Worster just published an article that argues a pet theme of mine, that as bad as terrorism is, the "war" against terrorism and the unfathomable cost associated with it is terribly misguided. It can only bring about a more insecure world and massive suffering - imagine the almost one and a half million Iraqis who have died under two presidents named Bush. I'm not even going to get into the counter-argument of what would their lives have been like otherwise, that is not my point. In a culture of our alleged intelligence and compassion, war and killing are never justifiable.

More importantly, if just a fraction of that effort were directed towards peace... ah, what an interesting thought. And if just a fraction of that effort were directed towards stopping the pollution that is poisoning our atmosphere, rivers, land and seas, and that is directly putting humanity and half of all the animals on this planet on?a road to hell, if not extinction, because of the global warming consequence... We learned a long time ago that every action has an equal an opposite reaction. But even before that knowledge of enlightenment, we knew the story of the Pied Piper: it's the same thing. We can't live as we do with impunity. We can't take with one hand without giving back with the other - the problem is that what we are taking can only be given back in kind, and it's a kind that is not very kind to biological life. Well, at least not to the 99.999% (plus or minus a few decimal places)?of biological life that supports the remaining part. I'm not trying to be academically or scientifically accurate here: any hyperbole is used only to support a point. Until we can accept, as many shamanic and indigineous cultures have for millennia, that every single part of the known universe exists for a reason, and that we?must respect all the component parts, we will continue down this road to hell. What is increasingly clear is that the Earth does not need humans -?we need the Earth. The approaching 7 billion humans don't need the tiny percentage who control all of the power and money - the elite need the rest. Without a "rest", there is no elite - but without an elite there can still be a "rest".

There is still time to change the infinite number of possible futures that humanity faces, and to narrow these futures down to one of a few that represent hope. And having said that, my heart goes out to those who have died in the name of terrorism - and every other cause that can be blamed on humans...

Peace,
White Feather

---------

Here's the article by Worster.

Counterpunch Weekend Edition
June 30 / July 1, 2007
Which City is Worse Off Today: New York or New Orleans?
Fiddling While America Sizzles

By DONALD WORSTER

The United States is the richest, most powerful nation in history -- this you have heard many times before. What you have not heard so often is that America has also been, for nearly 200 years, the safest, most secure nation ever. Far from being aware of that fact and enjoying it,
we have become a nation filled with fear and anxiety. But we fear the wrong invader.

Not since the British burned our capital in 1814 has a foreign army succeeded in invading our continental domain. Pearl Harbor lay thousands of miles from our mainland homes. And the World Trade Center bombing was no real invasion or victory of a foreign power, but one act by a handful of fanatics, all killed. Their brothers are hiding in caves along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, no more able to invade America, if we keep our eyes open, than camels could take over our national parks.

Yet a far more serious threat has appeared that our leaders are ignoring. It is global climate change. And it has the potential to bring the United States down economically, socially and agriculturally, making us a much poorer and weaker nation.

In February the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest major report of scientific data. Based on the greenhouse gases already affecting the atmosphere, and on expected increases in those gases under various economic scenarios, the IPCC projects -- too
cautiously, many say -- that the Earth's overall surface temperature will rise 3 to 7 degrees by the end of this century, and the sea may rise almost 2 feet.

In an April IPCC report, world policy-makers were told to expect long-term flooding of coastal areas, more intense tropical storms, increased drought in drought-prone areas, and a decline in crop productivity with increased risk of hunger.

Here is where the danger comes to the United States: Not only may we be forced to protect people on the coasts, or move them inland, we will also be in great danger of losing our agricultural heartland -- the Corn Belt and the Wheat Belt. Today, half of our wheat crop goes overseas. In a few decades we may not have enough food to support our own population,
let alone share with others.

And our Western cities may be paying a lot more for water, if they can find any, than for the last drops of oil.

We are most threatened today, not by terrorists, but by impersonal physical forces. And as the century goes on, that invasion will gather speed and effect with biological threats like invasive plants and malaria.

Such talk, we are told, is scare mongering. We also are told that defensive measures would cost too much.

Yet which place is worse off today? New York, which lost two major buildings and thousands of lives to terrorists? Or New Orleans, which lost many lives as well and may never recover much of its displaced population or destroyed territory after being hit by a hurricane that drew its energy from warming gulf waters?

And how can we not afford to invest in conservation and alternative energy sources to defend our own land against the ravages of global climate change, but afford to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which cost $120 billion a year? And pay four to five times that, depending on
the calculation, for the military as a whole? And spend more than $40 billion more on the Homeland Security Department?

All that money to defend a country that is the most secure and safe in the world from outside human invasion!

Our homeland is facing a change of unprecedented danger, one that we have helped create by wasteful consumption. This is likely to be the greatest threat to security and prosperity in our history.

When will our leaders stop beating the drums about "a war on terrorism" and start facing the real dangers we face? When will they wake up and take action -- today, this year? Will they wait until Washington is under water and the Great Plains are a burning desert?

Peace
White Feather

the vulture
2000

the vulture caught the wind
cutting though the air
looking
searching
although only the size of a pea
its brain thought only of survival
not really focused on the vector
transcribed by the bird
in multi-dimensional reality
food
eat
mate
live
desert below
but nothing moving
no sign of food
no vegetation
hungry
alone
sick
its brain too small
to realize it was dying
not a single question
to confuse its mind
eat
nothing
parched earth below
tan
crisscrossed with black
dead
the vulture swooped on a down current
dying like everything below
too stupid
to realize
that death came grace of
an even more stupid human
a leader
too stuck in power
too stuck in greed
his brain too small to realize
too stuck in competition
with other leaders
who led
who were followed
by others
just like him
who were followed
by a streams of filth
leading proudly
to the end
too stupid to realize
that in a competition
with nature
only nature can win
even if only pyrrhic
the vulture
the victim
the earth
empty
quiet
peace
nothing

All over the world, we are clamoring for alternative fuels to replace petroleum products, and this is a good thing. Well, except for the bad side, that is. Specifically ethanol and fuels made from grain, are rapidly forcing the price of foods to skyrocket, not so much in the developed West where we are not totally reliant on grains, but but many other countries are beginning to feel the additional cost and are suffering. This is because the world's largest producer and exporter of grain is trying to move its production towards the creation of fuels, therefore grain starts to have a price dominated by equivalence to oil...

