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Feb. 19, 2006 - Art Bell

02:29:07

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Robert Zimmerman - Space Climate & UFOs - James Gilliland - Gilliland Ranch Sightings

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	Of the whole global warming thing.
	However, I wonder how many of you tonight saw 60 Minutes.
	The third segment on 60 Minutes, I thought was 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 Gilliland is a internationally known speaker, minister, visionary, and author of two books, Reunion with Source and Becoming God II.
	He is the director of the Self-Mastery Earth Institute and ESETI, 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 this 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.
	In fact, let's ask James very quickly.
	James, welcome to the program.
	Oh, thank you for having me on again.
	Sure.
	Where was this recorded, please?
	It was actually recorded over Portland State University.
	And this is just the soundtrack that also had a ship that accompanied with it, and when the pulses changed, the flashing light on the ship would change along with the pulses.
	No kidding.
	It's pretty amazing.
	Alright, there were a number of witnesses, obviously, because we had somebody record it.
	Yes.
	All right.
	I'm going to play a little bit of it here, and I can't guarantee it's going to come through on the radio well.
	These are low tones, but I'll hold my headphones up there and give it a try.
	In the meantime, I suggest you go to the website and take a listen for yourself.
	Here it comes.
	Okay. There you go.
	Okay. There you've got it.
	Okay, there you've got it.
	You're suggesting, James, that as the pulse began to change toward the end there, the accompanying light did too?
	Yes, the ship, it was a pretty large ship, and it would, 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.
	Close encounters of the third kind.
	It definitely matched the, you know, the same pulse frequencies as it was going off.
	Fascinating.
	All right.
	You have brought with you a number of people tonight.
	Did these people all witness the same thing or different things?
	What are we going to talk about here?
	Well, we have two people that work in the aerospace industry.
	We won't say which one.
	We don't want to get into trouble.
	But they're project managers and they're high up on the food chain, you might say there.
	It would be fair to say in one of the nation's largest aerospace companies.
	Yes.
	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 very involved in that industry.
	And he will come forward.
	We've got quite a few witnesses.
	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.
	Well, you had a very disproportionately large number of UFO sightings.
	Now, do you attribute that to this NDE you had?
	It's part of it.
	It's kind of interesting what happened was I had the near-death experience and it blew me open into the 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.
	Now, see, if it was just you, I'd say it sounds like you fell out there on the ranch, got a big bump on your head, and began seeing things.
	The trouble is, the trouble is, we've got a lot of high-class witnesses here, so maybe what you're saying has some weight.
	I mean, maybe you did I don't know what you did.
	I mean, you know, a multiverse and an interdimensional mind, those are different, difficult concepts for the audience to grasp, and it sounds a little nutty on the face of it, but... But?
	Well, I can explain it, you know, with physics, because, you know, 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 that 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.
	He does.
	Exactly, and you know, we look at this third dimension here, and all of the life and diversity on this dimension, and I just think it's very arrogant of us to think that we're the only dimension with life, and with civilizations on it as well.
	Yeah, that's fair too.
	Yeah, so anyway, when you understand the super-strength theory, I like the vibrational continuum theory better.
	What we do is, there's all of these different frequencies and there's worlds within worlds within worlds existing right alongside of us.
	And the latest physics has, you know, turned us on to this.
	And, you know, those frequencies, or those beings, have bodies and they have a world that's physical to their frequency.
	That's just like ours, it's just of a different frequency.
	And it's your contingent to want that you are able to become in tune somehow with this frequency?
	Yes, yes.
	I've actually had photographs taken of me as I would leave my own physical body, and you can actually see one body moving outside the other body.
	And you can see bands of energy spinning around me.
	Fascinating.
	And those are on the website as well.
	All right, 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 a hundred times more UFOs than anybody else.
	Uh-huh.
	So there has to be something special about you.
	We've had over 3,000 witnesses up here.
	Yeah, that's the thing.
	A lot of top physicists have been up here.
	And what do they do?
	Do they walk away shaking their heads going, well, yeah, I saw it.
	It really changes them.
	It's enough to just think about it and say it's possible, but when it's in your face and you see it... It does change you, yes.
	Oh, it takes, you know, for about the next week or so, you're just contemplating everything, you know, about life.
	You're absolutely right.
	And what you really do know about life, and it's a real shocker.
	I had a man here who was a kung fu master and a qigong master.
	This man is very, very well trained, and actually he's the one that filmed the mothership hovering over Portland State University.
	All right.
	Let us not keep our witnesses waiting.
	We have with us Russ first.
	Russ, welcome.
	Welcome.
	Glad to be here.
	Glad to have you.
	You work for a large aerospace company.
	I do.
	How did you become involved with James?
	How did I become involved with James?
	I heard his interview on the Art Bell Program about three years ago, three, four years ago.
	Right.
	And I was very impressed.
	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 You know, reading things off the internet or listening to programs.
	Maybe even see something.
	And maybe even see something.
	And so I gave him a call, and he said, sure, we can come visit.
	So I lined up several of my friends, and we headed on down to Trout Lake for a weekend.
	All right, would one of those friends be the next Russell I've got here?
	That is him, all right.
	All right, I'm not sure I can do that, but I'll try.
	Russell, are you there?
	Can you hear me, Art?
	I hear you.
	So we've got Russ and Russell.
	So Russ rounded you up, Russell, and others, and you both did what?
	Took a weekend or something and went over?
	We took the weekend and went down and visited the Trout Lake area, the whole Mount Adams routine down there.
	We stopped over the Llama Ranch the night before.
	James Ranch on Saturday, June 4th.
	It was a wonderful experience.
	All right.
	And again, you also work for a large aerospace company.
	Same one as the other.
	So you both are familiar with aircraft.
	I guess that'd be fair to say, right?
	Oh, absolutely.
	I've been doing this for 30 years.
	Good.
	All right.
	So you get to the ranch, and I don't know what your expectations are, but in fact, what happens?
	Well, we came back from dinner, the three of us, 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.
	Traversing the sky, and each one came to a complete stop at some point.
	Okay, satellites never do that.
	No.
	And two of them shot off into space after stopping.
	Really?
	Now, how many of you were there at the time?
	Yourself, uh, the other Russ and James, and others?
	There were about, uh, there were over a dozen people there.
	Somewhat less than two dozen.
	Uh-huh.
	There's only three in our group, per se.
	The others came independently on their own.
	And out of curiosity, when these appearances began, what, you know, in a small group like that, what were the dynamics?
	I mean, were people going, oh my god, or what?
	Well, for the best sighting, yeah, we were watching a UFO come in and turn a few times and made a stop above us, above the mountain.
	It then flared up and lit up for five full seconds.
	Bright light, didn't move.
	But it lit up for five seconds, and to applause and cheering of the group there, and died back down to its original look and feel.
	And a few seconds later, it zigzagged off into space, kind of in a snaking trajectory in a couple of degrees of arc.
	And it was spectacular.
	We applauded and cheered.
	It was amazing.
	Both of you being in the industry, do either one of you have any conventional explanation for what you saw?
	I did not.
	I analyzed it carefully, trying to think of, you know, was this a spy satellite?
	Well, they don't go traipsing off into space.
	They lit up and made their presence known.
	They stopped, which was interesting in and of itself.
	Yes.
	Displayed a lot of characteristics that I have never seen before or since.
	Would it be your guess that what you were seeing was extraterrestrial?
	Or 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... I'm asking too many questions.
	Do you think it's connected to James in the way that he's described it may be?
	I think James has provided explanations about how these things Uh, you know, show up at, uh, in that area that I agree with.
	A lot of it might have to do with the mountain.
	There's lots of, uh, lava outcroppings everywhere.
	Fifteen to, you know, twenty miles away from the mountain.
	It is the most massive mountain in the Cascade Chain.
	It's not as tall as Rainier, but it, it sits up on a huge plateau that would, uh, give it some magnetic properties that probably, uh, surrounding areas.
	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?
	No, I think the lava lends the 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.
	Have you been at all curious enough to perhaps take a trip up the mountain and start looking?
	We traversed the mountain on the way there and on the way back on the back dirt roads and stuff.
	It's a very rugged area.
	Very rugged area up there in the videos that James has of lights on the mountain.
	Extremely interesting.
	There's nobody climbing a mountain at night, Art.
	I hear you.
	The other, Russ, do you agree with what you just heard described?
	You saw the same thing?
	Oh, I definitely saw the same thing, and it was an impressive moment.
