Last flight of the honeybee?

The Guardian news paper, on 31st May 2008, reports on the declining numbers of honeybees around the world. They say,

Hackenberg was the first beekeeper to report that his bees had vanished. On a November day 18 months ago, he checked the hives in his Florida bee yard to find they were empty. "They weren't dead, they were just gone," he recalls.

Since then, close on two million colonies of honeybees across the US have been wiped out. The strange phenomenon, dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD), is also thought to have claimed the lives of billions of honeybees around the world. In Taiwan, 10 million honeybees were reported to have disappeared in just two weeks, and throughout Europe honeybees are in peril.

UK farming minister Lord Rooker, however, warned last year that honeybees are in acute danger: "If nothing is done about it, the honeybee population could be wiped out in 10 years,"

Honeybees are vital for the pollination of around 90 crops worldwide. In addition to almonds, most fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds are dependent on honeybees. Crops that are used as cattle and pig feed also rely on honeybee pollination, as does the cotton plant.

According to Albert Einstein, our very existence is inextricably linked to bees - he is reputed to have said: "If the bee disappears off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left."

It then goes on to say something very interesting.

This is not the first time that honeybees have disappeared. The first recorded unexplained loss was in the US 150 years ago and ever since large numbers have vanished at intervals throughout North America, Europe and Australia. An epidemic first reported on the Isle of Wight wiped out 90% of honeybee colonies in the UK at the beginning of the 20th century.

So why all the panic then, if this sort of thing happens again and again and even seems natural.

The book is “A World Without Bees” by Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum.

Climate Change May 2008 Round Up

As there is a constant flow of climate change news, keeping you scared and in a panic, I don’t report on it daily. Instead I will do monthly round ups of some of the more interesting events.

Things started off by some German scientists telling us the last 10 years of cooling is down to natural climate cycles and things will be getting hotter again by 2020.

We also heard news that the UN has wasted 10 billion dollars in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, who should not of qualified.

Exxon, the oil company, is to cut funding to climate change denial groups. If there is no one looking at the possibility that there is no man made global warming then there is only going to be one point of view looked at. I thought science was about finding truth and not about backing the current political ideology.

The current food crisis is being blamed on climate change too, when other factors are to blame. Food is being grown for bio fuel and green policies have been forcing farm land to go fallow, so the amount of food to eat has decreased. Also, China is demanding more food to feed its growing middle classes.

Below are some the new things that are “affected by climate change”.

The Australian islands of the Torres Strait are slowly being submerged
Force 1 billion people from their homes by 2050
Tropical insects will be the first to go
Plate tectonics could shut down
Extinction for butterflies in Scotland
French truffle threatened
Lead the poor to 'barbarisation'
Rising ocean to submerge part of South Florida
One in eight of the world's birds are at risk of extinction
Sea life at risk from rapid acidification
Threat to US crops and water
Reindeer herders face extinction
The narwhal, a whale with a long spiral tusk, is at risk

We are being told to do the following to help to combat climate change.

Eat insects. A group of experts endorse bugs as a nutritious and sustainable food source
The halting of logging in the world's rainforests is the single greatest solution to climate change, Prince Charles has said
Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them. Stop making fat people
Become a vegetarian, as growing livestock is more damaging to the environment
Cultivation your own fruit and vegetables
Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry 'carbon ration cards'
World must cut CO2 to India levels

This constant stream of fear is the real global threat. Forcing people to do the will of others in order to “save the planet” and make a quick buck or gain power at the same time.

Asteroid Deflection Research Center

The Iowa State University website, on May 22nd 2008, has news that they will be hosting an Asteroid Deflection Research Center on their campus for researchers from around the world to talk about different methods of deflecting asteroids. The article says,

Just 100 years ago, June 30, 1908, an asteroid or comet estimated at 100–200 feet in diameter exploded in the skies above Tunguska, Siberia. Known as the Tunguska Event, the explosion flattened trees and killed other vegetation over a 500,000-acre area. But if the explosion had occurred four hours later, it would have destroyed St. Petersburg or Moscow with an equivalent energy level of about 500 Hiroshima nuclear bombs.

