More Bad News

It's radon, VOC' s and indoor air quality that worries the Tories, not melting of the Arctic ice flows.....or the decline of the Ozone....or climate change.

Greenland Ice Sheet on a Downward Slide

For the first time NASA scientists have analyzed data from direct, detailed satellite measurements to show that ice losses now far surpass ice gains in the shrinking Greenland ice sheet. Using a novel technique that reveals regional changes in the weight of the massive ice sheet across the entire continent, scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., report that Greenland's low coastal regions lost 155 gigatons (41 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2003 and 2005 from excess melting and icebergs, while the high-elevation interior gained 54 gigatons (14 cubic miles) annually from excess snowfall.

"With this new analysis we observe dramatic ice mass losses concentrated in the low-elevation coastal regions, with nearly half of the loss coming from southeast Greenland," said lead author Scott Luthcke of NASA Goddard's Planetary Geodynamics Laboratory. "In the 1990's the ice was very close to balance with gains at about the same level as losses. That situation has now changed significantly, with an annual net loss of ice equal to nearly six years of average water flow from the Colorado River."

NASA and NOAA Announce Ozone Hole is a Double Record Breaker

NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists report this year's ozone hole in the polar region of the Southern Hemisphere has broken records for area and depth.

The ozone layer acts to protect life on Earth by blocking harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun. The "ozone hole" is a severe depletion of the ozone layer high above Antarctica. It is primarily caused by human-produced compounds that release chlorine and bromine gases in the stratosphere. "From September 21 to 30, the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles," said Paul Newman, atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. If the stratospheric weather conditions had been normal, the ozone hole would be expected to reach a size of about 8.9 to 9.3 million square miles, about the surface area of North America.

The Earth’s ozone hole. Image credit: NASA Click to enlarge

Expect a Warmer, Wetter World this Century

Recent episodes of deadly heat in the United States and Europe, long dry spells across the U.S. West, and heavy bursts of rain and snow across much of North America and Eurasia hint at longer-term changes to come, according to a new study based on several of the world's most advanced climate models. Much of the world will face an enhanced risk of heat waves, intense precipitation, and other weather extremes, conclude scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Texas Tech University, and Australia's Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre. The new study, "Going to the Extremes," will appear in the December issue of the journal Climatic Change.

See:

Ambrose

Environment

Ozone

Arctic

Cimate Change

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Ozone,
Antarctica, CF, flourocarbons, sun,
Greenland, ice, NASA, NOFA

The Scientific Basis of Socialism

Here is another scientific observation that human culture evolves towards libertarian socialism as an organic devolpment of human societies creative and techonolgical abilities as first observed by Peter Kropotkin in his work Mutual Aid.

And the contradiciton of capitalism, as outlined by Dr. Marx , is that it creates technological advances that it cannot use, since they would depreciate surplus value/profit, while they can liberate humanity from the toil of work. And thus open up the possibility of a self-managed society without bosses or the State.

The Evolution of Future Wealth
Technologies evolve much as species do, and that underappreciated fact is the key to growth
By Stuart A. Kauffman

As economics attempts to model increasingly complicated phenomena, however, it would do well to shift its attention from physics to biology, because the biosphere and the living things in it represent the most complex systems known in nature. In particular, a deeper understanding of how species adapt and evolve may bring profound--even revolutionary--insights into business adaptability and the engines of economic growth.

The path to maximum prosperity will depend on finding ways to build economic systems in which new niches will generate spontaneously and abundantly. Such an approach to economics is indeed radical. It is based on the emergent behavior of systems rather than on the reductive study of them. It defies conventional mathematical treatments because it is not prestatable and is nonalgorithmic. Not surprisingly, most economists have so far resisted these ideas. Yet there can be little doubt that learning to apply these lessons from biology to technology will usher in a remarkable era of innovation and growth.

Stuart A. Kauffman is professor of biocomplexity and informatics at the University of Calgary and external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.


