There's an anecdote about twins still in their mother's womb. They argued about who should come out first. One of the embryos complained "I'm the most beautiful; I should be born first."
"Maybe you are beautiful," responded the other, "but I'm the strongest; I should ooze out first."
The pair pushed and shoved in their mother's uterus until their umbilical cords broke. The mother miscarried and both fetuses perished.
Divisiveness is a scoundrel who can't leave without being pushed and who won't leave without being forced. He is the star in his own drama.
How many times have Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians seen his film in the theater of Christian dispute?
Pope John Paul II has waged war against divisions within Christianity in hopes of hastening a curtain call to these stains on divine memory. We wish him well. Selfishness, theology, self-righteousness and conceit are the emcees that have broadcast disunity among Christian communities for centuries.
But the Pope took a welcomed step in his battle. He recently returned the bones of John Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians. These honored ancient leaders' graves were looted from Constantinople, today known as Istanbul in Turkey, in 1204 by Catholic marauders during the Fourth Crusade.
In 1054, from Constantinople and beyond to Rome and beyond, division immigrated to Christianity. The Eastern Orthodox Church broke with the Catholic Church because the two branches of Catholicism differed over rites, the wording of prayers, the use of unleavened bread in the Catholic Eucharist, territory, church calendar and other matters.
Pope Paul speeded up his quest after Orthodox leaders accused Rome of trying to evangelize Eastern believers, especially in the Ukraine and Romania. To assure the Orthodox Church Rome had no intention of stealing Orthodox believers, the Pontiff offered to return the bones.
Matthew 5:23-24 says "If you offer your gift at the altar and there remember someone has something against you, leave your gift before the altar. First, go and reconcile yourself to that person, then come and offer your gift."
Despite the embargoes Catholics and Protestants have established between each other and within their own borders, we hope Christians worldwide will look downrange from their own hills and someday migrate toward the plains of unity, using this episode between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians as an example.
Kamis, 12 Oktober 2017
Kamis, 05 Oktober 2017
Mystery, not Myth: Jesus Christ is real!
In the children's section of any bookstore, books on the birth of Jesus stand next to Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk. The same parents who describe Santa Claus so convincingly also tell their children of Another who knows if they've been "naughty or nice." No wonder many children cast aside the Father and the Son at about the time they give up their belief in
the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.
But the Gospel Story is not myth or fairy tale. It is history--as solidly believable as Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus. Look at any calendar. The prefixes Sept-, Oct-, Nov-, and Dec- should designate months 7, 8, 9, and 10, not 9, 10, 11, and 12. Why are they off by two digits? Because in their egotism two powerful men, namely Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus, inserted months to honor themselves, pushing the succeeding months back in the year. The calendar's misnamed months testify to the two rulers' historicity.
The same is true with regard to the year on the calendar. Each passing year recalls the blessed moment when "The Word became flesh and pitched a tent among us" (John 1:14). And every stock market report and checkbook entry, every video camera's electronic brain and every letter's postmark, whisper in
unison, "He actually lived, truly and literally, in real space and time!"
John cannot be misunderstood: "We heard Him, we saw Him with our eyes, we looked at Him, and our hands touched Him" (1 John 1:1). Paul says Christ was raised and appeared to eyewitnesses, many of whom were still alive to affirm it 25 years later (1 Cor. 15:5-8).
For all of us who follow Him, the story can end, "and they lived happily ever after," because of this very reason: it does not begin with "Once upon a time," but "Once, for all time."
the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.
But the Gospel Story is not myth or fairy tale. It is history--as solidly believable as Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus. Look at any calendar. The prefixes Sept-, Oct-, Nov-, and Dec- should designate months 7, 8, 9, and 10, not 9, 10, 11, and 12. Why are they off by two digits? Because in their egotism two powerful men, namely Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus, inserted months to honor themselves, pushing the succeeding months back in the year. The calendar's misnamed months testify to the two rulers' historicity.
The same is true with regard to the year on the calendar. Each passing year recalls the blessed moment when "The Word became flesh and pitched a tent among us" (John 1:14). And every stock market report and checkbook entry, every video camera's electronic brain and every letter's postmark, whisper in
unison, "He actually lived, truly and literally, in real space and time!"
John cannot be misunderstood: "We heard Him, we saw Him with our eyes, we looked at Him, and our hands touched Him" (1 John 1:1). Paul says Christ was raised and appeared to eyewitnesses, many of whom were still alive to affirm it 25 years later (1 Cor. 15:5-8).
For all of us who follow Him, the story can end, "and they lived happily ever after," because of this very reason: it does not begin with "Once upon a time," but "Once, for all time."
Jumat, 22 September 2017
Why Is Sunday the Holiest Day For Christians?
How many Christians regularly go to church on Sunday and never question why? What is different about this day than any other? Who made it the holiest day and when? These are only some of the things that religious leaders never tell you. The answers all lie in the way Christianity came about and of the traditions and festivals that were celebrated along with the ritual practised at that time.
To explain it we need to go back to the murky Roman Empire and the Caesar, Claudius Constantine. His background, religious beliefs, and ancestry lie in that of the Amor of Babylon and the Islamic religion. These things were revealed by Spirit of the Universe, the real God, when it commissioned me to remove the wall of blindness that buried the facts and captured the spiritual people.
