The Environment: Re-Greening the Earth

Achieving a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle is not desirable, but absolutely necessary. With the signs all about us showing an environment in collapse, it is an urgent priority that direct action must be taken immediately by all of us at all levels of society and across the extent of the planet. We have no where else to go and even if we did, will we mess that ecosystem up too? We have o learn to be good husbandmen of the planet that we do have. Not only do we have to stop the direction of where we are going, we have to reverse it. Time is short and the need is desperate. It is time to move lose what little remains.

"I've heard economists boast that their discipline is based on a fundamental human impulse: selfishness. They claim that we act first out of self-interest. I can agree, depending on how we define self. To some, "self" extends beyond the individual person to include immediate family. Others might include community, an ecosystem, or all other species."

If we consider that humanity is a species where individuals are disposed to different interests, we find all manner of dispositions and not all of them are selfish to the exclusion of all others and all else. Consider the mother with an infant, whether animal or human. Here instinct is so strong that the mother will place herself in direct danger to protect the infant; that investment in the future of the family or species. Selfishness extends away from the individual and toward the child. This can be extended to the family and in more primitive societies, to the whole of the group where each one has to look out for the whole in order to survive individually and as a group.

"I list ecosystem and other species deliberately because we have become a narcissistic, self-indulgent species. We believe we are at the centre of the world, and everything around us is an "opportunity" or "resource" to exploit. Our needs or demands trump all other possibilities. This is an anthropocentric view of life."

This is true due to our alienation from nature, which is a complex subject in itself and can't be so easily "blown off". Today in our metropolises, office and mall centered lifestyle where everything that we want and then-some is readily available for the right price, we lose sight of the fact that the real foundation is nature. The air we breath and also treat as a sewer, the water we drink that is wasted in a myriad of productive processes and the very earth we grow food in becomes the landfill for our garbage. Even outer space has become a waste dump. Humanity is far from being the center of the cosmos. A natural disaster of any kind should remind us of this fact. Huge forces exist well beyond our ability to control. Many of them are destructive. When the rains do not come, we lose that opportunity to gather food or for drinking water and for making hydroelectric power.

"..... When the economy experiences a downturn, we demand that nature pay for it. We relax pollution standards, increase logging or fishing above sustainable levels, or .... lift the requirement of environmental assessments for new projects."

This simple truth is extended to the fact the capitalism always seeks to cut costs in order to increase surplus value, the heart of capitalist philosophy. Thus all safety standards, health concerns and environmental protections are on the chopping block. The engineered economic collapse of 2008-2009 was about cutting costs and restructuring the economy in Asia where there are very few controls and over a billion cheap workers. The drive for profit at the the expense of the planetary ecosystem is just one symptom of the greater disease of corporate greed. A handful of individuals manipulate the economy of the world and the lives of the people in order to guarantee this trend continues. The only problem is that capitalism has to continually expand and the whole earth has an upper limit that cannot be surpassed. But this fact is by and large ignored and legislated away in various ways while the rush to expand beyond carrying capacity and tipping points continues in a blind rush for more wealth and power. Someone once said that there is no one so blind as the person who will not see.

"A fundamentally different perspective on our place in the world is called "biocentrism". In this view, life's diversity encompasses all and we humans are a part of it, ultimately deriving everything we need from it. Viewed this way, our well-being, indeed our survival, depends on the health and well-being of the natural world...."

We agree that a new paradigm is needed and the answer is complex rather than simplistic. We have to consider things like re-education, planning the economy, developing a more bio-centric approach to our intimate relation to nature and the logistics to bring it all together. This cannot be done via capitalism due to its intrinsic anarchy where different sections vie in competition and interfere in the ability of them to do business. Anyone who is against such approach is in an even worse position. The health and well being of the earth is not a consideration for those who do not want to pay for the cost of clean up due to that eating up profits.

"The most pernicious aspect of our anthropocentrism has been to elevate economics to the highest priority. We act as if the economy is some kind of natural force that we must all placate or serve in every way possible. But wait! Some things, like gravity, the speed of light, entropy, and the first and second laws of thermodynamics, are forces of nature. There's nothing we can do about them except live within the boundaries they delimit. "

These facts stand squarely in the way of unbridled and unlimited growth of capital. Eventually limits are reached that cannot be surpassed and when that happens, the expansion stops, profit is lost and the corporation begins to wither. We have made a god and fetish out of money. It is in the nature of capitalist life to make the economy, money and profit sacrosanct. Workers are brought up on money and few know of alternatives to money. When the money is gone, they are desperate. With the 2008-2009 economic collapse made for immense desperation. We came face to face with limits, our ignorance and our inability to suddenly jump into a new paradigm, despite being told that we have to shift our paradigm.

"But the economy, the market, currency - we created these entities, and if they don't work, we should look beyond trying to get them back up and running the way they were. We should fix them or toss them out and replace them."

This kind of talk has been the inspiration behind things like Cointelpro, MKUltra and McCarthyism. The current Obama regime is attempting to buy off the inevitable by getting the private bank of the Federal Reserve to print up more money and devalue the currencies of the world and the dollars we all hold. The current methods of fixing the economy are unsustainable even just in economic terms of trillions of dollars in new debts. One economist tells us that the real debt is on the order of a quadrillion dollars. It is already beyond unsustainable. It is fit to be tossed out and replaced with a better idea. This is the choice we must now make.

"When economists and politicians met in Bretton Woods, Maine, in 1944, they faced a world where war had devastated countrysides, cities, and economies. So they tried to devise solutions. They pegged currency to the American greenback and looked to the (terrible) twins, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to get economies going again."

This important piece of history eventually led to the abandonment of the gold standard in the US in 1971 under the Nixon administration. By 1972, a severe economic crisis began to unfold that was exacerbated by the 1974 OPEC oil manipulations. The direct outgrowth was the turn toward research to alternatives to oil that was abandoned when oil prices stabilized. From there, the economy increasingly relied on speculation until the US entered the Reagan era of voodoo economics (his own term). The medium of economic manipulation, particular for international loans has been the IMF and World Bank. Economies of whole countries were ruined leading to unrest and the possibility of revolution or civil war, many of which occurred in the western world from 1959 and on.

"The postwar era saw amazing recovery in Europe and Japan, as well as a roaring U.S. economy based on supplying a cornucopia of consumer goods. But the economic system we've created is fundamentally flawed because it is disconnected from the biosphere in which we live. We cannot afford to ignore these flaws any longer."

Again the disconnection is due to the nature of capitalist production; i.e., maximum production at the least cost.

"Flaw 1: Beyond its obvious value as the source of raw materials like fish, lumber, and food, nature performs all kinds of "services" that allow us to survive and flourish. Nature creates topsoil, the thin skin that supports all agriculture. Nature removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and returns oxygen. Nature takes nitrogen from the air and fixes it to enrich soil. Nature filters water as it percolates through soil. Nature transforms sunlight into molecules that we need for energy in our bodies. Nature degrades the carcasses of dead plants and animals and disperses the atoms and molecules back into the biosphere. Nature pollinates flowering plants.

I could go on, but I think you catch my drift. We cannot duplicate what nature does around the clock, but we dismiss those services as "externalities" in our economy. "

We can take values that we find in nature or arrange in a manner so that we can grow food, clothing and shelter, but we cannot replace sunshine. No one has ever made food solely from chemicals in the absence of natural influences. We think we can replace soil in things like hydroponics, but these are extremely intensive and are the choice only of crops where the profit is huge due to questions of legality. We cannot grow out entire food needs from hydroponics. We can filter water, but only in a limited quantities and not in the copious quantities that we need for daily needs without escalating the cost out of reach.

"Flaw 2: To compound the problem, economists believe that because there are no limits to human creativity, there need be no limits to the economy. But the economy depends on having healthy people, and health depends on nature's services, which are ignored in economic calculations. Our home is the biosphere, the thin layer of air, water, and land where all life exists. And that's it; it can't grow. We are witnessing the collision of the economic imperative to grow indefinitely with the finite services that nature performs. It's time to get our perspective and priorities right. Biocentrism is a good place to start."

Biocentrism cannot be approached as a reform. The problem with reform is that decades of battle yields little of no results and those refoms granted partly of in whold can be struck down instantly. Bio centrism thus is a transitional demand that exceeds the capability of capitalism to deliver on it. Therefore, the choice then becomes; capitalism versus bio centrism; capitalism versus a planned economy that includes bio centrism as part of the equation. Although we have been ingenious in solving problems, this has always been in the direction to increase profit, thus things like planned obsolescence entered the economy and speeded up the ruination of the environment. Ingenious solutions always have to consider bio centrism if it is to be considered a real alternative. Everything from transportation to power generation, technology, recycling and an infrastructure has to be reconsidered.

Nature is the basis upon which we all depend and stand. Without the existence of something as simple as sunlight, we would not be here; at least in the form we find ourselves at this time. We derive our life from the various useful things we find around us and grow in agriculture as food upon which to live. We also obtain raw resources and refine them to manufacture our homes and technology.

Economies evolved with the creation of surplus value that became commodities for trade. Extend this a little further and we end up with a universal commodity; money and the economy. Money is not a be all and end all, but serves only as virtual commodities that substitute for the real thing until we actually trade it for the real thing. Money is so powerful in this way that it has become something of a mantra or a fetish that absorbs our attention completely. We strive to get as much of it is possible and lose sight of the fact that it all started with what we found in a natural setting. Money is the new god, replacing the real gods of nature manifesting as powerful forces over which we have absolutely no control. One bad hurricane is enough to ruin a lot of speculative financial game plans. We live for the most part, under the illusions and delusions of capitalism and most are ignorant of alternatives. Further, most want to continue in the lifestyle they are used to and want the other person to make the cuts and even agree with governments that force such legislative solutions. Unfortunately, this approach only causes resentment and generates the potential for civil unrest, which in itself is hard on the environment.

Here, in the depths of the vast cosmos, resides a sapphire jewel without equal within the view of its immediate neighbors and for the stretches of space as far as can been seen. We who hitch a ride on this magnificent planet seem oblivious to our very privileged position. It has not always been this way, nor will it continue indefinitely. Yet for the time being, the Earth is the cosmic jewel in the crown of the solar retinue and likely in much the galaxy. All other planets have a glorious beauty of their own, but it is a hellish beauty and the Earth is unique in a special way. The Earth is a paradise planet; a resplendent, white laced, sapphire jewel in the solar system, very well suited for life. When we cast our gaze outward into the heavens, we find hellish worlds; though exquisitely beautiful in their own right; unsuited for life, as we know it.

- Mercury, devoid of an atmosphere, is far too close to the Sun and is almost tidally locked.

- Venus is so hot; lead easily melts on its surface. The air pressure is so dense a 5 km/hr wind is a hurricane.

- The Moon is so dry; it makes the Sahara look lush. The temperature swing is by hundreds of degrees in light and dark areas.

- Mars, though close to being "ideal" is far too dry and cold for complex life.

- Jupiter is too cold, poisonous and oppressive in gravity. It orbits just beyond the freeze zone of the solar system, which means water condenses to ice in a hard vacuum.

- The Galean moons of Jupiter orbit in an extremely hazardous radiation belt. Only one likes somewhat promising, but the final answer is decades off.

- Saturn with its gossamer rings is little better than Jupiter for life. The Moon Titan has oceans of ethylene, water volcanoes and ice continents with a methane atmosphere and rain.

- Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and beyond are well beyond the freezing zone and offer little in the way to support life.

- Even when we look to known planets around other stars of which we are now aware of more than 340, we find bizarre worlds around pulsars, in orbits like those of comets, or so close to their sun, they glow with the heat. Earth like planets are so far rare. Only one has been found on the fringe of the habitable zone and it's 20 light years away.

- Extra solar planets can boast winds of hypersonic velocity, be super heated or have radiation that's off the scale.

Whether or not life exists on any of the known worlds and moons in our solar system, it is an unresolved question at this point, but we do know that we couldn't live there without building special self-contained environments. As it is, we already live in self-contained environment, which up to recent times, has been self regulating. Human activity has exceeded the carrying capacity of our closed system environment. We do know that human beings, animals and plants as we know them on Earth, would be incapable of living on any of these worlds and moons except under very well designed and engineered circumstances. As we have shown a poor performance record within the closed system of the Earth, it suggests that we would do even more poorly in a smaller self contained closed environment. That was proven when a small closed system was tested and found to be rapidly unsustainable and was shut down long before the end of the experiment. This was supposed to be a test case for a small self contained environment suitable for Mars. As for worlds around other stars, well, they're so far off as to be unreachable by our current means of technology and any in the foreseeable future. Current economic trends (2008-09) suggest that this kind of research is now on the back burner. We have a lot to learn about living within our means on the vastness of the Earth before we can venture on much smaller closed systems to the stars.
Recent evidence from the Sub-millimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) suggests that water and oxygen are quite rare in the galaxy. This is information that has been accumulated from about 15 interstellar gas clouds. There are plans to survey more. But for the moment, the researchers from Cornell University have found very little of the main prerequisites our type of life needs in outer space. This may change in the future as more information comes in. What the researchers say specifically is;

"There's not much to drink there, and it's hard to breathe," says Cornell University astronomer Paul Goldsmith, one of the 12 members of the satellite science team. The primary goal for SWAS - launched on Dec. 5, 1998 - was to be a complete radio astronomy observatory to confirm the conventional wisdom that the two most abundant molecular carriers of oxygen in interstellar clouds, after carbon monoxide, are water vapor and molecular oxygen. Since these two molecules are relatively abundant in Earth's atmosphere, their presence in distant space is hidden from earthbound telescopes; their abundance is unknown. As it turns out, water seems to be 10,000 times less abundant in these molecular clouds than was previously thought. It is so scarce that it is found in the ratio of only one part in a hundred million compared with hydrogen molecules, the most common component. Molecular oxygen is at least 100 times less abundant than predicted and, according to Goldsmith, perhaps a thousand times scarcer. Interstellar clouds are considered to be nurseries for star formation; therefore the SWAS science team is attempting to understand the chemical reactions that affect star birth. As of yet, nearly 100 different molecules have been found in such clouds. However, there are still two big holes in understanding the chemistry - how much water and oxygen are present in molecular form. Also on the SWAS science team are Cornell astronomer Martin Harwit and principal investigator Gary Melnick of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who is a Cornell graduate. SWAS was originally planned as a three-year mission. However, the science team is hoping that the unexpected results recorded by the observatory will induce NASA to extend the mission to four years or beyond. "We now have between 10 and 20 good interstellar cloud sources, and we think it is well worth having 40 or 50," says Goldsmith. Most important among the recorded sources is the giant Orion molecular cloud that is 1,500 light years from Earth. The mass of this vast cloud - nearly 15 light years across - is far greater than that of the myriad stars that make up the constellation. In optical images, young stars can be seen lighting up the entire nebula, indicating an excellent area for observing star birth. Both water and molecular oxygen have been considered to be essential constituents of the molecular clouds from which stars form. According to Goldsmith, it has been determined that the reason for their death is that the molecular clouds are only 30 degrees above absolute zero. The water might be frozen on the dust grains in the clouds and therefore, not detectable by radio astronomy. This concept has been held previously, however, there have been few hard numbers. Harder to explain is the near complete absence of molecular oxygen. The molecule doesn't freeze in the same way as water and, thus, would not be in frozen form on dust grains, Goldsmith added. "Since oxygen is the third most abundant atom in the universe, after hydrogen and helium, we ought to be able to understand where the oxygen atoms are and in what form. And they certainly don't seem to be in molecular oxygen in the gas phase as predictions would have it," says Goldsmith. "It really is a dilemma for interstellar chemistry, but it might be a hint that something is wrong with our picture of the structure of these giant clouds."

Continued below

Our world is indeed a paradise world based on our present knowledge and the hard evidence of observation. So then, why do we think and behave as if we lived in hell? It is clear that the Earth goes through cycles of extremes based upon the evidence of the geological eras and paleontology. Extremes on Earth are born of cosmic and earth bound catastrophes of one type or another. Whether by orbital changes, changes in the sun or impacts from Earth crossing asteroids and comets and super-volcanic explosions, the history of the Earth has been one of extremes rather than what we see now as the norm. Evidence exists that the Earth has both been very cold and very hot in the past. Today's climate is the exception rather than the rule. It is now changing as it always does. Our own activities also contribute significantly to it. The accelerating melting of the glaciers and polar ice is a result of all these factors.

Our current cycle is a rather unique opportunity, one that will not remain forever. Threats abound all about, from the quaking of the Earth, the changing sun, violent weather or some unseen flying mountain or rubble pile with our name on it headed straight to us in a catastrophic date in destiny. It will come as it has in the past. The question is; what are we going to do about it? Shall we sit by like dinosaurs and watch the world go to hell? Will we steer our own way to a hell of our own making? There are some things we can do right now. Others will take much longer to deal with. One of the things we can do right now, is learn to cooperate with one another in a manner that so far has eluded us. From there we can reach out and prevent probable destruction in the future. But we must first recognize that there is a very real threat, and this is something many refuse to recognize. The one thing we can do, is change the ways we do things so as not to continue to ruin the only place we have to live and to reverse the damage we have already done.

But the kind of change being presented here is one that moves away from the wealth centered and greed oriented society that characterizes civilization today. This is the kind of society that will go nowhere in the long run, except to delay the day of necessary action until it coincides with environmental catastrophe, which is now unfolding right in our face. This kind of society emphasizes the gathering of wealth into ones own hands at the expense of everything and everyone else. It is apparent that if humanity is to have a future of any kind, a fundamental change is necessary. This is a change that's not as easy as it sounds. History is strung together with examples of failed attempts to create a better society. But the difficulty of it should not be a deterrent in making the effort. After all, landing men on the moon was considered impossible not so long ago. That effort starts with each and every one of us. We have the means to make a better world that was unavailable to our forebears. That means is also the key to reshaping the solar system and hence our future.

Once we overcome our obsession with wealth and greed its partner, then the next step of developing the technological solutions to protect the paradise Earth from cataclysms of all kinds must be taken. This takes a number of forms such as sophisticated and powerful observing stations, computers to calculate chaotic orbits, space hardware and reliable robots to tackle the difficult problems in harsh and hellish environments for earth threats that are outside. In the environmental question we need to develop sustainable technologies and those that undo the damage we have already done, i.e., to remove all the garbage we have created such as to extract greenhouse gasses and lock them up in a stable manner.
In the end, we will have to leave the Earth, as the sun will gradually get brighter and hotter, turning Earth into another hell planet. On the cosmological calendar, this is not too far into the future. In the human timeframe, it is in the distant future and we need to learn to live within our ecological means. Either we must adapt to outer space, or find another rare jewel in the cosmos to which we can relocate. If and when we do find such places among the stars, a whole new set of questions will arise, like the kind that occupied the minds of some who landed in Mesoamerica several hundred years ago.

COMPLEX CONVERGENCE AND LIFE

When we consider life, we often take a lot for granted. Complex life as we know it, requires the serendipitous presence of a myriad of conditions to allow for its development and continuance. Everything has to be "just right" in order for complex form to evolve at all. Prerequisites for its development include,

- The existence of a relatively long-lived, stable star to provide the differential of light and heat.

- Sufficient distance from potential super novae, neutron stars, black holes, magnetars and active galactic cores.

- The existence of a planet at the right distance from the star so that temperatures are neither too cold nor too hot on the planet's surface.

- A low orbital eccentricity and no interplanetary resonances.

