Category Archives: Science

Distribute Your Wealth Now!

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Yes, you. If you have the wherewithal to read the mariner’s blog, you have wealth. No one else can address the depravity, greed, ignorance, prejudice, starvation, disease, death, destruction of the biosphere, incessant war, and class abuse.

The United Methodist Church has a mission project called “Imagine No Malaria.” One can acquire a tee shirt that says, “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try spending the night with a mosquito.” This proverb is a fine challenge; it can apply to any issue around the world or around the corner. If you want to support this project, send a contribution to your local Methodist Church.

Below are other efforts that need your wealth and your health.

Habitat for Humanity. (www.habitat.org) Builds homes for the homeless. This is an organization that has immense impact on a family’s life in a very short time. HH will accept your body and a hammer as well. Check the website for information.

Salvation Army. (www.salvationarmyusa.org) “ONE MISSION: Into the world of the hurting, broken, lonely, dispossessed and lost, reaching them in love by all means.” Contribute goods and cash. SA also helps those in disaster zones and ignores national boundaries. Check local phonebook for free pick up; donate cash on the website.

Religious Institution. Visit your institution or search for that institution’s website to find a magnitude of mission projects for people in need around the world.

World Wildlife Fund. (www.worldwildlife.org) “The group’s mission is to stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature. Currently, much of its work focuses on the conservation of three biomes that contain most of the world’s biodiversity: oceans and coasts, forests, and freshwater ecosystems. Among other issues, it is also concerned with endangered species, pollution and climate change.” Visit website for gifts and donations.

Food and Water Watch. (www.foodandwaterwatch.org) “Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainably produced. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping the global commons — our shared resources — under public control.”

The mariner is a member of FWW. He feels there is a need to protect shared resources by keeping resource administration in the public sector where profit is less of a threat to our health and access to critical resources is not denied for any reason. FWW is an advocacy organization that responds to federal, state and local legislation that may be detrimental to the wellbeing of citizens.

Local charities. In your search engine, type “charities near me” to find organizations supporting every sort of need from homeless to abject poor to neighborhood cleanup to slum restoration to medical need to foster children services, even to homeless pets. There is no shortage of need for your wealth and your health.

Add to this list your commitment to improve local government by becoming active in local issues and participating in the primary and voting process.

The mariner has provided a short sample of ways by which the reader can become engaged in improving the world. One does not have to wait for an election.

Ancient Mariner

Keeping Up with the World

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Some readers may be interested in why the world is the way it is today. For example, the Atlantic magazine has a truly insightful article about ISIS, its driving principles and interpretation of the Quran. See:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

For a thorough, apolitical review of all aspects of global warming, population and impact on the biosphere, Live Science is an excellent source not only for global warming but a full rainbow of scientific insights about the world today. See:

http://www.livescience.com/topics/global-warming/

In order to produce both volume and profit in livestock corporations, animal abuse is rampant – including human animals. See:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=john+oliver+chicken+farmers&FORM=VIRE1#view=detail&mid=FB1EA7E99500750DC9B2FB1EA7E99500750DC9B2

A few books are benchmark publications that bring to light the subtle phenomena that shape our lives. For example, a book everyone should retrieve from a library is The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. It is an entertaining read recounting Kolbert’s travels around the world with scientists and researchers. She discusses how viruses and bacteria are carried around the world affecting everything from frogs to bats. The book focuses on human activity that destroys the biosphere. There is an alarming account of the huge number of extinctions that have occurred since 1900 and what that means to human survival.

The Road to Character, a new book by David Brooks, PBS commentator, is an introspective review of his life by comparing the lives of others against his own life. Brooks discusses foibles and successes and how others overcame their shortcomings to become people of high character.

Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, written by Doris Kearns Goodwin, was published in 1977 but is a tour de force of Johnson’s personal and public life. Many today can recall (and observe) the cultural shift engineered by Ronald Reagan. Fewer remember the “guns and butter” policies of Johnson. Johnson launched the greatest cultural shift since FDR – including the Civil Rights Act. Goodwin was an intimate friend to whom LBJ revealed his inner struggles and his aspirations. Good for a summer long read.

