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May 26, 2007 - Art Bell
02:36:20
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Greenhouse Extinctions - Peter Ward
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From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in the world's prolific time zones, each and every one covered by this program, Coast to Coast AM, the very largest program of its sort in the world.
I'm Art Bell.
Great to be with you, an honor and a privilege to be escorting you through the weekend.
The webcam photograph is a nondescript photograph taken of me about an hour ago or so.
And we're on Asia Watch, of course.
Asia is due June 1st by C-section, and not that there's any hint of it, so not to worry you unduly, but you know, should I have to leave the program early, you'll know why.
Now, a couple of things I want to cover before I get into the world news, the ever-depressing world news.
There's been a big controversy about the picture Chad took.
Chad's photograph.
And I looked at that very carefully.
It's unlike most UFO photographs.
It's extremely clear.
Extremely detailed.
And, you know, I've wondered a lot about it.
What could it be?
It looked... To me, it looked oddly...
Terrestrial, in a way, and not enough to be extraterrestrial.
Beyond that, I'm not prepared to make any judgments.
However, I did get an interesting fast blast just before the program tonight from Stanley in Ivor, Virginia.
I guess it is I-V-O-R.
Ivor, Virginia.
And, uh, Stanley says, Art, I can prove the Shad UFO pictures are fake.
Now, I don't know if this proves it or not, but he goes on, just download the photo, and then, in quotes, open with, that's the option when you right-click, I think, open with Notepad, and you can clearly see the word Adobe written all in the code, within all the code.
And he gave his phone number, and I called it.
I didn't have enough time to try it myself before the program.
But I know that we're just packed with computer geniuses out there who will quickly try this and let me know what they find.
So, just thought I'd toss that out and see... You know, and the fact that Adobe was involved at some point doesn't necessarily make it fake.
However, if the claim is that it was taken with film and then scanned and put directly up, Then I guess it would be a problem, if true.
So, some of you out there, most of you, I would guess, who have computers, give it a shot, see what happens.
Now, turning to the never-to-disappoint depressing news, and it is, U.S.
deaths, the headline, near grim Memorial Day mark.
Americans have opened nearly a thousand new graves to bury U.S.
troops killed in Iraq since Memorial Day a year ago.
The figure is telling, and expected to rise in coming months.
In the period from Memorial Day 2006 through Saturday, 980 soldiers and Marines died in Iraq compared to 807 deaths the previous year.
And with the Baghdad security operation now three and a half months old, even President Bush, of course, is predicting a very difficult summer for U.S.
forces.
Anybody with brainstorms on this war?
Don't be afraid to pick up the phone.
Iraq's Prime Minister and two top American officials flew to the blistering Western
Desert Saturday in a rare joint outing to highlight gains there in the fight against
insurgents hours before the military reported the deaths of eight more U.S. troops.
troops, one of those killed a Marine, died in combat in Anbar province, once the site of some of the fiercest fighting in the country, and where the U.S.
ambassador, the American commander in Iraq, and the Iraqi leader traveled on Saturday.
For nearly a decade, Dr. Jack Kevorkian waged an incredibly defiant campaign to help other people kill themselves.
The retired pathologist left bodies at hospital emergency rooms, motels, videotaped a death that was broadcast on CBS 60 Minutes.
His actions prompted battles over assisted suicide in many, many states.
Standing in the baking sun outside the U.S.
Consulate in Monterey, hundreds of Mexicans wait anxiously for temporary work visas.
But even before they were fingerprinted and interviewed for the permit, many had already paid recruiters thousands of dollars in hopes of easing the way, supplying the U.S.
guest worker program as a complex and sometimes criminal network of foreign recruiters Who extort lots of money from poor migrants, then keep them on the job by forcing them into debt and threatening their families back home.
Ukraine's feuding President and Prime Minister agreed early Sunday to hold an early parliamentary election September 30th, thus diffusing a months-long political crisis that had been threatening to escalate into violence.
We found a decision which is a compromise, according to the President, Uh, and he was quoted as saying that by the Interfax News Agency after emerging from eight hours of tense talks.
Now, now we can say the political crisis in Ukraine is over.
Lindsay Lohan arrested.
Suspicion of driving under the influence Saturday after her convertible struck a curb and investigators found what they believe Is cocaine at the scene?
According to police, Lohan, 20, and two other people were in her 2005 Mercedes SL65 when it crashed on Sunset Boulevard around 5.20 a.m.
Sergeant Mike Foxen said it appeared Lohan was speeding.
Well, everyone seems to have a suggestion to get two wayward whales lingering in the Sacramento River to swim 70 miles back to the Pacific.
One person's suggesting towing.
Towing the orcas.
That'd be interesting.
I've been seeing it on the news all week long, and no matter what they try, the whales don't seem to want to go.
Just one more item before the break.
Rescuers suspended their search Saturday for a man now presumed to be the sixth person killed by rising waters in Central Texas.
Forecasters warned the recurring rain could cause more flooding across the plains.
Forecasters issued flood warnings, said the storms have dumped more than, get this, 10 inches of rain in some areas, probably They say it will continue through at least Sunday.
Roadways washed out.
Some intersections remaining closed Saturday after two days of rain pounded central Texas.
Governor McBury activated the National Guard troops to be deployed in Waco, Austin and San Antonio for the holiday weekend.
Dozens of people were plucked from rising waters on Friday.
So, trouble in Texas.
Big trouble.
Alright, in a moment we'll look at a couple of other stories.
Well, there's climate news.
The U.S.
has rejected any prospect of a deal on climate change at the G8 Summit in Germany next month.
This is according to a leaked document.
Had to be leaked for us to get it.
Despite Tony Blair's declaration on Thursday that Washington would sign up to at least the beginnings of action to cut carbon emissions, a note attached to a draft document circulated by Germany says the U.S.
is fundamentally opposed to the proposals, period.
The note, written in red ink, says the deal runs, quote, counter to our overall position and crosses multiple red lines in terms of what we simply cannot agree to.
This document called final, but we never agreed to any of the climate language present in the document.
We have tried to tread lightly, but there's only so far we can go given our fundamental opposition to the German position, it says.
The tone is blunt, with whole pages of the draft crossed out, and even the mildest statements about confirming previous agreements rejected.
The proposals within the sections titled Fighting Climate Change and Carbon Markets are fundamentally incompatible with the President's approach to climate change.
It doesn't describe the President's approach.
This is a very interesting story, and for those of you who want to know where it comes from, it's CNN.com.
Reuters.
The southern ocean around Antarctica is so loaded now with carbon dioxide that it can barely absorb any more.
So more of the gas will stay in the atmosphere to warm up the planet.
Human activity, the main culprit, said researcher Connie LaRue, LaCue I guess it is, who called the finding very alarming.
The phenomena was not expected to be apparent for decades, she said in a telephone interview from the University of East Anglia in Britain.
We thought we'd be able to detect only the second half, detect all of this in the second half of the century, say around 2050 or so, she said.
But data from 1981 through 2004 show the sink is already full of carbon dioxide, so I find this really quite alarming.
The Southern Ocean is one of the world's biggest reservoirs of carbon, known as a carbon sink.
When carbon is in a sink, whether it's in the ocean or a forest, both of which can lock up carbon dioxide, it stays out of the atmosphere and does not contribute to global warming.
The new research published in the latest section of the journal Science indicates the Southern Ocean has been saturated with carbon dioxide since at least the 1980s.
This is significant because the Southern Ocean accounts for about 15% of the total global carbon sink.
Increased winds over the last half century are to blame for the change, she said.
These winds blend the carbon dioxide through the Southern Ocean, mixing the naturally occurring carbon that usually stays deep down with human-caused carbon.
I suppose one would have to be concerned that somehow something would release all of this carbon dioxide, all of a sudden, whether it be in an ocean or locked in ice or wherever it would be, suddenly adding to the amount of global warming we've already got going on.
All right.
First hour, we promise unscreened open lines, so here they come.
A couple of things to remember.
One, when I answer the phone, You must immediately, especially with unscreened open lines, because I'm just, boom, coming right to the line.
So when I answer, and say you're on the air, you've got to reach over and turn your radio off, boom, just like that.
Number two.
If at all possible, have something compelling to say for, you know, the whole audience.
It's a big audience out there, so rather than, you know, keep it at a personal level of some kind, or with some question that might be better answered in email, if you've got something that would interest everybody, then we are interested in you.
West of the Rockies, 1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
1-800-618-8255, east of the Rockies.
1-800-825-5033, first time callers, we love you.
Area code 81850147.
Wow card line folks!
Area code 818-501-4109.
And if you're outside the country, no problem.
The following portal will get you here.
Get hold of your operator.
Have her call for you.
Toll free, 800-893-0903.
That's 800-893-0903.
Let us go to the first time caller line and say, yo, you're on the air.
Oh, hello, Art.
Hello, sir.
Hey, I took a little fishing trip one night.
Look up in the sky and I see a little orange dot flying around.
And a little friend of mine, he's sitting there telling me what it is, and I'm telling This is not what it is.
And what was he saying it was?
Well, we're watching this thing and all of a sudden he says, by God, I know what it is.
He says it's a meteorite.
Yeah, but it's going the wrong way.
Meteorites don't exactly.
I don't think you'd describe them as flying along.
Well, when we first seen it, it was moving very slow, very large, very small.
And when he said it was a meteorite, it was going up And as it goes up... That's another clue.
Meteorites don't go up.
I know.
I know they don't.
It goes up and all of a sudden it blanks.
And it's about three times larger.
And it takes off again.
It's gone.
And it kind of looked like Jean-Luc Picard's eyes on Star Trek as it was leaving town.
I see.
And we don't know what it was.
Okay, well I certainly don't either, but I appreciate the report, and I would not really attribute any of those characteristics to a meteorite at all.
Nor, by the way, and I've said this a million times before, let me say it again, inevitably when something comes crashing to the ground, people say, well it was a meteorite.
We don't know that, until you find the hot rock.
Or even one tested that's cold.
You don't know that it was a meteor, right?
There's simply no way to know that.
And so I think they, uh, people tend to sling that term around too easily when you see something flashing across the sky.
I suppose the natural human instinct is to assign a logical conclusion to it, but until you find that rock, well... Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hey, how's it going?
Very well, sir.
My name is Rick and I'm calling from East Chicago, Indiana.
Yes, sir.
I was listening to your show some weeks ago with David Sarita.
Uh-huh.
And he was mentioning about how our government has UFOs and how they reverse engineered some crafts.
Yes.
And I kind of find it hard to believe because if these beings are so advanced than we are, Wouldn't it be impossible to reverse-engineer some craft?