Last November, NASA reported 900 known potentially hazardous objects (PHOs), most of which are asteroids. PHOs are defined as objects larger than 492 feet in diameter whose trajectories bring them to within about 4.6 million miles of the Earth’s orbit. NASA scientists estimate the total population of PHOs to be around 20,000. “However,” Wie said, “the asteroid we have to worry about is the asteroid that we don’t know.”

According to Tom Shih, professor and chair of aerospace engineering, “the potential for a major catastrophe created by an asteroid impacting Earth is very real. It is a matter of when, and humankind must be prepared for it."

Bad news indeed, but at the end of the article we have something a little more reassuring.

The chances of having to use deflection technologies on an asteroid in the near future are admittedly remote. Scientists estimate the frequency of an extinction-class (6 miles in diameter or larger) object striking Earth as once every 50–100 million years, and for a 200-foot or larger object as once every 100–500 years.

The estimate is for one every 100-500 years, but the last one was a 100 years ago, therefore the next one can happen at anytime. Is it time to panic?

The website is www.engineering.iastate.edu

The 11th Hour

Channel 4, on the 25th May 2008, showed the film “The 11th Hour”. This was a call to ordinary people about the environmental disasters that are happening now and what will happen next if we do not start to take action to stop climate change. Sadly its message was drowned out by the very heavy use of propaganda techniques.

There were two extremes shown, the good environmentalist and everyone else. When showing the good side you would hear soft music and see long clips of some beautiful environment. When showing the other side you had loud fast music with a lot of short clips of destruction, pollution and human suffering. What you never see is the middle ground, the life we live every day.

Below are a number of quotes from the film that I found interesting.

The biosphere is sick, a planet that is behaving like an infected organism.
Thom Hartman, author of “The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight”

What I hear in my dreams are the generations in the future screaming back to us in time, saying, what are you doing, don’t you see, we are at this critical point in time, and we have evolved to be the leaders of our biological community and we are misleading, we are coursing the devastation to the very foundation of our life system, that has given us birth and we are ultimately committing suicide.
Paul Stamets, Mycologist, Author of “Mycelium Running”

Even to think we are separated from nature is some how a thinking disorder.
James Hillman, Psychologist

If we were to have to go back to simply living off current sunlight, lacking technology, the planet couldn’t sustain more than half a billion to at the most a billion people.
Thom Hartman

We don’t know where the global warming will stop. But the worst case scenario is the earth will become like its sister planet Venus. With a temperature of 250 centigrade and raining sulphuric acid. The human race could not survive in those conditions.
Stephen Hawking

...coming close to what many scientists call the tipping point. A tipping point where we loss control of climate. And when we loss control of climate, then things like Katrina [the Hurricane], Katrina scale events will simply become the norm.
David Orr, Chair, Environmental Studies Program, Oberlin College

The human impacts, it is happening first and fastest in the Arctic. We are starting to see that things are happening even faster than what scientists have indicated. By the end of the century, perhaps even in a few decades, the Arctic will be quite ice free.
Sheila Watt-Cloutier, International Chair, Inuit Circumpolar Conference

The UN estimates that by the middle of the century that there maybe 150 million environmental refuges at any given time from climate change.
Bill Mickibben, Author, Founder, Stepitup07.org

So what's Plan Bee?

In The Observer, on Sunday May 25th 2008, there was an article about the continuing decline of the British bee population. It says,

They are nature's most productive workers, the farmer's friend and the essence of wholesome country life. But within a decade Britain's honeybee could be extinct. Simon Garfield meets the keepers battling a killer disease that's already wiped out a third of America's colonies – and now threatens our own.

Then talking about the different diseases bees can get it continues,

Then there was the potential catastrophe of the acronym CCD, the cause or symptoms of which no one claimed to fully understand, but whose name suggested a sort of bee Armageddon: Colony Collapse Disorder. But the problem with bees should not just be of concern to those gathered in a small English lecture hall, but a matter for us all. The question of dwindling honey supplies is one thing, but the greater threat is to apples, pears, raspberries, cherries, strawberries, blackcurrants, broad and runner beans and oilseed rape, and about 20 other crops dependent on insects for pollination. For bees are not just part of the foodchain; they are its clasp.

The article also when on to say that the government are doing very little about it.

