WADE FRAZIER : A Healed Planet

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

Other than some fringe types, there is no debate among scientists that the remains of marine organisms formed Earth’s oil deposits. Until the eon of complex life, there was not much that could make the oil deposits, so the Ediacaran Period produced the first oil deposits of note. The process of oil formation is well known, and it was the “lucky” marine organisms that became today’s oil deposits. Most of today’s oil deposits were laid down during the reign of dinosaurs, during anoxic events along the shores of the Tethys Ocean. For hundreds of millions of years, there was a constant tectonic plate movement that kept creating oceans and then squeezing them out of existence. Before there was the Tethys, there was the Proto-Tethys and the Paleo-Tethys, and each in their turn was squeezed out of existence, as their ancient shores were jammed under the southern rim of Asia. That jamming created sediments that are miles deep, and that is the source of not only Middle East oil, but Texas oil, African, South American, and the like were all created by the same process, as ancient anoxic shores were subducted. The final remains of the Tethys are the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, Black, Caspian, and Aral seas. There is an “oil window” from about one-to-three miles deep, and if ocean sediments from anoxic events get shoved into that window, then what we call conventional oil can form.

Even after it forms, however, most conventional oil eventually leaks back out into the oceans, and only relatively rare ocean sediments are formed and get trapped in specific kinds of geological formations, just “waiting” to be discovered by oil companies.

Before the science of plate tectonics was developed, beginning in the 1960s, some scientists, Stalinist scientists in particular, theorized that oil was not formed from ocean sediments, but by some primordial processes in the mantle. It was championed in the USA by Thomas Gold, but like so many hypotheses, it has fallen by the wayside as more evidence was amassed. Plate tectonic theory not only helped kill the abiotic oil formation hypothesis, but also the “pole-shift” hypothesis by Charles Hapgood also fell by the wayside, even though Albert Einstein endorsed Hapgood’s work. Einstein died before the rise of plate tectonics, and he surely would not endorse Hapgood’s work if he was alive today, nor would he take Velikovsky’s ideas seriously for a moment. There is a phenomenon called True Polar Wander, but Hapgood’s hypothesis had pole shifts happening a thousand times faster, which no scientist takes seriously today, although plenty of non-scientific fringe types still promote such nonsense.

Most sediments from anoxic events never entered and stayed in the oil window. Going below the oil window completely destroyed the oil and turned it into natural gas, while sediments that never got that deep remained kerogen, which is what oil starts as.

Conventional oil is a particular “grade” of hydrocarbon that exists in formations that can be drilled by the methods developed since the 1850s, when the first commercial well was drilled. Capitalism went into overdrive with oil, as John Rockefeller soon took over the industry by controlling the refining arm of it, and became Earth’s richest human who soon became a “philanthropist.” The world has paid dearly for the “philanthropy” of the rich. The Rockefellers’ malign influence can be felt to this day, in various areas such as medicine and economic theory, and they helped wipe out my companies.

I heard Tom Bearden talk about it in 1998, and I agree, that the oil companies themselves are not behind the organized suppression of FE, although they have plenty to answer for. Corporations are too short-sighted for those kinds of activities, and they would be too easy to uncover, so the suppression originates from higher levels of the game. Fossils, atmospheric data, geological studies, astronomy, and the like are not easily subjected to the kinds of organized suppression that abounds regarding FE, alternative medicine, and related areas. All that the forces of organized suppression have to do is neutralize relatively few people and their disruptive theories and technologies, which are not easily reproduced or implemented, which is typical with such fledgling efforts. If they can be strangled in their cradles, then it is relatively easy to keep such upstarts at bay, and the Big Boys know very well what game they are playing.

But that conspiratorial activity is a far cry from what petroleum geologists and scientists do. It would not be easy to classify excavations, geological findings, and so on. The national security state has covered up plenty of nefarious activity, but they can’t go classify all of the world’s fossil beds, geological formations, astronomical data, etc. But all manner of fringe talking head spins grand yarns with little evidence, and the scientifically illiterate New Age/conspiracist crowd laps it up. There is a boatload of that stuff out there, and one example is the idea that Antarctica was ice free in historical times, based on highly flimsy interpretations of old maps and the like. Hapgood started it, and that invalid hypothesis still has life amongst the fringe crowd.

The evidence is overwhelming that Antarctica began developing its ice sheet nearly 50 million years ago, as Earth transitioned from hothouse to icehouse conditions, and by 35 million years ago, it had healthy ice sheets that have mostly grown since then. It probably shrank a little during the Miocene, but it has been very healthy for the past ten million years, and in the past three, it has been largely as it is today and even larger during the intervals when ice sheets covered the northern hemisphere. The idea that Antarctica was ice-free a few hundred years ago is not taken seriously by any professional scientists.

The abiotic oil idea is nearly in the same dustbin today, although at least there you can find professional scientists, generally with conflicts of interest, advocating the abiotic oil idea, although no professional geologists take them seriously. There is simply far too much evidence that anoxic marine sediments, acted on by very particular geological processes, formed today’s oil deposits, especially with the rise of molecular biology, so that scientists can now construct, step-by-step, how the remains of dead marine organisms were “refined” into what we call oil today.

The Canadian tar sands are not made of conventional oil at all, but kerogen that was never pushed into the “oil window,” so has not been “distilled” into oil. Hence, the processing of those tar sands that occurs today is very energy intensive, to do the work that geological processes did to conventional oil. As I previously mentioned, the energy return on investment (“EROI”) on East Texas oil in the 1920s was more than 100-to-1, in the Golden Age of easy oil. Its EROI was so high because it was close to the surface. The further you have to drill, the lower your EROI. Also, those Hollywood movies of people happily being covered in oil gushers that made them rich were real events, but always short-lived. After that initial pressure on a tapped oil formation was bled off, then it was the task of sucking that oil out of the ground, not just letting it flow into waiting storage.

Sucking that oil out takes energy, and the further you have to pull it up, the more energy it takes. Also, the oil is not just in some kind of pool but is impregnated into the geological strata, in the pores of the rocks. When only about a third of the oil in an oilfield is extracted, the remaining oil is so energy intensive to extract that the EROI drops to one, meaning that it takes as much energy to extract the oil as the oil provides, making the exercise useless.

Also, there are grades of oil. Because sulfur is an essential element in biology (which gives egg yolks their yellow color, and hydrogen sulfide is what makes rotten eggs smell so bad, and human digestive gas), it remains in petroleum. Oil with less than 0.42% sulfur is called “sweet crude,” and is the good stuff that oil companies covet. Oil with greater than 0.42% is called “sour crude.” Sour crude takes more energy to refine, to remove that sulfur. If cars ran on sour crude without the sulfur removed, the skies would be filled with sulfuric acid clouds. As it is, air pollution from burning oil is bad enough, without adding a bunch more sulfur to it.

This is a very brief summary how oil is formed, extracted, and delivered to your gas tank. Next will be the concept of Peak Oil, and then the dregs-scraping activity known today as the fracking boom, which came to a screeching halt in the USA recently, as oil prices collapsed, and Canada’s tar sands operations have suffered similarly.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

A reader presented me with some “hacked” climate data, and I analyzed it, for what it is worth, but am going to use it as a spring board for a few posts. I have attached the data, rendered in graphic form, and have compared it to a similar graph on Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia graphic is at the top, and below it is the graphic for the Northern Hemisphere, and the bottom is for all of Earth. I can’t vouch for the data’s authenticity or accuracy, but I am going to make some important points regarding it.

To compare the Wikipedia chart to the “hacked” data, you need to look only at the last half of the Wikipedia data, as it spans 2,000 years, while the hacked data only spans 1,000 years.

The year 1000 CE was the height of the Medieval Warm Period, and the Wikipedia value for the temperature “anomaly” was about -0.2. The depth of the Little Ice Age was about 1600 CE, and the anomaly was about -0.7, or a half degree Celsius between the height of the good times of the Medieval Warm Period and the hellish depths of the Little Ice Age, which is about one degree Fahrenheit. One degree! One degree meant the difference between troubadours plying their trade through Europe during an era of (relative) peace and plenty and the Hell on Earth of the Thirty Years’ War.

