Carbon Emissions Hit Record High in 2018

 International Energy Agency (IEA) Report

Global energy consumption in 2018 increased at nearly twice the average rate of growth since 2010, driven by a robust global economy and higher heating and cooling needs in some parts of the world. Demand for all fuels increased, led by natural gas, even as solar and wind posted double digit growth. Higher electricity demand was responsible for over half of the growth in energy needs. Energy efficiency saw lacklustre improvement. As a result of higher energy consumption, CO2 emissions rose 1.7% last year and hit a new record.

Renewables and Conservation aren't cutting it.

New Research Shows that the Human Brain Can Detect the Earth's Magnetic Field

A just released study (see below) finds that the humans have a magnetic sense that allows our brain to detect the Earth's magnetic fields. Further that as with all human abilities there is great variability amongst people's sentience of the magnetic field.

To me this is great news because I believe it underscores my work with our Mother and Her aspects such as Fields of Consciousness, the Life Force and Earth Chakras and a host of other Earth Energies. I also believe that older civilizations had greater sentience of the magnetic field and respect for our Mother and would create stone structures to enhance Her.

At the same time it makes me wonder what consequences a pole shift would have upon us and our magnetic sense.

What affect is the weakening geomagnetic field having upon different species such as birds, bees...?

Is being sentient of Mother Earth truly beneficial as I believe? Will it help in dealing with a pole shift?

Blessings,
madis

New evidence for a human magnetic sense that lets your brain detect the Earth’s magnetic field

By Shinsuke Shimojo, Daw-An Wu, Joseph Kirschvink at Cal tech

Do human beings have a magnetic sense? Biologists know other animals do. They think it helps creatures including bees, turtles and birds navigate through the world.

Scientists have tried to investigate whether humans belong on the list of magnetically sensitive organisms. For decades, there’s been a back-and-forth between positive reports and failures to demonstrate the trait in people, with seemingly endless controversy.

The mixed results in people may be due to the fact that virtually all past studies relied on behavioral decisions from the participants. If human beings do possess a magnetic sense, daily experience suggests that it would be very weak or deeply subconscious. Such faint impressions could easily be misinterpreted – or just plain missed – when trying to make decisions.

So our research group – including a geophysical biologist, a cognitive neuroscientist and a neuroengineer – took another approach. What we found arguably provides the first concrete neuroscientific evidence that humans do have a geomagnetic sense. 

How does a biological geomagnetic sense work?

The Earth is surrounded by a magnetic field, generated by the movement of the planet’s liquid core. It’s why a magnetic compass points north. At Earth’s surface, this magnetic field is fairly weak, about 100 times weaker than that of a refrigerator magnet.

Over the past 50 years or so, scientists have shown that hundreds of organisms in nearly all branches of the bacterial, protist and animal kingdoms have the ability to detect and respond to this geomagnetic field. In some animals – such as honey bees – the geomagnetic behavioral responses are as strong as the responses to light, odor or touch. Biologists have identified strong responses in vertebrates ranging from fish, amphibians, reptiles, numerous birds and a diverse variety of mammals including whales, rodents, bats, cows and dogs – the last of which can be trained to find a hidden bar magnet. In all of these cases, the animals are using the geomagnetic field as components of their homing and navigation abilities, along with other cues like sight, smell and hearing.

Skeptics dismissed early reports of these responses, largely because there didn’t seem to be a biophysical mechanism that could translate the Earth’s weak geomagnetic field into strong neural signals. This view was dramatically changed by the discovery that living cells have the ability tobuild nanocrystals of the ferromagnetic mineral magnetite – basically, tiny iron magnets. Biogenic crystals of magnetite were first seen in the teeth of one group of mollusks, later in bacteria, and then in a variety of other organisms ranging from protists and animals such as insects, fish and mammals, including within tissues of the human brain.

Manipulating the magnetic field

n our new study, we asked 34 participants simply to sit in our testing chamber while we directly recorded electrical activity in their brains with electroencephalography (EEG). Our modified Faraday cage included a set of 3-axis coils that let us create controlled magnetic fields of high uniformity via electric current we ran through its wires. Since we live in mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, the environmental magnetic field in our lab dips downwards to the north at about 60 degrees from horizon.

chematic drawing of the human magnetoreception test chamber at Caltech.Modified from 'Center of attraction' by C. Bickel (Hand, 2016).