The second part of this bad story relates to palm oil, which many have said can replace coal or carbon-fuels especially in the generation of electricity. I have excerpted some information on this issue which is proving dramatically counter-productive.

report late last year by a Netherlands-based research group claimed some plantations produce far more carbon dioxide than they save. Seeded on drained peat swamps, they unleash a warehouse of carbon from decomposed plants and animals that had been locked in the bogs for hundreds of million years, which one biologist described as "buried sunshine."

"As a biofuel, it's a failure," said Marcel Silvius, a climate change expert for Wetlands International, the institute that led the research team.

The palm oil debate is just one example of cold realism dampening enthusiasm for vegetable oils as substitutes for the fossil fuels that are widely blamed for the gradual warming of the Earth and potentially disastrous changes in climate.

In the United States, where farmers have diverted corn and sugar crops to ethanol production, food prices have soared. Environmentalists say the high energy cost of making ethanol, coupled with the degraded land and polluted water from heavily fertilized fields, have put a large question mark on its value as a biofuel.

Palm oil is an ingredient in cooking oil, cosmetics, soaps, bread, chocolate -- in fact, in about one in every 10 products on the supermarket shelf. It also is used as an industrial lubricant.

It is attractive for bioenergy because it is relatively abundant, cheap at about US$557 (euro419) per ton in mid-March, and more easily integrated into existing power stations than most other alternative fuels.

Unlike carbon-rich fossil fuels, production is considered carbon neutral, meaning the carbon emitted from burning palm oil is the same as that absorbed during growth.

But the surrounding environmental cost is becoming increasingly apparent.

The four-year study in Southeast Asia by a team from Wetlands, Delft Hydraulics and the Alterra Research Center of Wageningen University said 600 million tons of carbon dioxide seep every year into the air from drained peat swamps. Another 1.4 billion tons go up in smoke from rain forest fires deliberately set to clear new land for plantations, shrouding much of Singapore and Malaysia in an impenetrable haze for weeks at a time.

Together, those 2 billion tons of CO2 amount to 8 percent of the globe's fossil fuel emissions, the report said.

Deforestation is the No. 2 cause of greenhouse gas emissions after the burning of fossil fuels, said Jeffrey Dukes, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts, and clearing peat swamps for plantations is "a double whammy."

It not only releases carbon trapped over many millennia, Dukes said, but destroys the most efficient ecosystem on the planet for sucking carbon from the atmosphere and storing it underground.

"By converting these forests, we are essentially taking that buried sunshine and wasting it," he said. "It's a terrible decision. Whether or not it's consciously made, it's society going in reverse."

Despite pressure to replace coal, oil and gas with cleaner fuels, major power companies in Britain and the Netherlands have scrapped plans to partially convert electricity generation to palm oil.

So there are two major problems that the experts didn't predict even though they represent fules with great intentions. It's too often like that, and if we continue to do things only in reaction to disaster, this will not change: the problems will get worse. We must start to be proactive and think all the issues through before starting hugely expensive programs to help reverse global warming. It's pretty sad that if you want to see where the growth sectors are, you normally look at the job ads. So it's easy to see that healthcare is a huge issue, and anything to do with the elderly - there are thousands of jobs advertized. Sales of anything in our consumer societyL the same thing. Try doing a search to find jobs in real environmental protection issues: you'll probably find none! (On the other hand, if you do find some let me know as it's getting old being unemployed!)

Peace,
White Feather

Global Warming and New Technology Heat Up Race for Riches in Melting Arctic
March 23, 2007 - By Doug Mellgren, Associated Press

HAMMERFEST, Norway -- Barren and uninhabited, Hans Island is very hard to find on a map.
Yet these days the Frisbee-shaped rock in the Arctic is much in demand -- so much so that Canada and Denmark have both staked their claim to it with flags and warships.

The reason: an international race for oil, fish, diamonds and shipping routes, accelerated by the impact of global warming on Earth's frozen north.

The latest report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the ice cap is warming faster than the rest of the planet and ice is receding, partly due to greenhouse gases. It's a catastrophic scenario for the Arctic ecosystem, for polar bears and other wildlife, and for Inuit populations whose ancient cultures depend on frozen waters.

But some see a lucrative silver lining of riches waiting to be snatched from the deep, and the prospect of timesaving sea lanes that could transform the shipping industry the way the Suez Canal did in the 19th century.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Arctic has as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas. Moscow reportedly sees the potential of minerals in its slice of the Arctic sector approaching US$2 trillion (euro1.5 trillion).

All this has pushed governments and businesses into a scramble for sovereignty over these suddenly priceless seas.

Regardless of climate change, oil and gas exploration in the Arctic is moving full speed ahead. State-controlled Norwegian oil company Statoil ASA plans to start tapping gas from its offshore Snoehvit field in December, the first in the Barents Sea. It uses advanced equipment on the ocean floor, remote-controlled from the Norwegian oil boom town of Hammerfest through a 90-mile (145-kilometer) undersea cable.

Alan Murray, an analyst with the energy consultants Wood Mackenzie, said most petroleum companies are now focusing research and exploration on the far north. Russia is developing the vast Shkotman natural gas field off its Arctic coast, and Norwegians hope their advanced technology will find a place there.

"Oil will bring a big geopolitical focus. It is a driving force in the Arctic," said Arvid Jensen, a consultant in Hammerfest who advises companies that hope to hitch their economic wagons to the northern rush.

It could open the North Pole region to easy navigation for five months a year, according to the latest Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, an intergovernmental group. That could cut sailing time from Germany to Alaska by 60 percent, going through Russia's Arctic instead of the Panama Canal.

