About
The Plausible Futures Newsletter is a news service for the future studies community edited by independent researcher Ole Peter Galaasen (CV) based in Norway. The initial idea behind Plausible Futures was to use the internet to collect and present news and analysis on different management topics.
Since 1996 the site has grown in complexity and the coverage today spans diverse science and humanistic topics. The objective of this website is to help organizations and individuals discern the news and background information available on the internet related to the future. The key topics of this site is new technology, management theory and long term large scale change.
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Plausible Futures Newsletter 
I’m writing because I’m trying to explore more options in attempting to get my cycles theory published. After working on the 150,000 word manuscript for three years, I’ve had a disheartening lack of interest from publishers and agents. In fact, this is what the only person (aside from my husband) to read the manuscript so far had to say:
Dear Catherine,
Many thanks for sending me the manuscript for The Tri-Generational Theory. While I find the subject fascinating and I think you have a very strong argument, I am going to pass on the project. Unfortunately, I just feel the writing is not at the commercial level required in order to compete in this crowded market. I wish you the best of luck with finding an agent.
All my best,
Abby Koons
(I believe her problem with it was that the book is basically a review of history, instead of one of those fun narrative non-fiction books that mix anecdotes with their own speculations.)
Any suggestions?
Yours,
Catherine Dong, Ph.D.
Somehow I feel unable to help you… tri-generational theory? Humans tend to preserve tradition better when living within the proximity of three generations. I have no clue as to where you would publish a book covering this universal phenomenon.
Carbon Dioxide Emissions Threaten An Ocean Calamity
Many of us who love the ocean are likely reading with alarm the news reports on the impact of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels that is creating ocean acidification and a survival crisis for our coral reefs. In most of those reports the emphasis is given to the threat to and ideas for saving the beautiful coral reefs by reducing emissions, our carbon footprint. While it is good to reduce the fossil fuel and other green house gas emissions we are all contributing, I beg to differ with the position that reducing our global carbon footprint will help save our ocean bathing beauties, the reefs. It’s not that I don’t fully support reducing our carbon footprint, I am rather more concerned about the more potent role of the deadly dose of anthropogenic (fossil) CO2 already in the air on its way to our surface ocean waters. Those hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 from the fossil fuel age burning, the bulk of which we’ve emitted in the past 75 years, is a massive carbon bomb already airborne and slowly but surely dissolving (exploding) into the surface ocean. By most accounts CO2 in the atmosphere takes on the order of 200 years to equilibrate with the surface ocean. As it dissolves in the surface ocean it makes the water more acidic. The pH (acidity) drop of 30% that we’ve been recording of recent is just the proverbial tip of the dry-iceberg.
As the surface ocean absorbs the rest of this deadly dose, regardless of whether we emit more which we surely will do, the acidification process already destined to occur is more than sufficient to change ocean ecology in far wider and disastrous fashion than merely scalding the bathing beauty reefs at the shore. In fact the devastating effects CO2 has on the ocean is not proceeding only via acidification, H2O+CO2=H2CO3 (carbonic acid), there is a secondary pathway wherein CO2 is enhancing the greeness of the planets dry lands. This added greenery is is a major benefit our high and rising CO2 delivers to droughty grasses who are losing less water via evaporation and transpiration as they take CO2 from the enriched air, are remaining green and growing bushier each spring, and as such are superior ground cover thus reducing topsoil loss in the wind. Tragically that dust in the wind is the major source of vital mineral micronutrients for the open ocean. Prophetically it seems, all we really are is dust in the wind.
So as our reef beauties cry out and dissolve like Dorothy’s wicked witch in our acidifying oceans, the acidification will certainly continue for at least another century, unabated even if we never emit another molecule of fossil CO2 into the air. At the same time as the oceans suffer this chemical shock treatment, akin to those we give our swimming pools, they will continue as well to lose their phyto-plankton and photosynthetic capacity to counter this onslaught. The loss of net primary productivity (ocean greeness), NPP, is reportedly 17% in the North Atlantic, 26% in the North Pacific, and 50% in the sub-tropical tropical oceans. Last spring a scientific report of a transect of the Eastern Pacific between French Polynesia and Chile reported it found “the clearest water on Earth. In the middle of the Pacific the waters were of such clarity that they even exceeded the clarity of the former record holding lakes which lie beneath a mile of ice on the Antarctic continent, in the cold and dark for a million years. Clear water is lifeless water and while it may be a scientific curiosity under the Antarctic icecap it is a horrifying finding in what should be an ocean murky with an abundance of life.
