The United Nations says Geo engineering is inevitable

Tyler Ludens wrote:

J Davis wrote: Permies reject big AG, big pharma, and generally would rather have their life savings in seed, soil, and  skills rather than any debt based currency which may lose its value any day now.

Nope.  I buy (most of) my food at the grocery store, depend for my life on medications from big pharma, and keep my $ in the bank.

So am I not a permie?

Well, I suppose I should say most/many permies...

And you can call yourself whatever you like! I respect your right to choose and I will lob no labels at you.

Peace

J Davis wrote:So, getting excited about the kickstarter. Book looks awesome.

Its a shame Paul is such a conspiracy theorist. He really should have said "so called bad guys" and that reference to the light bulb cartel is very politically incorrect.

Seriously, permies is as much a reaction to real world conspiracies as it is a return to indigenous principles. Permies reject big AG, big pharma, and generally would rather have their life savings in seed, soil, and  skills rather than any debt based currency which may lose its value any day now. Do you not acknowledge that the wide world would see your aversion to these things as conspiratorial?

To believe in conspiracy theory is to believe simply that in order to achieve an agenda, some folks keep it secret for a while. Thats it. That's also called world history.

Ok, i give the cider press back to those who havent researched the proposed worldwide program of cloudseeding with aluminum and heavy metals but are totally sure there is no risk to our soil and no relevance to community food production capacity. Nothing to see here..got it.

Gonna go urigate my wood chips and visit a kickstarter site now.

I think the better way to win people over to your cause is simply to present your ideas,  and why you believe they are so to people,  and let them draw their own conclusions.  You seem angry that everyone won't just blindly agree with you and resort to smugness and snide comments.  In my experience,  that shuts down communication much more than it encourages it.

Part of the issue here is exactly what previous posters have said.  Let's assume everything you said is 100% factual and airplanes are going to be used to spread toxic gick all over the world.  What would you have anyone do about it? Even if it were absolutely certain it was going to happen,  starting tomorrow, I wouldn't change anything I'm doing. I planted a new cherry tree in my orchard area yesterday,  and I'll keep right on planting more trees,  making new gardens,  making biochar, raising chickens,  and on and on. I literally wouldn't change anything.  That being said,  how does it benefit me to worry about this?

In fact,  here is a picture of the cherry tree.  Daffodils have been planted in a ring around it,  comfrey will be added in a bigger circle,  and autumn olive and honey berry planted between it and the apple trees on either side of it.  Herbs will go in soon too.

J Davis wrote:
Seriously, permies is as much a reaction to real world conspiracies as it is a return to indigenous principles. Permies reject big AG, big pharma, and generally would rather have their life savings in seed, soil, and  skills rather than any debt based currency which may lose its value any day now. Do you not acknowledge that the wide world would see your aversion to these things as conspiratorial?

To believe in conspiracy theory is to believe simply that in order to achieve an agenda, some folks keep it secret for a while. Thats it. That's also called world history.

Ok, i give the cider press back to those who havent researched the proposed worldwide program of cloudseeding with aluminum and heavy metals but are totally sure there is no risk to our soil and no relevance to community food production capacity. Nothing to see here..got it.

I think permies is more a reaction to bad-tasting food and lack of superior product at a reasonable cost. Anyone who's compared a hothouse cardboard beefsteak tomato with the genuine article fresh from the garden will tell you it's worth any effort. It's the same with berries. So taking those examples, and going with the idea that it tastes more substantive and better because of increased phytonutrient content, maybe it's got a more complete nutrient profile, and maybe it's as much better for us as it is tastier.

I think it's also a grassroots movement to respond to real, grounded concerns about what is being normalised in society vis a vis factory farmed meat, nutritionally-deficient food, edible goods poisoned by chemicals that we don't want in our food supply, and concerns that an urban way of life is being seen as the only, or most desirable, way of life.

I think it's mainly a grounded, rational response to some of the same concerns that have sent people "prepping," whatever that means for them, but rather than stock arms and ammo, preparing to defend their "Alamo" from the ravening hordes of starving cityfolk, permies seek to embrace sustainability, and even resilience, into their daily lives and life systems.

It is for this reason that we also seek community, even if only on this site. We understand that we are our own best survival tools, and our interdependence can foster resilience, helping us to survive in ways that an assault rifle with an ultimately limited quantity of ammo is ill-equipped to manage.

We are composed of a membership that, for the most part, actually reads and digests information, disseminating it to the whole, where we chew over it like well-gnawed bones. I believe it's the fact that we are discriminating in our choice of source material that results in our healthy and deserved skepticism about unfounded, unqualified fear-mongering disguised as concerned discussion.

