Orion Gaia Needs Yo

Orion , Gaia Needs You !
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com
Deep background:

Gaia

Gaia is the shorthand for the feedback system whereby the living organisms on planet Earth maintain the planet’s temperature within livable ranges . The increasing insolation output from Sol ( up 25% over the last three billion years ) is pushing the adaptability envelope (Cf Lovelock).

The fibrillations  in climate at the extremes of adaptation give rise to intelligence . Intelligence can thus be seen as an inevitable consequence of a main sequence star of Sol’s mass reaching a certain age . This has two interesting corollaries:

1. Putative civilizations in the local stellar group will be of about the same level .

Note that only the increasing temperature of the Sol-type sun is a factor . Asteroid impacts , etc are immaterial . Any present contacts with local civilizations will be at about the same intelligence level . Technology levels can be measured in the log of energy utilization . In other words , the gap between nuclear-energy using civilizations cannot be as large as , say between Europeans and Amerindians/Africans in SolTerra’s history . Also , note the successful assimilation of higher technology in Russia , China , India , Japan . The key seems to prevent a massive depopulation due to plagues .

1. Intelligence can be seen as another way in which the feedback mechanism operates . Humans will have to manage the planet more pro-actively to ensure their own survival . This enevitably means the survival of the ecosphere . Shading the planet , moving off-planet to habitats , terraforming Mars, Venus et al , or colonizing other solar systems are ways of doing this .


2. Exclusion ! The one response guaranteed to lead to extinction is “Business as usual” .  The planetary system is nearing the limits of it’s adaptive capability . The evolution of intelligence is a symptom of this . Supra-planetary intervention is needed .


3. For that , the ability to use and get large masses ( ie in the millions of tons ) into orbit is necessary .

Orion

See excellent Wikkipedia summation .     en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion

Deep background:

Any explosive reaction propulsion system is essentially like exploding a cracker  in the middle of kettle . If you leave a hole in one end of the kettle , you have a rocket or a jet engine with thrust in the direction opposite to the hole . But Newton’s laws says that no matter how fancy your tricks , the force-components at ninety-degrees to the thrust direction cannot be used for propulsion .

Propulsion and lift .
Yet nearly all our present aircrafts’ propulsion is on the horizontal (propellers or jets) . The vertical lift is by air-pressure differentials on special surfaces (wings) .

Our problem is not a gravity-well . If it was not for the atmosphere , we could simply build a long rail-gun to get any desired mass into orbit .

1 . The Original Orion :
A buffered plate with energetic series of explosions under it (nuclear if necessary ) . All lift given by propulsion . Maximum possible efficiency 50% .

2. Orion Air-Lift
The explosion is above the plate .We do not contain the sides of the explosion . The shock-wave sweeps away the air above the plate . The air-pressure differential lifts the whole contraption .
We already know that we require far less force to get aero-dynamic lift than straight-up vertical propulsion . ( Go to any airport) .

This is essentially an inverted hovercraft . The difference  is that the pressure is removed from the top of the plate in a series of pulsed explosions . Since the explosions need not be contained ( like in a jet engine) , conventional , shaped or nuclear explosives can be used . Anything with a bit of vooma .

The plate can be anything durable (concrete , granite ) . The lift is like a hovercraft : the larger the surface area , the better . 10 000 to 100 000 tons seems to be good estimates to put into orbit using conventional explosives like semtex . See tweaking .

Tweaking:
2.1 Put a hole in the center of the plate , with a cap on top .  Vertical component of thrust is added .
2.2 Fresnel type effects are possible .
2.3 The contraption will have to start falling sideways at higher altitudes . Secondary shuttles can use it for orbital launch . The whole plate can go standard Orion or Railgun Orion to go into orbit .

Orion Rail-Cannon.

For those who need to zap an incoming asteroid , missiles , or in extremis , an incoming comet .

This is a purely destructive hypervelocity bullet that can be fired from the surface of the planet with little preparation necessary . A desperation tool .

Essentially , we have to drill a tunnel of vacuum in the atmosphere for our bullet , while erecting an electromagnetic-railgun to accellarate it to a reasonable fraction of lightspeed .

The method:
Have a plate with a hole in the center . Have a wire-tube of ionized air paths (laser guides from orbit or from plate ) .

Explode pulsed nukes below the hole in the plate .

The blast through the hole blows ionized air and ablatives through the laser ionized air-paths , inducing huge currents . The currents act as a linear rail-gun . It also blows a vacuum ahead of the plate .

Repeat the pulse .

What makes it cheap , easy and quick at present is that the nuclear pulse can be delivered from outside the tube (ie cruise missiles)

Ten square miles of Canadian shield rock 3000 feet deep can be converted into a pulse of plasma moving at about 0.1 c using about 100 cruise missiles . Of course , in such a case , the atmosphere ahead of the projectile will have to blown away as well .

Do not try this at home unless you have no choice !

It will make a really ,really loud bang ! The planet will go boing! . The night-sky will be like day .

Planetary temperatures will fall , due to small particulates  degrading into the atmosphere . But this is only a short-term solution to increased Solar temperature .

A least-intervention solution is to gradually shift the Earth’s orbit outward . This is easily within present technology ( cf studies) . A series of asteroids or comets steered close to Luna when it is farthest from the sun will tug the Earth-Luna system into a wider orbit using only gravitational forces .  (Jupiter has already done this) Mining the Sun for energy will also quickly soak up the extra energy . All dependant on massive extra-Terra activity .



The singularity.

This is essentially a deus-ex-machina argument . Everybody  (or a significant fraction ) will become like gods and fix all the problems . The teensy problem is that most humans of first-world countries are already like “gods” , in terms of previous civilizations . They fly , see distantly , hear the dead , kill at the touch of a button , etc, etc . Extrapolate this forward . The hope is that there is a phase change . But the only phase change we know of on a reliable basis is Death .

But death is not what it used to be . In SF you have personality downloads . If your collection of photos and textmemories cobbled together by a AI passes the Turing test , is the person dead ? Half dead ? 80% dead ?

Can you see the problem ?

We thought there would be neat division : an event horizon . But in real life , the dead hang around long after they should have decently buggered off . And the more they are with us , the more we need to be purged . Their dead hands hang around in photos , patents , trademarks , statues ,plays , music ,novels , until a violent convulsion is needed to get rid of the past .

Weltschmertz while looking at old photographs should be firmly stamped on .
This is why Napoleon was known as the Great Disturber .

This convulsion is usually given the name of a revolution , or singularity .

So the singularity is always with us , but only more so if you are dead .

Hah! My quote!
A suitable revenge is to remember only the good parts .

Andre

Training the Immune

Training the Immune System.

The immune system is capable of handling most diseases , but is primarily reactive . The initiative is with diseases causing rapid changes in the targeting markers . Two new powerful techniques , which works very well in synergy , have emerged :

Method :
1. Isolate some disease causing cells (ie cancerous cells , HIV , etc)
2.Slow the activity in the cells , thereby halting cell-wall changes , by using H2S concentrations graduated from (say) 75 ppm to 80 ppm.
3. Kill the cells using hypochlorous acid ( bleach ) .

1. Inject the lot back into the organism  .


2. Repeat quickly.

Rationale :

1. The effect of H2S is well documented .
It slows the metabolism of the whole cell , including the cell-wall .

2. The effect of hypochlorous acid ( bleach ) :
Refer to
Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy , Do1:10.007/s00262-006-0127—9
Or
New Scientist  of 4 March 2006 p17 .

Cancer cells killed by hypochlorous acid (HOCl) ( bleach ) is five times more likely to be recognized as malign by dendritic cells than those killed by other means . This is an experimental fact .
The reason seems to be that one of the main methods by which the immune systems
kills deviant cells is by an injection of hypochlorous acid ( bleach ) . The fragments of hypochlorous acid mark the fragments of target cells as enemies to the immune system .
It is interesting to note that this seems to indicate a rapidly changing cell-wall structure for cancer cells , as there is a enemy-recognition , but not a very big one . This suggests the changeable cell-wall frozen at the moment of death does not encompass a large variety of the surface-configurations the cell can assume .

Hence we suggest a H2S concentration gradient up to stasis level to halt the various cell-wall permutations at various configurations at the moment of the hypochlorous acid kill . This should increase the immune system’s  enemy recognition percentage .

The question remains why would the technique be more effective with H2S than without it ?
The answer is that these intractable diseases , by definition , has evolved anti-attack mechanisms . One of these would certainly involve rapid change in the surfaces of the cells . The cells in the treatment sample would quickly diverge from the body’s system  . The body’s system would change slower because of signaling molecules (refer to quorum effect ) .
Thus , by immediately slowing the treatment sample by a graduated H2S concentration , killing it and immediately re-injecting , the immune system gains recognition of the enemy and hopefully some degree of advance on it .

The suspicion arises that a very simple molecule like HOCl is like other similarly simple molecules (nitrogen oxides , CO2 , etc that are used by living organisms as powerful signalling molecules .

HOCl kills any cell we know of . The only defense seems to be a thick shield . Is this wholly due to it’s reactive nature , or is there also a receptor site for it ? Immune cells kill by injecting it through a synapse-like structure . Thus , the targeting mechanism and the lethal payload share a linkage . This structure can learn through evolution .

Evolutionary speaking , the immune system will first try to kill by apoptosis as this is more economical . If this fails , then it will try to kill the cell by HOCl injection . If this fails and the system is still under stress , the chances are that it is a disease that is changing cell-walls quicker than the matching changes in the synapse-like immune cells mechanism .

The immune system will evolve two strategies :
First , try to decrease the change-speed in the attacking organism (first because this is older in evolutionary terms .)
Then , increase the learning speed of the immune system . Can you see where this is heading ?

