James Gilliland, a minister and author of Reunion with Source, describes his ranch near Mount Adams—a site with alleged magnetic properties—as a hotspot for UFO sightings, including triangular craft filmed by witnesses like Steve Marino and researchers from NIDS and CZETI. His near-death experience claims grant telepathic abilities, possibly explaining why these objects appear more frequently there. Meanwhile, Robert Zimmerman challenges mainstream global warming narratives, citing NASA’s James Hansen’s political ties to the Kyoto Accords and inconclusive data despite rising CO₂ levels, arguing natural variability remains unproven. He defends private space ventures like Space Adventures’ UAE-based Explorer rocket while criticizing NASA’s budget mismanagement, insisting space exploration yields cultural and technological dividends. Though some callers cite the National Academy of Sciences’ projections as definitive, Zimmerman insists models lack empirical certainty, urging caution until long-term trends clarify human influence—just as smoking’s risks took decades to confirm. Ultimately, both discussions highlight how unanswered questions, whether in climate science or extraterrestrial phenomena, demand rigorous scrutiny over hasty conclusions. [Automatically generated summary]
Uh however, I wonder how many of you tonight saw Sixty Minutes.
The third segment on Sixty Minutes I thought was uh extremely revealing.
And very much of what Whitley and myself have been saying now for years is coming true right in front of our eyes.
But for now, this is going to be very, very interesting.
James Gilland is an internationally known speaker, minister, visionary, and author of two books, Reunion with Source and Becoming God 2.
He is the director of the Self-Mastery Earth Institute, an E-SETI, enlightened contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.
After a near-death experience, James returned with what he refers to as an interdimensional mind, the ability to move beyond the body and the personality into other planes and dimensions throughout the multiverse.
I know it sounds crazy, but the guy's got a lot to back him up.
This includes the ability to experience different timelines and future probabilities.
He's dedicated to the awakening and healing of humanity and the earth, as well as researching and ushering in new healing and earth-friendly energy technologies.
Now, he brings with him tonight a number of witnesses.
However, first, on the website, coasttocoastam.com, there is something that's pretty cool.
It is the sound of a spacecraft.
I want you to hear it.
I'm going to go ahead and play a little bit of it.
It was a pretty large ship, and it would uh the light would go as the pulse would be quickened, the pulsing on the ship, you could see the light on the ship quicken along with it.
And we've got another guy that was very involved in the aviation industry and knows about every plane you can imagine, watches them, did maintenance on them, and, you know, very involved in that industry.
And he will come forward.
We've got quite a few witnesses that I don't know if we'll get to all of them.
And then we have Steve Marino with PSI applications that's one of the lead investigators here that has actually filmed one of these giant motherships hovering right just west of the ranch.
And that should be on the, I don't know if they put it up on coast to coast yet or not.
What happened was I had the near-death experience, and it blew me open into interdimensional mind, and I could receive telepathic messages and things of that nature.
What's interesting here is there's also a real long history of UFO activity in the area.
Well, I can explain it, you know, with physics, because a lot of people think they're just a body and a personality, and they think that they're just this physical mass here.
But the genome experiment proved that there's only 30,000 genes, and they expected to have at least 100,000 to actually operate this physical body.
So the genome experiment brought to us, actually proved that there is an outside intelligence that is actually operating the physical body because there's not enough genetic material to do it.
So that's one thing.
Now, you have Michio Kaku on your show quite a bit, and he talks about the other dimensions.
Well, you know, it's actually easier for me to believe what you're saying now than it would be that you're just some guy where you are on a ranch who happens to see 100 times more UFOs than anybody else.
And I just sort of stayed in touch with what was cropping up in the different media.
And then talking with my friends who also do personal research in UFO matters and such, I said, look, this is an opportunity to go visit and talk to somebody in person as opposed to just reading things off the internet or listening to programs.
So Russ rounded you up, Russell, and others, and you both did what?
Took a weekend or something and went over?
unidentified
We took the weekend and went down and visited the Trail Lake area, the whole Mount Adams routine down there with stop over at the Llama Ranch the night before and James Ranch on Saturday, June 4th.
So you get to the ranch, and I don't know what your expectations are, but in fact, what happens?
unidentified
Well, we came back from dinner, the three of us, that went down to Trout Lake and saw James, and about 10.15, we started looking at the sky, and over an hour and a half, we saw four separate UFO visits.
And in size and appearance, they appeared to look like satellites traversing the sky, except for the fact that they all made several distinct course changes while traversing the sky, and each one came to a complete stop at the time.
Would it be your guess that what you were seeing was extra-terrestrial?
would you be inclined to say, well, maybe one of our military test vehicles of some sort or another?
And also, do you think it's...
Do you think it's connected to James in the way that he's described it may be?
unidentified
I think James has provided explanations about how these things show up in that area That I agree with.
A lot of it might have to do with the mountain.
There's lots of lava outcroppings everywhere, 15 to 20 miles away from the mountain.
It is the most massive mountain in the Cascade Chain.
It's not as tall as Rainier, but it sits up on a huge plateau that would give it some magnetic properties that probably the surrounding areas of the other mountains wouldn't be able to equal.
Any supposition about why such an object would be interested in the largest mountain in the area or something with a lot of magnetic anything around it?
unidentified
Well, I think the lava lends credence to the fact that there's underground lava tubes and lava caves and places for things to happen underground.
That's your best place to hide from inquiring eyes.
The other Russ, do you agree with what you just heard described that you saw the same thing?
unidentified
Oh, I definitely saw the same thing, and it was an impressive moment.
And when it happened, the crowd just lit up.
Just people let out a cheer, and they were pointing and jumping, and it was quite something.
And one thing that I will mention is I do think there was a connection there with James Giland, because he had told us earlier in the evening that he had a sense or a mental impression that we were going to see something tonight, and it was going to be around like 10 or 11 o'clock.
And as we approached that point in time, he brought out a 10 million candle power lantern and turned it on and was pointing it around in the sky.
Let me go ahead and take my prescribed break, and we will continue.
The End This is the kind of subject I get so wrapped up in that I forget my commercial breaks.
All right, there's a second photograph taken by Spar Giedemann, I guess it is, Giedman, last summer over the conference center at the Gillen Ranch.
This is just one of the many metallic objects photographed on a regular basis in the immediate area.
Now, this is quite a good photograph.
It says there was a jet leaving and a chemtrail, or a contrail, if you will, just under the object.
Now, that looks exactly, almost exactly like what my wife and I saw here looking up from our driveway, just very nearly exactly, and it was involved with a contrail as well.
James, welcome back, and the Russes, welcome back.
When you saw what you two saw, would you describe it as a life-altering kind of event?
unidentified
Absolutely, Art.
It was, as James said, it was about a week later before I recovered from that.
I'd never seen anything like it before in my life.
What kind of thoughts went through your head afterward?
In other words, I remember my thoughts.
I've had two distinct experiences, and I remember my thoughts in about a week.
Actually, I went into shock for a little while, and then I began to think hard about what I had seen.
And that must have happened to you as well.
unidentified
It did.
It absolutely did.
And shock was a good word for it for a couple of days, and then I had to deal with that for all the things that it meant that were connected to that.
I'm very well grounded in science, and I'm very excited about the next few years with a Large Hadron Collider coming on board and all those things that are going to, I think, change the face of the Earth.
Do any of you have any idea how these things could be traversing our atmosphere at these incredible speeds sometimes without our military being fully aware of them and, if not, dealing with them in some way?
unidentified
I think James has got some footage of a glowing UFO going by that's actually being shot at, and you can see that for a split second.
It looks like some wavelength particle beam thing hitting it.
All right, if you don't mind, we actually had a couple physicists here and quite a large group here, and we had a very large golden ship come right over the ranch.
And just on the other side of the mountain there, we saw what looked like a plasma weapon and pulse lasers firing on this ship.
And it got a little brighter as it went over, and then it just kept going, like it just increased its shielding or did something that affected me.
Any of you have comments on the wisdom of firing on these things?
Yeah, that's about my reaction, too.
You know, I mean, if they come here from other planetary systems, then they come with drive systems that would imply weapons that, well, could turn us to absolute mush.
