The WTO made divestment illegal in 1999.

The "Massachusetts Burma Procurement Law" is one of the early cases.

WTO rules prohibit the use of environmental, human rights or labor practices to be considered as criteria in awarding public contracts.

Yep. We've entered into treaties that allow private corporations to challenge and overturn democratically enacted laws using secret courts.

I participated in the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle.
You geeks know about WIPO right?

You say that hurricanes cool the oceans by about 3 degrees C.

Heat escaping the ocean to the atmosphere is similar to heat escaping the atmosphere to space.

Does anyone know how much extra heat escapes into space as a result of a hurricane stirring the atmosphere compared to if the same area was calm?

The satelite images seem to show extra heat escaping. Does it? If so, How much?

I ask because if it's a significant amount, then maybe we could use atmospheric vortex engines to create artificial hurricanes. Then we could generate energy (like a solar updraft tower without glass) and cool the Earth at the same time. Maybe we could put AVE's above the ocean gyres and filter the microplastic out of the water as it moves under the hurricane too.

According to Jeff Fulgham, the CEO of Banyan Water and the ex-lead of General Electric's ecomagination division, the global replenishment rate is about 4,200 km3 while 2010 use was at least 4,300 km3. This is only possible by drawing down surface reserves like lakes and aquafirs.

Water use also limits the amount of CO2 that we can sequester in soils and plants to an additional 500 GT or so because we'll sequester water with it and not have enough for us. 500 GT is about 15 years worth at the current burning rates. IIRC (Rockstrom et al I think ... too lazy to check).

The punch lines are too long!

I'm not like that women in Snow crash who sanded the logo for the jeans she was wearing off the metal buttons but I do remove labels from containers in my home and usually use nice aesthetically pleasing or simple reused containers. My computer has the ad facing me on the screen bezel covered and the one on the lid too. I know that they paid money to put those there and wouldn't do so if they weren't making their money back. I don't want corporate ads in my house. I don't like to be imprinted. I try to avoids ads in the first place and I buy used. The corporations can pay me if they want me to advertise for them. Someone once said that advcertising is the penalty you pay for not being innovative enough. I do advertise for a few co-ops, businesses or products that I think are sustainable and ethical or honestly trying to be. The one down side is that when I go outside (I know, I know, I never leave my basement) I realize how much of our visual environment and space has been captured by corporations without our permission. After all the problem is that people other than ourselves are making the decisions that effect our lives, and that applies to regulating advertising too. Oh yeh ... I used to be an extreme anti-corporate and materialism type. I spent four years without using money.

People should go watch "The Corporation"

There are many planetary boundaries.

Rockstrom et al estimate global water use is already over the 4,300 km3 estimated global replenishment rate. If only 600 GT of additional carbon are sequestered in biomass (including forests, algae and other biofuels and so on) there will not be enough water for agriculture even using intensive means because of the water sequestered with the carbon. Green tech won't change this because building a sustainable energy system will release enough greenhouse gases to raise the global mean surface temp 2.0 C (Myhrvold and Caldeira) which will in turn decrease food production by at least 40%. (Rockstom et al). CO2e is another limit. Known carbon reserves on the market are about 2900 GT but we'll heat the planet 2 C for every 500 GT we burn. Exxon alone spends $100 million a day looking for more. There are now at least nine planetary boundaries reasonable quantified beyond which lie great risk of global catastrophe. We have exceed 3 of them already.

Search John Rockstrom - Planetary Boundaries.

on google scholar.

I have ripe plums rolling into my yard right now from my neighbors trees. The light colored powder on the outside of them (easy to see on grapes and so on too) is yeast. I eat it. Lots of B vitamins. Plus I use the yeast for sourdough and wine and such. I just wash some off into the juice or flour and water mix.

There are plant sources for ALL needed nutrients. I was vegan for a long time.

A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health

From the Abstract published in 2009 ...

"We conclude that these data highlight signs of hepatorenal toxicity, possibly due to the new pesticides specific to each GM corn.". .... This is what you are saying - that the damage could be from the pesticide residue..

But you dismiss the possibility of the the effects being from the genetic modifications, and the scientist doing this study don't. .

Instead they close the by abstract saying ...

"In addition, unintended direct or indirect metabolic consequences of the genetic modification cannot be excluded."

Toxins produced by and applied to GMOs are already found in most North American human blood samples including fetal blood of those consuming typical diets. This is an experiment without fully informed participants. I say experiment, because it's happening to us without any conclusive safety data.

