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Page added on October 13, 2015
Welcome To a New Planet
Not so long ago, it was science fiction. Now, it’s hard science — and that should frighten us all. The latest reports from the prestigious and sober Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) make increasingly hair-raising reading, suggesting that the planet is approaching possible moments of irreversible damage in a fashion and at a speed that had not been anticipated.
Scientists have long worried that climate change will not continue to advance in a “linear” fashion, with the planet getting a little bit hotter most years. Instead, they fear, humanity could someday experience “non-linear” climate shifts (also known as “singularities” or “tipping points”) after which there would be sudden and irreversible change of a catastrophic nature. This was the premise of the 2004 climate-disaster film The Day After Tomorrow. In that movie — most notable for its vivid scenes of a frozen-over New York City — melting polar ice causes a disruption in the North Atlantic Current, which in turn triggers a series of catastrophic storms and disasters. At the time of its release, many knowledgeable scientists derided the film’s premise, insisting that the confluence of events it portrayed was unlikely or simply impossible.
Fast forward 11 years and the prospect of such calamitous tipping points in the North Atlantic or elsewhere no longer looks improbable. In fact, climate scientists have begun to note early indicators of possible catastrophes.
Take the disruption of the North Atlantic Current, the pivotal event in The Day After Tomorrow. Essentially an extension of the Gulf Stream, that deep-sea current carries relatively warm salty water from the South Atlantic and the Caribbean to the northern reaches of the Atlantic. In the process, it helps keep Europe warmer than it would otherwise be. Once its salty water flows into sub-Arctic areas carried by this prolific stream, it gets colder and heavier, sinks to lower depths, and starts a return trip to warmer climes in the south where the whole process begins again.
So long as this “global conveyor belt” — known to scientists as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — keeps functioning, the Gulf Stream will also continue to bring warmer waters to the eastern United States and Europe. Should it be disrupted, however, the whole system might break down, in which case the Euro-Atlantic climate could turn colder and more storm-prone. Such a disruption might occur if the vast Greenland ice sheet melts in a significant way, as indeed is already beginning to happen today, pouring large quantities of salt-free fresh water into the Atlantic Ocean. Because of its lighter weight, this newly introduced water will remain close to the surface, preventing the submergence of salty water from the south and so effectively shutting down the conveyor belt. Indeed, exactly this process now seems to be underway.
By all accounts, 2015 is likely to wind up as the hottest year on record, with large parts of the world suffering from severe heat waves and wildfires. Despite all this, however, a stretch of the North Atlantic below Iceland and Greenland is experiencing all-time cold temperatures, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. What explains this anomaly? According to scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Pennsylvania State University, among other institutions, the most likely explanation is the arrival in the area of cold water from the Greenland ice sheet that is melting ever more rapidly thanks to climate change. Because this meltwater starts out salt-free, it has remained near the surface and so, as predicted, is slowing the northern advance of warmer water from the North Atlantic Current.
So far, the AMOC has not suffered a dramatic shutdown, but it is slowing, and scientists worry that a rapid increase in Greenland ice melt as the Arctic continues to warm will pour ever more meltwater into the North Atlantic, severely disrupting the conveyor system. That would, indeed, constitute a major tipping point, with severe consequences for Europe and eastern North America. Not only would Europe experience colder temperatures on an otherwise warmer planet, but coastal North America could witness higher sea levels than those predicted from climate change alone because the Gulf Stream tends to pull sea water away from the eastern U.S. and push it toward Europe. If it were to fail, rising sea levels could endanger cities like New York and Boston. Indeed, scientists discovered that just such a slowing of the AMOC helped produce a sea-level rise of four inches from New York to Newfoundland in 2009 and 2010.
In its 2014 report on the status of global warming, the IPCC indicated that the likelihood of the AMOC collapsing before the end of this century remains relatively low. But some studies suggest that the conveyor system is already 15%-20% below normal with Greenland’s melting still in an early stage. Once that process switches into high gear, the potential for the sort of breakdown that was once science fiction starts to look all too real.
Tipping Points on the Horizon
In a 2014 report, “Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability,” Working Group II of the IPCC identified three other natural systems already showing early-warning signs of catastrophic tipping points: the Arctic, coral reefs, and the Amazonian forest. All three, the report suggested, could experience massive and irreversible changes with profound implications for human societies.
