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April 3, 2004 - Art Bell

02:51:52

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Peter Ward - Rare Earth Hypothesis

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01:14:41

peter ward

58:50

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Speaker	Time	Text
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're going to be talking about hours a lot tonight.
		According to the first guest hour, Peter Ward will be here, who wrote a book called Rare Earth.
		And it's going to be an awful lot of fun and interesting, I think, to examine what you have to view as equally possible.
		I mean, we're always saying, as Jody Foster did, right, in contact, when you look up at the suns and the stars, they have to be out there.
		They have to be out there.
		Those are billions and billions of suns, right?
		And around them revolve more billions of planets we now know.
		And so life, life has to be out there.
		It's a very compelling argument, and one I will make to Peter Ward, who wrote Rare Earth, why complex life, that would be us, is uncommon in the universe.
		Very good reviews on the book, to be sure.
		Reviews from Science, the Associated Press.
		Very good reviews.
		In other words, maybe we are alone.
		And maybe complex life is...
		We're always looking at the other side of it, and I suppose in a way we will.
		But it should be most interesting to hear the case for the fact that man is alone.
		All of that out there?
		Giant waste of space.
		So we'll do that tonight.
		Now, a couple of things right off the bat.
		First of all, OG, my webcam photo.
		More than my webcam photo.
		Someone, good friend of mine, a ham radio operator, sent these photographs to me earlier today.
		She was sent the photographs by the captain of this boat.
		Actually, it's the Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine, nuclear submarine, USS Honolulu.
		And what we have here in this photograph, actually several of them, is totally incredible.
		You'll want to save this.
		It shows the USS Honolulu coming up just a few miles short of the exact North Pole, you know, bo-whoom through the ice.
		And here are these polar bears.
		It is such a remarkable set of photographs.
		And so I've got one on my webcam and then the full higher resolution versions up on the website, thanks to our webmaster.
		So go take a look.
		Coast2coastam.com, of course, it'll hit you right in the eye.
		You can't miss it.
		Now, I do a semi-yearly rant, because you can't call it anything else, about what is coming up tonight.
		Yes, by all means, folks, go and check your smoke detectors and then prepare to spring forward.
		God help us all spring forward.
		You know, this year I think maybe I'll call for civil disobedience.
		I am not suggesting that we all do not spring forward because springing forward is, well, it's okay.
unidentified		But let's stay there.
unidentified		When this fall comes around, you know, after going through the misery, the unspeakable misery of having to go around, I'm going to be changing clocks for two days.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, I've got, I used to have, well, I don't know, 50, 60 clocks.
		I've probably got 100 between the radio station that we own here at KNYEFM, 95.1 plug plug, and the house and all the cars.
		I have uncountable clocks to change twice a year with no merit for doing so whatsoever.
unidentified		None.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fine.
unidentified		Give us the daylight.
		Give it to us year-round.
		Don't make us like mindless robots year in, year out, twice a year.
		Have to go around and change every damn VCR and clock.
		God, what is wrong with us?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I saw a thing on Channel 13, our local ABC affiliate in Las Vegas the other day that said that it was Benjamin Franklin's idea.
		Something about, I don't know, World War and saving energy or something.
		Whatever.
		You know, you hear about the farmers, some people tell that story, and then there's others that talk about school children and bus stops, and I don't know.
		You hear a million different reasons why we change the clocks, but none of them are worth two cents.
unidentified		So I say, enough.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Obviously, talking to you about this twice a year is insufficient because we continue to mindlessly follow along like sheep changing our clocks, except for the smart states, you know, like Hawaii and Arizona, and there's some others that refuse to go along with the herd.
		I say it's time for civil disobedience.
		I have preached year in and year out about the insanity of this, and now I say we refuse to fall back.
		I say we all spring forward and stay that way.
		I want you to think about it.
		I mean it.
		I know.
		making people in trouble with their bosses in knows what it could do but maybe that that that we could send a message by I work for a network.
		Time is rather important to the network.
		So can I follow along and keep my job?
		I'm sure you're saying that too.
		Could you do it and just refuse to be part of the herd?
		Probably not.
		But I'm calling for it anyway.
		And I might even join in, which would be the end of me.
		Ah, gee.
		all right let's uh...
		well in a moment will look around the world and see what what sort of standard news is out there Actually, before moving on to the news of the day, I've talked to you for the last couple of weeks about BPL.
		That's the broadband over power lines thing, you know, where they can bring everybody in the nation, they say, broadband over power lines, and you'll have internet in every single wall socket in your home.
		Well, it's big brother-ish to the max, and it will destroy the shortwave bands.
		It'll just destroy the shortwave bands.
		Now, many countries, knowing they need emergency communications because of terrorism, which we're about to talk about in a moment, tried BPL and kicked it the hell out of a country.
		One of those countries, not exactly a technical slouch, would be Japan.
		They had this broadband over the internet over the power lines, baloney, BPL, and they kicked it out of the country.
		And I have right here a recording made at 7 megahertz, which is right sort of in the middle of the shortwave band.
		Well, not quite, but a very important part of the shortwave band.
		One that hams happen to use, but it wouldn't matter.
		It applies to hams, CBers, broadcasters, people who listen to news from other countries on the shortwave bands.
		They're going to take that away from us if this BPL goes through and you don't write to your congressman or your senator.
		And I thought you might like to hear what BPL will actually sound like.
		This recording was made in Japan.
		All right?
		A deployed BPL system in Japan before they kicked it the hell out.
unidentified		here's what you can expect Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you imagine trying to conduct emergency communications through that?
		Whether it's a ham operator, a CB operator, the U.S. government, FEMA, or any of the other, our own U.S. military, anybody who would need to conduct emergency communications, imagine them trying to do it.
		Or maybe you're trying to listen to the BBC on shortwave.
unidentified		do you think you could listen through this Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what BPL is going to sound like.
		Write to your congressman.
		Write to your senator.
		Tell them, please examine BPL.
		Please stop this forward motion of the Federal Communications Commission and these power industries before this spreads all over the nation and there's no going back.
		There's not going to be anybody talking through that, folks.
		Write to your senator and congressman and ask them to please take it slow and examine BPL before allowing it to go forward.
unidentified		If you don't, that's what we're in for.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Madrid, Spain.
		This would be, if innocent had not been killed and wounded, this would be actually, in a lot of ways, very laudable action.
		At least three suspects in the Madrid railway bombings blew themselves to smithereens.
		Police had them cornered, and so they blew themselves up.
		And gee, it sure saves everybody a lot of trial money and all the rest of it.
		If only others so disposed would take same way out, we'd have a better world.
		Unfortunately, however, one Special Forces agent was killed.
		15 police officers were wounded when this occurred.
		Now, our Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has conceded.
		He says, it would appear that the evidence that he presented with the CIA chief at his side to justify the Iraq war in the first place may have been bogus.
		The main reason we went to war was weapons of mass destruction, as you all know, and Secretary of State Powell now saying, well, yeah, maybe the whole thing was wrong, leaving it to the CIA to try and explain, I suppose.
		President Bush sought Saturday to squeeze more political mileage out of the news that Americans have more jobs, actually added the most workers in four years.
		Good numbers for the president, no doubt about it.
		Israel is threatening to kill Arafat.
		They're threatening to actually kill Arafat.
		And he's responding to that.
		That's fascinating.
		Publicly saying, well, we might take you out.
		Hundreds of technophiles, that's not bad stuff.
		These are people, technophiles would be people who enjoy technical stuff.
		It just sounds bad.
		Wired all of their computers.
		Hundreds of computers actually together, you know, standard computers like we have at home, to see if they could achieve.
		They networked them together, trying to muster enough power to process the most complex research problems that man faces right now, and no report on how successful or not the effort was.
		Listen to this one.
		This comes from the Independent in Great Britain.
		Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have jumped abruptly, raising fears that global warming may be accelerating out of control.
		Measurements by the U.S. government show that concentrations of the gas, main cause of the climate exchange, rose by a record amount over the past 12 months.
		It is now the third successive year in which they have increased sharply, making an unprecedented triennial surge.
		Scientists are at a loss to explain why the rapid rise has taken place, but they do fear it could show the first signs, listen carefully, that global warming has now begun to feed upon itself, with rising temperatures causing increases in carbon dioxide, which then go on to drive the thermometer even higher.
		This is pretty scary stuff, actually.
		And they go on to show the measurements taken at the 14,000-foot summit of Hawaii's Mount Loa.
		I guess they're saying that it may already be too late.
		It could be a remarkable and weird blip in the, you know, just some totally weird thing three years in a row like this, but the prospect that global warming now has begun to feed on itself is pretty frightening.
		But when you read stories like this one, maybe you can believe.
		An 80-mile-an-hour windstorm hit the upper Mackenzie River like a hammer, right out of the blue Friday morning, this last Friday, leaving trees scattered, power lines down, the river closed to boating at least until next week or so.
		Daniel Fisher, manager of the lodge in Hot Springs there, said, I've never, it's the craziest thing I've seen in a long time.
		But it wasn't a whisper.
		I mean, it was dead quiet, and then out of nowhere, 80 miles an hour.
		The sneaker wind dropped a three-foot-diameter Douglas fir tree, bank to bank, right across the river.
		The U.S. Forest Service closed the boat launches upstream from the tree, strongly advised all boaters to stay off the river's upper stretches.
		Quote, there aren't too many places an experienced boater would put in besides these two particular boat launches, said he.
		Point is, though, don't put in above that log.
		Anytime you've got a log or any kind of barrier across the river, it's dangerous.
		You don't want to run into something like that.
		Meteorologist, this is the interesting part.
		Mark O'Malley with the National Weather Service in Portland said that the wind apparently was the result of a deep easterly flow in the atmosphere that has caused, this is in quotes, listen carefully, that has caused, quote, gravity waves, end quote, to form over the Cascade range.
		It's like clear air turbulence when you're flying, O'Malley said.
		In fact, we've had several reports today from pilots of occasional moderate turbulence and severe turbulence, generally over the Cascades.
		But gravity, gravity waves, that certainly caught my attention.
		Gravity waves.
		So 80 miles an hour from zero to 80, like that.
		Just like that.
		Gravity waves.
		From a meteorologist.
		Okay.
		And then this.
		I'm sure you've heard about this, probably earlier in the week from George.
		Scientists predict major Southern California quake within five months.
		A state earthquake council has given a qualified endorsement to a prediction by a group of scientists who believe that an earthquake magnitude 6.4 or greater will occur in the Southern California desert sometime in the next five months.
		Now, that could include me.
		We had a 7.3 here about five years ago that shook us up pretty well, I'll tell you.
		But here, these are scientists, legitimate scientists, who are making this prediction.
	It's not a revelation that came to somebody in the middle of the night or that was channeled down from whoever.
	A team of scientists, actually, at the University of California, LA, predict the quake will occur within a 12,000 square mile area east of Los Angeles by September 5th.
	The zone includes a large swath of the Mojave Desert, the Coachella Valley, the Imperial Valley, and eastern San Diego County.
	The area was the location of a magnitude 7.3 Landers earthquake in 1992.
	That's the exact one that I referred to.
	And the 7.1 Hector mine quake in 1999.
	My wife and I were standing in our living room when the quake I just referred to, the 7.3, occurred.
	And here in Prump, Nevada, we got hit really hard.
	I mean, it was rock and roll time.
	It was early in the morning, and we were wide awake being the night creatures we are.
	And the house began to, well, sort of ride in waves.
	Everything began to move.
	Things started to fall off the shelf, all the normal earthquake things.
	And I, of course, considered the 3,000 pounds of antenna tower up above me and wondered if it would come down and visit.
	It would have cut through the house like a hot knife through butter.
unidentified		Fortunately, it stayed in place.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, be warned, I guess.
		They have been successful in the past.
		Oh, one other thing.
		I have mentioned feral people a few times on the show, and somebody sent me this from Chuck Shepard's News of the Weird, whatever that is.
		In February, social workers Found a feral family of six.
		Only the father spoke any kind of recognizable language.
		Others used hand signs and noises, living in a shed on a farm.
		In Free State North Africa, none of the kids aged 14 to 26 had ever met anyone outside the family and simply ran into the woods anytime any visitors ever approached.
		One boy only moved around only in a kind of a frog-like manner.
		In other words, he didn't even walk.
		The father said the kids were born normal, and he assumed their poor development and was punishment because he could not afford the ceremonial sacraments of their tribe.
		So they grew up being completely feral.
		Truly feral.
		Well, yes, humans.
		But not humans who had ever touched any part of society ever, but rather wild humans.
		As you would have a wild cat or a wild dog.
		Truly feral human beings.
		Kind of an oddity in the modern world, but there you are.
		It does happen.
		I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM in the Nighttime.
unidentified		A Bumma, A Bumma, A Bumma.
		Want a time travel?
		Go back to past shows on Streamlink.
		Sign up online at coasttocoastam.com.
		I don't know where we are.
		Can you hear my heart beating in?
		Do you know that behind all the gone?
		Like the teacher and the city of the city.
		I was born with sun for a long span I was put my mind with a gun in my hand And I lied to you I'm just here to ride like a wind And I've got such a long way to go I'm just here to ride like a wind I'm
		just here to ride like a wind I'm just here to ride like a wind Everybody, please listen very carefully.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're about to develop the lines.
		The telephone numbers you're about to hear are not the same ones you get during the week, a little bit different.
		So listen carefully.
unidentified		To Talk with Art Bell.
		From the wildcard line, area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach ART by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free, 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Open Live's coming right up, folks.
		It's such a pleasure to be here.
		anything that's on your mind is fair game right up the the Let's rock.
		First time caller line, you are on the air.
		Good evening.
unidentified		Good evening, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, where are you?
unidentified		I'm in Hinesville, Georgia, just off Fort Stewart.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you're going to have to yell at me a little.
		You're not too loud.
		Your first name is?
unidentified		My first name is Billie Jean.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Billie Jean, all right?
unidentified		Yes.
		And I'm in Hinesville, Georgia, right off Fort Stewart.
		Okay.
		And I was calling about fallen angels, and I don't really know what they are, but I had dreams, and they were recurring.