Strategy 1 . Decrease in the change-speed in the attacking organism (whether internal like cancer  or external like flu ) is handled by H2S type mechanisms . Hence the importance of sulfur ( see my previous notes ).

Strategy 2 . Increase the immune system’s learning speed.
Erk. This is a bit humbling .
On a basic level , Iodine seems to fill the requisite niche for a simple thing that has profound effects on the immune system , and thus on the nervous system .

The mechanism controlling the long-term , planet-wide distribution of sulfur and iodine is the algal organisms in the upper levels of the oceans . These are very temperature-dependant .

As the planetary temperature rises , the average concentration of sulfur and iodine falls because the algae retreat to the poles . Diseases increase . The immune systems first try the H2S route (because this is older ) , then try increasing the learning speed . We see this as intelligence .

Thus , we can see the pulse of intelligence in human affairs after the end of the last ice-age as a direct result of the increase in diseases caused by the decrease in sulfur and iodine concentrations .

An example: It is generally thought that the increased fishing off African waters caused the Africans to eat more bush-meat , thereby increasing their exposure to exotic diseases . But they have been eating the same for thousands of years . The critical lack is iodine

To sum up , human increased intelligence can be seen as an immune-system response to periods of warm inter-glacials . Since there is small evolutionary pressure to decrease intelligence , the effect ratcheted up . At present , humans can be seen as part of the planetary response to the relentless warming of the sun .

In other words , a planet like Earth which started off slightly too cool about 3 billion years ago , reached ideal life-temperature about 2 billion years ago and has gradually heated up as the sun became hotter (it is now 25% hotter than 3 billion years ago) .

The life-systems on the planet formed a complex feedback system which kept the system at livable temperatures . (Cf  Daisyworld , Gaia  and similar models) .

It is important to realize that the insolation from the sun fluctuated . The higher influx from sol left less leeway on the upper end of the boundary for living organisms on earth . A bit hotter , and living things did not as well with as a bit cooler .

So , as the sun became hotter , the earth’s thermostat evolved to be cooler (to leave room for fluctuations on the hot side). Please note that no conscious agency is necessary . Living learning mechanisms like discussed above evolved and became more intelligent with each heat-burp .

Till eventually , we get the present situation . Humans will have to cool the planet or become extinct . This can be seen to be (nearly) inevitable from the first planetary configuration . Another way of looking at it that humans are a part of the life systems on the planet ensuring its continuation .

Humans are a result of the heating of the planet , not the cause .

Intelligence is inevitable on any planet around a star on the main sequence .

Andre

Mouse Rage Road Rage

Mouse Rage , Road Rage , Divorce and the Amygdala

http://andreswhy.blogspot.com

Have you ever flared with visceral fury at a sticky mouse ?

The sequence of events is interesting :

1. A mental discontinuity , as the consciousness is bypassed for immediate threat countering . (the flare)


2. A hormonal flood (the visceral fury bit).


3. A closely following (milliseconds) override as the threat is assessed and dismissed.


4. A gradual relaxation of body-mind systems if the stimulus does not recur soon


5. If it recurs soon (ie about 5-10 minutes) , within the long-term potentiating learning period , the amygdale learns more and more that this is a threat . The reaction becomes stronger and more widespread with every learning repetition.

What is similar between driving a mouse and a car ?
The visual system is very alert , but body-mind is in a mild obsessive-compulsive behaviour state  ( lower serotonin and elevated dopamine ) . Eg , feeling relaxed while concentrating .

Why the flare ?
This relaxed , concentrating and visually alert mental state is found in mammals usually when the response to perceived threat is not fight-or-flight , but fight only .

Some situations:
1. Post-coital (as discussed before) (Protect your genes!)
2. While eating . (Protect your food!)
3. While or after feeding cubs. (Protect your genes!)

This was hard-wired in during mammalian evolutionary history .

The Amygdala.
This brain organ is hardwired for threats to food and genes ,  and also learns threats for which immediate response is required . (The panic button).

Its forte is immediate response , bypassing any smarter but slower data processing .

It’s drawback is that it learns wrong responses to things which are not a threat .

Fast and twitchy beats slow but sure in the survival game.

The Amygdala is not smart or complicated  , but fast . And it learns very , very quickly  ( even once can be enough in a traumatic episode )

So , hardwired in is the mental state :
( VisuallyAlert + low serotonin + high dopamine )  +  Threat  (  Aggressive Attack

Every repetition of the threat reinforces this response , especially if the repetitions fall within the nervous system’s long-term potentiation thresholds ( 5 – 10 mins ) .
Eg , in corporal punishment , there was usually waiting period of 5 mins between lashes : not sadism , but pragmatic learning in action .

A problem is that other things associated with the primary stimulus  get learned as well . Things unrelated to any threat can trigger the response .

This brings us back to road / mouse rage .
The mental state :
( VisuallyAlert + low serotonin + high dopamine )  +  Threat  (  Aggressive Attack
gets reinforced with every repetition  . The amygdala gets sensitized  to this process . You might be exposed to one or two road-rage stimuli a week , but a sticky mouse happens often inside the 10 min threshold . The system gets more and more sensitized.

Interruptions of the ( VisuallyAlert + low serotonin + high dopamine ) state starts getting treated as threats .

An example is hubby relaxing , watching TV after dinner , and wife interrupts . He snaps aggressively at her , without knowing why . The situation escalates from there  to the divorce court .

Associated items get learned as threats just as well as the primary threat . One of the reasons for the extreme bitterness of divorces : each partner triggers extreme threat and anxiety responses in each other . They don’t know why , so they rationalize ,

(Anxiety attacks can be seen as such an associational threat. )

Victims of a security system run amuck .

Reprogramming the Amygdala.

As can be seen from the above , the sensitization grows greater with age . The man might try a new wife , but the same problems surface in different guises . Learned helplessness becomes more prevalent and the system tends to paranoic catatonia . Anything new but with vaguely similar elements to previous threats triggers a threat response .

(Interestingly , this might be why the immune system forgets . Some auto-immune diseases might be due to an inability to forget . Maybe some of the techniques below might help . I refer you to the close similarity between immune-cell interactions and synapses .)

The amygdala needs to unlearn some tricks and desensitize on others . You don’t want to do without cops , but you only want the ones which are not trigger happy .

Will-power
This does not work  , as the amygdale operates through bypassing all the slow smart feedback processes .



Un-learning  and re-learning.
We have the luxury here of two experimental facts that shows that reprogramming the amygdala is possible :

1.Virtual-reality (primarily visual) cures of phobias ( fear of snakes , heights,etc .) has taken place .  So a purely visual input has an effect . This is to be expected from the “VisuallyAlert” component in the original mental state .

2. Direct chemical intervention in the long-term memories .
Re-potentialization
It has been found experimentally that long-term memories in neurons can be repotentialized by presenting the original stimulus . This is to be expected from an evolutionary viewpoint if the organism is past the infantile (neural-pruning) stage .
Use of chemicals like some of the beta-blockers then erases the long-term memory .

Of interest here is that one of the main problems with amygdala-induced anxieties is that the same chemical messengers is used in the inter-brain communication as in the brain-body communications . This means that a threat response in the amygdala is mirrored in the body , and then feeds back to the amygdala . This is then again fed back into the body : the result is an anxiety attack and/or shock . The beta-blocker was originally developed to break the loop in the body , but it seems that it works by erasing the long-term memory .

There is one teeny problem here : a neuron carrying  no memory or a duplicate memory will probably be marked for apoptosis  . We do not want this . So the therapy should include a simultaneous long-term  memory re-learning process . This should also rejuvenate the hippocampus .

What can we do now?

All this sounds like it will take a big lab , lots of white coats and meetings , government approval before some emasculated version might crawl out and cheep at the universe .

Luckily , we already know one easily duplicated stimulus : mouse rage .

We can design a program to do this and be fun too.
Boredom will be a problem , so we use a 3x3 tic-tac-toe grid to soak up the brain’s pattern recognition and counting mechanisms .

The brain’s basic numerical processor can only count to 3 (to be more precise , it can handle < , = , > ) .  The pattern recognition is much more complex , but we want to combine the two .

Basically , it is a Sudoku type grid, but each of the 3x3 elements are spread through time , instead of through space .


We only need pattern recognition , so we only need the traditional “ x” and “o” .
The algorithm:

1. Create a tic-tac-toe that is not a solution (ie no horizontal,vertical or crisscross pattern) . For evolutionary reasons , humans are much more adept at picking out interrupted patterns . And that does not get simpler than xxo .


2. Move the cursor to the nearest x or o that breaks the pattern (the Y square). As it gets near , freeze the cursor and only resume movement if the mouse is moved over it’s little square again . This is the stutter . Don’t worry if it does not cause a rage flare . We are not trying to reinforce the mechanism , but reprogram it at subliminal level . Mark the target square element programmatically


3. Immediately after the stutter ,


4. Move every element in the tic-tac-toe one right and one down in wrap-around .


5. Test if it is solution , If not , loop to 4


6. If it is no solution , try to click on what you think is the Y-square within 30 seconds .


7. If it is correct , count one CorrectY , else count CorrectN .


8. Loop to 4  until 6 minutes have passed .


9. Show score and count set .


10. Loop to 1


11. Proceed until Halt


12. Show scores and sets as a time sequence .

Any suggestions?

Andre

The revenge of Gaia

The revenge of Gaia .

http://andreswhy.blogspot.com
The revenge of Gaia

A book by James Lovelock ( ISBN 13:978-0-713-99914-3 )
This a good summary and call to arms .

