Entries by Frits Rincker

Climate change is a major challenge to life on Earth. We are dealing with more CO2, less O2 in a positive feedback loop due to higher temperatures, forest fires and the dying oceans. This has happened before and has caused major extinctions. The reason we are around is because some species survived. They where adapted to the changing environment and created offspring.

EU proposed to make standard seeds mandatory 

Evolution as Charles Darwin presented it is not survival of the fittest, as many believe, but survival of the just good enough. The process hinges on variety in species so that a changing situation creates an opportunity for some of the population, even if others, or the majority can't deal with it.

Evolution is a proces of survival of those species that can cope with their environment, not necessarily the optimal or strongest

The EU is now preparing to make use of certain seeds mandatory, standardized seeds. This means lots of legacy seeds will disappear and the plants we really need will have next to no variety. It also means seeds become money, because these will of course be patented modified seeds, which are 'better' than other seeds. 

Variety in species is the best way for life to deal with changes in the environment 

We should be weary overharvesting.

This strategy which is only motivated by economical motives, by desire to control and own, is the biggest diseaster for our environment and our chances of suvival on Earth. This risk taking behaviour has never a problem for the industry ingeneral as it has driven fossil fuel use for a century in which the effects where well known, and sigarets, and DDT, and nuclear power. Danger means you become dependent on them. The main concern is power and control excerted by a few.

Allowing the motivation of control to force us into an evolutionary niche is a mistake

We need not less variety in seeds, but more. The maximum, so the plants can adapt. Life on Earth lost the battle during the Permian extinction and then it had thousands of years to find a 'solution'. We now give it a couple of hundreds of years. Better not mess it up for ourselves.. 

Shell is organizing the Eco-Marathon in the Ahoy in Rotterdam. Hundreds of teams from around the world are competing to have the most fuel efficient car, or one that reaches the highest speed using solar, batteries or hydrogen. Below some pictures, first of the kids exposition.

It seems hard to be negative about this event. It is not at all. It's a blatant propaganda show for fossil fuels. Yes you see some solar panel and a wind turbine, but most of the exhibition is about gas, nuclear and lots of cars, cars, cars. Kids love cars. Apart from cars they can see a plan for their future where "75% of people live in cities".

Shell tells you there may be climate change, but that biomass burning in poor countries also adds a lot of CO2. All the more reason to stop their business.

Shell remains in the conditional mode regarding climate change. CO2 "has the potential". It's very predictable, their business model and ambitions include getting gas from the ocean floor apart from hunting for shale gas in South Africa. They don't learn they are a mere supplier of energy they find around Earth, only theirs because they bribe (or kill) most people that oppose them. This has been going on since the late 1800's.

A ripoff of the strangled Aptera

The Eco-Marathon challenge is interesting, today many teams seemed to have their complete workshop moved to the Ahoy hall. Categories are solar, batteries, gasoline, hydrogen. It's an involved activity, students will feel like they are really cool and active, which is what they should be much earlier in life (in terms of responsibilities). 

The creations remind one of the first cars, (many of which where electric by the way until Ford came along). It's a great way to make people aware of their maker skills. We say Wealth is skills x materials x energy, so these events are good for any economy, not only the Shell inspired (destined to cause our extinction) fossil fuel based one. 

Russians, of course working on a gasoline car 

We are building a test bed for robotic gardening, aquaphonics and other roboeconomic techniques. We believe that once it is established renewables afford us to restore ourplanet without limitation, we will set about developing the technology to do so, which will be a mix of information technology and robotics. It will be important especially to speed up the process of replanting and dedesertification, irrigation and maybe even channel building. All this will happen without any fossil fuel input, it has to, you can't solve a problem with it's cause. We'll group this under geoengineering and will start with trying to do some automation on our own indoor garden making it a loos thread along with other topics on this site..

Space age salad bar.. 

Max has been ranting about the many ways in which banks have created fraudulent credit for themselves and credit has been taken from the public by low interest rates and policies, something we understand to be part of the carboncredit logic. This logic dictates that as available carbon is reduced or shifted elsewhere, liquidity in society has to be shrunk or prices of everything will go up.

Carboncredit a limit to growth  Het carboncredit systeem

These guys take another perspective. They say that if we are to halt burning carbon when we reach 2 degrees (which is diseasterzone) that about 80% of the reserves will remain unused. As this reserves are on the books for credit extention, this book value of reserves has to be cut. What these guys are talking about also makes carboncredit sense, because you don't want to extend credit when the carbon is not there or prices will go up.