In normal life, when someone rotates their head – say, nodding up and down or turning the head from left to right – the direction of the geomagnetic field (which remains constant in space) will shift relative to their skull. This is no surprise to the subject’s brain, as it directed the muscles to move the head in the appropriate fashion in the first place.

In our experimental chamber, we can move the magnetic field silently relative to the brain, but without the brain having initiated any signal to move the head. This is comparable to situations when your head or trunk is passively rotated by somebody else, or when you’re a passenger in a vehicle which rotates. In those cases, though, your body will still register vestibular signals about its position in space, along with the magnetic field changes – in contrast, our experimental stimulation was only a magnetic field shift. When we shifted the magnetic field in the chamber, our participants did not experience any obvious feelings.

Study participants sat in the experimental chamber facing north, while the downwards-pointing field rotated clockwise (blue arrow) from northwest to northeast or counterclockwise (red arrow) from northeast to northwest. Magnetic Field Laboratory, Caltech, CC BY-ND

The EEG data, on the other hand, revealed that certain magnetic field rotations could trigger strong and reproducible brain responses. One EEG pattern known from existing research, called alpha-ERD (event-related desynchronization), typically shows up when a person suddenly detects and processes a sensory stimulus. The brains were “concerned” with the unexpected change in the magnetic field direction, and this triggered the alpha-wave reduction. That we saw such alpha-ERD patterns in response to simple magnetic rotations is powerful evidence for human magnetoreception.

Our participants’ brains only responded when the vertical component of the field was pointing downwards at about 60 degrees (while horizontally rotating), as it does naturally here in Pasadena, California. They did not respond to unnatural directions of the magnetic field – such as when it pointed upwards. We suggest the response is tuned to natural stimuli, reflecting a biological mechanism that has been shaped by natural selection.

Other researchers have shown that animals’ brains filter magnetic signals, only responding to those that are environmentally relevant. It makes sense to reject any magnetic signal that is too far away from the natural values because it most likely is from a magnetic anomaly - a lighting strike, or lodestone deposit in the ground, for example. One early report on birds showed that robins stop using the geomagnetic field if the strength is more than about 25 percent different from what they were used to. It’s possible this tendency might be why previous researchers had trouble identifying this magnetic sense – if they cranked up the strength of the magnetic field to “help” subjects detect it, they might have instead ensured that subjects’ brains ignored it.

Moreover, our series of experiments show that the receptor mechanism – the biological magnetometer in human beings – is not electrical induction, and can tell north from south. This latter feature rules out completely the so-called “quantum compass” or “cryptochrome”mechanism which is popular these days in the animal literature on magnetoreception. Our results are consistent only with functional magnetoreceptor cells based on the biological magnetite hypothesis. Note that a magnetite-based system can also explain all of the behavioral effects in birds that promoted the rise of the quantum compass hypothesis.

Brains register magnetic shifts, subconsciously

Our participants were all unaware of the magnetic field shifts and their brain responses. They felt that nothing had happened during the whole experiment – they’d just sat alone in dark silence for an hour. Underneath, though, their brains revealed a wide range of differences. Some brains showed almost no reaction, while other brains had alpha waves that shrank to half their normal size after a magnetic field shift.

It remains to be seen what these hidden reactions might mean for human behavioral capabilities. Do the weak and strong brain responses reflect some kind of individual differences in navigational ability? Can those with weaker brain responses benefit from some kind of training? Can those with strong brain responses be trained to actually feel the magnetic field? 

A human response to Earth-strength magnetic fields might seem surprising. But given the evidence for magnetic sensation in our animal ancestors, it might be more surprising if humans had completely lost every last piece of the system. Thus far, we’ve found evidence that people have working magnetic sensors sending signals to the brain – a previously unknown sensory ability in the subconscious human mind. The full extent of our magnetic inheritance remains to be discovered.

