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Thursday, August 25, 2011

22

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"There's Justice In The Universe"
Since I’ve previously blogged about oceanic methane hydrate gasification, I’ll forego that herein. But before I do, remember that ’one volume’ of methane hydrate contains ‘120 volumes’ of methane -- a serious consideration. And though methane eventually breaks down into Co2 and H2O, its effect is still very significant.

This blog is primarily about the precursor methane release from thawing permafrost (from an article from the Statesman):

...."we need to realize that this methane being released from melting permafrost is being produced by the biological process that occurs when organic material, such as dead plants and animals, rots and produces carbon dioxide. In the Arctic, much of the organic material is frozen in permafrost. But as ice inside permafrost melts, small sinkholes open in the ground and fill with water, joining to form millions of ponds and lakes. Organic matter slips from eroding shorelines to lake bottoms, where microbes feed on it. Because those lake bottoms are oxygen-free, the microbes generate methane in addition to carbon dioxide." This is occurring wherever there’s permafrost melting (Siberia, Canada, etc.).

Note: Methane is 20 times more of a greenhouse gas than CO2 is and will, thus, add to the effects of Global Warming. This occurred 11,000 years ago & is kicking in again now.  Of course, this time around we have vast amounts of previously sequestered CO2 being released by the use of fossil fuels, so climate change models based on paleo-climatic events is thus more complicated.  What’s simple is knowing that this fact does not bode well.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/02/26/0226methane.html

Permafrost Methane Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa3M4ou3kvw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSLHvZnbYwc&feature=related
Looking for something educational and interesting to watch on your computer.  Use the History.com "More Videos To Watch".  Whether about Ice Road Truckers or Dogfights, there's a good variety:
http://www.history.com/video.do?name=battle360
http://www.history.com/video.do?name=heroships
http://www.history.com/video.do?name=dogfights
http://www.history.com/video.do?name=The_Universe
Video Home page:
http://www.history.com/video.do?action=home

 
It'll soon be a year now that AAS's 'Reader Blogs' has been utilizing a new format.  And if Pat Stearn's 'hits counter' is any indication, there's minimal readership now (as compared with before).  There used to be about 75 different bloggers displayed at any one time & the most recent postings were always at the top of queue.  The numbers of hits was phenomenal.  But best of all, you could keep up with what the different people were posting without having to worry about their material disappearing from view before you had a chance to revisit the Readers Blogs (although I have to admit that this is no longer a real problem, if you know what I mean).

Maybe a lot the readership has been diverted to the Statesman.com page's articles and comments.  For the sake of the Statesman, I hope so.  Meanwhile, I miss the old format.  And I miss the rich variety of the many bloggers that used to be a part of it all.

p.s. - I'll keep my subscription going as long as there's not a significant rate increase, but even the hardcopy paper seems a bit more tired at times.
Sixty-four years and one day after Parke Potter helped his fellow Marines fashion a pole that weighed more than 100 pounds (and was from one of the pipes the Japanese had used to run water through the mountain) to fly the first U.S. flag atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi, Marines entombed his ashes Tuesday at the Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City. 
As an infantryman who packed a Browning Automatic Rifle, or BAR, he was in a battalion of the 5th Division's 28th Marines, the regiment that raised the flags on Mount Suribachi.

[By itself, this may not be remarkable, but considering its historic context between then and now, it’s food for thought.]

http://www.lvrj.com/news/40274917.html
In today’s AAS paper (A3) is an article stating that the GAO (Government Accountability Office) reports that the Defense Department’s effort to help Pakistan secure its border with Afghanistan and root out Taliban fighters is under-funded by 73% --- needs an additional $168 million more.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090223/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_pakistan

[My Question: We’re pounding hundreds of billions of dollars down countless other rat holes, but the one that is at the very center of everything is ‘under-funded’. Why?  I’m constantly amazed at the machinations of politics.

My only solace in this tangled web we weave is that, in an overpopulated world, anything which provides population control that doesn’t involve nuclear or germ warfare has a ‘silver lining’ that if, in the process, humanity truly learns a bit more of the Law of Cause and Effect as to how it relates to Natural Law & International Law.]

