Written by fatih al-farahat in


Cancer Might be Cured





Reading this article one must read between the lines.  The authors are working overtime to not raise expectations.  Yet we are describing a mechanical system that impacts tumors specifically in a way that allows a whole body attack without impacting much else.

 

The method appears likely to work on most major tumors.  In fact we immediately narrow ourselves down to cancers of the liver and spleen only as problematic and perhaps leukemia.  Any tumor needing a blood supply is completely vulnerable.

 

Mouse tests worked completely.

 

A range of strategies and protocols are discussed but all are secondary to the principal discovery.  We can inject gold nanorods into the bloodstream, wait a few hours and then successfully induce warming in localized tumors.  We likely cannot get away with a full body scan while we are at it but this is more than good enough.  Objectively, a workable protocol can be designed plausibly for all cancers.

 

I do not see the long development cycle been maintained for this therapy.  The metal itself has a long history of human usage.  The various coatings will have solid histories also.  Then it will be applied first to terminal patients.  After which the ethical burden switches to the other side of the argument.

 

After all, if thirty terminal lung cancer patients are outright cured, it is obscene to withhold treatment of the thousands dying from the disease.

 

Besides, why would you not try this method before surgery or chemotherapy?  They are both clearly harmful in application while this method is most likely not harmful in the least.

 

We have a completely new mechanical method of surgical removal of cancerous cells.  If we are lucky, it will take out all colonies of daughter cells also.  Most likely, it will reduce populations well below what is necessary for a supported immune system needs to finish the job.

 

In my opinion, if we cannot beat cancer with this magic bullet, then we are hopeless.  At worst, we will have to work at it in some cases.  Best is that there is no biological sidestep to a mechanical solution as has been shown on almost every biochemical method ever applied.  We may have actually won the war on cancer with this simple trick.

 

 

Targeting tumors using tiny gold particles

Gold nanorods could detect, treat cancer
Anne Trafton, MIT News Office

October 27, 2009

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/gold-cancer-0504.html

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice//images/article_images/20091221170432-0.jpg


MIT researchers developed these gold nanorods that absorb energy from near-infrared light and emit it as heat, destroying cancer cells.
Photo / Sangeeta Bhatia Laboratory; MIT

May 4, 2009

It has long been known that heat is an effective weapon against tumor cells. However, it's difficult to heat patients' tumors without damaging nearby tissues.


Now, MIT researchers have developed tiny gold particles that can home in on tumors, and then, by absorbing energy from near-infrared light and emitting it as heat, destroy tumors with minimal side effects.


Such particles, known as gold nanorods, could diagnose as well as treat tumors, says MIT graduate student Geoffrey von Maltzahn, who developed the tumor-homing particles with Sangeeta Bhatia, professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a member of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.


Von Maltzahn and Bhatia describe their gold nanorods in two papers recently published in Cancer Research and Advanced Materials. In March, von Maltzahn won the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, in part for his work with the nanorods.


Cancer affects about seven million people worldwide, and that number is projected to grow to 15 million by 2020. Most of those patients are treated with chemotherapy and/or radiation, which are often effective but can have debilitating side effects because it's difficult to target tumor tissue.


With chemotherapy treatment, 99 percent of drugs administered typically don't reach the tumor, said von Maltzahn. In contrast, the gold nanorods can specifically focus heat on tumors.




"This class of particles provides the most efficient method of specifically depositing energy in tumors," he said.


Wiping out tumors

Gold nanoparticles can absorb different frequencies of light, depending on their shape. Rod-shaped particles, such as those used by von Maltzahn and Bhatia, absorb light at near-infrared frequency; this light heats the rods but passes harmlessly through human tissue.


In a study reported in the team's Cancer Research paper, tumors in mice that received an intravenous injection of nanorods plus near-infrared laser treatment disappeared within 15 days. Those mice survived for three months with no evidence of reoccurrence, until the end of the study, while mice that received no treatment or only the nanorods or laser, did not.


Once the nanorods are injected, they disperse uniformly throughout the bloodstream. Bhatia's team developed a polymer coating for the particles that allows them to survive in the bloodstream longer than any other gold nanoparticles (the half-life is greater than 17 hours).


