Iran's Growing Revolution

This writer has correctly picked up on the reality that the present turmoil in Iran is similar to the turmoil preceding the overthrow of the Shah in 1979.  It certainly feels the same as then.

A reassertion of a popular and properly elected government will buy time for corrective measures.  I hope that this is actually possible this time around.  The writer expresses fear of foreign meddling, but that is unlikely in the event.  Iran has isolated itself for thirty years and anyone who could bring such influence to bear is living safely outside the country.

The real question is whether the present turmoil will weaken the will of the present regime, or more practically, is the army ready to use this turmoil as a pretext to eliminate the Mullahs?  Someone must prevent the revolutionary guards from acting.

The control structures in place compare to those enjoyed by prerevolutionary Romania.  That we remember as a near run thing.

At the moment, a popular rising is in full flight.  The possibility is now open for regime change.  It is also possible that such change will be in everyone’s favor.  Most certainly, the losers, however it all shakes out, are the leaders of the theocracy who originally jigged the system to provide themselves perpetual power.  I always though that bit would be a disaster for its agents.

It is reported that over 1500 or so have been arrested today.  The government is now visibly fighting with the people.

Iran's Growing Revolution vs. the Democrat's Intervention

By Shamus Cooke

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16673

Global Research, December 28, 2009

On Sunday in Iran, mass protests were drowned in blood by government authorities; at least ten reportedly have been killed with hundreds injured.  The events have been given ample coverage in the U.S. media, with the intention of further demonizing Iran's repressive government. Absent in the American media are the deeper implications of the protests, which, to anyone paying close attention, constitute a powerful revolutionary movement. 

This movement has grown exponentially in a very short period of time.  Although only beginning in June over allegations of voter fraud, the movement is now endorsed by millions of combative Iranians, demanding “death to the dictator,” while they waive an Iranian flag that's missing the Muslim insignia.  Massive demonstrations in the streets and university campuses have directly confronted police repression and in some cases have overcome it.  The New York Times describes a scene found only in instances of revolution:

“There were scattered reports of police officers surrendering, or refusing to fight. Several videos posted on the Internet show officers holding up their helmets and walking away from the melee, as protesters pat them on the back in appreciation.  In one photograph, several police officers can be seen holding their arms up, and one of them wears a bright green headband, the signature color of the opposition movement.” (December 27, 2009).

The recent killing of protestors is likely to have the opposite of its intended effect:  protestors are likely to become even more demanding and radicalized.  After the shots were fired, thousands of demonstrators were heard yelling: “I'll kill, I'll kill those who killed my brothers.”  If the current Iranian government survives the revolutionary movement, it will do so only after a prolonged period of extreme domestic crisis and repression. 

The reaction of the U.S. government to the month's long events in Iran has been largely to ignore it.  After some initial comments in June, the White House has talked only about Iran's “nuclear ambitions,” minus one sentence in Obama's Orwellian Nobel Peace Prize speech, where he said: “We will bear witness to the hundreds of thousands marching in the streets of Iran.” 

Not only has the U.S. government not “born witness” to the people's struggle in Iran, the Democrats are working to undermine it.  U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced his intention to push forward potentially crippling U.S. sanctions against Iran's oil imports (Iran cannot refine all of the oil it needs, and must import 40 percent).  If realized, this action would amount to an act of war. 

The AFP reports: “The legislation, which includes sanctions that can be slapped on foreign companies with more than 20 million dollars of investments in Iran's energy sector, was approved by the Banking Committee at end of October.”  (December 25, 2009).

The effect of such an economic attack will be to assist Iran's current rulers, who will use the provocation to distract the public away from domestic issues, and focus instead on a powerful foreign enemy. 

But “liberals” in Washington are not only advocating economic acts of war, but also the direct military type.  A recent Op-Ed article in the New York Times was titled “There's Only One Way to Stop Iran.”  The author was more than blunt: 

“We have reached the point where air strikes are the only plausible option with any prospect of preventing Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons. Postponing military action merely provides Iran a window to expand, disperse and harden its nuclear facilities against attack. The sooner the United States takes action, the better.”  (December 24, 2009).

This essay is from the U.S.' most powerful “liberal” mainstream newspaper.

In the same article, the author writes about the consequences of a U.S. attack on the Iranian “opposition,” i.e., revolutionary movement.  He admits that such an attack would have dire consequences for the Iranian social movement, but says it would be “temporary.”    