The Arctic comes in for particular scrutiny because it has experienced more warming than any other region on the planet and because the impact of climate change there is already so obvious. As the report put it, “For the Arctic region, new evidence indicates a biophysical regime shift is taking place, with cascading impacts on physical systems, ecosystems, and human livelihoods.”
This has begun with a massive melt of sea ice in the region and a resulting threat to native marine species. “For Arctic marine biota,” the report notes, “the rapid reduction of summer ice covers causes a tipping element that is now severely affecting pelagic [sub-surface] ecosystems as well as ice-dependent mammals such as seals and polar bears.” Other flora and fauna of the Arctic biome are also demonstrating stress related to climate change. For example, vast areas of tundra are being invaded by shrubs and small trees, decimating the habitats of some animal species and increasing the risk of fires.
This Arctic “regime shift” affects many other aspects of the ecosystem as well. Higher temperatures, for instance, have meant widespread thawing and melting of permafrost, the frozen soil and water that undergirds much of the Arctic landmass. In this lies another possible tipping-point danger, since frozen soils contain more than twice the carbon now present in the atmosphere. As the permafrost melts, some of this carbon is released in the form of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with many times the warming potential of carbon dioxide and other such gases. In other words, as the IPCC noted, any significant melting of Arctic permafrost will “create a potentially strong positive feedback to accelerate Arctic (and global) warming.” This, in fact, could prove to be more than a tipping point. It could be a planetary catastrophe.
Along with these biophysical effects, the warming of the Arctic is threatening the livelihoods and lifestyles of the indigenous peoples of the region. The loss of summer sea ice, for example, has endangered the marine species on which many such communities depend for food and the preservation of their cultural traditions. Meanwhile, melting permafrost and coastal erosion due to sea-level rise have threatened the very existence of their coastal villages. In September, President Obama visited Kotzebue, a village in Alaska some 30 miles above the Arctic Circle that could disappear as a result of melting permafrost, rising sea levels, and ever bigger storm surges.
Coral Reefs at Risk
Another crucial ecosystem that’s showing signs of heading toward an irreversible tipping point is the world’s constellation of coral reefs. Remarkably enough, although such reefs make up less than 1% of the Earth’s surface area, they house up to 25% of all marine life. They are, that is, essential for both the health of the oceans and of fishing communities, as well as of those who depend on fish for a significant part of their diet. According to one estimate, some 850 million people rely on coral reefs for their food security.
Corals, which are colonies of tiny animals related to sea anemones, have proven highly sensitive to changes in the acidity and temperature of their surrounding waters, both of which are rising due to the absorption of excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As a result, in a visually dramatic process called “bleaching,” coral populations have been dying out globally. According to a recent study by the Worldwide Fund for Nature, coral reef extent has declined by 50% in the last 30 years and all reefs could disappear as early as 2050 if current rates of ocean warming and acidification continue.
“This irreversible loss of biodiversity,” reports the IPCC, will have “significant consequences for regional marine ecosystems as well as the human livelihoods that depend on them.” Indeed, the growing evidence of such losses “strengthens the conclusion that increased mass bleaching of corals constitutes a strong warning signal for the singular event that would constitute the irreversible loss of an entire biome.”
Amazonian Dry-Out
The Amazon has long been viewed as the epitome of a tropical rainforest, with extraordinary plant and animal diversity. The Amazonian tree cover also plays a vital role in reducing the pace of global warming by absorbing vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during the process of photosynthesis. For years, however, the Amazon has been increasingly devastated by a process of deforestation, as settlers from Brazil’s coastal regions clear land for farming and ranching, and loggers (many operating illegally) harvest timber for wood products. Now, as if to add insult to injury, the region faces a new threat from climate change: tree mortality due to a rise in severe drought and the increased forest fire risk that accompanies it.
Although it can rain year-round in the Amazon region, there is a distinct wet season with heavy rainfall and a dry season with much less of it. An extended dry season with little rain can endanger the survival of many trees and increase the risk of wildfires. Research conducted by scientists at the University of Texas has found that the dry season in the southern Amazonian region has grown by a week every decade since 1980 while the annual fire season has lengthened. “The dry season over the southern Amazon is already marginal for maintaining rainforest,” says Rong Fu, the leader of the research team. “At some point, if it becomes too long, the rainforest will reach a tipping point” and disappear.