Money, credit or savings are worthless if there is no energy to produce goods when you want to spend it

In both cases the prices are kept stable so people are not alerted to a change of paradigma, and cashflows are protected. The guys are actually protecting the banking system and have Moody's on their side. Moody's, Standard & Poor and other rating agencies serve as leaders in the carboncredit system, becuase they determing the cost of credit, so effectively how much carbon a country or company can commandeer to do it's work. 

Pensions

Part of the conversation is about pensions. Pensions are illusions because the money people save in it only has value in a functioning economy, and you never know if that will exist when you get your money from your pension. Pensions need to shrink as hard as possible because the bad news is : Fossil fuel won't be available to make all the stuff people would want to buy when they get the money. Better then to make sure they have less money. Also businesses and banks make money today, now that there's still good access to oil (even if oil becomes more and more carbon intensive and complicated to get), so banks and industry will try to trick pensions out of their funds. They are already doing a charade about 'coverage' meaning they counted on certain interest on the savings but they didn't materialize so now the pension given will be decreased. All this is completely understandable in the carboncredit logic.

Because you (still) can't make anything without fossil fuels, money only buy stuff as long as they are available, and the amount of money people can spend today must match the amount of production possible today  

Max and his guests don't get this far. Max tries to find the road to trade up while ditching oil, and that is impossible as long as all companies use fossil fuels for production. The guests try to make the industry do something preventative it has never done before, but they are backed by Moody's because Moody's has as its task to manage the carboncredit balance, it has to cut credit when the carbon supply/access drops.

Our habits, our beliefs about others, when shared and common, invite exploitation. 'Economics' gets installed in our elites so banks make profits 

It is a truth that even in a world without central control behaviour can be concerted. One of the biggest silent organizers in our world is economic theory, another is our credit based banking system. Both are used and applied without to much doubt, for instance in 'kickstarting the economy'. Using prices is a reflection of the trust that someone maintains the relation between credit and productivity, and because productiviy depends on the availability of 'carbon' fuels that trust means one expects the carboncredit system to be managed.

Targeting 'Price stability' is managing the relation between carbon and credit 

This is what Bernanke means then he says the Federal Reserve Bank maintains 'price stability'. It tries to manage the value of one dollar of carboncredit vis a vis US domination of fossil fuel reserves. This process is collapsing for geopolitical reasons, hence the growing poverty and agressive nature of US banks in trying to destroy demand at home and aboad (by crashing the PIIGS).   

The Wallstreet banks, in cooperation with the US government, have reduced carbon consumption by reducing liquidity around the world, shifting reserves towards CAUSA industry

What will happen is that Moodies will downgrade oil companies for real, and nobody can be blamed, so banks are 'forced' to lend less and more discriminately, more austerity will have to be applied as the dying carbon industry still tries to strangle the growing renewable one because renewables are made using 'carbon' fuels the use of which requires credit. This gets the banks off the hook, and allows for expansion of their power as chaos starts to spread in regions without fossil fuels to transition to renewables. Many people will die, as many are already dying.

Two options for the end game :

1. A carbon based plutocracy arises that starts to mine Clathrate gas from the ocean floor, fracking the hell out of every nook and cranny playing locust with natural resources while strangling the renewable industry where possible and creating a total surveillance environment. Mankind's final moments will be spend in endless wars. Like the oil industry expert below confessed (second allinea).

Banks and the fossil fuel industry have been killing us for more than a century, the people in these sectors are selected to be short term thinkers loyal only to the corporation

2. Governments see that they have to increase the energy supply, and renewables being most easy to create and control shift the use of carbon fuels towards this sector, disregarding economic ideas like kickstarting something, actually focussing on cutting the carboncredit domination by building factories that create renewable energy sources using only renewble energy. This also include adopting a new money system, and abolishing the autonomy of the fossil fuel industry. With those measures the conditions of every living creature on earth starts to improve immediately.

Wealth is a function of Skills, Raw materials and Energy (notice the absence of credit or oil) 

The financial/fossil sector will dominate politics as much as it can as long as it can to remain in power. That is the nature of those industries. But these people are always and only bluffing and no match for a determined population. As always though these interests own both sides of the debate, so only a populist that has a clear idea about how to defeat the control by the banks and fossil fuel industry should be supported. The renewable future is the only future and it should be the one you want! 

