IMVA - Apocalypse Now Part Two - September 27, 2006

[Guest guest]

Dear IMVA,

On the same day I published Apocalypse Now Senator Inhofe,

Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, delivered a very

long speech to the Congress that is almost 180 degrees in opposition to what I

am writing and publishing about climate conditions. Inhofe lost me completely

though, when he said, " The American people know when their intelligence is being

insulted. They know when they are being used and when they are being duped. "

How one can trust a communication about a hugely important subject

from a man who can communicate such a lie is beyond me. The American government

uses and dupes the American public and the rest of the world everyday, dupes

them into drinking their poisoned water and poisoned medicines and even breath

the air poisoned with mercury and on and on. Every major problem facing the

world sees men and organizations doling out communications that confuse the

issue until the issues themselves becomes non-issues.

Inhofe mentions that " greenhouse gas limiting proposals may cost the

industrialized West trillions of dollars, " so obviously his speech is against

any measures that would do that. The people on top of the human heap are

addicted to these millions of dollars. It is obvious (at least to me) that the

system will not reform itself and whether it be Communistic Capitalism (China)

or Democratic Capitalism; we will be racing to produce more energy that pollutes

the world until something breaks.

In the end it does not matter if global warming is being caused by

God or man. When the seas rise and the weather gets too hot to handle, or when

vast areas of agriculture dry out and food supplies diminish it's the same.

Anyone who lives at the beach today can see the slowly rising waters and the

damage it is just starting to do. Maybe the sun will cool starting next week and

resolve all our climate problems, but I doubt it.

What is clear from his speech is that Inhofe has trashed the public

media on this issue. so who is there to trust? Our government? Bush? I

try my best to present issues in a logical and systematic way, a way that does

not insult our intuitive feeling sense of perceptual.

As you will all soon see, my core concentration is on practical

things in the medical area we can do to protect our health and very lives from

harm. For instance, spirulina as a survival food is looking better and better

than it ever did. The Federation for Safe and Effective Medicine is coming on

the scene next week to address these types of concerns.

Mark Sircus Ac., OMD

Director of International Medical Veritas Association

http://www.imva.info

http://www.magnesiumforlife.com

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Apocalypse Now - Part Two

International Medical Veritas Association

The Amazon Basin is Drying Up

Completely Dry River Bed

And as if this were not all enough the vast Amazon rainforest is on

the brink of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the

world's climate. Rumors are going around the net suggesting that this process

will be breathtakingly quick meaning the Amazon will be destroyed as early as

next year because the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of

drought without completely breaking down. Some have stated that the blue-chip

Woods Hole Research Centre in Boston has reached this conclusion, which is not

the case, but there is no denying the wide spread damage already inflicted on

the Amazon. It is in the middle of a devastating drought.

The Amazon, most scientists would agree, is of vital strategic

importance to the world's weather patterns. Changes in the Amazon could spread

drought into the northern hemisphere and may, in and of itself, accelerate

global warming with incalculable consequences, one of which could result in a

world that is simply uninhabitable.

The worse drought in the Amazon in 50 years is provoking the isolation

of entire towns, the death of tons of fish. Fires are burning out of

control.

The tragedy will be irreversible if the deforestation continues.

Many strange things are happening on the southern end of the planet.

New Zealand's agricultural industries continue to suffer the consequences of one

of its most destructive and expensive winters in history. Heavy rainfall, severe

flooding and blinding snowfalls plagued the nation all winter, and caused tens

of millions of dollars in damage. In Brazil the weather has been bizarre with

temperatures fluctuating madly in certain regions.

The heat wave sweeping Europe is a direct consequence

of the warming of the earth's atmosphere. " We are

observing and suffering the first effects of global warming, "

Hervé Le Treut

Meteorologist at the French

Centre for Scientific Research

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The Rising Seas

One of the great fears generated by global warming

is that the ocean is about to rise and swallow our coasts.

