Earth Intelligence – Page 176 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/11/15

SchwartzReport: Larry Dossey on ONE MIND – How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters

Here is an excellent essay by SR reader, author, and, physician Larry Dossey. I am happy to publish it because it reflects my own views. I encourage you to get Larry's new book: One Mind.

7 Billion Minds, or One?
LARRY DOSSEY, MD – The Huffington Post

Source: ONE MIND: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters by Larry Dossey, MD. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House; 2013

“I felt there was no separation between anything. I felt as if I were united with everything, and it was wonderful!” This recent report from a reader is a universal experience of people who are concerned with psychological and spiritual growth. This sense of connectedness is not fantasy, but is being affirmed by recent advances in consciousness research.

But where our mind is concerned, we've been more concerned with disunity than unity. During the 20th century we took the mind apart — the conscious, the unconscious, the pre- and sub-conscious, the collective unconscious, the superego, ego, id, and so on. When we look through the other end of the telescope, however, we can see a different pattern. We can make out what I call the One Mind — not a subdivision of consciousness, but the overarching, inclusive dimension to which all the mental components of all individual minds, past, present, and future belong. I capitalize the One Mind to distinguish it from the single, one mind that each individual appears to possess.

This is not a philosophical gambit, but is based on human experience and actual scientific experiments. Consider studies in which human neurons are separated into two batches and sealed in so-called Faraday containers that block physical communication. When one batch is stimulated with a laser, the distant batch of neurons registers the same changes at the same time.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Larry Dossey on ONE MIND – How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters”

2013/11/13

SmartPlanet: Staggering Costs of Fukushima Clean Up (Never Mind Toxicity Blowing East) + Fukushima RECAP

03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude

The staggering costs to clean up Fukushima

More than two years since the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, the Fukushima power plant meltdown is still a major, global environmental problem. And the staggering price tag for cleaning it up continues to rise.

The Japanese government just announced that it’s borrowing about $30 billion more to cover costs related to Fukushima, bringing the total amount the Japanese government has borrowed to clean up the mess to around $80 billion, more than three times the amount BP spent to clean up the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. That money will go into cleanup, along with compensation for the people who may never go back to their homes near the contaminated area, and the decommissioning of the nuclear reactors. But it’s not money that the government is on the hook for, Reuters reports:

Tokyo Electric Power, or Tepco, the owner of the Fukushima plant, remains responsible for covering the costs of compensation and paying to clean up the surrounding areas under a framework set by the previous government.

But the government has issued bonds to pay the related costs up front. The embattled utility remains on the hook for paying back the money spent to the government over a period of decades under current arrangements.

But it should hardly come as a surprise that the cleanup is proving so costly. Independent estimates put the total economic cost of the disaster at $250-$500 billion. Tepco has said it will need $137 billion to cover costs related to Fukushima. And if Chernobyl is any indication, the costs will likely continue for decades to come. And the real issue might not even be the cleanup costs or health concerns, but the fact that a large, productive area of land (of which Japan doesn’t have much to begin with) is now essentially useless and will be for many years, decades, or possibly centuries to come.

Fortunately, in the shadow of Fukushima, there is some good news. Just about 12 miles off the coast of the Fukushima prefecture, a symbolic floating wind turbine switched on for the first time on Monday. The turbine alone will send 2,000 kilowatts to Tohoku Electric Power Co. It’s a small step in the country’s push toward more renewable power, but the wind farm is expected to eventually have 143 turbines with a generating capacity of one gigawatt. But it’s just one of the ways Japan looking to make up for the lost energy production from its nuclear reactors, which accounted for about 30 percent Japan’s electricity capacity.

Continue reading “SmartPlanet: Staggering Costs of Fukushima Clean Up (Never Mind Toxicity Blowing East) + Fukushima RECAP”

2013/11/122013/11/12

SmartPlanet: Saltwater-Cooled Greenhouse Grows Crops in the Sahara

01 Agriculture, 05 Energy, Earth Intelligence

Saltwater-cooled greenhouse grows crops in the Sahara

How do you grow vegetables in arid areas? Reverse the trend of desertification, the Sahara Forest Project proposes.