Want to know more? Roboeconomy.com 

See The Coal Maffia Plunders India

Wetshandhaving in India heeft zijn zwakke kanten, dat is met de recente verkrachtingen wel gebleken. Het land is gigantisch groot en het grootste deel van de bevolking leeft in armoede. Net als Pakistan 'tribal zones' kent waar de politie niks te zeggen heeft zijn er in India ook gebieden waar je beter niet kan komen. Kennelijk vallen daar ook kolenrijke gebieden onder. De kolen maffia is zo machtig dat India niet goed bij zijn kolen kan. De regering heeft geen controle over de kolengebieden, de politie is corrupt en medeplichtig. De voorraden worden geplunderd.

We hebben het hier waarschijnlijk over schuldslavernij, net als in andere arme landen, waar het land zelf de gevangenis vormt van mensen die moeten werken om een schuld af te betalen. Kinderarbeid is geen uitzondering, zoals in de docu hieronder "Children of the inferno" te zien is. Kolen ontbranden spontaan als ze aan lucht blootstaan, en branden soms al 100 jaar. Meer over ondergronds brandende kolen.

English clarification below.. 

Hier is iets te doen voor de bouwsector, een manier om luchtverversing en verwarming te realiseren volledig op duurzame basis, misschien zelfs resulteren in een energie neutraal gebouw!

Zou dit voor particuleren ook kunnen, bejaarden tehuizen, ziekenhuizen, scholen? Denk het wel! Dit sluit enigzins aan bij onze eerdere posts over Solar Air heating.

English 

Ben Bronsema developed a method for converting buildings so that they do not require airconditioning and become near energy neutral. It is implemented by adapting the roofs and facades so they capitalize on the wind and solar energy available. Then it uses thermal convection and other intrinsic sources of flow to replace energy intensive fans and airconditioning systems. When the hot air is exhausted from the building in summer the heat can be extracted and stored in undergound aquifer or other heat storage tank for use later, or even to heat the buidling in winter. 

Applying these techniques (amongst which is solar air heating) to exiting buildings may be a quicker way to drive down carbon consumption than refubishing them with new heating systems. The adoption of these concepts can run into trouble because energy clients and banks don't like to loos customers or cashflow. Yet it provides a model for future buildings and a way out of your costly airco bills.. 

The Grvity plane concept is similar to the ocean gliders that have been used to collect ocean data for some time now. It does the same thing, but instead of using air for aqautic boyancy it uses helium for atmospheric boyancy.

Once it's at altitude it can glide down on wings, collecting some energy from small vawts who's energy is stored in the form of compressed energy. The speed it develops generates lift so the plane can cover over 500 miles without fuel, only based on the energy to decompress and compress the helium. 

The plane is safe because it doubles as an air ship, it floats in the air anyway.  It could use a propellor in our humble opinion, or it may float off.. 

Shipping is a mega pollutor. Even though shipping companies like Maersk are investing in cleaner engines and even in synthetic fuels, sadly the whole point of international shipping is that it monetizes fossil fuels. Long distance logistics creates the economy, it requires money to flow through the banks, it consumes fossil fuels. It makes banks and oil companies rich and important. Whatever you get from china, banks and oil companies get a cut of the produce.

Shipping companies are an essential part of 'global economy' trap

But there is an opportunity here. Shipping in the current form will not stay, it is simply too dumb. Europe is going to tax imported solar panels from China, but how will it respond the import of a solar panel plant from China? Way more efficient because there is no real link between Euro's and Chinese coal imports from Australia anyway.

"Commercial vessels emitted 3 percent of the world’s carbon in 2007, and that may increase to 18 percent by 2050 as global trade increases and fleets expand, said the UN’s International Maritime Organization." (source) 

Skysails Kites save fuel! can return the investment in 3-4 year!

Shipping can clean up, by starting to use wind power directly (using kites) or to make fuels, by starting to farm algae for biofuels at sea, by converting to Ammonia (NH3) altogether, but of course that would overturn the link with the fossil industry and the banking sector, which now makes the whole enterprise possible (ships get cheap almost unrefined fuel). For the shippers there's only the desire to keep doing what they are doing though, so there is hope. 

Dolphins Riding the Bow of the Leda Maersk from Maersk Line on Vimeo.