Sea levels have risen worldwide approximately 15-20 cm (6-8 inches)

in the last century. Part of that rise has been attributed to the historic

warming of the atmosphere and the oceans. Approximately 2-5 cm (1-2 inches) of

the rise resulted from the melting of mountain glaciers. The obvious danger is

that global warming will cause sea levels to rise dramatically and more rapidly

than anyone is presently imagining. Thermal expansion has already raised the

oceans 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) according to National Geographic,

but that's nothing compared to what would happen if, for example, Greenland's

massive ice sheet were to melt. The consequences would be catastrophic, " said

Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at

the University of Arizona in Tucson.

" The emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, are

leading to higher temperatures all over the world, but these are observed in an

irregular manner across the continents, " Treut said. " The global weather is

clearly disturbed. " There are clear economic costs that already are hitting

in Florida and the entire Gulf Coast. As rising seas and more powerful

hurricanes translate into higher insurance costs in these coastal communities,

people are retreating inland. And just as companies migrate to regions with

lower wages, they also migrate to regions with lower insurance costs. Hurricane

Katrina forced a million people from New Orleans and the small towns on the

Mississippi and Louisiana coasts to move inland and many have never moved back.

Waters are rising in Venice, prompting arguments over costly plans to

seal off the lagoon from the sea. The prospect of flooded squares on the scale

of Venice's Piazza San Marco is driving plans to expand and reinforce the Thames

flood barrier. In Holland the battle has been lost and 500,000 hectares, an area

more than twice the size of greater London, will be strategically flooded

instead and people will move to floating homes.

F. Boesch, with the University of land Center for

Environmental Sciences, estimates that for each millimeter rise in sea level,

the shoreline retreats an average of 1.5 meters. Thus if sea level rises by 1

meter, coastline will retreat by 1,500 meters, or nearly a mile. Below see a map

for projected land losses to low lying Florida.

People who live in Florida know all about the difficulties and higher

costs of insuring their homes. Rumors are now starting to float that the

beginning of a large scale pullout of insurance companies is just beginning from

the New York area. Rising oceans will eat away at the nearly 2400 km of

shoreline encircling the greater New York City metropolitan region - presently

home to 19.6 million people. Sea level has already climbed around 27 cm in New

York City and 38.5 cm along the New Jersey coast during the 20th century. These

local rates exceed the global average of 10-25 cm/century because the East Coast

is slowly sinking, as the earth's crust continues to readjust to the removal of

the ice from the last glaciation, around 15,000 year ago. But present rates of

sea level rise could accelerate several fold, as mountain and polar glaciers

melt and upper ocean layers heat up and expand, due to global heating. Even if

storms (both hurricanes and nor'easters) do not grow in severity, coastal

flooding will become more frequent as sea levels rise. Thus, smaller storm

surges would lead to coastal flood levels equivalent to that produced by a major

storm today.

Scientists from the Center for Climate Systems Research, Goddard

Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University have concluded that flood

waters would periodically cover significant portions of lower Manhattan, Coney

Island, the Rockaways in nearby Queens, and entire neighborhoods on Staten

Island. The metropolitan transportation system could be seriously disrupted

because most area rail and tunnel entrance points, many transportation

corridors, and portions of JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark Airports lie at elevations

less of 3 m or less. A powerful nor'easter with near hurricane-force winds

struck the city on December 11-12, 1992, producing some of the worst floods in

40 years that led to the almost complete shutdown of the region's transportation

system as well as evacuation of many seaside communities.

The heat is even affecting the generation of electricity, especially

in nuclear power plants in some places in Europe. The lack of fresh water for

Germany's nuclear plants' cooling systems has led German private electricity

suppliers to slow down their generators. In France, the state-owned Electricité

de France (EdF) was allowed to continue to drain hot water from the cooling

system into rivers, although the water temperatures exceeded the limits imposed

by environmental authorities. However, output has had to be lowered. EdF has

been importing electricity to compensate for the nuclear power plants' lower

performance. Eighty percent of electricity generated in France is produced by

nuclear power plants. In Italy, hydroelectric plants have had to slow down due

to a shortage of water in rivers.

