Visit:
www.sciencedebate2008.com

Science debate 2008 ------ Part II.

Who wants it? Well, you should! 18 April 2008

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Is the DEBATE at The Franklin Institute Going to HAPPEN?

All three "remaining" campaigns, polling at least 15% nationally, have now contacted "Science Debate 2008" organizers and are "considering" the debate invitation.

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I encourage you to call or e-mail "Science Debate 2008," officers and organizers, Shawn Lawrence Otto, CEO

, or Matthew Chapman, President

, and the steering committee members, to encourage the sponsor-broadening of the initiative to include the candidates who are registered in all 50 states, not just the "poll-leaders."

Please see link to James Lovelock Interview below my niceties . . .

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Vern Ehlers (co-chair), Republican congressman from Michigan
Rush Holt (co-chair), Democratic congressman from New Jersey
Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin; former Undersecretary of the Army
Arne Carlson, former Republican Governor of Minnesota; former chairman of American Express Funds board
Matthew Chapman, screenwriter, director, science writer; President of Science Debate, Inc.
Austin Dacey, contributing editor, The Skeptical Inquirer magazine
Calvin DeWitt, President, Academy of Evangelical Scientists and Ethicists
James Jensen, Director of Congressional and Government Affairs, The National Academies
Sheril Kirshenbaum, marine biologist, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Duke University
Lawrence Krauss, Professor of Astrophysics, Case Western Reserve University
Alan Leshner, CEO, AAAS; Executive Publisher, Science magazine
James McCarthy, President-elect, AAAS; Board member, Union of Concerned Scientists; Professor of Oceanography, Harvard University
Chris Mooney, science writer and science blogger, The Intersection
Shawn Lawrence Otto, screenwriter/director/producer; political consultant; entrepreneur; CEO of Science Debate, Inc.
John Rennie, Editor-in-Chief, Scientific American magazine
Deborah Wince-Smith, President, Council on Competitiveness

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“All models are wrong; some are useful.”- George Box

Ask them to "more" than "Consider."

Encourage these people to attend and to study the issues:

E-mail,

, or call the Clinton campaign at (703) 469-2008 and write to Hillary Clinton for President 4420 North Fairfax Drive Arlington, VA 22203

E-mail,

, or call the McCain campaign at (703) 418-2008 and write to John McCain 2008 P.O. Box 16118 Arlington, VA 22215

E-mail,

, or call the Obama campaign at (866) 675-2008, and write to Obama for America P.O. Box 8102 Chicago, IL 60680

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A MAJOR FLAW in the initiative remains. It may be a chance to Broaden beyond the two party system. Invite Ralph Nader. Invite Ron Paul. Invite ALL those who filed and are to appear on the ballots in the 50 states.

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You may not even want to have debates after you read the interview and understand James Lovelock's warning (link below) as elicited by Decca Aitkenhead, for the "Guardian."

As a matter of fact, you might just want to begin the "revolution" or vote a benign and terrible dictatorship, now. That is, if you are interested in species and planetary survival.

Jame Lovelock at 88 thinks we have passed the tipping point; James Hansen thinks we are on the precipice, about to tip, but haven't yet. I more agree with James Lovelock (Remember him introducing Gaia? That is, very largescale planetary ecosystems? Yeah, that guy.)

Royal Dutch Shell/Texaco, BP, ARAMOCO, EXXON, CITGO, Phillips/Conoco, and the Natural Gas and Coal components of Big Carbon Inc., with the Republican and Democratic National Parties in general as well as the Multinational profit-driven American interlocking directorate corporations, and "Old Money," have done you "in." At some point you may realize this.

The Lovelock interview:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

And from 1998, ten years earlier, in "Essays on Science and Society,"
Science Essay:
"a book for all seasons."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/280/5365/832?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Lovelock+essays+on+science+and+society+&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

I am not sure you can access the science essay article online, located at the above, but if you can't -- to read it, you must get thee to a good library and find the issue of SCIENCE magazine for 8 May 1998.

