Bare Bones Biology 242 – Fracking III repost

So here’s my answer to the question asked by the young man at the airing of the documentary Gasland in College Station in 2011 (https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2015/01/14/). Yes indeed, young man, every industry is having problems. That’s because the question is not fundamentally about industries. It’s about the universal law of cause and effect. About the common root cause of the effects that you don’t like, and the bigger question is whether you will decide to take actions that will make things better — or carry on doing the same behaviors that caused the problem in the first place.

No living thing on this earth has ever had the power, in the long term, to get whatever it wants without doing the behaviors (that is the causes) that will bring the effects that we want. If we sincerely want to solve the problems of industry and their root cause, then problem solving requires, first, knowing what we want; second, knowing what stands between us and getting what we want; and third, understanding that many actions are possible and useful for now, but most of them will cause more harm than good for future generations if we don’t know how the system functions.

So it’s your choice:
You can do nothing, or you can do something.
If you decide to do something, you can decide to:
Do something that will make you feel better;
or you can
Do something that will probably be a little more frustrating but will actually help improve the conditions.

The living earth ecosystem, not industry but the living Earth ecosystem – that’s what produces our air, water, earth and energy.

 

The living Earth ecosystem does not function by human values or aspirations. The living earth ecosystem functions very elegantly, incredibly, but definitely on the basis of cause and effect and according to the natural laws of physics and biology. So if we want to influence the living earth ecosystem we must do the actions, the causes, that will cause the effect we want. And not do the actions that cause adverse effects.

 

That’s all there is to it; and we know enough to do it; and there is no other way to get what we say we want.

For the past 100 years at least we have clearly understood our problem. We are unbalancing our ecosystem by taking away too much of the resources it needs to maintain its own balance of life, and using those resources for activities that poison the cycles required for its health and ours.

 

We know how to fix that. We fix it by reducing our growth of all kinds, because it is our growth that consumes the resources that the ecosystem needs to maintain its own healthy balance. There is no other way to get what we say we want, but we refuse to do it.

That’s why the oorporations don’t want us to understand our human problem. They would be required to help grow healthy communities rather than simply use the productivity of the existing communities to feather their own pocketbooks.

So your choice, young man, now, is to decide whether you want to make the earth more healthy, or if you would prefer to spend your time:

 

Doing nothing;
Trying to believe the corposystem fairy tales;
Resorting to powers like prayer or spirituality, that we cannot control, while ignoring or mis-using our own personal and social power;
Having fun;
Being miserable;
Blaming someone else;
Fighting over issues that will not change the outcomes;
Debating issues that will not change the outcomes;
Complaining;
Crying;
Pretending the glass is half full;
Pretending the glass is half empty;
Trying to win something;
Or trying yet harder to believe in the human value system that caused the problem in the first place.

Well, here’s my helpful hint. Your first next step should be to learn the difference between measurable facts, propaganda and opinions, including your own opinions.

 

At the same time you should:

 

(1) begin studying the laws of biology. The most basic laws, not all the details people try to befuddle you with. You will not learn about ecosystem health by studying physics or even physiology. It’s the ecosystem that’s sick, not a human or a proton.  A completely free download of the Bare Bones Ecology Energy Handbook is available on my website; I don’t even keep track of who downloads these.

 

(2) Stop arguing or fighting over anything, and begin problem solving discussions. Preferably with someone who read the same handbook. https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/pages_std-portrait-barebonesecology100627-finalfinalprinter.pdf

(3) Stop doing or supporting those actions that cause harm to the life of the ecosystem.

You’re right. Fracking is a symptom and not the cause of our problems. Stopping or limiting or confining fracking will not solve all the problems. Neither would anything else solve all the problems, instantly. Doing nothing will definitely not solve all the problems, and stopping or limiting or confining  fracking could prevent terminal destruction of the earth’s remaining fresh water, though it won’t improve the dirty air that now pollutes our beautiful Brazos Valley.

This is Bare Bones Biology, a production of http://FactFictionFancy.Wordpress.com and KEOS radio, 89.1 FM in Bryan Texas. A download of this radiocast available at:

traffic.libsyn.com/fff/Bare_Bones_Biology_242_-_Fracking_iii_repost.mp3
 

Links, References and Trackbacks:
https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2015/01/14/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1558250/

Click to access pages_std-portrait-barebonesecology100627-finalfinalprinter.pdf

Key Words: fresh water, fracking, propaganda, difference between measurable facts and opinions, industry, root cause, living earth ecosystem, human values, law of cause and effect, resources, poison, balance of life, growth, healthy balance, corporation, biology, physics, physiology.

