COMPLEXITY AND NEGATIVE FEEDBACK IN NATURE

An email from Wendell Krossa (wkrossa@shaw.ca) to Benny Peiser. For background on Prochlorococcus see here

Larry Seltzer in the Mar. 1/05 issue of CCNet said, "The Y2K [scare] taught the opposite lesson from what the extremists propounded: far from being vulnerable because they are interconnected, our systems are robust because of their redundancy and interconnectedness."

An important element in this interconnectedness is the fact that positive feedback amplifies an effect while negative feedback dampens it. Just over a decade ago, an organism was discovered that may produce a significant negative feedback and dampen the effect of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.

Bob Brinsmead has noted the following regarding this organism: "I suggest a major issue generally overlooked is the part played by micro-organisms in regulating the CO2 factor. To illustrate here, there has been talk of planting forests to gain some carbon credits because forests (especially young growing ones) absorb and sequester atmospheric carbon.

But fifteen years ago, American researcher Sally Chisolm, discovered a heretofore undetected single-celled organism in the oceans which she has called prochlorococcus. There are about 20 million of these little critters in every liter of ocean in the first 200 meters depth. They absorb CO2 and put carbon in a form that feeds plankton which then feeds fish and supports marine life in general. These micro-organisms absorb more carbon than all the forests in the world, and make our forest planting endeavors seems like mere breaking of wind in a thunderstorm. Ocean organisms moreover, produce 80% of the world's oxygen- a fact that puts to rest the claim that cutting trees will starve the world of oxygen. Micro-organisms make up more than two thirds of the world's biomass. They also clean up human pollution, including oil spills and chemical waste sites" (post to JBAS, Dec. 11/05).

It appears such organisms may function in a negative feedback role that may dampen the impact from CO2 shifts in the atmosphere. Complex life is replete with such feedback interconnections that make systems and life in general robust and resilient.





MANIC-DEPRESSION AND 'GLOBAL WARMING' HYPE

Post lifted from Prof. Philip Stott

I have already commented on the manic-depressive tendencies presented by participants and camp followers at major 'global-warming' meetings, such as those held in The Hague (2000), in Marrakesh, Morocco (2001), in Edinburgh around the G8 Summit (2005), and in Montreal (this month).

The 'meeting' is first reported to be 'failing drastically', with participants walking out or raising 'impossible' issues. The 'meeting' then extends into the early hours of the morning after the day on which it is meant to have closed, the host nation using every trick in the moral-blackmail book to achieve 'something' for home consumption. A bland agreement is cobbled together at the very last minute. Thousands of participants and journalists emerge from their fierce-small-world 'euphoric', tears are shed, and the 'success' of the meeting is overhyped and over-spun - "the world can breathe again". Then, inevitably, in the cold light of day, the euphoria turns quickly to angst and to bitterness as it becomes increasingly obvious that little-to-nothing has been achieved. The high is followed by a long depression.

If you examine carefully the symptoms exhibited following these repeated 'meeting patterns', while analysing in detail the changing media language involved, it becomes obvious that 'global warming' hype is leading to clinically-identifiable symptoms closely associated with those presented in 'mass psychogenic illness', or 'mass sociogenic illness'.

The following two excellent medical papers explain these syndromes, with detailed examples: (a) 'Mass psychogenic illness: role of the individual physician' [Am. Fam. Physician (2000) 62: 2649-53,2655-6], and (b) 'Mass psychogenic illness: a case report and overview' [Psychiatric Times, April 2000, XVII, 4]. Here is a key passage from (a):

"Mass psychogenic illness is characterized by symptoms, occurring among a group of persons with shared beliefs regarding those symptoms, that suggest organic illness but have no identifiable environmental cause and little clinical or laboratory evidence of disease. Mass psychogenic illness typically affects adolescents or children, groups under stress and females disproportionately more than males. Symptoms often follow an environmental trigger or illness in an index case. They can spread rapidly by apparent visual transmission, may be aggravated by a prominent emergency or media response, and frequently resolve after patients are separated from each other and removed from the environment in which the outbreak began. Physicians should consider this diagnosis when faced with a cluster of unexplained acute illness."

Both medical papers mention the effects of a high-school teacher, who noticed a gasoline-like odour in her classroom, on her class. The teacher developed headaches, nausea, shortness of breath, and dizziness. Her students soon began complaining of similar symptoms. The school was evacuated, and emergency personnel from several counties responded. On the first day, 100 people ended up going to a local emergency department with symptoms reportedly related to exposure at the school. Five days later, the outbreak re-occurred. The school was closed on that day, and approximately 70 people sought emergency care.

Yet, physical examination and laboratory testing revealed no evidence whatsoever of a toxic cause for the symptoms. Even more interestingly, such mass hysteria can spread rapidly to those who are distant from any original 'event'; in such cases, the response is known as 'mass hysteria by proxy'. One outbreak of 'mass hysteria by proxy', for example, has been documented, in which anxiety transmitted among parents led to reports of serious symptoms in students.

'Global warming' hysteria appears to be a classic example of 'mass psychogenic illness', which is triggered and fed by the regular world meetings mentioned above, but which is then transmitted globally through the media and Green pressure groups as 'mass hysteria by proxy'.

This is hardly surprising, as taking the temperature of the Earth every second of every day, and then reporting it uncritically and apocalyptically via 24-hour rolling news, constitutes the perfect trigger for folk with a predisposition to hypochondria, or, in this case, to 'ecochondria'. Manic-depression, or bipolar-disorder, then begins to exhibit itself, both in the individual and in the media.