In designing the particles, the researchers took advantage of the fact that blood vessels located near tumors have tiny pores just large enough for the nanorods to enter. Nanorods accumulate in the tumors, and within three days, the liver and spleen clear any that don't reach the tumor.


During a single exposure to a near-infrared laser, the nanorods heat up to 70 degree Celsius, hot enough to kill tumor cells. Additionally, heating them to a lower temperature weakens tumor cells enough to enhance the effectiveness of existing chemotherapy treatments, raising the possibility of using the nanorods as a supplement to those treatments.


The nanorods could also be used to kill tumor cells left behind after surgery. The nanorods can be more than 1,000 times more precise than a surgeon's scalpel, says von Maltzahn, so they could potentially remove residual cells the surgeon can't get.


Finding tumors

The nanorods' homing abilities also make them a promising tool for diagnosing tumors. After the particles are injected, they can be imaged using a technique known as Raman scattering. Any tissue that lights up, other than the liver or spleen, could harbor an invasive tumor.


In the Advanced Materials paper, the researchers showed they could enhance the nanorods' imaging abilities by adding molecules that absorb near-infrared light to their surface. Because of this surface-enhanced Raman scattering, very low concentrations of nanorods - to only a few parts per trillion in water [gf1]- can be detected.


Another advantage of the nanorods is that by coating them with different types of light-scattering molecules, they can be designed to simultaneously gather multiple types of information - not only whether there is a tumor, but whether it is at risk of invading other tissues, whether it's a primary or secondary tumor, or where it originated.


Bhatia and von Maltzahn are looking into commercializing the technology. Before the gold nanorods can be used in humans, they must undergo clinical trials and be approved by the FDA, which von Maltzahn says will be a multi-year process.


Other authors of the Advanced Materials paper are Andrea Centrone, postdoctoral associate in chemical engineering; Renuka Ramanathan, undergraduate in biological engineering; Alan Hatton, the Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering; and Michael Sailor and Ji-Ho Park of the University of California at San Diego.


Park and Sailor are also authors of the Cancer Research paper, along with Amit Agrawal, former postdoctoral associate in HST; and Nanda Kishor Bandaru and Sarit Das of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.


The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Whitaker Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Nanopartz Inc. supplied gold nanoparticles, gold nanowires and the precursor gold nanorods used in this work.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 6, 2009 (download PDF).

Written by fatih al-farahat in


Cape Breton Gold






I finished of the book on the remarkable apparent presence of decades long Chinese presence in Cape Breton during the fifteenth century.  It is possible that the exploration fleet of Zheng He made land fall during his voyage of exploration that penetrated the Atlantic.

The currents leading north from the southern tip of Africa pass through the equatorial zone and into the Gulf Stream.  Merely going with northerly tending currents culminates with a final land fall on Cape Breton.  Because Europeans were attempting to cross these currents, they were forced to follow far less obvious routes.

What finally mattered though was the immediate discovery of alluvial gold in beach sands at possibly several locales on the island.  That alone would have justified creating a major presence immediately on the island and this was well within the capacity of the fleet.  They also had easy access to coal for fuel that they understood and it appears that they also located sufficient iron to support an iron works of some sort.

The traditional history associates the island with the establishment of seven towns, likely holding populations each of several hundred.  Although we are still at the very beginning of archeological work, there is evidence of fields.  However, the abundant sea life here could easily have supplied ample dried fish protein with assistance from the native population.

It is also observed that the Micmac Indians exhibited an advanced knowledge base, language and script on contact with Europeans that was never satisfactorily explained.  It is reasonable that the Chinese communities extended education to the Micmac young.

It is noteworthy that the building ruins observed to date was labor intense.  This is also necessary in order to exploit alluvial gold properly.  Thus the gold would be mined during the summer months, while the off season allowed for the building of the typical walled Chinese towns.

The island of the seven cities was secure and an excellent self sustaining base for an ongoing mapping initiative of the Atlantic.

I suspect the fact that it returned gold each season to the Emperor of China postponed its premature suspension until the gold itself ran out at the end of the fifteenth century.

It is noteworthy that Chinese alluvial miners were highly regarded in gold rush days as the most diligent gleaners of gold in placer operations.  Thus I am unsurprised that no present day alluvial gold is readily apparent in the same waters.  The gold will be there but it will be below easy access by hand miners.  Currents and wind will have buried such since then.

