Category: Earth Intelligence

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Chuck Spinney: Robert Bryce on Wind Power Falsehoods

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government
Chuck Spinney

My good friend Robert Bryce carpet bombs the wind industry and highlights some very important issues in the process.  He is author of several energy-related books, including the released book: Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future (PublicAffairs, April 27, 2010), which is an excellent description of the of some show stopping limitations of the current menu non-nuclear green technologies.

Weekend Edition
July 29 – 31, 2011

The Global Backlash Against Wind Energy

T. Boone's Windy Misadventure

By ROBERT BRYCE, Counterpunch

Phi Beta Iota:  There is no lack of open source information necessary to create public intelligence in the public interest.  There is only a lack of integrity among all concerned–from government to corporations to parasitic think tanks and non-profits whose existence  is rooted in pleasing masters with money rather serving the public interest.  Particularly troubling is the US Governments refusal to be honest about either the carbon costs or the ecological costs (thousands of birds and bats being wiped out), and refusing to carry out its Congressionally-mandated duties with respect to protecting the environment from corporate predators.

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Koko: US Government Suspends Scientist For Integrity Inquiry – Who Suspends the USG?

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Koko

Arctic scientist who exposed climate threat to polar bear is suspended

US government conducts ‘integrity inquiry' on federal biologist amid lobbying by oil firms for Arctic permits

, US environment correspondent

guardian.co.uk,

It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice.

But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a warming Arctic has been suspended and his work put under official investigation for possible scientific misconduct.

. . . . . .

Some question why Monnett, employed by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, has been suspended at this moment. The Obama administration has been accused of hounding the scientist so it can open up the fragile region to drilling by Shell and other big oil companies.
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John Robb: Concentration of Wealth = Central Planning = Fall of US Empire from Misappropriation

03 Economy, Blog Wisdom, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, IO Impotency
John Robb

JOURNAL: Central Planning and The Fall of the US Empire

Here's some thinking that draws on decision making theory.  It's very much in line with how the late John Boyd (America's best strategist) would approach it.

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One of the most interesting underlying reasons for the decline of the Soviet Union, and soon the US, is misallocation of resources due to central planning.

Misallocation in this context means that year after year, decade after decade, the wealth of a nation is spent on the wrong things.  The wrong projects are funded.  The wrong things are built.  The wrong things were bought and so on.  Eventually, the accumulation of bad investment made them so fragile that even the smallest shock could topple them.  The reason for this the Soviet's reliance on central planning.  A system of economic governance where small group of people — in the Soviet Unions case bureaucrats — had all the decision making power.  They decided what was spent and where.  They decided badly.

Why did they decide badly?  The massive economy of a modern superstate is too complex for a small group of people to manage.  Too much data.  Too many uncertainties.  Too many moving parts.

The only way to manage an economy as complex as this is to allow massively parallel decision making.  A huge number of people making small decisions, that in aggregate, are able to process more data, get better data (by being closer to the problem), and apply more brainpower to weighing alternatives than any centralized decision making group.

Of course, the misallocation due to centralized decision making wasn't supposed to be a vulnerability of the West.  To allocate resources in our economy, we had a more efficient mechanism: markets.  Markets are supposed to be a mechanism that allows massively parallel decision making.

Those assumptions are proving false. The succession of market bubbles and finally, the global financial collpse of 2008 is prima facie that gross misallocation is occurring.  The wealth of the West, particularly the US, is being spent on the wrong things year after year, decade after decade.   We are now as fragile as the Soviet Union in the late 80's.

Continue reading “John Robb: Concentration of Wealth = Central Planning = Fall of US Empire from Misappropriation”

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John Robb: Failure of the Global System Soon?

Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Key Players, Policies
John Robb

JOURNAL: Early Failure of the Global System

It's impossible to fully measure the impact of disruptive attack on a complex system until it actually plays out.  Why?  There might be hidden negative or positive feedback loops in the system that either dampen or accelerate the initial damage of the disruptive attack.  That's the problem with the fight in the US Congress over the debt ceiling.  The system that is being upset is soooo complex that we don't have a clue what the damage will be or how much damage has already been done until it plays out.

What we do know is that the financial and economic system that is being disrupted is extremely leveraged.  Further, the entire global economy is entirely dependent on massive deficit spending just to avoid another collapse.  Which means that nearly any disruption can result in damage far in excess of the original attack.  It is also tightly coupled on a global level.  This means that any event in Washington can quickly spread to the rest of world in seconds.   The best analogy I can think of at the moment is a pilot of an F-16 trying to rewire his cockpit's instrumentation while in a high G turn to evade a bogey on his six.  Needless to say, it's unlikely to end well.