He argues that an extreme sense of urgency for remedial steps is necessary , as a major discontinuity ( or tipping point )  looms in about 30 to 40 years at present projected rates of global warming . The Global temperature would rise by about 3 degrees within this time , then suddenly suddenly rise within a year or two by about 8 degrees Celsius after this threshold is reached .

This is the Algal die-off tipping point .
If the global temperature rises by  3  degrees Celsius (ie a total 500 ppm CO2 concentration) global warming causing the rapid extinction of most algae in surface temperate and tropical oceans will result . This would cause a decrease in CO2 downdrawal and decrease in cloud-cover due to lack of DMS condensation nuclei for droplets . The combined effect bounces the global temperature up by at least 8 degrees in a very short time .

Other lesser positive feedback warming effects which are already operative :

1 . Melting of Siberian and Canadian permafrost is releasing large volumes of trapped methane and CO2 . ( Methane is 24 times more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 ) . Large peat fires is to be expected as dry-out progresses , releasing even more CO2 .

1. Melting of Arctic ice is reducing reflection of light , raising temperatures in arctic regions .


2. Melting of glaciers . Less flow-off during summer leads to less vegetation and more warming .


3. A temperature rise of 4 degrees will see the vanishing of all tropical forests ( The why is tied to the evaporation rate . Even present temperature rises are enough to cause dry-offs in marginal areas , leading to very large fires in the Amazon , Indonesia , Malaysia.) Human exploitation exacerbates this effect .


4. The slowing-down of the Gulf-Stream due to the large-scale influx of fresh water from the melting of the arctic and Greenland ice masses . Actually , the whole planetary ocean current system is affected , but nobody knows to what effect .


5. Solar dimming effect ( due to solar reflection by sulfur pollution aerosols ) decreases . The effect can be very pronounced : apparently , the week-long banning of all flights over the USA after 9/11 caused a whopping 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature over the north American continent .


6. Human activities .


7. Rising ocean levels and extreme wheather is killing vegetation , the rotting of which releases their carbon content as methane or CO2 .

Negative feedback factors:

1. Large scale volcanism : rapid melting of large volumes of ice will destabilize the tectonic balance , especially in the North Atlantic and North Pacific .


2. Lowering of oxygen concentration due to alagal die-off .

3. Humanity will have to supply the rest . All the natural restorative mechanisms seems to result in the extinction of humans .


What does this mean for humans?

The Business as usual scenario:
For about 20 years , things will get slowly worse . More extreme hurricanes , droughts , floods etc . Famines , water-famines and increasing oxygen-famines cause large-scale environmental refugees . Resource wars and genocidal wars increase in frequency and intensity .

The present resource-rich nations withdraw core-survivors to highland areas in the arctic and Antarctic regions . (Notice present fortifications in Urals and bio-banks in Norway and Sweden) The sea-level rises within a decade by at least 7 m as the Greenland ice melts at around 2050 . Antarctic melts are uncertain , but it would be prudent to relocate at least 200 m above present sea-levels .

All regions between Canada-NorthernEuropeSiberia and TierreDelFuega-NewZealand-Antartica become uninhabitable ( or at best , like the sub-sahel at present) . The Hadley-cells in the atmosphere broaden and shift the trade-wind further to the poles . Huge storms , hurricanes , floods , tornadoes . The risen sea-levels means huge expanses of shallow seas over Western-Europe , Eastern-US , Amazon , with concommittant  heating fuelling the storms .

The cooling caused by the cessation of the Gulf-stream on Western-Europe will be initially offset by the global warming ( the estimated effects cancel out : -8  by +8 degrees , but the rising sea-levels will drown most of the West-European plains (return to Tethys Sea) . The shallow seas trap heat and generate unbelievable storms .

The inevitable volcanism caused by the shifting tectonic stresses of lifting ice-masses will cause a short-term cooling , but even bigger storms . Super-volcanoes? Can anybody survive the energy fluctuations ?


Human intervention .

All this seems very pessimistic . Unless something drastic is done , it seems all too possible that no one will survive . Business as usual is not sufficient . Extinction is not only a real possibility , but a high probability .

Essentially , humans will have to increasingly manage the planet . Services supplied free and without conscious thought by the planet (call it Gaia ) ( like breathable air , potable water , edible food , safe domiciles , anti-boredom) , will have to be done by humans if they want to avoid extinction .

The Morality.

Humans have enormous power at the moment . They can easily control the problems of the planet . They have the technology and a lot of the necessary knowledge .

What they lack is a moral basis to mobilize it all .

There is a curious paralysis of the will .

They ask themselves :
“Is it the right thing to do?”
They are quite willing to sacrifice themselves if they are convinced it is the right thing to do (history is full of this) .

But they ask themselves:
Shall we loose a human disease on all the Universe ?
Will humans be like a plague ? At the moment they are contained on one planet . They think they have nearly destroyed their biosphere . Is it moral to release uncontrolled positive feedback forces ?


This is a very general way of looking at it:

The key here is variety and transformation .

Large numbers lead to variety . Variety lead to both conflict and co-operation .

Conflict and co-operation are fractal in combination . Elements have conflicts between  boundaries of co-operation , and these boundaries are in turn the elements of conflicts between bigger boundaries of co-operation , and so forth .

This gives sufficient scope for transformation .

Essentially , this means that any sufficiently large number of elements is bounded : Competitive elements are bounded by  co-operative boundaries , and co-operative boundary-elements are bounded by competitive boundaries . And so forth .

It means you can screw up big time , but you can’t destroy the universe .

Conversely , inaction in a complex situation spinning out of control is the worst possible response .

The moral thing for our society is to intervene .

That perennial problem “ Does the end justifies the means ? “ can be shown to be bounded .
You can try to analyze the effects of any decision in its competition environment until its co-operation boundary , then on all co-operation boundaries , then on all competition environments after that , etc . You will very rapidly reach reach a fuzzy boundary . Like a chaotic system into the future .
An example is climate . Climate and competitive humans is predictable (it is , after all , what we did above with global warming) . However , if co-operative humans are added , the end-result is unpredictable .You cannot say “this end justifies the means” , but only that “my striving towards these possible ends justifies some of these means “.


It is my considered opinion that the right thing to do is not to limit human numbers .

This translates into :
1.No artificial plagues .
2.Release energy technology .
3. Use present technology to the utmost , but in all areas .

Humans will have to manage the planet.

This means building up knowledge of how ecology works . Actively regulating the energy inflow to the planet , as well as the outflow .

These things Mother Earth used to do for us for free . But we’re slowly growing up . Time to stand on our own feet .

For instance , managing the energy inflow to the planet is trivial . Numerous umbrella-type plans are available . All require large masses in orbit , which can be done (and will be if things get bad ) by Orion type thrusters .
There is sufficient variety on the planet at the moment to make it inevitable .

It sounds like a lot of work , but there are a lot of hands . The terran biosphere , excluding humans , can be very closely approximated . If humans are included , decent first and second order approximations can be made .

Humans can run their biosphere .

Andre

FutureWatch Predict

FutureWatch : Prediction ranking by Google

http://andreswhy.blogspot.com

Synopsis:
Search engines like Google cannot examine and rank the future , but they can certainly rank past predictions about the future .

Benefits : the continual feedback will lead not only to the identification and ranking of predictors ,  but hopefully make existing ones take more care (eg think-tanks) . The creation of verifiable marketplace for predictors will lead to much better prediction systems , something a high-tech society desperately needs .

Existing systems:
This ranking is already done to some extent by money ( eg Warren Buffet in investments)  . This is also the only category where the accuracy of predictions is routinely measured  .

Political elections also can be seen as to a measure of the accuracy of a politician’s predictions .

There are a large number of other prediction systems : think-tanks , futurologists , science-fiction writers , scenario-planners , politicians , climatologists , astrologers , mediums , tarot , numerology , etc , etc .

The problem in a fast-changing , high-tech society is that irreversable  changes might take place before this evaluation process has caught up .

Argument for a new system:
It is clear that some individuals and organizations are better at prediction than others . The reason  why might be unclear , but some consistently outperform others .
The problem is to find them . This is the same as ranking them for accuracy above chance . A formidable undertaking .

A large statistical base with built-in feedback is required for any method .
Until now , only money was available as a reliable ranking mechanism .

A Google-type voting ranking system seems another viable method .

Google does not have to decide whether a predictor is better : superior predictors will draw more links , and poorer ones less .

Categorization :  some suggestions
By time and by type.

Scientific : Climate , population , etc
Financial
Economic
Politicians
Fashions
Happiness
Lotto
Etc , etc

Initial set-up problems:
This could be costly (if not impossible) .
Ask for help from your users .
Set up the categories .
Ask the predictors and the users to evaluate each other . This is viable only if a statistically large amount of data can be assembled .

Commercially interested predictors and users have an obvious interest in blowing their own horn and shooting down the competition .

But there is also a large class of vitally interested users in predictions : civil services , farmers , etc .

To repeat , this exercise would only be possible on a large statistical base .

But it will be very lucrative .

Andre Willers

Birdflu Survival Update 7 :CCR5 and Flu

Birdflu Survival Update -7

Dated 27/02/2006

CCR5 and Flu

I noticed that I have not established a link between the two in previous writings available to you .

The easiest way to see it is the pneumonic form of bubonic plague . It has borrowed the flu machinery for quick injection of material into the cell . This is so quickly lethal to the cell that it burns out too fast to be a serious pandemic .

Note that the 1918 Flu was preceded by a world-wide flu-like pandemic , where people got very ill with flu-like symptoms , but very few died . (March 1918) .They also recovered very rapidly , but there seems to have been no immunity response . (They died just as readily in the later November 1918 forms . ) In other words , the immune system had no chance to learn .
Yet workers in sulfur-rich environments were nearly unaffected .