Okay, and in what sense are you an aviation expert?
unidentified
Well, basically, I've dealt with commercial aviation for a better part of 18 years, 18 plus years of my life.
Okay.
Ranging from manager of flight operations to mechanical maintenance engineer.
So did that for quite a few years until time moved me out of that field and into something else in a different direction altogether.
But during that time, I mean, just the acquaintance of various airlines, domestic airlines that I had worked for, and the equipment involved, a lot of the military bases that were close enough by, a lot of the airfields that I was working out of, seemed to go ahead and interest me.
So naturally, one's going to look where their interests lie.
Connected up through James actually through a mutual friend.
And this was in the early portion of 2000, actually in the summer of 2000.
So it was quite a while ago.
And basic, I am the most skeptical person there would have to be alive when it would come to anything that's out of the ordinary.
I much rather go and base all of my judgments through a confirmed discernment of what's going on and what's what.
So when I had heard about some of these sightings that were taking place, I did take the advantage point to go up on a weekend and visit with James.
That was my main concern, to go ahead and visit with James and meet James.
But basics turned out that there was a bonus of the sightings that I had seen.
And we were in a much more limited group.
There were just the folks that were there from the ranch, which was maybe at the time, I think, three or four people, including James and my friend and myself.
Describe the most spectacular thing you saw while there.
unidentified
Well, I think the most spectacular thing that I recall is most of the, as far as Mount Adams goes, most of the seems like most of the star patterns and everything were moving basically from a right to a left across the skyline and the horizon.
James had pointed out something seemingly slowly moving from left to right.
And as it disappeared behind Mount Adams, showing itself again on the right-hand side of Mount Adams as it came by, it was much larger.
It seemed to descend into a tree lime that was there.
It seemed to disappear for about five minutes.
Suddenly, it just rose up brighter than day, larger than life, and sat there for a few minutes, hovered, and then just took off and disappeared, basically, at a high rate of speed.
And, you know, James does have some type of an attunement to it.
We would be standing there as a small group, and he would say there's something coming from the south.
He'd turn to the south, and we'd look there, and sure enough, within a matter of, you know, 30 seconds to a minute, there would be something there dimly seen coming across the sky, traversing over the ranch.
And there Wouldn't be any way in your mind in the world that James could have perpetrated these things.
unidentified
No, that would take a little bit too much money, I think.
And I think if one would have to think that somebody from the military or any of our special ops vehicles and everything would have enough time to just go ahead and keep James busy at the ranch by promoting the sightings that would be shown, does not seem to be logical, nor a good expense of the money that could be better used somewhere else.
Would it be also your impression that these objects wanted to be seen?
unidentified
It does seem that way, especially around the ranch.
From what I've seen, after that, naturally, as we go through, we start looking more skyward, and I've seen a couple of different things here and there, but not in the same instance as they're appearing over the ranch.
I think it's just a focal point.
Most certainly the vortex that is created over Mount Adams and around that area might have a lot to do with it.
But I think the basics is just to go ahead and offer a preliminary presence that would go ahead and then lead to possibly a more confirmed contact on a wider spectrum of, you know, showing to the general public.
Yeah, well, the reason I say that so obviously is if you've got the technology to get here from there, then you've got the technology certainly to be stealthy about it if you want to be.
unidentified
Exactly.
And I mean, even that night, there were times when we would see some of these craft follow and tail along some commercial aviation flights.
And naturally, you know they are something along that line because of, you know, because of the aileron lights that are going to be flashing under a normal situation that identifies it as an aircraft.
And they would tail these things and sort of dim down and get a little bit dimmer in their basic presence as one would look at it.
Suddenly they would just sort of veer off, light up, and just shoot off into the sky at a 90-degree angle and travel three or four times easily as fast as the commercial airliner would be doing.
So that's kind of very unique for me to see.
And as I say, I'm not one that's easily convinced on many things, but it does seem to be happening at the ranch more so than not.
Well, actually, we had Stephen Greer up here, and he came and did one of his trainings up here, and I lost track of how many UFOs we saw, and we actually got two enormous triangles on film.
I had John Alexander up here with NIDS doing an investigation, and we walked out in the middle of the field, and I said, they're coming in from the West.
Well, I was initially interested in the case back in 2000 when James had reported on several email lists that he had been taken aboard and had a big red mark on his chest where he was allegedly taken etherically from his body onto this craft.
And another investigator that's an associate investigator, I know, Christopher Montgomery, had gone there to check this out and found other evidence of this, such as aspen leaves by where the light was located that came by the window where he was at in his bathroom that were like enlarged, like 40 times larger than normal leaves and such.
So I decided to take a trip up there and check into it.
And ever since then, I've kind of really spearheaded a case file on this for him and documenting his background, his evidence.
What I found most intriguing was the fact that James was drawn to Trout Lake without any pre-knowledge or interest in UFOs.
He was merely brought there from his near-death experience, which had changed his life.
He had no idea that there was a previous flap of activity that had occurred There, that was quite significant.
And suddenly, with what he intended to do up there with the Earth Self-Mastery Institute, I believe, this flap of activity began to reoccur that was very similar to a study that was conducted by Dr. J. Allen Hynek back in 72 of activity very similar in nature.
We found that there was a three-year study which David Ackers conducted for Dr. Hynek.
And it's interesting, though, because you brought up that it seems these UFOs want to be seen.
And you're exactly right, because the one significant thing that was different, and the only thing that was different, was the fact that these lights have displayed a willingness to be recorded over James Ranch, whereas in the previous flap, a very similar activity in that region, they noted in their report that the UFOs seem to avoid them, almost knowingly so with an intelligence beyond reason of chance.
Yeah, I think it's a slow acclimation is what it is.
What might be a better way to put it?
I mean, you know, they don't want to shock us to death.
So we're working on possibly doing something at more of a grassroots civilian-initiated level through Project Contact to actually bring these craft down for a live broadcast.
Although it's very difficult seeing these things at night with a webcam, and the kind of resolution you need is pretty heavy-duty compared to what the eye is capable of.
unidentified
That's true, but we've really discovered there's some new systems out now that are pretty cost-effective, and we're just looking for some funding.
You know, $5,000 can set us up up there, and we're trying to fund it out of pocket if necessary.
We have some interest from Orange County MUFON.
They may help to fund us.
They want to see something initially set up up there.
So we've got some tracking systems and monitoring systems.
We're trying to set up an independent small booth that would monitor not only just the video capture, but also other elements like possibly ionic content in the air, other elements that could be related to plasma anomalies up there.
Well, you know, there's no doubt that pre-existing up there has been a phenomenon that's been referred to as the Great Balls of Light.
It's been more toward over the Yakima region, which is, by the way, where Kenneth Arnold first opened up the era of ufology we're currently in.
But it's well documented by many this balls of light phenomenon.
The region, though, would easily extend beyond Mount Adams to include Trout Lake and I believe Glenville up there.
Now, what's interesting is by 1986, according to Greg Wong and David Ackers and their research, the phenomenon basically totally subsided and almost diminished.
But when James moved up there in the early 90s and began his endeavors with the Earth Self-Mastery Institute, it began to manifest there.
And ever since I taught him the virtues of the Sony Nightcam and documenting this for the sciences that would have doubt about it.
Well, you know, this actually ties to space a little bit with James Hansen's uproar with NASA and their public relations department a few weeks ago.
And it ties into where my skepticism always comes from.
Any journalist who is honest about these facts, when you dig into the facts closely, you recognize sometimes how slim the conclusions you often hear, such as on CBS tonight, how slim the facts are that they base those conclusions on.
In the last, I'd say, two years, there has been, I don't know how to say this without making it sound like the evidence is too strong, there's been an increasing preponderance, and that's too strong even, but there's been more evidence implying or suggesting that there is increasing temperatures on Earth.
But once again, if you study the situation very closely and you talk to the scientists who are doing the actual research, a lot of them, you get a sense from them that, yeah, maybe that's happening, but the real down and dirty guys, they're more skeptical.
They're willing to say, well, we need to do more research.
Well, actually, one of them that was there tonight said, listen, we really want to particularly thank the skeptics because they've forced us to check and recheck and be damn sure of what we're saying before we say it.