Spain's drought: a glimpse of our future?

The Independent, on the 24th May 2008, looks at the possible future water shortage problems we will face and at the resent droughts in Spain. It says,

Barcelona is a dry city. It is dry in a way that two days of showers can do nothing to alleviate. The Catalan capital's weather can change from one day to the next, but its climate, like that of the whole Mediterranean region, is inexorably warming up and drying out. And in the process this most modern of cities is living through a crisis that offers a disturbing glimpse of metropolitan futures everywhere.

Its fountains and beach showers are dry, its ornamental lakes and private swimming pools drained and hosepipes banned. Children are now being taught how to save water as part of their school day. This iconic, avant-garde city is in the grip of the worst drought since records began and is bringing the climate crisis that has blighted cities in Australia and throughout the Third World to Europe. A resource that most Europeans have grown up taking for granted now dominates conversation. Nearly half of Catalans say water is the region's main problem, more worrying than terrorism, economic slowdown or even the populists' favourite – immigration.

The political battles now breaking out here could be a foretaste of the water wars that scientists and policymakers have warned us will be commonplace in the coming decades. The emergency water-saving measures Barcelona adopted after winter rains failed for a second year running have not been enough.

Spain has always had water shortage problems, it’s a hot country. But the problem has become worse because of irrigation systems for agriculture, old and leaking pipes, tourism (with their swimming pools and golf courses), and a larger population. This is more a man made problem than a global warming issue.

Will there be water wars in the future? We will have to wait and see.

Bananas are dying

The Independent, on 22nd May 2008, had an article looking at the disease affecting the banana and how it’s over production has lead to its down fall. It says,

Below the headlines about rocketing food prices and rocking governments, there lays a largely unnoticed fact: bananas are dying. The foodstuff, more heavily consumed even than rice or potatoes, has its own form of cancer. It is a fungus called Panama Disease, and it turns bananas brick-red and inedible.

There is no cure. They all die as it spreads, and it spreads quickly. Soon – in five, 10 or 30 years – the yellow creamy fruit as we know it will not exist.

What lead to this has been a long list of errors from companies more interested in shareholders’ profits and short term gains. It seems this problem is mainly down to unregulated capitalism at its worst. Greedy men doing evil things for the love of money.

The book is “Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World” by Dan Koeppel.

The Struggle to Control World Population

The Sunday Times, on 18th May 2008, reviewed a book by Matthew Connelly called “Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population”. The book looks at methods used over the years to try to reduce and control population levels. The review starts off as follows.

The population-control freaks are back in town. Two factors have given the neo-Malthusians hope that their bleak world view and dismal remedies might once again become intellectually fashionable.

The first is the notion that the most efficient way for mankind to cut its carbon emissions is not to breathe at all - or at least to do so in much smaller numbers. The second is the recent rapid increase in food prices worldwide - which the neo-Malthusians, as ever, do not believe is capable of being addressed by either the market or agricultural technology. These days, even apparently liberal commentators in the mainstream press write effusively in admiration of China's coercive one-child policy.

Against this background, the publication of Matthew Connelly's book is not just perfectly timed: it is essential. The assistant professor of history at Columbia University has delivered a devastating account of the population-control movement; he demonstrates, detail by shocking detail, how a movement that believed it was acting from the highest humanitarian ideals became responsible for callous abuses of human rights on a global scale, ruining millions of lives in a grotesque eugenic experiment.

The book highlights the affect fear can have in making governments do horrible things, believing them to be for the best. How many other foolish actions will take place because of overhyped, exaggerated fears?

Obesity contributes to global warming

Reuters, 15th May 2008, had an article on a study about the affects that fat people have on global warming. It said,

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.

At least 400 million adults worldwide are obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects by 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.

In their model, the researchers pegged 40 percent of the global population as obese with a body mass index of near 30. Many nations are fast approaching or have surpassed this level, Edwards said.

Because thinner people eat less and are more likely to walk than rely on cars, a slimmer population would lower demand for fuel for transportation and for agriculture, Edwards said.

For some reason this story didn’t get reported in the news papers. Maybe there would have been a big backlash condemning them for discriminating again fat people.