It should be no surprise that Washington's “liberal” wing of the corporate establishment is getting in line behind a more aggressive approach to Iran, since the exact same thing happened on the war path to Iraq. 

Like Iraq, politicians are conjuring up nightmare scenarios to scare the American public into accepting an attack on Iran.   In fact, the exact same bogeymen are being used which justified the invasion of Iraq.  Iran, we are told, will give nuclear weapons to terrorists, just like Saddam was supposedly about to do.

Also like Iraq, there is zero evidence of nuclear weapons in Iran. Contrary to the accusations of Democrats and Republicans, the U.S. government's own National Intelligence Estimate of late 2007 stated that Iran had halted its entire nuclear weapons program in 2003 and had not re-started it as of 2007. 

U.N. inspectors inside of Iran have also reported zero evidence of nuclear weaponry. Likely, however, as in Iraq, false “intelligence” may be “uncovered” that could be used to justify an attack. 

Regardless of the many media-invented lies surrounding the situation in Iran, the real cause for intervention would be the same as Iraq:  oil and corporate profits in general. 

Like Iraq, Iran has lots of oil.  Also like Iraq, Iran has a large state sector that could be privatized as gifts for U.S. corporations.  Like Iraq, Iran is not a puppet of the United States, one of the few countries in the oil-rich Middle Easthanging on to their independence.    

This Iranian revolution, if successful, has profound implications for the Middle East and beyond.  The last Iranian revolution, in 1979, shook off the U.S.-installed puppet dictator and made Iran an independent country.  Unfortunately, the aspirations of the people were choked off by the Ayatollahs, who stopped the revolutionary movement in its tracks by murdering progressives by the thousands. 

Because the Middle East continues to be dominated by U.S. puppets or directly by the U.S. military, Iran's independence continues to be a source of inspiration for millions in the region.  Regrettably, the stunted outcome of the 1979 revolution is also viewed as a goal for many of these same people, who wrongly see a religious government as more just and equitable than what they currently experience under U.S. domination. 

The popular revolution in Iran is likely to come into conflict with not only Mullahs, but in addition, powerful corporations. The people will not be satisfied submitting to either, making this revolution inherently more radical than the “pro-democracy” label given by the U.S. government.  If Iran were to complete a revolution that made its goal to spend its oil wealth and other riches on the people, it would send an example that would rock the Middle East.  Any U.S. or Israeli intervention would be useless, which is precisely why they may try to abort the baby before it is born. 

Those in the United States involved in the anti-war movement must be aware of the unfolding events in Iran.  The people of Iran must be allowed to complete their revolution without U.S. intervention.  HANDS OFF IRAN!

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org).  He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com

Frozen in Time

I came across this recent item by Lee C. Gerhard who spells out the science on a point by point basis.  I have posted on most of this at one point or the other, but this lists the key points quite neatly.

Emphatically CO2 presently has nothing to do with global warming unless you are prepared to believe all the data is false.  He makes the same point that I made about the fact that recent cooling falsifies the original hypothesis as convincingly as possible.

The future reappearance of a little ice age is still one millennium away and perhaps by that time we will have reforested the Sahara, the Middle East and maybe Utah and environs.  That should keep the northern hemisphere a degree or more warmer.

The last two paragraphs underlines the invidious effect of a political agenda been applied to scientific research.  It is now clear why I was faced with a paucity of recent work on the pertinent data for something as simple as this blog.  It was been both hidden and dare I say it? Been suppressed!  Mercifully that has ended and fairly, though not totally grasped yet, so has the CO2 hypothesis.

When I wrote my first posts in 2007, I spelled out the risks and dangers involved in linking the two separate phenomena.  I was skeptical on linkage merely because the historical record showed it was not necessary for the moment and that we could well afford to wait until a better record emerged.  I never dreamed that the linkage theory would turn into the massive fiasco it has.

This list can be kept to hand for when someone attempts to resurrect the same shabby arguments again.  They are clear fact based hinges in the climate debate.  Ignoring them does not make them falsifiable.

I still find it astounding that a group of highly placed climate scientists chose to climb so far out on the proverbial limb when their historical data showed a full two degrees of variation.  Statistical risk alone should have prevented that.  Why did they gamble?

Frozen in Time

Dec 17, 2009

Fact-based climate debate

By Lee C. Gerhard, IPCC Expert Reviewer

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/new-and-cool/fact_based_climate_debate/

It is crucial that scientists are factually accurate when they do speak out, that they ignore media hype and maintain a clinical detachment from social or other agendas. There are facts and data that are ignored in the maelstrom of social and economic agendas swirling about Copenhagen.

