Survival January 9, 2010
Posted by Graham in : General, collapse, survivalism , 6commentsAfter three weeks of sub-zero temperatures and snow and ice in many parts, Ireland, like much of the rest of Europe, is experiencing considerable difficulty in continuing its post-industrial lifestyle. Supplies of salt for the roads are stretched, and also gas supplies with industry being told to use coal or oil instead.
So far the main routes are being kept open and food supplies are getting through to all but the most remote households, but with ice storms on their way in the next few days from the east expected to worsen conditions in Europe and here over the weekend, shortages could become an issue. Already potato crops have been affected with thousands of tons of unharvested spuds destroyed in farms a round the country.
Water is also an issue in many towns and cities, with increased demand apparently caused by people staying at home more, and losses due to frozen pipes.
Some homes have also been without electricity as storms and snow damage lines and maintenance vehicles find it hard to reach them.
Already the schools have been closed for next week, and this includes my own college so Ill be grounded for the moment. Martin, who is from Chicago, thinks it is a joke the country is coming to a standstill. Hasn’t anyone here heard of snow tyres? Apparently not, Ive never heard mention of them.
It is 30-50 year events like these that test our mettle and preparedness- as a nation we are failing miserably, such disruption interferes with the Great Plan of Keep on Growing the Economy. We are just not set up for hunkering down and doing as little as possible- sledging and snowball flinging excepted.
What might have seemed fun for some up till now has been a real hardship for others, but the real question is, how long will it last? If they are already closing the schools it hardly looks like the authorities will be able to be more organised than they already are.
It looks highly likely to remain unchanged for the next two weeks but seemingly the last Big Freeze, sometime in the 1960s, lasted well into March, even April in some parts. Another 6-8 weeks of this is surely not something this country is ready for.
I’m someone who is supposed to be more prepared than most, but in truth I am only half way there. Ive spent some of the time coppiceing next winter’s wood supply, the perfect activity for this time of year and weather, the first warming from the cutting of the wood being very welcome.
I have left the van over the bridge because the steep hill up here has been so icy, so it is possible to drive carefully and slowly into town, but I have only been out once this week and am keeping journeys to a minimum.
The cabin really comes into its own with the low winter sun warming the interior to a cosy 18 degrees most days by 11am. I don’t really need to light the range until the evening. Current wood supplies are probably OK for another three weeks; I could stretch it out longer if need be.
Water will be the first to go. It currently freezes each night but thaws out by lunch time. However, my main supply is currently rain water off a shed roof in a 1300L tank. With careful use I only have another maybe 8 or 10 days if there is no precipitation. I havnt investigated the well yet but presumably can break the ice and carry buckets.
One thing I have ample of is solar electricity. The sun is warm on the rocks and dazzling each day. No SAD this year! The electric chainsaw is getting some use, but otherwise apart from the computer I have far more power than I can use- not a situation I ever envisaged at this time of year.
I had made no special preparations for food but have a stock that would see me through a couple of weeks at least if I couldn’t get out at all, including two sacks of Bantry CSA spuds, and a supply of rice and pulses. There is still a couple of large squashes in the store and a few shallots left, but very little in the garden- just some leeks and a little kale. Oh, and some artichokes for when all else fails!
Contact with the immediate neighbours has been more frequent which has been nice, otherwise very quiet, leaving one to dwell on what real survival conditions would feel like, and whether, if the weather continues for long, it will come to that, and if it will be anything like the scenes from Cormac Mccarthy’s novel, now just released as a film, The Road.
I’ve made it on a list of Those Making a Difference in 2009 January 3, 2010
Posted by Graham in : General , 1 comment so farI am honoured to be included amongst some very illustrious and far more deserving names onto John Gibbons’ list of Those Making a Difference in 2009.
From the Irish Times Dec. 24th 2009. Full text below.
Seasonal salute to those making a difference
A mix of new voices and seasoned campaigners – here is a list of people at the front line of the ecological crunch, writes JOHN GIBBONS
THE YEAR ending was to have been the one when the world finally got to grips with climate change. Instead, post-Copenhagen, the global community “is left resembling an alcoholic who has decided to save up for a liver transplant rather than give up drink”, as a recent editorial in the Guardian newspaper put it dryly.
However, it’s Christmas Eve, and even this column has to take one week off every year to look on the positive side. And since my editor is probably off wrapping my present, this is the perfect opportunity to sneak in a non-peer-reviewed and entirely unscientific list of people who helped make a difference in 2009. Some will be offended at being omitted; others may well be offended at being included; apologies all round in advance. (more…)
Atheist Blogroll and a Blasphemous New Year January 2, 2010
Posted by Graham in : General , add a commentJehovah! Jehovah! Jehovah!