Or the Northwest Passage could open through the channels of Canada's Arctic islands and shorten the voyage from Europe to the Far East. And that's where Hans Island, at the entrance to the Northwest Passage, starts to matter.

The half-square-mile (1.3-square-kilometer) rock, just one-seventh the size of New York's Central Park, is wedged between Canada's Ellesmere Island and Danish-ruled Greenland, and for more than 20 years has been a subject of unusually bitter exchanges between the two NATO allies.

In 1984, Denmark's minister for Greenland affairs, Tom Hoeyem, caused a stir when he flew in on a chartered helicopter, raised a Danish flag on the island, buried a bottle of brandy at the base of the flagpole and left a note saying: "Welcome to the Danish island."

The dispute erupted again two years ago when Canadian Defense Minister Bill Graham set foot on the rock while Canadian troops hoisted the Maple Leaf flag.

Denmark sent a letter of protest to Ottawa, while Canadians and Danes took out competing Google ads, each proclaiming sovereignty over the rock 680 miles (1,100 kilometers) south of the North Pole.

Some Canadians even called for a boycott of Danish pastries.

Although both countries have repeatedly sent warships to the island to make their presence felt, there's no risk of a shooting war -- both sides are resolved to settle the problem peacefully. But the prospect of a warmer planet opening up the icy waters has helped push the issue up the agenda.

"We all realize that because of global warming it will suddenly be an area that will become more accessible," said Peter Taksoe-Jensen, head of the Danish Foreign Ministry's legal department.
Shortcuts through Arctic waters are no longer the stuff of science fiction.

In August 2005, the Akademik Fyodorov of Russia was the first ship to reach the North Pole without icebreaker help. The Norwegian shipyard Aker Yards is building innovative vessels that sail forward in clear waters, and then turn around to plow with their sterns through heavier ice.

Global warming is also bringing an unexpected bonus to American transportation company OmniTrax Inc., which a decade ago bought the small underutilized Northwest Passage port of Churchill, Manitoba, for a token fee of 10 Canadian dollars (about US$8;euro6).

The company, which is private, won't say how much money it is making in Churchill, but it was estimated to have moved more than 500,000 tons of grain through the port in 2007.

Managing director Michael Ogborn said climate change was not something the company thought about in 1997. But over the last 10 years we saw a lengthening of the season, which appears to be related to global warming," Ogborn said. "We see the trend continuing."

Just a few years ago, reports said it would take 100 years for the ice to melt, but recent studies say it could happen in 10-15 years, and the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark and Norway have been rushing to stake their claims in the Arctic.

Norway and Russia have issues in the Barents Sea; the U.S. and Russia in Beaufort Sea; the U.S. and Canada over rights to the Northwest Passage; and even Alaska and Canada's Yukon province over their offshore boundary.

Canada, Russia and Denmark are seeking to claim waters all the way up to the North Pole, saying the seabed is part of their continental shelf under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Norway wants to extend its claims on the same basis, although not all the way to the pole.

Canada says the Northwest Passage is its territory, a claim the United States hotly disputes, insisting the waters are neutral. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged to put military icebreakers in the frigid waters "to assert our sovereignty and take action to protect our territorial integrity."

Politics aside, there are environmental concerns. Apart from the risk of oil spills, more vessels could carry alien organisms into the Northwest Passage, posing a risk to indigenous life forms.
The Arctic melt has also been intensifying competition over dwindling fishing stocks.

Fish stocks essential to some regions appear to be moving to colder waters, and thus into another country's fishing grounds. Russian and Norwegian fishermen already report catching salmon much farther north than is normal.

"It is potentially very dramatic for fish stocks. They could move toward the North Pole, which would make sovereignty very unclear," said Dag Vongraven, an environmental expert at the Norwegian Polar Institute.

Russia contests Norway's claims to fish-rich waters around the Arctic Svalbard Islands, and has even sent warships there to underscore its discontent with the Norwegian Coast Guard boarding Russian trawlers there.

"Even though they say it is about fish, it is really about oil," said Jensen, the consultant in Hammerfest.

In 2004, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the sovereignty issue "a serious, competitive battle" that "will unfold more and more fiercely."

With all the squabbling over ownership, Tristan Pearce, a research associate at the University of Guelph's Global Environmental Change Group in Canada, reminded Arctic nations of who got there first: indigenous peoples like the Inuits and the Sami.

"Everybody is talking about the potential for minerals, diamonds, oil and gas, but we mustn't forget that people live there, all the way across the Arctic," he said. "They've always been there and they have a major role to play."

------
Associated Press reporters Beth Duff-Brown in Toronto, Phil Couvrette in Montreal, Mike Eckel in Moscow, Dan Joling in Anchorage, Alaska, and Karl Ritter in Stockholm, Sweden, contributed to this report.
Source: Associated Press

I have to say that this story is a bit of good news / bad news. But why, WHY do we need to get our kicks out of hoping "to have a hunt for a bear or two "? I just don't get it. How can tracking down an animal, any animal, just to kill it, be considered a sport? For those who don't know, most Native American tribes (not ALL) have hunted bears in the past. They did so usually when they were menaced by an errant animal, or occasionally to eat its meat and use its fat for sacred occasions. But when they did this, their hunts were almost exclusively restricted to the use of a hand-weapon. They were not permitted, for example, to use bows and arrows, or spears (mostly). But a knife and their human skills were allowed and exemplified. Not exactly like shooting wolves from planes or taking a high-tech rifle accurate at a gazillion miles and taking out a bear is it?

Anyway, enough of my commentary - though I will be doing a shamanic journey with the spirit of Bear to ask that these animals stay as protected as possible. Here's the story...

SALMON, Idaho -- Grizzly bears in the Yellowstone National Park area no longer need the protections of the federal Endangered Species Act to ensure their survival, U.S. officials said Thursday.

"As a nation, we should be proud of our ability to have preserved a part of our wilderness heritage for future generations," U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall told a telephone news conference announcing the plan to remove Yellowstone area grizzlies from the endangered species list.