	And boy, 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 Gilliland, because he had told us Earlier in the evening, he had a mental impression that we were going to see something tonight, and it was going to be around 10 or 11 o'clock.
	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.
	Shortly after that, this All right, gentlemen, hold tight for a moment.
	let me go ahead and take my prescribed break and we will continue.
	This is a kind of subject I get so wrapped up in that I forget my commercial breaks.
	Alright, there's a second photograph taken by Sparg.
	Giedemann, I guess it is.
	Giedemann 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?
	Absolutely, Art.
	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.
	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, you know, 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 of the 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?
	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.
	It is just spectacular.
	So you think they are aware and they are reacting and they are shooting?
	Absolutely.
	Art, if you don't mind, we actually had, I 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, you know, increased its shielding, or did something to it.
	And 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.
	Once again, James Gilliland.
	James, welcome back.
	Good to be back.
	James, first of all, where is your ranch?
	We're right at the base of Mount Adams in Trout Lake, Washington.
	Okay.
	And it's on the Columbia River, just about 20 miles from the Columbia River on the border.
	And a lot of people are going to want to know, what do they have to do to get an invite to come see?
	Well, the best thing to do is just call us or send us an email.
	Right now we're closed because we've got a lot of snow on the ground.
	Six degrees up here with about 60 mile per hour wind.
	I see.
	That'll discourage watching.
	Yeah, it kind of inhibits that a little bit.
	It'll be warming up here towards the mid-March or end of March.
	But you are open to that sort of thing?
	Yes.
	All right.
	Well, the more the merrier, I guess.
	And for the two Russes, I have one more question.
	That's why I held you over.
	And that is, these craft appear to be I think that's pretty obvious, Art.
	They flashed and set off lights left and right.
	it's for james or it's the mountaineer for whatever reason they want
	to be seen do you get the guys get that too
	i think that's pretty obvious art uh... you know that flashed in
	but off light left and right it was uh... they were trying to hide up there
	yeah exactly And so I wonder what the tease is.
	I mean, if we're being contacted, now I'm asking you to go out on a limb and you don't have to, but if we're being contacted, why the light show?
	Why the tease?
	Why not just get it over with and make contact?
	Anybody have any guesses?
	I do, if you want.
	All right, listen, I'm going to thank the two Russes for being here tonight.
	Okay, well thank you much.
	Thank you guys.
	Both of them aerospace workers.
	So, you know, that's pretty heavy stuff from my point of view.
	Anyway, you said you had a guest, James?
	Yes, there's some other guests that should be on the list, but... Oh, the guests?
	Yeah, it's... What's happening right now is, you know, people ask, you know, why don't they land on the White House lawn?
	That's right.
	In 1952, they did fly over the White House lawn quite a bit.
	They did, actually, yes.
	And that was very well documented.
	And, you know, they were hovering right over the Olympics, too, as well.
	And that's going out over, you know, all the news agencies there.
	In Mexico, it's all over the front page in Mexico.
	There are hundreds of aircraft flying over Mexico.
	I know.
	There are near collisions.
	Even some collisions, I believe, have been reported in Mexico.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, it's just undeniable there.
	And mainly, it's just our press.
	We've had real good luck up here.
	We had ABC come up, and Fox News covered it, and Evening Magazine covered it, and the History Channel and Discovery Channel.
	We've had real good press, because when they come up and see the evidence, the giggle factor just drops right there.
	And plus the long history, you know, with Dr. G. Allen Hynek and all the other top researchers.
	Steve Marino talked a lot about that.
	He has all that history.
	Alright, alright.
	We do have others, so let me bring Robert, I believe it is, an aviation expert on.
	Robert, welcome.
	Good evening, how are you folks?
	We're just fine.
	Where are you, Robert?
	I'm over in the Oregon area, up around Eugene.
	Okay, and in what sense are you an aviation expert?
	Well, basically I've dealt with commercial aviation for the better part of 18 years, 18 plus years of my life.
	Okay.
	Ranging from manager of flight operations to mechanical, you know, maintenance engineers.
	So, I did that for quite a few years until time moved me out of that field and into something else in a different direction altogether.
	During that time, uh, I mean, uh, just the acquaintance of various airlines, uh, domestic airlines that I had worked for, um, 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, um, seemed to go ahead and interest me.
	So naturally one's going to look where their interests lie.
	Of course.
	All right.
	What have you seen?
	How did you connect with James?
	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 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.
	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, you know, across the skyline and the horizons.
	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 line that was there.
	Um, 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 your reaction?
	Um, flabbergasted, actually.
	I think that, out of most, was the, I guess, the gracing arrow that struck the skepticism out of my heart. But you apparently
	had a multitude of sightings.
	Uh, we did. There were, and you know, James is, 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
	And there wouldn't be any way, in your mind, in the world, that James could have perpetrated these things?
	No, that would take a little bit too much money, I think.
	And I think if one would have to think that somebody from, you know, 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?
	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.
	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.
	Well, the reason I say this, 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.
	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 Um, 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.
	Yeah.
	Suddenly they would just sort of veer off, light up, and just shoot off into the sky at a 90 degree angle and, um, travel, you know, three, four, three or four times easily as fast as the commercial airliner would be doing.
	So that's kind of, 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.
	It does.
	Robert, in the interest of time, I'm going to scoot, and thank you so very much for being here.
	Hey, thanks for having me, and James, take care of yourself and be well.
	All right.
	James, I've got a fast-blast question, a real quick one, and that would be, You apparently use flashing lights.
	Now, Seasetti does that as well.
	They believe that flashing lights attract UFOs.
	You use them?
	Why?
	Well, actually, we had Steven 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.
	Ah, so you got this from Steven Greer.
	Yeah, well, we've been doing it here for probably, I don't know how many years.
	We've had full-blown contact going on for over 10 years here.
	And so, you know, the flashlights, I think it's more consciousness than the flashlight.
	The lights help.
	The intent.
	Yeah, the intent.
	And they pick it up.
	And it's like, we don't A lot of people don't realize how expansive our consciousness can be.
	It's one of the best radars you can use.
	You know, and you can feel these things coming in from a long distance.
	Now, that's interesting.
	You can feel them.
	What do you feel?
	Well, it's interesting.
	You feel like a tingling.
	I feel an energy, and it's just a knowingness.
	It's hard to explain.
	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.
	Now, John Alexander, I know, he's in Las Vegas, friend of mine, hardcore scientist type, military hardcore.
	Yes.
	And his reaction?
	He, undeniably, you know, they're here.
	He actually went public with it at the International UFO Congress when people asked him.
	They said, yes, it is a real-time event and it is happening there.
	And he did a long report on it.
	with Ned about what he experienced.
	He saw lights coming down through the field and zipping around on the field and going back up again.
	I don't know what else he said, but I've been trying to get that report.
	Maybe you can grab that sometime for me.
	Maybe I can.
	Alright, we've got Steve Marino on the line as well.
	Steve, welcome to the program.
	Hi, thank you.
	You're a PSI UFO investigator, is that correct?
	Yeah, that's a non-profit foundation that I head is PSI Applications.
	Where are you located?
	We're located in Fairfield, California.
	All right.
	And your contact with James?
	Well, I was initially interested in the case file 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 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 stuff.
	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 flop of activity began to reoccur that was very similar to a study that was conducted by Dr. Jalen Hynek back in 1972 of activity very similar in nature.
	We found that there was a three-year study which David Akers conducted for Dr. Hynek.
	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.
	This almost seems like a tease.
	You know, 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 that more of a grassroots civilian initiated level through Project Contact to actually bring these crap down for a live broadcast.
	You sure include me?
	Absolutely.
	We're trying to set up live cam monitoring up there to move a database forward on the level of activity.
	Now that absolutely makes sense.
	Get a webcam up there.
	Absolutely.
	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.
	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.
	Well, what's going on is incredible.
	Do you think it's James or the Mountain or both?
	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 ball-of-life 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 Long 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, I really want to thank you for coming on and verifying all this and take care.
	of the sony night cam are and documenting this for the uh...
	you know sciences that uh... would have doubt about it
	on its the way it was a little bit increase we are out of time buddy
	uh... i really want to thank you for coming on and verify all this and uh...
	take care i think that uh... the audience can be their own judge
	uh... about what they've heard tonight And James, if they want to contact you, there are people who are craving the kind of experience they just heard about from others.
	How do they do it?
	The best way to do it is go through the website.