I mean, to me, that would be like... No, not necessarily.
Even if they're very advanced, you would be quite surprised what good scientists can do.
If you have the actual machinery, and I'm not saying that we've actually reverse-engineered anything, but if you have the machinery in front of you, then reverse-engineering is a whole lot easier than inventing.
In other words, you can say to yourself, what does this do?
Well, let's take this apart and see how it does it.
That's kind of reverse engineering.
Going slowly and figuring out how somebody did something much easier than reinventing the wheel, so to speak.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
How you doing, Art?
Quite well, sir.
That's good.
Hey, listen, I've got a Oh.
little tidbit about the Nostradamus.
Oh.
If you're interested.
The band Judas Priest will be doing a concept album on his wife.
Should be out in June or July.
Okay.
It's just basically, you know, what his wife was about, what he, all the quatrains and all that.
And it's going to be done with a full orchestra.
Well, it's probably due him.
Can you imagine having visions, seeing things that would be ahead for the world, and living in a society that would string you up, burn you at the stake, or otherwise dispose of you if you wrote about them in a language that could be easily understood, so you had to reduce it to kind of a poetic Slightly foggy text that, you know, would be understood much later.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Hello.
Going once.
Going twice.
Gone.
We'll go back to the first time caller line.
You're on the air.
Hey, Art.
Yes, sir.
This is Mike in Miami.
How you doing today?
Just fine, Mike.
Art, you said anybody with a brainstorm on the Iraq War?
You betcha.
Well, you know, there's a bunch of stuff out there floating around that this is Vietnam all over again.
And if the parallel is to hold, well, we know very well that Communist Russia and China were supporting the North Vietnamese.
So in this case, who is supporting the so-called insurgents in Iraq?
Probably Iran, certainly to some degree.
Yes, but then what's the greater power?
What is the main power behind Iran?
Well, I don't... I'll let you tell me.
What are you going to say?
Saudi Arabia?
Well, I would certainly... There's money from the Saudis.
We do know that Pakistan and North Korea In addition to Libya, was supplied with the know-how to create nuclear weapons.
Yeah, North Korea can't afford to feed their own people though.
I don't think they're a lot, very much behind.
No, no, no, China.
China.
We know, it's been established that North Korea and Libya have been supplied with technology from China.
Okay.
And of course, North Korea has played a role In distracting us from China's buildup, for instance, in their ultimate goal to take over Taiwan.
Yeah, I'll buy some of that.
You think China really is behind this, huh?
I think ultimately, in the long run, China's behind this.
I think I view it as a proxy war.
They probably got something to do with it, but I don't think you could pin a big pin on China and say, let's go.
No, it's not.
It's not clear.
It's not evident at this point.
But I think down the road in the long run, you know, the Middle East does provide a large share of petroleum for us.
Okay, but the big question is, how would you end it?
How would I end it?
That's right.
Well, you all had a guest on named Lev Navarrozov a couple years ago.
George was the one who interviewed him.
Hold that thought, sir.
We're at a break point here.
I'm going to hold you through the break because that's what I really want to hear from anybody who has a good idea how we get out of there with our skins.
I'm Art Bell.
It is, I am, and it's my pleasure to be here.
When I said with our skins intact, I guess I meant our national honor.
We really aren't going to get out of there with our skins intact.
In fact, thousands of them have already been taken.
So, I've sat and I've thought about this war and thought about it and thought about it.
There's got to be a way to win it and be done or get out and just conclude it was a bad idea to begin with.
I'm not sure.
Anyway, we'll get back to our caller in a moment.
Just very briefly on the Chad photo.
Yeah, I know the fact that it appears there doesn't automatically mean that it's a fake at all.
It's a very, very interesting photograph.
My only comment on it would be, and it certainly is clear, that it looks more terrestrial than it does extra-terrestrial.
But you've got to admit, boy, they're good photographs.
I guess people have been able to duplicate it.
The problem is we're in the day and age when you can duplicate anything.
When there's virtually no way to ensure that a photograph is a real McCoy anymore.
I don't care what it is.
Even photographs of little green guys and little gray guys and all the rest of it in craft.
I'm afraid we've entered an age where Well, they used to be Polaroids, right?
And you could almost bank on a Polaroid being real.
That day's now gone.
All right, let's bring back our first-time caller line and say you've had a few minutes to think it over.
How would you end this?
What kind of exit strategy at this point would you come up with?
Wow, Art, that really leaves one at a loss.
And yes, I have had some time to think it over.
As to whether we could end this gracefully, as you were asking, I really am at a loss for that.
It seems to me that the best thing to contemplate is what is the worst case scenario consequence if and when we do leave, because obviously that region of the world is essential.
It supplies Okay, well, you and I are on the same page.
I have no idea at this point how it can be ended.
And I think that's why I've said in the past, you know, we're there, right or wrong, and I guess wrong, based on the information that got us there, that was all wrong.
But we are there.
And about the best argument you can make for continuing in any way at all is that we're probably killing people who, given enough time, would figure out a way to come to the United States and kill as many of us as they could.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
This is Blair in Sedona, Arizona.
Hello, Blair.
Hey, hi.
I'm sitting here with my friend Jim at the base of Cathedral Rock on the north face here, and I have a friend of yours he'd like to say hello to you, and he's got a UFO report for you.
Not far away.
Is this Art?
It is.
Hey Art, it's David Serita.
Hey David!
I was just talking, we were just hiking up Cathedral Rock in the dark, and I heard my name on your show, and last night we came up here and we saw something pretty amazing.
Like what?
This light is Venus, not a single FAA light on it, and I looked at it on the night vision binoculars while my friend Jim And my girlfriend, we're looking at it to the naked eye, and it was truly going faster than Mach 4.
It started out really slow and just started accelerating faster and faster and faster and disappeared from their sight.
And I saw it on the night vision as faint as the faintest stars you can see on night vision, which means when you look at night vision, you see stars that the human eye can't see even on a clear night.
That's right.
It's way out there.
This thing was moving so fast, not a single flash, so definitely no FAA lights on it.
And, uh, you know, I've seen those pictures you're talking about.
I agree with you on that one.
You do?
Yeah.
Well, I'm not saying it's fake.
I'm just saying that... It's not fake either.
It looks... You know, the words that you used, it's... When I look at the architecture of the thing, most of it is just tentacles, and then you have this circular area, and a very, what appears to be a very small kind of space for... Possibly it's an unmanned probe, but...
Yeah, I would just, my comment was, it looks odd, but terrestrial odd, not extraterrestrial odd, that's all.
It looks odd terrestrial to me, too.
It looks, you also, when I go into Photoshop, I've taken them into Photoshop, you try to match the color and the reflectivity off the metal with the colors of the light, you know, the tone of the day.
And this guy did a good job.
If it's fake, if it's fake, I'm not saying I know it's fake, But the lighting tones match really well, like in reflectivity.
So he's done a really good job if it's fake.
But my initial reaction is it's got to be fake, you know, because it's so sharp and it's just... Well, thank you very much, David.
That's a problem, you know.
Most times people inevitably complain, oh, it's another foggy UFO photograph.
But if it's too clear, then it, you know, it can't be real.
I don't know.
I've seen this photograph now in a number of settings, you know, near the power lines, near the trees, out on its own.
It's something, but it seems like a terrestrial something to me.
And I hope we find out what it is.
Wester the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello!
Hello!
Hi.
I'm going to tell you something.
I am an alien.
The government's known about me for near 50 years.
And still you live?
I'm going to tell you something.
Um, most of the ships, the UFOs seen in the United States are government.
Well, we used to send them a lot of ships that they could shoot down and get the technology.
We?
Um.
Who, who are we?
Where are, in other words, you're alien from where?
Yeah, but we, we don't, we don't send them around here anymore.
Where, where are you from?
We don't, um, build ships that you can shoot out of the air real easy.
Uh-huh.
Where are you from?
And, uh, I can tell you something about the alien abductions.
It isn't aliens.
Where are you from?
Percent.
Where are you from?
No alien is doing it.
Okay.
Where are you from is a question.
Five seconds to answer.
I can't tell you stuff like that.
Why not?
If you can call a radio talk program and say, I'm an alien, then you can surely tell me where you're from.
Well, I've talked to the government stuff.
I can't tell you that.
Alright, let's pass that by.
What about the abductions?
Alien abductions are not done by aliens.
It's highly unethical.
We just wouldn't do it.
You wouldn't?
We wouldn't need to for any reason.
The things that they do are entirely human, like they examine people and stuff.
We've been here a long, long time.
Why would humans, military or otherwise, need to take cows into anything at all?
They could get their hands on all the cows they wanted.
I know!
We wouldn't do anything like that.
In other words, it doesn't make sense to you either.
Why?
It doesn't make any sense to you?
No.
Personally, I don't know.
All right, let's try another question.
Why are you here?
Why are we here?
Yes.
There's some very, very bad creatures that are just generally termed bad aliens.
There's good aliens and bad aliens.
And you're a good alien?
Yeah.
And you're here to stop the bad aliens from doing what?
Well, doing pretty much what they're doing.
As you notice, the Earth is not in good shape.
So, what is it the bad aliens are doing?
They want nothing but death and destruction for your planet and your people.
Alright, thank you for the call.
We don't need aliens to accomplish that.
On a daily basis, we bring death and destruction to our fellow Earthlings all the time.
On a fairly mass scale, actually.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello, Art.
Hi.
This is Frank calling from Brooklyn, New York.
Yes, Frank.
And I wanted to let you know, Art, that I spoke to you on the show you did right after 9-11.
And I was calling from Western Pennsylvania.
And I said that before we would take any action against any nation, we had better analyze what has happened and do a thorough investigation.
And I did warn against Any activity against Afghanistan or Iraq, having been a student of foreign policy and diplomacy for the last 35 years.
But I wanted to say this, Art, that a solution that I see would be for the U.S.
to declare a victory in the sense that Saddam Hussein has been deposed, a new regime has been put in quote-unquote democratically although I may disagree with the interpretation of that word democratic and Then I think we should really bring our troops out and do a thorough investigation regarding the malfeasance with the non-competitive bidding and the expense of the war and I think that would allow America to attempt to salvage its image and
America has been deeply wounded by this police action in Iran.
What about the bases?
What about the bases that we have established in Iraq?
Would they remain?
In other words, part of the bloodletting that Americans have done is to establish bases in Iraq, to have a geopolitical and military base in that part of the world.
Would you abandon that or keep them?
Well, I think what's going to happen, Art, is this.
Since the current regime in Iraq has stated that it wants the U.S.
out, I think basically what will happen is that there will have to be sort of an independent party, such as maybe the European Union or maybe China, that will come in on invitation from the Iraqi government.
