How to get to the end of the world?

I’d like to think I’m not a doomsayer. But I wonder how many of us can look at Japan’s woes at the moment and not see the beginning of a domino effect that will have reverberations we haven’t even begun to think about in the coming months and years. And even if we had, it’s altogether possible we actually can’t begin to imagine the far-reaching results of this tragic trio of disasters.

Japan is the world’s third largest economy. That in itself is a major concern. A third of Japan has been shaken and blasted by water to a crumbling soggy pile of splinters.

This island nation that sits as a sentinel to Asia permeates our life in a way we’ve never stopped to think about overly much. After the second world war, when Japan had its military teeth pulled, the powers that were at the time made the utterly effective decision that if Japan couldn’t rule the world by force, it could do a damned good job of doing so in the commerce sector. Which, in the ensuing 60 years, is exactly what they have done to a degree no other nation can even begin to compare. There is not one area of our lives where we do not use something that has not been designed and built in Japan. From the myriad of cars to the tiny computer chips that run everything except our bodies these days, Japan has a role in it somewhere.

It has its fingers in many international pies and there’d be few countries out there that have not seen some kind of investment from Japan in one way or another.

So if we look at the three pronged attack it suffered earlier this month; the earthquake, the tidal wave and then the subsequent nuclear crisis – where to from here?

The doomsayers who talk about the end of the world in 2012 do make me laugh – there is as many tales of what that might mean in how that would be achieved, from natural disasters to Raelians, that it’s a bit like shopping at a gypsy fair – there’s a bottle of snake oil for everyone.

Yet… the thought occurs to me that we have become so utterly dependent on technology that in an instance like this, where a great big hole has been blasted in the middle of one the world’s leading nations in this vital industry, we could become highly unstable in terms of our current civilization – and the ‘end of the world’ as we know it, just may well be around the corner. Hard call, you think? Maybe not.

Where is the money coming from to rebuild Japan – and rebuild the niche it fills so completely? Insurers world-wide are already paying out very large sums of money from such disasters in the past decade as Hurricane Katrina, Aceh, Haiti, the Queensland floods and yes, even the 30 billion dollars worth round about here in Christchurch. Our finance minister said, before the Japan event, that we were needing financial help from the rest of the world. Fair call, we don’t, being the small nation we are, have the kind of money needed to rebuild the city to the degree the city fathers would like to see it happen.

Insurance isn’t a bottomless pit. There has to come a time whereby there is not enough money in the pot to continually pay for all the disasters and people cannot afford the premiums hurting insurance companies are imposing on them to cover those shortfalls. What happens then? How do the Japans and Christchurches of this world get rebuilt? We have a great credit crunch on – one can print money as often as one likes, but the more one does this, the less it means until you get to a point where the great unwashed realizes that it has no value whatsoever. That means banks go under, foreclosures can’t happen, trade and commerce suffer, unemployment is everywhere, government tax-based coffers can’t meet the national budgets in any way, shape or form, – and what do you have? You have a civilization balancing on the brink of destruction.

Is that where we are? Or the point we are coming to?

It seems to me the recipe for global derailment is already sitting on the workbench. What happens in the next few months is, in a large degree, likely to have a major impact of a type so devastating that I don’t believe we fully understand the potential ramifications. It is only going to take one more major disaster – and think about this: Australia provides much of the world’s sugar, wheat and grain requirements – all washed away this summer. Japan provides, as mentioned, far too many things to count them all – and we still won’t know whether or not there can be a recovery here after the atrocious triad of a week ago.

In the Middle East, the uprising and unrest is at unprecedented levels, largely thanks to the US’s perhaps unnecessary involvement which has created a wolf of war called democracy.

This is a sobering period of time we are entering into and I firmly believe that our politicians have to think very long and hard about how they are going to steer our isolated little rowboat through these troubled times.

There has to be a swing towards focusing on the internal economy, rather than the export one; has to be a plan for ensuring that no matter what, our small Pacific fruit bowl can survive and look after its 4.5 million inhabitants without the need for international consumer products that just may stop arriving.

It’s time, I believe, to start think about self preservation a little bit more than we have been.

Weathering the storm - Ken Ring

Poor Ken Ring. If ever there was a leaf at the mercy of a sea of public opinion, then this weather man who predicts earthquakes has to feel like he’s been sailing on it with land nowhere in sight. He’s been doing this a long time – farmers everywhere have used him, there’s a number of fishing men and women who swear by his forecasts.