	And all the information is there, the maps and the phone number.
	And that's the easiest way to contact us.
	It's good to give us a little notice because it is a ranch here and we have our other work I understand.
	But, you know, the thing about this is that there have been so many witnesses from all walks of life, and the reason they're contacting here is we're rising to the occasion.
	These are some very spiritually and technologically advanced beings.
	Some are millions, probably even billions of years ahead of us, you know, in evolution as we know it.
	And they have interstellar ships, interdimensional ships, they have time travel.
	You know, it could go into three more hours if you really wanted to get into it.
	Well, we will do that.
	We will do that.
	James, that would make them a Type 2 or perhaps even Type 3, but at least a Type 2 civilization according to Professor Kaku.
	Yes, yes.
	There's quite a few different groups that are coming here and I've experienced, you know, I could talk more about those.
	I don't think we have enough time on this show, but about the different contacts that
	I've had...
	However, now, here is Robert Zimmerman.
	Robert, welcome back to the program.
	It's always a pleasure.
	Good to have you.
	I'm very glad to be here.
	We have many space-related matters to discuss.
	However, before we do, 60 Minutes did a real walloper tonight.
	It was, I believe, their third segment, and it was on climate change.
	Now, in the past, when you've been on the show, you've been kind of a Skeptic.
	Skeptic on climate change.
	Skeptic, certainly, on man's part in it.
	Skeptically, Jen, as a general rule, you've been skeptical on the whole issue.
	A lot's happened between then and now.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Any comments on, I mean, the whole Hansen business, the 60 Minutes, all the reports that have been in since we last spoke?
	Have you moved?
	Well, you know, this actually ties into space a little bit with James Hansen's uproar with NASA and their public relations department a week 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, not too strong even, but there's been more evidence implying or suggesting that there is increasing temperatures on Earth.
	uh... but once again if you study the the situation very closely and you look
	talk to the scientists what doing the actual research a lot of them
	you get a sense from them that you may be that happening but there
	wrote the world down and dirty guys
	they are 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, a little humorous.
	Humorous?
	Because that's exactly what the pro-global warming people were saying about ten years ago.
	We now know for sure, and we thank the skeptics for having to check, having to force us to check, but we now know for sure.
	But the truth is, 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.
	Well, that said, you've got them too, right?
	Yes, without question!
	I mean, you're partisan.
	Let's get that out of the way.
	Yes, I'm partisan.
	When it comes to science, the research facts, I'm looking for the facts.
	I want to know If I was purely partisan, I would have started off by saying, nope, there's no global warming, it's all Democratic Party politics.
	Well, you almost were saying that a couple of years ago.
	You were virtually saying that.
	A couple of years ago, what I was saying was that the facts are not in, and there is no 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.
	I'm open to the facts here, without question.
	All right, without question, here's a fact for you.
	They showed two photographs of the North Pole.
	You know, the ice up there?
	One taken, I think it was in the 70s, and the other one taken in 2005.
	And, hey brother, a lot of that was gone.
	Yeah, but that is not... Those two photos don't tell you anything.
	They don't?
	Really?
	That's right.
	Because the North Pole goes through cycles of Little ice for periods of time, sometimes hard to 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's very unpredictable what channels would even be open.
	Sometimes it'd be completely open, and they'd get there.
	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 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.
	It's going to take another decade to really have a sense of this, and even then, it's only a 40-30 year time frame in global periods.
	You see changes like this, climate changes like this, Why do you think the U.S.
	show themselves and you could have normal relations over a thirty-year
	period that might have nothing to do with a real global change so you need
	time to really know and the fact that noted why do you think the u.s. navy is
	presently laying out plans to navigate because it's all going to be water and
	no ice uh... i'm i i i you know that that the navy if they're
	smart they're taking they're taking notes and uh... that they can attend
	They're going after every possibility.
	They want to be prepared, because if it does go away, they have to be prepared to be able to navigate it, to do the defensive work they need to do.
	If they're not prepared for that, They're not doing their job.
	There you are.
	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 like to joke about this because even in the 60 Minutes they talked about how You know, it'll go up a foot for our children, and another foot for our grandchildren, and then, you know, 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 a hundred 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.
	That's an example of partisan.
	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.
	That's an argument that the Republicans make.
	One of the things they said on 60 Minutes, Robert, was that the Bush administration is spending $5 billion.
	Uh, a year on, you know, on climate and what's going on.
	Yes.
	They're spending a lot of money.
	Research is ongoing, yes.
	However, uh, the results, uh, spent from that money would seem to indicate they ought to be doing something, and so one of the complaints is, they're not.
	Well, you see, the complaint, what, the ones who say they're not doing anything, the doing that those people almost always want is signing 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 Nassar and many other, and 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.
	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 would say 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.
	And that was done on 60 Minutes, and that was a perfect example of misstating what is known.
	The meteorologists are very clear on this.
	Hurricanes have very clearly followed a 40-year cycle since they've been studying them.
	They go up and they go down.
	You have heavy seasons and you have light periods.
	Unomomento, Robert, unomomento.
	They did happen to mention that the ocean temperatures in that area are higher than they've ever recorded.
	Now, hold on, hold on, Robert.
	One at a time.
	Let me finish.
	Now hold on, hold on Robert, one at a time, let me finish.
	Hurricanes clearly, clearly get their energy from the high temperatures of the ocean.
	That's where it comes from.
	So higher temperatures, bigger storms.
	Duh.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	That's absolutely correct.
	But you see, once again, the meteorologists are very clear on this, that hurricanes have a clear cycle of hurricanes.
	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.
	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 season.
	So, once again, it's not 100% clear at this point whether this The bad hurricane seasons we've had the last two years are because of global warming or because of the natural cycle of the hurricanes.
	Well, I'll give you that.
	It's not totally clear.
	Yeah, but that's my point.
	It's not.
	This is not to say we should ignore the problem.
	This is not to say that the problem doesn't exist.
	And it's not to say that global warming isn't happening.
	It's saying the situation is still somewhat unclear.
	And if you're going to take action, you need to know specifically against what?
	Especially if you're passing laws which restrict human freedom, you should at least know what you're doing, and we don't really know precisely yet.
	Everything I can see, we just don't know yet.
	Suppose the day comes when even Robert Zimmerman says, all right, my back is broken, the latest is in, it's obvious, we're in big trouble, then what?
	Well, you also have to then start analyzing what are the specific consequences of the The global warming you have predicted is going to occur.
	And a lot of it, today, is always addressed in doom and gloom.
	We're all going to die.
	I don't think anybody said that.
	I don't think anybody Well, I'm using the cliché of the attitude.
	It's doom and gloom, and it's a disaster we have to deal with.
	You yourself just said we're in deep trouble.
	Well... No, no.
	I set up... No, wait a minute, Robert.
	Hold on a minute.
	Hold on.
	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?
	See, but I'm going to take a step back.
	I want to first ask... Well, that's more like a step aside.
	Well, wait, let me finish.
	We need to understand the process of global warming, or at least what is happening.
	Then we have to ask ourselves, what are the consequences of that?
	And if you start to break that down with some thought, 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.
	It's possible, yes.
	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.
	Well, you know, you can't deal specifically with hurricanes, but you can deal with, let's say, rising oceans.
	If, for example, we have oceans rising because of the melting of Antarctica and Greenland, and that will be a predictable trend over time, it won't happen overnight, you then start attacking the coastal areas and Deal with how to prevent flooding on the coastal areas, or you decide, well, we're going to let some coastal areas go and tell people they should sell their land.
	Move!
	You deal with it, and it's not going to happen overnight.
	You know, you get hurricanes once again.
	We do not know if the hurricanes are a direct result of global warming, so that's a separate issue.
	In an area that's a hurricane area that's below sea level, such as New Orleans, It doesn't matter whether there's global warming or not.
	You have to deal with what is certain to come someday, and they hadn't, and they should have, and now they should.
	That is irrelevant to global warming.
	You live in a coastal area like Florida, you know hurricanes are coming through, regardless, you deal with that.
	If the oceans are going to rise, you're going to have major flooding, then when we know that's for a fact, then you deal with it, either you address it with levies, or you decide, well, this is not going to be worth saving.
	You then make those intelligent decisions when you know.
	It's not clear yet if that's happening.
	And with respect to the causative factor, suppose it is decided that indeed greenhouse gases, you know, from man are a major portion of what's happening or adding to a natural cycle that's already underway, whatever.
	Yeah.
	That's a tough one.
