Category Archives: Science

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

 

Civilization’s Link to Global Climate

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In his effort to imagine what the experience of approaching extinction would be, that is, how and why seemingly stable cultures collapse; the mariner began looking for reasons why significant societies had failed in the past. Quickly, after reading studies from climatologists, anthropologists and language historians, he first had to learn what permitted societies to emerge.

The common opinion from many experts in many disciplines, is that modern humans (Homo sapiens) were stuck in Africa because of the ice age. Paleoclimatologist J.P. Steffensen in the January 7, 2002 issue of The New Yorker Magazine commented: “You can ask, why didn’t human beings make civilization fifty thousand years ago? You know that they had just as big brains as we have today.

When you put it in a climatic framework, you can say, “Well, it was the ice age. And also, this ice age was so climatically unstable that each time you had the beginning of a culture they had to move. Then came the present interglacial– ten thousand years of very stable climate. The perfect conditions for agriculture. If you look at it, it’s amazing. Civilizations in Persia, in China, and in India start at the same time, maybe six thousand years ago. They all developed writing and they all developed religion and they all built cities, all at the same time, because the climate was stable. I think that if the climate would have been stable fifty thousand years ago it would have started then. But they had no chance.”

The nuance of Steffensen’s comment is that, all along, humans were as dependent on global climate as any other creature. The advancement of human society through nomadic, agricultural, industrial, and modern periods has always been taught with the nuance that humans grew in sophistication and it was their independent intelligence that lifted them from the past ages. Steffensen implies that it was simply a stable global climate in which to have the human experience.

One would think that our brains should not have taken 10,000 years to move from grubbing for roots to growing roots, to canning roots, to making altered roots. However, there were those distractions:  war, predation, unlimited population growth, not replacing parts of the Earth we borrowed like water, dysfunctional environments left behind, lust, and unbeknown, thereby disrupting the global climate – the real reason our species is in trouble. 10,000 years was long enough to forget our place in the Earth’s command of life.

Heavy stuff. The mariner will continue another time.

Ancient Mariner

Befuddlement

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On Friday, Stanford University released a study by internationally prestigious scientists that declared planet Earth is well into the sixth mass extinction (Holocene). The report has charts and other references that indicate the fabric of the planet’s ecosystem is collapsing at an ever increasing rate. The report predicted the collapse would occur in about three human lifetimes (315 years+or-). The report further suggested that humans will be one of the earlier extinctions because of human dependence on so many environmental and specie services, e.g., naturally cleaned water, pollination by bees, and stable weather patterns for vegetation.

The mariner is befuddled that no television outlet grabbed this issue. If the reader hadn’t come across an article on a few websites, the reader would never know that extinction of Homo sapiens has become a statistical reality – near enough that today’s elementary school children will have their lives disrupted in significant if not fatal ways. Despite what the Bible says about Armageddon, it will not occur in one day. It will occur faster and faster over time. For the most part, symptoms will involve starvation, disease, economic collapse, vandalism and true anarchy as governments will not have the resources to quell the collapse of rule by law.

There is a book on this subject published recently by Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the Climate. (The mariner’s town library has a copy as well as a copy of The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert). Klein has written several books on the subject of economic greed destroying the planet. Following is an excerpt from the New York Times book review for This Changes Everything:

“Klein diagnoses impressively what hasn’t worked. No more claptrap about fracked gas as a bridge to renewables. Enough already of the international summit meetings that produce sirocco-quality hot air, and nonbinding agreements that bind us all to more emissions. Klein dismantles the boondoggle that is cap and trade. She skewers grandiose command-and-control schemes to re-engineer the planet’s climate. No point, when a hubristic mind-set has gotten us into this mess, to pile on further hubris. She reserves a special scorn for the partnerships between Big Green organizations and Immense Carbon, peddled as win-win for everyone, but which haven’t slowed emissions. Such partnerships remind us that when the lamb and the lion lie down together, only one of them gets eaten.

In democracies driven by lobbyists, donors and plutocrats, the giant polluters are going to win while the rest of us, in various degrees of passivity and complicity, will watch the planet die. “Any attempt to rise to the climate challenge will be fruitless unless it is understood as part of a much broader battle of worldviews,” Klein writes. “Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war.”

The point is, there is a mountain of resistance to change – especially on capitalist philosophy and the ingrained demand for ever increasing profits. How long will it take Earth’s humans to break the most successful profit engine in history? The Mass Extinction report implies that everything must be corrected in two lifetimes to prevent full collapse of the environment.

The mariner includes one chart from the report that ties the development of the mass extinction, or conversely, the destruction of the global environment, back to the beginning of the industrial age.

extinct animals

An easy to read article is available at the following link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/02/11/there-have-been-five-mass-extinctions-in-earths-history-now-were-facing-a-sixth

As Naomi Klein pointed out (and Pogo), our own perceptions of what is good, better and best for each human, each of all species, and the planet environment itself, is a myth. We do not have a model of human behavior that matches the reality around us – nor will reality accept it. Yet, humans are delinquent and tardy in how they manage their own place on the planet.

