Voyagers on Earth

 

Remember that time on Star Trek when they were facing a new unknown enemy? The ship was a machine ship with no carbon based life forms aboard.  It was called VGER.

As it turned out, VGER was short for Voyager, an evolved artificial intelligence that returned to Earth in Star Trek (the Motion Picture) and ascended to explore higher levels of existence. It is probably the most powerful artificial entity encountered by Starfleet.

Now I'm not a big Trecky fan, but there were a lot of things that I appreciate that came from the mind of Texan Gene Roddenberry. One, the cast is multi cultural and multi species.  The purpose of the missions was to explore the universe. There is no such thing as money.  There is no pursuit of capital just pursuit of knowledge. 

In the real world, our Voyagers are now almost 20 billion miles away and they have entered space where the solar winds no longer exist. It takes about a day to send or receive a message from them.  And we lost contact with VGER 1 just last year.

This from BBC's Sky and Night:

"On 14 November 2023, the spacecraft suddenly began transmitting unintelligible data instead of its usual engineering and science report.

The spacecraft still appeared to be receiving commands and operating normally, allowing the team to diagnose the problem lay in Voyager 1’s software and develop a fix.

On 20 April, the team received the first understandable message back from the spacecraft in five months.

In 2012, Voyager 1 passed through the heliopause, the boundary at the edge of the solar wind’s influence and the start of interstellar space. The twin Voyagers are the only spacecraft to have ventured into this region, making their invaluable data worth fighting for.

After 47 years in space, both Voyager 1 and 2 are beginning to reach the end of their usable lifespan. Both are powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators, using radioactive material to generate electricity. As this radioactive material decays over time, its power output slowly decreases. 

Even once all its scientific systems are shut down, Voyager will continue transmitting a locator signal back to Earth, which will remain in range of the Deep Space Network until 2036.  At that point, the Voyagers will sail beyond our sight, but will continue to travel ever outward into the depths of the Universe."

But if they do wind up in some other galaxy, they know where to find us, thanks to the copper plates we put on them at the suggestion of Carl Sagan.  We also included a golden record. 

This from Wikipedia:

The Voyager Golden Records are two identical phonograph records which were included aboard the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.^[1] The records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form who may find them.

Carl Sagan noted that "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space, but the launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet."

Whether or not VGER returns as advanced AI, who can say.  But we can say that our own AI on this planet is clearly headed into distant regions of Cyber Space.  I saw at least three different softwares advertised during the Olympics, one suggesting that students should use it for thank you notes.  The message of Verner Vinge and the Singularity seem particularly relevant as we earthlings find ourselves hurling threw Space/Time.

We are all Voyagers on Earth.  And we need to look forward to find our place in this universe and in this time. The Merchants of Fear will always be with us. But as it is said, We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.

And as we dance to the hopeful beat of the Harris Walz, I choose to be optimistic about our future despite the urgent need for climate stabilization and the nuclear wars and starvation that will follow our non-action.

And like Earnest Tubb and Willie Nelson,

 I'll Walz across Texas with you by my side.

for  When we Dance together

 my world's in disguise

 it's a fairyland tale that's come true.

 

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AI thinks therefore AI am

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you haven't noticed, artificial intelligence (AI) is quite suddenly becoming a huge story.  Just last month, 60 minutes ran a significant piece on the issue and not only was it very entertaining, it was downright scary.  The self learning soccer robots really got my attention.  After just two days, they were running soccer plays that I've never even seen in a FIFA event. The excitement and concern started at the end of 2022 with the release of ChatGPT.  This from Wikipedia:

ChatGPT launched as a prototype on November 30, 2022, and garnered attention for its detailed responses and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge.^[3] The advent of the chatbot has increased competition within the space, motivating the creation of Google's Bard and Meta's LLaMA. 

And just this week,  Jeffery Hinton , the Godfather of AI, left his job at Google because of his concerns for the technology he has helped develop.  

This from the Times:

"Geoffrey Hinton was an artificial intelligence pioneer. In 2012, Dr. Hinton and two of his graduate students at the University of Toronto created technology that became the intellectual foundation for the A.I. systems that the tech industry’s biggest companies believe is a key to their future.

