Restoration

The biggest mass extinction in the history of the world was caused by carbon dioxide. That’s the conclusion of a shocking new study published last week in Science Magazine.

According to that study - the Permian Mass Extinction - which occurred 252 million years ago - started when a group of volcanoes erupted in Siberia - sending tons upon tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

This C02 bomb then filtered into the earth's oceans - acidifying them and making them totally incapable of supporting any ecosystem whatsoever. The result was the total annihilation of 90 percent of all life on earth.

While scientists don't think that we're at risk of any supervolcano eruptions any time soon - the fact that the Permian Mass Extinction appears to have been caused by carbon dioxide is pretty scary given the state of the earth's climate these days.

At over 400 parts per million - there is now more carbon in the atmosphere at any time in human history. In fact - the last time time there was this much carbon in the atmosphere was almost 15 million years ago!

Meanwhile - to make matters worse - as a side effect of climate change - our oceans are acidifying at a rate we haven't seen in millions of years.

It shouldn't be any surprise - then - that some scientists think we're on the cusp of the next big mass extinction - all as a result of carbon pollution from fossil fuels.

But don't tell Senate Republicans that. Some of them - like Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions - don't even believe that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. He told EPA head Gina McCarthy recently that it's just a "harmless plant food."

Luckily - not everyone takes as much money and advice from the fossil fuel industry as Senator Sessions.

All around the world these days - scientists - policymakers - and activists of all stripes are hard at work finding ways to fight back against climate change. And while some of these experts are focusing on economic solutions and others are looking at political solutions - still others are exploring natural solutions to climate change.

This is the subject of our documentary "Restoration" - which is narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Check it out:


I hope you enjoyed "Restoration" and the entire series as much as we did making it. For more information on the documentary you just saw and to view all four parts of the Green World Rising series go to greenworldrising.org.

Comments

mathboy's picture
mathboy 9 years 14 weeks ago
#1

Okay, people have to stop naming their kids James Webb. There's already the guy the telescope is named after, the former Virginia senator, and now the guy Thom talked about today who's leaning toward Hillary.

It is true that the Democratic Party doesn't distinguish itself from the Republican Party. As a member of the party, who's gone to the state convention 3 times, even I never see the final version of the party's platform.

mathboy's picture
mathboy 9 years 14 weeks ago
#2

A million-mother march would be great, especially if they all had infants. At least 10,000 of those kids would be crying at any time; anyone would give in to that.

sterowas's picture
sterowas 9 years 14 weeks ago
#3

I prefer "Arctic Methane Releases" to explain what deep doodoo we are in. High methane concentrations have persistently shown up over the Arctic Ocean from October 1, 2013, through to January 2014. On January 19, 2014, levels as high as 2363 ppb were recorded over the Arctic Ocean: http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/01/high-methane-levels-over-the-arc...

CORRECTION: The current activation for the estate tax is $5.4 Million, NOT over $10 Million as Thom stated earlier this week. AND the tax rate starts at 35%, NOT the 2% Thom alleged. THIS does NOT include states that add addtional taxes called inheritance tax......

liz banker 9 years 14 weeks ago
#4

It's good to know that a Hollywood actor like Mr. Dicaprio has established and is affordably active and principled on Climate Change/Global Warming - a nice break from Access Hollywood celebrities raising money for their "favorite disease" or celebrities having regular encounters with law enforcement (a la Justin Bieber).

ckrob's picture
ckrob 9 years 14 weeks ago
#5

Let's parse "freedom." There are two major branches of meaning: freedom from, aspired to by the poor and oppressed not to have things done to them and freedom to, in which those free of significant limit aspire to new behaviors. The wealthy wish to be free to exercise the power that their weath affords them. The poor wish to be free from the power exercised over them. Same word but very different meanings.

PaulHosse's picture
PaulHosse 9 years 14 weeks ago
#6

A very interesting article. With the acidicty of oceans increasing, we're obviously going to have serious affect on food supply, which will of course have a domino effect. Climate change has already begun to affect the availability of fresh water. Regardless of whether Man is the cause or it's part of a natural cycle or some combination, "something" is obviously happening. My big concern is the tipping point, which I understand we're almost there. But, on the whole, I think if we could arrange a more "selective" lesser extinction, say in Washington, it might not be an altogether bad thing and still give us time to do something corrective.

2950-10K's picture
2950-10K 9 years 14 weeks ago
#7

With big oil money in firm control of our government, and corporate media.....global warming...... truth based on science, has become an extremely inconvenient reality for many.

It's not unlike the what happened during the 16th and 17th century....the Papacy, which was basically the big money power of that age, fought Copernicus and Galileo over heliocentrism to the bitter end. It's always about holding on to money and power at all cost, but this time instead of a heretic at the stake, the entire planet is at stake.