		And they were in 1999 for about a month, a month and a half.
		And I'm married, and I was at that time.
		And I had these dreams, and the first one, I'll tell you about the first one.
		And this is this man, and it's the same man each time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there a sexual content to it?
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Rather than have you tell your story, if you don't mind, I'm just going to go ahead and do what I meant to do anyway, ma'am.
		So there's so much to what that lady was about to do.
		Look, all right, here it is.
		Last week, I began to understand that in the world of the paranormal, that which we deal with so much on this program, there was something that I had obviously missed.
		I mean, we began to get calls here, more and more of them, people willing to talk about sexual encounters, the paranormal and sexual encounters.
		Now, this is a very, very difficult subject.
		So last weekend, I invited anybody with either an interest or an experience in this area to send me an email.
		Well, let me tell you what happened.
		I got thousands and thousands of emails.
		So many thousands that every time I would download my email, it would be clogged with them.
		Thousands of stories of sexual attacks, some appreciated, most Not appreciated.
		I can't even begin to relate to you the incredible number of honest, obviously told-from-the-heart stories that I have.
		So many that I have come to realize this is a monstrous topic.
		It's just absolutely monstrous, but it's incredibly difficult to talk about without appearing salacious.
		It's just impossible.
		I mean, that lady was about to lay a story on us of, I understand, of something that happened to her.
		And so I have begun to look into this.
		I have a medical professional who is very much aware of this topic long before I was, who has written to me.
		I'm considering putting her on the air.
		I just can't tell you how big this is.
		And I've also received a lot of emails from people saying, look, Art, you know what the FCC is doing?
		They're cracking down.
		And they are.
		And so I have to be very careful how I even think about presenting this topic to you.
		But I also, on the other hand, can't not present it to you.
		It's monstrous.
unidentified		Absolutely monstrous.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And there may be as much sexual content to paranormal experiences as there is with anything else.
		It's that big.
		And since we do that on this program, talk about the paranormal, we have a responsibility to do something with this, and I will.
		I just don't know the right way to approach it exactly, particularly in the rather poisonous atmosphere right now with regard to what can and can't be done on the radio or television.
		And besides that, I do have a responsibility to the larger audience out there as well.
		So I'm trying to figure out how to approach this in an appropriate, tasteful way so that you understand the magnitude of it because it's absolutely gigantic, folks.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hi.
		You know what I think is going on, what you just said?
		What?
		I think because the time that we're in, I believe that we're being attacked because we're in the very last days.
		And I'm going to tell somebody that maybe they need to go see the passion.
		And then get a hold of the ancientmanuscript.com website, get information that Glenn Kimball has, and it'll change their whole life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You could be right.
unidentified		And I think that we're being attacked because Satan knows his time's about up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You could be right.
unidentified		I believe I am.
		I'm from the house of David myself.
		And I believe, I think this is right because, you know, he said he was going to attack us at the very end, I mean, like he wouldn't ever before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I can't tell you, ma'am.
		The number of emails is just staggering.
		And so it's so big that I can't not, I can't ignore it.
unidentified		I know you can't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		On the other hand, I also can't, or I could.
		I could easily get in trouble.
		But I want to be very careful how I do this.
		But boy, we've got to do it.
		I'm telling you, it's underway.
		It's underway.
		Mass attacks are underway.
unidentified		But what they need to do is get on their knees to Jesus Christ himself and ask for his protection.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, that certainly would be the advice that a Christian would give.
		And maybe it's the right advice.
		Maybe it's the right advice.
		I don't know.
		All I know is I just do a job.
		I'm a tacoist.
		And when I see something of this magnitude that's underway, I know this has meaning.
		Now, has it been going on all the time with this magnitude, with this frequency?
		I have no way of knowing.
		Yet.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello?
unidentified		Yeah, this is Joel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Joel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Turn your radio off, please.
unidentified		Oh, yes, sir.
unidentified		It's on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, off, Joel.
		Oh, off, all right.
		Yes, off.
unidentified		Okay, let me.
unidentified		All right, it's off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now proceed.
unidentified		Okay, yeah, I was wanting to tell you about an experience I'd had with what I believe to be a Sasquatch, and I was just going to ask you if you had heard of any other sightings or whatnot in this region.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What I've mostly heard about SaskWatch recently is that the whole thing was hoaxed.
unidentified		It was all hoaxed?
		Hoaxed.
		Hoxed to be fake.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hoaxed, fake.
unidentified		Yeah, because what I had seen was I had actually spotted this track in some remote parts of Montana I had been in.
unidentified		And I had been trying to get a hold of you for a while to ask you about it because I had to get away from the film.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you've got me now, so you found tracks, and then what?
unidentified		Well, then I kind of followed them as far as I could.
unidentified		You know, I had kind of noticed a figurine running into the wilderness, and I had seen a lot of bear and whatnot before, but this wasn't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to ask one more time for you to turn off your radio.
unidentified		Yeah, it's off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I still hear it.
unidentified		Oh, well, you're.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm hearing the radio.
unidentified		It's off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
		All right.
		Now, so did you follow the tracks?
unidentified		Yes, sir, as far as I could.
		And what had happened is I was walking in snow, and it was probably around May, the snow was starting to melt, and I ran into a patch where there was some dryness.
		But I had seen a figurine, and what I had seen was I was on its hind legs running.
		I couldn't, you know, I'd seen bear many a time, but just didn't run like a bear or whatnot, and that's why I was wanting to contact you, and, you know, I believe that's what it was in my mind, but, you know, that's why I was wanting to contact you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, you have.
		I appreciate it.
		I don't know.
		I have no way of knowing.
		I just know that many people recently have been copying to the fact that they faked Sasquatch movies, that they've faked tracks and all kinds of other things.
		But on the other hand, a lot of people have seen creatures.
		Now, these creatures, in other words, both could be true.
		There could be plenty of fakes out there.
		We humans do that sort of thing, right?
		And there could also be real creatures out there.
		I mean, think about this.
		If there can be feral people, and that means people who have never encountered society at all, ever.
		They've grown as human animals, mammals.
		I don't know.
		As it said in this story I read earlier tonight, one little boy who moved on all fours.
		On all fours.
		Just like an animal, never learned to walk.
		They didn't communicate with any known language.
		They just made hand signs.
		So if there can be feral humans, there certainly can be creatures that we have not yet fully identified or are aware of on this planet.
		West of the Rockies, you're on here.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, Art.
		What do we do about the feral politicians?
		Jeff from San Bernardino.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Any comment I would make would get me in trouble.
unidentified		Well, I don't know.
		So far they haven't gone too far after the people have been talking about stuff in Washington.
		But I wanted to let you know I'm calling from the land of KFI to the land of things that go perump in the night.
		95.1 K-N-Y-E-F-M in perump Nevada.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I did not make you do that, did I?
unidentified		No, but, you know, I appreciate where you guys come from.
unidentified		I wanted to ask real quickly, who came up with things that go perump in the night, you or Ramona?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It was actually something somebody sent in that we modified a little bit, and I kind of, it was that.
		Somebody sent in some email that had something like that.
		We changed it a little bit, and boom, there you are.
unidentified		Well, it really works.
unidentified		I called to let you know that you were on NPR National Public Radio on the 6th of March.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow, wow, wow, wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How?
unidentified		Not by name, but by movie.
unidentified		That being the upcoming movie that you've got, well, that your book led to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, the day after tomorrow, premiering, I believe, May 28th.
unidentified		May 28th.
		Well, I'm looking forward to it.
		So am I. The program was called Living on Earth, and if I can say, it was hosted by Steve Kerwood.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
unidentified		They discussed abrupt climate change.
unidentified		I want to thank you for being ahead of the event horizon as you've been on so many topics and letting us know way before the general media got a hold of it, but aren't they picking up on it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They are now, finally, yes.
unidentified		And they mentioned that Peter Schwartz from the Monitor Group and Global Focus, who worked on Deep Impact and Armageddon and a few others, he said he turned down work on the day after tomorrow.
		He said it was pure entertainment.
		However, Daniel Schrag from the Harvard School of Earth and Planetary Science said that the day after tomorrow he gets a kick out of using the trailer to show that it's talk.
		So just the trailer alone is making an impact.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, I'll tell you what, it's making a big impact, all right.
		In fact, there have been a number of stories saying that it's going to have a very large political impact on Washington.
		There have been a number of stories on that.
		So we'll see.
unidentified		There we go with the feral politicians.
unidentified		I guess that's an F-word we can still use, huh?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it is.
unidentified		Howard Stern has gotten away with so much.
		I think that whatever you bring up, Dr. Laura brings up things all the time on her program.
		I think you're in fair territory to speak about that issue, clinically.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I believe so.
		Yes, and I've got a medical professional who's prepared to discuss it.
		And this is gigantic.
		When I say I get thousands of emails, I mean this was beyond all reason.
		Thank you very much.
		I'm not going to ferret out any of them and read them to you.
		In many cases, they are very descriptive sexual attacks that have occurred to both men and women.
		And how do I translate to you the magnitude of the response that I had from last weekend?
		I don't even know how to translate it to you.
		What does it mean?
		Does it mean, as a young lady said a few moments ago, that these are the final days and that Lucifer is perhaps beginning to have his way?
		I don't know.
		Has this always been going on and it simply came to a head with the discussion on the radio about it last week?
		I don't know.
		I don't have the answers to these questions.
		All I can tell you is it's monstrously big, the sexual component to paranormal activity right now.
		International line, you're on the air.
		Hello.
		Hello there.
		Going once?
		Yes, yes.
unidentified		Is this me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, only you know that for sure, but it sounds suspiciously like you, yes.
unidentified		Okay.
		My mother lived in Las Vegas, and her third husband left every morning at 5 o'clock and came home at 7, never told her what he did.
		And he went missing, and three years later, they found his body in the desert.
		Well, going through his things, she came upon a document from one of those old type machines that had the dotted, it's like one long piece of paper, but they have dots on each side of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that would have been the old dot matrix printer paper, yes.
unidentified		Right.
		And on this paper, it's about 15 feet long.
		It talks about Majestic 12 and what they did and who they were and all kinds of different subjects.
		And at the very bottom of it is John Lear's name dated 1979.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He said John Lear, yes.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		I was wondering, would you be interested in looking at this?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think I most probably would, but please do not send any originals.
unidentified		Yeah, this is an original.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I understand that.
		Please don't do that.
		If you can, send a copy to me.
unidentified		Okay, I have your address, and it'll probably end up at George's table.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
		All right.
		Well, very good.
		Yes, send it in.
		But don't be warned, folks, all the way around.
		Don't send originals because I don't wish to be responsible for them.
		And there have been A number of incidents where people sent one-of-a-kind things and expected them to be returned.
		And, you know, you just never know about the mails, you never know about the security of anything these days.
		So copy me on something important, but for heaven's sake, hold on to your original.
		Easy to rock easy on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
		Yes, sir.
		You and Mr. Argates and Mr. Allen get a fiber optics line into every president in the United States.
		That would cure the whole problem, wouldn't it?
		It would take care of your original thing you talked about tonight.
		You could have a true internet discussion of subjects you're not allowed to put on the radio.
		You could take it, say, power beyond anything you can imagine by allowing people to see what it'll cost to start the dryer or to take a day off and do something and so on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, actually, it's the key to everything.
		If we get fiber, and that originally was the intent, I mean, if you want to deliver real bandwidth, you don't screw around with trying to put, you know, RF onto that's radio frequency onto the power lines, interfere with destroy shortwave.
		That is not the way to get broadband to the American people.
		As a matter of fact, it won't even be that broad, to be honest with you.
		Nor will it be delivered as promised to the rural folk right away.
		Just like cable, it will go into the cities, follow the money.
		That's where the people are.
		That's where the money is.
		That's where it'll be deployed.
		The real way to do it is, as this gentleman said, get fiber optic cable into every house in America.
		And that's the end of the story.
		You can then deliver everything you want.
		There'll be enough bandwidth to literally change the entire world.
		Yes, get fiber to homes.
		By all.
		West of the Rockies call toll-free.
unidentified		1-800-618-8255.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Tracy, hold on.
		We're not allowed to put last names on the air.
		So I had to bleat that out, Tracy.
		Let's begin fresh.
		Your first name is Tracy, and you're where?
unidentified		Clinton, Oregon.
		All right.
		All right.
		I just discovered your program a couple months ago, and I really enjoy it.
		And something happened to me when I was a little boy, and I just wanted to mention it because I never knew really nobody to talk to you about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, you do now, but it's got to be fast because we're almost at the end of the hour.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What happened?
unidentified		I was, we recently moved into a house and was there about two months.
		And about 1.30 in the morning one night, we heard a loud boom, like a gunshot.
		And I was awake, and everybody in the house got up and we called the police and everything.
		And it happened again a couple weeks ago.
		I mean, a couple weeks after that.
		And the same time of night, too.
		And then we didn't know what it was.
		And then someone down at the little store down the road said that somebody was murdered in that house.
		And they had robbed someplace.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you think you were hearing like an echo of that murder?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that what we're talking about here?
unidentified		Well, I believe in strange happenings and stuff, but sounds, actual sounds like that of this gun going off.
		It happened three times and my mother was really suspicious, so we moved.
		And I just wonder if you heard about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I haven't heard about that.
		And in fact, there are some places in the United States, parts of LA and other cities across America, where gunshots are thought of as the norm, and they're just ignored.
		Call the police?
		No, most people would never call the police, just another gunshot.
		Consider the state of society when we think that.
unidentified		Sweet Jesus, where am I to desire me?
		I travel the world and the seven sea.
		Everybody's looking for something.
		Some of them want to know.
		What do Mel Gibson and the choral...
		Ooh, and it's all right.
		And it's coming on.
		We gotta get right back to where we started from.
		Nothing good.
		Nothing good.
		We gotta get right back to where we started from.
		Oh, come on.
		Do you remember that day, when you first came my way?
		I said no one could take your place.
		If you get hurt, by the little things I think, I can put that smile back on to your face.
		Ooh, and it's all right.
		And it's coming on.
		We gotta get right back to where we started from.
		Nothing good.
		Love can be strong.
		We gotta get right back to where we started from.
		Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
		to talk with Art Bell.
		Call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from East to the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west to the Rockies, call Art at 800-618-8255.
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		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is, and let me see here.
		What's his name?
		Carl from Topsham, Maine says, I was a little confused with regard to your last caller and your connection with the new movie, The Day After Tomorrow.
		Well, The Day After Tomorrow is based in part on our book, meaning Art Bell and Whitley Street, called The Coming Global Superstorm.
		So it's based in part on that.
		And we're all, Whitley and I are waiting with bated breath to see how it comes out.
unidentified		But it sure looks good, doesn't it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sort of nervously waiting to see what was done.
		All right, coming up in a moment, this is going to be fascinating.
		Absolutely fascinating.
		Peter Ward is here.
		He is a professor of biology, a professor of Earth and space sciences.
		He's an adjunct professor of astronomy at the University of Washington at Seattle.
		He's a principal investigator of the University of City of Washington node of the NASA Astrobiology Institute that involves the leadership of over 25 scientists studying the possibility of finding life beyond Earth.
		He has published more than 100 scientific papers dealing with paleontology.
		I knew I was going to blow this.
		Paleontological, thank you, zoological and astronomical topics.
		In addition, he's published 12 books and appeared in numerous television documentaries, senior counselor of the Paleontological Society, and was awarded an affiliate professorship at the California Institute of Technology.
		So big-time credentials.
		His book is Rare Earth, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe.
		In fact, the New York Times concluded of his book, maybe we are alone in the universe, after all.
		That's quite something to think about, that we would be alone in the universe that Jodi Foster in contact when she looked into the heavens and said it would be such a great waste if there was nothing else up there.
		I mean, the entire concept is as it as probable or even more probable than there's life everywhere, that life is common, that given the right mud puddle and lightning strike, it's going to occur all over the place.
		All those billions of suns and billions more planets going around and there's not life.
		It doesn't seem logical, does it?
		but in a moment Peter Ward I think is going to perhaps make that exact argument.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I will note the title says, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe.
		Said uncommon, not impossible, not non-existent, but uncommon.
		Nevertheless, somebody at the New York Times apparently was motivated enough from reading this to at least imagine that we might be alone.
		Peter, welcome to the program.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Great to be here, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thanks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Peter, where are you, as a matter of interest?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I'm in Seattle, Washington right now, and I'm very curious about how the change of hour is going to affect this conversation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't think it's really going to affect us at all.
		I mean, we're going to do the next three hours, and then, boom, the insanity will ensue.
		But they will do something different.
		When they play the program back, it's like some hour slips out from somewhere or something.
		I don't know.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		There it goes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Peter, before we even get into this, what do you think of that?
		I mean, isn't it insane that we're doing this twice a year?
		Is there any rationale that makes any sense to you about why we must do this?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm even curious why we have 12 months.
		It would be much more logical, actually, to have 13 months in the year.
		Our calendar system is totally screwed up, and I know it's going to mess my sleep up for the next couple weeks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But, I mean, do you see any reason why we should have to do this?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		No, but it's one of those things imposed upon us, and you and I both know there's no way we can get out of this one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I was actually suggesting civil disobedience.
		You know, just spring forward and stay the hell there.
		You know, forget about going back altogether.
		Just civilly.
		Anyway, that'll never happen.
		So, yeah, I know.
		I'm already setting the clocks.
		I hate this.
		Welcome to the program.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		It's a pleasure to be back.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I was with you about two years ago now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		So I'm sure we'll cover much of the same territory.
		I mean, most people, certainly most of my listeners, would think that complex life actually is rather common in the universe.
		And so it's interesting to even consider the opposite possibility, but I suppose one must consider it, huh?
		Why did you decide to write this book?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's funny.
		I was talking to a good friend of mine who is the co-author, Don Brownlee, and Don is the principal investigator of the just recently almost finished Stardust mission.
		This was the NASA spacecraft which scooped up a bit of comet and is coming back to land in, I think it's a Utah desert in about three years from now.
		So if you ever wanted a real Andromeda to strain scenario, it's on its way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I figured it would be right up there in Utah close by.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So something crawled out of it.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I was just talking and wondering, you cannot turn the TV on without seeing aliens.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's clear that our society is so interested in believing that we are not alone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		It's totally throughout the culture.
		So we started asking ourselves, we come at this not as straight astronomers, but as people who study how planets should work if they have life.
		The Earth is the only example we know of a life-giving planet.
		And our sense was that most planets die early.
		And coming from geological sides of planetary geology, you really get a sense that most planets have a very narrow window where life can occur before it is snuffed out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What kind of window, as a matter of interest?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, again, we're geologists and we think in millions of years, but we think that a billion years is a very long time for a planet to be able to have liquid water on its surface.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		You know, our planet's already 4.6 billion years in age.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we now have, of course, Mars, which had apparently salty seas chopping their way across the surface of the planet not very long ago, geologically.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, but then that's almost a case-in-point proof of our point.
		Mars had an ocean, and conditions on Mars are so bad that ocean very quickly left.
		They may have had a billion years of ocean.
		They may have had a half billion years of ocean, but not enough.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How long have we had the ocean?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		We've had 4.5 billion years of ocean.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a lot of ocean.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Long Time, plenty of time for evolution to build all kinds of stuff.
		So it's a time question.
		And what Don and I have also done is try to figure out how soon will the end of the world be for this planet.
		And I did read your book, by the way.
		I enjoyed it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, thank you.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I also saw the script of the movie.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		It was sent to me by Fox Studio to comment on it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you're kidding.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You have read the script.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I have read the script.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I had to sign my life away to say I will not give away any of the secrets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, oh, gee, well, let's see.
		What can we pick legally from your brain?
		Did you in Let's see, what can I ask you?
		Did you enjoy it?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, I did.
		Actually, it was interesting.
		There's a big spread about it in popular science.
		They wanted my take on it and a few others.
		Because, again, in this book that I also wrote called The Life and Death of Planet Earth, we look at just the scenario, as you did, as a matter of fact, and try to get a sense of what a catastrophe a new ice age ought to be.
		But my problem with the script, and maybe I shouldn't say this, is that it all happens too quickly.
		This is like bang, and there you are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a movie, though.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's what the producers said.
		It's a movie.
		It's a movie.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The producers are right.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, the producers are picking and choosing.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		They're cherry-picking their science.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's producers for you.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, it was interesting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We shall see.
		Boy, what a rare find, and I can't ask you any questions without getting in trouble.
		All right, fine.
		Let's move on.
		As I said, in contact, she looks up.
		What a great waste it would be.
		I mean, we can see.
		I don't know.
		I don't know actually how many stars the eye can see on a good clear night, but many.
		And there's billions up there, and then probably planets we now know going around those stars.
		And so I think it's right that the average human being look up at night and imagine there is life up there, because it seems logical.
		And if not, Peter, why not?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I totally agree.
		I think that life is almost everywhere.
		And this is one of the points of our book.
		We say that life isn't rare.
		Microbial life is probably very easy to build.
		But our point is that almost no planet, very few planets, get enough time, and you need time for evolution to work, to build intelligence.
		Intelligence, I think, is going to be a really rare deal.
		And the other aspect we're coming at, we're trying to really refute Carl Sagan.
		And much of the book, although dedicated to him, is kind of a backslap.
		And I can say this now.
		Sagan had the view that if you look outside at the stars, you're going to see inevitably some of those stars will have intelligence.
		His estimate was there are more than a million intelligent species in the Milky Way.
		That means you or I looking out, you've got to see them.
		This is a pretty interesting estimate, and it's based on a whole number of scientific aspects, which are much better known now than were known when Sagan made that estimate.
		And if there were 10 more intelligences in the Milky Way, I'd be happy.
		But that's 500 billion stars, Art.
		So I think my sense is that we're not particularly alone, but we may be so geographically separated that, in fact, we are alone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		In the instance where complex life did arise, Peter, wouldn't it be a race?
		In other words, you're saying extinction cycles occur, in fact, mass extinction, and oceans come and oceans go.
		So once complex life has arisen, then it would be a race for the ability to easily traverse large distances in space before you become extinct.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Exactly right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I guess you would contend that more than not, other civilizations, if they do exist, lose the race.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Most civilizations lose the race, and not many creatures, I think, make it the civilization.
		We only have to look at Venus and Mars to see what happens when planets go bad, because both of these were, early in the game, easily habitable planets.
		Venus, especially.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Quite true.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		The sun was closer, or the sun was less bright when Venus and the Earth and Mars first formed.
		Venus would have been the optimal place for life.
		And yet look at Venus now.
		He's had what we call a runaway greenhouse where it just boiled away all the water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In fact, in the first hour, I read a story indicating that process that built upon itself may be underway right now, Peter.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, we certainly have problems on planet Earth.
		It's getting the thermostat regulated.
		You've been in an apartment, you turn it up too high, it goes too cold.
		The problem with a habitable planet, that thermostat screws up, you lose your water or you freeze.
		So there's really no room for error for a planet between freezing and losing all of your heat through boiling away.
		You cannot screw up, not even one time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Well, it doesn't look too good.
		When you read the news right now about the changing weather patterns, the increasing temperatures, runaway global warming, and all the rest of it, it really doesn't look very good.
		But see, on the other side of the coin, Peter, we have all these people who say, either from a religious perspective, look, God put all of the animals and the trees and the things that crawl and live on the planet for the use of mankind, and we are supposed to go ahead and use them as we will.
		There is that point of view, and then there's the conservative economic point of view, and all of these great political pressures that keep the ball rolling toward the, let's keep doing what we're doing right now until the last drop of oil, tomorrow night's subject is gone, or whatever.
		And so those are very powerful forces out there, Peter.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I was always curious who wrote that passage in the Bible that all the animals and plants are here for us.
		As far as I know, the Bible isn't autobiographical.
		Although I've seen God signed in a few bad motels, I think this is early Christian monks, probably ignorant as you can imagine, saying all this stuff.
		I mean, it strikes me as that we take it still so seriously when you look at the context of who wrote that and when.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It nevertheless forms a very popular current attitude that's shared by a certain political side of the fence that wants to keep the economic ball rolling right up into the last drop of oil, petroleum.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, as we see that happening, Seattle, Washington now has $2.25 gasoline at our pumps.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm thinking we'll see $3 probably first in California about midsummer if something doesn't radically change.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, I agree entirely.
		And the thing is, though, however, you've been to Europe.
		You know that once you go overseas, our gas is still half the price of any other Western democracy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And we have enormously subsidized gasoline in this country.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		True.
		Absolutely true.
		But that's going to make the eventual change all the worse and more difficult because we perhaps have it unrealistically low.
		When the real shortage begins to happen, the price is going to go up so drastically that our economy is going to fall to its knees.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I expect there will be some major problems.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And if we compound that with what I think both you and I believe is going to happen, certainly in the next 50 years of sudden and catastrophic climate change, you're looking at a world where it's problematical for having a continuation of this very easy, wonderful culture that we live in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then these would be the last great years of planet Earth.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, the planet's going to go on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, from our perspective.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I just think the last great years, the civilization as we know it.
		I think we as a species, I don't think we are to be eradicated unless we have a really large asteroid coming in.
		But I was finally heartened to see that the military establishment, the United States, is for the first time taking sudden global climate change seriously as a military threat.
		And of course it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, they have to.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, they haven't in the past.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But they're doing this really with an administration, a political administration, which after all is the supreme commander of the military services.
		They're doing it in effect against their wishes.
		They're moving independently along a line that is not being towed by the administration.
		Interesting, huh?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's interesting and scary.
		And let me tell you, the major criticism I had about the movie relates directly to this issue.
		And my criticism was that the movie is compressed into less than a year.
		I mean, the timeframe is very short.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And in a way, this makes that particular problem, as foreseen in the movie, much easier to solve.
		There's a very wonderful scientist named Bill Calvin who did a paper, or actually an article in Atlantic Monthly about three, four years ago called The Great Climate Flip-Flop, in which he looked at the same scenario that the movie posits.
		We get a change in these thermal haline salt currents.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And hence we produce a sudden global warming, or in this particular case of the movie, a sudden cooling.
		And the thing about that particular type of climate change is that from looking at ice core records from Antarctica and Greenland, we know that that has happened in the past, but at a minimum of 10 and more usually 20 and sometimes 50 years.
		And the point is, the point I made to popular science is that a 10-year event is far more dangerous and difficult to solve than a one-year event.
		A one-year event is like an earthquake.
		The earthquake shatters a city, people come to the aid, everything's backed hunky-dory, and you fix it.
		No matter how bad the earthquake, within a year or two, you're fixing it.
		When you have a long-term climate, a 10-year climate change, it's not a 100-year climate change.
		That's pretty easy to deal with too.
		That's slow enough.
		10 years is just fast enough to really ruin your civilization, yet so slow that there's no way that you can fix it with sudden aid from many different sources.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Peter, do you think that you could describe to this audience what a 10-year change would be like for everybody in the United States and then for the rest of the world as well?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, do you think you could kind of put together what might be a realistic scenario based on a 10-year flip-flop?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		I think the thing we have to deal with is what keeps us going.
		And what I had tonight was the most wonderful dinner.
		And in that dinner, I had noodles, we had beef stroganoff, I had friends over, we had salad, we had stuff that came from California, stuff that comes from the Midwest, things that grow because farmers have an enormous predictability.
		It's April in Seattle.
		I'm just starting to set out the first of my little vegetable gardens.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, listen, we're here at the bottom of the hour.
		So during this, consider that, please, if you would, Peter, a sort of an overview of what the United States could expect, what changes would happen to us, and then to the rest of the world as well.
		Peter Ward is my guest.
		I'm Art Bell.
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art bell ▲ ● ▼		None of this was planned.
		You know what?
		None of it.
		Totally blew me away when he said, I mean, The Coming Global Superstorm, yes, is the book that the new movie, The Day After Tomorrow, is based on.
		And here I walk into a guest who's read the script to The Day After Tomorrow.
		I haven't read the script.
		They never said it to me.
unidentified		I don't think they'd dare.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've got a guest who's read the script.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Unbelievable.
unidentified		Unbelievable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, what are the odds?