And I think basically what has to happen is Iraq has to be responsible for their oil.
And if they choose to have their own oil market using the euro as opposed to the US petrodollar, they have that right.
And I think what has to occur is this.
The Iraqis have to be able to, in a sense, control their destiny.
And they're going to have to have the complete authority to make any trade agreements Alright, well let's hold it there.
nations in the world, not having the US sort of usurp that power as has been
going on for the past three years. All right, well let's hold it there. I think
that China would not exactly be considered an independent arbiter in
this case. Not that I agree completely with the previous caller, but certainly
after all of this I would not turn it over to China to mediate.
That probably would be one of the last countries on the list.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
Hello?
Going once, going twice, gone.
Wildcard Line, next, you're on the air.
Hello?
Hello.
Oh, who's this?
Who do you think it is?
Oh, hey, Art.
Hey, this is John in Colorado.
Yes, John.
I was wondering if there was anybody out there that could talk about time wave zero.
As you probably know, Terrence McKenna took the King One arrangement of the 64 hexagrams and the I Ching and graphed it on a fractal graph.
And, of course, the graph coincides with rise and fall of civilizations here on Earth.
And then it takes a nosedive in December 21st, 2012.
I know Terrence McKenna has passed on, but is there anyone out there that can talk about his work?
I don't know.
It's a good question.
Somebody certainly should be carrying on what Terrence... Terrence was such a great man, wasn't he?
An amazing, an amazing individual who was just absolutely brilliant, despite all of the experimentation that he did.
He was nothing short of brilliant.
What a loss.
So somebody out there must be continuing his work.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hey Art, it's not a bootlicker calling back.
You ever talk to Larry Spring yet?
Larry Spring?
The 92-year-old physicist?
No, I have not.
Okay, well I hope you do.
You know, time's getting on for him.
Hey, you said something for the whole audience.
I came up with If you Google my name, there's apparition photos of Jesus Christ up there on the internet.
Alright, well I'm sure based on that, somebody will do exactly that and Google your name.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air.
Hello, how are you?
Hello?
Hello.
Hi, I'm the ghost's brother and I'm here to cause death and destruction.
No, I'm just kidding.
This is Ron, I'm calling from Far Rockaway, New York.
Yes.
Okay, I have a story to tell you I saw about a few months ago.
I live right on Long Island, right by the beach.
One night, a Friday night, a boat came ashore, a big tanker, and there was a lot of action going on by the beach trying to get the tanker to go back in.
It was stuck on the sand for almost two days, I think.
In the middle, I was watching the sky, and I saw a green light.
I didn't look at the star because it was too bright.
No, but I do have a comment on it.
it looked like maybe it was about a few miles offshore and I was just staring at it and suddenly it just
dropped and it fell straight down into the water and it couldn't have been a plane or anything
because there was no flashing it didn't flash or anything it was just a bright green light
that was now suspended in the air and then it just let go and fell straight down.
Any idea what that could have been? No but I do have a comment on it and that is that
what is it two-thirds of the surface of the earth I believe is covered by ocean.
Isn't it about two-thirds?
So, if an extraterrestrial civilization wanted to monitor us and wanted a base, why not put it underwater?
And one, I think, entirely underdone aspect of ufology is the number of sightings that have been made at sea.
The number of Navy people who have seen things Both on sonar and with their own eyes that have descended into the ocean.
I mean, it would be an ideal place.
You could come and go and virtually have every chance of being undetected.
Right?
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi Art.
This is a DCN in California and I'd like to ask you a question.
Have you ever heard of Michael Army Airfield in central Utah?
I have not.
It's supposed to be the new Area 51.
And there's a couple of local airspaces that are associated with that airfield that go from surface to infinity, flight level 580.
That may well be, but an awful lot of people, sir, are saying this or that is the new Area 51.
Let me tell you, Area 51 is still there and expanding.
Right, and so is Michael Army Airfield.
In the last three years, the government has poured in over five billion dollars into this little tiny airfield in the middle of Utah.
And what do you think they're doing?
I think they're talking about that system that they can launch anywhere in the world in 15 minutes.
I believe that's what they're developing there.
Because the airspace associated with that airfield goes from the surface to flight level 580, 58,000 feet.
Nowhere else in the United States is that airspace controlled like that.
Alright, you may well be on to something.
Have you taken a look at Google Earth lately and looked for photographs of it?
Yes, I have.
You can find it.
It's out in the middle of nowhere.
It's about 15 miles from the actual base itself.
The base is southwest of Salt Lake City.
And then there's a single two-lane road that goes out to the airfield out in the middle of nowhere.
What can you actually see?
Can you see landing strips?
Can you see hangars?
That kind of thing?
Just the same way you can see at Groom Lake.
Well, we'll have lots of people then looking.
Have at it, folks.
Be my guest and let me know what you find.
It's entirely possible we're opening something new.
Who knows?
Wildcard Lion, you're... How dare you deny me the opportunity to make that disgusted diamond!
Mr. Bell, I called in twice and that hussy did not allow me to get through on your orders, no doubt, or... No, no, I've never ordered anybody to keep you away.
She kept me away.
Oh, no, no, no, wait.
There was a time.
We were in the middle of... Oh, that's right.
I remember... No, there was a guest on.
And I was aware that you were on the line waiting, and I had an option to either answer the phone or not, JC, and I chose not to.
Not to, because I was going to shout down that disgustator with my truth.
And that's beside the point anyway, because I want to address you about your, your fully, you've fully ascended into the realm of, of food pornography, pizza punch pornography.
And I told you this was going to happen, people, years ago, that he would be on the forefront of doing this and you have done it.
You have unleashed, uh, how dare you do this to America?
Indulging and encouraging debauchery and gluttony among Irishmen.
Gluttony, huh?
Yes, that's correct.
And I suppose you don't eat pizza, huh?
I do not eat pizza because that's an Italian food.
And what's wrong with that, JC?
Time's limited.
Make it good.
What I'm going to make good is the fact that you are denying the gods Listen, also, Jerry Falwell, you haven't done a tribute show to him, but bless his soul, he's burning in hell now because he refused to accept the new revelation.
Just as Brother Diamond will burn in hell because he's the only one who thought he had the righteous truth of Jesus Christ Almighty when he knows that I've got the righteous truth.
I'm God's 10-star general, the only one authorized to bring forth the new revelation.
How's everything at home, JC?
Edna back yet?
No, but we're very, very close to bringing her home.
All right, well, on that note, we'll end it and be right back.
Here I am.
Coming up in a moment is Peter Ward.
Peter Ward is a professor of biology, a professor of earth and space sciences, an adjunct professor of astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle.
He is Principal Investigator of the University of Washington Node of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which involves the leadership of over 25 scientists studying the probability of finding life beyond the Earth.
That should interest many of you.
He's also Senior Counselor of the Paleontological Society and was awarded an Affiliate Professorship at the California Institute of Technology, so he's got absolutely Impeccable credentials.
In a moment, Peter Ward.
Peter Ward, welcome back to Coast to Coast AM.
Hey Art, great to be back.
Thank you for having me.
You betcha.
Listen, Peter, I know you're going to be talking a lot about CO2 tonight, right?
Yeah, I got some gas on the mind.
Gas on the mind.
I read a story in the first hour that shocked me, and it's from CNN.com.
I have a feeling it came, I believe it came from England.
Uh, through Reuters.
It says the southern ocean around Antarctica is so loaded with carbon dioxide, it can barely absorb any more.
So, more of the gas will stay in the atmosphere to warm up the planet.
Now, uh, the scientist who found this, uh, says human activity is the main culprit.
Uh, Connie Leclerc, something like that.
Saying she didn't expect this phenomena to be apparent for decades, but apparently Antarctica is simply loaded.
It's carbon sink and it's now loaded with CO2 to the point that it can't hold any more.
A quote here is a possibility that in a warmer world, the Southern Ocean, the strongest ocean sink for CO2, is weakening and is certainly a cause for concern.
Had you read that?
No, but I've been following it from another point of view.
The northern ocean, as you know, cold water takes more CO2 than warm.
The northern oceans in the Arctic have taken on so much CO2 that their acidity has risen to the point that all the small, tiny little mollusks called pteropods, which are the base of the food chain, their shells are being etched off their back.
It's so acid that the marine mollusks can't secrete calcium carbonate shells.
That's trouble.
I hadn't heard about the Southern Ocean, but it's just more food, more wood on the fire here.
You know, I'm just a layman here, Peter.
I really am.
And here would be my question.
I understand that CO2 is trapped in these waters.
Is there anything that could come along and suddenly cause these oceans to release what they have?
Cause these carbon sinks to Let go, as it were.
Yeah, absolutely, and it's funny that in Science Magazine this past week, for the first time ever, investigators looking at the ice core records from Antarctica discovered that three times during the Pleistocene, the Ice Ages, huge amounts of carbon dioxide came right out of solution as big bubbles, just as you're describing.
This has been theorized for a long time, but here's the first time there's proof that it happened out of an ocean.
We know it's happened out of a lake.
Art, do you remember that horrible situation in Africa, Lake Nyos in the 80s?
I certainly do.
Yeah, CO2 came out of pollution and killed people.
Well, we now know it can happen from oceans, and just the scenario you're describing is no longer theoretical.
It does happen, and watch out world.
Well, I don't know what caused the release in Africa, or I don't recall, I think perhaps at the time I knew, or maybe I didn't.
Do you know what caused the release in Africa and can we draw a parallel to any of the world's larger oceans?
Sure, I think what happened in Africa, it was a volcanic lake is a very special case where the lake itself was sitting in a big crater.
That's right.
And it kept releasing volcanic gas, but the warm water on top trapped it down in the bottom, and the colder water on the bottom.
But the whole system just overturned.
It may have been a big storm, something, an earthquake, something perturbed it, and the cold came to the surface.
It's an oceanic overturning, it's called.
Now, this mechanism was thought to be what caused the Permian extinction in a paper in 1996, and that's in my book, Under a Green Sky, which is really the One of the really interesting bits of evidence in that book, how that extinction could have happened.
Alright, let's begin at the beginning.
What are mass extinctions?
I think I know, but let's get it nailed down.
Yeah, there are very short periods in the geological past when large numbers of species rather suddenly went extinct.
You know, the whole point is how sudden is the rather suddenly?
Well, we certainly know about one of them, the dinosaur extinction of 65 million years That was certainly caused by asteroid impact.
All evidence for the last 20 years since that was discovered by the Alvarez's indicates, indeed, it was caused by, let's say, a 10-kilometer body hidden in the Earth.