Expert warns climate change will lead to 'barbarisation'

The Guardian, on May 15th 2008, has a report about a lecture given by Mohan Munasinghe, vice-president of the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC), about the possible future problems that will face the world because of climate change. It said,

Climate change will lead to a "fortress world" in which the rich lock themselves away in gated communities and the poor must fend for themselves in shattered environments, unless governments act quickly to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate change is, or could be, the additional factor which will exacerbate the existing problems of poverty, environmental degradation, social polarisation and terrorism and it could lead to a very chaotic situation.

The scenario, which he termed "barbarisation" was already beginning to happen, he said. "Fortress world is a situation where the rich live in enclaves, protected, and the poor live outside in unsustainable conditions.

Food supply at risk from species loss

Reuters, May 14th 2008, has an article about governments missing goals to slow the rate of extinctions and how the loss of biodiversity will result in putting food supplies at risk. They says,

Governments are set to miss a self-imposed goal of slowing the rate of extinctions by 2010 and as a result are putting long-term food supplies at risk, a top environmentalist said before a U.N. biodiversity conference.

There is no question that the long-term sustainability of the world's food supply depends in no small part on how we take care of the world's biodiversity.

U.N. experts warn the planet is facing the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. Some estimates say a species vanishes every 20 minutes, due mainly to human activity and greenhouse gas emissions.

What about the theory of evolution and the “survival of the fittest”. At some point the next weak species to die out will be us.

How the world's oceans are running out of fish

The Observer, on May 11th 2008, had an article about the constantly depleting number of fish in the oceans. It says,

The future of our seas has never been more precarious. Ninety years of industrial-scale overfishing has brought us to the brink of an ecological catastrophe and deprived millions of their livelihoods.

North Atlantic fish stocks have been in decline for well over a century. Callum Roberts points out in his recent book The Unnatural History of the Sea that it was obvious from the 1880s that fish stocks were in decline.

Is there any hope for fish? If we cannot sort out the problem of bluefin tuna – a highly prized fish, whose life cycle is well understood, and whose fishing is closely monitored - what hope is there for the other stocks? Will our children eat wild fish or only farmed?
The Newfoundland cod fishery, for 500 years the world's greatest, was exhausted and closed in 1992, and there's still no evidence of any return of the fish. Once stocks dip below a certain critical level, the scientists believe, they can never recover because the entire eco-system has changed.

What Condoms Have to Do with Climate Change

The Time magazine, on 12th May 2008, has an article about how overpopulation will affect climate change and how we can help by having fewer children. It says,

Michael Hayden should have some insight on the biggest threats facing the U.S. But when Hayden recently described what he saw the most troublesome trend over the next several decades, it wasn't terrorism or climate change. It was overpopulation in the poorest parts of the world.

The sudden spike in both food and fuel prices is raising concerns that we may not be able to grow forever, that even with the best technological innovation, the planet may have limits. It's becoming increasingly clear that if we can't curb carbon emissions in a world of 6.8 billion, it may be impossible to do when there are 9 billion of us.

The question remains though: what can we do about population? State-mandated birth control is essentially unfair. The key to limiting population growth, he [Engleman] says, is to give control over procreation to women. In society after society, even in countries where large families have always been the norm, when women take control over family size, birth rates shrink.

The population of the Earth continues to increase and the affects on climate change are going to increase along with it. Therefore we need to stop families having too many children by giving woman the control to dictate when they get pregnant.

The article also had something interesting to say about the same thing being said before in 1970.

That era, which saw the birth of the modern environmental movement, was obsessed with the idea of global limits, that without drastic intervention, we were doomed to overpopulation. Books like Paul Erhlich's The Population Bomb warned that the Earth was reaching the end of its carrying capacity, and that within decades, hundreds of millions of people would starve to death.

Fast-forward 30 years, however, and the situation has changed. The mass famines that Erhlich and others prophesized never happened, and while population growth has continued — an estimated 6.8 billion people nowlive on Earth — and on the whole, the world is better off today than it has ever been.

They got it wrong before therefore it is possible they have got it wrong again. But over 30 years have past and there is a new generation of people to scare.

The book is “More: Population, Nature and What Women Want” by Robert Engelman.

What's really worth worrying about?

