------ THE SKY IS FALLING ------

[Paradox]

Global famine? Blame the Fed

[screener]

hi paradox, and the bank rate went down another 1/4 today. pretty soon they'll be paying us to take the dollar and we'll all be starving but we'll have all that paper lettuce to eat.

[cbacba]

I guess they haven't figured out yet that oil (and hence energy) is no longer valued in US $. Hence inflating the currency to give away money. They've been doing it way too long now and the value has dropped even relatively from $1.30/UK pound sterling now to $2.05/UK pound sterling and who knows how weak the pound actually is.

However, there is one bright note. The pinch of farmers with doubled fuel costs and no increase in produced commodity prices has already started started reducing the efficiencies and production rates. One cannot afford to fertilize as much now. One cannot afford to perform brush control. Hence, less food will be produced and some of that seems destined for the unsustainable government subsidized food burning project called ethanol. It's starting to sound like the population of planet earth is about to undergo a major culling.

[Paradox]

Originally Posted by screener

hi paradox, and the bank rate went down another 1/4 today. pretty soon they'll be paying us to take the dollar and we'll all be starving but we'll have all that paper lettuce to eat.

Fiat Salad, MMMmmm. I heard the Chinese are using our dollars to wrap eggrolls. Apparently they are high in fiber and deep fried taste great.

[Paradox]

Originally Posted by cbacba

I guess they haven't figured out yet that oil (and hence energy) is no longer valued in US $. Hence inflating the currency to give away money. They've been doing it way too long now and the value has dropped even relatively from $1.30/UK pound sterling now to $2.05/UK pound sterling and who knows how weak the pound actually is.

However, there is one bright note. The pinch of farmers with doubled fuel costs and no increase in produced commodity prices has already started started reducing the efficiencies and production rates. One cannot afford to fertilize as much now. One cannot afford to perform brush control. Hence, less food will be produced and some of that seems destined for the unsustainable government subsidized food burning project called ethanol. It's starting to sound like the population of planet earth is about to undergo a major culling.

Hi Cbacba,

Yeah, so much for ethanol as a viable alternative. I called that one way back. I'm in Northern Cal, we have people driving around advertising their bio-fuel use proudly. It is looking more like a bio-famine at the moment.

~Paradox

[cbacba]

alternatives aren't really viable alternatives and never have been.

there is now serious ramifications to the cost of fuel and the cost of food production. The unsustainable government subsidized food burning project is only a minor player in the unfolding disaster now. It's beginning to look like the economically illiterate that keep crying that we can restructure society without no consequence are fixing to find out the hard way that a relatively minor increase in energy costs is going to have dire consequences for them and everyone else and it will be measured in the death toll, not in some inconvenience factor.

[karmakop]

New Ocean Current Discovered

[screener]

karmakop, good link, It looks like the cold low salinity water coming out of the arctic not only sinks but like the titanic when it sinks, takes down everything around it as well. There was another link there showing similar patterns in the North Atlantic. Both seemed to cause bulges of higher level warmer higher salinity water to the south. Circulation changes that affect not just the fish but the weather patterns all around too.

Cooler water looks like it would be reaching la nina from both the south along the west coast of S America and from the north, although weaker, still a reinforcement.

[screener]

karmakop, good link, It looks like the cold low salinity water coming out of the arctic not only sinks but like the titanic when it sinks, takes down everything around it as well. There was another link there showing similar patterns in the North Atlantic. Both seemed to cause bulges of higher level warmer higher salinity water to the south. Circulation changes that affect not just the fish but the weather patterns all around too.

Cooler water looks like it would be reaching la nina from both the south along the west coast of S America and from the north, although weaker, still a reinforcement.

Cbacba, My impressions would be a little different. oil and gas burning aren't really a viable sustainable alternative any more than other options. The subsidization of fossil fuel burning is having consequences that we are finding out about the hard way as well. Taking the least expensive overall route is going to be our best bet. Of course we don't know all the ramifications of anything we do but we still have to do the analysis.

[cbacba]

it's the only viable alternative on the short term and developing nuclear is the only longer term viable option. One can fill in the gaps and specialty apps ever so slightly with alternatives such as wind and solar power. There are consequences to these as well as the fact that they are not truly stable.

Despite the pop view that the earth system is fragile, this is clearly not the case as the fact that life currently exists here is proof that the system is extremely hardy and self correcting.

The current foolishness of co2 with its 1 1/2 W/m^2 variation over a couple of hundred years causing the variations observed over the last 20 years exists only because of the ignoring of much greater variations going on at the same time. If 1 w/m^2 increase due to co2 causes 0.5 or 0.8 K rise in avg global T, then what does an increase in incoming solar energy into the system (caused by a decrease in albedo not in TSI) equivalent to an increase of 10W/m^2 going to do over a few years? Hint, there hasn't been a multiyear global average increase of 5 to 8 degrees K. In the same fashion, if 1 w/m^2 increase is worth 0.8K rise in T, then what's the rise from the other 150-170 W/m^2 in GHG 'blocking'? Hint, we have 33 K total GHG contribution to Earth's T and what's more, the first W/m^2 had much more effect than the last one.