NEWS OF NAMAZU THE EARTH SHAKER
| NAMAZU, giant Japanese catfish former demigod, turned maritime analyst |
What we are creating here is an archive of his older posts. When completed readers of his posts from any given day will be able to go straight to the Namazu archive to review past posts on similar subjects without scrolling and picking through non-Namazu material ( which the Great Catfish refers to "flotsam and jetsam")
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This post has been taken out date time order being posted nearly a year and half after Namazu's first appearance in these pages. However in this post he describes his employment history and evolution as an analysts and writer. Without this post the reader would have to review many different posts to discover how Namazu became a maritime analysts of the American Admiralty Information Services organization. After this post most posts are in date/time order of occurrence in the blog.
AUSTRALIA,CANADA,GREAT BRITAIN,NEW ZEALAND, BERMUDA, BELIZE, SOUTH AFRICA WHERE ARE YOU? THE GREAT CATFISH IS TRYING TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU?
http://americanadmiraltybooks.blogspot.com/ |
| NAMAZU, GIANT JAPANESE CATFISH ,FORMER DEMIGOD, AND NOW MARITIME ANALYST FOR AMERICAN ADMIRALTY BOOKS |
http://americanadmiraltybooks.blogspot.com/
So I'm sending this out into the world via our faithful readers and asking them to pass it on to every person they may know in a nation where English is an official language. Our most detailed statistics are in and despite my directly addressing all of the English speaking bipeds on matters of utmost communal naval and maritime importance I can't help but notice that we had 64 times more Russian readers than British. Sometimes we go two weeks with no visitors from the English speaking nations other than the United States. It is vital that we chat. So again I'm asking my regular readers to please forward this to everyone you know in the English speaking nations.WHO AM I, WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO HEAR FROM ME?
I am Namazu, a 3,000 year old giant catfish and former demigod formerly honored in Japan as being responsible for coastal earth quakes and tidal waves or tsunamis. Now, before you go dismissing me as some sort of pagan myth. I'd like you to keep in mind that the American Religious Right accused me of that when I first started employment with the American Admiralty Books (AAB) organization and its parent group American Admiralty Information Services (AAIS). As I pointed out to them in my defense of the reemployment rights of former demigods, I in fact, was not responsible for violent earth tremors or tsunamis. I'm merely a personification of those forces of nature and I didn't get to choose the job title of "demigod". I am in fact, a monotheist though not formally a Christian. As I pointed out in my defense of the reemployment rights of former demigods I am after all, a giant catfish, and as such not eligible for baptism; that being reserved for repentant bipeds like your selves. I now count among my regular readers quite a few members of the American Religious Right. After the Japanese outgrew any use for "demigods" I found myself for the first time in 3,000 years of existence unemployed. Like a lot of former celebrities I tried to cash in on my notoriety. I posed as a cover model for new wave rock album:
http://americanadmiraltybooks.blogspot.com/
I made an appearance in my semi human apparition as a performance artist.You can view it on YouTube at this link: Namazu Live Performance I appeared in an animated film, you may view the trailer here Namazu Video Trailer and I modeled for artist Eske Kath here is a sample of his work featuring yours truly:
http://www.eskekath.dk/
Not that the fine arts were new to me or I new to them as a subject. People had been fascinated with my images for thousands of years as illustrated by this ancient wood print.
http://americanadmiraltybooks.blogspot.com/
But these occasional gigs weren't really very satisfying after 3,000 years as a demigod. I was depressed for a while then took a deep self assessment. I found that I'm 3,000 years old , now that's experienced. I live at the bottom of the Sea of Japan, pardon the pun but you've got to credit me with some depth. Really despite the pun, I've been to the heights worshiped as a demigod, to the depths working for a pittance as a model, that's pretty much the full gambit of work/economic experience for an intelligent life form. I really do have depth. I have always lived in the ocean, that makes 3,000 years of maritime specific experience. The other things I have done in my career have given me poise and confidence in my ability to communicate. After due consideration I determined that I should be a writer. So I assumed by fully human persona ( a very old Japanese man, I can not hold it together for very long, if it fails on me I look like my apparition on the album cover, human body , catfish head) and determined to set out seeking employment. Given my back ground I wanted to interview with maritime publishers. Given my appearance and potential for a sudden and uncontrolled change to catfish head modeI knew I had to find a town that had maritime publishers and wouldn't blink an eye at a catfish headed person. I needed a port town open to strange sights. There was only one place to go:
NEW ORLEANS!
And that's how I walked into the offices of American Admiralty Books one winter. It turned out it was a good thing that it was winter because the head honcho OG (short for Old Guy) and his wife ("She who would be obeyed") spend summers in Annapolis. I caught him in, we had an interview, there was a meeting of the minds and the rest is history. I'm now a senior maritime analyst and Dean of the Namazu School of Climatology helping the AAB pursue its mission of organizing and making available all of the maritime literature, technical and literary, all of the videos, all of the links to maritime information in the English language available to the entire English speaking world. And yet today, a year into the quest we have more Russians, Poles, Chinese, and French reading us in translation than British readers. I have been addressing "the English speaking bipeds" for over a year now on naval. coast guard, and merchant marine subjects, on national policies for the maritime sector, often speaking directly to Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Belize, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and South Africa. But in fact you haven't been reading my irreplaceable wisdom. I have been trying to tell you the truth about climate change and what should really be done about it. I've described how the English speaking world is being hemmed in by growing naval powers while English speaking naval power is shrinking, and what to do about it. I have described the common sense solution to so many maritime and watery issues, yet you , the non American English speaking world have not been tuned in.
English is the official international language of maritime transportation. Merchant Marine Officers all over the world are tested for minimum proficiency. Helm and engine orders by pilots to helmsmen across the globe are given in English. It wasn't the Americans who made English the world's standard language for maritime activities. It wasn't the Americans who established naval customs now observed all over the world, indeed the American Navy adopted British naval traditions. But if you are not tuned in they are about to organize it for retrieval without input from anywhere but America.
BRITS! AUSSIES! KIWIS! BAHAMANIANS, BELIZEANS! SOUTH AFRICANS!
IS THIS THE ONLY FLAG THAT WILL FLY OVER THE GREAT ON LINE LIBRARY OF THE MARITIME LITERATURE OF THE ENGLISH SPEAKING WORLD?
Join the dialogue today, check in and use the Comment section to tell us what you think. Dare to read, think, and write. Check out :
AMERICAN ADMIRALTY BOOKS and start to plant these flags and others on the grounds of the World's growing on line library of English language maritime literature and information.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------IS THIS THE ONLY FLAG THAT WILL FLY OVER THE GREAT ON LINE LIBRARY OF THE MARITIME LITERATURE OF THE ENGLISH SPEAKING WORLD?
Join the dialogue today, check in and use the Comment section to tell us what you think. Dare to read, think, and write. Check out :AMERICAN ADMIRALTY BOOKS and start to plant these flags and others on the grounds of the World's growing on line library of English language maritime literature and information.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The post below was the very first appearance of the Great Catfish in the blog, before he applied for employment we were introduced to him by guest blogger Vic Socotra.
NAMAZU
(Earthquakes and tsunamis are part of the Japanese psyche. Living as they do on islands floating on the grinding of the Pacific tectonic plates, both are common occurrences. Mystical explanations helped explain the apparently random and frightening events. This image shows the giant catfish, Namazu, whose wiggling tail causes earth tremors and giant waves. Namazu is mostly kept under control by the god Kashima. But when Kashima is tired or distracted, Namazu flicks his tail and rattles the earth.)
I may have more bile than I need this morning. It is quite a remarkable thing to have a once trusty appendage suddenly collapse on you. It defies all experience, suddenly looking up from the floor. But I think it will get better.
I hope so- it is remarkable to feel so good one moment and then be writhing in pain the next. There must be an explanation for it. I am inclined to think it might have been the flicking of Namazu’s tail that catapulted me into this strange alternate reality.
You heard about the tornedo in Dexter, Michigan, last week. It was horrendous, though thank God no one died. My buddy Muhammed lives in Ann Abor, not far from the epicenter of the activity. He said: “We got good hail out of it. Dexter had a lot of damage, probable F3 Tornados. Weather is wild here!”
“It hit 75 and humid here today, what a contrast. Really awesome to see Nature at work! When the atmosphere, the ground (being mined and drilled), the thoughts of people are out of balance. Then, things get put back in balance. The weather guy calls it physics. Maybe it is.” He concluded with the observation that he thinks “it is Spirit at work.”
“As you know, it is easy to "dis" religion. But no one I have ever seen or talked to thinks about Science when a possible Tornado approaches, people pray. It works. Let's just say I was not standing on my front porch doing Physics problems 60 minutes ago.”
I was thinking the other day that hurricanes have diminished in number and intensity, even though our ability to track them has increased measurably. An early Spring here- with the usual attendant savagery of the change of season- is matched by a late and record-breaking winter in Alaska, and snows in Europe that range as far south as North Africa.
Is it La Nina? Sunspots or the lack of them? The regular precession of the wobbling earth?