Zealot: The life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, by Reza Asland, is a fascinating study of the time of Jesus – without focusing on the Christian ramifications of Jesus. It is a sociological look into that time; it provides a fresh perspective by which to understand Jesus and his role as a proselytizer and as a zealot. Reza Asland is a world renowned expert on world religions and has published several important works. For what it’s worth, Fox News vehemently denounced this book and assassinated the character of Asland.

 

Communication moves a lot faster today than even a couple of decades ago. Within minutes, we know about beheadings in Iraq, or a tsunami in Japan, or a volcanic eruption in Peru, or a giant explosion in China, or denying funds for America’s infrastructure and the jobs it would provide, or the disappearance of the Monarch butterfly. We know more about what is happening in real time. The added responsibility is to know why these events are happening. One can no longer speak blindly from old prejudices and unfounded privilege. Every day is a day at school maintaining our education about what is really happening and, knowing why, make the right decision to improve the plight of our real-time world.

Ancient Mariner

The Great Barrier of Nationalism

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In the last post, Today is Earth Overshoot Day, the mariner wrote of global issues that are ignored by governments around the world. Water and minerals have reached an end game and face inadequacy during this century. Food is both abused by waste and unavailable to millions because of political obstruction. Ecosystems of all kinds are wantonly destroyed to increase profit. One-third of the Gulf of Mexico is a dead sea because of the toxicity flowing off the Mississippi River. 90% of Monarch butterflies have disappeared. Coral reefs around the world are dying. Coral is the bottom of the food chain; without coral whole species of fish and mammals will disappear. Much of Micronesia will vanish beneath the sea in 50 years. Although we know deforestation of great forests is not good for our atmosphere, yet the clearing continues.

The mariner knows he sounds like Chicken Little but the ramifications of not caring about our planet or ourselves already are measurable. While there is a futile attempt by multiple nations to limit Carbon Dioxide, that effort miserably falls short of functional change, let alone actually modifying global circumstances. Still, governments feign ignorance about global warming and converting to alternative energy now and deny passing legislation to prevent profit taking at the expense of everyone’s biosphere.

Why is each nation so reticent to join with others to avoid terminal catastrophes for humanity? The answer is nationalism. The twenty-first century presents issues that can only be solved if the world politic changes its priorities. These priorities are not nation-sensitive. The type of government does not matter be it communist, socialist, capitalist, authoritarian, monarchy or tribal. In every case, the wellbeing of the nation, its economy, its culture, and its advantage among nations, are the first priority.

The one new nation that has evolved without nationalist priorities is corporations. Focused on profit as a first and last cause, corporations glean unfathomable amounts of cash and assets from the world economy. This cash is used to grow and acquire more assets or it is parked in long term investment. Corporate profit is sufficient to take serious steps toward global rejuvenation but does not for the sake of profit. If the sums stored away by corporations were taxed for the benefit of global issues, relatively simple issues like fossil fuels could be bought outright – diminishing the pressures against Earth’s biosphere in short order. Although the solution is simple, the process is tangled in worldwide nationalism – nations who benefit from their corporate contributors.

Operating largely outside the jurisdiction of nations, corporations are in effect today’s pirates – not roaming the seas but roaming the Internet that allows rapid reorganization and fast-dollar marketing and to move to nations that are more amenable and enable larger profits. The Trans-Pacific Partnership in Congress right now will make participating corporations virtually impervious to nation-based human rights and labor law. Corporate payoffs to legislators and kings are huge and difficult to resist.

To a small degree, one can understand greed as a goal. Certainly, it is personally rewarding. On the other hand, fairness is a tangible factor. If one makes a mess in a friend’s home, one pays the price of cleaning the mess rather than leaving it for the friend. Somehow, governments have forgotten fairness. Some of this forgetfulness can be attributed to outdated government concepts. The founding fathers of the United States left fairness to the individual so that there can be freedom for all, freedom to pursue happiness, etc. This liberated the new country from the abuses of colonialism but it provided no structure for fairness. If one could pick a single issue why the US and State governments are broken, one would have to say the governments don’t enforce fairness – hence the ease with which the US has become an oligarchy and allows the fast-buck, under-taxed marketplace.