Bare Bones Biology 240 – Reality Check

FAX to BLM 140812 (FAX receipt filed)

U.S. Bureau of Land Management
New Mexico State Office
Fax: 505-954-2010
• I am protesting parcels NM-2014-001, 004 through 015, which are in the Rio Chama Watershed and East of the Continental Divide.
•
I am an 80-year-old retired career basic scientist who planned to spend the rest of my life in the Brazos Valley of Texas and was forced to move because of the destruction of the quality of the air that was threatening my health. I am not alone. Large segments of the American people are becoming homeless or mobile. It is excellent business for the travel trailer parks, but not for building healthy productive communities.

I lived in this location in Texas for 35 years, and invested much of my life savings in four pieces of property in Texas. When I arrived in Texas the air was always as crystalline as that in northern New Mexico on a good day like today. When I left, the air was consistently, daily, gray with a dank smog that damaged my lungs and other organs.

This fug is still there on most days, over the entire region of the hill country and eastward, and up to about 200 feet elevation, and of course it continues to get worse as all those wells leak (I was threatened when I photographed effluent being poured into the local creek). This change took (for the worst of it) about 5 years and was very clearly, the most of it, the result of intensive fracking north of us.

In addition, of course, I know many other people who owned land and homes in the Brazos Valley of Texas who have had personal health problems, have been forced out of their rural homes, have lost their jobs to people brought in from outside to work the oil and gas jobs, and even have observed flights of birds drop from the air, killed or disabled by the fumes from those local processing stations the gas companies try to hide back in the boonies. I can document these things.

Some of the negative effects of fracking are very well known and well documented.. This destruction does not sit there on top of the BLM lands. Among these problems documented in regions of fracking, worldwide. Destruction of air, water and the almost completely unstudied underground biosystem are among them. Earthquakes that indicate unknown kinds of damage to underground bio and geo systems.

Our air water and soil are the commons. They belong to the people – not to the gas or oil companies, and not to the BLM. Money is not more important than the common welfare, and a little more money now will not solve the human problem of depleting resources. In fact, it will make the problem worse for children who are born today, because we did not try to solve the real human problem, but only tried to do more of what caused the problem in the first place.

I am a basic career biologist – not a technician or a technologist. Regardless of the opinions of technicians and technologists, I and other basic scientists know that what we do to the earth today we can never undo. Before we do anything we should deeply consider what will be the effect on the future of humans in New Mexico and beyond, because the effects of this toxic technology are not only local. But expand far across the land air and water, and into the future.

I sincerely hope I will not need to sell out and move away from New Mexico as fracking continues, but I hesitate to invest further – to buy a property where I can live in winter – until I find out to what extent New Mexico is willing to protect her citizens and the natural wealth of her Biosystems from fly-by-night developers who bring temporary jobs, use up the infrastructure of the communities, and then sell off a portion gas and oil overseas and go away to feed off of the next community. It is the function of government to protect its citizens from these snake-oil salesmen who promise temporary riches rather than help to grow sustainable communities for the welfare of all the people.

I have purchased land here. Again, I hope this is a place where I can live healthy to the end of my days.

Dr. M. Lynn Lamoreux
Lumberton, NM 87528

Copy to:
Rio Arriba Concerned Citizens
POB 934
Abiquiu, NM 87510

This is Bare Bones Biology, a production of FactFictionFancy.Wordpress.com and KEOS Radio, 89.1 in Bryan, TX

A copy of the podcast can be downloaded at:

Again, this link does not appear to respond to my efforts to open it, but the address is:
traffic.libsyn.com/fff/Bare_Bones_Biology_240F_-_Reality_Check.mp3
You have to precede the above with http://

References

For a more inclusive and very well informed account of the biological and human consequences of fracking go to Alternative Radio and download the audio or the transcript (or both) of Fracking and Public Health, Sandra Steingraber. http://www.alternativeradio.org/products/stes001

And while you are there: http://www.alternativeradio.org/products/lint001
Thomas Linzety. Corporations, communities and the environment.

Bare Bones Biology 238 – Reflux

Congratulations to The Eagle and to Gunnar Schade for publishing an accurate, straightforward, and conservative op-ed describing facts and opinions related to fracking (posted below and at http://www.theeagle.com/opinion/columnists/cs-needs-proper-drilling-setbacks/article_5c06e1bc-abf2-5b67-87c8-9ae1fd6c5347.html )

Facts, by definition, are realities that we cannot change. Opinions, we can change. That means we cannot improve our lives by trying to change an unchangeable set of facts. It does not mean there is nothing we can do to improve our lives. It does mean we should study the facts and use the facts to help us decide what will work and what will not work to improve our lives, and then argue our opinions about the options that are actually available to us.

Bare Bones Biology http://FactFictionFancy.Wordpress.com was created for just this reason: to clarify relationships among facts about biology, and opinions about biology so that we can make the wisest possible short-term choices that cause the least possible long-term harm to ourselves.