- The existence of a planetary magnetic field to shield from ionizing radiation.

- The existence of an atmosphere to provide surface pressure for:

- The existence of liquid water at the crucial temperature for complex chemical reactions.

- The existence of ozone to block short wave UV radiation, inimical to complex and sensitive biological molecules.

- The proper inclination of the planet to its orbital plane. It should not be oriented with its spin axis near the plane of the orbit, such as in the case of Uranus and Pluto. Nor can it be tidally locked to the star; although there are some theoretical considerations.

- The existence of crucial elements like Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Calcium, trace metals like iron.

- A variety of ecosystems and ecological niches on the planetary surface.

- Some would debate the need for an orbiting moon, but this may not be so. What is necessary is geological recycling such as through plate tectonics.

- A complex chemistry that can photosynthesize whether in virus sized to cellular sized structures.

- A changing climate that is not overly violent. This depends somewhat on the orbital eccentricity, spin axis orientation and chemical composition of the atmosphere and other factors like mountains, volcanism and impact frequency.

- Conditions that will allow for feeding, shelter and reproduction.

- Environmental turbulence that stirs up nutrients and removes waste products for recycling.

The above is the prerequisite for complex life to arise on a planet. All these conditions must exist simultaneously in greater or lesser degrees in order for some form of life to evolve. This creates a rather narrow focus for the development of life, even at a relatively simple level. For most of Earth's history up to about 600 million years ago, this was the case for life that was basically cellular and microscopic. Only after this time did life becomes increasingly complex. There is much speculation as to why it took life billions of years to evolve from bacteria and cells to multicellular and complex life. One thing is certain and that is the environment had to stabilize enough to allow for greater complexity. It is known that simpler life forms can withstand greater punishment from the cosmos than larger more complex forms. There are bacteria that thrive in temperatures of 600 degrees Celsius near undersea volcanic vents and chimneys. On the surface, bacteria live in the vents in Yellowstone Park at near boiling temperatures. Conversely, some fish and bacteria can live in frigid temperatures in salt water well below the freezing point of fresh water. The more complex forms of life like most fish; elephants and people require more conditions for survival than the basic list above. These must also; more or less coexist simultaneously within narrow constraints.

Complex life has evolved to involve the interrelation of many species with one another in a complex variation of a strange attractor. There are predator-prey relations, symbiosis of various shades and types and parasitic ones. They all operate within a limit cycle and seldom go beyond limits without some form of check on numbers. This is how nature makes the whole sustainable and this is the way it has been including the human species; that is until the advent of industrialization and the massive exploitation of everything thereafter. In order for complex life to exist, there are many conditions that have to be fulfilled simultaneously.

- A source of food to allow for an energy differential. Here plants that photosynthesize provide a food source for animals.

- A source of fresh pure water.

- A renewing atmosphere to allow for respiration required in photosynthesis and animal metabolism.

- A place or means to shelter from environmental extremes.

- A means to efficiently eliminate waste products of metabolism.

- Conditions to allow for reproduction and with that, the death of the progenitor to allow for the growth of following generations, creating the possibility of evolution and adaptation to changing conditions in a short span of time.

- A means to communicate within the multicellular organism and between individuals of a species.

- Sensitivity to the environment in order to respond with survival tactics.

The last point is one where the human species has broken down, especially with the alienation from nature that comes of specialization and civilization. We have basically taken an attitude of dominance over nature and are starting to reap the consequences of our actions. We can use our intellectual ability to solve the problems and get back into natural balance, or continue our ways and suffer the now accelerating consequences.

Complex life forms often adapt to very specialized conditions over long periods of environmental quasi-stability. When the environment suddenly changes, they can't adapt and die off. Thus there evolved responses to deal with this that take many forms. They range from going into a latency stage of life, like spores, hibernation or a complete change of form. Most species on the planet go through their complete life cycle within the context of a single terrestrial orbit about the sun. Within that year, activity is often concentrated in a few short months. This is a key as to why evolution can occur over months rather than millions of years. Some species can manage to live for many years, even thousands in the case of bristle cone pines in California. Species that live for years are very specialized and require some stability in the environment. Needless to say, an upset like a prolonged famine will eliminate chances of survival for most of them. The geologic record shows that of all the species that ever lived, fully 99 percent are now extinct. Over the course of geological history, life has taken many fantastic forms.

When the idea of life on exosolar planets is considered in the context of the Drake equation, we must consider the above in addition for each and every case. On Earth, most of its history was occupied by microscopic life. Complex life came only recently in geologic history. Intelligent complex life is even more recent; a virtual footnote thus far. Thus, when we travel to the stars and find planets suitable for life, we are most likely to find it in the microscopic form. There may even be some kind of fractal power function for complex life, which suggests that complex life, let alone intelligent complex life is comparatively and exceedingly rare.
In the whole of the cosmos in space-time, we are unlikely to find any two things alike in exact measure. What we will find is a self-affine pattern that recapitulates itself from place to place along a fractal power function. We are thus unique in the entire cosmos, and probably exceedingly rare. It should then strike us as something of a mystical experience to appreciate the uniqueness of our situation. The Earth and all upon it is a living jewel in the unfathomable depths of the cosmos, very seldom equaled anywhere. This is so because of the unique combination of complex life coupled with conscious intelligence that can ponder such things as the cosmos and our special relation to all that it is. Indeed, if there are "Elohim" who conspired to create the living Earth, it is the convergence of countless cosmic influences and forces great and small within the vast cosmos that historically and simultaneously acted upon this place and time, resulting in the resplendent jewel of the Earth complete with complex, intelligent life. With this insight, we should behave a lot differently than we do. Instead of contempt, we should be awe struck and humbled at the profound significance of this place and the incredible and incalculable confluence of forces that resulted in our existence and continues for the moment to support and sustain us. We should treat each other and all of nature with the utmost of respect, as each and every one is unique within the context of a unique place and time. All of nature and the cosmos has converged, conspired and consented to allow all the diversity we see, no matter what form that it takes. No type of intolerance, bigotry or chauvinism is an acceptable excuse in the face of this reality. What nature can allow in its vast array of expression is the truth, and not some obscurantist and unfounded concept or belief. When all is considered, this will never be again!

Instead, we find ourselves trapped in petty squabbling often not of our own making, but in which we are entrapped by the cross purposes of one another. In a mad rush to grow ever richer and more powerful, we ruin the only place we know for certain that we can live. Often, we are born into a society, not of our making, but of that long dead dream of those who are no more. It is a dream that has drifted into nightmare distortions of the former vision. Our dreams and reality almost never seem to converge. The lusts of those who seize control of the destinies of the many, force most of us to comply with the desires for petty profiteering, all the while ignoring the spectacular wonder of our special uniqueness and the possibilities that this entails. We plunder and murder one another while a sword of Damocles hangs over our collective heads a sword, which we can do something about. We need only seize the moment, but our worldview is in need of a major "paradigm shift" to borrow a popular phrase. When all is considered, we are unique phenomena without equal and we should start to appreciate that and behave accordingly. A good start is to treat each other with something more than mere contempt! If there is a curse, it is ignorance, and the willingness of those who know better to exploit it for their own ends and at the ultimate expense of the species and this living jewel, Earth.

This then is the problem. We shall now surge forward and seek out and implement solutions that are already within our grasp if we only will to do the task.

A sustainable environment is one where the individual parts work together as an integrated whole that functions within the limits of that environment. All the parts thereof function individually but each one is balanced by all the rest so that one part does not dominate to the exclusion and detriment of all the others. A sustainable environment allows for all the species to interact in a collective balance even though the individuals therein exist in a condition far from equilibrium. The collective situation under natural development never drifts far from balance. A sustainable environment must live within the limits of the Earth. This is how the natural environment works where a strange attractor regulates each and every part in predator-prey cycles so that the whole remains healthy. If one expands, other factors hold it in check and keep the environment and all species healthy. This works in a complex feed back loop. Humanity used to function within that context until through technology, agriculture, surplus production and attitude they strayed from the balance and put at risk the whole, including themselves. Humanity reached a point of self superiority and alienation from nature that turned the balance of the environment on its head. With gathering momentum we exceeded the carrying capacity of the whole and put the whole ecosystem and ourselves at risk. For the longest time, we wouldn't even acknowledge this truth and some still don't. Now the whole unbalanced approach humanity has taken is making itself ever more apparent and it is accelerating. As a result, some have taken steps to achieve a sustainable environment, but so far, it is far from what is actually required to rebalance the ecosystem. One would think that with our intelligence, that we should not only recognize the problem as it develops, but also deal with it to correct it.

Among the first were people like Rachel Carson who wrote "Silent Spring" a book that popularized the emerging environmental crisis. Jacques Cousteau also brought environmental questions to our attention, particularly concerning the oceans of the planet. Soon after, the Greenpeace movement emerged and fought virtually alone, taking extreme risks in order to bring a host of environmental crises to our collective attention. Greenpeace with its ship Rainbow Warrior has intervened to bring attention to over fishing, the crises caused by whaling and shark fin hunting. They have intervened to stop the dumping of nuclear waste into the oceans and even attempted to stop nuclear detonations in the Aleutian Island chain of Alaska. One detonation, a five megaton underground blast almost on the shores of the Soviet Union caused grave international concern and an earthquake. They attempted to stop the French from testing a nuclear device in the Pacific and had their ship sunk by French divers. Greenpeace failed to stop the nuclear arms race of the day. But Greenpeace has succeeded in other areas and has a world wide support. Some of their actions have been nothing short of heroic despite condemnation heaped upon them from many sources. The whole of the battle has been and is the attempt to bring our attention to live within the carrying capacity of the Earth and work in a sustainable environment.

Our technological ways have had and continue to have a collective and escalating influence on the Earth. At current levels, it has become obvious that it is unsustainable as air borne pollution has now exceeded the carrying capacity of the atmosphere. What is even worse is that the US alone is building or planning to build 150 new coal fired electrical generating plants. China, which now has a persistent brown cloud problem, is building or planning to build more coal powered generators. Plastic debris has collected in the Pacific Ocean in five huge floating piles of everything plastic from bags to traffic cones. We have obviously exceeded the carrying capacity of the oceans as a garbage dump. This is further evidenced in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of sea birds, sea turtles, seals, dolphins and fish. Some of these plastic contaminated fish are eaten by us and our own bodies become reservoirs of plastic derived chemicals, radioactive waste and carcinogenic agents. On land, we are running out of "land fills", as if land needed filling with our electronic planned obsolescence technology, food waste, plastic, furniture, glass, metal, pesticides, paints, chemicals, sewage and even radioactive waste. As we have no more land needing to be filled, we are now considering burning the refuse along with coal and oil and using the atmosphere as the new waste dump.

Our use of trees for newsprint, cardboard and toiletry items has to change. For every tree used, one must be planted. Use of annual crops as a substitute crop to create paper and fiber is a must and one of the best is hemp. Another is the water hyacinth, which is considered a nuisance plant in India. However, water hyacinth also happens to be a plant that can filter clean water to remove all kinds of waste from sewage to heavy metal contaminants. What is put in by way of heavily polluted water in one end with water hyacinth filtration results in drinkable clean water at the other end and more biomass for feed and paper in the water hyacinths. Most of our domestic paper use has to change including an intensification of recycling. Even our eating habits have to change if we are to be sustainable. The N. American and European eating lifestyle is unsustainable considering that to eat meat requires ten times the resources that a vegetarian requires. A meat eating diet even forces some vegetarians to go hungry. For every item of food eaten, one is destroyed because it is outdated or has lost some of its freshness from sitting around too long. There is no market due to lack of sales and incoming food from agribusiness has to have room in the stores, so food not sold is dumped. There is an extreme amount of waste in restaurants that ends up in the landfill creating methane; a greenhouse gas. Meanwhile, people also go hungry.

To get back into balance and achieve sustainability is going to be a struggling heave to and hard tack against heavy economic winds. We will have to give up addiction to plastic and fossil fuels just for starters. We will have to learn to recycle absolutely everything. What we are recycling now is far from enough. We need to use renewable energy such as wind power, piezoelectric generation, geothermal power, solar energy and the like. All of these are proven and have working examples in use around the planet. Any revolution has to begin at the grass roots and this is also true of moving toward a sustainable environment. There will have to be wholesale changes individually and across the planet. We cannot justify mass consumption in the industrialized developed nations while most people in the third world have to do without clean running water, basic medical services, nutritious food, sanitary conditions and electricity. As things are now, they are very lopsided. We in the rich nations must reduce, reuse, and recycle while basic living standards are allowed for the poorest. It is all about balance.

To achieve a sustainable environment, we are going to have to emulate nature as best as we can, as ultimately, we are also part of nature. Depending on how you interpret it, humanity is either the most successful species in recent epochs, or an unmitigated disaster on the face of nature that is mediating the sixth great extinction event. Regarding this, we are now required to make great changes. What follows are things we can do individually and then what we can do collectively. This is by no means a complete list of what we can do. There is likely a lot more, but this is a start. Living within the Earth's means is absolutely essential for our survival.

Individually we can;

-Stop using plastic bags and choose reusable ones. This alone will go far in protecting the environment, especially in toxin creating landfills and huge problems in the oceans. As it is, a massive clean up is required.

- Buy bulk and avoid packaging as much as possible. Recycle packaging each time you go to the store for refills.

- Use low electrical power consuming lighting and products. Although there are disputes about florescent bulbs and their toxicity, there are other emerging technologies like light emitting diodes to consider. These consume the least amount of power for the greatest output of light.

- Turn off lights not in immediate use. It is surprising how much is wasted at home and at work. Lights in rooms not in use should be turned off and turned on only if you're in them.

- Encourage children to be "green". Set an example and children will follow, especially if the activity is fun for all involved. People who love to work in nature easily transmit this to their children as children are naturally drawn to the outdoors.

- Chose greener washing alternatives like cold water washes and line drying, It takes a lot of energy to heat water for washing, just to let the hot water and the dirt go down the drain. Thus, using cold water is more eco-friendly. In the days before dryers, wash was hung to dry in the sunlight. If you have a yard, this is definitely the way to go. Dryers use a lot of energy.

- Be on the watch out for "Green wash". These are products that tout their green qualities, but they are green in name only, promoted by slick advertising. It is estimated that of everything that calls itself green, only about two percent are actually green. The rest is outright advertising lies. You must ask questions and probe for the truth. Do not just accept what ads say!

- Bottled water is very much the fashion, but this is being discouraged. Much of the bottled water is shipped in from distant locations creating a large carbon footprint for water of often questionable value and purity. It would be better to install a filtration unit at home to filter metals, bacteria and chlorine out of your drinking water. This localizes the production and cuts down on transport and carbon production that ends up in the atmosphere. If you like to carry some, there exists a wide selection of reusable water bottles that climbers, hikers and campers use.

- Become a vegan. As it takes 1/10th the arable land to sustain a vegan as opposed to someone who relies on meat and dairy products, this is by far the more sustainable option. If a nation like India can live as vegetarians, so can we!

- Get behind family planning and zero population growth. China has had a policy of zero population growth for many years. This is something not enforced in our part of the world, but a voluntary policy will help in sustainability.

- Use cloth recyclable diapers and avoid disposable ones. Disposable diapers add a huge amount of waste to landfills, much of which, except the plastic, is recyclable. There was a day where there were only cloth diapers and a pick up and clean service.

- If you can compost, do so and recycle all food scraps. Those who have a back yard to grow vegetables, can compost food waste and scraps and reduce their dependency on chemical fertilizers.

- Consider getting and using a composting toilet. Composting toilets are great if you have land and a garden. If not, the compost can be offered to someone who does for part of the garden produce.

- All yard waste like grass clippings and leaves can be composted, recycled and even used as mulch to help reduce water evaporation losses.

- Don't waste food. If you can't eat it; share with the poor at home and abroad. Get into using leftovers in dishes and don't produce more than can be eaten by the family in a day. It is better to under eat than to over eat.

- If you have a yard, grow a vegetable garden and plant fruit trees. This is even better than eating local because you grow it and you know what's going into the food you grow. It is best to aim for a completely organic approach.

- Buy local produce as much as possible, supporting local farming and cutting down on emissions. Avoid food coming from half way around the world. If you like exotic stuff, try growing some locally. If you do grow exotics, control the spread of seeds into the local eco-system to avoid a future Kudzu type eco-catastrophe.

- Shower like a sailor, wet yourself in the shower, shut off the water, soap up and shampoo completely and then turn on the water to rinse quickly.

- Upgrade insulation for the home and double glaze all windows, especially for those who live in cold long winter zones. Consider adding insulation to the exterior walls as well as the attic.

- Turn down the thermostat and put on more sweaters. If you have an oil or gas furnace, this is crucial. The recommended setting is 68 degrees F. or 20 degrees C.

- Bike or walk instead of driving. Leave the car at home, especially for those short trips. This will cut down on parking competition as well, which causes a lot of wasted gas driving and looking for parking spots.

- Don't uproot plants for flowers, use potted flowers, even if they are annuals. If you do use cut flowers, recycle them as compost when they are finished. If they have gone to seed, you may want to harvest the seeds for next year.

- Support and encourage companies that are ethical, that give back fairly and boycott polluters by refusing to buy their products. This act may encourage them to clean up.

- Grow your own spices for kitchen use. They can be grown in a south facing window in the kitchen if possible, so that they are ready and at hand. Basil, Oregano and others work well indoors. Fresh is best and there is no polluting transporting from halfway around the world.

- Eat in season: forget winter strawberries unless you can grow them at home in wintertime yourself. Alternately, harvest in season and dry surpluses with a solar food dryer for later use. If you live near the country, berries such a blackberries, blueberries and others grow in abundance in the wild and are free.

- Use recycled paper or hemp based paper and avoid subscribing to newspapers. Get news at the library, online or on TV.

- Consider local wind power, piezoelectric, solar and micro turbine electric power. Countries should consider geothermal power.

- Use organic food. They have fewer pesticides and herbicides, growth hormones, anti-biotics, preservatives and no GMOs. However, the whole planet is now so polluted; even the best food is now tainted. We are going to have to ramp up our efforts.

Collectively we should pursue;

- Abolish planned obsolescence starting with the concept of boycotting all products that are engineered to fall apart right at the expiry of the warrantee. Planned obsolescence can come in redesigns too by way of fashion or various upgrades. If we demand new features, it means that the older technology will end up in the landfill faster.

- Bringing an end to warfare is an idea whose time is severely overdue. War is one of the most destructive influences on the environment. We can refer to the front during WWI, the atomic destruction and testing of WWII and thereafter, all the chemicals and explosives dumped on various nations around the planet and see the incalculable damage wrecked on innocent people and the environment then and up to now.

- Geothermal energy sources are a great way to produce energy from the waste heat of the Earth itself. There are some countries that already rely heavy on geothermal power and we should follow there example, especially where it is easily extracted.

- Piezoelectric energy is electricity that is produced from the compression of materials. An experiment in Britain has piezoelectric sensors embedded under a freeway and these produce enough electricity to power about 40,000 homes. Other candidates for such generation are dance floors, so that the dancers make the power to power the band and light show and then some.

- Wind power is an obvious answer that we are now using, but the concept needs revision and improvement so that it is constant and reliable. Wind towers that create a heat differential to create an air flow is one idea that has been experimented upon with success.

- Solar energy has seen a recent development with paint on solar cells that create electrical energy. It is now possible to derive power from infra red energy sources. These devices can work at night, on cloudy days and even from waste heat from buildings, cars and our own bodies.