And their position was it's not a maybe anymore.
This is happening.
In fact, one of them said, even if we were to stop all the emissions dead cold on Earth today, we would still, for hundreds of years, experience warming with dire consequences.
See, the problem with what that guy said is very, I find, in a sense, humorous because that's exactly what the pro-global warming people were saying about 10 years ago.
We now know for sure, and we thank the skeptics for having to check, having forcing us to check, but we now know for sure.
But the truth is, it's a you see, you have to separate the information available about what's going on versus those who have, quite honestly, partisan motives for what they're doing.
A couple of years ago, what I was saying was that the facts are not in, and there is not consensus.
What's happening now is it appears that, I don't know if a consensus is the right word, but the skeptical scientists are saying, well, if any direction it's leaning, it's towards global warming.
But even there, they're willing to say, oh, we don't know.
Because the North Pole goes through cycles of little ice for periods of time.
Sometimes hard to pattern.
I'll tell a story having to do with exploration of the islands in the North Pole area.
When the British were trying to find the Northwest Passage, they would find on a year-to-year basis, it very unpredictable what channels would even be open.
Sometimes it'd be completely open and they could stay out.
The very first guy who tried to reach the Northwest Passage got 80% of the way there in the 1820s.
It then took almost 50 years before they could even match his voyage because the ice was inconsistent.
So just two photos like that don't tell you anything.
And this is getting back to what I said a few years ago, which is to really understand what's going on here, we're going to need several years, decades more of data to see the pattern over time.
And they've only been studying the global climate globally, from satellites and from global sources, since the late 70s.
Now, if we're going to have massive climate change, if that's in the cards as a possibility sooner than you think, then kind of like the Navy, shouldn't we be preparing as best we can with agriculture and other things that will change and affect our ability to eat and things like that?
I always used to joke about this because even in the 60 Minutes, they talked about how it'll go up a foot for our children and another foot for our grandchildren and then a foot a generation.
Well, we're not going to be standing on the shore drowning as the water comes in over generations.
That takes time And you adapt as things happen.
That's in the worst case scenarios, it's still going to take 100 years.
That's a lot of time.
One of the issues about the global warming controversy over the decades is how a lot of the pro-global warming scientists, the partisan ones, the ones who want to push it, they like to paint the Republican Party's position as if they're ignoring global warming because Bush refuses to sign the Kyoto Accords.
Because it's not analyzing why maybe the Bush administration doesn't want to sign Kyoto, not because it's going to solve global warming, but because it's a flawed treaty and doesn't really attack the problem.
Well, you see, the complaint, the ones who say they're not doing anything, the doing that those people almost always want is sign the Kyoto Accords, as if that solves the problem.
And the problem is that doesn't solve the problem.
At least it's argued, and I think it's reasonably argued if you analyze that specific treaty, that it's not going to solve the problem.
The Kyoto Accords, the UN-Kyoto Accords are not a solution.
All they appear to be, if you analyze it, is a tool for strengthening third world nations' economies and hurting the first world nations' economies.
Redistribution of wealth, essentially.
That's not solving this problem.
Now, to say the Bush administration isn't doing anything, the fact is it hasn't been one party or the other in terms of the research.
The ongoing research that NASA and many other NOAA and other government agencies have been doing on this particular subject has been going on now for decades and is continuing to go on.
And it has to do with that $5 billion of research.
We need to know what is actually happening.
Whether we know or not is still, I think, an open question.
If global warming is happening and the data more recently seems to be leaning much better in that direction, if it is happening, we still are not completely clear on why.
There are a lot of unknowns there.
And so to answer that question, I still think it's going to take at least a decade to get a clear idea.
Five years ago, I was saying it's going to take at least 15 years.
I think we're getting closer.
But it's going to take time to get that long-range sense of where the climate is going.
And when we have, if you say 100 years, I'm sorry, I can't see myself standing on the ocean waiting 100 years to drown.
This is something free society will adapt to very reasonably over time because we'll have the time to deal with it.
You know, one of the arguments made by a lot of people in the last year or so is how warm it's been the last year and how we have these big hurricanes.
But you see, once again, meteorologists are very clear on this, that hurricanes have been, they have a clear cycle of hurricanes where you have heavy periods and light periods.
And we're going through a heavy period right now, and that's following the cycle from 40 years ago.
Well, we have only been measuring the temperatures of the oceans to this specificness and clarity and detail for 40 years.
We did not know precisely what the temperatures of the oceans were 40 years ago when we had that last heavy hurricane seasons.
So once again, it's not 100% clear at this point whether this bad hurricane seasons we've had the last two years are because of global warming or because a natural cycle of the hurricane.
I set up a question, a scenario, and I said, what if the day comes when Robert Zimmerman even says, all right, the evidence is in, we're in deep trouble.
We didn't understand the process of global warming, or at least what is happening, then we have to ask ourselves, well, what is the consequences of that?
And if you start to break that down with some thought, then you can figure out, well, we need to address this particular problem.
But like if you live in Russia, you might actually be able to have better harvests and grow more food for us.
What I'm saying is, suppose we know we're going to get a New Orleans after a New Orleans after a New Orleans, that indeed one consequence is going to be gigantic killer, bigger hurricanes.
And with respect to the causative factor, suppose it is decided that indeed greenhouse gases from man are a major portion of what's happening or adding to a natural cycle that's already underway, whatever.
It's a tough one only because I don't see our country or any country just by law outlawing cars.
That more than anything else.
I just don't see it happening.
And it's a tough one.
I do see a pattern in this respect, which is good, which is there's an effort for other political reasons having to do with the Middle East and oil to ease away from the use of fossil fuels and cars.
Hybrid engines, the talk of fuel sales, which is still far down the road, but still there's talk of that.
So those other factors might actually work to our advantage.
As oil prices go up, it's absolutely the best thing in this respect because capitalism then will function.
You have higher prices, it then becomes cost-effective to find alternatives, and those alternatives might solve the problem.
Shouldn't there be, though, some political pressure, pressure from the top?
I mean, after all, that is what a president is supposed to do, is look at the larger picture and direct the nation for the nation and citizens' good, right?
So the top NASA guy on issues having to do with global warming and all the rest of it, this is the top NASA guy starts making statements and gets muzzled.
And so Robert, I wonder what your take on that whole brouhaha is.
Well, I'll tell you, to me, that was a very entertaining thing.
There are several aspects.
One, there were problems in the NASA Public Relations Office.
Those problems were totally the result of a new administrator coming in and a complete shake-up of moving, some people moving into different places, new people coming in, a lot of young new people coming in, some of whom were political appointees.
And the shake-up brought about some actually very stupid policies in the NASA public relations office that had nothing to do with the politics of global warming.
Just stupid interface.
I'll get to tell a story.
I was at an American Astronomical Society meeting.
I'm in the press room.
And the various public relations people for various NASA offices are complaining very loudly about the fact that they've been ordered when they write press releases.
These are people that work in different areas.
They either work with the Hubble Space Telescope or the Chandra Space Telescope.
They're not headquarters, NASA headquarters.
And they work with the scientists, and their job is to release press releases when a discovery is made.
And they're complaining about how from on top, NASA headquarters press office, has ordered them that in any press release they make, the first quote in the press release has to come from someone at NASA headquarters, which is absurd.
It has nothing to do with the scientists who are doing the work, and they're complaining about it, and they have a valid complaint.
So there were problems in that office.
And it comes about, this stuff happens all the time.
Every time you get a new president comes in, the first set of people who work for him, often you have a lot of these kind of problems.
Now, part of it is that the political appointee that the Bush administrator hired, George Deutsch, that caused all the problems, he did lie on his president's resume.
That indicates something about him.
He was a little young, inexperienced.
And he was trying to impose, I think, a little bit of the political.
Michael Griffin, the administrator, said this recently, like a week ago, at a press breakfast.
He pointed out: you know, we want to be open, we want to let a scientist do things, but the scientists can't be making statements that are policy-oriented as if that's what NASA stands for.
They have to separate their beliefs on what policy should be from what NASA's beliefs on policy.