Great video!

agelbert's picture
agelbert 9 years 14 weeks ago
#8

Thom,

This is what we have to do WORLDWIDE. If we don't, we die.

The bottom line is that humans, although we are tasked as self aware beings with being stewards of those life forms who are not, are a function of the biosphere, just as all the other life forms are.

We have NOT "risen above" the other life forms with our polluting example. The reverse is true. Our science CANNOT replace life forms that go extinct. We can't even make a paramecium! We are STUCK when a large enough percentage of the biosphere we MUST have to survive dies off. And THAT is ALREADY BAKED IN, according to Hansen and thousands of other serious scientists.

We have NOT earned the right to do anything on this biosphere except to obey the rules of planetary biochemistry that our scientists have discovered. We don't do that and we die, period.

So we can sit here and hem and haw about whether this or that system is "doable", "practical" or "too utopian" while we are oh, so cautious in not wanting to tinker with all those "Great traditions" and "individuality" and "freedom" that gave us our present Dystopia. Good luck with that.

I propose that we go from a defunct "carrying Capacity" meme to a "Caring Capacity" meme.

This world view modification is life promoting, instead of death rewarding.

First, we would need to adopt Hansen's "Golden Opportunity" (tax and dividend) on fossil fuels along with the elimination of any and all subsidies and tax deductions for exploration for fossil fuels.

Second, codifying into international law fines and/or imprisonment for biosphere harming activities (e.g. fossil fuel exploration and non-bioremidiated mining) must occur across the board in order to ensure compliance to the Caring Capacity meme.

Third, we adopt the product of a Caring Capacity concept called a modified Borsadi Constant. The modification consists of Biosphere math applied to the basket of commodities Borsadi proposed. The modified Borsadi Constant must be the ONLY LEGAL TENDER in order to ensure compliance to the Caring Capacity meme. Of course, the international community could expand that basket to include other, less known, but important commodities vital to biosphere restoration. This requires a planetary ecology inventory of the biosphere by objective scientists.

An inventory of the biosphere must be RADICALLY different than those now made by the CIA and all the other profit over planet exploiters that operate on the carrying capacity meme (i.e. ANYTHING we get from the ground that harms the biosphere MORE than nurtures it MUST be considered too expensive to extract, period).

For those that will wail and moan about how we need fossil fuel this and fossil fuel that (pesticides, fertilizers, plastics, etc.) in order to avoid having to cull the human population, I present to you the example of China BEFORE the industrial revolution.

For over 1,000 YEARS they had such a perfectly balanced use of human feces for fertilizing crops, that they obtained a population density FAR above anything any other country in the world has reached as of this date. And they did that WITHOUT warring on other countries (yeah they had internal conflict but nobody's perfect! ) and WITHOUT CAPITALISM several centuries before the industrial revolution.

With the knowledge we now possess, ALL the products we need to thrive can be obtained IN HARMONY with the biosphere. Any population pressure we experience can be solved by GROWING the biosphere onto arid, desolate portions of the globe. There are a LOT of those.

When the limit to THAT is reached within a century or so, we can terraform mars to give us another 1000 years of growing elbow room. It's a BIG universe out there! The reason more people don't see this is that they are brainwashed to think SCARCITY, SCARCITY and SCARCITY equals VALUE. That's the exploitive, profit over planet mindfork we have been visited with for the benefit of the Gordon Gecko IDIOTS.

 

Here's the CARING CAPACITY CURRENCY part of the proposal:

Present Dystopia:

http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-170415130136.png

The "currency" of Dystopia:

http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-170415131118.png

The BorsodI Constant aka "the Exeter experiment "InFLatIon Free Currency (approximately 1971-1974)

United States Constitution forbids the counterfeiting of this nation’s currency, however, it in no way limits the circulation of a completely alternative medium of exchange...

[url=http://www.scribd.com/doc/13266703/3-09-Ralph-Borsodi-Constant-Currency#]3 09 Ralph Borsodi Constant Currency[/url]

What MUST we do to have a type of FUNCTIONAL society based on human CARING CAPACITY instead of the exploited biosphere's "carrying capacity"?

We must adopt a currency [color=green]that reflects REAL VALUE in the biosphere. The use of this currency must nurture LIFE, not reward coercion, greed, war and death.

Ralph Borsodi came up with a local currency called the "CONSTANT".

I like it. With some fine tuning, it would fit the bill for a Green Libertarian Socialist currency that would meet the Caring Capacity requirement to nurture LIFE, not reward coercion, greed, war and death.

SNIPPET:

The first Constants were sold on June 21st 1972. Over a period of about three years, Borsodi presented his ideas to many people who deposited approximately $100,000 in his bank experiment called Arbitrage International and the funds were used to buy the basket of 30 basic commodities on the world market. (Arbitrage International maintained a Luxembourg and a London office, in addition to its temporary headquarters in Exeter, New Hampshire.)