I think it's because we have a firm grasp on how to deal with environmental toxicity that our responses might seem flippant and dismissive, but also because there is no real merit to the concerns as they stand.

Finally, when it's assumed that we disagree because we are either incapable or unwilling to understand the point you're trying to make, whatever that was, that's demeaning to us. Consider, perhaps, that either your knowledge isn't as complete as you think, or that our collective wisdom isn't as lacking as you believe.

I would rather that, instead of cloud-seeding and manipulating weather patterns, we work in some of the ways mentioned in my earlier posts about restoring abundance to lower trophic levels in the ocean, and growing artificial coral reefs to reverse ocean acidification, to reverse desertification, and to replace big AG with more human-based, horticulturally-oriented food systems, and to move to freight and transportation systems that don't rely on costly and environmentally damaging infrastructure. But I don't see the point in unreasoning panic without details about the dangers and harms involved.

And if we can get an idea of what the chemicals involved are, including distribution in parts per million over any given affected area, such that we can assess actual potential harms, I'm sure we could nail that down, too. So long as it doesn't read like a bad Roland Emmerich flick.

-CK

J Davis wrote: Do you not acknowledge that the wide world would see your aversion to these things as conspiratorial?

To believe in conspiracy theory is to believe simply that in order to achieve an agenda, some folks keep it secret for a while. Thats it. That's also called world history.

I'm a little confused as to whether you are referring to permaculture as a conspiracy, or if the "bad guys" are the ones with the conspiracy, so I'll address both:

We DON'T want to keep it a secret - we want the whole world to know about it!  That's what this forum, Paul's book, thousands of blogs, video's and PDC's are about; spreading it openly!!

The reason permaculture is not more prevalent is not because it's secret - it's that people don't want to do the work.



Secondly, exposing the lies and agendas of others is not "Conspiracy Theory" - it's journalism (and/or editorial).

Furthermore, many of these "bad guys" are not operating in secret - the dangers of pollution, deforestation, oil consumption, etc. are widely known and derided, even more so now with the recent court rulings on glyphosate.

Dustin Rhodes wrote:
The reason permaculture is not more prevalent is not because it's secret - it's that people don't want to do the work.

I think a lot of people don't understand that it's scalable - that it doesn't have to be a 60 acre farm.  Anyone can incorporate permaculture into their lives, on any scale they can manage.

Tyler Ludens wrote:I think a lot of people don't understand that it's scalable - that it doesn't have to be a 60 acre farm.  Anyone can incorporate permaculture into their lives, on any scale they can manage.

You're right, Tyler. We live happily on just 1/4 acre. And while we are not 100% self sufficient and never will be, that does not mean we don't bother to engage in the activities of self sufficient people.

Greg Mamishian wrote:

Tyler Ludens wrote:I think a lot of people don't understand that it's scalable - that it doesn't have to be a 60 acre farm.  Anyone can incorporate permaculture into their lives, on any scale they can manage.

You're right, Tyler. We live happily on just 1/4 acre. And while we are not 100% self sufficient and never will be, that does not mean we don't bother to engage in the activities of self sufficient people.

When I first started homesteading/permaculture, I wanted to be as self sufficient as possible. I wanted to be able to survive and thrive with no outside inputs. I’ve since realized that I won’t be able to achieve that in the way that I thought, but I might actually be able to achieve something more in a way.

I think that we are laying foundations that we can’t see for future people to take sustainable living to another level. If people before me hadn’t preserved heritage seeds and trees, my lifestyle wouldn’t be possible. In a similar way I’m passing that on and even adding to it. Whether we’re on a quarter of an acre or something larger, everything we do gives people something to build off of in the future. I might not be able to plant thousands of chestnut and walnut trees in my area, but if I can even plant fifty of each, people will be able to use seeds to grow thousands down the line. I think this is part of the secret to our success: the future and the hope that we can’t see.

James Landreth wrote:When I first started homesteading/permaculture, I wanted to be as self sufficient as possible. I wanted to be able to survive and thrive with no outside inputs. I’ve since realized that I won’t be able to achieve that in the way that I thought, but I might actually be able to achieve something more in a way.

Everyone's motorboat leaves a wake... for better or for worse. (lol)

I think of us as being sufficient rather than self sufficient. So while we don't produce all of our own food, by working in a practical trade I produce enough money to buy anything we don't produce ourselves. The law of sustainability in permaculture when applied to finances is solvency.  

J Davis wrote:So today, my inbox contained an article from the Council on Foreign Relations, The Internationalist Newsletter - International Institutions and Global Governance Program and was raising awareness and linking to this article on World Politics Review website.

