IT'S ALMOST OFFICIAL--WE'RE LIVING IN A NEW GEOLOGIC EPOCH DOMINATED BY HUMAN ACTIVITY--THE ANTHROPOCENE

Geologists are not the most radical or wild-eyed of scientists. In keeping with the rocks and strata they study, they tend to think in terms of millions or billions of years, and changes that occur, let us say, glacially.

So when the International Union of Geological Sciences announces that it's in the process of formalizing the demise of the Holocene Epoch, the climatic and geological cradle in which civilization has been developing for the past 11,000 years or so, and usher us into the uncharted, unpredictable, human-dominated Anthropocene, we'd best take notice.

 Millions of years of sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon

Credit: USGS

The Holocene is the climatically benign epoch in which all of human civilization has unfolded. In the year 2000, Nobel prize winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and biologist Eugene Stoermer floated the idea that human activities rather than natural processes were now dominating Earth's biology and geology, and proposed that this be recognized as a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. After several years of deliberations, The Working Group on the 'Anthropocene' says it's time to formalize that idea.

Plastic Earth/Credit Univ. of Leicester

The Working Group will present its findings and recommendations to the 35th International Geological Congress, currently meeting in Cape Town, South Africa. That will lead to a formal proposal to the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, and, if approved, on to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, with final ratification in the hands of the Executive Committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences. 

The process, including further research to settle on one or more "golden spikes"--locations where the stratigraphic signature of human impacts is clearest--could take several years.

Clearly, it's no small thing to end one geological epoch and start another. "The Time Scale is the backbone of our science," says paleobiologist Jan Zalasiewicz, a member of the Working Group. "We do not treat it lightly at all." However, the Working Group has amassed convincing evidence that the Anthropocene is real. 

They note that since the middle of the 20th Century, the Earth System has seen markedly accelerated erosion and sedimentation, major perturbations to the cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous and other elements, significant changes to climate and sea level, unprecedented changes in the distribution of plants and animals, and a marked reduction in biodiversity, all caused by human activities.

From the purely geological point of view, these changes have left clear and permanent signals in recent strata, including the presence of plastic, aluminum, concrete, fly ash and radioactive fallout.

Hydrogen bomb blast over Bikini Atoll, March 1, 1954, one of many

 nuclear blasts whose fallout contributes to the Anthropocene signal

Credit: Wikipedia

Of the 35 members of the Working Group, 34 agreed that the Anthropocene is stratigraphically real, and 30 concurred that it should formally be made a new Epoch within the Geological Time Scale.

Of course this formal recognition that we are living in an epoch dominated more by humans than by nature goes far beyond the discipline of geology. This recognition that our combined activities are impacting not just the atmosphere and climate, but the very rocks beneath our feet, tells us in no uncertain terms that the time for climate-change denial is long past and the time for concerted action overdue.

"The Earth System has, in a a real sense, begun a new trajectory," says Zalasiewicz. "The Anthropocene - beyond its formal expression in geology - seems to be useful to people as a means of grasping the scale in time and space of what is going on, and of linking myriad human activities with with the wide range of impacts on the natural world. Hopefully it may help us understand, control and adapt to those impacts."

You can read about a visionary call for concerted action to create a sustainable world here.

You can view a detailed presentation on the Anthropocene by Prof. Zalasiewicz at this URL.

You can read here an update from 1/15/18 about how scientists worldwide are homing in on an official "golden spike" that will mark the onset of the anthropocene, probably between 1952 and 1955. This comment is worth noting:


Professor Mark Williams [a geologist at the University of Leicester] said: “The range of environments we are working with is remarkable – from polar ice and snow layers to deep lake and sea floors to the skeletons of reef corals and stalactites in caves. The fact that signals of the Anthropocene are so sharply visible in all of these shows just how pervasive human impact has been on the planet in post-war times.”

EARTHLIKE PLANET DISCOVERED AROUND THE SUN'S CLOSEST NEIGHBOR

Astronomers have discovered an earthlike planet orbiting Proxima Centauri--the star closest to our sun. "It's the closest extra-terrestrial planet that will ever be found--there are no stars closer to Earth," says Guillem Anglada-Escude, at Queen Mary University of London, and one of the authors of the Nature article detailing the discovery.

Finding that our closest celestial neighbor harbors a small, rocky planet similar to Earth in the star's temperate zone suggests that potentially habitable earthlike planets are far from rare. Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf, smaller, cooler and less massive than the sun. M dwarfs like Proxima Centauri are the most abundant stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Since M dwarfs live much longer than stars like our sun, life could have ample time to develop on their planets. "If only a small fraction of M dwarfs have temperate-zone planets, our Galaxy could be teeming with life," writes Artie Hatzes, an astronomer at the Thuringian State Obsevatory, in Germany.