- Mass rapid transit the much criticized mode of getting about is something that we really need to pursue. It eliminates the aggravation of finding a parking spot and saves on adding carbon. All we need to do is take a hard look at the situation and make the necessary changes that will make it the more attractive alternative than revving up the car again.

- Creating better designed buildings will help to conserve energy and in the better recycling of energy waste. Ideas such as having a roof garden to shade the building in summer and keeping it warm in winter not only reduce carbon, but look great as well. Even now, there are buildings with trees growing on the root. The idea of a vertical farm is another building concept being developed.

- Any process using coal, oil and nuclear energy sources should be phased out in favor of renewable ones. Currently there is move to build more coal fired generators. Some 150 are in the building and planning stages in the US and China is also building more.

- There exists a process to extract carbon from the atmosphere and fix it in a stable manner. Further the product can be used in building, such as in concrete. Building these plants to remove excess carbon and lock it away as calcium carbonate should be an immediate priority.

There exists means to remove carbon from the atmosphere and fix it chemically so that it does not pose a hazard in global warming and the consequences thereof. The process involves extracting carbon dioxide by freezing it out and subjecting it to a chemical process with calcium hydroxide to make calcium carbonate. The first step would be to collect carbon dioxide by condensing it out of the atmosphere by running atmospheric gasses through a freeze condenser that would make dry ice, or frozen carbon dioxide. This is done routinely, so it is not a problem. Next the dry ice is placed in a solution of calcium hydroxide to make the calcium carbonate.

Industry manufactures calcium carbonate by passing carbon dioxide through a solution of calcium hydroxide. The calcium carbonate precipitates out of the solution. The chemical formula is;

Ca(OH)2 + CO2 ---> CaCO3

This is where we can begin to extract large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and stabilize it, relatively speaking. As long as the calcium carbonate is not exposed to something like acid rain, it remains stable. It can be used as a building material and nature already does so in the form of clam-shells and bones. We already use lots of natural calcium carbonate in construction and can augment this using artificially made calcium carbonate. This is probably by far the best solution. We can develop the technology to begin extracting the carbon out of the atmosphere on an industrial scale, but it is going to cost. For the moment, it seems that the governments of the world would have to get behind this one as industry, especially the fossil fuel sector, is slow to pursue this research and development. It should come out of taxes and massive projects should be designed and built to begin the process of removing carbon and stabilizing it.

Another solution involves the planting of more trees in order to absorb some of the carbon and the avoidance of harvesting too many in sensitive areas like the rain forests of the world. But this solution requires that a constant tree volume is maintained and the more carbon we pump into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, the more trees we are going to need in order to "hide" the carbon. Unfortunately, we can plant only so many trees and there are areas where plant life of any kind will not thrive such as in deserts and the Polar Regions.

Nature is removing some of the carbon by absorbing it into the oceans, but this is detrimental as the oceans are slowing acidifying. This has the potential of adding more carbon to the atmosphere as acid will slowly dissolve calcium carbonate found in corals, shells and diatoms. The only solution is to keep the carbon from entering the waters of the world and stabilizing it instead in some semi-permanent fashion.

Cleary the current methods of running industry, heating homes and transporting goods and people around the world are posing a serious threat on the ecosystem and now must be replaced by something else. Fortunately there are other ways of obtaining energy without ruining the planet and making life difficult or impossible. We should take the signs of global warming seriously and act on alternative sources of energy and give up fossil and nuclear based energy. What already exists is promising and needs to be pursued with vigor. Among these are; wind power, geothermal energy, tidal energy, infra red sources, geomagnetic sources, and piezoelectric energy.

Wind power is being increasingly used around the world, but it is not without controversy. Some people allege adverse health affects. Others complain of the noise. Windmills as they exist, do not work without a source of wind. There is however, a way to generate wind on our own to power a horizontally mounted windmill and this requires a wide chimney to exploit the stack effect to generate wind. Experiments have been done in Spain in other regions on this design and the stack powered windmills worked until decommissioned and torn down. The question is why was something like this torn down and left the field open for the less efficient vertically mounted windmill. It is good that wind power is being increasingly used, but there is much room for improvement.

Geothermal energy is that which is sourced from the internal heat of the Earth and is put into use in heating homes or driving steam powered turbines. Geothermal energy has been proven effective and efficient, with one of the highest efficiency ratings that can be given to any energy conversion system. Many areas of the world are suitable for obtaining and using this energy, but most of them remain unused in favor of other sources such as fossil fuels, nuclear, hydro or wind energy. Geothermic energy where extracted has proven to be reliable over extended periods of time. Currently, this is the form of energy that is used in places like Iceland, the Philippines, California, Italy, Africa, New Zealand and many other places.

Some sources of this energy are natural, occurring around hot springs, like the ones found Near Harrison British Columbia, or in Yellowstone National Park in the US. Others can be created where there are known hot places near the surface of the earth, but are dry. Within the earth, near the source of heat, is a reservoir of water which gets super heated by the magma that is close by and supplying the heat, and the water then works its way to the surface in the form of hot water springs or geysers. Dry hot spots can be developed by injecting water into the hot zone and then tapping the heated water or steam to do what we want to generate power of to heat homes.

The best places for constructing geothermal plants are near the plate boundaries of the planet where large tectonic plates jostle and rub against one another. This natural tendency creates plenty of natural hot spots. This is one reason why Iceland is ideal, but the western coast of the Americas and eastern coasts of Asia are also ideal for similar reasons. The ideal spot is where super heated water or steam erupts from a hot spot below the surface. A power plant can be placed nearby to capture the steam and use it to power turbines for the generating of electricity. The steam can also be used to heat buildings directly without turning it into something else. The size of the power plant is limited only by the amount of the natural resource available. As it stands now, most natural sources of geothermal energy just vent into the air without being used.

There are almost two tidal pulses a day virtually over the extent of the planet with few exceptions. In some regions like the Bay of Funday, the tidal pulse is amplified by the surrounding land. The inrushing tide in these regions can be tapped to produce hydro energy. Anywhere where the tide pulse is funneled in a channel is an excellent candidate for sea driven hydro-electric power. As the tide goes in and out on a nearly twice daily cycle, the turbines can be designed to work in reversible fashion. The only non productive time would be when the tide was at standstills between maximum and minimum. But, as the tide times vary around the world, even in closely placed locations, this should not be a problem. Alternately, the waves of the ocean in regions where there are constant storms like the roaring 40's in the southern hemisphere can be tapped for a constant source of electric power.

Solar energy has seen a recent development with paint on solar cells that create electrical energy. It is now possible to derive power from infra red energy sources. These devices can work at night, on cloudy days and even from waste heat from buildings, cars and our own bodies. The basic principle of these infra-red solar cells is the same as that for visible light solar cells. The use of certain chemicals in combination captures photons that cause the release of electrons via the photo-electric effect and these can be directed to run circuits or collected in batteries or capacitors. Infra-red energy exists in abundance all around us and should be tapped for energy needs. As it stands now, almost all of the infra-red energy just vents into the environment and eventually into space.

Another method of generating electric power is taking a mere loop of wire that is connected to a circuit and turning it in the geomagnetic field. A simple experiment will demonstrate that electricity can be derived from this means and no magnets are needed. Coupled with wind or water turbines, the wire loops can produce useable power without resorting to coal, oil or nuclear power. This is a real versatile and inexpensive source for generating plenty of on site power. Wire loops can even be imbedded in other systems like wind generators. There is a lot of talk about the failure of the geomagnetosphere, but the consensus is that the field is reversing and not disappearing. Thus using the geomagnetic field can still be used to create electrical power. In space, these ideas can generate electrical power in the solar magnetic field. Such a power generator can be incorporated right into the structure of a space station that rotates to create simulated gravity. The simple rotation can also produce power from the heliomagnetosphere.

Piezoelectric power has been around in many applications for a long time; in fact, well over a century. One can find them in use all the way back to Thomas Edison who used it in his first phonographs. They are still in use by anyone who is an affectionado of vinyl records like rappers who use them for the scratch background in their music. Piezoelectric have been used in microphones that are in common use everywhere. Did you know that piezoelectric have been used recently to power complete homes? Yes this is so and there are thoughts to expand this idea by placing hundreds of thousands of these generators under highways and dance floors, where a constant source of changing pressure is present to generate the power. The basic generator has been patented; US Patent # 6,655,035 as the piezoelectric generator. The abstract of the patent reads;
"A method of extracting electrical energy from mechanical motion includes reusing an elastic portion of energy in a transducer by transferring the elastic portion of energy to another transducer. An apparatus for extracting electrical energy from mechanical motion includes at least two transducers coupled such that an elastic portion of energy in one transducer is transferable to the other transducer. The transducers are coupled by a member defining a waved surface, and each transducer defines a coupler in contact with the waved surface for movement following the waved surface. Couplers of two transducers are positioned such that they move out-of-phase relative to each other. The transducers are bound to a plate positioned between members such that the plate is deformed. The plate and members are configured such that relative rotation there between produces a wave that travels along the plate." In other words, when the generator is deformed, a charge of electrical impulse is produced and this can be collected or directly used as a source of electrical power. Typically, piezoelectric generators are small, which makes them ideal for installation where a lot of traffic drives over them or where people congregate like in malls and dance floors. A pilot project was able to power 40,000 homes by placing piezoelectric generators under the highways that cut through communities.

The above considerations can be already being done with off the shelf technology. We do not have to develop anything new and some of these devices have been around for several decades to over a century. So why are we not using these sources for power? The answer is found in mega corporations and the political powers that are in place to make certain that the profit of the owners is in no way threatened. These are the corporations that made sure that we became slaves to fossil fuels and nuclear power. But now the information and technology is now widely available and is well dispersed. Even if political powers are not rushing to correct our carbon impact, local regions and individuals are taking the lead and removing themselves from the carbon and nuclear grid. In fact, some produce a surplus that is added to the major grids.

Alternative fuels as we see them are nothing new under the sun, having been used as far back in history as the 19th century. Some alternative even go back before the dawn of recorded hsitory. Not even ethonal is new. "Corn squeezins" were used to run early cars that could use alcohol as fuel. There was even a steam powered car and compressed air was even considered. Proponents as influencial as Nikola Tesla have developed the concept of alternative fuels though his was by way of wireless electrical power transmission. Tesla went one step further than most insofar as that he was able to demonstrate the powering of various technologies using remote fuels sources, where the fuel was not even on board mobile technology like ships, planes, trains, trucks and cars.

Nikola Tesla's concepts and patents of wireless transmsiion or energy allows for the use of cell phones today and his development of alternating current allowed for the modern profile of cities that we see, with sky scrapers reaching almost 2,000 meters into the sky. The planned tower to replace the ones downed in 9-11 of 2001 in New York, is to be 1,776 meters tall, comemorating in meters the year of the American Revolution. If it were not for alternating current, we would be stuck with the Edison direct current which can only be transmitted over short distances, limiting building heights to no more than five or six stories. The four most influencial electrical power people of the 19th and 20th centuries were Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse and Morgan. Tesla was by far the greatest idea man, inventing and demosnstrating the wireless transmission of large amounts or useble power as an alternative energy source. He is credited with over 700 patents. The patented Wardenclyff project in New York was the first in what was to be a series of transmission towers to project power to anything with appropriate receiving circuitry to convert the power into a useable form. This could be a household, a city, a ship, train, truck, airplane or automobile. When J. P. Morgan realized what such a concept would mean as far as charging for wired power is concerned, he dropped his support and ordered the tower he sponsored finacially to be torn down. Tesla ended up in dire poverty in his final years, ostrasized and demonized in the community. Yet, as far as alternative fuels are concerned, few could top Nikola Tesla's contributions. That we do not use it today is more of a testament to greed past and present than of ignorance.

The industrial revolution was built on steam long before the internal comustion engine existed in the numbers they exist today. The unfortunate thing about steam though is that it was often generated using coal, wood or oil. However, steam can be generated using solar or geothermal sources. In fact some natural steam, such as in Iceland is entirely geothermal in origin. Iceland boasts a 40 percent dependency on geothermal energy, greater than any other country on the planet. On the other hand, Canada and the US, despite having vast reserves for geothermal energy, hardly expliot it at all, preferring to use fossil fuels, ethonol or nuclear sources. It would not be a great leap to tap into geothermal energy to run turbines to at least power and heat our cities. Great reserves of natural heat exists in the Rockies, Cascades and in Yellowstone Park.

Solar energy was used for thousands of years by the First Nations and other so called primative peoples to dry and preserve food and make salt, long before there was even any concept of refrigeration outside of a winter freeze. Solar energy can be captured to generate electiricy efficiently for small electrical appliances like cell phones, MP3 players, portable game consoles, rechargebale falshlights and lighting. In some instances it is already being done, but it is far from universal. Solar energy can be collected to generate steam and this has been demostrated experimentally and practically. Solar cells today are very effeicient and many can be rolled up and carried in a back-pack to be unrolled and used where power collection and generation is needed. We can still dry and preserve food by the solar method, just as countless generations did before us.

Parabolic soalr reflectors can be used for cooking when there is plenty of bright sunshine available. It can even be done in wineter in a sun facing window. There is absolutely no impact on the environment except for the tasty aroma of cooking food in the cooker as it is being prepared. Solar cookers can be home made or can be bought through various outlets on the internet or in camping supply stores.

Wind energy alone cleared the lowands of the Netherlands long before the advent of the electric motor and the internal combustion engine. The dutch who saw their land being inudated by slowly rising sea levels, took a proactive approach and built a massive dyke system around most of their furtile growing areas. To keep seeping water out of their farmalands, they harnessed the wind to clear the land of excess water and pumped it out to the ocean. The Dutch even extended their land holding seaward by the same mathod, reclaiming land that was once under water. They have been doing this for hundreds of years, proving the efficacy of such a system, to conduct a massive virtually country wide engineering project. Even when great sea storms breached the dykes and historically flooded the land, they rebuilt and cleared the land once more with wind power alone. Sadly, many of these windmills have been retired for more compact elecrical pumps hooked into an electrical grid powered by fossil fuel or nuclear power plants in contries like France to the south.

A combination of wind energy and electrical energy harvested from nothing more than the Earth's magnetism is an interesting approach to alternative fuel. A simple experiment with loops of wire and a sensitive volt meter prove that alternating current casn be created by rotating the loops of wire in the geomagnetosphere. Scale this up and combine it with a windmill and useable power can be generated by harnessing the wind and the Earth's magnetism. These power systems can be made to a variety of sizes to power a single home or a neighborhood in a city. No additional input is needed to obtain electrical energy. Couple with batteries, one can power anthing from portable players to electric vehicles.

As long as there have been people and seasonal variation that concentrated food production to a few months of the year, there has been an active program to preserve food for later use. This often means salting, solar drying or using of various spices to preserve food for later. This has been done since before recorded history and is still practiced in areas where there is no practical refrigeration. We can still get sun dried jerky or sea weed snacks at the local supermarket that have no other input than solar drying. Sea salt so popular today with health food affectionados is strictly sun dried at the sea shore in vast flat drying paddies. Sun dried fruits, meats and seaweed make ideal back pack snacks for that back pack trip or picnic.

If planed carefully, we need not use fossil fuels, ethonol made from corn or nuclear energy at all. Using geothermal, solar, wind and Teslian technology in concert, we can have a zero footprint as far as pollution is concerned and yet enjoy a level of energy and power that we curently enjoy. We need only the will and determination to carry it out, wherther individually or collectively. We need to do it now to cut back on our continuing damage to the only planet we know that can support us.

The cosmos is filled with energy that we are beginning to understand and finding ways to utilize. We use some passively to observe the cosmos itself, such as radio waves. Censorship and suppression is nothing new in any arena where competition or unwanted ideas threaten to upset the established order. Someone once said that history is written by the winners. In fact, there are occurrences where a winning invading force sought to wipe out all traces of the vanquished. This almost occurred to the Maya when the conquistadors destroyed almost all of their writings. Fortunately, they could not destroy all of the stone carvings from which we later meticulously derived much of our current knowledge of them. In any major change, there is the possibility of an advance, but for those who cling to old ways; a loss. Today, more than ever, there is a need for environmentally friendly technology. But what we see more often than genuine results is green-wash and green labelling for profit. What we also see is planned obsolescence on a huge scale in the electronics and fashion industries that are rapidly deteriorating the environment and filling landfills. What we need to see is the encouragement of environmentally friendly technology and far less planned obsolescence.

The following accounts are not ideas of perpetual motion machines or zero point energy proposals, which many see as violating the known laws of physics and on the lunatic fringe. These are genuine ideas that deserve a second look. They are ways to alter our environmentally destructive practices. In a world of soaring fuel prices that are driving many people and some countries into bankruptcy and are worthy of a second look. Most people are not aware of alternatives. In fact, if you ask the average person who Nikola Tesla was, they would be stymied for an answer. Tesla gave us the 20th century in the form of the poly-phase AC motor. This is powered from alternating current generators; another of his ideas; that allows for modern skyscrapers, long distance power transmission, refrigeration, remote control and a host of other applications.

In Time magazine of August 17 July 1995, on page 46, an article discussed future technologies that are going to severely change the world as we know it.
The author correctly points out that a change in the usage of energy would have a massive impact, but then promises "The first company to design an affordable car that doesn't foul the atmosphere will race past its competitors."

Not only was he wrong, but he was lying. The simple fact of the matter is that the technology has been with us for most of the 20th century and now 21st century. It's just that it would free us from the enslavement by oil companies, and government, to allow us to utilize it. The oil cartels have been around for over a century and are very wealthy and powerful. In fact, they covertly run the government for their own benefit. Many people suggest this including organizations like 911Truth.com. Some prominent government officials have been and are oil magnates.

Worse yet, is the historical facts that people who invent new ways of doing the same tasks are either bought off with large sums and failing that "disappeared" or murdered. Perhaps the most prominent case in the history of alternate energy technology that was suppressed was the case of Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower (1901 - 1917) also known as the Tesla Tower,

Wardenclyffe Tower was an early Wireless Telecommunications Aerial tower designed by Nikola Tesla and intended for commercial Trans-Atlantic Wireless Telephony, broadcasting, and to demonstrate the Wireless energy transfer transmission of power without interconnecting wires. [1][2] Tesla intended for the tower to demonstrate how the ionosphere could be used to provide free electricity to everyone without the need for power lines. The core facility was never fully operational and was not completed due to "economic problems". [3] These economic problems were a withdrawal of support from J. P. Morgan, who realized only well into the project, just what wireless transmission of power would mean to his power distribution profits. If the project had been completed and successful as earlier and smaller similar designs had proven, then people could draw electrical power literally out of the air and there would be no way to monitor and charge them a fee for using it. This kind of thing was a death threat to the power business, so it was squashed. Tesla spent the last days of his days in dire poverty with only pigeons as friends. Upon his death, The CIA and FBI rushed to seize his papers from his dilapidated hotel room and secreted them away from the public. Tesla's has 111 US patents and more than 700 internationally. The military searched through the seized documents, developing some of the ideas for their own use, among them H.A.A.R.P., which uses the ionosphere to transmit power for various purposes that many speculate upon. Today, we use wireless technology in the form of cell phones, remote controls and wireless internet, all pioneered and perfected by Tesla. Tesla proved that all manner of technology could be run wirelessly and also fueled remotely if we combine some of his ideas in different ways.