On Monday, however, he officially joined a growing chorus of critics who say those companies are racing toward danger with their aggressive campaign to create products based on generative artificial intelligence, the technology that powers popular chatbots like ChatGPT.

Dr. Hinton said he has quit his job at Google so he can freely speak out about the risks of A.I.  A part of him, he said, now regrets his life’s work. (clip)

Dr. Hinton’s journey from A.I. groundbreaker to doomsayer marks a remarkable moment for the technology industry at perhaps its most important inflection point in decades. Industry leaders believe the new A.I. systems could be as important as the introduction of the web browser in the early 1990s and could lead to breakthroughs in areas ranging from drug research to education.

But gnawing at many industry insiders is a fear that they are releasing something dangerous into the wild. Generative A.I. can already be a tool for misinformation. Soon, it could be a risk to jobs. Somewhere down the line, tech’s biggest worriers say, it could be a risk to humanity.

“It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” Dr. Hinton said.

After the San Francisco start-up OpenAI released a new version of ChatGPT in March, more than 1,000 technology leaders and researchers signed an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of new systems because A.I. technologies pose “profound risks to society and humanity.”

Several days later, 19 current and former leaders of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence released their own letter warning of the risks of A.I. That group included Eric Horvitz, chief scientific officer at Microsoft. (clip)

Dr. Hinton, a 75-year-old British expatriate, is a lifelong academic whose career was driven by his personal convictions about the development and use of A.I.  In 1972, as a graduate student at the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Hinton embraced an idea called a neural network. A neural network is a mathematical system that learns skills by analyzing data. At the time, few researchers believed in the idea. But it became his life’s work.

In 2012, Dr. Hinton and two of his students in Toronto, Ilya Sutskever and Alex Krishevsky, built a neural network that could analyze thousands of photos and teach itself to identify common objects, such as flowers, dogs and cars.

In 2018, Dr. Hinton and two other longtime collaborators received the Turing Award, often called “the Nobel Prize of computing,” for their work on neural networks.

Around the same time, Google, OpenAI and other companies began building neural networks that learned from huge amounts of digital text. Dr. Hinton thought it was a powerful way for machines to understand and generate language, but it was inferior to the way humans handled language.

Then, last year, as Google and OpenAI built systems using much larger amounts of data, his view changed. He still believed the systems were inferior to the human brain in some ways but he thought they were eclipsing human intelligence in others. “Maybe what is going on in these systems,” he said, “is actually a lot better than what is going on in the brain.”

As companies improve their A.I. systems, he believes they become increasingly dangerous. “Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now,” he said of A.I. technology. “Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.”

One of the segments of the 60 minutes story discussed that these learning systems have not just the ability but an apparent propensity to make up stuff.  They call these stories hallucinations. 

Down the road, Hinton is worried that future versions of the technology pose a threat to humanity because they often learn unexpected behavior from the vast amounts of data they analyze. This becomes an issue, he said, as individuals and companies allow A.I. systems not only to generate their own computer code but actually run that code on their own.

“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” he said. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”

This is what used to be called the Singularity and I wrote about it 20 years ago. 

The concept and the term "singularity" was popularized by Vernor Vinge  in 1983 in an article that claimed that once humans create intelligence greater than their own, there will be a technological and social transition and it would signal the end of the human era.

He wrote that he would be surprised if it occurred before 2005 or after 2030.

This week, the White House is gathering as many of the tech folks that they can to do something before we find ourselves in one big pickle.

Rene Descarte would be pleased I suppose.

 

COGITO, ERGO SUM

 

 

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The Bay of the Wise

 

It was a big Roevember and it's not quite over yet.  Hopefully, the D's will win the runoff in Georgia and actually pick up a seat in the Senate.  It will be quite a repudiation of the party that is out of control. Unfortunately, they did manage to eke out control of the house by a few votes.  Had it not been for Long Island and the  lower Hudson River along with  the seats that DeSantis gerrymandered, the table would have been turned. So it wasn't a wave or tsunami, it was more like a light rain.  But it will make things soggy and the House will be a mess.

