Anthropocene

Age of Man (National Geographic):

So it's disconcerting to learn that many stratigraphers have come to believe that we are such an event—that human beings have so altered the planet in just the past century or two that we've ushered in a new epoch: the Anthropocene. Standing in the smirr, I ask Zalasiewicz what he thinks this epoch will look like to the geologists of the distant future, whoever or whatever they may be. Will the transition be a moderate one, like dozens of others that appear in the record, or will it show up as a sharp band in which very bad things happened—like the mass extinction at the end of the Ordovician?

That, Zalasiewicz says, is what we are in the process of determining.

The Anthropocene: a new epoch of geological time? (Royal Society A):

This issue examines the nature, scale and status of the Anthropocene as a potential new geological Epoch. Key themes addressed are the effects of human influence on climate, landscape, the oceans, and biodiversity, and how these are producing a distinctive geological record, that will be preserved into the far future. The phenomenon of ongoing, human-driven environmental change may be compared with the great environmental perturbations of the geological past.

How hard are we pushing the land? (PhysOrg / NASA):

We may be becoming an ever more technologically advanced society, but we remain as dependent as ever -- if not more and more so -- on the natural world that surrounds us.

That is one takeaway from new NASA research that has found humans are using an increasing amount of the Earth's total land plant production each year for food, fiber, building and packaging materials and biofuels.

This remains a young data record, as one of the first global measurements tied to satellite data was published in 2004. That baseline-setting measurement was for the year 1995, when humans needed 20 percent of all plant growth for our various products. But the early returns are in, and despite uncertainties in the measurement, the signal is headed in a clear direction: up. From 1995 to 2005, global annual plant consumption rose from 20 percent to 25 percent of all plant production in those years.

As the human population continues to grow and more societies develop modern economies, this rate of consumption is increasing both as a whole and on a per capita basis globally, a NASA research group led by Marc Imhoff at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., has found.

Blind date with disaster (Guardian / David Suzuki 2008)

[I]n 1992, a remarkable document called World Scientists' Warning to Humanity was signed by more than 1,500 senior scientists, including more than half of all Nobel prizewinners alive at that time.

Here is some of what the document said: "Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future we wish for human society . . . and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about."

The document goes on to list the critical areas of the atmosphere, water resources, oceans, soil, forests, species extinction, and overpopulation. Then the words grow even more urgent: "No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished. . .

A great change in our stewardship of the Earth and life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated."

This is a frightening document; eminent scientists do not often sign such a strongly worded missive. But if the Scientists' Warning is frightening, the response of the media in North America was terrifying - there was no response. None of the major television networks bothered to report it, and both the New York Times and Washington Post dismissed it as "not newsworthy".

Og til slutt en på norsk:
Tror historiens sjette masseutryddelse er på vei (NRK)

Internet Schminternet

Mye har blitt sagt i det siste om hvor viktig "sosiale media" har vært i opprørene i midtøsten etc., både av mainstream-medier og bloggere som John Robb.

Vel, jeg er skeptisk... Hvis jeg var revolusjonær ville jeg holdt meg langt unna sånne ting! Hør på Hr. Assange:

He [Assange] said: "Yes [Twitter and Facebook] did play a part, although not nearly as large a part as al-Jazeera. But the guide produced by Egyptian revolutionaries … says on the first page, 'Do not use Facebook and Twitter', and says on the last page, 'Do not use Facebook and Twitter'.

"There is a reason for that. There was actually a Facebook revolt in Cairo three or four years ago. It was very small … after it, Facebook was used to round-up all the principal participants. They were then beaten, interrogated and incarcerated."

Julian Assange tells students that the web is the greatest spying machine ever (Guardian)

Forøvrig også: Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media (Guardian)

...oooog litt matnytt når vi først er i gang

Farmers Fail to Meet Demand as Corn Stockpiles Drop to 1974 Low (Bloomberg news)

“This has been a demand-driven bull market,” said Jim Farrell, 56, the chief executive officer of Omaha-based Farmers National Co., which manages more than 2.4 million acres on 5,000 farms in 24 states.

“I do not think we can see a big enough increase in U.S. acreage to rebuild inventories back to a comfortable cushion in one year,” he said. “It is going to take two years of good weather and good yields. There is absolutely no room for any weather problems anywhere in the world this year.”

(min utheving)

Den ellers optimistiske Lester Brown:

Everything now depends on this year’s harvest. Lowering food prices to a more comfortable level will require a bumper grain harvest, one much larger than the record harvest of 2008 that combined with the economic recession to end the 2007-08 grain price climb.

If the world has a poor harvest this year, food prices will rise to previously unimaginable levels. Food riots will multiply, political unrest will spread and governments will fall. The world is now one poor harvest away from chaos in world grain markets.

(World One Poor Harvest Away From Chaos)

Det er på tide å blote til Frøy.

"Recovery" i USA

Denne var "Ukens graf" på RWER-bloggen; verd en titt, interessante kommentarer, spesielt fra Merijn Knibbe.

Videre fra Consumer Metrics Institute, som etter eget utsagn måler "consumer interest in major discretionary purchases" (men holder eksakt metode hemmelig, dessverre):

Nu går alt så meget bedre!

Michael Hudson kritiserer Oljefondet

Forsåvidt omtalt av Aftenposten, men mye bedre av Klassekampen:

Ødslar bort oljefondet (2011-2-21)

[Klassekampen] - Oljefondet plasserer oljeformuen i aksjar og andre finansielle verdipapir, og får kvart år skryt av IMF for å vere ei lur pengeplassering. Kva er eigentleg gale med det?