Agrarian civilizations simply had no margin for error, as their energy surplus was so thin. If you look at that hacked data, it does not look quite right, but the biggest downward spike in the Northern Hemisphere’s record was in the 1400s, and from top to bottom was about 0.6 degrees. So, the variations for Wikipedia and the hacked data are about the same range. The Wikipedia graph merges several results from different studies, and is going be more meaningful than that hacked data, which gives a misleading level of precision, for starters, going out to four places past the decimal point.

Actual temperature readings are only a couple of centuries old, and true global mean temperatures from direct instrument readings is only decades old, and the “steep” climb from 1800, of about one degree Celsius, or two degrees Fahrenheit, is largely missing in the hacked data. There is no argument that my lifetime is the warmest period in many centuries, and maybe since the last interglacial 100,000 years ago. Every year but one in this century is warmer than any year before 2000 ever recorded.

Not only do the climate models predict it, but the fossil record is very clear that the difference between icehouse and hothouse phases is felt most dramatically at the poles, with forests growing at the poles in hothouse periods and the poles buried under ice in icehouse phases, especially the South Pole, which has had Antarctica at it nearly continuously for 500 million years. I have been literally watching glaciers vanish in my beloved mountains, and my late uncle was amazed at what he witnessed in his lifetime.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

These recent Global Warming and Peak Oil posts have been stirring some things up in various forums that I post to, and touches on subjects that are important for what I am attempting. I feel the need to address them. A key aspect of my effort, which I have devoted the rest of my lifetime’s “spare” time to, and it won’t succeed without it, is to have my little band comprised of people who are scientifically literate. Together, we can help usher in the biggest event in the human journey. But we won’t be able to help if we can’t keep our eye on the ball, get distracted by the daily circus, get sucked in by the blizzard of disinformation that exists on important topics, grind the egocentric axes that feed us, etc.

It wasn’t until early 2003, more than a quarter-century since that voice in my head suggested that I trade my science studies for business studies, and 15 years since my free energy journey radicalized me, that I was introduced to Bucky Fuller’s work and the paradigm that I had been groping toward since my cradle finally crystallized. Ever since, my work has been consciously comprehensive in nature. I resumed my science studies in earnest about then, and starting in 2007, my studies were performed with the specific intention of writing what became my big essay. I’ll not write its like again in this lifetime, and again this year, I will update it for the past year’s studies, similar to how college textbooks are updated. I expect the pace of updates to slow down before long, as the essay gets into the shape that I originally envisioned for it. It is damned close to it today, but there is still some important work ahead of me.

I first published my fluoridation essay in 1998, as a prelude to my medical racket essay. I began studying for that essay way back in 1990, when I was introduced to Rife’s and Naessens’s work, many years after I had already witnessed health miracles that orthodox medicine declared “impossible” and bore the brunt of the medical racket at work. The people who have been steamrollered by the medical racket the worst have generally been MDs and biological scientists, not untrained fringe types.

I am anything but Mr. Orthodox, and scientific literacy does not mean drinking the Kool-Aid of materialism, but understanding the processes and findings of mainstream science, for starters. What needs to come with that is sharpening one’s tools of perception and assessment, so that we are not just watching the salvos of scientific controversy fly, like watching a tennis match, but developing our own informed opinions on those matters, not taking some authority’s word for it or blindly embracing some fringe voices because they are fringe, which I see all the time. There is a mountain of chaff for every kernel of wheat on the fringes, and I am constantly besieged by people who shovel the chaff at me, unable to distinguish wheat from chaff as they leave their critical faculties at the door, if they ever had them in the first place.

I am the biographer of one of the leading scientific fringe voices, who left the orthodox fold after his mystical awakening and could no longer drink the Kool-Aid of materialism, which ruined him as a mainstream scientist, which is typical of my relatively few fellow travelers. But as fringe as he was, he still believed in the process of science, and it is a worthy ideal, just like a truly free press is a worthy ideal, even though the reality is like Orwell and Huxley depicted. Rupert Sheldrake is a wonderful challenger of materialism, which is the religion of this Epoch, and the “skeptics” are all over him, getting him banned from venues where his voice is sorely needed. But Sheldrake also believes in the scientific process, even as he disputes what its findings mean, as he performs his own experiments that falsify materialism. But what Brian and Sheldrake did, or Ralph Moss, is a far cry from what I see dominating the fringes, as either paranoid conspiracist or naïve New Age material abounds. From many years of immersion in both milieus, I came to understand what their virtues and limitations were, and above all, they rarely take a scientific or scholarly approach, but glom onto any shiny object that they come upon that appeals to their predilections, and they end up deluded and often dangerously so. It is really sad to witness, and I have seen many go off the deep end.

Let there be no mistaking my stance: I know that technologies exist on the planet today that turn the physics textbooks into doorstops, and Ed Mitchell’s perspective was close to mine on the UFO/ET issue, and Brian’s life was shortened by his snooping into the UFO issue. So, again, I am far from Mr. Orthodox, but the fringes are filled with what amounts to gossip, and on scientific matters, one can always find a contrarian scientist to challenge the consensus, which can be a noble role to fill, but hypotheses are not evidence, much less proof, and the scientifically illiterate lap that stuff up when it appeals to their beliefs, which is a worthless way to digest scientific material.

Back in the late 1990s, when I had my email address on my site and took on all comers, before I decided that it was not worth my time anymore to do that, I was besieged by fringe claimants, and one body of work I eventually called “hillbilly science,” as it kind of resembled science and scholarship in superficial ways, but the punchline was always along the lines of how the Bible was literally true (a highly dubious notion) or supported other beliefs and folk tales that poor agrarian American white people grew up with. There are even Biblical fundamentalists in those circles who believe that Earth is flat and think that scientific evidence supports it. Never mind that any teenagers with a little gumption can disprove that notion to themselves, there are people, in today’s USA mind you, not some medieval village, who believe that Earth is flat. I heard about a Flat-Earther who is a pal of one of my pupils, and my pupil told me of that Flat-Earther in tones of amazement and resignation.

This post is a prelude to scientific literacy and the Global Warming and Peak Oil issues. Being scientifically literate on those issues does not mean blindly drinking orthodoxy’s Kool-Aid, but understanding the theories, the evidence, and the battles of the hypotheses that abound in such highly charged areas. It also means understanding how and when the national security state, corporate interests, and even Godzilla muddy the waters, and in ways that mainstream scientists are generally naïve to. There needs to be worldliness, too.

Scientific literacy includes understanding what areas are disputed and why, what areas have almost no dispute because the evidence is robust, and where the evidence is more equivocal and the hypotheses more speculative. It takes some work and mental horsepower to become scientifically literate on those issues, but people do not need genius-level IQs to achieve that literacy, but just a love of the truth and a willingness to do the work.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

On to scientific literacy and the issues around Global Warming and Peak Oil. This may turn into a series of posts, and I’ll begin with the carbon dioxide issue.

The carbon dioxide issue

We need to go back a ways, to where carbon comes from. Astronomers and cosmologists are unanimous that all elements heavier than hydrogen were formed by the fusion processes in stars. After hydrogen and helium, carbon and oxygen are considered to be the two most common elements in the universe. In fact, of the most important elements to life on Earth, only phosphorus, calcium, and potassium are not represented in the top ten. Life on Earth made do with what was available.

Earth is in what is called the “habitable zone,” which means a planet’s orientation to a star that makes life as we know it possible, and possessing liquid water is one of those requirements, which requires an atmosphere. Earth’s atmosphere is a vanishingly tiny proportion of Earth’s mass, but without it, life as we know it would not exist on Earth.

Earth’s atmosphere is 99% comprised of diatomic oxygen and nitrogen, and the oxygen only exists because of oxygenic photosynthesis. That oxygen also created the ozone layer. Other than those gases, nearly the entirety of the remaining atmosphere is argon, which is a noble gas that won’t react with anything. Water also evaporates and precipitates, and is responsible for most of the greenhouse effect on Earth. I wrote a recent post on why water and carbon dioxide absorb infrared radiation while oxygen and nitrogen do not. Atmospheric molecules of more than two atoms can absorb infrared radiation, and that produces the greenhouse effect that prevented Earth from being a big ball of ice.

While water is ten times as plentiful in Earth’s atmosphere as carbon dioxide is, carbon dioxide is more important than water for the greenhouse function, as its boiling point is hundreds of degrees lower, so it does not precipitate out of the atmosphere like water continually does.

