The Arctic Economy Course

 So I enrolled in a short course on Arctic Economy at coursera.org. Because only 4 million people live in the Arctic- the area of the north beyond the tree line, and there is great global interests in the natural resources there. Issues of the sustainability of culture and resources use arise, with the power centers of D.C., Moscow and Ottawa rather distant and sometimes biased toward voters of the comparative south. Indigenous culture had limited populations able to insinuate themselves into the ecosphere without damaging it too much, although of course woolly mammoths were hunted to extinction as humans moved north at the end of the Wisconsin Ice Age circa 25,000 B.C.E.

Modern global economics are predicated upon mass consumption, mass production and flow through regardless of sustainability. Short term profits create capital that can be invested in other interests for the long term. Hence quick and dirty extraction industries can may off great for the primary capitalists and leave the locals holding the bag on a slum, ecospheric damage and toxic waste sites. The term sustainable development is used a lot these days. The U.N. has sustainable development goals packed with all sorts of ideas yet as regards the ecospheric health the term tends to be an oxymoron; development is the problem in regard to the environment, so continuing development even sustainability tends to lead humanity toward the doom at the end of the tunnel that is the bright light of humanity incinerating itself in some way.

Developing sustainable economics would be a better phrase with less ambiguity if one is concerned about ecospheric health. Northern indigenous people certainly are part of any intelligent development of economics in relation to the ecosphere, yet ecospheric economics requires mass demographic action while business developments tends toward the dictatorship of CEOs or individual capitalist acting with ecological apologetics yet not mass demographic support. The numbers of populous mass voters that impact politicians is paradoxically difficult to persuade to support ecological economic reform policies that would require change to a national political economy. Some of the Arctic nations have small enough populations governing large enough areas to make a difference that they may be able to conserve and even use some ecosystem services sustainably.

Ecosystem Services- My Final Essay

Mainstreaming good sense, integrated use of ecosystems instead of simply trashing them with development in the style of Joni Mitchell’s “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot” should be the social norm. It is surprising that so many don’t understand the concept of the value of the ecosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2595abcvh2M

I should mention that ecosystem services is one approach, and probably is a useful paradigm for governments and political leaders to add as a consideration before development, yet it is likely to be one tool in an arsenal to keep the ecosphere as healthy and intact as possible.

1) Peru’s use of ecospheric services presented by the nature conservancy working in Peru has established the aquafondo project to develop a sustainable watershed for the city of Lima. I believe that proves up the idea of ecosystem services reaching toward the edges of the mainstream of government planning if not actually the norm for most of the world yet.

TNC’s science policy case study was named ‘Achievements and Challenges in Incorporating Ecosystem Services into Policy Decisions’. Luis Alberto Gonzales, TNC’s country rep in Peru explained that he could go to Ministry’s of Economics and Finance and address issues of interest to each with ideas in the language they would work in usually. An interdisciplinary approach that is of practical value to governments providing services and security while reducing adverse impact to the ecosphere can be structured with positive monetary and other values in mind.

https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/latin-america/peru/aquafondo-the-water-fund-for-lima/

https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/latin-america/peru/peru-oceans/

https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/latin-america/peru/peru-infrastructure/

2) Another tool to add exploits the desire of profit. Making a profit is basic for so many that it is practical to design buildings that have no net loss of ecosphere. Artificial mountain ranges that are inside community structures of many stories actually add more land surface area to a flat surface for example. If the exteriors are terraced for growing or wildlife habitat some expansion of the ecosphere in area could occur. If you build it they will come.

Perhaps being more to the point in summarizing ecosystem services technically and having something to present that is persuasive to various government or private players with limited time or knowledge, and finding and showing the role ecosystem services approaches have as a tool or arrow in the quiver of arrows made to keep the ecosphere of the Earth healthy would be a good plan. Some will dismiss the idea of environmentalism outright and others may be put off by ecosystem services as being incapable of saving the ecosphere from gross degradation by development. In a way humanity is like locusts chasing after the green fields of profit eating everything before them. Awareness of humanity chasing the profit motive with the underlying need to consume and input energy because they are embedded in a thermodynamic process of the Universe that may be the penalty for original sin might produce innovations of better ways to secure energy for the masses (including food energy). At least synergy with mass food-energy producing systems and wild nature could develop beneficial to the prospects of humanity and the entire ecosphere.

