The Christmas tree or should we say the solstice tree?

By, Uwe Paschen.

 The Christmas tree or the Solstice Tree? 

 For millennia’s now trees have been worshiped by many cultures as being mystical, even magical and gifted with great powers. The Germanic Tribes and the Scandinavian Tribes gave us the tradition of the decorated tree at solstice, nowadays better known as Christmas tree.

 Some 2000 years ago though, the Fir tree was decorated with Fruits and Straw ornaments as well as religious symbols referring to Odin who is also the ancestor of Father Christmas as Agios Nikolaos, ("victory of the people") is the common name for Nicholas of Myra.) Is the ancestor of Saint Nicolas.

 The Decorations of the Tree was latter adapted to Christmas, and even though many Christian did resist it at first, since it is a Pagan symbol and tradition, it did make a break through with Martin Luther in the 16th century in Germany. Latter in the 19th Century it was introduced in Briton as well as in the Americas. Nowadays around the World. Even here, in Japan the Christmas tree is to be fund everywhere.

 However today a great number of them are plastic trees made to 68% in China and 27% in the USA and Canada, The German still swear by the real tree and have adopted a new custom by buying live trees and planting those right after Christmas in the Garden or the Wood lot near by.

 Now there are also a great number of Tree Farms that grow trees as others do grow Pigs for slotter. Some see this as a good thing and others find it environmentally unfriendly. It is actually rather difficult to make up once mind on what is and what is not good for the environment, since we are being bombarded with facts and figures from all directions.

 Some of those so called facts are merely made up by some Sales Persons or even businesses at times, however there are some sound sites and real research lead by Universities and independent associations that have looked in to it rather seriously, such as the Christmas Tree Association for instance, http://www.christmastree.org/faketrees.cfm

 Now, it does seem that planting a tree would be by far the best one could do for the environment. Secondly, would be the real cut tree grown by certified wood loots that do not harm the forest as such and last of course the plastic tree since it is made with PVC and originates from Petrol based products that do really harm our environment.

 Same does go for the ornaments and lights. Opting for the environment would require straw and natural ornaments rather then plastic once or synthetic ornaments. The old way seems to be best here, Fruits and Straw ornaments.

 Lights, well if you have to have them, less is off course better and energy saving once would be grand, not only do they help the environment, but they also save a lot of money on the electrical bill and those keep going up as we all know to well.

 Now, if you opt for the real environmental choice then you leave the hole tree thing and donate a tree to be planted in the spring in your country or some where else, that would have the greatest positive impact of all. http://www.environmentalmediafund.org/Home.aspx

 Now, as you may decorate your tree for Christmas, after all. Do remember some facts in honour of that tree, such as.: In a single Year a tree processes 1,254,000.00 KCall/M2 of this the tree uses 1,199 KCall/M2 for its own grows, not to much in fact, yet 55% of that energy the Tree uses for respiration, meaning filtering the air, removing or absorbing CO2 and rejecting Oxygen. That is a lot by any standard.

 So show some respect to our friends the tree this season and maybe even plant one your self in gesture of being grateful for all they do for us CO2 Producer and Oxygen users on Earth. Happy Holidays.

 Sources.

http://books.google.com/books?id=0Ntvos9aaC8C&pg=PA326&lpg=PA326&dq=Kilocalory+used+for+tree+growth&source=web&ots=lR_JJBXa5b&sig=EFoUXaQT6HAlmsbagHhshrbZ7eQ&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA295,M1

http://www.christmastree.org/debate.cfm

 

Gaia's revenge

The Revenge of Gaia, The Earth is Fighting back. Humanity is now under attack after decades, even centuries of abusing the Earth and it's balance. This is what James Lovelock believes and writes about in three rather well researched books about Gaia and Humanity at large.

James Lovelock is CH, CBE, FRS (born 26 July 1919) is an independent scientist, author, researcher, environmentalist, and futurist who lives in Devon, in the south west of England. He is known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, in which he postulates that the Earth functions as a kind of superorganism.

 He studied chemistry at the University of Manchester, followed by Medical Research Council post at the Institute for Medical Research in London. Being a student permitted him to postpone his military service during the Second World War, Still he advocated him self as a conscientious objector. He did change his views later on, in the light of Nazi atrocities and tried to enlist after all, yet was rejected since his medical research was too valuable to allow him to enlist.

In 1948, Lovelock obtained a Ph.D. degree in medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Within the United States, he has conducted research at Yale, Baylor College of Medicine, and Harvard University. He was the first to make a connection between CFC and the OZON depletion, for wish he, Frank Rowland and Mario Molina shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work.