We cannot change facts, but we can change our opinions about how to deal with the facts. For example, we cannot change what fracking is doing to the air that everyone in the community must breath. That’s a fact of Life. We can change what we choose to do about fracking. That’s an available human choice.

In making that choice, another fact of Life should be considered. That is, what goes around, comes around. It is a fact that all the substances of Life (the atoms and molecules) recycle in the Biosystem. The fact is, if we put poisonous substances into the air, water and soil, then at least most of us must breathe, drink and/or eat poisonous substances.

We all know it’s true, what goes around comes around in the Biosystem. We don’t like to deal with it (http://www.celdf.org/), but that doesn’t change the fact. The modern “systems” expert Fritjof Capra (http://www.amazon.com/Systems-View-Life-Unifying-Vision/dp/1107011361/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419440846&sr=1-1&keywords=capra) knows it is true, even though he may think of it more like a business plan than a law of nature. Hundreds of thousands of people during the green revolution came to understand how our earth system functions to provide for our needs, and they embraced the Ecosystem (note, system) as their family of origin. Farther back in time, earlier cultures understood the dangers of fouling our own nest; for example, lessons we have learned in Ladakh (http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/) and other places are now being applied to problems in many modern communities, even Houston (www.transitionhouston.org/).

Do we need more examples? It’s a fact of life. In the real world, what goes around comes back around to affect our future welfare, the up side and the down side of our welfare, and we can’t change the facts of Life. What we can do is choose how we respond to them.

Of course, we also know that some people do not agree. For example the Eagle also published an opinion entitled: “Fracking Bans in Cities Hurt Everyone.” We know that is not a fact because I am someone and I have been very greatly harmed, physically, emotionally, financially, and permanently by oil and gas development in the Brazos Valley, as have many other people. So the idea that we all benefit from fracking is not a fact. It is an opinion. Furthermore, the author of that letter makes some rather extravagant claims that he does not support with data or references. In my opinion he cannot support some of these claims. So it seems that we have an argument between two sets of statements, each of which is supported by some facts and some opinions, with or without supporting evidence.

It seems to me foolish to argue opinions against facts. We can’t change the facts anyhow; it’s a non-discussable issue, a waste of our time that could be used to do something that actually would work to maintain or improve the common welfare. We do know that fracking is toxic to the “commons.” The commons is the air we all must breathe, the water we all must drink, and the soil in which our food grows. That’s a fact. The poisons we throw into the commons will go around and come back to bite us in the end.

If our real goal is to benefit everyone in our community, it should not be difficult to make a list of the most useful facts that limit our options. We could consult unaffiliated, well-informed experts. We then could post this list on the wall in city offices, and stop trying to change facts, admit to the reality of natural law, and begin to rationally discuss our opinions, considering both the up side and the down side of the options that remain to us, under three headings: 1) What is best for everyone now; 2) What is best for the welfare of the entire community. That would of course include people outside the cities who provide services of various kinds. 3) What is best for the future welfare of the children born into this community.

Obviously such a discussion is not an either/or debate that someone wins and someone else loses, and that’s a good thing, because either/or arguments do not lead to win-win solutions. Discussion is not the easiest answer to any problem because discussing real, fact-based issues is difficult. But such an effort, carried out with good will, could genuinely bring us one step closer, at least in BCS, to Peace on Earth and the welfare of all our citizens.

This is Bare Bones Biology, a production of FactFictionFancy and KEOS FM, 89.1 in Bryan, Texas.

A copy of this podcast can be downloaded at:

 

References:
http://FactFictionFancy.Wordpress.com

http://www.theeagle.com/opinion/columnists/cs-needs-proper-drilling-setbacks/article_5c06e1bc-abf2-
5b67-87c8-9ae1fd6c5347.html

Home

http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/

http://www.transitionhouston.org/

 

 

Copy of op-ed:

http://www.theeagle.com/opinion/columnists/cs-needs-proper-drilling-setbacks/article_5c06e1bc-abf2-5b67-87c8-9ae1fd6c5347.html

Posted: Saturday, December 20, 2014 12:00 am

By GUNNAR W. SCHADE

Special to The Eagle

While the shale boom is heralded as a new energy era and an economic windfall for all, the reality often looks much more mundane. Rarely in the mainstream news are there stories about the people directly affected by fracking operations near their homes, or the rapid degradation of air quality in those parts of the nation where fracking is dotting the landscape.

As geoscientists from across the world gathered two weeks ago in San Francisco for the annual American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, there were several sessions on the air quality impacts of oil and gas extraction, especially as related to the “boom.”

And the news is bleak: Ongoing air quality measurements have shown for several years now that numerous hydrocarbons attributable to oil and gas industry emissions are tens to thousands of times higher in shale areas than what is considered clean air. The widespread hydrocarbon pollution creates secondary ozone pollution, even in winter, thus affecting people far removed from extraction areas, possibly erasing two decades of ozone air quality improvements. Air toxics emissions include known and suspected carcinogens such as benzene and formaldehyde, and neurotoxins such as xylenes.