I liked this explanation this morning, and I try on belief systems. As you know, the earth's orbit around the sun is not quite circular. The closest approach of earth to the sun is called “perihelion,” and it now occurs in January, making northern hemisphere winters slightly milder. This change in timing of perihelion is known as the precession of the equinoxes, and occurs on a period of 22,000 years.
11,000 years ago, perihelion occurred in July, making the seasons more severe than today.
Add in the fact that our planet is not round. Our earthly hotel has an orbit that varies on cycles of 100,000 and 400,000 years, and this affects how important the timing of perihelion is to the relative strength of the seasons.
The combination of the 41,000 year tilt-cycle and a 22,000 year precession cycle affect the relative severity of summer and winter, and may control the growth and retreat of ice sheets. Cool summers in the northern hemisphere, where most of the earth's land mass is located, appear to allow snow and ice to persist to the next winter, allowing the development of large ice sheets over hundreds to thousands of years.
Conversely, warmer summers shrink ice sheets by melting more ice than the amount accumulating during the winter.
That is the Milankovitch Theory, anyway, which was thought up by a Serbian scientist named Milutin Milankovitch back in 1920, which means he does not have a dog in the current argument about Anthropomorphic Global Warming, or its cousin, Catastrophic AGW.
The legion of things we do not understand about how climate and weather work- they are of course not the same- and whether the current theory on CO2 emissions is correct is something else. There are Greenhouse gases, of course. But what exactly is it they do? We have Dr. Mann's hockey stick graphic. How does that work with everything else?
I listened to Dr. Michael Mann flacking his new book the other day on NPR, and he spent precious little time on anything like science. Apparently he solved all this stuff a long time ago, and he has moved on mostly to policy recommendations, something that the Ivory Tower has always prided itself on.
I am no “denier,” as the current vituperative discourse goes. Of course the climate is changing, and of course the greenhouse effect has been known for a long time. Look at the evidence: Global temperatures- to the extent that we have them without resorting to pine cones and buried logs from Siberia- have increased almost a full degree (Celsius) since 1840.
Dr. Mann says there is a tipping point, we may have hit it already, and urgent action is required. I got an idea of what that might be in the form of a thoughtful piece by a fellow named Gary Stix. He laid it out in the pages of Scientific American this morning. He is wrestling with some heavy stuff. He is calling for immediate and massive social change.
"Global prosperity now depends on our species' success at a totally unfamiliar assignment: to "fit" our many billions of people on this small planet, with its finite resources and finite capacity to withstand pollution. The job will be very hard and will require sustained focus…
Behavioral economics and other forward-looking disciplines in the social sciences try to grapple with weighty questions. But they have never taken on a challenge of this scale, recruiting all seven billion of us to act in unison…. In principle, species-wide alteration in basic human behaviors would be a sine qua non, but that kind of pronouncement also profoundly strains credibility in the chaos of the political sphere....How do we create new institutions with enforcement powers way beyond the current mandate of the U.N.? Could we ensure against a malevolent dictator who might abuse the power of such organizations?"
Sounds like fun, but "Whoa," I thought. “Of course not. The only inevitability in this warming or cooling globe is that the over-arching ego of the human species won’t change. The most powerful emotion is not that of reproduction, but to tell others what to do.
Oh, BTW, Gary is not a climate scientist, according to the home page of Scientific American. His job is to: "Commission, write, and edit features, news articles and Web blogs.... His area of coverage is neuroscience. He also has frequently been the issue or section editor for special issues or reports on topics ranging from nanotechnology to obesity.”
More help from another quarter- a neurological approach to AGW. Let's get cracking, shall we?
Oh, yeah. What does the Milankovitch Theory say about future climate change? That good doctor claimed that orbital changes occur over thousands of years, and the climate system may also take thousands of years to respond to orbital forcing.
Is this urgent? Could it be that AGW actually fending off the next ice age? I dunno.
Dr. Mann and Gary Stix seem pretty worked up about it, and I guess I am, too. I am thinking that that pesky Namazu is working up for a quiver of his tail. Maybe we should all run to the other side of the tilted earth's axis?
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Click here for a video on the climate change debate, click on the return arrow in the upper left corner of the YouTube tool bar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KLGqDSAj
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AN INVITATION TO THINK, SPEAK, and WRITE
Namazu, the giant Japanese mythological catfish whose wiggling causes tsunamis and who Vic Socotra used to introduce us to the many causes and potential combinations of causes that can trigger climate change made quite a splash around the American Admiralty Books' water cooler. Meteorology has long been an examination subject on professional merchant mariner examinations. Few professionals are more weather concerned than professional mariners. Measurable climate change is already causing adjustments in U.S. Coast Guard planning and budgeting as the Coast Guard attempts to respond to the increasing need for a year round significant presence above the Arctic Circle. The Chinese, who have no Arctic coast are sending survey ships into the High Arctic because they have an interest in a shorter route for their exports to Europe. The long sought after Northwest Passage is becoming a summer reality. Climate change may not be exclusively a maritime subject, but maritime professionals are a bit like the canary in the coal mine being among the first to notice and be affected. Professional mariners are also well equipped, given the amount of technical training in meteorology spread throughout our professional culture, to discuss the subject. But climate change doesn't stop with maritime concerns. With the world's population largely concentrated in large urban centers and their core cities; changes in agricultural production could mean starvation for some.
To our collective, very practical, mariner minds the "NAMAZU CERTAINTY" compels the question; "what should governments, and others be doing to prepare for and and be able to mitigate against the negative effects of the NAMAZU CERTAINTY"? A major climate change on a global scale means major changes in agriculture. Those initial changes in agricultural patterns spell initial crop failures and starvation for some. This begs the question; how can agriculture be insulated from climate change? The Kraft exhibit at Disney World suggests that great quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables can be raised indoors in hydroponic "food factories", lessening urban dependence on far flung lines of supply for these food sources. Who should be responsible for encouraging this production national, regional, or municipal governments , or some combination of these? How could such production in the face of stiff traditional agricultural production competition be encouraged? How do we get such urban food safety nets on line without damaging the economics of traditional agriculture or relieving urban factory producers from the price constraints of the traditional competition. Should governments build, operate and hold in reserve such "food factories" for the eventual NAMAZU CERTAINTY emergency? How about urban or at least indoor protein production? NASA space colony studies seem to focus on aquaculture and small meat producing species like doves and rabbits, these all lend themselves to indoor production methods. Should national agricultural authorities encourage more green house type production even in areas of mild climate as a hedge against lost production when the NAMAZU CERTAINTY strikes? Frankly, when we initially put our collective minds to it, grain and other complex carbohydrate production was the stumbling block, we are unaware of production techniques for these dietary staples outside of extensive agriculture. Often in climate change, a bust for one region may be a boon for another. Perhaps the answer to a climate shift that devastates some grain producing areas is a more flexible global grain transportation net work.
Previously on March 22, 2012 our guest blogger Vic Socotra introduced our readers to the mythological Japanese giant catfish named NAMAZU. The Namazu of legend was a mythological explanation for Tsunamis and coastal earth quakes , pictured as the results of the wiggling of the giant catfish named Namazu. Vic used NAMAZU as an entertaining vehicle for an exploration of the causes, effects, and record of severe, sudden, climate change. He described for us such climate game changers as sun spots, orbit wobble, axis rotation irregularities, volcanic activity, meteor strikes, and various combinations of such. The point of the original NAMAZU article was that catastrophic climate change has happened in the past with no warning signs and has overtaken life on earth with catastrophic results.
In our second installment in the Namazu series we noted that the present climate crisis comes with lots of warning that it is on going. Unlike orbit wobble, or volcanic activity, we in theory, could do something about it if global politics and economics could for once work in tandem for the planet's health. There appears to be little time but there does appear to be time. In our second article built on the original NAMAZU article, we asked the question of what if we actually dodged the present clearly visible on coming bullet? Isn't it a mathematical certainty that one day when we least expect it one of the previous causes of massive climate change such as orbit wobble, sun spots, volcanic activity, axis rotation irregularities, or some combination of similar elements will again strike us as in the past? Our considered scientific answer is yes there will one day in the future regardless of how we handle the present self imposed crisis occur a massive climate change about which we can do nothing in terms of prevention or mitigation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KLGqDSAjo
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OCEANOGRAPHY , CLIMATE CHANGE:
The other thing that makes the Namazu School a different type of climate change forum is that we aren't concerned with the source of climate change. The entire series began with a guest blog posting describing the Namazu legend and the many ways that climate can change radically, suddenly, and without any input from man. While we debate the present situation surrounding our own influence on climate through our industrial, and transportation, and domestic consumption activities solar flares, a wide spread outbreak of vulcanism, axis wobble, ocean current changes or any combination of these and other elements can generate a massive global climate change over night. The Namazu school notes that this has happened before in the earth's past, all of the climate change elements still exist in nature, so it can happen again. What we have been soliciting comment on is the measures that governments national, regional, and local should take to mitigate the effects of a radical and unexpected climate change. We want to focus on this vice the present arguments over what to do to reduce any effects that human activity may be having on climate change. If we are successful in neutralizing our own effects on the atmosphere, that doesn't eliminate the probability of climate change, and it can be sudden, radical and dangerous and caused by cosmic forces over which we have no control.