NASA's not, it's not their job to tell the world what NASA's policy is.
But on the other side of it, you've got James Hansen, who has been over the years an extremely partisan, pro-global warming guy.
A lot of his press stuff is infuriatingly overstating what we know.
That's happened with him in the past.
So you've got it coming from both directions.
I think in this case, most of the fault, though, was in the press offices overzealousness, they're trying to control policy statements from the scientists, and they overdid it.
Hansen got a little bit annoyed at that, and he also doesn't like the Bush administration because they won't sign the Cheoti Accords.
So it's a little bit of both of those things all rolled up in one.
And, you know, once again, the NASA press offense should let scientists make their statements.
If the facts start to show a result in the direction of global warming, I'm going to say sure.
I'm still going to say, look, for example, there was a report a few weeks ago from Science about how the glaciers in Greenland have been shrinking dramatically.
And so I, you know, tonight, because we're going to be on the show, I did a little bit of research, and I pulled up those reports, and I also pulled up the actual data, the actual data, not the press releases and not the CBS reports, but the actual data.
And if you look at the data closely, yes, there's no question that some of that if you were to weigh the balance of what the elevations of the glaciers in Greenland are, it seems to be going down.
But if you look at the amount of data they have and the spread of the data, if you look at the data, you're some way saying, well, ho, you know, it's not as clear-cut as they're saying.
It's kind of, yes, maybe shrinking, but it's questionable still.
I have this vision, Robert, of you not admitting anything until the water is sloshing in your sneakers, you know, and still you're going to say, well, you know, yeah, there's some water here, but, you know, there's really no proof that it's going to keep getting higher.
I was at an American Geophysical Union conference in which I had a guy, there was a guy, a scientist, giving a report about his modeling of wow the seas are going to rise over the next decade, next 150 years.
And his model showed a graph going up steeply.
And he then showed another graph, similar model, but the second graph had the dotted line as his prediction, and it had a solid line under that about what had actually happened.
And he passed that graph very quickly.
But the graph showed what was actually happening was significantly below his model.
And so, once again, you know, we say glaciers shrinking in Greenland, but there's some, you know, it's not completely clear.
And the oceans haven't actually been rising as fast as the prediction, or even rising based on the prediction.
So once again, I'm waiting for some solid information to convince me.
The Russians, last, about a week and a half ago, they signed a deal with a company.
It's a multi-international deal.
The company is called Space Adventures.
They're the people that sent Dennis Tito up to Mia using Russian rockets.
And they sent Shuttleworth and recently Greg Olson.
And they're going to send a Japanese up two or three months.
They're the only company at this moment that's actually sent tourists into space.
And they've worked closely with the Russians over the last few years doing this successfully, making money for the Russians and money for themselves and providing and fulfilling a need because wealthy people wanted to go into space.
A Russian company is going to build a rocket called Explorer, and it's going to be a multi-stage.
It'll take off similar to Spaceship One off a plane, and they'll send the second stage up to get a suborbital flight.
And it's reusable, much like the shuttle that will have a lifting body shape, so it'll come down and glide to landing.
That's going to be built by a Russian company.
But the spaceport is going to take place in one of the United Arab Emirates, Ras el-Khamai.
Now, if you look at the Saudi Peninsula and the Strait of Homuz that goes past Iraq, at the very eastern end, there's a little point peninsula that sticks up into the Strait.
Well, the western half of that is the little tiny area that's controlled by Ras al-Khamai.
That's one of the United Arab Emirates.
Essentially, it's a bunch of tribal guys who got together.
They're tribal leaders, and they put together a country, the United Arab Emirates.
And they have made a deal with Space Adventures that they're going to provide the spaceport.
Now, there's more to this that's more interesting.
Some of the money's coming from the Ansara family.
Now, that name doesn't ring a bell.
I'll remind people that.
It wasn't the X Prize that Burt Rutan's company won with Spaceship One.
It was the Ansari X Prize.
The Ansari family's got a lot of money.
It's Arab, it's got Arab roots.
And they're some of the financial backing to this whole space adventures deal.
And it's in the money of $265 million to build a spaceport, to build Explorer, the Russian ship, and to put them up from the UAE.
So it's really interesting.
And they say they're going to get their first ship up by 2008.
Yes, he's very quiet, but they're building a ship, and they're putting a spaceport together, but he's not talking about it very much, but he has the cash.
On top of that, I'll always like to bring up SpaceX, Space Exploration Incorporated.
SpaceX is Elon Musk's company, and he is like, he's had, he's not building reusable ships for tourism.
He's building rockets to just put satellites in orbit, just make money.
But if he can make it work, he will cut the cost of satellite orbit by a third, and he'll start to make a lot of money.
Robert, NASA's private dominion almost has been space.
And you're quoting all these various private efforts that are cranking up right now.
When it begins to happen, how do you think NASA and the U.S. government and other governments around the world are going to react to invasion of their private territory?
Well, NASA's first reaction a few years ago when Dennis Tito went up, and I talked about this extensively in Leaving Earth, my book.
Their reaction was abysmally offensive to me.
They tried to stop it.
They tried to stop it.
Their attitude in recent years has been to back off and let it happen.
They know they can't.
The question isn't so much what NASA's going to do, it's what the U.S. government's going to do.
And they've passed laws which I think are going to make it hard.
One of the reasons the Space Adventures Company, I think, went to the United Arab Emirates for their spaceport is because U.S. law, the last year, the law they passed last year to supposedly help commercial space is a hindrance.
And I think they recognize that, and they went someplace where they want to deal with all this regulation.
And that's where we have to worry.
I'm hoping that the exuberance of the success of this kind of stuff will encourage Congress to pass laws that will reduce the problem.
But I would say this, that Michael Griffin might disagree with you based on his testimony and the Congress's reaction to his budget the last few weeks.
They're not necessarily an agreement.
I think, though, in this case, because it's a feistem, it's their little empire, and the government likes controlling that little empire.
I wouldn't disagree with you.
And so we'll see.
I go from pessimism to optimism periodically on this subject, though.
I'm hopeful.
I will say this, though.
It's discouraging from an American's point of view that they have to go to the United Arab Emirates to set up a spaceport.
They have to go to the Russians to get a rocket ship.
It's discouraging that companies like Boeing and Lockheed don't have the innovation anymore to chip in and make this happen.
Oh, yes, the Chinese are pushing forward on a steady, though very, I think, somewhat slow pace.
They could pick it up if they wanted to.
But nonetheless, they're demonstrating that it can be done and that they will do it.
And where are we?
I mean, you know, right now there's a court suit between Elon Musk's SpaceX Company and Boeing and Lockheed, because Boeing and Lockheed both built to have their own rockets, the Delta and the Atlas.
They're made by each company.
And the military wanted to have those two different rockets to give them some redundancy and have competition.
And Boeing and Lockheed decided last year that they're going to get together and form a partnership.
And the military will only have one company to choose from.
And the military's kind of said, okay, and the government wants to go along with this.
And it's not innovative.
It's not competitive.
And Musk, who's trying to make a rocket to compete with these guys, is suing the military and the government for non-competitive practices.
And he's, unfortunately, last week, I think it's unfortunate in my mind, his case was thrown out.
that they've got a appeal again but unfortunate that boy in lockheed to approach to competition is to try to former cartel and not the innovative the All right.
Well, you know, the situation about the science is that in looking at the data, there is very little data, there's no data, in fact, to indicate that the Earth is getting colder.
None.
If any data that we find is either inconclusive or it leans in the direction of warming.
So, you know, if you want to look closely, you can say, well, that implies that it's happening.
And that's a reasonable conclusion.
It's not an unreasonable position to take on by any means.
I'm trying to give you a sense of what I see when I look closely, talk to the scientists themselves at conferences and see the heavy report.
You know, I like to tell a story about it.
I'm at NAGU, and they have sessions.
And in those sessions, they had a session on the Sea Rise.
And so the first guy gives a very bombastic report of how Jesus Bay is going to be flooded in six months.
I'm exaggerating.
But he was very aggressively saying that the ocean is arising because of global warming.
We've got to do something immediately or it's going to flood.
And most of the reporters, they come for that first very bombastic session and they leave.
