WADE FRAZIER : A Healed Planet

[Servant Limestone]

Hi guys:

It's been a while. Our Internet connection at home is nothing good as of the past few days. The telecommunications company we're subscribing to is advertising a new Internet connection upgrade, and we are continually refusing to bite into the offers of upgrading. In a way, because my sister don't want any of it...yet. I've managed to do something with the Canopy before (in fact a long time ago) and I've got ourselves connected to a rather good cell site, but given that the numbers of "sectors" dropped dramatically as I've last observed our AP configuration, I am assuming that other subscribers are taking the upgrade. I don't think that somebody is hacking our WIFI or stealing our bandwith. It's certainly possible, but I don't think so. The company is finding a way to phase people out from the old subscription, I am guessing, and that is why our comparatively good connection is suffering some problems now. They are not resetting or "decongesting" the traffic deliberately. Well, what do you expect from capitalism? Our country is definitely lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of Internet speed, and it's even in Southeast Asia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intern...internet_speed

The telecommunications monopolies are just jacking up prices while the services are not necessarily getting better; the same way our energy distribution monopoly here does the same thing, with occasional drop of prices. We are also starting to have some water shortages, thanks to the ongoing El Nino phenomenon and the fact that our province is starting to have that "water crisis".

http://www.rappler.com/science-natur...g-water-supply
http://www.rappler.com/nation/82916-...water-shortage

We don't have running water from early morning to early afternoon. It's worse during weekends now, it's from early morning to early evening. But we've learned how to store large gallons of water. But this is still all very irritating for me.

By the way, I've also tried this Detekt free tool from the Internet about the possibilities that I am under government surveillance:

https://resistsurveillance.org/

Thankfully, nothing came up. Hahahaha. I just got curious when I encountered this tool, so I tried it. It's not about being paranoid or anything. After all, if Godzilla is watching this (maybe they are), they are definitely not going to make themselves known to you, except if they want you to know them. I am not sure if I want to experience that. That's probably inside the danger zones of exploring FE disclosure. And I know that Wade came up with this idea and consider the safety of people who might help him out. So, I am confident. Our ISP might be seeing my Web activity and thinks how crazy I am though. Hahahaha.

Now, recently, I am reading something about the debate on the possible inclusion of an Anthropocene geologic epoch to cover contemporary history and I want to ask you, Wade, about your personal thoughts on this ongoing scientific debate. I want to hear your thoughts on its relation to your Epochal periods and if the Industrial Revolution is the right time period or maybe we can even go farther.

http://www.anthropocene.info/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthro...temporal_limit

I've actually thought that it can be from the beginnings of humanity's ability to cook food and the related violent activity from acquiring that animal meat and then make it edible through cooking. It's that energy-related event. But, maybe the word "Anthropocene" is not correct for that. But it's humans that started the entire ability to harness the power of fire. Sure, this may not yet be the true beginnings of how humanity can severely affect the ecosystem, but I have a certain aversion to the entire phenomenon of killing (even though I still really miss my Age of Empires video games and all of the killing there, Hahahaha). I still eat meat, largely out of necessity and pressures of our economic standing and my surrounding environment (family, place, occupational demands, etc.) , but I always eat meat and sometimes thinking of all the costs of producing that beef steak I am eating, for example. It could very well have a spiritual cost to me. I just thought that the start of humanity's harnessing of fire and its usage to cook food is the beginning of it all. Humans have been changing ecosystems of places since then, but it's true that the Industrial Revolution started the capacity of the species to affect the ecosystem of the entire planet, though it's effects only came to be felt 200 years later. 200 years is such a very short time though. This is definitely revolutionary.

That's all. Incidentally, as I am posting now, our Internet connection seems to have gotten better, for now.

Thanks,

Serg.

[Wade Frazier]

Hi Serg:

I'll reply soon. Just worked a 15-hour day, after a 12-hour one, and hitting the sack in minute, if I stay awake that long.

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

I have a few minutes before rushing out the door to work. I would not worry about being surveilled. If Godzilla wants to stake out your toilet, there is no stopping him, and you will never know it. Nobody who interacts with me in forums is in any danger, IMO, at least from Godzilla and friends. It is people’s social circles where the real danger lies.

