Global Warming - Burning My Iceland

Living on a tropical island, is quite unique. If you love the natural world, there are many things you could do it. I grew up in a small valley in the hills south of my island and I have known my whole life.

Field trips to a pretty fast pace of the canyon hills hundred meters is all worth it when I have to choose a place near the top only. It is a true blessing to be able to do. It is a wonderful job, too. The tops of steep hills to near the base is covered by savannah grasslands. The very steep slopes and along its base are wooded ravine. More than jungle delirium. If you look in the mountains in the distance, are the golden color of the meadows a great contrast to the dark green jungle hills. It is amazing to know how my mind that a hundred years ago, almost all of these dark hills. Jungles all the way up. Wow. And one reason why not.

Fire was a tool for humans used almost since its discovery. He also has done before. And one of the biggest weapons for hunting deer has become here in the jungles of the south. What they do is a fire. Just set a fire the flame and let it rip. Help if you would have difficulties. For once it's gone and burning in arable soil, a wonderful thing called life happens next. New shoots of grass from the hills and burned black. And the deer is probably a surprise, because they consume these tender buds. The wild hunter waits.

Oh, but all the other things that there was kindled a fire in the hills happened. Surely this is not the arsonist would have thought about it. Let us straight in the direction that things go happen. The fire is determined and set on fire. The atmosphere is the first hit. A powerful greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide), a by-product of combustion of vegetation is directly exposed to the atmosphere. But wait. We do not really feel their effects for a long time. No, not right. Global warming. Exactly. It is not surprising that the collective memory of vegetation in the world is still a significant contribution to global warming? his strike.

While in the flames, a fire are often lost in a jungle. The fire will stop, right? That is true. The last time. But the fire will not die once they walk into the jungle. He has to burn its way into a little "to run into the water and most of the jungle. You know, it will take at least one meter. Do burnout. So how can you burn burn, walking to the size of forests . The more you burn, the less the jungle. Strike two.

Now, the fire died and the hills are bare. When the rain comes, and then the soil to wash away. I have never burned washed flee a hill by the rain. Soil erosion by sedimentation in water. But that does not matter. The ocean is big. Will not hurt. In the grand scheme of the oceans, not too much. For aquatic life in rivers, coral, and the open sea populations that feed and live on these reefs, the damage is absolutely fatal. Strike three.

Add all. We have professionals on the one hand, the shot immediately after a new fire is enticing deer. It would be easier to catch. And only useful for the hunter. We are opposite on the other side, and the list is impressive.

- The air in our atmosphere gets an infusion of a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. We know without doubt that large and persistent global warming has caused and is accelerating, climate change may very well end our day.

- It is the country. Our lower jungle. This quickly leads to loss of habitat for animals. The bright green jungle of our gold and the sea of our savannas are burned from the hills of text and black. All animals, nests or caves caught fire, food, well, that's just their loss. And if it rains, we lose our topsoil. The roots in the city, burned clean. accelerated soil erosion, I despise. .

- It is the sea, rivers are included. Immediately after the soil erosion is the effect of sedimentation. This transported soil spreading. And blankets and suffocates when it finally stabilized. Sedimentation is the bearer of death for microscopic organisms, plants, fish and corals, to say the least. In the aquatic environment, is the destruction of large and extended. Imagine that your air is filled with the ashes of all time. What would be the quality of your life, what then?

He has about 700 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day. There is no doubt, no debate. A large percentage comes from the constant reminder of the natural landscape. We have to change the way they do things.

The survival of our race, have to stop global warming. Climate change in progress should be maintained, if not reversed. If we refuse to realize this, it will matter in fifty or a hundred years? Spread the word. Take part. We can still save.

Why does not Al Gore debate on global warming?

As I write this article, the U.S. is a large explosion in the Arctic. E 'was 40 degrees at Miami Orange Bowl, the coldest ever. Beijing, London, Seoul falls and says other parts of the world under the snow important in their history. And Al Gore, there is a need for a debate on planet Earth. I know I would say that this extreme cold is caused by global warming.

To say that the two basic facts about global warming come. One thing is global warming. And two, the warming caused by man. He said that the 3,000 scientists around the world and all disciplines of climate in 100% agreement on these two issues.

It may surprise you, but I agree with these points. What I can not live without debate position. Who is that Al Gore is he? To begin, it is not even a scientist! If nothing else, you could probably learn a challenge, especially if they are scientific. Heck, I think I can learn a thing or two!

I guess that means that the discovery of new evidence or research, contrary to his position, would not be accepted. I wonder if 3000 scientists could find agreement with this statement? Why spend taxpayer money warming of global research, if it did?

Does Al believe that man is 100% the cause of global warming? Here I request the data. I read enough science to know that millions of years the Earth was covered with ice. to melt a massive global warming and that man was not there. Scientists tell us that the main causes of submarine volcanoes and the sun, I think the sun and volcanic eruptions are an important part of global warming? I want to hear the percentage of debate. I wonder if it would do more for the environment and put a sock in the mouth of the volcano to another or in the mouth?

To say that we go to the disaster in the coming decades. I have heard of freshwater and coastal areas, but what about Chicago. I have neighbors who do not just "warm up have been here. Again, I'm not ready to see the disaster in the future and sees his friends. In the U.S., we have seen cooler temperatures of this decade (it is the Convention on growth Copenhagen climate change by the United Nations), but the carbon emissions of more people. What is the science of climate around this? Then these data suggest at least a period of a catastrophe?

All must agree that no study of personal preferences or policies on global warming. He was able to obtain an objective attitude in the treatment of all data completely. We assume that each insured of his advisers, he knew all the possible interpretations of the abuse. There are other models or scenarios that can be accepted. The Admit it, you can not discuss because they would be exposed as a fraudster. Remember, this is the same man who gave us several versions of Al Gore in his presidential race.