Stonehenge Study Shows That Sacred Areas Have Been Desecrated for a Long Time

Yesterday ScienceAdvances  reported  that people all over the British Isles brought pigs with them to Stonehenge to be slaughtered for a feast 2400-2800 BC several centuries before Stonehenge was built. 
Multi-isotope analysis reveals that feasts in the Stonehenge environs and across Wessex drew people and animals from throughout Britain

They discovered this through carbon dating of the many bones that evidently litter the grounds.

Abstract
The great henge complexes of southern Britain are iconic monuments of the third millennium BCE, representing great feats of engineering and labor mobilization that hosted feasting events on a previously unparalleled scale. The scale of movement and the catchments that the complexes served, however, have thus far eluded understanding. Presenting the largest five-isotope system archeological dataset (87Sr/86Sr, δ34S, δ18O, δ13C, and δ15N) yet fully published, we analyze 131 pigs, the prime feasting animals, from four Late Neolithic (approximately 2800 to 2400 BCE) complexes to explore the networks that the feasts served. Because archeological evidence excludes continental contact, sources are considered only in the context of the British Isles. This analysis reveals wide-ranging origins across Britain, with few pigs raised locally. This finding demonstrates great investment of effort in transporting pigs raised elsewhere over vast distances to supply feasts and evidences the very first phase of pan-British connectivity.

However, were these the same people that built Stonehenge?
I ask this because sacred space is often used for different purposes by subsequent civilizations. For example, paranormal investigators, archeologists doing dig are constantly desecrating sacred space through their activities.

Climate Change is Beginning to Thwart Tree/Vegetative Growth in America's West

Wildfires and Climate Change Push low-elevation forests across a critical climate threshold for tree Regeneration

A study released by the Academy of Science today finds that forests in California, Colorado, the northern rockies and the southwest has passed a critical threshold that will limit the regenerative ability of Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir. SAD.

Significance Per Report

Changes in climate and disturbance regimes may cause abrupt shifts in vegetation communities. Identifying climatic conditions that can limit tree regeneration is important for understanding when and where wildfires may catalyze such changes. This study quantified relationships between annual climate conditions and regeneration of Pinus ponderosa (ponderosa pine) and Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas-fir), two ecologically and economically important conifer species in low-elevation forests of western North America. We found that regeneration exhibited a threshold response to annual climate conditions and the forests we sampled crossed these climate thresholds in the past 20 years, resulting in fewer recruitment opportunities through time. In areas that have crossed climatic thresholds for regeneration, stand-replacing fires may result in abrupt ecosystem transitions to nonforest states.

Celebrate Women's History Month

Celebrate Women's History Month

March is Women’s History Month. Friday, March 8th is International Women’s Day. Take the time and visit one of the Finger Lakes’ many historic places for Women’s Rights. After all the first Women’s Rights Convention was held in the Finger Lakes at Seneca Falls on July 19, 1848.

Here are a few of the many places to visit to learn about and experience the spirit of the Women’s Rights Movement in our area. The triumvirate of Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton that led the Women’s Right’s Movement during its infancy all have their homes open for viewing. This list is far from a complete.

Auburn

NYS Equal Rights Heritage Center, 25 South Street, 315-258-9820. http://historyshometown.com/nys-equal-rights-heritage-center/.
Contains exhibits and information about Equal Rights in New York State.

Harriet Tubman National Historical Park, 180 South St. 315-252-2081. https://www.nps.gov/hart/index.htm.
Beloved by many Harriet Tubman was the most prolific conductor’s on the Underground Railroad who took pride in never running a train off of the tracks, or having lost a passenger. She worked with Anthony and Stanton for Women’s Rights after the Civil War.

Fayetteville

Matilda Joslyn Gage Home, 210 E Genesee St. 315-637-9511. http://www.matildajoslyngage.org
Gage was the more radical of the three leaders of the Women’s Right Movement (Anthony and Stanton were the other two.) Her gravestone is etched with her words; “There is a word sweeter than mother, home or heaven. That word is liberty.”