But as the election began to show itself, another event in Africa was convening.  It was COP27.  And if you don't speak diplomatic acronym that's the  27th Conference of Parties for the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established an international environmental treaty to combat "dangerous human interference with the climate system", in part by stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.^[1] It was signed by 154 states at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. Its original secretariat was in Geneva but relocated to Bonn in 1996.^[2] It entered into force on 21 March 1994.^[3]

As for COP 27, here is the press release:

UN Climate Change News, 20 November 2022 – The United Nations Climate Change Conference COP27 closed today with a breakthrough agreement to provide “loss and damage” funding for vulnerable countries hit hard by climate disasters.

“This outcome moves us forward,” said Simon Stiell, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary. “We have determined a way forward on a decades-long conversation on funding for loss and damage – deliberating over how we address the impacts on communities whose lives and livelihoods have been ruined by the very worst impacts of climate change.”

Set against a difficult geopolitical backdrop, COP27 resulted in countries delivering a package of decisions that reaffirmed their commitment to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The package also strengthened action by countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change, as well as boosting the support of finance, technology and capacity building needed by developing countries.

 I had several friends who went.  One was our Mayor and the other was our County Commissioner from Travis County.  We had dinner this weekend and the results of her report are much worse than the  meeley mouthed milk toastie  official Press Release.

Here are the five main accomplishments from Reuters:

FUND FOR "CLIMATE JUSTICE"

After years of resistance from rich governments, nations for the first time agreed to set up a fund to provide payouts to developing countries that suffer "loss and damage" from climate-driven storms, floods, droughts and wildfires.

Despite being the standout success of the talks, it will likely take several years to hammer out the details over how the fund will be run, including how the money will be dispersed and which countries are likely to be eligible.

FOSSIL FUEL FLOW

The final COP27 deal drew criticism from some quarters for not doing more to rein in climate-damaging emissions, both by setting more ambitious national targets and by scaling back use of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.

 While the deal text called for efforts to phase down use of unabated coal power and phase-out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, some countries had pushed to phase out, or at least phase down, all fossil fuels.

But from the opening speeches to the gaveling of the final deal, the use of fossil fuels was affirmed for the near future.

President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates - host of next year's COP28 climate summit - said his country would continue to deliver oil and gas "for as long as the world is in need".

Oil company CEOs were on hand at this year's summit, after having been pushed to the margins at COP26. Natural gas chiefs were billing themselves as climate champions, despite gas companies having faced lawsuits in the United States over such claims.

Nevertheless, some electricity-poor nations in Africa argued for their right to develop their natural gas reserves, even as they face increasing climate impacts such as drought.

Other Highlights.

 "BRAZIL IS BACK"

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was greeted by roaring crowds as he declared "Brazil is back" in the global climate fight, and vowed to host COP30 in 2025 in the Amazon region.

 U.S., CHINA RELATIONSHIP REKINDLED

A critical precursor for the climate talks' success happened far away from the Red Sea locale.

As the COP entered its second week, China's President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden met in Indonesia for the G20 where the heads of the world's two largest greenhouse gas emitters agreed to restart cooperation on climate change after a months-long hiatus due to tensions over Taiwan.

BILLIONS IN PRIVATE FINANCE (BUT NOT TRILLIONS... YET)

The world of finance has failed to provide enough money to help countries cut their carbon emissions and adapt their economies to the changes wrought by global warming, yet the COP27 talks suggest change is coming.

Among the steps likely to free up more cash is a plan to reform leading public lenders such as the World Bank so that they can take more risk and lend more money. By doing so, countries hope more private investors will join in.

For me, the super take away is that the whole show was sponsored by Coca Cola.

My guests for dinner were alarmed at the pace of progress and they have been to at least five of these things over the years.  They didn't see how the current pace was going to keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees C.  In fact neither does this group. This from last year's report:

"The world's largest-ever climate change report has been published, setting out the most up-to-date assessment of how the climate crisis will impact the world over the coming decades.

It has found that the average global temperature is likely to rise by more than 1.5°C within the next 20 years, surpassing the limit settled on in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

This warming will result in more frequent and widespread extreme weather events - including heatwaves, heavy rainfall, drought, wildfires and ocean acidification all of which have already been increasing in severity around the planet.

'Today's IPCC Report is a code red for humanity,' says António Guterres, UN Secretary-General.

'The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.

'Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.'

In all predicted scenarios, we are now expected to release enough carbon emissions to cause the planet to warm by 1.5°C by 2040, although with the current trajectory of emissions this will likely be closer to 2034.

The past five years have been the hottest on record since the 1850s. The recent rate of sea-level rise is nearly triple that of 1901-1971 and human influence has caused the global retreat of glaciers since the 1990s.   

 

It's the kind of thing that makes you want to pack up the kids and go to Sharm El Sheeikh

 

Which by the way, 

Means  

Bay of the Wise. 

We Wish.

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World War Z

The first time I saw pictures coming from Comrade Putin's War in Ukraine, there were trucks, troops, and even tanks all marked by hand with a Z with a box around it.  At the time, I didn't know if they were Russians or Ukrainians.  It made sense that it could be either.  After all,  President Zelenskyy of Ukraine could be the hero or the target, but in fact he was not that popular as the attack began.  Why the Russians would mark their vehicles with Z perhaps made sense to remind the troops that overturning the Ukrainian government of Zelenskyy was their true mission.

Of course it reminded me of the 2013 movie, World War Z.  This from Wikipedia:

"Former UN operative Gerry Lane, his wife Karin, and their two daughters, Rachel and Connie, are in heavy Philadelphia traffic when the city is overrun by zombies. As chaos spreads, the Lanes escape to Newark, New Jersey and take refuge in an apartment with a couple and their young son Tommy, though they are forced to escape with Tommy when a horde of zombies attack the apartment and his parents are infected. UN Deputy Secretary-General Thierry Umutoni, an old friend of Gerry, sends a helicopter that extracts the Lanes to a U.S. Navy vessel in the Atlantic Ocean where scientists and military personnel are analyzing the worldwide outbreaks. Andrew Fassbach, a young virologist, insists that the plague is a virus and that the development of a vaccine depends on finding the origin."

Ultimately, after a lot  of blood and global chaos, a new vaccine is developed  thus allowing offensives to be taken against the zombies. In the end, Gerry finds and embraces his family and all is more or less well. There was talk of a sequel and return of this zombie apocalypse but it's no where on the horizon.

It's certainly not needed given that most all of us are experiencing our own zombie apocalypse as a different World War Z unfolds in front of our eyes.  As the Russians attacked from the North, the South, the East, and from the air under the pretense of being peacekeepers for the newly Russia recognized eastern region of Donbas of Ukraine, the veneer rubbed off quickly.  It was a full scale attack to return Ukraine to the Russia fold.  And with 200,000 soldiers, heavy armor, and dominance of the air and of the seas to the south, who would not imagine that they would succeed in days.

Apparently President Z.  

Along with the 44 million Ukrainians who had voted 9 to 1 for independence from Russia in 1991 and with help from the EU and US, Ukrainians are now in their second week of holding much of the Russian army at bay.  It is reported that somewhere between 5 and 10 thousand Russians have been killed and more than 250 tanks have been lost.  Stories of Russian soldier discontent are growing.

And everyday, more javelin antitank weapons and stinger anti aircraft missiles are arriving from the West.  President Zelenskyy has become a hero of his people and of much of the anti-autocrat world.  Yet the outcome is grim to most military professionals.  But within this bleak assessment of the outcome, other intelligence officials are saying that Putin has blundered, that he has already lost this war, and any victory now will be pyrrhic.

However heart wrenching it becomes, the Zelenskyy defense of his people and his famous quote, "I don't need a ride, I need ammunition", will be remembered long after these weeks and months of autocratic fiat has cast its dark shadow over Europe and the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, the Real World War Z rages on. For Climate Change will be our last world war if we don't defend ourselves.

A new United Nations science report is saying climate change is about to get much worse. It's likely going to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer, gloomier, and much more dangerous within the next 18-20 years.With extreme weather now, climate change is about to get so much worse.

And after that watch out.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said Monday if human-caused global warming isn’t limited to just another couple tenths of a degree, an Earth now struck regularly by deadly heat, fires, floods and drought in future decades will degrade in 127 ways with some being “potentially irreversible.”