To have enough money to support the global warming of his family for generations. No descendant of Al Gore will never work. Instead his mantra of "no more debate, I would like to hear" no more dollars "! What about the commitment of all to all the money he makes of global warming on the poorest countries in Africa to make.

You and the global warming debate

And 'concern is not the proper way to active scientific argument on global warming. This application is based on best practices of science, scientific data and evaluation of evidence. In the short term in a context of science, the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere creates a greenhouse effect which helps to keep warm. This is acknowledged by all scientists. Global warming scenario arises because we have a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for our activities - such as burning coal. The more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere can lead to abnormally warm temperatures, with potentially devastating consequences. Scientists have spent years trying to find out if this scenario is correct. Environmentalists say that yes, skeptics say no. Among scientists, the majority say 'yes', but a small and vocal minority crying, no! What about this?

The way of working scientists is as follows. We Are Scientists, and I'm one of them, a number of hypotheses, some ideas that we want to control. We make observations and experiments, often supported by calculations. What we are looking for a number of tests, which can, in principle, to show that we are wrong, that we want evidence that potentially can be shown that Our assumption is wrong. It 'important that such evidence exists. If you can get without testing can be done in principle able to demonstrate that your idea is not correct, scientists turn away from you. This may at first seem a bit 'strange, but this is the way we work. What are you doing this to show that neither you nor anyone else can prove that you're so wrong, maybe you're right! Remember, the finding that corresponds to your hypothesis by itself does not prove that your hypothesis is true, because who can say that some other assumptions may not fit the observations?

For example, when they met two competing ideas. A classic example is the Copernican system against the old Ptolemaic system of the Sun and planets. Copernican system, with the sun at the center was not accepted by both scientific and religious op gronden was a time when this vastgesteld Ptolemaic "system works equally well - indeed beter in a way. There was no obvious way to demonstrate whether the system is, at that time.

Another recent example is the problem of the ozone hole in 1980 and 1990. Hypothesis (a) that emissions of chemicals used in refrigerators and hair sprays, etc., can cause destruction of the ozone layer is over the upper atmosphere. Test to prove that the error may be the following. If we take the concentration of ozone in the upper atmosphere for a period of time, and I think it has not fallen, it falsifies the hypothesis That human activity caused the destruction of the ozone layer - because there is nothing to explain. Note that the position in front of the depletion of ozone observation does not prove that human activities are causing the destruction of the ozone layer. Something, but not necessarily of human activity.

Positive feedback is exhausted and then open the question of natural or human activities. All we can do for some is to falsify the hypothesis that human activity has caused the destruction of the ozone layer. What actually happened was the discovery of the ozone layer over the Antarctic ozone hole's mass, with significant ozone depletion. Combined with a healthy observational data of any kind, for which the Nobel Prize, the ozone hole would swift and decisive action in the international form of the Montreal Protocol. Thus, although initially only to distort the situation, a great weight of evidence can be very convincing in the truth of hypotheses. The risk that we are causing the ozone hole was very large.

The same scientific method is not applicable in the case of debate global warming. In fact, this method can not, in my view, be applied. However, discussions are mainly represented as scientific debate, with political and economic consequences that follow relied on the results of objective scientific discussion. I maintain that no objective scientific debate, simply because the rules of science are not met. Instead, I propose that this discussion assumes the risk. What is the risk of climate skeptics wrong? What is the risk to the environment (if it is) that he would not? Instead of continuing in this dry, I justify my position, telling an imaginary conversation between two physicists, Horace, and Twinkle.

Before you begin, remember, there are two kinds of skeptics of climate skeptics who deny the absolute existence of global warming at all, and skeptics of climate relative who agrees that there is global warming but is not blame our introduction of additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is not our fault. Rather, the observed warming is only part of the natural cycle of the earth. Horace is somewhere in between, mostly relatives, but with a touch of absolute.

Enter Horatio and Twinkle, sitting with his coffee in the dining room on the seventh floor of a well-known Department of Physics, who will remain nameless. Dining room overlooking the harbor, and you can change the path to the hills on a day to see clearly how the present. But this is not the position that they are interested. This is an old argument, that focus. Horace is a climate skeptic. Twinkle, his friend, believes that humans cause global warming, and that "something must be done.

"This climate of the Copenhagen meeting began," says Twinkle to get the ball rolling.

"Yes," replies Horatio. "Let's see if a good case for this time to come, rather than simply repeat the catechism faithful defenders of the environment!

And now, "murmurs Twinkle, sipping coffee.

"Well, you know what I mean, says Horace." You can see that these emails from the University of East Anglia say. It 's a bit increased.

"I've read them. I guess I should respond Twinkle. But it is a normal story. Sceptics say that e-mail to change everything, and great people say that nothing will change. You have heard that the Saudi representative to the meeting in Copenhagen. Talk your interests.

"Yes, but you can! Climate change over time, changing a lot. How do we know that, as a result of human activities?

"Look, we know something. Outset weather people tell us that the temperature is rising so fast that it must be unnatural. And all models show that if we have more CO2 in the atmosphere cause temperature rise. We created the CO2 'atmosphere. The temperature is rising. of course!

"Yes, you are basically good. I agree that more or less. I'm not so sure the temperature is increased. But this is not the point.

"What's the point then? Twinkle adds pauses, as Horace with a cup of coffee.

Horace takes her hand.

"You know, like me that the model .....' begins.

"Can I come with you? Socrates, the new professor of Greek, put the tray on the table beside them.

"Yes, yes, of course, says Twinkle." We just talked about the climate in Copenhagen.

"Yes, I'm just saying that climate models are really bad" Horace again. Socrates Horatio nods and continues. 'Biosphere is not bound up, and worst of all, from a physical point of view, the treatment of clouds just totally unrealistic. We simply can not predict the amount of temperature increase due to the presence of a certain amount of CO2' atmosphere.