		Almost a million to one, have to be a million to one.
		Even the critics of the concept of fast climate change, rapid climate change, are beginning to yield to the inevitable fact that it's happening right now.
		Actually, we're having one weird, bizarre weather story after another.
		The inexplicable continues to happen.
		You know, hurricanes forming where they've not formed previously bizarre weather all over the place, real changes.
		You were telling me about your garden, and I hope you kind of lay out a 10-year kind of thing.
		In other words, what do you think, Peter, we can expect if we get this 10-year flip?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the garden analogy is simply that we have to have predictable agriculture.
		And the 10-year flip will be a gradual failure of crops.
		One by one by one, where you start losing the predictability of crop yield.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And that is the disaster, because it is food that drives the world around.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And when we lose predictability of agriculture, we are back to 10,000 years ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Having said that, imagine this 10-year flip.
		And so what do you see happening in the United States?
		Let us begin here at home.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, just as we were discussing that, interestingly enough, I have the TV on, too, and CNN has just reported that the president's science advisor denies that the science policy of the White House is driven by a conservative agenda, including studies of climate change.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		So it is the perfect storm because I think people are now just waking up to the fact that we do have a big problem with climate change.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder if this comes from the same people who told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's out of my purview.
		I simply look at the Earth.
		I'm a specialist of past mass extinctions.
		I have studied and seen episodes in the past when over half the species on the planet die out.
		And we now have identified about 10 episodes caused directly by global warming.
		Ten years ago, we thought every bit of mass extinction was caused by asteroids from space.
		And indeed, the dinosaurs died out that way.
		But all the rest, the dinosaur extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago, was a unique case.
		We have had, however, numerous times when much of the species of the planet die out through global warming.
		Global cooling is also a big one.
		It is sudden climate change that is the most dangerous aspect of living on planet Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There has to be a reason why all of a sudden so much of science is beginning to embrace this as not only possible, but probably inevitable and possibly even occurring right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That we're actually in it, the beginnings of it right now.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's two good sources of evidence.
		As you know, for the last 10 years at least, scientists have been going to the great ice sheets.
		There's one in Antarctica, there's one in Greenland, and the ice piled layer upon layer preserves excellent record of the ancient climate.
		All you need to do is core it.
		You take a big drill, you take the cores back in a cold lab, you analyze them for the nature of the isotopes of oxygen, and you can get ancient temperatures.
		Now, we've been realizing over the last five years that the rather sudden shifts happen very quickly, because you need two things.
		You need to know what the temperature change was and how long it took.
		So you need to do a radiocarbon date on it, as well as understanding the magnitude of the temperature change.
		And it's very clear that the Earth's climate, at least since the ice ages began, has been flipping back and forth and back and forth.
		We have been in a 10,000-year period of calm.
		It is very atypical of the last 2 million.
		And that 10,000-year calm is about to end.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And when it does, what will happen?
		I mean, I want to know the simple stuff, like how this will affect my daily life, whether I'm going to live through this or whether it's going to kill me.
		And if I live through it, what changes can I expect in my life?
		You know, the basic stuff here.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		The scariest scenario is not so much America's climate change because it will, but we're a very large continent.
		It's quite well insulated.
		The biggest problem is Europe.
		Europe has about 500 million very cranky People.
		Happily for us and the rest of the world, Europe totally feeds itself.
		It is self-sufficient in food because European agriculture is fabulous.
		But if you look at the latitude of Europe, you have to realize that all those beautiful wine-growing areas in France and Italy are really at the same latitude as parts of southern Canada.
		Southern Canada doesn't grow wine grapes because it has a very cold winter climate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Roughly as Labrador, I believe.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and Europe is anomalously warm because of these thermohaline circulation patterns.
		These are these big ocean currents that keep Europe warm.
		If these currents are perturbed, Europe gets the temperature it should have, which is cold.
		And so over a 10-year period then, you have 500 million Europeans who are no longer self-sufficient in food and yet have an industrial civilization and an armament ability and armies sufficient to conquer areas that do make food.
		And that, I think, is the inevitable consequence of war.
		Climate change.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The inevitable consequence, you're saying, is war.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I think so.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I think for Europe, the best place to grab would be Tunisia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, you're saying that a nation faced with possibly even simply being erased, I mean, being destroyed, prior to allowing itself to be destroyed under those conditions, would absolutely go and grab the land where they could grow food.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they would do so through war.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		That's my guess.
		For a while, they'll buy it, but then sooner or later, food would be the most valuable commodity on the planet, and fresh water.
		Those two become the new gold.
		And so there's where you have the problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's a problem, all right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you think they would take, I'm sorry, you said.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		My guess is that certainly armed conflict would arise.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, you mentioned a specific country you thought would go first.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, one of the places you'd want to get would be Tunisia.
		Tunisia used to be the breadbasket of the Roman Empire.
		Northern Tunisia has some fabulous grain-growing areas.
		It's semi-desert in the southern half, but as the climate cools, it cools just enough to be fabulous for grain.
		It was the granary, again, of the Roman Empire for a thousand years.
		And that part of Africa, once Europe cools, northern Africa gets wet again and becomes a fabulous grain-growing area.
		And that is a very likely militarized, easily grabbed place.
		The Crimea in Russia would be another grain-growing area, but the Russians have enough armament to take care of themselves.
		It's the Europeans.
		They have to figure out where can we go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is a political question, but I was actually wondering about the same thing, and I was suggesting the very same outcome.
		I really was.
		I mentioned the probability under those conditions of war.
		And, gosh, Peter, I just don't want to say.
		I mean, that could be the end of the world in the next decade, should that occur.
		That's virtually the end of the world, because I don't think there are any small wars.
		Well, maybe there are, but it seems like almost any war that would be for just taking land or taking something on the part of Europe would lead to something much wider and perhaps dangerous on a global scale.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, you've certainly got problems.
		If I were we, I would certainly be making nice with the Canadians.
		Because, again, if we certainly have an episode of global warming, southern Canada becomes the grain area of choice, whereas much of the grain area now in the United States is too hot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it would naturally move north.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, our Canadian friends, I'm sure, are ready to grow grain for us, right up there?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, they're willing to sell us grain, I suspect.
		We share a culture.
		The Canadians in the United States, I think, are a very well-bound society.
		I think the conflict doesn't arise from North America.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It wouldn't seem so.
		I mean, were the grain belt now, and the grain is shipped quite readily to Canada.
		I would imagine the reverse certainly could occur without war.
		But as you mentioned, Europe would be a very dire situation.
		Dire indeed.
		When I thought of the same scenario, I considered perhaps northern Africa.
		But that might even be hotter, actually, so I guess that wouldn't work.
		They'd have to go north, wouldn't they?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, it depends.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or no, they could go south, actually.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		They could go south.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They could go south.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Especially if, again, the funny thing about global warming is global warming could make Europe colder.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And that's the paradox.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so they could actually then consider parts of Africa.
unidentified		That's what I would do, geopolitically.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There are many ways, of course, in which it can end for Earth.
		And one is asteroids.
		I mean, you can't leave them out.
		They did, we think, take out the dinosaurs.
		What are the odds?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, they're pretty good.
		You asked me earlier in the conversation why I had the temerity to write a book that suggests that complex life is fairly rare.
		And part of that is based on studies that we have done and other colleagues, we examine the galaxy as a whole, and we ask the question, are there better and worse neighborhoods in the galaxy?
		And one of these relates to asteroid impact.
		It turns out that there are regions of the galaxy where you would have a lower asteroid impact and regions where you'd have a much higher impact.
		The farther away from the center you are, the safer you are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we're quite a ways out there.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And that's why the Earth, I think, in the last 500 million years has had but one single large calamitous impact event.
		And that's the one that killed the dinosaurs.
		One time in 500 million years is pretty good.
		Now, if you're a star sitting in the center of the galaxy, you have so many stars very close to you that you have got this enormous close packing.
		It affects your Oort cloud.
		The Oort cloud is where the comets are kept.
		All star systems have them.
		Once you have other stars dragging your comets, it starts pushing comets into other stars.
		You have a much higher asteroid impact rate.
		And the second aspect, the centers of galaxies are dangerous because of enormous energetic explosions.
		There's gamma-ray bursts and supernova.
		So we really posited the center of galaxies a terrible place for complex life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We have seen some rather large gamma-ray bursts, some that really have shocked the scientists.
		And that's yet another way the Earth could be virtually scorched of all life, isn't it?
		In other words, a strong enough one and life would cease.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Oh, sure.
		These gamma-ray bursts are directed, and we can imagine them wiping out thousands of planets, just eliminating life from thousands of planets in their way.
		But the good news is the majority of gamma-ray bursts and the directionality are from the center of the galaxy.
		We are a long way.
		We are in the galactic outposts.
		And again, that's a very favorable place.
		I've had this argument with SETI.
		You know, you talked about contact in the movie, and they've got the beautiful Jodi Foster.
		It turns out that Ellie, the heroine of that movie, is a real person.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know, I've talked to her.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Jill Tarter.
		I've talked to her.
		And Jill Tarter is...
		It was probably a nice interview.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It was.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Jill Tarter would like to see me killed by a Sherman tank.
		Would she?
		I'm the most dangerous threat to SETI because of our book.
unidentified		Yes.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		They don't like the news that there may not be intelligent life everywhere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I would rather imagine they don't.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		You need to get your big donors, like Paul Allen, all excited about all the aliens out there.
		And if you can get a scientific sense that that may not be the case, why would people give him money?
		So I was with she and Paul Allen.
		I gave Paul a copy of my book, Rare Earth, and it was kind of like Out of the Exorcist.
unidentified		She looked at me like, it burned.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		It was a very funny moment.
		Well, it's funny for me.
		It wasn't funny for her.
		Paul was bemused.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So did you get into a lively discussion with her at all?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, she sent her attack dogs out, and I've had four or five formal debates now with the SETI people.
		Seth Szostak is the designated debater, and he and I have done it around the country several times, and it is tooth and claw.
		The first couple times are personal, but we both have improved our debating skills.
		Neither of us believes the other, but nevertheless, I really think that we're probably correct.
		And deep in his heart, I think he cannot refute my arguments.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, only because, as we all know, Seth I've also interviewed many, many times, and he actually is extremely optimistic that they will find life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		However, he's also faced with the indisputable fact that they have surveyed a great deal of the sky already, and so far, other than a few moments of regrettable excitement because it didn't come true, they haven't found a damn thing.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Enrico Fermi, where are they?
		Well, that's exactly the case.
		And sooner or later, CETI has this sort of, they're in a tough bind.
		They have to say, we're really optimistic, we'll find things.
		But on the other hand, they have gotten money.
		They are looking.
		They haven't found anything.
		Sooner or later, they have to come to the truthful point.
		Well, look, there's now a lesser chance of us finding anything than there was five years ago because we looked here, here, here, and here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Yes.
		Do you think they're close to that?
		Or do you think that the need for continued funding to keep the program going will prevent that?
		Or has that moment really already occurred?
		I mean, where are we with that?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, interestingly, Seth gave a public lecture that I was at, and he has now stated for the first time that if they don't find some contact, and I think he said by about 2050, then the odds of their finding a contact are going to lessen dramatically.
		So what they're saying is, give us another 50 years of your money, and we'll give you a better sense of whether or not.
		So that I thought was interesting.
		That was the first time that I've heard any of the SETI people publicly admit that, yes, there is a limit to our searching.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, these people work with numbers, right?
		And they know what they've surveyed so far and what they've got left to survey.
		So 50 years, huh?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		50 years.
		Now, in SETI's defense, I shouldn't bash them.
		They do a tremendous lot of good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, you should definitely not bash them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You perhaps might question the viability of what they're doing, but bash them, no.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		So, for instance, an awful lot of the really good astrobiology that's being taken place is by SETI scientists, but it just underscores the fact they need a lot of money.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		They have a huge overhead because they have so many people on staff.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Too much staff, in your opinion?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		No, again, I think there's some fabulous scientists.
		Chris Chiba, who is the chief scientist there, is really one of the more brilliant humans on the planet.
		And a lot of the stuff that they're doing...
		My point is, and this is a point that a lot of probably my colleagues would disagree with.
		My point is I think the Earth is going into such a dangerous moment in its history.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That it's moot?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I think it's moot.
		I think we should put it off for a century or two.
		It's not that the aliens are going to go away.
		And if we get through this, fine.
		I mean, say 100 years from now or 50 years from now, let's start doing the search again.
		But at the moment, my sense is I'd rather save endangered species and worry about climate and try to keep our house in order.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, you think it's so pressing that we should live to search another day.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, that would be my brothers if I were in charge, but I'm not in charge of much, so there you are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, suppose you were in charge of everything and you were a dictator, and based on the scientific knowledge you now have, you could dictate what would begin to happen right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What would you order?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, the first thing I would do, I think, one of the most dangerous things that we're doing is I would demand that Detroit start building hybrids.
		I mean, it's just a tragedy, I think, that the only two reasonable hybrid cars to be bought in America, one comes from Toyota and one comes from Honda.
		Now, you can't tell me that Detroit can't equally build a hybrid car.
		The amount of carbon dioxide and emissions coming out of every one of our automobiles is part of the crisis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Detroit, though, has a problem.
		They're a business, and they have to provide what people want.
		And what people want right now are great big, you know, sort of civilian tanks.
		They are, but I think that, you know, they're a business.
		They have to give people what they want, don't they?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		That will change with $5 a gallon gasoline.
		And once we start getting disruptions in climate, we are certainly going to find that transportation systems, fuel, everything is going to be in the whole new world.
		And if I were in charge, I would certainly start mobilizing for a lower oil economy than we have in the present day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if you have an SUV now, hold on to it because who knows, it could be worth a lot of money as an antique.
		Or maybe if you want an SUV, just hang on for a little while longer because they're going to suddenly get real cheap, Peter?
		You think so?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		That would be my sense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Hold on.
		We're at the top of the hour.
		Peter Ward is my guest.
		His book is Rare Earth.
		Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe.
		And he's in quite a row with the SETI people.
		Well, this should be interesting, shouldn't it?
		I'm Art Bell, and in the nighttime, this is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		What do Mel Gibson and the Coral King do?