It is proven that power can be converted from sunlight and transmitted via microwaves and converted to electrical power remotely. This is done from solar cells that produce electricity to power a Maser (a microwave equivalent to a laser) and then reconverted after being transmitted to a rectenna [5] into useable electrical power. This set up can beam electrical power from space platforms that convert sunlight into microwaves and transmit them to earth to be converted to electrical power. It is all proven technology. The power can be even generated on earth with the same set up initially. This is but one way to produce power that would be environmentally safe.

Francisco Pachec is an inventor from Bolivia created the "Pacheco Bi-Polar Auto electric Hydrogen Generator" US Patent #5,089,107, which separates hydrogen from seawater. He has built successful prototypes that have fuelled a car, a motorcycle, a lawn mower, a torch, a boat, and most recently in 1990 he energized an entire home in West Milford. After many conferences including at the U.N. and public exhibitions proving the inventions worth, the wider community is still unable to utilize this technology. Others have taken this idea and have developed it. There is a long list of developers who have developed variations on the hydrogen theme, only to have their ideas censored. Today, one can actually by a hydrogen powered car from Honda in Japan. Ballard Fuel Cells are being developed and used in British Columbia Canada. However, though decades of work have gone into these ideas and hundreds of millions of dollars, they are not widely and readily available, despite the calls for greener technology. Most of us are still stuck using diesel and gas.

Joseph R. Zubris developed an electric car circuit design in 1969, US Patent #3,809,978, that he estimated would cost him about $100 a year to operate. Using an old ten horsepower electric truck motor, he worked out a unique system to get peak performance from his old 1961 Mercury engine that he ran from this power plant. The device actually cut energy drain on electric car starting by 75%, and by weakening excitation after getting started. It produced a 100% mileage gain over conventional electric motors. The inventor was shocked to find the lack of reaction from larger business interests, and so in the early 1970's began selling licenses to interested smaller concerns for $500.

Robert Alexander from Montebello, California spent 45 days and around $500 to assemble a car, US Patent #3,913,004, based on a small 7/8ths 12 v-motor that provided the initial power. Once going, a hydraulic and air system took over and recharged the systems small electric energy drain. The inventor and his partner were determined that the auto industry would not bury their "super power" system, but to no avail.

John W. Keeley developed a car in the 1920's using principles similar to Nikola Tesla's, drawing harmonic magnetic energies from the planet itself. The electric car ran from high frequency electricity that was received when he simply broadcast the reradiated atmospheric energy from a unit on his house roof. This is another demonstration that power can be broadcast wirelessly and then received remotely and used as effective fuel. GM and the other Detroit oil magnates offered the inventor 35 million dollars which was turned down when they would not guarantee to market the engine. Henry Ford later bought and successfully shelved the invention.

A simple child's toy has demonstrated the potential of crystals to capture energy and convert it into electrical power for use in our technological applications. This toy is the once popular crystal radio that even today has a wide community of interest and development in the world and is easily available on the internet. The crystal radio is actually a kind of rectenna, converting radio frequencies into DC electrical power. A crystal radio captures radio waves and turns the modulated waves into electrical impulses that power speakers, producing voice and music for the user. Circuit designs exist that amplify the signals into useable levels of power that could be used for other applications. Crystal radios are usually tuned to nearby radio frequencies, but they could be as easily tuned to the sun, planets and the cosmos, just to produce power. Radio waves are another form of electromagnetic radiation like sunlight that can be captured by solar cells and responds to the photo-electric effect detailed by Albert Einstein in 1905 [4]. All of these remote sources produce radio waves in copious amounts. Between the radio station bands are regions of static that originate from the cosmos, lightning and the sun. In the early days of TV, the static manifested as "snow" interference with programming. Though not suppressed per se, crystal radio technology has not been actively pursued as an alternate energy source. As it exists today, crystals powered by radio frequencies could conceivably replace batteries for small devices like MP3 players, cell phones, digital cameras, electric toys and laptop computers. This would go a long way in stopping pollution from spent batteries winding up in the landfill and getting into the water table.

The Earth has a geomagnetic field that can be used to produce electric current in a loop of wire. Coupled with windmills, electrical power can be tapped straight out of the geomagnetosphere.

There exists a host of ways to capture and convert energy. Some have been suppressed and some have not been pursued and some are new concepts looking for development. Some new concepts have even been stolen and redesigned so that the real inventor is cheated out of their research and reward for their discovery. Many of these new ideas are environmentally friendly. Today we stand at the end of a century long road of investment and development in fossil fuel technology that would be hard to disconnect. Many people have cars that have cost a lot of time and investment that they have come to rely upon for everyday needs like transport to and from work, shopping for food and picking up the children from school. We could not go "cold turkey" without taking a giant step backward with huge costs in life. What needs to be done is to integrate superior technology alongside present ones and replace what we have.

We also need to eliminate planned obsolescence. If we can build space craft that last several decades such as the Voyager 1 and 2, now deep in the Kuiper belt and now past the solar heliopause, and still in working order, then it follows we can do the same here on Earth. So why isn't this being done? In order to keep the money rolling in and business viable, new concepts need to replace old ones continually. Planned life expectancies in manufactured goods are built in one way or another and that lifespan is usually on the order of a few years at most. If new ideas are not forthcoming, than old ones are repackaged and sold as new. This is true especially in the fashion industry, but also in the automotive and electronics. Tapping in on the peoples' desire for the latest style or upgrade, perfectly good items are thrown out into the environment. This not only represents major stress to the environment but a kind of furtive theft where people are sold in a quantitative upgrade or change rather than a qualitative one. A qualitative one would be one like an electric car that is fuelled remotely along the concepts of N. Tesla.

References:

1. Leland I., Nikola Tesla On His Work with Alternating Currents and Their Application to wireless Telegraphy, Telephony, and Transmission of Power, Twenty First Century Books, 2002, pp. 106, 153, 170.; Councel, "This Wardenclyffe station was that -- experimental?" Tesla, "No, it was a commercial undertaking. . . ."

2. "The Future of the Wireless Art," Wireless Telegraphy & Telephony, Van Nostrand, 1908

3. Cheney, Margaret(1999), Tesla Master of Lightning, New York: Barnes & Noble Books, ISBN 0-7607-1005-8_, pp. 107.; "Unable to overcome his financial burdens, he was forced to close the laboratory in 1905."

Fresh water is something we take too much for granted. It is even imported from countries that have a shortage because it is profitable to sell it as bottled water elsewhere, but if forces many to go without. Even though we use it everywhere and for many reasons from drinking, bathing, washing the car, industry, agriculture, laundry and watering the lawn, it is in short supply. Some regions are more affected more by this than others. All the fresh water on the planet only amounts to two percent of the total and a lot of this is locked away as ice in Antarctica. The other 98 percent is in the world oceans or to a far lesser extent, in the atmosphere. The part we have direct access to is less than one percent of all water and this has to be available to every person, animal and plant on the planet. We all need to learn to reduce out consumption of fresh water. Our current rates of consumption need to be radically reduced to fall in line with sustainable use. Over the last several years, people in the industrial nations have questioned the quality of their drinking water and turned to bottled water as a result. Most people in the world do not have access to fresh water, which results in a lot of disease. What fresh water exists is harvested and shipped half way around the world to be sold to consumers at the expense of locals. The shipment of all this water increases the carbon footprint on the world. Often, this bottled water is the same a tap water. There is a lot of deception in this field of profitable business. Green consciousness is now getting bottled water in the spotlight and showing alternatives that will leave fresh water where it is by region and look to local resources.

Reducing water consumption begins with each and every one of us and there are many things we can do without taking it from others and using more than is needed. Among these are the use of mulch in gardens to reduce water evaporation, landscaping with something other than grass, using a shower head flow reducer, getting a smaller toilet tank or turning to a composting toilet, placing a cover over the swimming pool to reduce evaporation, using washing machines only with a full load, wash dishes by hand using a soap tub and rinse tub, recycling water from dish rinsing or vegetable washing to garden, imaginative use of captured rain water to irrigate a vegetable garden and so on. This is just a few ways fresh water can be saved. If you live in a rain intensive region, consider catching and using this for a lot of applications.

The use of mulch in gardens reduces water evaporation and thus lessens waste. Use this in conjunction with drip irrigation, as regular methods of irrigation often throw water into the air, losing some to evaporation. If the garden is near a driveway of sidewalk, water runoff will end up there and run uselessly into the storm sewer or down the street. Mulch will impede evaporation, so it is a good idea for conserving fresh water. Mulch can be made from last falls leaf fall, grass clippings or straw, which can be laid between plants. If used properly, it will also impede weed growth which is another source of fresh water loss.

Landscaping with something other than grass is an idea that the lazy landscaper considers as there is no grass to cut, weeds to pull or plants to attend to. Landscaping with paving stones, stonework or a deck are some ideas. None of these use any water. If you do consider a few plants, consider trees that are hardy, don't need anything beyond occasional rain and provides shade as well, which will cool your yard and reduce evaporation of ground water.

One of the oldest ways to reduce water consumption is to using a shower head flow reducer. This cuts down on water waste as a typical shower uses several gallons of heated water. Hot water requires energy to heat it and most ways leave a carbon footprint that goes right down the drain just after use. As well as that, a lot of fresh water is used up, making it a double whammy on the environment. Non bio-degradable soaps and shampoos make it a triple whammy. There are two ways to cut down on two of the wastes. Using a restrictor cuts down on the amount of hot water that goes down the drain. Also, by showering like a sailor, you can really cut down on waste. Turn on the shower to get yourself wet and then shut it off. Soap and shampoo until you are done. Turn on the water long enough to rinse clean and shut it off.

Getting a smaller toilet tank or turning to a composting toilet is another way to cut down on water use. If you have a typical family of four, the toilet is constantly being flushed with dozens of gallons going to the sewer. There are some answers. In an older toilet or if you rent, place bricks in the tank to displace water that would otherwise go down the drain. Alternately, install a toilet with a smaller tank. If you have a yard with a garden, using a composting toilet is the best alternatives as these use no water at all.

Placing a cover over the swimming pool helps to reduce evaporation. The typical swimming pool can lose a lot of water by evaporation on a hot summer day. By placing a cover over the water does two things. It keeps water consumption down due to replacing evaporation losses and can extend swimming season by warming the water early and late in the season. If you have young children, be sure to instruct them concerning safety of such seasons.

Use washing machines only when you have a full load. This will mean using it when you have enough whites or color items as most people separate these and wash them separately. You may also consider using cold water washes only to cut down on carbon emissions needed to heat up water. For whites, use an environmentally friendly bleach and bio-degradable soap and wash only if you can fill the machine to capacity.

Wash all your dishes by hand using a soap tub and rinse tub. Forget about the dishwasher as these use up far too much fresh water. If you need a dishwasher, get the kids to do the dishes. Everyone must contribute to the running of a family. This will require discipline and possibly reward. Whatever you do in the end, avoid the dishwasher, unless somehow you can rig one to recycle water. Use a sink or tub with a quantity of water with dish detergent to do the preliminary wash and a tub of rinse water to wash of soap traces. A third tub might be needed to really clean up in the rinse. Use a bio-degradable soap so that the used dish water can by used to water plants outside, cutting down on the use of fresh water just for these. If you wash you fruits and vegetables, which is advisable if you use "traditional" no organic ones, use the rinse water for outdoor and indoor plants too.

Considering the design of most houses and buildings, a lot of rain water is wasted by being allowed to run off into the storm sewer as it pours off the roofs. The water falling on the roof of your house can be captured, redirected to gardens or even stored for dry days to water the garden. In ancient times within marginal environments, people collected rainwater into large underground caverns called cisterns in order to have a fresh water supply all year round in dry times. If you live in the country you may consider building a cistern. In the urban areas, rain water can be collected into swimming pools for recreational purposes. Over dry periods, collected water can be used for garden watering. If you're going to drink rain water, filter it first through and activated charcoal filtration system to remove soot, pollution and bacteria. Even with such practices, use it with care and consideration as if it was being piped in. Water from plumbing originally comes from rainfall and is extracted from rivers, lakes and underwater. Collecting rainwater from rooftops is a process of catching it before it gets to aquifers.

Install a water filtration unit for clean drinking water and use recyclable camping bottles. Many people like to use bottled water these days, which is massively adding to landfills and oceans with all those empty plastic containers. Though recyclable bottles are expensive, consider that all the added up disposable bottles end up costing a lot more. By using a camper's or hiker's bottle over and over, you eliminate a lot of waste. In conjunction with filtered refilling, this is as good as if not a lot better than packaged and disposable bottled water bottles. A lot of bottle water is imported from elsewhere which adds a heavy carbon footprint as well.

Fix leaky faucets wherever you find them. Either hire a professional plumber or do it yourself if you know how. This includes leaks that occur in the toilet. Most toilets have a complicated arrangement that serves as the flush mechanism and these can leak at a number of points. To see if your toilet leaks, place a little food coloring in the tank. If the water in the bowl discolors, you have a leak and you'll need to trace and fix it. Sometimes this means replacing the entire flushing mechanism.

Do not run water until it is hot or cold, use the water that first comes out, and chill water in the fridge and heat on the stove where necessary. These are but a few ways to conserve fresh water, which is in shorter supply than we would wish to think.

Two schools are currently in conflict as to the direction the Earth's climate is going, a hothouse or a frozen hell. According to some, the long cycle of climate should be heading us into an prolonged ice age. Yet both ice caps are melting down and both are in danger of full collapse. The evidence is unmistakeable if one take a hard look at the world's glaciers and poles. The argument is that the current warming is either a figment of the imagination of global warming fanatics, or a temporary glitch, such as often happens in longer cycles. On the other side, we see weird weather that sees melting permafrost and lengthening growing seasons with extremes in precipitation all over the planet.

While we ramp up the carbon and other greenhouse gasses, we are also adding a lot of soot, nitrous oxide and dust. This contributes to global warming, but it is masked by the dust by 2 to 24 percent depending on whether you live in remote outback or in an major industrial centre in America, Europe, China or India. All the soot, nitrous oxide and dust eventually ends up in all the ice fields world around. When the accumulation is sufficient, it captures sunlight, converting it to heat and melts the ice. Everyone knows that dirt on snow will speed up initial melting even in cold temperatures until the dirt concentrates and acts as a blanket. In nature this occurs with volcanic explosions and/or forest fires. This however is aperiodic and the next years snow covers the heat trapping material. With human input it is constant, so annual snows have not effect.

The sunlight, even in a weakened form, will then heat the accumulated soot and dust, speeding the melting of the ice. This will occur whether we are in a warming or cooling cycle. The geologic record shows many temporary events. Lately people have been adding a constant and increasing supply of dirt to the ice and melting speeds up. Ice age or hothouse, the result is the same. If we remove the global dimming factor, then the real extent of global warming will become apparent. For this to occur, all industry would have to stop.

In any area of controversy, there are two sides to the question, even if the inquiry is scientific in nature. Science is divided into two camps; those that support the manmade global warming influence and those who propose that it is entirely nature based with no or little human impact. Those who say there is no global warming base their theses on the following ideas

- The sun is cooling so the mean temperature fluctuates accordingly just like in the Maunder and Spoorer Minima.
- As the sun cools, gamma rays penetrate from deep space and create cooling clouds on earth, which then allows ice buildup.
- Due to something called the Milanokovich cycle, the northern and southern hemispheres endure ice ages separately and in opposing phases. When the north is in an ice age, the south is in a warm period and visa versa.
- Current heating is due to the current solar warm cycle and orbital dynamics of the Earth.

Let us look at each in turn.

Although it is true that the current solar cycle is not building up to a sun spot maximum as expected and thus may be acting as a trigger for a new ice-age; it is not true that ice is building up. In fact, during this solar cooling, both poles are undergoing massive ice shelf collapse and meltdown. There is ample footage from overhead satellites to prove this and also the fact that glaciers world wide are in retreat. Ocean levels are rising as well and new information suggests a complete melt of Arctic ice in five years. These measurements have been going on now for two decades at least, or through two complete solar cycles. Yet in this same period, the ten hottest years in the history of global temperatures were recorded. Many people have noticed confusion in the seasons with summer lengths increasing. Conversely, they are also cooling, at least in wet regions. Dry regions experience increasing heat and dryness.

At least one theorist has made a case that extra solar gamma rays create clouding and cooling on the Earth as clouds reflect more sunlight. This is a controversial idea. As oceans heat up, more water evaporates and then condenses into fog banks and clouds. This occurs over the oceans and where ever winds carry moisture laden air up mountains causing rain. The theorist also agrees that ice ages will occur back and forth between poles due to Earth's orbital changes. However, other members of the scientific community do not accept the gamma cloud creation idea.

It is acknowledged that Earth's orbit does change. This first came to light in the changes in the orbit of Mercury that were detected early in the 20th century and were used to prove some of Einstein's ideas of general relativity. Later observation confirmed this for the rest of the solar system including the Earth. The changes follow three principle cycles of 22,000 years, 40,000 years and 100,000 years, known as the Milanokovich cycles. All of these cycles have been matched to cycles in the ice cores and deep sea sediment cores. According to ice core samples, we should be heading into an ice age with an eventual freeze up of the northern hemisphere, covering much of the landmass in the northern half of the Earth and lowering the sea levels. What we are seeing instead is ice and glacial retreat in both hemispheres simultaneously, demonstrating that something else is at work. In addition, sea levels are rising and this is dramatically desecrated with the increasing disappearance of the Maldives and islands in the Pacific Ocean. The only fresh input during this period is the output of the industrial revolution of the last two centuries. This has added greenhouse gasses that could account for the anomaly. In a period where theoretically there should be global freezing, we see the opposite and its accumulating results.

Earth has an eccentric orbit. Currently, the point where the Earth is closest to the sun is on or about January 4th of each year. The result is that the southern hemisphere has short intense summers and long cold winters. The northern hemisphere has shorter, less severe winters and long cooler summers. But, as most of the land mass of the Earth is north of the equator, temperature swings are quicker due to less water to hold the heat. As the perihelion of the Earth shifts to its opposite point in July, the situation will reverse with the north having long deep winters, where ice will have a chance to build up. This is partly confirmed in the existence of massive ice fields in Antarctica. However, the massive ice shelves in Antarctica have recently collapsed and in a period where ice should be building, especially as we are also in a solar cooling as well. However, this has not been the case. In a spit of land that stretches almost to S. America, regions are now ice free and in the first time in living memory, plants are establishing themselves in Antarctica while Emperor penguins have left for colder climes further south.

What is behind this curious anomaly? It can be only one thing and one thing alone that fly in the face of cherished ideas of the nay sayers. That has to be the effects of combined human input on the globe. We are far from the first. Earth got its oxygen atmosphere from cyanobacteria hundreds of millions of years ago, changing forever the Earth and allowing for creatures like us. Now we are changing the atmosphere by adding pollutants that block sunlight and greenhouse gasses that trap heat. For the moment, the two have something of a canceling effect, but remove the dust; soot, sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide and the sunlight will pour in to really heat things up. The oceans will give off more moisture, making more clouds that will rebalance things, but with more intense storms. Statistic show that hurricane and typhoon severity has been increasing over the last couple of decades. Sure the solar cooling will chill things a bit and this may be a blessing to allow us to get our carbon act together, but overall, heat will still get trapped.

In this debate enters political realities and economics. In any scenario, we have to take this into consideration. Who stands to profit on both sides of the question in this competition of ideas? Those who deny global warming and dimming do so because they want to keep things just as they are because this is what is the most profitable for them. Others are left to clean up the mess or suffer from its accumulation. On the other hand, there are those who will profit from carbon taxes. On both counts, the poor will suffer the most and various interests will profit. But ultimately, the situation regarding our collective environment will have to be dealt with just because the evidence out there is telling us we must.

