Abstract versus Reality

So many times I make a comment such as, "well that is what we have to deal with living in Christianity" or "that is religion" or "that is what we have living in Capitalism" and someone will contradict me by saying that some aspect that they do not like is not really part of Christianity or Capitalism or whatever the topic is that we are discussing. I have realized that most people have been sold on the concept of Platonic ideals. Platonic ideals are concepts that there is an abstract idea that represents the concept or thing and the item in reality that we are dealing with is not as real as the abstract concept.

So when I discuss a result of living in a Capitalist system, the "believers" will say that it is not really a part of capitalism because it does not fit with their abstract ideal of capitalism as a concept regardless of the fact that it exists in reality.

So I would conclude that this is some form of cognitive dissonance that we have been trained to perform on a consistent basis in order to accept the way things are. Which brings me to something that I have heard and been using in my speech, "Reality Based Worldview". If we look at things "on the ground", so to speak, then we tend to arrive at wildly differing conclusions. For example, in the abstract, Capitalism is the most efficient way to exchange goods, services and labor and allows individuals to specialize and get the highest marginal value for their work (yeah, I was the president of my college chapter of our economics honor society). In the abstract, Christianity is a religion of peace and love and turning the other cheek and giving to rome what is rome's and turning over the moneychangers tables, etc. In reality Capitalism is a hierarchical system that taxes individuals in order to provide a subsidy to corporations and enforce the accumulation of wealth with elites. On the ground, Christianity, or Christian societies, have been the most destructive force on the earth comparable to the impact of a meteor that wipes out a large portion of life on the planet.

Adventures in Coverting my truck to run on veggie oil

In late 2006 I purchased a 1995 Chevrolet Suburban 6.5L Turbo Diesel. We had a new baby and needed a little more room than our Mitsubishi convertible provided, especially with the trips we make between our respective homesteads in Western Illinois and Oklahoma.

The reason that I purchased a diesel was solely with the purpose of having it converted to run on waste vegetable oil. Just in case you get this confused with bio-diesel, this is not bio-diesel which can be created from vegetable oil and has the same viscosity as diesel fuel.

So I went up to Springfield, Missouri to Golden Fuel Systems and bought one of their systems and had them build a custom tank that would sit in the very back of the Suburban and hold the oil. We installed it over two days time. It consists of a valve or port that in this case sits on top of the engine and switches between the two fuels. With this kind of system, you start the engine on diesel and then let it warm up. The engine coolant is circulated through a set of hoses that are bundled with the veggie oil fuel line back to the veggie tank which has a chamber built into the bottom of the tank. The hot coolant warms the tank and hence the fuel. This allows the system to heat up in it's entirety within just a few miles of driving and then you can switch to running on veggie oil.

I have had several issues with the overall system. First of all it is very important to understand quite a bit about the diesel system that you are going to buy. First, the heart of contemporary diesel engines is the fuel injection system including the injection pump and injectors. It is very important to know the lifecycle of these components. Most truck diesel engines have a life of 300k or so. Some injector pumps have a life of 150k. Injectors can be changed in as little at 100k miles. I ended up making all of these repairs within the first year of owning the vehicle.

Why is this not on the front page every day??

You will not see any political candidates talking about this elephant in the room. As of the first decade of the 21st century 50,000 species go extinct every year due to human activity. Basically our industrial economy is killing the planet. This rate of species extinction has been rising dramatically through the 20th and now the 21st centuries and has approached the level that was last seen 65 Million years ago when a meteor hit the earth and wiped out a good portion of life on this planet. Here are some links:

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/01/31_olsond_biodiversity/

As of 2003, only 10% of large fish in the ocean remain:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/05/14/coolsc.disappearingfish/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0515_030515_fishdecline.html

90% of all edible species in the oceans will be gone by around 2048: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2006-11-02-overfishing-threat_x.htm

A very good summary page of the current species extinction: http://www.well.com/~davidu/extinction.html

An example of why not to trust the military, government, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palomares_hydrogen_bombs_incident

This article explains how some hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped in Spain during the 1960's when a B-52 crashed. The place still has radiation contamination because the explosives detonated. The only reason that there was not a thermonuclear reaction was that the impact took the bomb out of alignment. This is not in the article but common sense for anyone that knows how these bombs work.

Also, you should read this list of military accidents involving nuclear materials:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents

I don't support these fucking troops!

You should especially read about Rock Flats in Colorado. They have released a shitload of radiation and material and no one knows about it!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Flats

A tree farm is not a Forest

From: Learning to Listen to the Land
By W. B. Willers
"...it is imperative to understand that humanity has not 'reforested' a single acre, because no one has planted and grown a forest on purpose. What we and the rest of the world have done, and are doing under the guise of "forestry," is trade our forests in on simplistic, economic treee farms. And forests and tree farms are not synonymous, no matter how many high-priced public relations firms try to create the impression that they are."