This can be seen as an infection so virulent that it quickly killed the cells it penetrated.
No big problem . One intruder kills one cell , and the clean-up squad (apoptosis or immune system) removes the evidence .

But the immune system hasn’t learned much to counter the attacker in future . The cell has also not learned any handy new tricks the attacker might have . A system that allows controlled access to attackers would be much superior in competition with similar cells than those who do not .

Hence , a general learning channel to import a wide variety of genetic material under controlled conditions evolved . CCR5 seems to be one such a system . It happened a long time ago during the transition to an oxygen atmosphere . Organisms such as Flu or HIV seems to have learned to jam the learning channel open .

There seems to be a feedback element here as well . There seems to be no evolutionary advantage in HIV mutating endlessly to gain entry into an open port . The only advantage is that entry stimulates new immune system molecules configured for the new entry . The HIV uses the cells own machinery to exhaust the immune system . This also how flu works ( ie SARS overloaded immune systems ) . From evolutionary pressures , less lethal surviving varieties would evolve very quickly .

In evolutionary terms , any bug that does not kill off the whole species is a positive learning experience . An open port like CCR5 begs the question why the species is still in existence .

One view is that it is an over-population control .
Since sulfur supply is limited , too many organisms dilute the sulfur concentration per organism . Jamming open an entry-port into a cell will then quickly lead to the the evolution of predatory organisms that will reduce the population , regardless of the immune response . There has been about two billion years for this mechanism to become established.

The question is why such an obvious attack route has not been blocked . The answer is that it has . But it requires chemicals available in high concentrations at the time of the evolution of these ports . Sulfur and methane.

Note the importance of methane-type compounds in epigenetic programming . Sulfur (like in H2S) plays an equally important part .

Stem-cells can be seen as a form of suspended animation . This can be mediated by H2S . Since Sulfur is an element which is not very biologically active , shortages will be noticeable here first .

I have no guidelines on methane , since it’s importance only popped during this analysis . Methylazation as found in epigenetic programming would seem to be adaptation of methane-groups to more sophisticated usages as happened with oestrogen evolution . Still , it would happen easier if there was more methane . The body’s normal supply seems to be from gut-bacteria . A healthy intestinal flora seems more important than ever .

Sulfur concentrations and availability in the environment is still mainly determined by volcanic activity . Sulfur is sequestered into rocks , usually in the form of sulfates .Humans have put a few billion tons back into circulations via fertilizer , but it is drop in the bucket (unlike carbon , where fire does the work , sulfates has to be dug up , transported and laboriously reworked . ) Local high sulfur concentrations in rich agricultural nations might seem to be a problem , but the planetary concentration per person is decreasing .(Most food production in the East is done without artificial fertilizer).

Remember , every human being sequesters at least 15 kg of sulfur in his body . At his burial , this is interred in a grave yard and not recycled immediately . Human feces in the West is not recycled immediately ( usually washed into the sea) . All that sulfur is lost and the rate of replenishment does not keep up .

The result is a lowering of the sulfur concentration , not only in humans , but in the whole eco-system .

This leads to the worrisome conclusion that major pandemics of plant- and animal diseases are in the offing . HIV and Birdflu can be seen as ones .But an equivalent one would be diseases for wheat , corn , rice , cassava , manioc , beans , bamboo or any of the staple foods

The over-population control seems to be alive and operative .






What to do ?
Species survival seems extremely ulikely .

Individual survival:
Get off planet . Lament in your remaining time about the things you lot have been too stupid to maintain (you know , small things like air to breathe , water to drink , food to eat .)

The Terran ecology has been irrevocably disturbed . Any organisms remaining on-planet face a prolonged period of genetic instability (read extinction , retro-viral mutation , etc . )

Here is the joker:

Any humans moving successfully off-planet will need to understand genetics and ecology so well ( to create selfsustaining habitats) that they could redesign the Terran ecosystem . This is doubtful . The easier alternative would be to redesign humans .

Either way , Homo Saps is extinct . Deal with it .

Andre

Birdflu Update -6CCR5 , Sulpher and the 1918 Flu

Birdflu Survival Update -6

Dated 22/02/2006

CCR5 , Sulpher and the 1918 Flu

The 1918 flu attacked sulpher-deprived individuals through the receptor site CCR5 (see previous writings).

The 1918 flu was a direct mutation from birds to humans (ie no intermediate animal or human reactor was involved) . Hence there was no vector of the disease remaining after the human pandemic burned out . No reinfection from a animal source was possible , since there was no animal source and the burn-out happened quickly enough that the virus could not get a foothold in an animal species . So the epidemic vanished quickly .

If the same happens today , we can expect a quick , sharp pandemic involving nations that have been cutting down on sulpher emissions : USA and Europe .

A low-sulpher community (like SA) would be inclined to favour an endemic version of human bird-flu , since the African genetic diversity would be combined with bird-flu in a high-probability scenario of lower mortality ,but endemic reservoirs .

This might have already happened with HIV , since HIV uses CCR5 as well .

A testable prediction then would be that the recent (1 Jan 2006) introduction of low-sulpher diesel in SA would lead to a marked increase in the HIV/AIDS rates .

A worst case scenario would then be a sharp pandemic (50% death rate) in genetically uniform populations , with it then vanishing . However , genetically various populations (ie Africa) will have a lower initial mortality , but will then form a pool of endemic vectors .

Intriguing is the correlation between West Nile Fever and CCR5 . The mutation on CCR5 that gives a degree of immunity to 1918-flu , bubonic plague and HIV leads to a greater susceptibility to West Nile Fever .

Clearly , there is a very old correlation here . Attention is drawn to the high-sulpher content of the environment of the surviving hominins after the Toba event .

Historically , smallpox decreased bubonic plague below pandemic levels by blocking access to CCR5 . Suspicion exists that other diseases using CCR5 (like HIV) is now increasing because this blocker has been removed .

One wonders if the disruption in smallpox vaccination during WWI and the low-sulpher environment led to a random mutation of the bird-flu gaining sufficient foothold to become an epidemic .

Why should viruses be so sensitive to the sulpher concentration ? Because cells are so sensitive to sulpher concentrations . Attention is drawn to the cascade of epigenetic switches caused by a 80 ppm concentration of H2S , switching off the genes of even advanced mammals in a very precise sequence . (Suspended animation : see Scientific American) (Total anoxia does the same) . This is a partial apoptosis , since the total breakdown of the cell does not take place , but harmful oxidizing elements are apoptised .

What is even more intriguing , is that restoring oxygen leads to revivication without major support mechanisms . Ie , it is programmed in , and the program of partial apoptosis and anapoptosis is still fully operative (ie still used in routine cell operations) .

Whipsawing.
The suspicion arises that the first multi-cellular organisms evolved to be able to survive in both oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor , sulpher-rich environments . Initially , the ur-cell could do both , but not very well . Putting a cell-wall in between increased efficiency drastically . Parasites evolved for each mode , but would tend to specialize on aerobic or anaerobic after the schism got established by Darwinnian selection of more efficient phenotype preferred by a particular gene structure .

The joker here is the immune system . It places a bias on the organism , favouring the survival of positive changes , either aerobic or anaerobic .

So , breathing in succession 80 ppm H2S and pure Oxygen , while taking antibiotics should see off any cellular competitors in quick fashion .

Speculations:
The increase in asthma can be more accurately correlated to the lack of “mephitic vapours” . Ie the smells from the toilet . Note that the whipsaw effect above is a cascade , and that the process can be interrupted by the lack of a single element in the cascade . The lack of sufficient H2S concentration in developmental stages can lead to severe immune system imbalances . Note that small boys like bad smells . Why?

This leads to the irresistible conclusion that continuous washing is bad for human males , since it impairs their immune system . I always knew that !

Smell seems to have been neglected . If 80 ppm H2S triggers the organism into stasis (an experimental fact ) , smells ( or more exactly , chemical signals ) can cause huge effects . It is not the smell exactly . The chemical throws a switch in the genetic machinery of the cells . The result can be out of proportion to the concentration (will have to be , as concentrations are diluted by the volume of space .)

Epigenetic programming is obvious . Post-natal epigenetic programming using whipsawing H2S techniques might persuade some cells into becoming stem cells . Note that regenerators like crocs , tadpoles , etc seek anaerobic environments

Note that the techniques are simple and reasonably risk-free .

You can do this at home , especially as last resort .

Can it make you younger?
Whipsawing is a form of post-natal epigenetic programming . It definitely slows ageing , but regeneration might take a bit more work . Crocs and sharks keep on growing , until they cannot be supported by their ecosystem . I see no reason why humans should be different.

The only way old humans could survive is by emigrating to the outer spaces . Imagine a universe populated by concentric rings of bores . Yuck.

Andre

Blackout! The Cost of the Margin .

Blackout !
The Cost of the Margin

A quick theory overview:
For every additional dollar spent on an existing system , we get R dollars in value in return . Seen over time , R is initially much bigger than one , but decreases as the system matures and complexity increases ( ie the Law of Diminishing Returns) .

As the Return R decreases to one , risk assessment plays a bigger and bigger role . Riskier investments are not made or , more importantly , no precautions are taken against the more unlikely risks .

Simultaneously , the complexity of the system increases ( by definition , the simple and easy things get done first .) The number of things that can go wrong increase exponentially . If humans are involved , the system is non-linear as well . In other words , an unlikely outlier can feedback to affect the whole system . But no effort or expense is made to prevent the unlikelier problems . Hence , it is only a matter of time before the system is negatively affected in a major way .

It is a “ Damned if you do , damned if you don’t “ scenario .
Trying to cover the exponentially increasing number of risks must bankrupt any system .
Trying to prevent the system becoming more complex in a competitive environment will lead to such a relative disadvantage that the system (or its CEO ! ) will suffer a catastrophic drawdown .