References:

Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth

Henrik Svensmark, The Chilling Stars

The Maldives
http://apps.develebridge.net/usiotws/7/ComMIT_Thailand_July07.pdf
http://www.acclimatise.uk.com/news/adaptation-in-action-in-the-maldives

Antarctic melt-down
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15850535/

Arctic and Greenland meltdown
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1111569,00.html

Glacial retreat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850

Firestorms
http://www.alternet.org/environment/126910/firestorms_and_deep_freeze:_climate_change_may_bring_both/

Increasing deserts
http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/science/reports/desertification.html

Increasing temperatures
http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/170.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

Global warming, Nay sayers on global warming, Antarctic meltdown, Artic meltdown, Glacial retreat

When we consider life, we often take a lot for granted. Complex life as we know it, requires the serendipitous presence of a myriad of conditions to allow for its development and continuance. Everything has to be "just right" in order for complex form to evolve at all. Prerequisites for its development include,

- The existence of a relatively long-lived, stable star to provide the differential of light and heat.
- Sufficient distance from potential super novae, neutron stars, black holes, magnetars and active galactic cores.
- The existence of a planet at the right distance from the star so that temperatures are neither too cold nor too hot on the planet's surface.
- A low orbital eccentricity and no interplanetary resonances.
- The existence of a planetary magnetic field to shield from ionizing radiation.
- The existence of an atmosphere to provide surface pressure for:
- The existence of liquid water at the crucial temperature for complex chemical reactions.
- The existence of ozone to block short wave UV radiation, inimical to complex and sensitive biological molecules.
- The proper inclination of the planet to its orbital plane. It should not be oriented with its spin axis near the plane of the orbit, such as in the case of Uranus and Pluto. Nor can it be tidally locked to the star; although there are some theoretical considerations.
- The existence of crucial elements like Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Calcium, trace metals like iron.
- A variety of ecosystems and ecological niches on the planetary surface.
- Some would debate the need for an orbiting moon, but this may not be so. What is necessary is geological recycling such as through plate tectonics.
- A complex chemistry that can photosynthesize whether in virus sized to cellular sized structures.
- A changing climate that is not overly violent. This depends somewhat on the orbital eccentricity, spin axis orientation and chemical composition of the atmosphere and other factors like mountains, volcanism and impact frequency.
- Conditions that will allow for feeding, shelter and reproduction.
- Environmental turbulence that stirs up nutrients and removes waste products for recycling.

The above is the prerequisite for complex life to arise on a planet. All these conditions must exist simultaneously in greater or lesser degrees in order for some form of life to evolve. This creates a rather narrow focus for the development of life, even at a relatively simple level. For most of Earth's history up to about 600 million years ago, this was the case for life that was basically cellular and microscopic. Only after this time did life becomes increasingly complex. There is much speculation as to why it took life billions of years to evolve from bacteria and cells to multicellular and complex life. One thing is certain and that is the environment had to stabilize enough to allow for greater complexity. It is known that simpler life forms can withstand greater punishment from the cosmos than larger more complex forms. There are bacteria that thrive in temperatures of 600 degrees Celsius near undersea volcanic vents and chimneys. On the surface, bacteria live in the vents in Yellowstone Park at near boiling temperatures. Conversely, some fish and bacteria can live in frigid temperatures in salt water well below the freezing point of fresh water. The more complex forms of life like most fish; elephants and people require more conditions for survival than the basic list above. These must also; more or less coexist simultaneously within narrow constraints.

Complex life has evolved to involve the interrelation of many species with one another in a complex variation of a strange attractor. There are predator-prey relations, symbiosis of various shades and types and parasitic ones. They all operate within a limit cycle and seldom go beyond limits without some form of check on numbers. This is how nature makes the whole sustainable and this is the way it has been including the human species; that is until the advent of industrialization and the massive exploitation of everything thereafter. In order for complex life to exist, there are many conditions that have to be fulfilled simultaneously.

A source of food to allow for an energy differential. Here plants that photosynthesize provide a food source for animals.
- A source of fresh pure water.
- A renewing atmosphere to allow for respiration required in photosynthesis and animal metabolism.
- A place or means to shelter from environmental extremes.
- A means to efficiently eliminate waste products of metabolism.
- Conditions to allow for reproduction and with that, the death of the progenitor to allow for the growth of following generations, creating the possibility of evolution and adaptation to changing conditions in a short span of time.
%u2022 A means to communicate within the multicellular organism and between individuals of a species.
%u2022 Sensitivity to the environment in order to respond with survival tactics.

The last point is one where the human species has broken down, especially with the alienation from nature that comes of specialization and civilization. We have basically taken an attitude of dominance over nature and are starting to reap the consequences of our actions. We can use our intellectual ability to solve the problems and get back into natural balance, or continue our ways and suffer the now accelerating consequences.

Complex life forms often adapt to very specialized conditions over long periods of environmental quasi-stability. When the environment suddenly changes, they can't adapt and die off. Thus there evolved responses to deal with this that take many forms. They range from going into a latency stage of life, like spores, hibernation or a complete change of form. Most species on the planet go through their complete life cycle within the context of a single terrestrial orbit about the sun. Within that year, activity is often concentrated in a few short months. This is a key as to why evolution can occur over months rather than millions of years. Some species can manage to live for many years, even thousands in the case of bristle cone pines in California. Species that live for years are very specialized and require some stability in the environment. Needless to say, an upset like a prolonged famine will eliminate chances of survival for most of them. The geologic record shows that of all the species that ever lived, fully 99 percent are now extinct. Over the course of geological history, life has taken many fantastic forms.

When the idea of life on exosolar planets is considered in the context of the Drake equation, we must consider the above in addition for each and every case. On Earth, most of its history was occupied by microscopic life. Complex life came only recently in geologic history. Intelligent complex life is even more recent; a virtual footnote thus far. Thus, when we travel to the stars and find planets suitable for life, we are most likely to find it in the microscopic form. There may even be some kind of fractal power function for complex life, which suggests that complex life, let alone intelligent complex life is comparatively and exceedingly rare.

In the whole of the cosmos in space-time, we are unlikely to find any two things alike in exact measure. What we will find is a self-affine pattern that recapitulates itself from place to place along a fractal power function. We are thus unique in the entire cosmos, and probably exceedingly rare. It should then strike us as something of a mystical experience to appreciate the uniqueness of our situation. The Earth and all upon it is a living jewel in the unfathomable depths of the cosmos, very seldom equaled anywhere. This is so because of the unique combination of complex life coupled with conscious intelligence that can ponder such things as the cosmos and our special relation to all that it is. Indeed, if there are "Elohim" who conspired to create the living Earth, it is the convergence of countless cosmic influences and forces great and small within the vast cosmos that historically and simultaneously acted upon this place and time, resulting in the resplendent jewel of the Earth complete with complex, intelligent life. With this insight, we should behave a lot differently than we do. Instead of contempt, we should be awe struck and humbled at the profound significance of this place and the incredible and incalculable confluence of forces that resulted in our existence and continues for the moment to support and sustain us. We should treat each other and all of nature with the utmost of respect, as each and every one is unique within the context of a unique place and time. All of nature and the cosmos has converged, conspired and consented to allow all the diversity we see, no matter what form that it takes. No type of intolerance, bigotry or chauvinism is an acceptable excuse in the face of this reality. What nature can allow in its vast array of expression is the truth, and not some obscurantist and unfounded concept or belief. When all is considered, this will never be again!

Instead, we find ourselves trapped in petty squabbling often not of our own making, but in which we are entrapped by the cross purposes of one another. In a mad rush to grow ever richer and more powerful, we ruin the only place we know for certain that we can live. Often, we are born into a society, not of our making, but of that long dead dream of those who are no more. It is a dream that has drifted into nightmare distortions of the former vision. Our dreams and reality almost never seem to converge. The lusts of those who seize control of the destinies of the many, force most of us to comply with the desires for petty profiteering, all the while ignoring the spectacular wonder of our special uniqueness and the possibilities that this entails. We plunder and murder one another while a sword of Damocles hangs over our collective heads a sword, which we can do something about. We need only seize the moment, but our worldview is in need of a major "paradigm shift" to borrow a popular phrase. When all is considered, we are unique phenomena without equal and we should start to appreciate that and behave accordingly. A good start is to treat each other with something more than mere contempt! If there is a curse, it is ignorance, and the willingness of those who know better to exploit it for their own ends and at the ultimate expense of the species and this living jewel, Earth.

This then is the problem. We shall now surge forward and seek out and implement solutions that are already within our grasp if we only will to do the task.

Rainforests serve as part of the lungs of the world as well as moisture and temperature regulators. Were it not for rainforests the earth would end up as a drier and hotter place racked with temperature extremes and wild weather as the norm. That we can say this is due to the fact that clear cutting and shrinking the extent of the world's rainforests has actually reduced the quantity of rain cloud formation, leading to drying and increasing desertification. On top of this, the temperature of the areas affected has increased, further drying out the affected regions. The regions in question are the Amazon basin, the African rainforests and interestingly enough, the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest. The forests that are by far the most sensitive to this are the Amazon and African tropical rain forests. Both lie on the equator and effect both the north and south hemispheres. The local weather patterns moderated by the forests have a profound influence on the rest of the planet.

Everyone knows that on hot summer days, clouds which pass between us and the sun, have an immediate cooling effect. Lack of clouds means that heat has a chance to accumulate and build. Everyone who has endured a heat wave welcomes the cooling clouds and rain that bring an end to it. We also know that on winter days, clouds tend to act as a blanket and keep things warmer. Vast rainforests that once existed acted as a huge carbon and moisture sink. In the days where the forests dominated, there was a daily weather cycle that started in the early morning as bright and sunny. As the day progressed and the jungle heated, clouds built up over the rainforest due to the moisture released from all the plants. The moister condensed as clouds and prevented everything below from reaching extreme heat. When cool enough, the clouds released torrents of rain to water and cool everything below. By evening, the clouds were once more dispersing and becoming sparse. Winds blew some of the clouds from the rainforest to other regions that were also watered and cooled. Some of these clouds fed rivers and glaciers. The clouds reflect more sunlight when plentiful and help regulate the Earth's temperature. Fewer clouds mean more sunlight reaches the darker earth and thus heats it up. More clouds mean cooling overall. When the winds mix up the hot and cool regions, the temperature is averaged out planet wide. Less rainforests eventually translates into less cloud cover and more heat. This is but one part of the complex issue of global warming.

Rainforests also absorb a lot of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen, thus removing this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and acting as the world's lungs, giving us life giving oxygen. Global wind patterns mix everything up so that the air with less carbon dioxide moves out and air with more has a chance to contact the carbon hungry rain forests to be cleared of excess greenhouse gasses. Rainforests thus serve a triple function to increase global cloud cover, to subtract carbon dioxide and add oxygen. Now water vapor is a greenhouse gas when it is not in the form of clouds and it lends it influence as humid heat. But when the moisture condenses into clouds, the cloud tops reflect incoming sunlight and the regions under the clouds are allowed to cool.

For many decades and up to the present, rainforests are being clear cut for agricultural growing regions, usually to produce cash crops for export and profit. The soil tends to be thin and is quickly exhausted as it lacks a lot of nutrients for heavy feeding crops and beef. When it is exhausted after a few crops, farmers usually abandon the now unproductive fields, cut down more rainforest to clear land for agriculture. Such has been the case and continues in the Amazon basin, where enough forest is cleared in a year to rival France in area. Clear cutting is affected by cut and burn techniques, which release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere while at the same time subtracting oxygen that we need to, breathe. Climatologists have noticed that as the clear cuts expand and the rainforest shrinks, that the local climate dries up and gets hotter. Regions already clear cut and exhausted turn to desert. Less rainforest remains and less daily cloud cover occurs and this threatens even the forest cover that remains. The outer regions that used to see daily rains now see little cloud cover, scant rains and get scorching hot. This affects the groundwater level to the point where people and animals are forced to migrate due to increasing drought. Once great rivers ran to the ocean, but now some of them are drying up and water coming in from other regions never reaches the sea.

Carbon dioxide that is not absorbed by rainforest is absorbed by the oceans instead, acidifying the oceans and dissolving calcium carbonate from shells and coral and releasing trapped carbon dioxide into a vicious increasing cycle in the sea water. The extra greenhouse gasses heat the ocean as well as the atmosphere. This places the ocean species that are temperature and chemistry sensitive at risk and the potential for the collapse of the other part of the Earth's lungs, the photo plankton. Though heating of the oceans contribute to evaporation and cloud formation, it does nothing to lock away carbon either as calcium carbonate or in plant material. It does escalate the scenario for super storms that brew over heated oceans and make landfall as intense hurricanes as the weather seeks to balance extremes of heat and cold.

Increasing dry hot areas jacks up the average world temperature and some of this heat reaches far enough north and south to melt the polar ice caps and high enough to melt mountain glaciers. The Earth is heating up for a number of reasons and one of them is the decrease of rainforest cover. Less carbon is recycled and fewer clouds mean hotter days overall as we move closer to catastrophe, flooding and hot dry conditions. The loss of the rainforests spells an increased risk for catastrophe for the entire planet. As the rainforests shrink, a crucial temperature regulator is reduced and at threat of being completely lost. When temperatures get hot enough, photosynthesis shuts down and the process reverses, injecting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere while taking up oxygen. No one is sure where the tipping point is that will lead to a total break down of the rainforest regulator, but when it does, the result will be catastrophe.

There is a lot of interest to stop the destruction of the rainforest, but as long as we run business as usual and do nothing about regional poverty that is driving much of the destruction, the result seems inevitable. We are all at risk; rich and poor alike and must seriously act to avert catastrophe.

Wind turbines have a long history. Traditionally they were used to drain excess water from farmland such as in the case of the Netherlands dating from about 1200 AD where they drained water from lands below sea level. With the advent of electrical power came the use of the wind turbine to generate power. But are the configurations that we typically see the best for generating continuous power? Far from it! Yet we see vast sums of money and effort being poured into an outmoded design that may or may not deliver power depending on the vagaries of the weather. Such a plan is in effect by Texas oil billionaire, T. Boone Pickens. He wants to constuct a massive wind farm in the Texas panhandle that will generate 4,000 megawatts of electrical power. That of course depends on the wind conditions. We need to stand the wind turbine concept "on its head" in order to make it a reliable and continuous source of power. There is no shortage of ideas as you will see.

It is not impossible to generate ones own wind to power a wind turbine, but not all locations are suitable for doing this. For the small user, location can be a detriment, but for community and city users, a suitable location can be chosen that will result in the most continuous and efficient generation of power. The idea of generating wind has been tried in the past. In 1903, Spanish Colonel Isidoro Cabanyes first proposed a solar chimney power plant in the magazine "La energía eléctrica". In Spain, a solar updraft tower was constructed and run from 1982 through to 1989.

"The chimney had a height of 195 metres and a diameter of 10 metres, with a collection area (greenhouse) of 46,000 m² (about 11 acres, or 244 m diameter) obtaining a maximum power output of about 50 kW. However, this was an experimental setup that was not intended for power generation. Instead, different materials were used for testing, such as single or double glazing or plastic (which turned out not to be durable enough) and one section was used as an actual greenhouse, growing plants under the glass. During operation, optimisation data was collected on a second-by-second basis with 180 sensors measuring inside and outside temperature, humidity and wind speed. [1]"

"This pilot power plant operated for approximately eight years, but the chimney guy rods were not protected against corrosion and not expected to last longer than the intended test period of three years. So, not surprisingly, after eight years they had rusted through and broke in a storm, causing the tower to fall over and the plant was decommissioned in 1989. [2]"

The basic principle of the solar updraft tower is to capture solar energy to heat the base of the tower in order to generate and updraft inside the chimney. The updraft wind is captured by a horizontally mounted internal turbine which is coupled with a generator. The tower can be coupled with greenhouses and the heated air vented to the tower. Further, heat produced from the sun can be stored for night-time use and the heat can be delivered by a radiation grid to create a continuous updraft. So in effect, continuous wind can be created by setting up a heat differential between the base and the top of the tower. China has plans to build a tower using superconducting suspended turbines to increase the mechanical efficiency.
Obviously, the best places for such towers is in locations where there is plenty of sunshine year round. Such places are like desert locations and south facing slopes of desert mountains. But any place that has a preponderance of sunny days over cloudy ones are candidates for such towers. There need not be consideration for locating them in windy places as they will generate their own internal wind.
A smaller version can be built for the home or farm and use the same chimney or stack effect that has already been exploited in larger designs. The basic units are the solar heat collector, the heat storage container, the heat exhanger, the tower and the turbine-generator. A heat collector can be something as simple as a greenhouse that has embeded heat collecting tubing. The heated water in the tubing is collected into an insulated storage tank for night time running. Otherwise. excess heat buildup in the greenhouse is directed to the tower via ducts and the updraft wind drives the turbine which in turn drives a generator. At night, the heat exchanger provides the heat to cause the updraft and continue power generation. The tower and horizontally mounted turbine are self explainitory.

Another option is to build a small turbine on the cheap using halves of a 45 gallon oil drum. This unit is entirely dependant on ambiant wind, so it is not as reliable as the solar updraft tower wind turbine, which is the ultimate goal in wind turbines. However, it does provide a good jumping off point to gain experimental experience. There are plans that can be referred to in order to build a small experimental wind generator.[3]
References:

1. Schlaich J, Schiel W (2001), "Solar Chimneys", in RA Meyers (ed), Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology, 3rd Edition, Academic Press, London. ISBN 0-12-227410-5 downloadPDF (180 KiB)

2. Mills D (2004). "Advances in solar thermal electricity technology". Solar Energy 76 (1-3): 19-31. doi:10.1016/S0038-092X(03)00102-6.

3. www.re-energy.ca

Windmill power has been around for a long time and harnessed to do a lot of what otherwise would be backbreaking toil. Windmills have been used to mill grain, to drain flooded land, extract ground water and lately to generate electrical power. More exotic uses include wind powering an organ and Jacques Cousteau's use of a modified windmill to drive the sailing ship, Alcyone (2) in any direction. Perhaps the best example of windmill power in all of history is how the Dutch exploited wind to drain vast stretches of lowlands to expand their living and growing space.

The basic principle of wind power generation is accomplished by capturing wind by the use of mounted sails or fixed "wings." The mounted sails or wings can be positioned vertically or horizontally or even at an angle to best exploit existing air currents. Some designs are oriented it to the wind by a "tail" mounted at right angles to the wind capturing part of the mill, so that existing air currents will turn the sails into the wind. At least one example exists where wind is captured and turned into a reverse cyclone to power a wind driven turbine which was geared to machinery for motive power.

To understand how a windmill sail works, let's look at sailing ships, tall ships and sailing with and against the wind. For much of sailing history, ships have relied on tail winds or at least winds that could drive them forward from a relative rear direction. With the development of the jib, sailing craft could sail somewhat against the wind. Tall ships from form the 17th century and on relied increasingly in jibs as well as square sails. The jib is a triangular sail set between masts or the bowsprit and the foremast. The jib's orientation was along the line between the bow and stern of the ship as opposed to the square sails that were set on yard-arms attached to the various masts and perpendicular to the midline from bow to stern. A jib could catch the winds from the side and also when set properly, catch the wind from either the starboard bow or port bow and act part as sail and part glider. The force of the headwind would allow the jib to transfer the winds energy to the ship which would move it through the water against the wind. However, as the ship could approach the headwind only at an angle, in order to reach a line of sight destination, the ships crew had to "zigzag" or tack one way, then the other way in order to continue sailing to their destination against the wind direction. The advent of the triangular jib sail made sailing more versatile.

