The Rising Tide
A "moulin" is a gigantic hole in a glacier, and not something we had to think about much in the past. However, in Greenland melting moulins are now the size of Niagra Falls, dumping enough fresh water into the ocean each day to quench the thirst of all New York City or London for an entire year. The melting water has the effect of lubricating the glaciers and, in turn, speeding up the melting process.
When scientists recently surveyed the glaciers of Iceland, they were shocked at the pace of the melt, revealing that previous estimates of melting speed and rising sea levels were, at best, "conservative."
The speed of the melting is so fast now that it is causing earthquakes with blocks of ice several kilometers in size breaking apart as a result.
While previous estimates placed the Greenland melt at 1000 years or more, scientists are quickly suggesting that the entire melt could occur in only a few decades -- with serious global consequences from rising sea levels happening within a few years.
The projected disaster areas in the US are large coastal locations like New York and Florida -- areas that would be particularly vulnerable to higher tides and large storms.
The Bush administration recently met to discuss the two largest global threats -- terrorism and global warming. The voluntary efforts Bush suggested for countries to lower greenhouse gas emissions will not be enough to reduce emissions by the 80% scientists are saying is needed.
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- 10-11-07
- Adam Elenbaas's blog
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The Positive?
We usually try and stay on the positive side of things on Reality Sandwich but the posts today really reminded me how much we are living as a species in ignorance, unconsciously aware of our connection with all beings.
We just aren't there yet with our consciousness to see the actual effects of extremely low frequency radiation as mentioned in the WiFi post, or even more disconcertedly, how each little action we all take is somehow affecting this gushing melts of polar ice.
I think we're getting there. As an energy healer I've seen plenty of miracles and leaps in human transformation to make me believe, but still when reading posts like this, I think we're allowed to have a bummer day.
Thanks, Adam, for covering this crucial news bit so thoughtfully.
Ecological consequences
The consequences of the ice caps melting and the sea level rise could potentially be genuinely catastrophic. Millions of people could be displaced if entire countries and cities go underwater. I personally have a suspicion that the authorities are well aware of the potential danger, but are not alerting us so that when the time comes, we will have to rely on them in a situation of ecological disaster. I have not forgotten the predictions made by a Pentagon report three years ago about the consequences of global warming.
This possible scenario is very bleak. There would be mass chaos in some areas of the world as people displaced by the floods try to find refuge in other places. Will this actually happen? Well, it seems likely to happen if drastic changes and a concerted effort are not made by the world governments to try to stop the melting of the glaciers. Whether or not this will occur in the 11th hour remains to be seen. Last year marked the first time that a populated island went completely underwater and everyone had to evacuate.
Yet another reason why I am glad to live in the mountains....
=)
What's our story?
I realize that subconsciously, I tend to feel that we are living in a fable, a story, and therefore that certain absolutely horrendous and destructive things won't happen simply because they would ruin the story, or change the plot-line entirely to one of chaos and desperate endurance in a world in utter collapse. I also keep thinking about the Hopi and their connection to the weather through rain dances etc. What if all weather and climate is actually a projection of the psyche?
I recommend Christopher Bache's book, "Dark Night, Early Dawn", which I think about all the time. He had a series of LSD therapy sessions where he saw massive breakdowns coming in the near future, but this causes new connections to be formed rapidly among the survivors, leading to a new world that was almost unrecognizable, from our reference point, within a few years.
Something like that seems entirely plausible.
Also, in terms of destroying the materialist paradigm, massive global coastal flooding would probably decimate the concept of private property for many millions of people, who would have to develop new forms of collaborative communities just to survive.