Greenhouse gases and their effects are well-known. Here are some of things we know:

• The most effective greenhouse gas is water vapor, comprising approximately 95 percent of the total greenhouse effect.

• Carbon dioxide concentration has been continually rising for nearly 100 years. It continues to rise, but carbon dioxide concentrations at present are near the lowest in geologic history.

• Temperature change correlation with carbon dioxide levels is not statistically significant.

• There are no data that definitively relate carbon dioxide levels to temperature changes.

• The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide logarithmically declines with increasing concentration. At present levels, any additional carbon dioxide can have very little effect.

We also know a lot about Earth temperature changes:

• Global temperature changes naturally all of the time, in both directions and at many scales of intensity.

• The warmest year in the U.S. in the last century was 1934, not 1998. The U.S. has the best and most extensive temperature records in the world.

• Global temperature peaked in 1998 on the current 60-80 year cycle, and has been episodically declining ever since. This cooling absolutely falsifies claims that human carbon dioxide emissions are a controlling factor in Earth temperature.

• Voluminous historic records demonstrate the Medieval Climate Optimum (MCO) was real and that the “hockey stick” graphic that attempted to deny that fact was at best bad science. The MCO was considerably warmer than the end of the 20th century.

• During the last 100 years, temperature has both risen and fallen, including the present cooling. All the changes in temperature of the last 100 years are in normal historic ranges, both in absolute value and, most importantly, rate of change.

Contrary to many public statements:

• Effects of temperature change are absolutely independent of the cause of the temperature change.

• Global hurricane, cyclonic and major storm activity is near 30-year lows. Any increase in cost of damages by storms is a product of increasing population density in vulnerable areas such as along the shores and property value inflation, not due to any increase in frequency or severity of storms.

• Polar bears have survived and thrived over periods of extreme cold and extreme warmth over hundreds of thousands of years - extremes far in excess of modern temperature changes.

• The 2009 minimum Arctic ice extent was significantly larger than the previous two years. The 2009 Antarctic maximum ice extent was significantly above the 30-year average. There are only 30 years of records.

• Rate and magnitude of sea level changes observed during the last 100 years are within normal historical ranges. Current sea level rise is tiny and, at most, justifies a prediction of perhaps ten centimeters rise in this century.

The present climate debate is a classic conflict between data and computer programs. The computer programs are the source of concern over climate change and global warming, not the data. Data are measurements. Computer programs are artificial constructs.

Public announcements use a great deal of hyperbole and inflammatory language. For instance, the word “ever” is misused by media and in public pronouncements alike. It does not mean “in the last 20 years,” or “the last 70 years.” “Ever” means the last 4.5 billion years.

For example, some argue that the Arctic is melting, with the warmest-ever temperatures. One should ask, “How long is ever?” The answer is since 1979. And then ask, “Is it still warming?” The answer is unequivocally “No.” Earth temperatures are cooling. Similarly, the word “unprecedented” cannot be legitimately used to describe any climate change in the last 8,000 years.

There is not an unlimited supply of liquid fuels. At some point, sooner or later, global oil production will decline, and transportation costs will become insurmountable if we do not develop alternative energy sources. However, those alternative energy sources do not now exist.

A legislated reduction in energy use or significant increase in cost will severely harm the global economy and force a reduction in the standard of living in the United States. It is time we spent the research dollars to invent an order-of-magnitude better solar converter and an order-of-magnitude better battery. Once we learn how to store electrical energy, we can electrify transportation. But these are separate issues. Energy conversion is not related to climate change science.

I have been a reviewer of the last two IPCC reports, one of the several thousand scientists who purportedly are supporters of the IPCC view that humans control global temperature. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many of us try to bring better and more current science to the IPCC, but we usually fail. Recently we found out why. The whistleblower release of e-mails and files from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University has demonstrated scientific malfeasance and a sickening violation of scientific ethics.

If the game of Russian roulette with the environment that Adrian Melott contends is going on, is it how will we feed all the people when the cold of the inevitable Little Ice Age returns? It will return. We just don’t know when. Read more here.

Exponential Money

The writer makes an observation that is poorly understood in terms of our economic system.  Part of it is the ongoing drift in real money supply and the slow decline in purchasing power.  This is naturally driven be the also blind inability for participants in the economy to accept emotionally a lesser value in exchange for goods and services.  Thus assuming a fixed supply and demand, we still must accommodate a positive drift in money supply in any event.  Let us call it the human bias.