This followed my reincarnation and knowledge that heaven and hell are myths. To begin with all have returned who have lived before (Job 5:19-21 Isaiah 26:19). "Thy dead men shall live" that last passage states. These are the things hidden behind the wall and fear has imprisoned God's people.
After he established the Catholic Church based on his Islamic beliefs Constantine made Sunday, the dies solis in Rome, the day of prayer. This was in keeping with the practices of Babylon where the Mother God was and still is the sun. It was called 'ma-r-y' which means 'mother's powerful eye'. The icons in the Kaaba at Mecca are the sun and the moon.
The sun-star cradled in the crescent moon remains the main symbol of Islam while the five-point star is also a symbol in Christianity. Mary is the chief god in the Catholic Church because of the emperor's work. This is how she is described in the bible:
"BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH" Revelation 17:5
This is the only place in the bible where capital letters are used. It shows how important the words are for understanding how Constantine reinstated the sun as the great power. Catholics pray to Mary several times a day but none of them know the Spirit is the only power.
In keeping with his beliefs and the religion from whose format Christianity was founded Constantine made Sunday, the festival of the sun, the main day of prayer and rest. The sun-god is the first beast of Revelation 13 and the emperor is the second.
Mary is dressed in purple (colour worn by caesars) and scarlet (worn by bishops) according to this prophecy. She also sits on the city built on seven hills (ibid 17:9). Rome sits on seven hills and its real name is Roma (reverse Amor) because it was built by the Amor as their capital after the city of Mary was destroyed by earthquake.
These things are all verified and qualified in the records which are open to the public.
To explain it we need to go back to the murky Roman Empire and the Caesar, Claudius Constantine. His background, religious beliefs, and ancestry lie in that of the Amor of Babylon and the Islamic religion. These things were revealed by Spirit of the Universe, the real God, when it commissioned me to remove the wall of blindness that buried the facts and captured the spiritual people.
This followed my reincarnation and knowledge that heaven and hell are myths. To begin with all have returned who have lived before (Job 5:19-21 Isaiah 26:19). "Thy dead men shall live" that last passage states. These are the things hidden behind the wall and fear has imprisoned God's people.
After he established the Catholic Church based on his Islamic beliefs Constantine made Sunday, the dies solis in Rome, the day of prayer. This was in keeping with the practices of Babylon where the Mother God was and still is the sun. It was called 'ma-r-y' which means 'mother's powerful eye'. The icons in the Kaaba at Mecca are the sun and the moon.
The sun-star cradled in the crescent moon remains the main symbol of Islam while the five-point star is also a symbol in Christianity. Mary is the chief god in the Catholic Church because of the emperor's work. This is how she is described in the bible:
"BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH" Revelation 17:5
This is the only place in the bible where capital letters are used. It shows how important the words are for understanding how Constantine reinstated the sun as the great power. Catholics pray to Mary several times a day but none of them know the Spirit is the only power.
In keeping with his beliefs and the religion from whose format Christianity was founded Constantine made Sunday, the festival of the sun, the main day of prayer and rest. The sun-god is the first beast of Revelation 13 and the emperor is the second.
Mary is dressed in purple (colour worn by caesars) and scarlet (worn by bishops) according to this prophecy. She also sits on the city built on seven hills (ibid 17:9). Rome sits on seven hills and its real name is Roma (reverse Amor) because it was built by the Amor as their capital after the city of Mary was destroyed by earthquake.
These things are all verified and qualified in the records which are open to the public.
Jumat, 08 September 2017
After We Have Squandered Our Fossil Fuel Treasure, Our Way of Living Will Be Very Different
In a mere fifty years time, the kind of living that we have now will be vastly different whether we like it or not. Whilst most planners plan for what they regard as a better future using exponentially more energy, practically no planners plan for a future using a person's share of the amount of solar energy that falls on a person's share of the Earth
Another reality on which the growth-supporting planners fail to recognise, is that the most efficient converter of solar energy to fuel is chlorophyll - especially in grasses, and the most efficient converter of grass into usable energy is animal muscle.
Without the massive amounts of energy we take for granted will always be there, cities of more than a million people cannot possibly exist. And if you believe, as I do, that we should also care for every living and non-living beautiful and wild aspect of this tiny planet if, and if you believe that they all deserve a place on this planet, then the human population must be significantly reduced, not increased. I believe that every aspect of this tiny planet deserves the care that only we humans can provide, which means that we should planning to reduce the human population to a sustainable 500,000,000 humans! Even if this premise is not accepted, planners should be debating and planning for all contingencies - this one too - just in case.
After we have squandered all of our fossil fuels by about 2060, the Sun, chlorophyll and muscle, will be the portable energy and engines we will have to use sparingly and wisely. And soon after our metal machines and tools have worn out or oxidised to dust, the basic materials of wood and rock will be the only available materials for tools and for harnessing our energy sources.
The trouble with short-sighted and unethical planners
Many of today's planners accept the philosophy that given infinite resources and time, if something can be described, it will eventually be invented, and so plan in the expectation that by the time their schemes are put into effect, other problems that the scheme ignores will be solved by somebody else. This is a dangerous premise, because it presumes that known absolute and practical limitations can be ignored.
Such is the case of energy. All planners plan in the expectation that when fossil fuels are exhausted somebody will have found new energy sources, or have been able to "capture" and use solar energy.