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art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's who we are, and it occurred to me that maybe Seth Shostak is out there right now listening and would like to get a word in.
		Well, Seth, if you would like to get a word in here, I think that could be arranged.
		All you'd need to do is get a hold of the network.
		You know how to do that, I think.
		Or, failing that, email me at artbell at mindspring.com with a phone number.
		And that sure would be interesting, wouldn't it, to get Seth on here since they've debated before?
		That would be fun.
		So, Seth, if you're out there listening, Art Bell, A-R-T-B-E-L-L, lowercase, at MindSpring.com.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Since we're touching on SETI Peter, Peter Ward is my guest.
		But Rare Earth, his book, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the University.
		He's tangled with Seth's showstack a few times.
		And while we're talking for a second about SETI, I've always sort of tangled with Seth over whether SETI would immediately release the information or whether there's actually a behind-the-scenes protocol that would, if they actually found life, that would take precedence and it would remain secret for I don't know how long a period of time, but we wouldn't get the information right away.
		We've always gone round and round on that.
		What do you think?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's a really interesting question.
		And I found out that there is something called a planetary protection officer.
		And this might relate right to that.
		It turns out that NASA has someone on staff who is the planetary protection officer for planet Earth.
		And this is no joke.
		I mean, this guy's making civil servant wages.
		The aspects that are most interesting, I touched earlier that my friend Don Brownley has comet stuff coming back to Earth.
		Well, when we start doing sample return missions from Mars, we are going to be bringing back alien samples to Earth as well.
		I'm just wondering if a first signal would also be, let's face it, if the aliens know that we're here, although we've seen enough bad science fiction movies, all of this, there is a potential for danger as well.
unidentified		Well, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
		And by the way, while you're on the subject of the comet and contamination, I read a fascinating story the other day that suggested short of the two rovers that we just sent to Mars, everything preceding them was not sterilized before it was sent to Mars.
		So there's a lot of scientists now saying, yeah, we're going to find life on Mars all right.
		And guess what?
		It's going to be ours.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're exactly right about that.
		And believe me, a whole lot of people are very, very, very worried about that.
		And here's an analogous case.
		Because the Bush administration wants to go to Mars and because there's going to be a lunar aspect to it, I was sent to Houston last week, along with, I guess, 10 or 15 other scientists, to try to put together on short notice A scientific rationale for going back to the moon.
		What would be a reasonable and valid scientific sort of impetus to, if we're going to go there anyway and the military is going to run it, couldn't we get in some science on the side?
		And it turns out one of the more really interesting projects that could be done on the moon is finding fossils.
		And you say, ah, fossils on the moon, that's nonsense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, not necessarily.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There are those who believe that the moon was carved from the earth.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Indeed, and you're very close, because we think early in Earth history there was a heavy bombardment.
		There may be more pristine early earth rock on the moon than on the earth, because all the old rocks on the earth have been affected by metamorphism and volcanism.
		But that pristine early earth rock has been blasted into space.
		And we've done calculations showing that actually quite a bit has landed on the moon.
		And we may have a better insight into how life first formed on Earth by going to the moon than by studying it on the Earth.
		It just shows that microbes and rocks and material can go from planet to planet.
		This old concept of panspermia, the idea that life, Fred Hoyle, that life originated elsewhere and was seeded here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But doesn't that argue over on the other side of your argument?
		I mean, doesn't that really argue that life would tend to be common?
		Well, that's not uncommon.
		This is where our book is totally misinterpreted because you want to maintain complex life.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		We have proposed two things.
		We call it the rare earth hypothesis, and it's even entered scientific lore as such.
		One, life should be almost everywhere.
		We think life is easy to form.
		If you have liquid water, if you have temperature that isn't too high, too cold, you're probably going to get life.
		Mars had it, Venus had it, or it's sent from place to place.
		But you've got to have a nice nest for a long period of time if you want to get beyond a bacterium to a paramecium, which is pretty complex.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What you're saying makes sense.
		I understand.
		In other words, you've got to have an appropriate long-lasting environment, which we do appear to have.
		And you point out we're out here on the edge where we're unlikely to be struck at least for a good period of time.
		And so we have this little garden earth.
		And you're just saying it's not very common.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's something even more important than even being out on the edge.
		And this is where the geologists and geology, I think, the greatest contribution that we have made to this whole concept of how many life forms are out there comes from the insight that not only do you have to have a planet in a safe part of the galaxy, you have to have a planet with plate tectonics or continental drift.
		And this was totally unforeseen.
		Turns out that the same process that caused our continents to slide around is the global thermostat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe we better define what you mean by complex life, because now you're getting down to the tectonic plates being important for our existence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Perhaps they are, but I can imagine other forms of complex life that might not necessarily follow our format very closely.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Now, that's another great question that we should actually think about.
		Let's define complex life as, remember the flat worm you had in school, Planaria?
		I'll go even that simple.
		And if you get as complex as a flatworm or a garden worm, that's really complex life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so you're suggesting even that either.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Even that.
		We don't even have to go to intelligence or mammals or anything like it.
		Let's just go to anything that has multicellularity where the cells all have to work together.
		That's complex life to me.
		So we think that's almost non-existent in the galaxy and the universe as a whole.
		How's that paradoxical?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a very difficult concept to embrace.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But on the other hand, as you explain it, maybe not.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's just get one quick look like plate tectonics.
		I mean, this is a what the hell does plate tectonics have to do with anything?
		It was found out that is our thermostat.
		It turns out that we have carbon dioxide, as we all know.
		That is the problem with global warming and greenhouse gases.
		Any planet that has too much carbon dioxide becomes Venus.
		So how do you get it out of an atmosphere?
		It's always being pumped in there by your volcanoes.
		So there's a constant stream of it.
		If you don't have a system to scrub it out of your atmosphere, you're dead in a short period of time, which is what happened to Venus.
		Venus did not have plate tectonics.
		Every time we have a mountain go up, we get granite being formed.
		And once you expose granite to air, the silicate minerals, as they weather, take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as part of the weathering product.
		This little simple concept totally escaped the astronomers.
		And this was the contribution that was made by geology.
		And in rare earth for the first time, we suggested this was why Earth has maintained this extremely long stable temperature, building on the work of Jim Casting and others at Penn State who discovered this originally.
		So it just seems so simple.
		And yet, if you don't find plate tectonics, and we only know one place in the solar system that has it, Earth, Mars had it and it stopped, Venus had it and it stopped.
		As soon as they lost it, they lost any ability to have life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Peter, let's assume all of this is correct and the cycle is about to occur.
		Have we, to this moment, sufficiently evolved technologically to be able to survive by and large, the population survive, and make it through this?
		Would that be a yes or a no?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I think so.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I don't think we'll survive happily, but I think we'll survive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Well, that's at least a fairly cheery thought in the middle of all this.
		That we will survive, but you say it'll be a perhaps miserable existence, not so bad as in a nuclear war where you wish you were dead.
		Not quite that bad?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		No, I think we'll certainly see population crashes.
		I think the history of the next thousand years is going to be one or more enormous sort of corrections to the human population on planet Earth.
		And none of that will be very happy.
		We really, I think, are going to see famine, or simply if we get these 10-year global changes in climate, I could see a case where a billion people die.
		We're really looking at a major correction on the planet.
		Maybe we can do it as in the case of sort of outsourcing.
		You retire a lot of them before you send the rest of the way.
		But my worry is that we just as a civilization are not yet ready to deal with, again, this tenure event.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's rare that I get a guest who can do more doom and gloom than I can.
		You're really doing pretty well here.
		All right, let me try this from an optimistic point of view.
		The United States, and I think you said this earlier, probably is uniquely positioned to make it through with less pain than most of the rest of the world.
		Wouldn't that be true?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I think so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good.
		That's sort of good.
		But even the U.S. will be strained, won't we?
		Economically strained from perhaps even food and a fuel point of view.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the worst case scenario is, you know, or I guess I'm just preaching and converted here because you know all this stuff, but the worst case scenario is with global warming, you get a rise in sea level.
		Now, it isn't going to be bad like the movies where you have this gigantic sort of tidal wave aspect coming in, but the rise in sea level injects salt into deltas and near shore, very productive farmlands.
		It turns out that, oh, a huge percentage of the world's crops come from deltas right now, the Mississippi Delta, the Nile Delta, the Bamaputra.
		It goes on and on.
		These are flat, very, very rich soils, almost at sea level.
		If you rise or create a rise in sea level of even a meter or so, you inject salt water into the groundwater systems in these places, and you lose crops.
		It is the loss of the deltas that is going to be as catastrophic as almost anything.
		And this is where the U.S. will really suffer, because we do have lowland areas.
		The whole Mississippi area, the Gulf Coast, there's an awful lot of productive farmland which become non-productive.
		And personally, the most productive place on the United States of all is the Sacramento and the Imperial and the San Joaquin Valleys.
		And we know that because the sea level is going to change, the Sacramento Delta region, it injects salt into the San Joaquin.
		And once you do that, all these beautiful winter vegetables we get.
		I mean, the San Joaquin is definitely as productive as any place on this planet for groceries.
		And we've got trouble.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's quite a change, all right.
		And that would certainly eclipse in terms of a challenge for mankind in the most immediate future anything else we're thinking of, including terrorism and, I don't know, whatever other threats might be looming, even the remote asteroid possibility.
		All the rest of it is dwarfed by this if it's underway.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's my sense of it.
		The next book I want to write is called The Defense of Civilization, simply asking, what is civilization?
		What are its threats?
		And what are the actual mechanisms by which it can be destroyed?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you have now come to believe that this is the most likely and that it's imminent?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, are you that far down the road?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, the only way it's not imminent is if we can really begin controlling climate in a fashion that we don't do yet.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And one of the really scary aspects about climate change is that we can't control climate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, whether there are any current climate control efforts underway.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you heard any big rumors even?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, we certainly walked out of the Kyoto.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Now, Kyoto itself was flawed, but nevertheless, the biggest single polluter of greenhouse gases.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I didn't mean that kind of climate control.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I see engineering climate control.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		No, it's going to have to be done country by country by trading emissions.
		I mean, this is the whole name of the game.
		But we have this huge new middle class in both China and India.
		And I think this is something that we Americans just don't quite understand, is that China and India are in the same position that the U.S. was in 1950, 1955, with this huge emerging middle class based on many cases, either jobs we've sent in the case of India or the products that are produced in the Shanghai region in China.
		And so you've got a middle class.
		Middle class wants cars, and they want refrigerators, and they want metal things.
		To do that industrially, you've got to increase your energy, which is either oil or, in the case of China, it's coal.
		And so what we're looking at is even with the best efforts of Western Europe and America, and we're not doing our best efforts, the Chinese and the Indians, in a large sense, hold the key to the planet's climatic future.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm laughing because I've said these exact things that the rest of the world is going to want what we have now grown used to.
		You know, the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed is going to be wanted by the rest of the world, and very quickly now.
		In fact, it's already well underway, and they're going to be doing all of the submitting as well.
		And so the problem is going to be compounded many times.
		I've just said all of this myself, and so it's like hearing an echo coming from you, Peter.
		It seems absolutely true to me.
		And I see absolutely no real-world way to reverse it.
		You can talk about it, but it's not going to happen.
		You have any thoughts?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		No, I agree with you.
		I think, unfortunately, we are so threatened by different cultures, and because of the political realities that we hire politicians for four years, and a politician, there's no politician on the planet with the current mandates that can think about a 10-year event because they're not in office long enough.
		That's what makes it really, really difficult, the cultural and also just the political systems that have evolved by humankind.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about some other nations that don't have that four-year problem?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are they looking at this in a very different way?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, probably so.
		But again, the players in this business are those with Industry.
		And I think that in Russia, for instance, Putin is president for life.
		I don't see him ever giving up that power.
		So there you have someone with a longer-term view.
		But unfortunately, he's got such huge problems.
		I mean, they teeter on going from a European country to really a backwater third world nation.
		I've been to Russia several times.
		I've just been struck by, boy, you know, my whole life as a child and from the 50s, I was scared, scared of Russia and all the Cold War.
		And when I finally saw the industrial sort of ineptitude of the place, it just was funny and really, really sad.
		I still think that Southeast Asia is one of the big players, but boy, I think India and China are the name of the game for understanding the next century of climate change.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So we will make it through this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that out on the other side of all of this pain that almost seems inevitable, there will come this great, wonderful technological society where man has benefited himself and perhaps lives now a longer life, has extended his life through genetic manipulation or whatever?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		A little more cynical than that.
		I wrote another book, actually, since the last time we talked.
		It's called The Future of Evolution, in which I try to just posit what future evolutionary creatures on the planet may look like.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a picture book.
		Alexis Rockman, the great New York artist, was the illustrator and sent through Times Books.
		And in it, you know, I've been contacted by many movie makers over and over and over, and once they found out what my sense of it is, they just hang up because it's not a very sexy view.
		I don't think humans will change in an evolutionary sense.
		I do think the one chance at producing a new human species is genetically engineering into the germline the ability to live to 150 years old.
		So let's imagine that we have a 150-year person, and that person can say, because they lived to 150, they can have children for 100 years of it.
		I mean, all of a sudden, the social structure is radically different.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And the other major thing is that once you live to 150, your ability to make money radically changes as well.
		You can make 50-year investments at high yields, and you become rich.
		Unless you're a really, really bad investor.
		Someone living to 150 years and having, say, 50 kids is going to be a radically different human than the rest of us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you think we will do that sort of thing?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I'm sure we'll do it.
		But the point is that not everybody will get to do it.
		I think the reality of the human civilization and human species is that there will always be a few haves and many, many more have-nots.
		And this will certainly go for biotech, too.
		I mean, we're already seeing it.
		Who gets plastic surgery?
		Who gets the elective, very expensive genetic aspect?
		It is certainly not the whole world.
		It's a very tiny percentage out of the money.
		That'll increase, but not for everybody.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Hold it right there.
		Peter Ward, my guest, Rare Earth.
		Why complex life is uncommon in the universe?
		Perhaps not even any more complex than your standard Earthworm.
		That qualifies as complex.
