The Great Permian Mass Extinction

Most interesting CBC article on the Permian extinction, 250 million years ago. I have long heard that those volcanoes were suspected, But why did such massive, highly localized volcanic eruptions occur? Some years ago I read an article that identified an impact site, at the time diametrically opposite those volcanoes. This impact site was described as far larger than the one that triggered the dinosaur extinction, large enough to set the earth's crust ringing and come into resonant focus where those volcanoes erupted, deeply cracking the earth's crust. I have not seen anything of this since and wonder if it has been investigated further.

On Public Funding of Political Parties

I placed the following response to today's topic on CBC Radio One's Cross Country Check-Up:

I tend to agree that there should be no public funding for political parties. Party finances should be entirely by personal donation. This is just simply fair and democratic. Under public funding, some of my tax dollars are ending up in the hands of some political party or another that I cannot support, which is totally undemocratic. This is the same as the bad old days of corporate and union funding of political parties when some of my corporate equity or some of my union dues ended up in the hands of political parties I oppose. It is only democratic that I voluntarily contribute where I personally see appropriate and do so as a private individual.

If a party gets out of touch with the electorate, its finances will decline; a party more in touch with the electorate will receive growing financial support. Certainly a party's finances will strongly predict its placing during a given election but a winning party's success will not be simply the result of its financial capacity. More truly the reverse will be true, the winning party's financial capacity will be the result of its attraction to voters.

There is a role for the public purse in political funding, though. That is as a collection and distribution service only. A fear exists among the voting public that larger donors to specific political parties can have undue policy influence. Compulsory anonymity would preclude this fear. A public agency could receive my personal donation (and any limit as to donation size would be totally unnecessary) and assign it to the political entity I designate without ever identifying me to that entity. The only cost to the public purse would be the operating costs of that agency as no public money would go to any party. Other than actual membership fees, political parties will have no knowledge of the specific sources of their funding but they they most certainly will know if their offerings to the voting public have any real attraction.

Yes, eliminate public subsidy to political parties; keep party financing entirely from personal sources, but make those sources anonymous to receiving parties.

Not mentioned, but quite consequential, I think, anonymous-to-the-recipient personal source political financing would likely be conducive to independent political candidacy, which would be all to the good for our democracy.

Remembering

On this Remembrance Day I'd like to share my father's most powerful poem from his experience of World War II:

Casualty

by E. Arthur Hopkins

The Lord God spared my flesh the tearing steel
And, in the crashing tumult of our strife,
When I so often called His Name, I’d feel
His guardianship upon me, sheltering my life.

The Norman beach was spotted with our dead,
Yet I passed on and fought the bitter way,
Unbleeding on the bloodstained roads that led
From Greye-Sur-Mer through Camille and on to Bray.

On, ever on, each life bought grudging mile,
Some broken hamlets our reward for days.
Still safe I passed through Caen, then paused awhile,
Before we crushed the Wehrmacht at Falaise.

There never were a prouder band of men
Than we Canadians as we crossed the Seine,
To trap their thousands in ‘The Ports’ and then,
Storming after them, to win again.

Safe through it all, and safe again
For all those endless miles I’ve had to roam
To bring me here, to know at last the pain
Of stricken men. Sore hurt! Dear God, sore hurt at home -- at home!

The Lord God kept me safe. I wonder why?
She said she couldn’t wait. Too long away, too far.
The Lord God shelters best the men who die.
Their home is faithful, where the little crosses are!

Love and Mutual Exclusion

Our faith tells us how we should relate to our neighbours. Jesus tells us to love our neighbours. In faith we know that this is not a selective admonition; we cannot arbitrarily discriminate who we define as neighbour and limit our love. Yet, never does Jesus guide us as to how to relate to matters between various of our neighbours. Far too often mutual exclusivity comes into play. In many cases, if I am to love one neighbour, I must necessarily deny another neighbour.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus has his Samaritan arrive after the attack, choose not to pass by but lovingly assist and support the stranger who had fallen among thieves. This is entirely a one-to-one, polar, relationship. What if Jesus had had the Samaritan arrive on the scene during the attack instead? The neighbour relationship would be triangular. The thieves are as equally the Samaritan’s neighbours as the stranger on the road to Jericho. Yet the choice is obvious: deny the thieves and, in love, defend the stranger, rendering whatever assistance may be necessary, even to the point of violence, to drive the thieves away from their target. There is no way around it, in order to love the stranger on the road to Jericho, the Samaritan would have to deny the thieves.