It also presumes that the captured heat will have no Global Warming effect because the heat will be re-radiated at night. But the very act of capturing heat for warming insulated houses is preventing re-radiation, and the more people who attain our kind of warm housing in cool climates, the more heat must be retained and further Global Warming must occur. Compared with total solar radiation, such heat retention is minuscule, but it is perilously cumulative.
Planning should be based on known, absolute and practical limitations, combined with practical and realistic expectations. Fine to aspire to the ultimate luxury of the imagination, but not to nihilistically dismiss the probable or possible consequences as it being somebody else's problem.
Those who commission plans have a duty to commission a range of possible scenarios for a better future, not dump on us one 'take it, or we'll give it to you anyway' plan. Even if I am wrong about when we will run out of fossil fuels, planners should be planning NOW for a society with a good, sophisticated quality of life without the prodigious amounts of energy we use. If we did this, future generations could continue with the best attributes of a sophisticated society. If we don't, extinction of society as we know it, is probable. Are we not able to plan for a positive vision without fossil fuels? The Amish do.
The Earth already has far too many people
Scientists have been warning about the dire consequences of overpopulation for logical, responsible, environmental, humane and social reasons.
A most crucial problem that is not being addressed is that third-World families need many children because many of them die from accident, disease, starvation, and genocide, and to care for the parents in their old-age. So these people need many children to maintain a stable, two surviving children population. However, Western doctors save the people from disease, feed them in times of drought and disaster and protect them from genocidal wars, taking away the population regulators and not replacing them with real birth control. As well, many groups use the surplus people as their own armies to acquire wealth and power.
On the other hand, our Western societies have eliminated those five necessities for having large families, and socially responsible nations normally maintain a two-children style of sustainable population.
Aims for maintaining sustainable populations in third-World countries are being compromised by schemes to accommodate the exponentially growing amount of displaced people. For instance, to save excess people from overpopulated countries that refuse to maintain a sustainable population, our politicians devise schemes to bring them to Australia to live like we energy-gobblers in our style of energy-gobbling homes. That is the wrong way around. Excess people normally come from communities that have the kind of sustainable living that we fuel-squandering Western societies should be practising ourselves If any population of animals or plants exceed their sustainability, the excess die or are killed. By eliminating the population regulators within third-world countries and not replacing them with any other means of population control, we are surely killing all of us.
The push for overpopulation is mainly from selfish people who profit from it - they manipulate our culture and emotions, and ask us to provide "humanitarian" succor and use unselfish, caring people to implement their self interest.
The main reason why overpopulation is so well embraced is that businessmen, religious sects and immigration implementers profit from overpopulation, and blithely proclaim "The consequences of overpopulation's not our problem - let scientists or future generations fix it!"
Seizing on such opportunities for a quick dollar, compliant planners plan using unproven and unrealistic premises, proclaiming that they know that it is a problem, but it will fix itself when the World population reaches twelve or twenty billion people or some other figure they pluck without any serious rational.
How many people can Australia sustainably cope with?
To counter this onslaught of "Big Australia" propaganda, we must demand that our Government seek verifiable evidence about Australia's population limits.
To seek public opinion about how many immigrants the public decide is enough, authorities normally put on a pretense of 'Consultation' with the public. However, in fact, they discuss only ONE detailed plan, whose implementation, costings, tenderers, public spin and false propaganda have already been decided. Independent expertise and the public opinion is rarely ever given real regard. And, whilst the public cannot or will not tell you what they would accept, they can tell you what they don't want. If they are given the choice between real alternatives, they normally make good choices. On the other hand, if the Government was serious about finding out how many immigrants their constituents wanted, they would present alternative models and explain their pros and cons to allow the public to make informed choices*.
Normally, I am aghast at government plans and cry out for the government to consult the independent universities and institutions. But even in universities there are population-growth-supporters. Fortunately they are in the minority, if they weren't, we would be in real trouble, there would be good reason for pessimism.
"Big Australia" may be profitable for the incumbent political party and a few vested interests, but it is a perilous problem for most Australians.
The malevolent alliance between Parliament and business about population issues has many benefits for Parliament. It saves Parliament the effort of governing, it brings in much revenue, the government is very well rewarded and protected by its businessmen sponsors, and the task of governance is conveniently done by big business at no cost or effort by Parliament. Normally a small coterie of bureaucratic 'advisors' to government, simply relay the selective data supplied by Big Business. They feed Parliament with the spin of "bigger is better"- develop at any cost. The saved money can be then used for re-election campaigns. Try to govern without us businessmen and see how far you get?
The vested interests certainly make the task of researching data very easy for compliant public service advisors- who get "looked after" in many ways by the businessmen. We allow the government plan for our own demise! What a lot of lotus eaters we allow our politicians to become.
Fifty years is little time left to plan for living without electricity or any the other energy sources we take for granted.
There is an imperative need to plan for an alternative way of living that will protect our tiny planet. It is the obligation of academic planners to demand that the Government and the modern emperors of commerce to change their thinking and have them rethink the value of our resources to avoid the certain oblivion for all of us, and every other living creature including the businessmen themselves. If we don't, we have at the most another 600 months before worldwide catastrophe.
Not long, is it?
Without fuel for transport a city cannot contain more than a million people because its population limit depends on the walking distance between where somebody lives and where their food is produced.