Almost the entire range of electromagnetic radiation is absorbed by some gas in Earth’s atmosphere. The ability to absorb electromagnetic radiation is dependent on the energy level of the radiation and the energy “niches” in the gaseous molecules. It is just like quantum mechanics in that only certain energy levels are possible in the electron configurations, so only certain frequencies of light (AKA wavelength) are absorbed by certain gases.

Fortunately, oxygen and nitrogen are transparent to visible light, otherwise, it would have never reached Earth’s surface and powered photosynthesis, which is where virtually all energy in all life on Earth originates from. Even chemosynthetic organisms rely on solar energy.

Greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation, slowing down Earth’s energy loss to space, and it is like putting on a blanket when you sleep, as it reduces your body’s rate of heat loss.

Paleologists have been able to piece together the broad strokes of Earth’s development from when it formed about 4.6 billion years ago, soon after the Sun did. The Sun is obviously the greatest variable on Earth’s temperature, but the Sun is in a class of stars that burn very steadily for ten billion years or so. Our Sun is in its middle age, and will steadily burn for several billion more years before it becomes a red giant. If Earth stays in its present orbit, it will be obliterated by then, and life as we know it on Earth will come to an end long before that, mainly from the continual loss of carbon in the carbon cycle (as plate tectonics slows and volcanism wanes, which is the primary source of carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere) and Earth will eventually lose its ocean. The beginning of the loss of Earth’s ocean is currently estimated to be a billion years or so away, as the Sun keeps getting brighter.

Carbon dioxide concentrations were once many times higher than today’s, and Earth was much warmer. During the eon of complex life, the hothouse and icehouse periods on Earth are thought to rest entirely on the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content. Everything else is of minor significance.

The ideas in this post are not denied by any credible scientists that I am aware of. The evidence is very robust, and I am not aware of any experimental data that calls it into question. There can be vociferous debate on many issues, such as oxygen’s role in the rise of complex life, but nobody denies the importance of oxygen to complex life today or the role of greenhouse gases in Earth’s climate and carbon dioxide’s central importance. There is really no scientific debate of note on those issues. The sporadic role of methane has been investigated and debated, but no climate scientist that I am aware of will seriously question the leading role of carbon dioxide in Earth’s greenhouse effect.

I have noted that some scientists have sold their souls to the hydrocarbon lobby to cloud the issue, but even they do not dispute the central role that carbon dioxide has always played in Earth’s climate. There really aren’t any other contenders, and it is a pretty simple issue.

Best,

Wade

[Chris Gilbert]

I am anything but Mr. Orthodox, and scientific literacy does not mean drinking the Kool-Aid of materialism, but understanding the processes and findings of mainstream science, for starters. What needs to come with that is sharpening one’s tools of perception and assessment, so that we are not just watching the salvos of scientific controversy fly, like watching a tennis match, but developing our own informed opinions on those matters, not taking some authority’s word for it or blindly embracing some fringe voices because they are fringe, which I see all the time. There is a mountain of chaff for every kernel of wheat on the fringes, and I am constantly besieged by people who shovel the chaff at me, unable to distinguish wheat from chaff as they leave their critical faculties at the door, if they ever had them in the first place.

I am the biographer of one of the leading scientific fringe voices, who left the orthodox fold after his mystical awakening and could no longer drink the Kool-Aid of materialism, which ruined him as a mainstream scientist, which is typical of my relatively few fellow travelers. But as fringe as he was, he still believed in the process of science, and it is a worthy ideal, just like a truly free press is a worthy ideal, even though the reality is like Orwell and Huxley depicted. Rupert Sheldrake is a wonderful challenger of materialism, which is the religion of this Epoch, and the “skeptics” are all over him, getting him banned from venues where his voice is sorely needed. But Sheldrake also believes in the scientific process, even as he disputes what its findings mean, as he performs his own experiments that falsify materialism. But what Brian and Sheldrake did, or Ralph Moss, is a far cry from what I see dominating the fringes, as either paranoid conspiracist or naïve New Age material abounds. From many years of immersion in both milieus, I came to understand what their virtues and limitations were, and above all, they rarely take a scientific or scholarly approach, but glom onto any shiny object that they come upon that appeals to their predilections, and they end up deluded and often dangerously so. It is really sad to witness, and I have seen many go off the deep end.

Let there be no mistaking my stance: I know that technologies exist on the planet today that turn the physics textbooks into doorstops, and Ed Mitchell’s perspective was close to mine on the UFO/ET issue, and Brian’s life was shortened by his snooping into the UFO issue. So, again, I am far from Mr. Orthodox, but the fringes are filled with what amounts to gossip, and on scientific matters, one can always find a contrarian scientist to challenge the consensus, which can be a noble role to fill, but hypotheses are not evidence, much less proof, and the scientifically illiterate lap that stuff up when it appeals to their beliefs, which is a worthless way to digest scientific material.

I really liked the way you described this here.

I've been posting/lurking on new age/conspiracy forums off and on since 1996, and at times I get weary of all the information noise. None of it ever seems to go anywhere, it's almost always endless speculation.

People taking their interpretations of their subjective psychic experiences at face value is another problem I've noticed. I don't mention it much, but several months ago when doing a form of Taoist alchemy I experienced my consciousness flying "up" into a realm of higher vibration and meet what looked like aliens greeting me, helping to clear blockages from my spirit and sending me compassion. Very powerful, but I was able to come back down to earth after. Now, I could do what many channeling types do and make an elaborate theory of everything based on my experience, with pronouncements about how ETs are helping to save or intervene in Earth's affairs and the whole nine yards.

Instead, I look at said experience as one that might have been part multidimensional, but was most likely my own subconscious cleaning itself out, burning through ingrained filters, given that meditation often puts me into a state similar to half-dreaming.

I'm more interested in efforts to actually do something in the here and now, rather than just speculation.

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

A few odds and ends this Saturday morning. I provided a DNA test sample yesterday, to see what my genetic ancestry is. My family name can be traced back to Scotland in the 1730s, and that line is probably all white, and my mother’s side is almost certainly all Scandinavian. But my paternal grandmother’s side is where my redneck roots come from, and almost certainly some Indian blood. My wife comes from Spanish “settler” stock, going back to the 1500s, and like my family did, there was complete denial that my wife’s family ever interbred with those “subhuman” Indians (they claim “noble” descent from both Columbus and Coronado – I have their family tree that shows it), but when my wife got her DNA test back not long ago, she had nearly 10% Indian DNA, and I am going to predict that I have about 8% Indian DNA. My wife also had some sub-Saharan African DNA, probably via slave stock somewhere along the way, and even some Ashkenazy Jew DNA, which surprised me. Some Sephardic Jew DNA would not have been surprising for Spanish immigrants, but how Ashkenazy Jew DNA got in there is a mystery. If I have some sub-Saharan African DNA, that will be a rich irony, coming from a family line as racist and bigoted as mine was, which was the true American Way.

Back in 1987, when I was Dennis’s partner, I began fielding the thousands of reactions to the idea of FE that 20 years later led to my layers of the FE onion framework. Fear reactions were always the most plentiful, which included all of the denial reactions, and they took on a wide spectrum of expression. Without exception those fearful reactions projected the idea of scarcity onto a situation of abundance, which is nonsensical, but since all that humanity has ever known is scarcity, such fears are understandable, although they reflect a stunted perspective. To be fair, no humans have ever been able to imagine the next Epoch before it arrived, and it will be the case with about 99.99% of humanity this time, too.

A variation of the fear response is conjuring up scenarios of economic collapse, strip-mining Earth, and wars when FE is introduced. How nonsensical. FE will be like giving everybody a billion dollars, and rich people don’t fight each other over the scraps. Some want a fully-fleshed out plan for an easy transition to the Fifth Epoch, as if any of that means anything before FE is delivered. It doesn’t. In last year’s update to my big essay, I wrote little section on my atom bomb studies. Literally the day after nuking Hiroshima, people began speculating on the potential of nuclear energy, and it became quite the political football for several years. Of course, nuclear fission is a poor way to obtain energy, and it eventually became obvious what a pipedream fission was. The irony is that FE technology likely existed back then in commercial form, but Godzilla kept the lid on it, as he has done to this day.