The truth is, therefore, a serious one: 'global warming' hype is bad for your health. Yes, Green hype can be clinically damaging. Of course, as the author of the above studies cleverly reminds us, the essence of all this was said by Jonathan Swift a long time ago (in 1710):

"Falsehood flies and the truth comes limping after; so that when men come to be undeceived it is too late: the jest is over and the tale has had its effect."





NEW SCIENTIST AND THE AUBREY MEYER MUSICAL ZEN METHOD

An email from John A. (climateaudit@gmail.com) to Benny Peiser

Something caught my eye that I couldn't resist replying to. In the article in New Scientist that you quoted we read:

"Many environmental groups were pleased with the outcomes. Steve Sawyer of Greenpeace International called the meeting "historic" and said it had delivered "just about everything" the pressure group wanted.

But others were more sceptical, saying the meeting had done nothing more than agree to keep talking. They point out that the US signed up for talks only after a clause was added stipulating that the dialogue "will not open any negotiations leading to new commitments". For many, this made the dialogue pointless.

"In Kyoto in 1997, Greenpeace argued that the world could emit at most another 270 billion tonnes of carbon before we hit dangerous and even chaotic rates of climate change. Since then we have travelled a quarter of the way to that figure," points out Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute in London, UK. "This agreement does not change anything, so to call it a triumph is crazy. We are still on a one-way trip to disaster."

As a admirer of Orwell, I appreciate the twisting of language like the use of "sceptical" to mean "disbelieving because its not pessimistic enough"

I have a little more information about this Aubrey Meyer. I've just recently wasted some money on Amazon (well, more than usually just wasted it on more books than I actually need). I bought a book on the basis of an Amazon Recommendation because I genuinely wanted to find out what this particular doctrine meant. The book is called "Contraction & Convergence - The Global Solution to Climate Change" by Aubrey Meyer. The Amazon reviews are equally glowing. See here

Here is the first three paragraphs of the Author's Note:

"I've never anything other than a musician. How I ended up devising a global policy concept at UN climate negotiations for the last ten years is a bit of a mystery to me. [JA - you're not the only one] But a clue is that both writing and playing music are largely about wholeness and the principled distribution of 'effort' or practice. Responding to the climate challenge seems much like writing or playing music, where balance on the axes of reason and feeling, time and space, can only come from internal consistency. If practice is unprincipled there is no coordination and there is discord. When it is principled, there is balance, harmony and union. Perhaps all life aspires to the condition of music.

Ten years ago, I was feeling crushed and frightened by the realisation that humanity's pollution was destroying the future by changing the global climate. A sympathetic friend told me I wasn' being 'Zen' enough. I didn't know what he meant, had a good laugh and decided he must be right.

So I went to the UN just as the negotiations began to create the climate convention. There I discovered tensions between Taoists, Marxists, economists, musicians and other human beings. This was only just funny enough, often enough, to rescue me from the powerlessness and despair that otherwise captures those who are not Zen enough at the UN, or anywhere else. 'Being Zen' probably means caring, but enough to grasp reality by letting go of 'duality'...."

OK Aubrey, I'm going to back away very very slowly....

The book is full of Aubrey's beliefs on Taoism and Zen Buddhism with complicated diagrams on greenhouse emissions that, to my amateur scientific eye, look pretty unreadable, interspersed with Taoist pictograms and exortations on Zen and New Age spirituality. On these occasions, you've got to wonder if the reviewers on Amazon are reading the same book, or smoking something that isn't from the tobacconists and reading Aubrey's aura remotely.

Now it appears that Aubrey is speaking on behalf of the "Global Commons Institute", the well known environmentalist group and jazz combo. It's truly an amazing academic path that Aubrey has managed to get himself quoted as an environmental authority in "New Scientist". Clearly the publishers have expanded the definition of scientist quite a lot more than the Oxford English Dictionary takes account of.

So for all you budding scientists out there, the message is clear: Don't sweat the math stuff with all of that hard grind of calculus and statistics.

Use the "Aubrey Meyer Musical Zen Method". All you have to do is learn your instrument and turn up at the UN.




WIND FARM INSTALLED NEAR PARLIAMENT SOLVES BRITISH ENERGY CRISIS

Scientists who set up a wind farm next to the Houses of Parliament were surprised to discover that the four wind turbines installed produce more than enough electricity to end the British energy crisis.

Greg Mullet, project manager, said: "Wind turbines are a very efficient method of generating electricity but are usually powered by cold air in most locations i.e. the wind. With the amount of hot air that passes over these particular turbines their spin rate and efficiency has increased by several million percent, thus solving the British energy crisis overnight. Unfortunately, when first switched on the turbines span so fast that they moved Britain south by about 496 metres, which means we will have to spend millions updating all of our GPS linked systems such as route finders. We have now overcome this problem by facing two turbines south and two north."

"The only remaining problem is that this increased efficiency mysteriously disappears at certain times of the year - coincidentally, when the House of Commons is in recess. We are currently negotiating a deal with France to export our excess electricity to them, in return for cheaper electricity from them when our turbines are off-line."

Professor Douglas Ramsbottom, an energy expert based at Bootle University, said: "This is excellent news and means we don't have to go through all the old arguments over going nuclear. We have also done some research of our own and hope to set up another electricity generation project next to this wind farm."

"However, this project will be based on new technologies that allow farmers to turn animal waste into useful energy, as we have been assured there is an unending supply of bullshit in the same area."

(Satire from Deadbrain)

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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