his experiment has many implications. It shows, for instance, that as a result of the gradual accumulation of water vapour, the atmosphere became sufficiently saturated to permit the aggregation of individual water molecules into macro-molecules, or rain- drops. In the process of falling, these droplets of water generate a charge, and sud- denly the phenomenon of electricity appears in the form of lightning. All at once a form of pure energy is made available for the planet's use.
In the course of an electrical discharge, ozone is created and, due to the often intense temperature- and ionisation- induced, high-velocity updrafts in thunder- storms, this ozone can be borne aloft to form or reinforce the ozone layer, which protects us all from excessive ultraviolet radiation. At any given moment the number of thunderstorms world-wide has been placed at about 1880 with an estimated 100 lightning strikes per minute. At an
100 Living Energies
average of 15,000,000kw per strike, this amounts to l,500,000,000kw/min or
13,000,000,000kw/hrs per year8.
Lightning strikes can be up to 9km long and sheet lightning can extend up to 100km. All of these strikes are associated with the production of ozone due to the intense ionisation caused by the electrical discharge. In view of the fact that thunder- storm clouds can reach altitudes as high as 12km or so and contain extraordinarily pow- erful upcurrents, as demonstrated on a small scale in the experiment described above, it is possible that this newly produced ozone is carried up to augment the protective ozone layer.
If thunderstorm activity should decline, however, then this contribution will also drop commensurately. Indeed, over recent years the author has noticed a fall in the usual number of thunderstorms in the area where he lives and it may well be that this is a trend world-wide. Should this be the case, then it may have serious consequences for us all. Remembering that the water molecule is a dipole, for rain to produce an electrical dis- charge the water particles must be very fine in order to be able to spin fast enough to generate a high charge.
According to research by Kenneth S.Davis
and John Arthur Day9 the amount of water
evaporated annually from the oceans
amounts to about 333,000km3, the contribu-
tion from lakes, river and land surfaces being
in the order of 62,000km3; the latter represent-
ing 18.6% of the total of 395,000km3 that
returns to Earth as rain every year. Relative to the total area of rivers and lakes, the land surfaces covered by forest are far greater and therefore the major part of land evaporation is derived from the forest. As a percentage of the whole the contribution from the forest is therefore critical to the maintenance of stable climatic conditions.
However, owing to our massive deforesta- tion activities, principally for agriculture and beef production, the area of natural forest has decreased enormously from its original state. This massive enlargement of hot, sun- exposed surfaces has resulted in an enor- mous increase in the evaporation rate, which
has been greatly assisted by an increase in temperature caused by the effects and prod- ucts of our technology. A 1°C rise in tempera- ture causes the retention, but not necessarily an even distribution, of an additional 1,000 million cubic metres of water vapour in the atmosphere.
In consequence the whole of the Earth's water balance has been seriously disturbed, resulting in very disorderly agglomerations of atmospheric water; a fact we are daily made aware of. In some places there is an overload, causing repeated catastrophic rain- fall and large-scale inundation, such has been occurring in recent years in Bangladesh, while in others there is little or none at all, i.e. severe drought conditions prevail, as in the Sudan and Ethiopia, all of which are associ- ated with extreme suffering and enormous loss of life. Due to the sheer volume of excess water vapour, instead of the creation of the small water particles mentioned above, much heavier drops are formed which fall as delug- ing rain and generate considerably lower charges.
In many such rainstorms, cyclonic and monsoonal storms there is no thunder at all. While this additional water vapour will increase the general atmospheric tempera- tures, due to the movement of the upper air streams it graduates towards the poles, there to fall as snow, adding to the volume of water fixed almost permanently as ice. Moreover the area of cloud cover also increases owing to this abnormal water- vapour content, which in turn amplifies the so-called albedo effect of the Earth. The albedo is the term for the overall whiteness of the Earth's atmosphere caused by the reflection of light off the white cloud areas. This obscures the Sun's rays and prevents the water vapour below the clouds from being further warmed.