"These models are really that bad? Socrates asks.

"Clouds are the key, says Horace.

"Then you do not trust any predictions of the model?" Asks Socrates.

"In addition to the overall result of the introduction of CO2 in the atmosphere caused the earth - Horace agree," introduces Twinkle.

"Yes, but like the earth?" Said Horace. "I do not think people came out with figures. There is very little influence. Maybe it does not matter what people Have done. Perhaps the most important changes are very natural. Models proves nothing!

"Oh, God!" Twinkle says. It is unclear whether this is a common expression of anxiety or attention with his friend and colleague of Horace. Three sat in silence a few minutes, drinking coffee. The silence is broken Socrates.

"Can I ask you, Horatio?

"Of course!

'If I ask you, that no evidence would have changed his mind and said it was wrong, what you reply''

"You mean that the observational data?

"If you want answers to Socrates.

"Well, 'says Horace. And then there is a silence, as he reflects on the question." This is an interesting question.

"He wanted to see the growth temperature of 10 degrees, and he knows that he is mistaken," Twinkle introduces cunning.

"I never said that!" Horace said, smiling at his friend.

"Well, we are waiting. What would convince you're wrong? Requests Twinkle.

"Maybe I can ask the same question, Twinkle? Said Socrates. What would convince the skeptics were right all the time?

"The fall of 10 degrees temperature! Horace says, laughing.

There is silence. But this time it's different kinds of silence. Horace and thought Twinkle.

'Well, of course, Twinkle, says over time, "when we went to introduce the current rate of atmospheric CO2 and temperature rise, and then ..... say in the next 50 years .. .. "

"What are you, Horace?" Socrates asked how to stop fading.

I'm not sure that there is one thing to prove to me that people give answers that significant global warming Horace. Maybe a lot of factors, "he adds.

Horace and Twinkle look and frowned. Both know that the theory is a theory, as it is objectionable in principle in an experiment or observation - or at least decent call "thought experiment. Socrates crystallizes their concerns.

"I wonder if you could say that global warming is not so much a theory about how you feel?" It gives you an embarrassed chuckle.

"Well, there are things that can prove one way or another. Want me to say that this is far from proven, says Horace.

"Yes." But asked what would be our position to refute! Twinkle Bulb. In addition, all experiments that do not consider the experiments that we are willing to risk to do, right? How can I do nothing and wait 50 years! This is the problem!

Horace pulls a wry face, but are not actively agree.

"We can not refer to the question of perceived risks? Asks Socrates. It stops time." As global warming seems compelling, "he added.

"You say that with great risk? - I was right, and it is not, and vice versa? Requests Twinkle

"Hey, wait, I. ..." Horace said, see the issue.

"Well, it must be admitted, because none of us are acceptable evidence, or Rather, a refutation, is down on the risks, is not it? Interrupt Twinkle.

"You mean the more serious consequences if the skeptics are wrong? Socrates asked Twinkle.

"I must say, Twinkle says," is not it? "

"Look, it's crazy." Horace is a bit 'crazy. "Therefore, nobody could have predicted the end of the world, but because we can not disprove, we need to place ITS head. This is not science, it's anarchy!

"Yes, this is a good philosophy," says Twinkle. " I totally agree with you that if I have a crazy theory, this is for me to try to prove that is not for you to refute. But there are two things. First, we agree that global warming can not be proved or disproved in a way that satisfies us. Secondly, the theory is not crazy .... in reality, not just a theory, Socrates turned to us. But this is a good qualitative basis, although not quantitative, agree. I think, Socrates asked the right question. Comments that convince you that you're wrong? I have no answer. You do not understand. The risk we are talking about, not worthy of rigorous science. The risk of error is worse, Horatio, than risk my mistakes. "

Horace grumble, but retains his world.

What follows from this conclusion? I suspect most people will look at Twinkle. Adverse effects of environmental misconduct, of course, because we are many resources, human and natural, very effective in combating a nonexistent problem to use. Perhaps global economic growth will be slower than usual. However, as Horace wrong, and we do little or nothing in his opinion, no single package of bank's survival, advertisements, chairman of the Federal Reserve System of wisdom from any source, to save us from a series of disasters, the least that can be major problems. Most people, almost all countries at the meeting in Copenhagen, the defender of the "precautionary principle. They are divided on the side of Twinkle. Precautions should be taken.

Parts of the above vision is a bit 'different from the global warming debate. This is a relief, because the way the discussion tends to believe that it is absolutely impossible for a layman to understand that scientists believe, even when the disputes between environmentalists alone. It is said that sea level rise of 3 feet, others say six feet! How to know who is right? You can not make your mind from the effects of global warming, climate scientists to listen to dissent, that the better the general pattern of atmospheric circulation on Earth! In my opinion, the above is that the global warming debate is not based on science, because the correct application of standard scientific arguments are not sufficient. Thus, the non-scientist simply make their own choices based on how they see the danger, not realizing that their lack of experience prevent them from holding opinions.

UFO's On the Record

No one on Earth has had the technology to build UFOs.  It is only in the past year that we have made the discoveries necessary and confirmed necessary possibilities for building them ourselves.  At least now it is possible to establish a targeted program to build the craft with some hope of success.

Those who have followed my posts know also that there is conforming evidence to support the UFOs and their occupants are part of a human space based civilization established around twenty thousand years ago who acted 13,000 years ago to end the northern Ice Age.

Leslie Kean has done us a service by introducing high value authoritative resources to the subject in one book.  This will give the subject weight in the US that it has lacked.

It is noteworthy that a number of countries have thrown their data out on the common pool.  The US needs to do the same, since it is obvious that they are just as clueless and that sitting on the evidence is solving nothing.