This weatherman and astrologer predicted the first Christchurch earthquake, using his long term experience. In fact, in 2006, TV3’s Nightline got him on board to predict a series of earthquakes – and he provided.

Last year, he said September 4. He got it right. Next, he said, there would be a three day window in February between the 19-21. He was a day out. The big quake struck on February 22.

The interesting thing about this was that just the day before, seismologists had, using their models, said that there was a less than four percent chance that Christchurch would be struck by another big quake. Just the day before. And how very wrong they were.

It’s probably no wonder then, that the vitriol coming from our resident university-credentialed experts has seen Ken Ring learn to swim in it very quickly.

I was astounded at this – if one reads about what Ring thinks and the way he presents it, you can see there is food for thought. He seems to think there is a great correlation between tides, solar activity, the moon – and earthquakes. This, according to our seismologists, is tosh. One went so far as to say it was investigated 100 years ago and found to be nonsense. Hmmm. I’m sure there is an equal difference too in the years between Icarus trying to fly and Richard Pearce. Or the Wright brothers.

Yet, looking outside of New Zealand, there are a number of other experts who are looking seriously into the possibility that what Ring is saying could possibly have a basis in probability.

I have no issues whatsoever with that – science should never be so closed minded that the potential of something cannot be explored and researched until a definitive answer one way or the other for the time being can be found. The minute this happens is the moment when those who try to shut the doors on such ideas and research become fully paid up members of the Flat Earth Society. I’m absolutely not interested in scientists who say “It can’t be done.” Or “It’s absolute rubbish” without ever having even once tried seriously putting the effort into researching what another scientist or skilled layperson is saying. To me, they are not scientists. They are either people with no imagination who are comfortable being brain-washed by a funded emeritus who is comfortable hanging onto his or her chair without anyone rocking the boat thanks, or he or she simply has no busy claiming that they are an expert on anything.

There are those who have vilified Ring for ‘scaring’ the population of Christchurch, especially given that he has made another prediction of a big earthquake for March 20. He goes as far as to say that after April 19, that should be it for a very long period of time.

The thing is, you hear of cynics who say when such events happen, “So where were the psychics then?” Not that Ken Ring is one of these – he is not. Although as an interesting aside, Deb Webber from Sensing Murder apparently predicted the February quake and has also said it is not finished yet.

But let’s look at this – if I was a Cantabrian and I could see via a scientific method (even if unaccepted by the mainstream) that such a prediction could happen; that it had been predicted successfully twice before, would I want to know that another was coming? You bet your bippy I would. I could even cope with, as Ring says, the fact that it could be a few days either side. I would much rather be forewarned and ensure my family’s safety by taking them on an impromptu holiday to say, Invercargill for a week than find I’d lost one of them under the rubble of yet another collapsed building. In fact, I couldn’t give a damn if it didn’t actually happen. The fact that twice before the predictions have occurred is enough for me. I’d just enjoy the holiday.

There is no doubt that Ring and seismologists sit on opposing sides of the fence on the how and why’s of earthquakes. But I found his comments to Marcus Lush on Radio Live last September quite telling when he said, there is no university in the world which has astrology as part of the funded research going on. There is only so much money for funding via universities and those already there ensure through their politicking that such things as this would never get a look in. This, he says, is a bit of an indictment because it means shared ideas and diametrical ways of looking at things that actually would make a difference, never get to be heard.

I can only hope that someone somewhere with real funding to give away actually does take the time to listen to what Ken Ring has to say. Because I do think, like many others, that the proof is in the pudding and in this, Ring has literally run rings around our resident experts, something they do not like one iota. I’m not saying he is right, or that his methods are perfect. Just that what he has said and done does show there is a reason to investigate this completely.

Scientists need to get off their high horses and actually use the two ears they were born with more than the one mouth. It may well be that those such as Ken Ring can offer inroads into exciting and new methodology that can actually be used to prevent loss of life. So far, all I’m seeing is bruised egos and ladies and gentlemen of the campus, that doesn’t look good against what’s happened in Christchurch in the past six months. The idiotic stance taken by John Campbell against Ring on TV3 recently was a prime example of how little a university education can actually mean at the end of the day. It wasn't an interview, it was an out and out bully session.