:: P O S E I D O N Z B L O G ::

Texas Peace March 1/4 - 16/4/2006

I am moved to mention the Texas Peace March, which will take place between April 1st and April 16th. Included below is a website from which further details will be obtainable.

By simple invitation to participate it's aim is to march unto the River: its goal to redeem the soul of the USA.

Two important blessings that americans can grant in their lives.

And most practical, too, given the significance of Easter.

And perhaps for generations to come to look back and say that here the redemption called for was made and paid in our earthly ways. The ways we know. And I do mean all the parties involved and alluded to..

ConsumersforPeace.org is promoting the ExxonMobil War Boycott, which seeks immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces and mercenaries from Iraq, reparations for Iraq, impeachment of George W. Bush and prosecution of U.S. officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq.

"ExxonMobil has made at least $7 billion extra in 2005 because of the invasion and occupation of Iraq," said Nick Mottern, director of ConsumersforPeace.org. "This is unearned money, taken from consumers, and it needs to be returned to society," he continued. "We propose that ExxonMobil write checks to private organizations for relief in Iraq, for war-related injuries of U.S. veterans and to compensate people in the U.S. and elsewhere who have been harmed by ExxonMobil operations."

The beneficiaries would include residents of Beaumont and Baytown, Texas, living near ExxonMobil refineries who have experienced severe health problems, according to Mottern.

ConsumersforPeace.org is developing a list of potential recipients for the $7 billion.

"War profiteering is unacceptable in any war," said Mottern, "and it is particularly despicable when it is done by the nation's largest oil company during an illegal war that has so much suffering and has so much to do with oil."

Truly

INTO the OPEN..

Below is a basis to inspire innovation in or for businesses that our world needs. It is based on the recently announced California Clean Technology Competition. Opportunity-only to californians, they call it the Clean Tech Open. For brevity I'll call it the OPEN. And for a wider range of talents it need not constrain entries to  just a state or small country's residents. 

The premise of the OPEN is simple: each participant comes up with an overview plan for a technology-enabled green business in one of 5 categories; finalists then must produce the full-fledged business plan. Winners in each category (Energy Efficiency, Smart Power, Renewable Energy, Transportation, and Water Management: note: fit this to need/s) receive a good cash prize, along with a variety of professional services and a year's worth of office space; the overall winner receives an additional cash award.

Here's their BIG picture:

We believe that a new class of emerging clean technologies can help resolve many of the great challenges of our day:

* Global demand for diminishing resources continues to grow. Demand for energy and raw materials is increasing dramatically driven in large part by the economies of China and India.

* Sustainable development must become a reality - the only option for a world of over 6 billion people.

* Long-term energy prices are trending upward. The many costs of foreign oil force us to consider the need for energy independence.

* Tens of millions of combustion engines powering a growing demand for automobiles and trucks continue to drive the use of fossil fuels and the proliferation of greenhouse gases.

* Managing environmental contamination has real costs including the need for better health care, water treatment, and soil remediation. Not polluting in the first place can be the most economical solution. 

There's much more right here..

AND the graphic speaks for itself:

Truly,

Thoughts Past and Present.. upon St. Patrick

Saint Patrick was a Roman. Destined to live out his life beyond the Empire's fringe. When the Empire collapsed its Christian legacy was preserved in Ireland thanks to Patrick. And Patrick’s spiritual sons, Columba, Aidan and other holy men, eventually brought the ancient heritage back east, to the lands where it had originally come from.

Ten years ago Thomas Cahill published a delightful little book, “How the Irish Saved Civilization,” describing how from the bower the saints and scholars came that saved the classical and religious heritage of Europe.

Today we are witnessing a second age of migrations and wanderings. Christianity has already to a large extent died in Europe, and, barring a miracle, the old continent will descend into the dark ages for a second time. As perhaps Eurabia.

The Irish have been infected with the same multiculturalism that has infected the whole of Western Europe. Dublin already has its mosques – who could have imagined that half a century ago! – and the time is not far away that in Ireland – as in other countries in Western Europe – more people will be praying in a mosque every week rather than a Christian church.

And yet, we know that, even if Europe perishes, its culture, its religion, its heritage lives on, beyond its westernmost border, in America. One day, perhaps, America will send its missionaries east in order to re-europeanise the countries where its own civilisation came from.

As a boy Patrick was abducted from Roman Britain by slave raiders and taken to Ireland. He managed to escape and board a ship bound for the Empire only to find “desertum,” moral, economic and political devastation there, in the very year – 407 AD – that barbaric hordes wreaked devastation in Gaul.

All of us who live in Europe and can read the signs of the times, know that ours is a civilisation that has committed suicide. And yet we must bear witness to the world, and especially to America, about what European civilisation is today: moral, economic and political devastation, desertum.