In 1800, London was the most populous city in the World. It had grown to the maximum possible population of one million people. No city could grow bigger than one million because people had to live near to where their food was produced. To transport food further would have cost more fuel (which is of course is food) than there was energy in the food that was being transported. Then Mr Stephenson opened the Pandora's Box of fossil-fuel energy, and Mr Watt invented steam trains. Then, food and the very fuel for the transport (coal) could be got from farms and mines far from the city and transported into the city using fossil fuel. So London was able to grow to well over a million people. And ever cheaper transport allowed machines to be made in factories to extract the coal that allowed the machines to be made that would more-easily extract the fossil fuel. With fossil-fuelled transport spreading around the world, other cities followed and cities of multi-millions of people happened. Then they discovered oil which was easily extracted and more portable, and so it seemed there was no end to the size that cities could grow.
Inventions blossomed, and the mantra became that if you could describe it, somebody would inevitably invent it. Challenges to the Western style of unlimited "growth", limits were and are, for most people, unthinkable.
I challenge that premise because if one looks at history of all the epochs from Rameses to Caesar, from Elizabeth 1 to John Kennedy, popular planners also planned on the premise that their style of living would continue forever, and the only alternative was unthinkable. Where were the wise people who would advise the rulers of the day that the good times they were having would surely end? Where is Paul Ehrlich, what have they done to him?
Shoot the messenger, reward the carpet bagger
Governments never accept advice to take needed action if they thought that they couldn't sell the needed action, even if not taking action would result in catastrophe.
Complete changes to the way we live and our attitudes to sustainability are crucial for mankind to survive the next fifty years. Most governments do not have the wit or communications tools to present a better, simpler and more cultured society. That is because most Western governments leave the governance of the way live to the very people who are creating the problem - the business world! But it is the price we must pay, if we want to survive.
Each epoch has had resources that they thought would go on forever and that was considered to be the proper and progressive order for society. Rameses had religion and slaves, Caesar had tyrannical government and slaves, Elizabeth had law, organisation and commerce, and America had communications and abundant fossil fuels - coal, oil and uranium.
Abundant energy is our mighty servant who provides us such a luxurious lifestyle, but but soon he will be exhausted.
Ours is the energy epoch where our planners also plan with the premise that we will forever have abundant fuels and the consequential communications. They presume that even if fossil fuels become exhausted in some far distant time, by then we will have found new energy sources. Such premises are as flimsy as the premises of Rameses and Caesar. Then the wise people were pilloried as doomsday heretics. So when the end of the era came, the rulers and the people lost everything.
Our present lifestyle depends mainly on two elements, metals and plastics, and both of them depend on fossil energy. The start of civilisation coincided with the bronze age, where copper and tin that were at the surface were melted using wood or coal which was also at the surface. Later other minerals were found that created more effective tools and machines, but that required high melting temperatures, which in turn required digging for fuels and minerals from ever greater depths. These new metals and the new range of tools and machines determined the way in which villages and cities developed and grew. In turn, the new tools and machines allowed people to mine even deeper to retrieve oil and minerals, even to tap geo-thermal energy.
Indeed the machines that foreign companies have bought to Australia can remove as much coal or iron ore in one day from one mine, as every mine in the World used to extract in a whole year. That fact alone and its obvious consequences should frighten every Australian, but we are so comfortable with our lifestyle that we don't want to think too much about it, we prefer to believe the spin doctors of the people who are being enriched by our system.
There is no credible evidence that the most important portable energy source - oil - will be available after 2020, and that's only ten years away. Sure, there will always be oil in the ground and under the sea beds, but when it reaches the energy-equation barrier, that is, when it takes more energy to extract the oil than you can get usable energy from the extracted oil, so it must be left there.
Coal and uranium will suffer the same energy-equation barrier, and Australia's abundant amounts of these easily extracted fuels will soon be gobbled up cheaply by overseas businesses to finance Australians revelling in an unsustainable bath of energy wastage - until it has run out by about 2060. Some vested interests from energy companies or their subsidised academics in purchasable universities have estimated that we have another two hundred years of fossil fuel left. Their evidence for this is palpably optimistic. They are trying to sell a fools' paradise. The Western World consumes most of all the energy sources but China and India are rapidly attaining standard-of-living parity. That would at least halve the run-out dates. So it would be prudent to plan for an earlier run-out date.
Whichever date you believe, planners have an obligation to plan for alternative contingencies. In any case, Australia will eventually be left with a lot of holes in the ground in a mainly desert country that is incapable of maintaining a population of twenty million, let alone thirty. And the overseas companies will inevitably return to their home countries when the plunder is over.
What is so precious about human life?
Question: Isn't saving every human life a moral obligation for we privileged Western societies?
Answer: What is so precious about human life? There is an even greater moral obligation to save our small planet, humanity itself and every other living species!
What the planners are planning for Australia in 2060 will result in a desert with many big holes
Planners will tell you that a probable fuel-less desert for Australia is "not our problem", because the absence of fuels is not part of our brief, and we can only get funding to develop plans according to our brief which predicts endless energy for the foreseeable future.
Another problem is that politicians will never commission planners to devise plans for them unless they know that the planners will predict an easier, more comfortable and secure lifestyle that they can easily sell to their constituents. So although planners may want to plan for an energy and metal-free quality lifestyle - who will fund such reality? Dick Smith?