Sparky Sweet feared a stock market collapse if his FE gizmo was introduced, but Sparky was firmly stuck in the current paradigm, as you can see when viewing a video of his gizmo working, as “proprietary technology” flashes across the screen several times, which announced that Sparky had no idea of what he really had ahold of. it typical, so there is no reason to get on Sparky’s case. I have never met an altruistic inventor, much less an FE inventor, and I have never heard of an FE inventor with the goods willing to give it away. They are all mired in scarcity, just like everybody else.

All battle plans for enlisting the world’s governments, corporations, and “progressive” organizations in some FE transition plan are hopelessly naïve. There is only going to be denial, derision, and fear until FE is delivered. Only then are people’s eyes going to begin to open, and not before. It is putting the cart way before the horse to get all wrapped up in transition plans and fearful scenarios of abundance. When people envision collapsing stock markets and how energy-revenue dependent organizations and nations will react to FE’s reality, those are just more fear reactions. When FE is delivered to the world, even the stupidest among us will instantly realize that it is game over for the Fourth Epoch and we will quickly achieve Type 1 status. Only if humanity is filled with idiots, from top to bottom, will we fail at safely implementing FE, and I have a higher opinion of humanity than that. I advocate those peacekeeping grandmothers, and the vast wealth that FE will generate will be rather easily distributed. I have noticed that people are so addicted to scarcity they really can’t imagine an effort like mine, in which the most lucrative technology in world history is going to be given to humanity. There will be blueprints, machines, and processes given away so that FE devices will quickly be mass produced, for free, globally, for all of humanity. Capitalism, nations, cities, exchange professions, and all other scarcity-based institutions and ways of life will quickly fade to oblivion, and nobody will miss them, just like nobody, other than dark pathers, pine for the good old days of agrarian economies, potentates, and slavery.

Only megalomaniacs think that they are going to become the Bill Gates of FE, but there are plenty of them, or FE tinkerers who announce that they are the Messiah, etc. The Epochal significance of FE will quickly become apparent to all, and my choir idea is about forming a high-level conversation and framework that will instantly become dominant, but until FE is delivered, don’t expect anybody to listen, especially your social circles, the rich and powerful, the “progressives,” etc. Godzilla is keenly aware of what FE means: the end of his entire ballgame. That is why he has been so avid in suppressing it. So-called “progressive” organizations have been hearing about FE since the 1970s, and without exception, they treat FE as the enemy, as mired in scarcity as they are. It is really hard to avoid at least hearing of the FE idea.

Before FE is delivered, all attempts to enlist the world’s institutions in some kind of FE transition are pointless, but once FE is delivered, they will all pay rapt attention. But not before then. That is just how it has always been, and there is no reason to think that it will be different this time.

To Serg’s idea of social groups of no more than ten people, I doubt it. I think that social organization will look nothing like what we see today. The Internet probably hints at it, as people from across the world can instantly come together for common interests, but once scarcity ends, fear will no longer be the primary operating principle behind human interactions, as they form in-groups. All of humanity will quickly be seen as one big in-group. People will be able to meet in real time, in the flesh, almost instantly. I expect that most people are going to still live on Earth, but nothing like what you see today. When cities, nations, nuclear families and the like become obsolete, what takes their place will be infinitely more enlightened and largely unrecognizable to people today, and if they even glimpse them today, they react with fear. Again, almost nobody has any idea what living in a world beyond scarcity and fear will look like, will feel like, etc., even though some visions of it are pretty straightforward and should be easy to understand in their rudiments. I don’t treat Roads’s visitation as fiction; I know accomplished psychonauts who have made similar visits.

Now my busy weekend begins, as I host my family for Easter (Sarducci’s favorite holiday ), and I may not make many posts until Monday.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi Enishi:

One thing that Greer makes clear is that to call ETs as only from distant star systems, or “interdimensional,” is to think in restricted ways. It is not either/or, but both/and. And yes, you can also paste your own beliefs onto the experience, and maybe you “just” imagined it, and those ETs/interdimensionals were not involved in what you experienced. But don’t bet on it.

For all of her limitations of being a human living in scarcity and fear, I always gave Jane Roberts points for always questioning just what Seth was. I have had so many real-world encounters with channeled entities, and from my first encounter, they were often spectacular, that I knew that it was not just some subconscious phenomenon, and the best of them always emphasized the power that each of us has, that the power is in the present, and it is about what we do, here and now, that is important. But so few really understood, and just like in the post I made a few minutes ago, people project all their fear-and-scarcity-based stuff onto that, and became Seth’s groupies, demonized him, dismissed him as some unconscious stuff in Jane’s mind, etc.

My experience showed me that there is a lot more than meets the eye with channels, and some indeed are tapping into something deep and profound, but as people begin tapping into their own inner knowing, the channeling phenomenon will pass. I see it as kind of a Young Soul activity, on the cusp of graduating to Mature.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

Here is the next subject that I want to cover…

The Carbon Cycle and Human Impacts on It

The atmospheric effect of carbon dioxide, of trapping infrared radiation and warming Earth’s atmosphere, is denied by no credible atmospheric scientist that I am aware of. Even the Global Warming “skeptics,” prostitutes that the most prominent are, don’t deny that. I have yet to see a paleoclimate study that denied the leading role that carbon dioxide has played in global surface temperatures, including its hothouse and icehouse phases. But you can find all manner of scientifically illiterate “skeptic” on the Internet making arguments against the role that carbon dioxide plays, but they are usually the equivalent of people making the case for a Flat Earth. Few professional scientists, and no professional climate scientists, even the most contrarian amongst them, are going to deny those very basic issues of physics.

The next issue that I want to cover is the carbon cycle and how carbon dioxide levels have seesawed over the eons, and how carbon starvation is likely going to mean the end of complex life on Earth. For a couple of centuries, a philosophy known as uniformitarianism dominated Earth sciences, which assumes that the only processes that were ever on Earth are the current ones. Today’s scientists have largely rejected uniformitarianism and try to imagine what processes may have existed millions or billions of years ago, with the understanding that they may have been very different from what exists today. They develop their hypotheses and then hunt for evidence that either confirms or falsifies them, and hunting for falsifying evidence is more important than hunting for confirmatory evidence. Only hypotheses that have survived attempts to falsify them graduate to the status of theories.

The carbon cycle is how carbon moves through Earth, including its crust, oceans, atmosphere, and ecosystems. At its most basic level, carbon dioxide is added to Earth’s surface environments via volcanism and is removed from the atmosphere by weathering and the burial of organism remains. Until the rise of complex life, organic burial was largely limited to sandstone, which actually comprises most organic carbon burial. It has been estimated that there is 26,000 times more organic carbon buried in Earth’s crust than exists in today’s ecosystems. This graphic shows the comings and goings of the carbon cycle. Again, no credible scientists dispute those numbers or the dynamics depicted in that picture.

The seesawing of atmospheric carbon dioxide over the eons was due to imbalances in those dynamics. The most dramatic additions have historically come from volcanism. Volcanoes spew out carbon dioxide, among other gases, and the spewing of volcanic carbon dioxide is responsible for ending the previous Icehouse Earth phase. The volcanism was related to the formation and breakup of a supercontinent, Pangaea in that instance. The volcanism that ended the Karoo Ice Age kept on happening, and kept Earth’s surface warm for 200 million years, during the entire reign of dinosaurs.

But the first thing that that volcanic warming did was contribute to the greatest mass extinction in the eon of complex life. Ironically, Charles Darwin made uniformitarian philosophy the heart of his evolutionary theory, and that philosophy made the idea of a mass extinction taboo, and for more than a century, any Western scientist who advocated mass extinctions was risking his career. It was not until the 1970s that the taboo began lifting, and then it was spectacularly blown away by the asteroid impact hypothesis for the dinosaurs’ demise, proposed by a team of scientists led by a Nobel laureate working outside of his field of expertise. Mainstream science has regularly been shaken up by outsiders, and the leading edge of science today is happening between the disciplines, as interdisciplinary and comprehensive works abound, and I used them extensively in the studies that led to my big essay.

The asteroid impact hypothesis is the only known one that can be a single-cause for previous mass extinctions. The others had multiple causes that made Earth hostile to complex life, but volcanism is being proposed as an ancillary cause of the dinosaurs’ extinction, as there was another big volcanic event just before the dinosaurs died off. I’ll follow that controversy with interest, but I think that volcanism is not going to come close to explaining the end-Cretaceous extinction. The asteroid impact was the ultimate cause that dwarfed all else.

