I have been enjoying my own neurological relapse of late, so you have my understanding as well as sympathies.

Wendy Davis has recently both blessed as well as innundated us with a long and tremendously dense three-part series on climate change in which - somewhere - the issue you have brought up is covered. If you have the energy, you may peruse her essays for further confirmation that we have indeed already passed the climate change tipping point no matter what we do.

The link below is to Part I of her series:

http://caucus99percent.com/content/climate-change-tipping-point-realitie...

dancingrabbit

Guy McPherson is an overreaction to the climate scientists' lack of interest in real society. Instead of asking "what form would world society have to take in order to survive climate change?", climate scientists have so far asked "how little do I have to ask of the Powers That Be before we can get some climate legislation that looks good enough to make people suspect it might do something?" This has caused the climate scientists to "bridge the gap" (in Sense-Making terms) by underestimating the extent and power of climate change while at the same time engaging some sort of groupthink about fashionable solutions to the problem. The Guy McPhersons of the world see this garbage and tell us, "we're doomed." A better way is to critique science in the way that has been done by the philosopher Isabelle Stengers. Her most recent one, "In Catastrophic Times," is pretty good, although dense reading. Stengers has been inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour, so there's a style situation with her writing.

Naomi Klein is an improvement upon the Guy McPherson overreaction. Klein's inspiration is to argue that "we need a popular movement to deal with climate change, one which will finger capitalism as the culprit in the whole affair." Unfortunately, Klein doesn't go much further than this inspiration. Perhaps the scientists and the movement can join forces?

The first time I was exposed to the idea of climate science, a friend had loaned me a copy of Gaia by James Locklove. As far as I know, his may have been the first scientist to popularize the topic, some 50 years ago. Lovelock is a scientist/philosopher, which is a perspective that resonates with me. He introduced into the earth sciences the concept of Gaia — a theory that the planet is a giant, self-regulating, self-healing, and evolving organism. All life in this region of space, lives, evolves, and becomes extinct on the Gaia host organism.

My brain says Gaia is a very powerful theory. Every piece of evidence that science has about the physical history of the planet supports it. Gaia gets catastrophically damaged; Gaia heals itself; species including hominoids, come and go over time.

Homo sapiens is a physically evolving species, but the species is not yet consciously sentient and cannot adapt/evolve collectively. The leading cause of extinction is the failure to quickly adapt/evolve to a changing environment.

A good example of a highly adaptive hominoid species is Homo erectus. They stood as tall as modern Homo sapiens with similar proportions and large brains. They used technologies, such as fire, and built complex tools. It appears that they migrated through much of the world and developed cultures that cooperated and showed empathy.

We know Homo erectus evolved rapidly as a species because they thrived for at least two million years, all the while adapting to some horrific environmental changes. They only disappeared about 50,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens were just beginning to walk out of Africa. For a time, both species shared the planet, but Home erectus already had colonized themselves elsewhere on the planet.

The point is Homo erectus had an extraordinarily long run as a species :: two million years adapting through some horrific environmental changes. That's ten times longer than Homo sapiens have existed, yet they may have already inflicted global-level environmental chaos upon themselves due to the species unevolved awareness.

Anyway….. I digress.

My thinking is aligned to that of James Locklove. Ny only question when I finished Gaia was :: "Which parts of earth offer the best chance for adaptive survival?" and "Let's get there before the gates slam shut."

Now, 96 years old, Lovelock still says the deadline is between 2030 and 2040. At that point, the de-population will begin. He has always thought recycling and greening was a good thing to do, but it would not change the outcome of warming. The tipping had already passed before he brought climate change into public awareness.