A Civilization is composed of many systems like these , at various stages . Any individual system will eventually self-destruct , but innovation can create new systems .

Any freezing (or slow-down) will result in destruction by a competitor.
If it is a monopoly , there is no competitor . The eventual collapse will be much quicker and more devastating .

There is one out : a non-competitive environment . Note that the civilizations with the longest history of stability ( Egypt , Christian , Islam , China , Buddhist , Hindu) managed to create both real and virtual pockets of non-competitiveness inside their boundaries (ie Monasteries , Universities ) .


A case study : ESKOM in South Africa .

ESKOM (Electricity Supply Commission) was originally founded to smooth electricity supply from private and municipal electricity generators to the gold mines and their supporting industries on the Rand . It enjoyed one insuperable advantage : by Act of Parliament , it could not be sued for any losses its customers suffered due to
interruption of electricity supplies .

It used advantages of scale , cheap copper (for the wires) and legislation to become the sole supplier of electricity in South Africa . An example are the farmers: many farmers had their own generators , but were compelled by legislation to pay connection fees , even if they did not use ESKOM power . So eventually , they were forced to become ESKOM customers out of economic necessity .

The result was an enormously complex web wires strung all over South Africa to every home . After 1994 , the demand for power exploded . The cost of copper wire exceeded the revenue from any supply through them or the cost of safeguarding them All to be done without raising the cost above inflation level . An impossible task .

So the cost of power has been rising inexorably in real terms .


The Western Province Blackouts 2006

The City of Cape Town used to be self-sufficient in its power requirements . ESKOM promised cheaper and guaranteed power . The local power stations were phased out , except for the Koeberg nuclear station . Maintenance in respect of unlikely events ( like supervision to prevent a bolt being dropped into one of Koeberg’s main generators , cutting undergrowth under transmission lines , cleaning insulators on transmission lines after soot ,birdshit and dirt build-up , wear-and-tear on transformers and switchgear , etc) was not done .

Now the network is under stress , and the most fragile elements are failing first . Hence , the oldest , richest areas which first got electricity tend to be most affected as the engineers try to bring the network into stability while doing decades-needed maintenance . Newly revamped areas (like V&A , Sea Point) seems to be unfairly exempt .

Prognosis : not good.

ESKOM’s marginal return is less than one . If it remains the only electricity supplier , it’s collapse will drag down the whole sub-continent , or require exponentially increasing government subsidies / prices .

A solution is to reduce complexity voluntarily instead of waiting until outside factors does it for you .

A nice way that retains power for all is to split the big cities from the rural areas . The big cities are to be encouraged to build their own stations (eg pebble bed reactors) , while most of the complexity of the rural areas can be offset by renewable energy sources like wind or solar power . Note that central distribution of electrical power via valuable metal wires is never going to have a marginal return bigger than one (ie it will always have to be subsidized) . It is also in our civilization’s interest to keep the rural areas independent from the cities .

Will this happen?

You judge : it is your future.

Andre

Jethro Tull – Super Hero

Jethro Tull – Super Hero

In 1701 an Englishman called Jethro Tull invented the seed drill . By quickly and reliably planting seeds at the optimal spacing and depth , this invention enabled about a fourfold increase in yield within one season .

This invention created the largest pulse of wealth in history . Bigger than the invention of fire . Bigger than the invention of agriculture . Bigger than the invention of the internal combustion engine or transistor .

It kick-started the Industrial Revolution .

The reasons:
Most wealth was agricultural.
The increase in wealth was within one season . Malthusian population growth would take about 2 to 3 generations to catch up . Imagine getting a 400% raise in your salary in one year without inflation . This was the effect . This pulse of wealth propagated onwards , giving leisure and incentive to inventors . (ref Baby Boomer Pulse)

The result was a pulse of wealth stimulating other individuals to make similar inventions . The Age of Reason was born . The problem was the massive increase in population made possible by the efficient mechanized systems .

The large number of surplus males and the means to support large armies led to the First Large War (Napoleontic) . This gave the Age of Reason a knock (Nationalism), but you could still state unpopular beliefs without being killed for it . The Second Large War (WWI) destroyed the Age of Reason and ushered in the ideologies (Communism , Marxism , Fascism , Capitalism ). If you stated an unpopular belief , you stood a good chance of being heavily penalized for it . The demise of ideologies collapsed the system back to Religious Fundamentalism , where you can be killed for stating an unpopular belief . The Age of Reason is finally dead . This is the state at circa 2006 AD .

The Age of Reason only lasted a century , but gave rise to our present wealth .

When evaluating ideas like that of Huebner ( see “Waiting for the lights to go out” in Sunday Times of Oct 16 2005 ) , it is important to remember that changes come in pulses . Things might seem to be going to hell in a hand-basket (cf horse-poop in New York circa 1890’s) , but discontinuities generate pulses of change and wealth . You might as well try to explain a transistor using Newtonian mechanics . In other words , analyzing pulses of change as simple statistics of numbers of people over time is garbage .


Is Reason a Good Thing ?

The human race is trembling on the brink of extinction because of the inability of reason to resolve the problem of population and competition .

Example: China
Twice China has limited expansion:
1 Destruction of exploration fleets in 15 th century : the result was Western domination 200 years later (not very long) .
2 One child families in the 20 th century . The Result was a pulse of wealth (as more resources was devoted to education of the lone children) , but their main competitor India is exceeding their population .



Reason (ie logic) has two major drawbacks :

1 The Universum (Venn) is unbounded . This has been proven rigorously in 1906 (Principia Mathematica by Whitehead and Russell) . This means that no theory of everything is possible . ( If you think you have a TOE , you can always define items outside the delineated boundary which , by definition , do not fit inside TOE.)
2 Chaos Theory shows that that even inside a deterministic system , time-sequence predictions are only possible with varying degrees of error (cf weather) . The number of near equipotential branches grow exponentially after a finite number of time units .


This means that the End Does Not Justify The Means .
At best , a prediction must have some sort of probability margins .
This argument is only valid if no time-travel is possible .

Is there hope?
Our present locale (the sidereal Universe) can be expressed as Locale I , defined by the principle that conservation laws are possible There are rules !. Seeing Locale I as delineated , means pockets of being (particles) , space , time and curvaceous space-time. But it is unstable iro non-conservation systems (defined as Locale II). Locale I is maintained artificially by Locale II .

Locale I is maintained primarily as a nursery (try bringing up kids where there are no rules!) , but also as a holiday (going primitive) and trading/warfare locale . This is because interactions can be enforced in Locale I (ie the rules:conservation of something) , whereas in Locale II you cannot force an interaction .

The above reasons work better if there is a lot of variety .Also , the usual reasons of humanity , looking after the planet , etc , etc do not apply except as insofar they illustrate a lesson . In other words , nobody is innocent except the children , and they get the lessons they need .

What does this mean ?
There will be a variety increase soon .
This can be
1. Massive depopulation (plague , eco)
2. Aliens in space
3. Aliens in time
4. Both (most likely : there is only one singularity per universe : the first contacts from the local viewpoint will be on most similar interfaces.)
Merry Christmas
The Alien.

Birdflu Survival Update -5

Birdflu Survival Update -5

Dated 20/11/2005


Disaster Planning

Worst Case Scenario:
Birdflu with a
60% infection rate and a
50% untreated mortality rate .
(= The Black Death Scenario : 30% of the untreated population dies)

Strategy: Improve the chances of a group to have better survival rate .
No absolute immunity is known , or , if known , desirable.

1. Communication and Education.
First , establish a CGA (control of a geographical area) ( by military cordons if necessary ) .

Each and every person in a Controlled Geographical Area ( CGA) must not only know what the pandemic is , but what each must do to maximize their chances of survival . This is essential , as a pandemic is a mass phenomenon and cannot be treated on a small scale.

A local radio station keeping everyone abreast of what is going on is also vital .
An internet center (like an Internet Cafe) in each quarantine area will be essential .
Cellphones , email ,etc .

Fast , personal communication will be the difference between this pandemic and previous plagues .

Openness about survival chances is essential . Rumors and panic can destroy the whole CGA , and secrecy is impossible anyway . Humans are tough . If they know that loved-ones might stand a better chance of survival by their self-sacrifice , they will do it . But they must know it .

Every person must be able to recognize the symptoms and know that quarantine is necessary . But equally important , the people must know that the quarantine is survivable , else people will hide symptoms and flee ( as happened in Black death and Spanish Flu) , spreading the problem for everyone . Hence the triage set out below.


2. Get the infection rate down by triage of vectors . (TOV)
The vectors are humans and birds .

Humans inside the CGA are first triaged on
A Symptom free and no contact with carriers.
B Symptom free and with contact with carriers.
C Has Symptoms .

Do not have more than 3 decision points at any level of triage . (Speed and simplicity is of the essence)
Each level has its treatment and quarantine levels as set by medical officer .
Multiple hierarchical triage decision points (not to exceed 3 decisions per point ) can be set below these in hierarchical order .

Keep families and friends in contact via radio , internet , etc.

ARDS seems to be main killer in H5N1 (like with SARS or 1918 Flu) . This is treatable (Loristan) , so the mortality rate can brought down from 50% to about 5% if the necessary resources can be mobilized . Thus , the probability of survival is not dependant on urban/rural , but planning , organization and mobilization of resources of the particular CGA .

But a really tight quarantine is essential .
A porous series of quarantines will lead to a more lethal bug evolving through the barrier. .

Every newcomer (without exception ) and every resurgent point in the CGA must cycle through the whole triage and quarantine process .