To say that the asteroid impact hypothesis is the only single-cause is not quite accurate, as there has been a new one: humanity. Humans have been causing a mass extinction for 50,000 years, beginning with driving Australia’s megafauna to extinction after they migrated from Africa. Nothing else of note has contributed to that extinction. Ironically, as a cadre of corrupted scientists argues against climate change as a way to deflect responsibility from humanity, another scientific clique argues for climate change as a way to deflect responsibility from humanity. Everybody likes defending their in-groups.

The radioactivity of uranium and other metals causes the heat within Earth, and as the radioactivity has dwindled, tectonic plate movements have slowed down, volcanism is dwindling, and long-term carbon starvation will eventually spell the end of complex life on Earth. Current estimates have it happening about a billion years from now, at around the same time that Earth begins losing its ocean because of our ever-brightening Sun. But there has been a blip in the decline, which began about 8,000 years ago, when humans began deforesting Earth to make way for agriculture and civilization.

That blip is represented by those red numbers in that carbon cycle picture, which represent human impacts to the carbon cycle. The most important of humanity’s carbon cycle impacts has been mining and burning Earth’s hydrocarbon deposits. In future posts, I will go into depth on what formed those hydrocarbon deposits, but there is no dispute that mining and burning hydrocarbon deposits have raised the carbon dioxide level of the atmosphere. This is another area where there is no credible dissent.

In fact, if a bunch of college kids were given a science project, to come up with a way to quickly increase Earth’s carbon dioxide levels, the winning entry would be to mine and burn all of Earth’s hydrocarbon deposits (or use nuclear bombs to try to open up holes in the crust to stimulate volcanism, but humanity might not survive that science project. ). But humanity might not survive the winning entry, either. Global Warming by itself won’t spell humanity’s demise, but the dislocations that it is already causing could lead to wars that do see humanity wipe itself out. A five-foot rise in Earth’s oceans, which could easily happen within the next century, would displace hundreds of millions of people. Where are those displaced people going to live? The same climate change that causes sea level rises will also cause epic droughts and floods, which will disrupt humanity’s food supplies. What will happen when there are hundreds of millions of homeless and hungry people? My generation will likely get “lucky” and die before we find out the answers to those questions, but today’s children might not be so lucky.

And humanity largely has its head in the sand on those issues. Polymaths such as Peter Ward write about what may be coming, but his is a voice in the wilderness. The next post will be on the Global Warming “debate,” which was fomented by a bunch of hack scientists working for the oil companies and the corporate media, which helped create the illusion of a debate where one does not really exist. TV shows such as Fox News, which people close to me cannot get enough of, attack the idea of Global Warming all day long, parading “experts” to make their case. I had a college-educated Fox News aficionado inform me just the other day that there is no evidence of human-induced climate change. People like that abound in the USA, which is a fairly short step from believing that Earth is flat.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

The Global Warming “Debate”

Back in 1997, when I began the full-time study that began my second site, I read Julian Simon’s magnum opus, The State of Humanity, after reading an article on him in Wired magazine (which inspired this book, which was predictably lauded by The Wall Street Journal and The Economist), spent months studying the work of his authors, and wrote my first essay of my current effort (and lost the essay due to serial hardware failures). It was an educational experience, to read the work of scientists and scholars who had sold their souls. Simon died not long after I wrote that essay, and likely reaped what he sewed. After he died, he was replaced at Cato Institute by Steve Milloy, who was literally a tobacco company front man who coined the term “Junk Science” to attack research that showed the harm that second-hand smoke caused.

In The State of Humanity were the works of authors who are notorious today as Global Warming “skeptics,” such as Fred Singer (who also attacked second-hand smoke evidence, calling it “Junk Science”) and Patrick Michaels. Michaels was unabashedly on the oil companies’ payroll and getting most of his money from hydrocarbon interests. Michaels works at Cato Institute, too.

Michaels’s article attacked the recent temperature record, and his methods of attack became a staple amongst Global Warming “skeptics.” While not denying that carbon dioxide levels had skyrocketed during the industrial era, Michaels suggested that where global temperatures were taken were flawed, as in near cities and other “heat islands,” which provided a faulty temperature record. He suggested that sulfur dioxide pollution may actually be saving the Northern Hemisphere from warming, stated that the Northern Hemisphere had not warmed at all, and further stated that the only warming unequivocally measured was nighttime warming, and that was a good thing. So, no Global Warming, and what may have happened was beneficial.

Michaels’s work can be seen as a framework that other Global Warming “skeptics” have used. In William Ruddiman’s Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum, he recommended reading Michaels’s co-authored The Satanic Gases as an example of the “value systems” that people bring to the Global Warming issue, in Ruddiman’s chapter on the shameful politicking that currently dominates climate studies. Al Gore, AKA Mr. Environment, went on the road promoting his Global Warming presentation, and he presented ice age data and carbon dioxide levels, and that was misleading, too. The advancing and retreating ice sheets are due to Milankovitch cycles, and the related carbon dioxide fluctuations are an effect, not a cause. All of that Sturm und Drang served to cloud the real issues related to humanity’s epic burning of Earth’s hydrocarbon deposits.

The current Icehouse Earth phase began 35 million years ago, after 15 million years of cooling off from a 200-million-year Greenhouse Earth phase, which was caused by high carbon dioxide levels from volcanism. As with the other Icehouse Earth phases of the past several hundred million years, this one began with ice forming at Antarctica, and nobody is disputing that Earth’s declining carbon dioxide levels are the ultimate cause. There are different hypotheses for the decline, and reduced volcanism is surely a primary variable, but another may be increased carbon burial. One hypothesis has been used for past Icehouse Earth phases, which is mountain-building. Mountain-building exposes rock that then weathers, which sequesters carbon, and India slamming into Asia created the Himalayas, which exposed vast amounts of rock, which has been weathering for about 50 million years, which coincides with the beginning of Earth’s cooling into this Icehouse Earth phase. That is the important dynamic, not annual temperature fluctuations.

As I have written, climate science is young, and today’s skyrocketing carbon dioxide levels are unprecedented in Earth’s history. How it is going to exactly play out, year-by-year, nobody knows, but what everybody can agree on is that Earth will get warmer with that carbon dioxide blanket growing. All but one of the first 15 years of the 21^st century were warmer than any year measured before the year 2000. Those kinds of trends are meaningful, especially as carbon dioxide levels skyrocket.

To dive into the minutia of the recent temperature record is to get lost in the trees and fail to see the forest. While trying to tease the signal from the noise is good work, oscillations and other short-term and regional variables have been seized on and debated, when they are really pretty meaningless. It is the longer-term and larger-scale changes that should be focused on, but the issue has become a huge political football, such as when an American politician brought a snowball into Congress one day, as “proof” that there is not Global Warming, and the man chaired the Chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, in one of many instances of the fox managing the henhouse.

Global Warming deniers seize on this and that, like lawyers trying to form a shadow of doubt in the jury’s mind, and the corporate-owned media gives them the floor, as if their interest-conflicted drivel really means anything, so that it can be back to business as usual.

What climate scientists all agree on is that their science is young, and exactly how the warming will play out will be complex, with regional variation, El Niños, La Niñas, and other events creating short-term variation, but that the trend will inexorably become warmer. What the Global Warming models are unanimous about is that the poles will feel it first and the most, as they have during previous phases. Ice forms at the poles in the Icehouse phases, and forests are near the poles in the Greenhouse phases. And just as those models predict, we are seeing vast and startling changes in the ice at the poles. Worldwide, all glaciers have experienced pronounced retreats, and I can see it in my home state. It is very dramatic. People do not need to descend into temperature-reading minutia to witness the trends. That is what has climate scientists terrified, for good reason. Humanity is not toying so much with what happens year-to-year, but we are threatening to turn Earth from an Icehouse phase to a Greenhouse phase in mere centuries. The last transition from an Icehouse to Greenhouse was accompanied by the greatest mass extinction in the eon of complex life, and we don’t want to find out what might happen this time.

