Addicted to Growth

Scott Erickson's a terrific writer and environmentalist who cuts to the chase when it comes to explaining why growth is no longer sustainable using the clever alias of a 14 year old girl named Amy, who explains, in wonderfully clear language, where growth comes from and why it has to stop. 

Let’s say you get a loan for $100, but because of the interest you pay back $110. Here’s an interesting question: Where did that extra $10 come from? 

It didn’t come from you, since you can’t create money. Only banks can – by making loans. So the extra money could only come from one place: More loans! If you trace money to where money comes from, it almost always comes from a loan. 

People can get personal loans, but what’s more important for the economy is business loans – loans to start or expand a business. Of course all the loans have interest, which means paying back more money. But we’ve already figured out that money is “created” by banks issuing loans. So to pay off past loans, somewhere else in the economy there has to be new loans which create more money. But then THOSE loans have to be paid off with money, which means MORE loans. 

It always comes back to the banks making more loans to pay off the existing loans. This has been going on for hundreds of years, which is how the economy “grows.” 

Economic growth needs more money, but more money needs more economic growth, which needs more money. And it doesn’t stop. It can’t stop. 

That’s not only how the economy grows, but why it HAS to grow. We can never get to a point where growth is “enough.”

This is why we’re addicted to economic growth. We’re not creating money; we’re creating debt! Like with any addiction, we keep doing it even when it’s not working any more. 

Read the rest of this wonderful excerpt from the book, you won't be disappointed. :)

I like his splash image as well.

Mistakes were made

Kind of says it all, don't you think?

Pick-Up-Sticks

Like a moth drawn to a flame, one is drawn to the slow motion disaster known as Fukushima,  an ongoing catastrophe that could end our short term residency on planet earth.

Specifically, the greatest short-term threat to humanity is from the fuel pools at Fukushima.

If one of the pools collapsed or caught fire, it could have severe adverse impacts not only on Japan … but the rest of the world, including the United States.   Indeed, a Senator called it a national security concern for the U.S.:

The radiation caused by the failure of the spent fuel pools in the event of another earthquake could reach the West Coast within days. That absolutely makes the safe containment and protection of this spent fuel a security issue for the United States.

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen and physician Helen Caldicott have both said that people should evacuate the Northern Hemisphere if one of the Fukushima fuel pools collapses. Gundersen said:

Move south of the equator if that ever happened, I think that’s probably the lesson there.

Former U.N. adviser Akio Matsumura calls removing the radioactive materials from the Fukushima fuel pools “an issue of human survival”.

So the stakes in decommissioning the fuel pools are high, indeed.

What's even more terrifying is the fact a magnitude 7 earthquake (all that's needed to bring down the fuel pools @ Fukushima) hitting Japan within the next 3 years is estimated to be 95%, which could be the closest thing to a done deal regarding the most serious threat mankind has ever faced during his tenure on a tiny planet we call home.

Pick-up-Sticks, a game requiring mental dexterity and physical skill under pressure, is basically what has to be done at Fukushima but with the added fun of having to pick up thousands of damaged rods loaded into damaged racks, which reside in a deteriorating, water filled environment in danger of collapsing at any moment. Adding to this rosy scenario are the absolute requirements that said rods must remain in water at all times (or they will explode) and cannot touch one another in any way, shape or fashion (or they will explode) because if they do either, uncontrolled fission will ensue, thus making Chernobyl a walk in the park.

Factoids: Carefully plucking more than 1,500 brittle and potentially damaged fuel assemblies from the plant’s unstable Reactor No. 4 is expected to take about a year, and will be seen as a test of Tokyo Electric Power Co’s ability to move ahead with decommissioning the whole facility – a task likely to take decades and cost tens of billions of dollars.

If the rods – there are 50-70 in each of the assemblies, which weigh around 300 kg (660 pounds) and are 4.5 metres (15 feet) long – are exposed to air or if they break, huge amounts of radioactive gases could be released into the atmosphere.

Addendum: This is a picture showing the impact the earthquake and tsnuami had on Reactor 4's spent fuel rod pool building. Reassuring, right?

Needless to say, the rods in the pool no longer look like this.

But rather like this.

Any question as to why Fukushima is a fubar beyond description?

40 Billion & Counting - In just our Galaxy

BRT has often talked about the possibility of life existing on other planets, (They're Everywhere) something this author thinks, is a done deal given just how vast the multiverse truly is. Seems that Kepler has upped the ante for this part of reality as per the NY Times piece titled. 

Cosmic Census Finds Billions of Planets That Could Be Like Earth

Astronomers reported Monday that there could be as many as 40 billion habitable Earth-size planets in the galaxy, based on a new analysis of data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft.

One of every five sun-like stars in the galaxy has a planet the size of Earth circling it in the Goldilocks zone — not too hot, not too cold — where surface temperatures should be compatible with liquid water, according to a herculean three-year calculation based on data from the Kepler spacecraft by Erik Petigura, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.

Needless to say, the odds that BRT may be right, thanks to Kepler, warms the cockles of my heart. :)

Click on the graphic below to access the terrific interactive NY Times graphic to see the different kinds of planetary systems Kepler has discovered to date. Simply unbelievable yet it's just the tip of the iceberg in man's search for extraterrestrial life especially in lieu of the fact there are approximately 200 billion galaxies in our part of the multiverse, which means... the number of earth sized planets in our neck of th woods goes beyond calculation.