 Wile working with NASA in the 1960th concerned with detecting life on Mars, he came up with the Gaia hypothesis that proposes that living and non-living parts of the earth form a complex interacting system that should be seen a single organism. Named after the Greek goddess Gaia, the hypothesis postulates that the biosphere has a regulatory effect on the Earth's environment that acts to sustain life.

 Making the Earth it self a living entity such as Humans and Pine trees or Whales. Lovelock’s greatest critics are the evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins and Ford Doolittle. These (and other) critics questioned how natural selection operating on individual organisms could lead to the evolution of planetary-scale homeostasis. Yet much like a Human organism holding with in it self many other diverse living organism that evolve independently from the Human host it self and the same would apply for plant that harbour with in their own Bio mass other living organisms and plants.

 The same mechanism would apply to the Earth it self, so lovelock demonstrated it, and this is the base for his Books of the Gaia hypothesis. Wile in his last book the “revenge of Gaia” he takes a close look at the accumulative effect of the impact human have had and still have on the earth and comes to the conclusion that Gaia is very ill and suffers a sort of cold or cancer wish she is now fighting, meaning the elimination of Humanity.

 Even though Lovelock does believe that humans have a vital function for the continence of the earth, being its way to the stars, however the damage inflicted is now greater then the benefit received in return, making Humanity a cancer of sorts that needs to be contained. He has been quoted in The Guardian that 80% of humans will perish by 2100 AD, and this climate change will last 100,000 years.

 James Lovelock is no fly by preacher of dooms day fantasy but rather a well respected and proven scientist with many credentials and well funded research to back him up. Most of his predictions made in the 1960th have become a reality already and his latest predictions show that we are in serious trouble and not only do we have to stop burning fossil fuels and change Farming practices as well as our entire way of life, for that alone won’t be enough any longer. We have to clean up the mess we caused and this as fast as humanly possible for our pollution and destruction of the Earth will kill us other wise.

 Now he does support Nuclear power and this for the simple reason that it is a transition energy from fossil fuel to renewable energy and because nuclear power has a lesser impact on the Earth over all. As he said him self in an interview in 2006.

ABSTRACT:

"A television interviewer once asked me, 'But what about nuclear waste? Will it not poison the whole biosphere and persist for millions of years? ' I knew this to be a nightmare fantasy wholly without substance in the real world... One of the striking things about places heavily contaminated by radioactive nuclides is the richness of their wildlife. This is true of the land around Chernobyl, the bomb test sites of the Pacific, and areas near the United States' Savannah River nuclear weapons plant of the Second World War. Wild plants and animals do not perceive radiation as dangerous, and any slight reduction it may cause in their lifespan is far less a hazard than is the presence of people and their pets... I find it sad, but all too human, that there are vast bureaucracies concerned about nuclear waste, huge organizations devoted to decommissioning power stations, but nothing comparable to deal with that truly malign waste, carbon dioxide."

 Now I do recommend to all to read his book, If nothing else they are Scientifically interesting. Pollution and careless even irresponsible way of live is no different then Fascism in its worth form. Those, that do abuse the environment are responsible of Genocide and have to be treated no different then NAZI. 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revenge_of_Gaia

James Lovelock's personal website

James Lovelock index page by Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy

"Why Gaia is wreaking revenge on our abuse of the environment": Article about Lovelock published in the 'Independent'

"Nuclear power is the only green solution": Lovelock article published in the 'Independent'

Friends of James Lovelock

Biography of James Lovelock

BBC Radio interview transcript from Belief series in 2003

Nuclear Spin page examining Lovelock's history

evaluates Lovelock's terraforming proposal   

  

The Middle East conflict at the root of many other conflicts.

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Kofi Annan, former UN Secretaire General and now a mediator in International conflicts and advocating issues of importance to him personally such as the environment, food security and global poverty through the Kofi Annan foundation.  Said in an interview with ALJAZEERA’s journalist Teymoor Nabili in Singapore that the Israeli-Palestinian conflictis the single most charged conflict in the world today with an international impact like no other conflict. Affecting almost every one and being the catalyst and maybe even the cause for several other conflicts and troubles deriving from this single conflict that remains unresolved for already over two generations now.

We have seen Israel acting in Lebanon, we have seen Israel acting in Gaza in recent history and now we see Israel ignoring the security counsel once more and defying even the US Governments plea for reason and change in favour of a peaceful and fair solution for all parties involved.