The Namazu School started back in March of 2012 when the blog was just starting up. There have been a few postings on the subject since but many of our visitors have missed the previous postings so we repeat our basic focus again here. The previous postings are up, if interested, scroll through the postings starting in March 2012 and look for "Oceanography, Climate Change". Meanwhile to fuel discussion below we present a number of videos on climate change and security in face of climate change , especially rapid, massive, change that we can do nothing about.
To get through the NAMAZU selections with the least amount of unnecessary roaming click on the hyper-links below and at the end of the video click on the return arrow in the upper left corner of the YouTube tool bar. That will bring you right back here where you can click on the next video in the series.
First a look at the science behind current debate over the effects of our carbon foot print: The presenter at least touches on some of the other causes of climate change but is not focused on how rapid and violent these cosmic and natural causes can be.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: It has been over 13 months since Namazu made the predictions and observations noted in these two serial essays. Recent news coverage has confirmed the accuracy of his predictions. We took a chance in hiring a giant 3,000 year old catfish , former demigod as an analyst. He did a unique job of responding to our critics on the religious right for hiring what at first appeared to them to be a prominent pagan figure. In his polite but firm response in defense of reemployment rights for former demigods he used flawless theological arguments ("I'm a catfish, I'm not eligible for baptism, etc.) and actually won fans from among his early critics. He did a remarkable job of lampooning a number of national figures, provided insights into coastal zone planning, and damage control, building codes, and climatology. Then in November of 2012 he wrote the serial essays we republish below, making daring predictions running counter to the views of the day. But it was a block buster doubling our readership over night. The nearly 50,000 of you new readers who have begun to read this publication in the last six months come into these pages with Namazu a sort of established feature writer. We thank you for taking him for granted, we know its a stretch of the imagination. But there is a reason for his successful transformation from unemployed demigod to respected maritime analyst. To understand it, we urge you to read his seminal essays below. For those of you who were with us back in November of 2012 we thank you and urge you to re-read the essays as well just to see how well the Namazu views have held up, how many months ahead of the general media he was in predicting certain things. When it comes to accurate information on maritime world events from climate change, to coastal events and policies, to the depredations of "thug states", piracy and beyond ,we believe that the Giant Catfish is actually far more trust worthy than any American commercial news organization.
Click here for a video on the climate change debate, click on the return arrow in the upper left corner of the YouTube tool bar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KLGqDSAj
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EDITORS NOTE: This post was the first time that staff writer began to write about Namazu.
OCEANOGRAPHY:CLIMATE CHANGE
AN INVITATION TO THINK, SPEAK, and WRITE
SEE: OCEANOGRAPHY: CLIMATE CHANGE, NAMAZU-Blog by Vic Socotra on Thursday March 22, 2012
Namazu, the giant Japanese mythological catfish whose wiggling causes tsunamis and who Vic Socotra used to introduce us to the many causes and potential combinations of causes that can trigger climate change made quite a splash around the American Admiralty Books' water cooler. Meteorology has long been an examination subject on professional merchant mariner examinations. Few professionals are more weather concerned than professional mariners. Measurable climate change is already causing adjustments in U.S. Coast Guard planning and budgeting as the Coast Guard attempts to respond to the increasing need for a year round significant presence above the Arctic Circle. The Chinese, who have no Arctic coast are sending survey ships into the High Arctic because they have an interest in a shorter route for their exports to Europe. The long sought after Northwest Passage is becoming a summer reality. Climate change may not be exclusively a maritime subject, but maritime professionals are a bit like the canary in the coal mine being among the first to notice and be affected. Professional mariners are also well equipped, given the amount of technical training in meteorology spread throughout our professional culture, to discuss the subject. But climate change doesn't stop with maritime concerns. With the world's population largely concentrated in large urban centers and their core cities; changes in agricultural production could mean starvation for some.
What Vic Socotra used the giant mythological catfish Namazu to explain was that climate change, even rapid climate change, could possibly be induced by our own green house gas emissions; but it can, and has been, induced by quite natural causes and inevitably will be again. Sun spots, orbit wobble, axis rotation irregularities, volcanic activity, solo and in combination, have in the past induced very rapid and very large climate change. This fact shouldn't stop mankind's attempts to reduce his greenhouse gas emissions, but points out the clear and present danger of focusing only on that; as if the cleaning up of our pollution somehow assures us against sudden and dramatic damaging climate change; it doesn't.Climate change could be thrust upon us overnight even in the cleanest and greenest of all possible worlds. Many web sites debate or argue for one view or another on the current climate change situation which appears to be a warming trend with green house gases from human agricultural, and industrial, and transportation activities as the favored most probable cause. But Namazu reminds us that even if we escape this particular bullet, one never knows when he will wiggle again with catastrophic results.
We have decided to depart just a little from our exclusive maritime orientation to allow something of a dialogue between our visitors, marine professionals and "civilians" alike, on climate change. But we don't wish to revisit the on going debate over "global warming", "green house gases", "carbon emission credits" etc.. We'll call this forum the "NAMAZU SCHOOL". In the NAMAZU SCHOOL we start the discussion by mutual acceptance that climate change can occur due to both man made conditions and natural causes, and it can occur due to any combination of natural and man made causes, or by any single cause of either variety. Most importantly, since we know that a single, simple natural cause such as excessive volcanic activity can induce rapid climate change, and has induced it in the past; we assume that rapid climate change can occur in a very short time frame,and eventually will happen again. We call the dead certainty that mankind will once again, at some point, face widespread and massive climate change THE NAMAZU CERTAINTY.
To our collective, very practical, mariner minds the "NAMAZU CERTAINTY" compels the question; "what should governments, and others be doing to prepare for and and be able to mitigate against the negative effects of the NAMAZU CERTAINTY"? A major climate change on a global scale means major changes in agriculture. Those initial changes in agricultural patterns spell initial crop failures and starvation for some. This begs the question; how can agriculture be insulated from climate change? The Kraft exhibit at Disney World suggests that great quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables can be raised indoors in hydroponic "food factories", lessening urban dependence on far flung lines of supply for these food sources. Who should be responsible for encouraging this production national, regional, or municipal governments , or some combination of these? How could such production in the face of stiff traditional agricultural production competition be encouraged? How do we get such urban food safety nets on line without damaging the economics of traditional agriculture or relieving urban factory producers from the price constraints of the traditional competition. Should governments build, operate and hold in reserve such "food factories" for the eventual NAMAZU CERTAINTY emergency? How about urban or at least indoor protein production? NASA space colony studies seem to focus on aquaculture and small meat producing species like doves and rabbits, these all lend themselves to indoor production methods. Should national agricultural authorities encourage more green house type production even in areas of mild climate as a hedge against lost production when the NAMAZU CERTAINTY strikes? Frankly, when we initially put our collective minds to it, grain and other complex carbohydrate production was the stumbling block, we are unaware of production techniques for these dietary staples outside of extensive agriculture. Often in climate change, a bust for one region may be a boon for another. Perhaps the answer to a climate shift that devastates some grain producing areas is a more flexible global grain transportation net work.
Let's not forget the more maritime consequences in this discussion. Sea levels are definitely rising at least in the short term. Port and shore line protection have to be discussed and planned for. The "hard' (breakwaters, and cement revetments) verses "soft" (barrier island and marsh construction) debates have to be considered , and again who is responsible for what? What can a state or municipal government do on its own even if the federal government fiddles while NAMAZU wiggles? We invite our visitors to think on these subjects and others in the context of the "NAMAZU CERTAINTY" and to give us your comments. On just this subject at least, we won't delete your thoughts if they are non maritime. The NAMAZU SCHOOL is a forum for a complete discussion of what we should be doing now to prepare for the sure and certain coming climate event that we use the term "NAMAZU CERTAINTY" to symbolize. Give us your thoughts starting in the comment section of this post. We will publish new posts as we develop new collective thoughts. Members of the NAMAZU SCHOOL of climate thought, believe that we should be preparing now for climate change. Lets leave the debate over whether or not it is already in progress and who or what is responsible to the politicians. Lets try to find the new mandate to give the political office holders on what to really do about it besides "reduce green house gases", we'll just call that a good idea for one of the possible NAMAZU CERTAINTY possible causes that is in sight. The NAMAZU School of thought suggests that even a reduction in green houses gases, generally acknowledged to be a good idea, could , in conjunction with an event like extraordinary volcanic activity,result in a sudden cooling. Its time for practical planning for sudden climate change of any sort. That is the NAMAZU CERTAINTY and the NAMAZU solution. Lets get started right here on the details. Let us have your thoughts in the comment section or use the comment section to propose a guest posting.
Click below for a video on the current climate change debate
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------OCEANOGRAPHY , Climate Change
The Namazu School Revisited
The United Nations Conference On Climate Change In Bonn
Not as Bad as It Could Have Been, But Not Good.
