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117 comments on Peak Oil and the Environment Day 2 Part 1

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totoneila on May 10, 2006 - 2:32am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hello Reed,

Here is a link to Accuweather.com about record highs and a New Death Valley that they attribute to Global Warming.  They need a hurricane to bring moisture, but they also don't need a hurricane as this is where the Houston refineries are located!

http://headlines.accuweather.com/news-story.asp?partner=accuweather&myadc=0&traveler=0&a rticle=3

The national drought maps show this area to be even dryer than Arizona's deserts-- now that is hard to imagine!

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

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Reed on May 10, 2006 - 2:53am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thanks for the link, Totenella. Incredible! Things should be getting very interesting soon in the Gulf. Well, actually, everywhere.
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Reed on May 10, 2006 - 3:01am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Jeez, please forgive the misspelling of your handle, Totoneila. Getting late.
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totoneila on May 10, 2006 - 3:33am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hello Reed,

No Problemo on the misspelling.  Here is another very sad sign of extreme deforestation in Africa.  There must be a terrible shortage of sturdy mature trees across Africa,
and specifically in Zimbabwe:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/suffolk/4754515.stm

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

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Reed on May 10, 2006 - 4:05am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
totoneila, you certainly cover a lot of territory on the net. Some sick fucks out there.
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totoneila on May 10, 2006 - 4:49am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hello Reed,

Yeah, sad as this article is, this businessman is just a small scale version of the trillion dollar global arms industry.  Bullets, bombs, landmines, or even bayonets or machetes: man has a tremendous capacity to be very cruel to his neighbor.  I wish I knew a lot more about genetics--why didn't we evolve a DNA-impulse for suicide to outweigh our genetic propensity to lethally attack our fellow man?

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

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fleam on May 10, 2006 - 5:06am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Truthfully, I have a problem with the guys prosecuting him. He's selling pieces of wood, bolted together. And hanging is probably the least horrible way of dying over there. How about the Brit authorities take a close look at the companies and dictators they're doing business with first? No, they have to pick on a little guy to keep the public's attention away from their own much greater sins. If the Brit authorities wanted to actually do something, they'd try to stop the strife over there, but they don't want to alienate their best customers/clients/dirty work go-fers do they?
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totoneila on May 10, 2006 - 5:43am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hello Fleam,

Good points!  Hanging is a low cost, low profit, but an intensely low tech one-sided affair.  Much more profitable for the global arms industry to sell weaponry, to both sides in an African conflict, in exchange for their natural resources.  Then, just like Gillette Corp, there is much more money to be made selling replacement blades [bullets] than the initial razor [gun].  Isn't economics great!  =(

Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

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fleam on May 10, 2006 - 6:20am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
But of course!

It's just the hypocrisy that gets to me, don't actually do anything about the evil, find some little guy who appears to be doing evil and squash him like a bug.

I myself have a natural distaste for the idea of making and selling gibbets, but there's quite a body of evidence (haha) that people who make such stuff are more interested in being humane, and have more empathy for the one to be hanged than those who gave the order for them to be.

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totoneila on May 10, 2006 - 7:24pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hello Fleam,

I don't know if you watched the video interview of the farmer in my original link.  The included video link was a little erratic when I played it on my computer, but I believe the farmer mentioned how a well-designed gallows has a certain springiness to its operation.  I assume he means an optimal humane design incorporates this springiness to cleanly snap the spine vs just hanging there and slowly strangling to death.