3 Birds and the environment:
It is pointless to quarantine a Controlled Geographical Area (CGA) if migratory birds can contaminate it by droppings , contact with chickens or being eaten by local predators . At present moment , about 25% of migratory birds are carriers of H5N1 . There is some disturbing evidence that Bubonic Plague is carried the same way.
(The concentrations of plague occurrences are sensitive to hot-cold fluctuations according to a newly-released analysis of old USSR data.) A large-scale synergistic bubonic Plague has a reasonably probable expectancy in the case of social breakdown caused by birdflu . Rats!

Sadly , extermination of migratory birds seems to be the answer . Since hunters have been trying this for a long time without success , the best strategy in a CGA would be to deny landing and feeding opportunities. Eg in arid areas , dams can be drained.
All chickens , ducks , etc are to be destroyed . Vulnerable elements of the ecosysytem whereby wild bird flesh can be introduced(eg vultures , eagles , falcons , etc) can be eliminated . Pigs as well , to be on the safe side .

It is essential that contamination of the watersheds and aquifers be prevented .
If these are lost , the planet-wide pool of pathogens could mutate faster than humans can adapt . Extinction .

Further eco-proofing can be attempted by adding biologically active sulfer into the foodchain ( eg sulfer injections used by wool sheep farmers to get curly wool , or MSM used by hide or pelt farmers)




4 Modelling and Decision-making .
Present plans for a putative pandemic are based on large computer-agent models as described in Scientific American and New Scientist.
These are general models . A very good approximation for limited Geographical Areas can be obtained by using off-the-shelf engines like Civilization or Empires .

A basin with borders , water supply and defined trade-routes with neighbors can be defined as an empire . A plague can be introduced . Etc,etc,etc

There is some theoretical evidence that coarsening the factors in non-linear systems can change a problem from uncomputable to computable while keeping a reasonable degree of accuracy (the old principle that , if you have enough problems , they solve each other . But be warned: certain cusps can be hellaciously sensitive . )

5 Some consequences:

a During the pandemic , the more successful CGA’s will be under severe volkewanderung pressure . Tough times .

b Initially , the global trade system will collapse . Decreased population leads to decreased demand . Highly automated production systems are little affected . Massive deflation results . The cost of labour (especially in the highest mortality low-skilled labour brackets ) rockets (like in Black death) .

Nation-States collapse , as they are perceived as not keeping the intrinsic contract of protection and not starving their people regardless of the level of taxation. It is a massive tax-revolt .
It is analogous to the anti-church movement that swept Europe after the Black Death . The Church did not keep it’s part of the bargain and the populace voted with their feet(and pockets) . In general , surviving people all over will feel very , very pissed-off and betrayed .

Betrayed by Science , Church and Leaders . A deep revulsion against anything Big , Scientific or For Your Own Good . Small-scale warfare will become endemic , with the present trend to condottieri accellerating sharply .

There is an actual non-linearity here .

There is a also a critical threshold here : A large number of smaller states will not be forced back into a large state . Nuclear weapons forbid it . Neither can economic warfare force a population below subsistence levels in small hi-tech states . The world then moves to a new stable state of small nations serviced by developments of NGO’s and Multi-Nationals . Nation states like the USA , EU ,China go the way of the USSR .
This is an irreversible change .

The transition.
How bad will it be? It depends on the leadership .
The natural tendency would be for fragmentation on the lines of the pandemic’s CGA’s .

The critical areas will be the food-producing plains : American Mid-West , Ukraine and the oil and gas regions. The surviving groups will jockey for control of the trade of these areas .

As can be seen from the argument above , the actual mortality of infected individuals depends on their treatment , which in turn depends on the resources mobilized .

The USA will probably fragment in three : the Mid-West is the only part that still has anything to sell (food) . The East and West-coast have frittered away their built-up capital and neglected their education , while building up their armed forces . A protracted civil-war , with decreasing foreign adventures seems to be probable .

The EU will completely fragment . The collapse might even go to mid-1700 levels .
The whole world reverts to about 1750 as far as political systems goes . Wipe out the disasterous World Wars of Napoleon , Kaiser , Hitler , Stalin , Reagan .

China spins back to protracted civil wars of maneuver , as it has very cleverly reduced its population to the point where it is vulnerable to a sudden plague .

The Japanese find out why communal baths nearly destroyed all humans in the west .

Islam finds out why eating with your fingers out of communal bowl is a really bad idea if you are poor and birdflu prowls around .

Africans find out that genetic diversity means that you have so many more receptor sites for co-evolved diseases .

Enough

Andre

The New Limited War

The New Limited War



Also called Infowar , Infocentric War , Cyber War



A quick summary is given first . See the end for Mongol references .



In the last 15 years , the cutting edge of the world’s armed forces have been radically transformed . It is not only new technology , but mainly the way that the consequences of that technology enforces new tactics , strategies and logistics .



“Quantity has a quality of its own “ – Josef Stalin

The four principles below seem to be only a quantitive change , but together they spell a qualitative change that any armed force that wants to survive or win will have to adapt to .



The Four basic principles should be seen in synergistic combination :

1 Information technology : The first shot kills . Smart munitions and rapid-fire weapons means that the only safe places are stealthed or deeply fortified . Besides being a force-multiplier , this means that the baddies can be individually targeted . (Theorist : Rona) .



2 Interconnected secure digital communication .

Unfortified military forces have to be stealthed . A good way is interspersed in the enemy and organized via stealthed communications . By this , efficient , secret , interconnected digital communication is usually meant. They have to be stealthed , as anybody who gets identified gets zapped or swarmed (See para 1 above) . (Theorists : Arquilla and Ronfeldt) .



3 Asymmetric threat :

Attackers and Defenders have totally different profiles . A small aggressive , mobile (ie stealthed by uncertainty of position) army can force the defender into a totally different configuration . Cf Guerilla wars , Mongols , Boer war , Wolves and Moose , etc . The classical case is the West’s freedom of info systems (ie computers , Xeroxes , etc) vs the USSR control of all information dissemination . The USSR could not defend itself against the asymmetric threat without losing itself . (Theorists : Marshall and Wohlstetter) .





4 The Decision Cycle . (The Granddaddy of them all)

(Theorist : Boyd) .

The decision cycle or loop is summarized by the acronym OODA

Observation , Orientation , Decision , Action .



It is applicable in any competitive endeavour . If you complete the cycle(s) before your opponent , you win . Baseball , rugby , battles , you name it .



Freedom (democratic) systems historically have been at an initial disadvantage , as the are counter-punchers . (ie Napoleon , Kaizer , Hitler , USSR) . They managed to weather the first punch and gain the upper hand in the decision loop by virtue of their superior internal competitiveness . But note that as technology progresses , the first punch grows stronger . Germany nearly won WWII . The USSR lost the Information War and does not exist any more . But it nearly , nearly won . If it aggressively used its armed forces in the late 1970’s , most of the remains of Europe would be speaking Russian now .



The logic forces aggression upon the USA . It has to close the decision-loop before any enemy . And since the enemies are all hidden and stealthed , it has to go on the worst-case scenario .



The enemies like Al Qaida are not really free-based : their support are drawn from very specific areas and population groups . The West has the nasty habit of drawing things out once it knows it will win . (This is because of vested interests in armaments , politics , etc ) . Eg the West can win easily and cheaply now by nuking all Muslim nations with neutron bombs and interning all suspicious nationals indefinitely .

Boom-bam over . Neither Russia or China will really risk annihilation in protest , since they also perceive these elements as risks to themselves .



The USA is at the present moment willing to expend lives and treasure in a sub-optimum tactic to secure strategic advantages . But it is still the 800 lb gorilla . If the terrorist groups are too successful , it will sit where it wants .



Since neither adversary seems willing to push the other over the edge , a de facto rule of engagement has emerged . The US wants cheap oil , not the territory or the people . The Muslims want the territory and people , as well as a fair price for the oil . Essentially , it is about the price of oil . Osama bin Laden quoted a bazaar price of $160 a barrel . Total denial will definitely cause genocide . A settlement of about $100 - $120 a barrel seems to be barreling down at us , with various guarantees . US troops will wthdraw to bases in Iraq , mainly as a buffer against Iranian adventurism .

This is the most optimistic scenario .



Random fluctuations: Birdflu

A pandemic with death-rates of about 30% planetwide seems very likely (80% probability during northern winter of 2005 .) Muslim populations will be hit very hard (70%-100% mortality) because of their custom of social eating out of communal dishes . Flu is mainly spread by hand-to-mouth/nose transmission . All Muslim communities are overpopulated and depend on external food imports for survival . Primary flu effects will be the flu . Secondary effects will be starvation due to quarantines .Planes , cars and communal dishes will be a lethal combination .



Enough

Andre



References:

1 “The New Face of War” by Bruce Berkowitz.

ISBN 0-7432-1249-5

Clear and simple by CIA and RAND insider . Worrying because of the hubris leaking around the edges .







2 A very interesting article at the site below:

“Social Science at 190 MPH on NASCAR's Biggest Superspeedways” by David Ronfeldt
First Monday, volume 5, number 2 (February 2000),



An interesting correlation is sonons in superconductivity .

Even Nascar racers should be able to use repeated draft-bumps to speed up the pair to arbitrarily close to in-vacuo speeds .



http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_2/ronfeldt/index.html



3 The Castles-Knights defense evolved against exactly this kind of threat . Ie it has happened before .

See:

http://andreswhy.blogspot.com

Quote:



Whatever happened to William what’s-his-name?

“The only serious challenge would have been from the Mongols .

The Western response to centuries of light-cavalry attacks was numerous fortifications with a few heavy cavalry in each . Light-cavalry (like the Mongols) usually win by getting inside the decision-loop of their enemies . This presupposes that their enemy obligingly masses . A few big fortified cities counts as massing .