UFOs On the Record: debunkers beware

by Billy Cox

August 10th, 2010

http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/11096/ufos-on-the-record-debunkers-beware/?pa=all&tc=pgall

In a different culture, maybe, and were this any other issue, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record would be a game-changer. And it still could be. The long-anticipated results of Leslie Kean’s 10-year investigation reach retailers today with the sort of pedigree that makes it the most important book on UFOs in a generation.

From the foreword by former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta — who reiterates his longstanding contention that any UFO investigation should be transparent — to endorsements by grounded luminaries such as physicist Michio Kaku, UFOs On the Record avoids New Age hokum and will expose debunkers as willfully uninformed, dishonest and/or 100 percent irrelevant.

Readers who’ve followed Kean’s work will know she draws most heavily from the watershed 2007 press conference she staged with documentary filmmaker James Fox. That’s when an international cast of characters — the impeccably credentialed subjects of the book’s subtitle — convened in Washington to urge the U.S. to reopen its scientific investigation of UFOs.

No reason to revisit those details here; you can check it out at theCoalition for Freedom of Information or at UFOs On the Record.  Ten of those panelists, including two pilots who attacked UFOs in jet fighters, contributed to the the book. As well as the former head of the French equivalent of NASA and Brazil’s chief of Air Force operations.

Given the potential windfall of knowledge embodied by the phenomena, the broader, more dispiriting portrait that emerges is of a nation in an intellectual stupor, conditioned to dismiss the persistent mystery with derision and punchlines. Unable to muster little more than a 40-year-old press release in defense of its inability to secure its own air space, the United States finds itself increasingly isolated amid a bewildered and increasingly vocal global community.

With France leading the way, 13 countries from Uruguay to the United Kingdom have transferred government UFO records into the public domain. But information-sharing overtures by foreign representatives are greeted with silence by Uncle Sam. The temptation is to argue the U.S. has no incentive to participate due to its likely hoarding of UFO stash inside deep-black Special Access Programs, but Kean wisely chooses not to linger at the conspiracy trough.

Kean contends “the fundamental problem afflicting true understanding of UFOs is ignorance, not secrecy, and that this ignorance is accepted because it serves a political purpose.” That purpose, she continues, is “to maintain the imperative that we must avoid facing the possibility that anyUFOs could be extraterrestrial. For if they were, that would mean that these miraculous craft, vehicles, objects of unknown original — whatever they are — are generated by a more powerful ‘other’ from somewhere else.”

Her reasoning is sharpened by two political science professors, Dr. Alexander Wendt of Ohio State University, and the University of Minnesota’s Dr. Raymond Duvall, who contribute an essay, “Militant Agnosticism and the UFO Taboo.” They make a strong case that “the problem of UFO ignorance is fundamentally political before it is scientific.”

UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record is a tightly-constructed call to arms — a plea, actually, against overwhelming cultural odds — for the renewal of honest scientific inquiry into the most profound challenge of our age. The book belongs on the Science, Current Events, or Political Science sections of the chain-store shelves.

But America is hard-wired for cliches. If precedent holds and it winds up in the Occult or Astrology ghetto next to the tarot cards and the healing crystals, Kean’s research will have strikes against it before it can even step up to the plate. As always, perception, not reality, is the heavy hitter at the front gate.

Chinese Global Exploration

There is ample evidence emerging that the Chinese launched a national effort to map the globe in its entirety during the fifteenth century.  These maps in some form or the other found their way back to Europe and provide a basis for European efforts to do the same.  Thus a lot of information was mapped that could not be explained away through accidental European voyaging.

Here we have more on one of those Chinese maps.

We have evidence that trade and colonies were established on the West Coast of the Americas.  This include with the Maya, California and recently the Charlottes.  Other locales have likely remained hidden.

We know when it all ended.  We do not really know how long the process was undertaken.  The expedition of Zhang He was far too great to be a sudden roll of the dice.  It was more the last throw of possibly centuries of private marine enterprise.  That last expedition was both following known pathways but picking specific locales to study when stepping out.

They also were prepped to establish several colonies along the way.

It is up to archeology now that we have a good working hypothesis.

Nailing their colors to the mast

By Mike Peters (China Daily)

Updated: 2010-07-09 09:35

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2010-07/09/content_10086210.htm

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/images/attachement/jpg/site1/20100709/0023ae9885da0da0c19911.jpg

World Map in Book 5 - Dr Hendon M Harris, Jr Collection, from The

Asiatic Fathers of America.

The treasure trove of seafaring knowledge amassed by the Chinese over the centuries is at the heart of a debate over the extent of their ancient voyages, Mike Peters reports

A bright-eyed, middle-aged woman from the state of Virginia, United States, sits waiting for her next interview in a Lido-area hotel lobby. She's a retired social worker, a no-nonsense lady who speaks quietly and deliberately. But she is in town to help answer the question: Did medieval Chinese navigators reach the Americas years before Christopher Columbus? Just a few years ago, Charlotte Harris Rees started thinking that her late father might have held the key to one of history's great mysteries.

"Few people expect ever to own documents that could change world history," Harris writes in her 2008 book, Secret Maps of the Ancient World, "and neither did we. Yet for decades, under my brother's bed, lay ancient Asian maps that we, our father's seven children, inherited from him. Some believe that they may contain a secret of the ancient world."

That possibility brought Rees to Asia this month for two weeks of conferences and speeches. Her first stop focused on Zheng He (1371-1435), the 15th-century Chinese admiral who was dispatched by Emperor Zhu Di to "proceed all the way to the end of the Earth".

An international conference this week in Malaka, Malaysia - a seafarer's crossroads for centuries that was an important base for Zheng He - explored questions about Africa. Zheng certainly got there, but exactly where and the extent of his fleet's settlements and activities have engaged curious scholars for centuries.

The question that excites Rees, however, is whether Zheng He - and perhaps his Chinese predecessors - sailed to America as well.