Humanity has been unfair to Mother Earth. All of human history has been an expansion of skimming Earth’s riches but not cleaning human mess, not restoring or respecting what Earth has given toward our arrogant sense of success. Not only has humanity been thoughtless, humanity has been wanton. Without Earth, there would have been no success; without Earth now, there will be no humanity tomorrow. A respected ecologist has put the end 600 years from now.

Ancient Mariner

Today is Earth Overshoot Day

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Many may not know this term. It is the day of the year that humanity requires more of the Earth’s resources than Earth can provide for that year. In 2015 that day fell on August 14. From now until December 31, humanity is borrowing against future years. An example is the use of aquifers – water stored deep in the Earth. We are rapidly draining aquifers dry. What will happen when we have drained all the water? It took hundreds of thousands of years to create aquifers; humanity is draining them dry within 200 years. The chart below shows that earlier each year, humanity consumes more than the Earth can provide:

The latest population projection shows that by 2100, 85 years from now, the number of humans will grow from 7 billion+ to 12 billion+. That number is approaching double today’s population. Ecological resources are a global issue. It is larger than one nation, or the many international coalitions. It affects every nation on every continent. Every day the world dickers with economic and military wars, and ignores bellwether changes like global warming and creating dead seas that used to provide large quantities of life, global issues loom closer. Solving global issues will require every nation’s participation and will take decades to accomplish.

On a more imminent topic, the United States and most of the temperate climate nations will be affected by the strongest El Nino since 1950 – the first year records were kept. Southern California likely will get the rain it needs, albeit via heavy storms and flooding; Northern California and the top tiers of states all the way to the great lakes will be drier and warmer through the winter; the Upper Mississippi Valley and the Ohio Valley will have drier weather, perhaps even drought-like. The South, coast to coast, will have much wetter weather again via large storms. A second jet stream will come from Alaska and pass over the Great lakes into New England and the Middle Atlantic states.

The degree to which this strong El Nino will disrupt agriculture or cause flooding is still unknown but NOAA advises “above average” changes to our weather patterns. A tip to how much above average is in the name given by the cable weather channel: Godzilla El Nino. Crudely bilingual but a tip. If one remembers 1997-1998, El Nino produced snowstorms in New England that fell in feet per hour, rainstorms across the South that fell in inches per hour. Iowa and Missouri flip-flopped from very cold to very warm to very cold again.

Many planetary events have heightened profiles. In the mariner’s opinion, global warming is an indirect cause of stronger weather patterns and may, along with a weakening magnetic field, exacerbate plate tectonic activity. Because of the Sun’s cycle, scientists predict a small ice age in mid-century. Times they are a-changing!

Where will we put another 5 billion people? Not on islands or seashores – they will be underwater.

Ancient Mariner

The Situation between Us and Our Planet

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The mariner wishes to remove the political bickering by our elected officials. Their motives are tied more to the science of profit-making and job security than to the real situation of the relationship between Homo sapiens and Earth. Below is a link that the mariner urges you to read. There is no political banter; there is no liberal-conservative bias; there is no corporate or socialist slant; there is no nationalist defense. It is short and has pictures.

http://www.livescience.com/

51280-the-new-dying-how-human-caused-extinction-affects-the-planet-infographic.html

 

By the time the reader reaches the end of this post, extinction, climate change, an ice age, polar magnetic shift, and plate tectonics will be discussed. Lest the reader be confused, the topics actually are relatively independent of one another but Mother Nature is playing games with our adversarial political style. Poor Congress will be tied in knots for years!