But none of the others, and there were 15 of them in the last 500 billion years, none of the others show the telltale signs of an impact extinction, which is bits of iridium, which is what you find in outer space asteroids, a platinum group element, Or small spherules of glass.
As this thing hits, it throws a lot of rock up into the sky, and it comes back, melts into tektites.
Well, we don't find any of that around these other mass extinctions.
Alright, look, just for a moment, let's stick with the dinosaurs.
I apparently had this misguided belief that they are now much of the oil we're pumping from the ground.
Apparently not.
Well, that beautiful Sinclair oil sign, all those years as you drive through the Midwest... Did it to me, I guess.
So, could you describe, Peter, essentially what happened when that hit?
In other words, here we've got a world, I don't know how the continents were then, I have no way of knowing, but essentially, breathable air, the dinosaurs were breathing air, right?
So, breathable air, and these great big monsters, for the most part, suddenly dropped dead.
What actually happened in the world to cause that?
Well, when that asteroid hit, very quickly, so much material was thrown up in a space.
And we know where the crater is, of course.
It's the Chicxulub Crater in the Yucatan Peninsula.
So, the crater now is 200 kilometers across, so a 120 mile wide crater.
And think of the volume of rock that would have been thrown up in the space.
Well, not all of it went into orbit.
Some came back quickly, and as it comes back, the hot rocks, they get hot, heated, and catch fire to things when they hit the ground.
So the forest caught on fire, we know that much.
Secondly, all the dust obliterates the sun for a while, so we have those sunlight photosynthesis stops, and we have an awful lot of sulfur material, because it hit in a sulfur-rich sedimentary rock sequence, so you've got sulfuric acid.
So the place becomes very acidified, you've got worldwide global forest fires, and you've got a lot of dust falling on everything.
And that's a nice prescription for species death.
So the world dimmed for how many years, do you guess, Peter?
Oh, I think the estimates now is 30 to 50 years of very dimness, but it was certainly the heating and all the black smoke coming up from these burning forests would have certainly added to that.
Sure.
So, some people thought we went into a nuclear winter, that Carl Sagan idea, that it gets very cold if it was very hot.
It would take something about that serious to do what was done, wouldn't it?
Well, we thought so, Art, and after that was discovered in 1980, we thought all the mass extinctions were caused by these asteroids, and indeed, one by one, we went out, we scientists who were interested in this, and extinction after extinction, we couldn't find that evidence, and it was getting very frustrating.
And I think the actual cause has been discovered only in the last three or four years.
It's by a lot of different people.
One in particular, a man named Lee Kump from Penn State.
And he has suggested, and I've gone out to many of these sites and found confirming evidence, that these mass extinctions are caused by short-term global warming, which creates a series of bacteria in the oceans which produce toxic hydrosulfide gas, or hydrogen sulfide.
So we've got a case where the world is poisoned by poison gas.
Where are we in that scenario right now?
Yeah, that's what spooks me a lot.
We're at 380 parts per million carbon dioxide and rising.
And we're rising at about two parts per million per year, but that is accelerating.
If the geological record tells us we can measure directly what CO2 levels were in the past,
we know that every one of these what I call greenhouse extinctions happened when CO2 was
at or had risen above 1,000 parts per million.
And secondly, they could only take place when all of the ice caps have melted.
If we melt our ice caps, which we're doing, which we're doing very quickly.
And interestingly, I have one of the great experts on ice caps down in my guest bedroom,
Joe Kirschvink from Caltech, the man who discovered snowball earth, is here for four days working
with me.
And I asked him tonight, I said, look, I'm going to be on Art Bell tonight, and how long do you think it would take to melt Greenland?
And he said, a thousand years at the rate we're going.
Well, that sounds like a long time, but geologically it's an instant.
So we could start this gas attack mass extinction process in a thousand years or somewhat less.
Well, we're starting the process now, but we've got a thousand years to correct it.
Assuming that the thousand year figure is correct, what would you do between now and then, or now and the no turning back point, to correct it?
Well, it's a simple fix.
I tell my audiences when they ask about this, tongue-in-cheek, that the simplest way is to tell all the volcanoes on the planet to stop.
Because, you know, we've had a lot of greenhouse gas going in forever, really, all through history.
Well, Professor, you know we can't do that.
No.
So, step two is we have to reduce man-made CO2 emissions.
It's very simple.
But it's Oh, it's not simple.
Complicated.
Well, simple in theory.
The process is where it's going to be hideously hard.
I mean, I just have to say two words and we know how hard this is.
China, India.
Sure.
Right there we see the crux of the problem.
Well, the U.S.
too.
The U.S.
has rejected any prospect of a deal on climate change at the G8 Summit in Germany next month.
That's a leak, but apparently We've crossed out entire pages and paragraphs and just basically said, no.
Yeah, I saw the same thing.
And if global warming makes Haiti hotter, I hope those leaders of ours who have done that get consigned down to that hot place down below.
Yes, I don't know.
I mean, I call on individuals.
I try and do what I can.
I've got solar panels up.
I've got wind power.
Even though I've got some nice big cars that are fun to drive, I don't drive them for the most part.
They sit in the garage and I drive a little car, a little four banger.
And I guess individuals can do that, but you know the way it's going right now?
We love our big cars.
We love our SUVs.
We're not changing, and as you point out, China, India, other countries are emerging into... I'm told China will be ahead of us in another year.
Yeah, I've heard the same thing, Art.
And the other aspect that's also troubling is that India, by 2050, will be the world's most populous country that will pass China.
Really?
Yeah, as we know, China and India are both Have huge emerging middle classes.
And, of course, they want to have what we've always had, which are two cars in every garage.
And it's going to certainly be economically a race between those two to see who can get that middle class in place first.
And that's going to be a giant problem for controlling climate.
And control it we must, Art.
We absolutely cannot screw this up.
We have to get a hold and reduce CO2.
Well, again, I go back to this story.
Most of these stories have to come through Great Britain.
We don't originate them here.
But this worries me.
Let me again read a little more of it this time to you.
Had you read this yet?
No, I heard about it yesterday from a number of the websites.
Antarctica?
I was outraged to hear about it this morning, but it is true.
You're absolutely correct.
I can confirm that.
God!
Let's see, it says, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the world's oceans have absorbed about a quarter of the 500 gigatons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere by humans.
500 gigatons!
Now, what I'm worried about again, and I really am worried about this, a thousand years to most people listening right now, hey, that sounds pretty good, you know?
That's okay for children, that's okay for grandchildren.
A thousand years, that sounds pretty good.
Everybody's going, okay, let's not worry about it.
What I'm worried about is some sort of trigger that would cause a release in perhaps just one of these oceans, releasing its CO2 suddenly.
No, that would be a catastrophe.
And again, the physics of this has been worked out.
It is possible.
There's an even scarier prospect, or that's quite related to that.
What if it isn't CO2 that gets out, but what if it's methane?
There's a guy at Northwestern named Greg Riskin, the chemical engineer, a couple years ago, did some calculations that the Black Sea has at its base, at its bottom, enormous quantities of methane, which could come out of solution.
And were this to happen, of course, methane is flammable.
So you have this big bubble of methane come out and it's struck by lightning.
And in his scenario, he had this over China and burning up about half of Asia.
Well, everybody laughed.
Ha ha ha.
Except the physics is quite correct.
And now your statement about the storage of CO2, the same happens to methane.
And so we have these unbelievable greenhouse gases.
And let's just say that the CO2 does come out, you've got all of a sudden a huge plug of new greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
And Art, you know about feedbacks, that when we melt ice, the albedo of the planet reduces.
Albedo, of course, is reflectivity.
So all the ice, when it goes away from Greenland and Antarctica, exposes black rock, which absorbs more sunlight, which makes the planet warmer, which melts more ice.
Which makes more warmth.
And so you see how this circular pattern goes.
And it's funny you talk about tipping points.
Because again, my friend Joe Kirchnick said, look, he's really worried about one of these runaway tipping points.
And perhaps this sudden release of CO2 would do just that.
In which case, the 1,000-year estimate, as he said downstairs, is out the window.
It would be much faster.
If we had 1,000 parts per million right now.
Yep.
What would it be like?
Would we be unable to breathe?
What change will occur with a thousand parts per million?
Well, we have a pretty good geological record of past CO2, and the last time we had a thousand parts per million was 60 million years ago.
It was the Eocene.
It was the last time that we have the fossils of crocodiles and palm trees past the Arctic Circle All the way up almost to the North Pole, so that world would be absolutely globally warmed.
But at the same time, 1000 ppm, certainly you could breathe.
CO2 at that level isn't going to affect us physiologically.
But what will happen, and the biggest danger, aside from these real catastrophes that you've honed in on, the biggest catastrophe of course would be the sea level rise.
And I talked about a thousand years from now that we could start this pathway to the mass extinction.
But a thousand years from now, the sea level rise will have finished and we will have sea level 240 feet higher than we have now.
So, yeah, a thousand years from now there's a lot of trouble, but there would have been tons of trouble well before that.
How do you propose to convince people Who have already sighed a big sigh of relief because you mentioned a thousand years.
Why should they worry?
They're not going to be around, nor will their children or even their grandchildren.
Yeah, well, I try to spell this out.
I hate to sound like I'm plugging a book, but I really, in this recently written book of mine, I tried to have a timetable.
Try to let people see in step-by-step fashion, first of all, why the past relates to the future.
What can the past tell us And what do we really need to do?
I mean, this is sort of the ground truth.
It's the worst news about global warming.
It comes from the past.
By 2050, sea level will have risen at least by a meter.
That alone is going to cause enormous and catastrophic changes on this planet for the simple reason that if sea level rises three feet, the deltas, which now actually give us about one quarter of our food, deltas are enormously productive.
Well, with a 1 meter sea level rise, much of the deltaic areas on the planet, the Nile Delta, the Mississippi Delta, all these rich agricultural regions get injection of salt.
The sea doesn't have to cover them to have them turn into wasteland, because as you know, the salt runs up these freshwater estuaries, and it kills the soil.
So even by 2050, when we're peaking, human population will be heading towards 9 billion, we should see a massive reduction in food.
So that is our kids, and our kids' kids.
That's true.
It is.
I wonder how many billion people we can sustain, or the planet can sustain, on the Earth.
In fact, that's a very good question for you, which we will ask when we come back.
A caller, oh, I don't know, last week or the week before said, last week actually, I believe, and he called up during the open line session and said, you know what?
Alright, the real problem, and the real way to solve it, is population.
Now, Where are we right now?
Six billion?
Headed for nine billion?
You know, I don't know.
A lot of billions, anyway.
There really are many of us and we want cars.