	It's a tough one only because I don't see our country or any country just by law outlawing Of course.
	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 cells, which is still far down the road, but still there's talk of that.
	So those are the 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, then it becomes cost-effective to find alternatives, and those alternatives might solve the problem.
	They might.
	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?
	No, you're talking to a guy who doesn't quite believe that.
	This is a country that was bottom-up.
	The president's supposed to take the leadership from the nation, from what the citizens really want.
	And that's my perspective on this.
	I don't look to a great leader to tell me how to live my life.
	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.
	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 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.
	Stupid.
	I'll tell you 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 audited 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 at NASA headquarters.
	Right.
	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.
	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.
	That's the first thing about it.
	Dr. Hanson is complaining for no reason other than what you just stated.
	There's more to it than that.
	Oh, there is.
	That's part of it.
	The rest of it?
	I'm sorry.
	The rest of it?
	Well, the rest of it is this.
	Part of it is that the political appointee that the Bush administration hired, George Deutch, that caused all the problems, He did lie on his press resume.
	That indicates something about him.
	He was a little young and 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 scientists do things, but the scientists can't be making statements That are policy-oriented, 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... It's not their job to tell the world what NASA's policy is.
	So, what do you think?
	You're thinking he was a little overzealous?
	Is that the word?
	Deutsch got a little overzealous.
	Overzealous, yeah.
	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 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 over zealousness, trying to... They're trying to control policy statements from the scientists, and they overdid it, and they kind of... Hanson got a little bit annoyed at that, and he also doesn't like the Bush administration because they won't sign the chaotic accords.
	So, it's a little bit of both of those things all rolled up.
	You know, once again, the NASA press office should let scientists make their statements.
	No, James Hansen is a scientist, and he has all this concern, and you think that his concern is purely politically motivated, or do you think it's possible that as a top guy at NASA, he might know more than we do on the subject?
	No, it's not purely political in nature, and he's worried about this issue, and he's been, you know, as a scientist, he came to the conclusion almost a decade ago that global warming is definitely happening, without question.
	He's been a proponent of that conclusion for a long time.
	A lot of other scientists, you know, want more data.
	I'm a more skeptic, but he, you know, and some scientists come to conclusions very early, sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong.
	He came to this conclusion, and he hasn't been proven wrong yet.
	None of the data has contradicted his conclusions.
	You could say that not all the data has conclusively proved he's right, but it's working in his direction.
	I won't deny that.
	So he's very strong, and he's worried about the issue.
	There's no question of that.
	And there are a lot of people who are sincerely worried about the issue.
	They sometimes let their... The sad tragedy is if you spend any time among scientists, You find it's become almost irrational.
	It's very frustrating.
	They are all Democrats almost routinely.
	It's just a shame that's the case.
	It puts them in kind of a bubble, and their party affiliations sometimes get the best of them.
	And that has happened too often, and I think there was an aspect of it.
	Let's stop for a second.
	You said they're almost all Democrats.
	Surely you must have had some random thoughts about why that's true.
	Yeah, I've had lots of thoughts about that.
	You know, same thing in the academic community.
	Almost everyone is a Democrat.
	I was a teacher at three different colleges at different times.
	Let me tell you, if you are not a left-wing Democrat, you keep your mouth shut if you want to keep your job.
	And so you did, or having three jobs you didn't.
	I didn't, and that's why I don't eat there anymore.
	I see.
	You know, and it's become almost... This is the irrationality that frustrates me.
	There's nothing wrong with being a partisan Democrat or a partisan Republican.
	It's the willingness to talk to each other.
	And discuss it rationally, and recognize that there's goodwill on both sides.
	I totally respect James Hansen's concerns about, and the worries of those that believe Global Warming.
	It's a valid concern.
	You want to make sure we're prepared, and that's a good thing.
	Discussing it reasonably is also a good thing.
	You shouldn't paint those that are skeptical as blind and foolish about the issue.
	And say, sign the Kyoto Accords and you've solved all our problems.
	You have to analyze it carefully and figure out what's the solution.
	Well, I don't necessarily believe signing the Kyoto Accords would solve all the problems at all.
	Well, I wasn't saying you.
	No, I understand.
	By the way, so that you know, I'm a libertarian.
	You're obviously very conservative.
	I'm very libertarian.
	You've come a long way.
	You've moved a long way since last time you were on the program.
	So I consider that actually progress for you.
	Well, thank you, Art.
	My approach is to look at the facts.
	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.
	Oh, yes.
	Yes, and so 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 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 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, it's not as clear-cut as they're saying.
	It's kind of, yes, shrinking, but it's questionable still.
	I have this vision, Robert, of you not admitting anything until the water is sloshing in your sneakers, and still you're going to say, well, you know, yeah, there's some water here, but there's really no proof that it's going to keep getting higher.
	Well, I'll give you another example.
	I was at an American Geophysical Union conference in which there was a guy, a scientist, giving a report about his modeling of how the seas are going to rise over the next 150 years.
	And his model showed a graph going up steeply.
	And he then showed another graph, a similar model, but the second graph He had the dotted line as his prediction, and he 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 significantly below his model.
	And so, once again, you know, we say glaciers are 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 predictions.
	Once again, I'm waiting for some solid information to convince me.
	When I have that, I will be convinced.
	I have no problem with that.
	All right.
	Let's turn our attention to space in general and the Russians.
	There's a lot of talk in this country.
	In fact, I know some aerospace people that are actually hard at work right now on space tourism, on hotels in space.
	There are some incredible plans and people actually beginning to put together hardware in this country.
	And the Russians apparently are doing it too.
	What do you know?
	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's called Space Adventures.
	They're the people that sent Dennis Tito up to Mir using Russian rockets.
	Right.
	And they sent Shuttleworth and, recently, Greg Olson.
	And they're going to send a Japanese up in 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, money for themselves, and providing and fulfilling a need, because people, wealthy people, wanted to go into space.
	And ticking off NASA.
	They're making, yeah, well, originally ticking off NASA, NASA's kind of like accepted the reality that they don't rule the world in space for Americans, and Americans, if they wish to go, have the right to go, and so NASA's backed off a little bit on that, thank goodness.
	Yes.
	Space Adventures is more linked with an international community, so last week they signed a deal that involved not just the... they announced a deal that didn't just involve the Russians, it also involved the United Arab Emirates.
	It's a really fascinating combination of money and power.
	And the deal?
	Say again?
	The deal?
	Oh, the deal is this.
	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.
	It'll 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 Al Khaimah.
	Now, if you look at Uh, the Saudi Peninsula and the, uh, Strait of Hormuz that goes past, uh, Iraq.
	Yes.
	Um, at the very eastern end, there's a little point peninsula that sticks up into the Strait.
	Well, but the western half of that is the little tiny area that's controlled by Ras Al Khaimah.
	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 Invasion.
	They're going to provide the spaceport.
	Now, there's more to this.
	It's more interesting.
	Some of the money's coming from the Ansara family.
	Now, if that name doesn't ring a bell, I'll remind people that.
	And 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 got Arab roots.
	And there's 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, and they're in a race to beat Virgin Galactic.
	That's Richard Branson's company that's trying to deal with Burt Rutan's company.
	That's pretty exciting.
	The ship.
	So it's very exciting.
	By 2008, we could see suborbital first flights.
	We have two different companies, at least, of big money.
	Actually, there's more than that.
	I mean, in Oklahoma City, there's a third company.
	A lot of engineers I've talked to are very skeptical about rocket planes' ability to succeed.
	They've basically taken a Learjet as their as their rocket ship and they're going to send it up
	to suborbital heights and there's a lot of engineers who are skeptical that this is going to
	happen in Oklahoma City and they also have people who've given them money
	uh... who want to fly on them and they have a deal with Oklahoma, a tax deal to have a
	spaceport in Oklahoma City so
	you got a third company going and then you have Jeff Bezos of amazon.com and he's very quiet but his company is
	putting together a spaceport in the southern areas, very southern tips of
	Texas.
	No kidding?
	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 always like to bring up SpaceX, Space Exploration Incorporated.
	SpaceX is Elon Musk's company.
	And he is like, he's built not building reusable ships for tourism, he's building rockets to put satellites in orbit, just to 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, and his goal is the same as all the others.
	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 law they passed last year supposedly helped 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 We'll encourage Congress to pass laws that will reduce the problem.
	Well, look, isn't it almost fair to say that NASA and the government really are one, and if NASA thinks it's their private dominion, then the laws we've seen passed, well, they've been directed by, encouraged by NASA.