Another thing that most Global Warming deniers explicitly state is the economic cost of bringing down greenhouse gas emissions. I have witnessed this in related areas, as their last line of defense to business as usual, to emphasize the immense cost of changing our ways, to encourage us to do nothing. As George Carlin once said, the most powerful force in the universe is inertia. So, those Global Warming deniers are singing a song that, quite frankly, most people want to hear, of “all is well,” and even if it wasn’t, then there is really nothing that we can do about it anyway, so “Move along, there is nothing to see here, or really, nothing that you want to see.”

In summary, there is a huge faux debate about niggling issues, which are designed to distract from the big ones. I was not going to name him while he is still alive, but one of the Global Warming “skeptics” referred to in this post was Brian O’s former colleague, and Brian was angry and saddened that his colleague sold his soul to the oil companies. I just riffled through Brian’s books and found where Brian did name him in his last book, on page 93 of The Energy Solution Revolution, and Brian’s writing deserves to be reproduced here:


“…during autumn 2007, I was invited to appear on the Kevin Smith radio talk show, in which for the first hour, Mr. Smith grilled me that, according to a recent neoconservative think tank Hudson Institute Report, human-induced global warming and climate change are a hoax! During our interview, we could never get beyond being mired in such arguments. We did not even begin to embrace my solutions, or be able to imagine the world in a post-hydrocarbon age.

“One of the most vocal signatories to this appalling “Open Letter” to UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon was S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist who had been one of my mentors during my graduate school years in the 1960s and a collaborator on various scientific projects in the 1970s and 1980s. Over the past two decades, Singer took a curiously abrupt turn to right-wing politics. Moving to Washington, he soon joined neoconservative and big-business lobby groups such as the Heritage Foundation, the Global Climate Coalition, and the billionaire Reverend Sun Moon’s scientific advisory panel. Before climate became an issue, about twenty years ago [late 1980s – Ed.], he invited me into Houston and London first-class. (This may have been another example of a carrot dangled before me to “join the club” rather than reject it.) On these occasions, we could really determine where establishment science would go; in service to those who run the world. Like many of his climate-skeptic colleagues, Singer has sold out in promoting his “Moon-to-Moon” lunacy.”


So, it was Fred Singer. In the next paragraph, Brian wrote about a conference to reduce carbon dioxide emissions:


“So what came of the long-awaited Bali meeting? It became a circus in which all nations opposed the U.S.-dominated refusal to support even the modest Kyoto protocols limiting carbon dioxide emissions. The United States, with four percent of the world’s population, emits a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases, by far the highest per-capita rate of any nation in the world. It was no surprise that the U.S. representative to the Bali climate talks was booed off the stage for American inaction.”


What makes Brian’s work, or mine, surreal is that the solution that makes all those issues and many other go away, almost overnight, is ignored by all sides. Not long before he died, Brian wrote of trying to get his foot in the door at those “progressive” “philanthropist” gatherings, of people such as Richard Branson, and he was always shut out, with free energy entirely off the table, while the “solutions” bandied about were the same tame “solutions” that Brian promoted in the 1970s, before he really woke up.

Next on my list is Peak Oil.

Best,

Wade

[Krishna]

Posted by Wade Frazier (here)
And humanity largely has its head in the sand on those issues. Polymaths such as Peter Ward write about what may be coming, but his is a voice in the wilderness.

I liked Peter Ward books, Flooded Earth was good. But a chapter in the book called "Flood of Humans" was off, and seemed to reflect his in-group biases of being a Westerner. *Sigh*, even the best have their failures.

I am reading Nick Lane's "The Vital Question" it is very dense reading. Coming to appreciate the role of energy in the formation of life. Thanks Wade.

[Wade Frazier]

Hi Freeknowledge.

I am studying Lane's book, and it will take a while for all of it to sink in with me. My work is not as hard as his. But his work is very worthwhile. Which part of that chapter of Ward's do you disagree with? The population explosion? How the industrialized nations reached "ZPG" while the poor have not? Ward is no Chomsky, I'll grant you.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

As a brief addendum to the Global Warming debate, a pal in another forum wrote that mentioning Cato Institute’s name was all that I needed to do, and I replied with:

To your Cato Institute, “nuff said,” they are just one of an army like them: the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute, ad infinitum, and Professors Limbaugh and Coulter at the Fox News School of Climate Science cannot get enough of it.

I encountered my first “AstroTurf” organization when I became Dennis’s partner, as they shamelessly promoted nuclear energy. The nuclear establishment literally used a protégé of a death camp Nazi to promote nuclear energy in the 1950s, to write a children’s book on the wonders of nuclear energy, which also became a Disney show. You can’t make this stuff up.

Unfortunately, the so-called “environmental” organizations can be as deceptive. I studied Elizabeth Whelan’s work, and her chutzpa was astounding, as she was openly on the agribusiness and chemical polluter payroll, attacking anybody who disputed the “all chemicals are great” philosophy that she spouted, while calling their motivation into question, even Ralph Nader’s. But those people excel at chutzpa. When she became bedfellows with Steve Milloy it was surreal, as Whelan’s only “legitimate” claim to fame was taking on smoking, while Milloy was on the tobacco company payroll to discredit the second-hand smoke evidence, even coining the term “Junk Science” to attack it.

They are all heading to a very fitting place when their days on Earth are done.

Best,

[Krishna]

Posted by Wade Frazier (here)
Which part of that chapter of Ward's do you disagree with? The population explosion? How the industrialized nations reached "ZPG" while the poor have not?

I did not expect Ward to be Chomsky or even to have read him. Reading and understanding Demographic Transition would have been enough. This does not detract from his contributions in areas where he has real expertise. He is a good teacher and I learned much from his books.

The setting is in 2060

"now he was undoubtedly seeing children of those past kids, the numbers now multiplied by four"

referring to AIDS crisis "check on overpopulation that the devastating epidemic still exacted from sub-saharan Africa"

"the modicum of health care provided here, and the accompanying reduction in infant mortality …. into human producing factories"

"religious mores that caused great population growth"

"Human populations swelling like never before"
"Immigrants from Mexico who multiplied more plentifully... doubling of [USA] population to 500 million"


"The European figure is alarming to Europeans"

"As an example of the unpredictability of human behavior, China’s draconian efforts in the past century to limit each women to just one child worked very well to the surprise of many who study human behavior."

Tunisia has a fertility rate of 2.17, which means that "children of those past kids" will be equal in number.

In today's world epidemics increase population, because fertility does not decrease until mortality decreases. This is stage 2 of demographic transition.

Decreases in infant mortality lead to decreases in Fertility, they do not cause "human populations swelling"


Irrespective of religion 2 child family is the norm. See Hans Rosling: Religions and babies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezVk1ahRF78

Mexico TFR is 2.2 today, Mexican immigrants have a similar fertilty so they cant contribute much to doubling of US population. It might still happen because of immigration from all over the world who will on average only have 2 kids or less.


Why is European fertility of 1.5 alarming? and Why is China's fertility of 1.6 not alarming?


China's one-child policy had no effect. But the reduction in fertility can be explained by standard social development. This is entirely predictable.

After 30 years of one-child policy the TFR in china is around 1.5 not 1 as would be expected from the name One-Child policy. China's TFR is similar to Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Kerala & Tamil Nadu both states of India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Germany etc.. NONE of which have one child policy.

So the draconian policy is not an explanation at all. So what explains?

"China’s Below-Replacement Fertility: Government Policy or Socioeconomic Development?"
Cai, Yong (Sep 2010).
http://courses.arch.vt.edu/courses/w...24/china10.pdf

"Population, Policy, and Politics: How Will History Judge China’s One-Child Policy?"
Feng, Wang; Yong, Cai; Baochang, Gu (2012).
http://dragonreport.com/Dragon_Repor..._pp115-129.pdf



One can assume 9-10 billion as peak around 2075 or 2100 latest from then its (likely) downhill or flatline(unlikely).

One can understand the various scenarios

Wittgenstein Centre Data Explorer
http://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/dataexplorer/

These are the same people who advise IPCC on population numbers.