See:

We Are All Socialists

Capitalism Proves Socialism Inevitable

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White Multiculturalism

Canada's welcome mat worn, immigrant studies find

Five new studies of immigrants of visible-minority background reveal cracks in Canada's ability to integrate newcomers, undermining the long-held consensus that multiculturalism has been an overwhelming success."It makes you wonder if multiculturalism is really working for more recent immigrants,” said Maraki Sikre Merid, who co-authored the study with several other Ethiopian-Canadians from a group called Young Diplomats. “We talk about Toronto being a mega melting pot, but it is really a lot of segregated communities. Is there something more Canada can do to give people a sense of what it means to be Canadian?”

Multiculturalism was the response to the Trudeau era Bilingualism and Biculturalism (the B and B) report, It was a politial movement within the Liberal party from the Ukrainian community and other European ethnic communities and linguistic groups in Canada that were the parties base. Professor Manoly Lupul of the U of A spearheaded the movement for inclusion of other linguistic minorities in the Canadian mosaic as it was called at the time.

The Ukrainian community like the new immigrant communities in Canada was an authentic diaspora, unlike other post WWII European Displaced Persons (DP's) who arrived in Canada, Ukrainians had no chance of returning to their homeland. Many were considered a threat to the Soviet state in the Ukraine.

Thus Ukrainian Canadians, the first of the hyphenated Canadians, viewed themselves as an authentic diaspora culture, keeping alive Ukrainian traditions here as the Ukraine became Russified.

It was the Liberals in the Ukrainian community that pushed for multiculturalism, aligning with other European DP communities, for whom English and French were their second languages. Multiculutralism was not so much about culture as it was the recognition of the 'other' linguistic minorities in Canada, Ukrainians, Germans, Polish, Italian, Finns, Icelanders, Jews etc.

Only the Jews continued to face racial discrimination that declined as the other ethnic communities were accepted into the Canadian body politic. Like the Ukrainians they too were an authentic diaspora, having no home to go to. That of course changed after 1948.

Culturally these communities were on the left prior to WWII, and populated the Communist Party and to a lesser degree the CCF. After WWII the first and second generations along with the newly arrived DP's moved towards integration into mainstream Canadian culture, and thus into the Liberal Party which was seen as cosmopolitan and was the anti-thesis to the nativist and Britishness of the Conservatives.

But linguistic based multiculturalism never concieved of inclusion of the other; that is visible minorities. It never reached out to the Chinese or Japanese commuities nor the West India diaspora. Nor did it include Canada's first nations, whose demands to be included the Canadian body politic arose at the same time.

It was essentially a white movement, an attempt to overcome the racist British nativist response of 'white anglo-saxon' Canadians to the immigration of Central and Eastern European immigrants. Ukrainians, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, etc. coming from peasant communities were descriped as niggers, wogs, etc. by the Anglo-Saxon community in Canada when they first arrived.

Years later as they were integrated into Canadian society, as all European ethnic communities were, they wanted to be white, they learned English, they supported the Dominion, they forgot their roots in their integration. Multiculturalism was the politics of integration, not a melting pot like the American nativist culture, into a 'white' culture, one that accepted accents. It was based on language, not culture despite its name.

Thus as Canada experienced more and more immigration from non-white countries the multiculturalism myth was expanded to include them. As it was a policy of the Liberals, it meant that politically the Liberals benefited from a broad based membership and support of these new immigrants.

The Conservatives as usual remained the home of the Anglo-Saxon's until Mulroney's united front party which for the first time included non-Anglo Quebecois.The destruction of the Conservatives into fragments was the result of The Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois. The latter based on language the former based on nativist populism, some of the nativists now being second and third generation immigrants who view themselves as 'white'.

The Liberals as a party and a government has used this linguistic multicultural policy to attempt to integrate non-white immigrants into the Canadian mosaic.

