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Comments by "" (@I_M_S-o4y) on "Gravitas: US tests nuclear missile after China's Taiwan drills" video.

As an example, consider an outcome of USA’s Freedom of Information Act. It revealed that the US National Office of Military Space Intelligence has developed a powerful artificial brain named ‘Sentient’, primarily for military use. [Ref.6]. Vladislav Tchakarov writes: “Unlike any other AIs in existence, it differs in the degree of independence. Usually the algorithm works with the loaded information, but Sentient can even direct satellites to get images of the objects it needs. In fact, it can be called an artificial brain”.
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No bows and arrows, no spears, no specialized weapons of any sort can be found in the archaeological record from those early times: the birds and many other large animals were so docile that people simply walked up and clubbed them to death with a stick or broke their necks.
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“[T]here is concern among some scientific groups that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible and little could be done to correct the situation in the short term,” a 1982 internal briefing for Exxon’s management noted.
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But, as inevitably happens to cultures who think they can defy nature, the times of moa for the Māori came to an end. Their moa feast lasted for three to four hundred years but came to an abrupt end with the death of the last moa bird and thus the final and total extinction of all twelve Moa species.
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While it is important to physically be present to impart such information, another front in the war on reversing climate degradation are the posters, signs and stickers that can be found across the city reminding everyone of what looms in our collective future should such warnings fail to exact real and significant action on everyone’s part to save our world as we know it.
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Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to reach New Zealand and encounter the Māori people, just weeks after he had mapped nearby Tasmania. On December 16, 1642, he wrote in his journal about his one and only encounter with the Māori.
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We humans live on a planet which we have named Earth which, along with several other planets each of which we have named, revolves around a star which we have named Sun – all with different names in different cultures. More recently, we have recognized life on Earth ranging from micro-organisms to elephants and whales, and understand that in physical size, we are somewhere in between.
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Even today, the most intelligent members of Sapiens – like say, members of Mensa International – cannot even peruse the enormous volume of knowledge being developed within and between multiple disciplines, leave alone study, understand and remember it for intelligent application.
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We knew for decades what harnessing a hundred million years of sunlight stored in the form of coal and petroleum would do to the climate. As early as the 1930s British engineer Guy Stewart Callendar suggested that increased CO2 was warming the planet. In the late 1970s into the 1980s, scientists at companies such as Exxon and Shell determined that the burning of fossil fuels was contributing to rising global temperature.
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Food was everywhere for the taking, particularly a large flightless family of birds called the moa (similar to ostriches). There were so many of the birds, and they were so easily approached, that the archeological record shows that during the first few hundred years of occupation the islanders didn’t even need weapons.
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The day when AI can be an autonomous entity which independently makes its decisions and acts accordingly, and controls other AI entities and robots to perform specific tasks, may not be in the distant future. Such an AI entity would be able to independently acquire or access data, and use it to teach itself varied subjects, including comprehension of abstract ideas.
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Around AD 1400—roughly four hundred years after their initial colonization of New Zealand—the Māori people began building fortresses and constructing tools for organized warfare. The forts, called pas in the Māori language, proliferated across the island.
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Meanwhile, as environmentalists have been messing around with micro fixes, the global Right has instituted insurgency and has achieved system change that’s tearing down democracy, tearing down equality before the law, tearing down basic rights, human rights, regulations, and taxes, ripping down everything, and changing the system to suit billionaires, oligarchs, and predatory corporations. They have proven that it’s possible to achieve system change. They’ve done it!
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We are a species which has promoted itself to the top of the evolutionary ladder of life, among the myriad life-forms on Earth, and claim uniqueness and primacy of intelligence. In an amazing act of self-certification, we have named ourselves as Homo Sapiens (Latin for ”wise man”). In most cultures, Man is believed to be at the apex of creation in the universe. The question today is whether humans are too ‘smart’ for their own good.
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Sapiens stand near the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century with amazing scientific and technological capabilites, but without matching social skills. The effect of this sapient (Meaning: wise, or attempting to appear wise) species on the global environment and ecology – of which it is a part, not the master – increases with every new discovery, invention or development.
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Many countries including India, have prepared an action plan on climate change (APCC), for adaptation and mitigation measures. These are essentially reactive to on-going and forthcoming situations and conditions, and do not address the fundamental causes of GW-CC. If fundamental causes are dealt with urgently and diligently, the rate at which GW-CC impacts societies and nations, can be reduced, and make biological and social adaptation and mitigation measures effective and meaningful.
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3D printing is a manufacturing technique of building a solid object by computer-controlled process of depositing/ joining material according to a 3D computer model. At present it pertains to inert objects. As techniques and processes improve, and AI gets integrated into systems and processes, mass manufacture of parts, components and sub-assemblies required for assembling any end product, will be possible without human intervention. Already, robots are independently assembling automobiles, etc., upto the roll-out of the end product. [Note 1].
