“”The premise is pretty straightforward: There are plenty of passionate, driven people who want to make cool ideas and projects happen. Access to resources (especially, money) is often a large barrier to actualizing them. So why not create physical locations that don’t require money as a chief organizing energy source, where enthusiastic entrepreneurs, artists, designers and other creatives can come together and prototype their dreams?
The way I previously described the flavor of it was:
the superhero school. a center for disruptive innovation. continuous learning zone. collective intelligence. live/work startup incubator. community center. hackerspace. makerlab. autonomous zone. permaculture and sustainable food production. cooperatively owned communications infrastructure. resilience. r&d lab. a place for creative troublemakers.
The idea wants to happen, so without waiting for conditions to be ‘perfect’ to start, we’ve decided to just go ahead and help build it.
Below is a USGS press release describing some fascinating geological research into the effects of climate change — a huge drought — on the demise of Egypt's Middle Kingdom around 4200 years ago. This is one extreme climate event occurred well before man contributed significant CO2 to the atmosphere. It is also a interesting example of how one can meld science with contemporary/historical/archaeological accounts in the human record.
This research may also be a good object lesson for that subset of paleoclimatologists who are more concerned with erasing the effects of the Medieval Warming Period (~1000 AD when temperatures may well have been as warm or warmer than today) followed by the Little Ice Age (~1600 AD) from human memory, as a means to prove their theory that current temperature increases are unprecedented and therefore due to mankind's generation of CO2. [see Tony Brown's marvelous essay, “The Long Slow Thaw”]
Histories, archives, and folklore have many contemporary accounts of events suggesting the existence both the MWP (settling of Greenland, growing grapes in Scotland) and the LIA (River Thames freezing). The MWP/LIA sequence raises a cyclical possibility and suggests recent temperature increases (since somewhere between 1750 and 1850) may be a normal recovery from the LIA [e.g., see Professor's Akasofu's analysis here].
The stakes of such an hypothesis are huge, because if the MWP/LIA hypothesis is correct, money spent on adaptation would be a far wiser strategy that a huge, and ultimatly futile effort, to reduce CO2 emissions. [1] That is one reason why the study described below is important — it is an example of the benefits that arise from melding science and history and archaeology.
[1] Ironically, while the US is one of, if not, the largest CO2 emitters, its emissions have leveled off and show signs of declining according to data compiled by the Energy Information Administration. [source: here] The principle sources of CO2 growth since the mid 1990s are in the developing world, especially China and India, and CO2 growth is directly correlated with improvements in their standards of living (which is still very low by western standards). To get developing countries to cut back CO2 emissions is tantamount to asking them to reduce their future standard of living. [source: here]
The presenter, Margaret Heffernan, is an amazing woman. Media producer, entrepreneur, feminist, philosopher, business consultant. Check out her bio at www.mheffernan.com <http://www.mheffernan.com/
The hysteria coming out of Israel regarding the need to attack Iran raises a question of whether or not Netanyahu is overplaying his hand. Perhaps he is serious. Perhaps he is bluffing in the hope that he can squeeze a huge increase in the annual US aid budget to Israel; perhaps he thinks he can exert enough influence to tip the election in favor of Romney. But if he thinks he can force Obama and the United States into attacking Iran, he is playing a dangerous game that could easily backfire. Mr. Obama is not rising to the bait. Moreover, Netanyahu's odious attempt to manipulate the United States' election process borders on the obscene, and my guess is that Americans, especially independents, are beginning to notice. Netanyahu may be setting himself (and Israel) up for a kind of blowback. Coincidentally or not, Romney's obsequious trip to Israel to harvest Jewish support at home was a public relations bust. Against this background, one wonders what the Iranians are making of this bluster and bombast. Attached is an opinion piece written by an Iranian for the American Iranian Council, an organization dedicated to improving US-Iranian relations. CS
Israeli threats of an imminent attack against Iran make headlines almost daily. Israel’s media also reflect the latest developments in this respect in a significant fashion. According to Time, “the front pages of the four main Israeli dailies last Friday [August 10] reflected what appeared to be a concerted campaign to create the impression that Israel is preparing itself to start a hot war with Iran sometime over the next 12 weeks.” In an interview with Israeli TV, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevi also said if he were Iranian, he “would be very fearful of the next 12 weeks.”
This 3 minute video was put together by Dan Villalva , a member of the original Fukushima Response group, in Sonoma County, CA. More groups are forming around the country, as Yastel Yamada and Tak Okamoto, of the Skilled Veterans Corps for Fukushima finish their tour of the US..
Our group in the Bay Area has selected 3 goals:
1) Mobilizing an international effort to stabilize Fukushima now
2) Assessing and publicizing the impact of the disaster on California
3) Vigiling Fridays in support of the Japanese people, who are turning out en masse every Friday to stop nuclear reactors in Japan.
If you want to start a group in your area, email me – cwolman@mcn.org