We want washing machines and dryers and, you know, all over the world people pretty much really want the same thing.
They see our movies.
Believe me, they see our movies.
And people are pretty much the same the world over.
They want the comforts that we enjoy here in the U.S.
So, you know, I wonder how many billions of people the planet can actually sustain.
We'll ask Professor Ward in a moment.
All right, Professor Ward, I know this is not really your area of expertise, but you must have given it some thought.
Where are we now?
Six billion and climbing?
Six billion and climbing fast.
Climbing fast.
And you said nine billion by when?
Well, some estimates are 2050, others say 2200, but that's really parsing.
We're certainly going to go up by a third within a couple of generations.
That whole idea or question about how many people can the Earth support is funny.
I'm in my office, I'm looking at a book by that title written a few years ago, and it has some scary conclusions.
How many people you could really stuff on this planet?
It turns out many, but their standard of living would be... Well, okay, let me qualify it a little bit.
Not just stuff on the planet, Professor, but stuff on the planet with the kind of standard of living that they're all going to want.
I don't think we can even have six billion people on this planet with the standard of living that we all want.
And again, let's go back to carbon.
You can see that six billion people now with a coal-fired lifestyle, which is pretty much what India and China are going to have.
China, as you know, is putting online two to three coal-fired electricity plants per week.
And it's all coal, because they don't have the oil to run their power plants.
They don't have much in the way of nuclear.
So coal it is.
India's the same thing.
So because of these extra demand with all these new people that we're producing, We are rapidly changing the atmosphere of this planet, so that really is going to impact on our food production, because it's not just the lifestyle of a middle class, but can you get your kids enough to eat?
It's really going to dictate how the future unfolds.
By the way, Professor, if your guest is awake and would like a word with the audience, I'd be more than willing to say, put him on, let him have his say.
Okay, next break I'll run down.
He is a genius.
He's the guy that discovered Snowball Earth, the fact that the planet froze from cover to cover back 700 million years ago and once 2.3 billion years ago.
I mean, this guy is a tremendous, interesting character.
Joe Kirschvink.
So, we could experience another mass extinction.
If things went wrong, Professor, how quickly could it unfold if it went all wrong?
Well, that's a great question, Art, and what I worry about is, again, that thousand-year number is when things start.
Now, let's go through the sequence of events, because it's not just it gets warmer and things die.
As you well know, what drives currents and wind on this planet is the differential in heat.
The fact that our north and south poles are cold, our equator is warm, that difference in heat drives all the currents.
It drives things You know, the popular misconception of global warming, the future world, is super storms.
Well, as we get towards a really globally warmed world, we will indeed have an increase in storm violence.
But when we finally get the poles that are almost as warm as the equator, all storms turn off.
Wind slows down.
You get an absolutely calm world, not a really agitated world, because there's no heat differential anymore.
The thermal hailing currents that you so ably talked about in producing The Day After Tomorrow, in that movie and in that script that you produced, I know that you switched that thing off.
Well, it can get switched off, and it can get switched off simply when the Arctic is warm enough That it no longer drives these thermal hailing circulation patterns.
We've seen it split and we've seen it slow down.
We haven't seen it yet turn off, but that could be ahead of us yet.
Yeah, turning off, and the other thing that even scares me more than turning off is if it changes position and starts dumping its cargo of water Not way up north, because way up north, by the time that water sinks down, it's cool.
And cool water carries lots of oxygen.
But if it shifts to the point where it drops water down that has this warm water, warm water carries no oxygen.
And we know that at the end of the Paleocene, which was 63 million years ago, the conveyor belt switched to the point that oxygen-free water gets dumped on the deep ocean.
The deep ocean went anoxic.
No oxygen.
And over time, the entire ocean became like the Black Sea.
So that's the scenario.
When that happens, a whole new type of bacteria can emerge.
And these are bacteria that produce the very poisonous gas hydrogen sulfide as a byproduct of metabolism.
If these things get to the surface, they can start releasing this hydrogen sulfide as big bubbles that come out.
And that, we think, was what caused the Permian extinction, which was the biggest of all mass extinctions.
My lab just discovered last week, one of my grad students finally found evidence that the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction was caused by these great bubbles of hydrogen sulfide coming out 200 million years ago, and we have 12 others.
It can certainly happen again, and step one of that is removing the ice caps.
When that happens, this process starts going.
All right, let's get down to cases with the northern ice cap, for example.
I've seen photographs, and I think the audience has, that just scare the hell out of you.
It looks, you know, in 40 or 50 years, it looks as though 40% or better of the ice at the North Pole is gone.
Just gone.
Yeah, it's absolutely going very fast.
And again, we don't worry too much about ice cap melting In terms of sea level rise.
Because it's already... Right.
Because it's already in the water.
I've got that part.
The stuff on Greenland, that's what scares a lot of us.
Because Greenland is going really fast.
And we're not talking about a thousand years from now.
We're talking Greenland could be totally gone in a hundred to two hundred years from now.
Wow.
And it's going to be... And even before it's totally gone, sea level begins to rise really fast.
And so this upward rise in sea level I mean, let's face it, Art, the country of Bangladesh, if they had a six-foot rise in sea level, between one-third and one-half the population would be displaced.
Where are they going to go?
They have to go inland, and Bangladesh has no mountains.
It's stuck a big lowland.
There was a big tidal wave some years ago, not the most recent one, that killed many people there just because it's so low.
Bangladesh is one of many countries that even a four- to five-foot sea level rise will just Devastate.
I mean, devastate because the farmlands are gone and the displacement of people.
Where are the people going to go?
I have no idea, Professor, but I do know this.
I know that when you have stories in the news about mass anything in Bangladesh, people roll their eyes.
Like, yeah, you know, that kind of stuff always happens in Bangladesh.
Well, let's try San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Washington, D.C.
then.
Oh, that'll raise eyebrows.
Yeah, so let's try a 6 foot to 8 foot sea level rise in these coastal cities and you see what happens.
You know, just as an interesting little side light, I started asking myself, because I'm writing a book proposal on what sea level rise would do to America.
Right.
And just trying to think about, you know, so much of cities, the infrastructure of cities, the subterranean, think of all the electrical systems.
systems, and all the sewage systems, and all the water systems.
So even when we have a slight sea level rise, we start flooding all that stuff.
You can't get to it.
You can't get to your electricals, and they start shorting out under salt water.
Chicago had some major flood some years ago, I remember, and it caused all kinds of havoc.
When we have a six-foot sea level rise on the coastal cities of America, I mean, parts
of those cities will have to be abandoned, not because they're flooded, but because they
moves their infrastructure.
What about Manhattan?
Well, Manhattan's in big trouble.
I mean, just Wall Street itself, all that stuff is right down at the lower end of Manhattan, it's all at sea level.
And you've just got water lapping up and affecting, again, so much of that is built up, and you've got all the sewage, you've got all the electricity down there.
Who's going to get in there and be able to work on that stuff when it gets flooded by seawater?
You see, Professor, the problem is that a lot of people don't believe this.
And they don't believe it because there has been a concerted effort to debunk what you're saying.
Well, that's where the rock record really helps.
And again, I've been on this radio tour for this book for the last two weeks.
And I've been able to speak to stations all over the country.
That's kind of fun.
You get plunked down in a different living room night by night and talk to various radio personalities.
Some places really don't believe it.
I know.
A guy in Houston, the radio station there, absolutely was hostile to the thought that it just can't be happening.
Hostile is the right word.
I get them.
People are loathe to come on.
For example, if I begin taking calls, I probably won't get them.
But on the other hand, I've got a computer next to me where people using a pseudoname can type anything they want.
And you just would not believe the hostility to this.
It's unbelievable.
Truly it is.
I mean, whoever has been doing an anti-global warming campaign has been doing a very good job.
Well, it's like the cigarette lobby I heard was hired by the oil companies to work on the global warming campaign just as well.
Part of it came certainly from those groups.
Well, I've had professors on the air and, you know, people will write in and say, well, look, you know, he's just doing it for the money.
And the professor in question will frequently say, look, if I wanted money, I'd be doing it for the other side.
Because if I want grants, if I want money, and I want to debunk global warming, I can get all the money I want.
That's pretty dirty money, though, isn't it, Art?
Well, if you're selling out your beliefs, it certainly is.
Well, the one that I keep hearing over and over from the call-ins is this idea that there's no connection between carbon dioxide and global temperature.
And the second one I hear over and over, of course, is that even if there were, there are natural cycles, and humans have nothing to do with this whatsoever.
Well, that part's true.
I mean, there are natural cycles.
But I also argue with the fact that humans have nothing to do with it.
Oh, I totally agree with you.
And so what I try to trot out is the rock record, which can tell us what CO2 was in the past and can also tell us from the fossil record what types of animals were around.
When you have a high CO2 from the rock record and you recognize at the same time there were coral reefs all the way up to the Arctic, there were palm trees in the Arctic, it's not really Arctic anymore.
On the other hand, when we have very low carbon dioxide, we see times when we have glaciers.
They're going all the way down to the mid-latitudes.
CO2 got so low at certain times that we almost went completely glacial.
These snowball events that I talked about.
So, there's a very good correspondence.
And then secondly, about humans doing it, we just have to look back to before the Industrial Revolution.
We had low CO2, 180 to 240 bouncing around for the last 3 million years.
Well, come humans and bang, here we are.
Um, this tipping point thing, um, I, I...
I hear a great deal about it.
We see it going on in a way up north now as the ice melts.
It gets hotter because it's darker.
It absorbs more heat.
Anybody who lives out here where I am in the desert or even in other warm places knows that if you have a white car, it gets pretty warm in the sun.
If you've got a dark colored or say a black car, it becomes completely intolerable when it sits in the sun.
Absolutely.
So that's what you're operating on.
I'm very concerned about this tipping point thing.
Because to a degree, Professor, I'm kind of like everybody else.
A thousand years?
Eh.
My children, their children, all will be okay.
Pretty much, although you say there'll be trouble around 2050.
But a thousand years, that's a long way off.
You're not going to get people motivated To change their lifestyles in any way at all, with that kind of talk.
But if you're saying something is going to happen pretty soon, you might motivate them.
Well, it looks like pretty soon is certainly happening if we look at the number of hot years, and if we look at the effect between this heat and the hurricane cycles.
Again, even though way off in the future the globally warmed world is very calm, Getting there is another story, and again, the Atlantic hurricane forecast I just saw coming out is for another bang-bang year.
I think we got lulled to sleep last year.
There were fewer than expected.
That's right.
And people say, aha, it's over!
We got through that.
