Inevitable Transformation

                                                                                     written 9 February, 2026

                                                                               published 15 February, 2026

 

            One of the persistent illusions of life is linearity, the idea that tomorrow will be just like yesterday.  While this often seems accurate, it lulls us into complacency, unprepared when sudden changes inevitably occur.  Reality is a punctuated equilibrium, smooth periods between unexpected jumps. 

            Earthquakes are a good example.  The deep motion of the tectonic plates is ongoing, but the surface expression is resistant to change, sometimes static for lifetimes, then interrupted by abrupt transformation.  Earthquakes were once considered an "act of God", reeking vengeance on the sinful, but we have evolved, now seeing this as a natural process, which can be mitigated by experience and preparation.  But such awareness isn't always wide spread.

            After the 1906 earthquake destroyed much of San Francisco, modern geology came of age and building codes in California began demanding construction methods designed to withstand shaking, despite increased costs, guiding California's urban expansion for over a century.

            In the Pacific Northwest, with no recent experience of big quakes, building codes ignored what California knew could happen.  Relatively recently, it was realized this region repeatedly experiences extremely large quakes, putting most of that region's construction at risk, the consequence of ignoring fundamental reality.  This wisdom also applies in other domains.  

            For 2600 years, some spiritual leaders have shared that reality is fundamentally whole, interconnected, despite the illusion of separation presented by our senses.  But this has long been a minority perspective.  Lost in illusion, resistant to change, our cultures and religions have been at war with ourselves, each other, and the natural world for as long as history has been written.  

            Until 1800, human population grew slowly, doubling every 240 years, to one billion people.  When the industrial revolution kicked in, population began doubling every 60 years.  Quantum mechanics began in the early 1900's, and western science discovered what spiritual leaders of old knew: everything is energy, the world is whole, and separation is only a relative perspective.  But humanity used this new physical power in the same old way, destroying two cities in a flash.  Now, a few decades later, with population doubling every 25 years, we are still at war, still locked into the old illusion of separation.

            But like the smooth, steady motion of the underlying tectonic plates, the evolution of consciousness is proceeding.  The truth of unity, which had been kept secret for ages to protect practitioners from lethal reaction by the dominate culture, is now available everywhere.  This fundamental unity is experienced in quantum mechanical hardware such as the world wide web, and two thirds of the world now have smartphone connectivity.

            Such wide spread connectivity increasingly stresses the separation structures that dominant our culture.  Even before the smartphone introduction, cell phones with cameras were everywhere.  In 2003, the secret US torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, routine behavior for any dominator culture, was exposed to the world when private trophy pictures were unexpectedly shared with the whole world, shaking the political structure.

            The 2020 murder of George Floyd was captured on video by several bystanders using their smart phones.  This was not unusual police abuse, but the wide spread exposure prompted massive public rection and forced changes.  Today the thuggish ICE abuse of everyone is being well documented, immediately exposing the blatant lies of this Republican administration.  

            When America was founded, democracy was an experiment in political unity, not expected to survive.  The ideal of everyone having equal rights under the law was revolutionary, and inspired changes all over the world.  In fact, this was only an aspirational concept; just ask any woman, person of color, or the native inhabitants of the country.  However, America has made slow progress toward living the truth we all sing about.

            But our retrograde president personifies the selfish, corrupt, isolated individual, ignorant of unity reality.  Civil rights, human rights, and even the climatic viability of our species, are being destroy for one person's vanity.  This perspective is not new, but the extreme insanity of his position is on worldwide display.  The lie of equal rights has surfaced, demanding response.  We are too numerous, too powerful, and have pushed the system to a breaking point, to remain so ignorant.

            Many of us know the experience of unity reality, caring for others and the planet that supports us.  The question is: will we tolerate such institutional insanity, or will we more fully live our aspirations?  The answer will shake the world.

 

 

 

 

Does Cold Disprove Global Warming?

                                                                                      written 1 February, 2026

                                                                                   published 8 February, 2026

                                                                                            

            Last week, winter storm Fern impacted half of the US with bitter cold, heavy snow, and ice.  Records were broken, dozens have died, more than a million people lost power, and damage estimates are already above $115B.  Like a broken record, the administration claimed this proves global warming is a hoax.

            The climate crisis was first called "global warming", because the overall temperature of the planet is slowly increasing, the result of changing atmospheric chemistry due to combustion of fossil fuels.  In preindustrial times, the average planetary temperature was 13.6°C (56.5°F), which is now confirmed to be 1.5°C (2.7°F) higher, and increasing.  But it is simplistic, and misleading, to think this means everywhere will be just a little warmer than before.  

            Climate is a dynamic atmospheric system, distributing tropical heating to the higher latitudes.  Although the Arctic is much colder than the tropics, Coriolis forces create and sustain the jet stream, a fast flowing, highly constrained band of high-altitude wind, which restricts cold air to the polar region.  However, the Arctic region has warmed 3-4 times faster than the rest of the planet, reducing the Arctic/tropic temperature contrast.  Consequently, the jet stream is now less constrained, and wanders more than previously.  It often dips south enough to include most of North America, expanding Arctic cold to areas where it is not normally experienced.  The damage inflicted by storm Fern is demonstration of the growing climate crisis, not disproof.

            The fossil fuel industry, generating trillions of dollars each year, routinely funds self-serving climate denial lies.  But the industry has known about the climate problem since the 50's, political leaders have known since the 70's, and the general public has known since the late 80's.  However, wide spread societal lack of whole systems thinking has kept the industry climate lies popular.  But the issue has gotten worse each year, with ever increasing economic costs, so popular opinion is shifting.  