Artist's impression of newly discovered exoplanet Proxima b, with Proxima Centauri and its companions, double star Proxima AB just above the horizon.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

The newly discovered planet circles Proxima Centauri well within the star's habitable zone--the so-called Goldilocks region that's neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on the planet's surface. The researchers calculate that Proxima b receives less heat from its star than Earth gets from the sun, but add that an atmosphere, if it has one, could boost its surface temperature enough to keep water from freezing or boiling away, just as Earth's atmosphere does for us.

Graphic showing that Proxima b orbits very close to its star, and within the star's habitable zone. Mercury's orbit around our sun is shown for comparison.
Credit: ESO/M.Kornmesser/G. Coleman

Although potentially habitable, Proxima B is by no means Earth's twin. It's at least 1.3 times as massive as Earth, its "year" is only 11.2 days long, and, like Mercury in our solar system, it's almost certainly tidally locked, with one side always facing its star. It's also blasted by far more high-energy particles and radiation than Earth, perhaps 100 times as much. Despite these differences, the researchers think a protective atmosphere could remain. "None of this excludes the existence of an atmosphere or of water," says Ansgar Reiners, an astrophysicist at the University of Gottingen.

Although astronomers saw the first hints of a planet around Proxima Centauri more than a decade ago, it took months of detailed observations by an international team using the state-of-the-art ESO telescopes in Chile earlier this year to confirm its existence beyond doubt. "When we combined the old and new data, the significance went sky high," says Anglada-Escude.

Researchers would love to learn more about Proxima b, starting with whether it does have an atmosphere and if so, what it's composed of. Another key question is whether the planet has a magnetic field like Earth's, strong enough to protect the atmosphere (and any life the planet might harbor) from stellar flares.

Although the planet is "just" 4.2 light-years away, it would take thousands of years to send a spacecraft to study it, using current technology. (Russian billionare Yuri Milner hopes to change that by using powerful laser blasts from Earth to boost smartphone-sized spacecraft to 20 percent of the speed of light. If his project, called Breakthrough Starshot, succeeds, it could speed a probe to Proxima Centauri in just 20 years).

Still, the star is close enough that the next generation of space telescopes could detect and analyze light from Proxima b and its atmosphere by blocking out light from the star. "We know the planet and its period," says Anglada-Escude. "So in the next months or years we can design an instrument to measure its properties. That will be a priority."

You can view an excellent video about the discovery, from Nature, at this URL.

Artist's impression of Proxima b orbiting reddish Proxima Centauri, with double star Proxima AB also visible. 

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Tightening the noose around the polio virus

The world moved a step closer to eradicating polio, a sometimes fatal crippling disease that killed or paralyzed half a million people per year in the middle of the 20th Century. 

Today, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, GPEI, announced that July marked two full years with no cases of polio caused by the wild polio virus. This is a major milestone in the ongoing campaign to clear Africa, and soon the whole world, of the polio virus.

Compared to hundreds of thousands of cases not long ago, so far this year there have been only 19 polio cases worldwide, limited to two war-torn countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Within a few years, we may completely eradicate polio, and free the world's children and their parents from this devastating disease forever. The only other human disease that we have been able to eradicate is smallpox, after an enormous international effort completed in 1979.

Children in Iron Lung ventilators

Rancho Los Amigos Hospital

Downey, California, 1953

This near-eradication of polio has been possible due to the existence of two effective polio vaccines, starting with the inactivated polio virus vaccine developed by Jonas Salk in 1952, administered by injections, and followed by a weakened virus vaccine that could be delivered by mouth, developed by Albert Sabin and widely used starting in 1961.

Most of the global eradication program has relied on the weakened-virus oral vaccine, which is less expensive and easier to administer than the killed-virus injectable vaccine. However, in rare cases the inactivated virus can mutate back to a disease-causing form. As a result, the last stages in eradicating polio will require a switch back to injections.

Funding for the multi-billion dollar eradication program comes from a variety of national, international and private sources. Rotary International deserves special praise for spearheading this effort starting in 1985.

Experts at the Global Polio Eradication Initiative hope to overcome the final obstacles and wipe polio our completely within the next few years.

Gravitational wave astronomy leaps forward with second detection of merging black holes

--Second detection of colliding black holes

--Suggests that there are more black hole pairs than expected

--Confirms that we've entered the era of gravitational wave astronomy 

Researchers representing the LIGO and Virgo consortiums announced today that their twin gravitational wave detectors recorded a second black hole merger on December 26, 2015. The discovery was announced at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, in San Diego, California, and will be detailed in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Simulation of spacetime distortion as two black holes merge

This event differed significantly from the first detected black hole merger, which took place on September 14, 2015 (see zerospinzone, February 11, 2016, below). These two black holes were very light compared to the first pair, which weighed in at 36 and 29 times the mass of our sun. The researchers calculate that the second pair of collapsed stars weighed just 14 and 8 times the mass of the sun. 