The industry’s large well numbers per area with onsite pipes, valves, tanks, compressors and other equipment, together leak an enormous amount of gas and vapors into the air. Nevertheless, regulators treat each well as a minor emitter, and permits to drill are obtained easily.

In addition, Texas regulators allow onsite gas flaring with little oversight, which together with flaring in the Bakken shale has catapulted the U.S. into the top five flaring nations in the world, wasting more than 240 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year, emitting yet unquantified amounts of soot and formaldehyde. Living downwind of one or more well sites, especially when flaring, thus means intermittent to constant nuisances from air pollutants. Associated public health effects are becoming better documented and are consistent in shale areas, including headaches, nose bleeds, and eye, skin and respiratory tract irritations.

Through front groups such as Energy in Depth, the industry is denying responsibility and shedding doubt on the health effects. But the air quality data show otherwise. At Texas Commission on Environmental Quality monitoring stations in the Barnett shale area and since 2013 also downwind of the Eagle Ford, the widespread hydrocarbon pollution is well documented. In addition, the commission’s data bases contain numerous incidences of individual measurements taken near industrial sites in the Eagle Ford showing outlandishly high pollutant concentrations.

We have analyzed the Floresville monitor (the only current air quality monitor in the Eagle Ford region) data in detail, showing on average roughly 10 times above “normal” levels of hydrocarbons many miles downwind the shale area, with regular pollution plumes at much higher levels. Tracing these plumes suggests that, at times, acutely toxic concentration levels can exist at fence-lines of individual facilities. Independent air quality measurements and the commission’s own data thus contradict repeated statements by its leadership that there are no air quality levels of concern in the shale areas.

Is it thus surprising that residents in Denton and other Texas cities are objecting to wells inside their city limits, in their neighborhoods?

As the city of College Station is pondering changes to its oil and gas ordinance, it needs to consider the impacts of air pollution on the health and welfare of its residents. Despite new federal regulations taking effect on Jan. 1, the industry as a whole has not operated responsibly in the past, and we should not expect that it will do better — especially in Texas, where lax enforcement of the rules and a lack of deterring fines are commonplace. It is up to local communities to put in place and enforce rules protective not only of the air we breathe, but the associated property values and quality of life.

As College Station is impacted ever more directly through fracking sites in the surrounding county — and soon inside the city limits — its leadership has the opportunity to pass a stronger ordinance that addresses various air quality and other environmental concerns, such as via appropriate setbacks, and continuous air quality monitoring paid by the operators, including public availability of the data. The latter falls under the widely accepted “polluter pays” principle and can instill best practices by the operator.

No clear scientific guidance exists yet for the former, i.e. the allowable proximity of a facility to a residence. Toxicological evaluations of existing air quality measurements in shale areas, however, suggest that people living within 2,600 feet of well sites have a significantly elevated risk of cancer and other ailments from their exposure.

Since there is also legal precedent in other Texas city ordinances, it would be prudent to select at least a 1,500 feet setback to limit resident exposure during the inevitable times of poor pollutant dilution under unfavorable wind conditions.

Such setbacks, alongside other rules the ordinance does contain, may allow for responsible oil and gas extraction inside city limits.
• Gunnar W. Schade lives in College Station. He receives funding from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s Air Quality Research Program, though unrelated to the topic of this column.

Bare Bones Biology 236 – We

We got home to our Winter Palace yesterday, after a fairly challenging 1000 miles with heavy load on old pickup. We dropped the reins, so to speak and left the whole thing out in the snowy driveway, came into the house, turned up the heat, walked through to the big picture window that displays our higher level Biosystem in its winter glory, and then we sat in the lean-back chair and fell asleep.

I don’t know about Bitsy, but I woke up thinking about Sponge-Bob Square Pants, which I have never seen, but I imagine to be composed of one of those two-sided dish-washing sponges made of blue plastic.

Sponge-Bob does not live here, because Sponge-Bob does not live. He is a figment of a fertile imagination. Life is hard to imagine, but it is defined by its ability to do metabolic processes to recycle materials, to release energy from food to stay alive, and to reproduce it’s own kind. Probably Sponge-Bob only requires a pen and paintbrush in the hands of an artist to stay alive in our imagination, but real living things are real and alive whether or not we can imagine them.

Real sponges that are alive are made of living cells each of which can perform the metabolic miracle. So are we. So are the trees outside our window, and the little chipmunks that dash about in the summer and the sunflowers they like to eat and the chickadee that sat on my front step and looked me square in the face this morning. We all together are Life.

Real live sponges can do something even better than we can. If you take apart their cells, completely apart but don’t kill the cells, and put them in a dish of water, all the little microscopic sponge cells know how to come back together to make a sponge again.