“The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health,” says the major report designed to guide world leaders in their efforts to curb climate change. Delaying cuts in heat-trapping carbon emissions and waiting on adapting to warming’s impacts, it warns, “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

Today's children who will be alive in the year 2100 are most likely going to experience up to four times more climate extremes than now, even with a few more tenths of a degree of warming over today's heat. In addition to that,  if temperatures increase two more degrees Celsius from now (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit), they will feel over five times the floods, storms, drought, and heatwaves, according to the collection of scientists at the IPCC.

And yet our own "Zombies of the R Kind"  thwart global leadership and their own President as they deny the science of climate change and instead highlight high gas prices and attempt to make political hay with their mendacity. They are slaves to their need for power, not unlike Putin.

And in their support of Heir Putin and his genius, (sic)

their victories too,

will also be pyrrhic.

 

 

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The Right Fright

 

We've put out the inflatable skull as we wait for a few visitors tonight.

But, in the real world, nothing is more scary these days than the former political party turned death cult Republicans.

Somewhere early next week, the uber red state of Texas will eclipse California as the state with the most deaths even though California has 10 million more citizens.  It seems that the Republican death cult in the Lone Star State while fighting mask mandates for school children and vaccination requirements in businesses and institutions, has succeeded in sacrificing approximately 20,000 Texans for political ends.

Texas has further excelled in it's unconstitutional landmark Roe vs Wade work-around through the passing of legislation that  creates a unique bounty system that allows anyone anywhere to sue those that assist a woman in her legal right to choose.  It will be further in the news this week as the case is heard on All Saints Day at the Supremes. If this strategy is allowed, many scholars predict that legal chaos will soon be on everyone's doorstep as the legal strategy is adopted by blue states and red states alike.  If it is allowed, our justice system will join the death cult of their appointers.

Throughout the land, and especially in Virginia in the upcoming election on Tuesday, the R's and their brethren on the right have used dark money to finance faux rebellion in school boards and other public venues to activate those who believe their right to choose is superior to their neighbor's right to justice, no matter how many more are killed and endangered. In the R Death Cult, your right to rule your body is superior as long as you are not a pregnant woman.

As the former Grand Old Party continues it's death spiral into gaining power at all costs, it continues its resistance or even acknowledgement of the issue that has brought over 190 leaders and nations together in Glasgow to once again adopt meaningful action on the issue of Climate Change.

As the young but now maturing Greta Thunburg said as the United Nations sponsored gathering gathered,

“blah, blah, blah”.

She quoted statements by Boris Johnson: “This is not some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging”, and Narendra Modi: “Fighting climate change calls for innovation, cooperation and willpower” but said the science did not lie.

Carbon emissions are on track to rise by 16% by 2030, according to the UN, rather than fall by half, which is the cut needed to keep global heating under the internationally agreed limit of 1.5C."

And yet the Republican Death Cult in Congress gives no votes to the Biden Plan to seriously address the issue. And except for a few brave exceptions, they would allow the leader of their cult to finance, plan and execute a failed coup d' etat with impunity. Meanwhile, they use their majorities in over 23 states to fashion voting rules that will favor their white minority over the broad multicultural majority.

For the Republican Death Cult has become a dangerous cult of white supremacy.

This from Vanity Fair:

"As the Republican Party has made abundantly clear over the last number of years, one of its main platforms is racism. Obviously, in 2021, it’s hard to just come out and say, “Whites Only, Please,” though one group of GOP lawmakers has come extremely close, and by close we mean that it presumably won’t be long before they start doing team-building exercises that involve burning crosses and sporting white hoods around the Capitol.

Punchbowl News reports that an emerging “America First Caucus“ linked to representatives Louie Gohmert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Paul Gosar has been circulating material championing “a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions.” What are “Anglo-Saxon traditions”? For starters, they apparently involve demonizing immigrants. "

There are many, many Republicans who find their former party to be repugnant.  Yet they are woefully in short supply in the light of day.

As former Republican consultant Matt Dowd says, “I think Republican officials have failed Texas. I think they’ve systematically failed Texas. They haven’t protected us during COVID. They haven’t protected us during the grid failure. They haven’t protected us with our ability to vote in numerous ways. They failed all of us,” Dowd said.  

Back in the sixties, we all venerated those first intrepid travelers that would take humankind beyond the envelope of the earth.