Crucially, because they were less massive, their death spiral took far longer, providing the researchers with much more information. Instead of a "chirp" lasting just one-fifth of a second, this merger warped and roiled spacetime for a full second as the black holes whirled around each other 57 times before merging and falling silent. The radiating ripples through spacetime carried away as much energy as if the entire mass of the sun were instantly transformed into pure energy.

Spacetime seismograms recorded at LIGO's gravitational-wave detectors

It's easy to see the increase in amplitude and frequency as 

the two black holes whirled closer and closer together

You can compare how the two mergers sound here.

Detecting two black hole mergers during the short first run of the LIGO interferometers--September 12, 2015 through January 19, 2016--implies that there are more relatively low-mass black hole pairs than expected lurking in the nearby universe. The LIGO team is currently making their twin detectors even more sensitive. So when they start their second round of observations this fall, they expect to detect many more gravitational events, eventually hundreds or even thousands per year.

A team of theorists at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, is excited by the hint that there may be many black holes in this mass range. They are exploring the possibility that these are primordial black holes, formed directly from gas clouds in the early history of the universe. If there are enough of them, they may explain dark matter, whose nature remains a major mystery despite decades of efforts to pin it down.

The Virgo team hopes to have a third Earth-based gravitational wave observatory, near Pisa, Italy, up and running later this year. The three detectors working together will allow researchers to pinpoint the location in space of black hole mergers and other sources of gravitational waves such as rapidly spinning neutron stars or colliding neutron stars.

Researchers in the now burgeoning field of gravitational astronomy hope one day to be able to listen in on the gravitational relics of the Big Bang itself--the birth cry of our universe. 

ORIGINALIST SIN

Institute co-founder, Les Adler, has published an essay or OpEdNews explaining why the Republican refusal to consider any Obama nominee to the Supreme Court qualifies as "an originalist sin." You can read the article here.

 

Gravitational Waves Finally Detected

February 11, 2016

 

Supercomputer simulation of spacetime distortion from merging black holes

It took a century. In 1916, Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of spacetime. Today, a worldwide consortium of researchers announced the first detection of this fundamental phenomenon, confirmed through measurements made by two exquisitely sensitive instruments in Louisiana and Washington. 

"Einstein would be beaming, wouldn't he," said Gabriela Gonzalez, spokesperson for the LIGO consortium.

This epochal discovery not only demonstrates the phenomenal power and reach of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, it also opens up a whole new way of studying the universe, something we'll be hearing much more about -- gravitational astronomy.

"We have detected gravitational waves. We did it!” said David Reitze, Executive Director of the LIGO Laboratory. "Four hundred years ago, Galileo turned a telescope to the sky and opened the era of observational astronomy.  We're opening a new window on the universe, gravitational astronomy.” 

The crucial observation took place on September 14, 2015, when the two huge detectors of LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, one in Hanford, Washington, the other in Livingston, Louisiana simultaneously recorded ripples in spacetime that increased in frequency and intensity and then subsided over the course of one-fifth of a second. Those waves precisely matched what Einstein's equations of general relativity predict for the final moments of the death spiral and merger of two black holes.

 First spacetime "seismogram," tracing the death spiral and merger of two black holes

You can view a simulation of two black holes merging at this URL.

“These waves were produced by two colliding black holes about 1.3 billion years ago, and detected by LIGO, the most precise measuring device ever built," said Reitze.

 The LIGO interferometer in Hanford, Washington. Each leg is 4 km (2.5 miles) long

Researchers tell us that during the last moments of the black hole merger, the amount of power roiling spacetime was greater than all the light being emitted by all the stars in the observable universe. Even though the energy released by the merger was enormous -- as much as if the mass of three suns were converted into energy in a fraction of a second -- by the time the signal reached Earth, it was incredibly faint, distorting the 4-kilometer long arms of the LIGO detector by just one thousandth the width of an atomic nucleus. It took 40 years of research and engineering to build detectors able to measure such miniscule spacetime distortions.

"Each of these black holes are about 150 km in diameter," said Reitze. "Pack thirty times the mass of the sun in that. Accelerate it to half the speed of light. Then take another like that and collide them together. That's what we saw here. It's mind boggling." 

The researchers who announced the discovery said that this was the dawn of a new era in astronomy and our understanding of the cosmos. Since gravitational waves have been roiling space since the Big Bang, Advanced LIGO and its successors may allow scientists to listen in on the earliest moments of the the birth of the cosmos. They will also open a window on the strangest and most violent events in the universe, such as the merger of two neutron stars, and help researchers to home in on the mysterious dark energy that is speeding up the expansion of the universe.