 

The second critical factor is the individual demand for currency of exchange.  Firstly, we will deal with natural individuals.  Their needs vary throughout their lives.  However at any given point a certain amount of exchange is necessary for their up keep.  It does have a beginning, middle and an end.  Then there is the unnatural individual and that includes corporations and governments who share similar characteristics.  Their activities had a beginning, middle but no effective end.

 

So while the world is finite, the demand for money supply is not obviously finite in the framework of having an end.

 

In practice, natural demand will not have maximized until every individual of Earth has a sustainable middle class lifestyle. We have a long way to go.  The suppliers of that lifestyle will also need to expand hugely until the entire population of Earth has optimized their life way.

 

So although it all looks shaky and exponential, it is not.  We are racing up the steep part of a global S curve that has presently placed a third of the global population into a comfortable life way.  The next third will be absorbed during the next generation and during the same period we will exit the oil business.

 

The remainder will be absorbed by the end of this century and during that period the growth will flatten out to ultimately reflect only the effect of human bias and real population growth.

 

Exponential Money in a Finite World

 

Posted Oct 20, 2009 by Chris Martenson

 

http://www.postcarbon.org/article/40417-exponential-money-in-a-finite-world

 

I recently attended and presented at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) conference in Denver.

 

The entire summary of everything I heard boils down to this:  We are already past peak oil.

 

I'll wait for a minute while that sinks in.

(…)

While the implications are enormous, seemingly incalculable and therefore ungraspable, I truly believe that understanding the impact this will have on our economy will illuminate the future for those who take the time to internalize the details.

One of my central contributions centers on the idea that it is our monetary system itself that is out of step with reality.  Everything else we see around us economically is merely a symptom, while the cause of our current and future ills is the dependence of our monetary system on perpetual exponential growth.  A profound and important set of conclusions immediately result from the acceptance of this argument.

While I spend a lot of time sifting through current data and trying to explain it, this is the primary scaffolding upon which I hang everything else and which drives my long-term views.

If I am right, this has enormous implications for our future prosperity and the trajectory of our current investments and other stores of wealth, especially those denominated in a defective currency.  And I am not just talking about the dollar here, but all debt-backed fiat currencies.

While at the ASPO conference, I had a strong urge to re-post the article below, as it concisely lays out my central thesis and it occurred to me that perhaps we should periodically revisit and discuss this topic.

If you really internalize this argument, which is admittedly difficult, because it means suspending an enormous range of internal beliefs and external confirmations, then you might find yourself unable to slip on your old spectacles and view the world of economics and money quite the same way again.

In the parlance of the movie The Matrix, this point of view represents a red pill; once taken, it's extraordinarily difficult to see things the old way.

My hope is that we can have a vigorous discussion here.  I am constantly looking for evidence to either bolster or refute this hypothesis.  Where is this wrong?  What could mitigate this argument, besides some miracle energy breakthrough?  Is there another way to view this?   Is it somehow possible for our money system to be tweaked into compliance with reality?

As always, higher style points are offered for comments that are fact-based and logical over arguments that are grounded in beliefs and opinions.

---

Exponential Money in a Finite World

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

~ Dr. Albert Bartlett

Within the next twenty years, the most profound changes in all of economic history will sweep the globe. The economic chaos and turbulence we are now experiencing are merely the opening salvos in what will prove to be a long, disruptive period of adjustment. Our choices now are to either evolve a new economic model that is compatible with limited physical resources, or to risk a catastrophic failure of our monetary system, and with it the basis for civilization as we know it today.

In order to understand why, we must start at the beginning. While it was operating well, our monetary system was a great system, one that fostered incredible technological innovation and advances in standards of living, two characteristics that I fervently wish to continue. But every system has its pros and its cons, and our monetary system has a doozy of a flaw.

It is this: Our monetary system must continually expand, forever.

The US/world monetary system was designed and implemented at a time when the earth’s resources seemed limitless, so few gave much critical thought to the implications that every single dollar in circulation was to be loaned into existence by a bank with interest. In fact, most thought it a terribly “modern” concept, and most probably still do.

But anything that is continually expanding by some percentage amount, no matter how minuscule, is said to be growing geometrically, or exponentially.