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For most of the Second Millennium CE onwards, humans in most societies have viewed the world around them as human-centric. This assumed “superiority” of humans over other forms of life and over all inert matter, puts Sapiens on a self-created pedestal as the acme of evolved life on the planet.
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With its new title, the bill now, besides climate change legislation, includes other provisions such as healthcare, a new 15% minimum corporate tax, more funding for the IRS and a deficit reduction provision. In its latest iteration, even Joe Manchin (D-WV) agreed to sign on after he received some climate unfriendly provisions that he negotiated for in exchange for his support. One last holdout however is Krysten Sinema (D-AZ) who has yet to be convinced to sign on based on her interest in seeing changes more to her liking.
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The risk is that a loss of plankton brings in its wake a collapse of the ocean food chain. According to Dr. Howard Dryden of GOES, a tipping point could arrive within 25 years unless direct action is taken on toxins from plastics, chemicals, and farm fertilizers. Still, a big issue is temperatures goosed up by inordinate climate change/global warming as a result of excessive greenhouse gases emitted by humans as well as CO2’s hugely negative impact on ocean acidification.
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Starting in the 20th Century, there has been a concerted move to “transform our world”, the possessive pronoun perhaps indicating hubris. Initiated by world leaders and the economic upper crust of societies worldwide, this move to “transform” is based upon ideas discussed at the World Economic Forum, which meets annually at Davos. The WEF prepared Millennial Development Goals (MDGs) for 2000-2015, and later Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2015-2030, all with action plans. These transformative measures were designed for large-scale social and economic reform and change, without disturbing political power structures.
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As an aside, it is tempting to shift track into the Vedantic philosophy of consciousness and being, but that would be an uncalled-for digression in the current context, and can be discussed separately.
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The unintended transformation could hasten creation of an AI-dominated “deep state” [Ref.9], leading to dystopian surveillance regimes. [Ref.10]. Judging from recent reports of several large countries worldwide, perhaps this process is already underway.
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Of course, nobody knows for certain whether the horrendous falloff is a result of migration north because of too warm of waters or decimation by toxins such as plastics, chemicals, and farm pesticides/fertilizers. However, it’s likely a combination of factors, which essentially doubles the trouble.
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However, this halcyon era is coming to an end because of the climate crisis, provoked by 60 years of senior executives in the fossil fuel industry lying to us and buying off politicians while making trillions pouring their poisons into our atmosphere.
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Along the coast, Māori people hunted the three-ton elephant seal to extinction within those first four hundred years, exterminated the half-ton sea lion (Phocartos hookeri), and from all but the most remote regions wiped out the three-hundred-pound New Zealand fur seal (Arctocephalus forsteri).
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Evidences of GW-CC occurring and gaining momentum are reported in the international and national media almost on a daily basis, but appear to leave global and national leadership unmoved. Most world leaders, insulated and self-imprisoned behind security screens in comfortable working and living spaces, are mainly focussed on pelf and gaining or retaining power, out of contact with harsh realities affecting people. Their individual or collective intellectual uptake does not appear to include people’s welfare or species survival. Public protests concerning GW-CC are ignored and neglected, or brutally suppressed in medieval monarch style.
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Undeniably, scaling down industrialization will cause economic distress to large numbers of people, due to denial of products and services, and job losses. But statistics show that even larger numbers of people – reportedly around 70% of 7.9-billions – have been doing without these same goods, products and services, and remain in endemic distress. While the distress issue is relevant and immediate, the species-survival issue is no less relevant, but it is arguably more important. Further, as the effects of GW-CC discussed above begin to impact entire nations and populations, social distress and conflicts will intensify and amplify across all social and economic classes, and drive societies to implosion and self-annihilation.
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The Anthropocene Age – the age of humans, which has caused extinctions of plant and animal species and the pollution of the soil, air and oceans – is accelerating. Sea levels are rising three times faster than predicted. The arctic ice is vanishing at rates that were unforeseen. Even if we stop carbon emissions today – we have already reached 419 parts per million – carbon dioxide concentrations will continue to climb to as high as 550 ppm because of heat trapped in the oceans. Global temperatures, even in the most optimistic of scenarios, will rise for at least another century. This assumes we confront this crisis. The earth is becoming inhospitable to most life.
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The relatively new subject of Data Science is an IT-based inter-disciplinary convergence of theories, techniques and methods to model real-life phenomena, for knowledge-creation using data bases or large data sets. Data Science is about acquiring, storing, handling and processing “big data”. Recognition of its fundamental value may have prompted the quip, “Data is the new oil”. Data Science may be used for strategic decision-making in fields as diverse as military, intelligence, politics, business, commerce, communications, science, etc.
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Development of SciTech and applying it to industrial production processes calls for application of scientific methods for management of STEM. Thus, adding the ‘M’ of management to coin ‘STEMM’ may be appropriate.