Additional reading:
www.tinyurl.com/cpy8pl

After 'HomoSapiens' began to recover in numbers after our near extinction 75,000 years ago [the ‘bottleneck’ created by the explosion of the super volcano Toba], we differentiated into 3 basic racial groups (Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasoid) in 3 different parts of the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck

Further differentiation continued --- including that brought on by the development of the 4 migration events leading to Native America

But, after 1492, globalization hit big time.  In the Americas touching the Caribbean, the different groups began melding / a process that accelerated, expanded and continues today.  However, we should realize that evolution of the supergroup 'HomoSapiens' continues (and has accelerated).  Furthermore, as we expand into newer environments (especially those artificially created beneath the sea and in space), evolution will escalate / especially as its fueled by genetic science.
tinyurl.com/c5hqxx

p.s. - Perhaps we need to remind ourselves that sometimes it's "not nice to fool Mother Nature".  Heinlein's science fiction story entitled 'Time Enough For Love" presents us with a better way than some biogeneticists would have us take when it's revealed in the plot that selective breeding holds the best key for evolutionary advancement.  To me this means that higher criteria regarding 'donors' to fertility clinics are one under emphasized aspect for the advancement of humanity. Another way of boosting humanity's advancement would be to increase its inherent IQ level by heeding the suggestion made by Canada to supplement iodine in the world's salt supply.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/health/16iodine.html
"We need to investigate the $11 billion contract awarded an Italian company to build a new fleet of 28 Marine One presidential helicopters that will each cost more than the last Air Force One.  Some believe that the contract is a payoff for Italy's role in fabricating the "yellowcake" evidence that led to the invasion of Iraq

"Furthermore, the rigged bidding process bypassed, for example, Marine One pilots who repeatedly sought to give input. They had many safety concerns. At the time of the bid, the helicopter chosen was not certified to fly in the U.S. It was an old model made of heavy materials; this flew in the face of why President Bush supposedly needed a new fleet: i.e., so many extra security devices had been added to Marine One after 9/11, it was struggling to lift off.... another objection, which was raised repeatedly by many other officials in private, was national security. The Italian company, Finmeccanica, was doing business with Iran, China and Libya. Why outsource so sensitive a project? At the time of the bid, the security clearance necessary to manufacture and maintain Marine One required U.S. citizenship and prohibited Marine One team members from being married to citizens of another country."
tinyurl.com/agzf7a

Don't just blame Bush though / it had the explicit backing of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Outsourcing our National defense is truly a bipartisan effort. [That's right! There'll be no investigation.  But if we want to stimulate an economy with more pork spending, shouldn't it at least be our own?]
http://www.military.com/NewContent1/0,14361,FreedomAlliance_081204,00.htm
By now, Fred Singer has given his speech in Austin debunking the idea of C02 being a significant greenhouse influence.  He works for think tanks receiving funding from energy companies.  He, also, debunks secondhand tobacco smoke as contributing lung cancer (while working for nonprofits that are funded by the tobaccoo industry).  Hmmm -- Is this guy for real?

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/02/19/0219skeptic.html
http://www.frankandernest.com/cgi/view/display.pl?104-04-16
http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20090204&name=Lockhorns
http://www.frankandernest.com/cgi/view/display.pl?99-08-17
http://www.frankandernest.com/cgi/view/display.pl?94-09-20
http://www.frankandernest.com/cgi/view/display.pl?92-09-23

Charles Darwin's the 'Origin of Species':
http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/darwin/section10.rhtml
The variety in our genetic makeup is increasing as exponentially as is our 'human' numbers.  Anthropologists have noted human bone structural changes in the last 10,000 years --- and no one had blue eyes that long ago either.  8,000 years ago, a mutation arose in N. Europe that allowed adults to digest 'lactose'.  25 new genes that protect against malaria & genes that make 10% of Europeans resistant to HIV (due to a genetic change that helped them defend against smallpox)... and so forth and so on.

Besides changing environmental conditions and cultural influences pushing genetic adaptations, a prime influence is demographic.  Mutation rates are a steady but rare percentage of a population.  With the exponential growth of the human population since we became agrarian, the overall number of mutations has, thus, likewise increased.

Read more:
tinyurl.com/ddpwpw