"LIGO is a fantastic beginning," said Kip Thorne, one of LIGO's co-founders. "It has opened a new window on the universe. Every time a new window has been opened up there have been surprises. Gravitational waves are so radically different [from light and other electromagnetic radiation] that we will see big surprises, perhaps even bigger than we've seen through the radio and x-ray windows."

Remarkably, the frequency of the "chirp" produced by the merging black holes lies in the range of human hearing. You can hear it yourself here. If you listen carefully, you can hear the gravitational-wave signal getting both louder and higher, exactly as predicted as two colliding black holes rock the surrounding spacetime just before merging into one.

The Sustainocene -- Interview with visionary, Dr. Bryan Furnass

Dr. Bryan Furnass

Photo courtesy

NimbusWeb

Profile: Once a doctor, always a doctor. In retirement, British-born Australian physician Bryan Furnass has simply shifted his focus to “external medicine,” that is, the health of the planet. He argues that we need to exit the unsustainable Anthropocene era as soon as possible and create a new epoch which he dubs the Sustainocene.

What is the Sustainocene, and what led you to coin the word?

Kenneth Boulding, an English economist and chief advisory to John Kennedy said that the only two kinds of people who believe in perpetual growth on a limited planet are economists and madmen. But the present emphasis throughout most countries is on growth, economic growth in particular, grossly neglecting environmental sustainability. To solve this problem we need a new type of thinking, as Albert Einstein said.

Atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, a Nobel Prize winner, and his colleagues, started that process by naming the present era of human-induced climate change the Anthropocene. I'm saying that if business as usual goes on, if we allow the Anthropocene to continue unchecked, a large number of species, including our own, will be devastated by the end of this century. Researchers at the Global Footprint Network maintain that if poor countries were to adopt the present lifestyles of the rich, we would need four more planets to survive.

In other words, we need a new era, which I like to call the Sustainocene.

This neologism is not acceptable by most climate scientists, since the required change must occur within decades rather than thousands of years. A major exception is Daniel Nocera, professor of energy at Harvard University, who is promoting the technology of artificial photosynthesis, which could provide energy to economically poor as well as affluent populations, reducing inequalities.

What would define this new era?

The key feature would be that everything we do, politics, government, science and technology, would take into account four components – social, environmental, economic and personal lifestyle sustainability. We humans have grossly neglected environmental sustainability. At the moment the environment is at the bottom of the list and economics is at the top. We need all four components to work in conjunction with each other.

The Sustainocene is about being conscious, about the plants and animals around us, about what we eat, about what we do, about the gross inequalities in society, about real human happiness. The crux of sustainability is to work with rather than against nature.

What do you hope your idea of the Sustainocene will accomplish?

I hope it will make people realize that we're in a new epoch, a new era. If the idea could catch on as a new age in human development, it could help make people think. Bertrand Russell once provocatively announced that many people would rather face death by torture than to think. This is not just a local problem, it's a change as great as that which occurred about 10,000 years ago, when we left hunter-gathering and entered the Holocene, a fairly stable era, with food security. Now we've entered a very unstable era, the Anthropocene. We can no longer think about business as usual. Since we can't go back; instead we must metamorphose the Anthropocene to become sustainable.

What do you mean by “external medicine”?

The external environment rather than the internal environment, in other words, the health of the planet. We need to look holistically at the health of the biosphere and its ecosystem services that support us. We're part of the natural world, not superior to it. If the external environment packs up, so do we. So unless we think of the external environment, we're in trouble. Unless we protect the natural world, we're going to destroy our species. That's where I return to my main interest, in health. Global warming and climate change are probably the biggest threats to human health and well being, and to other species, than any other factor.

One example is local particulate pollution – small particles measuring 2.5 microns or less from coal and diesel pollution – which is often neglected by climatologists. My sensitivity to this was ignited by growing up pre-war in the industrial city of Manchester in northwest England, when impenetrable acrid smogs reduced visibility to one metre; the only viable form of transport being electric trams followed by a trail of cars which finished up in the tram depot! When I was a house physician during the Great London Smog of 1952, 4000 people died of cardio-respiratory failure. The Clean Air Act of 1956, which banned the burning of coal in open fires considerably reduced such disasters. 

Unfortunately, lethal particulate pollution has been repeated in the mega cities of the developing world as they have increased the combustion of fossil fuels exponentially. Ironically, at the start of the recent climate change conference in Paris, an environmental emergency was declared for Beijing, its mayor having stated the previous year that his city was “unlivable.”

If Earth is your patient, what's your treatment plan?