Because the Amazon harbors perhaps the largest array of distinctive flora and fauna on the planet, its loss would represent an irreversible blow to global biodiversity. In addition, the region hosts some of the largest assemblages of indigenous peoples still practicing their traditional ways of life. Even if their lives were saved (through relocation to urban slums or government encampments), the loss of their cultures, representing thousands of years of adaptation to a demanding environment, would be a blow for all humankind.
As in the case of the Arctic and coral reefs, the collapse of the Amazon will have what the IPCC terms “cascading impacts,” devastating ecosystems, diminishing biodiversity, and destroying the ways of life of indigenous peoples. Worse yet, as with the melting of the Arctic, so the drying-out of Amazonia is likely to feed into climate change, heightening its intensity and so sparking yet more tipping points on a planet increasingly close to the brink.
In its report, the IPCC, whose analysis tends, if anything, to be on the conservative side of climate science, indicated that the Amazon faced a relatively low risk of dying out by 2100. However, a 2009 study conducted by Britain’s famed Meteorological (Met) Office suggests that the risk is far greater than previously assumed. Even if global temperatures were to be held to an increase of 2 degrees Celsius, the study notes, as much as 40% of the Amazon would perish within a century; with 3 degrees of warming, up to 75% would vanish; and with 4 degrees, 85% would die. “The forest as we know it would effectively be gone,” said Met researcher Vicky Pope.
Of Tipping Points and Singularities
These four natural systems are by no means the only ones that could face devastating tipping points in the years to come. The IPCC report and other scientific studies hint at further biomes that show early signs of potential catastrophe. But these four are sufficiently advanced to tell us that we need to look at climate change in a new way: not as a slow, linear process to which we can adapt over time, but as a non-linear set of events involving dramatic and irreversible changes to the global ecosphere.
The difference is critical: linear change gives us the luxury of time to devise and implement curbs on greenhouse gas emissions, and to construct protective measures such as sea walls. Non-linear change puts a crimp on time and confronts us with the possibility of relatively sudden, devastating climate shifts against which no defensive measures can protect us.
Were the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation to fail, for example, there would be nothing we could do to turn it back on, nor would we be able to recreate coral reefs or resurrect the Amazon. Add in one other factor: when natural systems of this magnitude fail, should we not expect human systems to fail as well? No one can answer this question with certainty, but we do know that earlier human societies collapsed when faced with other kinds of profound changes in climate.
All of this should be on the minds of delegates to the upcoming climate summit in Paris, a meeting focused on adopting an international set of restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. Each participating nation is obliged to submit a set of measures it is ready to take, known as “intended nationally determined contributions,” or INDCs, aimed at achieving the overall goal of preventing planetary warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius. However, the INDCs submitted to date, including those from the United States and China, suggest a distinctly incremental approach to the problem. Unfortunately, if planetary tipping points are in our future, this mindset will not measure up. It’s time to start thinking instead in terms of civilizational survival.
Michael T. Klare
67 Comments on "Welcome To a New Planet"
Apneaman on Thu, 15th Oct 2015 8:57 pm
BillC, you’re a fucking retard. Everything you said is pure conspiracy and completely unscientific and illogical. AGW is disproved simply by your personal guess that the US (center of the universe) went 10 years without a hurricane. What does that even mean? Does the rest of the planet count? If had a fucking clue, if you read any of the science and the predictions then you would know that MORE hurricanes were never predicted, just more powerful ones. The one that drenched South Carolina the other week was 600 miles out to sea – a mere side swipe that is going to be well over a billion dollars in damage. You need to get some help with your thinking. Maybe a new brain.
Apneaman on Thu, 15th Oct 2015 9:05 pm
billc, your math skill leave something to be desired.
Hurricane Katrina 2005
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
Hurricane Ike 2008
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike
GregT on Thu, 15th Oct 2015 9:22 pm
BillC,
Climate Change is a result of CO2 induced Global Warming, as is Ocean Acidification, Arctic Amplification, sea level rise, the stalling of the Gulf Stream, the Methane Bomb, and thousands of other nasties that we have already unleashed around the world. Climate Change was the terminology chosen over Global Warming, because people like you are not capable of understanding why Global Warming is also attributed to extreme cold weather events.