Israel is not only defying the UN or the US any longer but the rest of the world as well.

Alon Liel, a professor of international relations at Tel Aviv University and the former head of Israel's foreign ministry, said, “The Quartet is united (UN, EU, Russia and the US) on this issue and the Quartet [of Middle East mediators] is the world. Israel is going to be internationally isolated if it persists in refusing to negotiate a fair and responsible peace with the Palestinian as well as allowing the establishment of a Palestinian State along with Israel.”

The current politics of expropriations and settlement of the predominantly Arab east of the city of Jerusalem by the Israeli Government which illegally annexed it after the 1967 Middle East war. This City is to be the capital of any future independent Palestinian state and claimed as such by Israel as well. Making these current settlement policies not only provocative and defying. More so it is a threat and an attempt to black mail the International community to surrender to Israel's continued violations of international laws as Tayseer Khaled an executive committee member from the PLO said on Wednesday dismissing Netanyahu's comments that the peace negotiations could be put on hold for another year as "threats.”

Why, it may be best if Jerusalem becomes a State on its own, that is neither Israeli nor Palestinian. Jerusalem the free and independent city state may be the start to a peace accord in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The UN security counsel needs to be reformed ultimately, for it does no longer reflect the geo-political reality and has become impotent to renegade states such as Israel, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Miramar or Sudan.  “The right to resist an occupation, a terrorist threat or self defence has to be understood in its true meaning, it cannot include the right to deliberately kill or mane civilians.”

The Goldstone report, even though a sound and well-balanced report was largely ignored because it was not liked by Israel. Rather then debate it, it was trashed by its opponents for it was all to accurate and Israel could not win any argument against this report so it simply forced all to abandon using it as a reference in hope to be able to negotiate a peace agreement with Israel.

This however, has not happen either since the Israeli government has kept on defying all and every one and made any hope for a peace accord more unlikely today then ever before.

At a meeting in Moscow on Friday, the Quartet of Middle East mediators comprising the UN, the US, the EU and Russia, called on Israel to freeze settlement activity in line with a 2003 peace "road map" which also obliged the Palestinians to take action to disarm fighters.

Maybe the Kana’an, whose descendant now live in Tunisia, should add their claim to this part of the world, after all, they where the original owners until they where overrun by the Persian who owned it as well and this long before the current inhabitants ancestors did set foot on the land of milk and honey. This is in part why a fair and reasonable peace agreement is so vital and this not only for the Middle Eastern countries. This conflict off ludicrous claims, based on false belief on both sides, has no end in sight if not resolved by the International community, this issue will keep igniting more and more bush fires around the globe if not settled once and for all. 

2009 broke yet another record, making climate change measurable.

Photos

2009 was yet market by another record, this in the form of the third highest Global surface temperature average being documented since 1891. It tied with 2006, 2003 and 2002.

The annual mean land temperatures where above in most land areas, except for North America and central Siberia.

On the long-term record the annual Global average land temperatures have been rinsing at a rate of 0.68 degree Celsius over the past century.

The factors causing this increase of the average Global surface temperatures as well as the rise of the average sea water temperatures are CO2 cases as well as other pollutants and phenomenon’s such as El Nino.

Over the past decade alone 1999 was market by + 0,10; 2000 by +0.05; 2001 by +0.27; 2002 by +0.31; 2003 by +0.31; 2004 by +0.27; 2005 by +0.32; 2006 +0.31; 2007 by +0.28; 2008 by +0.12 and 2009 by +0.31 degrees Celsius above average global temperatures.

The revised data clearly shows that the trend of global warming is persisting and accurate. The IPCC and several other organizations have reviewed and re-examined all data and findings to ensure its accuracy and integrity.

Further our oxygen depletions is greater as well due to the increase of CO2 produced in the industrial countries and the reductions of CO2 absorbing bio mass such as trees, Coral Reefs and others.

Aditionaly, an increase in Methane production is contributing to accelerate the green house effect lucking up more Oxygen, leading to still a greater and faster depletion of our volume of Oxygen available in the air.

Fear mongering or sound warnings? Well, I suppose that depends on where one stands and how well one may be informed and educated.

In order to be able to understand the seriousness of the problems at hand one needs to look only at the main cases contributing to our problem. From 1979 till 1984 CO2 contributed with 56% to the gases we emitted, where as CH4 contributed with 13.6%, N2O with 6.1%, CFC with 22.1%, HCFC with 2% and HCF with 0.2% of human caused atmospheric pollution.