It has failed. Because it was never about ethnicity or race, it was about language.

It never addressed racism, because it denied race as essential. It was about whiteness without talking about it. It was about accepting accents not skin colour. It was about accepting culture as dance troupes, food and fashion, not about ways of looking at the world that were different than ours.

The European immigrants shared a religious culture as well, Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant, the new immigrants do not. There are, Ishmalies, Taoists, Buddhists, Muslims, etc.

The Chinese experience in Canada, more so than the Japanese who are integrationists, was to remain outside of mainstream Canadian culture to accept the ghetto and make it their own, which is why every city has a China Town.

They were forced into the ghettos, and even in the era of multiculturalism there was little done to recognize the origin of the these ghettos were part of the Canadian State policy of dicrimination against Chinese immigrants.

The result for the community was to identify itself as a diaspora and thus saw themselves as Chinese first, Canadian second. Such is the case with other racial minorities that move here. The Filipino's, Jamaicans, Indians, Pakistani's, etc. all who view Canada as their home, but their home countries as the motherland.

There has been no integration into the Canadian mosaic because our policy of multiculturalism was never intended to adapt these immigrants into 'White' Canadian society.

In fact the reason we have dual citizenship, which the right wing is now attacking, is the result of the ideal of the hyphenated Canadian. That dual citizenship has existed since both the French and British colonialists came here.

The reason their citizenship is different than the rest of us, is they came here as conquerers, as agents of Imperialism. The rest of us came as workers, hewers of wood, drawers of water, the oppressed the subjects of Imperialism.

And that is the class base for understanding immigration in Canada, it is not the colour of ones skin, or country of origin, but the fact that all immigration to Canada is the countries need for workers.

Emigration is economic, those who leave their homelands do so to make a living.

Their integration into the Canadian body politic is dependent on them working.

The problem as outlined in the opening news item is simply that these communties have high unemployment, thus creating ghetto's, the very place they left their homeland to get away from.

It is not a case of needing a multiculturalism policy but a full employment strategy, which of course under the current goverment is not even on the agenda.


See:

Immigration

Migration

Happy Canada Day/Jour heureux du Canada

A History of Canadian Wealth, 1914.

Historical Memory on the Eve of the Election

Calgary Herald Remembers RB Bennet

Canada's First Internment Camps

Social Credit And Western Canadian Radicalism

Rebel Yell

Draft Dodgers in Dukhbour Country

Origins of the Captialist State In Canada

Aboriginal Property Rights

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multiculturalism, visible-minorities, immigration, immigrants, bilingualism-bicultrualism, Trudeau, Pearson, Liberals, Conservatives, Ukrainian-Canadians, hyphenated-Canadians, melting-pot, Cultural-Mosaic, white, people-of-colour, poltics, Canada, government,

It's The Environment Stupid

The opposition will vote down the Tories Hot Air Plan; Opposition parties vow to defeat legislation that sets ‘intensity targets' for emissions

Will Harper make it confidence vote and force an election over the environment? An issue they did not run on last election, which was not one of their priorities and was not in their policy papers except to say they would trash Kyoto. Which of course they can't because the government of Canada signed it not the Liberal Party, and it was passed by Parliament.

Yep its time to put up or shut up. Harper has threatened confidence votes before. A year after forcing the Liberal Minority government into an election will the Tories be forced into an election over the enivronment? Inquirying minds want to know.

See:

Ambrose

Environment


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Another U of A Dino Find

Ok its not a dinosaur, its a prehistoric post-dino mammal.

Another set of fossils boxed up and ignored for years at the University of Alberta only to reveal that they are the bones of a mysterious unkown prehistoric mammal.Few dozen fossils all that's left of one of Alberta's first mammal

Gee blow the dust off those boxes and check under the ping pong tables and see what else you can find guys. This is typical of all museums, they have boxes and boxes of 'stuff' no-one has bothered to look through, let alone catalouge and classify.