The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information. Ill add in the blogroll to my sidebar once i figure out how to do it.
That seems the most appropriate way to start the new year given that I want to announce that Zone5 is now officially listed on the Atheist Blogroll while Ireland sees the instigation of its new Blasphemy Law. The 25 Blaspemous quotes quoted here by Atheist Ireland make for hilarious reading, but especially dont miss No 25:
Dermot Ahern, Irish Minister for Justice, introducing his blasphemy law at an Oireachtas Justice Committee meeting, 2009, and referring to comments made about him personally: “They are blasphemous.” Deputy Pat Rabbitte replied: “Given the Minister’s self-image, it could very well be that we are blaspheming,” and Minister Ahern replied: “Deputy Rabbitte says that I am close to the baby Jesus, I am so pure.” So here we have an Irish Justice Minister joking about himself being blasphemed, at a parliamentary Justice Committee discussing his own blasphemy law, that could make his own jokes illegal.
Blasphemy is certainly a bizarre concept in the modern world where we prefer to operate within frameworks such as “democracy” and “freedom of speech”.
The Irish government’s excuse for this appears to be that because ireland is becoming more multicultural these days, there are now lots more ways that people might take offence, so we need laws to protect them. There will be a widespread suspicion though that this law has been sponsored by the Catholic Church perhaps to deflect critisism of its apparent true function of instituionalised of child rape.
The whole thing begs the question of what is a religion of course, and indeed atheism as well as “science” and “rationality” are themselves often called a religion- by the religious, or by religious apologists- as a way of denigrating reason and skepticism, which is odd since you would think that, if religions are “true” then atheism should, to the religious, gain in stature should they take on the religious mantel… paradox upon paradox…
Another interesting case of this was that of Tim Nicholson who was sacked for contesting some of his companies’ policies on environmental grounds:
The case involved Tim Nicholson, 42, who was laid off last year from his job as head of sustainability at Grainger Plc, Britain’s largest residential-property company. Nicholson contended he was laid off because his views on the environment were not shared by Grainger executives, and he sued the company for unfair dismissal under Britain’s six-year-old Religion and Belief Regulations, which make it unlawful to discriminate against a person on the grounds of their religious or philosophical beliefs. Grainger argued that Nicholson’s climate-change convictions did not qualify for protection under the law. But in a landmark ruling on Nov. 3, Justice Michael Burton found that “a belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives, is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of [the 2003 law].”
This might be good for Mr. Nicholson but is a disaster for the environmental movement, which must promote itself as being based on science and reason if it is to retain any credibility at all. Many aspects of environmentalism, from Biodynamics to Fairy-worship, the naturalistic fallacies of the organic Movement and the de-la-la land of quack medicine could indeed be properly seen as faith-based and therefore religious, and should be rejected by self-respecting environmentalists, but climate change does not come into that category, despite being frequently critisised as such by climate deniers.
This whole issue is all the more relevant and disturbing given another story from this very young year of 2010, of a near fatal attack on the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard who has been living under police protection since his 2006 cartoon of the prophet Mohammed with a bomb under his turban produced death threats from sections of the Mulsim community.
It seems horrific that the government of Ireland should pass laws to appease groups like this: “Say anything that makes our religion look anything but peace-loving and we’ll kill you!”
Perhaps there are however some cases in which blaspemy does indeed go too far, and some kind of legal restraints may need to be invoked to protect those who, like myself, follow The One True Faith:
Checkmate for the Climate Change Deniers December 14, 2009
Posted by Graham in : General , 3commentsProbably only friends and people who know me well will know that before I became interested in gardening and all things permacultural I was in fact a passionate chessplayer. This is way back in my youth, when for a few years while still at school I filled most of my free time studying chess books – the Sicilian Dragon, Rook and Pawn endings, the games of Bobby Fischer- and traveled to chess tournaments at weekends.
Although I dreamed of Grandmasterdom and did achieve some local success and did well in a few junior competitions, I was never a serious contender, which was just as well because it would probably have lead to a narrower and less richly fulfilled life than the one I have been blessed with.
I hardly play at all these days, not being anywhere near a chess club, and not inspired to play chess online (yet) but still regularly follow the top matches with great interest. Some of the players still competing at the highest levels are familiar to me still- the UK no. 1 Nigel Short is my contemporary and I remember seeing him play when still a teenager at the Britsh Championships in Brighton some 30 years ago.