The Planet Earth has some very large and slow-to-change processes that are not necessarily visible to humans. They are not visible because the impact of humans upon themselves may not be felt for decades or centuries. Nevertheless, the Earth does notice – if the mariner may be anthropomorphic. Slowly, the Earth changes its behavior. The first signs that the Earth has noticed is Earth adjusts its biosphere by eliminating species that no longer fit the Earth’s global ecology. This is the mass extinction of species called the “Sixth Extinction.” The second sign that the Earth is adjusting to reality is the change in subsystems like ocean temperature and acidic oceans, which begins to eliminate the very bottom of the protein chain – coral, plankton, simple land life like lichen, moss, and other simple plant life both in the water and on land. This elimination process already has begun.

Like many, the mariner feels that there is too much carbon dioxide. Evidence among growing things is too obvious. Excessive carbon has haunted us since the iron mills in Indiana and Ohio were spewing smoke that was killing trees in Pennsylvania and New York and coal mines poisoned rivers in the Appalachians.

However, the Sun is the most powerful influence on Earth’s weather and global temperature – easily trumping even Homo sapiens’s mischievousness. In just the last few days, solar scientists, armed with the best data yet regarding the activities of the Sun, say the Earth is headed for a “mini ice age” in just 15 years — something that hasn’t happened for three centuries. Early predictions are that it will last until 2045. The drop in Sun activity is called a Maunder Minimum; deeper currents in the Sun are moving in an opposite direction to the currents on the surface. The mariner mentioned a probable ice age in a post in June 2013 when he mentioned an ice age will occur in the 21st century. It isn’t his insight; he had been reading what solar scientists were saying about Sun cycles and the timing seemed correct.

 

Climate change versus the ice age. If there is confusion and disbelief now, think what both together will do to politics, international anti-carbon agreements and many environmental improvements riding the financing of climate change. Perhaps it should be made clear that there are two issues: ice age and excessive carbon – climate change notwithstanding.

Every 200,000 years or so, the magnetosphere switches poles, that is, the North Pole becomes the South Pole and vise versa. Presently, we are experiencing the very early phases of a polar switch. Scientists have determined that the strength of the magnetosphere has dropped 15% since 1840. There is nothing cataclysmic about the switch. The North and South magnetic waves push through each other around the globe. For example, today the South Atlantic and the Bering Sea have very weak magnetic spots such that a compass can be seen to vacillate as North and South magnetic waves move back and forth. “It may take another 2,000 years,” said physicist Phil Scherrer of Stanford University.

The real danger in a magnetosphere shift is twofold: First, the magnetic waves shield us from strong radiation from the Sun that is capable of causing cancer and other radiation ills; the Earth’s magnetosphere is weakened considerably during a shift and the Sun’s radiation can reach the surface of the Earth. At some point, all satellite communications will be interrupted.

Second, every creature that depends on a compass to get around will experience a topsy-turvy effect that turns everything backwards. Many creatures may be disoriented: Monarch butterflies, geese, whales – anything that migrates great distances without mapping terrain.

Switching to plate tectonics, the media covers stories about earthquakes and disturbed volcanoes on a regular basis. Statistically, the number of larger earthquakes per year has not changed but the energy or intensity has. The Earthquake that hit Japan recently moved that nation 12 feet closer to North America and caused a shift in Earth’s axis of 6.5 inches. Scientists worldwide focus increasingly on the Pacific Rim by Washington State. New evidence suggests that a small fault, Juan de Fuca, is currently pressing against the North American Plate causing uplift and stress. Eventually, it’s expected that the ground will break perhaps causing another “mega-thrust” earthquake that could rival the recent Japanese disaster. In addition, there is increased activity in the Chile/Peru fault and Los Angeles’s San Andreas Fault. Based on geologic data, a major earthquake has hit the Los Angeles area approximately every 200 years. The last major quake was about 300 years ago.

The mariner has written much about extinction. Peruse recent posts for more information or use the reader’s browser. To the mariner, extinction is both probable and within hundreds of years unless severe modifications are made to mankind’s treatment of the biosphere. We may not need to worry about earthquakes, magnetosphere shifts, ice ages, or Congress.