I would suggest that you stop doing your own thinking and pay attention to the science and the data, because your thought process is either non-existent or severely flawed.
GregT on Thu, 15th Oct 2015 9:32 pm
Thee,
“I will re-post here my answer to your statement there, which you are repeating here, that we should just all become mediæval again:”
There is nothing that I would embrace more than a techno-utopian future. I have always been a techie, and have always loved having the latest and greatest of everything.
I am not saying that we should all become mediaeval. I am saying that we are going to become mediaeval if we manage to stop what we are currently doing before we drive ourselves to extinction. At this point in time, it does not look at all likely that we are going to make it through the damage that we have already inflicted on the environment with our technological prowess. We either stop now and hope for the best, or we are in all likelihood done for as a species on this planet, within one generation.
apneaman on Fri, 16th Oct 2015 12:27 am
SoCal flooding: Part of I-5 shut down by mudslides as flash flooding hits
http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/10/15/55068/flash-flood-warnings-issued-in-southern-california/
Flash floods, mudslides north of Los Angeles shut down I-5
http://www.ktvu.com/news/33637132-story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pyC7WnvLT4
theedrich on Fri, 16th Oct 2015 4:24 am
Davy said “Our only hope is a return to a natural spirituality with an order of magnitude smaller population.” And added the example of the blissful Kogi of Columbia.
Just what would such a “natural spirituality” look like, Davy? One of the thousand Hindu cults? Worshipping the dung beetle as a god? In any case, there is no way such a regression is going to happen, pace GregT and others who romanticize past ages or primitive peoples while condemning the White man. For good or ill, man’s recent evolution has ratcheted him up to overload, just like the petrie-dish bacteria and every other life form.
Nothing is going to change until massive desperation hits. At that point, the Masters of the Universe will decide who is going to live and who is going to die. Given widespread modern technology, we have no assurance that almighty America, with all its ineradicable self-contradictions, is going to survive.
The U.S. is the earth’s political Tragedy of the Commons. It has become a trough for a feeding frenzy for every parasite, high and low, on the planet. The White population, paralyzed by a genosuicidal “ecumenical” Christian ideology based on fairy tales, can think of nothing else but feelgood “solutions” to its own impending demise. With its religious and secular preachers telling it how “guilty” it is as a result of its protoparents (who were implicitly White) having eaten a mythical “apple” of knowledge, every non-White anywhere wants “reparations” and atonement from Whitey, not to mention revenge for his superiority. And self-euthanizing Whitey, of course, meekly submits to the lie.
Communism, it is subliminally suggested, is the ideal answer to this condition, as can be seen in the wild popularity of Sanders the Socialist. It is virtually certain, however, that he will be outdone by Clitoris Clinton, since she now owns all of the women who read People magazine and similar rags, not to mention all of the non- and anti-Whites, along with illegally voting illegals and a considerable number of dead people. The pinko press will destroy the Repubs, so Mrs. Stalin really has nothing to worry about.
After Hotflash ascends the throne, the fun will really begin. Even the pretense of national borders will be abolished for the Asiatics flowing in to replace Whitey. The White mushrooms will be fed more marijuana and other mind anesthetizers. And the biosphere will be fatally wounded as monetary contributions to the Demonic Party swamp the few honest conservationist organizations still around. (The “conservative” Repubs have long been reduced to local politics and inane cultural disputes by the media.) Zero Population Growth, if not completely ignored, will be damned as worse than any anti-Semitic+racist combo that has ever existed.
Few people can imagine what planeticide means. But thanks to America, we are soon going to find out.
Davy on Fri, 16th Oct 2015 5:33 am
Thee, I stand by my statement and do not argue your points with the failure of the American dream. I might add a global modern man dream that is a failure. Every country has embraced prosperity. A small group of people may survive the coming global collapse. If they do they need to live as the Kogi of Columbia do. That is a plain and simple statement that says more than a UN report. Study the Kogi and ask yourself if they have the tools to survive post collapse. They fundamentally respect Nature and that is the starting point and the basis for their culture. They may not survive the locust people but if they do they have the cultural tools. I am arguing the point of their culture not the people actually. Climate change may render the area uninhabitable and their culture extinct. They are not the type to migrate. They will die in place with honor.