And I like to sit through the whole sessions because I'm not on a deadline.
I'm a freelancer.
I write when I think there's a story instead of for a deadline.
So I sat through the whole session and all the other reports that followed were much more inconclusive and tentative.
The scientists were, once again, if you have to, it's from either zero to global warming, it's not zero to global cooling, it's always in one direction.
But there's still doubts.
A few years ago, satellite data from certain elevations of the altitudes was showing the atmosphere was getting colder.
Now, that data has gotten more conclusive, less contradictory in the last few years.
So it's beginning to indicate, yes, this is where I'm saying.
Yes, the evidence is beginning to lean more towards global warming.
But it's tipping.
I don't dispute that.
But I see enough inconclusive information in talking to enough scientists to hold back, to want to be somewhat skeptical still.
But Robert, you can't honestly say that, for example, a private company would do the kind of deep space stuff that NASA is doing, the exploration of some of the outer planets and beyond.
You're not going to see that from private industry.
In fact, the proof of that is Elon Musk, once again.
Remember, he came up with PayPal.
He sold it to eBay, made billions of dollars.
He's got lots of money.
His original goal, his original goal was he wanted to get into space, and his original idea was he was going to put together his own Mars probe to bring back a sample.
And he did a lot of research, and he found he could build a probe pretty reasonably cheap.
But his problem was the cost of getting into space was so high, it made it impractical.
So he said, wait a minute, I can do that cheaper and make better money.
But his original goal was to do exactly the kind of deep space stuff that NASA's doing because he wanted to do it.
Let's say, for example, Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic is somewhat successful with space tourism, and they're selling tickets and they're making good profits.
Let me finish.
They're going to pump that money into an orbital craft for space tourism.
Well, publicity-wise, it does them enormous lost leader good to do a mission like that, if only if they're going to take tourists eventually to the asteroids to know what the asteroids are made out of, to prove that they can, proof of concept, get a craft there and back.
No, I have no doubt it doesn't have to be government.
It doesn't mean it shouldn't be government and it shouldn't be just private.
I'm not trying to say one or the other, but there's no rule that says it has to be government.
Well, you know, one of the things is this, that it doesn't cost a lot of money to send an relatively a lot of money to do an orbital mission, a robot probe.
I'm telling you now that, you know, we got started on the shuttle.
Brother Bush wants the shuttle retired by 2010, and NASA has announced that one of the three shuttles, Atlantis, is only going to do five more flights.
And by 2008, when it was due for an overhaul, they're just going to retire it, and they're going to use it for spare parts while they finish the International Space Station over the next few years with the remaining two shuttles.
I predict that they might not retire the shuttle in 2010.
This is not because they don't want to retire the shuttle, but they need to finish the International Space Station.
And if it takes an extra year or so, they're going to take that extra year or so.
They'll do those extra flights they need to do.
And I also predict that when the shuttle is finally retired and we have a replacement which will not be as capable, I guarantee to you that at some point, we are all going to say, gee, I wish we had the shuttle's capability again.
Because the shuttle is a remarkable instrument.
It's old.
It should have been upgraded.
It should have had a second generation.
But it's a marvelous piece of equipment that can do amazing things in orbit that nothing has been built to match it at this point.
Well, you see, he's actually handling this better than any NASA administrator in my lifetime.
He's doing the one thing that no NASA, and I'm writing a book now.
I'm writing a book about the Hubble Space Telescope.
And I'm dealing with a lot of the history behind Hubble.
And this is historic with NASA.
NASA administrators never tell the truth about, and up until now, have told the truth about how much it's going to cost to do something.
They do what they call a buy-in.
They sell a program at a much less cost than it really costs.
And then once Congress has approved it and it begins to cost what it really is going to cost, Congress feels kind of obliged to finish the job.
And NASA's been doing this kind of game for years.
And one of the reasons they have credibility problems on Capitol Hill and with the public, and one of the reasons they have trouble now getting really the kind of cash they need is because of that dishonesty.
The previous administrator, Sean O'Keefe of NASA, was doing the same thing.
He said, we'll build this exploration project.
We'll go to the moon.
We'll finish the ISS and we'll retire the shuttle.
And it won't cost you any more money.
And O'Keefe has said to Congress in the last few weeks, that's not true.
If you want me to finish the International Space Station and build the crew exploration vehicle that replaced the shuttle, you're going to do completely both those things and have no gap between the retirement of the shuttle and the next generation manned vehicle for the United States, then you're going to have to give me more money.
If you don't give me, he said this, if you don't give me more money, I'm going to have to cut back on space station construction.
Well, if they were to quote the actual amount that they knew it would cost, and we've all seen the space station go through the roof in cost, it never would have been approved in the first place.
There are many out there who say the entire space effort, any money we spend for space, going into space, is an entire just flat waste of taxpayer dollars.
Well, well, there's a lot I could tell a lot of stories.
I mean, it's a ludicrous statement.
And a great a great example of that is the congressman who was at a hearing, and he was complaining about all the money for NASA, and he said, and space, he says, space is a waste of money.
I don't like space.
I don't need space to know what the weather is.
If I need the weather, I'll go to the weather channel.
And they're depending on satellites.
I mean, it's not a waste of money.
The other side of it is that the argument always is, well, we should spend the money here on Earth.
Well, the money's spent here on Earth.
None of it's spent in space.
We don't have any industry in space that we give the cash to.
It's not a foreign aid.
It's spent in the United States, most of it.
So that's the second argument.
And, you know, and I've said this to you before, and I've said this repeatedly.
I've written it repeatedly.
If you don't dream big dreams, you don't get anything accomplished.
You become a small and petty nation.
You've got to grow.
You've got to try to do great things.
And space exploration is that.
Now, once again, whether NASA should do it or not, or whether these private companies should do it, that is a valid argument.
And I'm not a big fan of having the government do it because I've seen how little NASA has accomplished in the last 30 years.
It's very depressing.
I'm hopeful this is maybe going to see a turn the corner because if they start doing what they're supposed to do, they will generate private enterprise for sure.
One of the reasons all these tourism companies exist now is because there is indications that NASA is looking to them for help.
And so there's money.
NASA is a customer for them as well as the tourists.
And so that's one of the reasons they're getting some additional investment dollars because they're realizing, you know, we not only could sell to tourists, but we might be able to sell our business to NASA.
In the past, NASA didn't want to deal with new companies.
It has it Lockheed and its Boeing, and they were partners, and they were all at the same pig trowel eating the food, and they didn't need to go to anyone new.
Could you, if you were testifying, could you make a case that there's profit ultimately in space and that what exploration we have done thus far has created all these new products and all these new things and it's so worth it what we've done?
I mean, when they were first considering going, if you read articles about what space will produce back in the 50s, they hadn't the faintest idea what was going to come out of the initial space exploration.
They didn't really understand weather satellites and how it would be so important to us.
They didn't really understand climate research at all.
That never came up.
No one had the slightest idea that was going to come out.
No, they had no idea about communications, not in the slightest as it became.
NXM and Sirius Radio, who dreamed?
Direct broadcast TV, DISH TV, television.
No one dreamed of it.
And this is communications, and it's information, and it's something that no one imagined in a million years.
Now, what tourism will bring and actual hotels in space are things we really, at this point, that's a next stage, and we really don't know what will come.
I like to bring up the issue of osteoporosis always because it's a good serendipitous thing.
If we start having people regularly living in space for long periods of time, weightlessness produces the same exact symptoms as bed rest, and it produces bone loss.
And that's like osteoporosis.
And so it becomes a serendipitous research tool for learning how to solve that earthbound problem.
Now, that's just a specific spin-off.
I don't like to argue big spin-offs, but that gives you an example.
But to try to give that as an example is a mistake, because what we will learn is something we can't at the moment imagine.
That's the secret.
Look, Hubble was proposed by a bunch of astronomers, and they made arguments about what we're going to learn, but one of their fundamental arguments repeatedly was, it has the opportunity to learn things we can't even imagine now.
And they were 100% right.
And that applies to space tourism and space exploration and manned space going to the moon.
Some of the benefits we will not actually be able to imagine.
And I will now give you a historical background.
My major was history.