As it happens Short is playing in a major event in London this week, the London Chess Classic where he is up against among others two of the top players in the world, ex-world champion Vladimir Kramnik and the Norwegian phenomenon Magnus Carlsen who at just 18years of age is currently the world number 1.
I was gratified and surprised then to read a story on Chess Vibes by Arne Moll in which the author weaves together the themes of his early skepticism about chess computers with… climate change skepticism:
During the last few days, with the eyes of the entire world on the Copenhagen Climate Summit while climate ‘skeptics’ demand equal time in the debate and attempt to confuse public opinion with misinformation and politically motivated arguments, I was often reminded of how I myself used to look at chess computers in the 90s. As aggravated as I am now about the lowly tactics of today’s climate skeptics, I’m afraid back in the days I was a kind of computer-skeptic, too, in the sense that I found it very, very hard to believe chess engines could ever replace or imitate the best of human chess thinking. I simply couldn’t imagine a lifeless machine suggesting a subtle long-term positional exchange sacrifice.
He goes onto give a very good definition of a skeptic as being someone who will change their view if new evidence comes along but points out rather astutely that -from the point of view of a climate change denier- “Being a skeptic is only useful if the evidence is on your side”. It is worth reading down through the comments on the Chess Vibes article and comparing them with discussions on climate change sites- I am gratified that most of the chess fans there seem very rational and well able to handle the nuanced arguments about the science of climate change, and the nature of science in general.
While the likes of Carlsen and Short battle it out over the 64 black and white squares in London a much more serious challenge is taking place inside and out of the conference halls in Copenhagen. Though the chances may be slim, lets hope a strategy can be found that doesnt involve too many unsound sacrifices, and the professional climate change deniers, working so hard around the clock to misrepresent the science, can be once and for all checkmated.
Brilliant debunking of the leaked emails by Unity here.
Pat Kenny: Resign Now December 4, 2009
Posted by Graham in : General , 6commentsI just listened to the debate on the Pat Kenny show on Wednesday between Australian mining magnate and climate change denier Ian Pilmer and Irish Times journalist Pat Kenny. It is really hard to know whether Kenny is as ignorant on the subject of climate change as he makes out or whether he to is directly or indirectly in the pay of Big Oil/Gas/Coal etc..
He claimed the next day that only one comment was received by the show in support of John- is that in any way credible?! I couldnt listen on the day but heard the archived version of the show today and sent in my response to the pat Kenny show:
Dear Pat I just listened to the “debate” between Ian Pilmer and John Gibbons which was broadcast on your show on Wednesday December 2nd. At this stage in the game, with the evidence for anthropogenic climate change so clear and the predictions form the climate models that Pilmer dismisses coming in right on time- viz the recent flooding due to increased sea surface temperature in the this country- it is truly shocking to have the national broadcaster be involved with such a misrepresentation of the science. The climate is changing right under our very noses, destroying lives and livelihoods not just for the poor in far away places but our very own friends and neighbors here at home. Pilmer is indeed a charlatan and John was very brave to call him that on air; he has already been completely discredited by George Monbiot whose criticisms of his book have not been in any way addressed by Pilmer; you are surely aware of this. While it is completely obvious that many in the mining industry have clear vested interests, and the evidence for an orchestrated climate denial industry has been clear since before Kyoto, the suggestion that Gibbons and other journalists have a vested interest in fear-mongering is outrageous and absurd. Your stance of “showing both sides of the argument” is completely corrupt ; you may as well ask respectable scientists and journalists to debate the flat earth society for “balance”. The damage you are doing as a climate change denier to the public understanding of the most important scientific issue of our time is severe; in my opinion you have forfeited your right to play the role you have and wiled the influence you you. You should resign from your position on RTE and retire to your home where you at least will be presumably sufficiently well healed to survive the coming catastrophe.
Sincerely Graham Strouts
The charge of a religious faith-based approach on the side of the established science is one we are familiar with whenever debating quackery or pseudo-science; an excellent overview of how science actually works is found here on RealClimate.
Steep Decline: Douthwaite on the Economy November 18, 2009
Posted by Graham in : General , add a commentThanks to Tom for sending me the link to this essential reading from Ireland’s premier green economist Richard Douthwaite in Construct Ireland Magazine.
Douthwaite explains the state of the world and Irish economy with reference to the housing bubble and declining fossil energy reserves. The predictions are fairly grim- stop paying into a pension, they wont deliver; if there is a slight respite in the general decline, choose your moment to sell any assets; but be aware that any such “upturn” will send fuel prices spiralling.
