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  • From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Maintaining the standards of permaculture - important issues
  • Date: Fri, 4 May 2012 09:59:56 -0700

Thanks for this, Daniel. You point out nicely the difficulty of arguing facts
back and forth. Each side can come up with data, or at least (in examples 2
and 3/4) anecdotes to support their view, and it goes round and round
forever. For your European weathermen and women, I can show you the Arbor Day
Foundation map of US climate zones, also based on thousands of temperature
readings, that shows a very significant increase in temperatures, along with
horrific anecdotes like, ships can now sail in summer from the Atlantic to
the Pacific via the Arctic Ocean, which has never before been possible (and
all the lakes I used to ice skate on haven't frozen in decades). That's part
of why zombie arguments keep coming back. Facts and anecdotes rarely change
people's minds. Resonance does.

So what I do when to help make up my mind I am not an expert, like with
climate, is to assess the integrity and motivation of both sides, and logical
quality of their arguments. And in this case, the climate change advocates
and the population control advocates seem very superior. And in the virus
argument (where I am a bit of an expert) there is merit on both sides,
although anecdotes of people drinking cholera water don't carry much weight
for me. They are stories, and people make up and exaggerate stories all the
time. I want data (one of my favorites: the plural of "anecdote" is not
"data.") But I'm a big fan of Albrecht, weirdo that he was, and, to repeat,
totally buy that good soil and good health go together.

One difficulty with denying the germ theory is that is leaves so very, very
much unexplainable that is well explained by germ theory. For example,
between 1492 and 1750 somewhere between 50-90% of the North American
indigenous population died of smallpox, measles, chicken pox, and other viral
diseases from Europe, dead before many saw or heard of a European. This means
either that viruses do cause infections, or else nearly every native American
was in such poor health that they were susceptible. If the only way an
argument will work is by claiming that 90% of native Americans were in bad
health, I don't think you've got an argument. At that point it's both
circular (you have to be sick to get sick) and you've just defined everyone
as being in poor health, which becomes meaningless, and ruins the argument,
because then germs remain the cause of infection, since everyone, except for
Dr. Pettenkofer drinking his cholera, is in ill health.

It's also unfalsifiable: "only sick people get infections, and we decide what
"sick" means" (maybe the Indians were in poor spiritual health because they
foresaw a European takeover). So it's not science, any more than Creationism
is science, and just like Creationism, it seems to exist only to overthrow an
existing science without offering a meaningful explanation of its own other
than "soil creates health." But it doesn't explain disease. That's what
bothers me about it. If I ever see the idea stated coherently, in a
scientific manner, I'll be much more sympathetic to it.

And, LL: sorry your thread got hijacked; I tried to change the subject line
once, but it keeps coming back as this one.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On May 4, 2012, at 2:55 AM, Daniel Jager wrote:

> Dear everyone,
>
> We can safely assume that we have unburdened ourselves of at least one
> falsehood and found the "Light' of Permaculture; yet this does NOT
> automatically imply that we have liberated ourselves from the literally
> thousands of more Lies that fill our hearts and minds.
>
> Oystein's post has a lot of info that he summarized in perhaps too short a
> form that at first glance it does not warrant further attention. Yet some
> of the ideas he brings forward are sound. Very sound indeed. Here is a
> person who doesn't stop liberating himself from falsehoods, and found some
> more truths besides Permaculture that are very shocking. Obviously, even
> among Permaculture crowds, such info is a bit too much.
>
> It is kind of depressing to see the laden responses; not based on a
> discussion of the facts provided in the links by Oystein.
>
> Let me try and help clarify Oystein's comments / ideas a little further, in
> between the lines below.
>
>>
>>> 1. Humans are not in charge of the climate (so the
>> permaculture response
>>
>> While it is literally true that no one is in charge of the
>> climate, those words are a soundbite straight from
>> corporate-funded think tanks. Not being a climate scientist,
>> I must rely on experts here, and I tend to side with 99% of
>> the world's climate scientists rather than a handful of
>> oil-company mouthpieces making zombie statements that will
>> not die when disproved. Follow the money: the
>> anti-climate-change propagandists work for the carbon
>> industry.
>
> 1 - Climate scientists are dependent on their funding from grant
> foundations, etc. Who controls that money? Rotary, Rockefeller, CFR, etc,
> etc... aka The elite.
> Now, during my PhD, I saw how easily my own professor was writing grant
> proposals in which he HAD TO put SOMETHING about climate change, because
> the funding agencies wanted to hear it. So we studied CO2 emissions from
> these peatlands in Finland and Russia. After 6 years, guess what the
> conclusions were? Even during the driest and hottest years, with warm
> winters, the peatlands were still LARGE carbon sinks (i.e. they accumulate
> carbon by capturing CO2 into biomass). Of course, this project then died a
> quick death. Funding dried up. Surprise surprise.
> And during that time i had the wonderful opportunity to work with former
> Eastern German and Russian meteorologists. You know, those people who
> actually measure the weather, day to day, and not run some hot-shot
> supercomputer model. Some of them had worked for 40+ years, getting DAILY
> measurements. AND they ran the statistics on this material. Guess what.
> They flat out denied ANY warming trend, though they did acknowledge an
> moderate increase in rainfall and temperature variability and extremes (yet
> fluctuating still around the same averages). They said that this is due to
> landuse change (most notably deforestation) and hence the lowering of
> atmospheric water vapour content. Water, incidentally, is the substance
> with the largest specific heat capacity of almost ANY natural substance on
> the planet, and its loss increases temperature extremes, as well as
> rainfall variability. Any meteorologist and physicist will concur, though
> many "climate scientists" will
> not like to hear about this.
>
>>
>>> 2. Exponential human growth (overpopulation) is a myth.
>>
>>
>> The human population is doubling at decreasing intervals.
>> That is, by definition, exponential growth, so this
>> statement is mathematically ignorant. As for it being a
>> problem, population growth is now being sustained by fossil
>> fuel-based food. Maybe we'll find something else as oil runs
>> out, but we are already seeing huge declines in food yields
>> from overuse of soils (I did population genetics work for a
>> while; I recognize the signs of overpopulation.) Maybe
>> having one species use 40% of the Earth's annual production
>> is sustainable, but if population doubles again, so does
>> that number. Anyone who doesn't think human impact is a
>> problem should start drinking from the nearest river, and
>> see how long you live. I suggest a great video called
>> "Arithmetic, Population, and Energy" as a good look at what
>> population growth means.
>> http://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy_video1.html
>
> Only 1 argument for me on this one. The population PLUS modern
> technological living standards = disaster. Yet 7 billion people in 7
> million eco-villages around the globe plus a change in diet (no grain, no
> meat)? I foresee no problem!
>
>>
>> These last two are way off topic, but they are fun for me.
>>
>>> 3. Viruses, as infectious microorganisms, is a myth.
>>
>> Now we're in my field. I did immunology and genetics
>> research for 15 years. I have used viruses to cause
>> infections in otherwise healthy organisms. Their entire
>> genetic machinery is designed to infect; their genes have
>> been independently used to cause infections, and to do
>> everything needed to infect healthy organisms. They are
>> little miracles, cleverly designed to cause infection
>> because it they cannot reproduce without infecting a host;
>> it's their raison d'etre. Also, it's difficult to explain
>> how a killed virus can confer immunity against a live virus,
>> even in very unhealthy people, without viruses being a cause
>> of infection.
>>
>>> 4. Pasteur was wrong - an infection is always a
>> secondary illness; infections arise after tissue has been
>> damaged, by malnutrition or intoxication. (PR: enrich the
>> blood for good health, like you would enrich the soil for
>> good growth)
>>
>> People who say this have not read Pasteur. He was not
>> "wrong." He knew that otherwise healthy organisms throw off
>> infections much faster than sick ones. And I'd be careful
>> with statements that include the word "always."
>>
>> I suggest getting into the best shape possible and then
>> letting an Ebola-sick monkey spray blood on you, or stay in
>> a room dusted with with hanta-virus mouse turds. It may
>> change your mind about viruses.
>>
>> These arguments take advantage of the fact that most people
>> have not been taught to do critical thought, and get sucked
>> in by fallacious bits of sophistry that match their politics
>> and temperament, since they don't have the mental tools to
>> properly evaluate them. As Dick Cheney reportedly said, "you
>> can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are
>> the ones we're looking for." Like I say, I love to upset the
>> conventional wisdom, but promoting these dead-wrong, zombie
>> arguments can do real harm to real people.
>>
>> Now back to the important stuff.
>>
>> Toby
>> http://patternliteracy.com
>>
>
> I take these to issues together, since they are related.
>
> First some collected notes by Natural hygienist, Dr. Tilden.
>
> "Dr. Pettenkofer, professor of bacteriology, at the university of Vienna,
> reached the conclusion that germs do not cause "disease." One day, while
> instructing his class in the bacteriological laboratory, he startled his
> students by picking up a glass containing millions of living cholera
> bacilli and swallowed the entire contents before the astonished students.
> De Kruif says 'There were enough millions of wriggling comma germs in this
> tube to infect a regiment, but Pettenkofer only growled through his beard:
> 'Now let us see if I get cholera.' "
>
> "Mysteriously, nothing happened and the failure of the mad Pettenkofer to
> come down with cholera remains to this day an enigma without even the
> beginning of an explanation."
>
> Dr. Thomas Powell, who died a few years ago in California in his eightieth
> year, is thought to have taken more germs than any other man. Years ago he
> challenged his medical colleagues to produce a single "disease" in him by
> germ inoculation. For years many of the germ theorists did their best to
> silence this discordant note. Cholera germs, bubonic plague germs and germs
> of every description were innoculated into his body and fed to him in every
> kind of food. Again and again they scraped his throat raw and painted it
> with diphtheria germs. But in all these many efforts, not once did they
> succeed in producing a single "disease" in him.
>
> There are many such anecdotes to be found ALL over the natural hygiene
> literature AND also on the internet. Moreover, notably Dr. Weston Price
> (writing about humans) and Dr. Albrecht (writing about animals), showed
> conclusively on their own, that the SOIL (or body fed through the soil) is
> worth 80% of human health (perhaps 20% is reserved for one's outlook or
> spiritual state). The Soil and Health library, run byu Steve Solomon, is a
> very good source of info about the fallacy of the germ and virus theory.
>
> And it is not that Pasteur was wrong or right, it was just that Pasteur
> plagiarized Bechamps (a WELL documented fact, look it up), and that Pasteur
> on his death said: "I was wrong, the germ is nothing, the soil (i.e. state
> of the body) is everything!"
>
> Daniel Jager
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