The population of the outsize, hump-shouldered bears that roam in Yellowstone and parts of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming has grown to more than 500 today from 136 three decades ago, a comeback called "extraordinary" by U.S. Department of Interior Deputy Secretary Lynn Scarlett.
"There is simply no way to overstate what an amazing accomplishment this is," she said.
In the early 19th century, more than 50,000 grizzlies ranged across the vast open spaces west of the Mississippi.

Shooting, trapping and poisoning campaigns reduced their numbers to 1,000 in the lower 48 states by 1975, when they were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Some environmental groups cautioned that the bears will be hard put to overcome challenges without federal protections.

"What we're essentially being asked to do is gamble on the future of the bears when they may not have a very good system to determine if bears go into decline or if their food sources do," said Craig Kenworthy, conservation director for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.

NO WHOLESALE HUNTING
Under the delisting, which officially goes into effect on April 28, broad management authority over the bears will be handed to Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

All three states plan to allow grizzly hunting under certain conditions, a sport banned for more than 30 years. The states also will have more flexibility to destroy bears considered chronic nuisances to humans or livestock.

Gregg Losinski, regional conservation educator with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, cautioned that delisting would not mean wholesale hunting.

"Some day we hope to have a hunt for a bear or two but it's not like, 'Whoa, let's all go out and buy a tag,"' he said, referring to a hunting license.

Environmental groups such as the National Wildlife Federation applauded the delisting, calling it another victory for the nation's landmark conservation law.

Others expressed concern about the potential encroachment by mining, logging and energy interests on bear habitat and about climate-caused threats to the grizzly's food sources.
The government says that an extensive monitoring program will track the post-delisting progress of Yellowstone area grizzlies.

Except for Alaska and the Yellowstone area, the nation's grizzlies will remain federally protected. Those bears, estimated at 600, range in parts of northwest and western Montana, upper Idaho and northern Washington State.

Grizzlies join bald eagles and western gray wolves, all icons of the American West, as targets this year for delisting.
Source: Reuters

Every day, I check in with an online forum that allows free discussion between anthropologists, ecologists, geographers, sociologists - it's really interesting if you're into that sort of thing! but recently there has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about the meanings of knowledge and theory, going all the way back to Marx and Darwin and including some of today's most critical thinkers - I won't bore you with all of that. The point though is that most of the academics that I am listening too are taking one of two sides, either to probe deeper into the theory, or to declare that the WHOLE ecosystem of the world, governments, churches, business and academia, and the environment, is broken.

It is this last point that is important, because most academics and applied academics from the above list, read between the lines of the scientific community, regarding the knowledge produced about global warming, more deeply than most of us. What they see is that we have between 5 and 20 years to definitively do something about the environment before it is actually TOO LATE - until it is irreversible. That time frame, again, is 5 to 20 years, with most of the cleverest of these people thinking that it is realistically 10 years from now. I will say this differently:

IF WE DON'T DO SOMETHING TO STOP AND REVERSE HUMAN CONTRIBUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING IMMEDIATELY IT WILL BE TOO LATE TO SAVE THE PLANET AS WE KNOW IT.

This is not a doomsday warning like "the end of the world is nigh", for the world will continue, and many animals and plants will survive. Maybe even some humans will survive. But if we do nothing the only good news will be that Mother Earth will have a hell of lot fewer people to sustain with her natural resources! That's not even funny.

So it bothers me when I read an article like one I saw yesterday claiming that Big Business is pressuring the Bush administration to put into place laws that will cut carbon-based emissions by 60-90% by 2050. First, because that's a lot further out than 5-20 years, and second, because their motives are nothing to do with saving the planet, but as they themselves claim, IF there is such a law, then people will have no choice but to use different products, fuels, filters etc. And these big businesses are the ones who have invested over the last 50 years or so in developing these products, but have kept them under wraps. It is only for profit - like that will count a lot when there is no human world left to sustain a market economy! I remember a small example. In the early 1980s I interviewed a young PhD from South Africa for a programmer's job (he was way too qualified). His doctoral thesis had been based on a simple "bolt-on" device that could, at that time, be built commercially for less than £50. Bolted on to a petrol engine, it allowed a car to drive on water. It worked, it was efficient, it was clean, it was cheap, and the car ran for hundreds of miles on a tank of water! Although he was overqualified and I couldn't hire him, he didn't need my job though: in my last correspondence with this brilliant young scientist, Esso had just offered him $30 million to shut-up.

Here in France, we have strikes all the time. People are in the streets for larger pensions when they retire, higher minimum wages, fewer hours, longer vacations, more jobs for the young - all the normal things that bother society. These normal people are so wrapped up in their normal issues that they can't see the real problem even when it is placed right under their nose. Sure, in the run up to the French presidential election, the candidates talk "green", but that's only a little aside to get a few extra votes.

My wife returned from work yesterday and asked why I looked depressed, and I explained the essence of this blog to her - but as she said, she didn't have time for thinking about this. I am not in the least criticising her, or the strikers. But unless we can make everyone, and I mean everyone - I couldn't care whether they are white, black, brown, yellow, short, fat, thin, or what passport they carry, or what God they pray to - take the time to listen, those 5 to 20 years will pass in the blink of an eye. And it will be too late.

Academia calls the problem "Global Environmental Sustainability". We are at the point of no return, and I, as a student of knowledge, like the other academics, see the problem, but cannot yet see the solution. Nevertheless, I am now a lot less concerned about what happens if I can't pay the mortgage, or about how much pension I will theoretically have when I can legally retire in 14 years.

I have a daughter who disowned me in a bout of hatred two years ago. The reasons are personal and are not for discussion, but a few days go, out of nowhere, she somehow through the miracle of technology, found some of my recent environmental blogs. She sent me a vicious letter full of hatred, and in this letter, she accused me essentially of being a totally lost soul who was going to rot in hell because I cared more about the environment than about my "own flesh and blood". Unfortunately, she is right - I DO care more about our planet and the 6 BILLION people who share it with many more billions of innocent animals and plants, than I do about a presently unfixable relationship with my own flesh and blood. I am not, though, suggesting that we ignore our own flesh and blood, quite the contrary, I am suggesting, pleading, that we love them enough to do whatever it takes to ensure that they have a life in 20 years. I would encourage as many of them as possible to become extreme activists in environmentalism and to study subjects that can help the world rather than subjects that can theoretically make a lot of money. If the world's ecosphere is broken, who will care about lots of money?