Ancient Mariner

 

Jim Inhofe

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In fairness, the mariner stayed awake until 3:00AM to listen to Jim Inhofe (R) Oklahoma Senator on CSPAN1. His presentation was difficult to follow because he spoke in half-sentences. His major defense against climate change, and the impact of the fossil fuel industry on that climate change, boiled down to bits and pieces of hearings in his Committee on Environment and Public Works that provided loopholes in defense of non-action on the part of his committee – even when the testimony was taken out of context as given by those testifying against conservative government policy.

Inhofe’s basic premise is that unless one stops all countries simultaneously from contributing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere , it is useless to pass US legislation because CO2 will not be diminished.

This policy flies in the face of so many international and national legislation and court decisions that the mariner cannot list them all. To name a few countries that are pursuing less CO2 carbon emission, one could name all European countries, all Nordic countries, and many others scattered throughout the world – even Mexico and South Korea. The United Nations, whatever the reader may think of the organization politically, does a good job of monitoring energy production around the world. It is unanimously opposed to current CO2 output and has proposed significant decreases in CO2 by 2020.

It is impossible for every country instantaneously to change its carbon policy. Inhofe knows this is impossible and stands behind the principle that every nation must agree to significant reduction before the US need lift a finger in Congress.

In addition, he stands behind the scientifically unsupported concept that there is no global warming and further, that it is not related to human activity.

Oklahomans not related to fossil fuels, be proud.

Ancient Mariner

Pough Paree

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AvengersPatrick MacNee died today at the age of 93. A moment’s silence by fans who remember The Avengers from the 1960’s. His best known partner, Diana Rigg, a fine looking actress, is still with us. The two of them were the best of British tongue-in-cheek humor. MacNee played John Steed, an understated, imperturbable fighter of crime – some of his antagonists were strange. His partner played Emma Peel, an ever ready to assist martial arts expert who always dressed in a tight jumpsuit. Videos are available on the Internet and DVDs for those who want to travel through time.

Those were the days.

The Pope issued a statement that the world must heed the dangers of global warming, which he laid at the feet of humanity as the cause. Jim Inhofe (R) Oklahoma, had snide remarks. The republican candidate herd (is there another term we could use to specify 23 republicans running for President of the US? Suggestions welcome) to the last man and woman denounced Pope Frank’s statement for the most part saying (a) the Pope is not a scientist (b) the Pope should stick to religion and leave science to us!! (c) the Roman Catholic Church does not represent world opinion.

The trashing of the Pope – indeed that was what it was; none of the candidates were nice or polite and in a few cases could not rise above character assassination – shows the power of politics when it is comprised of large amounts of money, lack of statesmanship, and counting on gerrymandered voters in the primaries.

As if to deliberately counter this silliness, the Netherlands was ordered by a court in Hague to reduce carbon output by 25% of 1990 levels within five years – more than the Dutch government intention to reduce the amount by 14 to17 percent.

A UN climate secretariat article obliging states to do whatever is necessary to prevent dangerous climate change was also cited. So was the UN climate science panel’s 2007 assessment of the reductions in carbon dioxide needed to have a 50% chance of containing global warming to 2°C.

In local news, the mariner’s town has been subject to strategically timed thunderstorms and torrential rains (rain falls in inch increments). An earlier post referenced that he lost three old and stately trees during a bad storm. When the damaged trunks were dropped to the ground, the ground was so saturated the trunks left 6-8 inch trenches across the yard. Needless to say, these are full of water. In fact, half the backyard is underwater. Mosquitoes, gnats and pond bugs abound. If it ever stops raining, insecticide must be placed on the water’s surface to kill the bothersome insects. The lawn must be rebuilt from scratch.