Quoting the also essential Orlov Douthwaite presents a sober and realistic view of our current economic predicament and sends out a clear message to our political leaders and commentators: forget about “green shoots”, we are at a turning point in history and in the future will have to get used to a continually declining standard of living.
Policy and Preposterism: New online journal Forth November 10, 2009
Posted by Graham in : General , add a commentThe new online journal Forth has an article by Lenni Antonelli who interviewed me on the subject of pseudoscience and the environmental movement.
Zone5 Podcast #1 with Albert Bates and #2 with Noel Carillo November 2, 2009
Posted by Graham in : General , 3commentsWelcome to the first Zone5 Podcast!
These are likely to come out rather irregularly but I might manage one a month or so.
- Albert Bates at the charcoal barrel at Cloughjordan Eco-village, August 2009
This first podcast is with Albert Bates of The Farm, Tennessee, who I interviewed in back in August . Albert talks about permaculture, Powerdown, the Cloughjordan Eco-village where the interview took place, organic food and much more.
Update: You should be able to subscribe to an rss feed with this link.
As a special bonus, you can also listen here to a few minutes I managed to grab the same day with the Cuban Ambassador to Ireland, Noel Carillo, who was also visiting the Eco-village:
(Please click the link and the file will load)
Apologies for the poor sound quality and the abrupt end when the Ambassador was whisked away by his hosts to go and watch an exhibition match of hurling.
Dont Sweat the Hard Stuff October 22, 2009
Posted by Graham in : General , 1 comment so farMy eye was caught this morning by a story in the Grauniad recounting the death of three people after a new Age sweat lodge in northern Arizona:
According to local police, at 3pm on Thursday 8 October – the final day of the retreat, and following a buffet meal to break their fast – more than 60 people crammed into a space measuring just 415 sq ft. An initial 12 hot rocks were thrown into the fire pit, then doused with water and sandalwood to create steam and a scent of incense. By the time the ceremony was halted two hours later, another 46 hot rocks had reportedly been added to the pyre, turning the enclosure into a human cooking pot. A 911 emergency call reported that two people had no pulse and were not breathing.
The seat lodge was the culmination of a retreat lead by New Age guru James Arthur Ray who appears to have scarpered unharmed to “meditate” after the deaths occurred. The article quotes his comment from his Facebook page in which he explains:
despite considerable criticism, I have chosen to continue with my work. It’s too important not to. One of the lessons I teach is that you have to confront and embrace adversity and learn and grow from it. I promise you I am doing a lot of learning and growing.
Worse still, the Guardian goes onto say:
One of his staff members, called Barb, was quoted from the same call by Associated Press as saying that those who died “left their bodies during the ceremony and had so much fun they chose not to come back, and that was their choice that they made”.
One reason why this drew my attention is that in my distant youth Ioften enjoyed sweat lodges along the Native American style, with a small bender under canvas and a pit which was fed with heated stones, the same way as the tragic one at the Angel Valley Retreat Center, usually just for fun and accompanied by drumming and plenty of cold baths in a suitable river or pond afterwords.
A few years ago however I attended a sweat lodge at the end of a small festival in West Cork which was to be my first- and last- experience of a more formal, ceremonial initiation, lead by someone who, like Ray, claimed he knew what he was doing.
The difference in this lodge compared to the ones I used to set up myself was that it was exceprionally hot- far in excess to anything I had previously experienced (and the idea was always to get as hot as possible) and there were certain protocols and rituals according to, so we were told, native American tradition. It was to take the form of four “rounds” each one with a different spiritual theme, perhaps one for each of the four elements or something.
At the start of the first round people were invited to invite into the lodge with us whatever “spirit guides” we wanted to accompany our “journey”. One girl asked to be joined by quite a few such guides: ” I call spirit of Dolphin… and Bear… and Redwood… and eagle…” by which time the already cramped and squashed space started to feel very crowded indeed.
As the water was splashed onto the stones and the temperature increased, I could hardly breath and felt very uncomfortable, but not wishing to disturb the gathering i stuck it out until the end of the first round.
I couldnt go back in and in fact have never been in a sweat lodge since. The rest of the group continued and I seem to remember one of the group becoming very distressed at one point; she was congratulated by the “leader” for doing a “good job” in achieving whatever state she reached- not a pleasant one as far as I could tell.
It was only on this occasion that it occurred to me what is probably obvious that the traditional sweat lodge was not a fun evening with your mates but designed to be a cathartic experience in common with many other spiritual and religious rituals from many traditions around the world. The organism is put under such stress that another state of consciousness is reached, with visions of Other Realities perhaps with messages from the beyond for the tribe.