If the major governments of the world were brave enough tomorrow, to ban ALL use of petroleum products and coal, immediately, I would support that measure no matter how difficult it would be. I could care less about what Bush cited as the reason for pulling the US out of Kyoto - bad for American economy. Such a measure would hurt my emotions because the only way I would be able to visit my three incredible young boys in Arizona would be to take a sailboat across the Atlantic and then walk or horse-back ride 2,500 miles to get to see them. But I would do that if I knew that it would ensure a viable, sustainable future for them. Hopefully there is a less-draconian solution that this, but we won't know until we all wake up and smell the roses - before there are no roses left to smell, and no people left to smell whatever is left to grow.

This information was written by:

Copyright © 2000 to 2006 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Originally written: 2000-FEB-23
Latest update: 2006-MAY-14
Author: B.A. Robinson

http://www.religioustolerance.org/spring_equinox.htm


Overview:

Religious followers from around the world observe many seasonal days of celebration during March and April. Most are religious holy days, and are linked in some way to the spring or vernal equinox. On that day, the daytime and nighttime hours are approximately equal -- each being 12 hours long.

Christianity and other religions associate three themes with the vernal equinox: Conception and pregnancy leading to birth on the winter solstice.

Victory of a god of light (or life, rebirth, resurrection) over the powers of darkness (death).
The descent of the goddess or god into the underworld for a period of three days. This is such a popular theme among religions that mythologists refer to it as "the harrowing of Hell." 13

People view other religions in various ways, and thus treat the celebrations of other faiths differently:

Some people value the worldwide variety of March and April celebrations, because they demonstrate the diversity of religious belief within our common humanity. They respect both their own religious traditions and those of other faiths for their ability to inspire people to lead more ethical and fulfilled lives. Religious diversity is, to them, a positive influence.

Others reject the importance of all celebrations other than the holy days recognized by their own religion. Some go so far as rejecting some of their religion's holy days when they are discovered to have Pagan origins (e.g. Easter and Christmas).

Some consider religions other than their own as being inspired by Satan. Thus the equinox celebrations of other religions are viewed as Satanic in origin, and intrinsically evil.

When and why the vernal equinox happens:

The seasons of the year are caused by the 23.5º tilt of the earth's axis. Because the earth is rotating like a top or gyroscope, it points in a fixed direction continuously -- towards a point in space near the North Star. But the earth is also revolving around the sun. During half of the year, the southern hemisphere is more exposed to the sun than is the northern hemisphere. During the rest of the year, the reverse is true. At noontime in the Northern Hemisphere the sun appears high in the sky during summertime and low in the sky during winter. The time of the year when the sun reaches its maximum elevation occurs on the day with the greatest number of daylight hours. This is called the summer solstice, and is typically JUN-21 -- the first day of summer. The lowest elevation occurs about DEC-21 and is the winter solstice -- the first day of winter, when the night time hours are maximum. Almost exactly half-way between the winter and summer solstice is the time of the vernal or spring equinox. It is one of two times during the year when the daytime and nighttime are almost exactly 12 hours long, and very close to being equal to each other.

History of the spring equinox:

The early Romans used a lunar calendar in which months alternated between 29 and 30 days. It was not a precise measure; it gradually fell out of step with the seasons. Julius Caesar reformed the calendar by switching its base from lunar to solar. The day on which the vernal equinox occurred was defined as MAR-25. The length of the year was fixed at 365 days, with an additional leap-year day added every fourth year. This made the average length of a year equal to 365.25 days, which was fairly close to the actual value of 365.2422 days.

The annual error of 0.0078 days accumulated over time until it became unmanageable. A second reform of the calendar was ordered by Pope Gregory XIII. Under the new system, 1582-MAR-21 CE became the date of the vernal equinox, the year 1582 was shortened by ten days, and future centennial years (1600, 1700...2000) were not considered leap years unless they were divisible by 400. 1 The Gregorian Calendar continues in general usage today. Eventually, its 0.0003 day annual error will accumulate and necessitate an elimination of a leap-year day circa 4915 CE.

The linkage between the equinox, Pagan celebrations & Easter:

Many, perhaps most, Pagan religions in the ancient Mediterranean region had a major seasonal day of religious celebration at, or following, the spring equinox. In one religion, Cybele, the Phrygian fertility goddess, had a consort who was believed to have been born via a virgin birth. He was Attis, who was said to have died and been resurrected each year during the period MAR-22 to MAR-25; i.e. at the time of the vernal equinox in the Julian calendar.

Wherever Christian worship of Jesus and Pagan worship of Attis were active in the same geographical area in ancient times, Christians "used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation." Since the worship of Cybele was brought to Rome in 204 BCE, about 250 years before Christianity, it is obvious that if any copying occurred, it was the Christians that copied the traditions of the Pagans.

Today, no consensus exists on the linkage between the Attis legend (and the stories associated with many other god-men) and Jesus Christ:

Some religious historians believe that the god-man's death and resurrection legends were first associated with Pagan deities many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus' life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans in the Roman Empire.

Ancient Christians had an alternative explanation; they claimed that Satan had created counterfeit Pagan deities with many of the same life experiences as Jesus had. Satan and his demons had done this, in advance of the coming of Christ, in order to confuse humanity.
Most modern-day Christians regard the Attis legend as being a Pagan myth of little value. They regard Jesus' death and resurrection account as being an exact description of real events, and unrelated to the earlier Pagan traditions.

Among the Roman Catholic church and Protestant denominations, Easter Sunday falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after MAR-20, the nominal date of the Spring Equinox. Its ancient linkages to sun and moon worship are obvious. Many sources incorrectly state that the starting date of the calculation is the actual day of the Equinox rather than the nominal date of MAR-20. Other sources use an incorrect reference date of MAR-21.

