Food for thought

A journey which started at 'logan' (a locally-grown diet) then meandered through 'community-based economics' ended at 'eco-communalism' as the final destination.

Organizing Ecological Revolution
John Bellamy Foster

My subject—organizing ecological revolution—has as its initial premise that we are in the midst of a global environmental crisis of such enormity that the web of life of the entire planet is threatened and with it the future of civilization.

This is no longer a very controversial proposition. To be sure, there are different perceptions about the extent of the challenge that this raises. At one extreme there are those who believe that since these are human problems arising from human causes they are easily solvable. All we need are ingenuity and the will to act. At the other extreme there are those who believe that the world ecology is deteriorating on a scale and with a rapidity beyond our means to control, giving rise to the gloomiest forebodings.

Although often seen as polar opposites these views nonetheless share a common basis. As Paul Sweezy observed they each reflect “the belief that if present trends continue to operate, it is only a matter of time until the human species irredeemably fouls its own nest” (Monthly Review, June 1989).

One factoid caught my eye and, I think, merits note:

Two thirds of the world’s major fish stocks are currently being fished at or above their capacity. Over the last half-century 90 percent of large predatory fish in the world’s oceans have been eliminated (Worldwatch, Vital Signs 2005).

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Red sky in the morning

This is a portent of a significant market basket increase and it is fueled by a combination of weather, increasing fertilizer and transportation costs. Have you considered alternatives in your diet?

Wheat hits $20 in North Dakota and Minnesota

The wheat market moved into historic ground Friday in North Dakota and Minnesota, as short-term demand from mills pushed prices up to $20 a bushel at one elevator in an after-hours scramble.

Most elevators in northeast North Dakota and northwest Minnesota posted prices of $16.70 to $17.30 Friday, according to an Agweek survey; that's four times as high as a year ago and the highest figures ever seen.

Dave Lokken, manager of AGP Elevator in Valley City, N.D., posted a bid of $18.25 Friday. But the market was much hotter than that.
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"The guys who don't have any wheat left, it just demoralizes them to see that $20 price. To think, if they had been sitting on 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 bushels of wheat, how much money that is," Lokken said.
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"We're projecting that food inflation in the U.S. is going to be 8 percent," Mark Palmquist, executive vice president for the ag businesses of CHS, a farmer-owned cooperative based in Inver Grove Heights, Minn., told the Pioneer Press. "Demand is so interesting this time around. It seems to be very insensitive to the price rises."

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A new source?

Hopefully we will have moved beyond using hydrocarbon fuels when exploitation of this resource becomes reasonable.

Titan's Surface Organics Surpass Oil Reserves On Earth
Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new Cassini data. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.

The new findings from the study led by Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, USA, are reported in the 29 January 2008 issue of the Geophysical Research Letters.

"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material-it's a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Lorenz. "This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan."

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Once again offering hope

This is a story which drew attention in the past but this latest story offers some intriguing details. As a strong proponent of building local economies, I like what I learned.

Five-seat concept car runs on air
An engineer has promised that within a year he will start selling a car that runs on compressed air, producing no emissions at all in town.

The OneCAT will be a five-seater with a glass fibre body, weighing just 350kg and could cost just over £2,500.

It will be driven by compressed air stored in carbon-fibre tanks built into the chassis.

The tanks can be filled with air from a compressor in just three minutes - much quicker than a battery car.

Alternatively, it can be plugged into the mains for four hours and an on-board compressor will do the job.

For long journeys the compressed air driving the pistons can be boosted by a fuel burner which heats the air so it expands and increases the pressure on the pistons. The burner will use all kinds of liquid fuel.

It is this guy's marketing plan is what I find extremely interesting.

Tata is the only big firm he'll license to sell the car - and they are limited to India. For the rest of the world he hopes to persuade hundreds of investors to set up their own factories, making the car from 80% locally-sourced materials.

"This will be a major saving in total emissions," he says.

"Imagine we will be able to save all those components travelling the world and all those transporters."

He wants each local factory to sell its own cars to cut out the middle man and he aims for 1% of global sales - about 680,000 per year.

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One more item

We keep on learning those little things that, at least to make, make life interesting.

The Smell of Space

Few people have experienced traveling into space. Even fewer have experienced the smell of space. Now this sounds strange, that a vacuum could have a smell and that a human being could live to smell that smell. It seems about as improbable as listening to sounds in space, yet space has a definite smell. Being creatures of an atmosphere, we can only smell space indirectly. Sort of like the way a pit viper smells by waving its tongue in the air and then pressing it to the roof of its mouth where sensors process the molecules that have been adsorbed onto the waggling appendage. I had the pleasure of operating the airlock for two of my crewmates while they went on several space walks. Each time, when I repressed the airlock, opened the hatch and welcomed two tired workers inside, a peculiar odor tickled my olfactory senses. At first I couldn't quite place it. It must have come from the air ducts that re-pressed the compartment. Then I noticed that this smell was on their suit, helmet, gloves, and tools. It was more pronounced on fabrics than on metal or plastic surfaces. It is hard to describe this smell; it is definitely not the olfactory equivalent to describing the palette sensations of some new food as "tastes like chicken." The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation. It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space.

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Getting spacey

The discoveries keep coming.

Hubble Finds Double Einstein Ring

This is an image of gravitational lens system SDSSJ0946+1006 as photographed by Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The gravitational field of an elliptical galaxy warps the light of two galaxies exactly behind it. The massive foreground galaxy is almost perfectly aligned in the sky with two background galaxies at different distances. The foreground galaxy is 3 billion light-years away, the inner ring and outer ring are comprised of multiple images of two galaxies at a distance of 6 and approximately 11 billion light-years. The odds of seeing such a special alignment are estimated to be 1 in 10,000. The right panel is a zoom onto the lens showing two concentric partial ring-like structures after subtracting the glare of the central, foreground galaxy.


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Digging through the numbers

Stories about the economy are rife with numbers. You have to be discerning to understand what they really mean. In this case the truly revealing numbers are withheld until the last of the seven paragraphs.

Retail sales stage unexpected rebound

Sales at retailers rose 0.3 percent in January, which was an unexpected pickup that partly reflected stronger sales of new cars and gasoline, according to a Commerce Department report on Wednesday.

January's sales increase followed a 0.4 percent decline in December and was contrary to Wall Street analysts' forecasts for a 0.2 percent decline.

And now to the kicker...

Excluding gasoline, January retail sales rose 0.1 percent.

At least it was not an overall decline.

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