The Heat and Agriculture

Unpredictable and devastating weather conditions are

jeopardizing access to one of life's most elemental needs: food!

One of the most horrendous scenarios that a future warmer world

offers us is reductions in food production. Between lower supplies and

increasing prices hundreds of millions, if not billions, could be added to the

lists of the starving. " Perhaps the most dangerous threat to future food

security is the rise in temperature. Among crop ecologists there is now a

consensus that for each temperature rise of 1 degree Celsius above the

historical average during the growing season, we can expect a 10 percent decline

in grain yields, " reports Lester R. Brown of the Earth Policy Institute.

In Germany, president of the association of farmers Gerd Sonnleitner

told the press that this year's harvest on cereals would be 10 to 15 percent

lower than in 2004, for which figures are available. " We had excellent

expectations, but the heat and the drought have destroyed them. " In France

farmers say the heat in 2006 has damaged harvests. Livestock breeders said they

have been forced to exhaust their forage reserves. " This is the fourth

successive drought we are suffering, " Jean-Luc Poulain, commissioner for risks

management at the French Association of Farmers told Inter Press Service. " We

have not been able to reconstitute our stocks. And the situation gets worse by

the day. "

This year's European crop production has

been significantly affected by the heat.

North America, Britain and Australia are currently afflicted by some

of the worst droughts in their history. Clean and abundant water is becoming a

highly sought-after commodity in many regions throughout these nations. The

times of cheap and abundant food are coming to an end and decreasing food

production in American, Australian and British agriculture will be devastating

to the entire world's population. Overflowing storehouses are about to become a

blessing of the past. Even now, natural disasters and weather catastrophes are

devastating crops and spurring a decline in agricultural production in these

nations. As a result, food prices are rising, and many analysts predict that the

problem will only grow worse.

Drought conditions in Australia are really bad. June 2006 was the

driest on record for the state of Western Australia, the third-driest for

and the fifth-driest for the country as a whole. Regions that have

traditionally been agriculturally rich-including the southwest of Western

Australia, the Murray-Darling Basin, the entire state of , much of New

South Wales and the southeastern part of Queensland-are currently enduring some

of the most severe droughts in their history.

" We are witnessing the gathering of a " perfect storm, " as record

temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, low global grain stocks, and an

anticipated rise in demand for grain by biofuel companies unite to cause grain

prices to surge, " wrote the Australian in July of 2006. On top of rising wheat

prices, a likely rise in corn and barley prices will further compound the

consumer crunch at the grocery store. 60 percent of the world grain harvest is

consumed as food, 36 percent as feed, and 3 percent as fuel. While the use of

grain for food and feed grows by roughly 1 percent per year, that used for fuel

is growing by over 20 percent per year.

The mid west in the United States and Great Britain are doing no

better. In America, similar drought conditions are confronting farmers. Regular

rainfall is becoming an increasingly rare phenomenon in many parts of the

country. By the end of July, over 60 percent of America languished in abnormally

dry conditions or drought. From Georgia to Arizona, and north through the

Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin, America's breadbasket is drying up.

At the same time, record heat scorched the nation, with periodic surges of

fierce and damaging triple-digit temperatures.[ii]

Agricultural devastation and resulting food

shortages are looming on the horizon.

For farmers like Harvey Heier in Kansas, wrote the Christian Science

Monitor, " the effects of the current heat wave are exaggerated because they come

on top of a dry winter and dry summer the year before " (July 2006). Large swaths

of topsoil across the Plains and the Midwest are devoid of moisture. In

northwest Kansas, where the average rainfall for the year through to July is

around 15 inches, Mr. Heier's farm had only received 6.

Farmers are facing a record growth in the demand for grain at a time

when the backlog of technology to raise grain yields is shrinking,

when underground water reserves are being depleted, and

when rising temperatures threaten to shrink future harvests.