The Anthropocene is kind of interesting, and I’ll agree with Ruddiman that humanity’s noticeable impacts were early, but I’ll say that they began even earlier than his 8,000 years ago with the beginning of agriculture, to 50,000 years ago, when humans began wiping out all the megafauna. It began a mass extinction, which usually forms the boundary of geological periods, and there were also massive vegetation changes, not only the huge fires that humans set, but those vanished megafauna had keystone species effects, too.

It is interesting that both ends of the eon of complex life are getting recent geological naming effort. The Ediacaran is the first new named period in over a century, and here comes the Anthropocene. We already have the Holocene, which is kind of human-independent, but not really. It is supposedly because of the ice age glaciers receding, but this is really just a blip, but as Ruddiman has made the case, humans have probably already delayed the next ice period by 50,000 years or so with Global Warming, so there really is a significant geological effect of humans, although it is the end of the Holocene, not the beginning, where humans will really get the “credit” for this epoch.

It can be an interesting debate to follow. I recently read a planetary scientist lamenting Pluto’s recent demotion from being a full planet. He complained that astronomers made that political decision, not planetary scientists. Pluto is round from gravity and has pronounced geological activity. That makes it a planet in that scientist’s eyes. Of course, he led the mission to Pluto, so has a little bias. Brian was arguably Earth’s most prominent planetary scientist for a time, with his Martian credentials, so this is another interesting subject for me.

Time to rush off to another busy day.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

I have been writing on demagogues and sentience this morning, but want to get to the Peak Oil, Global Warming, fracking, and related issues. Just this morning, I read Global Warming authority and Fox News personality Stacey Dash attacking Leonardo DiCaprio’s Oscar acceptance speech, as Dash cited scientific powerhouses such as Newsmax in her “fact”-filled rebuttal to the idea of Global Warming. Anybody on Fox News is only going to regurgitate the talking points that they are issued each day. I have had to hear such parroting recently in my personal life. The strange part is this: it is often intelligent people who do that. Why? IMO, they sold out their sentience for their self-interest. That is another subject that I may write about soon, but for now I have to rush off to work.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

Quickly, before I rush out the door to work, 30 years ago today, I met Dennis. Where does a life go? If you had asked me a couple of weeks before that fateful day what my “friends” had in store for me, I would not have believed it. If you would have told me what I was about to learn, I would have thought that you were crazy or a grand liar. I often sit back and think about it, and how surreal so much of it was. Dennis is going to be 70 in a couple of months. He should not have reached 70, and should be dead dozens of times over. But he was on a mission, and it was more than an honor to be part of it, although I will be licking my wounds for the rest of my life. No regrets, however. It was all part of the journey.

Off to work.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

This will start a series of posts on Peak Oil, Global Warming, and related topics. To begin with, what is temperature? It is a measure of molecular motion. When molecules move faster, they get warmer. All matter above absolute zero emits photons. Most is at wavelengths too large to be seen with the human eye, but as matter gets warmer, the photons are more energetic (have shorter wavelengths), and they eventually get powerful enough to be seen with the naked eye. Warm up metal in a fire, and it can get what is called red hot. Get it hotter still, and it can become white hot. Hotter still, and it begins emitting photons beyond the range of visible light, and ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma rays can be emitted. Those wavelengths are damaging to any living organisms, as they break molecular bonds, and the strongest can strip electrons from atoms and make them ions, which is why they are called ionizing radiation, which is deadly to organisms.

That was a lot to pack into a paragraph, and my big essay covers that territory at a more leisurely pace. The force of gravity attracted hydrogen into the star we call the Sun, and when hydrogen gets squeezed hard enough by gravity, nuclear fusion begins, as hydrogen nuclei (protons) fuse to form larger nuclei (helium, etc.), and all of the elements on our planet heavier than hydrogen, which is nearly all of Earth’s mass, were formed in stars via fusion processes. The Sun is a large star, in the top 5% of star sizes in our galaxy, and is in the “sweet spot” of stars, in which it burns very stably for several billion years before its life begins ending, as the fusion processes begin to end. The Sun has burned very stably for several billion years and will for several more before it becomes a red giant. It burns about a third brighter than it did a few billion years ago, and will continue to do so.