The experience raised a conundrum for the mariner: How do pond-dependent insects and plants travel to his standing water? The closest open water is at the golf course about a mile away. In some manner, he has received a complete, ready-to-go swamp as if it were a kit from a swamp store. If the mariner had any trees left, he would hang some Spanish Moss on them and turn loose a few muskrats. To add insult to injury, just days before the trees were damaged, the mariner downloaded plans for a barred owl nest. The owls are plentiful in town and young rabbits are a treat. The nest would have overlooked the lawn in front of the flower garden. So much for that idea. Instead, the mariner may add a couple of caimans and a Cottonmouth water snake.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Is Extinction True?

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The word about the Holocene Extinction, AKA the Sixth Mass Extinction, is beginning to spread. Lowbrow naysayers have linked together unrelated studies with the attitude, “Here we go again…” Others dismiss the work of the research team by casting aspersions on Paul Ehlrich, who has produced fatalistic studies in the past (which still hold relevant truths). A fair and informative interview with head researcher Gerardo Ceballos can be found at this link:

http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/we-are-100-for-sure-in-the-middle-of-a-major-extinction-event

Given the naysayers are pooh-poohing the extinction for self gratification, the mariner feels certain that industries and reactionaries who have vested interests in keeping culture and economy the way it is, prefer nothing should change and will take delaying actions beyond the naysayers skepticism.

No one can predict with certainty how long the extinction process will take. This makes it easy for many to sit by the side of the road and wait to see what happens. “Waiting” is self destructive. No one wants to give up automobiles for enforced mass transit; utilities don’t want to shut down electrical plants in favor of distributed non-fossil fuel electricity; the coal industry doesn’t want to be banished; the magic of fracking, which isn’t magic and is a dirty industrial process, doesn’t want tightly controlled regulations that will cut into profits; households still want strawberries in grocery stores in January; travel destinations don’t want transportation restricted; households and industries don’t want to be relocated to restore an endangered habitat….ad infinitum.

The only point that no one except politicians seems to challenge is that global warming is happening increasingly fast. There is too much data to refute that. How fast is a matter of conjecture but it is easy to get into a conversation like, “I remember crabbing for Maryland crabs; I took home a bushel in one day!” The mariner knows firsthand that doesn’t happen anymore. He’s sure the reader can think of a personal comparison where wildlife was more plentiful, beaches were pristine, and water birds, seals and otters weren’t covered in crude oil.

Remember the Passenger Pigeon? It was by far the most numerous bird species in North America at the turn of the 1900’s. There were billions of them across all of North America. Deforestation and commercial hunting wiped out the Passenger Pigeon. The last one died in a zoo in 1914. The Passenger Pigeon is an example of how Homo sapiens expedites mass extinction. In the post, Advocacy at Home – Specie Ecology, posted earlier this month, the mariner provided a list of endangered animals that went on for pages. The mariner provides again a short quote from the Cree Indians:

“Only when the last tree has died, the last river been poisoned, and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.”

As Naomi Klein says in her book, This Changes Everything, the Earth’s biosphere is not a for-profit issue. The world’s cultures and priorities must turn away from capitalistic solutions and reinvest – at cost – in the biosphere for our own survival.

The mariner leaves this issue for awhile. Like yeast in bread, the idea of mass extinction needs time to rise. He asks only that the reader pay attention to the news and magazine articles that discuss global warming, water shortage, weather energy and changes to the oceans, polar ice, and disappearing creatures because humans have destroyed their habitat.

Ancient Mariner

Shifting Gears for the Future

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Should the reader look forward to see future progress that will knock out extinction – do not look backward for a measure of speed. The reader will be disappointed.

Media news filled additional air time in Charlotte by going down the street to the State Capitol where the Confederate war flag is displayed. Now, all the republican candidates for President can say, “Not my problem,” save two: one who ran last time, Romney, and Jeb somebody. The mariner will not join the fray; it is covered nonstop on 24-hour news stations. There must be some usable information once in a while.