		So we are rare.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
		Then they send me away.
		Teach me how to be sensible.
		Miragical, all responsible, practical.
		And then they show me a world.
		I could feel so dependent on the world.
		Phineas.
		There are times when all the love you see, the questions run too deep, for such a sinful mind.
		But please, please tell me what's wrong, I know it's wrong to start, please tell me who I am.
		And then what would you say, I'll be calling you a radical, a liberal, a fanatical criminal.
		So won't you sign up for me, we'd like to be all acceptable, respectable, oh, presentable, vegetable.
		Oh, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby.
		Take a ride.
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		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Peter Ward is my guest.
		I love getting computer messages during the program.
		That's a lot of fun.
		Laura, in Hell's Canyon, Washington, there's names for it, Hell's Canyon.
		Says Art, yes, When Planets Go Bad would be a great title for a book or a movie.
		You want to write it or should I?
		When Planets Go Bad.
		but that's what we're talking about.
		Well, here's something interesting.
		Peter mentions specifically, as he did a little while ago, the scenario of the Andromeda Strain connected with the cometary material that we're going to bring back to Earth, and we are doing that.
		I'm curious, though, Peter, why would you reference the possibility of an Andromeda Strain type of horrible whatever.
		With respect to bringing back cometary material.
		I mean, after all, things are smashing into the earth all the time, perhaps with all sorts of seeds.
		Or would you postulate that they're virtually sterilized as they enter the atmosphere, and therefore bringing back something unmolested from a comet might be a really poor idea?
		Is that the scheme here, or what?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not so worried about stardust.
		The cometary material coming back is coming from, as you say, a pretty sterile environment.
		Although there are a small few who do believe that you could get the formation of certainly complex organic molecules and comets.
		We know that there are amino acids in space, and so one could see where some of these do link together.
		But when we bring stuff back from Mars, I think we have to be really pretty careful about it.
		And there's a terrible, as you said already, two-edged sword to this.
		Let's say we find on the sample returns from Mars that are coming back in 2011 or so, that we find microbial life.
		Now, is it Mars life, or is it Earth life that got there and then got to Mars through our space probes?
		And really, one of the great bombshell discoveries of recent times, in a way, may have been made yesterday, Art.
		I don't know if you saw the methane on Mars story.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, methane, as you know, comes commonly from volcanoes, even though we can't find any active volcanism on Mars.
		But it comes much more commonly from methanogen bacteria.
		And boy, I'll tell you that this has really heated up the life on Mars question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A little pun there?
unidentified		Well, if it is, I didn't see a comment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, methane.
		Sure, a byproduct of living organisms and volcanoes.
		No volcanoes.
		It really does look like there might be life there.
		It doesn't seem like, though, to be honest with you, Peter, that whatever life we might have put there with our earlier probes could have evolved quickly enough to be producing methane at those levels.
		Does it you?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Viking got theirs in, what, 76?
		We had two Viking probes themselves.
		What if we have subterranean water and it's just a bacterium after all?
		You could get bacteria grow pretty darn fast.
		Not totally far-fetched.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, this argument will never end then, will it?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the scary thing.
		Let's say we get the microbes and they have DNA just like ours.
		There's two possibilities.
		Either DNA independently evolved there or it's a cross-contaminant.
		How would you know?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you wouldn't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Except again to say to evolve, to be sufficiently progressive to produce that kind of methane would seem unlikely in that period of time.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is what they got there 76.
		That's 25 years.
		Right.
		Even a couple bacteria, given the correct conditions, can easily, in 25 years, produce sufficient populations that you could easily do it.
		I think methanogens, archaeans, are just the type of bacteria that we could expect to make it across in a spaceship, crash on the land.
		We had two enormous landers plus all the others going down.
		It is not impossible.
		And at this stage, the best solution to the whole business, if we find life and it's non-DNA life, then we say, aha, this is independently arisen on Mars.
		But the scary scenario for the NASA people, of which I'm one, is that it will be DNA life.
		And then we can never quite say that we didn't put it there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How heavily is this being debated?
		And how much of a crashing possibility was it for NASA to realize that, oops, all the stuff we sent in the beginning wasn't sterilized.
		Darn.
		Look what that means.
		I mean, this must be a big one for them.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a big one for them.
		And there's a lot of really bright, good people who are debating these things.
		I'm not peripherally employed by NASA, but I get a very large grant from them.
		And so I've gotten to know them over the last five years.
		The scientific wings of that agency are really first class.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, why do you get a grant from NASA?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you do to engender a grant?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		The NASA Astrobiology Institute is made up of 15 consortia.
		Generally, they're at universities, but not always.
		For instance, there was one node at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
		There's one node at Johnson Space Center.
		There's a node at Ames in San Jose.
		It's a competitive grant system where 10 or 15 professors at each of these places put forward a proposal that would further the field of astrobiology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what was yours?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Ours was pretty much the same conversation and the same outline as in Rare Earth.
		We at the university are looking for the factors that would allow complex life to arise and what are the kind of biotic systems of a planet that would keep them alive.
		What is it about planets?
		Which planet?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you, this is very interesting, have you had any feedback from NASA with regard to what you've said to them?
		I mean, you're really, it's kind of like talking to Seth in a way.
		After all, NASA has every hope that something will develop out there.
		I presume that's the purpose of NASA.
		We're going to space to see what's out there, and one of the things would be life.
		So they'd be over on the positive side of life.
		NASA would be, or wanting to find it, certainly.
		So how do they take what you tell them?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, NASA is certainly in the let's go find life business, but they're also in the more physical aspects.
		One of the specialties that we bring them from the University of Washington and the team that I put together is looking at past planetary catastrophes.
		Again, we look at the past mass extinctions and ask, could these be a commonality in other worlds?
		What is it about the Earth that caused these great periods of mass death?
		And what might we expect in other planets to be the Fate of life, should we find it elsewhere?
		Again, this idea that there are various areas in a galaxy that are better and worse for life is a very, very productive way to go.
		Peter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Peter, if we could travel in space much better than the speed of light, and we could go visit right now many worlds with, I don't know, the probability of life based on water and all the things that we're familiar with,
art bell ▲ ● ▼		and we could zoom around and visit these planets, would it be your view that what we would find is a bunch of perhaps signs of ancient civilizations that have self-immolated or been destroyed one way or the other?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's my guess that if we could go to the hundred nearest stars, and we now know that virtually every star has planets, so this is much more optimistic than in Sagan's day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Certainly.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		So let's go to the hundred nearest stars and go star system by star system by star system.
		The vast majority of them are not going to have Earth-like planets that are habitable.
		They may have had Earth-like planets, but we now know that the vast majority of systems we've seen have Jupiters, hot Jupiters, that are present in the highly elliptical orbits.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So we're going to find a lot of dead planets.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're going to find a lot of Jupiters, and where the Earth-like planets used to be, they're no longer there.
		They've been either sent into the Sun or ejected.
		When we find Earth-like planets, I think we're going to find an awful lot of planets like Mars or like Venus, Earth-like planets, planets that went bad.
		If we find two or three Earth-like planets that have life in the nearest hundred stars, I think that would be a very positive outcome.
		I would think that the chance of finding a civilization, although you can't say, I mean, lightning always strikes twice, you could always have two planets like the Earth maybe side by side, but I think the odds are that in 100 planets around us, we would find nothing that was Earth-like in the sense of having so much light.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doesn't this kind of scenario sadden you?
		I mean, to contemplate this?
		Or are you just straightforward scientific about it?
		I mean, surely it must produce strong emotions in you as you think about it.
		It would in any person.
		So how does it affect you?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would love there to be lots of life out there.
		It would be more interesting, I think, to be in sort of a zoologically rich universe.
		On the other hand, I'm vastly influenced by several of my colleagues here, and I keep bringing up Don Brownlee, who's an amazing guy.
		You should get him on your show.
		He's just one of the most wonderful, cheerful, outgoing people, and yet his pessimism runs in an entirely different way than mine.
		His pessimism is about space travel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In what sense?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		He is entirely pessimistic that we will ever, ever get to another star or that we will ever voyage outside of our solar system.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		He thinks that the distances are so enormously great that we have totally, totally sort of misunderstood what a light year is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, the numbers are solidly, of course, on his side.
		I mean, not sadly, they are on his side.
		Even if we could travel at the speed of light, they're still on his side.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In terms of being pessimistic, I'm afraid it's numerically just fine.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		His sense is that we're always trapped in this particular system.
		So whether, unless, of course, you ask, you can sign multi-generations of humans to live and breathe in a tin can spaceship that would go for hundreds and hundreds of years.
		And perhaps, coming out at the other end, you have a crew which, has been brought up ten generations away from the one who launched it to know how to smow the rocket down.
		But then your chances are you're going to enter a system which has been totally dead and devoid.
		Now, can we send out hundreds of such endeavors with no possibility of ever coming back?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, we would not do that.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And that is the way it would have to be done.
		Unless, of course, that you think we can get faster-than-life drive and all that stuff.
		And, of course, a lot of us just think the physics suggests that's not going to happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, a lot of what has been suggested couldn't be has already come to pass.
		So I don't rule that possibility out, but I am willing to certainly consider that even if we got it, what we would find out there, according to you, seems to be either always dead or planets that were at one point harboring some sort of life, but now are dead again.
		And existing life would be nil and maybe even zero.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Or bacterial.
		Again, we may find that bacteria are very beautiful.
		Humans can eat them.
		It may be the best that we find.
		Or here and there, we do find a flatworm, but not a very advanced flatworm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can see how Seth would just go berserk around you, I'm sure.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		There we go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But NASA, again, getting back to NASA, I mean, you've had to present this hypothesis to NASA, and there must have been some notable reaction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, are they sort of displeased by its consideration, or are they so scientific that they're willing to consider it right along with everything else?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll find out in two more years.
		We're going to put a renewal into our grants, and maybe we'll get renewed, maybe we won't.
		But the Court of Public Opinion doesn't count for anything where the deliverables, NASA exists in a world called deliverables.
		For us, the deliverables are scientific papers.
		So if we produce good science, that is all they want for their money.
		And they draw upon that.
		And I think already the entire NASA Astrobiology Institute, I think, is evolving into the premier sort of prestige scientific arm of NASA.
		I see NASA itself is really changing, radically changing, and that one part of it will be scientific.
		And certainly the pursuit of life and life beyond the Earth is the primary mission of this particular institute.
		To understand where life will be, you have to know an awful lot about how planets work.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But having said all that, your theory argues against their existence, if that's a prime reason for them to exist.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, we certainly argue against complex life, although we think there may be a multiplicity of bacterial life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or could it be reasonably argued by NASA that even if there's not life out there, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't go?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, NASA has a new mission and a mission statement.
		And one of the aspects of that mission statement is try to make our world better.
		Certainly to understand the fates of worlds that didn't do well may at least give us the wisdom and understanding of how not to screw up this particular planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There are many people who believe that NASA knows things that it has not told us.
		There's a great group of people out there who feel that things were seen on the moon, things have been seen on Mars and elsewhere, that NASA is well aware of and hasn't said a word about.
		You're aware of that group, I'm sure.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I am.
		I guess I'm not close enough to NASA, even though I'm part of it, to have been privy to all that great new knowledge.
		So everything I've seen about it has been pretty straightforward.
		I think an awful lot of the brightest people on the planet seem to be working for them now.
		And I think this last shuttle disaster has really woken people up in it.
		And what I see now that I really, really appreciate is finally this idea, let's get out of low Earth orbit.
		Let's realize that the space station is a disaster.
		Cut our losses on that boondoggle and start reaching out to places that really matter, that make a difference.
		Let's go back to the moon.
		There's a lot of very interesting science to be done.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't think there's a good argument for the space station having a worthwhile mission?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's a good military argument.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A military argument.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I suppose, but it's manned by Russians to a large degree.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So what are you saying?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I don't see a lot of Chinese on it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not yet, but the Chinese have plans.
		They're going to put their own up.
		The Chinese say they're going to the moon.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly the point, why all of a sudden there's this sort of renewed interest in going back to the moon.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Why NASA had a crash group of us try to put together scientific reasons to, at least if they go, take some scientists along, because the Bush directive up till now is we're going to the moon and we may not have time to do any science as we go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In what way have they actually said that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that seems ludicrous, sort of.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Do you think?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we're going to the moon and there's no real science planned.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know, I don't know if I grasp that.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		It came down from the person right beneath the NASA administrator.
		Was that get ready for a moon mission and try somebody, please give us an excuse for sending scientists along.
		Otherwise, it'll be just like Apollo.
		Apollo wasn't about science.
		Out of all those astronauts, one geologist made it on the last trip.
		Now, that's not much of an interest in science.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, at least then we had the Cold War going.
		We had the race excuse.
		And you think that's all it is now with the Chinese?
		They say they're going to go to the moon, so we're going to go back to the moon.
		Is that what it's about?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Boy, certainly this idea to get to Mars was a bold initiative by the President, and it was met by an awful lot of sort of ho-hum, where's the money going to come from?
		But to get to the Mars, we have to springboard to the moon first.
		At least that's his directive.
		And we're in early stages of planning.
		So maybe I'll be more diplomatic.
		Let's just say that at this stage, the planning is going so quickly that it may have outstripped the scientific sort of rationale to go.
		So scientists are now trying to put together a possible series of very interesting experiments to do if we do go.
		And there are some very interesting things that can be done on the moon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me try again.
		You're saying that short of this, though, it was only a political they're doing it, so let's go, I don't know, do it again, show them we can do it again.
		What?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		That's my read of it.
		That's the way it came down to us.
		Let's put together some science here because, hey, guess what, gang?
		We're going to the moon and Mars.
unidentified		So jump on that bus.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We are a strange group of people, aren't we?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, America is different than I remember it when I was younger.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, me too.
		All right, Peter, hold on.
		Peter Ward is here, author of Rare Earth, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe.
unidentified		And we're going to go to the phones shortly after we get back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		so if you have questions now would be a good time Thank you.
unidentified		Nights in white satin, never reaching the end.
		Letters unwritten, never meaning to send beauty out of this with these eyes before just what the truth is.
		What do Mel Gibson and the Coral Castle do?