Previously on March 22, 2012 our guest blogger Vic Socotra introduced our readers to the mythological Japanese giant catfish named NAMAZU. The Namazu of legend was a mythological explanation for Tsunamis and coastal earth quakes , pictured as the results of the wiggling of the giant catfish named Namazu. Vic used NAMAZU as an entertaining vehicle for an exploration of the causes, effects, and record of severe, sudden, climate change. He described for us such climate game changers as sun spots, orbit wobble, axis rotation irregularities, volcanic activity, meteor strikes, and various combinations of such. The point of the original NAMAZU article was that catastrophic climate change has happened in the past with no warning signs and has overtaken life on earth with catastrophic results.
In our second installment in the Namazu series we noted that the present climate crisis comes with lots of warning that it is on going. Unlike orbit wobble, or volcanic activity, we in theory, could do something about it if global politics and economics could for once work in tandem for the planet's health. There appears to be little time but there does appear to be time. In our second article built on the original NAMAZU article, we asked the question of what if we actually dodged the present clearly visible on coming bullet? Isn't it a mathematical certainty that one day when we least expect it one of the previous causes of massive climate change such as orbit wobble, sun spots, volcanic activity, axis rotation irregularities, or some combination of similar elements will again strike us as in the past? Our considered scientific answer is yes there will one day in the future regardless of how we handle the present self imposed crisis occur a massive climate change about which we can do nothing in terms of prevention or mitigation.
We called that certainty the NAMAZU CERTAINTY. Around that certainty we launched what we called the NAMAZU SCHOOL. The "NAMAZU SCHOOL" is a school of thought that we intend to apply to discussion of climate change in this blog. The first principal of this school of thought is that the NAMAZU CERTAINTY is indeed a certainty and that real politics makes it unlikely that the world will be able to respond in an efficient global way to mitigate the agricultural, economic, biological, and human costs of such a global disaster.
So we feel the most important thing to discuss is how local, state /provincial, and national governments along with certain corporations and private citizens can prepare to mitigate the most deadly results of such a sudden shift in climate to reduce suffering among heavily urbanized human populations. We requested our readers to join in the discussion by submitting guest blogs and comments on real measures that real governments might take to insure adequate food supplies and other necessities for a protracted period in the years when most outdoor crops based on existing climate zones are lost. We haven't had much participation so far but recent news out of Bonn indicates to us that the NAMAZU SCHOOL is on the right track.
On May 25 Reuters reported that more than 180 countries agreed on a agenda for work on a new climate treaty by 2015. So after much discussion in Bonn 180 countries have finally agreed (after how many years?) to set an agenda for a possible new climate treaty by 2015. The headlines indicate that mistrust between blocks of nations remain a part of the on going debate. Last year in South Africa the United Nations conference on the climate agreed to a package of measures that would extend the 1977 Kyoto Protocol after it expires at the end of this year. At that time the conference agreed that a new legally binding accord to cut greenhouse gases should be inked by 2015 and go into effect by 2020. While trying to arrive at this future agreement the squabbling between nations continues. The European Union and others have accused China along with other developing nations of "procedural blocking" or trying to backtrack on the deal inked in Durban ,South Africa last year. Developing nations accuse the United States and the European Union and other "rich" nations of trying to avoid making deeper cuts and dodging increases in financial help to poorer nations to help them deal with climate change.
The science that all this is working against is this. Unless emissions of green house gases are cut enough to keep the rise in average global temperature to less than 2% Celsius over pre- industrial levels a threshold that scientist say is the minimum required to avert catastrophic effects will be exceeded. While we know this; some nations appear poised to miss their emissions reduction goals for 2020 and the world seems set on a course for a 3.5 degree Celsius rise in average global temperature before the century is out.
Hello? Did anyone really believe that the world "community" was going to solve this problem? That is not to say that the present situation is without hope. Politics aside, economics might cause us to eliminate the internal combustion engine as the primary engine of surface transport which all by itself might bring the needed reductions in green house gases. War or economic disaster might reduce human carbon consumption in time. But does anyone really believe that global politics or a global political process will actually avert disaster?
But suppose it does? Missing this train now rushing at us doesn't mean that another unforeseen climate change won't suddenly overwhelm us without any contribution to causation on our part. Remember orbit wobble, axis rotation, meteor strikes, volcanic activity can happen at any moment. Do we wait for the disaster to be upon us and expect the type of global political process that is now failing to do anything decisive about the on coming but relatively slow moving crisis to save us from starvation in the year following such an event? Will the global government community even be able to accept that these things happen and man is powerless to prevent them or will they lapse into a "blame game"? Now is the time to start looking at legal and technological regional and local solutions to post sudden climate change food security problems, flood control, drought relief. We don't need to wait on the global statesmen to wake up to the NAMAZU CERTAINTY.
We the people, you know us common expendable folk who won't have safe houses and stored food supplies that will sustain the heads of government and governing elites, need to start thinking along these lines and making technologically and economically feasible demands on our local and regional governments, then our national governments; and simply hope for the best beyond that and take a lesson from history, International cooperation does happen, but generally only slowly; too slowly to deal with a real global catastrophe. If the global governors can actually forestall the on coming man made crisis we can save whole species of wild life and whole regions of agricultural production. But we will not be able to do so with the faster climate changers that nature can and eventually will throw at us.
All we will be able to do in the face of the NAMAZU CERTAINTY is to try and save human urban populations from starvation by making a certain portion of our agricultural production not so weather dependent. We may be able to save a certain portion of the earth's wild species and most of a breeding remnant of our domestic stocks. But what NAMAZU can throw at us over night is more than we can deal with in terms of saving the planet's existing environment and web of life. In past climate change events life changed and it survived. The human race has to make plans to join the rat and the cockroach among the sure fire survivors The report of the meager progress on the current crisis should serve as an inducement to enter the NAMAZU SCHOOL and start thinking and perhaps writing about the needed mitigation planning for the NAMAZU CERTAINTY..
Click on the hyperlink below for a video on the climate change debate. Press the return arrow in the upper left hand corner of the YouTube tool bar to return here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KLGqDSAjo
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This post further developing the Namazu School of Climatology was posted July 25, 2012 . Namazu had not been hired yet. But we think that you are beginning to see why we were the first door he knocked on to start
Namazu School videos
OCEANOGRAPHY , CLIMATE CHANGE:
THE LATEST FROM THE NAMAZU SCHOOL:
The Namazu Film Festival
Climate Change System Dynamics by James Childs http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=7339&picture=climate-change-system-dynamics
Namazu the mythological Giant catfish of ancient Japan whose wiggling was credited with causing earthquakes and tsunamis is the name we have adopted for our on going discussions of climate change. The most immediate effect of climate change that must be dealt with in the maritime sector is of course the opening of the High Arctic to navigation. Departing a bit from our usually laser sharp focus on things maritime we said that we'd open the Namazu discussions to other changes like food security that may not appear so maritime in nature, yet it is grain exports that provide a little less than half of the cargoes for the American towboat and barge industry. Its a connected world and waterborne transport does a lot of the connection.
The other thing that makes the Namazu School a different type of climate change forum is that we aren't concerned with the source of climate change. The entire series began with a guest blog posting describing the Namazu legend and the many ways that climate can change radically, suddenly, and without any input from man. While we debate the present situation surrounding our own influence on climate through our industrial, and transportation, and domestic consumption activities solar flares, a wide spread outbreak of vulcanism, axis wobble, ocean current changes or any combination of these and other elements can generate a massive global climate change over night. The Namazu school notes that this has happened before in the earth's past, all of the climate change elements still exist in nature, so it can happen again. What we have been soliciting comment on is the measures that governments national, regional, and local should take to mitigate the effects of a radical and unexpected climate change. We want to focus on this vice the present arguments over what to do to reduce any effects that human activity may be having on climate change. If we are successful in neutralizing our own effects on the atmosphere, that doesn't eliminate the probability of climate change, and it can be sudden, radical and dangerous and caused by cosmic forces over which we have no control.
The Namazu School started back in March of 2012 when the blog was just starting up. There have been a few postings on the subject since but many of our visitors have missed the previous postings so we repeat our basic focus again here. The previous postings are up, if interested, scroll through the postings starting in March 2012 and look for "Oceanography, Climate Change". Meanwhile to fuel discussion below we present a number of videos on climate change and security in face of climate change , especially rapid, massive, change that we can do nothing about.
To get through the NAMAZU selections with the least amount of unnecessary roaming click on the hyper-links below and at the end of the video click on the return arrow in the upper left corner of the YouTube tool bar. That will bring you right back here where you can click on the next video in the series.
First a look at the science behind current debate over the effects of our carbon foot print: The presenter at least touches on some of the other causes of climate change but is not focused on how rapid and violent these cosmic and natural causes can be.