            The current administration, subservient to the fossil fuel industry, is profoundly retarded on this issue, making climate denial federal policy, eliminating any mention or research, and defunding efforts to deal with reality.  However, it now claims Greenland is necessary for national security because Russia and China are developing shorter trade routes to Europe using the Arctic Ocean.  These routes are now possible because there is less sea ice during the Arctic summer months.  There is less sea ice because the Arctic is rapidly warming.  Yet the administration denies warming is happening.  This refusal to consider the whole system is insane.

            Such limited thinking is wide spread in our economy.  PG&E recently reported their investment in advanced systems to monitor and predict where fire storms are likely, an important achievement, because fires are larger, more expensive, and more numerous each year due to climate change.  But this ignores that part of PG&E's business is natural gas, which creates carbon dioxide when burned, increasing the climate problem.  Additionally, any natural gas leaked into the atmosphere accelerates climate warming 100 times more than carbon dioxide, in the short run.  They are making money while creating the problem they are proudly spending money to prevent.  More insanity.

            Fire insurance is becoming a victim of the growing climate crisis impact.  In other states, flood insurance is having the same problem.  The insurance industry has been paying out more than it collects for years, and can't remain in business.  Not only are prices increasing, but complete cancelations are increasing as well.  This threatens the economy of the real estate industry, mortgage lending, and the tax base of local governments.  Yet the insurance industry invests heavily in the fossil fuel industry, making short term money off of the system that is killing them long term.  Suicidal insanity.

            While the current Republican administration is rapidly losing popularity, and will soon be dumped onto the trash heap of history, the climate crisis is not going away.  It represents the deeper social challenge to remake our entire economy with recognition of whole systems, if we are to have long term sustainability.  This global issue demands something new from humans: real, sustained, coordinated global response, not performative blathering.  Reality doesn't care about your race, nationality, gender, political orientation, wealth, or religious affiliation.  We are either with it, or we become extinct, like most of the species that have ever lived.  We may still have time to choose, but that window is rapidly closing.

 

 

 

 

Who Benefits?

                                                                                      written 25 January, 2026

                                                                                  published 1 February, 2026

 

            Two divisions of airborne troops are preparing to put "boots on the ground" in the US.  ICE tactics grow more erratic, killing another observer, and now expanding into Maine, while the administration gives them complete immunity.  The president gave a rambling, fact free televised speech on his accomplishments.  A day later he gave a similar performance at the Davos Economic Forum, insulting NATO, claiming we deserve to be given Greenland (or Iceland), displaying his growing disconnection from reality.  The whole world sees the Republican leader of America is an incompetent, corrupt, demented bully.

            The stock market dipped, but recovered after another TACO move, where he backed away from threatening to take Greenland by force (this week).  But the damage has been done.  The world sees that America is no longer a trusted partner.  If your friend just tried to bully you with tariffs and threats of invasion, your trust has been broken.  The prime minister of Canada recently stated the global power structure that has dominated for the last 80 years has come apart, and everyone needs to take actions accordingly.

            After WW2, the US was the only major industrial country with an intact manufacturing infrastructure and vast domestic reserves of oil, the dominant energy source.  We led the world, formed agreements beneficial to the US that stabilized the global financial system, helped rebuild much of the planet, with enough wealth left over to create a booming domestic middle class.   

            Eight decades later, we have burned up most of our domestic oil, there is an energy alternative to fossil fuels, we have sent manufacturing to countries with cheaper labor, there is another currency as strong as the dollar, and we have a trillionaire while a hundred million Americans struggle to survive.  These forces have been building for decades, but the general world order has endured.  Until now.

            China has begun valuing liquified natural gas purchases in yuan, their own currency, rather than dollars.  Countries are shedding US financial investments as increasingly risky, and hoarding gold instead.  NATO no longer sees the US as trustworthy.  Canada, our long-standing trading partner, is planning to resist an attack by the US, and opened trade negotiations with China.  The EU announced a South American trade agreement, excluding the US, and is negotiating another with Southeast Asia.  

            The stock market is financially fragile.  The market's steady rise results from just a few AI stocks, while the rest of the economy has stagnated.  This AI frenzy, with hundreds of billions invested, has almost no economic return.  It requires huge increases in electrical power, supposedly from installation of new natural gas and nuclear power systems.  But new natural gas production is limited by supply chain constipation and increasing fuel prices.  Building traditional nuclear takes at least a decade, and small modular reactor development, at the scale needed, may take as long, since none currently exist.  The entire market is poised for a serious correction from reality, which could be triggered by the unhinged element in the White House.

            So, who benefits from this presidency?  In the short run, Republican leadership has power and has been dismantling the progressive agenda assembled over decades.  But I can't imagine any of them anticipated the destruction now being wrought on America's economy or world standing.  They may have known the president is crazy, but mistakenly assumed he could be controlled.  

            American billionaires have done very well in the last year, but their wealth depends on the post war global order and rule of law, which is now crumbling.  The other global autocrats stand to gain from America's fall from grace, as democracy has always been a thorn in their plans.  

            With NATO distracted by defending against the US, Russia is freer to push their domination in Ukraine.  But corruption has hollowed out the Russian economy, and their only trade good is oil, which suffers from decreasing demand as global renewable investment continues to grow exponentially.

            China is the only clear winner, already the leader in producing the renewable energy systems of the future, while the US foolishly tries to return to the past.  

            Thank Republican leadership, which used to have principles and revere the rule of law, yet they continue to support this destructive administration.  Reality is whole, and cooperation, between individuals as well as nations, produces sustainable results.  Selfish bullies may appear to thrive in the short run, but reality eventually prevails.  The saying goes: nature bats last.