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The increasing scale and growth-rate of industrialization, are both linked with the global mindset of “economic growth”, which is a pernicious economic ideology spanning across different political ideologies. This is re-inforced by the corporate-led World Economic Forum at Davos, which provides the annual booster-dose of this ideology to the world’s political-economic leaders.
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As their populations grew, the Māori killed the moa in huge numbers: in the Otago District, an ancient killing field was found at Waitaki containing more than ninety thousand moa skeletons. The bones suggest that the birds were clubbed or their necks were wrung.
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With the advent of digital information technology, the volume of knowledge is growing at an exponential rate. In 2019 it was assessed that the body of human knowledge was doubling every 12-months. The growth of knowledge is linked closely with the volumes of data acquired or accessed, stored and processed, and in turn is connected to improved, and still improving, low-energy hardware and software. It is anticipated that the body of human knowledge will double perhaps every 12-hours in the not-distant future. [Ref.7].
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This is a basic law of nature. The insect-eating bird population around us, for example, is a fraction today of what it was 20 years ago because its food—the insect population—has been decimated by pesticides and loss of habitat (their food source), over the past few decades.
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However, SciTech is not essential to create a subaltern class. Although Constitutionally barred, a subaltern class of the “lowest” caste and even a caste-less population beneath this “lowest” caste, exists in the ages-old multi-tiered caste hierarchy.
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In geologically very recent times, among all living beings, Man has learned to influence, modify and change his environment through agriculture and industry, and his capability to harness energy sources and materials, and create new materials. As a species, 7.9-billion humans are the most influential and dominant form of life on Earth.
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At the bottom of the food web phytoplankton generically serves as the most significant resource of marine life simply because nothing else eats if phytoplankton doesn’t exist. Moreover, phytoplankton performs photosynthesis, converting sunrays to energy, absorbs CO2, and serves as a major source, producing oxygen for the biosphere.
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It’s a disturbing discovery, but first a look at the marine food web, starting with the lowest organisms: (1) phytoplankton – plant-like plankton: green algae, diatoms, and dinoflagellates eaten by (2) zooplankton – microorganisms: crustaceans, rotifers, insect larvae and mites eaten by (3) small fish: anchovies, sardines, shrimp, squid, krill eaten by (4) bigger fish: sturgeon, sunfish, sharks, manta rays eaten by (5) mammals: seals, dolphins, polar bears, and last but certainly not least, humans at an increasingly wobbly end of the food chain.
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Information overload is a problem for Sapiens. However, that may not be a serious problem to AI entities (like an upgraded ‘Sentient’), which would be a part of Roboticus. It is not difficult to conceive of a future when AI entities of Roboticus could compete with its progenitor Sapiens, and even pose an existential challenge to Sapiens.
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Humans are divided within and between societies on the bases of ethnicity, language, caste, religion and gender. Pre-historically, historically and even today, this has been cause for conflicts and wars, and mindless oppression, subjugation and slaughter, often based upon categorization of “superior” and “inferior”.
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One such individual was seen outside the entrance to the Dirksen Senate Building holding several homemade climate crisis signs that he changed periodically. His objective in being there was to intercept staff members on their way to work with his informative signs hoping they in turn would relate the messages to their respective senators. One poignant sign among the many on offer called upon the “Young Senate Staffers” reminding them of the generation climate crisis they face and for them to consider it as a meaningful if not imperative personal challenge.
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Teams of scientists study plankton and keep track of changes at the base of the food chain. Their results are reported to various governmental agencies that hopefully take remedial action if things are going sideways. But, umm… well, onward with the story.
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Thus, in the physical-psychological-social sense, this effectively re-engineered Sapiens a few generations in the future may be as different from the present Sapiens, as the present Sapiens is from its pre-historic Sapiens ancestors.
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Which brings forth the heartbreaking reality that CO2 emissions are nearly guaranteed to keep on increasing at the current rate of 10 times more than the paleoclimate record over the past 66 million years. Umm, 10xs faster! And 66 million years left in the dust.
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The islanders then began eating other local animals, and in short order they exterminated or brought to the brink of extinction the huia, takahe, and kakapo, all birds ranging from the size of modern chickens down to the size of pigeons.
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From a sociological viewpoint, this will result in some changes in Sapiens societies. One, it will reduce direct and indirect human-to-human interactions, which is already happening with mobile phones, social media, banking, travel, hotels, tele-marketing, merchandise-delivery by drones, etc). Sapiens, supposedly a social animal, will lose inter-personal skills, and alter the psychological make-up of successive generations. This may be mostly among the economic upper-crust of Sapiens societies. Two, it will create a section of society which is physically helpless for certain routine but essential jobs/functions, even if they have the desire to perform them. There will be resultant change in the physique of successive generations of Sapiens. This also may be mostly among the economic upper-crust of Sapiens societies. Three, AI-enabled untargeted, intrusive surveillance over entire populations will introduce an element of pervasive fear and a sense of subordination to a remote, unquestionable authority. This will destroy individual creativity from an early age, affecting every individual psychologically, to become obedient and supine under any or all circumstances. A society comprised of such Sapiens would be grist to the mill of authoritarian social-political leaders in nexus with corporate owners of surveillance systems.
