While a sobering read, even more sobering to readers will be understanding how the environmental costs of conflict are not limited only to the Middle East, but that war costs the environment no matter where it occurs. Among the costs detailed by the Strategic Foresight Group specifically because of conflicts in the Middle East: * Stress on water resources (the Israel-Hezbollah war caused severe damage to South Lebanese water networks) * Arable land degradation * Forest utilization and destruction * Oil spills (almost 55 million barrels of oil were spilt in the desert and at sea during the first gulf war) * Sewage dumping (since the 2003 Iraq war, over 300 000 tonnes of raw sewage are dumped into the Tigris daily) * Habitat loss, leading to increased stress on local species and overall biodiversity levels * Increased and significant carbon emissions caused by the machinery of war (as detailed in another report on Red, Green and Blue, an Abrams tank’s fuel efficiency is rated at 0.56 miles per gallon!) […]
JERUSALEM — Rabbis affiliated with the Israeli army urged troops heading into Gaza to reclaim what they said was God-given land and ‘get rid of the gentiles’ – effectively turning the 22-day Israeli intervention into a religious war, according to the testimony of a soldier who fought in Gaza. Literature passed out to soldiers by the army’s rabbinate ‘had a clear message – we are the people of Israel, we came by a miracle to the land of Israel, God returned us to the land, now we need to struggle to get rid of the gentiles that are interfering with our conquest of the land,’ the soldier told a forum of Gaza veterans in mid-February, just weeks after the conflict ended. A transcript of the testimony given at an Israeli military academy at the Oranim college on Feb. 13 was obtained on Friday by McClatchy and also published in Haaretz, one of Israel’s leading dailies. The soldier, identified as ‘Ram,’ a pseudonym to protect his identity, gave a scathing description of the atmosphere as the Israeli army went to war. ‘The general atmosphere among people I spoke to was . . . the lives of Palestinians are […]
WASHINGTON — Energy production of all types-wind, ethanol and mountaintop coal mining-is contributing to steep drops in bird populations, a new government report says. The first-of-its-kind report chronicles a four-decade decline in many of the country’s bird populations and provides many reasons for it, from suburban sprawl to the spread of exotic species to global warming. It shows that birds in Hawaii are more in danger of becoming extinct than anywhere else in the United States. In the last 40 years, populations of birds living on prairies, deserts and at sea have declined between 30 percent and 40 percent. But in almost every case, energy production has also played a role. Environmentalists and scientists say the report should signal the Obama administration to act cautiously as it seeks to expand renewable energy production and the electricity grid on public lands and tries to harness wind energy along the nation’s coastlines. ‘We need to go into these energies with our environmental eyes open,’ said John Fitzpatrick, the director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which helped draft the report along with nonprofit advocacy groups. ‘We need to attend to any form of energy development, not just […]
I believe that some of our most engrained notions about space and causality should be reconsidered. Anyone who takes quantum mechanics seriously will have reached the same conclusion. What quantum mechanics tells us, I believe, is surprising to say the least. It tells us that the basic components of objects – the particles, electrons, quarks etc. – cannot be thought of as ‘self-existent’. The reality that they, and hence all objects, are components of is merely ’empirical reality’. This reality is something that, while not a purely mind-made construct as radical idealism would have it, can be but the picture our mind forces us to form of … Of what ? The only answer I am able to provide is that underlying this empirical reality is a mysterious, non-conceptualisable ‘ultimate reality’, not embedded in space and (presumably) not in time either. How did I arrive at this conclusion? My interest in the foundations of quantum physics developed at quite an early stage in my career, but I soon noticed that my elders deliberately brushed aside the problems the theory raised, which they considered not to be part of physics proper. It was only after I attained the […]
NEW YORK — More than 600 self-confessed climate sceptics met in a Times Square hotel in New York this month to challenge what has become a broad scientific and political consensus: that without big changes in energy choices, humans will dangerously heat up the planet. The three-day International Conference on Climate Change – organised by the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit group seeking deregulation and unfettered markets – brought together political figures, conservative campaigners, scientists, an Apollo astronaut and the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus. Organisers say the discussions were intended to counter the Obama administration and Democratic lawmakers who have pledged to tackle global warming with legislation requiring cuts in the greenhouse gases that scientists have linked to rising temperatures. The participants hold a wide range of views on climate science. Some concede that humans probably contribute to global warming, but they argue that the shift in temperatures poses no urgent risk. Others attribute the warming, along with cooler temperatures in recent years, to solar changes or ocean cycles. But large corporations such as Exxon Mobil, which in the past financed the Heartland Institute and other groups that challenged the climate consensus, have […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