Az has a good example of using sub-optimal hanging equipment:

http://www.geocities.com/zybt/globe.htm
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In a letter to a historian (Douglas D. Martin) a former reporter for the Phoenix Gazette, Jack Lefler, wrote the following about the 13 July 1936, execution:

The hanging of Earl Gardner was a very dramatic story and an exciting one to cover. . . . He was a juvenile delinquent and mean as hell, especially when loaded with tulapai. Marshal McKinney deputized everybody in sight, including reporters. We strutted the streets of Globe carrying rifles and stacking them in the corner of a bar when we went in for a drink. The gallows was an abandoned rock crusher in a canyon below Coolidge Dam. Earl was brought from the jail at Globe during the night and spent his last hours sitting in a car with the Rev. Uplegger. . . . I tried to interview them but they wouldn't talk. Reporters, officers and other witnesses lounged around campfires in the sandy bed of a wash through the night. There was quite a bit of boozing and horsing around. Earl went to the gallows without apparent concern and died a ghastly death. I was crouched in a corner of the crusher on a pile of gravel and damn near went through the trap after him. Earl's shoulder struck the side of the trap and broke his fall. He hung at the end of the rope gasping for 25 minutes until Maricopa County Sheriff Lon Jordan, a giant of a man, stepped down through the trap and put his weight on Earl's shoulder to tighten the noose and shut off his breathing.

The execution of Gardner by hanging was so ghastly that Congress passed a law stipulating that from henceforth all federal executions had to take place according to the manner "prescribed by the laws of the State within which the sentence is imposed." As the law in Arizona required that executions should be done by lethal gas (law passed in 1933), no more hangings were to be permitted in Arizona, not even on federally-supervised Indian reservations. Thus the Pinal Mountain region witnessed the last legal hanging ever permitted in Arizona.
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I believe some other state abolished hanging when a particularly obese subject's head was gruesomely separated from the body below.  Obviously, the Hangman, being a professional, was upset at this event, but it was the crowd going wild that precipitated the change to other forms of execution.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

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clifman on May 10, 2006 - 10:31am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Totoneila,

Love your posts.  There's no way for a species to evolve a tendency for suicide.  Any individual with such an inclination will tend not to pass it on to his/her offspring.  On the other hand, an inclination to attack our fellows increases the chances for success of our genes in the pool.  It ain't pretty, it just is.  Daniel Quinn takes an interesting look at this, especially in "The Story of B"

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tom deplume on May 10, 2006 - 12:02pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
There are many species like the Black Widow spider in which the sex act is effectively an act of suicide.
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clifman on May 10, 2006 - 2:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Good point.  Mantids and salmon would fit that also.  But these few species have evolved this not really as a self-limiting suicidal tendency, but rather as a self-perpetuating 'provide nutrients for the success of the next generation' tendency.  In the case of salmon, the nutrients they cycle from ocean to headwater are actually significant for the ecosystem as a whole.  Just one more way we've damaged the system without realizing the impact 'till after the fact.
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totoneila on May 10, 2006 - 8:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hello Clifman,

Wish it wasn't so.  Geneticists talk about 'survival of the fittest' but we long ago moved away from this natural paradigm of competing, like the other animals, by pure tooth and claw.

Instead, by using extrasomatic means; weapons that extend our reach beyond mere 'tooth and claw'; we fight in a manner that does not optimize natural fitness to our ecosystem's demands.  An atomic weapon is indiscriminate in determining physical fitness right on down to a knife or machete [Hutu-Tutsi conflict, for example]-- our bodies & mind have no genetic defense to extrasomatic attack.  It simply boils down to those that can last wield a weapon.  Even if the entire global landmass is converted to sand dunes, the last human to wield a rock in his fist, for crushing a skull, will become King.

Kenyans, and other professional marathoners, that regularly win these long distance events, are my model of what I believe Nature would want to survive in a purely physical competition.  I believe our ancient ancestors were very good at team-chasing a prey animal until it collapsed from exhaustion or was hopelessly cornered.  Our ability to sweat off excess heat and bipedalism vs four-legged animals and their panting give us a decided advantage over distance.  Hunting tactics and adopting weaponry and traps vastly increased the effectiveness of this rundown strategy for protein, especially if they could injure the animal first.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans SmaRter than Yeast?

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tom deplume on May 10, 2006 - 11:57am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Drought maps are based on departure from historical norms not on total precipitation. If rain in Michigan was only 20 inches this year and in Arizona was only 10 the map would show severe drought in Michigan but normal for Arizona even though Michigan had twice as much rain as Arizona.
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