Academics have batted around that idea for centuries, but it wasn't until Gavin Menzies published his bestselling book, 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, eight years ago that the debate became an international firestorm. One of the sparks landed on Rees, who read 1421 with amazement and realized that the author was trying to connect the same dots her father had followed in his research.

"When I was a social worker straight out of college, many of my clients in Oklahoma were American Indians who looked very Asian to me," she says today. "But the idea of Chinese coming to America 4,200 years ago in boats sounded pretty far-fetched then."

But her father, Hendon M Harris Jr, a child of Christian missionaries who worked in several regions of China, was fascinated by the possibility. He picked up references to ancient Chinese navigators from several sources, including the ancient classic Shan Hai Jing (Collection of the Mountains and Seas), said to have been written in 2,200 BC and quoted in Chinese history and literature ever since.

The Shan Hai Jing tells of Chinese travel to the four corners of the earth, says Rees, "including a beautiful land to the east of China named Fu Sang."

Then one day in 1972, Harris was browsing in an antique shop in Shouth Korea, looking for gifts to take home to his family in the United States. He was examining the wares on display when the shopkeeper said, "I have a map in the back. Would you like to see that?"

"Father wasn't really into collecting maps - not then! - but he said, 'Yes,'" the daughter says. And when the map was spread out, as he recounted to his children years later, "he had to sit down because he felt himself shaking all over".

What Harris saw was a world map block-printed in an ancient Shang (16th century to 11th century BC) Chinese style, with China at the center and a circular continent looping around the edges of the page. He immediately related this to the Fu Sang of the Shan Hai Jing. In subsequent years Harris found copies of similar maps in the collections of museums and universities.

However, opinion is divided over the identity of Fu Sang, many believe it refers to somewhere in America; while others claim it is more likely to be Japan.

A year later, Harris wrote The Asiatic Fathers of America: Chinese Discovery and Colonization of Ancient America. It got some notice in academic circles, but it was never the pop-culture phenomenon of 1421, though its premise was much more controversial.

For while Menzies' book credits the voyages of Zheng He and the admirals under him with the discovery of the world beyond China, Harris argues that Zheng He set sail with maps made from information acquired hundreds, even thousands of years earlier.

Charlotte Harris Rees finds that argument persuasive. Her speech in Malaka this week was titled Zheng He's Inheritance, and she told her audience that "starting a study of Chinese sea travel with Zheng He is like beginning a study of space travel with a trip to Mars".

Chinese seafaring was refined over centuries, she believes. "Zheng He could not have been as successful as he was, without the treasure trove of knowledge and invention amassed by the Chinese over many years of sea travel."

An illustration from the July 2005 issue of National Geographic compares Zheng He's largest ships to European vessels of the same era. The article contends that the Chinese admiral's fleet contained up to 62 baochuan, or treasure ships, that measured 122 m by 52 m.

"You could fit all of Columbus' ships and all of Vasco da Gama's on a single deck of a ship that size," Rees says in awe. Rees talks about her father's research today with the passion of a religious convert. She talks of ancient Chinese shipwrecks off the US Pacific coast. Of maps Columbus and Magellan are said to have used on their voyages. Of DNA testing on Native Americans, with undisputed links to ancient Chinese.

So is she convinced that Chinese adventurers, not Columbus, "discovered America"?

"I don't pretend to know the answers," she says, smiling. "But as we find more and more evidence, I think we have to keep trying to put it together until we do know."

Q: Why are the ideas in your book so controversial?

A: It's not easy to rewrite history. I'm not a PhD, and if I were to pursue a PhD, I'd need university and academic mentors who supported the research. Most experts on the discovery of America have invested their lives and careers documenting a different view, a Eurocentric view.

It wasn't always that way, though. I have seen copies of US history textbooks from around 1905, which say that the Chinese have been in America for at least 1,000 years. So this isn't a new idea. But by around 1910 there were new academic pressures, and then came the Columbus Day national holiday. After that, school kids in the US stopped hearing about Chinese coming to America.

Q: It seems that a lot of Chinese scholars are as reluctant to embrace the idea as US scholars are. Why?

A: There is immense interest here. But it can't be proved, especially with Chinese documents, because, soon after the voyages of Zheng He, there was a tremendous reaction against these outside adventures and the strain such shipbuilding put on the country's economy. Ships, maps, records were all destroyed and China became an inward-looking society for centuries. That's why it's easier to find ancient maps that tell the story in Korea, where they were not destroyed by government order, than it is in China.

Q: The US Library of Congress recently exhibited a famous map made by Matteo Ricci, the Italian Jesuit, which the Library said was the first known map of the Americas with Chinese inscriptions. You challenged that publicly.

A: It was a surprising thing for the Library of Congress to say. Many people doing research in this area have seen older maps of the Americas with Chinese writing. One of them is in the Library of Congress' own collection, though they have yet to validate or disprove its age.

Q. Is this about ethnic bias?

A: Well, it's true that many Western scholars are invested in the history of the European discovery of America. But it may be a matter of money, too. In May 2003, the Library of Congress completed their purchase of the Waldseemuller Map of the world for $10 million. Five million came from Congress and the other $5 million from donors. According to their 2003 press release that map was the "first image of the outline of the continents of the world as we know them today - Martin Waldseemuller's monumental 1507 map". That indeed is a beautiful map. However, if the Library of Congress now, only seven years later, admits that any other map that shows the American continents predates the Waldseemuller, then perhaps Congress and the donors who helped purchase the Waldseemuller will complain their money was misspent.

Many scholars contend that since the Waldseemuller and other European maps showed the Pacific Coast of the Americas before Europeans had been there, that they had to be copied from earlier maps.

Q: People who read your book, your father's book and Gavin Menzies' book can easily be overwhelmed by all of the evidence you cite. But critics contend most of it is circumstantial. Of everything you've seen and learned about, what has been the most convincing evidence for you?