Our next selection features a World bank figure on agriculture and climate change. It is obvious from the presentation that the speaker believes that a carbon emissions driven climate change is underway. His suggestions for dealing with its effects on agriculture are based on the idea that the worse effects are still a decade or more away. His suggestions all involve voluntary actions by industrialized nations to self limit carbon emissions and to set up funds to compensate poorer agricultural nations. Such "cures" have nothing to do with the what the NAMAZU school is seeking in the way of food security comments. By contrast with the speaker in this video we are looking for the type of measures that would keep urban populations from starving to death in the face of virtually over night massive climate change. We are asking what we should do if orbit, or axis change, or massive vulcanism, solar flares, a meteor strike, or any of dozens of other causes and combinations of causes confront us , with our need to feed massive urban populations. THIS VIDEO IS AN EXAMPLE OF THE TYPE OF CIVIL READINESS DISCUSSIONS THAT ARE GOING ON NOW, NOT THE TYPE WE WANT TO START. YOU WILL NOTE THAT THE SPEAKER COMES FROM A POSITION THAT ASSUMES THAT TREND IS FUTURE AND THAT WE ARE HEADED FOR A MAN CAUSED GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE OF UNKNOWN PROPORTIONS OVER A PERIOD OF DECADES. The Namazu School seeks your comments on what we should be doing acting on the assumption that climate change can and does happen, often suddenly and from causes that we can't control. We simply are not about the usual debate. But here is an example of the typical thinking today on civil preparedness for climate change.
Here is an example of the type of technology that could help secure urban food supplies in the event of sudden climate change.
If our little "film festival" has clarified you idea of what the "Namazu school is all about and how it differs from today's climate change discussions let us have your comments on what governments, corporations, and individuals should be doing to create a world less susceptible to damage by sudden, drastic climate change. Comment on any related subject such as food security, transportation, communications, or the economy. But remember our focus is not on the current debate but on what to do to build a less vulnerable world in the face of the one uncontested fact; climate change happens, often suddenly, and we are not the only potential cause. We could conceivably emerge from the present situation in a much cleaner world and still face extinction as a species from any one or a combination of cosmic (such as solar flare activity or meteor strike), or natural (such as vulcanism) climate change causes. If you find another forum where this discussion is taking place please alert us via the comments section. Welcome to the NAMAZU SCHOOL!
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THE NAMAZU SCHOOL:
WAS THE PUMICE SLICK THE SIZE OF BELGIUM A REMINDER FROM OUR FRIEND NAMAZU?
Kashima Controls NAMAZU
Yesterday we reported that a floating "slick" of volcanic pumice roughly the size of Belgium was observed in the ocean off of New Zealand. After observation by the New Zealand Navy, scientists determined that the positively buoyant rock particles did not originate with a recent known on shore volcanic event but must originate from a sub sea volcanic eruption. Namazu you may remember is the name of the giant mythological Japanese catfish associated with coastal earthquakes and tsunamis. Kashima is the minor god who controls Namazu with a rock, but occasionally lets his guard down, the giant fish wiggles and Japan experiences earth quakes and tsunamis. Your basic pagan god has never been all that reliable.
We introduced our readers to Namazu a while back in a discussion of climate change that described all of the natural ways that climate can change suddenly and drastically. Earth axis wobble, orbital drift, sun spots, volcanic activity, meteor strikes, and ocean current changes and any number of combinations of these elements have caused sudden and drastic climate change here on the home planet and all of the Kashima types on the planet collectively failed to stop the Namazu like consequences. So we named our school of climate change after the great catfish. Our school of discussion is not focused on the current debate of are we or are we not causing climate change with our carbon emissions. We are soliciting ideas on what to do to be ready as a society, particularly an urban society, when not if, sudden and drastic climate change overtakes us.
The "pumice slick" found by the New Zealand Navy recently measured 250 nautical miles long by about 30 nautical miles wide , or roughly 10,000 square miles (26,000 square kilometers) . The material is basically white and refracts light, looking much like ice when observed upon a calm sea.. The undersea volcano blast that produced it must have been enormous.
Now consider what could happen if several under sea blasts of similar magnitude happened in close proximity to a few major Mt. St. Helen type shore side eruptions. Ash would enter the atmosphere in sufficient quantity to refract a great deal of sunlight back into space, while mirror like reflectors in the form of these pumice slicks the size of nation states reflected even more radiant energy out; you'd have sudden catastrophic cooling. Probably for several years whole crop belts would fail to yield the expected crops. What should we have done to prepare for such an event? How do we extricate these large urban populations from a food chain that is global in length? That is the subject of the Namazu school.
On this occasion of the appearance of the pumice slick the size of Belgium we ask our readers again to send us comments with anything that you would like to add to the discussion of how do we prepare for sudden drastic climate change. This sudden change has happened in the past, and can happen at any time without warning. Blame it on sun spots, volcanic activity, solar flares or the wiggles of good old Namazu, it's going to happen again; and the Kashima and all the Kashima's men will never put Humpty Dumpty together again. We need to be ready.
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CLIMATE AND CLIMATE CHANGE BOOK SHELF
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CLIMATE AND CLIMATE CHANGE BOOK SHELF
11/7/2012 Namazu Fully Loaded
Editor's note: It seems that we are constantly mentioning this essay by the Great Catfish which doubled our readership overnight in 2012 and was for a long time our most visited post. It was a two part lengthy exploration of America from a world ocean point of view of a 3,000 year old former demigod. Recently we tried to pull it up on our "All THINGS NAMAZU " Page and it wasn't there. We finally found it in the cloud archive. We probably have increased our readership by 50,000 since we last were able to link to this essay. Written on the eve of Obama's second presidential election we find it is still right on point today. By republishing we hope we restart the archival clock making it easier to link to this two part essay in future posts that refer to it. We will probably be referring to it numerous times in 2014 as Namazu's predictions of 2012 continue to become reality. This is the great catfish at his deepest. If you joined us after 2012 and never read it, or even if you read it in 2012, it is worth a revisit. This is the Great Catfish at his deepest.-Johnas Presbyter, editor
NAMAZU FULLY LOADED: THE FUTURE OF AMERICA
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First Published Wednesday, November 7, 2012 TECHNICAL BACK UP COPY
NAMAZU FULLY LOADED: THE FUTURE OF AMERICA
| Namazu, Giant Japanese Catfish Demigod does a core dump on what he knows about the presidential election, oil and gas production, the recovery, and the not so distant future! This is the big cat fully loaded letting go with both barrels with a vision of the future that is exciting, dangerous, promising , and scary all at the same time. Its our bad luck that Japanese demigod giant catfish can't be a natural born U..S. citizens.. Because if he could qualify to run, this big catfish is the visionary we should have elected today.. |
EDITOR'S NOTE: It has been over 13 months since Namazu made the predictions and observations noted in these two serial essays. Recent news coverage has confirmed the accuracy of his predictions. We took a chance in hiring a giant 3,000 year old catfish , former demigod as an analyst. He did a unique job of responding to our critics on the religious right for hiring what at first appeared to them to be a prominent pagan figure. In his polite but firm response in defense of reemployment rights for former demigods he used flawless theological arguments ("I'm a catfish, I'm not eligible for baptism, etc.) and actually won fans from among his early critics. He did a remarkable job of lampooning a number of national figures, provided insights into coastal zone planning, and damage control, building codes, and climatology. Then in November of 2012 he wrote the serial essays we republish below, making daring predictions running counter to the views of the day. But it was a block buster doubling our readership over night. The nearly 50,000 of you new readers who have begun to read this publication in the last six months come into these pages with Namazu a sort of established feature writer. We thank you for taking him for granted, we know its a stretch of the imagination. But there is a reason for his successful transformation from unemployed demigod to respected maritime analyst. To understand it, we urge you to read his seminal essays below. For those of you who were with us back in November of 2012 we thank you and urge you to re-read the essays as well just to see how well the Namazu views have held up, how many months ahead of the general media he was in predicting certain things. When it comes to accurate information on maritime world events from climate change, to coastal events and policies, to the depredations of "thug states", piracy and beyond ,we believe that the Giant Catfish is actually far more trust worthy than any American commercial news organization.
NAMAZU FULLY LOADED: THE FUTURE OF AMERICA
When you are a force of nature personified, and I like that term I think better than the old "demigod" label ; you are in constant communion with other forces of nature. That not only includes other giant catfish like my cousin Jack, but even non personified forces of nature like oil and natural gas. The most powerful force of nature that I've always been in constant contact with for some reason seems to be blind to itself as a force of nature. That force is the collective intelligence of the human race. It is in fact "of this world" having evolved here and far more powerful than any previous force of nature ever seen on the planet. There is an interplay between the human intelligence force of nature, laws of physics, and deposits of oil and gas that will change the future into something almost barely imaginable for the collective human intelligence. These are developments so big only a giant catfish of a size sufficient to warrant the title "the Earth Shaker" could possibly get his mind around it and communicate it to you.
 The Obama / McCain contest CHA CHING! BIG RECOVERY COMING NO MATTER WHO IS IN THE WHITE HOUSE!