Crank

Yours truly loves crank, aka java, aka coffee, a substance, like tea and chocolate, the dark kind of course, is actually good for you unless one drinks 100 cups a day. :), so drink up, crank is a drug that satisfies, always. :)

Now when Pot is finally legalized…

Break-thru

BRT has talked about solar ad nauseum as yours truly believes that solar will eventually become the prime driver to sustainable energy production. The holdback to this tech has been efficiency, cost and form factor as expensive, large glass encased silicon solar cells with 12% efficiency, does not compute if solar is to replace the environmentally catastrophic fossil fuel tech that currently powers the world today.

Enter epitaxy,  a better way to do solar, courtesy a collaboration between Arizona State University and Georgia Tech using a new way to grow gallium nitride crystals (InGaN), the critical component that will change how solar gets power from the sun.

Did you know that crystals form the basis for the penetrating icy blue glare of car headlights and could be fundamental to the future in solar energy technology?

Crystals are at the heart of diodes. Not the kind you might find in quartz, formed naturally, but manufactured to form alloys, such as indium gallium nitride or InGaN. This alloy forms the light emitting region of LEDs, for illumination in the visible range, and of laser diodes (LDs), in the blue-UV range... 

In an article recently published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, the ASU group, in collaboration with a scientific team led by professor Alan Doolittle at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has just revealed the fundamental aspect of a new approach to growing InGaN crystals for diodes, which promises to move photovoltaic solar cell technology toward record-breaking efficiencies.

Imagination is more important than knowledge - Einstein

Lab-On-A-Chip... is coming

In a piece titled Healthcare - Days of Future Past , BRT talked about the upcoming tsnami that's coming to medicine when lab-on-a-chip technology, used in conjunction with IBM's Watson and the web, will force change upon medicine in ways today's dysfunctional environment cannot hold back simply because the efficiencies gained, by using this tech, in terms of proper and prompt diagnosis of patient conditions, with suggested procedures, will render obsolete the current way medicine is being conducted all over the world. Seems the LOAC part of the equation is coming, sooner, rather then later, thanks to revolutionary research done at the University of Rochester.

A new, super-thin silicon membrane could lead to “lab-on-a-chip” diagnostic devices the size of credit cards, say researchers.

The ability to shrink laboratory-scale processes to automated chip-sized systems would revolutionize biotechnology and medicine. For example, the US military and homeland security efforts need inexpensive and highly portable devices that process blood samples to detect biological agents such as anthrax.

The Times, they are a changing - Dylan

The Public Weal

The notion of public vs. private property in the US is sharply drawn. If an intruder enters one's property in the US, the first thing the owner asks is, "Can I help you?", in a subdued and sinister way, a notion alien to the max in Finland and Sweden.

The most direct and also the most highly symbolic implementation of the logic of the public good is something that Finns call jokamiehenoikeus or “every person's rights”. It is sometimes translated as “every man's rights,” but this is incorrect, since Finnish has no gender-specific pronouns. There is no “she” or “he” but only hän, which is used in place of both. And even hän seems to be a modern invention; one friend of ours comes from Lapland and speaks a dialect where objects, animals and humans are all indicated with the same generic pronoun se. So what is “every hän's rights”? Very simply, the law of the land allows anyone to travel across, camp and pick berries on anyone else's land. That is, all Finnish territory is Finnish society's land. Finnish society has defended it all these years from both foreign and domestic encroachment, and has also organized and enforced an intricate system of private stewardship that attempts to safeguard it in perpetuity.

I have a Swedish friend who educated me on this notion of private stewardship and why it's a good thing, something this nation should learn to abide by but won't as for the Public Good has gone the way of the dodo bird, a concept never to be embraced by the populace of this so called "exceptional" country. 

As for the sign, the Finish response is priceless.

And what would happen if someone bothered to put up a sign such as the one at the top of this article? (Quite an astoundingly large collection of these is available from Google image search!) Would there be a scandal, or an arrest, or a lawsuit, or a fine? Probably not; chances are, the person in question would be called using a certain choice foreign loan word, one of the few in the Finnish language: idiootti. Because the actions of any one idiootti, or even an organized group of them, would not be sufficient to create a system of private property. The decision would have to be society's as a whole. And that's simply not happening.

Any questions?

Navigating ObamaCare

This funky graphic, courtesy the Boston Review, actually shows how to properly navigate ObamaCare, the weak first step to single payer…

Exchanges square the political circle of creating a public insurance program through private business. An exchange is an online marketplace where government officials vet private insurance plans to make sure they provide essential coverage at affordable prices…

Despite all the hitches, people are going to the exchanges in droves. Millions of people visited the federal Web site on the first day, overwhelming the site. State-run exchanges are going more smoothly. In New York state, 40,000 people applied for insurance in the first week. In Washington state, 9,400 people.

It's a start, right?

The Number 5

5 high pressure centers circling the northern hemisphere, as seen in the above graphic, often equates to an oncoming intense heatwave, a recent finding that will help save lives as we move further into the realm of the 900 lb gorilla known as Global Warming.

Scientists may have found a new way to do just that: New research shows that heat waves are often preceded by a peculiar global weather pattern. Referred to as a wavenumber-5 pattern, it consists of five high-pressure systems evenly distributed across the Northern Hemisphere. This arrangement of the jet stream is more stable than other configurations, and allows areas of heat and high pressure to build up and persist, said Haiyan Teng, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. The jet stream is a river of wind high in the atmosphere that flows from west to east around the globe.

Click on the NYTimes image to do an interactive journey into just how rapidly GW is accelerating, a process exponential in actuallity, something never slow moving or glacial in reality, given just how intense phase transitions from one state to another can be.