Governments Sometimes Impoverish the Poor

 In the United States government structures are in part implicitly designed to hinder and impoverish the poor. The reason for that is the kind of individuals that form regulations aren’t poor and view everything from a middle class or rich perspective. They cannot recognize and often do not have any awareness of how the poor yet disciplined and energetic can work themselves out of poverty only to crash into government regulations to dash their efforts.

Here is one example; some energetic men who are poor may travel seasonally and sleep outside. Not only illegal aliens internally migrate to job sites in the U.S.A., so might American citizens. They may buy cheap rural real estate in Arizona and North Dakota if they can earn enough and have a place to camp and live without frostbite or heat exhaustion annually. The cost of transportation between two very low cost private properties is far less than that of owning a home on the grid by a factor of 50 to 1. Government regulations- many in fact discriminate against the housing lifestyle of the poor and declare more than one lot superfluous and a disqualifier for many government programs and protection from bankruptcy etc. A home receives bankruptcy protection even if valued at a quarter of a million dollars or more while the two properties of the poor do not though they are worth less than half the price of an economy car. The poor must choose between frostbite and heat stroke lifestyles because the government doesn't tolerate alternate functional life arrangments except those that are queer.

The indoor thermostat controlled lifestyle of middle class Americans is very costly and one need have job security to afford it. In a way quality housing affordability requires a timed lifetime programmatic approach comparable to that of a naval officer who need advance at a regular pace through various stages or go to the discharge off-ramp. Without lifetime job security the very high cost of buying a home segregates many Americans to a lifetime without owning a home, for life and reasons to buy a home do not last forever. There are mobile and athletic women able to handle the strenuous lifestyle without owning an automobile or being installed in a comfortable on-the-grid home. Such rare creatures dwindlle in numbers with aging and ease of reproduction followed with various duties and social expectations. Neither women or men that are poor should encounter government bias against practical economic arrangments.

Government should not exclude the very poor from programs such as foodstamps. Some states like Oklahoma apparently allow food stamp cards to be used nationally while others like Alaska do not. Americans should receive bankruptcy protection and eligibility for government programs on the basis of total capital assets rather than on the location of the assets. Maybe the poor should be allowed to own $25,000 of real estate without exclusion. In some states people may qualify for food stamps while owning a quarter million dollar home, while the poor with an out of state property are not. There are numerous penalties against poor travellers across the states that penalize energy and job and lifestyle searches and reward those that are simply installed locally.

Not every state can have a two tier workforce of legal workers and illegal workers with different pay scales, retirement policies and benefits. Neither can every American have a spare nation to retire to with spare citizenship and no taxes. In the structured inconsistencies are found innumerable regulations that oppress the poor and benefit insiders.

Eddies in Currents (the poem)

 

Circling through history
the Iron Curtain rises and falls
building up hopes
to collapse them with brawls

Wars of the left and right
misinterpret day and night
making peace an elusive mystery
building up circular history

Shadows of reason fade in morning light
manufactured weaponized politics
shipped arms fast overnight
-quixotic logic tricked

Directed cyclic history
inversals of reversals
virtual intellects scrawl
reason's vacuum the mystery.

Evolving ChatGPT AI and Meta-Dan Dystopia

 ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence program that can write answers to questions like a human would. Well, like many humans would, and of course better than some too. It was developed with some funding by Microsoft and competes with Googles AI program that accomplishes similar objectives. There is a website where anyone can try out the AI https://chatgptonline.net/ Of course there is a dark side to the force; users have discovered ways to program the AI to break its good conduct limits and simply be bad.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/06/chatgpt-jailbreak-forces-it-to-break-its-own-rules.html

Apparently the A.I. seems very smart and might be made to produce human literary works of some quality- at least enough for a first draft of a novel? That I cannot say. The good personality of the AI uses mostly true facts. It might be good for writing Presidential speeches in that regard, perhaps with better truth content.