On this point, I recommend social ecologist Murray Bookchin's book, The Ecology of Freedom, where he argues for the end of hierarchy and the end of property to be replaced by "usufruct," meaning something is only yours when you are actually making use of it.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Mass Dreams of the Future
Daniel, your reply reminded me of an interview I read recently in What is Enlightenment? magazine with futurist John Petersen, president of the Arlington Institute. Petersen is questioned about his interest in 2012 and the ecological crises on the horizon, and he refers to a 1989 book, Mass Dreams of the Future, as providing his first hints of an approaching societal breakdown. I have yet to get my hands on the book, but here's a little of what he has to say about it:
"I discovered the work of Chet Snow and Helen Wambach who together wrote a book called Mass Dreams of the Future, based on their work doing remote viewing exercises. They asked twenty-five hundred people to envision the United States in the year 2030. About eighty-five percent of them reported the same thing: It's a place with no government, divided politically into four quadrants, and everyone is living in small communities, some of which are very defensive and full of guns, and others where people cooperate and work together.
"Then Stephan Schwartz, a man who was involved in the U.S. government's remote viewing program during the Cold War ... reported a very similar thing. In his exercises, he asked thousands of people what North America would look like in the year 2050, and they said: 'There's no government; it's split into four; there are these small communities.' Now at the time, Schwartz had no idea about the work Snow and Wambach were doing..."
Interesting correlations to your hunches of new social connections arising out of the chaos of an upturned world order...
mass dreams
I found "Mass Dreams of the Future" to be pretty unconvincing, however. As I discuss in "2012" with regard to hypnotherapists exploring alien abductions, there seems to be a very subtle transpersonal relationship in psychic arenas where the focus and preconceptions of the researchers has a profound influence on the results.
It may be that the phenomenon of how this psychic influencing could take place is almost more interesting than any data collected in these types of studies.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Bache's Dark Night, Early Dawn
Bache: On the relationship between the individual & collective
I've completed Bache's Dark Night, Early Dawn - Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind and found it fascinating, compelling and validating to experiences I understand.
I wondered about where I might go in finding more input from where he left off in his last appendix of that book -- where he was discussing the interplay between the individual, the collective, the extended invitation from the collective to the individual and the individual's acceptance of communion and mutual transmissions and further interplay of information, karma, conveyance of wisdom and alleviation of suffering, et al of which he was just reaching into the caldron to share -- as if waiting, contemplating his next movement.
If we can push the envelope to puncture through and experience and suffer the consequences of the burdens of joined transformation and transmutation of collective social responsibilities and the totality of issues, how can we also go about accessing mutual reverse support, from the growing and evolving accumulation found within that body, for having traversed this chasm of heart, mind, soul and dissolution of ego boundaries? This is an awkward and vulnerable place, and I'd love to read more on what others have found in this particular area. Any help Daniel? Thanks. Sometimes I find it hard to go it alone.
I couldn't agree more with
Surfin'
Adam: Is it more important to raise awareness OF what's happening, or can we raise consciousness of not just what is happening but why it is happening?
Daniel: What if all weather and climate is actually a projection of the psyche?
Humankind's mind and the Gaian mind are all intertwined.
If climate is effected/affected/projected by the psyche (and indirectly, of course it is. If only for being affected by technologies that are the product of human psyches.)
Then perhaps we shouldn't be talking about chaos!
But chaos is so tempting! Adam, your 911 analogy is bang on.
There is a flood of information about what is happening and why and the (potential) chaos of it all. But only a relatively tiny trickle regarding what people would love to see happen or how to harness or respond lovingly to all this. If one is so caught up in the shock - it is then difficult to envision and create something seperated, by leaps and bounds, from the shock. The vision becomes a simple response to the chaoshock. Rather than something that leaves catastrophe in the dust.
When alarming info such as this appears, I am inclined and provoked towards vitality, towards optimism. Water is symbolic of life. That which has been frozen is now flowing. Leaving in its wake; the death of ignorance.
As Morgan Brent and others have noted: "It's not about saving the planet, the planet is going to live. It's about saving the humans."
So, with the understanding the planet is shedding its skin - how do you want to live?
Raise your hands and breath to the sky.