We can find the fundamental proof of the depth and breadth of this problem by considering it from the point of view of basic chemical thermodynamics. Indeed we have expended a hundred terrawatts or so burning fossil carbon to put that deadly dose of CO2 into our atmosphere and ocean. The present human energy use continues at about 12 terrawatts per year today. No trivial energy savings will serve to counter the certain first principals chemical effects of this burning of fossil carbon as it impacts the biggest and most sensitive ecosystem on this small blue planet, the oceans. We can still trust in what the Second Law of Thermodynamics teaches us in that one must balance chemical equations energetically. If we are to address a problem created by terrawatts of energy we must devote terrawatts of energy for the cure. In this case those curative terrawatts better be emission free or we are lost.
So where is there a source of emission free terrawatts of curative power we can devote to saving the oceans and help restore the balance of Nature? It is of course ONLY available from ocean photosynthesis and therein lies the course we must chart to restore our oceans. We must not simply imagine the damage we’ve prescribed can be ignored by staring only ahead and not behind. We must not only take actions that assume the present mortally wounded state of the oceans is something we can’t deal with. No mere conservation ethic or effort will suffice, we are far to far over the tipping point for that to work. We must replenish and restore ocean plant life and photosynthesis for there in the vast living ocean expanse the terrawatts of solar power, captured by living green plankton, can be found and used to compete with the H2O+CO2=H2CO3 reaction. There in lies our only hope if we act now to assist the ocean plants, phyto-plankton, to convert CO2+Sunlight in the ocean to life instead of death. Without replenished mineral micronutrients, without our determined efforts to administer the antidote, life in the oceans, and on this small blue planet, will surely not remain as it is. It will revert to the cyanobacterial; state the oceans were in 600 million years ago before green plants made abundant oxygen and higher life forms, including ourselves, evolved.
My hope in writing to you with this information is to inspire your curiosity and perhaps engagement in this critical issue facing our environment. If you have any questions I would be happy to provide what answers I can.
Planktos Science
San Francisco
http://www.planktos-science.com
Roboutique is a small and unique business that has created a social website to educate the public about robotics. Robotics is on the verge of exploding into an earth altering industry. The website will therefore focus on making an easy and simple transition into this new age of technology. Roboutique will educate the general public, including professionals in the industry, of the innovative technologies that benefit society and the unregulated technologies that may be hazardous to society. Both youths and adults will benefit from a new robotic culture. The mission is for the public to maximize their knowledge and develop the skills needed to confidently make the important decisions that will create the framework for the rules and regulations that will, in turn, govern robotics in the future.
I believe that if you decide to build a relationship with Roboutique we can complement each other, increase our benefits, maximize our business and assist in igniting the future of robotics. I ask that you consider sending me some company/marketing information and a list of your products with their technical specifications so I can create a file in our database about your company. I also urge you to sign up to our website (http://www.roboutique.com/register.php) where you can insert, update, and delete company information along with the products provided. If you find that you do not have the time to sign up at this moment, it would be of no inconvenience and my pleasure to register for you.
There are many reasons why you should register with our website, the main reason being free advertising and marketing. Roboutique’s website creates a networking portal where anyone can come to learn and collect information about robotics, their features, and their flaws. There is also an open forum where people can discuss everyday robotics and your expertise in robotics would be greatly appreciated.
I look forward to hearing from you.
I like the layout of your blog and I’m going to do the same thing for mine. Do you have any tips? Please PM ME on yahoo @ AmandaLovesYou702
Dear, ladies and gentlemen from “Plausible Futures”
I visited your homepage and thought that this grant would be interesting for you and also for the people participating in your network.
Prix Ars Electronica; “THE NEXT IDEA” 2010 – Call for Entries!
The 24. Prix Ars Electronica 2010 – “THE NEXT IDEA” – grant is now accepting submissions and we are again in search of interesting projects.
The aim of this grant is to honor new and extraordinarily promising ideas and to support the process of developing them further. This year, we seek to nurture projects that deal with three themes of key importance to humankind’s future: energy, mobility and access.
We kindly invite you to submit your latest projects!
If you know any further interesting works we’ll be happy to get your recommendation and please feel free to forward this to all interesting/ed parties!
For detailed information about the grant, please check: http://www.aec.at/prix_categories_en.php?cat=%5BTHE%20NEXT%20IDEA%5D%20ART%20AND%20TECHNOLOGY%20GRANT
For online submission: http://90.146.8.18/en/prix/registration/index.asp
Prix Ars Electronica – THE NEXT IDEA – 2010
Online Submission Deadline: March 17, 2010
Contact: nextidea@prixars.aec.at
With kind regards
Bernhard Böhm