One danger mentioned was that in this and similar cases where people have died in sweat lodges a plastic tarp was used which would have kept the lodge hotter and perhaps less breathable.
The other reason I was interested was because James Arthur Ray appears in the film The Secret which as regular readers may know is one of my pet hates. The Secret has made millions for its makers by cynically exploiting people’s gullibility and willingness to believe that the Universe will provide for them anything they want. For me, this warped and retarded concept is as powerful symbol a symbol of what is wrong with the world as any- a pity then that it is so popular with many in the environmental movement- or at least its New Age wing.
The secret of the Secret’s success is that it based on a partial truth of course- that positive thinking may help and have a real effect on your confidence. In a sense it could be seen as a kind of self-hypnotism. But crossing over from the (limited) abilities we may have of deliberately improving our outlook on things into the classic New Age belief that we create reality with our minds is both dangerous and reactionary.
There are a billion or so hungry people in the world who rarely get a proper meal. I have occasionally been very hungry when there was no food to be had- on camping trips for example- and I am well aware of the power of the mind to conjure up strong visions of food in such circumstances. Id be dreaming of cream buns and seeing pizzas flying at me through the mist.
The whole concept is based on the idea that we all get what we deserve- karma, it is all written in the stars, but the lure of The Secret is that you can break out of this -simply by wishing!
In fairness, Mr Ray’s retreats seem to have been more demanding, but the whole concept of people paying thousands of dollars to undergo such rituals on the guidance of such a person fills me with horror. These are intelligent, well educated people from one of the richest nations on earth.
Even New Agers who have never heard of The Secret dance very close to the ideologies and dangers of this kind of thinking every time they utter the phrase “You create your own reality”. Out the window goes social justice issues, out goes any concept of oppression and discrimination. Its all your fault, if you dont get a better lot that proves you dont really want it.
It all seems to be just an extreme version of the Myth of unending progress and the ideology of personal entitlement that has come to dominate in the modern world- secular individualism dressed up with beads and feathers.
Perhaps we should take a pause on reading of such hubris and accept that what we cant conjure up with wishful thinking or by conning others we might have to earn by the honest sweat of our brow.
Tom Wagner brings the Lumper back to Ireland October 21, 2009
Posted by Graham in : General , add a commentWashington State plant breeder Tom Wagner of Tater-Mater visited Brown Envelope Seeds last weekend near Skibbereen to give a two-day workshop on breeding new varieties of tomatoes and potatoes.
This was a fascinating experience, and a great opportunity to learn some of the man’s great art. Tom has been breeding thousands of varieties of these vegetables over more than half a century, including the famous Green Zebra Tomatoes and specializing in varieties of potato that withstand late blight, as well as selecting for other qualities such as late frost resistance and keeping abilities for tomatoes and even potatoes that could be grown for their spectacular flowers, along with increased nutrients, flavour, texture and colour.
Blight resistance is the holy grail for potato growers in wetter parts of the world, and Tom has shown that by constant selection of resistant varieties grown from True Potato Seed (TPS) it is possible to keep ahead of the fungus.
Above: Tom collects tomato pollen
Tom has a large germplasm of potato varieties and True Potato seed and showed us how to sve the seed from the potato berries and discussed the genetics of potato breeding.
The course was attended by a posse from the Irish Seed savers Association as well as several more local gardenenrs and seed savers, so it was a great chance to catch up with old friends.
Tom showed numerous slides of his plots around Washington State and talked us through some of the plant breeding operations and seed saving, as well as practical demonstrations on hand pollination.
Quite unexpectedly, he had also a special event planned for this, his first visit to Ireland: Tom has a connection to this part of the world through his grandfather who came from the Isle of Mann and has retained this connection through his breeding work with the Lumper, the old variety which was grown extensively in Ireland through the famines of the 1840s and the one which succumbed to blight, wiping out much of the food of the Irish peasantry and resulting in the great famine.
It has been a dream of Tom’s to bring back improved, blight resistant varieties of the Lumper to Ireland, so on the Saturday we drove out to the Abbeystrewery famine graveyard near Skibbereen where Tom said a few words about the famine and then ceremoniously scattered some of the new seed on the graves of the 9000 famine victims buried there. It seemed a poignat and historic moment as we stood in the quiet and beautiful graveyard while Matteo of the ISSA played a lament on thie fiddle.
More on Tom and his amazing work here.
Many thanks to Madeline and Mike for hosting the event that is sure to usher in a new era in Ireland as the seed savers here become seed breeders and maybe we will even see a return of the Lumper.
