20 JUL 2017 by ideonexus
The Need for Moral Universals in Democracy
Working societies — if they are to endure, grow, and cohere, if they are to prosper, hang together, and really mature — need moral universals. Moral universals are simply things that people believe everyone should have. In the UK, those things — those moral universals — are healthcare and media and welfare. In Germany, they are healthcare and media and welfare and higher education. And so on.
Moral universals anchor a society in a genuinely shared prosperity. Not just... 1 
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notes09 AUG 2014 by ideonexus
Human Respiration is Not a Source of Carbon Emissions
That's not a problem. The CO2 that's released by humans (and animals) is produced by metabolising carbon from food, and the food comes from plants that have been grown recently. During their growth, the plants have absorbed an equivalent amount of CO2 from the atmosphere. Even when eating meat, the animals are typically only a few years old and were fed on recently grown plants. In contrast, the cars run on fossil fuels that are hundreds of million years old. 1 notes
notes22 JUL 2014 by ideonexus
Human Respiration is Carbon Neutral
The very first time you learned about carbon dioxide was probably in grade school: We breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Any eight-year-old can rattle off this fact. More specifically, the mitochondria within our cells perform cellular respiration: they burn carbohydrates (in the example shown below, glucose) in the oxygen that we breathe in to yield carbon dioxide and water, which we exhale as waste products, as well as energy, which is required to maintain...
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1 We exhale carbon and that carbon is sequestered in the next plant we eat.
03 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
Fossil Fuels are Humanity's "Starter"
Now we have comprehended and peeled off the layers of petals
which disclosed not only that physical energy is conserved but also
that it is ever increasingly deposited as a fossil-fuel savings account
aboard our Spaceship Earth through photosynthesis and
progressive, complex, topsoil fossilization buried ever deeper
within Earth's crust by frost, wind, flood, volcanoes, and earthquake
upheavals. We have thus discovered also that we can make all of
humanity successful through science's world-e... 1 notes
notesThey are here to get the engine of sustainable energy running, we have to get the engine running before they are exhausted or the car of civilization is dead.
13 AUG 2013 by ideonexus
Global Warming is a Land Management Issue
One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas. To understand the movement of carbon through the atmosphere and biosphere, we need to measure a lot of numbers. I do not want to confuse you with a lot of numbers, so I will ask you to remember just one number. The number that I ask you to remember is one hundredth of an inch per year. Now I will explain what this number means. ... 1 notes
notesWith proper land management, we can pull the excess carbon from the atmosphere and into biomass.
09 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
The Promise of GM Foods
TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO, humans learned how to farm. It was an epochal invention that made possible settled life, cities, craft specialization, writing, organized religion, architecture, mathematics. science. Now humanity stands on the brink of a second agricultural revolution potentially as great as the one that occurred when our ancestors gave up hunter-gatherer way of life and settled down as farmers. Scientists and engineers are poised to genetically modify organisms to increase the yield,... 1 notes
notesGM foods hold the possibility of a second green revolution, allowing us to use less pesticides and less fertilizer and improve the nutritional value of our food supply.
08 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
The Need for a Common Perspective
That we need a planetary ethic is so obvious that I need but list a few key words: climate, ethnic cleansing, fossil fuels, habitat preservation, human rights, hunger, infectious disease, nuclear weapons, oceans, ozone layer, pollution, population. Our global conversations on these topics are, by definition, cacophonies of national, cultural, and religious self-interest. Without a common religious orientation, we basically don't know where to begin, nor do we know what to say or how to listen... 1 notes
notesWe need a singular vision based on reality in order to come to consensus and overcome our political and ideological differences.