Obviously, the Sun is the source of Earth’s warmth. The radioactive materials below Earth’s surface contribute relatively little to Earth’s surface warmth, but they power Earth’s tectonic activity, which is critical for the chemical makeup of Earth’s atmosphere, and the most important is the carbon cycle. Carbon is vital for life on Earth, and because carbon dioxide is a three-molecule gas, it traps infrared radiation (just below the visible wavelength of light) coming from Earth, and that trapped energy raises Earth’s temperature. In every paleoclimate study I ever saw, carbon dioxide has always been the most important gas for raising Earth’s temperature. If not for the carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere, Earth’s surface would have been a block of ice since Earth’s early days. If Earth stays in its present orbit, complex life will not be able to live in Earth in about a billion years, and not long after that, Earth will become as sterile as the Moon.

In the eon of complex life carbon dioxide levels have seesawed, which gave rise to hot periods and ice ages. The hothouse Earth period that the dinosaurs thrived in began ending about 50 million years ago, because of continually declining carbon dioxide as volcanism declined (as Earth’s radioactive activity declines), and we live in an ice age today. For the past million years, continental ice sheets have grown and receded like clockwork, due to Earth’s orientation to the Sun, and until human activities began altering Earth’s atmosphere, beginning eight thousand years ago with the rise of agriculture, Earth would already be heading back toward the growth of the ice sheets. Climate scientists estimate that humanity has already delayed that new glacial episode by 50,000 years or so, primarily due to the hydrocarbon age we are in, as we burn Earth’s hydrocarbon deposits with abandon.

While in every scientific discipline some scientists play “devil’s advocate” and challenge the consensus, which can be a noble role, most Global Warming contrarianism has been engaged in by scientists who sold their souls to the hydrocarbon lobby. I have never seen a credible challenge to the idea that increasing the atmospheric carbon dioxide will inexorably lead to a warmer atmosphere. The idea is unassailable. That said, climate systems are incredibly complex and climate science is a young discipline. But every Global Warming naysayer that I have seen, for those who were not on the payroll of oil and coal companies, seizes on either short term oscillations or regional data, which is meaningless as far as being used for a challenge to the idea of Global Warming. The ultimate cause of Earth’s surface temperate is well known, as is the cause of our current ice age, and all of the Fox News talking heads cannot make it go away.

A related issue is where did those hydrocarbons come from? As with the causes of Earth’s surface temperature, there is no credible challenge to the idea that Earth’s coal deposits were formed from swampy forests in which fallen trees did not decay before they were buried in sediments, and most of Earth’s coal deposits formed before any life on Earth had evolved the means to digest lignin, which makes up the wood in trees. On the Internet, you can find all manner of challenge to the idea of why coal formed, often at tabloid sites that the scientifically illiterate swarm to. But no credible scientist takes those ideas seriously.

Similarly, Earth’s oil deposits were formed by organisms that were buried by sediments before they could be decayed by other organisms, and the oil was formed from marine sediments that formed during anoxic events during the eon of complex life, with most of it formed during the reign of dinosaurs. Stalinist scientists played with the idea that Earth’s oil deposits did not form from dead organisms, but from some primordial process in Earth’s mantle. However, with the rise of plate tectonics and the molecular sciences, in which scientists can trace, atom-by-atom, how organic material from dead organisms became Earth’s oil deposits, other than some interest-conflicted contrarian fringe, no credible scientist seriously considers that Earth’s oil deposits formed from anything other than marine anoxic events.

This is a prelude to my coming series of posts on Global Warming, Peak Oil, and related topics, but it is time to begin another busy day at the office, and my work hurricane will not abate for several more days.

Off to work.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

On to Global Warming. In the 1860s, John Tyndall performed the first experiments with gases and what photons they absorbed. Water and carbon dioxide were strong absorbers of light’s infrared frequency. Different gases absorb different frequencies due to the energy needed for their electrons to jump into higher orbits, also called quantum leaping, and for complex molecules, it can be the energy needed to reach a new state of vibration or rotation. Earth’s atmosphere is largely transparent to visible light, radio waves, and infrared radiation, and it absorbs most of everything else. Different gases absorb different frequencies. While water vapor absorbs more infrared radiation than carbon dioxide does, it is wildly variable and only stays in the atmosphere for about a week before it comes back out in precipitation. Carbon dioxide lasts for more than a century.