Rochester

National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House, 19 Madison Street. 585-235-6124 http://susanbanthonyhouse.org/visit-us/main.php
Anthony was the enduring force behind Women’s Rights, choosing the cause over marriage and children. In 1872 she famously voted and was subsequently arrested. One of her many quotes, “There is not a woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence.”

Fredrick Douglass Monument, Highland Park, 43 State St.
Besides being a fervent abolitionist Fredrick Douglass was an advocate for Women’s Rights and attended the first Women’s Rights Convention. Because his farm was located near the northeast end of Highland Park one must wonder if his monument may be located, on or near the property of his former home.

Seneca Falls

Women’s Rights National Historical Park, 136 Fall Street, (315) 568-0024. https://www.nps.gov/wori/index.htm
Has a museum and next door is the Wesleyan Chapel where the first Women’s Rights Convention was held.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton House, 32 Washington Street.
This is where what Stanton called “the center of the rebellion” was located.

National Women’s Hall of Fame, 76 Fall St, Seneca Falls, 315-568-8060. https://www.womenofthehall.org
Learn about the 266 women that they have honored for their work for Women’s Rights and inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Sherwood

Howland Stone Store Museum, located on Rte. 34b in Sherwood.  The formal address is 2956 Rte 34b, Aurora. 315-345-3210 or 315-364-8158. https://www.howlandstonestore.org
Slocum and Emily Howland were passionate abolitionists.  Emily and her niece, Isabel, were active in the local, state and national women’s suffrage movements.

Syracuse

Grace Episcopal Church, 819 Madison Street. http://gracesyracuse.org 
Congregant Betty Bone Schiess led the successful effort in 1974 to have women ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church in America. She became part of what is known as the “Philadelphia Eleven”. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1998.

Places you can see but not visit.

Newark—Fox Sister’s home1510 Hydesville Road. This is where the Spiritualist’s Movement, that would play a dominant role in the Women’s Movement was born in 1848. As Harvard Divinity School professor Anne Braude tells the “American Women’s Rights Movement drew its first breath in an atmosphere alive with rumors of angels”; and was “a central agent of feminism”. 

Waterloo—Hunt House, 401 East Main Street This is where Elizabeth Cady Stanton, abolitionist Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright, Maryann M’Clintock and hostess, Jane Hunt, met for tea and had a discussion that resulted in America's first Women's Rights Convention on July 13, 1848. House, 14 East Williams Street, On July 16, 1848 Mary Ann M'Clintock hosted a planning session for the First Women's Rights Convention along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and drafted the Declaration of Sentiments. It is to be open to public viewing in June.

NY & NH Stone Walls being used to measure Pole Shift

I came across this article today on how stone walls in New York and New Hamspshire were being used  to measure the movement of the magnetic pole over the last few centuries. You will find it below. It is a synopsis of a research project that worked with stone walls.

I often find stone walls aligned with certain energy formations in our Mother's geomagnetic field. I have never thought  of looking at them to see if they are part of the Earth Grid that aligns with the magnetic poles.

There are formations I have found that I believe are aligned with the magnetic field. But they are not too conducive to use to determine alignments with accuracy.

I DO HOWEVER HAVE A QUESTION THAT I WELCOME INPUT ON. GIVEN THE POLE SHIFT IF I FIND A WALL MAPPING OUT SOMETHING SUCH AS AN ENERGY LINES AND THEY ARE  STILL ALIGNED WITH THE ENERGY FORMATION--DOES THIS MEAN THAT THE ENERGY FORMATION DEALS WITH (POWERS, GIVES FORM TO ...ETC) THE PHYSICAL EARTH AND NOT THE MAGNETIC FIELD. 

BECAUSE IF THE STONE STRUCTURE WAS ORIGINALLY ALIGNED WITH THE MAGNETIC FIELD IT WOULD NO LONGER BE SO.

SECONDLY, IF THIS IS SO COULD  THE REASON I AM NOT FINDING AN ABUNDANCE OF ALIGNMENTS WITH THE MAGNETIC FIELD IS BECAUSE EONS AGO THE PEOPLE BUILDING STONE STRUCTURES KNEW, OR LEARNED, THAT THEY MOVE?