New critter solves ancient puzzle Actually that headline is misleading the critter actually creates a new puzzle, what was it?


Most confounding are the animal's teeth, which resemble in superficial ways, those of primitive relatives of ungulates, the group of mammals which includes horses and cows. But despite that link to ungulates, which are traditionally herbivores, Horolodectes was thought to have dined on small insects and grubs. "It had sharp crests on the teeth which formed blades, indicating it was likely carnivorous," said Craig Scott, a PhD candidate and lead author of the study. Horolodectes means 'hourglass biter', in reference to the creature's peculiar hourglass-shaped pre-molars, the teeth between the canine and the molars. The very tall, sharp pre-molars are unlike any others so far discovered in the mammal world. "There is nothing else with teeth quite like it," Craig said. Researchers give name to ancient mystery creature

The oddly shaped teeth of a prehistoric mystery creature are responsible for its new name

For the first time, researchers at the University of Alberta have been able to put a name and a description to an ancient mammal that still defies classification.

See

Dinosuars

Fossils

Prehistoric

Monsters



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RCMP Terror

State terrorism by the State Police; RCMP, was justified under the Canadian Security Act and under the Official Secrets Act. Both of which have now been challenged as unconsitutional.

Secrecy law quashed, RCMP admonished
An Ontario judge struck down a federal official secrets law yesterday, saying that the RCMP tried to use it to intimidate an Ottawa journalist into revealing who had leaked her material in the Maher Arar affair.

All these violations occured under the Liberals but the opposition Conservatives under Harper, Kenney, Day etc. demanded even more draconian actions at the time.

Now they are the government they have white washed the criticisms of the RCMP and CSIS and have done nothing about the reccomendations of the O'Conner report on the Arar case. Now this. Will they appeal, probably they are the government now.

No wonder they hate the courts, judges and our civil rights. They are after all the self described party of Law and Order, which means they are anti-libertarian statists.


See:

Arar

RCMP


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Tell It To The Conservatives

Someone should tell the Conservatives this.
Britain and the Netherlands will on Friday attempt to force climate change to the top of the EU's agenda, warning that the world is only 10-15 years away from “a catastrophic tipping point”.

Since their hot air act announced yesterday won't come into effect until it's too late.Tories would half greenhouse gases by 2050

See;

Ambrose

Environment


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More Porridge

More evidence for the Goldilocks Enigma.....

Scientists prove that parts of cell nuclei are not arranged at random from PhysOrg.com

The nucleus of a mammal cell is made up of component parts arranged in a pattern which can be predicted statistically, says new research published today. Scientists hope this discovery that parts of the inside of a cell nucleus are not arranged at random will give greater insight into how cells work and could eventually lead to a greater understanding of how they become dysfunctional in diseases like cancer.
The study, published today in PLoS Computational Biology, involved systems biologists working together with mathematicians to identify, for the first time, 'spatial relationships' governing the distribution of an important control protein in the nucleus, in relation to other components within the nuclei of mammal cells.

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Goldilocks Enigma

Life is not a box of chocolates it is a bowl of porridge.

Why life is a bowl of porridge

Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Goldilocks. Her story of hunger, peril and a bowl of porridge that was “just right” is probably familiar to most of us. In most tellings, the fairy tale doesn’t mention whether our golden-haired heroine spent much time pondering why the bear family residence should contain a seat, a serving of porridge and a bed, all of which are ideally suited to a young human. As far as she was concerned, that’s just how it was.

But physicist Paul Davies, author of the bestseller The Mind of God, thinks perhaps she should have given it some thought. His new book, due out next month, takes the blonde waif’s name and applies it to rather more interesting question - why is the universe just right for life?

In The Goldilocks Enigma, published by Allen Lane, Davies suggests that one of the most significant facts about the universe is that we are part of it. Although, at first glance, the existence of life seems irrelevant to cosmology, he argues, in fact the universe is “just right” for the existence of life, and the development of intelligence, in a rather spooky way.