A: DNA evidence, which is quite recent. We've known for a long time that the "Chinese blue spot", which appears on the buttocks of babies and then disappears, is also seen at birth in many Native American communities. Now we know that five distinct genetic markers match ancient Chinese with modern Native Americans. That's evidence that you can take to court and win.

See Through Solar Panels

This is interesting though I would like to see more detail.  The use of organics asks more questions than it answers.  That it can out perform thin film by an order of magnitude implies converting over a much broader spectrum.  So far so good.  Can it be sustained?

This is a new entrant and the claims are at least promising.  Even if the production is nort particularly impressive, it will still have a market merely to make use of a passive resource.  Recall windows must be specially made to begin with, and it will be no trick at all folding this into the supply chain.

Of course, if they can establish sustainable high yield at a low effective cost base, every office building will soon convert and so will everyone else.  Recall how we all use double pane windows these days.

World's First-of-Its-Kind See-Thru Glass SolarWindow Capable Of Generating Electricity

by Staff Writers

Burtonsville MD (SPX) Jul 27, 2010

http://www.solardaily.com/reports/World_First_of_Its_Kind_See_Thru_Glass_SolarWindow_Capable_Of_Generating_Electricity_999.html

Researchers Apply Coating to Commercial Glass, Demonstrating Transparency of New Energy's SolarWindow Capable of Generating Electricity, Currently Under Development. Source: New Energy Technologies, Inc.

http://www.spacedaily.com/images-lg/new-energy-technologies-solarwindow-pv-lg.jpg

New Energy Technologies is pleased to announce that researchers developing its proprietary SolarWindow technology have achieved major scientific and technical breakthroughs, allowing the Company to unveil a working prototype of the world's first-ever glass window capable of generating electricity in the upcoming weeks.

Until now, solar panels have remained opaque, with the prospect of creating a see-thru glass window capable of generating electricity limited by the use of metals and various expensive processes which block visibility and prevent light from passing through glass surfaces.

New Energy's ability to generate electricity on see-thru glass is made possible by making use of the world's smallest working organic solar cells, developed by Dr. Xiaomei Jiang at the University of South Florida. Unlike conventional solar systems, New Energy's solar cells generate electricity from both natural and artificial light sources, outperforming today's commercial solar and thin-film technologies by as much as 10-fold.

New Energy's SolarWindow technology is under development for potential application in the estimated 5 million commercial buildings in America (Energy Information Administration) and more than 80 million single detached homes.

"We're always keen to see innovations in our laboratories turn into meaningful commercial products," stated Valerie McDevitt, Assistant Vice President for Research, Division of Patents and Licensing, University of South Florida. "We very much look forward to the commercial development of New Energy's SolarWindow technology, which, if successful, could literally transform the way in which we view the use of solar energy for our homes, offices, and commercial buildings."

The University of South Florida Research Foundation has licensed Dr. Xiaomei Jiang's groundbreaking discovery and important commercial processes and applications to New Energy Solar Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of New Energy Technologies, Inc.

"It's very exciting to see that our ongoing research has led to several significant breakthroughs with transparency and the production of electricity on see-thru glass," explained Mr. Meetesh V. Patel, President and CEO of New Energy Technologies, Inc. "For the first time ever, these advances have allowed us to develop an early-scale working prototype of the technology, which I very much look forward to unveiling in the upcoming weeks."

Ozone Improves Biofuel Production Efficiency

It is of some interest that direct application of ozone degrades the lignin allowing the carbohydrates to be attacked and converted to sugars.  It will not be easy, but it opens another avenue.

Ozone is a bit tricky to produce and expensive and may well limit this method to the laboratory.

However, a process protocol that starts and ends dry is a rather good beginning and leaves a lot of options open for further treatment and no immediate waste stream.

A friend of mine has been testing ozone on ores to some effect, so this is not too surprising.

New Technique Improves Efficiency Of Biofuel Production

by Staff Writers

Raleigh NC (SPX) Jul 06, 2010

http://www.biofueldaily.com/reports/New_Technique_Improves_Efficiency_Of_Biofuel_Production_999.html

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a more efficient technique for producing biofuels from woody plants that significantly reduces the waste that results from conventional biofuel production techniques. The technique is a significant step toward creating a commercially viable new source of biofuels.

"This technique makes the process more efficient and less expensive," says Dr. Ratna Sharma-Shivappa, associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering at NC State and co-author of the research. "The technique could open the door to making lignin-rich plant matter a commercially viable feedstock for biofuels, curtailing biofuel's reliance on staple food crops."

Traditionally, to make ethanol, butanol or other biofuels, producers have used corn, beets or other plant matter that is high in starches or simple sugars. However, since those crops are also significant staple foods, biofuels are competing with people for those crops.

However, other forms of biomass - such as switchgrass or inedible corn stalks - can also be used to make biofuels. But these other crops pose their own problem: their energy potential is locked away inside the plant's lignin - the woody, protective material that provides each plant's structural support.

Breaking down that lignin to reach the plant's component carbohydrates is an essential first step toward making biofuels.

At present, researchers exploring how to create biofuels from this so-called "woody" material treat the plant matter with harsh chemicals that break it down into a carbohydrate-rich substance and a liquid waste stream. These carbohydrates are then exposed to enzymes that turn the carbohydrates into sugars that can be fermented to make ethanol or butanol.

This technique often results in a significant portion of the plant's carbohydrates being siphoned off with the liquid waste stream. Researchers must either incorporate additional processes to retrieve those carbohydrates, or lose them altogether.

But now researchers from NC State have developed a new way to free the carbohydrates from the lignin. By exposing the plant matter to gaseous ozone, with very little moisture, they are able to produce a carbohydrate-rich solid with no solid or liquid waste.

"This is more efficient because it degrades the lignin very effectively and there is little or no loss of the plant's carbohydrates," Sharma-Shivappa says. "The solid can then go directly to the enzymes to produce the sugars necessary for biofuel production."