How to turn the politics around? That's an extremely good question, and a very difficult one. We need to grow in wisdom, but that's a difficult thing to attain. I think most governments are acting unwisely, but I can give you one example where wisdom works. A very undeveloped country in West Africa, Sierra Leone, was incredibly poor and mostly illiterate. Someone had the idea of introducing solar panels to generate electricity to cook food, and so children could read at night, and people could access the internet. The literacy rate has gone up and even poor children are going to university. The key to population stabilisation is education. Girls who are literate and who have had an education will not have as many children. So education is one of the pillars of sustainability.

My own feeling is is that women are wiser and more sensible than men in this way. I think that women can see far ahead, can see that we must preserve the environment that we live in. This may be a sexist point of view, but I really think that men are experts at harming and killing members of their own species, for example in domestic violence and warfare. If there were more women in power, we could be more optimistic about the future.

We need to be less individualistic, to have more of a social contract. You cannot have a sustainable society while there are such gross inequalities in wealth. One percent of the world's population owns 50 percent of its wealth. Power is concentrated in the hands of a few, who are not necessarily the wisest few. So we must diminish these gross inequalities.

We also need to listen to the few ecological economists, people like Herman Daly, Kenneth Boulding and E.F. Schumacher. Economy and ecology derive from the same Greek word, ecos, home. But most economists have been seduced by the ideas of endless growth and material gain – GDP – as the only things that matter in life. Ecological economists recognize the value of nature, that we are part of nature, and also of families, communities, and future generations that economists typically ignore.

They've also found that people or societies that are ultra-rich are not necessarilyhappy. From my background as a physician, I think we need a focus not on wealth, but on well-being. We need to have a little more growth in wisdom, that material goods are really not satisfying for people, and to be rich is not necessarily to be happy. I think that human happiness is something we should aim for, like in Bhutan, where they want to replace the gross national product with gross nationalhappiness as an indicator of progress.

Obviously, economic principles are necessary to run a society, but not to dominate its thinking. Economics without ecology means disaster.

What role do you see technology playing?

There's enormous potential for clean, renewable energy notably from a cocktail of solar thermal, photovoltaic, geothermal, wind, wave and tidal power. Storage of power poses a problem, but technologies are now available to store enough power in batteries for transport, domestic and industrial use. Renewable energy can now be used to attach hydrogen to nitrogen as anhydrous ammonia, which was used to drive light rail in New Orleans in the late 19^th Century and buses in Brussels during the Second World War. Ammonia as a fuel is now being used in Canada and the US, with ongoing research into ammonia fuel cells, against objections by the fossil fuel industries.

The research by Daniel Nocera and his colleagues on artificial photosynthesis also shows great promise for the world's future. There's lots of evidence that renewable energy can be economically competitive with fossil fuels. We also need to use energy more efficiently instead of wasting it the way we do.

On the other side of the energy equation, primary prevention must be addressed. The widespread plunder of forests, which absorb carbon dioxide, must be curtailed, and the land used instead for organic agriculture to feed the expected growth of an additional 3 billion people.

James Hansen, a senior physicist in NASA, summarizes the required change as moving from a carbon economy to a photon economy. I think the main obstacle on both sides is not technical or scientific; it's political.

What's your prognosis for the patient?

Right now, the Anthropocene continues on its lethal way with the opening of new coal mines and gas wells instead of installing economically competitive renewable energy. The problems confronting us in the Anthropocene may be summarized as the “three Ps,” namely Population, Pollution and Poverty. Metamorphosis to the Sustainocene will require application of the three “Es,” namely Ecology, Education and Ethics.

I have seven grandchildren, and I think about their future rather anxiously. Anyone with humanity in their bones thinks about their grandchildren, and business as usual will put them at hazard. But if the word Sustainocene catches on, it might help – “from little things, big things grow,” as in the case of acorns. 

We should remember the ancient Greek proverb that wise men plant trees under whose shade they will not sit.

Why is there anything rather than nothing--story on BBC

BBC Earth has just published a feature I wrote looking into what science has to say about why anything at all exists. Here's the link:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141106-why-does-anything-exist-at-all

The Lysenko Affair

Truthout has just published an op-ed by us, entitled The Lysenko Affair. 

Here's the summary:

The Republican Party's embrace of climate-change denial is reminiscent of the Soviet Union's three-decade-long endorsement of Lysenkoism, which likewise was based on denial of basic science. Both represent politically convenient untruths with dangerous real-world consequences.

You can read the piece at: http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/25078-the-lysenko-affair

My most recent story for New Scientist, on what a sustainable world might be like, was published as the cover feature for their 2 July 2014 issue. You can view a bit of the story here. The rest of the story is behind the New Scientist paywall, so only available if you are a subscriber. If you would like more information about the story, you can contact me at robtadler@gmail.com.