BillC on Fri, 16th Oct 2015 9:52 pm
Climate change before climate change was cool
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TAZPRr9xfIk
BillC on Fri, 16th Oct 2015 9:55 pm
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pHQfSCCtVq4
Hernan Vargas Alvarado on Fri, 16th Oct 2015 10:14 pm
Sorry to interrupt Davy´s love for the Ape, but the man is a fucking bully and loves to see his name in print. This by no means I agree with the fraud named, Plant, who should learn just to shut the fuck up.
Hernan Vargas Alvarado on Fri, 16th Oct 2015 10:16 pm
Bill C. Shut the fuck up with your climate change denialist crap. Folks on this blog no better than buy into your obvious lies.
GregT on Sat, 17th Oct 2015 12:30 am
“GregT and others who romanticize past ages or primitive peoples while condemning the White man.”
You obviously didn’t read what I wrote very carefully thee. I don’t romanticize the end of modern industrial society. I understand that it was never sustainable, and will ultimately lead to a dead end. It is not me that is condemning the ‘White Man’, it is man that is condemning himself, and all other species on this planet with him. If there is any hope for the continuation of our species, then we need to look back at where we went wrong. We can’t have our planet and eat it too thee. What we do to the planet, we do to ourselves. We have nowhere else to go. This is our one and only home.
theedrich on Sat, 17th Oct 2015 6:57 am
Well, GregT, the place where we went wrong was: (1.) in worshipping a “Higher Power” in anthropomorphic (or even, as many Hindus, zoomorphic) form, so that (as opposed to, say, Mahayana or Zen Buddhism) we patterned it after our own life form; and (2.) quite specifically, the Christian psychodynamic of guilt (psychobiologically a form of neurosis) as a societal control mechanism. The first point made us believe the HP (as a “loving father”) was obsessed with our own egocentric concerns. And the second point made “moral superiority” and the projection of “evil” onto opponents a tool for galvanizing a herd against those opponents. Point #1 is responsible for the demand that all humans (and maybe even chimps) have “heaven” on earth, regardless of the consequences for the earth. And point #2 makes it possible for us to slaughter our own biological kin in Europe and feel supremely justified in doing so. The fakery used to ensnare Japan into Pearl Harbor (and hence WW II) and the rationalizations for nuking its civilian cities were also based on the same point.
The humanitarian and religious drive to “save” the Third World from its own lethal squalor so that its demographic billions can become trillions also comes from Christianity, with some help from Judaism. The Black African basket case that has been used as a humanitarian theme park ever since Albert Schweitzer is but one example. Few are the cases where non-Christian societies shower non-military aid on poorer societies. It is (often hypocritical) Christian “caritas” and “compassion” that have been and are producing the global overpopulation catastrophe. And the Guilt dynamic is now resulting in an orgy of White genosuicide making the intellectual classes ecstatic with joy.
And note that I have not even addressed the trash religion of Mohammedanism.
Davy on Sat, 17th Oct 2015 7:36 am
Yea, thee, some good points. I will mention that when shit hits the fan and people are isolated in their little modern world coveys it will be those religious communities that have the structures to pull together that have the right stuff for survival. It reminds me of the “How the Grinch that Stole Christmas” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR2aPIrF8j0 the community of Whoville was stripped of the things of Christmas but what remained was the bonds of community. I admire religions at this level for what is just ahead.
It will be groups of people that can draw together in coherent groups well established with roles and motivation that will offer survival. It is the lonely intellectual wolf hidden away in his little den that will quickly be swept away into the dust bin of collapse. I will also say that these religious communities will also be better prepared for death because the death has meaning in religion.
I am not saying their belief are right I am only saying they provide meaning and purpose to these members. In a time of plenty with ample resources for asshole intellectuals like many of us we can righteously talk down religion. Their day will come when collapse hits and they have the tools to navigate it.
I am not saying all religious organizations. Many Catholic perishes are empty of these strengths. Many are full of rich who commute to the Sunday event but have no real connection to anything because they are so spread out in their connections. I am talking the small perish where the believers are “all in” with the perish. I chose the Catholic parish as an example because that is my point of reference. Down here in the Mo Ozarks with the hillbilly’s where I live the goofball Baptist are much the same way. They are some serious “Bleevers”. Baptist will come together in strong community.