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This abundance of food led to a golden age of peaceful human population expansion on New Zealand. The few dozen initial settlers became hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, all feasting on the huge moa birds.
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Yesterday’s science fiction is today’s reality and tomorrow’s common practice. The world of tomorrow may consist of different kinds of humans (Sapiens), and humanoid and machine robots (Roboticus), with populations under the influence and control of AI. We are transiting into times with a planet and a world which are transforming uncontrollably and unpredictably in multiple ways. The direction of change is towards using SciTech to centralize social, economic and political power.
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In present times, STEM is used primarily to improve competitiveness in science and technology development, with an unstated emphasis on commercial profit. Although not formally acknowledged, the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) are accorded status secondary to STEM.
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The principal characteristic of this concept of economic growth is that it is designed to be perpetual, unending, and consumptive. Such economic growth consumes its own environmental/ecological resource base, like a cancer.
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In the new technological society which Sapiens is creating, it is imperative that we need to examine the evidence at hand and ask ourselves three questions, namely: (1) Has Sapiens opened a SciTech Pandora’s Box? (2) Could Sapiens’ SciTech capability empower Roboticus with superior SciTech capability to control, even subjugate Sapiens? and (3) Is Sapiens on a self-destructive path because of its SciTech capability?
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However, those who seek to transform “our” world fail to understand that the relentless march of SciTech is willy-nilly transforming the world in unintended ways. To quote Aroon Raman [Ref.8], “The world ‘is’. But humankind does not accept this. We seek to mould the world to our desires. The result is violence against the world, which is also a form of violence against ourselves”. Will the out-of-control advancement of SciTech cause violence against ourselves?
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Turning to fish, the Māori soon endangered even the ubiquitous snappers, as the archeological record shows the fish skeletons and the hooks used to catch them declined in size rapidly over a hundred-year period following the extinction of the moa.
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“Half of humanity is in the danger zone, from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires,” U.N Secretary General António Guterres told ministers from 40 countries meeting to discuss the climate crisis on July 18. “No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction.”
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The pending massive climate legislation to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions 40 percent by 2030 as outlined by President Biden is still being held hostage in the Senate. The $369 billion package that is thicker than a New York phonebook contains 725 pages of text.
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Humans, being a part of and dependent upon Earth’s environment and ecology, are biologically and sociologically subject to changes caused by GW-CC. Geo-physical situations and conditions that GW-CC are reliably expected to cause, are:
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It is not as if we were not warned. It is not as if we lacked scientific evidence. It is not as if we could not see the steady ecological degeneration and species extinction. And yet, we did not act. The result will be mass death with victims dwarfing the murderous rampages of fascism, Stalinism and Mao Zedong’s China combined. The desperate response is to burn more coal, especially with the soaring cost of natural gas and oil, and extend the life of nuclear power plants to sustain the economy and produce cool air. It is a self-defeating response. Joe Biden has approved more new oil drilling permits than Donald Trump. Once the power outages begin, as in India, the heat waves will exact a grim toll.
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Preliminary evidence suggests, in addition to human influenced chemicals, etc., for the first time, microscopic plankton sea creatures are negatively reacting to warming ocean water in a profound manner. In part, the issue is the change of water temperature conditions required to support certain species life cycles. It appears that global warming’s impact is displacing them northward as the equatorial waters turn too warm. This shift northward by plankton may be okay for the short-term but more ocean warming will become extremely problematic as plankton essentially run out of enough cooler water space to migrate without overcrowding its own kind in jumbled clumps of plankton crowding onto and battling over the same space. This can become toxic in many respects.
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Like any well-made sausage, the bill includes a myriad of bits and pieces of other components. If passed as presently reformed, it would be the largest appropriation for climate funding in our history. But unless it gets the required number of sponsors to vote for it, it won’t pass. The new Build Back Better reconciliation bill is now retitled the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
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Industrialization is organized large-scale manufacture/production of goods and services. Societies manufacture/produce or exchange goods within and between themselves. Societies also produce facilities/conveniences for themselves and other societies, in the form of services such as health-care, education, civic services, transportation, etc.
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Whether or not this is the end-game, if Sapiens is to steer away from possible take-over by Roboticus, we need a “road map”. This would be for world’s political and thought leaders to understand that they cannot “transform our world” using the current failed paradigm of competition-dominance-control. This failed paradigm should be replaced by a new paradigm of of cooperation-understanding-sharing within and between societies. This should encourage people to seek and secure justice, liberty and equality along with democratic rights. This is surely a tall order, but hope is ever-present in every sane mind that it is doable in the best interest of 7.8-billion Sapiens alive today, and their progeny.