Carbon dioxide is the most important gas for determining Earth’s surface temperature, not water. In every paleoclimate study I have seen, carbon dioxide is considered the primary variable in determining global climate, from hothouse periods to ice ages, and models of carbon dioxide levels over Earth’s history have been developed and refined as more data is collected and the models become more sophisticated. Just what levels of carbon dioxide existed in the past is a matter of intense scientific investigation, but no scientists are debating what the overall effects were: when carbon dioxide levels were high, Earth was in hothouse conditions, and when it was low, Earth was in an ice age. There is also no debate that Earth’s mechanisms have been sequestering carbon in Earth’s crust faster than volcanism has been spewing it back out into the atmosphere, which is why Earth has been in an icehouse phase for the past 35 million years.

There is very little debate amongst scientists on those issues, as they are well established. Those so-called greenhouse gases act on Earth’s atmosphere the same way that sleeping under a blanket does, in that they slow down the loss of heat, keeping you or Earth’s atmosphere warmer than without it. Nearly two centuries ago, a French mathematician discovered what would later be called the greenhouse effect. Scientists began measuring the climate effect of humanity’s burning hydrocarbons back in the 1800s. There is nothing new about the idea of human-induced climate change, and there is really no debate amongst scientists that increasing the key greenhouse gas is going to warm Earth. The only debate is how fast it will happen and what oscillations and localized effects will accompany it. In paleoclimate studies, what became clear was that the equatorial regions were relatively unaffected by icehouse and greenhouse conditions; the polar regions had the big changes. In the late Permian, Mesozoic, and Eocene, forests grew near the poles. During the ice ages, any land near the poles was buried under ice sheets. In at least one instance, almost the entirely of Earth’s surface was buried under ice, in what has been called “Snowball Earth.”

During our current ice age, carbon dioxide levels have oscillated between 160 and 280 PPM, corresponding to cold and warm periods. However, carbon dioxide level changes are not a cause for the changes, but an effect of them, as Earth warms, those polar regions in particular off-gas carbon dioxide. Although falling carbon dioxide levels are the ultimate cause of our current icehouse period, the cause of the advancing and retreating ice sheets are oscillations in Earth’s orientation to the Sun, in what have been called Milankovitch cycles. Other proximate causes have been the oceanic current changes largely due to moving continents.

The Antarctic ice sheet began forming about 35 million years ago, which marks the beginning of our icehouse period. Today, scientists think that carbon dioxide dipped below 600 PPM when that ice sheet began forming, and as it oscillated over the next 35 million years, the trend was always lower, and Earth kept getting cooler. The biggest extinction in the Age of Mammals was when Earth changed from hothouse conditions to icehouse ones. Animals living during the past 35 million years were well adapted to Earth’s icehouse conditions, which is why scientists who propose climate explanations for the extinction of the megafauna are wrong. There have been no climate events in the past 35 million years that would have precipitated a mass extinction of all of Earth’s large land animals except for those in Africa, where humans evolved and the megafauna learned to avoid them (and to a lesser extent, Asia). Humans did it, and humans are responsible for the recent skyrocketing carbon dioxide level, which now stands at 400 PPM, when the natural trend predicts that we should have about 240 PPM today and should be slipping back into continental ice sheets forming. Scientists think that humanity may have already delayed the next ice cycle by 10,000 years with what has already been pumped into the atmosphere by burning the hydrocarbons that have fueled the industrial age, and some wonder if that ice age will return at all. At the end of William Ruddiman’s Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum, he wrote, “It is even possible that we will never return to that now-overdue glaciation.”

By the early 1970s, scientists began predicting what we are seeing today, as carbon dioxide levels skyrocket and Earth keeps getting hotter, with new temperature records set nearly every year in this century. There really is no debate amongst climate scientists that Global Warming is real, and the only debate is what the regional effects will be, whether we will have runaway conditions, how fast the ice sheets will melt and what the resultant sea level changes will be, and so on.