How many years will it take for humans to eliminate arrogance and hubris and recognize that we are not the reason for the Earth to exist?

How many years will it take for core cultural values to recognize that Homo sapiens is not, by a high count, the superior species. We are more dependent on many other species than they are on us.

How many years will it take to dismantle capitalism and nationalism? If history serves correctly, once a nation has cured its unstable situation of war and abuse, it won’t be until the third generation thereafter before that nation will have leaders unscarred and unbiased in their decisions about national policy and culture.

The mariner will have more on the Holocene as matters develop. He presents only high level concepts and ideas in this post; he depends on the reader to pursue links and news sources that will add more substance to this issue.

Ancient Mariner

The Sixth Extinction has Begun

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An irrefutable and respected report was just published in the Science Advances journal. A blue ribbon team of scientists working at Stanford University, headed by Paul Ehrlich and lead researcher Gerardo Ceballos, a professor of conservation ecology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a visiting professor at Stanford University, predicts that humans could be extinct in three lifespans. Three lifespans is three generations each separated by about 25 years plus the average lifespan of each generation – assume 80 years. 75 years plus 240 years = 315 years.

We wouldn’t all expire together at the last moment. Starvation would increase day by day as water, food and environment would take their toll faster and faster over time. The mariner was amazed that this report didn’t take over the news media in every quarter. Other than the browser results, there was no mention of the coming extinction of humans – in only three generations.

The mariner strongly urges that the reader browse “sixth mass extinction” and read the news article on.MSN.com or other news websites.

Ancient Mariner

Red Brain, Blue Brain

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The following information was published in the PLoS ONE journal on February 13, 2013:

“Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans

Liberals and conservatives exhibit different cognitive styles and converging lines of evidence suggest that biology influences differences in their political attitudes and beliefs. In particular, a recent study of young adults suggests that liberals and conservatives have significantly different brain structure, with liberals showing increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, and conservatives showing increased gray matter volume in the in the amygdala.

Here, we explore differences in brain function in liberals and conservatives by matching publicly-available voter records to 82 subjects who performed a risk-taking task…. Although the risk-taking behavior of Democrats (liberals) and Republicans (conservatives) did not differ, their brain activity did. Democrats showed significantly greater activity in the left insula, while Republicans showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala….. These results suggest that liberals and conservatives engage different cognitive processes when they think about risk, and the results support recent evidence that conservatives show greater sensitivity to threatening stimuli….. Conversely, liberals had stronger responses to situations of cognitive conflict than conservatives.”

Red brain art

The mariner apologizes for the scientific journal lingo – rather dry reading. He will paraphrase while contemplating what this means in the world of politics and beliefs in general. His comments easily can be interpreted too literally; the reader should consider the mariner’s informal interpretations as parables.

Republicans orient attention to external cues. What this means is Republicans find it less important to understand how they feel inside; more important is their control of potential risk outside.

On the other hand, Democrats orient attention to perceptions of internal feelings – how they feel about the external cues. This orientation also borders the temporal-parietal junction, and may reflect the perceptions of internal feeling and motivation in others as well.

Now the reader has a clear and firm understanding of the difference between a Republican and a Democrat. The mariner perceives this may not be true. Let’s take a real example but remember that simply saying something for clarity may be overstated and may not be wholly true in the first place.

Republicans are good managers because they are risk averse. Republicans are sensitive to anything that blocks their range of decisions in dealing with risk. Therefore, Republicans do not like labor unions because labor unions have the ability to limit what the Republican may want to do regarding job profiles and salary – risk-laden issues in any business. This does not mean Democrats aren’t good managers, too. Remember the statement in the journal lingo: “Although the risk-taking behavior of Democrats (liberals) and Republicans (conservatives) did not differ….” In other words, a good manager will deal with risk appropriately – liberal or conservative.

The Democrat manager, however, is sensitive to his/her feelings about jobs and salary and, because the temporal-parietal junction is nearby, empathy may play a role in how the risk is perceived. As long as labor unions play by fair rules, the Democrat is more likely to accept why being in a union is important to the employees’ perception of risk.

How are we doing? Maybe one more example. But to keep it simple, no elected government folks are allowed:

Bah, Humbug! People have nothing to do with global warming! Republican or Democrat? We don’t really know for certain but several surveys show that this is a Republican. Global warming is nothing if it is not constrictive, behavioral (the right amygdala doesn’t know about behavioral) and interferes with profit strategies across the board. A Republican would run from the restrictive regulations that cure global warming. The same is true of the fossil fuel industry, the banking industry and a myriad of other corporate interests that do not want to be curtailed in their decision making regarding risk to profit.

What is the future of humanity if it all boils down to Left Posterial Insula versus right amygdala?

Ancient Mariner