Looking back at vertical mounted windmills, we can find various sail configurations including the jib mast combination where the masts are arranged around the central drive shaft. In this case, the sails are oriented into the wind with the aid of a tail and turret like moveable mill head. Vertically mounted sails or wings complete with a rudder or tail are typically found in designs that are used to mill grain, extract ground water or to drain water from lowlands. In some regions where wind was constant from a particular direction, the mill head did not have to turn and the jib alone was all that was necessary to keep the mill turning. The jibs alone could be set to best exploit the wind.

The wind energy captured by the sails that turned the energy of the wind into the rotary motion of a drive shaft attached to the masts, sails, wings or turbine. This rotary motion was then transferred to piston rods attached to an in line crank shaft, or to a differential that directed the energy to a millstone inside the mill housing below. In some cases the wind power was transferred to a mill wheel to move water up hill. Other cases exploited an Archimedes screw for the same ends. In the case of the piston, these were used to draw up water from a low level to a higher level. This relied on atmospheric pressure on the water and the partial vacuum created in the pumps. The Dutch employed the piston design, the water wheel and the Archimedes screw to extract water from the lowlands and to dump it into the seaward side of a dike complex (3). Often several windmills worked in tandem to raise water gradually from a low height to a great enough height to accomplish the task of water removal. Prior to the 19th century almost all windmill working parts were constructed entirely of wood and sail canvas. With the advent of industrialization, the moving parts were converted to metallic form.

Midwestern farmers have used windmills to extract underground water and to irrigate. These distinctive windmills have become something of a symbol with their many bladed wind driven fans , distinctive tails and towers. They are not used much these days as water is now extracted using electric pumps. So too, the Dutch have converted to electric pumps.

Vertical and horizontal designs have been used to capture wind to turn a generator for the production of electricity. Some depend on the existence of existing winds and others create their own wind to power a wind turbine.

The horizontally mounted variety has been used in the confines of a tower that creates a heat differential in order to create an updraft to power such as the wind turbine and the vortex engine (1). Such windmills were developed and used on and off during then 20th century to generate electrical power. There is even a variety that would exploit and enhance the physics behind the dust devil. No tower is needed and a standing atmospheric vortex was created to drive a horizontally mounted turbine connected to a generator.

The reverse cyclone, one of which was used to power the Alcyone (2), is designed to capture existing winds from any direction and funneling it into a turbine to directly drive a propeller shaft that drove the ship forward including directly into the wind.

References:

1. http://vortexengine.ca/index.shtml

2. http://www.math.clemson.edu/~simms/cousteau/

3. http://www.nt.ntnu.no/users/haugwarb/DropBox/The%20Dutch%20Windmill%20Stokhuyzen%201962.htm

It has been the dream of many to tap the abundant energy of the cosmos and turn it into useful power to drive motors and electronic technology. There is no reason why this can't be done because of the photoelectric effect. Plants exploit the photoelectric effect at the very foundation of photosynthesis by capturing the red and blue wavelengths of light that cause electrons to be ejected from hydrogen in water and this simple process is how plants get there energy. This has been going on naturally for 3.8 billion years on Earth. Thus a direct connection exists between quantum physics, light and life. There are organisms that exist outside of the photosynthesis loop, but they are comparatively few and rare in comparison to the biomass dependant on photosynthesis. We copy this process somewhat in technology like solar cells and antenna, but there is much room for improvement and it can be achieved using fractal designs incorporated in energy capture technology.

Looking a little deeper into photosynthesis, we find it is a chemical process that is triggered by a fundamental law of physics; the photoelectric effect on the quantum level. As everything is made up of atoms and sub-atomic particles, it is little wonder that chloroplasts and chlorophyll in plants utilize an important factor in quantum physics. What is a wonder is that evolution occurred to exploit the photoelectric effect as a source of energy. The fact that most leaves reflect the green wavelength of light should tell us something. The same leaves absorb the blue and red wavelengths of light which just happen to be the types of wavelengths that will trigger hydrogen to lose an electron. These wavelengths are 656.28 nanometers for hydrogen red alpha and 486.13 nanometers for hydrogen blue beta. Hydrogen atoms will absorb and release only light in the blue, ultraviolet and the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum. Once the photon of the correct wavelength contacts the electron shell of the water molecule, it ionizes the molecule and breaks it down in a process called reduction, releasing oxygen molecule and the free radical hydrogen proton is then captured by a carbon dioxide molecule in the process of being converted to sugar. There are four discrete stages in the process of photosynthesis. The first one has been described and this is the stage where high energy molecules are assembled. This is called the Light Reaction stage of photosynthesis. It is this very stage we emulate with our photoelectric technology.

By adapting to the use of fractal accumulators, we can capture a wide variety of wavelengths and then convert them to electrical impulses that can be specifically directed via a diode to build a direct current potential of voltage. In fact, by cleverly designing the circuits, we can capture energy of both polarizations and separate them with appropriate filters to capture and use the total sum of energy that acts on the accumulators. Using a series of fractal accumulators shaped on the principle of the Sierpinski gasket, we can build a large amount of accumulated energy. The finer mesh will capture the more energetic wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum and the large mesh will capture microwaves and radio waves. The type of metal the gasket is made of is important to exploit the photoelectric effect over a wide range of frequencies. This metal used in the Sierpinski antenna is likely to be made from an alloy or some element that is susceptible to the photoelectric effect from many specific frequencies. For the most part they should be able to work in any condition as long as they are exposed to radiation.

Space is awash with frequencies of all kinds. In addition, we release copious amounts from radio stations, cell phone networks, wireless internet locations and any combustion of fossil fuels from our own activities. Manmade "waste" frequencies are often in the microwave, infra-red and radio frequencies. Cosmic radiation includes these but also has ultra violet, x-ray, gamma, light and ultra low radio frequencies. With the exception of visible light, all of it is available unless screened out. In the open air and in deep space, all frequencies can be captured and turned into electrical energy which can then power ion drives and electric appliances of all kinds. It can even be used to power electro-magnets.

Electrical energy can be collected into batteries or capacitors. It can be used directly as direct current or passed into an inverter to create alternating current. It can even be reconverted to microwaves, beamed by maser to distant locations for remote fueling ops to power deep space vehicles. But such accumulators are not restricted to space applications. They can be used as a green alternative to generating copious amounts of power that is needed for modern industrial society. They can be incorporated right into the structure of buildings to run HVAC systems, elevators and feed the power grid for a local area. They can be incorporated into homes and electric vehicles in self-contained systems.

We are already using Sierpinski antennas in cell phones; particularly the new models that can do a wide variety of tasks which are all assigned different frequencies to send and receive. If done the old way, they would require a large array of different types of antennas. But a single tiny Sierpinski antenna allows for a wide range of applications set at many frequencies with just a single antenna. Using these as power collectors promises to deliver a lot of power from a tiny accumulator.

Pictured above is the simple mock up of a single Sierpinski accumulator that can serve as a power source or a charger for a battery powered system. This is a technology currently under consideration and development.

Global dimming has at its root a number of causes such as volcanic explosions, impacts, massive forest fires, dust storms, industrial emissions and warfare. Other factors include increasing cloud cover, formation of ice and changes in the sun itself. Many of these causes work by blocking the incoming sunlight by absorption. Some work by reflecting sunlight. One results from changes in the sun itself. In any case, apparent dimming of sunlight can have complex interactions on the Earth that are not always straight forward and even counter-intuitive. A case of counter-intuition is quoted below.

"In the mid-1980s, Atsumu Ohmura, a geography researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, found that solar radiation striking the Earth's surface had declined by more than 10% over the three previous decades. His findings are in apparent contradiction to global warming. The global temperature has steadily been going up. Less light reaching the earth would mean that it would have to cool."(1)

The drop of incoming sunlight can be attributed to mainly to manmade causes in the decades of the 1950's through 1980's. Certainly the solar variation from sunspots contributes to a 1 percent swing between the years of sunspot maximum which reduce the sun's light output but raise the heat output and periods of quiet where the sun brightens but cools. From the end of WWII to the mid 80's where the study concentrated there were inputs such as atmospheric atomic tests by the US and USSR, increase of oil production, more use of cars and heavy industry. Unfortunately, the study does not include the effects of Mt. Pinatubo and the Kuwait oil fires. Both of these injected vast quantities of particulate matter into the atmosphere which blocked sunlight. But we do know that sunlight was blocked almost completely at ground zero in the area of the Kuwait oiled fires. Some people in Washington State recall the effects of being down wind of the Mt. St. Helens volcanic explosion of May 18, 1980. Under the ash cloud near Richland 130 miles east, the sun was completely blocked, creating darkness at late morning until nightfall. Dimming here was at 100 %, but only for a short time. Globally, the impact was less than 1 %.

Many people are familiar with the brownish haze of pollution in major cities like Los Angeles and Beijing. The haze can be so thick that it is difficult to see further than a few blocks. This also extends from the ground up and a significant portion of sunlight is blocked from reaching the surface of the Earth. During the Beijing 2008 Olympics the pollution haze from steel making and cars threatened the games. China acted and curtailed the pollution output for the duration of the games. Pictures arriving and printed in various newspapers in the pre-games months and weeks showed the extent of pollution was so great that it was like a thick fog. This pollution that has been building rapidly over the last several years is thought to have contributed to summer cooling in western North America, even as global temperatures climbed everywhere else as a result of global warming. No figures are available as of this writing as to the extent of dimming.

It is thought by David Keys that global dimming took on truly catastrophic proportions when Krakatau exploded in Feb. 535 CE (2). He quotes sources from Rome and Asia that tell us that for years there was no summer and that the sun shone weakly for about four hours a day, even in the depths of what should have been summer. The resulting famine starved millions to death and allowed the bubonic plague to spread rapidly, wiping out at least half of the population in various regions of the world. Whole civilizations collapsed as a result of a major dimming of the globe. New ones rose a century later.

As the Earth heats, cloud cover increases and sunlight is reflected back into space from the cloud tops. This results in dimming below the clouds. Dimming under clouds is extensive enough to prevent older solar panels from working. In this case, heat is trapped by the clouds below, so there is little significant loss of heat to space. However, the reflectivity of the clouds blocks further input so there is a balance. However, it has been noticed that global pr pan-evaporation rates have been dropping due to global dimming. This means less cloud cover and less rainfall. This pattern is not evenly distributed so some regions get more clouds and rain and other areas experience more droughts for the same reason of pollution (3). The global dimming slows the rate or evaporation from the oceans despite global warming. Pollution clouds have been shown to block 10 % of incoming sunlight (4).

Today, the significant contribution to global dimming comes from manmade activities. These include past and present events. Atomic testing injected a lot of particles into the atmosphere; much of it radioactive. Warfare has added significantly to global dimming through carpet bombing and the Kuwait oil fires of 1991. Burn off of forests in the Amazon basin has added to global dimming. The juggernaut economy of China that runs 70 % of its power needs on coal has contributed heavily to global dimming. India is also joining the industrial race and is beginning to inject a lot of pollution of similar types. Our love affair with the car has abated somewhat due primarily to a slowing economy combined with high oil prices, but winter heating is still adding its bit.

Scientists and biologists have noted the extension of the growing season with earlier springs and later running falls. This has changed the migration habits of various birds and sea life. This fact alone stands as proof of global warming. However cooler summers are brought to us by suspended soot and dust. But, the extended warm seasons means that winter in some places is being reduced or eliminated. The effects are being felt at the North Pole which is seeing more and more ice pack break up and melting. In 2008, the icepack at the pole itself melted for the first time in history.

Global dimming has serious repercussions. It cuts off sunlight and lowers plant photosynthesis, thus curtailing efficiency of plant metabolism and food production. Seed production falls and annual plants may not even mature. It interferes with the oceanic evaporation and the hydrologic cycle leading to drought. This leads to a slowly building famine which will starve hundreds of millions of people if not billions. At the same time, we face the contradiction of global warming due to green house gasses, even though the incoming sunlight is reduced. If the suspended particle polluting contributed by the industrialized nations ended here and now, the global temperature would rise dramatically over a few years leading to global flooding from ice meltdown. The current levels of global dimming are actually masking the true extent of global warming and is a disaster waiting in the wings to engulf life on Earth (5). If the pollution stopped now it would take a few years for the suspended particles to filter out. Then there would be a dramatic rise in temperatures world wide to the point where life would "cook". The remaining ice would melt, potentially raising the sea levels by 65 meters overall which would inundate all the lowlands of the world. Heating the oceans would account for a one meter rise alone from thermal expansion.

We are now hanging by our fingernails off the side of a precipice and we are going to have to solve the situation which is far more serious than we have been led to believe.

References:

1.Ohmura, A. and Lang, H. (June 1989). in Lenoble, J. and Geleyn, J.-F. (Eds): Secular variation of global radiation in Europe. In IRS '88: Current Problems in Atmospheric Radiation, A. Deepak Publ., Hampton, VA. , Hampton, VA: Deepak Publ., (635) pp. 298-301. ISBN ISBN 978-0937194164.

2. David Keys, Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World.

3. Roderick, Michael L. and Farquhar, Graham D. (2002). "The Cause of Decreased Pan Evaporation over the Past 50 Years". Science 298 (5597): pp. 1410-1411. doi:10.1126/science.1075390. PMID 12434057

4. J. Srinivasan et al. (2002). "Asian Brown Cloud - fact and fantasy". Current Science 83 (5): pp. 586-592.

5. Andreae O. M., Jones C. D., Cox P. M. (2005-06-30). "Strong present-day aerosol cooling implies a hot future". Nature 435: pp. 1187-1190.

How now brown cloud? Where did you come from? And, who are all of these with you likewise brown? Brown clouds form around "seeds" of soot, dust, chemicals, metals and other industrial material injected into the atmosphere. These clouds have been photographed and are literally brown in color, unlike their white and grey counterparts. The brown coloring results from a toxic brew of a wide spectrum of manmade chemicals. The chemicals come from industrial smokestacks, oil wells, coal burning, sour gas burn off, burning biomass like trees from forest fires, natural and manmade, automobiles, trucks, trains, ships and jets. Soot injected into the atmosphere from incomplete combustion, blocks incoming sunlight resulting in dimming below. Cities from Beijing, China to New Delhi, India are getting darker. Glaciers in the Himalayas and elsewhere, even as far as Antarctica, are melting faster and weather systems worldwide are becoming more wild and extreme. In part, this is due to the combined and unequal effects of manmade Atmospheric Brown Clouds and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is combined insofar as all developed and developing nations are involved. It is unequal because undeveloped regions like the wild Amazon basin are directly affected by the actions of the developed and developing nations.

These are among the conclusions of scientists from around the world who studied a more than three kilometer thick layer of soot and other manmade particles in the atmosphere that stretches from the Arabian Peninsula to China and the western Pacific Ocean. This cloud drifts across the Pacific and impacts agriculture in Canada and the US due to something called global dimming. At the heart of the problem, global dimming is from 10 up to 25 percent and as the pollution spreads, global dimming worldwide is now set at 2 to 4 percent.

Soot and chemicals lead to the formation of atmospheric brown clouds around particles like black carbon soot that absorb sunlight, heating the air; and gases such as ozone which enhance the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere. Globally however, atmospheric brown clouds may be countering or masking the warming impacts of climate change by between 20 and 80 per cent that many researchers suggest. This is because of particles such as sulfates and some organics which reflect sunlight and cool the surface of the Earth below. If the brown clouds were suddenly removed, we would all immediately feel the effects of global warming and the consequences of glacial meltdown worldwide due to an immediate worldwide rise of temperature of at least 2 degrees centigrade. With greenhouse gasses already responsible for about 1 degree Celsius rise in he world temperature, the added increase from brown cloud removal would set the rise to 3 degrees overall. The geological record indicates that 12,500 years ago, a rise in global temperatures of 5 degrees caused such a meltdown, that sea levels rose 130 meters (400 feet).

But it does not end there. These same brown clouds rain on the land and inject these same chemicals into the soil and this affects all agricultural production worldwide and in turn they end up in meat, grain, nuts, fruits and vegetables that we all eat and thus poisoning us. Some of these same chemicals go though a process of biological magnification and wind up in high concentrations in our bodies and endanger or ruin our health. Brown clouds contain a variety of toxic aerosols, carcinogens and particles including particulate matter of less than 2.5 microns in width. These have been linked with a variety of health effects from respiratory disease and cardio-vascular problems. This danger is shown in signs such as increase of asthma, bronchitis and weakened immunity, which threatens those with already weakened immunity whether from disease or chemotherapy. Further, reduction of sunlight interferes with photosynthesis and reduces food production substantially. With an expanding population, reduction of food will raise food prices and sharply increase starvation, riots and warfare.

Several hotspots of brown cloud formation have been identified and are located in;
1. East Asia, including and covering eastern China.

2. India in the Ganges plains within South Asia from the northwest and northeast regions of eastern Pakistan across India to Bangladesh and Myanmar.

3. Southeast Asia, covering Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

4. Southern Africa extending southwards from sub-Saharan Africa into Angola, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

5. The Eastern part of the Amazon Basin in South America.

6. North east US along the eastern seaboard and extending into the Great Lakes region of the US and Canada.

7. Western Europe centered over Britain, France, Holland, Belgium and Germany.
These hotspots have been identified from thermographic photography taken from Earth orbiting satellites, the most severe concentrations have been found in the first two regions in the above list.

The most polluting cities in the world that contribute to brown cloud formation have been identified as; Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata, Lagos, Mumbai, New Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tehran where the combined soot levels are 10 percent of the total mass of all manmade particles. The other 90 percent comes from all other areas.

The results of all this pollution is;

1. Glaciers have shrunk five per cent since the 1950s and the volume of China's nearly 47,000 glaciers has fallen by 3,000 square kilometers over the past quarter century.

2. Glaciers in India such as the Siachen, Gangotri and Chhota Shigiri glaciers are retreating at rates of between 10 and 25 meters a year. The retreat has accelerated in the past 3.5 decades.

3. The West Antarctic ice sheet is beginning to break up in massive chunks and scientists fear that the whole region could collapse, raising world sea levels by 6 meters flooding all coastal regions and many major cities.

4. Elevated regions of the Himalayas within 100 km radius of Mount Everest experience large black carbon concentrations ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand nano grams per cubic meter of ice. This blackening of glaciers collects sunlight and speeds up melting.

5. Reduced output of all crops and crop failures due to several reasons such as reduced photosynthesis, reduced yields, flooding, droughts, acidification and the like leading to mass starvation, riots and warfare for food. Crops losses have been 10 to 40 percent depending on the crop and region.

6. Acid and toxic rains negatively impact the whole of the biosphere. Acid rains have been noted decades ago concerning the destruction of the Black Forest in Germany.

7. Outdoor exposure to particulate toxins suspended in the atmosphere with increases in concentrations of parts per million of 2.5 or 20 micrograms per cubic meter of air could lead to about 340,000 excess deaths per year in China and India

8. Indoor exposure according to the World Health Organization estimates that over 780,000 deaths in India and China can be linked to solid fuel use in the home.