Until a professional biographer joins the fray, I am Brian O’Leary’s biographer, and Brian was a planetary scientist whom NASA asked to go to Mars, for the only human officially put in such a position. Brian was an atmospheric scientist and one of the early voices on Global Warming, and one of the leading Global Warming “skeptics” was once Brian’s colleague. The man sold his soul to the hydrocarbon lobby. Brian told me of his anguish and anger back in 2001, as I had been following the “debate” for a decade by then.

The elite corruption of science goes way back, as science and capitalism make for poor bedfellows. The general rule of thumb is that the more wealth and power invested in the outcome of scientific investigation, the more that corporate interests and the global elite will meddle, often using the world’s governments as tools of promotion and suppression, and the media that they own provides the propaganda. The most spectacular and pernicious instances are conjoined, which is the suppression of the ET presence and their technologies, which include antigravity and free energy. The elite will become obsolete if those technologies are used by the public and they know it, hence history’s greatest act of organized suppression.

But the elite have also been actively mischievous in many areas of health and medicine, where toxic industrial wastes receive surreal makeovers into “medicine” and other violent and lucrative interventions are invented that do more harm than good.

Brian was far from the only hip astronaut on those issues. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, when the alarm bells really began to go off on Global Warming, the oil companies in particular began buying up scientists with souls for sale to begin a “skeptical” debate on whether Global Warming was real. In the early 1990s, there were less than a dozen of them. Around the same time, tobacco companies mounted an offensive against the evidence of the harm that smoking caused to bystanders, and they literally coined the term “Junk Science” to discredit the scientific evidence, in one of the most blatant instances ever of corporate propaganda.

Today, the so-called Global Warming “debate” is little more than those hydrocarbon lobby shills, their dupes, a little tribe of scientific contrarians that can be found in all scientific fields, and a compliant media. The recent Fox News T&A who challenged Leonardo DiCaprio’s Oscar acceptance speech is par for the course these days, and the “debate” is nearly all smoke and mirrors designed the lull the masses back into complacency and easy manipulation, and it almost always works. I have watched people embrace certain death rather than question their indoctrination. At first, it was hard to believe, but now I realize that it is normal. The vast majority of humanity is unwilling and unable to escape the shackles of their conditioning. The masses shuffle along to the drumbeat, herded like lemmings, but the “smart” are captured by more subtle means. Materialism is the religion of this Epoch, and it has captured almost all scientists and the “educated,” who are those who most vociferously deny free energy’s reality or desirability.

After getting both barrels of those crazed reactions of denial and fear for several years while he played the Paul Revere of Free Energy, Brian began openly wondering if humanity was a sentient species, and I sadly understood his query.

Those are quite the minefields to walk, but whether Global Warming is real or not, and whether it has anything to do with humanity’s prodigious burning of hydrocarbons, is not one of those areas, unless people get duped by the spectacle of the “debate” today that was fomented by the oil companies and friends, and a compliant public who wants business as usual and being relieved of any responsibility for their actions. This has been the human condition for the entirety of the human journey, and could be called human nature. To some degree, it is, but it does not have to be like this.

Next up will be Peak Oil.

Best,

Wade

[Ilie Pandia]

Hi Wade,

You wrote this above:

"because carbon dioxide is a three-molecule gas, it traps infrared radiation"

I could not find an explanation that links the molecule size to the the frequency of radiation that it absorbs.

[Wade Frazier]

Hi Ilie:

Thanks! This means you are thinking. As a preamble to my reply, let me say: WARNING, I am not a professional scientist.

I wrote because they are three-atom molecules, and that is correct, and not because of their size, but because their complexity allows them to absorb frequencies that atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen, which comprise 99% of our atmosphere, cannot. I tweaked the next post, to better reflect the idea.

Lower energy levels match the vibrational and rotational energies that can absorb infrared, and to make an electron jump is another order of magnitude. Here are some cartoons and a table that make it clearer. Here is a cute cartoon, and this shows the molecular movements that absorb infrared. It is also “quantized,” in that only certain movements are allowed, so only certain wavelengths can be absorbed.