The United States, the colonies, the New World.
The old world could not have really imagined what benefits the new world eventually brought to them.
And some of those things has to do with what the United States was founded on, which is the ideas of law and freedom and religious freedom.
And those ideas didn't exist in the old world, and they still don't really.
And that's something that came out of the new world.
And that's the benefits you can't even imagine.
And so, yeah, it's a foolish thing to say no.
First of all, with private enterprise art, you can't say no because someone's going to do it whether you want to or not.
And so you want to say no.
That's what NASA tried to do to Dennis Tito.
No, no, no, you can't go.
Well, tough luck.
He went anyway.
So if Space Adventures or SpaceX wants to do it, it's not our business to tell them no.
Well, that's partly because one of the things I learned in writing Leaving Earth and talking about the Russians' culture and space program of the last 30s in the United States is how much the United States has become like the Soviet Union.
We think it's our right to say no to these things.
It's not.
Freedom says people can dream, and if those people can fill their dreams, all power to them.
I mean, it is absolutely the most significant scientific instrument that any nation has ever put in orbit.
And it is as important as the manned program to go to the moon.
If not more important, it's as important for the same reason.
It has had consequences for our understanding of the universe that we hadn't anticipated before its launch and have surprised us.
Just like going to the moon had cultural influences on the United States and the world that we did not anticipate beforehand and surprised us.
And I wrote about that in my first book, Genesis, the Story of Apollo 8, how the Apollo 8 mission, looking at the Earth from the moon, was one of the biggest prime movers for the environmental movement.
It changed our whole perspective of the Earth.
And similarly, Hubble has given us a completely different perspective of the universe that ways we did not anticipate.
And the most famous, the most significant scientific discovery that the scientists like to talk about with Hubble is how the universe is, you know, you blow something up and the debris flies away from the explosion and you just assume it's going to slow down.
It's really very, very interesting watching the fast blasts come in.
You know, there's an incredible amount of controversy that came out of the first part of this program, and my inclination is to open the phone lines up pretty quickly for Robert Zimmerman.
So if you want to ask him a question, and you want to circle back to the climate issue, because that really does appear to be what caught people's attention.
Either, by the way, very much in agreement with Robert, as in, gee, he suddenly a guess that really makes sense, or in very much disagreement with Robert.
I think it'd be interesting to see how the audience reacts to what he says.
But first, you know, Robert, I'd like to dig a little bit deeper into this Hubble thing.
I mean, obviously, there's got to be a big hook that you're not willing to tell me about.
I mean, Hubble itself is such an important telescope.
And the story behind it is worth telling, including the story behind last year's decision two years ago by Sean O'Keefe to cancel the servicing mission and how that decision was made and then following up later on.
These are stories that should be told.
There's a lot of things that happened that made Hubble happen that is worth that people should know about because it's, once again, it's so important.
You know, I was mentioning the really cosmological discovery that was really significant at scientist points.
But to me, that wasn't the most, culturally, that is not necessarily the most important thing.
It's much similar to the Apollo 8 mission.
Those first sharp images of stars exploding and planetary nebula and the disks around stars, that more than anything else changed our perspective of the universe because we now suddenly could see the universe with clarity.
The human race was a near-sided, blind species until Hubble came along.
And that is significant on a very basic level.
I'll never forget being at the 1993 American Astronomical Society's meeting in which they unveiled the first sharp pictures after Hubble's repair.
So, you know, in every respect, while the private sector is doing some interesting things, we're moving further and further away from space exploration, it seems to me.
I mean, and sometimes I agree entirely with you because of the general lack of interest.
People are much more, you know, popular.
When China sent up astronauts, I was going to do a radio interview, their first astronauts, and I got a call ten minutes before the radio interview at NLA saying, look, we decided not to cover it because there was a garbage strike.
And it says, China is sending its first astronaut up.
How can you say such?
They're both important, I guess.
So in some ways I agree with you.
But then other times I don't.
And the web is an example of that.
And Talk Radio and your show, there's now opportunities to get in.
The main media doesn't really care about this subject very much.
I'm from the Cleveland area, and they're all straight-shooting guys.
And they've all said the same thing when asked about global warming.
They say there's just not enough time to study the thing to make any kind of certain predictions because, like I say, the cycle is so long, and this Earth's been here for so long, and for as little as we've been watching it, there's no way you can look at this and say, yeah, there's global warming, there's not.
A little dance, moving the feet around a little bit.
West of the Rockies, you're on there with Robert Zimmerman.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hello, Art.
Hello.
Hi, Mr. Zimmerman.
I just had one question.
With all the activity going on with the magnetic field, the Earth's starting to flip, the sunspot activity that's been pretty unusual the last couple of years, and the recent, well, I don't know if it's recent, but about six months ago, I read a report that there's evidence that the ice caps on Mars are actually melting also.
So with all that taken into consideration, it seems like if there is global warming, it would be more of a natural phenomenon than one caused by any activity that man could be causing.
The Earth, there is a factor here that isn't talked about.
There has been a 10%, the quota just mentioned this, and people, this is a factor.
We don't know what its consequences are.
We don't even know what the long-term final result of it will be.
But in the last 150 years, there has been a 10% decline in the strength of the Earth's magnetic field.
And some scientists say, could this be the beginning of a magnetic flip, a polarity flip from north to south?
We don't know what causes them in the past.
They've happened many times.
We don't know how long they took in the past, though they have sense of several thousand, 100,000 years.
That's happening.
Now, does that have any effect on the climate?
We actually don't know.
Who knows?
There's no way of knowing at this stage because the good global climate research that's been going on has only been going on since the dawn of the space race, you know, that vast waste of money.
And it's going to take several decades to have, I think, a stronger inkling of the future.
unidentified
But, I mean, there is evidence of past climate changes.
Yes.
Like, you know, they've had evidence, fossil evidence in Antarctica that that used to be a tropical forest.
Yes, part of that is because Antarctica wasn't always at the South Pole.
But you're right, there's been climate change in the past.
So there's no reason to think that climate change can happen again on the Earth in significant amounts.
Whether that's happening now is an unknown.
As far as I'm concerned, I don't think the facts are solid enough to make any firm conclusions yet.
At least where I'm coming from.
unidentified
To me, I don't know, it seems like we've got a lot more to worry about socially than to keep us all busy without worrying about the weather, which is something beyond our control anyway.
I was disappointed to hear something being said about things can change.
They're not perfect.
We can get things perfect if we want to.
The problem is none of us make the effort to try.
If we recognize in recognizing the problems that we have and deal with the problems rather than put them aside and said it will never change, then they will continue to manifest themselves in ways in which is causing problems in society today.
And that's what has caused the problem because people sit back and say, well, I can't do it.
I'm not perfect.
And the point is, if we strive to be imperfect, we will go so far off perfect, we will hurt ourselves and others in the process.
We have to move forward by recognizing that we have to make the step forward and recognize that we can hit the perfection mark when we are ready to, after a period of the development that we are supposed to be doing.
If we don't do it, we do not succeed.
We just continue to plunder and harm as we go through the process of our lives.
Our achievement in this life is supposed to be not the things in life, but the quality that you can achieve from within that brings you out to be the kind of upstanding person that all beings are supposed to be.
And rightfully so.
However, because society tells them that they can't achieve it, they fail to hit the mark.
I thank you very much for allowing me that opportunity to say so.
There was a period through the 70s and 80s and 90s, and even in today, where scientific and engineering innovation had kind of declined in the United States.
No one was really, you wouldn't see new companies show up.
The fact that Lockheed and Boeing don't want to compete, they want to form an alliance.
It's the kind of lack of innovation and competitiveness that defeats you, that's not trying to be better.
That's exactly the worst way you can be.
And there has been an aspect of that.
It's kind of a wealthy nation.
People get lazy.
So that's when I'm depressed, I think, of that.
But then I see things changing in other ways.
You see all these private companies with innovation suddenly coming out of nowhere.
For the first time in like decades, we're finally starting to see some of this creativity.
And that gives me hope.
It tells me, and I use the web and talk radio and the new sources of information maybe as an indicator of change.
When I was growing up in the 60s, you had three television stations.