9. Economic losses due to outdoor exposure to atmospheric brown clouds of 2.5 parts per million has been crudely estimated at 3.6 per cent of gross domestic product in China and 2.2 per cent of gross domestic product in India.

10. Changes have been noted in the monsoon patterns over India with a shortening of the monsoon season and more intense short period rains leading to massive flooding, ruination of crops followed by longer dry spells.

We have already seen food riots in Asia because of food shortages that had as it cause, brown clouds formed from a combination massive pollution of the atmosphere, global dimming and changing of world weather patterns due to warming. If this persists, the problems all mentioned here will become more pervasive. In the context of a collapsed world economy, this will worsen the problems for ordinary people even more. What is needed is to cut back on the emission of these pollutants as well as green-house gasses, combined with a program of extracting the same from the atmosphere. Brown clouds are likely our last wake up call before it is really too late.

At the root of it all is our drive to produce for profit and the manipulation of the money supply. Little regard is given to disposal of wastes, no matter where they end up, whether in brown clouds, in the five great "Sargasso Seas" of plastic refuse in the entire world's oceans, radioactive wastes and plowing of landfills into the ground under whole towns and agricultural areas. All of this is coming back on us with a vengeance and the time to correct it is now short.

One of the chief and greatest contributors to pollution is the deliberate under-engineering of commodities in order for them to fall apart, break down or become obsolete due to advances shortly after the warranty period. In combination, the current period sees rapid advancements in technology that obsoletes quickly with the latest upgrades that on average cycle every eighteen months. This is especially true with computers. Recent advances in television from cathode ray tubes to plasma and liquid crystal flat screen format has caused a lot of dumping of cathode ray format screens that have contributed heavily to pollution. Other electronics like cell phones and game consoles add even more as each round of improvement means a run on the new devices and a dumping of the now obsoleted ones. Some are resold and thus recycled, but most are just dumped. Add to the pollution, cars, trucks, plastic wrap and all the refuse of various descriptions.

Over the last year or two, there has emerged an electronics recycling business that will pick up or receive used and broken down electronics like computers, TVs, game consoles, VCRs, DVD players, CD players, cell phones and the like. These are usually collected for free and then shipped offshore to Hong Kong from Vancouver, BC where people in China's capitalist enclave are hired to dismantle all of these for various elements like lead solder, gold and other useful elements and items. The methods used generate a lot of toxins that end up in the atmosphere, land and water to the point where the health of the workers is adversely affected, the land and water ruined beyond redemption. It is done here due to cheap labor costs, no environmental controls and in the remote locations in the Chinese countryside away from snooping and prying eyes. On our side we get a warm fuzzy feeling of doing the environment some good by recycling spent or no longer desirable electronic commodities. Most people don't inquire beyond this and those that do soon find a public relations exercise and lots of deception. Further, when the situation is policed in one area, the impromptu factories close promptly and relocate to continue in business elsewhere.

The manufacture of electronics and as far as that goes; many other items create a lot of pollution in their manufacture. The by-products are often dumped into the environment with no consideration for anything such as wildlife and the health of the community. It eats into profits to clean up the mess, so it is disposed of as cheaply as possible. Often this means disposal via the commercial and domestic garbage pick and delivery to the landfill. Sometimes they get employees to illegally dump highly toxic materials. The environment is filled in the air, the ground and the water with thousands of chemicals, many of which are carcinogenic. All of these have found their way back into our bodies after moving up the food chain. All of them have spread around the world and can be found in ice fields as far removed as Greenland and Antarctica. Capitalist production has left an indelible imprint on the planet, world wide. The people have been left with the task of cleaning up, which many are now forced to do, not so much for cleaning up as for an income and a recycling of valuable metals.

The great task ahead of the working class after the winning of the revolutionary class struggle and the end of imperialist capitalism will be to create a sustainable world and clean up the staggering mess left by capitalist profiteering. As this has been ongoing for hundreds of years, a concerted effort will likely take as long unless some radical new method is developed to clean up the mess quickly. It also falls on the shoulders or the proletariat to use methods and develop others that are much safer and that don't produce so much waste and hazardous by-products. There is little doubt that much of this has already been discovered and ready to be implemented, but lies in wait for a better world governance in the form of a planned economy.

An absolute end must be put to planned obsolescence. If NASA can build space probes and telescopes that can survive for decades in the harshest environment known, then it seems reasonable that the same tactic can be used on Earth. Space vehicles and instruments can't afford to break down. There is no going back to the garage or repair shop at the drop of a pin. There is no replacement en route. Once launched, they not only have to hold together in a high G-force and bumpy launch ride, but last for decades while they coast toward their distant goals. The space probe and vehicle has to last and they usually do. This is an example that we can follow on Earth. Everyone knows about antiques that still work perfectly after several decades of use. They can be old radios, victrolas, or old 1913 model electric cars or even old model T's. Earlier antiques are steam powered trains that are still in use in China. These are the products of a bygone age that were designed to last. They were often over-engineered and not deliberately under-engineered as today's commodities are, as newer, bolder, faster, smarter, better commodities are ready to flood the market. No sooner do we buy something than it becomes obsoleted due to a new advance. We can have newer and better, but they should be designed in a fashion where existing items can be upgraded where the upgrade is available. In the early days of the personal computer and also in the days of the vacuum tube, this is just what was done. It can be done again. That is what standardization was all about since its inception in the 18th century. All parts that become outmoded should be designed for maximum recyclability with minimum harm to the environment and our health.

Selecting all the best technology out of all the available variants is another tactic. The best technology has been around for a long time and in many cases is still working for us. Items like the polyphase motor invented by Tesla at the turn into the 20th century are still with us and are still being made simply because there is nothing better to do the job, whether running the fridge or hoisting us in elevators and escalators or a myriad of other uses. Some old technology that many thought was history has been revived. One of these is the phonograph record player that enjoyed a revival with the emergence of rap. Now a commodity thought to have been eclipsed by CDs has a new life and is popular again among audiophiles. Another commodity enjoying a revival is the vacuum tube. One can even take a course on vacuum tube design. The vacuum tube has a future in space, especially where a natural hard vacuum exists, no glass enclosure is needed and they are relatively easy to make and service. Integrated circuits though used in hostile environments, easily break down and cannot have individual diodes, transistors or other electrical parts replaced without replacing the entire unit. Vacuum tube circuitry can have individual parts replaced and in space even individual components replaced in a single unit. There are many other old technologies around that are still in use and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. There will be new ideas, but these can incorporate what we have learned on how best to do things.

Recycling absolutely everything is an axiom that we still have to learn to take to heart. We should not make anything that cannot be recycled. A good example of this is nuclear waste. Unless we can invent a way to recycle nuclear waste without harm, we should not be making any. All metals, glass, paper, wood, some plastics, fabric and organic "waste" are totally recyclable. There is no excuse whatsoever to not reuse them. As an example, it takes only 10 percent of the energy to recycle aluminum as it does to mine and process aluminum from raw ore. The same is true for iron. Other metals have a much higher energy output to obtain them from the raw ore and one of them is fissile uranium which we should not be mining at all; at least in this stage of things where we can't recycle the waste.

Removing carbon from the atmosphere has been done by shellfish for eons as they turn it into calcium carbonate in their shells. We do this when our bodies make bone. The process that nature uses can be duplicated in the lab and scaled up in order to gobble up all the CO2 that we have been injecting into the atmosphere. We put it there and it us up to us to take it out. The problem is now so severe that planting trees alone is not enough. We will have to take direct action. If industry is unwilling and governments drag their feet, then it is we, the people that will have to grab this one by the horns and do the job!

Before there were cars and trucks, people literally used horse power. They also used trains, sailing ships and lighter than air ships. Today, where much of the population lives in concentrated areas, the answer has to be rapid transit, trains and buses instead of millions of individual cars clogging up the roads and polluting the atmosphere. Instead of short hop jets, the idea of reinventing the blimp and dirigible that is solar powered is a viable one. Jacques Cousteau invented a type of reverse vortex sail that drives a turbine and can sail straight against the wind. In fact the sale operates at peal efficiency against the wind. This device was installed on the Alcyone, his flag ship. It can be set up and scaled up to power large freight ships. The big thing today is the re-emergence of the electric car for the umpteenth time. This idea has been tried many times and quashed by oil interest lobbyists that had them removed from the road and destroyed. Now that they are re-emerging, will it be permanent? It can be if the people put their foot down on the question and say no to the oil lobbyists and capitalist interests that are ruining the planet. There is a lot of PR on the environment currently and we have to keep up the pressure and not burn out, as that is what they are relying on. We need to learn this important lesson of history instead of see-sawing back and forth between gas guzzlers and electric over and over again and paying the piper all the way for each round while the environment goes down the toilet.

The development of better energy sources like, solar, piezoelectric, wind, geothermal and micro generators must be encouraged. There is no arcane sci-fi type of technology involved here. Most of it is off the shelf with more modern materials. Some of the ideas are centuries old and have been successfully used by people like the Dutch who were using windmills as long ago as the 12th century. Solar energy has been used to cool cities and homes in Iran for centuries. Iceland runs most of its power needs on geothermic energy. We have no excuse to not use these sources. Laziness is not an option either. All it takes is the resolve and commitment to develop and use these no matter what! For the future and with current understanding, we can develop lower power consumption technology, use L.E.D.s for lighting, make better and longer lasting batteries and rely on solar recharging. Everything can be done with environment and health in mind and engineered for the long term.

Engineering for the long term means that planned obsolescence is out. What will it mean when we no longer have to make all that shoddy, under-engineered stuff that falls apart and keeps the economy going, adds pollution to the environment and people working like mad? It means that with all our sophisticated methods for making things, the work week will shrink drastically. It means that the landfills will not fill up and overflow into our bodies. There will be much less pollution. But in a planned economy this does not have to translate into starvation because of the loss of work time translated into and hourly wage, which would shrink by at least 90 percent. It means that there will be a shift toward a major increase in leisure time without a loss in living standard. If the economy were socialized, then the flood of good commodities will be universally available. It is a paradigm shift to humanism and away from profit. This is especially true as mechanization and robots produce most ot the usable goods and hard labor by people is less and less required to produce use value. People can then pursue their real interests such as gardening, sports, the arts, entertaining, travel, research and all else they enjoy that is not "work"; that abhorrent necessity under capitalist modes of production and monetarist order of society that is required in order to make enough money to cling desperately to life for another two weeks while banks and CEOs pocket the majority of the wealth created by the actual producers. Most labor type work is highly mechanized today, employing the heavy use of robotics. What used to take thousands of people to accomplish can now be done by a single person managing and army of robots through a computer network to produce the same amount of commodities and in far less time. Can you see what this all means? Join those of us who are aware and committed to a better life for all!

The society that cannot live within its means is doomed to certain destruction. Such a society is the bourgeois order of capitalism. Capitalism in order to make profits must constantly expand to accumulate more in order to create profit. This expansion is accomplished in a variety of ways in various combinations. In a closed system like the confines of a country and indeed, a planet, the end of growth is reached when every last area and vestige of expansion, acquisition, accumulation and thus profiting has been tapped out. Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism is headed straight to this conclusion. Indeed, the signs are abundant in the environment and now the world economy. When growth room has run out, capitalism stagnates and must ultimately collapse and die. The bourgeoisie over the decades and centuries has invented one fix after another, each one more drastic than the one before. One of the traditional methods used to revive capitalism is war. But war is one of the hardest stresses imposed on the environment. Once the patches and fixes run out, capitalism and its captains, the bourgeoisie face immanent death. This is where the knowledgeable members of the working class and the working class in its entirety must step in within historical destiny. Attempts to wrest the natural world from the bourgeoisie have been made in history and so far, the bourgeoisie has been able to thwart each in turn. The result has been the most profitable, naked and greedy exploitation of the environment without regard to anything but selfish gain.

The Earth is vast, but it is a closed system, finely and delicately balanced with a myriad of interdependent and symbiotic relationships. The Earth is closed because it is a planet in orbit around the sun in a solar system shared with billions of other objects from cosmic dust to asteroids, comets, moons and other planets. The end of the closed system of the Earth's biosphere is the upper atmosphere. Beyond that is the protective magnetic field. Within this is contained all life, all the water, all the resources, all land and everything else human society and nature finds useful. Space travel notwithstanding, astronomers have not yet found another planet such as Earth in "easy" reach. As a result, humanity must be content and operate within the limits of the Earth's biosphere and resource base. Lately, we have learned that this is not the case, but this revelation has not meant anything bur business as usual. We are using up the planet faster than it can naturally replenish itself. The principle culprit in this is bourgeois capitalism. This issue is clear, but complex.

Every action has a direct influence on everything around it. Most actions are small and have an insignificant influence. Though it has been stated that "the flapping of a butterfly's wings in one area of the world can cause a hurricane in another part"; this is ridiculous. However, effects such as creating greenhouse gasses over the course of centuries can have a dramatic effect. Over this period there is an accumulation of influences that have a profound effect later on. An earlier example is how the stromatalites changed the Earth's atmosphere over the course of billions of years. In the context of the early Earth, oxygen was poisonous. Nevertheless, cyanobacteria continued pumping it out. For billions of years, the Earth absorbed it by rusting all the available iron. When this ran out, then the oxygen began to accumulate in the ocean and atmosphere. This great change in the atmosphere is what caused life to evolve into the forms we see today that can breathe what was formally poisonous. Humanity is busy changing the atmosphere again, adding all sorts of things as a result of industrial activities as run by capitalist interests today. Part of that change is the addition of greenhouse gasses and particulate matter that are heating the atmosphere and blocking sunlight. Also, the creation of greenhouse gases is using up the free oxygen and carbon based materials like plants and fossil fuels. Once more, through the aegis of human activity under capitalism, the oxygen is being absorbed at an increasing rate. As more and more forests are chopped down to make way for agribusiness and "resource management" (read exploitation) and oceans are polluted, oxygen regeneration is being slowed down. This new atmospheric change spells the demise for life as we know it. Indeed, many species are now on the brink of extinction or are endangered. Scientists suggest that the current rate of extinction is the sixth greatest extinction in planetary history, rivalling the Cretaceous, the Devonian, Ordovician, Permian and other great mass extinctions of the geological past.

In order to have a flow of energy form one place to another or from one state to another, there needs to be a difference. The greater the difference there is between the two locations or states, the greater the energy exchange that occurs between them. The end result is that storms intensify, hot spells get hotter, cold snaps deeper and there is a global met-down of glaciers and of the Polar Regions. There is even talk of a global super storm such as occurred in geologic history and within the historic memory of humanity. This too augers for changes of climactic zones, triggering famines, floods, altered ecological zones and extreme danger to established species that cannot easily migrate. And what of those that can migrate? As the world changes in unforeseeable ways, migrating species may well wind up in another unstable area to face new challenges to mass survival. This is the end result of centuries of industrialization in its ever accelerating pace that had no other priority than surplus value and commodities to generate profit for the owners of the means of production. Those who did the actual production were kept desperate enough so that they would return daily to continue to produce surpluses and hence profit, in which they do not share.

Industry need not harm everything it touches. However, historically, that is just what has been happening in an ever accelerating pace resulting in greenhouse gasses combined with global dimming due to things like fine dust and soot. Starting with the expropriation of land from the peasants for cash crops and the forcing of these same peoples into growing manufacturing centers, this opened the door for the development of the bourgeoisie. First the land was taken as a means of production, leaving the peasants nothing but to sell their muscle power. The expropriating class of the land became the land lords. This was and still is (in China 2005 to 2008) done by force and terror. In the Americas, native populations were driven out, exterminated and enslaved under European imperialism. In Africa, the same thing occurred. In the Middle East today, the US and its allies/supporters are in an imperialist drive to acquire resources and strategic locales. People are driven off the land to make way for "progress" and industrialization. No regard was or is given for the people driven off the land and the land itself. Ever since then, the bourgeoisie has expropriated other means of production like mining, manufacturing, farming and fishing. All of this is developing through uneven and combined development, i.e., differing stages of development are occurring simultaneously in various regions. This has been done through capitalism since its inception by its methodology of accumulation, improvement and advances in manufacturing, expansionism and seeking profit. Today, capitalism is pervasive. Mergers and hostile take over moves concentrate the vast wealth of the Earth into fewer and fewer hands. Even economic crashes serve this purpose. All those methods that can be used for profiteering are valid to the detriment of processes that will not promote profiteering. In other words, anything that threatens that profit will be blocked. So when the electric car came to fore again in the period of 2204-07, they were ultimately blocked, expropriated and then shredded because they were seen as a threat to the profits of big oil.

On the antithesis, anything that promotes profit will be pursued with a vengeance. Historically this meant mechanization, lowering wages, ignoring safety and health questions, destruction of surpluses and warfare. Much of this continues today. Added to the woes of eviction, poverty, filth and disease is warfare, engineered famines and planned obsolescence. Mechanization has meant two things; i.e., displacement from jobs and forever being on a learning curve to fit into the new jobs. No more is this true than in the still volatile computer trades. Workers are on a learning treadmill along with the work schedule, leaving time for little else. Lower wages is accomplished by maintaining a reserve army of the unemployed, importing foreign workers to labour for lower wages or exporting jobs under various trade agreements. The ignoring of safety and health concerns was done to cut costs so that the profit margin could be kept as large as possible. Many people are aware of destruction of "surplus" food because there is no market for it, despite millions going hungry. No market simply means that the millions of starving people are too poor to pay and too poor to survive, so they must die in agony while good food is destroyed on this pretext or that, i.e., mad cow disease or bird flu. Warfare is the single most profitable industry of capitalism. What war does is open new markets based on the wholesale destruction of old saturated ones. The winner takes all including the subdued population into slavery in many instances, whether it is chattel slavery or wage slavery. It boosts the medical business with all its dubious and noxious "remedies" at high cost and huge profits. Warfare is the height of planned obsolescence as hundreds of billions of dollars in labour value are poured into bombs that are single use items. Carpet bombing, anyone can agree is extremely ruinous. It is counterproductive to civilized existence and extremely hard on the biosphere.

The development of the bourgeoisie and its principle method of business, capitalism have brought untold misery to literally billions of people and extinction to countless species. These things are still going on at an ever accelerating pace. Wherever capitalist production moves, something or someone else must be removed. Whether it is a rain forest or an indigenous population, they must be moved so that "development" can take place. Everything is looked at for its profit value and nothing else. Those who must "clear out" by co-operating or by force are removed from their means of life, whether as hunter-gathers in the rain forests or deserts, or as small family farmers in fertile lands, or when new methods of production are developed in manufacturing cities. In every instance, something is lost. In the jungles and deserts, it is a way of life that has endured for tens of thousands of years. In rural family farms managed by peasants and small ma and pa farms, people are displaced for agribusiness, factory farms and industrial development. In China, millions were displaced for the Three Gorges Dam. In the Kalahari Desert, bushmen were displaced for mineral and oil wealth. In the Amazon basin, forests were clear cut to make way for agribusiness for the support of McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's and others. Beef for these multibillion dollar industries had to be raised somewhere. Factory farming in North America proves to be insufficient to meet the needs of the population, high end restaurants and the bottom feeders all at once. The result of agribusiness in the Amazon basin alone in soil of marginal condition was disastrous. Typically, the land is depleted in two years and left to become desert or washed into the Atlantic. More forests are levelled to keep up production of beef, an item most of the poor in the world can't even conceive of purchasing anything at a typical burger joint. This is going on planet wide. In manufacturing, jobs are "shipped" overseas to places of greater productive efficiency and lower wages and working and environmental standards. The result is the loss of jobs in the millions on the home front. What is the capitalist solution? Eliminate social programs, encourage xenophobia (discreetly, while paying lip service to tolerance) and import cheap labour under various trade agreements and export manufacturing jobs to third world developing regions. It helps to target an enemy to distract people from the real attacks.