There is a massive and rapid economic recovery coming to be followed by a relatively prolonged period of rising American Prosperity. This recovery/ restoration will be fully manifested within 42 months, possibly as early as 36 months and the first signs that the national media will be able to read are just around the corner. Who ever you elected today as president had nothing to do with this recovery, but the nearly 40% of the electorate that doesn't pay income tax and another 10% or so who are chronically clueless will credit the sitting President at the time with the boom. Who is president will determine whether we will develop our new found riches into a legacy for the future or squander it in useless programs that bring us to ruin when this next economic merry go round stops. Remember you heard all this here first. Print out and keep this posting for the future.
China's rise is cruising for a bruising. The U.S. is poised to once again to emerge as the World's only full service super power. Two things are about to curb China's growth, their dependency on import hydrocarbon energy, and new technological developments that will render the type of manufacturing that grew their economy, obsolete and not cost effective. By mid century the force that will curb China's growth as a manufacturer coupled with parallel technological developments in several related areas will present the world and the world's leading nation with an earth shattering conundrum. If mankind deals with it with imagination, and energy, and an open mind we may enter an entire new era of human evolution and a thousand years of incredible prosperity and progress. If we deal with it relying on "isms" like socialism, conservatism, libertarianism, or totalitarianism, we will slide into global war from which the human race, just as it reached the pinnacle of its development self annihilates. I, Namazu the Earth Shaker will explain these predictions in detail below, take notes there is even a little investment information mixed into all of this. First as a force of nature myself I'm acutely aware when humans tap into another force of nature. Americans have in the last few years tapped into natural gas in a big way. Where America was not long ago the major importer of liquefied natural gas America is now way more than self sufficient in it and starting to export. The price of natural gas is dropping. The U.S. is trying to use as much as it can rapidly converting electricity production over from coal to natural gas. People are converting from electricity to natural gas for heating and cooking and by passing electricity no matter how it is generated. The price of natural gas keeps dropping. The desire to export natural gas by the American producers is nothing short of urgent. The price for natural gas is too low in America due to the glut, but there is a demand for it globally. But America has hardly begun to tap its' potential as an exporter. The biggest obstruction to natural gas export is the fact that all but one of our LNG marine terminals were developed as import terminals. They can easily be back engineered to export terminals but the Obama administration is sitting on the permits. The holders of these permits are going to be rich. Legally Obama can't directly charge the permit holders to put millions or even billions in his own pocket, the party pocket, or even favorite federal programs. The permit fee is the permit fee. But traditional Chicago politics dictates that nothing of that much value that you control while in political power is let go for free. Finding a legal and not too unethical looking way to get to tap into the wealth represented by the permits in order to fund political agendas is taking time. Regardless of who occupies the White House in January, those permits will be issued soon. When that happens the United States will jump practically over night to the number one exporter , number one preferred provider, of liquefied natural gas to the world. This is going to have a big effect on our balance of payments but it is just the start of the fossil fuel driven rehabilitation of the American economy. America has been producing enough domestic oil of late that coupled with the crude oil we import from the OPEC states the United States is now a net exporter of refined petrochemical products which helps create jobs, and relief for our balance of payments. But becoming a net exporter of refined product partially dependent on the import of foreign product is just the start of the coming U.S. oil boom. In the near future any imports will strictly be sent to the U.S. for refining services , America won't need any more foreign crude stocks. Not only will the United States be self sufficient in oil, if America wanted to export crude stock , soon U.S. crude stock available for export will exceed Saudi Arabia. Sound unreal, read on, its not and both of the Presidential candidates knew this as they went into the election.
Much of the same technology that brought you the natural gas glut is directly applicable to the extraction of crude oil from shale and other "tight formations". While the "deep water " finds in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico have made the national headlines since the BP Oil spill the real news in new U.S. oil discovery is on shore in the tight formations. While the Republicans have been blasting the Obama administration for dragging their feet on the deep water permits, oil production in the United States has been rising steadily on land, mostly on private lands. Just one of the new tight formations now technologically feasible to exploit in Texas has more reserves than all of Saudi Arabia. So far, we know of about three such formations in the United States. But here is some news that hasn't been in the oil and gas trades in quite some time. There is a belt of oil reserves on land in the United States in the South East stretching in a crescent shape called a "trend" from Alabama through parts of Mississippi and into parts of what is called in Louisiana "the Florida Parishes" that has been known to have bigger reserves than Saudi Arabia since the 1950s. Most of the reserve is in private hands. Unfortunately for all of the speculators in mineral rights in the region since the 1950s, most of this oil is laced with "sour gas" or hydrogen sulfide. This makes it dangerous and expensive to drill. At one point it was estimated that in order to economically recover the oil in this on shore trend gasoline would have to be selling for eight dollars a gallon. With all of the new tight formations coming in, gasoline prices are poised for a fall, yet"landsmen", the guys who arrange drilling leases, and mineral rights with private property owners are active in the areas of this trend again. Exploration is in progress so one has to wonder if insiders in the oil industry know of a pending new technological break through that will suddenly make these reserves safe and economical to produce. Suddenly it almost seems like there is no end to U.S. crude oil reserves. * Editor's Note since this was written word has gotten out that Australia has found similar oil in quantities greater than Saudi Arabia, and Australia a close American Ally, is located very close to South East Asian markets and India. Soon America and her Pacific Allies will be in a much better position to ignore the demands of the Middle East OPEC states. But it takes some time for all of this to manifest itself in the economy. Wells have to be drilled, production units moved into place, and there is the political process of the necessary permits. The U.S. oil industry is trying to low profile the finds in order to not set off a U.S. politician feeding frenzy that will run from county supervisors , through the halls of Congress, to the White House. Both of the men who just ran for President know most of this. Obama was trying to figure a more or less legitimate way to benefit from the LNG export terminal permit process. Romney had a very good reason for making what seems like a campaign promise to create "12,000,000 new jobs". That is the predicted number of new jobs that the new oil boom should generate in the next three to five years. Most political pundits call his promise impossible. As potentially president, Romney knows that all he has to do is not interfere with the boom and he will be credited with it. Obama on the other hand is already interfering with the boom, slowing it some what with permit games. The jobs that will be created without any effort on his part and in substantial numbers despite his games will be largely high wage blue collar related to oil drilling, refining, and transport. Consider that an instrument technician in an oil refinery requires about six months of vocational technical training and starts near $60,000 a year in compensation. Obama has already spoken about putting federal dollars into non degree vocational technical education for "today's jobs". Carefully crafted Federal educational aid programs aimed at the longer term unemployed should propel many people who experienced months or even years of recent hard times into lucrative positions without the expense or time of pursuing a four year degree. Indeed many a liberal arts graduate will seek out these opportunities. Since the boom will directly positively affect the non college educated working and lower middle class, Obama, if still in the White House will point to it as proof that "his plan" to build the economy "from the middle class out" worked. In fact the natural gas/ oil boom is coming regardless of who sits in the White House. Neither man nor either political party had anything to do with creating it. Both parties are trying to ride it to a prolonged if not permanent position of political power.
The effects of this coming boom will include the re-positioning of the U.S. dollar as again the unchallenged global reserve currency. The balance of payments will be resolved in America's favor, and America's number one credit rating restored. Tax revenues will increase not because the United States did or did not raise taxes on the "rich'. The truth, is if the federal government confiscated all of the wealth of the top one percent, it would only make a tiny dent in the amount of the U.S. national debt. There will simply be more tax payers paying taxes on more income. With the boom and its increased revenues to the U.S. Treasury, the debt will look less daunting. Given an electorate in which nearly 50% of the voters are actually willing to believe the President or party in power had anything to do with the coming new prosperity who ever is in the White House in 2016 has a free ride to re-election or election of the proxy of his choice. There in is the making of the first of the coming potential disasters that could ruin what should be about a fifty year run of prosperity and progress.
Running parallel and a bit behind the coming oil boom is a technological development that will end China's run as the number one manufacturing economy. Its called three "dimensional printing". You've seen the science fiction version for years on STAR TREK, the replicator. Well the early versions are out of the lab and into the market place already. Its being called Three Dimensional Printing. The operator loads in the specifications for the product and some canisters of powdered materials and the "printer begins" layering the desired object from the molecule level up ending with with a three dimensional working product. In short you are looking at the arrival of the STAR TREK replicator. I know you think that can't happen. If you are over fifty think about where you first saw the "flip phone", the "electronic book" ( now sold as Kindle and several competitive models). If you are under thirty you probably can't remember a time when these things weren't around. Well the "Replicator" AKA "Three Dimensional Printing" is out of the Lab and on the shop floor in a few places already. The early models are expensive and the products they can make somewhat limited at the moment. But like all such technologies the performance will improve with time and costs will drop. In fact for a few small units the price has already dropped to a point where wealthy individuals may have some. It is widely reported that Jay Leno has one in his garage that can produce a number of working parts for vintage cars where sufficient specs exist for these parts no longer manufactured in the traditional sense. For the Chinese as well as for Americans this is earth shaking news., what else would you expect from Namazu the Earth Shaker? This technology conserves not only labor but material resources as well. Most manufacturing today is reductive. The process starts with a pile of steel , plastic, and other materials in whole sale lengths and shapes. The desired object is cut, milled, shaped and assembled out of this material pile and emerges in the functional form sold, leaving behind a slag pile of waste material. The Three Dimensional Printing Process starts at the molecular level and generates no waste using only exactly the amount of material needed. That saving alone puts the conventional factory at a big disadvantage. To be continued |
NAMAZU FULLY LOADED , THE FUTURE OF AMERICA PART 2
NAMAZU ANCIENT GIANT CATFISH DEMIGOD OF JAPAN CONTINUES HIS VISION FOR AMERICA, OCEANS WIDE, 3,000 YEARS DEEP, THE GREAT CATFISH CAN EVEN SEE INTO THE NEAR FUTURE! GEEZ WE SHOULD HAVE HIRED HIM AS AN ANALYST A YEAR AGO! (Continuing from Part 1) Three Dimensional Printing not only eliminates material waste in manufacturing but also eliminates all of the employment attached to the excess of materials required to manufacture in the conventional factory. This "replicator" technology allows for short production runs, custom work, and mid run changes; all things frequently needed today but often prohibitively expensive with a conventional "factory". The labor level in a replicator based plant is tiny even compared to the most "modern" conventional "factory" that has maximized the advantages of robotic technology.