In real life, we face this dilemma almost constantly. The choice is often far more subtle than between thieves and a victim but the consequence remains: to love the one requires denial of the other. In subtlety, the choice becomes far more subjective and truly difficult. When neighbours' needs conflict, how do we decide which neighbour to love and which neighbour to deny? We must prayerfully determine this for ourselves as Jesus never tells us how to make the choice. I suspect some Christians become catatonic at the dilemma, never choose, and effectively deny both. I suspect also that people in the greater community may quickly give the label “hypocrite” to Christians who make a choice to deny love with which the greater community disagrees.

Space, Time, and ...

I have come to realize something that never seems to get discussed in popularized presentations of Einstein’s theory of relativity: It implies at least a fifth dimension to the make-up of the universe we experience.

In the case of a single dimension, a linear universe, the only possible difference in location and/or movement has to be on a straight line, ahead or back. Deflection from that straight line, to one side or the other, results only from the existence of a second dimension to form a planar universe. Euclidian geometry is based on the two dimensions of the plane and, of course, it breaks down at the larger scale of our whole earth, a sphere that curves into a third spacial dimension. In space differences in location and/or movement can occur ahead or back, to one side or the other, and above or below. Yet in reality, movement also requires time and existence may be separated by duration. Time gives our universe a fourth dimension to permit possible differences in location and/or movement ahead/back, side to side, above/below, and in time. Thus, we sense our most familiar experience of our universe.

Yet Einstein tells us that the entirety of space/time curves at mass. Gravity is curved space/time. If space and time curve, they must curve into ... an aspect of existence other than space and time themselves. Only the existence of yet a fifth dimension to our universe could accept curvature of space and time together. Without such a fifth dimension space/time could not curve. Thus, we must live in a universe defined by a minimum of five dimensions.

Space Based Solar Energy

One topic on today’s CBC Radio One’s Quirk and Quarks discussed space based solar power. The discussion missed a significant factor and I sent the following thoughts in response:

Today's discussion about space based solar power was most interesting. One point did get missed and it is very essential when considering the scale of such a project. That is the law of conservation of energy. Whatever the source of energy, whatever the purpose into which we put energy, when we use energy we only transform it from one form of energy to another. What is the final form of all energy that we use, the energy waste product? It is always heat. H-E-A-T!

Our earth experiences a certain flux of energy from the sun already. Living things capture some of that energy and transform it for life functions, either using it immediately, which just turns it into waste heat, or storing it. Unused solar energy either gets reflected or absorbed and again transformed into heat. Waste heat gets radiated back out into space and our atmosphere moderates that radiation. In equilibrium, the flux of energy falling onto the earth's surface equals the amount of energy stored by life processes plus the heat our earth radiates back into space. Earth's average temperature remains constant.

Our current global warming problem stems from two sources. The one most talked about at present being our habit of releasing carbon dioxide and thus inhibiting the earth's capacity to radiate waste heat away into space. We retain more of the heat we generate. The other part of the problem in using fossil fuels lies in the fact that we are using long stored energy. We actually increase the flux of energy at the surface of the earth. Thus the flux of energy at the surface of the earth is greater than the sum of reduced energy the earth radiates back into space and energy stored by means other than atmospheric heating. Earth's average temperature rises.

Space based solar energy only solves half the problem. Fully implemented, it may stop the increase in carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and thus remove the problem of reduced radiation of waste heat back into space. Unfortunately, as with other currently considered alternative energy sources, geothermal, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, it still adds to the energy flux at the surface of the earth. At the scale your discussion suggests as necessary for this energy source to be feasible, this addition of solar energy that would otherwise pass the earth by will be vast. The flux of energy at the surface of the earth will be greater than the combined energy the earth normally radiates back into space and natural energy storage other than into the atmosphere. Earth's average temperature will still rise.

If we are going to bring vast amounts of energy onto the surface of our planet, in addition to the energy the earth normally receives, then we must either have means of storing that extra energy somewhere other than in our atmosphere or improve the earth's capacity to radiate waste energy back out into space. No two ways about it!

Capturing and using the solar energy that would normally pass us by really implies using that energy where we capture it, out there in space not down here. The real long term answer lies in getting off this planet (and staying off any other) as proposed long ago by Gerard K. O'Neill.