Could Literacy Limit Growth?

Evidently, Earth’s ecology continues to be impacted by the unbridled effects of Human consumption and population growth. Resulting in more people seeming willing to take some rather difficult stances on key issues. Especially ones that contribute to Humanity’s disproportionate impact upon our shared Environment. Specifically, our mushrooming need for food and fuel in a world that is already precariously overpopulated has become a hot topic again, and re-raises the specter of Population Control. A subject that everyone expects to be personally managed via contraceptive methods, rather than anything more Orwellian, of course. There is a game-changing factor that’s still being overlooked in this difficult question though; which is the very real correlation between Women’s Literacy or basic education, and drastically lowered birth rates!

As evidenced below (and elsewhere), raising Literacy rates for women, would seem to directly impact impact birth-rates, and then human population levels, and thus our total consumptions – Especially as third world populations clamor to achieve a more Western lifestyle and comparable rate of Consumption.

If you’re curious about the science behind this intuitive connection between literacy and lowered birthrates, here’s some hard info for you. If you’re already comfortable with the reasons for this correlation, then you might also consider why Literacy could be placed up at the forefront of efforts to reduce Global Warming…

A Diesel Powered Future?

	Diesel Power was a revolution that still inspires new innovations even today. Bridging the gap for Industry and Transportation as they seek out a sustainable Future. Check the Green History of Diesel!

Upon operating his first successful engine design back in 1897  Rudolph Diesel changed the world in ways that most people still don’t fully appreciate today. Especially now, as we begin the long process of moving out of the petroleum-powered era, we should pause to take lessons from visionaries like Tesla and Diesel, and consider how they harnessed natural forces and physical phenomena to revolutionize existing technologies, and enabled enormous leaps into the Future by allowing others to build upon the solid foundations that they laid. The venerable diesel engine was an innovation of the internal combustion engine that continues to be improved upon even today, with the new methods and materials that are offered by modern science.

Many of us associate diesel power with loud smelly trucks and buses, so it might come as a great surprise that Diesel technology is actually still being improved upon after all this time. In fact, in just the past few years we’re seeing a level of improvement to efficiency and emissions that are actually positioning diesel as a sustainable interim solution for our transportation needs…While other options continue to be researched for that quantum leap in technology that will slingshot both Industry and Society towards the next century. So If you’re ready to see how diesel power still holds a few tricks up it’s sleeve, then let’s start exploring, by looking at railway locomotives as our prime motivator!

BTW: If you’re curious about Rudolf Diesel’s sense of environmental and social responsibility, as it was well over a century ago…Just pop-open another window by clicking HERE for further insights.

Diesel’s Vision

	At one time, Diesel power was poised as an alternative to big Coal and Oil… Today it could once again bridge the sustainability gap, offering Industry and Transportation the time to find its renewable power for the Future. Learn More Here

At the World’s Fair of 1900 in Paris France, Rudolph Diesel demonstrated the virtues of his new pressure-ignited “rational heat motor”  which came to bear his name to the world then, and has done so to the present day. We’ve come to also know Rudolf Diesel as an eminent mechanical and thermal engineer, a multi-lingual and knowledgeable patron of the Arts, and not least of all a highly progressive Social Theorist. Although his legacy is inestimable, his rise to fame was as quick as it was brief…and leaves us with some unanswered questions about how Diesel’s vision may have offered us a different world than the one ruled by Oil and Big Banks.

Hemp Diesel

	A century ago, it looked like Diesel Power and Hemp Products could have combined to side-track (eliminate?) our current dependencies on Oil and Forestry…Funny how things could still come full circle! ♦ CLICK HERE to learn how Diesel is cleaning up it’s act, and kicking the forced Oil habit!

In 1893, German inventor Rudolf Diesel published a paper entitled “The Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Engine” which described a motor in which air is compressed by a piston to a very high pressure, causing a temperature spike where injected fuel is auto-ignited and efficiently burned in the expanding compression during the down-stroke. This basic concept results in a simple, safe, cool, highly efficient engine that could run on locally produced vegetable oils – and therefore level the playing field for those who otherwise couldn’t compete with the large steam-powered Industries and Shippers of the day.