Easter Sunday can fall on any date from March 22 to April 25th. The year-to-year sequence is so complicated that it takes 5.7 million years to repeat. Eastern Orthodox churches sometimes celebrate Easter on the same day as the rest of Christendom. However if that date does not follow Passover, then the Orthodox churches delay their Easter - sometimes by over a month.

Spring celebrations by various faiths - ancient and modern:

ANCIENT BRITAIN: Both the solstices and equinoxes "were the highly sophisticated preoccupation of the mysterious Megalithic peoples who pre-dated Celt, Roman and Saxon on Europe's Atlantic fringe by thousands of years." The equinoxes were not otherwise celebrated in ancient Britain, until recent years.

ANCIENT IRELAND: The spring and fall equinox were celebrated in ancient times. A cluster of megalithic cairns are scattered through the hills at Loughcrew, about 55 miles North West of Dublin in Ireland. Longhcrew Carin T is a passage tomb which is designed so that the light from the rising sun on the spring and summer equinoxes penetrates a long corridor and illuminates a backstone, which is decorated with astronomical symbols. 19,20

ANCIENT GERMANS: Ostara, the Germanic fertility Goddess was associated with human and crop fertility. On the spring equinox, she mated with the solar god and conceived a child that would be born 9 months later on DEC-21: Yule, the winter solstice.

ANCIENT MAYANS: The indigenous Mayan people in Central American have celebrated a spring equinox festival for ten centuries. As the sun sets on the day of the equinox on the great ceremonial pyramid, El Castillo, Mexico, its "western face...is bathed in the late afternoon sunlight. The lengthening shadows appear to run from the top of the pyramid's northern staircase to the bottom, giving the illusion of a diamond-backed snake in descent." This has been called "The Return of the Sun Serpent" since ancient times. 14

ANCIENT GREEKS: The god-man Dionysos was a major deity among the ancient Greeks. "As a god of the spring rites, of the flowering plants and fruitful vines, Dionysos was said to be in terrible pain during winter, when most living things sicken and die, or hibernate." Persephone, a daughter of Demeter, descended into the Otherworld and returned near the time of the spring equinox. This story has close parallels to various Goddess legends, stories of the life of King Arthur, and of Jesus Christ. 10

ANCIENT PERSIA; ZOROASTRIANISM: Various ancient civilizations (Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Babylonia, Elam) circa 3000 to 2000 BCE celebrated new years at the time of the spring equinox. "No Ruz," the new day or New Year has been celebrated in the area of modern-day Iran since the Achaemenian (Hakhamaneshi) period over 2500 years ago. It survived because of Zoroastrianism which was the religion of Ancient Persia before the advent of Islam 1400 years ago. Many religious historians trace the Judeo-Christian concepts of Hell, Heaven, Resurrection, the arrival of the Messiah, and the last judgment to Zoroastrianism. In that faith, the Lord of Wisdom "created all that was good and became God. The Hostile Spirit, Angra Mainyu (Ahriman), residing in the eternal darkness created all that was bad and became the Hostile Spirit." 16 This dualistic God/Satan concept is surprisingly close to the views of conservative Christianity today.

ANCIENT ROMANS: In "about 200 B.C., mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill ...Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name)...The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection." Attis was born of a human woman, a virgin named Nana. He "grew up to become a sacrificial victim and Savior, slain to bring salvation to mankind. His body was eaten by his worshipers in the form of bread...[He was] crucified on a pine tree, whence his holy blood poured down to redeem the earth." 2 The celebration was held on MAR-25, 9 months before his birth on DEC-25. In Rome, the rituals took place where St. Peter's now stands in Vatican City. 8 The similarities between the stories of Attis and Jesus are obvious.

ANCIENT SAXONS: Eostre was the Saxon version of the Germanic lunar goddess Ostara. She gave her name to the Christian Easter and to the female hormone estrogen. Her feast day was held on the full moon following the vernal equinox -- almost the identical calculation as for the Christian Easter in the west. One delightful legend associated with Eostre was that she found an injured bird on the ground one winter. To save its life, she transformed it into a hare. But "the transformation was not a complete one. The bird took the appearance of a hare but retained the ability to lay eggs. ..the hare would decorate these eggs and leave them as gifts to Eostre." 10

BAHÁ'Í WORLD FAITH: Naw-Rúz is an ancient Iranian New Years day festival which occurs near the Spring Equinox. It is now a world holiday of the Bahá'í faith. If the equinox occurs before sunset, then New Year's Day is celebrated on that day in the Middle East; otherwise it is delayed until the following day. In the rest of the world, it is always on MAR-21. It is celebrated with many symbols indicating regrowth and renewal - much like the Christian Easter. Some members follow the ancient Iranian "haft-sin" custom on this day involves arranging seven objects whose name begin with the letter "S" in Persian; e.g. hyacinths, apples, lilies, silver coins, garlic, vinegar and rue.

CHRISTIANITY: The record of the Roman Army's execution date of Yeshua of Nazareth (later known as Jesus Christ) has been lost. Dates linked to the Jewish Passover celebration in the years 30 to 33 have been suggested. Easter commemorates Jesus' execution, visit to Hell, and resurrection. Easter Sunday is a moveable holy day, being celebrated from late MAR to late APR. It is named after the "Teutonic goddess Eostre, whose name is probably yet another variant of Ishtar, Astare and Aset..." 8

The Feast of Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is held on MAR-25, on the nominal date of the spring equinox, according to the old Julian calendar. This is the time when the angel Gabriel told Mary that she was pregnant. (Luke 1:26-38) Nine months later, at Christmas/Yule, Mary is traditionally believed to have given birth to Jesus, while still a virgin.

JUDAISM: "In its origin, the Passover dinner itself was a spring fertility festival-the unleavened bread coming from the agricultural past of the people and the paschal lamb from its more distant pastoral years." 6 The Bible passages of Leviticus 23:5-8 and Numbers 28:16-18 state that Passover is to be celebrated in the springtime, on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nissan. The Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord is held on the 15th. It evolved into a celebration of God's liberation of the ancient Hebrews from slavery in Egypt.