Sponge Bob can’t do that. He isn’t real, nor a cell, nor an organism. He makes money for the corposystem, but he’s not alive just like the corposystem is not alive. No cells, no metabolism; no reproduction of their kind.

We humans can do metabolism and reproduce our kind, and also the cells of which we are made can do metabolism and reproduce their kind, but if you take a cell apart it cannot come back together, and if you take a person’s cells all apart leaving only the living cells, the person cannot reconstitute himself.

A person can do without a few parts, arms, fingers, that kind of thing, but not without the important metabolic functions that recycle the oxygen and nitrogen and carbon and water and other materials, and use the energy from food to do the work and maintain the balance of staying alive and reproducing our kind.

We can do without a few parts, but we can’t reconstitute, because we have evolved to be so unitary that all our cells together add up to — One person, indivisible.

I thought about these things – I often think about strange things — and then I looked out the window at the trees and grasses and the chickadees and other birds and me and Bitsy and – well, you already know, we all make up the living Earth Biosystem.

Similar to humans, the Life of the Biosystem can do without a few of its parts (species), but it cannot do without the important metabolic functions that recycle the air and water and soil and food and maintain the balance of resources that is necessary for Life to stay alive. Because the living Biosystem has evolved to become so unitary that all its species and all their cells together add up to — one system, indivisible.

So what happens if the bits and pieces of the Biosystem, the different species that make up the whole, are taken apart, reorganized, redesigned to suit our human imagination?

It would be a really good idea to know the answer to that question — before we decide for sure that we want to do it.

But nobody does know.

And just look what happened last time we decided that we know more than Mother Nature knows about what she needs to stay alive and balanced.

This is Bare Bones Biology, a production of FactFictionFancy and KEOS radio, 89.1 FM in Bryan, Texas.

A podcast of this program can be downloaded here:

Bare Bones Biology 231 – Vote Against the Beast

I arrived back home to the belly of the beast a couple of days ago. I talked with a lot of nice people who live here. Yesterday was election day. One of the things we talked about was that all the people here are nice people, but the “beast,” the culture we support, is insane. It’s important to define one’s words, especially when we are using words like insane, so we defined them. When you do things that are obviously suicidal – that is insane. The beast, of course, is the corposystem culture, of which nearly all humans now are a part.

There were two headlines in the local paper the day before we voted. One was a well written report on Climate Change. The other was about Australian Shepherd Dogs. Everyone I talked to read about the dogs first and maybe noticed the report that clearly describes the fact that our current climate change disaster is caused by human behaviors on earth.

I will point out that my expertise, my whole career, has been about biology – that is, the basic biological question of how Life functions to stay alive, that is different from technology and it is different from nature study. Real biological scientists have known for more than 200 years about the real facts of human impact on the Biosystem, including climate change.

If anyone tells you in this culture in this age that they are a biologist, they generally mean one of two things. The first is that they are a technologist trained to believe they can control the laws of nature. These laws are gravity, the laws of thermodynamics and the like. These, plus the laws of Biology, are the laws of nature that respond to human interference by changing the climate of the Biosystem. These laws DEFINE how the Biosystem functions and how it responds to change. They respond to human technologies – well, you have seen it, the laws of nature respond to human technologies by changing the climate. The laws of nature (think of gravity for example) they do not care what we believe.

The second group of people who think of themselves as biologists also often aren’t studying how Life functions to stay alive. They tend to “love” the Biosystem, but they also do not want to learn facts that contradict their beliefs about how the Biosystem functions to maintain its own Life. These people often believe – not so much that humans can control the Biosystem, but that the Biosystem is human and will react to our human belief systems the same way that other humans react. It won’t. Because the Biosystem is not human. It will do what it will do, and it does not care what we believe.

And then there is a smaller group of hard scientists – most of them seem to be physicists rather than biologists, according to the newspaper, but who can believe the newspaper. It is written by people who don’t even claim to understand biology. Anyhow, according to the newspaper, evidently most of the hard science about Climate Change is built around the debate over whether or not humans have caused Climate Change. Basic biology has known the answer for at least 200 years. Why are we arguing about it now?

One of the political people I talked with yesterday, who is not a biologist, is well aware the argument about whether or not we cause climate change is a bait and switch question that is meant to stop us talking about the real question, which is “What are we going to do about climate change that will not be suicidal?” (ref.)

People tend to wring their hands and moan when I say “DO SOMETHING,” so I’ll suggest, minimally, that we should require the “beast” to obey the law. If you are a real American, learn about what made America great. It was not more and better technologies. It was our innovative Rule of Law. If you, and I do mean you. If you don’t make it your responsibility to be sure that our rule of law works to protect the people, then the American experiment will have failed.