Compared to the period of 2003 till 2008 where CO2 contribution was 86.2%, CH4 2.2%, N2O 7.6%, CFC -5.0%, HCFC 4.7% and HFC 4.2%.

This is a massive increase of Oxygen atoms being looked up and no longer available in the air. At the same time we can also observe an equally worrisome degrees of CO2 absorption due to a temperature increase which leads to greater production of CO2 by the plants and lover production of Oxygen.

Other factors are further deforestations taking place, desertification due to human activity and pollution killing vital organisms and human practices of overfishing and over exploitation of the natural resources available with out giving back to the cycle of life.

Intelligence is determined by the capability to observe, learn and adapt for the sake of survival and evolution. Should we still have this ability, then we will change our ways and stop polluting, we will learn to reinvent our self’s and restructure our societies accordingly. Should we persist in failing at this task, then we will perish in the same manner as a parasite or a cancer perishes after killing its host.

The choice is ours and ours alone.

http://www.wmo.int/pages/index_en.html

Videos

Ice Melting Animation in Google Earth

see larger video 

sourced by chowdawg

Do White African exit? What is an African?

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What is an African? Further, what is a White African? Do white Africans exist? It does depend whom you ask, there are those that believe that white African are all of European decent such as of Dutch, British, French, Portuguese, German, and to a lesser extent, Italian, Spanish, Austrian, Scandinavian, Greek, Lithuanian, Belgian, Swiss, and Irish ancestry, those descending of European heritage total today between seven to twelve million through out Africa. They arrived 200 to 400 years ago.

Then there are those that include the Berber people as well as the Tuareg and the Arab African of Northern Africa that are mostly in the following seven countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara.

There are also other groups of White African that decent from The Semitic Phoenicians, the Iranian Alans, the European Greeks, Romans and the Germanic clan of the Vandals, Those arrived two Thousand years ago and settled mainly in North Africa, making up today’s African white population. Totalling between 208 million to 220 million people.

Berbers still make up the majority in Morocco today. Their name Berber was given by the Roman, meaning indigenous people, today we still use the word out of context as “Barbarian.”

 We have to remember that Africa is a continent of 30,221,532 km², divided into 53 countries with a total population of over one billion people, speaking over 2000 different languages such as Berber, Arabic, Igbo, Swahili, Hausa, Amharic, and Yoruba which are spoken by tens of millions of people.

It is also in Africa where the earliest Homo sapiens (modern human) were found in Ethiopia being dated to ca. 200,000 years ago. Meaning that every human being can trace their roots back to Africa from where we all migrated around the globe and evolved into what we are today.

Today some, this especially in Zimbabwe, proclaim that there is no such a thing then a white African. This notion is gaining popularity, especially in the Eastern South African countries, where Zimbabwe leads the way with expropriating White African of their land and businesses to be given to Black African. In essence, there is nothing wrong with land and wealth redistribution, if such is required due to a social or prior racial injustice. The problem lies with the question of whether there are White Africans or not? If we say there are none then we strip over 200 million African of their rights as citizen and African.

All this still leaves out the Métis. Those African of mixed ethnicity that would have nowhere to go.

This illness or ethnical, religious and national divide is taking dangerous proportions and this not only in Zimbabwe. The same politics of hate and tendency toward ethnical cleansing can be observed in countries such as Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda and Egypt. This either in the form of religious, ethnical, social or in some cases all of them together. I say ethnical and not racial, for there is only one human race and the term has been misused and abused for far to long.

Africa is not the only continent where this can be observed; the same would be true in the Middle East, in countries such as Israel, Lebanon and Yemen.

Even in modern Europe, the illness is still present in countries such as Italy, Spain, Serbia, Turkey and Poland.

What can be done to stop it and should we stop it?

It is vital to stop it, for it does have no limits, it does not stop with white African versus Black African, nor will it limit it self to Jews versus Muslim or European versus Asian… If this is allowed to persist or worth still, if it does expand, it will, lead us right back to another Holocaust.

If there are no White Africans, then they cannot be any Black European either, if there are no Muslim Israeli then they can not be any American Jews either, if there are no European Asian, then they can not be any Asian European either… In addition, all those of mixed ethnicity, religion or nationality such as my self would be in the worth of troubles since the Métis can claim to be anything and yet are nothing.

The irony of it all is that if we go back far enough in Human history and evolution then we are all East African from what is Ethiopia today. I do not think that Ethiopia would have room for seven billion refugees.

Videos

Harmonica " AFRIQUE ADIEU " M_ SARDOU

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sourced by Uwe Paschen

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