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Starting with the industrial revolution which enabled production of goods – and later services – on an unprecedented scale and rate, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have been at the core of discoveries and inventions. These goods have provided economic or commercial advantage to the developer and producer, and often been used for military or political advantage. Over the decades, the focus of STEM has shifted from being human-benefit-centric to becoming the driver of industry primarily for economic growth and financial profit through trade and commerce.
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AI combines cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary SciTech, and will be some combination of STEMM and HASS; that is, a convergence of the hard and soft sciences. With intensive capital investment, AI will possess broad-spectrum applicability, enabling deep socio-political penetration.
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It is not difficult to envisage a situation when Roboticus uses the AI resources and their own capabilities of asexual, large-scale self-replication to over-ride, even usurp, the power and authority of the minuscule numbers of superior Sapiens who control them, both in terms of numbers – with the sperm count among the ruling Sapiens males declining [Ref.3] – and physical-mental-intellectual capability. The subaltern Sapiens populations would become the “prize” for the Roboticus take-over. But even before this contest, a conflict of controlling interests between Sapiens and Roboticus could arise.
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Use and consumption of the products of industrialization create further demand, which boosts the activity of these industrial subsystems, in cyclically increasing “loops” of consuming primary natural resources and generating waste.
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IPCC Reports indicate that GW-CC continues to cause changes in the environment and ecosystems, at a rate to which biological systems may not be able to adapt, to survive. Thus, all life on the planet will be impacted, and especially human societies, because they are complex systems. IPCC recommends that nations and societies across the globe need to urgently plan to mitigate the harmful effects of GW-CC, and adapt to its inevitable effects.
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The huge strides in science and technology over the last century, have caused galloping industrialization. The processes, products, services and facilities due to industrialization, which are available to human populations, have affected the lives and life-styles of almost all humans – although rather unequally – in both beneficial and harmful ways.
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This should not shock us when it happens all around us and millions are starving and homeless, although it almost certainly will because most of the human race has lived for so long within the food abundance created by the widespread use of fossil fuels starting in the 19th century.
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The world today is on the verge of a major food emergency, provoked in part by Russia’s attack on Ukraine but more broadly by the damage heat from global warming is doing to crops worldwide. This is both a crisis and an opportunity.
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Entire populations are dumbed-down and public opinion manipulated to carry out the designs of the controllers, who profess to know what is correct, desirable and good for Sapiens society. Regardless of the socio-economic level of such people, they form the beginnings of a subaltern class.
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Industrialization is based upon developing, advancing and employing science and technology to promote the ideology of economic growth. It is driven by and also drives the complex system of the oil/energy industry, the banking-finance sector, the extractive mining/quarrying industry, the manufacturing/production industry, the agriculture industry, etc. These are the socio-economic systems of every national economy.
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Sapiens have grown into the dominant species on the planet, with global influence. Starting perhaps with fire and the wheel in pre-historic times, Sapiens has creatively envisioned and constructed devices and machines which have multiplied individual and group power exponentially. For example, in just one Century (the 20th Century), humans invented the airplane and landed a human on the moon, even while transiting from logarithmic tables for rapid calculation to parallel-processing super computers in the same period, these and many other inventions and discoveries going together.
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Modern industrialized or industrializing societies are complex entities characterized by urbanization, industrial development, social stratification, some form of government, and refined communication systems. Within these “civilized” societies, the distribution of social, economic and political power is skewed, with power concentrated in relatively few hands. Modern industrial civilization designed by humans themselves, attempts to control nature, including human beings. Acquisition and consolidation of power and authority for control and dominance is the name of the game.
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The profits from fossil fuels, and the lifestyle the burning of fossil fuels afforded to the privileged on the planet, overroad a rational response. The failure is homicidal.
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Extremely rapid developments in AI are leading to fundamental changes in the way in which a large proportion of Sapiens live. Algorithms which are the core of AI, can already detect Parkinson’s disease and cancer, although this is expensive and therefore available only to a socio-economically privileged minority, when seen in the context of 7.8-billion Sapiens on the planet. Therefore increased longevity and improved physical and mental functionality for Sapiens individuals will be available only to the superior Sapiens.
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However, UN Secretary-General António Guterres holds out hope, that “… the climate emergency is a race we are losing, but it is a race we can win”. Therefore, societies and nations across the globe, will need to organize and adapt for individual, social-civilizational and species survival.
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The time for action has already passed us and we have a great deal of catching up to do but it’s never too late to being trying to make a difference, individually and collectively to save our world for ourselves and future generations.
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As I wrote in Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture, eight hundred years ago a group of Melanesians sailed to the islands they called Aotearoa and we now call New Zealand. When they first arrived, around the year AD 1200, humans had never before inhabited that island paradise.