Sharma notes that the process itself is more expensive than using a bath of harsh chemicals to free the carbohydrates, but is ultimately more cost-effective because it makes more efficient use of the plant matter.

The researchers have recently received a grant from the Center for Bioenergy Research and Development to fine-tune the process for use with switchgrass and miscanthus grass. "Our eventual goal is to use this technique for any type of feedstock, to produce any biofuel or biochemical that can use these sugars," Sharma-Shivappa says.

The research, "Effect of ozonolysis on bioconversion of miscanthus to bioethanol," was co-authored by Sharma-Shivappa, NC State Ph.D. student Anushadevi Panneerselvam, Dr. Praveen Kolar, an assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering at NC State, Dr. Thomas Ranney, a professor of horticultural science at NC State, and Dr. Steve Peretti, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State.

The research is partially funded by the Biofuels Center of North Carolina and was presented June 23 at the 2010 Annual International Meeting of the American Society for Agricultural and Biological Engineers in Pittsburgh, PA.

NC State's Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering is a joint department of the university's College of Engineering and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Unregulated Greed has Destroyed the Capitalist System

There is much to agree with and plenty to argue against with here but the view point needs to be read.

1                    The break up of AT&T was not a mistake.  I will take it further, at some point. All super large organizations need to be subdivided on some rational basis.  ATT&T actually did an excellent job in that regard.  Others may well make a hash out of it.

My reasoning is simple.  Cheaper access to more money through size is usually a serious error because it ultimately lowers the real return that management may achieve.  There are exceptions, yet Warren Buffet has found his point of resistance.  It is vastly more profitable to nurture many small companies that are then spun out, as actually happened under ATT&T.

Besides, the digital age was happening and the wall of monopoly barriers needed to be pulled down as fast as possible.  This way it took less than a decade and prevented billions of dollars been diverted to monopoly profits and paychecks.

2          Off shoring is a problem hugely driven by the failure of the US to reform its tax code.  By not imposing a VAT tax, the USA gives every other country an economic advantage. That encourages the transfer of manufacturing offshore.  Solve that and much of the problem will fade as a far leveler playing field will exist.

Right now a company has an equal opportunity to place a factory in the US or India.  Cheap labor is one of a very short list of deciding factors but tax on sales is an immediate claim on cash flow.  It you are in the USA you pay it on all exports now, often before you get paid.  It you are in the rest of the world, you pay it also, but you offset it with tax you pay on costs.  This is a huge and immediate advantage that can not be dodged.

Since most investments are initially deemed as risky, the corporation that plans to export will find it more prudent to build were this drag does not exist.

Otherwise, stop counting their jobs and observe that our incomes have not risen appreciably since 1980, yet our purchasing power from the same dollar bill has leapt ahead, not in specifics but in the expansion of cheaper choices.

3          Yes, greed must be regulated.  Except the pigs have the coin to buy off the politicians who are ill educated economically and are all suckers to begin with.  Tell me how to change that now.

"Unregulated Greed has Destroyed the Capitalist System": The Big Things That Matter And The Little Things That Annoy

By Paul Craig Roberts

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20587

I write about major problems:  the collapsing US economy, wars based on lies and deception, the police state based on “the war on terror” and other fabrications such as those orchestrated by corrupt police and prosecutors, who boost their performance reports by convicting the innocent, and so on.  America is a very distressing place. The fact that so many Americans are taken in by the lies told by “their” government makes America all the more depressing.

Often, however, it is small annoyances that waste Americans’ time and drive up blood pressures. One of the worst things that ever happened to Americans was the breakup of the AT&T telephone monopoly. As Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in 1981, if 150 percent of my time and energy had not been required to cure stagflation in the face of opposition from Wall Street and Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, I might have been able to prevent the destruction of the best communications service in the world, and one that was very inexpensive to customers. 

The assistant attorney general in charge of the “anti-trust case” against AT&T called me to ask if Treasury had an interest in how the case was resolved.  I went to Treasury Secretary Don Regan and told him that although my conservative and libertarian friends thought that the breakup of At&T was a great idea, their opinion was based entirely in ideology and that the practical effect would not be good for widows and orphans who had a blue chip stock to see them through life or for communications customers as deregulated communications would give the multiple communications corporations different interests than those of the customers. Under the regulated regime, AT&T was allowed a reasonable rate of return on its investment, and to stay out of trouble with regulators AT&T provided excellent and inexpensive service.

Secretary Regan reminded me of my memo to him detailing that Treasury was going to have a hard time getting President Reagan’s economic program, directed at curing the stagflation that had wrecked President Carter’s presidency, out of the Reagan administration.  The budget director, David Stockman, and his chief economist, Larry Kudlow, had lined up against it following the wishes of Wall Street, and the White House Chief of Staff James Baker and his deputy Richard Darman were representatives of VP George H.W. Bush and did not want s substantial Reagan success that would again threaten the Republican Establishment’s hold over the party. Baker and Darman wanted to be sure that George H. W. Bush, and not Jack Kemp, succeeded Ronald Reagan, and that required a muted Reagan success that they could claim as theirs for moderating an “extremist” program. 

]I told Secretary Regan that if I had another deputy assistant secretary, I could reach a reasonable conclusion whether the breakup of AT&T was sensible. He replied that he was sure that was the case, but that once I had three deputies the headlines in the Washington Post and New York Times, Business Week, Newsweek, and so on, would be: “Supply-sider builds empire at Treasury.”  He said it would sink me and that without me he could not get the President’s economic program out of the President’s administration. “Which do you want to do,” he asked, “save AT&T or cure stagflation?”