We have expanded on the conjecture made by Paul Chaisson.  I observe that at present the response on the internet to his work is rather modest.  A few noisy naysayers are making themselves heard and several local archeologists made a walk about and argued against the conjecture.

Opinion is wonderful but evidence from well planned excavation is often convincing.  I used to show budding mining professionals that many Canadian mines are located on roads and highways that preceded the actual discovery.  The reason for this is that understanding was possible only after many professional eyeballs had looked at the evidence and worked on the site. 

This site is encouraging and the cultural record of seven cities from the absolute beginning of European exploration is strongly encouraging.  So far we have a handful of folks who have done reconnaissance.  Paul reports a couple of Ming burial sites and these are prime.  The platforms were a site leveling technique that left only themselves and must remain suggestive until actual cultural evidence is excavated.  Known graves and apparent foundries are much better.

A mining operation that established at least one principal operation and half dozen secondary towns on specific mine locales was in contact with their homeland.  It is reasonable that pottery was used and broken over perhaps seventy years at the main locale and likely a lot less at the secondary locales.  It is not likely that it was hauled down to the beach and thrown in the ocean.  We simply have not located any waste tips as yet for what will turn out to be a small community.

The site needs to be carefully mapped with attention to the possible living quarters.  Again this has hardly happened as yet.  Occupation was quite brief as is typical of mining projects.  The build up of debris was thus a lot less than might be expected.  Also most everything has been covered with centuries of moss which is difficult to interpret without a lot of spade work.

Written by fatih al-farahat in


Expanding SETI Search






I must admit that I am not an optimist when it comes to the search for alien space signals.  I just think that all such signaling would trend to precision and minimal energy output.  We are certainly tamping back our own emissions as time passes and finding better ways to do things.

Besides, the probability of major system losses for exposed electrical devices is not understood by the public at all. This risk is been presently ignored by most agencies except partly by the military.  Simply put, a solar flare can produce a huge EMP pulse, as can a high altitude nuclear bomb and this can fry all electrical devices not enclosed in a Faraday cage.

We are presently doomed to receive one lesson with millions dead as a result.  After that we will convert to pure optical systems as much as possible and Faraday cage protected equipment.  It is a costly program, but our new superconducting power cables and a lot of high power systems are already operating in this mode as they simply have no choice.  It needs to be brought down to the household level.

The simple expedient of producing all power cables with a thin conducting sheath would solve most of the problem over time.  It will not save the toaster but it allows us to save the house.

Thus it is likely that an advanced civilization will be well shielded and radio based transmission actually minimized over time.

A combination of Faraday cages and information transfer by optical cable is completely feasible for us today.  The result would be complete radio silence for planet Earth and that is our likeliest future.

 

Search for extraterrestrial life is growing

Marc Kaufman, Washington Post
Sunday, December 27, 2009


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/27/MN0R1B7LBC.DTL


(12-27) 04:00 PST Hat Creek, -- Shasta County - The wide dishes, 20 feet across and raised high on their pedestals, creaked and groaned as the winds from an approaching snowstorm pushed into this highland valley. Forty-two in all, the radio telescopes laid out in view of some of California's tallest mountains look otherworldly, and now their sounds conjured up visions of deep-space denizens as well.


The instruments, the initial phase of the planned 350-dish Allen Telescope Array, are designed to systematically scan the skies for radio signals sent by advanced civilizations from distant star systems and planets. Fifty years after it began - and 18 years since Congress voted to strip taxpayer money from the effort - the nation's search for extraterrestrial intelligence is alive and growing.


"I think there's been a real sea change in how the public views life in the universe and the search for intelligent life," said Jill Tarter, a founder of the nonprofit SETI Institute and the person on whom Carl Sagan's book "Contact," and the movie that followed, were loosely based.
"We're finding new extra-solar planets every week," she said. "We now know microbes can live in extreme environments on Earth thought to be impossible for life not very long ago, and so many more things seem possible in terms of life beyond Earth."


The Hat Creek array, which began operation two years ago, is a joint project of the SETI Institute and the nearby radio astronomy laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley. Made possible by an almost $25 million donation from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the array is unique and on the cutting edge of radio astronomy. SETI and Berkeley share both the facility, 290 miles northeast of San Francisco, and all the data it collects.