You had very little variety of information sources.
And so you tended to get what I would call accepted wisdoms about whatever is going on in the world.
It didn't matter whether they're right or wrong.
They were accepted wisdoms.
They might have been right, but you had no wide range of opinions to work from.
So you tended to accept a very narrow point of view.
And I think my generation, unfortunately, the baby boom generation, tends to do that.
They don't like new ideas because they're not used to it.
But in the last 15 years with the web and talk radio and cable and hundreds of other news sources, kids growing up today are exposed to a gigantic range of information.
They get a piece of information, they know that whatever accepted wisdom is being spoken, they can go to the web, do a search, and instantly find a different point of view.
So to them, there is no accepted wisdom.
The only thing that counts is information and factually correct information, proven right.
And what that does is open your mind, and I think that's why we're beginning to see a renaissance.
East of the Rockies, your turn with Robert Zimmerman.
Hi.
unidentified
Hi, this is Doc from Texas.
I wanted to get your comment on Space Island Group, the company that's taking external tanks, connecting them end-to-end into a ring, creating a centrifugal force, creating one-third gravity.
Now, this alone will solve the problems with the bone loss, as well as not only just taking five people to Mars, but possibly 100 people at a time.
I mean, in the 80s, when it was first proposed to use the external tank to make a cheap, quick space station, NASA opposed it because they were trying to get funding to build the International Space Station.
At the time, it was Freedom, but they were trying to build a space station, and they didn't want a competitor.
Well, why would they still want to continue using the International Space Station when they Could use the Ring space station and get so much more out of it with parts that they already have that they know work.
Yeah, I object to some of the nay saying, I guess, in regard to the compelling evidence that global warming has been taking place.
There's been so many scientists, climatologists that have been jumping ship in recent years that have jumped over to the side that they do support the idea that human beings are impacting the planet.
And one of their major concerns, I mean, I've heard this over and over again, and I'm really hoping that this particular argument has been wearing itself out, that I would hear that, well, water vapor is causing most of the global warming.
And that's true.
And I'm not sure where he stands on that, but it is, in fact, a true fact, but it's something that is happening as a result of carbon dioxide emissions.
They begin the initial heating process.
And after that, the heating process itself begins to cause an evaporation of water off the surfaces of lakes, rivers, and the oceans.
And then you get the greenhouse effect turned on, or the Venus effect, I guess is what some scientists are calling it.
I mean, one of the arguments for global warming is that, and this is without question, there has been an increase in the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the last 50 years.
And the cause of that is generally ascribed to vehicles, the car emissions.
Fossil fuels, I shouldn't just say car missiles, I should say fossil fuels.
The burning of fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide as a consequence of that.
I don't argue that at all.
I do point out that you talk to enough scientists who are doing, once again, the hard work, and they're frustrated at, many of them are frustrated at finding a direct connection.
There is a correlation.
There is a concern because it's theoretically it makes sense that you put enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it holds the heat that comes from the sun.
Do you remember how many years, Robert, it took to form a stated direct connection between smoking and, I don't know, heart disease, lung cancer, and so forth?
I'm not sure they actually, even to this day, have been able to pinpoint the exact connection.
I'm not disputing the connection when I say that, but I'm not even sure even to this day they understand the process of how the nicotines in cigarettes causes the problems.
I'm not disputing the connection.
I'm just saying I'm not sure they understand the connection even now.
So this applies just as well to global warming and carbon dioxide.
Now, down the road, if we start to see clear evidence of global warming, you know, and I say to you, you know, give it another 10 more years, I said 15 years, five years ago, I think the evidence, and you know, I'm beginning, you know, five years have passed, I'm beginning to see, you know, we're not getting anything to say otherwise, but it's still unclear the causes.
You know, there's a, once again, those cycles, the Earth goes, the sun, the sun is a variable star.
They know that for a fact, but they don't know how much it varies.
We've only been tracing the sun's radiant budget closely since 1978.
Tree ring data and other data indicates that it has fluctuated in the past enough to change the Earth's climate, enough to destroy the Anastasi civilizations in the American Southwest, it's a suspect.
Is that a factor in this?
We can't do anything about the sun.
We don't, you know, I know, I know.
You know, putting them all together, obviously, if carbon dioxide is a factor in global warming, we have to try to deal with it.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
Hello.
unidentified
Hi, Kent in Kansas City.
And I'm normally a sports top caller, but you got me hooked.
And I'd just like to say, Art, I understand your frustration, all the people out there typing you.
It's a privilege to be on the radio any chance I get.
So folks, pick up the phone.
The trick is redow, redow, redow.
My question, I am in the National Guard.
I had the privilege of serving this country September down in New Orleans, and I heard you all talk about New Orleans earlier in the show.
What I saw there was what I thought was pretty much a sacked city, and I'm really shocked to hear that they're rebuilding the Superdome.
They plan on the Saints playing there next season.
Even as I was there, they were rebuilding the city.
And when Rita came in, they ushered us up into Jackson, Mississippi, because they didn't think the levees could hold the water back for Rita after Rita brought us back down.
And I've not heard that the levees have been repaired.
And to me, it's absolute nonsense for them to rebuild the city if the levees aren't fixed yet.
And how we're supposed to think that these sandbags can hold back more hurricanes.
And I just, I'm clueless as to why they're rebuilding and why they would expect anyone to move back in there.
There's a political component to this, of course, because the reason a lot of that rebuilding is going on is because billions of federal dollars have been pumped in, and they've been pumped in because there's been a political demand that how dare you abandon these poor people.
In fact, there's been a demand if you do abandon them, you're a racist.
And so they've dumped, they want to dump billions of dollars in there and do it immediately without any thought.
And that's where you get the cluelessness aspect.
They're playing games, power, political games, rather than looking at the situation honestly and dealing with it in a thoughtful manner.
And so, you know, I agree with the caller 100%.
I mean, we first have to fix the problem before we start rebuilding everything there.
Oh, yeah, you know, but once again, we turn, once again, this problem occurred, and the immediate response is let's have the federal government, Congress, dump lots of money in and save the day.
And the truth is, it's not the federal government's job.
If a whole bunch of money, no matter who dumps it in, Robert, is dumped in, and the new hurricane season comes, and it's almost upon us, it'll be here shortly, and another Category 5 hits New Orleans and wipes it out, besides the horrible tragedy that will occur again, there's going to be severe embarrassment.
You know, they keep postponing, they keep wanting to postpone the election of the mayor in that town, and it's basically because they're terrified he's going to lose.
Because it's a disgrace how the local politicians in that area have not done their job.
They spent money for the last few decades on things that had nothing to do with securing the city from flooding, from a hurricane.
They looked the other way.
And yes, there's going to be a lot of embarrassment.
Yeah, look, you say we have to start planning to deal with it.
And we just got to drive discussing New Orleans and how government plans how to solve these things.
And most of the solutions most Americans today turn to instantly is, well, oh, we have to get the government to plan our future if global warming is happening.
And I personally think if global warming is happening, American citizens and world citizens are going to very quickly start to adapt where they grow their crops because the weather will change and it will be a better place to grow here instead of there.
Property values will determine a great deal how we will adapt to that situation.
People will adjust as it happens over a long period of time.
I don't see, I think it will be an enormous waste of money to ask the world's governments to try to unify and plan this.
Well, there are some things that might well occur.
It was a scenario in the movie from the book, and that is that, for example, an ocean current that we depend on for European relative warmth would just suddenly quit on us.
There are times.
That's it.
That's right.
And there are signs.
It's beginning to splinter and stall.
Very, very worrisome signs.
And that would be a rather immediate effect on almost all of Europe.
The thing that has to be understood in all of this is this doesn't happen overnight.
None of this will happen overnight.
It will happen over a period of one to two to three generations.
And for a human species, that's in a long period of time to change and adapt.
Remember, the United States was practically built in a period of maybe three generations.
The whole country.
We forget that at the start of the previous century, 1903, they flew the first plane.
Cars were just appearing.
By the end of that century, once again, we have a space station, permanent occupant in space, and you have roads all across the world, not just in the United States.
People can adapt very fast in these Situations compared to the speed in which such changes will happen.