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Questioning authority becomes defiance of authority, so people take the easier path of acquiescence or supine acceptance of authoritarian coercion or fiat. They easily and unquestioningly submit to technological biological/genetic manipulation, and would even possibly further the policies and purposes of the controllers, by enforcing it on others who may not be so pliable. Even presently available science & technology (SciTech) makes eugenics technologically possible by differentially enabling or disabling different sections of people selectively, to create subaltern Sapiens societies.
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AI capability is developing very rapidly, and a recent study shows that “AI can learn to identify vulnerabilities in human habits and behaviours and use them to influence human decision-making”. [Ref.5] Put another way, AI can influence and modify human behaviour. This idea when extended implies that as AI’s capability develops, an AI entity (Roboticus) can insidiously influence, even train, Sapiens on how and what to think.
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The easily killed large animals all exterminated, the Māori turned to what were considered famine foods by their seafaring ancestors: roots, tubers, frogs, ferns, rats, and small birds. Along with this change in their diet came a dramatic shift in Māori culture.
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‘Sentient’ is cognitive since it can perceive what it possesses and what it does not. It has the capability to feel a need for something which it does not possess – that is, it has ‘desires’. In a sense, ‘Sentient’ may be said to be both cognitive and conscious – a living, sentient, perhaps even self-aware being. The given name ‘Sentient’ is surely not arbitrary, and its development for military use is ominous when we consider a Roboticus population of AI entities with Sapiens qualities.
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Zach Tratar [Ref.1] writes; “A mass hijacking of our minds is currently underway. Perhaps you’ve felt it for a while now. Underlying facts seem increasingly rare, “the truth” is debated back and forth without progress, and people’s behaviors continuously bend towards the irrational“.
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Rapid advancements in science and technology have increasingly intensified and magnified the effects of industrialization. Today, the large-scale negative effects of industrialization over many decades, are dwarfing the benefits.
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The measures needed to be taken for adaptation to forthcoming GW-CC situations and conditions, and for mitigating GW-CC effects are well argued. Societies and nations ignore them at unacceptable cost to future generations.
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Pick any species and the law of nature is the same: more food produces population growth while less food shrinks population (often in brutal ways). It’s why areas like desert and scrub that produce little food were, over the past millennia, lightly populated, whereas areas rich with food like forests and seacoasts carried large human populations.
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Thus, the robot population can grow enormously in numbers, and take over several functions which are done by Sapiens. While jobs like sewerage cleaning and garbage handling should most certainly be done only by robots – dangerous/toxic materials-handling is already being done by robots – the exponential growth of robot populations will create machine-dependency of Sapiens, albeit among the economically better-off sections in society.
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A dozen different species of New Zealand moa birds, weighing from under fifty to over five hundred pounds each, provided meat and eggs well in excess of the food needs of the initial Melanesian explorers.
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Information Technology (IT) has grown exponentially in terms of hardware, software and systems capabilities, and provides enormous computational and data handling capability. The fields of biotechnology (BT) and nanotechnology and many fields of natural science have expanded mostly based on IT capability.
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Over a few generations, using AI and SciTech-enabled genetic modification (GM), these humans could self-engineer their own DNA so as to acquire physical and mental capabilities far superior to the vast majority of Sapiens populations. This superior class of Sapiens would be able to exercise hegemonic power over the vast majority of the subaltern population.
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All of which brings to mind if, when, and how there’s any chance whatsoever of globally unified remedial policies on a worldwide scale to prevent total collapse of marine life. Hmm! That’s asking for a lot, especially when nations of the world couldn’t even follow thru on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris ’15 climate agreement. That’s been a total failure. What then of the oceans?
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To pass the bill, every Senate Democrat must vote for it before it can be returned to the House for final approval. Without belaboring the subject, it is important to know that besides the usual backroom negotiations, there is a grassroots effort on the part of many independent individuals and activist groups urging senators to vote for passage.
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If “the race” against GW-CC is to be “won”, industrialization needs to be urgently and drastically scaled down and stopped. It is not about doing away with industry, but stopping industrialization. The economic-growth global model must be scrapped and less consumptive, locally-relevant, socio-economic models adopted. Without doing this, it amounts to trying to save the sinking ship of industrialized civilization, by merely wearing life-jackets of adaptation and mitigation, without attending to the cause of sinking.
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Earth’s climate and ecology may shift to a different level of dynamic stability, but that will take millennia. The rate of change of this shift is small when viewed on a geophysical time-scale. However, if viewed from the time-scale of Life on Earth it is rapid, and viewed from a Homo Sapiens time-scale, it is disastrous. GW-CC is not in the future. It is already happening, and we are in the midst of the transition.