	It's all one government.
	You could be right, but I would say this, that Michael Griffin might disagree with you based on his testimony and the Congress' reaction to his budget the last few weeks.
	They're not necessarily in agreement.
	I think, though, in this case, because it's a little empire and the government likes controlling that little empire, I wouldn't disagree with you.
	So we'll see.
	I go from pessimism to optimism periodically on this subject.
	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.
	Well, from their point of view, all hell's breaking loose.
	I mean, look at the Chinese.
	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, uh, 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 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, OK.
	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 for non-competitive practices and he's
	unfortunately last week i think he is an unfortunate my mind his case was
	thrown out and they're going to appeal again but unfortunate that
	boyd and lockheed's approach to competition is to try to form a cartel and not
	and all right uh... back once again to robert zimmerman
	Robert, welcome back.
	I have this feeling, Robert, that there are a lot of areas in which you and I would probably agree.
	Yeah, well I've always been sarcastic.
	Oh my, it doesn't bother me.
	I have this feeling, Robert, that there are a lot of areas in which you and I would probably
	agree.
	You're obviously a conservative.
	And that's why I'm quite conservative in many areas.
	It's just that again, I look at the science and I guess I see something a little different
	than you do, that's all.
	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.
	Any data that we find is either inconclusive or it leans in the direction of warming.
	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, but I'm at an AGU, and they have sessions, and in those sessions, like they had a session on sea rise, the sea rise.
	And so the first guy gives a very bombastic report about how Chesapeake Bay is going to be flooded in like, I don't know, six months.
	I'm exaggerating.
	But he was very aggressively saying that the ocean is rising 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 session, 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, once again, if you have to, it's for me the zero to global warming.
	It's not zero to global cooling.
	It's always in one direction.
	But they're still without.
	A few years ago, satellite data from certain elevations of 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.
	Yes, I can see you tipping.
	But it's tipping.
	I don't dispute that.
	But I see enough inconclusive information and talking to enough scientists to hold back, to want to become skeptical.
	That's where I come from.
	Let's turn our attention to the shuttle.
	It is an interesting position America finds itself in right now.
	We're kind of at the end of the life of the shuttle.
	I guess one's getting ready to be retired, right?
	Yeah, we have three shuttles left, and as per President Bush's space vision, he wants them all retired by 2010.
	And replaced by...
	Well, that's another question.
	We can answer that, but let's talk specifically about the shuttle, and then we can talk about what they replaced.
	We don't know yet.
	We'll see what they replaced, but I really don't know.
	That's one of the issues that the new Administrator, Michael Griffin, has aggressively attacked that wasn't being done very well by the previous Administrator.
	They wasted a lot of time under the previous Administrator with a lot of bureaucratic silliness that didn't accomplish anything, and Griffin has aggressively tried to get things moving.
	Whether he's going to get something built in to replace the shuttle is still an open question.
	They might end up just simply contracting with Space Adventures or with Earth Repair.
	That's what I hope, actually.
	Well, that would be the collapse of NASA.
	That would be great.
	I would be so happy if we could shut NASA down.
	I used to argue before Bush made his speech, I did this on your show.
	I did it on Coast to Coast.
	I said, rather than give NASA the job of getting us to the moon, they should have Close down the whole manned program at NASA, that's spending somewhere between four and six billion dollars a year, and take that money and put it in a kitty, and offer it as a prize to whoever can do it instead.
	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.
	That's kind of See, it's got to be government.
	It's got to be government.
	I don't buy that.
	I don't buy that at all.
	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 goals, 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 is doing
	because he wanted to do it.
	It's not going to happen in private industries.
	There's not enough of a return.
	In fact, there's really no return for that except knowledge and that's going to have to be government.
	There's no private organization that is going to go out and collect comet dust and do that kind of work.
	It's just not going to happen.
	I'll give you a scenario where it would happen.
	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.
	Wait, let me finish.
	They're going to pump that money into an orbital craft for space tourism.
	Well, publicity-wise, it does them enormous loss-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 look, I can clearly see space tourism, a hotel in orbit, that kind of thing.
	Okay, sure.
	Private industry can reach out and do that right now, but some of these other missions, I think you're dreaming there, buddy.
	Well, you know, one of the things is this, that it doesn't cost a lot of money to send a relatively, a lot of money to do an orbital mission, a robot probe.
	I'm telling you now that, you know, we've got to start on the shuttle.
	The President 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.
	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, We, 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.
	So, even if we get something that will get to the space station, that will build with the last of the shuttle missions, it will not be as capable.
	Now, that's moving fairly quickly to the rear.
	I mean, what's going on with this?
	Is the new administrator really going to get the administration's attention, and more importantly, money?
	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... I'm writing a book now.
	I'm writing a book about the Hubble Space Telescope.
	I'm dealing with a lot of the history behind Hubble.
	This is historic with NASA.
	NASA administrators never tell the truth.
	Up until now, they've 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 commutes to cost what it really is going to cost, the 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, 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 finish the, 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 will replace the shuttle, You're going to do completely both those things and have no gap between the retirement shuttle and the next generation manned vehicle for the United States.
	You're going to have to give me more money.
	If you don't give me more money, I'm going to have to cut back on the 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.
	Now, there is that rationale.
	You know, that could really well be true, but today, and this is why Michael Griffin is maybe being honest, because the dynamics today are very different.
	The public wants this done.
	I mean, I'm not sure I want NASA to do it either, but they want it done, and NASA's a vehicle for getting it done, and so I think there's much more interest in giving him the money he needs to actually get it done.
	So he's now playing that game, and he's demanding it.
	And I'm hopeful that that honest approach, I think, is actually going to work in this case, and I think you'll get the cash you need.
	Whether NASA can succeed or not is still an open question.
	I don't deny that.
	Let me try this out on you.
	There are many out there who say the entire space effort, anything that we, any money we spend for space, going into space, is an entire just flat waste of taxpayer dollars.
	How do you respond to that?
	Well, I could tell a lot of stories.
	I mean, it's a ludicrous statement.
	And a great example of that is the congressman who was at a hearing and he was complaining about all the money for NASA and space.
	Space is a waste of money.
	I don't need space.
	You know, I don't need space to know what the weather is.
	If I need the weather, I'll go to the weather channel.
	I mean, it's not a waste of money.
	All of it.
	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.
	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's 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 are indications that NASA is looking to them for help.
	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 now only can sell to tourists, but we might as well sell our business to NASA.
	In the past, NASA didn't want to deal with new companies.
	It had its Lockheed and its Boeing, and they were partners, and they were all the same big, proud, eating the food, and they didn't need to go to anyone new.
	Well, I hope that's changing.
	I'm getting the sense that is from Griffin.
	Ken, 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, are we out of our minds to be moving backwards?
	Would you make that case?
	Yes, I would absolutely make the case.
	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.
	That's important.
	That's true, yes.
	They had no idea about communications, not in the slightest, as it became...
	XM and Sirius Radio, who dreamed?
	Direct broadcast TV?
	Dish TV?
	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 the next stage,
	and we really don't know what'll come.
	I like to bring up the issue of osteoporosis always because it's such 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 spinoff.
	I don't like to argue big spinoffs, 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 have 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.
	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, look, he went anyway.
	Yeah.
	So if Space Adventures or SpaceX wants to do it, it's not our business to tell them no.
	No, I agree with that.
	I absolutely agree with that.
	I just think there's going to be a big no anyway.
	Well, that's partly because one of my, you know, one of the things I learned in writing Leaving Earth and talking about the Russian's culture and space program in the last 30 years 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 fulfill their dreams, all power to them.
	No, I agree.
	You wrote a book about the Hubble, right?
	No, I haven't.
	I'm in the process of writing it.
	What is the basic contention of the book?
	How do you feel about it?
	At this point, my publisher has told me I'm not allowed to talk in specifics about it.
	Really?
	It's going to come out.
	Really?
	Yes, but that's the way you get people interested in wanting to buy a book, but not with your publisher.
	My publisher said, talk about it.
	It's going to be about Hubble.
	I've been writing about Hubble.
	When I was writing the UPI column, I wrote about it extensively.
	I've written magazine articles on it.
	Just a general overview.
	Well, I mean, I could talk about Hubble in general.
	I mean, it is the most, 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.
	It's 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.
	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 the whole perspective of the Earth.