Geometric growth can be seen in this sequence of numbers (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64), while an arithmetic growth sequence is (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). In 1798, Thomas Malthus postulated that the human population’s geometric growth would, at some point, exceed the arithmetic returns of the earth, principally in the arena of food. To paraphrase, he recognized that the exponential growth of human numbers would meet with the constraints imposed by a finite world. As seen in the chart below, human population is growing exponentially, and is on track to reach 9.5 billion by 2050. To put this in perspective, it was only in 1960 that the world first passed 3 billion in total population, the same amount that is projected to be added over the next 42 years. Each new person places additional demands on food, water, energy, and other finite resources.

In parallel with exponential population growth, our monetary system is also exhibiting exponential behavior. Consider this evidence:

1) Money supply growth (see chart above). It took us from 1620 until 1973 to create the first $1trillion of US money stock (measured by adding up every bank account, CD, money market fund, etc). Every road, factory, bridge, school, and house built, together with every war fought and every other economic transaction that ever took place over those first 350 years, resulted in the creation of $1 trillion in money stock [1]. The most recent $1 trillion? That has been created in only 4.5 months. The dotted line in the chart is an idealized exponential curve, while the solid line is actual monetary data. The fit is nearly perfect (with a correlation of 0.98, for those interested). Data from the Federal Reserve.

2) Household debt has doubled in only 7 years, growing from seven to fourteen trillion dollars. Think about that for a minute. It is a stunning turn of events. Have household incomes also doubled in 7 years? No, not even close; they have grown less than half as much, calling into question how these loans will be repaid, let alone doubled again. Data from the Federal Reserve.

3) Total credit market debt (that’s all debt) had finally exceeded $5 trillion by 1975, but has recently increased by $5 trillion in just the past 2 years (from 2006 - 2008), and now stands at nearly $50 trillion. In order for the next twenty years to resemble the last twenty years, debt would have to expand by another 3 to 4 times, to somewhere between $150 trillion and $200 trillion. How likely do you think this is? Data from the Federal Reserve.

How do we make sense of money numbers this large and growing this fast? Why is this happening? Could it be that the US economy is so robust that it requires monetary and credit growth to double every 6-7 years? Are US households expecting a huge surge in wages, to be able to pay off all that debt? If not, then what’s going on? The key to understanding all three of the above money and debt charts was snuck in a few paragraphs ago; every single dollar in circulation is loaned into existence by a bank, with interest.

That little statement contains the entire mystery. As improbable as it may sound to you that all money is backed by debt, it is precisely correct, and while many of you are going to struggle with the concept, you’ll be in good company. John Kenneth Galbraith, the world-famous Harvard economist, said, “The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.” [2]

Here’s how money (and debt) creation works: Suppose we wipe the entire system clean and start over, so that we can more easily understand the process. Say you enter the first (and only) bank and receive the very first loan for $1000. At this point the bank has an asset (your loan) on the books, and you have $1000 in cash and a $1000 liability owed to the bank. After a month passes, and the first interest accrues, we peek into the system and observe that the $1000 in money still exists, but that your debt has grown by the size of the interest (let’s call that $10). Now your total debt to the bank is $1000 plus the $10 interest or $1010 in total.

Since there’s only $1000 floating around, and that’s all there is, clearly there’s not enough money to settle the whole debt. So where will the required $10 come from? In our system it must be loaned into existence, taking the form of $10 of new money plus $10 of new debt that must also be paid back with interest.

But if our system requires new and larger loans to enable the repayment of old loans, aren’t we actually just compounding the total amount of debt (and resulting money) with every passing year? Yes, that is precisely what is happening, and the three money/debt charts supplied above all provide confirmation of that dynamic.

In other words, our monetary system, and by extension our entire economy, are textbook examples of exponential systems. Yeast in a vat of sugar water, predator-free lemming populations, and algal blooms are natural examples of exponential growth. Plotted on graph paper, the lines tracking these populations start out slowly, begin to rise more quickly, and then, suddenly, shoot almost straight up, yielding a shape that resembles a hockey stick.