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I converted the list of "topics" into a table. These Sciencedebate2008.com website topics are a few of the scientific issues that touch nearly everyone in the nation while many of these are of global or planetary reach. To the topics, and the table, I added one for the lawyers and social science types.

Again Note: I added one thing to this table. Civil Environmental Conspiracy Law is my addition. There are many other things that are possible to add. My discussion of Civil Environmental Conspiracy Law will be brief, and some of it in this posting, way below. You are welcome to copy this table. Just go to "view page source" under view on your tool bar, and copy and paste the HTML. Please Credit: Table, Les Porter, Xomba.com

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Image: IPCC no scale.

This graphic is important. This is the only one I have found left at the IPCC unscaled -- that even implies the critical nature of the "Climate Change" ahead. Nothing is so important as the fact that the space between 100 years and 1000 years is shown. The temperature is not shown, but the steepness of the temperature-rise curve is. The fact that the temperature stabilizes in 100's of years is stated. Think about what 385 ppmv equilibrates at; what temperature. Can life survive? That is a good question isn't it? You may notice that the temperature is flat as far as you can see -- which is at least 50 generations. Under the scenario here, maybe it is only 5 generations or 6 and the Great Die-Off is complete. Most of your children's children's children will not survive. Perhaps no one will. Can this be changed? Yes. But not by Democrats or Republicans. This last next chance must not fail. I recommend punishing the last bunch, our current bunch. But would that be "ethical?" I think it would be Just. It may not save us. But then again, it might. . .

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Imminent Clear and Present Danger.

To begin with the very first item: A.1.

A. The Environment

1. Climate Change.

Somehow this must get into YOUR heads, and into the Candidates Heads, as well.

We have to "remove" the excess CO2 from the Commons of the Atmosphere. Or we have to further "pollute" our atmospheric commons with from 1 to 3 billion tons of, basically, sulfuric acid, in quantities sufficient to maintain a continuous micron thick aerosol shield. Now look -- we all use this commons. We all breath We allow CO2 to waft its way into it. We all exhale it, or allow our trash to exhale it. Some entities exhale/dump a lot more waste into the commons than others do. There have been proposals to "tax" them, and continue to allow them to emit CO2 -- Business As Usual, with a little tiny penalty. Unfortunately, we are now way beyond that. The time for "tiny get your attention" penalties passed more than a decade ago.

The number James Hansen is calling for is 350 ppmv

At the 2007 December's American Geophysical Union meeting, Dr. James Hansen called on the meeting participants in San Francisco to begin to think about 350 ppmv CO2 as the maximum amount we can allow in the Atmosphere without "runaway consequences" and further endangerment of all life on the planet.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/illwesleyan_20080219.pdf

And of course, you have all seen heard or read about Six Degrees, by Mark Lynas.

The IPCC ideas of "doubling CO2" (770 ppmv) is now recognized as folly.

Even lowering it to a "not so business friendly" 450 ppmv as a final value is more than ludicrous. The 450 ppmv would kill the majority of all large land animals. It will produce equilibrium temperatures with the land and the oceans top layers in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 F above current temperatures.

If you look at the recent "Keeling Curve" you see this.

IMAGE: NOAA

Below are the readings measured and recorded for the entire length of time the Mauna Loa record has been accumulating. Notice the 1989 values, where we "slide right on by" Dr. James Hansen's goal of 350 ppmv.

Image: NOAA

What does this mean? What can you know from this graphic? One thing is that you can see the "balance." CO2 rises and falls seasonally, by about the same amount. If it weren't for Fossil Carbon Fuel it would rough its way up and down like it did before industrial revolution powered by fossil fuels. Life and death of plants; absorption while seasonally growing and release at seasons end; a balance of life and death of plants solar collectors.

The big question is how do we get back down to the 350 ppmv CO2 Dr. Hansen is suggesting as our goal. It is not at all clear from the graphic. This graphic, with data running for the last half century, shows nothing in nature can do the job.