		What do you think about me?
		What's a part of a time in your wildest dreams?
		To talk with Art Bell.
		Call the wildcard line at Epic Code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To target with Art Bell from East of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
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		International callers may retard by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and titling Toll 3 8008930903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast Again with Art Bell and my guest Peter Ward, who wrote Rare Earth, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I think I'll give him a couple of minutes to think about this one.
		It's a typical critical email of anybody who talks about global warming and all the rest of it.
		And it's very typical, and it's typical of the Klan.
		So I thought I would read it and give him a couple of minutes and think about a response.
		But here it is.
		Hobwash Art.
		Does your guest deny that Mount Pinatubo erupting in the Philippines put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than all the activity of man since the dawn of time?
		So there you go.
		in a moment so we'll get a response To be fair, the author of this email, Bill in Santa Ana, California, he actually said Pinatubo put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any of the activity of man since the dawn of man.
		Not the dawn of time, the dawn of man.
		But even that is a very powerful argument, suggesting that nature does things that dwarf anything man could do with regard to the atmosphere anyway.
		And to that you say what?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I was able to go to the carbon dioxide laboratory.
		There is such a place.
		It's on the slope of one of the big volcanoes in Hawaii.
		It's up to 13,000 feet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And on it is marked the rise in carbon dioxide since measurements began.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I think it was in the early 1970s.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I read a story on this tonight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Jeez.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a very daunting sort of place to get to, but once you're there, you see this clockwork rise of greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere.
		Mount Pinatubo raised the temperature of the planet only for a very short time and only very briefly.
		And in actuality, the amount of carbon dioxide coming out of it was quite minimal.
		It's nothing like what cars are doing in a single year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, yeah, I've got it here.
		This one came from the Independent in the UK, where we get a lot of news we don't get here.
		But yes, that's exactly Where they went to Hawaii.
		And they're saying this was actually the story that I read in the first hour, which suggests, in the body of the story, that it may be now feeding upon itself, that we may have actually tipped past the point where it's simply increasing,
		but now it has begun the process that ends up with boiling, roiling planets of death, like a Venus.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I don't think we're going to go that far from all the, hopefully not, from everything I've seen.
		Hopefully not.
		The best estimate that I've seen comes from a climatologist, and this is scary in itself, suggesting that in 100 years we will have carbon dioxide levels of 1,000 parts per million.
		We now have about 360 ppm.
		But what's interesting to a geologist such as myself is we can calculate from rock nodules what past carbon dioxide levels have been.
		The last time we had a global forest, really a tropical forest that covered the whole planet was the Eocene epoch.
		This was 60 million years ago when the first horses evolved.
		It was a planet-wide jungle.
		CO2 levels were 1,000 parts per million then.
		So this guy at the University of Washington, David Battisti, has suggested that within 100 years we will have a return to the same levels of CO2 that we had in the Eocene, which was an entire planet of warmth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A thousand parts.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		A thousand parts per million is, again, because of what we're doing to the atmosphere, 100, at most 150 years from now, we get to 1,000 ppm.
		And that will really signal a planet radically.
		It'll start producing climate that is hugely different than present day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then you would say back to this emailer, Hogwash, go read the numbers.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I don't want to say Hogwash.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I mean, maybe he's looking at different aspects, but to my understanding.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He was quite specific with Pinatuba.
		You're saying back, Hogwash.
		No, it's not true.
		Here's what Dan is doing, and here are the numbers.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		As far as I know, that's correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, here we go.
		First time caller aligned.
		You're on the air with Peter Ward.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello?
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		My question related back to life in the universe.
		I realize that my view may be a bit ahead of time, but with just our galaxy alone, approximately 100 million light years across, and there's billions of galaxies in our known universe, doesn't it seem kind of a small mindset to think that there isn't or was not some form of life out there at one point?
		It's not right now?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I never said there's not life out there.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		In fact, I said there's life almost everywhere.
unidentified		Right, right.
unidentified		Okay, complex life, my mistake.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, we never said there's not complex life out there.
		We are just trying to refute sort of the Carl Sagan SETI view that everywhere you look, you should expect to find an intelligent civilization.
		And there's two aspects to refute it.
		First of all, why haven't they contacted us or why haven't we seen any of them?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is beginning to be at least a reasonably compelling argument, Caller, wouldn't you say?
		The fact that we haven't talked to anybody yet.
		I mean, that's reasonably compelling, huh?
unidentified		Well, it is a little compelling, but I personally think that our society certainly isn't at a level yet where we should be contacted, honestly.
		I mean, we're trying to blow ourselves up every other year.
		We don't really have a clue what's going on, so why would an advanced civilization want to contact us?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doesn't he make an awfully good point?
		In other words, wouldn't we be looked on by anybody who has made it, Peter, as one of the much more likely going to blow themselves up any second here?
		Come on, we're going to the next one.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, my sense is if you had aliens, they would probably, well, alien anthropologists, look what we do.
		Whenever we find a lost tribe in New Guinea or whatever, we fall all over ourselves to study it and see it.
		And certainly my sense would be that if there were other more advanced civilizations, they'd probably want to know how we tick.
		And especially if we're not advanced enough to be a danger to them, why would they hide it?
		I think a much easier solution to that particular problem is that at least in our neighborhood, there's nobody else.
unidentified		I hope so.
		Maybe I'm still a dreamer.
		I know I'm in the minority.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I hope you're right.
		Listen, Peter, I really hope you're right.
		I'm just telling you what I see and what I think.
		It's not what I want.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, thank you very much.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
unidentified		Hey.
		Hi.
		Hi.
		Have y'all, either one of y'all read the book of Enoch or read the Sumerian text?
		It tells you in the Sumerian text, in Enoch, that there's 12 planets to our solar system.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And we were brought here 4 billion years ago, according to Bible codes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gold miners, right?
unidentified		They said they were looking for gold.
		But anyway, the thing is, it explains it in the book of Enoch.
		It tells you about our galaxy.
		It tells also there's 12 planets in that book also.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me ask Peter about all of this.
		Just blanketly.
		Peter, I'm certain you're aware of the work of Zachariah Sitchin and the theory that we were designed, we're designer beings, and that we were brought here to mine gold.
		And there is this other planet, and there are these other people.
		And comments?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's just in my the older I get, the less I seem to know.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I guess what I have learned in my life doesn't seem to support that, but I try to keep an open mind.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I guess I'd answer the same way.
		I don't know one way or the other.
		It is certainly an interesting hypothesis.
		But I don't know.
		East of the Rockies, you're on there with Peter Ward.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, Park.
		Yes.
		Hi.
		Yeah, I'm not one of these people who thinks it's terribly likely that we've been visited by extraterrestrials with advanced civilizations.
		But I guess I was under the impression that you thought that there might not be much out there in the way of any kind of life.
		But it sounded like what you said a few minutes ago.
		Maybe I was mistaken in that impression.
		But I was just going to say that given that we have already witnessed the propensity for some rather strange forms of life to be able to survive in very hostile environments on our own planet.
		You know, if you go like very deep down into the bottom of, you know, very deep oceans on our planet, we've seen some pretty strange life forms down there surviving without sunlight.
		Absolutely.
		And, you know, and I guess there's like, you know, various caves and such where there's no sunlight and what have you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What he's saying is complex life, even little sluggy things, are not common, are uncommon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so that would make us very uncommon or even possibly totally unique, at least as a possibility, right, Peter?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's a possibility.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I think it's a pretty small chance that there's no other intelligences out there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, when I say intelligence, I mean at or beyond our level.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I just, the numbers are so huge, you'd be very foolish to think that we're unique.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And that's not a word I ever use.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		See, now he's sounding a little like Shostak.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, like that.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		It's just unique means one.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And I just personally don't believe that we're it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Colin?
unidentified		Helen?
		Yep.
		Yeah.
		Well, basically I wanted to say that, you know, it would seem to me that there could at least be some form of life, even if it's not, you know, technologically advanced life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you agree.
unidentified		I mean, in various places, you know, in other solar systems, even if the planets in those solar systems have very hostile environments.
		I'd certainly like to see what's underneath the ice flows of Europa, given that it is covered, seems to be covered in water.
		And, you know, may in fact, well, we don't know for sure, but, you know, because there's some sort of a possibility that there could be life underneath the ice crust there.
		So if that's a possibility, then I would say that there's at least a possibility for some form of life in solar systems, even if they do have, you know, planets that have rather...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, I don't think you're disagreeing.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		No, that's a very cogent description.
		And it's interesting you talk about the subsurface life, because I begin my book, Rare Earth, talking about subsurface life and extreme life as the reason why we should believe that life is going to be very common.
		So you hit the same argument I did.
		We could have written the book together.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then the name of your book, and even its subtitle, really are misleading.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		No, the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, according to you, they are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, you're saying that, well, maybe it is pretty common.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		It doesn't take an Earth to have life.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		It takes an Earth to have complex life that can last a very long time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But then when you start talking about the numbers, you start sounding more like Seth than yourself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, yeah, yeah, okay, it's probably out there.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that Rare Earth and this whole idea is certainly an end member that has not existed prior to this.
		I mean, you either have one group of people that says, aha, we're unique, or you have the cultural sort of trend towards aliens are everywhere.
		But there's never really been sort of a very critical evaluation of that, and that's the point we're trying to make.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, but even a critical evaluation might include the following.
		Any life sufficiently advanced to get here might well only study us, accounting for the sightings, the mutilations, the abductions, the sorts of things that we do hear about.
		It might account for that.
		I mean, they wouldn't necessarily make connect with us.
		They might only sort of monitor us and consider that we're going to blow ourselves to pieces more than likely, or, you know, the climate will get us, or whatever, that we won't make it.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's one point of view.
		But something just happened two weeks ago that made me really wonder even about any of the sightings.
		We just spotted an asteroid that whizzed by, as you know, and it was only 30 meters across.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Now, to see something that is between us and the moon, that's a long distance away, that's only 30 meters across, indicates that our ability and our looking in space is unbelievable.
		Spaceships smaller than 30 meters, it's hard for me to imagine tiny little spaceships.
		In other words, if they were out there, we would see them.
		There would be record of this.
		So to get around that, you almost have to invoke really far out energy-wise.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't have to invoke so much.
		No, you don't.
		Look, we can make aircraft that are almost completely stealthy.
		They're stealthy to radar.
		They're on the verge, if not already making an invisible to the eye craft.
		So you don't have to think too many generations ahead in technological advancement to imagine that they could hide from us if they wanted to.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I suppose it's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello?
		Going once, going twice, gone.
		International Line, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, it's Jeff Colling from Canada.
unidentified		How are you guys?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just fine.
unidentified		Fantastic.
		I love your show.
		And quick question and a comment, and then I'll listen off the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
unidentified		The question about, or the comment about climate change, if, I mean, if it's taken us this long to build up all the CO2, and now we're seeing the climate change, how can we change it so that it stops happening?
		I think it's a little too far progress to help anything.
		Like the USA right now per person is 23 barrels of oil a day, or 23 barrels of oil per person per year.
		And like the rest of the world, like China is a barrel and a half.
		So how can we change that so we actually can stay on this earth?
		And if we ever get anywhere else, your caller or your guest was saying that it's impossible to go like light speed or maximum light speed or faster than light speed.
		but what if this earth as the whole universe is moving around what if we're actually actually moving somewhere to where we're supposed to be going but don't even know because we think the universe is Spinning around us?
		What if we're spinning towards something?
		And that was my comment.
		And if you could comment, just let me know how he can, or what his plan for the future is with global warming and a little comment on Earth moving around to meet the people.
		That would be great.
		Thank you very much.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're welcome.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess to answer that, I think you're correct.
		The U.S. certainly is the biggest energy glutton.
		I think it's up to every one of us as we go through our lives.
		I know this is going to sound really trite, but it is an individual effort.
		The most important, single important thing one can do is vote.
		I'm not going to say who to vote for, but voting is one aspect that certainly is going to affect the future of the planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know who I'm going to have on tomorrow night?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Who?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Richard Heinberg.
		And he's written a book called Party's Over, Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies.
		The Party's Over.
		Now, what do you think that might add up to?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's certainly scary times.
		I must admit, scary times.
		My own sense of what to do is my wife and I are shopping for a hybrid car.
		I think that alone, we only have one car.
		We're trading in what we have for hybrid.
		That's not going to save the world, but if it's multiplied by lots and lots of people, it will certainly make an effect.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
		Hello.
		Hello.
		Going once, going twice, gone.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, this is Peter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He's here, yes.
unidentified		This is Peter from Dearborn Heights.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		I sent you the email.
unidentified		I was the one that talked to you on New Year's Day about the asteroid hitting this year, probably within this next couple weeks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		And basically, isn't it funny how small this world is?
		My son's down there in Las Vegas.
		He works for Raush and he's down here for the NASCAR races.
		But anyway, you know, I've read a lot of UFO magazines.
		And, you know, I find that the biggest UFO book is the Bible.
		You know, that in the Bible it tells you that the angels are uncountable.
		That means there is life out there.
		And it's uncountable.
		That's how many there are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, that's a kind of a different sort of life, I think, than Peter was trying to discuss scientifically.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that correct, Peter?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or is it?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Again, I try to keep an open mind in this world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Having said that, what does that mean?
		I mean, do you simply hold an open mind about the possibility of angels and the whole story as told in the Bible and all of that?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was raised as a fallen Catholic, and I'm afraid my beliefs now have fallen away from some of the more literal tales in the Bible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I ask this of all men of science, nearly, that I interview.
		And it's a very hard question to ask, so usually I just use the movie Contact.
		And I remember that really critical scene where he was sitting in the seat with a review board, and it was to be decided who would go and make contact with these incredible beings who had provided the sketch for the machine of how to get there.
		And the critical question the group wanted to know of the scientist was, will you spread, will you tell them that you believe, do you believe in God, and will you take the word of God to them?
		And what a moment, what an incredible moment.
		And the scientist just had to sort of sit there and finally honestly answer, no, I can't do that.
		Would you have said no, Peter?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I was on the Jody Foster side of things, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I thought perhaps that would be the case.
		Which is fascinating.
		I'm Mark Bell.