The diatomic molecules that comprise 99% of Earth’s atmosphere do not have the “degrees of freedom” to absorb infrared, and here is a cartoon that depicts it.

When I was reading up on this recently, there was one site with some very cool animations, but after an hour of looking, I could not find it. But what I did find in my hunt is the kind of stuff that abounds on the Internet, as writers called Global Warming a fraud and called the greenhouse effect a mirage, but could not even spell Fourier’s name correctly. You can also find contrarian scientists grinding axes and claiming that the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide is bogus, but they sure do not make a living in that field. Their theorizing would not last long amongst colleagues who are specialists in the field.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

One last note before I get to Peak Oil. On Global Warming, humanity’s playing with Earth’s carbon dioxide levels is not toying with a proximate cause of our current ice age, but the ultimate cause of the past 35 million-year Icehouse Earth phase. We are risking turning Earth from an Icehouse Earth to a Greenhouse Earth, and doing it in a few centuries. Nothing remotely like it has ever happened before on Earth, and the last transition from an Icehouse Earth to a Greenhouse Earth resulted in the greatest extinction of complex life ever. That is what terrifies climate scientists and biologists. We are engaging in an experiment with the only inhabitable planet for light years in every direction, have our toes over the edge of the abyss, and almost nobody knows or cares, as the horizon of their awareness rarely extends past their immediate self-interest. Shudder. Of course, it does not have to be this way.

Best,

Wade

[Ilie Pandia]

OK, learned something new today . There was no magic in the number "3" but rather the more degrees of freedom the molecule has the easier it can store energy as vibration. Also particular shapes do a better job than others.

Those are some pretty cool animations. I realize that I had assumed molecules are rigid 3d structures when in fact they seem to be more like oscillators, which in turn allows them to absorb energy as vibration. It's pretty amazing that my desk feels rather solid instead of this "wobbly thing" . This can also mean that with the right IR frequency and resonance you could break down a molecule that can be excited by IR.

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

I don’t have much time this morning for writing, but briefly, maybe not today, but probably tomorrow, this thread will pass one million page views. That is a first in my writing career. I know that a significant proportion has been the spiderbots, especially Google’s, but many humans have also been here, and thanks for reading. Every writer’s objective is to be read. I found some choir members here, and can only be grateful for that.

Just yesterday, a pal was asking about my strategy, and as I outlined how my effort could go, when I got to the 15-year-mark, I think that he began realizing my framework. I expect this to start slowly, and training the first comprehensive thinkers who can keep their eyes on the ball will be the hardest ones. The rest will come easier.

As I told my pal, if my efforts contribute 0.1% toward making FE happen, for everybody involved, it will be the crowning experience in their souls’ journeys. So, it seems like a worthwhile activity, and beats watching TV.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi Ilie:

Briefly, IR does not have enough energy to break apart molecules. The shorter the wavelength, the higher the frequency. Visible light can’t do it, either, but ultraviolet light can split water, and it damages DNA by breaking bonds. Some ultraviolet light can strip off an electron, which is called ionizing the atom. Ionizing radiation is the most dangerous light of all, and X-rays and gamma rays are worse. Fortunately, Earth’s atmosphere protects Earth’s surface from those frequencies, as atmospheric gases “sacrifice” themselves, when absorbing those frequencies, getting blown apart.

That is called “getting too much energy.”

Best,

Wade

[Servant Limestone]

Hi guys:

That's an interesting discovery Ilie.

Yes, it's really frustrating to see the effectiveness of the hydrocarbon industry's propaganda in the American population. I am not sure if I am right, but it seems that your country, Wade, is an anomaly regarding this issue. The US is a major stumbling block from international action against climate change. Obviously, for somebody like us here with most of your other readers, it's not that surprising.

I just wanted to say something about how the city of Seattle seems to have made a very big impact on my life. Obviously, this is because it's the city where you are living right now, and you were also born there and grew up near there. I also have to take note about how the Seattle sound and the alternative rock revolution created an impact on me when I was in college, and continued to do so today. I've started with Nirvana, but my exploration of that band and the alternative rock community allowed me to be able to explore other genres and to get know more about the background of the Seattle bands. And I am quite impressed. I don't know even know that Jimi Hendrix came from your city, Wade.

