The whirld, perfect storms and other dizzy ramblings. -- Operation Phoenix

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Subject: The whirld, perfect storms and other dizzy ramblings.

Author:
Allen Currie

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Date Posted: 16:24:45 08/31/12 Fri

The whirld, perfect storms and other dizzy ramblings akin to the Greek textbook “English as she is spoke.” Or “The case of the midwife toad”.

Well, the first unofficial official signpost that the financial end is nigh has come and gone. Some lord high mucky muck, probably the president of the ECM or its central bank, along with a German spokesperson much nearer to divinity than I am, have stood firm and brave, and King Kanut like have ordered the tide not to come in. “We will not allow the ECM to be broken up.” Like all good bureaucrats they are doing exactly the right thing (for some circumstances) at absolutely the worst possible time. Despite the attempt to rally support and funds from the rest of the world, Germanies best probable option at the moment would be to withdraw from the ECM, forcing everyone to take their medicine. But politics is about power and the certainty of those in power that they have not only the best, but had the only viable solution for any of humanities problems right down to the heartbreak of psoriasis.

I may have said this before here, but the world financial system reminds me of the heavy smoker of 40 or more years begins to cough blood. (Our leaders, AND WE have been irresponsibly spending tomorrows earnings today for even longer than 40 years, in fact since the start of WWII. Doctor B knows, or maybe he doesn’t, that it is terminal cancer but decides that the patient is better off not knowing and better living in a fairy land, so he finds a soothing name for what he is about to do, (Q.E.) and prescribes double the dose of tobacco smoke, saying it will calm the patients nerves, and secretly hoping the tar will cover the cancer cells, thus killing them. (Print and or otherwise borrow even more money.)

Pain killers cure symptoms, not diseases. As much as he wants to believe, the patient is coughing more and more blood and he has this niggling doubt that something serious is wrong. He needs ever more medicine to calm his nerves.

Another factor, even less recognised by humanity is world overpopulation.

Way back in the ‘50’s some scientists got curious about the causes of many animal species population rise and fall as it did. Being a farm boy in the foothills of the Rockies I was familiar with the phenomena. The wild rabbit population would grow and grow and about every seven years there came a mysterious die off. That year you had to watch your farm animals very carefully because the now starving predators, the wolves, lynx, cougars, etc. were coming down from the mountains in search of food.

The scientists began by studying the rise and fall of the population of wolves and then deer on an island, thinking that since they were on an island there could be less outside influence. They watched closely and even did autopsies on all the dying animals from whatever cause. True enough they did not have the medical tools we have today, but this was the most recent study I know of. The only thing they could find was that in the lead up to the population peak and subsequent mysterious die off, was enlarged adrenal glands, suggesting the animals were under some kind of stress.

They moved the experiments inside using rats as subject animals. They provided a large room, all the food, water and bedding that the rats wanted. Rats have a very rigid social structure. They almost never fight among themselves. The family unit is quite sacrosanct, with both sexes being very monogamous and faithful. Mothers are especially caring and always make good nests.

As the population grew the social structure began to break down. Autopsies began to show enlarged adrenal glands. Males began to mount males. Adolescent rats began to form gangs which terrorized the population. Females did not make good nests, just scattering a few straws around. They would pick up a kit, obviously planning to move nest, get distracted, drop the kit and wander off. Infanticide and cannibalism became rampant.

Formerly courtship rituals involved the male chasing the female around, nipping at her tail. Eventually she would dive into her burrow and the male would stand in front of the burrow, hopping from foot to foot. If she poked her nose out and sniffed, he would follow her into the burrow and mate. If not, eventually he would wander off. As the population grew, attractive to rats, female rat tails were bitten until bone showed. The male no longer waited outside the burrow, but entered and mated.

Then came the mysterious die off. And the social structure returned to what it was.

Think of it. If you are in a crowded elevator, you stand rigidly at attention saying with your body language “I am not touching you because I want to but because the situation forces it.” Anyone who has ever visited Japan knows how convoluted societies artificial politeness can get as 125 million citizens try to exist on a very narrow strip of coastline on a relatively small series of islands where it is so difficult to have a personal space.

The scientists found that if they added ceramic roof tiles as sort of a high rise nesting space, they could raise the ultimate numbers of the population significantly before the mysterious die off happened, despite the much smaller personal space than the the rats needed normally. It seemed that the existence of walls was used to delineate acceptable personal space.

I worried after AIDS first appeared that our great die off had come. The stats said that during the expected four year lifespan of an HIV infected person, it could be expected on average that they would infect two others per year, an exponential increase. The medical community did yeoman duty finding a way of controlling HIV, but HIV is still with us. Current estimates are that 25 million people currently alive with HIV infection. If something happens like financial collapse to make the drug industry go down, how long before AIDS resumes its exponential progress.,

Overpopulation also has a hand in many other of mankinds current woes. With the exception of a time when the black death swept the world (and that was a long time ago) mans population has never declined. Neither we nor our leaders have personally experienced a declining population. All our models, particularly the economic, stress population growth as a panacea. In fact, few people alive today have experienced even as mild a life reversal as the dirty thirties. Even with the tide raising all boats, our leaders have a very mediocre track record making economic decisions. The only reason there are not pitchforks in the streets is that the politicos are much better at spin than they are at economics.

We are adding 300 million new mouths to feed each year. Needless to say, that means a lot of new land going under the plow. You can argue all you want about manmade global warming and CO2. The shrill instant experts on weather, whose education on the matter consists of about ten seconds of listening to another equally knowledgeable expert, seem at odds with the solar experts who have spent lifetimes studying the matter. Apparently both Mars and Venus have recently warmed by three degrees C, whereas earth has only warmed by two. As well, NASA has just announced that the UN weather model is faulty. Satellites show the world is radiating far more infrared heat than predicted by the model. As a glider pilot I know that forests are great collectors of heat. As far as I am concerned the two percent warming the solar experts attribute to CO2 is washed by the reduced heat storage of the forests being cut to provide food for 300 million new mouths.

I do believe firmly that the change in albido of the earth produced when these nice green forests are cut down to be replaced by black earth, black industrial roofs, and blacktop highways is a major contributor to global warming. The solar experts are predicting global cooling. In total I am merely predicting changing global weather patterns. It is clear even only looking at the residue as glaciers recede that changing weather patterns have been the rule rather than the exception for most of the life of the planet. Looking at the records, our weather has been exceptionally benign over the last fifty years, and particularly during the thirty years to the mid ’20 zeros. It is certainly due to change.

Undoubtedly mankind is an element in weather change, but to what extent, I as a mere human, cannot state. For instance, there is an ocean desert just to the west of Chile. Its edge just touches the western beaches of Chile. Ocean deserts are especially vicious. One weather station on that desert has NEVER reported precipitation in its over 100 year history. I saw a forecast saying that this desert would move east and expand through the western part of Brazil to the SW quarter of the US within a decade or two. The recent droughts in Texas et al would tend in my mind to confirm that forecast.

Then too, the world overpopulation even affects our forecasts and predictive models. In living memory, or even written history, we have always faced growth. From scientific inventions to population growth, we have lived in a growth atmosphere. (excepting the dark ages which are well worth studying.) Not only do we use ever present growth as a cornerstone in all our predictive models, we neither know how to, nor even want to consider negative growth or even stability. We have no experience with, nor have we even given thought to negative conditions. It might be wise to give a passing nod to the risk profile that is developing for humanity.

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