Now add modern management practices like" just in time delivery" where distributors no longer want to tie up capital in large stocks of product and the related storage and transport. Manufacturing is going to move closer to distributors around the world. China will no longer be the supplier of so many manufactured items to the global market. The United States won't either, but will come back into its own, making and distributing products sold in the United States. China will prefer to get its oil and natural gas from the United States as the more reliable and efficient supplier compared to OPEC sources. Yet America won't be dependent on China for cash infusions to pay American debt and to make the clothing, furnishings, and appliances Americans use. The Dragon will continue to make trouble with its neighbors over various islands and areas in the China Sea in the hope that there are massive reserves of oil there and that the Dragon will control them. But confrontation will only serve to slow exploration and development. I like what Og calls China, "a thug state". I think at present he is correct, as long as I have known them (3,000 years) they have been big on central big government which usually degenerates into thuggery. I don't see them changing their ways in time to avoid a fall from world economic power. I frankly don't know if that also means regime change. Even giant catfish "demigods" have their crystal ball limits. So in the first three decades of the twenty first century these technological forces will unfold and dump in American laps another shot at an "American Century". Unfortunately even while this prosperity is unfolding other technological and political forces are shaping up that could put some dark clouds on the horizon. If America uses its newly recovered economic power to pay off its debt and reform its' government's free borrowing ways and deals pragmatically with the third wave of technological change coming, there is a chance that America could remain powerful and free leading the planet into a thousand year period of global prosperity and human freedom. For that to happen the present day model of politician and voter has to change dramatically, and all thought that makes a "may I?" bow to any from of "ism" must go. Sink or swim time, is rapidly heading toward America and the world. The next wave of technology is actually moving along as we prepare to absorb the positive shock waves of becoming again the world's supplier of preference for petrochemical products, and regain our own manufacturing base. What's coming isn't a single game changing event of technology but a convergence of technologies. The replicator or "Three Dimensional Printing" is part of it in fact. But along with that are the combined effects of explosive growth in computational capacity and speed, not to mention new machine logic that can only be called artificial intelligence. These developments are converging with advances in miniaturization and advances at the interface between genetic engineering and agriculture, and medicine. These advances all seem to be converging at about the mid century point when something amazing in an evolutionary sense will take place. On some future day near the mid century point the quantity and quality of artificial intelligence on the planet will exceed the total of human organic brain power. Through devices as small as surgical implanted micro chips , and special eye glasses people will be linked into this vast intelligence. Human/cyber enhanced intelligence will dwarf every past advance in human intelligence over the last 200,000 thousand years. All of this will be happening at a time when medical advances will have extended the human life span potential to a seemingly indefinite point barring accidents. And not only will life be extended but relative youth as well.. Unfortunately this rapidly approaching future that babies born today will have to deal with as adults will occur just as technology will make it possible to generate all of the food, fiber, finished products, and shelter that the entire human race will ever need to live a comfortable middle class life with only a tiny fraction of the work force actively employed. There will be a need for human workers in certain service sectors, and human managers and administrators will be wanted in manufacturing, sales will still have a creative and personal component, but the bottom line is that most of the decently educated and even skilled people on Earth just won't be able to find gainful employment. There it is the sink or swim moment! Throughout civilized history we have rewarded the producers with the medium of exchange and they have spread it by purchasing needs and wants from other producers. In a world of potential high end consumers awash in goods that almost appear automatically , but only a very small number of people able to possess the medium of exchange through productive work; will the productive system collapse? Will it reduce itself to serve a insular economy of the elite workers who let the rest of the human race starve? Will the rest of the human race consent to starve quietly and peacefully? How do we deal with this unprecedented situation, a world of plenty in which the medium of exchange is either unavailable to ordinary people , or in the only alternative in which humanity survives and progresses is distributed by some system as yet unimaginable in which the medium of exchange is distributed in an as yet unimagined system that detaches money from one's contribution to the production of goods and services. The old American adage attributed to Captain John Smith "He who doesn't work doesn't eat" just won't cut it in the world tomorrow. The oil and gas boom is coming and will drive a big recovery around the corner. We will have an unprecedented opportunity to retire our debt and reform our system back to a balanced budget. But with the two American political parties being based on two opposed coherent belief systems; conservatism and liberalism no matter which is in power neither ism offers any solution for what comes after the boom. One would "correct" the debt with excessively painful measures and one would just continue to spend the nation into the ground, putting off the day when the bill comes due another generation down the line. To set the stage for the coming new age of intelligence, longevity , and abundance and still preserve the greatest good for the greatest number, a pragmatism totally unhitched from the slavish mentality of the "isms" is desperately needed. Some ideas of the right and left have places in this pragmatic approach. The right is correct is seeing the priority that should be attached to paying off the nation's debt. The left is correct in wanting to thicken the "safety net". But the American tax payer can't pay the bill for the left's social programs now. The federal government borrows every other dollar it spends. There are large numbers of Americans who despise the Republican tendency to describe social security payments military and civil service retirements as "entitlements" lumping payments that they receive for work performed and systems financially contributed to in the same category as welfare payments and food stamps. The Democrats tend to hold such taxpayers hostage by also lumping them into the "entitlement " group knowing full well that many of the social security recipients and pensioners are Republican. Cut off payments to our voters and we cut off payments to yours. Its time for some common sense and pragmatism. The fact is we can cut welfare type benefits without affecting the government's credit but to fail in our pension obligations makes the "full faith and credit" of the United States a joke. We must separate pension obligations including social security from welfare entitlements". The good news for both sides if they could stop squabbling long enough to listen is that the recovery is around the corner no thanks to any occupant of the White House or the Congress. More over the recovery is going to be extraordinarily strong and long lasting. This means there need be no rush to default or draconian measures. Both sides must be committed to paying off the debt without damaging the American Government's credit or pushing people out onto the street. Looking down the road thirty years at the on set of the "singularity" that some futurists call this convergence of technologies reducing labor to a fraction of today's levels leaders have to realize that conventional socialism isn't the answer, but they are going to have to decouple conventional ideas of "work" from earnings or risk mass starvation and civil war in middle of the greatest level of material wealth that mankind has ever had. Enter the NAMAZU idea "the active electorate." Down in cousin Jack's Louisiana some very rural parishes are governed by "police juries". These are sort of a commission that approves budget outlays for public works like roads, and provides public safety services, and parks and recreation. Generally police jury members are elected. But if enough candidates don't run, members can be drafted as in what they call a "petite jury" for a trial. Now let's look at some painful American history. America started out as a republic where pretty much the landed gentry and the professional class were the electorate. America gradually evolved into a more democratic form where those who could read and were interested enough in public affairs to pay a poll tax could vote and elect the representatives who would serve in the legislature and they could vote for the key executives such a President and Governor. This was part of the American evolution from republic into full representational democracy. But we lost something along the way as the franchise was expanded. What we lost was a majority electorate of educated and concerned citizens, throwing many elections to the most entertaining , dare I used the term, "demigod". That is one of the reasons why American government malfunctions so often. A little history is in order here. One of the great milestones on the road to representational democracy was the paying of elected office holders. Until the public began to pay a salary to elected legislators the only people who could afford to serve in office were the landed gentry and other independently wealthy. Paying public office holders changed that and made the legislature and executive more responsible to the people. But today America has reached the far end of that trend. Ignorant and indolent people have learned that they can vote themselves cash and other benefits right out of the public treasury. To get better government we need a better electorate. In the coming years as more and more educated people become unemployed and unemployable we need to establish corps of professional electors in every jurisdiction. These would be groups of educated voters paid to study the issues being prepared for the general electorate . They would be required to meet formally, study documents, and discuss the pros and cons of everything going on the ballot. They would be required to vote in the usual secret ballot but early. Without attribution to individual electors their votes would be counted and the results yea and nay published for the public before the general election. Their votes would count in the general election and the general voting public would be free to vote as they saw fit. Such bodies which we might call elector colleges would have a positive influence on general elections. These colleges would function at precinct, county, and state levels. Members would be paid and could come from neighborhood elections, and independent commission appointments. There would be a career pattern that would begin with precinct service for those interested. These would be