I've developed a total liking to Pearl Jam recently, and I am not sure if you are listening to the Seattle bands that created that wave in the early 1990s. They just started it. I also remembered Pearl Jam before because of their activism and their support to Ralph Nader in 2000. I do regret their support to the Democrats starting in 2004 though. But, this regret just came more recently when I've shifted to the radleft. Pearl Jam have to compromise with the music industry eventually, and it even includes their relatively liberal politics. I also have to say that Eddie Vedder is friends with Howard Zinn. At least that's the impression. He even dedicated a song to him. I just forgot what is that. I don't know. I just developed a liking to Pearl Jam now. I got too tired of Nirvana. But it's been that way for quite some time anyway. I mellowed out after expressing all of that alienation and anger to the wider world and society through Seattle grunge and the extended 1990s rock movement, with bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine, etc. But Seattle music started the expansion of my musical horizons (at least in listening to tons of genres).

Seattle created that impact with me. It's been there way before I got to know you, Wade. I think the fact that you live in Seattle made me more attracted to your message and advocacy in your website when I first read it in that fateful day in late 2012. That's 7 hours of reading your site, so I remember reading about your life. Can you imagine how such a city can make an impact to somebody like me here in this part of the world. It opened up my mind.

You should be proud of being from Washington State. I also remembered about the revolutionary events of 1918 and 1919 around the world and what U.S. city made the most militancy back then, it's Seattle again! The Seattle General Strike. I've read about it before.

Writing something about the Philippines just sealed the deal eventually for me. I know that I am a believer.

But it didn't came easy. There are many things that happened to me that laid the groundwork before I encountered your work, and then just accept it after a thorough and semi-agonizing digestion. I have to deny what I've just read, at first, of course. It's too painful. But then again, here I am. I am just happy that I got to know you and Ilie, Melinda, and to be able to interact here.

That's all.

Thanks,

Serg.

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

This will be a short one, kicking off the Peak Oil and related discussion. The concept of energy return on investment (“EROI”) will be an important one for these topics. The idea of return on investment in financial terms is a pale reflection of the real thing, which is EROI. The financial economy is imaginary and does not deal with reality very well. The financial economy will disappear in the Fifth Epoch, along with money and other primitive constructs.

I’ll cut right to the chase on Peak Oil. Only about a third of the oil in an oilfield is extracted. The rest stays in the ground. The reason is that the EROI falls to around one for that remaining oil, which means that it takes as much energy to get it out of the ground as the energy that that oil provides, which makes the exercise pointless. In East Texas nearly a century ago, the EROI from those oil fields was more than 100-to-1, in the Golden Age of Oil. The EROI of oil extraction around the world has fallen ever since. In 1990, global oil EROI was about 30, is less than 20 today, and may fall to 10 in the next several years. Conventional oil will be entirely depleted long before this century ends.

The pioneers of the EROI concept estimate that an EROI of around 10-to-1 is the minimum required for running a civilization, and we are coming close to it already, at least for oil. The Peak Oil idea is that peak production for an oil well is reached when about half of the exploitable oil is extracted. Then the curve of extraction declines down to where the method of extraction cannot get any more. What makes EROI go down is that the oil near the surface does not take much energy to extract, and the deeper you go, the EROI declines. When converted to money terms, it can mean extraction cost per barrel. The only reason why the USA has a military presence in the Middle East today is that it has the world’s last easy oil, with a cost of extraction of a few dollars per barrel. Iraq had the world’s largest oil reserves, with the highest EROI, that was not subjected to corporate control (along with Iran). That is why the USA murdered millions of people there, and any other “reason” provided is pure obfuscation and distraction.

The so-called fracking boom in the USA was all about oil with an EROI of around three (or direct costs of extraction of $40 per barrel or so, and fully amortized costs of up to $80 per barrel, which is why those fracking operations are all going bankrupt now, with $40-per-barrel oil). It is not conventional oil, which is what the father of the Peak Oil idea, M. King Hubbert, wrote about, and is the low-quality dregs that all declining societies scrape on their way to oblivion, as they run out of energy. Canada’s tar sands are more of the same: an environmental catastrophe in the making with an EROI of less than five.