The other thing I keep finding about this whole global warming debate that's so troubling is that people want it to be over, and the press I kind of use it as, well, we've done that story, now it's time to move on to something else.
I know, that's our breath.
Wishful thinking is going to go away.
Alright, there have been some pretty wild ideas proposed by some scientists to technologically cool the planet, to put up some reflectors so not as much sunlight gets in, perhaps to have a program of spraying To reflect light.
Is there anything out there that is tempting, that's interesting, that might work?
Yeah, there's a lot of solutions and my sense is that what we're going to have to do is fix this whole thing technologically.
You know, the conservation movement is sort of based on, let's go back to nature.
Well, nature ain't going to fix it because it's so thoroughly broken.
I think the survival of the human race is really going to depend on global engineering.
On massive scales.
And we're going to have to get our acts together to coordinate this as a world, not as individual countries, which is why it could be so darn hard to do.
But for instance, there's a new program in the Pacific, a pilot program right now, in which they're seeding the Pacific.
So much of the ocean out there, the middle oceans, as you know, is a desert.
It's a biologically empty place.
Because there's not enough nutrients.
So they're seeding it with iron.
Lots of fine iron pellets.
...into the surface waters, and it's causing plankton blooms, enormous plankton blooms.
And this plankton does what?
It takes up CO2, and the plankton live for a while, they die, they fall down to the deep bottom, and take that carbon out, it falls into the sediment, and it's out of the system.
So this is a hope, is that we can seed the world, or the big ocean, middle parts of the oceans, to produce so much plankton, that you can reduce carbon dioxide in this way.
Is the United States actively involved in this?
These are private companies, from what I've heard.
Private companies?
It isn't even government.
These are private companies that are thinking, you know, the solution to so much of this problem might have to be private enterprise.
Well, where's the profit, though?
I mean, why are private companies doing it?
How do they make money?
Well, the contracts would come from governments.
Whole nations, they hope, would glom onto this type of technology, realizing that After we have a couple of giant catastrophes, I have another friend, David Battisti, who's a great modeler at the University of Washington, where I work, and he said he thinks it's going to take a huge couple of big shocks, and by shocks he means the mass mortality of humans from a global warming-derived incident or two, to really get people to get their act together.
And the other thing he said, the sad thing, it will almost demand not a global country, but Well, a million people just sat straight up in their seats when you said that.
I know they did.
And they said, gee, he's talking about a new world order.
United Nations what it should be instead of what it is because it's going to take
a concentrated global effort to get things done. Well a million people just
sat straight up in their seats when you said that. I know they did. And they said
gee he's talking about a new world order.
Well black helicopters. The trouble is how else we're going to do it?
We're seeing what one country can do, the United States, in torpedoing absolutely necessary ways of cutting back on CO2.
We can't let it go past 475.
I've heard that is the number.
500 at the most is really the tipping point at which CO2 crashes and we can't get back.
So the people I talk to say if we get above about 500, the game's over. So our whole business now is to make sure
we don't surpass 500. We're at 380 and climbing. So it's not as if we have a long time
to get this done.
If we don't change anything, Professor, when might we hit 500? Can we project that?
Yeah, if it's two per year. So in 50 years, there's 100 right there and at 380 we're at
So, 50 years from now, if things continue as they continue, we hit just about 500, we're at the tipping point.
But, things aren't continuing at the same rate, because again, with these new Chinese plants, I noticed that Canada, which thinks of itself as such a green country, up in Edmonton, they have the oil shale project.
They're turning All right, Professor, hold it right there.
Professor Peter Ward is my guest, and we will be right back.
Indeed, here I am.
My guest is Professor Peter Ward.
Now, I'll tell you what I'd like to do.
on earth. All right professor, hold it right there.
Professor Peter Ward is my guest and we will be right back.
Indeed, here I am. My guest is Professor Peter Ward. Now, tell you what I'd like to do. He's going to bring on
perhaps, the professor is staying with him at the moment and we'll chat with him. But you know what I want to do on
I want to line up a bunch of skeptics.
I really do.
Now, that doesn't mean that I want a bunch of screaming and yelling because that's not what I'm after, but if you have A legitimate, skeptical point of view that you would like to argue, I'd really like to get you on the air.
That's the only way we're going to get past some of this, and I understand that many of you are reluctant to call with a contrarian point of view, but I want you to.
So, if you have a contrarian point of view, please get to your telephone, fill up the lines, and get ready.
Professor Peter Ward, back in a moment.
All right, Professor Ward, welcome back.
Thanks, Art.
Is your visitor of a mind to say a word or two?
Well, I went down and pounded on the door, and he seemed to be snoring away.
Maybe not.
All right.
Look, I've invited the audience.
The only way I can reasonably see to drill this into people's heads and get them to understand Uh, is to have some contrarian points of view, and people are very hesitant to do that, you know, to approach a guest and say, no, no, no, I think you're full of it, and here's why.
And so I'd like to get, we'll screen and we'll get to some of that, all right?
It'll make it a much more interesting program.
I don't want people just agreeing or we don't get anywhere.
I do want to ask you, though, with respect to the Greenland ice sheet, which is very, very important because that ice, of course, is above sea level.
And when it melts, if it melts, it will add to sea level in a way that'll make Manhattan and a lot of other places very uncomfortable.
Now, what do we know about the stability of the Greenland ice sheet?
Well, we certainly know that it's melting more rapidly now than any time since people began observing.
There's some curious stuff going on.
It's thinning at the edges.
Part of it is thickening in the center, and people have taken some false hope from that, saying, see, it's right in the middle.
It's getting thicker.
But this is because it's snowing a little more heavily up there because of the warming going on all around.
The thinning itself is what's so scary.
It thins to a certain point where then big pieces of it break off and much more rapid melting takes place.
So it's not a straight line, it's a long slow melt and then a really rapid disintegration.
And a really rapid disintegration?
Yeah, you get to a certain point, and again we're talking about tipping points, and this is where really the physics and the dynamics of melting ice is becoming very interesting to an awful lot of ice physicists.
And they're trying to understand now, At what point does this ice, instead of slowly drip away, really start speeding up and it's melting?
And that's the big fear.
Professor, how many of your colleagues disagree with you?
How much disagreement is left?
I mean, a lot of people have come on and said, Global warming now is a settled science, meaning there's no more argument to it.
It's happening and that's that.
Is that your position or are there still a lot of contrarian scientists out there?
I don't know of any contrarian scientists about global warming.
Where the debate still goes on is on these mass extinctions.
Because there are still people that think, oh gee, you know, large-body comets and asteroids are what cause these things, or maybe supernovae or something extraterrestrial.
This is so brand new, this understanding that several of our groups are finding with rapid global warming, that there's a lot of interesting give and take on that.
I mean, that's where the frontier of the science is right now.
You saw the day after tomorrow, right?
Oh, I did.
I actually saw the screenplay before it came out.
All right.
Well, it, of course, was packed into a couple of hours, as you have to do with movies, so because of that reason, obvious liberties were taken with timelines and so forth.
But that said, what about the basic science presented in it?
Oh, the science was good.
It's been one of the real worries, certainly, that Europe itself gets cold if we stop the thermohaline circulation, but what I've tried to do and spell out is that this is just going to be a hiccup along the way.
Yeah, Europe's going to get cold, but not for long.
The run-up of carbon dioxide so heats the world that Europe cools and then warms right back up again in a few decades and runs right by that.
It's kind of like a short-term cooling event, and then it really takes off with this warming.
Okay.
All right.
I would very much like to just sort of fool around, take a few calls.
Chad in Oklahoma, you're on with Professor Ward.
Hey Art, how are you doing?
I'm fine, Chad.
It's the first time I've called you.
I've listened to you for a long time.
Professor, how do you, how can you change the way the parts per million of carbon dioxide is in the air without putting us back in the horse and buggy era?
Yeah, great question.
One of the things that I've been really struck by is when I'm talking to engineering colleagues and listening to other people talk about this is that, sure enough, there's going to be great challenges to our economy if we stop industrialization.
You're right, we go back to the horse and buggy.
On the other hand, why don't we look at this from a capitalistic point of view, the country that figures out first.
How to really make equipment greener.
The way that you have solutions to this is going to require entirely new ways of engineering, entirely new ways of manufacturing.
Somebody's going to get there first, and whoever gets there first gets there rich.
China is trying its darndest right now to come up with engineering solutions on how to reduce greenhouse emissions and yet at the same time keep productivity up.
If that sort of solution, I think, I mean, look at Toyota.
Toyota has become the number one auto seller in the world.
It's not just their hybrids, but that has certainly helped, because they have very quickly adapted to the marketplace, and the U.S.
automakers have not.
We have to be nimble, I think, in terms of business, and certainly in terms of engineering.
In the 70s, the Japanese car sold.
Everything else was a dinosaur.
You could hardly get a cent for it.
And now, we appear to be approaching that point again, and U.S.
automakers are not on top of it again.
Oh, absolutely right.
No, I just, I don't get it.
On the one hand, companies make what people want, and it is fair to look around and say, look at all the SUVs around, that seems to be what people want.
Well, there's one place on earth where they really do help.
I just spent four blessed months in Australia, and I was up at the North End, a place called Broome.
They have a wet season, and in the wet season it gets so muddy the roads disappear, and everybody had Land Rovers, and I realized why.
Well, there may not be a need, but there's a want.
And that's all it takes.
I mean, if people want them, then U.S.
And you really don't want to be stuck walking home with your car in the bog in that sort
of country.
But other than that, there's not really a need for all those suburban SUVs that we have
in America.
Well, there may not be a need, but there's a want.
And that's all it takes.
I mean, if people want them, then U.S. automakers are going to make them.
But once again, they're going to be surprised.
The gas prices are already moving into a place where lots of people are beginning to say, you know, I can't handle this.
Our family budget can't handle this.
And so we're going to have to get a smaller car.
So we're kind of right back where we were in the 70s.
Yeah, absolutely.
I've heard that it's now costing a thousand dollars more per year for the typical family just on gasoline.
I mean, that's a hit.
Oh, that's a hit.
All right.
Lot of people in trouble.
And the way our country is set up...
You know, we like to live in the burbs and drive to work.
So, I just, in my wildest dreams, I cannot imagine, Professor, how we're going to, you know, in a way, I understand what the current administration is doing.
And it's like they're, kind of like they're in denial.
And I can't say that I blame them because I don't, kind of like that last caller said, how are we going to do this?
Without sliding back to an earlier day that nobody's going to like.
Well, it's going to be the great challenge to us from an engineering point of view.
In my own city, I'm seeing more and more and more bicycles emerging.
The downside of that is because we have more cars at the same time, there's an awful lot of nasty car-bike wrecks going on around here.