"Before we can discuss a forest versus a tree farm, we must 'define' forest and forestry and a tree farm and tree-farm management. A forest is the most complex, terrestrial biotic portion of the ecosystem, and is characterized by a predominance of trees. Forestry is the profession that embraces the science, art, and business of managing the forested portion of the ecosystem in a manner that assures the maintenance and sustainability of biological diversity and productivity for perpetual production of amenities, services, and goods for human use. A tree farm is an area under cultivation, a group of cultivated trees. And because a plantation is an economic crop, it is grossly simplified and specialized. Tree-farm management is the profession that embraces the science, art, and business of managing a tree farm--an agricultural crop--to reap the greatest economic returns on the least economic investment, in the shortest possible time."
"Today's 'forest practices' are counter to sustainable forestry because, instead of training foresters to manage forests, we train tree-farm managers to manage the short-rotation, 'economic' tree farms with which we are replacing our native forests. Forests have evolved through the cumulative addition of structural diversity that initiates and maintains process diversity, complexity, and stability through time. We are reversing the rich building process of that diversity, complexity, and stability by replacing native forests with tree farms designed only with narrow, short-term economic considerations."

Ok, so that quote sums up abstractly what is happening in the US national forests and elsewhere in the 'developed world'. I personally have witnessed this, walking through a stand of single species pine, next to a clear cut. No one that has actually seen a real forest would mistake this for forest. However, most forestry students get trained in these tree farms and have not even seen old growth forest. The fact that we even have to use the term "old growth" is sickening, forest means old growth, otherwise it's a tree farm! Cutting trees on a thirty or even fifty year rotation does not a forest make!

I am willing to take anyone on a tour of the Ouachita National Forest and show you how they are transforming a mixed deciduous and coniferous forest into a sterile pine tree farm, that is if I can find any of the original forest left! Right now 97% of the US's forests have been cut. YES 97%! And they are still cutting down the last of the old growth redwoods in California. Over 95% of the redwoods have been cut.

Abundant Forests Website

I saw this website pop up in my Google Ads: http://www.abundantforests.org/

It is such a crock of crap.

If you have been told that there is more forest in the USA today than 100 years ago then you have not been told the complete truth. There are more trees yes, if you count a two year old pine seedling as equal with a three hundred year old oak. More tomorrow.

Reading "Collapse" by Jared Diamond - Post 1

I have read the prologue, Part 1: Modern Montana, and the skipped Chapter 2, 3, 4, 5 in Part 2: Past Societies, then I read the chapters in Part 2 having to deal with Greenland (Chapters 5, 6, 7, 8) and chapter 9 which goes over a few success stories. I plan on returning to read the first part of Part 2.

Overall, I think Mr. Diamond does a good job of setting up a framework to analyze how and why certain societies have collapsed. It is somewhat simplistic and I think that most of the time the five point framework does not emphasize the heavy influence of environmental destruction in the societies or maybe it's because he seems overly concerned with balancing the different forces in societal collapse so that he doesn't come up with a majic bullet approach. However, this is a minor criticism.

I found what I consider to be a MAJOR issue with certain statements in Chapter 9 regarding success stories. Here is the quote from page 306:

"In thus devoting one chapter to these three success stories of the New Guinea highlands, Tikopia, and Tokugawa Japan, after seven chapters mostly on societies brought down by deforestation and other environmental problems plus a few other success stories (Orkney, Shetland, Faeroes, Iceland), I'm not implying that success stories constitute rare exceptions. Within the last few centuries Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, France, and other western European countries stabilized and then expanded their forested area by top-down measures, as did Japan. Similarly, about 600 years earlier, the largest and most tightly organized Native American society, the Inca Empire of the Central Andes with tens of millions of subjects under an absolute ruler, carried out massive reafforestation and terracing to halt soil erosion, increase crop yields, and secure its wood supplies."

Well, the western European countries that he mentions that have increased their forested area, where does he think that they get their wood from? Does Mr. Diamond think that they are self-sufficient in wood products? Hell no, they all import most of the wood products that they use. To judge a societies ability to sustainably use it's environment you have to expand to everywhere it obtains resources from. As he pointed out in the section on Montana, that Montana receives most of it's income from out of state and is not and would not be sustainable, similarly, the western European states receive most of their wood products from elsewhere including the Nordic states and the tropics.

Also, most Western European nations idea of a forest is really a mono-crop tree farm similar to what the forest service does in the US. They clear cut a stand of trees, then they plant new trees made up of a single species which they then 'harvest' again in thirty years. A thirty year stand of mono-crop trees is not a forest, that is a tree-farm. A forest can take a thousand years to mature.