The key feature of exponential functions that our species desperately needs to understand is illustrated in this next example: [3]

Suppose I had a magic eyedropper that could dispense a drop of water with a most unusual trait – it will double in size every minute – and I place a drop of water in your hand. At first you’d just have a lonely drop of water sitting in your hand, but after one minute it would double in size, and after six minutes you’d have a blob of water that could fill a thimble. Do you have a sense of that growth? Now, follow me to Fenway Park, where I am going to place a drop from my magic eye dropper on the pitcher’s mound at 12:00 pm on January 1st of 2008. To make this interesting, let’s assume that the park is water-tight, and that I’ve handcuffed you to the highest row of bleacher seats. Way down there, on the mound, I bend over and plop a magic drop of water, so small you could not possibly see it from where you are sitting, and it begins to double. My question to you is, at what date and at what time would the park be completely filled? That is, how long do you have to escape from your handcuffs? Days? Weeks? Months? Years?

The answer is this: You have until 12:49 pm, on that same day, before the park is completely filled. You have only 49 minutes to escape your handcuffs. And at what time do you suppose that the park is still 97% empty space (and how many of you will appreciate the seriousness of your predicament)? The answer is that at 12:44 pm the park is still 97% unfilled. The first 44 minutes filled just 3% of the park, while the last 5 minutes filled the remaining 97%. From all of history until 1960 to reach a population of 3 billion humans; only 42 years from now to add another 3 billion.

And that’s why we need to appreciate exponential functions. For quite a while, everything seems just fine, and a few minutes later your park is overflowing. Time runs out in a hurry towards the end of any exponential growth system, forcing hurried decisions and limited options.

So how does this pertain to our economic problems, and why should you care? The truth is, there’s nothing inherently wrong with exponential growth, as long as you have unlimited room and resources. However, there are clear signs that several key resources on our planet are in their final minutes, to use our Fenway Park example.

And none of these are more important than crude oil. “Peak oil” is the global extension of the observation that individual oil fields, without exception, produce slightly more oil each year up to a point (“the peak”), after which they produce incrementally less and less oil each year, until their economics force abandonment. It is a fact that the US hit its peak of oil production in 1970 at approximately 10 million barrels a day and now produces barely more than 5 million barrels a day. It is now widely recognized that oil is a finite resource, and another cold, hard fact is that global oil discoveries peaked some 45 years ago. Because discoveries precede production (you’ve got to find it before you can pump it), we can be certain that production will peak too. We might disagree over the timing, but not the process.

I’m focusing on oil because energy drives an economy, not the other way around. The engine of any economy is energy, while money is merely the lubricating oil. Without energy, no amount of additional money would make the slightest difference in our lives. Economists love to say that higher oil prices will stimulate new oil production, as if demand could magically create supply. (Joke: If you lock three economists in a basement they won’t worry about starving, because they know their grumbling bellies will soon cause sandwiches to appear.) But just as there is no amount of additional price hikes that will cause more cod to come from the depleted oceans, oil fields will yield their treasures in accordance to geological limits, not human desire.

And here’s where the enormous monetary design flaw comes into the story. As Meadows, et al., in The Limits to Growth (1972) brilliantly predicted, we humans are now encountering physical, resource-constrained limits to our economic and population growth. So, on the one hand we have a monetary system that, by its very design, must expand exponentially in order to merely operate, while on the other hand we live on a spherical planet with finite resource limits.

When we started our exponential monetary system, initiated by the Bank of England around 1700 but kicked into high gear in 1971 with the international abandonment of gold settlement, nobody ever thought that the day would come when we’d find our ball park filled nearly to the brim. Who ever thought that oil production would hit a limit? Who knew that every acre of arable land, and then some, would someday be put into production? How could we possibly fish the seas empty? Yet all of these things have come to pass, and our monetary system demands that even more follow.

This is clearly an unsustainable arrangement. Someday soon, it will cease to be.

Repeating an opening sentence, our choices now are to either evolve a new economic model that is compatible with limited physical resources, or risk a catastrophic failure of our monetary system, and with it the basis for civilization as we know it today. I wish this collision between a finite planet and an exponential money system was far off in the future. Alas, it is certainly within the lifetime of people alive today, and likely already upon us.

We are leaving a legacy of debt to our children, born and unborn. Just as the direct printing of money favored by Wiemar Germany in the 1920s destroyed German’s purchasing power, so, too, does America’s debt accumulation promise to ruin our economy. Thus the moral argument beneath exponential growth in a finite context is:Should one generation consume beyond its means and either expect or hope that the next generations will somehow pick up the tab?

  

In summary, because our economic model and our entire system of money enforce a doctrine of limitless growth, they have become anachronisms incompatible with the well-being of the planet on which we live and depend. Our global money system might be complicated, and it might be sophisticated, but it is soon to be a vestige of the past.