Wisdom is in an uneven battle with greed and lazy parliamentarians.
In a recent clip of the greatest environmental visionary of our epoch, Dr Paul Ehrlich, it showed him working away on an old computer in a modest room by himself. To counter Ehrlich's kind of wisdom and need for meagre resources, the energy emperors have virtually unlimited money, a veritable army of spin doctors and publishing house of propaganda mechanics to sell their produce for quick profit. What little chance do people like Ehrlich and truth stand?
The myth of "Clean" energies
Other energy-crisis deniers maintain that, after fossil fuels are exhausted, the so-called "natural" energy sources such as wind, solar panels, mirror solar collection, space sails, geo-thermal, wave, tidal, hydro, hydrogen and so on will then be "harnessed" to perpetuate our life-style. The illogicality of this premise is that all of the energy-gathering devices for capturing and converting the "natural" energies to usable energy and transmitting these energies, are dependent on massive amounts of the products of fossil energy.
Modern windmills and wave harnessing machines are made of plastic and steel and only last twenty years, solar panels are made of glass and plastic and also have a useful life of about twenty years, mirror solar collectors can last about 50 years, but they are normally situated far from where energy is needed and the getting of energy from where it is generated to where it is needed is not economical. Geo-thermal has problems such as mineralisation of pipelines and the cooling of the hot spot from whence the heat is drawn, which can cause seismic pressure buildup and again they present transmission problems. Tidal power and hydro power depend on building weirs and turbines built and maintained using vast amounts of fossil fuels and they vastly change the ecology and sedimentation of the area.
When coal and oil are exhausted, satellites and the promise of energy-gathering sails in space will be impossible without the massive amounts of fuel and high-tech equipment needed.
Fusion energy. The dreamers' dream of endless energy.
All generating and transmission mechanisms must eventually decay and disintegrate. And if you are thinking nuclear fusion energy, consider this - scientists have been trying to obtain useable energy from nuclear fusion for sixty years but despite virtually unlimited resources, nobody has done it. No learned body believes it will ever likely to be achieved because nobody believes that the temperature necessary to achieve fusion, that is 5800k, is possible to be contained let alone harnessed on Earth.
All of the available "natural" energy sources could not possibly supply even a fraction of that to which our present lifestyle is accustomed, and for an increased population the proposition is palpably ludicrous. When the end of fossil fuels happens in 2060, there will be a return to renewable material machines like wooden waterwheels, Dutch-style windmills, Amish-style horse driven transport and wooden sail ships, because we will be without metals and electric power.
Is a lifestyle as sophisticated as people like the Amish have not a better quality than ours? Do they not enjoy themselves as much or more than we do? We should study and learn from such good and cultured people's lifestyles.
Energy availability is inextricably linked to the problem of the population explosion, and all people wanting, demanding or seizing their share of fossil energy. The planners are not planning for those scenarios! They say it's not their problem, because it's not their brief, and it's not their responsibility to stand up and trumpet if and when they see that the end of our way of life is about to happen.
The richest, most powerful governments on Earth are the energy companies. OPEC for one, is far more powerful and influential than the United States or the EEC, and they are not obligated to any morality or electorate. Their product is energy, and challenges from people who voice rational concerns about their product are met a hundred times over by refutations, not from them, but from their compliant minions and scientists who drown out dissent. The energy companies offer an endless life of luxurious worldly riches using endless supplies of energy.
Another reality on which the growth-supporting planners fail to recognise, is that the most efficient converter of solar energy to fuel is chlorophyll - especially in grasses, and the most efficient converter of grass into usable energy is animal muscle.
Without the massive amounts of energy we take for granted will always be there, cities of more than a million people cannot possibly exist. And if you believe, as I do, that we should also care for every living and non-living beautiful and wild aspect of this tiny planet if, and if you believe that they all deserve a place on this planet, then the human population must be significantly reduced, not increased. I believe that every aspect of this tiny planet deserves the care that only we humans can provide, which means that we should planning to reduce the human population to a sustainable 500,000,000 humans! Even if this premise is not accepted, planners should be debating and planning for all contingencies - this one too - just in case.
After we have squandered all of our fossil fuels by about 2060, the Sun, chlorophyll and muscle, will be the portable energy and engines we will have to use sparingly and wisely. And soon after our metal machines and tools have worn out or oxidised to dust, the basic materials of wood and rock will be the only available materials for tools and for harnessing our energy sources.
The trouble with short-sighted and unethical planners
Many of today's planners accept the philosophy that given infinite resources and time, if something can be described, it will eventually be invented, and so plan in the expectation that by the time their schemes are put into effect, other problems that the scheme ignores will be solved by somebody else. This is a dangerous premise, because it presumes that known absolute and practical limitations can be ignored.
Such is the case of energy. All planners plan in the expectation that when fossil fuels are exhausted somebody will have found new energy sources, or have been able to "capture" and use solar energy.
It also presumes that the captured heat will have no Global Warming effect because the heat will be re-radiated at night. But the very act of capturing heat for warming insulated houses is preventing re-radiation, and the more people who attain our kind of warm housing in cool climates, the more heat must be retained and further Global Warming must occur. Compared with total solar radiation, such heat retention is minuscule, but it is perilously cumulative.