NATIVE AMERICAN SPIRITUALITY: There are countless stone structures created by Natives in the past and still standing in North America. One was called Calendar One by its modern-day finder. It is in a natural amphitheatre of about 20 acres in size in Vermont. From a stone enclosure in the center of the bowl, one can see a number of vertical rocks and other markers around the edge of the bowl "At the winter solstice, the sun rose at the southern peak of the east ridge and set at a notch at the southern end of the west ridge." The summer solstice and both equinoxes were similarly marked. 4

"America's Stonehenge" is a 4,000 year old megalithic site located on Mystery Hill in Salem NH. Carbon dating has estimated the age of some charcoal remnants at 3,000 and 4,000 years ago. Researchers have concluded that the site was erected either by Native Americans or an unknown migrant European population. 15 The site contains five standing stones and one fallen stone in a linear alignment which point to both the sunrise and sunset at the spring and fall equinoxes.

NEOPAGANISM: This is a group of religions which are attempted re-creations of ancient Pagan religions. Of these, Wicca is the most common; it is loosely based on ancient Celtic beliefs, symbols and practices, with the addition of some more recent Masonic and ceremonial magic rituals.

Monotheistic religions, like Judaism, Christianity and Islam, tend to view time as linear. It started with creation; the world as we know it will end at some time in the future. Aboriginal and Neopagan religions see time as circular and repetitive, with lunar (monthly) and solar (yearly) cycles. Their "...rituals guarantee the continuity of nature's cycles, which traditional human societies depend on for their sustenance." 3

Wiccans recognize eight seasonal days of celebration. Four are minor sabbats and occur at the two solstices and the two equinoxes. The other are major sabbats which happen approximately halfway between an equinox and solstice. Wiccans may celebrate Lady Day on the evening before, or at sunrise on the morning of the solstice/equinox, or at the exact time of vernal equinox.

Near the Mediterranean, this is a time of sprouting of the summer's crop; farther north, it is the time for seeding. 8 Their rituals at the Spring Equinox are related primarily to the fertility of the crops and to the balance of the day and night times. Where Wiccans can safely celebrate the Sabbat out of doors without threat of religious persecution, they often incorporate a bonfire into their rituals, jumping over the dying embers to assure fertility of people and crops. It is experienced as a time of balance.

The date and time of the spring equinox:

The exact date and time of the vernal equinox, when the sun moves into the astrological sign of Aries, varies from year to year. Each year, the date/time moves progressively later in March until the year before leap-year is reached. On leap-year, it returns to an earlier date/time. The four-year cycle is then repeated.
Between the years 1503 CE and 2496 CE, the earliest spring equinox will be on 2496-MAR-19 at 12:28 UT.

The latest was on 1503-MAR-21 at 8:42 UT.

Year Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere(UT)

1999 MAR-21 @ 01:46
2000 MAR-20 @ 07:35
2001 MAR-20 @ 13:30
2002 MAR-20 @ 19:16
2003 MAR-21 @ 01:00
2004 MAR-20 @ 06:48
2005 MAR-20 @ 12:33
2006 MAR-20 @ 18:26
2007 MAR-21 @ 00:07
2008 MAR-20 @ 05:48
2009 MAR-20 @ 11:44
2010 MAR-20 @ 17.32

The dates and times from 1999 to 2004 were derived from the astronomical calculations on The Dome of the Sky web site. 7 The data for 2005 to 2010 was taken from archaeoastronomy.com 21 An online "Easy Date Converter" calculates the dates and times of the equinoxes and solstices within 20 seconds. 22 Times are in UT (Universal Time). This used to be called Greenwich Mean Time or GMT. In North America, you can find your local time by subtracting:

3 hours 30 minutes for Newfoundland time
4 hours for ATL
5 hours for EST
6 hours for CST
7 hours for MST
8 hours for PST
9 hours for ALA
10 hours for HAW

I was going to write a whole blog about why this film is utter garbage and should be totally banned because of its total falsity, but the British newspaper, The Guardian, did it first. It won't fix all the damage, but it will help a little. Now I have also heard from friends that they too have seen films, perhaps the same one, perhaps others with similar themes - MEANT TO MISLEAD! The following article from the Guardian should be read and applied to anything that doesn't smack true to you...

Sorry if I'm infringing copyright but I think the author wouldn't mind...

Don't let truth stand in the way of a red-hot debunking of climate change

The science might be bunkum, the research discredited. But all that counts for Channel 4 is generating controversy

George Monbiot
Tuesday March 13, 2007
The Guardian

Were it not for dissent, science, like politics, would have stayed in the dark ages. All the great heroes of the discipline - Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein - took tremendous risks in confronting mainstream opinion. Today's crank has often proved to be tomorrow's visionary.

But the syllogism does not apply. Being a crank does not automatically make you a visionary. There is little prospect, for example, that Dr Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang, the South African health minister who has claimed Aids can be treated with garlic, lemon and beetroot, will be hailed as a genius. But the point is often confused. Professor David Bellamy, for example, while making the incorrect claim that wind farms do not have "any measurable effect" on total emissions of carbon dioxide, has compared himself to Galileo.

The problem with The Great Global Warming Swindle, which caused a sensation when it was broadcast on Channel 4 last week, is that to make its case it relies not on future visionaries, but on people whose findings have already been proved wrong. The implications could not be graver. Just as the government launches its climate change bill and Gordon Brown and David Cameron start jostling to establish their green credentials, thousands have been misled into believing there is no problem to address.

The film's main contention is that the current increase in global temperatures is caused not by rising greenhouse gases, but by changes in the activity of the sun. It is built around the discovery in 1991 by the Danish atmospheric physicist Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen that recent temperature variations on Earth are in "strikingly good agreement" with the length of the cycle of sunspots.
Unfortunately, he found nothing of the kind. A paper published in the journal Eos in 2004 reveals that the "agreement" was the result of "incorrect handling of the physical data". The real data for recent years show the opposite: that the length of the sunspot cycle has declined, while temperatures have risen. When this error was exposed, Friis-Christensen and his co-author published a new paper, purporting to produce similar results. But this too turned out to be an artefact of mistakes - in this case in their arithmetic.