It is our duty to report about the devastation in Europe 1,600 years after the first one, a devastation wreaked not by barbarians but wreaked in our souls by ourselves first, leaving a desertum which a desert people is now taking advantage of. This is the sad story of Europe. It is a lesson for America to ponder on this Saint Patrick’s day: Do not repeat Europe’s fatal mistake.

[Ex: an article which first appeared in Bjournal]

Truly,

Without unction - WITH apology.

Twas the International Day for Women on the 8th march 2007. Sayeth the United Nations.

And I was so busy I forgot the date. Yes, I do have a diary so I have no excuse.

Save to say how sorry I am.. Not to have mentioned the lasses and ladies past and present for all they have been and become in my life.

Above, an appropriate Rockwell illustration which I think captures it all really well. 'We Can Do It'.

And we will.

Truly,

Kyoto Protocol Compliance..now has TEETH.

News from the United Nations Environment Programme :: Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the UNEP, also welcomed the launch of the compliance system..

“With today’s announcement, the Protocol also has teeth, as befits a legally binding treaty. This in turn adds to the integrity of Kyoto and its provisions, in particular the credibility of the emissions trading markets,” Mr. Toepfer said.

The enforcement wing of the Protocol’s Compliance Committee had the power to determine the consequences for countries that do not meet commitments, while the facilitative branch of the Committee was designed to provide advice and assistance to States in order to promote compliance, according to UNFCCC.

Ambassador Raúl Estrada Oyuela of Argentina, Chair of the Enforcement Branch, called the Kyoto Protocol compliance system “groundbreaking” and pointed out that it was “designed to ensure the environmental integrity of the agreement and to contribute to the credibility of the carbon market created by the Protocol.”

Hironori Hamanaka of Japan was elected Chair of the committee’s Facilitative Branch.

Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, 35 industrialized countries and the European Community are required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below levels specified for each of them. Overall, this should amount to reductions of at least 5 percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012 and now the 20-member Compliance Committee will deal with cases of non-compliance with these and other obligations of the Protocol.

“The signs of climate change are all around us, from the melting of the Arctic and the glaciers up to extreme weather events and the migration of species,” said Mr. Toepfer. “I sincerely believe that the world is no longer in any doubt that climate change is real and that the targets set under Kyoto are modest and doable – that few if any will be bothering Ambassador Estrada or Mr. Hamanaka over the next six years.”

[HT: UN, repubbed scoop.co.nz]

Truly,

ANTARCTIC.. what gives..?

There was the study that said how global warming would increase precipitation(rain) and thus thicken Antarctica vis freezing etc..

Not so.

Then there was the British Antarctic Survey which said that the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet alone—which is about eight times smaller in volume than the East Antarctic ice sheet—would raise global sea levels by more than 20 feet.

Watch this space..

Now for the study by University of Colorado at Boulder researchers on the Antarctic ice sheet, which harbors 90 percent of Earth’s ice and has, they say, lost significant mass in recent years—most of it from the West Antarctic ice sheet. Which appears to tie-in with the Brits. But what, exactly, ties-in?

The team used measurements taken with NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites to conclude that the Antarctic ice sheet is losing up to 152 ± 80 cubic kilometers annually. The estimated ice loss in Antarctica is equivalent to 0.4 ± 0.2 mm/year of global sea rise. The only way to go for globally-observing satellites.

But these findings counter the prediction of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment, completed in 2001, that projected that the Antarctic ice sheet would gain mass in the 21st century due to increased precipitation in a warming climate, as mentioned above.

Researchers used GRACE data to calculate the total ice mass in Antarctica between April 2002 and August 2005. That is, post the IPP work.

Launched in 2002 by NASA and Germany, the two GRACE satellites orbit Earth 16 times a day at an altitude of 310 miles, sensing subtle variations in Earth’s mass and gravitational pull. Separated by 137 miles at all times, the satellites measure changes in Earth’s gravity field caused by regional changes in the planet’s mass, including such things as ice sheets, oceans and water stored in the soil and in underground aquifers.

A change in gravity due to a pass over a portion of the Antarctic ice sheet, for example, imperceptibly tugs the lead satellite away from the trailing satellite. A sensitive ranging system allows researchers to measure the distance of the two satellites down to as small as 1 micron and to then calculate the ice mass in particular regions of the continent.

A study spearheaded by researchers at CU-Boulder and published in September 2004 concluded that glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula—which juts north from the West Antarctic ice sheet toward South America—speeded up following the collapse of Larsen B ice shelf in 2002. Ice shelves on the peninsula—which has warmed by an average of 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 60 years—have decreased by more than 5,200 square miles in the past three decades.

The fifth largest continent, Antarctica is the Earth’s highest, windiest, coldest, and driest land mass. Its surface is 99.7% covered by a vast ice sheet with an average thickness of ~2 km and a total volume of ~25M km3. Floating ice shelves constitute about 11% of the continent.

Which makes for an awful lot of water.. as and when they melt. But now at least a much better overall perspective is possible.

Truly,