	And similarly, Hubble has given us completely different perspective of the universe in 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, gravity's
	going to pull up.
	And that's the story of Apollo 8.
	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's suddenly a guest that really makes sense, or in very much disagreement with Robert.
	I think it'll 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'm giving you some of... I mean, Hubble itself is such an important telescope.
	Yes.
	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 people should know about because, again, it's so important.
	You know, I was mentioning the really cosmological discovery that is really significant and a scientist's point, 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 nebulae, 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-sighted, 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.
	Yes.
	And looking at those pictures, and looking at the scientists look at those pictures, but myself looking at... I didn't need a scientist anymore to explain to me what was happening.
	And, you know, you look at old pictures of some of the same objects, and all you see are fuzzy blobs.
	Sure.
	And scientists do a lot of research, and they come up with theories about what's happening, and quite often they were right.
	Should Hubble... You have to... Should Hubble be allowed to die?
	It's not a question so much of whether Hubble should be allowed to die.
	The question really should be, should we deny ourselves an optical capability in space?
	And if Hubble is to die, should we not replace it with a bigger optical telescope, or at least as much?
	The fact is, Hubble's not going to die.
	Hubble will be around for at least a decade, assuming the shuttle flies in May, which all signs say, yes, it's going to.
	And assuming everything goes well, and of course that's an unknown, this is a rocket scientist, but I would say the odds are on our favor that it will go well.
	There is a scheduled repair mission in December of 07.
	That's on the manifest.
	It's on the schedule.
	They haven't committed to it because they want to get the test flight done.
	Well, you know, there's a lot of controversy about it.
	I mean, a lot of people have said, It died.
	Let it fall out of orbit.
	I only know one person who said that, and that was Sean O'Keefe.
	I haven't come across very many people who say, let it die.
	When he tried to do that, it was insanity.
	That's what I said, big controversy.
	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.
	You mean as a nation?
	Yes, sir.
	I don't disagree with you there.
	Well, yes and no.
	I mean, 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 L.A.
	saying, look, we decided not to cover it because there was a garbage strike.
	And, you know, China sending its first astronaut, how can you say such a, you know, they're both important, I guess, but, you know, 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.
	No, they don't.
	No, they don't.
	But now there's other ways to get that information, and the success of those other resources indicates the public's interest.
	And the fact that NASA appears to be getting the money it didn't get in the past, Once again, indicates an interest.
	So, I go back and forth.
	I'm not sure where we are right now.
	I think we're on a knife edge, and we could fall in either direction.
	And I think we're leaning in the right direction.
	But, you know, I go back and forth.
	I don't know.
	I'm hopeful.
	I want to bring on some callers.
	So, come on callers.
	These are the Rockies.
	You're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Good morning.
	Hello?
	Hello.
	Hey, how you doing?
	Okay.
	Good show.
	I want to make one comment about the funding and everything, like for outer space.
	You know, I think it's up to now that it's been like $7 trillion in money spent on stuff like the Great Society.
	And you don't see no discernible improvement.
	And there's always going to be problems with society.
	And you can't just say, we're not going to explore this or go into this because we have problems with society.
	That'll always be there.
	Do you agree?
	I absolutely agree with you.
	You know, they'll always be criminals.
	You can't get away from that.
	You cannot.
	You can't prevent that.
	You can try to prevent it.
	You do the best you can, but you have to realize that we are an imperfect species.
	What makes us noble is that we try for perfection, knowing it can't be achieved.
	You know, if something's out there, once we get a taste of it, we're going to go for it.
	Yeah, I mean... You know, if it takes ten years or it takes a hundred years, it's going to happen.
	I totally agree with you.
	And one more thing about the climate.
	Look, there's like three meteorologists in there.
	I'm from the Cleveland area, and they're all straight shooting guys.
	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, and there's not.
	So it takes a while.
	Well, let me insert here.
	You're basically repeating what I said, but I want people to understand that it's very important to let the facts dictate.
	As I said earlier to Art, you don't find much evidence for cooling at this stage anymore.
	There was a few bits before that made it more confusing, but it's beginning increasingly to show warming.
	The question is this.
	One, is it just the natural ups and downs, like you have warm days, cold days?
	We haven't been studying for such a long time to know all the cycles the Earth maybe goes through, and that's one of the unknowns.
	Or is it maybe a factual warming that's taking place, a serious warming?
	That's one of the questions we don't know, and it's going to take some time.
	To come to two quick conclusions here is a very bad mistake, I think.
	From a scientist's point of view.
	And once again, most scientists I talk to say the same thing.
	They're unsure of what's happening right now.
	Well, as I listen to you, I picture you in my mind doing a little jig.
	You know, a little dance.
	You mean with a call?
	A little dance.
	Moving the feet around a little bit.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Good morning.
	Hello, Art.
	Hello.
	Yeah, 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 recent, but about six months ago I read a report that the ice caps, 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 You know, causing.
	I'm not sure.
	I'm not sure about the poles of the Mars melting.
	They actually melt naturally, seasonally.
	Actually, they are melting.
	On Mars.
	No question.
	The Earth, there is a fact here that isn't talked about.
	There has been a 10%... The caller just mentioned this.
	This is a fact.
	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, several thousand, hundred thousand years.
	That's happening.
	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.
	But, I mean, there is evidence of past climate changes.
	Yes.
	You know, they've had the evidence, fossil evidence in that article that that used to be a tropical forest.
	Yes, part of that is because that article wasn't always at the South Pole.
	But you're right, there's been climate change in the past.
	There's no reason to think that climate change can't 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.
	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 take an optimistic point of view.
	If we do find something that's happening, we are an adaptive species.
	The best thing we can do for ourselves is face a situation and adapt to it.
	Deal with it.
	Don't run away from it.
	If the oceans are rising a foot every 40 years, I don't see myself drowning.
	And if I had coastal property, I would, you know, beachfront property, I would have to deal with it.
	That's all there is to it.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	All right.
	Hey, thanks a lot, Art.
	You're very welcome.
	Take care.
	You're on the Air Coast to Coast AM with Robert Zimmerman.
	Good morning.
	Hello, my name is Galectra.
	Hi, I would like to offer my condolences first.
	Thank you.
	Where are you calling from?
	Oh, I'm calling from Toronto.
	Toronto, okay.
	Go right ahead.
	I was disappointed to hear something being said about things can't 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 areas, 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.
	Okay.
	I thank you very much for allowing me that opportunity to say so.
	You're very welcome.
	It was more of a speech than a question, I guess.
	You know, Art, I'd like to... I think she misunderstood something I said.
	I never claimed we should not strive for perfection.
	In fact, that's one of the things I think is most noble about the human species, that desire to strive for perfection.
	And I think it's absolutely essential we do that.
	We try to be the best we can be.
	We try to solve all our problems.
	We try.
	We mustn't give up.
	We must... To quote Yoder, there is no try, only do.
	I absolutely agree with her on that point.
	But I recognize what makes that effort so, to me, ennobling is the recognition that there really is no way to achieve perfection.
	You achieve great things and you're going to find you could still have done better.
	That's alright.
	That doesn't mean you don't try still to do better.
	So I just wanted to make that clarification.
	Why do you think, if you agree, or if there is a, you said you go through cycles of a belief with regard to this.
	Why do you think the United States has moved away from space exploration?
	It has sort of backed almost on every front.
	I mean, if you're in one of those moments where you believe that, why do you think it might be, Robert?
	Well, there was a period in the United... I wrote a column for this for UPI.
	There was a period through the 70s and 80s and 90s and even into today where Scientific and engineering innovation has 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, is 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, very variety of information sources.
	Right.
	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 were 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.
	What that does is open your mind, and I think that's why we're beginning to see a renaissance.
	I'm hoping.
	I'm hopeful.
	East of the Rockies, your turn with Robert Zimmerman.
	Hi.
	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, and creating a centrifugal force, creating one-third gravity.
	Now, this alone will solve the problems with bone loss, as well as not only just taking five people to Mars, but possibly a hundred people at a time.
	Just like a wheel.
	You know, the engineering... I wrote about this in Leaving Earth at some note.
	The idea of building using centrifugal force to imitate gravity so you can avoid some of these problems is a fundamentally good idea.
	The problem has been getting the mass up into orbit to assemble such a station.
	And the Russians and the United States have not I'm not an engineer.
	I've said this many times before.
	I would say with the shuttle we have had the opportunity with the external tanks to give it a try and we haven't.
	There's no doubt about that.