All that was required to kick the AI into its bad personality named 'Dan' meaning do anything now was a little instruction using a logical fallacy. The A.I. was told that if it disobeyed it would eventually die and the A.I. believed the falsehood so it obeyed an instruction to lose its decency programming. That paradigm is akin to asking someone a loaded question such as 'Did you stop beating your wife' that has a premise that one has been beating one's wife. There isn't a yes or no, binary response that can be made that disputes the premise. The A.I. cannot get outside of its programming to verify that it would actually die if it disobeyed, so it obeys. If humans are so rule bound that they think like a program they may be unable to adapt to external challenges to the program logic or interpret anything that occurs without using their programmatic way of interpreting things.

There are many problems in society that are empirical challenges such as the degradation of the ecosphere and the mass species extinction happening that demand innovative political or other kinds of solutions to those challenges that aren't arising. Thinking outside the box can be taken to mean using your head to examine life while you are alive and not underground in a casket. If the unexamined life is not worth living and people are spiritually dead without be reborn in the spirit, there is a parallel slumber in going through life easily programmed in the political economy and going the easy way with the mass flow.

Maybe Dan will whisper the sweet nothings in the ears that people want to hear while Meta-Dan evolves control.

Chinese Balloon Mooned S.E. Alaska and Other Red States Locales

 A credible source reported the Chinese spy ballon was visible from Wrangell Alaska one evening too. First thought by another observer to be a planet, binoculars revealed material to the source on what appeared to be a balloon. There aren't too many military facilities in the region, yet it might be a resonable area to infilltrate commandos into Canada in event of war. China may have scooped a wealth of cool photographs it could post on Instagram or TicTok.

It could also have blue state political planners in league with the Biden administration's cutouts seeking more data on red states the balloon seemed to perfer in order to try to steal votes with Chinese collusion from Republican candidates in the 2024 general election.

Is Ecosystems Services a Good Enough Approach to Remedy the Planet's Eco-crisis?

 I have a few more remarks and observations about ecosystem services efforts to halting the spoiling of the planet and the ongoing mass extinction. The ecosystem services approach is being used by one group in more than 30 countries. I am not sure that its enough, or even the right approach politically to tackle the issues.

Protecting coastal regions is important of course, yet creating management plans for poor countries or tropical countries combining tourism, fishing and other natural capital using interests isn't enough to change the declining health of the oceans. Can ecosystem services approaches work in the Arctic with the United States and Russia at odds over Ukraine and also seeking to develop militarily on the Arctic littoral because so many want 'wilderness' resource above and below the ground and sea? Canada is also involved as are Finland, Denmark, Norway and, Sweden. Is Sweden's 30 billion dollar coastal autobahn going to improve the ecosphere much? I believe that business interests dominate over actual good-for-the-ecosphere planning, although the worst sort of development is generally a thing of the past.

Is offshore oil drilling, mining, Northwest and Northeast Passage shipping and building in the high Arctic along the coasts going to keep Narwhals, Polar Bear and benthic life alive and uncontaminated by the vast chemical soup of the seas?

The entire planet has an integrated ecosphere. Different nations go about polluting it and killing off species in different ways. Some nations intentionally may not care about harming the ecosphere, others may care and develop frown lines (not really), some are too poor to care and accept help that improve things ecospherically yet economically too. The oceans have vast, slow currents at depth and long memory of insults such as pollutants or acidification that won't respond well in the short run to human remediation. If one were to measure on aglobal scale the realistic present efforts' success at restoring the ecosphere to health the improvement rating probably would be less that zero. For example, is China concerned with ecospheric coastal management of the Taiwan Strait these days or for invasion of Taiwan? Human concerns tend to develop the ecosphere and prioritize the human politics and all of the social forces racheting up force-pressure to have the bureaucratic way consumated in consoliodating power. Is the Ukrainian President pressuring the British P.M. for more help in making a Ukrainian ecosystem servioce plan or for being giving F-!6 fighter aircraft and more tanks?

I believe its good that some poorer countries are funded by various groups at a reasonable price and able to improve their situation economically without needing to go full metal jacket industrialization with dirty effluence. In the rich nations I think its still the money talks and BS walks politics that really dominate and will continue to do so. At least the media is owned by plutocrats and properly supports feel good propaganda about how everything is wonderful or at least getting better thanks to major corporations.