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Our Saviour may be our Destroyer
Ice that burns
Ice that burns: Will a new discovery trigger runaway global warming?
There’s a theory that global warming cycles over the eons have been the result of the sudden sporadic release of large quantities of methane hydrate.
A tremendous release of methane gas frozen beneath the sea floor heated the Earth by up to 13 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) 55 million years ago, a new NASA study confirms.
Generally, cold temperatures and high pressure keep methane stable beneath the ocean floor, however, that might not always have been the case. A movement of continental plates, like the Indian subcontinent, may have initiated a release that led to the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum, occurred around 55 million years ago and lasted about 100,000 years.
Current theory has linked this to a vast release of frozen methane from beneath the sea floor, which led to the earth warming as a result of increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The large quantity of methane ice at the bottom of the world’s oceans today is seen as a risk factor for accelerated “runaway global warming.” As the oceans heat up, there is a risk that the methane would be released further accelerating the global warming process.
Given this backdrop, this news seems a bit alarming:
Scientists unlock frozen natural gas
For the first time, Canadian and Japanese researchers have managed to efficiently produce a constant stream of natural gas from ice-like gas hydrates that, worldwide, dwarf all known fossil fuel deposits combined.
This breakthrough is touted as something that could one day solve the world’s energy shortages.
But it strikes me that this also has the potential to trigger a fairly cataclysmic release of methane. If the methane is already becoming unstable due to gradually warming oceans, will drilling it be the catalyst for a massive release of gas?
While the engineers will no doubt assure us that there are adequate safety precautions in place, there is no way to have certainty over the outcome of drilling down into the bowels of the earth.
Just ask the people of Sidoarjo.
Deadly Mud Volcano Destroys Village
A team of British researchers says the deadly upwelling began when an exploratory gas well punched through a layer of rock 9,300 feet (2,800 meters) below the surface, allowing hot, high-pressure water to escape.
Save the Planet by Hoarding
Can individuals make a difference?
Big Foot - Michael Specter
How do we alter human behavior significantly enough to limit global warming? Personal choices, no matter how virtuous, cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.
In “Why Bother?” Michael Pollon response to Specter, looking at the mind set which creates individual apathy in the face of alarming climate change issues.
Here’s the point: Cheap energy, which gives us climate change, fosters precisely the mentality that makes dealing with climate change in our own lives seem impossibly difficult. Specialists ourselves, we can no longer imagine anyone but an expert, or anything but a new technology or law, solving our problems.
I almost agree with him. It is true we do not see the value of ourselves as individual actors on a world stage. But it is not because of specialisation that we feel powerless. It is because for the past generation, we have been indoctrinated into the belief that free markets determine the ultimate good.
Individual efforts in the face of the human tide may be virtuous but ineffective.
The supple of energy and thus carbon emissions are fixed: my change in demand only affects the price. So my reduction in demand simply makes it cheaper for some Chinese guy to put another gallon into his new car.
The Answer is Hoarding
In fact given this paradigm, the only thing that might save planet earth at this point are the spiralling oil prices.
If someone with very deep pockets wanted to make a real change, they would buy oil and hoard it - driving up prices without releasing the carbon they had purchased.
It’s also probably a good long term investment that would pay off well over the next 20-40 years.
The personal equivalent would be a mass movement that encourages individuals to hoard and drive up prices.
Of course if this gained any traction it would probably be outlawed and/or cause massive panic. It would certainly exacerbate climbing food prices which are partly tied to the cost of transportation and fertilizer (of which petrochemicals are a major component).
The problem with the entire equation is that those who waste the most have the largest disposable incomes to weather the increased cost of energy.
Plan B: The Plague.
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Pollon: Grow your own garden
I would like to but so far all my experiments with veggies on a tropical balcony have been destroyed by bugs…
Video: Driving High
How much before your driving goes to pot?
Is one joint the end of civilization as we know it?
Sex & Music
Is music part of our DNA? How generations of wooing with song has created musical genius.
A musician I know, who shall remain nameless (you know who you are) said recently that “a well sounded chord by a chorus of voices is better than really great sex.” The point was made to emphasize where music fits into his hierarchy of priorities and no doubt pleasure.
It is a sentiment that probably few would agree with (great sex, after all, is so elusive) but really we should not be surprised to hear it. Those who have a strong reaction to music, body movement or color may well find themselves becoming musicians, dancers or artists respectively. Those of us with more common sensitivities naturally pursue our artistic interests with less passion.
Yet since it was uttered, I can’t let the quip go. Not because of what was meant, but because it so perfectly illustrates an idea that underlies my beliefs about the forces that shaped human evolution – a topic I’m rather enamored with.
For the moment, let us leave aside all thoughts of divinity. Let’s simply say that spiritual influences on man are part of the Polar system of mapping and for now we shall dwell on the Cartesian.