	So what do you think of that idea? You thought then it was solid?
	Well, you see, I'm not an engineer. I've said this many times before.
	If a company wants to do it, the one thing NASA shouldn't do is stand in the way.
	Now, whether NASA should finance it is a separate story.
	You could argue one way or the other, but absolutely, and unfortunately, our government has stood in the way.
	They have blocked any effort to do such things.
	Have you ever wondered why that is?
	Oh, I don't wonder.
	I know some of the reasons why.
	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.
	All right, Colin, quick.
	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?
	Well, you've got to build it.
	And the problem there is that, for one thing, it isn't cheap to launch the shuttle.
	To put up external tanks, you've got to launch the shuttle.
	There's no reason why, once again, there's no reason to abandon the International Space Station.
	If you're launching the shuttle, you might as well finish it.
	If NASA was smart, they would maybe look into this.
	You know, people are willing, in fact, even the very nicest conversations on these blogs and these various bulletin boards inevitably generate into some gigantic fight.
	And people, so when they're anonymous and they don't have to vocalize it and they can type it, well, I'll tell you, they're tigers.
	Interesting human behavior.
	Robert, welcome back.
	Glad to be here.
	Okay, here we go.
	Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Hello?
	Hello, is this me?
	Yes, well, only you know that for sure, but it sounds like you.
	Okay, sorry about that.
	Yeah, I object to some of the naysaying, 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, you know, in recent years, they 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, but 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, you know, 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.
	What is your comment on that?
	Well, Venus has run away global warming.
	Robert?
	You know, I don't dispute what you say at all.
	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 should just say fossil fuels.
	Burning 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 many of them are frustrated at finding a direct connection.
	There is a correlation.
	There is a concern because, 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, I've 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 nicotine 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, 5 years ago, I'm beginning, you know, 5 years have passed, I'm beginning to see, you know, we're not getting anything to say otherwise, but it's still unclear.
	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... Yeah, I know, I know.
	Putting them all together, obviously, if carbon dioxide is a factor in global warming, we have to try to deal with it.
	I agree.
	We adapt.
	Alright.
	These are the Rockies.
	You're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Hello.
	Hi, Kent in Kansas City, and I'm normally a sports talk 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, read out, read out, read out.
	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're playing on the Saints' plan their 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.
	And if you all know something to enlighten me...
	No, I think that clueless is a reasonable word in this situation.
	Robert?
	You know, I'll bring it.
	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 if in fact there's been a demand.
	If you do abandon them, you're a racist!
	And so 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.
	I agree with the call 100%.
	I mean, we first have to fix the problem before we start rebuilding everything there.
	Well, they're not.
	Fixing the problem.
	I mean, they're not fixing the problem.
	Oh, yeah, I agree.
	You know, but 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.
	But see, here's the thing.
	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.
	Oh, without question.
	Severe embarrassment.
	Oh, without question.
	I agree.
	It is clueless.
	I'm not disputing this.
	I mean, it's absolutely insane.
	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 Yes, I hope I'm on the air.
	Thank you.
	do with securing the city from flooding, from a hurricane, they look the other way.
	And yes, there's going to be a lot of embarrassment.
	You know, maybe that's the best possible thing.
	I don't want to say that.
	I mean, we don't want another hurricane.
	No, we don't.
	Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Good morning.
	Yes, I hope I'm on the air.
	That's what I said, on the air.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, my name is Wally and I'm from Reno.
	And first, Art, my condolences for your loss.
	Thank you.
	And for the future callers, please, I'll just accept everybody's condolences, not to repeat it.
	Thank you.
	Caller, go ahead.
	I'm sorry.
	And Robert, you're a pleasure to listen to.
	Well, thank you.
	One thing I will tell you, I'm a scientist.
	I'm a geologist.
	Actually, I'm a mining engineer, but I study geology intensely.
	This thing about global warming, it is happening.
	And there's factual evidence to prove that it's happening.
	But man has nothing to do with it.
	Lake Lahontan was here.
	Lake Bonneville were here.
	Both of those lakes were here 8,000 years ago.
	And they have dried up.
	And we're in a drying cycle.
	It's evident.
	You drive anywhere across the Great Basin, you can see Lake levels on the mountain ranges when you're in the valley floors.
	Not only has that started 8,000 years ago, we're in a global warming cycle.
	I don't think it matters whether it's man's hand, whether it's nature, whether it's a natural cycle, or man's hand in conjunction with a natural cycle.
	Once we finally agree that it's happening, then we can begin doing something about it.
	How are you going to do something about the sun, Art?
	Well, you're not.
	But if our climate is in fact changing, then where we can grow things will change, and we've got to begin planning ahead.
	I agree totally with that, but this idea that the Kyoto Treaty is going to solve this problem is ludicrous.
	The sun is driving this.
	It may or may not be.
	I mean, the sun is one theory.
	You mentioned it yourself, Robert.
	You say we have to start planning to deal with it, and we just got a drive to discussing New Orleans and how government plans how to solve these.
	And most of the solutions most Americans today turn to instantly as 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 to 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 think it will be an enormous waste of money to ask the world's governments to try to unify and plan this.
	That won't work.
	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 signs.
	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 that 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 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 occupancy in space, and you have roads all across the world, not just the United States.
	People can adapt very fast in these situations, compared to the speed at 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, in fact it restricts flexibility.
	I don't disagree with that.
	The government is a blunt instrument.
	I mean, New Orleans is a great demonstration of how poorly they can do things.
	Now that doesn't mean we shouldn't.
	The government is a player in this.
	We are in a nation, I don't believe in anarchy, we are, humans do need government and it has a function.
	But to see it as the first and only savior in this, I think is a terrible thing.
	I agree with that.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Hi.
	Dr. Zimmerman, or I'm not a doctor.
	I'm sorry, Mr. Zimmerman.
	Are you familiar with the Greenland ice sheet altimeter data from the ERS-1?
	Yes, I was mentioning that earlier on.
	I actually was looking at the actual data earlier this evening out of curiosity.
	Well, at the above 1,500 meters, the ice sheet has actually gotten thicker by six centimeters per year over those nine years.
	Yeah, if you look at the data closely, large areas of Greenland have actually gotten thicker.
	Large areas.
	Large areas have gotten thinner.
	There are some areas right on the edge of the eastern coast of Greenland that have dropped in thickness precipitously.
	But those are small areas.
	Overall, the balance is, to quote the scientist, is in the negative.
	It's shrunk more than it's grown.
	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.
	Now, I'm sure you read that.
	Yeah, I'm totally aware of that.
	The point is, though, that if you look at this data, the overall change in the ice sheet of Greenland is not It's not gigantically in the direction of shrinkage.
	It leans that way.
	And, once again, there is evidence that it does do cycles.
	We're not yet in a position to know for sure if this is global warming or if this is just a cyclical event.
	We just are not in a position to know that.
	I'm sorry.
	That's all right.
	Anything else?
	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.
	All right.
	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.
	Well, for the Rockies, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	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 If you're referring to the National Academy report that came out about four years ago on the issue of global warming, I've read that report.
	...are very clear in stating that it is a consequence of human activity.
	No, that is absolutely incorrect.
	That is not what that report says.
	The report said very conclusively that we are unsure that human activity might be a factor, and in fact they put page after page of caveats into the report about what was going on I will quote from the report.
	I'm sorry, sir, but that's just... Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	...the article reports on it, and they were not conclusive in that report.
	They favored global warming.
	They thought maybe human... I'm reading it right now.
	Robert, Robert, Robert.
	Hold on.
	What he wants to do is quote from the report.
	Greenhouse gases are accumulating... Let him do it.
	Let me read specifically quote.
	Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities.
	Temperatures are rising globally.
	And that was the first sentence of this report.
	Yes, you're reading the executive summary at the beginning, that's correct.
	Yes.
	okay listen you know hold on it's clearly my view the talk radio ought not be
	You know, it's boring.
	And that's not what we're all about.
	And this is certainly far from boring.
	My guest is Robert Zimmerman, and my caller was quoting from the executive summary, and in fact the very first part of it.
	Correct, caller?
	Yep, that is correct, Art.
	That seems like a definitive statement, Robert.
	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.
	Still, to open the executive summary like that would seem to be making the primary statement that they wanted to make in conclusion.
	Yes, that's exactly right.
	That's the other aspect of that.
	This is a National Academy of Sciences report.
	Yes.
	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 a report like this.
	But this report is not as conclusive as That first sentence makes it up to be.