Well, of course, and I'm not prepared to go to a bike.
I live out here where I've got to have a car.
Yeah, absolutely.
The western cities are going to be the worst off.
You know, the old eastern cities where they're all piled up on one on top of the other.
Actually, those may become the cities of the future again where you can walk to the corner store where we don't have giant supermarkets because we do get out of our cars.
You know, they're about to charge people to drive in New York City.
That's going to really change things in there, too, from a city point of view.
Majority of people, I think, in New York City don't own a car.
Absolutely.
Where would you park it?
That's right.
Doug in Hollywood, Hollywood, California, I presume, west of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Yes, that's me.
It's an honor to be on your show, Art, and it's an honor to be able to ask you a question, Mr. Ward.
I have your book, The Life and Death of Planet Earth, and what I wanted to ask you is how do you know that this particular episode of global warming is not part of a A cycle that we've noticed over the last, oh, let's say, I think it was about every 500 years ago, or, excuse me, 500 years or so, we noticed global cooling as from around 1100 to the 1600s when the Earth cooled down significantly, and then we had the Little Ice Age, and then after that the Earth has been warming up again, and that appears to be a cycle.
So I wanted to ask you about that.
Yeah, that's a really great question, and that's one of the... You hear all types of criticism to the whole global warming and carbon dioxide.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing the science.
I just want to... I'm just wanting to put a question out there, because I want to know both sides of the issue.
Yeah, what I'm saying is that there are cycles, and the scientists who look at this have to be really careful to try to divest any sort of analysis.
Get those cycles out of there.
The way I've seen it responded to by the climate people I respect is that, yes, we had the Little Ice Age, and we've had these ups and downs, but where we are now in CO2 is well higher, well beyond anything that took place in the Little Ice Age all the way back to 10, 12,000 years ago.
You know, Al Gore in his movie showed that graph at the end, and still he's dead on.
In some things I don't think he was very accurate, but on that one he is.
We've moved out of sort of the ping-pong up and down of the 180 to 250 in parts per million of CO2 that led to those short-term climate events.
We're beyond that.
Now, you see, Professor, you mentioned the name Al Gore.
Now, I can guarantee you that just mentioning the name Al Gore will obliterate the thinking processes of a third of the listeners Right there.
I mean, they are so upset with Al Gore, they hate him so much, that they will say, oh, if he's saying anything about Al Gore, then I'm turning the radio off.
I guarantee it.
That's the kind of message I'll get.
Well, have him call.
I love this.
Let's have some give and take here.
OK, we'll get it.
Caller, is that enough of an... I think what the caller wants to know is...
The ice ages and the climate change is coming and going.
The natural cycles.
How positive are we that we can pin X number of percentage on human beings above and beyond any cycle going on?
Yeah, again, that's a really fair question.
I guess the response is that we have so much more CO2 and that we could directly relate that to human activities.
This isn't the Earth spitting out more.
That's been pretty constant.
But you go back, the Industrial Revolution of 1800 was the point at which it just really started climbing out the window.
And then with the 1950s and the huge run-up in human population, it accelerates.
So you really can correlate the acceleration of industrialization to this acceleration of the rise of atmospheric CO2.
Caller?
Seems like cause and effect to me.
Yeah.
Caller?
Hello.
Anything else?
I was curious, at what point in human history, or, I mean, excuse me, Earth history, can you go back to see a level of CO2 similar to or comparable to what we have today?
Okay.
Yeah, I think what the last time we had, it's really on the downward slide, and this was probably the Pliocene, which would have been I have the CO2 curve in this most recent book I wrote, and the CO2 curve, if I can remember, was probably about 10 million years ago.
It's on the downward slope.
It finally gets down to the point where we plug into the ice ages.
As you know, if you saw Life and Death of Planet Earth, it's really life that keeps sequestering all the carbon dioxide.
It's so funny, it's ironic, that here we worry about too much carbon dioxide, and yet really the end of life on this planet will be from too little carbon dioxide.
Humans' challenge is going to be to regulate it.
We're going to bring it down now, but in the future, our challenge will be to bring it back up again.
All right.
Mike in Livermore, California.
You're on with Professor Ward.
Art, you've made my day now.
I've finally got through to you.
Good.
Hey, and before I ask my question, I have a theory of my own that I've always had, and I wanted to tell you, that the dinosaurs' extinction was caused by themselves.
Because what is one of the heavy... Methane.
Methane.
Methane.
And what do dinosaurs, most of them, the biggest ones, eat?
They eat greens.
And what causes, what result of that is?
Flacculence and methane.
So they basically farted themselves to death.
But it's a great honor to talk to Mr. Ward here, and I wanted to ask him... It's a good story you told, but I don't think that's how it happened.
No, I doubt it either.
It's my little joke.
Come on, Gary Larson said it was smoking, and why not?
Yeah, why not?
Listen, let's get back to what the last caller was talking about, and the cyclical of it.
What about the sun?
And the fact that it's heating up the Earth's core, and from that we're getting more volcanic activity, and can that be correlated to any of the CO2?
Yeah, the sun is getting warmer, and that's absolutely true.
It's 33% more energetic, more energy comes from it and hits the Earth now than it did when the Earth was formed.
about when the when the riots started happening. Yeah the sun is getting warmer
I mean that's absolutely true it's 33% more energetic more energy comes from it
and hits the earth now than it did when the earth was formed but the volcanic
activity is really independent of the Sun although it warms the planet it
doesn't warm the deep parts of the planet that would cause volcanic
That's all the radioactive stuff.
No, but what about the atmosphere, though?
Well, it's still not enough to get down.
It's a trivial rise in atmosphere.
It's hideous to us, but if the atmosphere is like 40 degrees Fahrenheit or 60 degrees Fahrenheit, it doesn't matter.
It's not going to heat up rocks deep down.
In any way close enough to cause any more volcanic... Yes, okay, but what about the Sun as an agent in what we're calling global warming?
Ah, now that's a much better question.
Okay.
One of the most relevant and interesting critiques of all is could the global warming cycles that we're seeing actually be related not to carbon dioxide, but to solar cycles themselves?
Yes.
In the last year there's been a lot of give-and-take on this particular one And on the surface of it, it seems like a pretty good criticism.
But we do not see records, at least records that we can relate back to.
When people have been watching sunspots, for instance, for the last 150 years or more, we don't see, for instance, anything that correlates sunspot activity.
And we know sunspots themselves are correlated to the sun's activity of becoming quiescent and then becoming more stormy and going quiescent.
Those don't relate.
They don't correlate at all to the climate cycles that we see in the planet.
Now, maybe we have pulses of the Sun that were more energetic before human history, before we've had a record of it.
Well, we just can't answer that one.
But at least the solar people that I know, and I've asked them explicitly, and they say, no, I don't think so.
No, we're at a solar minimum right now.
Yep.
And we have still been noting these outrageous temperature hikes going on.
Yeah, there you go indeed.
How much of a possibility, Professor, is it that the scientists like yourself are wrong?
How much possibility is left that you're wrong?
Well, I'm sure I'm wrong about a lot of this world.
In terms of the whole issue of global warming, there are so many individual aspects to it that I bet I'm wrong about a lot of it.
The easiest thing to be wrong about are the estimates of when things are going to happen.
I mean, you know as well as I do that forecasting the future is a very tough business.
But the overall trends, I bet I'm not wrong.
And the sequence of events, I think I'm probably right on.
And again, at the end of this book I've just written, under a green sky, I just lay out, as best I can see it, what the next thousand years is going to look like.
All right, Professor.
Hold it right there.
We've got to take a break.
Professor Peter Ward is my guest.
We will be right back.
Here I am.
I think all of us want to know if this is real.
Don't we?
You know, you see stories about dead zones in the ocean.
Areas in the ocean where nothing lives, where nothing can live, because there's either no nutrients or no oxygen or dead zones in the ocean.
Scary as hell.
You hear about... I read a story not long ago about... I believe it said that if nothing changes, there'll be no fish left in the ocean in 50 years.
No fish left in the ocean in 50 years.
Well, that's scary stuff.
In a moment we'll ask Professor Ward about exactly that.
So, Professor, there were stories about no more fish in the ocean 50 years, if we don't change what we're doing.
Dead zones, reading all about those all the time.
Whales and other sea animals behaving in strange, strange ways.
The oceans seem as though they're changing.
What's going on?
Yeah, these dead zones are really spooky, aren't they?
They are.
We've got them in smaller bodies of water.
There's a place called Hood Canal in my state, Washington State, that's entirely dead now.
But the Gulf of Mexico has them.
And these are big areas of water where the oxygen is out.
They move along as coherent sort of bodies of water, separated for the oxygenated water.
And indeed, they can enlarge and do.
And when they cover over a sea bottom, for instance, all of, even the infauna, the stuff that lives buried within the sediment, dies off.
These are, of course, due to overproduction of the water.
If you have too much nitrate and phosphate, you get animals living like crazy, plants blooming away, and then they use up the nutrients and die, and they rot.
And yet, there's so many animals and plants that the rotting uses up every bit of oxygen, and that bit of water goes anoxic.
Now, let's imagine that all of the oceans in the world Alright, I'm going to just sort of keep bringing in calls and we'll see what we get.
Diana in Florida, you're on with Professor Ward.
Thank you, Art.
Sir, I have all the respect for you, but I'm worried because when we put out CO2 I'm not smart like you.
Carbon dioxide.
Plants need that to live.
So then they give off oxygen in return.
And you talked about India and China.
OK, they're not on Mars and Mars is heating up.
So I have a feeling that this has more to do with the sun.
And I think that people are just trying to cash in on it by causing a global tax on carbon dioxide.
And then also, Well, you make a lot more money on the SUVs than you do on smaller cars.
I'm not sure about that one, but... Yeah, that's a good point about the global warming on Mars.
We should touch on that.
Yeah, let's.
Because that is an interesting story that people are using to say that, see, it's caused by the sun has warmed up everything.
If Mars warmed up at the same time the Earth is warming up, well, that must show that it's the sun.
But some of my NASA buddies have gone back and really taken a good hard look at those data, and they're not standing up to scrutiny.
I mean, your comments about carbon dioxide, and perhaps it's just this whole thing is being led by some big business or governmental group trying to make money.
I come from the 60s.
I'm paranoid as anybody.
But even now, the evidence to me suggests that's probably not the case, that this thing really is real.
Okay.
Let's move to Costa Mesa, California, and Steve, you're on the air with Professor Ward.
Well, hi Art.
Hi Peter.
Good to have you.
I read a book about 10 years ago called Entropy.
I don't remember who it was by, but you can guess where I'm going with this.