Your job, your savings, your investments, and your future prospects and standard of living depend on the continuation of an unsustainable system now drawing to a close. You owe it to yourself to get ahead of the immense changes that are coming like water roiling up the steps towards the bleacher seat to which you are chained.

---

[1] Having trouble picturing a trillion? Think of it this way: If you had a single thousand-dollar bill, you could have a pretty good night on the town with your friends. If you had a stack of thousand dollar bills that was 4 inches high, you’d be a millionaire. If you had a stack just 40 inches high, you would be worth ten million dollars. How high would your stack have to be in order for you to be a trillionaire? The answer is, a solid stack of thousand dollar bills 68.9 miles high.

[2] If you need more help on this concept, please visit chapters 7 & 8 of my free, on-line Crash Course at http://chrismartenson.com/crashcourse.

[3] I gained a much deeper appreciation for the power of exponential functions from transcripts of speeches given by the mathematician Dr. Albert Bartlett. This link goes toan exceptional example of his ability to make this complex subject startlingly clear.

Reagan's Secret War

One thing that I always look forward to during the holidays is to read several books through at a leisurely pace and simple enjoy them.  Most times, I am simply not that patient.  Part of that is because far too many books are built on a simple premise that could be well presented in a much shorter form. Thus I will often quickly gut a given text and jump to the next item.

This time I picked up ‘Regan’s Secret War’ subtitled ‘the untold story of his fight to save the world from nuclear disaster’ written by Martin Anderson and Annelise Anderson.  It reveals through his writings and the day diary that he kept how fully engaged he was in managing relationships with the USSR.

Plenty of drivel has been written by his opponents about the idea that much of what he accomplished was accidental and the changes that took place were inevitable.  To the degree that was ever true, the fact is that he made it all happen on his watch rather than a generation later.  It is clear that he set out to break the Soviet Union.  He understood the enemy was at war and that he needed to ramp up the stakes.

Under his watch, he took a shaken and economically weakened USA, not unlike the present situation, restored the economic situation through tax reduction ala Laffer and began rebuilding the military.  He invented the SDI initiative purposely to confront the USSR on a battle field of defensive systems they could not counter.

These were simple changes and ideas.  However he drove them home and the cold war was terminated.

Remarkably, his argument for SDI (or star wars) continues to be even more valid today.  The threat is totalitarian states eager to gain a counter to eminent invasion by their neighbors in response to their abuses.  We have Iran, North Korea, and yes Pakistan who makes everyone nervous.   We still have inventories in India China, Russia and the USA.

Reagan’s objective was to persuade everyone to eliminate all such weapons.  We have forgotten that.  Restoring that priority would be very wise and would end the present nonsense.

The importance of SDI was central to any such scheme.

A workable strategy is to establish in orbit hunter packs of red hot space torpedoes.  Each pack would be networked to a command module able to resupply and release the torpedoes as needed.  A shell of such packs can be kept in orbit, able to cover all launch locales including oceans on a continuous 24/7 basis.  The torpedoes would carry a ballistic warhead with a minimal charge to possibly increase the kill diameter.

Any missile in launch mode lifting out of the lower atmosphere carrying a warhead is slow.  An incoming torpedo is traveling at thousands of miles per hour and cannot go too deep before burning up, yet it does not have too.  It merely needs to intercept and hit the missile to destroy it.

The fundamental technical problem was damping the vibration of the torpedo’s sensors.  The torpedo had to be able to remain locked on the target.  The problem was solved a long time ago with a robust magnetic suspension system.  That is why present missile defenses have become surprisingly good.

Extending this to a space borne torpedo pack regime would make a nuclear launch obsolete.

Reagan wanted the SDI system, not so much as a response to the USSR, though that too, but as an answer to every whacko out there.  Today he looks prescient.

The Island of the Seven Cities

Another book that has my attention this Christmas is ‘The Island of the Seven Cities’ by Paul Chiasson.  He has built up the evidence and argument for Cape Breton Island been that legendary island that figured heavily at the very beginnings of the European discovery of the Americas.

He reports on his discovery of one such town on Cape Dauphin and picks up on additional evidence for other locales toward the end.  He gained significant publicity when he presented at the Smithsonian in 2005 and also some coverage since.  It appears that several towns were built primarily to exploit gold occurrences on the island by Chinese operators at least during part of the fifteenth century.

This is presently highly controversial but competent archeology will certainly shake out the truth.  The extent of the operations suggests a large labor force and possibly a sustained period of exploitation.  Also the finite nature of gold mining activity strongly suggests that as the resource was mined out, that the settlers merely packed up and went home.