Remember that other statement — government by the people and for the people? By the people means everyone is responsible. It does not mean sit around moaning about what the other people are doing that is illegal, and it does not mean go to the polls once or twice a year. It does not mean change the laws to suit the corposystem. It means enforce the laws – international, national and local — that were already on the books to protect the Biosystem.

In our lifetime, there never was any valid question that climate change is real and it is caused by overpopulation of humans, taking the food out of the mouths of the other species of organisms that MAKE the food energy and the soil, and recycle the air and water that we humans require to stay alive. The corposystem DOES NOT and CAN NOT make these things. The Biosystem makes them. The corposystem is destroying them.

The body of the living Biosystem consists of – it IS those other species that are being destroyed to make room for us. THEY make our climate, and when the climate changes enough — when we also run out of food — then we will follow them into extinction, and I mean now – some time early in this century. Real biologists have understood this problem for at least a couple of hundred years but we have nevertheless grown a suicidal corposystem. That is, indeed, insane.

The people I talked to yesterday seem to understand this reality. I don’t know what they are doing about it, but I have stopped voting FOR anyone, rather I voted against the corposystem – against overpopulation and every other sort of effort to dominate the Biosystem, because none of them will work, and because I care about your children and grandchildren and the horrors that will happen to most of them if we continue on this path.

The Biosystem is by far a bigger beast than the corposystem, and it does not care what we believe. It will simply spit us out.

Its methods will be starvation, disease and war, caused by Climate Change.

 

This is Bare Bones Biology, a production of FactFictionFancy and KEOS radio, 89.1 FM in Bryan Texas.

To obtain a podcast that contains the meat of this message, go to:

References:

https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/bare-bones-bio…he-corposystem/
https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/naivete-or-ignorance/ https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/stop-and-think/

Hey Texas! Show Your Support for the Open Internet

The debate on Net Neutrality is coming to Texas — and this is your chance to speak out.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai is holding an open forum on Net Neutrality at Texas A&M University in College Station on Tues., Oct. 21. Don’t miss out on this chance to show a key decision maker that you support real Net Neutrality.
Here are the details:
What: Rally and Speakout for Net Neutrality
When: 9 a.m. on Tues., Oct. 21
Where: Outside Hagler Auditorium, Annenberg Presidential Conference Center, 4347 TAMU, 1002 George Bush Drive W, Texas A&M, College Station
Bring: Bring a sign expressing your support for Net Neutrality.
Note: Right after the rally we’ll head inside Hagler Auditorium at 10 a.m. for the commissioner’s forum.
Commissioners rarely leave Washington to meet with the public, and as of now this event is the only one of its kind on the calendar. But Pai’s hardly a Net Neutrality advocate — in fact, he’d be happy to let a few mammoth companies lock down the Internet and charge us more money.
That’s why we need you there on Oct. 21.
RSVP today to tell Commissioner Pai that you’ll stand for nothing less than real Net Neutrality.

 

http://act.freepress.net/survey/internet_texas/?t=2&akid=4979.9104896.HZrkYc

 

Bare Bones Biology 224F – Healthy Living – What Goes Around

The question is not: “What should I do?” And it is not: “Whom should I believe?” Those are victim questions. The question is: “How does it work?” Because if I know how it works, I don’t need to be someone else’s victim. I can take care of myself. I can recognize the frauds and wheeler dealers. And I can figure out for myself what to do and whom to believe and why. So our question now is how does life stay healthy, that is, “sound, vital and functioning properly.” (https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/) .

And the answer is, all of Life works pretty much the same, from the entire Earth Biosystem to all the different organisms including us, to all the cells that also are alive, except a few cells in hot springs and deep in the ocean or earth, that use a different system for getting energy. All of these different parts of Life recycle the materials of which they are made, using the energy from food to do the work of being alive, and using an “operating system” that is encoded in the genes and selected by the processes of evolution to maintain a healthy balance.

.The Biosystem survives by balancing these three essential sub-systems that are at work in all of us and interact with each other to maintain life:

(1) Recycling Materials – The materials that our bodies are made of come from our food and water. The materials are mostly atoms (such as carbon, oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen) and molecules (such as lipids, carbohydrates, proteins and nucleic acids). The materials are recycled all around the world and used over and over again in every body on earth including the body of the Biosystem. The molecules are “digested” (taken apart) and then reassembled every time a new body grows. For example, if you eat a bean, the bean proteins are taken apart and the parts are reassembled to make person proteins, which are slightly different from bean proteins. When we die or excrete materials, they are broken down further into atoms (mostly carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen) or smaller molecules such as water and carbon dioxide. These atoms and molecules enrich the soil and clean the water by feeding organisms that live in healthy soil and clean water – and they maintain the balance of the healthy air. Then the same atoms and molecules are used to make molecules and cells in plants that grow in the soil. So, the atoms and molecules of all of earth are put together and taken apart – forever — as they are used and discarded by living creatures. That is Biosystem recycling. It’s not human recycling.