What the mariner finds important is the fact that racism is still a large and unresolved stigma in the American culture and what that means about the speed with which we will take steps to avoid extinction. Consider the following speed:

  • Twenty slaves were the first to arrive on US soil at Jamestown, Virginia on August 20, 1619.
  • In 1641, Massachusetts was the first state to legalize slavery.
  • In 1705, Virginia passes legislation that slaves are real estate.
  • In 1787, it was a better than usual year, relatively speaking. The Northwest Ordinance forbids slavery, except as criminal punishment, in the Northwest Territory (later Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin). Residents of the territory are required to return fugitive slaves. Also in 1787, states (including South Carolina) began putting tariffs on interstate and international slave trade; a few ban trading slaves altogether.
  • In 1788, the newly ratified US Constitution claims that each slave is 3/5 of a person – but only for tax purposes.
  • In 1819, Virginia outlaws the education of slaves and, with North Carolina, removes restraints on interstate trading of slaves.
  • The decade of the 1850’s was not good for slaves. Many states rescinded earlier trade limitations, new laws providing the right to be a free African American were rescinded, and finally, in 1857, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case by denying citizenship to all slaves, ex-slaves, and descendants of slaves and denies Congress the right to prohibit slavery in the territories.
  • In 1861, South Carolina secedes from the Union, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina also secede. It is the beginning of the Civil War.
  • In 1862, Lincoln signs several acts that, more or less, allow slaves and free African Americans to participate in the Civil War and, indirectly, though no one said so, the 3/5 person law became dysfunctional even if it was still is a part of the Constitution.
  • In 1863, Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.
  • In 1869, Tennessee passes legislation to create an all white government that opposes racial equality. Many states follow.
  • In 2015, the Confederate War Flag still flies at the Capitol of South Carolina and requires the heinous murder of nine religious African Americans in a hallmark African American church to request that the flag be removed. There is reticence by republicans across the board.
    • The mariner interjects for a moment to point out that it has been 244 years since the first slave arrived, a terrible civil war has transpired, the economic culture of slavery still persisted not through ownership but through outright abuse and tyranny. Any freed slave is fortunate to receive a salary other than a shack without utilities. In 244 years, how has the US culture changed? Virtually not at all; Tennessee’s idea in 1869 for all white government persists to this day. African American voting in government is gerrymandered against quite intensely. While legislation may have shifted a little, the American culture still does not include the African American as an equal citizen with equal rights.
    • In the future, even greater incursions into corporate American power and the consumer culture will be necessary to slow the clock of the sixth extinction. Beyond that, not only is extinction civil war, it is global war. Extinction includes Putin, ISIL, China and its allies, suppressed Africa. Even more troublesome, the United States itself, long a leader in creating the sixth extinction.

The mariner pursued the history of the African American experience as a model that depicts how difficult it is to alter large social, economic and political behavior that has been deeply ingrained for hundreds of years. The African American’s historical plight has become the plight of all mankind. The US has not made much progress with racism. Regarding extinction, is this to be expected for the next 244 years?

Ancient Mariner

Where is Amos, Where is Chicken Little, and Where is John Malthus?

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The mariner is Amos. The mariner is Chicken Little. The mariner is John Malthus. Woe will be cast upon us! The Lord shall end the days of Israel! The sky is falling! There will be no food!

It seems no one cares that the Holocene extinction will end the existence of humans within the lifetime of three or four generations. As spoken before, the mariner is befuddled. Perhaps Stanford University, world class environmental scientists, Food and Water Watch, World Wide Fund for Nature and dozens of similar organizations around the world are wrong. Perhaps 90% of the world’s scientists are wrong. Perhaps 400 ppm of carbon in the atmosphere is nothing more than an empty fact. Perhaps the warmest decade since records began is good fortune. Perhaps the rising seas, rising at Fibonacci speeds every decade, are good for sea life. Perhaps depleted aquifers will be good for life in general. Perhaps longer droughts, especially in the US, will provide more sunny days for picnics.

The mariner suspects imminent extinction is too big a pill for mankind to swallow. The event is beyond imagination. It is more surreal than the silliest science fiction movie. Extinction is a confrontation that has no answer except to wait and see. And so we shall wait and see. And it will be too late.

Ancient Mariner