Chinese exploration may have ended with Zheng He , but long initiated operations were self contained and unlikely to just shut down while there was gold to bring back to the Emperor.  The treasure fleet may well have been broken up but merchant ships could still make the trip.  We also have evidence of shipbuilding capacity at the towns.

The work force was large, so extraction of easily accessible alluvial gold would have been completed within a couple of generations.  In short, it was a planned industrial mining operation.  If it was discovered by Zheng He then the turn around would have been immediate because the new Emperor had ended exploration and ordered the ships destroyed.  What better way than to launch a mining expedition?

In such a case, the swift building of full communities, apparently fully fortified is not too surprising.  That they then operated as long as the gold lasted is a natural expectation as everyone returning home would be well staked.   My guess, if John Cabot’s report is correct, is that operations lasted to 1497 at least.  I also think that they packed up and left shortly thereafter.  

Portuguese fishermen and others were invading the offshore fishery and quickly developing the capacity to slave out the communities and this would have driven protection costs sky high.  Recall that for the next century, there were two sources of revenue available to seamen.   The easy one and the main business was salted and dried cod for the European market.  The other was slaving out coastal communities of natives for resale in Lisbon.  That is the main reason the Eastern Seaboard was depopulated by the early seventeenth century when colonization began.  

In fact Eastern North America continued to be slaved out even into the eighteenth century.  I am no longer convinced that disease was anywhere near the factor claimed in most histories.  A healthy woman can produce a dozen children so long as the crops can be brought in.  This only becomes impossible if the able bodied men and women are grabbed and sold into the slave islands of the Caribbean. 

The effect is very easy to underestimate.  At any time, a community of 200 has less than a third as able bodied men able to participate in war.  Capturing half those in a season which is about thirty men is recoverable in several years.  Yet the community is weakened and unable to withstand a similar attack the next year.  From this it can be seen that even moderate slaving for transportable slaves will swiftly collapse populations.

My point is that even moderate pressure exerted over a century will sooner or later induce a collapse of organized societies.

A Million Alien Crawfish

I am not nearly so exercised as some over the advent of so called alien species into new ecological niches.  It should be avoided, but once in motion there is little to be done.  This is certainly a case of just that.

My major regret over zebra mussels is that they are all so small.  However, birds are figuring out how to eat them and they have single handedly cleaned up the Great Lakes.  That tells us that an unfilled niche existed.  Now the question is why are Asian Carp doing so well?

Asian Carp is a major source of protein in Asia.  It is now in position to be the same here.  Most of the protein can even be fed to livestock.

I have thought for sometime that the crayfish was an underutilized source of protein for human consumption.  Outside of the South, no one has really tried to use them.  Yet they are fresh water lobster.

They are easily trapped and even farmed and this article shows how large the populations are.  It should be easy to produce clean product and preparation is similar.  The meat is in the tails and the rest produces an excellent stock.  They are no different than shrimp.

Obviously Loch Ken should produce top quality crayfish.  In fact we are looking at possibly tons of commercially valuable product.

I wonder how easy it would be to fish crayfish in Lake Superior.  The truth is that we have never developed the market.  Folks say they are not as good as shrimp, but that may be a side effect of harvesting.  Cold water crayfish are bound to be better than warm water crayfish.  Some one needs to set simple traps and build up a business supplying restaurants to get the business happening.  It may be possible to maintain quality year round.

More than a million 'alien' crayfish caught in loch

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/south_of_scotland/8426824.stm

A project to capture American signal crayfish on a Scottish loch has caught more than a million of the creatures.

The pilot scheme at Loch Ken in Dumfries and Galloway was part of research into the impact the non-native species was having on marine life.

The Scottish government financed the project, which started in the summer and ended in October.

The signal crayfish has been blamed for eating young fish and destroying their habitat.

A business case is now being prepared to seek further funding to undertake a three-year study in the loch, which will involve more trapping.

First recorded

However, according to a report by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, it is unlikely that all the creatures can be removed by trapping.

In the longer-term the focus will be on reducing their numbers to a manageable level.

The signal crayfish was introduced to waters in England and Wales through fish farms about 20 years ago.

In Scotland, they were first recorded in the catchment of the River Dee in Kirkcudbrightshire in 1995.

Since then, specimens have been found in Scottish ponds, rivers and lochs as far north as Inverness-shire.