And the same thing happens to all materials that we put into the biosystem. Including non-biological toxic compounds such as plastics, modern perfumes. Nothing “goes away.” Everything is recycled except energy, and we get it in our food.

(2) Capturing and Using Energy – The energy that our bodies use to do all this work of taking apart and putting together – energy for life — also comes from our food. Energy is the ability to do work, and there are different kinds of energy that do different kinds of work. The energy used by our living bodies is food energy. Plants are able to capture energy from the sun and change it into food energy and use that energy to make plant cells.  But energy does not recycle, so the food energy is put into the food by plants and then we eat the plants and use some of the energy to make human molecules (proeins, carbohydrates, lipids and nucleic acids) and human cells, and to grow healthy bodies.

When the food energy has been used to do that work of growing and maintaining health, it is released as heat. Heat energy and energy from oil wells or fracking or solar are all different forms of energy that cannot be used by our bodies. Food energy is the only kind of energy that can be used to keep our bodies alive and healthy. But energy does not recycle, and our technologies cannot make food energy. So our food is critical to our health, both to provide healthy materials and to get energy that plants can make but we cannot make. The supermarket or McDonalds do not and cannot make food. Only the Biosystem makes food, using earth, air, water and plants.   (Free download, Bare Bones Ecology Energy Handbook under chapter 2 on the right side of the blog http://FactFictionFancy.Wordpress.com)

The Operating System. The Law of Life. All of this recycling of materials and capturing of energy requires an operating system. The operating system for Life maintains the balance among all the millions of processes that are required to do the recycling and to flow food energy to all parts of the system, and to maintain a healthy balance of the Earth Biosystem. I call this the Law of Life. It is a natural law that is more important to Life even than gravity. The Law of Life is encoded as genetics acted upon by evolution responding to the environment. It is the Law of Life that maintains or changes the climate to keep the whole system in Balance.

This is Bare Bones Biology, a production of FactFictionFancy and KEOS, 89.1 FM, in Bryan, Texas.

A copy of the podcast can be downloaded at:     http://traffic.libsyn.com/fff/Bare_Bones_Biology_224_-_What_Goes_Around.mp3

 

https://factfictionfancy.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/

Free download, Bare Bones Ecology Energy Handbook under chapter 2 on the right side of the blog http://FactFictionFancy.Wordpress.com

140922 – Diary – Climate March

Sometimes I wonder. Actually most of the time I wonder why we-the-people try so hard to get someone else to take care of the problem that we haven’t tried to understand the cause of so we can take care of it ourselves. What is the point of begging our leaders to deal with climate change when we at the same time require our leaders to give us everything else that we want, and the other things we want always involve growth of the human “imprint” on the earth that unbalances the miracle of the Life that is our Earth.

The Law of Life is not only the Law of Life on Earth – it is also the real bottom line of human existence. Life must stay in balance to stay alive. If it can’t stay the way we like it — it will change so that it can stay in a different balance. It does this by several mechanisms that are biological. By flowing energy through the living system; by recycling the materials of which it is made, and by interacting with the environmental conditions of now. To do this job of staying alive, the Living Earth changes in response to WHAT WE DO TO IT NOW.

Fracking, for example, is largely illegal, and we do have laws of humans that were meant to protect us from ourselves, and we could be out there enforcing them, in addition to marching. And teaching ourselves how the laws of nature REALLY do function to maintain Life. How they really do function, not the fairy stories about cornucopias or survival of the fittest.

And devising new ways to make laws for humans that will support the Law of Life.

Most of our leaders are a good bit more clueless than we are, so getting their attention may not help.

Oh, yes. That’s why we try so hard to get their attention.

Well, I would say the Climate March was a good try, and I wish it good luck.

Much rather I would like to see the people actually learn to understand the reality of the miracle that is the Biosystem so we can participate in it with love and joy, rather than duking it out with our leaders AND WITH THE BIOSYSTEM, trying to force them both to give us whatever we want without regard to the consequences to the Biosystem and therefore to ourselves.

Much rather I would like to see these marches also accessible to the poor people, many of whom may have no computers and no iThings and therefore don’t even hear about the march or can’t get there or are more worried about their own children than about ours. I wonder how many of the young people who participated in this march can even imagine such a thing as poor. The poor are after all in the trenches of the corposystem war against the Biosystem. Without them there would not be the success stories of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
that we try to emulate.

There are more poor on earth today than ever in the history of human kind and the only way to reverse that trend is to ALL cooperate with, rather than WAGE WAR against the efforts of our living earth as she tries to keep all her living parts functional and balanced in the way that WE want them to be balanced. We do not care to learn about her real need for balance, what Life on Earth requires to stay alive — and then we complain to our leaders for not giving us what we want, which mostly is more of everything.

More is not balance.

And I was very, very tired.