The dishes also represent a coming of age for SETI Institute enthusiasts and its sometimes hailed, sometimes ridiculed mission. While their effort was long associated with UFOs, overexcited researchers and little green men, it is now broadly embraced as important and rigorous science, and astronomers and astrobiologists in an increasing number of nations have become involved in parallel efforts.


"This is legitimate science, and there's a great deal of public interest in it," said Alan Stern, a former assistant administrator at NASA who, in 2007, decided that proposals for extraterrestrial search programs should not be banned from the agency, as they had been since the early 1990s. The National Science Foundation had come to a similar decision a few years before.


"It was not a big or difficult decision to change the policy," said Stern, who invited Tarter in to describe her program to NASA officials. "The technology and science had advanced, and so it made no sense to block applications."


Limited search programs for intelligent extraterrestrials in the 1970s and 1980s abruptly lost their federal funding in 1992, after NASA proposed a greater effort. Former Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., led the charge in Congress, telling the Senate at one point: "The Great Martian Chase may finally come to an end. As of today, millions have been spent and we have yet to bag a single little green fellow. Not a single Martian has said, 'Take me to your leader,' and not a single flying saucer has applied for FAA approval."


The funding was eliminated, even though SETI listens for radio signals from distant planets and has nothing to do with Mars or with a supposed search for flying saucers or other space oddities.


But when NASA informed Congress that it was going to allow SETI to once again compete for funds, there were no objections, Stern said. Rita Colwell, who was director of the National Science Foundation when it approved a small-scale SETI Institute proposal in 2004, said several prominent astronomers endorsed the group, saying that the institute had become an important player in the field of radio astronomy.


Still, search activity by the institute and others is often criticized for its lack of results. It has been 50 years since astronomer Frank Drake first used a radio antenna at the Green Bank National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia to listen for extraterrestrial signals, and so far no messages have been detected and confirmed. UCLA physicist and astronomer Ben Zuckerman often lectures on what he considers the overly optimistic predictions of search advocates, and he argues that if the Milky Way were home to technologically advanced civilizations we would know it by now. "I think very strong arguments can be brought to bear that the number of technological civilizations in the galaxy is one - us," he said.


Although disappointing to scientists searching for intelligent life beyond Earth, the absence of contact is something they consider far from surprising. As Tarter described the effort, the number of star systems studied so far for possible communications is minuscule compared with the number of stars in the sky - on the same scale as if a person searched for a fish in the Earth's combined oceans by drawing out a single cup of water.


"The chances of finding a fish in that one cup are obviously very small," she said. As she and others often point out, astronomers think the universe contains something on the order of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars and, given the discovery so far of more than 400 extra-solar planets, it is generally assumed that billions or trillions more are orbiting in distant systems.


What's more, it remains far from certain that listening for radio signals is the right approach. Radio is a relatively primitive form of communication, and advanced civilizations could be sending signals in many different ways. Given that possibility, astronomers have begun using optical telescopes to search for nanosecond laser blips and beeps that might be coming our way.


A Harvard-Princeton University collaboration has resulted in some of the most sophisticated optical searches, and the effort now has worldwide appeal. In November, for instance, a group of 30 optical and radio observatories and amateur astronomers dedicated two nights to simultaneously viewing one particular star system in search of radio signals or laser pulses. The effort, led by Shin-ya Narusawa of the Nishi-Harima Observatory in southern Japan, targeted a system described in 1993 by Sagan and Paul Horowitz (leader of the optical search team at Harvard) as potentially habitable.


"In Japan, our telescopes are all open to the regular people, and when they come in we want to know what are their big interests in astronomy," Narusawa said during the nighttime observation. "The top two are these: Is there an end, a border, to the universe? And is there life, especially intelligent life, anywhere other than Earth?"


Narusawa said he hoped to cooperate with the SETI Institute in the future, as well as with more fledgling SETI programs in South Korea and Australia.
Read more:

 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/27/MN0R1B7LBC.DTL#ixzz0b6IXoRLO

Written by fatih al-farahat in


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

Written by fatih al-farahat in


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


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.

Written by fatih al-farahat in


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.