When we think about evolution, we tend to think about physical characteristics: why, say, I have blond hair, you have black hair and why we aren’t all covered in fish scales. However the expression of genes extends beyond the boundaries of our bodies. The songs of birds, the nests they build, the architecture of beaver dams and the mating dances of spiders are all extensions of genetic code into physical space. They are what Richard Dawkins calls “the extended phenotype.” (Our genetic code is our “genotype” ; the expression of genes as physical traits are the “phenotype”; their interaction with the world the “extended phenotype”).
There is a grave misconception that evolution is a process that simply hones survival traits. It thus follows that all behaviour which cannot be attributed to enhancing one’s chances of survival are either an accidental byproduct of nature or, in absence of any suitable scientific explanation, a gift from God (for time eternal, God has been the caretaker of mysteries – however dwindling that treasure trove has become).
The error in this thinking is elusively obvious. A peacock’s tail does nothing for its chances of survival. In fact it makes him much easier prey to any creature with a taste for fowl. But it does make the peacock rather popular with the peahens and therein lies the answer. Survival doesn’t matter much in the evolutionary sense if you are unable to pass your genes on to the next generation. If, however, you succeeded in prodigious copulation before the end of a short life, you will have qualified as a fit survivor in so far as the gene pool is concerned.
The whims of sexual preference thus have a huge impact on evolution. A characteristic that is attractive to the opposite sex may be as valuable as one that keeps you out of the clutches of predators.
What is the survival value of a head of thick, shiny hair? We are the only primates which sport such a display. You can spend all day long hypothesizing about its value as a protector from cold and sun… but none of these theories explain why an individual will spend $200 on an intensive conditioning treatment and a dye job. Once sex becomes part of the equation, the significance is obvious. Our ancestors liked a full head of hair and we continue to do so in the present. Monitoring your likes and dislikes over the course of a day is as good a study in evolution as any.
But back to music. Am I suggesting that music is the result of a sexual manifestation – a bubbling over of sexual energy perhaps? Not at all.
Let us look for a more objective example. Humans are not the only artists in the animal kingdom. The male bowerbirds of Australasia have fairly well developed artistic abilities in the area of installation art. They create brightly coloured nests up to 9 feet high – a significant feet for a bird of only 6 ounces. But are the nests simply a means to an end? Are they built simply to lure female bower birds? Is this the epitomized love nest?
The desire to build such nests appear to be complex adaptations in their own right. Bowerbird are bent on building these nests whether or not the females show up.
Geoffrey Miller illustrates the point brilliantly in his book “The Mating Mind”:
“Males of many bowerbird species spend virtually all day, every day, building and maintaining their bowers. If you could interview a male Satin Bowerbird for Artforum magazine, he might say something like
“I find this implacable urge for self-expression, for playing with color and form for their own sake, quite inexplicable. I cannot remember when I first developed this raging thirst to present richly saturated color- fields within a monumental yet minimalist stage-set, but I feel connected to something beyond myself when I indulge these passions. When I see a beautiful orchid high in a tree, I simply must have it for my own. When I see a single shell out of place in my creation, I must put it right. Birds-of-paradise may grow lovely feathers, but there is no aesthetic mind at work there, only a body’s brute instinct. It is a happy coincidence that females sometimes come to my gallery openings and appreciate my work, but it would be an insult to suggest that I create in order to procreate. We live in a post-Freudian, post-modernist era in which crude sexual meta-narratives are no longer credible as explanations of our artistic impulses.”
Fortunately, bowerbirds cannot talk, so we are free to use sexual selection to explain their work, without them begging to differ.”
The bowerbirds do not build their nests to get laid, but it just so happens that those who are best at it, happen to get laid the most.
Would Mick Jagger be a musician if it didn’t come with the fringe benefit of female groupies? We can debate it. Would Mozart?
Being a good musician is certainly an attractive quality. Whether or not a person is pursuing musical interests for the badge of sex appeal or for pure love of the art doesn’t matter much. Sometime, long ago, those with musical ability were rewarded with a slight edge in their ability to get genes into the next generation. The genes propagated enough that today, all humans have basic music abilities (to appreciate if not to create) and generations of sexual preference for the best musical talent has resulted, in some individuals, what we recognise as musical brilliance.
If you have any doubt that as modern, rational creatures we have evolved beyond a primal reaction to musical talent, I have a group of sopranos to introduce to you not to mention an alto or two. I have previously reported a slight mass hysteria with regards to one of our conductors and given the behaviour of a few others, I’d have to speculate that even our “weird” (his own description – I would have been kinder) resident conductor has a few of the ladies going soft on him. Then again, that also might be due to our genetic predisposition for great hair.
I wish I could get orgasmic over really great music but I cannot. I am certainly carried away by brilliant sound and would not be without music in my life, but I’m obviously not predisposed to this extreme reaction.
I will, however, trade a great idea for an hour of great sex - trade the musician for theories about his existence. If an idea captures my imagination, I can live off the rush for days. I trust, therefore, that having a restless mind once carried more sex appeal than it does today.
If not, God has a lot to answer for.