So Thee from a practical doom and prep there are some advantages to religious organizations at the grass roots level. Historically and at the higher level of the religious establishment they are truly a human failure. Except for some eastern traditions that are not established religions the great religions are a primary source of the most primitive of human ills of superstition and mind control that have culminated in what we are today and that is a bottleneck people.
theedrich on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 3:59 am
Yes, Davy, you are correct in pointing out the unifying encouragement that some religion(s) can give to the “believers.” By the way, I do not wish to deny the role in the promotion of the intellectual life that religion, especially Catholicism, has provided over the centuries. Nor do I claim, as do many atheist types, to “know” that there is no such thing as another “dimension” (paranormal, transcendent, or whatever one wishes to call it) behind the everyday world we experience. See, for instance, the work of Rupert Sheldrake on morphic resonance or that of Ian Stevenson, M.D. The latter (formerly Carlson Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia, now deceased) worked for four decades on cases suggestive of what is usually called “reincarnation” and published his results in a massive, two-volume work, Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects, which cannot be lightly dismissed the way the materialists are wont to do.
What I am objecting to is the perversion of humanity’s gullibility in the religious sphere, and the tendency of most people to use an alleged certainty about the non-material as a vehicle for their own interests and neuroses. Take the idea of “heaven,” for instance. Thousands of years ago, kings, pharaohs and other rulers were apotheosized as “gods.” Then, starting notably with Zoroastrianism, a “democratization” of heaven (and its counterpart, hell) took place. The ordinary individual could become a god (i.e., “go to heaven”) if he or she just behaved as the ruler and society dictated. This view seeped into Judaism after the “Babylonian Exile” and became a staple of heterodox Judaic beliefs, even though not adopted by the elites (like the Sadducees). Among many others, Jesus preached this idea, and after his death, followed by visionary appearances of him, the mystery religions of the Hellenistic world absorbed the same view. (The mystery religions were cults of dying and rising gods.) Based on all this, nowadays Whites are implicitly promised “heaven” if they quietly accept racial extinction. Pay now and fly later.
Every now and then one sees an extreme, perverted example of this death-cultish ideology. The Jonestown mass suicide is one, Applegate (a bizarre spinoff of Christianity) another. But the real problem for the White race is the “slowly boiling frog” neurosis that is leading us and our civilization into the grave. Naturally everyone, especially the megarich, believes that “something” will save us before the end (the rapture? the Demonic Party?). But nature, however conceived, is not going to prevent us from killing ourselves with delusions of postmortem ecstasy.
Apneaman on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 5:16 am
Shut up with your white race OBSESSION. If the white race has become such debauched losers then you are too by default. Are you white or not? Apes are all alike at the biological level and cultures are forever changing, rising and falling. It’s highly unlikely any apes at all will be alive next century, so yeah, you’re right they are extincting themselves.
Sheldrake’s morphic resonance is bunk. Like religionists he makes claims with no evidence. It’s not about knowing. I don’t know that we are not part of an alien experiment, I just don’t see any evidence or proof. Fairies could also be true since we can’t actually disprove them. We could go to infinity with all the things with no evidence that we can’t disprove. If only we had some standard of evidence, some method to test all these claims with.
“Most of Sheldrake’s ideas are clearly pseudoscientific nonsense. Morphic resonance is extremely vague and ill-defined, and can only really be described as whatever Sheldrake says it is. Crucially, it is not falsifiable, and therefore not testable (although some have tried).”
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake
http://skepdic.com/morphicres.html
Apneaman on Mon, 19th Oct 2015 5:28 am
Dr Nina Jablonski breaks the illusion of skin color
“Nina Jablonski says that differing skin colors are simply our bodies’ adaptation to varied climates and levels of UV exposure. Charles Darwin disagreed with this theory, but she explains, that’s because he did not have access to NASA.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOSPNVunyFQ
Human Skin Color
“Variation in human skin color has fascinated and perplexed people for centuries. As the most visible aspect of human variation, skin pigmentation has been used in the past as a basis for classifying people into races. Studies conducted in the past 25 years have shown that skin pigmentation is a biological adaptation that regulates the penetration of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) into the skin, and represents an evolutionary compromise between the conflicting demands of protection of the skin against UVR and of production of vitamin D by UVR.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlB3m9Zl12E