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Some of the present capabilities of cutting-edge or emerging technologies are demonstrated as pilots, but not yet scaled up or fully implementable. Others are available at a cost, but most are secret (e.g., military-use technologies developed by USA’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)) or protected by patents or IPR for commercial or business purposes.
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There are three mathematical models for the future: a massive die-off of perhaps 70 percent of the human population and then an uneasy stabilization; extinction of humans and most other species; an immediate and radical reconfiguration of human society to protect the biosphere. This third scenario is dependent on an immediate halt to the production and consumption of fossil fuels, converting to a plant-based diet to end the animal agriculture industry – almost as large a contributor to greenhouse gasses as the fossil fuel industry – greening the deserts and restoring rainforests.
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As researchers develop more powerful algorithms, ‘Sentient’ or other similar AI entities can develop more independence and along with it, a sense of volition. Such an AI entity will purposively strive to satisfy its needs, wants and desires, and develop aspirations. It will transcend from simple decision-making to develop a sense of determination and initiative. It will possess a psyche and consciousness, like a member of the Sapiens species.
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While this is the largest moa boneyard, several other similar ancient sites have been discovered around New Zealand in the past few decades: as many as a million moa birds, representing hundreds of millions of pounds of meat, were killed by the early settlers, now known as the Māori (or “moa-eating”) people.
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According to David Johns, head of CPR: “Are we in a situation that requires mitigation as a matter of urgency? Yes, I would say so. If they carry on moving north and run out of water, if the seas become too warm, then we’ll lose a lot of those types of plankton that are critically important for fish species and marine mammals,” Ibid.
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On the other hand, an AI entity who is a member of Roboticus, suffers no biological death. If sub-systems malfunction or require upgrading, they can be replaced. In effect, the AI entity lives on “forever”, or at any rate, much longer than any individual member of Sapiens, or even several generations of Sapiens. More importantly, such an AI entity would continue to accumulate experience without the interruption with which Sapiens would have to contend.
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However, tribal societies on all continents (Adivasis in India) do not share this view. They live with bare feet planted firmly on earth, understand the inter-dependence of all forms of life, and know the true meaning of “enough” as they draw from nature even while giving back to nature. Today, tribal societies are depleting and vanishing, and with them, their knowledge systems and cultural heritage. Their natural wisdom has fallen victim to expansion of the know-all ‘civilized’ societies.
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The most talked-about “new” field based upon IT is Artificial Intelligence (AI). At present, AI mimics natural human intelligence especially in the areas of cognition, learning and problem-solving. Another path-breaking field is robotics, although this is not new or recent, combining computer science and engineering. Already robots which vacuum and mop floors, and AI-enabled robots which can remotely control other devices based on recognized voice commands, are available in the market.
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As with almost any technology, AI offers both positive (opportunities) and negative (threats) possibilities. The manner in which societies accept and implement AI, and changes within and between societies, will depend upon their inherent strengths and weaknesses.
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Over millennia, as humans learned to acquire and harness energy sources, they grew exponentially in numbers. The current global human population is 7.8-billion (U.N estimates, February 2021), up from under 2-billion in 1900, and 0.3-billion in 1000. Especially since the industrial revolution, for most societies, matter and life which is not human is considered as a resource, with the implicit assumption of their being “meant” for human benefit, and are therefore to be used and disposed off. This is the anthropocentric world view, which is the current ruling paradigm.
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The ruling class for decades denied the reality of the climate crisis or acknowledged the crisis and did nothing. We sleepwalked into catastrophe. Record heat waves. Monster droughts. Shifts in rainfall patterns. Declining crop yields. The melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers resulting in sea level rise. Flooding. Wildfires. Pandemics. The breakdown of supply chains. Mass migrations. Expanding deserts. The acidification of the oceans that extinguishes sea life, the food source for billions of people. Feedback loops will see one environmental catastrophe worsen another environmental catastrophe. The breakdown will be nonlinear. These are the harbingers of the future.
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Unless world leaders remove their economic-growth WEF-Davos blinkers and awaken to reality, UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ hope concerning the climate emergency will amount to nothing. It will be curtains for human civilization, perhaps even for humanity.
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AI’s present capability for facial recognition and emotion analysis, is already being deployed by some governments as part of public surveillance for security. [Ref.4]. This capability when developed further, would be available to an autonomous AI entity which has accumulated data on Sapiens individuals, for independent strategic decision-making. However, Sapiens leaders cannot reciprocally use this AI capability on humanoid (or droid) Roboticus, because their “facial features” are exact reproductions, displaying emotions which are part of the in-built algorithm.
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If the end product is a robot, an AI entity using robots can manufacture parts/components and assemble robots. That is, robots will manufacture robots from 3D printing to final assembly and roll-out, with an AI entity in control. This will make robots for multifarious repetitive functions affordable, bringing ease and convenience into Sapiens’ lives, and large profits to the corporate manufacturer.