To try to over-plan it from the government, to quote George Will, the government is a, to paraphrase him, the government is a blunt instrument and it doesn't give you the flexibility.
Yeah, and there's one more thing, Robert, that's worth mentioning, and that is that as these areas that were previously ice become water, you have a change in color.
You now have darkness, which, of course, absorbs sunlight, and there's a cascading effect.
The point is, though, that if you look at this data, the overall change in the ice sheet of Greenland is not gigantically in the direction of shrinkage.
It leans that way.
And once again, there is evidence that it does do cycles.
We are not yet in a position to know for sure if this is global warming or if this is just a cyclical event.
Well, there's plenty of historical evidence for warming trends in the past.
For example, if you go to Sweden, you'll find that there are some sites associated with the Vikings from the 7th, 8th, and 9th century, which are seaports, but they're a couple of miles from the sea.
In fact, the period in which the Vikings were crossing over to settle in America was a period of warming.
It might have been a factor in their ability to get to Newfoundland.
It is the same reason that the Anastasi civilizations in the southwest at that time died off because it was a warming period and their water sources dried up.
It is suspected from tree ring data that that occurred because of solar variation, but that's not confirmed.
You know, the key to this is that we are not helpless.
We can deal with the issue and learn what's going on.
I'm just not convinced yet we have all the data to know.
Wells to the Rockies, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
unidentified
Hi.
Art, thank you for being a voice of reason on the issue of global climate change.
I think it is entirely irresponsible and utterly outrageous that Mr. Zimmerman could state that the world scientific community is divided on the issue of whether or not humanity is contributing to the rise in global temperatures.
Let me cite my source.
Would you not agree that the National Academy of Sciences is the most esteemed body of scientific scholars in the world?
If you're referring to the National Academy report that came out about, maybe it's now four years ago on the issue of global warming, I've read that report.
unidentified
Subsequent reports, and those reports are very clear in stating that it is a consequence of human activity.
Well, I pulled up the report during the break because I wanted to be able to quote things from it as well.
Okay.
And what has to be understood is several things.
I mean, I could give you quotes.
Later on in the report, they analyze their conclusions very carefully and very reasonably and point out the many large, and I'm quoting now, large and still uncertain information that they have on this.
And they recognize that though they have certain conclusions, they're not sure what's going on.
And one has to be very careful how one views National Academy of Science reports.
Sometimes they're very good.
Sometimes they're not so good.
This is not a bad report, by the way.
One of the reasons I'm saying, I have been saying during this show, that the evidence is tilting towards global warming is the analysis of report like this.
But this report is not as conclusive as that first sentence makes it up to be.
The phenomenon about the report itself, that if you read the whole report, they analyze the situation very carefully, but they repeatedly talk about the uncertainties and the uncertainty.
What I'd like to say is what I was reading from were the bullet point conclusions from the beginning of the National Academy of Sciences Task Force summary.
And I just wanted to read one additional sentence and then make a brief comment.
That is, even in the most conservative scenarios, the models project temperatures and sea levels that continue to increase well beyond the end of this century, suggesting that assessments that examine only the next 100 years may well underestimate the magnitude of the eventual impacts.
So, and in terms of the National Academy of Sciences, my goodness, that's the gold standard.
The Academy was founded by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to serve as an independent consortium of scientists to serve as a founding board for national leaders on issues of science.
So, you know, I can't think of any more esteemed body than the National Academy of Sciences.
You know, once again, the report, the quote he just gave us was talking about what the models say.
And if you look at the report, those are models.
Those are predictions.
I'll quote, because of the large and still uncertain level of natural variability inherent in the climate record and the uncertainties in the time histories of the various forcing agents, and particularly aerosols that have to do with carbon, a causal linkage between the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the observed climate changes during the 20th century cannot be unequivocally established.
That's in the quote.
That's in the report.
They're talking about how they cannot yet say those models are right.
So the caller just quoted the report talking about how the models say it'll be devastating.
And they themselves in the report say that the models are not only not quite matching what is happening, but that they don't even have enough data yet to trust the models.
I've been listening to this great show this morning, and I had a comment about the first part of the interview, how Mr. Bell was giving example after example of proof of global warming.
And it seemed like Mr. Zimmerman was giving the slimmest possible reason or to dismiss or the exception to the rule to dismiss totally each specific proof of it happening.
And the only motivation I could come up with in my own mind was that Mr. Zimmerman has a lot of stock involved in home heating equipment.
I mean, the people that collect the data sometimes don't have the whole picture, and the whole picture doesn't form until the data is correlated, and then somebody goes, wow, look at this.
I've kind of believed that the Earth is kind of self-cleansing, and I believe that it's kind of a mass hysteria when it comes to recycling and the devastation that humans are causing on the planet.
Starting back in 1978, I started reading papers on it to, no.
Talking to or reading materials on global warming back then.
And it's just continued onward.
And now I believe that there's members of the Reagan administration that were dead set against the idea of global warming have turned over to becoming advocates of human activity and global warming.
And I know there's a clever political play now to call it climate change, which really doesn't do it justice because it is our direct impact on it.
And, you know, and every study I've ever seen says that it's a human impact that's directly causing it.
And years ago, I got an argument with, well, I didn't get an argument because I got cut off, but I was in, listening to Rush Limbaugh years ago, and he had the thing where he was saying that you couldn't, there was no way for chlorofluorofluorocarbons or any other heavy chlorine atoms to be lofted up to the stratosphere,
but the proof had been made a long time ago when the Mariner missions to Mars when they saw the heavy soils being lofted up into the upper atmosphere of Mars, screening out the sun.
And that was proof positive right there that there was human or that activity at the surface of the planet can be lofted up into higher altitudes.
So I have no doubt that we've added to the heat burden of the atmosphere.
For example, one day here in the desert, the air turned yellow, and it stayed yellow for about three days.
And, you know, the news organizations were inquired of, and nobody gave us an answer for about two days.
And then suddenly they found out that it came from, I believe it was Mongolia, some incredible dust storm or something in Mongolia, and our era turned yellow.
You know, Mount Pinatubo, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, worldwide significantly lowered the temperature of the Earth for a period of about five years.
And there have been other volcanoes that have done similar effects.
The issue here, though, is, once again, I don't know what papers the call is reading.
I'm looking right now at that same National Academy report.
The great uncertainty about human forcing factors presents a severe handicap both for the interpretation of past climate change and for the future assessments of climate change.
It's not a known issue right now.
That's all I've been saying, that there are a lot of unknowns.
And I think it's a real mistake to come to a firm conclusion before you really have all the facts.
But first, I'm a PhD in political science, and I'd like to make a Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, and ecology is now the new religion for a lot of people.
And if you look at these reports, I agree with Robert.
The executive summary was written by these same sort of politicos in these organizations that just as the left has captured most social science departments and most major universities in the United States, and you've got just a fever swamp of Marxism and neo-Marxists in the English political science sociology departments.
In fact, cultural anthropologists and scientific anthropologists practically are at each other's throats because the scientific types think the cultural anthropologists are crazy, basically, and deny all sorts of things because of their political stance.
But here's my point.
The executive summary is not the same as the basic report because the executive summary was written for political reasons.
If you go into a lot of the REASI reports and you look at these models, the uncertainty is there in all sorts of basic reports, but it's the political reporting of them.
And some of these organizations, for example, in this, I don't know if it was this report or just the previous one, the chief scientist for determination of on the National Board for Determination of Hurricanes quit in protest over the misinterpretation of his data and linking the frequency of hurricanes to global warming, when indeed he did not say that.
And then the president of the Academy of Sciences had to come out and apologize later to the guy for misstating his data in the report.
You know, I live in the Washington area, and I go to National Academy of Science meeting hearings.
And in fact, one of the best National Academy of Science reports that came out in the last few years was the one specifically assessing Hubble's future, the Hubble Space Telescope's future.
And I was at those sessions.
And regardless of how careful those scientists try to do their work, political components always get involved.
And even if they do a good job, much of National Academy reports are political.
And it's worth reading because that book doesn't only cover the manned space exploration post-Apollo, but it covers how the United States and Russia changed over that period of time and how that change reflected in their space program.