They were the Right Stuff.

The R's are now the same age old "white stuff"

And they are a fright on this Halloween night.

 

 

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Climate Change Impact on Nuclear Destruction Infrastructure

 

 

If you don't have enough to lose sleep over at night, "Respect is the Hub" can fill your boat.

Respect is the Hub is all over the subject of Climate Change and how it is likely to increase the chance of nuclear war.  A few others are onto it also:

Susan D'Agostino: 

Is the U.S. Nuclear Community Prepared for the Extreme Weather Climate Change is Bringing? https://thebulletin.org/2021/04/is-the-us-nuclear-community-prepared-for-the-extreme-weather-climate-change-is-bringing/ 

 Michael Klare: 

 How Rising Temperatures Increase the Likelihood of Nuclear War.   https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nuclear-defense-climate-change/ 

Matt Korda: 

When Talking About the Climate Crisis, We Can't Forget About Nuclear Weapons https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/climate-change-nuclear/ 

 The U.S. Nuclear Deterrent is not Prepared for Climate Catastrophe    https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewkorda/2020/03/16/the-us-nuclear-deterrent-is-not-prepared-for-climate-catastrophe/?sh=1fdb41f63a1e 

 Do Young People Care About Nuclear Weapons? (Looks at connecting nuclear weapons to climate, health and social justice issues) https://inkstickmedia.com/do-young-people-care-about-nuclear-weapons/

 Jamie Kwong: 

A Troubling Forecast: Climate Change and the Future of Nuclear Deterrence. (This paper discusses 2019 flood at U.S. Strategic Command, potential disruptions related to thawing permafrost, etc. R.U.S.I. = Royal United Services Institute, a UK security think tank) https://static.rusi.org/201912_rusi_uk_poni_papers_2019_web.pdf Video Content Council on Strategic Risks: 

Can Climate Change Increase the Risk of Nuclear War? (security analyst panel discussion) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNrahMvbWVY Ira Helfand/PSR: 

 Dr. Ira Helfand: Risk of Nuclear War Increases with Climate Change (interview) https://youtu.be/3H5eltT4XIo 

Also: 

Seth Baum et al: "A Model for the Probability of Nuclear War" (60 historical incidents related to nuclear weapons) A Model for the Probability of Nuclear War by Seth Baum, Robert de Neufville, Anthony Barrett.

Respect is the Hub has a very active twitter account with over 1800 tweets.  Check it out:

 https://twitter.com/selfothersplace 

 

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POTUS's Trifecta

 

Often, I try to post stories that are somewhat timeless.  Over the last 17 years, we post stories about Climate Change and advanced technology, about our move towards fascism in our politics, about the importance of respect, and the need for humanity to evolve on the planetary level.  But this Sunday is a trifecta of time and events.

It's the 29th of August and Hurricane Ida has come ashore as a class 4 hurricane with 150 MPH winds and gusts to 185.  Its eye is not quite to Houma, Louisiana, a town just west of New Orleans.  Landing at Port Forchon, it is going right through the oil and gas refining and shipping infrastructure of the region. Already, a half a million are without electricity and its just getting started. And four hours after landfall, it is still a class 4 storm that is traveling slowly.  This is a recipe for calamity.

Today is the 16th anniversary of Katrina.  Moreover, Ida is the second class 4 hurricane to hit Louisiana in less than a year.

Meanwhile, almost all the hospitals are packed with over 3,000 Covid 19 patients with 500 patients on ventilators.  With a 40% vaccination rate, Louisiana is 46th in vaccinations,  above Alabama, Mississippi, Wyoming, Idaho, and West Virginia. Because of the politicalization of the pandemic started by the previous administration and exacerbated by the current R establishment, the states that voted for the Rs are the states with the most deaths from Covid.

Earlier today, the POTUS and his defense team formally honored the 13 soldiers that we lost last Thursday at the airport in Kabul as a result of a 25 pound bomb attached to a Sunni Isis suicide bomber. Almost 200 locals were killed as they fought to find an exit from the 2 week old fledgling Taliban government. Over the last 2 weeks, over 5,000 troops at the the facility have managed  to oversee the departure of over 120,000 Americans, coalition partners, and Afghanis.