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As SciTech advances, it would be relatively easy to biologically and socially transform Sapiens, along with – perhaps unintentionally – creating a parallel society populated by AI-actuated machine robots, sentient humanoid (android and gynoid) robots, with autonomous AI-entities in control. Mayet Ligad Yuhico [Ref.2] has coined the term Homo Roboticus for such entities possessing phenomenal learning and cognitive capabilities [Note 2].
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The so-called educated among Sapiens believes that the species is at the apex of the “evolutionary ladder”, having evolved from “lesser” species into becoming the best of God’s marvellous creations, with the divine right to use and control its environment for its own benefit. This belief fails to understand that Sapiens has co-evolved with other species, with inter-dependence.
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Clive Hamilton in his Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change describes a dark relief that comes from accepting that “catastrophic climate change is virtually certain.”
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It is no exaggeration to say that Sapiens global dominance has brought itself to an existential crossroads particularly because of global warming and climate change. But as importantly, Sapiens’ increasing dependence upon the machine-world it has created with its amazing creativity and industry, threatens its future in an existential sense.
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Social media is increasingly being used by interest groups to influence opinions and even mindsets. Misinformation, disinformation and false information, formerly psywar tools of intelligence agencies, are now being used for political purposes by shadowy actors. The world has moved into times in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal beliefs. Information, generalized as ‘data’, is being used to manipulate minds for commercial or political purposes, noting that the distinction between ‘commercial’ and ‘political’ is becoming increasingly blurred.
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Voting, lobbying, petitioning, donating to environmental lobby groups, divestment campaigns and protesting to force the global ruling class to address the climate catastrophe proved no more effective than scrofula victims’ superstitious appeals to Henry VIII to cure them with a royal touch. In 1900 the burning of fossil fuel – mostly coal – produced about 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year. That number had risen threefold by 1950. Today the level is 20 times higher than the 1900 figure. During the last 60 years the increase in CO2 was an estimated 100 times faster than what the earth experienced during the transition from the last ice age.
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There is no guarantee that the biological child of a Sapiens couple will inherit the (superior) physical and mental capabilities of either parent. Furthermore, when a parent dies, the information, knowledge and experience dies with him/her. Although all that can be stored in a computer system, Sapiens progeny needs to learn, understand and internalize it and gain experience with passage of time. The possibility of surgically embedding in the child’s brain, a low-energy micro-miniaturized system containing the knowledge cannot be ruled out. But even so, experience cannot be gained by this means. Biological death of any Sapiens individual will raise the identical problem.
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An entity mastering Data Science for strategic purposes would gain strategic advantage over another entity with lesser mastery. As discussed earlier, an autonomous AI entity could out-manoevre a human who uses AI as a tool, howsoever intelligent the human is. Thus, Roboticus could likely out-STEMM and out-strategize the superior, ruling-class Sapiens. And therein lies a challenge.
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Over the next two hundred years, the Māori’s war-bent culture achieved an uneasy stability. They had moved from population explosion in the face of huge food resources to near-famine conditions, then to farming sweet potatoes in the lowland valleys and building forts for standing armies.
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It doesn’t take too much awareness in today’s world with 24-hour news and internet access to realize that “once in a 1,000-year storms” are now occurring on a sometimes monthly basis. The increase of droughts, the rapidly melting of glaciers and the polar ice caps and heatwaves along with massive fires across the world are now occurring more frequently and with greater intensity to fully appreciate just what a dilemma we are all now facing.
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These situations and conditions will inevitably overlap and reinforce each other. As inevitably, this will trigger social-economic-political crises, and intensify conflicts centered upon human survival essentials, namely, food-water-habitat, within and between societies and nations. Today, humanity is in the midst of “climate emergency”, which transcends national borders. It is the defining crisis of our times.
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Here’s why CO2 is destined to continue choking the planet: Public announcements of oil and gas production plans guarantee excessive levels of greenhouse gas emissions for years ahead: World’s Biggest Fossil Fuel Firms Projected to Spend Almost a Trillion Dollars on New Oil and Gas Fields by 2030, Global Witness and Oil Change International, April 12, 2022. At the same time, both China and India have once again rediscovered affairs with coal.
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Social coercion and the rule of law will disintegrate. This is taking place in many parts of the global south. A ruthless security and surveillance apparatus, along with heavily militarized police, will turn industrial nations into climate fortresses to keep out refugees and prevent uprisings by an increasingly desperate public. The ruling oligarchs will retreat to protected compounds where they will have access to services and amenities, including food, water and medical care, denied to the rest of us.
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In addition to the above-referenced GOES survey in parts of the equatorial Atlantic, another research team Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey (“CPR”) of Plymouth, UK monitors plankton with vessels across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, up to 30 vessels generating 5,000 samples per year. CPR has been monitoring plankton in the North Atlantic for 70 years and reports results to governments in the UK, EU, and North America.
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