Unfortunately, in the early 20th century Big Banks and Financiers were already doing everything in their power to support their Oil and Forestry interests, ,and thus assure the dominance of Petro-Chemical industries. So instead of seeing how Diesel’s vision would have played out, we’ve had to wait until the combined and destructive effects of Financial, Energy, and Environmental crisis’ here the 21st Century, would obviate the ideals and benefits that Rudolf Diesel had envisioned for Society over a century ago…When he built his first engines to be run on the same types of Bio-Fuels that we now have available today, and which could have cut Coal and Oil out of the picture from the very start…

GRID2.0: Why Upgrade?

Our various electrical grids have been built, rebuilt, and patched up in an ongoing process that began when electric power first began to be generated well over a century ago.  Of course plenty of new power plants and transmission towers have been patched into the existing infrastructure since those early days, and the costs of maintaining these have been paid for (repeatedly) by ratepayers who would presumably like to benefit from these fully amortized assets (at least for awhile) before incurring any new costs, or adding to already enormous public debts. So why exactly should anybody be bothered to consider the staggering expenses of undertaking a major upgrade of our various electrical grids at this particular point in history?

Most people are in fact much more interested in the development of newenergy (re)sources, rather than in understanding the boring details of delivering existing electricity into our homes and commercial spaces, so why worry about the distribution of power in a ‘smart’ electrical grid, when the old grid seems to be doing an adequate job ?

The True Nature of Contrails

	If you’d like a clear view of what creates Jet Contrails just: Click for Facts…

If you think that jet travel isn’t playing a major role in either climate change, or modified atmospheric chemistry, then you probably don’t need to dive into this deeper exploration. Otherwise you might find some points of interests below to move on with.

In our explorations of jet exhaust and ‘vapour contrails‘ and the impact of air travel on our Future Environment, we’ve made previous attempts to speculate upon why certain channels in the Mainstream Media have taken interest in a rather weak Conspiracy Theory like “Chemtrails”, rather than digging into the underlying science of Contrails (and environmental impact of jet exhaust) for a bonefide piece of investigative journalism on a possibly much deeper conspiracy.

If there’s such a things as covering up “conspiracies” with weaker conspiracy theories, then it’s quite possible that the airline industry knows full well that it is doing serious damage to the stratosphere. That the prevalence of “Chemtrail” theories might simply be serving to throw people off the trail by simply associating any negative environmental news about airliners with more easily dismissed “conspiracy theories”…

Geo-Engineering: Laying Foundations

Unlike BIO-Engineering, which seeks to apply pure Science via Technological processes to produce engineered results in Biological fields (from GM’d corn, to the materials of Orthpaedic hip-joint replacement hardware), GEO-Engineering seeks to take the same approach to producing engineered results for the entire Earth, in order to effect positive changes to our environment. Regrettably, the term Geo-Engineering seems to have been misappropriated and popularized as a description of Ecological or Environmental engineering applications on a global scale, even though the terms Enviro, Global, or ECO-Engineering would likely have been much more appropriate descriptors for this sort of work. Unfortunately for the real Geo-Engineers out there (who’ve been working long and hard on true Geological Engineering), the term GEO has already been co-opted by Environmentalists, adopted by the Media, and is now popularized to represent applied technological solutions to our most pressing issues around Climate Change. So thanks to prevailing trends in the Media, Geo-Engineering has effectively come to mean something else entirely to all of us who are not engineers.

Geo-Engineering has been categorical science since the Sixties (when it first became popular to believe that Technology could fix anything), and it seems to be finally coming into vogue after being brought to back to public attention by mainstream Media sources such as the New York Times. Geo-Engineering (as we currently accept the poorly named field) has become a notably complex endeavor that requires the collection, collation and application of knowledge from three VERY large areas of study:

* Scientific disciplines including Climatology, Biochemistry, Ecology, Meteorology and several subsets of Biology and Physics
* Engineering disciplines including aeronautical, naval, architectural, ballistics, propulsion, and materials Engineering.
* Regulatory/Management and other control disciplines such as business process and risk management, and realtime operational research…and of course an insanely complex and interdependent maze of International Politics, Regulations, Diplomacy, and Trade.