We're getting more and more powerful genetic analysis tools and longitudinal sample sets are of course more available with time.

My point is: Don't be dismissive. Keep an open mind. Be a good scientist.

The data isn't in yet and you know it.

I reccommend trying out scholar.google.com with two Greasemonkey scripts: "Google scholar citation explorer" and if you don't have journal access (get it via your local libray site?) try "Google scholar immediately available highlighter".

Keywords: GMO, toxicity, GM corn, rat, NK 603, MON 810, MON 863

I want to give some context for the huge dollar numbers so common in political and economic discussions.

It would only cost $200 billion a year to end abject poverty worldwide. (UN, Jeffrey Sachs)

If everyone on earth had food, clothes, shelter and clean water - what would that do for security, innovation, economics, the environment and human rights?
Those are big election issues, right?

Let's compare that $200 billion to some other things that are important in politics, apparently many, many times more important than ending abject poverty if money is our measure. Lets start with tax havens for the top few percent who receive our tax dollars via their ownership of the corporations which are recipients of government contracts, and in particular the military-industrial corporations whose private contractors receive a huge percentage of the military budget. For example prime intelligence contracts worth over $50 billion went over 70% to private contractors and in intelligence there are now more private than public employees.

The ultra rich hide over $20 trillion in offshore tax haven accounts while American minimum wage buys less than it did in 1968 and one in six families in the USA with children are extremely food insecure, lacking adequate nutrition at least once a year. The "job creators" don't use profits to create jobs, pay more or provide more benefits for workers. Instead they buy companies, combine them, and fire the duplicate workers. The ultra rich buy votes in Congress with their vast wealth too. Go see the correlation of Congress member's votes with donations made to their campaigns at maplight.org. Both parties are corrupt. The best analysis I've seen of Romney's economic plan done by MIT shows households making under $250,000 will on average pay $500 more in taxes, but the rich will pay less. Obama isn't much better. Neither candidate will do anything here.

The USA military budget is at least $500 billion a year not counting Iraq, Afghanistan, Veterans benefits, States spending or interest on past wars. It's over $1 trillion if you count that stuff. Private contractors get a huge cut. Americans are out of work, but for every billion dollars we spend on the military we lose from 5,000 to 15,000 jobs compared to spending the money on green jobs, health or education. Even just cutting the military budget and giving the money back to the taxpayers creates more jobs than spending it on the military. That's because the military isn't very labor intensive per dollar compared to other jobs. Go check my numbers, I'm low balling. The jobs numbers are from the Department of Labor, analysis by the PERI Institute. Neither candidate will do anything here.

The fossil fuel companies own over 2,795 GT of carbon assets worth $27 trillion at current market rates, but we can only burn about 565 GT more if we want an 80% chance of staying under 2.0C or 3.6F increase in global mean surface temperature over the next century. The Canadian Alberta Tar Sands contain more than 200 GT. Yet Exxon alone spends $37 billion a year or $100 million dollars a day, looking for more. Neither candidate will do anything here. Again I am low-balling, not counting coal oil or shale oil assets.

Both candidates are pro-torture, pro-warrantless spying, pro-secret prisons, pro-assassinate American citizens without trial, pro-indefinite detention, pro-military-industrial-complex, pro-privatize profits and socialize risk, pro-drone, pro-WTO-WIPO-WorldBank-IMF, anti-poor, anti-labor, anti-drug, anti-free speech (zones?), anti-American motherfuckers. And that's just the start of the list.

Check my numbers using scholar.google.com

Fucking sociopaths.

So what to do? What to do?

For the citizen looking for change, four boxes are available:
soap, ballot, jury and ammo.
Please consider order of use carefully!

Since we're discussing box 1 and 2 here ... what to do?
"white box" and "priority voting" ... google the terms ... I'm too lazy
Publicly funded elections - via Lawrence Lessig's proposed Constitutional Amendment described in "How money corrupts Congress and a plan to stop it" ... google it too.
Guaranteed Minimum Income

I often evaluate policy decisions by considering the effects from security, economics, environmental and human rights perspectives. Usually all are relevant. To do such an evaluation effectively requires context.

I hope I have helped to provide some context for the huge dollar numbers which are so commonly used without providing any meaningful reference.

$200 billion annually to END ABJECT POVERTY worldwide.

REMEMBER THAT NUMBER FOR FUTURE CONTEXT!