The Daily Mail, on the 7th May 2008, had an interesting article about a new book that looks at the things that threaten us, our fears about them and ranks them from a statistical point of view. The article said,

Their ratings work out the risk of an event as the likelihood of its happening multiplied by the impact if it does. For the panic rating, events are scored on how real the threat is, compared to how worried we have become.

It then lists the events and gives scores to the real risk level and the perceived panic level. The ratings are out of 10. The events and their ratings are as follows.

Being hit by an asteroid
Risk: 2
Panic: 4

Car crashes
Risk: 8
Panic: 6

Pension time bomb
Risk: 10
Panic: 6

Meeting an alien
Risk: 2
Panic: 4

Having a mental breakdown
Risk: 4
Panic: 10

Rising sea levels
Risk: 6
Panic: 8

Radiation poisoning
Risk: 4
Panic: 8

So it looks like people are over worrying about being hit by an asteroid, meeting an alien, having a mental breakdown, rising sea levels and radiation poisoning. But people are not fearful enough about car crashes and the pension time bomb.

If you add the values up, the real risks total 36 and the panic levels total 46. It would seem people over panic a little.

The book is “Panicology” by Simon Briscoe and Hugh Aldersey-Williams.

Risk of bird flu pandemic probably growing

Reuters’ web site reported, on May 6th 2008, that the risk of a bird flu pandemic was possibly growing. There was a meeting of 150 experts, hosted by WHO, to give an update on how to defence against a deadly global epidemic. It said,

The risk of a human influenza pandemic remains real and is probably growing as the bird flu virus becomes entrenched in poultry in more countries

The H5N1 avian flu virus has infected flocks in much of Asia, Africa and parts of Europe. Experts fear it could mutate into a form that passes easily from person to person, sparking an influenza pandemic that could kill millions.

There is also some interesting information about the number of human deaths so far.

The avian flu virus rarely infects people, but there have been 382 human cases worldwide since 2003, 241 of them fatal, according to the WHO, a United Nations agency.

The WHO has an alert level that is used to show the likelihood of another influenza pandemic. They say,

The WHO uses six phases of pandemic alert to gauge levels of threat. The world is currently in phase 3, meaning that a new influenza virus sub-type is causing disease in humans but is not yet spreading efficiently.

From the WHO web site these levels are as follows.

1: Low risk of human cases.
2: Higher risk of human cases.
3: No or very limited human-to-human transmission.
4: Evidence of increased human-to-human transmission.
5: Evidence of significant human-to-human transmission.
6: Efficient and sustained human-to-human transmission.

Are 382 human deaths over the last 5 years really something to be fearful of?

ITV movie Flood

On the 4th and 5th of May 2008, ITV showed the disaster movie Flood. It showed the tale of how London drowns under the affects of a storm surge and the spring tide.

The story goes something like this.

A bad storm is raging off the coast of England. A scientist, who long ago predicted that the Thames Barrier would fail but was ignored, tells the government about the impending disaster. He takes his computer models to show the government the events that are about to take place. The government starts to evacuate parts of London, but there is only 3 hours until the flood arrives.

With the combined forces of the storm surge and the spring tide there are 25 foot high waves racing up the Thames. The Thames Barrier can not hold the waves back and the London starts to drown.

The government looks to the scientist for help as only he understands the science behind it all. He comes up with a plan to open upstream sloosh gates, which are currently bursting with water from the storm, and have this flow of water push the storm surge back into the sea. Some people think the plan is impossible and a huge gamble, but the scientist is convinced and his computer models prove it.

The plan is put into action but there is a problem. The Thames Barrier needs opening. So the scientist goes off with others to help get the job done. But there are more problems and the only option the scientist has is to sacrifice his own life. The barrier is lowered just in time and millions of people are saved, but our hero is dead.

Can this happen for real? The ITV web site asked that question and said,

Leading actor David Suchet said: “Floods happened in Britain in 1953 and of course more recently. There was one in the 17th Century and global warming could create these conditions. However, the Thames Barrier and other defences are in a position to protect London, so in that sense, the film is very fictional.

This was a “what if” type of movie but not about the flood. It was more about a “what if we don’t listen to scientists and their computer models about future disasters?” It was interesting to see a scientist as the hero, one who was ignored, but had predicted the flood years ago. He was then the only one who could help fix the problem and the only one people looked to. Then in the end, as all good heroes, he sacrifices himself to save the day.