Lester Brown

According to Lester Brown, water tables are falling and wells are

going dry in countries that contain half the world's people, including the big

three grain producers China, India, and the United States. In China, water

shortages have contributed to lowering the wheat harvest from its peak of 123

million tons in 1997 to below 100 million tons in recent years. Water shortages

are also making it more difficult for farmers in India to expand their grain

harvest. In parts of the United States, such as the Texas panhandle and in

western Oklahoma and Kansas, depletion of the Ogallala aquifer has forced

farmers to return to lower-yield dryland farming.

The widespread over pumping of aquifers for irrigation means we

are feeding ourselves with water that belongs to the next generation.

Lester Brown

" While it is widely recognized that the world is facing a future of

water shortages, not everyone has connected the dots to see that this likely

also means a future of food shortages, " Brown continues. Forecast yield

estimates for the main crops throughout the European Union, compared with last

year's production and the average harvests over the last five years are looking

bad. And according to the latest estimates, compared with the 2001-2005

averages, this year will see a potential yield decrease for soft wheat, barley

and maize of 2.3 per cent, 4.6 per cent and 0.1 per cent respectively. Spring

barley is also forecast to see a potential decrease of 7.4 per cent.

Carryover stocks at the end of this crop year are projected to drop

to 57 days of consumption, the shortest buffer since the

56-day-low in 1972 that triggered a doubling of grain prices.[iii]

Conclusion

The view that some hold that these bad things are not going to happen

because humanity will respond intelligently is a fool's illusion. It is

extremely naïve to think that humankind will do something consistent against

global warming. There is nothing being done and actually little or nothing to do

at this point. Even if world wide economic activity ground to a halt and went

into a huge depression, cutting 50 percent of human activity, the momentum is

too great, the forces in place seem to be overwhelming. China's economy is

growing at the rate of 10 percent a year and is slated to continue this fierce

pace of expansion with the intense pollution and massive creation of greenhouse

emissions such industrial activity brings. It seems like we have no option but

to meet this human tragedy with dignity and intelligent action of our own to

protect ourselves and our loved ones the very best we can.

With barely seven weeks until the midterm elections, Americans

have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Republican-controlled

Congress,

with substantial majorities saying that they disapprove of

the job it is doing and that its members do not deserve re-election,

according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

There is little chance that the American Congress is going to act

intelligently or be able to see the forest from the trees on this issue, so

misdirected are they in what is truly important. The federal government acts so

criminally and irresponsibly that California is now suing the U.S. for failing

to address the effects of carbon dioxide emissions.[iv] The federal government

and the corporate capitalism has failed us terribly and in the end will prove to

be guilty of greater acts of terrorism against society then any foreign based

organization.

. " In my view, climate change is the most severe problem that we are

facing today -- more serious even than the threat of terrorism. " With this

warning to an international science meeting in February 2004, Dr. A. King,

Chief Scientific Advisor to the British Government, brought the issue of global

warming into sharp focus. But human civilization continues on its path to

destruction and is worrying about the wrong problems. From the point of view of

our planetary Gaia[v] - most human activity spurned by the capitalistic frenzy

to always provide an expanding economic growth has a suicidal bent to it.

Those of us who have young children need to be most alarmed. Which

parent does not want to see his or her children live long and prosperous lives?

But we cannot go down the tubes in despair with the knowing of what is going on;

life continues along its course. Life remains eternally precious each day we

live it and it is how we live it that makes all the difference in the world. It

is good, when we read about the forces moving on our planet, to remember that it

is the safety and health of our loved ones that matters most in life.

Our bodies are under full scale attack as blizzards of chemicals are

passing right into our bodies. Meanwhile the nutritional values of our present

foods have been frighteningly diminished and soon it seems we will be faced with

shortages of foods that don't nourish even when taken in normal quantities. Same

with our diminishing stocks of clean fresh water; what exists is polluted or

deliberately poisoned with chemicals like fluoride and chloramines. Even the

bottled water that comes in plastic is a problem.