The project combines existing technologies — such as the evaporation of saltwater to create fresh water along with solar thermal energy tech — to utilize what we have (saltwater, CO2) to produce what we need (food, fresh water and energy).

This week, the project, which is supported by fertilizer companies, reached a milestone. Its Qatar pilot plant produced 75 kilograms of crops (like cucumbers) per square meter annually while consuming only sunlight and seawater, Science reports. That’s comparable to commercial farms in Europe.

At the center of the project is a saltwater-cooled greenhouse, Science explains:

At one end, salt water is trickled over a gridlike curtain so that the prevailing wind blows the resulting cool, moist air over the plants inside. This cooling effect allowed the Qatar facility to grow three crops per year, even in the scorching summer. At the other end of the greenhouse is a network of pipes with cold seawater running through them. Some of the moisture in the air condenses on the pipes and is collected, providing a source of fresh water.

One surprising side effect is how the cool, moist air that was leaking out encouraged plants to grow spontaneously outside. By reducing exterior air temperatures with “evaporator hedges” (pictured), the plant was able to grow crops like barley and salad rocket (arugula), along with useful desert plants around the seawater greenhouse.

Another key element of the facility is the concentrated solar power plant:

This uses mirrors in the shape of a parabolic trough to heat a fluid flowing through a pipe at its focus. The heated fluid then boils water, and the steam drives a turbine to generate power. Hence, the plant has electricity to run its control systems and pumps and can use any excess to desalinate water for irrigating the plants.

“The big question is economic feasibility,” says Richard Tutwiler at the American University in Cairo. “How much did it cost to produce 75 kg of cucumbers per square meter?”

The project has also experimented with culturing heat-tolerant algae, growing salt-tolerant grasses for fodder or biofuel, and evaporating the concentrated saline the plant emits to produce salt, Science reports.

The Qatar plant is 1 hectare with 600 square meters of growing area inside. Next up: a 20-hectare test facility near Aqaba, Jordan.

[Via Science]

Images: Sahara Forest Project

2013/11/11

Sepp Hasslberger: One Planet One Engine

05 Energy, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

The Cyclone Engine; USES ANY FUEL with NO ENGINE MODIFICATIONS

After last weeks story on the Raphial Morgado and MYT™ Engine I Thought I would do a series on other innovative engine technologies. The Cyclone engine may only have average fuel efficiency, but does have many advantages over conventional engine technology. These include reducing emissions, and the ability to run on any type of fuel without any modifications, It can be converted to a heat engine harvesting waste heat.

To date, Cyclone has over 1,000 hours of running (on fuel!) and testing of the engines, They have achieved verified thermal efficiencies above 30%, and is very close to putting the first of these engine models into small-scale commercial production.

Popular Science magazine named the clean, green Cyclone Engine as the 2008 Invention of the Year. the engine’s inventor and company CEO, Harry Schoell has followed a path that would be a good example for many investors and researchers. “In less than a few years he has systematically undertaken the development and building of a company in a very professional way. i am not endorsing the technology but the processes of how to take something from the drawing board to market. There is still a ways to go, but progress is being made as will be illustrated in the following press release.

Read full article (technical details and more).

2013/11/09

SchwartzReport: Truths That Matter

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

This is excellent news. The cost of solar is coming down like a skier on a slope. If we took the same money we have willingly been spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, to no good purpose whatever, and put it to work converting the entire country off of carbon energy, we would create enormous prosperity. Unemployment would drop to 3-4%. Every energy conversion — animals and wind to coal, coal to petroleum — has created enormous wealth from the top down. We should be embracing this transformation not resisting it. And that's without even considering the effect on climate change. The struggle is not going to be technological, but how old forms die.