What this means with respect to the removal of CO2 is really very clear: Unless we figure out how to enhance biological plant growth on areas as vast as our oceans, and sequester the C, we have reached and passed the limit of the amount of CO2 Nature can pull out of the air without some other gigantic bio-operations. One science project that needs heavy heavy funding and I encourage is crash speed dedicated research and invention to remove the CO2 that Nature can't.

Our food crops and all other growing plants on the Earth are in a very rough balance. Oportunistically, we feed off of a small part of that, but affect a large part of it. Nature can't remove what we have placed there in an instant, by itself -- in more than 1000 years (read that as several thousand to 20,000 years.) And the reason it will take nature that long (or longer) is that our "excess" CO2 problem will have killed off so much of the "nature" that could "help us" do the work -- that no natural process extant can succeed and survive what we have already done. It may take Nature, Gaia, if you will, a million or millions of years, but with our help, much less than that.

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We must Research and Fund CO2 removal technologies of adequate scale to remove and sequester at least 35 ppmv, but more likely, by the time we begin, the need to remove 60 ppmv or much more will be needed. That is, to me, it looks like we are going to reach over 420 ppmv before we begin adequately addressing this corner pin of our species survival.

This Removal and Sequestration of CO2 is the Current Global Priority. Forget Business As Usual.

http://climateethics.org/?p=24#more-24
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The unthinkable, but necessary?
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Table By: Maria Silvia Muylaert de Araujo
http://climateethics.org/?p=24#more-24

We must also fund a preliminary but thorough 5-year study for the erection of a "Sulfate Aerosol Shield" to be placed in the stratosphere. Deployment mechanisms must be thoroughly examined. Maintenence costs too. Part of the Cost of Fossil Fuel production in the transition to a non-fossil fuel society, will be targeted taxes on profit and will be directed to the shield studies and preparations to launch escrow fund if needed, and if not at the end of 5 years, the taxes will be directed to carbon capture and retrieval technologies. A total of 75% of the cost of removal technology and sequestration technology will be funded and offset by Big Carbon and Banks that support them. It will be a penalty pay -- and banks and Carbon Corporations will pay these funds or go out of business with their resources internationalized and converted to new technologies.

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A.2. Conservation and Species Loss

Restructure and heavily fund species research and preservation through NSF, USGS. Rebuild and fund National Biological Survey, and support an International Biological Survey.

Image:NBII.gov, Wood Stork, Mycteria americana

http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/history/survey4-6.pdf

Create and Use DNA Preservation Banks. Speed classification of the Earth Genome.

Avoid loss of Polar Bear and Ringed Seal.

Image:USGS, BRD, Alaska

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A. 6. Renewable Energy Research.

- Renewable from solar and geothermal or ocean sources

Fund crash program for solar photovoltaic programs to use unusual materials to obtain higher output higher efficiency energy conversions.

Fund and research Hydrogen fuel cell technologies with incentives.

Fund and help Develop portable affordable units for solar energy thermal processes that could be used in climates where all domestic hot water needs can be met by solar units.

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C.3
Space exploration.

Fund LSST and other asteroid/near earth object detection programs. Fund support programs for NEO discovery and image storage.

We need a space borne NEO detector to search for those inside the earth's orbit. We need a platform to support imaging analysis equipment in space that can see the NEO's that could come from inside our orbit.

Fund NASA mission to Apophis for placement of transponder, and refine orbit while exploring means to alter orbit.

Heavily fund and prepare mission for Gravity Tractor proof of concept, and practical use. Use existing ion engines and begin building larger ion engines by scale-up.

Use B612 foundation for Gravity Tractor framework and direction, independent of NASA guidance, but with NASA support.

Fund Aerecibo for next 25 years, refurbish.
Study and fund Orbital Maser for precise computations of orbital trajectories.

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C.5/
ENERGY POLICY

Get rid of Fossil Carbon approaches to energy. They are transient. Do research of carbon sequestration from atmosphere.