The key is the advantage of fortified defense over offense . (In the siege of Malta about 8 000 knights held out against about 70 000 elite Ottoman troops .)



A successful ratio is about 1 defender for every 10 attackers .



What is the Western defense to enemies who do not stand still but can sting ? :

It is Independent defensive positions with a heavy smallish offensive punch which are NOT co-ordinated on a large scale.



Ie Numerous small Castles with a few knights and each having an independent ruler .

They will sit tight , but a few neighbours might combine to hit a tempting target .



If 300 000 Mongols attacked say 1 000 independent neighbouring castles , each with about 20 heavy cavalry , the Mongols will lose .

If they try to reduce each castle in detail , they will be nibbled to death by heavy-cavalry attacks from neighbouring supporting castles . Siege machinery would make the Mongols vulnerable to fixed-point attacks . There are not enough Mongols to attack on a broad front .



There are always more agriculturists than pastoralists .

It is a numbers game as long as the castles do not try to unify . If the castles do not unify , their attacks are random and the Mongols cannot get inside their decision-loop , because there isn’t one . “



End Quote



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Birdflu Survival Update -4

Birdflu Survival Update -4

Dated 28/10/2005

Some biochemistry from an evolutionary perspective.
Evolutionary principles:
A Things go from simpler to complex.
B Repetition of coding DNA sequences

This results in conversion of digital DNA to analog concentrations of chemicals . This is a DNA favourite , as it easily happens that portions of the DNA is replicated . Eg CTG might be favourable , but CTG CTG CTG even more so . The rest is straightforward survival of the fittest .

The result is that the system is very conservative . The simpler molecules get used first . More fine-tuned control mechanisms evolve by using the intermediary steps in the more primitive chain as controls in their own right . The hormone system in mammals is a good example . Eg Many essential hormones used to be intermediary steps in the synthesis of oestrogen . The same effect can be seen in vitamins .


What has this to do with flu?

The flu virus penetrates the cell-wall by using a protein called neuraminidase , which dissolves the cell-wall . Once inside , the virus replicates . But it then has to get out again . Tamiflu (Oseltamivir) inhibits the secondary formation of neuraminidase after infection of the cell . The propagation of the infection is inhibited , as the infectious DNA is imprisoned by the cell-wall .

Neuraminidase interacts strongly with a simple benzene-type chemical called Resorcinol . This reaction is so strong that it is used as a marker for experimenters .

There is a whole family of simple benzene-type chemicals associated with Resorcinol

Known ones:
Shikimic acid ( pathways lead to salicylic acid , acetylsalicylic acid(aspirin) , methyl salicilate (oil of wintergreen) , tyrosine , vanillin (vanilla) , essential fatty acids , prostaglandins , anti-biotics like erythromycin , tetracyclines , doxordibicin , tamiflu)

Important study :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez
Search for “Catalytic properties of neuraminidase of non-cholera vibrios” by Lavrovskii and Berzov .
Quote:
“…activation of neuraminidase was found in the presence of bivalent metal ions , especially Ca2+ , while chelate-forming complexes and heavy metal salts inhibited the enzyme .”



Pulling it all together:

1 There is interaction between Shikimic derivatives : a very proven one is aspirin and prostaglins . The very simplicity of the molecular structures strongly suggest that there are no energy-humps needing high-energy synthesis or enzymatic intermediation .
( In other words , I suspect that the supposed difficulties in synthesizing Tamiflu are a deliberate attempt to complexify a simple process in order to maximize profits.)

2 Skin and Cell-walls
From the general evolutionary principles above , one would expect that skin-structures would evolve out of cell-wall structures . Why reinvent the wheel ?

3 One would then expect that things affecting the skin would affect cellular walls
Resorcinol , salicylic acid , acetylsalicylic acid and oil of wintergreen are used for “acne,warts,dandruff ,psoriasis and similar conditions”

4 Sulfur
As sulfur is vital to the scaffolding of any cell , it is used as an adjunct in any of the above treatments . The sulfur serves to prevent inhibition of recovery . Think about this carefully .
Human burial practices sequester the large amount of biologically active sulfur away from the recycling process . A serious sulfur deficit is building up . Six billion people , each having about 15 kg of sulfur in their bodies , represents goodly fraction of the available sulfur-biomass . Add the lot in the cemeteries and any large-scale reforestation will create a significant health risk .

5 Arteries and veins.
Inside-out skin . The evolutionary ancestry is the same . The environment interacts in the lungs/gills .
Arterial callus equivalents are called plaque. Note the effect of aspirin .

6 Outside skin
The outside skin is connected to the inside-skin : ie lungs , nose , mouth ,stomach intestines , bladder , kidneys all have direct contact with the outside world and can be considered as one surface . So , for instance , what soap you use influences the micro-ecology of bacteria on your skin and eventually your resistance to disease or digestion Families have their own unique cultures of bacteria and yeasts on their skins . Communal baths (without bactericides) creates a monoculture of skin ecology which can severely compromise immune systems , especially without sufficient sulfur . The medieval decline of communal baths was a logical response . Note that communal baths have not revived . (LA proves the point.) . Japan avoided the worst by keeping it small and class-dependant .

7 What to do
From the suspicion that there is no natural energy hump between Shikimic derivatives (see para 1 above) , the direction of chemical reactions can be driven by concentrations . To be more exact , enhancing the concentration of a derivative can flow-back to the precursor and spill over into other derivatives .There is a back-pressure .

7 ; 1 Raise the temperature : the flu virus does not do so well at temperatures above 104 F . Pulse breathe 105F steam at 5 minute intervals for about half an hour , rest for about 2 hours . Repeat . Adding vanilla won’t hurt . The 5 minutes comes from the potentiating interval needed for a neuron to lay down long-term learning . The logic is that it must have some deep significance in the immune system ( which is , after all , only a glorified school .)

7 ; 1 ;2 : Alter oxidation patterns over longer terms than breathing
The Oxygen and CO2 levels are also dependant on the breathing pattern .
Pulsing the concentration of O2/CO2 over a longer period than the normal breathing influences small organisms faster than larger organisms . This differential can be exploited . (Cf Yoga)

7 ; 2 Add H2S : Suspended animation : About 80 ppm of H2S activates some very old genes that suspends animation at a molecular level ( see below) .

Wear goggles . (See dosages)

Pulsing the concentration of H2S between zero and 80 ppm will incapacitate (suspend biological activity) in small organisms faster than in larger organisms . This differential can be exploited .

I suspect that the normal immune system can handle a lot of insults given this advantage .

It should also help a lot with auto-immune diseases , as each pulse forces the immune system to differentiate between elements it did not think worthy of differentiating before . Neat .

Even neater if the ageing apoptosis mechanisms can be confused .


Suspended Animation (the real thing!)
In 2005, Mark Roth and other scientists from the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle demonstrated that mice can be put into a state of suspended animation by applying a low dosage of hydrogen sulfide (80 ppm H2S) in the air. The breathing rate of the animals sank from 120 to 10 breaths per minute and their temperature fell from 37 °C to 2 °C above ambient temperature (in effect, they had become cold-blooded). The mice survived this procedure for 6 hours and afterwards showed no negative health consequences.
Such a hibernation occurs naturally in many mammals and also in toads, but not in mice. (Mice can fall into a state called clinical torpor when food shortage occurs). If the H2S-induced hibernation can be made to work in humans, it could be useful in the emergency management of severely injured patients, and in the conservation of donated organs.
As mentioned above, hydrogen sulfide binds to cytochrome oxidase and thereby prevents oxygen from binding, which apparently leads to the dramatic slowdown of metabolism. Animals and humans naturally produce some hydrogen sulfide in their body; researchers have proposed that the gas is used to regulate metabolic activity and body temperature, which would explain the above findings
Dosages of H2S:
Treatment involves immediate inhalation of amyl nitrite, injections of sodium nitrite, inhalation of pure oxygen, administration of bronchodilators to overcome eventual bronchospasm, and in some cases hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Exposure to lower concentrations can result in eye irritation (because of the high alkality of the SH- anion), a sore throat and cough, shortness of breath, and fluid in the lungs. These symptoms usually go away in a few weeks. Long-term, low-level exposure may result in fatigue, loss of appetite, headaches, irritability, poor memory, and dizziness. Higher concentrations of 700-800 ppm tend to be fatal.
· 0.0047 ppm is the recognition threshold, the concentration at which 50% of humans can detect the characteristic rotten egg odor of hydrogen sulfide [2]
· 10-20 ppm is the borderline concentration for eye irritation.
· 50-100 ppm leads to eye damage.
· At 150-250 ppm the olfactory nerve is paralyzed after a few inhalations, and the sense of smell disappears, often together with awareness of danger,
· 320-530 ppm leads to pulmonary edema with the possibility of death.
· 530-1000 ppm causes strong stimulation of the central nervous system and rapid breathing, leading to loss of breathing;
o 800 ppm is the lethal concentration for 50% of humans for 5 minutes exposition (LC50).
Concentrations over 1000 ppm cause immediate collapse with loss of breathing, even after inhalation of a single breath.

7 ;3 Mega-doses of aspirin should lead to an increase in natural neuraminidase inhibitors . Be careful about side-effects (ulcers , blood-clotting). I cannot find anything on the net . Johan , Eben – your bailiwick .

7 ; 4 Take high Vit C doses ( 3-4 grams /day) As per Linus Pauling. Be careful about ulcers Use buffered preparations .

7 ; 5 Take MSM : about 3 grams a day. (Biologically active sulfur) . Vit C speeds uptake .