To sum up, this movie was more about the results of us not trusting scientists and their computer models. It all seemed a little like “Doomsayer’s Propaganda” to me.

Earth 'noise' could attract alien invaders

From the New Scientist magazine, 3rd May 2008, a scientist is reported as saying that we are too late to stop an alien invasion. The article says,

No matter how quiet we try to be now it's too late to prevent alien invaders. So says Alexander Zaitsev of the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics in Moscow, Russia, who points the finger at astronomers.

For 40 years, astronomers have fired microwaves off objects to chart near-Earth space and track the movement of close asteroids - and these signals are traceable back to us.

Tea and Armageddon

In the Daily Mail, on the 5th of May 2008, Tom Kelly reports on a secret British government report from 1955 on how they were going to survive after a Soviet nuclear assault.

It was believed that the Soviets would strike London, Birmingham, Merseyside, Manchester and Clydeside with 20 megaton hydrogen bombs. They would also likely hit Tyneside, Teeside, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull, Derby, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bristol, Plymouth, Cardiff, Coventry, Belfast and Purfleet in Essex, with less powerful nuclear bombs.

They planned to stockpile supplies, the article says,

The report's writers suggest a huge effort to stockpile staple foods and prepare the nation for the aftermath of a nuclear strike.

Their shopping list includes 40,000 tons of condensed milk, 200,000 tons of oils and fats, 700,000 tons of raw sugar, and 800,000 tons of wheat and flour.

Oddly, there was some concern about the amount of tea available. It says,

"The tea position would be very serious," notes one civil servant in the report. "With a loss of 75 per cent of stocks and substantial delays in imports and with a system of rationing, it would be wrong to consider that even 1oz per head per week (enough for about 12 cups) could be ensured."

It adds that "no satisfactory solution has yet been found" to the tea problem and calls for a plan to ensure a decent supply.

I can understand this. It feels like the end of the world when we run out of tea too.

Earth is losing dirt at an alarming rate

In The Detroit News, from detnews.com, on the 30th April 2008, there was an article about the eroding of topsoil. It reports that,

Nutrient-rich topsoil is being eroded much faster than it can be replenished, experts say.

On average, the planet is covered with little more than three feet of topsoil, the shallow skin of nutrient-rich matter that sustains most of our food and also appears to play a critical role in supporting life on Earth.

The National Academy of Sciences has determined that cropland in the U.S. is being eroded at least 10 times faster than the time it takes for lost soil to be replaced.

Doctor Montgomery, author of “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations”, says,

"Globally, it's pretty clear we're running out of dirt,"

New Survivalism

The BBC web site magazine, on the 2nd May 2008, had an article on a new wave of bunker building survivalists. Some rich people in the fear of society collapsing are building bunkers, so they can safely ride out the months of chaos to come.

They start off by saying the following.

In the 1950s and 1960s, bunkers were a feature of many American suburban homes, populated by families fearful of the prospect of nuclear war. That threat has subsided, but now many reasonable people are stocking up on essential supplies in preparation for a new cataclysm.

Of Barton M Biggs and his book, it says the following.

Yet in his latest book, Wealth, War and Wisdom, he suggests that all right-minded people should "assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilised infrastructure".

He then lists a number of events that could occur.

• Bird flu, could be come a global pandemic and kill 50 million people, and create large problems for national health systems and a shortage of workers.
• Food price increases.
• Higher oil prices.
• Power blackouts, could create water supply problems, transportation problems, large financial losses, looting and “a mass exodus from cities”.
• Earthquakes and hurricanes.
• Major global economic crisis.
• Dramatic oil shortage.

Of Mr Biggs it also says that,

Well-off people are advised by Biggs to invest 5% of their income into creating a safe haven, which should be "well-stocked with seed, fertiliser, canned food, medicine, clothes, etc". He labels this plan "sensible" rather than "survivalist".