Before delving into these ridiculously broad categories of study, first, let’s just put away any indignant or ignorant self-righteousness about “playing God” with the environment. Instead, let’s simply admit that we’ve already been toying with our Ecology, and changing the Earths environment in countless ways for a long time now already.

Whether it’s by altering watersheds and aquifers, re-engineering entire drainage systems for irrigation or hydro power, or by clearcutting the heat and CO2 consuming capacity of entire forests, and let’s not forget the ongoing and always contentious issues behind enormous volumes of CO2 (and other more potent greenhouse gases) escaping into the atmosphere, as Humans we are already very deeply ensnared in the tricky game of Geo-Engineering. Thus the dire scenarios described as AGW, or “Anthropogenic” (man-made) Global Warming are directly attributed to Human activities, which nobody questions as being capable of changing an entire planet.

So since we’ve already been behaving like foolish Gods (or rather like some lesser being that has self-provisioned itself with Godlike dominion over nature according to some self-distorting Judeao-Christian fallacy) let’s then look at the risks of Geo-Engineering more realistically.

Seeding Cloudy Conspiracies

	Some poorly supported Conspiracy Theories have been making their way into the Mainstream Media. Ironically, there might be a deeper, more subtle corrosion beneath this superficial trend!

According to the recent surge of Public and Media interest in “Chemtrails” it seems that the amorphous realm of  ‘Conspiracy Theories‘ is no longer just being limited to the outer fringes of Society. Of course, there’s been an enormous amount of mainstream news coverage for all the officially sanctioned Climate Change issues, but during this time we’ve also been witness to a fracturing and perceptible shift in Public Opinion around the central Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) issue. This has resulted in a dizzying array of new points and counterpoints of discussion around the official stories that come out out of the UN, IPCC, and all the larger NGO’s and Environmental Groups, which invariably resulted in most truly alternative views being largely suppressed, rejected, or at least fully discredited through standard PR and Press (or propaganda?)  methods that offered no real room for rationale discourse or debate, outside the chaotic streams of  pseudo-moderated Comments fields, or obscure online forums. If you prefer to be spoonfed an opinion, or would like to consider a fact-based position on what actually causes the jet contrails implicated in Chemtrails, just click/scroll right down to The True Nature of Contrails

Generally speaking, the Media would certainly not turn against the hands that feed it, but rather than lose the over-stressed attentions of its brow-beaten Audience, certain segments of the Media (as a pandering reflection of its Advertisers first, and of Society as a close second) have been increasingly willing to selectively examine at least some of these more alternative points of view, even if they do verge on the realm of Conspiracy Theory. Not only to bolster flagging public interest, but perhaps to retain some general credibility as a balanced source of mainstream information, after having already whipped the leading Climate Change horses all the way down the backstretch to their disappointing finish in Copenhagen.

Unfortunately it seems that the lack of investigative reporting that we’ve seen for Climate Science is becoming even more obvious now in these fringe subjects as well, and leads us to wonder what the ultimate consequences will be of such Media-inspired lassitude?

In the same way that just a few key trigger points (such as ClimateGate, the failure in Copenhagen, and a cool Winter, etc)  started a right-wing Media landslide from the over-driven buildup of Global Warming issues, we also saw huge segments of both American and European populations get tipped off the AGW fence, and into the clutches of the right-wing media. These were loosely decided segments that might have otherwise remained open to further suggestions, or at least remain pliably indecisive. Can this be seen as a form of ‘statistical housecleaning for undecided remainders, or just a social backfire which will likely set the entire Environmental Movement back by at least a few paces. You can decide.

Anyhow let’s get back to finding some verity behind “Chemtrails” since this seems to better represent the types of environmental issues that people still seem to have a stomach for these days…Just as controversial, poorly defined, and relatively as un-actionable as climate change, yet at least with a strong anti-authoritarian spin to feel like they can finally push back against the “establishment” somehow, just by ‘spreading the word’…Just like in the early days of a easily adopted Global Warming Movement.

Sp let’s look at Chemtrails. The persistent theory is that any jetplane ‘contrails’ (condensation trails) that are observed to linger in the sky, overlap, and/or form clouds are actually ‘chemtrails’ – Which are claimed to not only be a method of Weather Control, but also of Population Control, Global Dimming, and Bio Warfare, or possibly just very expensive waste disposal.  In the true spirit of conspiracy theory though, lets drill down through the alternating layers of confusion and deceit, and interpret the core samples with yet another new twist.