UN says geo engineering is inevitable, but at what cost

"Humanity must also consider a third option it has long resisted: geoengineering, or the deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment. Solar radiation modification denotes the deployment of technologies to alter the amount of radiation entering or leaving Earth’s atmosphere."

Regular posters on this site regularly lump weather modification, geoengineering, chemtrails, and solar radiation management with right wing conspiracy theories which have no potential link to permaculture. There is much throwing of labels and dismissiveness and zero discourse, inquiry, consideration of possibilities, impacts, risks, or even much civility. It is damaging to permie credibility to be on the "vigorous denier and dismisser" side of this issue which "if true" would have massive implications to soil, self-reliance, and food production worldwide.

For the sake of civil discourse and for the sake of the credibility of our attachment to reason, can we please drop the conspiracy theory label now?

I am fully aware that a goodly portion of the internet is devoted to conspiracy theories and I don't want too see permies drift in that direction.  But Permies focus is largely about building soil and if experiments are either already occurring or according to the UN will soon be occurring on a large scale which will put toxic gick into the soil, we ought to be able to talk about "what gick, what would be the likely impact to the soil, and what might we be able to do about it" without having to deal with childish non-communication techniques like labels and bigfoot sighting comparisons...

Wacky science ideas, like shading the Earth from solar radiation, is unlikely to be realistic and does not change human behaviour – these are stopgap measures, not fixes. Similarly, cloud seeding simply steals the rain from some other location.

It would be pertinent to tie-in the term ‘Geo-Engineering’ with the ‘Kardashev Scale’, which provides a method to measure the technological development of a civilisation on a galactic scale, based on energy use i.e. accepting we’re not the only ‘intelligent’ ones in the Universe.

For example:

Tier 1 Civilisations would use all the energy that falls on its planet from its parent star (sun)
Tier 2 Utilising all of the radiation emitted by its star e.g. a Dyson ring/sphere, Alderson disk, etc
Tier 3 Able to capture and use the energy of its galaxy

To put it into perspective, we’re still some time away from achieving Tier 1, though I suppose the greedy use of non-renewable natural resources like coal, gas, oil and uranium will eventually lead to greater improvements in solar technologies.

Leslie White, anthropologist, proposed: the primary function of culture and the one that determines its level of advancement, is its ability to harness and control energy.

It then became known as 'White's Law', which basically states:  ‘culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased’.

Since MOST people would consider fooling around with the planets weather patterns and other natural orders is a stupid and dangerous thing, changing our energy reliance to renewable sources just makes sense from an evolutionary viewpoint – looking back and looking forward.

Undoing the damage that we’ve already done is not impossible, but geological time-frames make it a multi-generational process and will undoubtedly involve extreme, worldwide weather events such as glaciation, desertification, severe storms, etc until we get back to balance – that is, naturally occurring variations based on ‘Milankovitch Cycles’.

The term ‘energy’ is all encompassing so, from a Permaculture perspective, it is certainly one of the many freely available tools for all people to use in the repair and maintenance of the biosphere.

I look forward to the day when the only energy we use is derived from non-polluting sources: solar, geothermal, wind, wave, hydro, hydrogen, et al.

I came across this brilliant bit of wisdom while watching a youtube video about burying kitchen scraps and other things by an Austrailian guy "self sufficient me".

"You don't have to be self sufficient in everything.
Just be self sufficient in something."

--"self sufficient me"

short 5 min read:
https://www.concordia.ca/news/stories/2019/04/16/climate-engineering-needs-to-look-at-the-big-picture-says-researcher.html

Now that's the kind of conversation that lends itself to being on this site, in my opinion. In the article about her paper, the big three geoengineering ideas are talked about in brief. No mention of con-trails (or chem-trails), no mention of cloud-seeding, no creative reality-based fictions about looming doom.

Just a summary of the three avenues being looked at: solar radiation management through spraying of aerosols into the atmosphere, mimicking the effects of a volcanic eruption; alkalisation of the ocean through crushing tonnes of appropriate types of mineral and dumping them in the surf; and massive-widespread afforestation, to the tune of an area the size of Europe. This, along with a simply stated concern that, "...there are unknown unknowns," variables that affect variables in balance that we have no inkling of.

I am saving her paper to read for bedtime, but I have a feeling that they will find the afforestation model the least unintentionally impactful.

Thanks, Nick.

-CK

Chris Kott wrote:

I am saving her paper to read for bedtime, but I have a feeling that they will find the afforestation model the least unintentionally impactful.

Thanks, Nick.

-CK

Agreed.  The others definitely give me pause.