I have a name

Ihave a name is a project that sets out to illustrate, through photos and biographies, that the often nameless, faceless migrants trying to enter the U.S. from Latin America are real people...individuals with names, faces, and histories.

For the past eighteen months, Tom Feher, a talented photographer, and I have been working on this project in Mexico. Tom has been taking photos of Latin American migrants passing through a shelter in Oaxaca, Mexico on their way to the U.S., and I’ve been interviewing them. Our goal is to produce a movable exposition of 30 or more life-sized photos and written vignettes that will convey what we’ve been learning firsthand--that it’s one thing to have a concept such as “migrant,” “migrant worker,” “undocumented worker,” or “illegal alien,” and quite another to know people as individuals with their own names, faces, life stories and dreams.

The inspiration for this project came to Tom when a neighbor of his in Seattle kept referring to a worker as “Jose” or “the Mexican.” When Tom spoke with “Jose,” he found out that he was neither Mexican nor named Jose. That was the catalyst for I have a name. Tom and I want to do what we can to let people meet the usually nameless and faceless migrants who pick our food, staff our restaurants, build our houses and maintain our homes. We think this approach has the potential to change hearts and minds. We’ve now interviewed and photographed 18 men and women, about half the number we want for the exposition. We’ve lined up our first venue, Trinity Church in Boston, for December, 2014.

Putting together an exhibit like this will require considerable financial support. Tom has calculated the material and transportation costs of the project at about $25,000. We hope to raise this amount through the funding site indiegogo.com. Any contribution you can make, from $1.00 up, will help. You can see more about the project and contribute if you wish by clicking here or on any of the links above. And, if you feel as we do that this is a worthwhile project, please send this note on to some of your friends or associates.

Thanks very much for your time and attention, and, hopefully, your support.

Robert Adler

"Nothing personal. It's for the good of the economy."

Drawing by Sarah Adler, 2012. All rights reserved.

Home of the Brave

 HOME OF THE BRAVE

Dear Mitt,

I’d like you to tell me

when

you became so afraid

of the world

you actually made

where mortgaged lives

polluted skies

endangered dreams

denial schemes, all slipped

half buried beneath your bottom line.

My country tis of thee,

sweet land of voter ID

land of wall street greed

purveyors of endless need

more ostrich than eagle 

head down, furiously

kicking sand into the gears of change

facing facts with fatuous fictions

Beamed right

at that quivering center 

where old fears and rusty saws

are sharpened

for deeper cuts  

Not well-funded banks

and unfunded wars

but right at those oh so

soft and tempting organs

where the most vulnerable among us live.

Land of the hedge fund’s pride 

land where one-percenters reside

on every gated mountainside,

let freedom

from regulation ring

and rally round that highly leveraged flag boys

which 47% of us don’t deserve to own

even

one thread,

one stripe,

one star.

YouTube version of Dear Mitt

They say that a picture is worth 1000 words:

Michele Bachmann's Direct Line to God


Following the East Coast earthquake and Hurricane Irene, presidential candidate Michele Bachmann's response was as follows:

“I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians,” Bachmann said to supporters. “We've had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here? Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending.' ”

It must be great to have a direct line to God. It's strange, though, that God always seems to tell subscribers to the hotline exactly what they want to hear.

Ignorance is even more blissful if you're sure you know

We at the institute want to draw attention to a notable victory in the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans.

A just-released Gallup poll finds that 96 percent of Americans believe that they know "something" or "a great deal" about global warming and climate change.

Contrast that 96 percent figure with the results of a Yale University study last year that found that 92 percent of Americans would receive a C, D or F on what they actually know about climate change. Fifty-two percent would flat-out fail.

For example, 55 percent don't know that carbon dioxide traps heat being radiated from the Earth's surface, 43 percent don't know what the greenhouse effect refers to, and 75 percent have never heard of ocean acidification or coral bleaching.

It's a great example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive defect that blinds people to their own deficiencies.

From a PR point of view, it's an accomplishment to convince people of your message--yet after all, that's what they get paid to do. But it's a work of art to convince people of a lie and also make them think they really know the truth.

Too bad there's no Oscar, Emmy or Nobel Prize for the dedicated people who have pulled this off!

Nobel Medal          Credit Chris Campbell/Creative Commons

High fives all around!

Time for a New National Holiday -- Creation Day!