Let’s consider the possibility that this recent Media phenomenon of openly validating and reporting on the subject of ChemTrails, (among other fringe theories) might possibly be part of a very clever strategy for an even more subtle form of mass/media/mind control!  Why hasn’t the Media simply researched and explained the actual physical phenomenon of (polluted?) Contrails instead?  Could the truth actually be, that among all the rather flimsy issues out there, that this alternative ‘climate issue’ has been handpicked (among others?) to achieve higher Media visibility in order to just publicly debunk it, and thus discredit the entire concept of Conspiracy Theory, or worse yet to help derail any public credibility around the existence of an underground railroad for  suppressed information, or any other signs of a growing Alternative Press which might risk having an impact on the Mainstream Media Message, and general Public Consciousness in the event of a genuine crisis?

Science Journals: Purveyors or Gatekeepers?

	Publish or Perish !

After after harnessing the laws of Nature, and applying Truth and Reason to triumph over dogmatic Religion, Science now seems to be capable of falling into the same traps of power and corruption that can undermine all great human pursuits and lofty achievements. Hopefully, the same basic principals that allowed Science to persevere and flourish, can also be brought to bear upon its own methods now, in order to redeem itself to the Media and clamoring Masses that have lost their blind faith.

Since we’ve all been raised to believe that Science is based in Truth, and that Justice and Liberty are inalienable rights, it should come as no surprise that the General Public risks becoming(at least temporarily) disenfranchised by the fact that there seems to be some degree of suppressed dissent in the Scientific Community revolving around Climate Science.   From a Layman’s point of view, many people have grown weary of the arguments, and are ready to just “follow the money” when it comes to understanding the causes of the global warming debate. Most intelligent people are also becoming hyper-sensitized to anything that even remotely resembles propaganda, and have started to see past the all political posturing, economic interests, and ethical self-righteousness of the Climate Change movement to realize that we might actually have a more profound and underlying dilemma to consider here. One that is failing to address deeper ecological issues, while still trying to commoditize carbon dioxide through legislation. A dilemma which might eventually stem itself from our Society’s reliance on Science as the primary guiding force in human achievement and evolution. Therefore, in order to proceed into a clarified vision of the Future where environmental issues can be addressed at their root cause, let’s first consider the risks of losing our best guiding force in a world presently ruled by money and politics.

As we risk losing our faith in Science here in the Present, we need to regain a workable trust in what we had hoped were the infallible principals of the Scientific Method in order to move towards a more pre-verified Future outlook.  Since many people believe that Science has indeed supplanted Religion (which arguably supplanted Nature long ago!) as our guiding force in Society and Life as we know it, let’s proceed according to any other scientific or “religious” study by considering the facts as basic articles of faith, and as they exist within the scientific community itself. The first step to redeeming our views of Science would surely be to turn to the ‘scripture’ of Science, as it has been methodically collected and presented throughout the ages by the indentured librarians and peer-reviewed science journals that this community of researchers and trusted professionals places its own trust into.

THORIUM: A Tipping Point in History

- IMPACT REPORT –

	Thorium has somehow survived its early demise… Now it stands poised to fuel a limitless Future if we can change the course of history  !

The nuclear debate continues to put forward large scale alternatives to fossil-fueled Society, but has never included a much better option, when it comes to managing the waste and risks. This tragedy is essentially the result of politics, not science, since there likely isn’t a more misunderstood and overlooked element on the Periodic Table than Thorium.

Despite its enormous potential to safely power both the developing world and our modern societies through the self-regulating energy production of the little known “Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor” (LFTR).  This long-mothballed reactor design is gaining great new attention in other parts of the world because it produces only small amounts radioactive waste (which fully decay in a few hundred years, rather than many thousands), offers no realistic potential for easy weaponization, and in fact enables the destruction of weapons grade materials. Thorium astoundingly still remains an elemental mystery to most people to this very day however. Mainly because it’s early and successful development in the U.S. was nixxed in favor of the Uranium-based weapons programs in the 50′s and 60′s.