Planning should be based on known, absolute and practical limitations, combined with practical and realistic expectations. Fine to aspire to the ultimate luxury of the imagination, but not to nihilistically dismiss the probable or possible consequences as it being somebody else's problem.
Those who commission plans have a duty to commission a range of possible scenarios for a better future, not dump on us one 'take it, or we'll give it to you anyway' plan. Even if I am wrong about when we will run out of fossil fuels, planners should be planning NOW for a society with a good, sophisticated quality of life without the prodigious amounts of energy we use. If we did this, future generations could continue with the best attributes of a sophisticated society. If we don't, extinction of society as we know it, is probable. Are we not able to plan for a positive vision without fossil fuels? The Amish do.
The Earth already has far too many people
Scientists have been warning about the dire consequences of overpopulation for logical, responsible, environmental, humane and social reasons.
A most crucial problem that is not being addressed is that third-World families need many children because many of them die from accident, disease, starvation, and genocide, and to care for the parents in their old-age. So these people need many children to maintain a stable, two surviving children population. However, Western doctors save the people from disease, feed them in times of drought and disaster and protect them from genocidal wars, taking away the population regulators and not replacing them with real birth control. As well, many groups use the surplus people as their own armies to acquire wealth and power.
On the other hand, our Western societies have eliminated those five necessities for having large families, and socially responsible nations normally maintain a two-children style of sustainable population.
Aims for maintaining sustainable populations in third-World countries are being compromised by schemes to accommodate the exponentially growing amount of displaced people. For instance, to save excess people from overpopulated countries that refuse to maintain a sustainable population, our politicians devise schemes to bring them to Australia to live like we energy-gobblers in our style of energy-gobbling homes. That is the wrong way around. Excess people normally come from communities that have the kind of sustainable living that we fuel-squandering Western societies should be practising ourselves If any population of animals or plants exceed their sustainability, the excess die or are killed. By eliminating the population regulators within third-world countries and not replacing them with any other means of population control, we are surely killing all of us.
The push for overpopulation is mainly from selfish people who profit from it - they manipulate our culture and emotions, and ask us to provide "humanitarian" succor and use unselfish, caring people to implement their self interest.
The main reason why overpopulation is so well embraced is that businessmen, religious sects and immigration implementers profit from overpopulation, and blithely proclaim "The consequences of overpopulation's not our problem - let scientists or future generations fix it!"
Seizing on such opportunities for a quick dollar, compliant planners plan using unproven and unrealistic premises, proclaiming that they know that it is a problem, but it will fix itself when the World population reaches twelve or twenty billion people or some other figure they pluck without any serious rational.
How many people can Australia sustainably cope with?
To counter this onslaught of "Big Australia" propaganda, we must demand that our Government seek verifiable evidence about Australia's population limits.
To seek public opinion about how many immigrants the public decide is enough, authorities normally put on a pretense of 'Consultation' with the public. However, in fact, they discuss only ONE detailed plan, whose implementation, costings, tenderers, public spin and false propaganda have already been decided. Independent expertise and the public opinion is rarely ever given real regard. And, whilst the public cannot or will not tell you what they would accept, they can tell you what they don't want. If they are given the choice between real alternatives, they normally make good choices. On the other hand, if the Government was serious about finding out how many immigrants their constituents wanted, they would present alternative models and explain their pros and cons to allow the public to make informed choices*.
Normally, I am aghast at government plans and cry out for the government to consult the independent universities and institutions. But even in universities there are population-growth-supporters. Fortunately they are in the minority, if they weren't, we would be in real trouble, there would be good reason for pessimism.
"Big Australia" may be profitable for the incumbent political party and a few vested interests, but it is a perilous problem for most Australians.
The malevolent alliance between Parliament and business about population issues has many benefits for Parliament. It saves Parliament the effort of governing, it brings in much revenue, the government is very well rewarded and protected by its businessmen sponsors, and the task of governance is conveniently done by big business at no cost or effort by Parliament. Normally a small coterie of bureaucratic 'advisors' to government, simply relay the selective data supplied by Big Business. They feed Parliament with the spin of "bigger is better"- develop at any cost. The saved money can be then used for re-election campaigns. Try to govern without us businessmen and see how far you get?
The vested interests certainly make the task of researching data very easy for compliant public service advisors- who get "looked after" in many ways by the businessmen. We allow the government plan for our own demise! What a lot of lotus eaters we allow our politicians to become.
Fifty years is little time left to plan for living without electricity or any the other energy sources we take for granted.
There is an imperative need to plan for an alternative way of living that will protect our tiny planet. It is the obligation of academic planners to demand that the Government and the modern emperors of commerce to change their thinking and have them rethink the value of our resources to avoid the certain oblivion for all of us, and every other living creature including the businessmen themselves. If we don't, we have at the most another 600 months before worldwide catastrophe.
Not long, is it?
Without fuel for transport a city cannot contain more than a million people because its population limit depends on the walking distance between where somebody lives and where their food is produced.