With Rick Perry's Day of Prayer and endorsement of the teaching of creationism in Texas schools, Michele Bachmann's links to Dominionism, and the Republican presidential candidates' near-universal rejection of climate science (what's with Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman?), we thought it was time to pass on this timely proposal from The Committee for Creation Day:

August 23, 2011

The Committee for Creation Day

Washington, DC

“Creation Day: An Idea Whose Time Has Come”

Dear Senators

BARRASSO, BROWNBACK, CHAMBLISS, COBURN, CORNYN, CRAPO, DEMINT, HATCH, MCCAIN, RISCH, SESSIONS & THUNE

and Representatives
AKIN, ALEXANDER, AUSTRIA, BACHMANN, BISHOP, BLACKBURN, BLUNT, BOEHNER [and others]


and presidential candidates
BACHMANN, PERRY [and others],


First, we at The Committee for Creation Day want to congratulate those of you who have earned a Defenders of Liberty rating from the American Conservative Union. Your 100 percent advocacy of conservative values represents a remarkable intellectual, moral and political achievement, and is greatly appreciated.

Given your proven support for Christian values, we want to bring to your attention a proposal that we believe can help unify all right-thinking citizens behind God’s plan for the United States—Creation Day, a new national holiday.

As you know, in 1654 the great scholar Archbishop James Ussher calculated that God initiated Creation during the night preceding Sunday, October 23, 4004 B.C.

What could be more important than officially recognizing that awesome moment, especially during these crucial and difficult times?

--Making Creation Day a national holiday would provide further proof that the United States is a nation founded on Christian principles and relying on God’s grace and guidance for its success.

--Federal recognition of Creation Day would provide invaluable support for the state-by-state, school-board- by-school-board battle to provide public school students with a balanced understanding of the scientific theory of intelligent design versus godless evolution, and balanced access to the truth about Creation compared to scientific theories claiming that the universe is billions of years old.

--Official establishment of Creation Day would bring some much-needed joy into these difficult years of economic crises, droughts, floods and other catastrophes that herald the End of Days. Environmentalists have their Earth Day. Why shouldn’t the rest of us have the right to unite in celebration of the Universe’s Birthday?

We understand that there may be some technical problems with the date of October 23. It falls right between Columbus Day, October 10, and Veterans Day, November 11. Some might think that having three Federal holidays in a month would be excessive. However, given the current insolvency of the government, not to mention our shared desire to cut government down to its lowest possible level, the more time Federal employees have off the better. We’re sure that, like the FAA employees who continued to work without pay during the recent debt ceiling crisis, other Federal employees will be happy to be furloughed without pay should October 23 fall on a weekday. Or perhaps Columbus Day and/or Veterans Day could be moved to some other dates, for example to March and April, which lack Federal holidays, or simply cancelled. After all, the discovery of America and even recognition of our brave veterans pale in importance to officially recognizing the Day It All Began.

We feel that it is worth noting that if making Creation Day a national holiday could be accomplished this year, then the very first celebration would fall on Tuesday, October 23, 2012. That's exactly two weeks before the general election. Enough said.

We think that we can accurately note that we represent tens of millions of voters, not to mention potential donors who are in a position to support Godly politicians generously, who would appreciate and applaud your advocacy for, and, God willing, creation of this new and vitally important national holiday.

Help us Ussher in a new, God-fearing era in America.

Sincerely,


The Committee for Creation Day


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How much do you know about the state of the nation?

We're constantly exposed to one version or another of the idea of American exceptionalism. The politicians and advertisers remind us over and over again that the U.S. is number one, the richest country in the world, the most powerful, the shining “city on a hill” prophesied by our Puritan founders.

If you’re curious to see how well your knowledge about how the U.S. is doing matches what the statistics say, and if the U.S. still merits that number one spot, take this 20-item quiz.

 1. Among the 23 richest countries (measured by GDP per person), where does the U.S. rank in 
 terms of life expectancy (1 = highest life expectancy, 23 = lowest)?                                                _____                                                               

             2. Among the 23 richest countries, where does the U.S. rank in terms of income

inequality (1 = lowest ratio between top and bottom 20%; 23 = highest ratio)?                                  ____


3. Among the 21 richest countries for which data are available, where does the

U.S. rank on a health-and-social-problems scale that combines measures of

trust, mental illness, drug and alcohol addiction, infant mortality, life expectancy,

obesity, children’s educational performance, teenage births, homicides, rates of

imprisonment, and social mobility (1 = fewest problems, 21 = most problems)?                                    _____

4. Among the 22 richest countries for which data are available, where does the U.S.

Rank on the UNICEF index of child wellbeing, a combination of 40 measures of

children’s health and wellbeing (1 = healthiest for children, 22 = least healthy)?                                     _____


5. Of the 21 richest countries for which data are available, where does the U.S.

rank in terms of the percent of GDP spent on foreign aid (1 = highest, 21 =lowest)?                           _____

6. Of the 12 rich countries for which data are available, where does the U.S. rank

In terms of the percent of the population who have been mentally ill in

The past 12 months (1 = lowest percentage, 12 = highest percentage)?                                                ____