[Hudson] - Det er ikkje noko gale med oljefondet. Det gjer det politikarane dykkar har sett som mål: Å tene pengar i dei internasjonale finansmarknadene. Problemet er at det spelet er over. Oljefondet er i dag verdt 512 milliardar dollar. USAs sentralbank trykte nett opp like mange dollar med eit tastetrykk. Når dei store statane trykkjer opp så mykje pengar for å berge økonomiane sine, endar fondet dykkar opp med å vedde mot uendeleg kreditt.

- Og med uendeleg kreditt vert pengane våre, som er kreditt, meiningslause?

- Akkurat, seier Hudson engasjert.

og «Satsar på ein daud hest» - et interview med Spetalen(!):

[Spetalen] er samd med den amerikanske økonomiprofessoren Michael Hudson, som har gjesta Noreg for å fortelje oss at finansmarknaden er på veg mot kollaps, og at vi må sjå etter nye stader å putte pensjonspengane våre - til dømes i utdanning og strategisk viktig teknologi. Hudson har vore økonom i JP Morgan Chase, ein av dei fjerde største bankane i USA, og rådgjeve amerikanske, kanadiske og latviske styresmakter.

- Hudson har jobba med investeringsbankar i 30 år. Han har skjønt at dei er baserte på rein svindel. Det er heilt utruleg at Ap er med på dette, seier Spetalen og syner til at Ap-politikar Einar Førde på 80-talet sa at å pumpe statlege pengar inn i børsen er som «å bære havre til en død hest».

I Klassekampen på måndag sa Hudson at selskapa Noreg investerer i, freistar selje gjelda si til oss, og at fondet dimed «subsidierer den internasjonale finanseliten».

Går inn på topp

Spetalen meiner oljefondet følgjer heilt feil strategi når det investerer i utalandske aksjar og obligasjonar. Han argumenterer matematisk: Oljefondet veks raskt når oljeprisen er høg, som før finanskrisa, då oljeprisen steig over 140 dollar fatet. Oljeprisen veks i sin tur raskt når aksjekursane stig, for då er det stor aktivitet i økonomien.

- Dimed endar oljefondet alltid opp med å kjøpe verdipapir når dei ligg høgast i pris. Og den dagen det går verkeleg dårleg og vi faktisk treng pengane til å trygge velferdsstaten og berge industrien, kjem oljepengane til å vere borte, for då har aksjekursane rast. Når 50 prosent av fondet kunne forsvinne i løpet av fire månader under krisa, ser du kor trygt dei står i dag, resonnerer Spetalen.

Kudos til Klassekampen!

Robert Rapier om Peak Oil

Dessverre litt vanskelig å høre hva intervjueren sier, og det er vel heller ikke helt heldig at hun avslutter intervjuet med å si "I'm good", men: Rapier er en svært fornuftig og jordnær fyr som veit hva han prater om. Vel bortsett fra at han er litt uheldig med timingen av utsagnet "We're still in recession", iom at Its Official: Recession Ended June 2009 samme dag som videoen ble lagt ut.

Men ellers bra oppsummering av problemstillingen.

Steven Schneider på Egde

Schneider er død,

Stanford climate researcher Stephen H. Schneider, a long-time friend, colleague and Edge contributor, died last month at the age of 65 of a heart attack while on a flight to London.

og i den anledning har Edge en nekrolog hvor de blant annet reposter en video av et intervju fra 2008.

Videoen er 20 minutter lang og svært severdig.

Det mest interessante var der han beskriver et prosjekt hvor han og studentene hans kobler sammen en "enkel" klimamodell og en "enkel" økonomisk modell:

It turned out that all those parameters that mattered to the climate model, and all those parameters that mattered to the economics model, while they still mattered a bit in the coupled model, were completely trumped by two parameters that controlled the behavior of the coupled system. Climate sensitivity was the big gorilla from the climate side, and the discount rate—how much we value the future—emerged as dominant from the economic side.

(mine uthevinger)

Klimaets følsomhet er det neppe mye vi får gjort med, men hva med vår discount rate? Her er et av Nate Hagens essays om temaet:

Living for the Moment while Devaluing the Future

(Jeg må le litt av Hagens innimellom, for eksempel når han skriver at

Everyone is familiar with the 'discount rate' in the financial markets.

Øøøh alle som har en finansbakgrunn som Hagens, sikkert, men ellers en ørliten overdrivelse kanskje? Vel, han forklarer begrepet, så han mente det vel ikke helt bokstavelig 8-)

Uansett,

The original neoclassical assumption was that the discount rate curve was exponential, meaning that we discounted the same from period to period. Actual economic experiments however show that the shape of the discount curve is hyperbolic, or as Harvard economist David Laibson prefers quasi-hyperbolic. This means that the early periods have much steeper discount rates than later periods. Laibsons research indicates that peoples discount rates are 12% during days 0-5 but drop to 4% in days 20-25. We REALLY prefer the present.

og til slutt

Understanding that stress increases peoples discount rates suggests to me that the events surrounding peak oil (and perhaps climate change) will reach an inflection point. We need to hit the emotional triggers well ahead of peak oil. Once people are stressed and things become difficult, accessing peoples rational minds will be all the harder.

Dersom dette skal gå bra må vi ("vi" = verdenssamfunnet) tilskrive fremtiden større verdi. Det er en vanskelig nok ting å oppnå i seg selv.

Det blir ikke lettere av at vi har dårlig tid.