Of Lloyd Alter, who writes for the web site Treehugger.com, it says,

He believes the world could be rattled by a variety of crises. "There is the problem of peak oil, peak gas, peak food, peak corn, peak everything,"

There is a sound voice of reason from Frank Furedi, who says,

For all the talk of a global bird flu pandemic, in the past five years there have been 200 human deaths from bird flu. In the same period more than six million people have died from diarrhoeal diseases and more than five million in road accidents – these would seem to be more pressing, practical problems to solve.

So, if you are one of the “many reasonable people”, who are “right-minded”, and can see all the disasters coming around the corner, then you should be thinking about building yourself a bunker, or at least buying one of the books about surviving the coming chaos. After all, those bunkers are expensive and the authors need to get the money to build them somehow!

Next decade ‘may see no warming’

The BBC web site, on the 1st May 2008, has reported on an article from the journal Nature about some German scientists who says we could see global temperatures remain the same for the next 10 years, but after that they will continue rising.

It says that,

A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming. However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say.

We have not seen global temperatures go up since 1998 and they have instead come down, which seems to go against the predictions of the scientists at the UN, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As a result other scientists and people are starting to ask probing questions about the evidence for man made climate change.

So it looks like we have an answer for the time being. The current cooling is a natural event that will bring down temperatures for a little while but they will continue to rise again in the future. This excuse is going to be used to hide the fact that their theories on climate change are wrong. It seems odd that the computer models that were used to promote climate change, which showed a continuing rise in temperatures, are the ones that now show the current cooling and future increases. The computer models of the pass were wrong so why should we trust the new one?

Life on Mars Means the Future Death of Man

In the magazine “Technology Review”, May/June 2008, there was an article entitled “Where Are They? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing.” Nick Bostrom talks about how, if we find fossils showing some sort of advanced life on Mars, it would mean the end of the human race, in the long and distant future of course.

It says the following.

But I hope that our Mars probes discover nothing. It would be good news if we find Mars to be sterile. Dead rocks and lifeless sands would lift my spirit.

Conversely, if we discovered traces of some simple, extinct life-form--some bacteria, some algae--it would be bad news. If we found fossils of something more advanced, perhaps something that looked like the remnants of a trilobite or even the skeleton of a small mammal, it would be very bad news. The more complex the life-form we found, the more depressing the news would be. I would find it interesting, certainly--but a bad omen for the future of the human race.

The reason for this is a bit complex and relates to a theoretical idea about a “Great Filter”, a sort of limit that evolution needs to pass for life to exist and end up exploring the solar system. Life on Mars would show where the human race is compared to this filter. If we are behind it then we are doomed, but if we are ahead of it then outer space here we come.

So, a theory of a “Great Filter”, based on a theory of how life started, and using a theory about finding life on Mars, means, in theory, the extinction of the human race.

Read from www.technologyreview.com.

Is Technology Ruining Children

In the Sunday Times on 27 April 2008 there was an interview with top brain scientist Susan Greenfield, by John Cornwell, where she talks about the affects of computers on the minds of child, turning them into amoral nobodies who can’t think for themselves.

A quote from the article goes as follows.

Professor Greenfield, promoter extraordinaire of science, has written a book that makes routine auguries – global warming, economic downturns – look like mere gloomy hand-wringing. A specialist in brain degeneration, Greenfield is predicting that our teen generation is headed for a sort of mass loss of personal identity. She calls it the Nobody Scenario. By spending inordinate quantities of time in the interactive, virtual, two-dimensional, cyberspace realms of the screen, she believes that the brains of the youth of today are headed for a drastic alteration. It’s as if all that young grey cortical matter is being scalded and defoliated by a kind of cognitive Agent Orange, depriving them of moral agency, imagination and awareness of consequences.

Then later on it also says the following.

Greenfield has elaborated a theory about the influence of IT on young brains. Given the time young people spend gazing into screens, small and large – reckoned to be from six to nine hours daily – she believes the minds of the younger generation are developing differently from those of previous generations. “The brain,” she says, “has plasticity: it is exquisitely malleable, and a significant alteration in our environment and behaviour has consequences.”

So we now have a generation of mindless killer children growing up to track us down and slaughter us, as if it were all part of some computer game. “Do you want to Kill or Save, use your mouse and click on the option you desire?”

More of this is detailed in Susan Greenfield’s book “ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century”.