So Friis-Christensen and another author developed yet another means of demonstrating that the sun is responsible, claiming to have discovered a remarkable agreement between cosmic radiation influenced by the sun and global cloud cover. This is the mechanism the film proposes for global warming. But, yet again, the method was exposed as faulty. They had been using satellite data which did not in fact measure global cloud cover. A paper in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics shows that, when the right data are used, a correlation is not found.

So the hypothesis changed again. Without acknowledging that his previous paper was wrong, Friis-Christensen's co-author, Henrik Svensmark, declared there was a correlation - not with total cloud cover but with "low cloud cover". This, too, turned out to be incorrect. Then, last year, Svensmark published a paper purporting to show cosmic rays could form tiny particles in the atmosphere. Accompanying the paper was a press release which went way beyond the findings reported in the paper, claiming it showed that both past and current climate events are the result of cosmic rays.

As Dr Gavin Schmidt of Nasa has shown on www.realclimate.org, five missing steps would have to be taken to justify the wild claims in the press release. "We've often criticised press releases that we felt gave misleading impressions of the underlying work," Schmidt says, "but this example is by far the most blatant extrapolation beyond reasonableness that we have seen." None of this seems to have troubled the programme makers, who report the cosmic ray theory as if it trounces all competing explanations.

The film also maintains that manmade global warming is disproved by conflicting temperature data. Professor John Christy speaks about the discrepancy he discovered between temperatures at the Earth's surface and temperatures in the troposphere (or lower atmosphere). But the programme fails to mention that in 2005 his data were proved wrong, by three papers in Science magazine.

Christy himself admitted last year that he was mistaken. He was one of the authors of a paper which states the opposite of what he says in the film. "Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human-induced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected."

Until recently, when found to be wrong, scientists went back to their labs to start again. Now, emboldened by the denial industry, some of them, like the film-makers, shriek "censorship!". This is the best example of manufactured victimhood I have come across. If you demonstrate someone is wrong, you are now deemed to be silencing him.

But there is one scientist in the film whose work has not been debunked: the oceanographer Carl Wunsch. He appears to support the idea that increasing carbon dioxide is not responsible for rising global temperatures. Wunsch says he was "completely misrepresented" by the programme, and "totally misled" by the people who made it.

This is a familiar story to those who have followed the career of the director Martin Durkin. In 1998, the Independent Television Commission found that, when making a similar series, he had "misled" his interviewees about "the content and purpose of the programmes". Their views had been "distorted through selective editing". Channel 4 had to make a prime-time apology.
Cherry-pick your results, choose work which is already discredited, and anything and everything becomes true. The twin towers were brought down by controlled explosions; MMR injections cause autism; homeopathy works; black people are less intelligent than white people; species came about through intelligent design. You can find lines of evidence which appear to support all these contentions, and, in most cases, professors who will speak up in their favour. But this does not mean that any of them are correct. You can sustain a belief in these propositions only by ignoring the overwhelming body of contradictory data. To form a balanced, scientific view, you have to consider all the evidence, on both sides of the question.

But for the film's commissioners, all that counts is the sensation. Channel 4 has always had a problem with science. No one in its science unit appears to understand the difference between a peer-reviewed paper and a clipping from the Daily Mail. It keeps commissioning people whose claims have been discredited - such as Durkin. But its failure to understand the scientific process just makes the job of whipping up a storm that much easier. The less true a programme is, the greater the controversy.

www.monbiot.com

As a result of the melting ice, a small lake started forming at the rim of the glacier in 1991 – it is now 200 feet deep! This new Peruvian lake is currently contained by a natural dam which protects the people who live in the valleys below the glacier, but it won’t be enough: in March 2006, a huge chunk of ice broke off and fell into the lake sending a wall of water cascading through the valley…When the glacier started to form 5-6000 years ago, there were only 300 million or so people in the world, and natural, long-term climactic changes forced SLOW human and animal migrations. But today with 6.5 BILLION people in the world and the same climactic changes happening in less than a century, what are we going to do? How many people need to die before the world wakes up and realizes that no matter how great the threat from terrorists, it is nothing like the threat from what the non-terrorist, civilized world is knowingly doing today?

Today’s average world temperature is only a few degrees lower than it was at the height of the Eemian interglacial period (125,000 years ago) – at that time the melting ice raised the sea level by 6 meters (20ft)! But that was a very slow change in climate that took tens of thousands of years to occur. We’ll hit those same temperatures within the next 30-50 years… We’re not seeing the rise in sea levels yet, but it’s certainly a sort of delayed reaction because there are just so many things in nature that need to happen to catch up with the temperature increases.

Just think for a moment about how many human habited coastal areas are closer to sea level than 6 meters and you’ll have an immediate idea of how badly threatened humanity is – all of Florida and most of the gulf coast, Holland for sure, much of India. Even London, Paris, New York and Boston would be mostly under water. And this is just the tip of this melting climactic iceberg. The Titanic was believed to be an unsinkable ship. The world that we habit is no more unsinkable than that magnificent ocean liner, but we are going to end up, just as surely as most of its passengers, with water over our heads and unable to breathe.

I sorry to be another bearer of bad tidings, but time is running out and the human-controlled world must be made to listen NOW. And I’m not just talking about the so-called developed nations as EVEN if we all got together to make a concerted effort right now: what can it accomplish in the face of the massively increasing problem of the Chinese and Indian populations if they are not also working together with us?

It’s time to stop the world’s ridiculous human and financial waste caused by a never-ending need to increase consumerism and capitalism, all in the name of freedom and improved “quality of life”.  And it’s time to stop our obsession with fighting “Terror” so that we can concentrate on saving “Terra”.

© 2007 Tony Knight