The only silver lining I can take from this is that all of the factors causing a slow unwind of the current system have the potential of being accelerated.  That's good?  Yes, if only for one reason.  We're not as bad off as we would be in a couple of years if this current trajectory continued.  The problems would only be worse and our ability to recover from them less.

Regardless, take this opportunity to really think about how you can make a living and protect your family in a full blown global economic depression with all of its negative consequences.  A six month stockpile of canned/freeze dried goods and two dozen boxes of ammo won't get you through it.  You need a real game plan.

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Venessa Miemis: Beyond Systems Thinking

Advanced Cyber/IO, Articles & Chapters, Briefings (Core), Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Policies
Venessa Miemis

Excellent piece from Rethinking Complexity: Studying Systems for a Humane and Sustainable World.

From Systems Thinking to Systems Being

CONCLUSION

Systems being involves embodying a new consciousness, an expanded sense of self, a recognition that we cannot survive alone, that a future that works for humanity needs also to work for other species and the planet. It involves empathy and love for the greater human family and for all our relationships – plants and animals, earth and sky, ancestors and descendents, and the many peoples and beings that inhabit our Earth. This is the wisdom of many indigenous cultures around the world, this is part of the heritage that we have forgotten and we are in the process of recovering.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Systems being and systems living brings it all together: linking head, heart and hands. The expression of systems being is an integration of our full human capacities. It involves rationality with reverence to the mystery of life, listening beyond words, sensing with our whole being, and expressing our authentic self in every moment of our life. The journey from systems thinking to systems being is a transformative learning process of expansion of consciousness—from awareness to embodiment.

— Kathia Laszlo, Ph.D., directs Saybrook University's program in Leadership of Sustainable Systems

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John Steiner: Christopher Schaefer on Wealth

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Articles & Chapters, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government
John Steiner

Christopher Schaefer (PhD), gives us both a short essay below recommending two books, and at the link, a five-page essay, “Mind the Gap: Wealth Disparities, the Deficit, and our Economic Future.”

CREATING COMMON WEALTH

Christopher Schaefer

It is now clear that the present global economic crisis is also a political and moral crisis raising fundamental questions about the nature of market capitalism in the West, in particular in the United States and England. Old arguments from the Right and the Left about more government involvement in society or less are often deemed irrelevant as the system is perceived as being corrupt and manipulated by economic and political elites.  A recent Pew Research Poll found that over 92 percent of Americans viewed the economy as bad, over 70 percent say they have suffered job related or financial hardship as a result of the great recession, 25 percent say they have difficulty paying their mortgage and 24 percent in paying their medical bills. Meanwhile 65 percent see government in a negative light and large banks and large corporations as corrupt, ( 67 and 64 percent respectively ). Or as David Korten states in Agenda for a New Economy, (Berrett Koehler) “conservatives and liberals share a sense that the dominant culture and institutions of the contemporary world are morally and spiritually bankrupt, unresponsive to human needs and values , and destructive of the strong families and communities we crave and our children desperately need.(1)

Korten's book is an excellent beginning in rethinking how our economy should be organized and should function. He makes a strong case for a 12 point agenda in achieving independence from Wall Street and and in creating a more local and sustainable economic future. The 12 point Agenda includes:

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John Robb: Resilience 101 – Close the loop…all of them

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Key Players, Policies, Threats
John Robb

RESILIENT PRODUCTION: Close The Loop!

Reslient, local production can reach amazing levels of capacity and efficiency by obsessively closing loops.  How do you close loops?  Simply:

  1. Turn the waste of one production process into the fuel/input required to operate another.
  2. Do that again and again and again until there is nothing left to reuse.
  3. All along the way, find ways to take the good parts out of each process.  It could be food in one.  Heating/cooling in another.  Fresh water in a third.

For example.  Let's say you want to produce vegitables and fish.  If you did it in a disconnected way, you would be hit with expenses (both monetary and time) at each step in the process.  You would need to fertilize the plants.  Feed the fish.  Clean the water.  It gets expensive early.

If you connected the production systems together, by closing the loops, you would have an aquaponics system.  In an aquaponics system, the fish waste feeds bacteria which in turn produces fertilizer for the plants and fresh water for the fish.  The food the plants produce generate excess that feeds the fish.  With a tiny bit of automation and design, the entire thing operates seemlessly.  Loop closed!  The biggest chore is collecting the bounty.

Closing loops can turn problems into opportunties.  Waste into bounty.