THIRD, THIS GETS DOWN TO WHY THE POLE SHIFTS. WHY?
I DON'T THINK ITS BECAUSE OF THE MOLTEH CORE

Research Article

Free Access

Measurements of Geomagnetic Declination (1685–1910) Using Land Surveys, LiDAR, and Stone Walls

John W. Delano

https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JB016655

Remains of an old stone wall marking the boundary of a long-abandoned farm near Grafton, New York.DELANO 2019

Stone Walls Hidden In The Woods Of New York And New Hampshire Reveal Earth's Magnetic Pole Shift

By David Bressan

The needle of a magnetic compass doesn't point exactly to the geographical poles, but to the magnetic poles. The angle of deviation is called magnetic declination, and its degree varies depending on where one stands on the globe. Earth's magnetic field varies depending on one's location, influenced by magnetic minerals found in Earth's crust, and also is not constant, but changes over time, probably a result of shifting currents of partially molten material in Earth's inner core. Nowadays the magnetic pole is wandering with a speed of 30 miles per year, following a straight path from the Canadian Arctic to Siberia.

To reconstruct the polar shifts in the last centuries scientists used historic ships’ logbooks, as sailors recorded the position of the magnetic poles during their travels, or magnetic minerals found in pottery, preserving the direction of the magnetic field when the clay was fired to give it a hard, durable form.

Geochemist John Delano from the State University of New York at Albany used an unusual source to reconstruct Earth's shifting magnetic field, inspired by an old map from 1790. He used old stone walls as well as old streets, built in Colonial America, to reconstruct the shift in Earth's magnetic poles over the last 300 years. Since his early childhood Delano, growing up in the country in New Hampshire, became fascinated by the remains of the walls found in the middle of the woods.  Observing a map from 1790 he realized that the stone walls form a grid pattern, marking the property boundaries of the many 100-acre farms founded here the late 17th and early 18th century. The walls were built using rocks deposited in the landscape of New York and New Hampshire by glaciers some 10,000 years ago. As the rocks make it hard to plow the fields, early colonists piled them up along the borders of their fields. Later the farmers used them to built stone walls and to mark the property boundaries. The area was finally abandoned as the young United States expanded west and better farmland was discovered.

LiDAR image, where pulsed laser light is used to map the ground, shows the grid of stone walls of the former farmland, now heavily forested, near Grafton, NY.DELANO 2019

Delano studied hundreds of 17th- and 19th-century surveys from the New York Sate archives and compared them to modern aerial images to find the stone walls in the former farmland, nowadays located in the middle of a forest. At first, he measured the still standing walls using GPS. However, as this method was quite time-consuming, he acquired modern land surveys based on LiDAR technology. LiDAR images, where the landscape is scanned using pulses of laser light and special software removes the forest cover, revealed the underlying ground surface, and Delano was able to map 745 miles of stone walls. He compared the course of the walls with respect to the modern magnetic pole to compass measurements done by early surveyors. The land surveyors used a map with a reference grid disposed according to the location of the magnetic pole at the time of the survey. The stone walls were mapped and referenced according to this grid and so the maps produced are of very high precision. The stone walls were mapped with just ±0.30 degrees of error in relation to the Earth's magnetic field. One of the most detailed surveys done in 1787 placed the stone walls about 4° west of the true geographical pole; modern measurements place the stone walls about 9° west, as the magnetic pole apparently moved away from the geographical pole. Using various surveys done over time in the studied areas Delano was able to reconstruct the polar shift from 1685 until 1910.

The movement of Earth's north magnetic pole. Credit: Wikipedia/Cavit CC BY 4.0WIKIPEDIA/CAVIT

The model based on Delano's survey confirms other reconstruction of Earth's magnetic pole shifts in the last 300 years. However, for the period from 1775 to 1810 there are small differences, suggesting that the former models need to be updated.

The Uninhabitable Earth:

A new book  The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future by David Wallace-Wells argues that climate change is much worse than currently forecast. 
For example, 50% of the carbon burning over the last 400 years occurred since Seinfeld premeired , 85% since the end of WWII. Worldwide food production will be halfed by the end of this century and we will have many more mouths to feed.



Author interviewed on Democracy Now