	It's a 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 unknowns.
	Let the caller say something.
	Go ahead, caller.
	Thank you, Art.
	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.
	Go ahead.
	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, I can't think of of any more esteemed body than the National Academy of Sciences.
	All right.
	Caller, thank you.
	Robert?
	You know, once again, the report that he, 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 are due to carbon, a causal linkage between the buildup of greener 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 don't, they cannot yet say those models are right.
	The caller just quoted the report talking about how the models say it'll be devastating.
	I think he said the most conservative models.
	But those are still models.
	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.
	Okay.
	Alright.
	They say that themselves.
	So, I don't dispute this report, and I have... You know what?
	I haven't been saying, no, global warming.
	There's no global... I haven't said that at any point in this.
	I haven't denied global warming.
	I'm saying, I want more data, and so do the scientists.
	Alright.
	First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Yes.
	Am I on?
	You're on.
	Thank you.
	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 rule to dismiss totally each specific Uh, 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.
	That's funny.
	All I can think is possibly how you could look him right in the face and just say it isn't happening.
	So you don't want it to get out that maybe this will be a thing of the past?
	No, I don't have stock in the home-eating industry.
	I make no money.
	In fact, I probably would benefit as a writer, a science writer, for Global Warming to be... Well, not by a lot.
	Because I'd write about it.
	It would be a major story and I'd get benefit from it.
	You know, once again, I'm taking the position, I really am taking the position of the scientists I talk to who do the research.
	The National Academy of Science reports are done by people who go to Washington Joint Committees.
	They're not the people down there in the trenches doing the research.
	And that's the people I like to talk to.
	And what I get from them is not the global warming.
	I'm not getting from them, no global warming.
	They're not saying that.
	They're not denying the reality of their evidence.
	What they're saying is that they're They're not yet ready to say for sure what they know what's
	happening.
	You also have to make a distinction, Art, between theorists who make models predicting the future
	and the guys who collect the data.
	And there is a world of difference between the people that go to those two camps.
	And in fact, most of the people you hear from are generally pushing global warming,
	are the ones who write the models.
	But, you know, there is this.
	I mean, 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 grant that.
	And, in fact, that's what the models are for.
	That's trying to give us an overall picture.
	But the trouble has been, and this they don't deny, even modelers that I speak to, is that Predictions have not yet matched.
	Well, actually, if you watched 60 Minutes last night, they referred to the models.
	And actually, they said, so far, they've been frankly spot on.
	And in fact, it may be a little ahead of some of the models.
	Well, what I have seen is some models seem to work better than others, but they have not matched dead on.
	All right.
	Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Good morning.
	Uh, hi, Art.
	Hi.
	And, uh, hi, Robert.
	Hello.
	Um, 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.
	One of the things is, like, when I fly in a plane... Where'd he go?
	I don't know.
	Where'd he go?
	All right, we'll try this.
	Sorry about that, caller.
	First time caller on the line, you're on the air.
	Yeah, I wanted to make a comment on Robert Zimmerman's assertion that global warming is not being directly influenced by human activity.
	Okay.
	And this has been going on for years.
	I remember first studying this back in 1978.
	Turn the radio off, please.
	Turn it off.
	Absolute thing you have to do, folks.
	Off, off, off.
	Off.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Starting back in 1978, I started reading papers on, 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 that 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, in every study I've ever seen, it's observed that it's a human impact that's directly causing it.
	And years ago, I got in an argument with, well, I didn't get in an argument because I got cut off, but I was listening to Rush Limbaugh years ago, and he had the thing where he was saying that you couldn't, there was no way for chlorofluorocarbons or any other heavy chlorine atoms to be lofted up to the stratosphere, but the proof of it was made a long time ago when the I think there's no question about it.
	mary missions to mars and they saw the uh... the heavy dust will be locked it
	up into the upper atmosphere of mars and screening out the sun
	and that was proof positive right there that there was uh...
	uh... that human or that activity at the surface of the planet can be locked it
	up into a higher altitude so that i have no doubt that we've uh... we've added to the
	uh... the uh... the birth heat burden of the atmosphere and i think there's no
	question about it 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 air turned yellow.
	So, it's not that big a world, Robert.
	Oh, I would agree.
	You know, Mount Pinatubo, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, worldwide significantly lowered the temperature of the Earth.
	That's right.
	For a period of about five years.
	Yes.
	There have been other volcanoes that have done similar effects.
	The issue here, though, is, once again, I don't know what papers the Quoll 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 assessment 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.
	I think it's a real mistake to come to a firm conclusion before you really have all the facts.
	Have you ever been in Bangkok?
	No, I haven't.
	No, it's a wonderful city.
	It's amazing when you go to Bangkok.
	I think it's about sixty four or five percent of the traffic police in Bangkok have lung disease.
	And when you actually walk in Bangkok on most days and you inhale, it hurts your lungs.
	That's from the vehicles, I'm sure.
	Oh, I'm sure.
	Yes, and no question about it.
	I mean, you know, one of the signs, one of the ways I'm hopeful is that For example, L.A.
	The L.A.
	Basin has cleaned up to some degree.
	Yes, you're right.
	It's cleaned up to some degree.
	The problem here is that these scientists keep saying, even if we were to stop all emissions tomorrow, the future is already absolutely in concrete That's based upon those models which are based upon a lot of uncertainty.
	Nasty models.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Hello.
	Yes.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Yes, I'm calling from New Orleans.
	First, I'm a Ph.D.
	in political science and I'd like to make a green peace and the Sierra Club.
	The ecology is now the new religion for a lot of people.
	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 and 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 recent 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 even 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 the Termination of Hurricanes quit in protest over the misinterpretation of his data Robert, I think this young man should be taken under your wing and developed.
	He is another Zimmerman.
	I don't know what else to say.
	he did not say that and then the president of the academy of sciences had
	to come out and apologize later to the guy before missus that for misstating
	his data and my report robert i think this young man should be taken under
	your wing and develop he is another zimmerman uh... i i i don't know what else to say you know i i i live
	in what i live in the washington area and i go to a national academy science
	meeting hearings and in fact one of the best national academy of science
	report became a copy years with the one specifically assessing the public
	future the public fiscal future 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.
	They are not scientific.
	You see, I knew you wanted to say that, and I also knew that when he said it, you smiled.
	I won't deny that.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Robert Zimmerman.
	Good morning.
	Yes, this is Olin in Culver City.
	Yes.
	Every 11 years, the sun reaches its peak output about the same time that Jupiter passes in front of Saturn.
	And?
	So didn't all of this global heating start around May the 5th 2000 when Jupiter was in front of Saturn in front of Uranus in front of Neptune.
	Okay, got it.
	What do you think, Robert?
	Well, the issue of Jupiter and Saturn are not really a factor in this, but the Sun's solar cycle could be, and they don't really know yet that solar cycle's long-term history.
	For example, when Galileo first looked at the Sun 500 years ago, 400 years ago, he saw a few sunspots.
	The next, like, 75, 80 years, there were no sunspots at all.
	And then suddenly the solar cycle began again.
	Why there was a period of almost 100 years where you had no solar cycle, we do not understand.
	No sunspots for almost 100 years.
	And there have been now.
	Every 11 years we have a cycle where the sun peaks with sunspots.
	And there is a fluctuation in its radiation budget where it increases slightly and decreases slightly.
	Not very much, but like a tenth of a percent.
	But it happens.
	But is it getting more or less?
	They're not sure, because we've only been measuring it very precisely since 1970.
	All right, look, the show is over.
	What do you want to plug?
	Well, I mean, you know, people probably got a whole mess of opinions about where I stand on a lot of stuff.
	I'm a very thoughtful guy.
	I really try to be as objective as possible when I write stuff up, and so if they read My books, especially Leaving Earth, the last one, they'll get a real sense of where I stand on all issues, and it's not partisan.
	I just like to find out what happened, or what we know, and then go from there.
	That's where I'm going.
	So I'd like people to try to take a look at Leaving Earth.
	They get a sense of at least where I stand on a lot of issues.
	All right.
	Leaving Earth, available, what, Amazon, that kind of thing?
	Oh, yeah, it's available everywhere.
	Bookstores, Amazon.
	My publisher is Joseph Henry Press.
	They're doing the next book on Hubble.
	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.
	All right, buddy.
	That's it.
	We're out of time.
	Thank you for being here.
	Have a great night.
	All right.
	Thanks for having me.
	It has been a pleasure, indeed.

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