Part 1.
UNDER DOE -- New fast track Fission, rebuild stationary nuclear power plants. Revitalize as stopgaps. Concentrate on infrastructure. Maintain weapons status in case needed especially for space and planetary defense of earth against impactors..

Part 2

Under DOE but given to each of the National Labs:

Fund Bussard's proton-Boron11 fusion concept with $5 billion over 10 years.
(This is the Safest fusion reaction approach. Helium output) Also, the goal is "portable devices scaled to needs" from ship power plants to terrestrial plug-in power plants, to replace all Coal and Natural Gas and eventually all fission plants. Bussard's fusion approach promises quick development of space located fusion rocket engines and ION field spaceship power plants. Bussards work for ONR should serve as basis. Initially, reassemble his team.

Fund pulsed focus fusion with $2 Billion over 10 years. Try to develop portable medium to moderate scale fusion reactors.

Fund reverse field fusion with $2 billion over 10 years. Scale up when functional. 10 years is more than sufficient.

Fund Tokamak with $1 Billion at $100 million/ year over next 10 years. Just a token for Tokamak. If Tokamak can be made to work, help tie together the locale in Europe to a power grid. Fully fund if none of the other fusion efforts succeed. I think the other efforts (especially Bussard's) promise the most.

Fund intercontinental gridding for power production and global electrical power transmission.

Pay for these programs via taxes on Carbon. Serious taxes.

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C.6.

Environmental Civil and Criminal Law

And maybe some ethics. . .

For some other ideas: http://climateethics.org/

http://climateethics.org/?cat=2

There are many platforms from which to step toward Justice and Fairness and Equity in the Commons. But, be warned. There are many forces which will deny you your share of it; they claim to own it or have some special right to it.

Initially, we are addressing the Commons. We are in the Climate Change umbrella, addressing the polluting-use of the Commons. There are now so many of us, that to get a handle on the problems is very difficult.

There is no more than about 49 million square miles of "habitable land" so for 6.7 billion people, each person's human birthright would be about 4.7 acres. Most of us would think that is a large area. It is. Can you claim your birthright? (if we counted the water surface it would be 18.818 acres.

How about your share of the Earth's 5,135.2 trillion tons of air. Your "share" of the Commons?

Your share is 5,135.2 trillion tons / 6.7 billion people = 766,447.76 tons of air. If you took your share in as area at sea level with 14.7 PSI your share of the air would cover 18.325 acres, and you can see how that compares with the land area. (So we are in the ball park either way.)

Because Warren Buffet has more money than anyone else by some measures -- should he have the "right" to pollute more of the Commons than poor Bill Gates? Or the stockholders and executives of a Big Carbon Company -- should they be allowed to produce, or their friends manufacture devices to pollute our Commons without restriction? Can we ask them or force them to pollute less if they wish to stay in business polluting? Do we allow their excuse. . . "well, we do not make you drive or use electricity. . .don't tell us how to do our business. . ."

Ocean Waters

How about Your share of the oceans? The planetary oceans are a Commons, and not counting too closely consists of 1,347,000,000 Cubic Kilometers or 322,300,000 cubic miles.

Here we take one assessment of the ocean volume and divide it by the people numbers, and ---- this is your "equitable" share of the Commons ----- 1.347x109 / 6.7 x 109 = 0.201044776 cubic km or 201,044,776 cubic meters.

That is a pool of water, a cube of water nearly 586 meters tall, deep and wide. That is a little less than 2000 feet (1922 ft) on a side. If you had a pool of water that large, you would need one of those navy deepsea rated hardsuits -- since they are rated for 2000 ft. -- to walk around at the bottom in your share of the Commons pool of water. Sunlight normally penetrates to about 660 feet, so it would be dark in there. (Why do giant squid eyes become nearly a foot in diameter? do they see something at over 660 feet? well, yes -- bioluminesence. What big eyes they have!)

How much of that water would you be willing to share with the Ocean Life forms who live there in the oceans? Oh yes. When Antarctica melts it will be at least another 4 - 5 million cubic miles. . .