"The value of a Constant was based on that of specific amounts of thirty basic commodities,

including gold, silver, iron, aluminum, lead, copper, nickel, tin, zinc, coal, oil, wheat, barley, rice, rye, oats, soya, maize, wool, cotton, cocoa, coffee, copra, hides, jute, rubber, cement, sulphur and sugar, and holders could sell them at any time for the total of whatever the constituents were then worth:

http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-170415140958.jpeg

Borsodi’s organisation, Independent Arbitrage International, recalculated the Constant’s underlying value monthly and let the banks know. " People who bought Constants from Borsodi’s organisation at, say, $2.18 a 10-Constant note were surprised later when the bank paid them $2.19 for it" a local newspaperman, Mel Most, wrote after the experiment had been running for seven months."

"To everybody’s surprise, even including Borsodi, many people bought Constant notes and made deposits in the bank checking account. At the same time Constants began to circulate around the town of Exeter, where restaurants and other businesses accepted them in payment."

The participants in the experiment saw the value of their constant rise 17% in three years. 36 months into the test, "...a constant bought in 1970 can still be traded for exactly one constant’s worth of goods . . . while a dollar will now buy only 85% of what it would purchase three years ago."

[url=http://www.scribd.com/doc/13266703/3-09-Ralph-Borsodi-Constant-Currency#]3 09 Ralph Borsodi Constant Currency[/url]

HERE is the typical BALONEY double talk response from the gooberment:

What did the U.S. Treasury Department have to say about the private currency?

A Treasury agent was quoted at the time saying, "We don’t care if he issues pine cones, as long as it is exchangeable for dollars so that transactions can be recorded for tax purposes."

BALONEY!

"Tax purposes" DOES NOT HAVE BEANS to do with it and COERCION to make people accept a worthless fiat currency issued by the "Federal" Reserve has EVERYTHING to do with it. But they don't say that, do they? THE INSTANT people with REAL currency try to PROPERLY value fiat dollars (see USED toilet paper or less), the profit over planet counterfeiters get their family jewels in an uproar.

 

http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-170415144817.jpeg

http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/forum/index.php/topic,4600.msg73211.html#msg73211

Feel free to pass this on with or without attribution. TPTB, not the overwhelming majority of the human biomass, are killing this biosphere. WE HAVE TO STOP THEIR SUICIDAL INSANITY OR WE WILL GO EXTINCT.

chuckle8's picture
chuckle8 9 years 14 weeks ago
#9

ckrob -- I really like your parsing.

chuckle8's picture
chuckle8 9 years 14 weeks ago
#10

PaulHosse -- Why do you want to get rid of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren?

chuckle8's picture
chuckle8 9 years 14 weeks ago
#11

agelbert -- I think the tax and dividend would solve the fossil fuel problems. I am always amazed at the power of government. For example, that wimpy $800 billion stimulus package back in 2009 changed a 700,000 a month job loss into a 200,000 a month job gain.

Your description of Bosardi constants seems to imply that money came into existence for bookkeeping barter transactions. You need to discuss the history of money with the MMT economists. They say that money was created as a way to pay for the commons.

lightspark's picture
lightspark 9 years 14 weeks ago
#12

Hi Thom, love your work, been listening to you for years. I am a scientist in Australia, and I ask you to check the definition of pollutant. We should not call CO2 a pollutant or we just give our enemies stones to throw at us.

kind regards

chuckle8's picture
chuckle8 9 years 13 weeks ago
#13

When CO2, and only CO2, wiped out an entire African village a couple of decades ago, I thought maybe we could call it a pollutant.

piter85's picture
piter85 5 years 11 weeks ago
#14

The basic part of the magnetostrictive all kinds of sensor is the sensing element called the waveguide. The waveguide is made of ferromagnetic materials such as iron, nickel, cobalt and their alloys. The position magnet which is round in shape moves around this waveguide.

Initially when position has to be determined the Nagano keiki Pressure sensor electronics sends a current pulse called the interrogation pulse through the waveguide and starts the timer abs speed sensor . So a magnetic field is created around the waveguide. When the magnetic field of the position magnet interacts with the magnetic file around the waveguide a strain pulse is generated which travels at the speed of mazda 6 suction control valve on both sides. On one side this strain pulse is detected by the strain pulse detection system and then processed by the electronics and converted into electrical pulse suction control valve . The position is determined based on the time the strain pulse takes to Speed Sensor reach the strain pulse detection system. The un useful pulse which travels opposite Pressure Sensor the electronics is damped by damping module to prevent any interference by reflections from the waveguide tip.
Common Rail Pressure Sensor
Temperature Sensor
Fuel Metering Valve
Diesel Solenoid Valves

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