In 1800, London was the most populous city in the World. It had grown to the maximum possible population of one million people. No city could grow bigger than one million because people had to live near to where their food was produced. To transport food further would have cost more fuel (which is of course is food) than there was energy in the food that was being transported. Then Mr Stephenson opened the Pandora's Box of fossil-fuel energy, and Mr Watt invented steam trains. Then, food and the very fuel for the transport (coal) could be got from farms and mines far from the city and transported into the city using fossil fuel. So London was able to grow to well over a million people. And ever cheaper transport allowed machines to be made in factories to extract the coal that allowed the machines to be made that would more-easily extract the fossil fuel. With fossil-fuelled transport spreading around the world, other cities followed and cities of multi-millions of people happened. Then they discovered oil which was easily extracted and more portable, and so it seemed there was no end to the size that cities could grow.
Inventions blossomed, and the mantra became that if you could describe it, somebody would inevitably invent it. Challenges to the Western style of unlimited "growth", limits were and are, for most people, unthinkable.
I challenge that premise because if one looks at history of all the epochs from Rameses to Caesar, from Elizabeth 1 to John Kennedy, popular planners also planned on the premise that their style of living would continue forever, and the only alternative was unthinkable. Where were the wise people who would advise the rulers of the day that the good times they were having would surely end? Where is Paul Ehrlich, what have they done to him?
Shoot the messenger, reward the carpet bagger
Governments never accept advice to take needed action if they thought that they couldn't sell the needed action, even if not taking action would result in catastrophe.
Complete changes to the way we live and our attitudes to sustainability are crucial for mankind to survive the next fifty years. Most governments do not have the wit or communications tools to present a better, simpler and more cultured society. That is because most Western governments leave the governance of the way live to the very people who are creating the problem - the business world! But it is the price we must pay, if we want to survive.
Each epoch has had resources that they thought would go on forever and that was considered to be the proper and progressive order for society. Rameses had religion and slaves, Caesar had tyrannical government and slaves, Elizabeth had law, organisation and commerce, and America had communications and abundant fossil fuels - coal, oil and uranium.
Abundant energy is our mighty servant who provides us such a luxurious lifestyle, but but soon he will be exhausted.
Ours is the energy epoch where our planners also plan with the premise that we will forever have abundant fuels and the consequential communications. They presume that even if fossil fuels become exhausted in some far distant time, by then we will have found new energy sources. Such premises are as flimsy as the premises of Rameses and Caesar. Then the wise people were pilloried as doomsday heretics. So when the end of the era came, the rulers and the people lost everything.
Our present lifestyle depends mainly on two elements, metals and plastics, and both of them depend on fossil energy. The start of civilisation coincided with the bronze age, where copper and tin that were at the surface were melted using wood or coal which was also at the surface. Later other minerals were found that created more effective tools and machines, but that required high melting temperatures, which in turn required digging for fuels and minerals from ever greater depths. These new metals and the new range of tools and machines determined the way in which villages and cities developed and grew. In turn, the new tools and machines allowed people to mine even deeper to retrieve oil and minerals, even to tap geo-thermal energy.
Indeed the machines that foreign companies have bought to Australia can remove as much coal or iron ore in one day from one mine, as every mine in the World used to extract in a whole year. That fact alone and its obvious consequences should frighten every Australian, but we are so comfortable with our lifestyle that we don't want to think too much about it, we prefer to believe the spin doctors of the people who are being enriched by our system.
There is no credible evidence that the most important portable energy source - oil - will be available after 2020, and that's only ten years away. Sure, there will always be oil in the ground and under the sea beds, but when it reaches the energy-equation barrier, that is, when it takes more energy to extract the oil than you can get usable energy from the extracted oil, so it must be left there.
Coal and uranium will suffer the same energy-equation barrier, and Australia's abundant amounts of these easily extracted fuels will soon be gobbled up cheaply by overseas businesses to finance Australians revelling in an unsustainable bath of energy wastage - until it has run out by about 2060. Some vested interests from energy companies or their subsidised academics in purchasable universities have estimated that we have another two hundred years of fossil fuel left. Their evidence for this is palpably optimistic. They are trying to sell a fools' paradise. The Western World consumes most of all the energy sources but China and India are rapidly attaining standard-of-living parity. That would at least halve the run-out dates. So it would be prudent to plan for an earlier run-out date.
Whichever date you believe, planners have an obligation to plan for alternative contingencies. In any case, Australia will eventually be left with a lot of holes in the ground in a mainly desert country that is incapable of maintaining a population of twenty million, let alone thirty. And the overseas companies will inevitably return to their home countries when the plunder is over.
What is so precious about human life?
Question: Isn't saving every human life a moral obligation for we privileged Western societies?
Answer: What is so precious about human life? There is an even greater moral obligation to save our small planet, humanity itself and every other living species!
What the planners are planning for Australia in 2060 will result in a desert with many big holes
Planners will tell you that a probable fuel-less desert for Australia is "not our problem", because the absence of fuels is not part of our brief, and we can only get funding to develop plans according to our brief which predicts endless energy for the foreseeable future.
Another problem is that politicians will never commission planners to devise plans for them unless they know that the planners will predict an easier, more comfortable and secure lifestyle that they can easily sell to their constituents. So although planners may want to plan for an energy and metal-free quality lifestyle - who will fund such reality? Dick Smith?
Wisdom is in an uneven battle with greed and lazy parliamentarians.
In a recent clip of the greatest environmental visionary of our epoch, Dr Paul Ehrlich, it showed him working away on an old computer in a modest room by himself. To counter Ehrlich's kind of wisdom and need for meagre resources, the energy emperors have virtually unlimited money, a veritable army of spin doctors and publishing house of propaganda mechanics to sell their produce for quick profit. What little chance do people like Ehrlich and truth stand?