the lowest deliberative chambers of government but without dictating would signal to the less involved voter how the informed were voting. In important but low interest elections these electors insure that someone other than spoils seeking partisans turn out and vote, because the elector college members always vote. In a future where work opportunities are rare the government would have to do something that would choke the average Republican today. The government would have to insure portable retirement benefits, health benefits, expanded unemployment compensation for the part time and serial worker. For those who want to work, work is probably going to be sporadic and often part time. America can't follow the present Republican model and just throw such interested workers to the wolves. But we can't follow the Democratic model and just put them on a government dole and come load them onto buses at election time to haul them to the polls to pull the lever for the party favoring the dole. The Republican value of work needs to be honored by insuring that those who want to work in an economy which needs so few workers can earn a middle class living by constantly making them selves available for work and responding when called . Those who prefer not to constantly chase gainful employment should be engaged in the elector colleges insuring that democracy works intelligently starting at the grass roots level. Those who neither qualify for periodic work or the elector corps should be engaged in formal education or training and government will have to pay for it and their living expenses. Such government involvement and planning in people's lives is abhorrent to freedom loving people today. So the system has to be open, and voluntary. Those with inherited wealth who don't want to be professional electors or periodic workers, or paid scholars should be free to be hedonist if they prefer. Those who would like to try their hand at a simple subsistence farmer life style, or create a small business should still share in an expanded safety net. But government will be necessary to assure that the large long lived, general population has a variety of activities to choose from that will put the medium of exchange in their hands and assure that there is a market of consumers for those who produce products and especially for those who invent new ones. In the world of the cyber linked intelligent human of tomorrow there will be only one shortage if we move towards the future deliberately, and that will be conventional jobs. The left will have to acknowledge that work is a necessary part of the human nature. Without it we tend to degenerate and societies become plagued with crime. The right will have to acknowledge that in the world to come, devil take the hindmost capitalism will spell starvation and war. There are issues of taxation, and regulation, and monetary policy that will have to be resolved (hey I'm a giant catfish not a candidate for world emperor, you can't expect a full blue print for the future here). But the bottom line is easy to discern "ismatic" thinking has to go. So here is the NAMAZU PROPOSAL: I want to address this to two groups; college age kids, and their grandparents. Young people this will all fall on you. Your parents will probably remain Democrats or Republicans occasionally crossing the line for an individual candidate of particular appeal. They will remain consumer voters selecting between the two parties and putting little thought into their votes until pretty close to election time. They are going to leave you with a mess. Either don't join or resign from either major party now. Re-register independent right away. Get together with your grandparents and form a national pragmatic party. Your grandparents can't recognize the government today. They grew up thinking of it as a working partner and have seen it degenerate into a squabbling bunch of partisan ideology driven do nothings. Your grandparents can produce eligible candidates for offices with minimum qualifying ages as well as candidates with a credibility factor to get your new party some cross over voters from the working adult sector. Your grandparents are less likely to screw you over than the thirty to fifty something crowd of working adults. Your grandparents actually care about your future and may now have the time for politics. But if you don't act now to end the politics of today rest assured that the next president of the United States will hijack the recovery, take credit for it , be believed by half the electorate or more and try to establish a political dynasty on it. That means you arrive at the post recovery era of permanently shrinking job opportunities with a government and a society totally unprepared. Time to put aside the old ideas and conflicts and start supporting policies that work with out sticking labels of the left or right on them. Children, save yourselves, your political leaders won't do it for you and your parents are politically clueless. But fore warned is fore armed. OK, that's been a lot for you to absorb I'll sign off now ; Namazu the Earth Shaker Editors Note: After parts 1 and 2 of NAMAZU FULLY LOADED were transcribed from the hydro phones we were frankly "flabergasted". We asked the great catfish how on earth he ever came up with all this while wallowing about on the sea floor in the Sea of Japan. He said: "I read a lot". So we asked him for a couple of suggestions. We were "flabergasted" again. here are his suggestions below. Don't click on the first one unless you are deadly serious. WORLD WIDE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY PREDICTIONS: WARNING ONLY FOR THE VERY SERIOUS OIL AND GAS INVESTOR THIS IS A $4,500 DOWN LOAD. WE KID YOU NOT, 4 FIGURES. ONLY A JAPANESE DEMIGOD OR TEXAS OILMAN IS LIKELY TO BUY THIS DOWN LOAD. DISCLAIMER: The management of American Admiralty Books has decided to pull WORLD WIDE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY PREDICTIONS links from the AAB site. We appreciate that a demigod like Namazu has world wide sources and expense is no object when he does his research for his opinion, which we continue to highly value. However we would not want anyone to mistake an official AMERICAN ADMIRALTY BOOKS RECOMMENDATION with simply the suggestion of a particular author within the blog. We realize that low circulation technical publications are generally high priced. We link to quite a few that cost several hundred dollars a copy. However $4,500 was too much for us to spend for a chance at reviewing the download. We are making no judgement on the worth or the contents of this Amazon distributed product. But as an Amazon portal we distinguish our entry portal from other Amazon entry portals or the main Amazon site by the fact that we are subject matter experts and we are generally familiar with those titles we link to for sale. This particular document is beyond our finincial ability to review. We will work with Namazu to post in this space less expensive oil and gas information sources that tend to support the observations that he articulated in the two part series "NAMAZU FULLY LOADED: THE FUTURE OF AMERICA. This management decision is not meant in any way to reflect on Namazu as author or the pulled suggested reading as a source of information. This is strictly an economic decision. "THE SINGULARITY" BY RAY KUZWELL , MORE REASONABLE AT ABOUT $12. The last single commodity to occupy a central role in a global economy before oil was spices. Namazu remembers the spice era quite well and highly recommends its study to those concerned about how the oil based economy will play out. He suggests: SPICE by Jack Turner.Non Technical Guide to the Oil and Gas Industry by Norman J. Hyne
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11/9/2012 NAMAZU Suggestions
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| Namazu the Earth Shaker , Newly Hired AAB Analyst, Gets Editor in Hot Water |
You can scroll past this post to read NAMAZU FULLY LOADED
After reading and approving for release ""NAMAZU FULLY LOADED : AMERICA'S" FUTURE, Editor Johnas Prebyter asked the author for some suggested readings. The giant catfish "force of nature personified", a title we learned he prefers to "former Japanese giant catfish demigod" gave the editor two titles that he felt would help readers understand and confirm his opinions, predictions, and warnings that were contained in his two part post published right after the Presidential election. Prebyter posted both "suggested readings" immediately after the post. Unfortunately one was a special oil industry insider advice sheet retailing for $4,500 per down load. Prebyter published both "suggested readings" with only a minor disclaimer concerning the price of the first "suggested reading". Alarm bells went off in the weekly directors meeting.
The directors felt that given the price of the suggested data that Prebyter failed to post a sufficient disclaimer with the title, and most especially failed to draw the distinction between an American Admiralty Books "Recommended" publication that has gone through the corporate review process and a mere suggestion by the author of a particular post. It was felt that the on line book store could not afford to purchase data as expensive $4,500 per down load for their traditional review. A resolution was passed that in the future American Admiralty Books will not allow any authors to suggest publications or salable data of any sort the retail price of which would put it beyond the range that any director would consider for his or her personal or professional library acquisition. They required Prebyter to pull the hyperlink to the expensive document and to write a new disclaimer. It was noted that the disclaimer was to insure that the public understood that the published work was being removed only because its price put it out of the range of publications that the book store could evaluate, and was not a judgement on the work's content, or the potential utility of the content to the reader.
The board then turned their attention to the posts of the Great Catfish in the little over a week since he was hired by Prebyter. It was noted that, in that week Namazu had managed to insult Al Gore and respond to criticism from the religious right. He also managed to chide Rush Limbeaugh, suggest an investigation of Senator John McCane, issue a negative criticism of the Coast Guard's equipment approval process and policies, compliment actor Kevin Costner on his oil spill recovery invention , and accuse Barrack Obama of tap dancing on the line between sharp political practice and corruption involving some LNG plant and oil drilling permits. It was decided to confront the "Earth Shaker" as he is nicknamed on the hydrophones.
Namazu readily agreed to American Admiralty control of book suggestions based on price. However he refused to take back, tone down, or go easy on "any mere mortal with a big title and a small brain".
In the end Namazu threatened to resign and take his new following with him to another part of the Internet if the board didn't agree to amend his contract and grant him "complete creative control." The deal was struck and both Prebyter and Namazu retain their jobs and Namazu has complete creative control of all products under his byline.
Meanwhile visitors to the on line book store are clicking on Namazu Fully Loaded: The Future of America. day and night for two days and counting. Prebyter has decided to continue to position the post near the top of the blog. Namazu is off in the Sea of Japan doing research on his next post which will get back to coastal environmental issues. This Catfish is a new voice on the Internet, an interesting and certainly politically incorrect voice.
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