7 ; 6 Replace skin cultures : wash in a bacteriocidal soap . Then smear a yoghurt with live cultures all over you . Wait about 10 minutes , rinse and dry . Repeat daily for about 3 weeks . Any probiotic culture can be used instead of live yoghurt. The idea is to shift the skin ecology in the direction of symbiotic organisms , instead of the random guerilla skin our society encourages .

7 ; 7 Take tyrosine. .(Back pressure)

7 ; 8 Eat vanilla flavours.(Back pressure)

7 ; 9 Smell vanilla . .(Back pressure)

7 ; 10 Take erythromycin , tetracycline , doxorubicin. .(Back pressure)

I would really like some feedback on items 7;2 , 7;3 .

Andre Willers

New Climate Paradigm.

New Climate Paradigm.
19/10/2005

Scientist : William F. Ruddiman , a professional climate scientist ( Professor of Environmental Sciences at University of Virginia ) . He is a well-regarded university scientist not connected to any pressure groups .

Publications : Various peer-reviewed journals .
Popular book :
“ Plows , Plagues & Petroleum”
Published by Princeton University Press in 2005
ISBN 10: 0 691 12164 8
A very balanced , clear-headed view of the whole climate-change history .

Summary:
Large scale agriculture has since circa 8 000 ago counteracted natural climate cooling (which was caused by Milankovitch cycles) through land clearing (ie deforestation -CO2 release) and rice paddies ( flooding - methane release) . This was gradual until about 200 years ago , when the Industrial Revolution started .

Evidence used includes quantitive calculations on how humans could have released the required masses of green-house gasses – a very convincing argument .

The inverse ( the abandonment and subsequent reforestation of agricultural areas on a large scale due to pandemics ) and the reversal to the natural cooling is covered .(ie Little Ice Age circa 1400 AD to 1800 AD mainly due to Black Death and American pandemic depopulation of extensive agricultural areas throughout Mississippi-valley , Middle-America and Amazon-riverbank after Columbus ) .


Comment :

1 . The New-Paradigm
The previous assumption was that the climate changed and humans adapted to it . But if the alteration in human numbers or practices is of sufficient magnitude to alter the climate past certain critical thresholds , then a lot of history has to be re-written .

The cause of green-house gases fluctuation may be local , but the climatic effect is global .

2 .Feedback processes :
The effects of even small climate-fluctuations on marginal or overpopulated areas are severe . For example , the Little Ice Age . The extinction of the Norse colony in Greenland and the famine deaths in Europe can be shown to be causally linked to the bubonic plagues in Europe and the massive depopulation in the Americas .
The fate of the Roman Empire is also about to be redelved . Middle-East , etc .
Exciting .




3 Globalization.
Some completely unexpected things occur .

Globalization means cheap trade .
Agricultural products like wheat or corn can be imported cheaper from more favourable areas than they can be produced locally . Local agricultural land is then abandoned and reforested , while the population usually relocates to a city . The effect is the same as a pandemic in the country-side and swollen cities . The imports are produced more efficiently than a subsistence farming set-up , so the net global effect is a reduction of the human agricultural foot-print .

Even a subsistence farmer cannot survive , since he cannot trade a surplus for certain really , really essential things he cannot produce (eg salt , agricultural implements ) . His surplus is valueless for trading , since it can be imported cheaper than he can produce it . He might store it , but one or two years of drought and he literally starves . Of course , minor things like education or health is simply unaffordable

A good example of this is Africa today .
( A personal observation : in the area from Port Elizabeth to East London in South Africa ( about 400 km on the national route) there are no commercial farmers and vwery few subsitence farmers ( I counted 3) . The formerly commercial farmers converted to zero-maintenance game-farms and the subsistence farmers moved en-masse to Cape Town . The whole reach was reverting to thickets of thorn trees .)

The same thing happens with logging : it is more cost-efficient to log virgin tropical forests and ship them thousands of miles than growing and logging cultivated forests .The net global effect is a reduction of the human forest destruction .

The net effect of both is cooling effect , even though populations have increased . (The effect of industrialization is stripped out ) .

Local effects are severely asymmetric . Intensively cultivated prairies in North America means abandonment of farms or factory animal feedlot-farms in Europe or Asia . Clear-cutting in Indonesia means forests in Japan ,Europe or North America . Climatic disturbances in the short term ( 50 years) will occur .

But if the trading system breaks down , (ie collapse of the civilization) , the survivors usually restart subsistence farming , with the consequent deforestation . A warmer period follows . Examples: Warming after fall of Roman Empire , Collapse of Bronze Age civilization circa 1200 BC . (But not the Mayans – why?)

But there is another joker in the pack : ecological disturbance . The original deforestation/land clearing selected as survivors the toughest pests ( like rats) . Disease-prone areas were also left to the last . When abandonment occurs , these pests and their diseases explode into the vacant niches . The humans have by then packaged themselves into nice , concentrated parcels in the cities. Cycles of pandemics occur .

The wild comes to the city .


The broad pattern then seems to be :
Agriculture -> deforestation ->warming ->surpluses -> trade ->cities -> globalization ->farm abandonment -> reforestation -> cooling , severe ecodisturbances -> wars , pandemics -> collapse -> trade ceases -> subsistence farming restarts -> deforestation and the cycle repeats .


4 . An intriguing speculation about the Roman Empire.

Roman Empire:
Did the trade of cheap Egyptian corn through the Roman empire cause a switch from cereal growing to vines or olives (which is reforestation ) , causing a cooling which reduced the rainfall on the steppes , bringing the volkewanderung of steppe-dwellers down on their heads ?

Note that the very large central water wheat-mills in Gaul makes more economic sense if the wheat is imported , ground and the flour then distributed , rather than the wheat being collected , milled and then redistributed .

Reforestation crops (like vines , olives or fruits ) take years to yield a return . They are value-added crops , that can only afforded growers with deep pockets . The net result is the destruction of the small landowner . Even large latifundia were vulnerable . Even large pieces of ground are abandoned as they cannot produce any crop that cannot be produced cheaper elsewhere in the empire . As noted above , not even subsistence farmers can survive in this environment .

The citizen-farmer , once the backbone of the old Republic , has now become a client of a patron in a Roman city . The patron can afford it because of his large landholdings , worked by slaves and maintained by other armed slaves .

The only exception is on the frontiers , where retired soldiers are subsidized onto subsistence farms . But as already noted , subsistence farms are not viable in an empire . So the empire had to keep on subsidizing them . Eventually , this cost beggared the Roman Empire . It wasn’t just a soldier : it was his wife , children ,parents , uncles , cousins , etc. . If the state tried to refuse , they threatened to rebel or join the invaders ( who were family in any case) . The state by this time had only slaves or clients ( who were semi-slaves to the patron ) – not good soldier material .

The exception was the Christians , which had become more militant . (The meeker ones had been killed off in the pogroms) . Constantine realized this . He reorganized the army around loyal Christian cadres , concentrated them in the cities and cut the frontiers and the latifundia loose . This was a much bigger betrayal than the Roman retreat out of Britain . At first , only the relations of the frontier-troops burst through . Still , there were centuries-worth of scores to settle . But then came the steppe-dwellers , ferociously hungry because of the cooling and lower rainfall caused by the Roman Empire .

The age of the independent castle and armoured cavalry had arrived .
One of the largest land-reformation exercises ever unfolded . All the latifundia in Europe were parceled up as farms to the invading tribes . Vines , olivetrees , etc were uprooted and burnt (only fuel available) .

Trade crashed . Food transport ceased . A terrible time ensued .
Cities not having hinterlands protected by Christian troops , were looted and most of the inhabitants killed .
During the first winter , superfluous slaves on the latifundia (or cities) died of starvation , as the invader’s crops were not in yet , and they had none to spare .

Bitter triangular warfare between the newly invading (farmer) tribes , the steppe nomads and the fortified Christian Roman cities raged . The steppe nomads lost and were expelled . The tribes remained on the land outside of the Roman fortified cities .

This learning episode is the main reason why a Mongol invasion of Europe would have failed .

Constantine’s gamble salvaged something , but at a terrible price .

All this burning , looting and farming over the whole of Europe sharply raised the CO2 levels . The time-sensitivity of the climate to mild changes to CO2 levels is about 50 years (from Ruddiman) . So , by about 600 AD the climate in Europe got warmer , rain increased on the steppes and the steppe-dwellers’ pressure ceased .


5 Do the Steppe-Dwellers have a stable population size ?

The answer seems to be yes . (See Atlas of World Population History by McEvedy and Jones ) . The Mongolian steppe area’s population has remained steady at about 700 000 for millennia ( even during Genghis Khan).

The reason seems to be the low wealth multiplier : a herder can get only one calf a year , no matter how good it is . A farmer can get 30 – 100 fold increase in a good year . He can also store this . The herder has to have at least 30 years of good years in succession to equal one good farmer’s year . Now you see why nomads are just about extinct .

A farmer can survive 3 bad years in succession , because of this multiplier . A herder cannot . Every bad year might kill say half his stock , leaving him with about 10 % of what he started with at the end . The succeeding good year will leave him with at best 20% of his starting stock .

So , nomads cannot overpopulate easily , but is very sensitive to long-term downward trends in climate .

Which leads to the interesting speculation that the collapse of the middle-American civilizations (Maya , etc) triggered the initial cooling that led to the Mongolian excursions .

Another anomaly is the collapse of Chinese innovation in the 1400 –1500 ‘s . The Little Ice age decreased temperatures over Mongolia and Manchuria . Barbarian pressures on the Northern Frontiers increased and the disasterous central decision was made to concentrate resources on repelling this threat . The exploration fleets were burnt .

One can go on and on.

Enough

Andre