There are all sorts of Commons. The weather commons of rain and snow waters us and our food. Those who freely dump things into the air are allowed to do so by you, a citizen, a share holder. And you also do it. Should this be taxed? And if so, to what productive end does this Tax provide? What should it accomplish?

This site is an attempt to scale our population and other things, and worth a visit.
http://www.worldometers.info/

Who pays to dump into the Commons. Who should pay and who should not be allowed to spoil the air?

This is an area under which the entirety of society must be transformed. Adjustment and distribution of resources must accommodate planetary goals. Buckminster fuller world models should be enacted and explored.

Remuneration will be evaluated socially but will consist of payment proportional to ecological and social contribution. Basic necessities and living accommodations will be fundamental rights.

New social laws, to properly punish and remove/execute those environmental criminals, and to use their ill-gotten lucre to begin what is going to be a generations-long effort to remove CO2 from the air with new laws that are "Natural Laws" and laws based in physics, chemistry and ecology.

This is a mechanism of a singular human equality, and a necessary one, for reparations, for damages -- the tools to go about equitably recapturing what has been stolen from the entire planetary environment while "polluting it," and it would go a long step toward "justice." Robert Frost would instantly grasp the meaning and need for it.

Image: NASA

Assessment for Corporate and Banking asset recovery and reallocation will be handled by GAO and CBO, working with other financial analysis organizations around the world, international in scope, larger than any past War Machines, larger than nation's postured interests, and possibly more humanly uncaring than any of us humans will want.

Billions of people will be lost to save the few billions or hundreds of millions we will (maybe) be able to save. It does not have to be that way. But it likely will be that way.

Please realize, the denialists compound this. Austere treatment of them and their sponsors -- including their old money backing will be necessary. The financial segments are more than a little involved in this. That is, they are directly and materially involved. It is their speculation and gambling with the species welfare and planet's welfare that needs to be punished. Severe and thorough treatment of these segments will help rein-in the denialists and false claims that exacerbate and expand opposition to what must be a species response.

Herewith, the beginning of a list of some that should become aware of their roles in this catastrophe they have helped foster. . .

And a Hope of "Justice" can be gleaned:

http://climateethics.org/?p=26#more-26

Below are a list of the supporters of the Heartland Institutes recent conference at the Marriott in NYC March 2 through 4, 2008

http://www.heartland.org/NewYork08/ConferenceCosponsors.pdf

These are examples of researchers and writers to be directed to honest work or something harmlessly useful. Otherwise these are serious zestful contributors to destructive global warming, and earth-species endangerment and destruction. Investigate each for retraining and remedial conversion. Some you may not wish to retain, or even maintain. Said another way, some of these for whatever selfish reasons or conceptions or fatalisms -- may not be interested in our species survival. This is also a problem that needs recognition in the endgame nihilistic religions that are, at root, anti-life. There needs to be re-examination of the memes, and a better understanding of what is religiously inevitable, and what is open to choice within religions logical fundaments. (What are YOU passing the plate for?)

Some few of these people are posturing for their big carbon supporters, and some need prosecution under new laws. Most will be considered as though they are advanced misdemeanors, but some are in the category of those that would stand up in the theater and yell, "There is NOT a FIRE here..!" when indeed there was one. When, indeed, there is one.

There is NO credible scientific foundation for their pronouncements. None. But the worst part is they spread lies and dis-information at a level which is both terroristic and criminal. Laws will have to change. The measures of Law will have to intertwine with the burden of science to deduce the closest thing to truth that can be afforded.

This is like those followers of Jim Jones in South America who because of Jim's tax evasion problems committed suicide by drinking the poison and gave the poison to their children. They were all devout followers -- so maybe we did not want them or their children with us now? I do not think that to be an intelligent course. Somehow, the emotional must be left out of the Science Debate.

However. It is time for you to examine your own creed's, if you have any. And if you do not, it may be time to build some.