In the book written by them
World Population & Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198703167.do
We find the following chapter

"10: Wolfgang Lutz and Samir KC: The Rise of Global Human Capital and the End of World Population Growth"

An executive summary of the book can be found at
http://webarchive.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/.../XO-14-031.pdf

[Wade Frazier]

Hi Freeknowledge:

Yes, he got a few things wrong, such as sub-Saharan Africa is where Africa is still skyrocketing, not along the Mediterranean. But that paper you linked to even credited the Chinese policy with starting the decline. But yeah, he got it wrong in places. In an interview with him not long ago, he said that all of those books, TV shows, and other Sagan-ish popularizing did nothing for his career. Academia simply does not care about reaching out to the masses, so he had almost no help in writing his books. I was kind of shocked by the editorial errors in The Medea Hypothesis. If he had had an assistant like you helping him, he would not have gotten those parts of the demographic transition wrong. I may try to turn him onto FE one day, but am not holding my breath.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

Now for a series of posts on Peak Oil. The first fossil fuel of note is coal, not oil, not only in being used, but most of the world’s coal deposits were formed before most of the world’s oil deposits were, and the reasons and consequences are fascinating.

The world’s oil deposits began forming with the rise of complex life, so deposits were formed going back to the Ediacaran Period, but most was formed during the reign of dinosaurs. Coal’s horizon of formation was far earlier, beginning when the world’s first forests formed. The Devonian Period was the Cambrian Explosion for plants. Just as the Cambrian Period is when all animal body plans were set, the basics of plants and trees were set in the Devonian, with roots, leaves, bark, seeds, and wood. The only significant change since the Devonian was hundreds of millions of years later when some plants decided to use animals rather than protect against them, and flowering plants were born. Lignin was the secret for making vascular plants, which first appeared about 410 million years ago, and eventually wood. Lignin is a polymer, which gives it strength far beyond cellulose, which forms the cell walls of plants. Without lignin, plants would have never evolved beyond mosses. Lignin was the critical ingredient in forming land-based ecosystems, which includes the rise of that seemingly intelligent ape.

However, nothing on Earth learned how to digest lignin until a fungus did about 290 million years ago, and the basics of lignin digestion have not changed since. So, trees did not rot for nearly 100 million years, until that lignin-digesting fungus came along. That 100-million-year period is when most of the world’s coal deposits formed, and especially in the aptly named Carboniferous Period, when rainforests abounded and trees died and fell in swamps, never decayed, and piled up and were subducted by the formation of a supercontinent called Pangaea today.

In my recent post on the carbon cycle and how carbon dioxide levels have seesawed over the eons, I mentioned carbon production and carbon burial as the ends of the seesaw, and carbon never got buried as quickly as those non-rotting trees did. The effect of those trees getting buried like that (and forming most of Earth’s coal deposits) was the highest oxygen levels in the eon of complex life, and maybe the highest in Earth’s history. Although there is plenty of debate today on the issue, few scientists dispute the idea that those skyrocketing oxygen levels led to gigantic animals, and not only those gigantic dragonflies, but the largest freshwater fish ever, and gigantic millipedes and other arthropods. High oxygen and gigantism has been demonstrated in sea animals today.

But for us humans, the biggest impact of those high oxygen times was all of those buried trees that formed most of Earth’s coal deposits, which humanity is burning with such abandon today. My Peak Oil posts are coming soon, but Peak Coal is not far behind Peak Oil, and might be reached in my lifetime.

Best,

Wade

[Krishna]

[

Posted by Wade Frazier (here)
But that paper you linked to even credited the Chinese policy with starting the decline.

There is no question that the actions of the Chinese government had an effect on fertility. The question is which policies? Were they the draconian One-Child policy or its co-operative policies of giving basic healthcare and education.

Amartya Sen wrote a good article in 1990's which is still relevant

"Population Policy: Authoritarianism versus Cooperation

I say that the the draconian policies had no effect, and the co-operative policies are sufficient to explain the decline of fertility. One variable which is most important is education level of the people in reproductive age. e.g. see education levels in India and China in 1970



Research from Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital says that education is the key variable for human fertility. They advise the IPCC and have better quality projections than UN Population Division.


When I read Medea Hypothesis I could not find anything wrong with it.

[Wade Frazier]

Hi Freeknowledge:

My point was that the paper you cited “credited” the draconian policy, and if the very paper you cited “credited” that policy, it was very understandable for Ward to “credit” it also.

IMO, The Medea Hypothesis was a hurried effort, the shortest book that he wrote that I have, and had some glaring typos. For a little one, in chapter 3, he lists chemical reactions, and failed to put a colon to introduce the last one. Or the table in figure 7.1, which has the bottom number on the Y-axis incorrect. I thumbed through the book and could not find it, but I recall a significant mislabeling of a chapter or graphic, and I thought at time that it was a rushed production. I write technical business documents for a living, so my mind is trained to see typos, and even then, they can be hard to see, especially when you are the writer. I just clearly recall after reading the book thinking that he could have used more editorial help, but he was probably a one-man show, cranking the book out in his “spare” time. His books are a labor of love, not for the money or career enhancement, especially as he nears his career’s end. But the production values of Ward’s Out of Thin Air were much higher than The Medea Hypothesis, from the cover to the paper quality to the graphics to the writing. I have the hardback editions of both books.

I mentioned some of the glaring, fall-off-your-chair typos in Lisa Randall’s recent book. Like Ward, she could have used some help, but didn’t get it. Stephen King’s books do not have those kinds of errors in them, but those by world-class scientists writing for lay audiences do.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

To my previous post, the production quality of Ward’s and Randall’s books is an endemic problem. Brian O’s post-Establishment books suffered even more, as he did not have some cushy university position to pay the bills and give him time. I helped proofread his last book, but he really did not get any editorial assistance.

My work is pretty much a one-man show, and I ended up sacrificing my life to do it. Saving the world not only does not pay, if you do much of substance, you will risk your life. So it is, in our insane, egocentric word.

Best,

Wade

[Wade Frazier]

Hi:

I have a little time this morning, to take a break from Peak Oil, etc. Not quite sure where Adam read about my throwing arm, maybe here. I got it from my father. I recall throwing rocks when I was five years old, and being entranced by the rock in flight. Literally less than a hundred yards from where I watched that rock in flight, this baseball player lived, while he was in the middle of his career. His claim to “fame” was giving up one of the only two major league home runs that Sandy Koufax ever hit. In those days, baseball players did not make the outrageous sums that they do today, and most players had to get jobs in the off-season to make ends meet. My neighborhood, where that pitcher lived, had very modest homes in them, and we rented, in my father’s first year after college graduation. An uncle grew up with this player.

My father put me in a baseball league when I was six, in a league where it was first-through-sixth grade on the same team. I was in the second grade. You would never see that today. As I recall, I did not get a hit until halfway through the season, and played with a mitt that was my father’s as a child (from the 1940s), which was not exactly state of the art.

When we lived in Houston, I did not play any sports (and we did not even go outside onto the playground at school). I was an inveterate newspaper reader from age nine onward (until I realized that regarding anything important, it was a pack of lies), keeping up on all baseball stats and news, and when I was 18, I read the baseball draft. In the late rounds, I read the name of one of my third-grade classmates. I think back to those days now, and that attention to minutia I supposed helped me professionally, but keeping track of stuff like that was not a very good use of my time, as I look back at it.

When we moved back to California the next year, I was put into Little League, into what they called the “minors,” for the youngsters. I was nine years old. I really had no idea what I was doing, and they put me in right field, which was the safest place to stick me, out of the way. I was content to stand out in right field, but the coaches noticed my throws to the infield and the next thing I knew, they placed me on the pitching mound. I have rather dim memories of those days, but I struck out about half of the batters that I faced, and the next year, I was put in the “majors” and had a no-hitter going for several innings in my debut. That was the height of my baseball career. They didn’t pitch me again until halfway through the season, as I stood out in right field most of the time. When they pitched me again, the charm was gone and I recall giving up some pretty big home runs. My Little League pitching career ended the next year, when the coach left me in as I got shelled, giving up a three-run homer and grand slam in the same inning. My most famous “feat” from those days was when a curve ball got away from me and hit a member of the local baseball dynasty (the eldest son played professional baseball but never made the majors) right in the gonads as he tried getting out of the way and faced me as he turned. He was on the ground for several minutes, and years later, that incident was what I was known for in baseball circles, with that boy letting me know that he remembered when I hit him.