As the 20 year war comes to a blistering stop as President Ghani unexpectedly leaves with his millions, the corruption ends and the religious rule of the Taliban begins. Somehow caught with their pants down, the administration is left with control of the Harmid Karzai International Airport and nothing else except for  the sky. The outside perimeter is controlled by our state department declared terrorist Taliban who have publicly stated that they intend to be less ridiculous in their treatment of women and those who worked in the previous government.  

We have promised to get all the Americans out that want to leave and to get as many Afghans out as we can before our drop dead date on the 31st. It makes my stomach turn to think that Biden's term is now in the hands of the Taliban. And it is a testament to the power of the crazy behavior of his predecessor.

It's hard for a president to survive humiliation, ask Jimmy Carter. Americans like kicking ass, but we viscerally detest getting ours in a crack. Ask Gerald Ford.  And we don't like it when a hurricane almost destroys a historic city and the response is slow and incompetent. And we don't like liars who don't talk to us straight about a dangerous virus. Don't ask, he's really not with us.

Oh and what else?

How about the IPCC report on Climate Change:

It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.

The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years.

Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).

Many changes in the climate system become larger in direct relation to increasing global warming. They include increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones,as well as reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost.

Sure you say that the R's will just continue their efforts to minimize climate change, their foreign policy mistakes, and their irresponsible response to Covid.

But I think there is a chance that the R's might fall short in their efforts to blame the War they started and abruptly stopped on the current administration.  They may find that their attempt to confuse their own followers with silly yet dangerous cures even as they refuse to take the actual  cure will backfire and erode their barely existent credibility.  They may find that this hurricane along with all the other signs of climate disruption evident in the fires in the northwest and the life threatening lack of water in the southwest will awaken some to the true enemy of our time and the coming generations.

If the POTUS can focus all of this into the infrastructure bills that are in the House and the Senate with their powerful approaches to the challenges before us and move with honesty and resolve, he might be able to arise from this moment. But we must protect the troops from the sky so they come home, we must rush supplies and help the storm victims, and vaccinations should be required to go anywhere.

A Trifecta is a bet placed on a horse race in which the bettor must predict which horses will finish first, second, and third in the exact order.

It's an unusual bet unless you really know the horses.

And you still need to get a little lucky.

Let's hope the POTUS does. 

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Painting Courtesy of Karen Dupre

Respectism and the Kinder Community

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms..." Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948) 

 I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Martin Luther King (Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, 1964) 

 When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide. John Lewis (Farewell Essay, 2020) 

There is a community that believes in community. There is a community that believes in mutual respect for all and for our delicate life sphere. There is a community that believes in the common good for all. There is a kinder community that has always opposed cruelty and neglect and degradation of the natural. Our kinder community has always been here, part of the human community. It is time for this community to focus. 

This is like no other time in human history. 

We all live in a tiny bubble of air inside a very narrow strip of life. We are threatening our only home with destruction. The engine of destruction has many parts including nuclear weapons, climate crisis, resource depletion and mass extinction. 

The fuel for the engine is any human culture based on hatred, greed and fear. It should be clear by now that technology alone cannot save us, but can destroy us. It should be equally clear that only rapid, kind, and mutually respectful change in our human culture can save us from disaster. 

Our kinder community may wish to focus on the following hypotheses of life affirming cultural change: 

1) Following and universally advertising a model of respect for others, self and place. 

2) Separating abusive leaders, large and small, from power as respectfully as possible. 

3) Promoting fair dealing, justice and accountability based on listening dialogue, honesty, and equality. 

4) Using a rigorous, scientific metric of decreased violence, detention and neglect to measure our success. 

5) Using the clearest and simplest language possible. 

We are on the brink of a vast cultural change. Either enough of us will work together to build a better culture based on kindness and mutual respect, or a new culture formed by immense shared disaster and trauma will adhere to those who survive. 

Respectism is the belief that a mutually respectful society is a pragmatic necessity for our survival. Mutual respect is respect for self, others and place. Love is the soul of respect, and respect is the language of love. 

 Image: A view of the plenary hall in the World Conference Center in Bonn during a meeting of the UNFCCC. (Photo: IISD) 2017 

 

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