Typically, dealing with the threat of an "enemy" or "alien" influence under capitalism is done through jingoism and warfare. Whatever potential profit goal is in the mind of the bourgeoisie or a threat thereto, action is taken immediately, first by whipping up hysteria in the minds of the masses with propaganda. Then there is the build up of forces, the invasion and furtive or open war. Every tactic is used to bring the enemy to defeat. Fire arms and armament is only a small part of the picture. There are sieges/blockades, spying, misinformation, engineered famines, freezing of assets, spreading of poisons and disease. With modern weapons come radiological hazards and the ability to plunge whole cities and countries into the pre-electrical age.

The most wasteful and profitable enterprise under capitalism is warfare. What other industry can sell an expensive product like a smart bomb that is used only once and then it has to be replaced with another smart bomb? It would be like buying a car to use for just one day and then crashing it so a new one can be obtained for the next days drive and crash. Talk about the throw away idea of maximizing consumption! The practice of warfare maximizes planned obsolescence. The practice of war has always been about conquest, pillage, rape, enslavement and expansionism/colonialism. Along the way, many people are maimed and killed, much land and property destroyed. All this destruction clears the way for new markets, new patients for the medical profession, and corpses for the funeral industry. All of this is an insult against nature, our one and only real support. It is an insult, traumatizing everything it touches. Wars are fuelled on prejudice, propaganda and misinformation. The real "winners" are the capitalist holders of armament industries and capitalist bankers who gamble on winners and losers in major wars on both sides. Everyone else loses in this equation. This is bullying on a global scale to force compliance by maximizing terror. We are told to intervene and stop bullying between children and then we sell them on violent electronic games, prepare them for legalized bullying in the military, police and security. The hierarchical structure of civilization is all about bullying. Is it any wonder that we have war when we live, breath and die in a culture of violence? The violence extends to all areas of life including the rape and pillage of the planet and all creatures therein.

Perhaps the most ruinous tactic of all to ensure profits come rolling in is the practice of planned obsolescence. This tactic is an extension of what is typical of war. With other means to gain profit drying up as the limits of the planet are reached, capitalists resort to building in a fall-apart factor in the products of manufacture. In addition, new features in a particular item, obsolete predecessors in short order. Consumers, driven by never ending advertising and "being up to date" for that competitive edge over others, keep lapping them up. Products manufactured with a fall-apart component will fall apart, even if just sitting on the shelf. Workers are compelled for reasons of mere survival to manufacture such garbage. The end result is mountains of hazardous waste like hundreds of millions of tires, oceans contaminated with mercury and huge floating mats of plastic refuse, huge piles of non-recyclable electronic garbage that has fallen apart or been made obsolete by being out dated by a newer version. Yesterday's most desirable electronic gizmo is today's landfill! In short, it is impossible under profit driven economies to be green and concerned with the preservation and continuance of the biosphere. When the biosphere is finally ruined in total, not even the richest of the bourgeoisie would be able to survive. Of particular note in the scenarios of ruin, are the disasters of 535 AD and its aftermath and the ruin of the Easter Island culture prior to the arrival of the Europeans. These are actual historical occurrences, scientifically verified, within the memory of contemporary society. After AD 535 it was written by an Asian King that "Ten thousand strings of cash and fine gold cannot cure starvation." In a ruined planet, no one can survive. Even the richest will live like the poor, too poor to even survive!

Capitalism is incapable of preserving and maintaining an ecological balance and a "green Earth" by its own inherent fault of profit gathering. It contains the seed of its own demise, and all else if permitted to continue to the destruction of Earth itself! Couple war with planned obsolescence and we have the example of the 1991 Kuwait oil fires that destroyed much in natural resources and created a local nuclear winter in the region as more than 500 oil wells burned for almost a year. There is lots of political accusation as to who set them, but the destruction of resources and environment and manipulation of oil prices were the result. Environmental impacts were global with a significant increase in carbon greenhouse gases in 1991 and people reeled from price increases on everything as oil, or the lack thereof, determines the extent of capitalist profit.

Anything that could reverse the course of damage has to go through tremendous obstacles in order to be implemented. Sometimes even this struggle is not sufficient to introduce new ecological friendly technology. The chief obstacle is that technologies implemented to prevent or reverse destruction to the biosphere are too costly and would eat up the capitalist's sacred profits. Not only that, capitalism can't clean up its own mess because that too would eat up profits; so it is left to the masses to go green by bottle picking and recycling, often at their own expense and through green taxes. To avoid ecological restrictions at home, treaties are drafted by the bourgeoisie operating internationally so that manufacturing off shore can bypass environmental laws in regions where there are few or none. Thus interminable bureaucracy and stumbling blocks are in place to slow or stop such procedures. Lobbying by profit seeking interests is another block as are scientists who sing the tune of their capitalist bosses by explaining that there is no problem at all. So the messes of modern production like clear cutting harvesting of wild trees, over fishing, resource driven open pit and shaft mining and polluting factory production techniques are left unclean. The noxious chemicals are dumped into the land, the oceans, and the atmosphere and now even in orbit around earth. All too often, when the consumer buys these products, they are wrapped in plastic that then finds its way into the oceans, the food chain and in our own bodies.

A simple chemical process to take excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and render it harmless by changing it into calcium carbonate such as found in sea shells sits idle because to remove the necessary amounts from the atmosphere would require that 250,000 conversion plants be built to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. The same amount of money "legally" cheated out of the working class into the destructiveness of warfare could be better spent cleaning up the atmosphere and oceans. But, under capitalism, war fits the profit agenda much better than cleaning up the mess it creates and the mess of mass production by the cheapest and fastest means available. Bureaucracy of meeting the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse emissions is designed so that the worst polluters can trade off credits with the least polluting nations. This actually changes nothing!

Look out your window and see that it's business as usual. Everyone wants a status car. There are so many and more that are poured onto the streets daily, that we're running out of parking room. People can even buy 1,000 horsepower "screamin' demon machine" ultra sports cars. It makes one scratch their heads wondering why we need this in a grid lock world. Mass transit as it exists is used by the poorest workers and the homeless person pushes their worldly belongings in a borrowed shopping cart. When mass transit systems are proposed almost everyone shouts "Not in my back yard!" Power to the people under capitalism means more coal, oil and nuclear power generating plants at the going rate per kilowatt hour, payment on demand. China with its phenomenal 10 to 12 percent growth rate (2007-08) is going car and power crazy and so is India. With these accelerating demands and rates of consumption, the ecosystem does not stand a chance. Already we are seeing the arising phenomena of massive global dimming and brown clouds unheard of even during the Kuwait oil fires of 1991.

Pollution is the by product of capitalist mode of production that seeks maximum profit with minimal expense. Pollution is endemic in every field of capitalist endeavour. Although there are rigorous laws in first world developed nations to control pollution due to reformist policies, free trade laws allow development in third world nations with little or no control on pollution due to development and extraction of raw resources. In Ecuador, oil extraction means pollution of the surrounding land that has a direct negative result on the health of the indigenous aboriginals who live, hunt and gather near refineries. In Angola, the same types of conditions exist. Angola, despite its natural wealth, is one of the poorest countries in Africa simply due to bourgeois greed. The poor hunt, gather and fish as from ancient times. The wealth goes to a handful of people while 90 percent of the people live in abject poverty and squalor. Pollution is created with virtually no control, spreading disease and toxicity to the people and nature; the only thing that trickles down. In Angola, the oil being extracted and refined is protected by razor wire and land mines behind fences to keep the people out. This is direct proof of the class war that the bourgeoisie has always fought against the people. Though a handful of measures are implemented to make the capitalist oil robber barons look good, deeper digging finds that people work for food, just like in war torn Iraq.

Education is designed to make people compliant. Much of education grooms the masses for their various roles in society and aboriginal peoples' cultures are destroyed and the children sublimated into the conquering culture. It is used to train people for specific roles they are to play in the greater bourgeois context of class structure and specialization. These roles can change continually as technological advance calls for and people are re-educated. One of these specializations is the military, preparing people for war that the bourgeoisie use to acquire more resources and land. The countryside of many countries is littered with the smashed implements of war and towns are in bullet and bomb riddled ruin due to government-rebel wars. It is this same warring that is so hard on nature as well as the people. The bourgeoisie has an unpublicized trade going in Africa; raw resources out and weapons of war in. In fact, when 12 ecologists protested against Shell Oil for their pollution of fishing waters in Nigeria they were captured, framed on criminal charges and hung. This fact of greedy exploitation is also found in gold, diamond and heavy metal mines in Africa as well as elsewhere in the world. Economic apartheid is still alive and well in much of Africa despite the so called abolition of apartheid in the political arena. New additions to the bourgeois consumerist capitalist society only add to the woes. Yet means exist to run civilization with a minimum of pollution, but this is too costly for capitalists.

Despite what scientists are saying based on hard evidence, the latest of which is the break-up of an Antarctic ice shelf between the mainland and nearby islands for the first time in observed history (Apr. 4, 2009) , Nay Sayers hired by politicians representing capitalists say everything is fine and there is no evidence of ecological change or global warming. Yet, low laying Islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans are being inundated, ice caps are melting, storms get fiercer, whole ecosystems are in collapse and we must believe there is no evidence? Added to this is the religious frenzy of "Armageddon in our time" as spouted by the former Republican president, Ronald Reagan. This idea sold to workers deliberately kept ignorant and dumbed down postulates that a miracle made by Jesus Christ will save the world and meanwhile, business can go on as usual, which is what happened until the economy collapsed starting in Sept. 2009. The woes generated by capitalist greed are blamed on minorities like gay people who are blamed for the wrath of God poured out on innocent and guilty alike by causing weather woes, earthquakes and even asteroid strikes. Anti minority violence escalates due to this misinformation. Again nothing is done except business as usual and innocent people are tortured and killed for crimes committed by others. The very genocide maniacs employed by the ruling class to subdue foreign populations, get away with crimes against humanity. Capitalist business continues to assault the Earth and get away with crimes against nature. Gay people are blamed for crimes against humanity and nature by religious bigots directed by capitalist politicians to deflect blame from real criminals.

Capitalism needs constant renewal, hence the need for things like power grids, fossil fuels, disease and war. If someone came up with a way to generate "free energy", capitalism would face ruin, because that would knock down one of the main ideological pillars that props up capitalism and its methodology. Free energy would break the cycle of fossil fuel dependence and profiteering thereby. Such things have periodically threatened capitalism and its guardians, the bourgeois class throughout history. The latest threat came from electric cars that were promoted in California as an alternate form of transportation and were leased to those who were interested. Those who had the means to use them thought them to be superior by being quieter, cleaner and had the same get up and go regular cars, but totally without gas and oil. Big oil interests and their lobbyists managed to stop production, seize all the existing ones, stop all leasing and then had them all shredded by 2007. Since then the only ones permitted were hybrid electric and gas as opposed to fully electric cars. Typically, when the threat was recognized, the response was usually swift and brutal. The choice for an inventor or developer that is given is either accept a buy out and shut up or be killed and your discovery sequestered or destroyed.

Anything that threatens profiteering will be blocked. One outstanding example of this in the 20th century was the attempted development of the wireless transmission of electrical power by Nikola Tesla in the 1940's. Mr. Tesla actually accomplished this feat and was developing a major power distribution center in New York at Wardencliff. The project was under funding by the power magnate and tycoon J. P. Morgan. When J. P. Morgan figured out what was going on, he cancelled the funding, fired Nikola Tesla and had the power transmitter torn down. Morgan did not succeed in destroying all the records. With Tesla's system, there would be no effective way to charge users for electrical power as under the Edison and Westinghouse systems. J. P. Morgan saw this as a direct threat to his wealth and power and crushed the project in the bud. This single act kept the masses as slaves to his system, continually paying and making Morgan and other power magnates ever richer, which is one of the "holy grails" of capitalism. The same Nikola Tesla had worked previously for both Edison and Westinghouse. He was responsible for alternating current and pioneered hydro electric power generation. He died in abject poverty in 1943 after being fired by Morgan. He lived in seclusion with pigeons as his only friends after a life of hobnobbing with the who's who of society. At the moment of death, the C.I.A. stormed his hotel room and confiscated all his research notes and engineering drawings. Tesla has 111 US patents to his credit and over 700 ideas in all that are kept in secret. As a footnote, cell phones so popular today are a type of wireless transmitter and receiver. Tesla succeeded in experiment and attempted to transmit useable electrical power wirelessly but was blocked by profiteering interests.

Tesla is only one of many. Tesla almost succeeded in creating a wireless power grid. Others have invented systems that would not rely on fossil fuels or nuclear materials. These in turn are blocked from production, citing the prohibitions of the laws of thermodynamics. They are accused of attempting to con the public with "perpetual motion machines." Yet to everyone that has ever walked into a joke or novelty shop, one little toy continues to demonstrate the veracity of "perpetual motion." That little toy is the glass "drinking bird" containing a volatile fluid that causes it to swing back and forth due to vapour pressure and its internal design. When its beak comes in contact with water, the volatile fluid is condensed once more to liquid, lessoning the vapour pressure to repeat the cycle of bobbing up and down. This process will continue indefinitely without the input of any other energy that can be obtained from evaporating and cooling water. Heating the bottom part enhances the process, but is unnecessary. As long as the water holds out, the toy bird will bob up and down. Further, there is no violation of thermodynamics. There are other means of obtaining energy from natural sources without polluting the planet, poisoning the species and as a drawback to the ruling class, destroy capitalism by removing the means of accumulating profit. One of these ways is geothermal energy. Another is taking a mere loop of wire that is connected to a circuit and turning it in the geomagnetic field. A simple experiment will demonstrate that electricity can be derived from this means and no magnets are needed. Coupled with wind or water turbines, the wire loops can produce useable power without resorting to coal, oil or nuclear power.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of ideas that are held back because in reality, they are non-profitable. Most have been patented with prototypes. The prototypes are either smashed, records sometimes destroyed or they are sequestered out of view of the people. In order to bring more appropriate technology to the fore, capitalism must once and for all, be laid to rest forever. There is no third path as this has been proven in the history of the last two centuries. Capitalism and a healthy planet for all living things cannot co-exist due to the intrinsic contradiction to the established order of the bourgeoisie. This means that in order to have a healthy planet, capitalism has to be removed from interfering with everything and everyone. Attempts in history have been made, but so far have met with failure because it was not removed globally. Working people have risen up time and time again in a bid to change the world order, but so far this has failed. Starting with the French Revolution, which was inspired by the American Revolution, we see the bourgeoisie and middle classes taking the state and power from the monarchy and church with the aid of labour and peasants. The revolutions were seized by these forces and the workers were instruments of that seizure, later betrayed by the leading forces. Then there are the smaller European attempts at revolution in the mid 19th century that were crushed by the bourgeoisie. In 1905 there was the first attempt at a Russian revolution and 12 years later, the successful revolution in the same country. Even there, the bourgeoisie attempted to crush it, succeeding only under Stalin's capitulation to "socialism in one country." Between the years of 1989 to 1992, the deformed workers states started to fall apart under the pressures imposed by that chief capitalist state, the US. By 1992, it was history. Between the initial success of the USSR and its demise arose a number of degenerate workers states modeled on the degeneracy of Stalin's philosophy and "socialism in one country." Of these, we see N. Vietnam, China, N. Korea and Cuba still in existence, but with problems of their own. China is drifting more and more toward capitalism though clinging to the name of communism. Peasants are being driven off the land with no where to go for the sake of industrialization. Cuba's leader, Castro is near to death and already forces are lining up to "reclaim" Cuba for capitalism. N. Korea can't feed itself and corruption runs rife in the power structure. Only North Vietnam seems to have the fewest problems, but is courting the tourist dollar to prop up its economy. In every scenario, the problem is identical. There is an attempt to run a workers state in the midst of surrounding hostile capitalism. And capitalists put the squeeze one way or another on all of them with the ultimate goal of conquest. Therefore, the success of any workers' revolution in present and/or future is entirely dependent on being globally international in extent. Anything less is bound for failure. Although it can be argued that monarchies and theocracies exist today, they are also scrutinized by capitalist imperialistic designs.

Various "leaders" of many political leanings suggest they will lead the workers to the insurrection and the post insurrectionary world. This is something that has already been done in history to the detriment of the working class. They point out that leadership requires training, which is true. The working class in the main is not educated to run the affairs of state and business, and this is done deliberately. An ignorant population is much easier to manipulate for any desired end than an educated working class. The educating the working class lesson of the 1960's is what stands behind the dumbing down of post 1980's society. As for "revolutionary leaders," here we get into the role of education under capitalist society and how many of these leaders have been indoctrinated under that pro capitalist system. Fortunately, education is no longer restricted to capitalist universities and colleges. Increasingly, workers have the opportunity to self educate. They need only encouragement and interest will take care of the rest, but the negativity engendered under oppressive state and religious pedagogy must be overcome. Under capitalism, education is all about command and obey the failure complex and selective training for ones script, job and role under the rule of the bourgeoisie. For most this is reduced to Marx's equation where the worker must reproduce the next days labour and the next generation of workers and no more. Some workers are naturally curious as curiosity is not restricted by class distinction or divisions. These people naturally seek out information especially that which is censored, restricted or kept out of reach. From these workers come those that will lead the rest in a true working class international and global revolution. Also, many workers are pre-trained in the running of the machinery of the means of production and will form a necessary and integral function in the world transformation at hand, which includes the Leninist concept of smashing the bourgeois state apparatus. Part of that transformation will be toward a planned economy that works in harmony with nature instead of exploiting it for greatest individual gain. New ways prohibited under profiteering will be put to use to work with nature instead of against it.

Revolution by the entire global workforce is necessary. This is the only thing that will succeed in making the necessary change away from capitalism. This must be entirely done by the workers of the world and not led by any pretenders to an enlightened new age of which there are many. These same people bear an unmistakable mark that is identical to that of the capitalists and that is dividing the workers along various lines, making out that each is the enemy of the others. This ultimately leads to placing workers in a divide against one another and perpetuates that most monstrous ways of capitalist profiteering, which is war. We must turn as a block against the real enemies of the working class no matter how they profess themselves to the contrary. Actions speak louder than words and acts we must judge and action commit!

This work is a call to workers who understand the true nature of society and to educate the rest toward a real workers' revolution. It is not an easy task, but completely necessary to prevent a new succession of pretenders from taking power and keeping things more or less as they are due to lack of vision and experience. Only a miner can understand what mining is all about. No petty highly educated bureaucrat never having mined a single day in their life can comprehend what it means to mine. The same understanding is true for any other working endeavour of life whether farming, fishing, manufacture, service or communications! It must also be true for a workers revolution! No one from a class other than the working class can understand what it means to be a worker, nor can they truly represent the working class. They can only represent what they understand and their own interests. That has been the repeated lesson of history that by and large was not grasped. Politicians use this trick to deceive workers every day. Only a handful of visionaries who identified with the workers, the true Vanguard, even joining them, understood this fact, that is, it is necessary for workers to make their own revolution. It is only through such an act that the workers can band together around the world to clean up the mess of the old order and start ways of cleaner, earth friendly production that does exist.