And I cannot stay in motels any more because they are using more and more of cleaning products and pesticides and chemicals that kill you sense of smell so you don’t realize you are being poisoned, as you sleep, by the cleaning products and pesticides. So I started on home, but about by the time I got to Abiquiu I was too tired to drive, and so I stopped at the Abiquiu Inn.

I have told you about the Abiquiu Inn before, and I will tell you again because it is an oasis in a sea of toxic motels. It is a) quite lovely, b) clean, but cleaned with non-toxic products, c) pet friendly, d) people friendly, e) not over priced, on the low end, for an occasional treat, f) environmentally friendly, as best they can, which of course is not perfect, but I love that all the big beautiful old trees are helping to clean the air. Imagine all the motels in this country how many trees they wiped out in favor of ugly concrete. How much more sickness among the people who stay in toxic motels, and especially the people who work in those places, many of whom do not speak English. How much water and pesticides and toxic air and toxic cleaning compounds they altogether produce and imagine how much less they could be producing. Especially the chain motels that dictate the conditions according to their bottom line and without regard to the natural Law of Balance.

Well, so I thought I would tell you that again, because I don’t suppose the Abiquiu Inn was at the march, but they are nevertheless contributing every day to a better way of doing what they do.

Bare Bones Biology 221F – Watchtower

“Are you proselytizing?”

“Well, not really.”

Of course they were. The big man was hiding the Watchtower magazine behind his leg. And why else would he and his companion get all dressed up in city shoes, drive 3.5 miles into the wilderness and stop in my yard. The dictionary defines proselytizing as: “trying to convert someone to beliefs or opinions.”

Watchtower Christians are past masters of the conversational bait and switch, but I am no slouch at keeping my logic on target, and the subject of the month is Climate Change. Good bait; I’m very pleased that the Watchtower people care about climate change. They should learn all they can about it.

The visitor might have thought me a tree-hugger, way out here in the boonies; probably was not expecting an ecologist/geneticist. I said: “I do not argue with anyone about science unless and until they are willing to take the trouble to understand the science.” He said they weren’t “arguing.” She said they couldn’t be expected to be experts in science; I said: “I didn’t say expert, I have enough expertise for us all, but there is no point talking about science with people who don’t understand what the words mean and aren’t interested in finding out.” They didn’t argue.

I said I would read the watchtower, and I gave them the web address of my blog. I have a whole series on climate change, was it a couple of years ago already? that would be easy to find by plugging in the key words (“climate change”).

I read the Watchtower article on Climate Change, which is entitled “Will Man Ruin the Earth Beyond Repair?” This article expresses an apparently genuine concern about climate change and gives an accurate summary of the basics. There is a sidebar with references to popular, reputable and apparently accurate sources. I will definitely quote their description of the Zone of Life, including the closing sentence from Jeremiah 10:12 “the One who established the productive land by his wisdom.” It’s a little behind times. The “zone of life” is not as narrow as we used to believe, and continues deep within the earth, including the area that is being devastated by fracking, but that is another discussion. This is about the Watchtower article itself. What do I, as an expert scientist, think of the article?

In fact, I recommend this article to all climate change deniers, and I agree with its summary of climate change. I have only two negative reactions to this article. First, among the Bible references that are scattered through the article are none that place responsibility upon you or me or us to make the necessary effort to maintain the viable (living) balance of the “productive land” that the Bible says God created. Second, the Watchtower people clearly do not understand how the “productive land” stays alive so that it can provide for and support the people. In the modern age, we do know how Life maintains itself – at least we understand the basics of the System. It’s odd, in this crisis, that we are encouraged to sit back and wait for God to fix it for us.

The Bible is not the only thing that God created. He also created the wild things, plant and animal, and the entire living unit of the Biosystem, and as Jesus said about prophets (Matthew 7:16) “Ye shall know them by their works.” If this is true of prophets, how much more it must be true of God.

I think sitting around waiting for God to fix the mess we created in His Biosystem, rather than take a few hours ourselves to understand the basic laws of God and nature that permit the living earth to survive – as they are demonstrably manifested in His creation – well, I don’t think that approach will solve the problem, and since He kicked us out of the Garden of Eden once already, I expect he is still waiting for us (including the “good guys”) to grow up and take responsibility for the demonstrable consequences of our own behaviors.

This is Bare Bones Biology, a production of FactFictionFancy and KEOS radio, 89.1, Bryan Texas.

A copy of the podcast can be downloaded at:

Thistle in Bloom

The moths, butterflies, flies and ants are eating and courting on the thistle blossoms. The hummingbirds got here too early. Last year we had hummingbirds eating and nesting in their embrace.

In a stable, sustainable culture, one of the most amazing phenomena is the way that the thousands of life cycles mesh with each other, regulated in large part by the climate, so that the creatures are born when the food is available.