(Yes, I was yelling)

My State is not going to swing.
I'll vote for Jill Stein and so will Richard M. Stallman.

I always liked John Wheeler and his "many worlds" interpretation as opposed to the Copenhagen model where you have to have an observer to collapse the wave function. Wheelers interpretation is simpler since you don't have to try to explain what's different about the atoms of an observer compared to other atoms that for some reason don't collapse the wave.

In the many worlds interpretation the universe splits into more universes, each one is a possible wave function solution. People don't like the idea of infinite real universes though.

John Young from Cryptome.org once applied for a Chrysler Award for political innovation or some such thing. It went something like this:

Anonymous money means you can create an assasination betting pool where people bet on the date of the assasination of a politician (or anybody). The assasin is most likely to win the pool. The pool might grow larger when one makes an unpopular decision, therefore decisions might become more democratic because of the increased risk of assasination as the pool grows.

Couple that with drone crowdsourcing and we could democratize assasination!

Think of the possibilities ...

Politicians. CEO's. Lawyers. Reuters journalsists. Makers of Inconvenient Map Apps. Hippies and so on! Fox News whipping up the nation into a doubleplusgood 3-minute Hate with a side of a drone controlling frenzy. We'll need drone Republics to protect against the tyrany of the majority! And flooding attacks ... and ... and ... I know ... I know ... I'm a bit twisted! /sickhumor

Giant numbers should be presented in context.

Whenever I hear giant numbers for budgets I like to compare them to other things to know what they mean. A good comparison is one that everyone or almost everyone can relate to. I like to use the cost to raise everyone on earth out of extreme poverty, which means clean water, food, clothes and shelter.

Ending extreme poverty would cost less than $200 billion each year.

(source: Jeffrey Sachs - The end of poverty)

The UN has similiar numbers from the millenium goals.

The United States military budget is $500 billion to $1.5 trillion. $500 billion doesn't count the middle east wars, interest on war debt, veterans benefits or spending by the States.)

Plus a recent analysis of Deptartment of Labor Statistics by the PERI institute shows that for every billion dollars that we spend on the military we LOSE from 5,000 to 15,000 jobs compared to spending the money on green jobs, hwalth or education. That's because the military isn't very labor intensive. It takes more people to teach effectively than to kill effectively.

Anyway, remember it only costs $200 billion to end extreme poverty globally. Think about that next time you hear a big budget item come up.

I'm off topic I know. Context matters. And for those of you who think "So what? Congress will never go for military cuts." go watch Lawrence Lessig talk about "How money corrupts Congress, and a plan to stop it."

I'd bet Teslas footprint overall as a corporation and for each model of car is not even close to sustainable.

I'd like to see self driving Aptera style cars for personal and public transit with auto train formation and so on. Oh yeh ... plus backing up the grid.

Our pattern recognition abilities are still better than computers, although the gap is closing. Much of our pattern recognition capabilities are not conscious but can be utilized anyway.

I think most people mean the 90% we "don't use" is part of our mind that is not conscious. That's pretty accurate in a way.

There's a good BBC Horizon episode called "Out of
Control" How Big is the Unconscious Mind? It gives some awesome examples of harnessing the power of our unconscious mind.

One intriguing example is using a person wired up to measure brain response to identify objects of interest to the military in satelite imagery. These are very high resolution images and take a long time to analyze using normal means. But you can use the pattern recognition powers of the unconscious mind to speed up the process without compromising accuracy. One image is cut up into many smaller images and these are then shown in rapid sucession to the analyst. Some images trigger neural patterns which are associated with interest, object recognition and so on. These images are then set aside and further analyzed using traditional methods including brute force human scanning of the images. Accuracy stays good and output is increased.

Cool huh?

Horizon magnet link:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:34619356B292593508809F809F313CE4C064FC9A&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com

and torrent:
http://torcache.net/torrent/22DA604A946D2E38C1076574447029393F90320E.torrent

Oh yeh ... a weird thing about breathing is that it's the only autonomic function that is fully wired with somatic nervous control too. Our breath works unconsciously but unlike other autonomic functions like heartbeat and so on it can be consciously controlled without lots of practice. This can be used to practicle advantage. By using the breath as an object of attention during meditation and by consciously controlling our breathing we can help to reprogram the autonomic functions of our bodies. This happens because both sets of nerves are firing together (the somatic and the autonomic) so the autonomic system is trained too.