We are going to have to be pretty smart to survive the financial,

environmental, political, health and medical issues that will all conspire to

tear a great part of humanity up in a huge grinding machine of its own making.

Survival medicine is what medicine is going to have to be about. We are going to

need every edge we can get, meaning medicine has to start working for us and not

against us. That is not the case now as the many who are struggling to recover

from chronic illness and mistreatment at the hands of doctors know full well.

The rules of the game are going to change radically

underneath us and the most basic reason this is all

happening is that we have not followed the golden rule.

" For the first time since civilization began, sea level has begun to

rise at a measurable rate. It has become an indicator to watch, a trend that

could force a human migration of almost unimaginable dimensions. It also raises

questions about responsibility to other nations and to future generations that

humanity has never before faced, " Lester Brown wrote in 2001.[vi]

The leaders of Tuvalu-a tiny island country in the Pacific Ocean

midway between Hawaii and Australia-have conceded defeat in their

battle with the rising sea, announcing that they will abandon their

homeland.

Earth Policy Institute

What is going to happen to the eventual millions of human beings

living in low-lying countries who will some day join the flow of climate

refugees? Who will accept them? Many things we have taken for granted are going

to disappear, including a great part of the medical establishment that will no

longer be affordable to the majority. It's not only the owners of lush beach

front properties that are poised for great losses. The New York Times printed,

" The current situation with medicine and health insurance) is indeed

unsustainable, a point that the conventional wisdom has right. The cost of

health insurance can't keep doubling every seven years, and wasteful spending -

the brand-name drugs that are no better than generics, the treatments that

haven't been proved to extend lives or improve health - does need to be reined

in. " The handwriting is on the wall in many areas of life. Change is the

watchword, dramatic change, cataclismic change are all on the radar screen. All

this change will wash ashore upon the beach of humanity, which has no love for

change.

It is about time we start living with expectancy, with knowledge of

the forewarned. Where there is smoke there is usually fire. When you see an

arrow in flight coming toward you it is generally a good idea to duck. Health

professionals have to become sensitive to the shifting sands of life and be

prepared to help those who will be particularly hard-pressed to cope. We have to

be ahead of the pack for it is our responsibility to be sensitive to the

changing needs of our clients and of the times.

The misguided belief that " cheap power " is all that matters,

regardless of the environmental cost, is capitalism's chief flaw.

Of course all of this will fall on many deaf ears and President Bush

will be talking about how nice the weather is. Some say that it's snowing more,

high up on the ice packs, diminishing expectant sea water rise. But others don't

care how many people die or suffer as long as they can drive in their big cars.

It's not pleasant at all to read about a potent death blow to humanity's future.

And our reactions can be heavy with dread. Perhaps it is good to remember that

we all are going to die sooner or later and the fact and reality of our certain

death does not have to depress us. There is nothing more certain in life than

eventual death, though even that does not comfort the blow that we have to

endure to our children's future. This story is a story of woe to the children

and it sings the siren song of death to corporate capitalism which has

miscalculated the cost of its rape of the environment. It is ironic though, that

in the end, communist China is racing ahead of everyone to pollute.

Corporate capitalism is going to die a hard death. So entrenched is

the international system that nothing short of a global catastrophe is

sufficient to force us to mend our ways. We have always been hard of hearing and

resistant to change. There is nothing new here. The entire point of my writing

about this is to be prepared and to protect ourselves with things we can do for

ourselves and loved ones. We have the choice to be brave and calm and anticipate

change. Certainly its not really a good idea to go out and buy beach front

property. Better to tune into our souls and find strength not chained by denial.

Even on death's door love is the

answer, love

of life and everything on earth,

including each other.

Mark Sircus Ac., OMD

Director International Medical Veritas Association

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International Medical Veritas Association

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