7. Of 22 rich countries for which data are available, where does the U.S. rank in

terms of the United Nations index of illegal drug use (1 = least use, 22 = most use)?                          _____


 8. Among the 23 richest countries, where does the U.S. rank in terms of infant deaths

per 1000 live births (1 = lowest infant death rate, 23 = highest infant death rate)?                                 _____


 9.  Among the 21 rich countries for which data are available, where does the U.S. rank

In terms of the percent of people who are obese—body mass index over 30—

(1 = lowest percentage of obese citizens, 21 = highest percentage of obesity)?                                     _____


10.  Among the 19 rich countries for which data are available, where does the U.S.

rank in terms of the percentage of children who are overweight (1 = lowest

percentage of overweight children, 19 = highest percentage of overweight children)?                            _____

11. Among 22 rich countries for which data are available, how do U.S. 15-year-olds

Rank on an international test of math and reading skills (1 = highest, 22 = lowest)?                           _____

12. Among 21 rich countries for which data are available, where does the U.S. rank

In terms of the number of births among teens aged 15-19 (1 = lowest teen birth

rate, 21 = highest teen birth rate)?                                                                                                       _____

                                                                                                   
13.   Among the 23 richest countries, where does the U.S. rank in terms of homicides

per million people (1 = lowest homicide rate, 23 = highest)?                                                                 _____

14.   Among the 22 rich countries for which statistics are available, where does the U.S.

Rank in terms of the number of people in prison per 100,000 citizens 

(1 = lowest rate of imprisonment, 22 = highest)?                                                                                  _____

                                                                                                                   
15.  Among the 11 rich countries for which data is available, where does the U.S. rank in

terms of social mobility, measured by how different a son’s income at 30 is from his

father’s income when the son was born (1 = high mobility, 11 =low mobility)?                                      _____

16.   Among 21 rich countries for which data are available, where does the U.S. rate

In terms of the percentage of children living with a single parent (1 = lowest

percentage, 21 = highest percentage)?                                                                                                 _____

17.   Among the 22 richest nations for which statistics are available, where does the

U.S. rank in terms of the number of patents issued per 1,000,000 citizens

(1 = highest number of patents per capita, 22 = lowest number per capita)?                                         _____

18.   Among the 11 rich nations for which statistics are available, where does the U.S.

rank in terms of the proportion of waste that gets recycled (1 = highest proportion

of waste recycled, 11 = lowest proportion of waste recycled)?                                                            _____


19.    Among the 23 richest countries, where does the U.S. rank in terms of carbon

dioxide emissions per person (1 = lowest per capita CO2, 23 = highest per capita)?                         _____

20.   Among the 25 richest countries, where does the U.S. rank in terms of the percentage

of children living in relative poverty--defined as below a country’s median income—

(1 = lowest percentage of children in relative poverty, 25 = highest percentage)?                                  _____

You'll find the correct answers below. 

These statistics (except for # 20, which come from UNICEF) are taken from the book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson. They lay out the case for the idea that, among rich, developed countries, it's not the amount of wealth but the degree of equality or inequality that makes the difference between a physically and mentally healthy, happy, well functioning and secure society and the opposite. They find that, among rich countries, those with high levels of income equality, such as the Scandinavian countries and Japan, do well on these measures of individual and social well being, while those with high levels of inequality, such as the U.S. and the U.K., do poorly. They think there is a cause-and-effect relationship between inequality and social problems, and that the most direct way to address this wide range of issues is to take steps to return the U.S. to a more equitable society.

 Correct answers:
1.  20/23 (4^th lowest in life expectancy)
 2.  22/23 (2^nd highest in income inequality)
3. 21/21 (highest level of health and social problems)
 4. 19/22 (4^th lowest on child wellbeing)
5.  20/21 (2^nd lowest percent spent on foreign aid)
 6. 12/12 (highest prevalence of mental illness)
 7. 19/22 (4^th highest in illegal drug use)
8. 23/23 (highest infant death rate)
 9. 21/21 (highest level of adult obesity)
10.  19/19 (highest percentage of overweight children)
11.   17/22 (6^th lowest math and reading skills at age 15)
12.   21/21 (highest teen birth rate)
13.  23/23 (highest homicide rate)
14.   22/22 (highest imprisonment rate)
15.   11/11 (lowest social mobility)
16.   20/21 (In a three-way tie for the highest level of children in single-parent homes)
17.   19/22 (4^th lowest number of patents per 1,000,000 population)
18.   9/11 (3^rd lowest proportion of waste recycled)
19.   22/23 (2^nd highest per capita CO2 emissions)
20.   25/25 (highest percentage of children in relative poverty)