Peter Gorman: Whether Curanderos Can Affect Weather
"...Julio was nothing compared to Pablo, the Matses headman on the Rio Galvez. Pablo really didn't like his pueblo to get rained on. His primary wife, Ma-Shu spent time every day keeping every blade of grass out of the common area of the village and the rain would, of course, make it sprout again. So when Pablo was in the village and rains would come, he'd take out his nu-nu and blow it to the four corners of the village: It never ceased to amaze me to watch the rain fall--often torrential rain-- on all sides of the village with none falling in the village itself."
"Don't fight forces. Use them." - Buckminster Fuller
Human a Defective Species
I can not help but finally conclude that our species maybe defective and self destructive by its use of its own imagination.
We have access to the information that is needed to see what our species is doing, but our addiction to a life style that leaves 80% of our fellow human beings without access to water in their dwellings is not enough to even consider this one fact.
Anyone who thinks we are living a story and its author will not leave us with a dead end ending certainly has not considered geological history of Earth.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
T. S. Eliot
Here's two links that may
Here's two links that may add some new information on global warming. One is a quick global warming test (http://www.globalwarmingheartland.org/GWQuiz/Testindex.html), the other is a more in depth look at the role of water vapor in global warming and how it may be more a contributor to temperature variations than carbon dioxide emissions (http://www.sensri.org/global-warming.html).
One thing that I've noticed is that global warming is usually protrayed in a very emotional way, by ayesayers and naysayers. The ayesayers bring in a fear factor that is reminiscent of the the wrath of god. Rather than threats of hell after death for not excepting christ as a savior there are threats of hell on earth for not accepting an eco-lifestyle. The naysayers go right for the selfish feelings which disregard any sort of responsiblity towards others now and in the future, trusting the market to sort all this out for them as they continue to do whatever they want. One side loses the human for the sake of the rest, the other loses the rest for the sake of the human. And both are left with something that's incomplete.
I appreciate looking for positive outcomes of potentially catastrophic situations as in global warming changing the social structure, but why do we have to wait for some apocalypse or some change that comes from outside our own abilities. If we took it more upon ourselves to take up these changes in consciousness more consciously then might we avoid some of these impending disasters. It was suggested that we are unconsciously calling disasters upon ourselves to wake ourselves up. Is that really necessary? There are so many things going on now, alternative communities, real living communities centered around farming and fostering togetherness, that we don't have to wait for a disaster to foce us to live more in harmony. It just takes getting off our asses, leaving our homes, and going to one. Or getting together with friends, buying some land and starting one. Ten people, four acres, a few buildings, some livestock, a large garden. You could be very near to being self sustaining. Maybe a couple of you could have a job to bring in money that could be but towards the needs of all, support a couple cars, and bring in whatever you can't on your own. Maybe this won't avert any disasters, but I believe that those who are already living in this way will be more prepared and less affected by them. They will be the survivors because their seeds were planted, rooting, and growing before the storm could come and wash them away.
intentional community database
icdb.org is a self-serve, open, free, multi-lingual and paperless database/directory, serving intentional communities, and their organizations, individuals and groups searching for intentional communities, and curious aliens observing the evolution of the earth's future civilization (and/or beyond) from afar...
http://icdb.org/
A mature eco-community
I’ve so recently come the feel the above-mentioned rain drops that my emotions are still in an upheaval, my rational mind is racing full speed to catch up, and I find my survival instincts urgently searching for the correct geographical landing field. (I live near the Jersey Shore).
I retire in seven years and find myself wondering if this is enough time???
While I appreciate that the larger positive vibe of this community serves to welcome and soothe, realistic posts such as those above demonstrate our willingness to fearlessly engage with the greater reality around us.
Sitting here, with nothing much to contribute to this healing dialog, I’m struck by the possibility that those already living in mature agrarian communities like the Pennsylvania Dutch, may well be among the most prepared and hearty survivors of the coming change. God Bless ‘em!!!
And bless you all for your contributions to my personal growth, I wish I had something other than awe to offer in return.