Above video should be part of the media campaing where Maersk announces it's first clean energy driven service. Slowsteaming is a speed that dolphins can keep up with, so they where seen playing in front of the bow. Pitty that bow bellows out poison a few hundred meters further back. Opportunity knocks.

Billions of gallons of fuel for the taking 

Richard Branson is on this as well, as he owns Virgin Atlantic. He tries to make ethanol fuel from flared CO using mircobes, so maybe ships can even do this at sea or in port, doubling the utility of the fuel!

P.S.

Ampex Power, a startup of Shell and Nuon, does exactly the same thing as Skysails, but with a rigid wing instead of an inflatable kite. The system uses 1/20th of the materials for an equivalent turbine. This may work better, it will at least be cheaper. It seems the kite is actually a better solution because it does not require a runway. Why Ampex had to try and succeeded in getting 100.000 crowdfunding is a mystery, oh, no, because banks don't like renewables, and Shell and Nuon don't have cash!!

Secretly both Ampex and Skysails are VAWT, vertical wind turbines, that have always been cheaper and easier to build.

This extrinction will have no name, at least not for those that will study it in about 4 million years or so, the time it usually takes for some sentient lifeform to recover from scourge of toxic gasses produced by oceans, dead because of global warming. It may take a lot longer.

"Climate change is expected to have significant influences on terrestrial biodiversity at all system levels, including species-level reductions in range size and abundance, especially amongst endemic species" (source)

But it is happening, and the numbers are not mild, even without assuming this H2S toxic onslaught. The higher temperatures and changing weather conditions are enough for a pretty serious cull. This then of course is not the end of it, just the beginning.

57±6% of plants and 34±7% of animals are likely to lose ≥50% of their present climatic range by the 2080s.(source)

On the other hand, if we take action the results will be different. We can't read the full article but of course once we are focussed on mitigation and reversal of the damage (using abundant renewables and perhaps liquid energy produced using the sun in f.i. the North African desert), then the outcome will be much better:

With mitigation, however, losses are reduced by 60% if emissions peak in 2016 or 40% if emissions peak in 2030. (source)

We still don't know if that will be the end or just a slowdown. We can confirm that with a will to expand renewables and store carbon we will see a pickup at the point renewable energy is starting to drive the expansion, theoretically enabling us to catch more CO2 then was ever released since the start of using fossil fuels.

Check out Greenseaupwelling about how to use the deep ocean water to increase fish stocks and capture CO2 and cool the atmosphere

Cooling our planet is a big factor in retaining plant life as long as we don't have a way to make a concerted effort to exit carbon. Models of growing algae in our oceans show that method would work to catch significant amounts, but it's main effect would lie in the cooling of the air, bennefitting plants on land.. 

Update : Oops, not the biggest project, as there's a 12 $billion 1000 Mw (1 GW) plan in Dubai. But this project is taking it slow seriously, taking until 2030 to complete! Fake plan? Making solar 5% of the mix!

Morocco already has a parabolic trough solar thermal plant, and it has been courted by Desertec to do more, to become a power producer for Europe. But it turns out it will work with Saudi developer ACWA Power to build the biggest solar plant on the planet, and rightly so!

Seventeen year old kids cleanig trucks, breathing the fumes. Half if Ricks friends are sick.

The cancer link to shale gas is real. 

"The association between shale-oils and skin cancers, particularly of the scrotum, was demonstrated by analyses of 65 cases of skin cancer, including 31 of the scrotum, from the Scottish shale-oil industry." (source)

Earlier we wrote about what we call 'Hypertransparency' as the new standard for business around the world. Not secrecy or corporate privacy protection but on the contrary, an open protocol for all business transactions, payments activities. Why? Because our planet is being razed by companies that like secrecy because what they do is against the will of a majority of the stakeholders, those that live on or in the land where they do business.

Hypertransparency to create a globally shared reality

At the same time it's clear no online transmission or phone call remains untracked. The existence of giant datacenters storing each and every detectable move of any individual has been reported. It has been demonstrated no CCTV footage of smartphone is safe, and that is probably only the tip of the surveillance iceberg. Surveilance that creates two sides : The one observing en the one being observed. That split can be the engine of a societal division and power structure on it's own, no need for banks or armies. 

Neutrino detector, or hyperstransparent hub? 