The British Physicist Paul Davies was interviewed on BBC Hard Talk about his pantheist views of a living universe based on his book the Goldilocks Enigma.
As a physicist I was impressed with his breadth of scientific perspective on our living universe, especially his emphasis that most of his colleagues fail to appreciate biology and its importance.

That the universe is designed to become self-concious, I am paraphrasing, which is why conciousness in humans, sentience, is so important, not an after thought. He used as an example of self depreciating arrogance Stephen Hawkings comment that humans were simply a pile of scum on a planet of no importance.

WHO hasn't ever wondered why we are all here, or whether there's a purpose? Or if we will ever find satisfactory answers to such questions? The "Goldilocks enigma" is the puzzle of why life can exist in the universe; in other words, why the cosmos is "just right" - like the porridge in the famous fairy tale. Unlike the plethora of popular science books that subtly skew themselves towards addressing "cosmic" questions, this one tackles them head-on. It is a crash course in cutting-edge cosmology and an encounter with a mind-bending universe that gives birth to itself. From issue 2571 of New Scientist magazine, 30 September 2006, page 60

Davies argues that the universe has a design and a plan, and he was vehment that this is not ID which is just creationism in scientistic clothing. It is actually closer to the pantheistic idea that the universe is alive, a self-creating conciousness that is in a state of becoming concious of itself. Which may be the humble role we play in the great big picture, that rather than being pond scum, our development of rational, reasoning processes, that see the big picture, the big bang, the infintesmily small components of atomic particles, act as a meme for the universe in which we are a part. It is part of sciences attempt at the elegant theory of everything. Not Deus ex Machina but Deus est Homo.

Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Masters of the universe

Paul Davies goes a long way towards suggesting that he believes the creation of life to be somehow the 'goal' of the universe without suggesting that it is the work of a higher intelligence or God. That is to say he tends towards the belief that the principle of life 'builds purpose into the workings of the cosmos at a fundamental (rather than an incidental) level, without positing an unexplained pre-existing purposive agent to inject purpose miraculously.' (Read that twice.) This belief is his tentative solution to the 'Goldilocks Enigma', the 'reason' why planets such as our own are 'not too hot and not too cold but just right'. Davies is prepared to let this sense of purpose remain unexplained, but to propose that the universe is somehow geared toward its own understanding, because only 'self-consistent loops capable of understanding themselves can create for themselves, so that only universes with (at least the potential for) life really exist'. (Read that three times.)

Michael Frayn and Paul Davies tackle an astronomical topic in Making Sense of the Universe.

This ippr discussion in association with the New Humanist, featured Michael Frayn, author of The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe and Paul Davies, physicist and author of The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life?

At this event, both writers posed some provocative questions such as: Is our existence a lucky fluke or does it have meaning? Why should the universe be so exquisitely bio-friendly? Is there even a universe 'out there' or, is it an artefact of consciuosness, a projection of the stories we tell about it?

For interesting debate in the blogs see:

Not Even Wrong » Blog Archive » The Goldilocks Enigma

Science In Crisis: The Goldilocks Enigma

Theodora's Kut and the Goldilocks Enigma

mutations of mortalityIntelligent Design

What makes the universe just right for life?

Meaning of it all

See:

Deist

Cosmology

Monism

Dialectics

Intelligent Design

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Seal Hunt Divorce

Sir Paul McCartney's wife is divorcing him for cruelty and abuse. Did he beat her with a seal on the iceflows of Newfoundland?

Or was it a clever ploy by the Tories aginst seal hunt protests? Homewrecker Hearn takes credit for busting up McCartney marriage

And since Fisheries Minister Loyla Hearn is taking credit for their divorce, this must be why he is banning further seal hunt protests, cause family values are important to the New Conservative Government. And he doesn't want to cause anymore divorces.

See:

Seal Hunt

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