He often appears to be a critic of climate change remedies, but to me he is giving the best advice possible based on practical reality :: adapt or die. In a recent interview, he clarified yet again:

"After all this trying and failing [at climate change policies], perhaps it is time to consider that global warming is The Plan. It really doesn't matter what the cause is. (The big fight over whether climate change is caused by human activity is ultimately irrelevant. Some want settled science to declare it human-caused, because that suggests it can be "human-fixed. That's unlikely with available technologies. Others believe that ambitious environmental remedies will bring little but ongoing economic hardship to the table. In any event, no one will live long enough to see the outcome.) Is there a better approach?"

James Lovelock, the environmentalist and scientist who dedicated his life to climate change, gave us the Gaia hypothesis in the 1970s. He takes a long view of Earth's future, and sees the planet as not just a rock, but a complex, self-regulating organism geared to the long-term sustenance of life. Thus, if there are too many people for the Earth to support, which forces the very rapid extinction of other planetary species, Gaia – Earth – will find a way to get rid of the excess, and carry on.

That's the way nature works. Preserving the diversity of life is the first priority because diversity is the talent pool of mutations necessary for life to adapt, survive, and evolve into a state of sentience that is useful to the Universe.

Decades ago, Lovelock predicted that billions would be wiped out by floods, drought and famine by 2040. He is more circumspect about that date these days, but he has not changed his underlying belief that the consequences of global warming will catch up with us eventually. His conviction that humans are incapable of reversing them – and that it is in any case too late to try – is also unaltered.

Lovelock's concern is less with the survival of humanity than with the continuation of life itself. Against that imperative, the decimation of nations is almost inconsequential to him. "You know, I look with a great deal of equanimity on some sort of happening – not too rapid – that reduces our population down to about a billion," he says, five minutes into our meeting. "I think the Earth would be happier ... A population in England of five or 10 million? Yes, I think that sounds about right." To him, even the prospect of nuclear holocaust has its upside. "The civilisations of the northern hemisphere would be utterly destroyed, no doubt about it," he says, "but it would give life elsewhere a chance to recover. I think actually that Gaia might heave a sigh of relief."

There's a lot to regret. Lovelock says the vast sums of money being invested in renewable energy would be much better spent on strategies designed to help us migrate and survive. Critical amounts of time have been wasted, while adaptive strategies have not even been addressed, due to hubris, greed, and denial. So goeth Homo sapiens, along with their status quo.

He contends that the end of the world as we know it began in 1712, the year the Devonshire blacksmith Thomas Newcomen invented the coal-powered steam engine. It was the first time that stored solar energy had been harnessed in any serious way, with effects that now "grip us and our world in a series of unstoppable events. We are like the sorcerer's apprentice, trapped in the consequences of our meddling". Newcomen's discovery set in train more than just the era of industrial development. It also marked the start of a new geological epoch, the "Anthropocene", the most significant characteristic of which, Lovelock believes, has been the emergence of "an entirely new form of evolution" that is one million times faster than the old process of Darwinian natural selection.

He suggests now that we embrace the ongoing global shift towards urban living, which futurist architects like Paolo Soleri promote as the ideal earth-sharing set-up. Lovelock says moving humans to high density zones allows Gaia to heal the environment more efficiently. High density zones are far more efficient, generally, they offer survival when the full impact of global warming hits. The regions beyond the cities, rural areas, would then be left to Gaia to regulate for herself. It is far easier to regulate the climate of cities, Lovelock insists, than our current strategy of attempting to control the temperature of an entire planet. Homo sapiens have not developed planetary-level technologies, in any event. They are still fully invested at the "weapons" stage of scientific thinking.

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http://www.livescience.com/41048-facts-about-homo-erectus.html

http://europe.newsweek.com/james-lovelock-saving-planet-foolish-romantic...

I updated the 'spices as medicines' section with you in mind. It's about four paragraphs from the top in this food diary i'd posted a bit ago. you might just want to googledy/bing any combination of terms that makes sense to you, see what might help. best, wd

oh, and can you tell me what 'messages' are? i saw a thingie in the upper right page corner noting that for the first time this a.m., and i don't have a clue what to do about the messages (assuming they're for me).