Citizens are not supposed to observe. An 75 year prison sentence for a man videorecording police action proves this point. The power difference not only lies in the action that can be taken, but also in the (shared) perception of reality and evidence gathering that is allowed. Police are growing more brutal verywhere, the author witnessed a young man carried by 4 policemen over 100 meter without any reason right in the middle of Rotterdam, without any emergency or threat identifyable. This type of behaviour is intimidating, demoralizing and unwanted in a free society. People are not practicing puppets, and things should not get worse. There is no reason for things to get more dire other than those that can change course refuse to do so.

Neutrino detectors try to see tiny flashes of light in a large water tank, caused by the collision of a neutrino with the water. It's a thousand hyperallert eyes staring at whatever happens.  

With all this in mind the solutions are several, and because it's an existential battle between those that like the control structure (for their own safety) and those that would like it to go (by making things safer in general) those solutions will be fought. The easiest approache is to erode whatever you don't like slowly, which mimics the way our freedoms are encroached upon. This means becoming more sensitive to choice of words, to ommisions and acts that numb or blunt the public's attention. Say it out loud, name names, reality is your friend, that is the point of hypertransparency. 

An idea, or more an image got stuck in my head a few days after writing the first hypertransparency article, it was that of a lightbulb in an big space, surrounded by glass fiber endings, as the core of some giant server. It was a materialization of the concept, it was a way to make an untamperable broadcasting device. The single source of information (transmitted by the light) would channel all transactions and make them available to all listeners exactly at the same instant. That way nobody would have to doubt the veracity of the data, something one can do with twitter. Neutrino detectors would be a good example of the device, hence the picture and video above. They are buildt to detect tiny flashes resulting from the collision of water and neutrinos.

A single source transmits all commercial data to all 

It seems irony that to get all people on the same page one would have to build the inverse of a sun, an internal sun that treats all participating in the global organization equally. But it is not irony, it is logical, that the same process that treats plants and animals equally, the same type of process that makes us treat people equally, would have to develop to make our automated mechanical reality work in synchrony and fairness. Hypertransparency is a better fix than laws that need to be agreed an applied globally, because that system is so easy to corrupt. The problem is identity : As soon as people stop identifying with each other they stop treating each other equally. Human rights can be ignored, so a solution has to be found that bypasses differences of identity by creating a globally shared experience.

The above device is a lightsource that would be able to transmit the datastream to listeners, like an internal sun in the neutrino detector, but of course we would not need a detector that sensitive, just a way to detect the data transmitted in a way that ensures all obeservers share the same 'reality'. But we have in fact a device that can do what would be needed for global hypertransparency, in operation at Los Alamos laboratories for 2 years now : Quantum encryption. What is it? A device that transmits data from a central hub to 'ends of the spokes' with no possibility of tampering with it. The only place one can tamper with the data is before it is send. Full throtle irony : It's developed with secrecy in

"Quantum cryptography is the Eldorado of security, promising the potential for perfect communications secrecy. The concept is easy to understand. The laws of quantum mechanics state at the photon level, a particle cannot be measured without altering it. A message encoded in photons could not be read without altering it – which means the recipient will always know if it has been intercepted."(source)

Quantum encryption is not encryption at all. It is just a way to send signals so that natures laws don't allow you to detect them without leaving a trace. So you write your letter on super vulnerable paper, put it in a tube, tie it to a pigeon and whomever reads it before it reaches it's destination will damage it so much it is obvious it was compromised.

Why does equal access to information symbolize democracy and justice? Because it makes it impossible to escape responsibility in the face of the shared reality.

Quantum encryption is kind of hard to pull off, but it does guarantee all recievers get the same message, just like they looked at exactly the same data, although not at the same time. The idea is to develop quantum routers, that somehow can interact with the data and route it. This is not possible by definition without destoying the original message, leaving room for tampering or secrecy. Hypertransparency would argue encryption is to be avoided in all cases, so there is no loss. But to implement a quantum data system why not use space. Why not create a network of satellites that form a mesh of transmitters and recievers, able to compare data from multiple sources (visible satellites) to resolve the right data to transmit, a bit like GPS. Again we see that tampering with reality becomes harder when more eyes are on it. If we want to respond adequately though it is paramount we start sharing it hypertransparently.

Smart use of our planet and suns resouces would mean abundance for all. The struggle is caused by those that want to leverage scarce fossil fuels in an artificial financial and media reality

A more practical incarnation of the concept would be a simple webservice accesible to all to report transactions, messages and contracts. Like an open administration now already demanded by the tax office and accountancy firms. www.transparency.org/shell 

The demand for open data