Time for work.

Best,

Wade

[Ilie Pandia]

Hi,

"Briefly, IR does not have enough energy to break apart molecules. The shorter the wavelength, the higher the frequency."

I had assumed that energy could accumulate over time. So over a much longer period of time, you would get as much energy into an oscillator using IR frequency and you would get using the UV frequency. Further I had assumed that if you had enough time you can build the energy high enough to break the bonds, even with infra-red.

Although this seems theoretically possible, from what I could find online it was attempted but never succeeded. A couple of stated reasons: the heat gets lost too fast to have any significant build up over time, and even if you would somehow isolate the molecule so little to no heat is lost, the geometry beings to get so distorted that the "resonance frequency" value begins to float wildly, therefore making it impossible to get "in resonance" with the mechanical model anymore.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Wade Frazier (here)
I know that a significant proportion has been the spiderbots, especially Google’s, but many humans have also been here, and thanks for reading.

Recent views of this thread are 93% bots, 7% other (humans, I presume). The biggest bots are bing (Microsoft) and baidu (Chinese), at 36% of all hits and 30% of all hits, respectively. Google bot hits are only 1.5%. This is an example of a long standing situation - Google is more efficient in its web crawling, Microsoft less efficient.

(Way off topic ... sorry .)

[Wade Frazier]

Hi Ilie:

You are getting to some juicy territory, and I’ll briefly skim it. Yes, the energy hill is too steep to climb with infrared. You can’t split water, much less ionize it, with visible light…unless you have a catalyst. One of the big “plays” these days is finding easy ways to catalyze visible light reactions to split water, as they hack at branches.

With visible light, bacteria are not only able to split water, but also ionize it by tearing apart hydrogen atoms, which provide the protons that power the mitochondria. That is the magic of enzymes at work. You saw how wobbly those molecules are. What the enzyme that tears water apart does is like taking that wobbly water molecule and strapping it to a table, and then taking a hammer and chisel to it, to break it. Only the high end of UV, x-rays, and gamma rays can ionize atoms, but bacteria can do it with only visible light. When I update my big essay this year, I am going to expand this area.

Hi Serg:

Well, you are going to make me write some posts on Seattle. Yes, it is where I came into the world and where I plan to leave it, but it is also where Dennis first got clobbered by the Establishment. Seattle is a great city, but it is still a city, and my goal is ending cities, along many aspects of our current and previous Epochs. Any “pride” for where one lives, or of one’s background, is a trap. Pride is one of the deadly sins, but we turn it into a virtue. Appreciation, yes, pride, no.

Time for work.

Best,

Wade

¤=[Post Update]=¤

Thanks Paul! Not off topic at all. So, only maybe 70,000-100,000 human views to this thread. Interesting that China crawls it. This thread will pass a million views this morning. Thank you, bots!

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

Before I run out the door, while we are on the topic of site stats… My host filters out bots, and my site gets more human traffic than this thread does. My big essay is back to being the most popular part of my site, at more than 3,000 visits this month, with my American Empire essay in a distant second at only 2,000. About 75% of my visitors are not stumbling into it, but taking a direct link to it, from bookmarks, emails, etc.

I’ll write more on the topic soon, but the level of traffic is not so important to me, but the quality. The only thing that is going to attract the audience I seek is a high-level discussion of the material in my big essay, and my site in general. Plenty of topics to choose from. I am not shooting for a mass audience, but those few who have what I seek. When they can begin singing the song, those I seek will hear it, and know that it is something different.

Time for work.

Best,

Wade

[Servant Limestone]

Hi Wade:

Maybe "pride" is too strong of a word, after all, I have to agree with you that I am going to prefer seeing a human civilization scattered across the solar system living in self-sufficient traveling and floating homes, with small near-empty settlements for special purposes surrounded by the pristine natural beauty of the Earth. I am sure that humans are still going to gather together for certain events and purposes, but people are largely going to be together in small units of about 10 people as far as I believe.

Thanks,

Serg.