On the other hand, as most of the water vapour has been accumulated in the clouds, where there are none relatively little vapour is present and so the Sun, where it can shine through, no longer warms the atmos- phere. Assisted by the increasing pressures in the lower atmosphere caused by the temperature-induced expansion of abnormal
quantities of water into vapour, more and more water-molecules are forced to higher altitudes, there to be subjected to the dissociative processes mentioned earlier and the irredeemable loss of water increases. In
the long-term all of these effects act to reduce the general ambient temperatures and the presence of atmospheric water and while ini- tially the temperature in parts of the Earth will rise, in the end it will inevitably cool off dramatically as the precursor to a new ice- age.
Historically no-one has ever experienced the initial stages of an ice-age. But perhaps the recent, totally unseasonal fall of snow in
Australia at Christmas 1993 (hottest time of the year) is the first outstretching of the icy tentacles of an incipient ice-age. Viktor Schauberger already foresaw all this in 1933, long before anyone had any idea of global warming, and described it in detail in his
book Our Senseless Toil - The Source of the
World Crisis. The major causes in his view being the overclearing of the forest, coupled with heavy-handed, mechanistically-oriented agricultural practices and unnatural, mis- guided systems of water resources manage- ment, all of which are due to a total incomprehension of natural energies and processes.
Notes
1.The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary:
Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1980.
2. "The Water Cycle", The Biosphere, Scientific
American, 1970: W.H. Freeman, New York, U.S.A.
3. Phaidon Concise Encylopedia of Science and Technology, © 1978 Andromeda Oxford Limited, 11-15 The Vineyard, Abingdon, OX14 3PX,
England.
4. ibid.. LAPSE RATE: The rate of change of any mete-
orological factor with altitude, especially tempera- ture, which usually decreases at a rate of 0.6°C per
100 m (environmental lapse rate). Unsaturated air
loses about 1°C per 100m (dry adiabatic(*) lapse rate), whereas saturated air loses at an average of 0.5oC per 100m (saturated adiabatic lapse rate). ibid.. (*) ADIABATIC: Of a thermodynamic process
occurring without loss or gain of heat. 5. Electricity & Magnetism, Cambridge Univ. Press,
1908.
6. Das Bild der Modernen Physik by H.Lindner, p.108, fig. 51/1, "The formation of electromagnetic waves": Urania-Verlag, Leipzig, Germany. 7. Why blue above the red below one might ask? For
an explanation of the principles rather than the specifics we must refer to the table in figure 4.6, where we are reminded that gravitation, centrifu- gence, electricism, expansion, pressure and heat are all octavely related. It could thus be inter- preted that as the dipole droplets fall due to GRAVITY they develop like ELECTRIC charges, giving rise to mutually repulsive PRESSURES. These in turn cause the CENTRIFUGAL axial-> radial and horizontal EXPANSION of the ELEC-
TRIC field, which has a relatively low potential due to increased charge separation. In conse- quence it produces a discharge, whose colour lies at the lower frequency, longer wavelength, HOT end of the spectrum, i.e. red. We also know from fig. 4.6 (p. 63) that levitation, centripetence, mag- netism, impansion, suction and cold are equally octavely related. As the continuing flow of spin- ning dipole molecules with like charges encounter the now fully developed electric field, they are repelled aloft in what might be described as an 'upward fall'. Along this longer U-shaped fall- path each gradually develops its MAGNETIC charge. As the BIOMAGNETIC field develops gravity rapidly gives way to LEVITY. Mutual attraction (SUCTION) increases, producing a CENTRIPETAL RADIAL->AXIAL IMPANSION that converges the coiling MAGNETIC lines of force into an accelerating LEVITATIONAL vortex. Reaching extreme intensity at the pinnacle of this vortex, a plume-like, high frequency, bio-magnetic, bluish-white, COLD light soars upward as the bio- magnetic field discharges. In a sort of backhanded confirmation of this phenomenon, the human psy- che appears already to have been unconsciously impressed with the respective colours of magnet- ism and electricism, because coloured diagrams in most text books show magnetic fields in blue and electric fields in red!
8. Leopold Brandstatter, Implosion statt Explosion, Self-publication, Linz 10, Fach 20, Austria.
9. Water - The Mirror of Science, by K.S.Davis & J.A. Day, p. 149: Heinemann Educ, London, 1964.