		Good evening.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		Coast to Coast AM.
		To chunk with Art Bell.
		Call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time cover line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To chunk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west to the Rockies, call Arc at 800-618-8255.
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		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To be specific, actually, carbon dioxide has just been measured at the highest point in Hawaii at 379 parts per million, up from about 376 a year before.
		Now, these last three years of measurement represent actually the largest on record.
		They had up to about a 64% rise Over the average rate of growth over the past decade of 1.8 parts per million per year.
		So there you have it.
		Those are the hard numbers.
		current measurement of carbon dioxide at the highest point in Hawaii, 379 parts per million.
unidentified		The End Just get them all the time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, Josh in Tokyo, Japan says, wanted to say hi.
		Tell you, I was listening here in Japan.
		Very grateful for Streamlink.
		All right, once again, now with my guest who believes that we are a rare commodity.
		Now, that would be a fair statement, wouldn't it?
		That we, human beings, meaning, are a rare commodity.
		Fair?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I think it's very fair, sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And possibly even so rare as to never be able to talk to others of our ilk.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		That's also a good statement, I think.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I hope we're wrong.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no wonder SETI's after you.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		They are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First-time caller line, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Yeah, this is Mike in Detroit, and I listen to AM800, CKLW, out of Windsor.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, indeed.
unidentified		Long-time listener.
		First-time caller.
		I can't believe I made it through.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's why we have this line.
unidentified		Yeah, well, it's great.
		I've got a question for Peter, I believe.
		About DNA.
		Is DNA like the elemental chart where it's pretty much a finite list of properties that, catalyzed correctly, will form different forms of life?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're right on one of the most interesting questions of all, and I'm surprised it hasn't come up in this debate.
		We'd like very much to know if DNA is one way to make life or the only way to make life.
		And you say, Patrick, that's absurd.
		Surely with all the chemical elements we have, you could have a whole variety of types of life.
		And yet, when you start looking at what life is and the definition that we use, it can reproduce, it can metabolize, and it can evolve, there's not a whole lot of ways that you can actually build it and have information and have proteins made or whatever structure you use.
		So some of the smartest people I know on the planet, and one of these is named Steve Benner down in Florida, is trying to figure out if not DNA what.
		And he's really following up on your question.
		Is there another way to do it that is not DNA?
		And we don't know yet.
unidentified		Okay, and the reason I ask, I'm not a big Bible guy myself.
		Creation can be created by using a battery or it can be by an entity.
		In the theory of the Big Bang, creating our universe and so on, it took a long time after coalescing of the universe for life to form.
		Was there a catalyst, i.e.
		a meteor, natural volcanism occurring as the Earth evolved, that caused the gases that we needed to create the atmosphere to give us the filters and the possibilities for the evolution of a catalyzed DNA deposited by meteors, whatever.
		And if that's possible, would it not be possible to catalyze Mars, being as it already has DNA, although we don't know what its activity, its status is, kind of like the Genesis program, to create a planet for us to, in the future, inhabit?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We may have already started that process.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah, I gathered that from the earlier guest, earlier question.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		If I could answer that, DNA is so complex that no one has been able to build it in a test tube from first elements.
		But this last year, there has been a breakthrough by, again, this team in Florida.
		And when I was a boy, the most popular show on television was hosted by Ronald Reagan.
		It was called Death Valley Days.
		And they had the old ranger and had 20 mule team borax.
		You must remember this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I do.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		And it turns out that borax, while it's a pretty good soap, is a natural occurring product.
		And it has been found now to be the first step in building RNA, which is half of DNA.
		So parts, the most important parts of RNA have now been synthesized by a natural process where you take RNA, you run water over it, you throw in some amino acids.
		And this may be really the most critical and interesting step into eventually producing artificial DNA.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Who knew?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So producing our own blueprints for life.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, already people are messing around with DNA.
		And there's another crew in San Diego, again, part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, that built five-stranded DNA instead of the two-stranded that we have.
		And it remained stable for some time before it then fell apart.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's almost frightening, isn't it?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, a lot of people are really trying to examine the very basic or base level of what life is and how to build it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, hello.
unidentified		Yes, this is Phil from Venice, Florida.
		And I wanted to ask the guest about, or you too, what do we know about the soil itself on Mars?
		You know, what's its makeup?
		How's it compared to soil on Earth?
		Have we done much?
		I hear about the rocks and everything, but I don't remember much information about soil per se.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I believe we're probably just beginning to get that information, or about to get it, or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Aren't we doing some experiments in that area, or we're about to on the next spacecraft, Peter?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it turns out that we really can't analyze it per se, but I really wouldn't call it soil.
		Soil is a word that I always use that you can grow things in.
		And a soil is, by definition, a third to a half, sometimes percent, organic material.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, whatever passes for it then on all.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		All it is, is, all you've got there is broken up rocks and dust and material.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		You don't have any organics in it at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, I don't know if I want to say okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We don't really know that yet for certain, do we?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, that was the big disappointment of Viking.
		You remember when the two Vikings landed, they worked perfectly.
		And up till that time, Carl Sagan was really the top of the heap.
		We were really expecting to find life on Mars, and two of the experiments done by Viking, each of the Vikings, showed that not only was the soil sterile, essentially, but it had chemicals within it that would inhibit life from growing in it.
		This was such a depressing finding that it really set back astrobiology for about 20 years.
		Viking convinced most scientists that the soil of Mars is dead.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I actually did not realize we had a terrible, depressing finding.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Comprehensive a test, NIH.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		They had a very good, they actually picked up some of the material, took it in, tried to find reactions that would suggest that life was there.
		Viking was an entirely life detection experiment.
		It was sent up there by Sagan for that express purpose.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on air with Peter Ward.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		This is Bob from El Paso, Texas, listening to KTSM.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Bob.
unidentified		And one of the things that has troubled me for a long time with this, with the ozone layer and the chlorofluorocarbons, and how supposedly the chlorofluorocarbons were damaging the ozone layer when even helium won't go to the altitude that the ozone layer is.
unidentified		And can somebody explain that one to me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, how it gets up there to do the damage.
unidentified		Do the damage, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Peter, CFCs, something that supposedly humanity has a little victory here.
		In other words, they've begun to see, some of them claim, a turnaround and that the ozone is healed to some degree.
		You think that's bunked?
		Do you think the whole thing is bunked?
		Do you think CFCs never get there?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		What?
		I think they get there.
		I don't know the physics well enough to understand how they do get there.
		Just think of it.
		It's a pretty heavy molecule.
		There's a lot of updraft that takes an awful lot of stuff higher up.
		But it is the single most hopeful sign.
		And I think it's also an indication that we can do something about carbon dioxide.
		Because you're right, Art.
		The hole in the ozone is getting smaller.
		This is a small victory.
		It's an important victory, as much for understanding and dealing with other gases as it is ozone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Carbon dioxide doesn't seem so simple a problem, though, does it?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		It's a big problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a really big one, yes.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		The natural process that takes it out of the atmosphere, again, the weathering of rocks, is an extremely slow process.
		Now, this is even a worse problem than carbon dioxide, that's methane.
		Methane converts to carbon dioxide in, what, 20 to 100 years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		But methane is also an even more effective greenhouse gas.
		Now, the big spooky concern for an awful lot of us are things called gas hydrates, which is frozen methane.
		It is methane that is frozen into soils in the Arctic and the Antarctic.
		How you can get a runaway greenhouse is if you warm up the atmosphere sufficient to allow the release of that frozen methane, it doesn't act as anything when it's frozen.
		It goes up into the atmosphere.
		In 20 years, it converts to CO2, and you have a very much hotter climate.
		And this is the scariest scenario of global warming, is that we warm the planet warm enough that the Arctic regions get a temperature that releases the methane.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you seen the pictures of the Arctic, Peter?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I've been in the Arctic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was wondering, we had some pictures up that showed, I think, the last 50 or 100 years of the Arctic.
		In other words, where there was ice and where there is now water.
		Have you seen some of those comparisons?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I flew back from Alaska this summer just charting and examining the glaciers by airplane.
		And that's pretty phenomenal, too.
		And the glacier recession that's taking place all over this planet is so amazing.
		And you're totally right, Art, about what is going on up there and the thinning of the ice sheets and the fact that we are losing an enormous amount of the Arctic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you can look at those photographs and not have a profound reaction, then I just don't know about you, meaning everybody.
		I really don't.
		I mean, it has to be a profound reaction.
		It's going away.
		It's melting.
		Both ends, north and south.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		You know, the scarier aspect of the melting, very briefly, is that once that ice melts, it's very white.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		It reflects light back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		So the albedo of the planet changes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Indeed.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Rock absorbs the heat that ice had reflected out, and we just get warmer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, so we begin getting the opposite effect, which accelerates itself, which is what this article's all worried about.
		West of the Rockies, you're on there with Peter Ward.
		Hello.
		Hello?
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, hello?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		This is Tim.
		I'm in Pendleton, Oregon.
		You probably, Art probably remembers the town where Kenneth Arnold flew in in 1947.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Okay, I seen ships the same day, three of them.
unidentified		There were six of us here that seen them, and I'm quite amazed after 70 years of living that there are still a lot of people, supposedly educated people, who have never seen them or not can't believe in them when I've been aboard seven times myself and I have five implants.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, that's a pretty heavy record there.
		Peter, just generally respond to that.
		I mean, there are, of course, thousands of sightings, some of them quite spectacular.
		It's got to at least cause one a little pause and say, well, yeah, hey, what if we are being, maybe we are being visited?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, I hope so.
		Again, I truly, deep in my heart, hope that at least one of these sightings is correct.
		I don't want to be the only game in town.
		And maybe, hopefully, that it is true that we are being visited.
		And somewhere along the line, they're going to say, okay, hello, folks.
		But the scientist in me is deeply skeptical.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
		First time caller line.
		Hi there.
		You're on the air with Peter Ward.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Oh, thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're very welcome.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I thought I never get through.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, here you are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I'm in Seattle.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what is your first name?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Bill.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Bill.
		Fire away.
		Go ahead.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Oh, thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Turn your radio off.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Oh, off, okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Off, yes, off.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Bill.
		How are you?
		Yeah, you're sitting in for Art tonight, yeah?
		No one could do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, this is Art, sir, and Peter Ward is the guest.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I've been trying to get through to you for weeks now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, you're here, and our time is short, so.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, I have an answer to space travel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		I've learned how to control my dreams, and in my dreams, I can transport myself to any place I want to go to instantaneously.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm appreciative of that point of view, and it may well be, Peter, I know where he was headed, that all of this perhaps cannot be done with science.
		All of this perhaps cannot be done by going faster than light.
		But it may well be that our salvation in meeting others who may exist anywhere will exist within the mind.
		I'm not blind to that possibility, are you?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm hoping.
		Again, Art, I'm not a believer, but I'm a hoper.
		How about that?
		With an open mind.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's as good as it can, I guess.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Peter Ward.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, Art.
unidentified		Peter, good morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		This is John in Atlanta.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, John.
unidentified		You know, the question of complex life, you know, Art, I've been listening to your show for eight years.
unidentified		There is no doubt in my mind that we're being visited by life from elsewhere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why is there no doubt in your mind?
unidentified		Just a small percentage of the body of evidence out there would convince any jury in the world.
		I mean, just one of your former guests has collected documents that are freedom of toll-free 1-800-618-8255.
		From the government, we're being visited.
		No doubt.
		Jay Allen Hynek's book, The UFO Reporter, he was a leading astronomer on the Project Blue Boat.
		He used to call UFO enthusiasts crackpots.
		He became convinced by the body of evidence.
		All you got to do is look.
		You say you got an open mind, Peter.
		Just look.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Check it out.
		I got an open mind, but I'll reply to that.
		It just strikes me.
		Paul Alland in Seattle has now given, I think, $24 million to SETI.
		Now, if we were being visited, SETI wouldn't have to do what SETI's doing.
		They could save all the money.
		I mean, it'd be over, wouldn't it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why would you have to go look?
		They, of course, say that themselves.
		And as a result of that hypothesis, they actually scoff at such suggestions.
		It's pretty much of a, well, show us.
		And, you know, it's a fair position to take.
		I mean, they, too, will say, well, I've got an open mind, but I really don't see the evidence.
		And despite this last caller's claim about documents, and I'm certainly as well familiar with any of them as, most of them as anybody, it's not irrefutable evidence.
		Not yet.
		I don't think.
		It's close.
		I've had sightings myself, Peter, so I'm teetering in a strange place here, but it's still not, in my mind, irrefutable.
		But it's close for people like that caller.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's room to hope.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think the best we're going to get out of you on that subject.
		East of the Rockies, you're on here with Peter Ward.
		Not a lot of time.
unidentified		Hello?
		Yes, this is Will from Madison, Wisconsin.
		You know, there have been societies that have educated less intelligent societies, and in turn, these people have, yes, defeated the more intelligent societies in human history.
		That's why intelligent human beings, if they exist in outer space, do not want to give us their education.
		They're afraid of us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, there you have it, Peter.
		You think so?
		Think they might be afraid of us?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Well, we certainly see a cater in American society that seems less educated, that seems to be afraid of what more educated groups seem to want to come up with.
		So that fear is certainly real.
		Maybe they have a reason to be afraid.
		I think we should be a little more liberal, but what do I know?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, listen, Peter, it's been a pleasure having you here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Your book, Rare Earth, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe Available, the Usual Places, Amazon, and so forth, right?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Art, as usual.
		I hope, actually, get hold of Seth.
		Get us both on.
		Let's do a debate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I really would like to do that.
		And so if you're up for that, actually, we'll do it.
		Does it get pretty good and heated when you and Seth are together?
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		It gets really heated.
		We're just going and going and going.
		Why don't you hear us talk about binary star systems?
		Why I think you can't have anything on a multiple star system.
		And on and on and on, et cetera.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, good.
		I'll work on exactly that.
		And you have a good night, Peter.
peter ward ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care.
		All right, Peter Ward.
		And again, Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe.
		The book is called Rare Earth.
		I was in Music Group too, but remember Rare Earth?
		That's it for tonight.
		Tomorrow night, the party's over.

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