The myth of "Clean" energies
Other energy-crisis deniers maintain that, after fossil fuels are exhausted, the so-called "natural" energy sources such as wind, solar panels, mirror solar collection, space sails, geo-thermal, wave, tidal, hydro, hydrogen and so on will then be "harnessed" to perpetuate our life-style. The illogicality of this premise is that all of the energy-gathering devices for capturing and converting the "natural" energies to usable energy and transmitting these energies, are dependent on massive amounts of the products of fossil energy.
Modern windmills and wave harnessing machines are made of plastic and steel and only last twenty years, solar panels are made of glass and plastic and also have a useful life of about twenty years, mirror solar collectors can last about 50 years, but they are normally situated far from where energy is needed and the getting of energy from where it is generated to where it is needed is not economical. Geo-thermal has problems such as mineralisation of pipelines and the cooling of the hot spot from whence the heat is drawn, which can cause seismic pressure buildup and again they present transmission problems. Tidal power and hydro power depend on building weirs and turbines built and maintained using vast amounts of fossil fuels and they vastly change the ecology and sedimentation of the area.
When coal and oil are exhausted, satellites and the promise of energy-gathering sails in space will be impossible without the massive amounts of fuel and high-tech equipment needed.
Fusion energy. The dreamers' dream of endless energy.
All generating and transmission mechanisms must eventually decay and disintegrate. And if you are thinking nuclear fusion energy, consider this - scientists have been trying to obtain useable energy from nuclear fusion for sixty years but despite virtually unlimited resources, nobody has done it. No learned body believes it will ever likely to be achieved because nobody believes that the temperature necessary to achieve fusion, that is 5800k, is possible to be contained let alone harnessed on Earth.
All of the available "natural" energy sources could not possibly supply even a fraction of that to which our present lifestyle is accustomed, and for an increased population the proposition is palpably ludicrous. When the end of fossil fuels happens in 2060, there will be a return to renewable material machines like wooden waterwheels, Dutch-style windmills, Amish-style horse driven transport and wooden sail ships, because we will be without metals and electric power.
Is a lifestyle as sophisticated as people like the Amish have not a better quality than ours? Do they not enjoy themselves as much or more than we do? We should study and learn from such good and cultured people's lifestyles.
Energy availability is inextricably linked to the problem of the population explosion, and all people wanting, demanding or seizing their share of fossil energy. The planners are not planning for those scenarios! They say it's not their problem, because it's not their brief, and it's not their responsibility to stand up and trumpet if and when they see that the end of our way of life is about to happen.
The richest, most powerful governments on Earth are the energy companies. OPEC for one, is far more powerful and influential than the United States or the EEC, and they are not obligated to any morality or electorate. Their product is energy, and challenges from people who voice rational concerns about their product are met a hundred times over by refutations, not from them, but from their compliant minions and scientists who drown out dissent. The energy companies offer an endless life of luxurious worldly riches using endless supplies of energy.
Sabtu, 02 September 2017
The Map of the Treasures and Thesauruses in the World
The Bild magazine helped the treasure hunters with some very useful tips provided by its experts in archaeology and history. These made a map of the most important treasures lost in different corners of the world over time. Whether we are talking about treasure cases or by entire ships with statues made of precious metals, the ones passionate about treasures could actually make a blast if they searched the places indicated by the specialists. Some of these treasures are now worth billions of euros.
In 1937, Milton Doc Noss discovered a chain of caves at the base of the Victorio Peak Mountain. Sixteen thousand gold bars had been hidden by the Apaches, together with coins and jewels. Part of them were brought to the surface, while the entrance in the galleries was blocked by an explosion. This treasure is now worth billions of euros.
Then, according to the specialists, The Pacific island hides more treasures hidden by pirates. This story was also the source of inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island". They also assume that the Kokos Island hides the treasure of the church in Lima, Peru, which disappeared in 1821. This treasure is now worth hundreds of millions of euros.
After the Thirty-Year War, Maximilian I, Bavaria's leader, ran from the Swedish soldiers in 1648. His treasures were sent away to Austria on the Inn river. One of the boats sank and all the silver remained on the bottom of the ocean. The value of this treasure is not yet known.
There are many other treasures which haven't been discovered yet, but which are worth a lot both from a financial point of view and from a historical one.
In 1937, Milton Doc Noss discovered a chain of caves at the base of the Victorio Peak Mountain. Sixteen thousand gold bars had been hidden by the Apaches, together with coins and jewels. Part of them were brought to the surface, while the entrance in the galleries was blocked by an explosion. This treasure is now worth billions of euros.
Then, according to the specialists, The Pacific island hides more treasures hidden by pirates. This story was also the source of inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island". They also assume that the Kokos Island hides the treasure of the church in Lima, Peru, which disappeared in 1821. This treasure is now worth hundreds of millions of euros.
After the Thirty-Year War, Maximilian I, Bavaria's leader, ran from the Swedish soldiers in 1648. His treasures were sent away to Austria on the Inn river. One of the boats sank and all the silver remained on the bottom of the ocean. The value of this treasure is not yet known.
There are many other treasures which haven't been discovered yet, but which are worth a lot both from a financial point of view and from a historical one.
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