First Solar Reports Largest Quarterly Decline In CdTe Module Cost Per-Watt Since 2007
Clean Technica

Click through and look at the geographical distribution of poverty in the U.S. You will see on the maps that persistent poverty exists overwhelmingly in Red value states. I think this is happening because the white minority has made their retaining power their first priority, easily trumping social wellness. These are also the most violent, and the most religious states. They are controlled by the Caucasian Theocratic Ri! ght. The failure of the Right's social policies is glaringly obvious by any social measure one chooses. Why is almost no one talking about this?

Geography of Poverty
USDA Economic Research Service

This is the latest on the Prison Privatization trend showing how it is creating the New American Slavery. I find it amazing that this is going on, and nobody talks about it. Two years ago when I first really saw this trend, and wrote about it, I thought people would be outraged. (See: The New American Slavery. http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2811%2900043-7/fulltext)! . They aren't however, and 2.4 million men and women are in prison. Change has been very hard.

Non-Violent Offenders Fill Jails in Prison Nation’s Worst State: Louisiana
STEVEN ROSENFELD – AlterNet (U.S.)

Once again: Water is destiny. This excellent report spells out just what we face. Click through to see the charts and maps.

No Water, No Life
VL BAKER – Daily Kos

2013/11/072013/11/07

Eagle: Hans Rosling on Chimps Knowing More than Humans About the World…

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

We do not make this stuff up!

Hans Rosling: How much do you know about the world?

The world may have many problems, from climate change to armed conflict, natural disasters, poverty and the oppression of women and minorities – but where does population growth fit into this catalogue of woes?

With the population of the world at seven billion and rising, many fear a shortage of resources as well as a shortage of space. Swedish professor Hans Rosling, however, says it's time for a reality check.

When pollsters got 1,000 British people to take Rosling's “ignorance survey” in May this year, the results suggested they knew “less about the world than chimpanzees”, he says.

Take a version of the test in this quiz, compare your results with the British respondents', then read Hans Rosling's five reasons the world is in better shape than we think.

. . . . . . . .

The fact that humans do worse than chimps shows the problem is not a lack of knowledge, but the result of having preconceived ideas, Rosling says – ideas that are years, or sometimes decades out of date.

“What is particularly striking is that those with a university education did not do better – if anything worse – than everyone else,” he says.

Rosling infers from this that most people are ignorant about the profound ways the world is changing, “often for the better”.

Read full article with survey questions and results.

2013/11/072013/11/07

Neal Rauhauser: Greater Irans Greatest Problem — US Fumbling with Geo-Political Terrain It Does Not Understand…

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Greater Iran’s Greatest Problem

The current political boundaries of the Islamic Republic are a fraction of what the Persian empire was at it’s peak. This map of Scythia & Parthia shows what have been fairly stable boundaries for Iranian culture – from the Tigris river in the west to the Indus in the east.

Geographically this area is known as the Persian or Iranian Plateau

The current nations within Greater Iran’s territory include Georgia, Armenia, Azerbijan, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikstan, Afghanistan, and portions of Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and the Uighur portion of China.

This area is not a contiguous plateau, but it’s all elevated, often rugged, and it lays between Anatolia to the west and the Hindu Kush to the east. I have previously written about Anatolia’s water problems in Losing The Euphrates.

This article, Iran Becoming Uninhabitable, contained this stark quote from a former agriculture minister.

Kalantari said that the “deserts in Iran are spreading, and I am warning you that South Alborz and East Zagros will be uninhabitable and people will have to migrate. But where? Easily I can say that of the 75 million people in Iran, 45 million will have uncertain circumstances.” Kalantari continued, “If we start this very day to address this, it will take 12 to 15 years to balance.”

Somalia, Afghanistan, and Mali each dried past the point of sustaining their populations, descended into chaos, and became havens for illicit networks and terrorist groups.

Full post with two more maps below the line.

Continue reading “Neal Rauhauser: Greater Irans Greatest Problem — US Fumbling with Geo-Political Terrain It Does Not Understand…”