My parents put me in a league after Little League for a year, where I played in left field and did not get a hit all season. That was the end of organized sports for me, for several years, except for bowling, as my mother worked at a bowling alley and I kind of grew up there. About 20 years ago, I bowled once a week at a local lane for a summer, averaged about 200 and had a 700 series, as I had dreamed about as a teenager. I got the exact same score, a 702, as I dreamed of as a teenager and wrote down and kept for many years (that, along with newspaper clipping of my athletic feats, is in a box in my attic, which I have not rummaged through for many years). The individual scores were not the same, but the total was. I got bowling out of my system that summer. I still have my bowling ball, but the only use I put it to is carrying it in my pack, to train for backpacks. I put it in my pack each year around July, to train for my annual backpack.

I took up golf when I was 14, and in my senior year in high school, I decided to play organized sports again. I was going to go out for the golf team (I only shot in the 80s, in the 30s for nine holes on good days, nothing great, but I would have made the team). But the girl I got my first crush on (and pursued like a nerd), was a star runner and basketball player (and homecoming princess the next year, who eventually became a cop, oh the irony), and I decided to join the track team. And she never joined the team! It was the first of my “chasing women” follies.

I was originally a miler. My first mile for time was in my first track meet, and I ran a 5:13. I could have been about a 4:30 miler if I put my effort to it, but being a distance runner was work and I was quite the leaper, especially for a white guy, and became a high jumper. I cleared six feet that first year, and would have been about a six-foot-eight jumper if I had proper training and coaching, but that did not happen. I also long-jumped, doing about 20 feet at my best. None of that was good enough for any kind of track scholarships, etc., and I really did not know what I wanted to do, career-wise, other than the assumption that I would be a scientist. My first love was paleontology as a child, which was typical, I suppose. I was recognized as a scientific prodigy from first grade onward, and my first grade teacher formally remarked on my fascination with nature (my big essay is no anomaly), but when I got into high school, my early fascination with chemistry came to the fore, and it looked like I would be a chemist, until that existential crisis when I was 19, soon followed by that voice in my head.

The only event that I was college-worthy in was the high jump, but on my first days of practice, I noticed somebody throwing a javelin. It was outlawed in California in high school because it was so dangerous (and I could tell quite the tales of witnessing their dangers, and may soon), but once I picked up a javelin, there was no going back. I had grown more than a foot since those Little League days, and had nearly reached my height today, at almost six feet two inches. Little did I know it at the time, but I was in college track during the Golden Age of Track and Field in the USA, especially in California junior college track. Track was still amateur in those days, but I eventually ran around in the same circles that Dwight Stones was in and heard about his under-the-table money, which the marquee athletes could command.

The year before, a high school kid matched the world record in the 100 yard dash, which they do not run anymore. The kid trained barefooted when young because he could not afford shoes while growing up. Muhammad Ali responded to his plight, bought his family a house, the kid moved to LA, and was placed in Santa Monica Junior College. My first college meet was a dual meet against Santa Monica, and that kid already had his entourage with him. Several years later, he was homeless in LA and trying to make a comeback. I threw over 180 feet that year, which did not set the world on fire, but it got me into the big meets as a freshman. That sprinter kid was nearly illiterate, but in Southern California junior college track, it did not matter (which as I look back, was a preview of how corrupt I would discover that California was). The Canadian javelin champion went to another LA community college and threw over 260 feet that year, which was world class. But midway through the season, another thrower from the same college began throwing at the meets, and he was pretty good, too. He set the world record several years later, during my first year in LA. I planned to go to the meet where he did it, at UCLA, a ten-minute drive from my home, but I got busy with something else. The next day, I read the headlines and felt like a fool, missing that historical throw.

I’ll make a long story short. I grew up in the same neighborhood with a boy who became a major league baseball player, and his younger brother and my younger brother were best friends for years, united by their love of surfing, bodybuilding, and taking steroids. Two of my close friends from my teenage years became professional athletes, one on the tennis circuit, and one on the bowling circuit.

When I was in college, reading up all the track stats in the library, I vividly recall reading a survey of college track athletes. They were asked this question: “If you could take a drug that would see you set the world record in five years, but you would be dead in ten years, would you do it?” Something like 70% of the respondents replied that they would. It is the same idiocy that sees 18-year-old boys try to prove their manhood on the battlefield, and the older generations happily exploit their vulnerable state. I heard that the same survey was given to track athletes in recent years, and the proportion of “Hell yes, I would do it” replies was about the same.

In those days in the late 1970s and early 1980s, taking steroids was normal, especially among those in what are called “weight events,” such as the shot put, discus, and javelin. I was never that stupid, but was stupid in other ways. I began a fasting regimen when I was 17, which I still do today, and went vegan just as I turned 20, just to see what it was like. I did not even try to get any protein, lost 15 pounds, and was the skinniest javelin thrower in California the next year, at six foot one inch and about 140 pounds. I had my sights set on the school record of nearly 200 feet, came within a foot of it, but the nicest guy I ever knew in track walked onto the team, and by using my advice at a meet, he set the record instead of me. We met several years later after watching the Olympic Trials in 1984, when I got to see a 300-foot throw. I recognized him in a parking lot, as he was leaving, and we chatted for a minute. I am sure that it was something that my “friends” orchestrated.

I eventually threw about 210 feet, far below my potential of 250 feet or so, and got a permanent back injury (which prevented me from hiking yesterday), as I injured myself weight lifting (I first injured my back high jumping), and tried to come back too fast in my senior year, so that I could garner the meaningless athletic glory of becoming All-American, and that injury will haunt me to my grave. How stupid.

I have small fingers for my size and poor small motor control (men are evolutionarily adapted for running, throwing, etc., from their hunting days, and women for sewing, typing, and other small motor tasks, from their gathering days), which makes typing a chore, and maybe it was for the best. If I had longer fingers, I might have tried the professional baseball route, as I threw a baseball about 360 feet on good days, which translates to the low 90s. That is average major league velocity, but what makes for successful major league pitchers is not throwing 100 miles-per-hour, but throwing it with controlled movement (called “putting some mustard on it”), and placing it at the knees on the outside corner of the plate. That neighbor boy was not the only guy I knew who tried professional baseball, and world record holders in track events were in my circle, but being a professional athlete is usually one hell of a waste of a life. That neighbor boy made several million dollars over his career, but he was in the rarefied air. About 99.9% of all professional athletes can’t really make much of a living, often ruin their bodies, and rarely develop the other skills for leading a successful life.

I read an article in Z Magazine, a decade ago or so, and it was about what an outright scam and pipedream professional sports are. In the USA, a third of black teenage boys think that they will make a living in professional sports, and so do their parents. The reality is that 1-in-5,000 will, and of those who are fortunate enough to become professional athletes, almost none of them will make enough money, and save it, to be set for life, or even a few years. Even those black athletes who hit it big in the NBA, for instance, nearly invariably piss it all away and are broke immediately after they retire, sometimes even before they retire, as they piss through tens of millions of dollars as fast as they can. My father called it being “ghetto rich” (actually, the real term I cannot write in public). In the USA, it has become part of the culture, where black athletes are almost expected to piss away their earnings as fast as they can, living the celebrity life for a brief moment. Former Seattle Seahawks star Marshawn Lynch is an anomaly among black football players, maybe because he comes from a family of professional athletes.

I may write more about those days, we’ll see, before I get to Serg’s post on my living in Seattle. And then it will be back to Peak Oil.

Time for chores, then hiking.

Best,

Wade

[Krishna]

Posted by Wade Frazier (here)
it was very understandable for Ward to “credit” it also.

I don't think Yong Cai credited one-child policy. In Population, Policy, and Politics: How Will History Judge China’s One-Child Policy? he says that the "demographic effects of the one-child policy in reducing population growth, which can at best be very small"

We are getting too specialized here it is excusable that Ward gets it wrong.

He writes "I believe that more than any other factor, the ever increasing number of humans causes the seas to rise"

This statement put the projections for rise of seas into question. What are people modeling in terms of human population and consumption? Will global warming be "milder" than the projections because of incorrect assumptions on population?

He uses respectable UN projections... can't fault him for that.

What I did not like was that he talks about Europe shutting off its borders, because of too much immigration, Mexican descendants causing population doubling in US (impossible), he talks of China approvingly while similar fertility for Europe is "alarming". I interpret it as in-group bias and that made me sad.