Curing stagflation gave America twenty more years. Ironically, the good times started to erode when Reagan’s other goal was accomplished and the Soviet Union dissolved in 1990. “The end of history” resulted in India and China opening their labor markets to American capitalists, who began producing offshore with foreign labor the products that they sold to Americans. The labor costs savings pushed up corporate profits, shareholders’ returns, and managerial bonuses. But it deprived Americans of middle class incomes and wrecked the balance of trade. The US income distribution and the trade deficit worsened.

Many progressives blame the worsening income distribution  on the Reagan tax rate reductions, but the real cause is the offshoring of manufacturing, industrial, and professional service jobs, such as software engineering.

None of us in the Reagan administration foresaw jobs offshoring as the consequence of Soviet collapse. We had no idea that by bringing down the Soviet Union we would be bringing down America. During the Reagan years India was socialist and would not allow foreign corporations, had they been interested, to touch their labor force. China was communist and no foreign capital could enter the country.

However, once the Soviet Union was gone from the earth, the remaining socialist and communist regimes decided to go with the winners. They opened to Western corporations and sucked jobs out of the developed West.

But this is a different story. To get back to deregulation, nothing has worked for the consumer since deregulation. Deregulation permitted corporations to impose their costs of operation on customers without having to send them a bill. For example, corporations use voice recognition technology to keep customers from salaried customer representatives. I remember when a customer with a problem could call a utility company or bank and have the problem immediately corrected.

No more. There was an error in my phone bill today, which I had corrected without result on two previous occasions. As everyone knows by now, it takes 10-15 minutes, usually, to get a live person who can actually fix the problem.  After listening to sales pitches for 12 minutes, I got a live person. Once the problem was understood, it was pronounced to be an upper level problem out of his hands. I waited another 10 minutes while he tried to reach a superior who had the code to fix the problem that the phone company had produced in my account. The entire time I listened to product advertisements. 

How many times has this happened to you?

Whoever invented these artificial voice capabilities is the enemy of mankind. Whomever a customer calls--utilities, credit card companies, banks, whatever, the customer gets a voice machine. Some voice machines never tell the customer how to get a live person who can, on occasion, actually fix the problem.

In my opinion, the strategy behind the endless delays is to cause the customers to give up, slam the telephone down and play the higher incorrect bill as it is cheaper in time and frustration to correcting the problem and being billed in the correct amount. These ripoffs of the customer are produced by Wall Street pressures for higher earnings. 

The frustrations, of course, multiply when one reaches an offshored service somewhere in the Third World. The incentive is to hang up and to pay the excessive bill so that phone, internet, or credit card services are not cut off

Had Don Regan and I known that the high speed Internet was in our future and that American corporations would use it to destroy the jobs traditionally filled by US university graduates, possibly we would have decided to save the regulated telephone monopoly and to deliver the economy over to stagflation.

The reason is that sooner or later something would have been done about stagflation, but nothing whatsoever has been done about offshoring. Saving the economy from offshoring would have been a greater achievement than saving the economy from stagflation. However, in my time stagflation, not offshoring, was the problem.

I regret that I did not have a crystal ball.

Deregulation proponents will say that the breakup of AT&T gave us cell phones and broadband, as if foreign regulated communication companiesand state monopolies do not provide cell phone service or high speed Internet connections. I can remember attending corporate board meetings years ago at which the European members had digital cell phones with which they could call most anywhere on earth, while we Americans with our analogue cell phones could hardly connect down the street.

What deregulation did was to permit Wall Street to push the deregulated industries-- phone service, airlines, trucking, and later Wall Street itself-- to focus on profits and not on service. Profits were increased by curtailing service, by pushing up prices and by  Wall Street creating fraudulent financial instruments, which the banksters used America’s reputation to market to the gullible at home and abroad. 

Consider air travel. Admit it, if you are my age you hate it. The deterioration in service over my lifetime is phenomenal. Studies in favor of airline deregulation focused on short flights between A and B and concluded that small airlines serving high density areas were more efficient because they were not regulated. What was left out of the analysis is that regulated airlines served low density areas and permitted free stopovers. For example, if one was flying from the US to Athens, Greece, the traveler could stopover in London, Paris, and Rome without additional charges. Moreover, passengers were fed hot meals even in tourist class. In those halcyon days, it was even possible to travel more comfortably in tourist class than in first class, because flights were not scheduled in keeping with full capacity. Several rows of seats might be unoccupied. It was possible to push up the arm rests on three or four center aisle seats, lay down and go to sleep.

Perhaps the best benefit of regulated air travel for passengers was that airlines had spare airliners. If one airplane had mechanical problems that could not be fixed within a reasonable time, a standby airliner was rolled out to enable passengers to meet their connections and designations. With deregulation, customer service is not important. The bottom line has eliminated spare airliners.

With deregulated airlines, Wall Street calls the tune. If your flight has a mechanical problem, you are stuck where you are unless you have some sort of privileged status that can bump passengers from later fully booked flights. “Studies” that focus only on discounted ticket price omit major costs of deregulation and thereby wrongly conclude that deregulation has benefited the consumer.

When trucking was regulated, truckers would stop to provide roadside assistant to stranded travelers. Today, with deregulated trucking, every minute counts toward the bottom line. Not only do truckers no longer stop to aid stranded travelers, they travel at excessive speeds that endanger automobile drivers. Trucks have expanded in size, weight and speed. Trucks raise the stress level on interstate highway drivers and destroy, at taxpayers expense, the roads on which they travel.

Conservatives and especially libertarians romanticize “free market unregulated capitalism.” They regard it as the best of all economic orders. However, with deregulated capitalism, every decision is a bottom-line decision that screws everyone except the shareholders and management. 

In America today there is no longer a connection between profits and the welfare of the people. Unregulated greed has destroyed the capitalist system, which now distributes excessive rewards to the few at the expense of the many.

If Marx and Lenin were alive today, the extraordinary greed with which Wall Street has infected capitalism would provide Marx and Lenin with a better case than they had in the 19th and early 20th centuries.