The guy pretty much said that we reach a watershed with every Energy thing with coal, with wood.
We're going to do the same thing with fossil fuels.
And I'm just wondering where it's going to go.
I mean, we're always going to have some kind of energy source and it's going to cause some kind of problem.
You know, what are we going to do?
You know, what are we going to do well?
That's a pretty good question, Professor.
What are we going to do?
Well, it's a great question on where's the energy going to come from.
That's right.
Just coming off Australia, I was seeing a huge area of land with very few people in it.
And what I saw taking place there is that they had a combination of giant solar fields and big wind generating machines that were fueling small villages So what they're trying to do is use the local sources around them instead of trying to build a plant that's large enough to power an entire city, is do it small and do it locally and try to generate power around you.
And also in Australia, they have people now that are putting solar panels on their roof and generating enough electricity that they're starting to sell it.
Instead of their buying electricity, they can start selling electricity It's not cheap to put these panels on.
It takes you about 10 years of selling to break even.
But after that, you're making money.
And so there are solutions.
And this is, of course, a very sunny place.
But it's a case where Australian industry said, hey, let's jump on this.
There's no reason why we can't have this all over Arizona, California, anywhere where we have 30 positions.
Yeah, Nevada.
My state is full of lots of things.
A lot of federal land, about 90% of it federal land.
And we have lots of wind, and Professor, we have lots of sun.
And we would have very few objections to wind generators and solar panels and or anything else that the BLM would decide could be put on their land.
Well, it's the way to go.
It is.
Why we're not going there is a separate question altogether.
Let's go to Jim in Houston, Texas.
You're on the air.
Hi Art.
It's a true joy to be able to talk to you.
I've been a fan of yours for a dozen years or more.
Thank you.
I love most of the stuff you do.
But on this point, gentlemen, I think that we've stopped looking at information that doesn't agree with your point of view.
There's a book I was told not to tell the title, but by Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, supported by meteorological societies in Canada, the United States, and Australia.
And for that matter, the state meteorologist in Oregon and I believe it's Delaware.
And they say that the CO2 cause for global warming is And they debunk it on every page of their book by scientific reasoning and scientific research.
Alright, well can you quote a couple of the debunking points for us?
Okay.
What I want to say in terms of points is, number one, you mentioned palm trees in the Arctic.
Let's say that happens again.
There's green stuff growing where it's not growing today.
So if you take away the Mississippi Delta, But you open up all of Northern Canada, which is many times larger than our breadbasket.
And for that matter, you open up Russia, which is many, many times larger than the United States.
And all that dark earth that you say is going to be exposed, you've got some land there that's available for cultivation.
So the idea that we're not going to have land to cultivate is just hype.
Or maybe it should be said a different way.
Maybe a different way.
There'll be land to cultivate, it just won't be the land we're cultivating now.
Correct.
Correct.
Okay, Professor?
Yeah, it's a great point, and actually I was thinking about the same thing a couple months ago.
I tried to do some calculations on just how much new land would become available.
It's really tough, because it turns out you have to figure out what crops will grow at what latitudes The two big ones, of course, would be Antarctica and Greenland.
Now, let's say we get all the ice gone.
The problem with both of those is that when all that ice melts, the land rises.
And so you have this sort of rebound effect taking place.
But before that happens, it's still very depressed.
And in both cases, we'll have large inland seas that cover it.
And before we can Turn it into a Great Lake scenario, you're going to get a salt lake in there and you could never grow anything on it.
With some engineering, you could certainly engineer your way around that.
I think what we'd have to do is to ensure, because I mean you're absolutely right, we are going to have new places that we will cultivate and we're absolutely going to have to cultivate them.
The downside of it is, even though you've got a globally warmed world, you still have the problem of at high latitudes of a shortened growing season.
I mean, you've got all winter of darkness.
I don't care if it's warm or cold or whatever.
You still can't grow plants.
And so it's the closer you get to the equator, the larger the growing season that you have.
That's quite true.
Short.
So it doesn't work out.
You might not have thought of that.
But if you take a trip far up north, you'll find out he's quite right.
And the growing season is horrendously short.
So I'm not sure it would be.
A case where we could just say, well, all right, we can't grow this in the U.S.
anymore, but we'll grow it up in northern Canada or Greenland or whatever.
May I make one more point?
Yeah, sure.
You've got warmer temperatures in the atmosphere.
Warmer air holds more moisture.
Therefore, all that feet and feet and feet of sea rise, some of that's going to be taken up by simply More humidity in the air worldwide.
So I don't see the great rise in the oceans.
Also, when you take into account that if all the icebergs melted today, you wouldn't raise the ocean an inch because nine-tenths of them are in the water.
And when they melt... Wait a minute, wait a minute, Colin.
The ice in Greenland's not in the water.
The ice at the Antarctic is not in the water.
I understand.
Okay, well, if you melt the ice in Greenland and you melt the ice in the Antarctica, Peter, what do we have?
240 feet, the estimate.
240 feet?
Of rise.
Of rise, yes.
What about the fact that warmer air holds more moisture?
Yeah, but that's the trivial.
It holds more moisture, but it's still present as a gaseous form, and gas is a very dispersed solid molecule.
Thank you Art, Professor Ward.
It would have an absolutely trivial effect on sea level rise.
All right.
To Jim in Montana, you're on with Professor Ward.
Thank you, Art.
Professor Ward, I was wondering if the professor could address the fact that there have been
reports that only 2% of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere is created by mankind.
I'm not familiar with that particular statistic, and I think that's a way under estimation
from what I understand.
It's a very interesting statistic.
It's really tough measurement to get because you've got volcanic sources, of course, and the only way you can get an estimation of CO2 coming out of the volcanoes is to measure a few of them over a rate of time and then do an estimate for what all of them would have to be.
But there's a reverse calculation you can do that suggests that's totally not correct.
And this is simply looking at the base level of CO2 before humans were around.
I mean, we know what that is over long periods of time.
It fluctuates, up and down, up and down.
But again, it goes from about 180 to about 220 or 240.
But as soon as we humans start sitting around here and doing our industry, you know, we pretty much doubled that.
And so, we can look at the amount of time, because CO2, you know, it also is taken out of the atmosphere.
Plants use it, it's a sink, and this and that, but the calculations suggest there's a whole lot more than 2% that humans are doing.
It's way more than that.
Yes, but I mean, if you look at, okay, you said earlier that there have been five mass extinctions that weren't caused by a meteor hit, correct?
Yep, probably 14 actually.
And most of those, or at least some of those, could be attributed to CO2 releases from the ocean?
No, probably they're coming from big volcanic events.
But here's where I need to clarify that.
I'm glad you brought that up.
These things took place during times when there were things called flood basalts.
This isn't a normal volcano.
A flood basalt is giant cracks in the ground opening up and enormous amounts of lava come pouring out.
For instance, the whole eastern part of Washington State is all basalt.
It all came out about 30 million years ago.
Russia, one quarter of Siberia is covered by basalt.
It came out over a million years.
That's the same time that the Permian extinction took place.
The entire East Coast, from New York up into the Palisades, all of that is basalt that came out and covers a huge area of the Atlantic under the seabeds.
That came out at the same time we had the Triassic mass extinctions.
So these flood basalts are short-term times when so much lava comes out. But it's not the lava,
it's the carbon dioxide that comes out of these big vents. And so these are short term,
and there are a million years when we have these big CO2 events, and then they stop. They're
generated by magma. And so we are doing, we're doing the equivalent of a flood to
salt right now. That's what humans are up to.
Okay.
All right.
This is interesting.
East of the Rockies, it's Dale in Las Vegas.
How did you get on the East of the Rockies line, Dale?
Well, I got confused, actually.
I moved out here to listen to your show better.
Anyway, I worked on the Super Collider for a while, and I worked in high-energy physics at the University of Houston, and we had a problem with bogus scientists, or bad science, science fiction, passing off as science.
And a lot of times we'd have to just eliminate them from our group.
A lot of them got into law.
There's a way to get funded, which on the Collider we eventually didn't get funded, but I saw some scientists turn a chameleon change to where they started researching things like this, global warming, where they can make people believe the end of the world is near, and suddenly the funding It comes for them.
And a lot of them forsake scientific principles.
They're more on the radio than in the lab.
And even the FBI came and investigated our lab for a while because we had a problem with that.
They're members of the New World Order.
George Norrie brought up some things about how it ties in with certain legal things that are happening now.
The world is changing, but I don't fear the global warming as much as the political changes going on that involve a lower standard of living and sacrificing our principles.
Well, I'm not sure what the question is here.
Well, it's not a question.
It's a statement.
I'm just saying that I've seen a lot of this sort of thing going on.
It's political science.
It's not science.
All right.
Well, all right.
There you go, Professor Ward.
There's the accusation.
Well, I recommend you go on the website, there's a Scientific American article that I wrote that has an awful lot of the data explaining, and go buy my new book, where all the data is laid out, well, the scientific references are there, and I think you can see the arguments more clearly than trying to express it on the radio.
October 2006, Scientific American.
Well, I had a very, very good professor on Not Long Ago who again said, look, if you're looking for funding, there's a lot more funding available very quickly if you're willing to sacrifice what you believe and come and speak out against global warming.
That there are oil companies and such that have quite a bit of money available for that sort of thing.
Well, the funding that we get is small, and we certainly get it because we're looking at geological events.
But I think what's new about our group is we're trying to at least tie up the past with the present and the future.
And I think we ignore the rock record and we ignore the past history of this planet at our peril.
Now, the last listener, I don't know if he's accusing me of being one of these guys the FBI should pick up and carry away.
You know, you call them the way you see them.
We're getting close to the top of the hour.
Professor, I'm curious, I really am curious, have you ever been approached by anybody on the other side of the question?
In other words, somebody wanting you to do a little research into whether all this is baloney?
No, I think I'm not famous enough, but no one has ever given me the chance to turn them down.
All right, we'll continue with these calls, and ladies and gentlemen, what we're looking for, and we're getting, are contrarians.
If you hate Al Gore, if you think this is all baloney, then you're our person.
So pick up the phone and give us a call.
We'd love to hear what you have to say.
Professor Peter Ward is my guest.
From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
Here I am.
Alright, I'm going to now prove my point.
During the break, I downloaded my email, knowing what would be there.
And sure enough, Glenn, and I won't give his last name, it's not necessary, sends the following to Peter Ward.
Peter Ward is a nutcase who got his data from the same junk science Al Gore did.
There's not enough ice on the planet to raise sea levels more than 20 or 30 feet.
God, that would be enough.
Anyway, going on, apparently they forgot to remember that a sea under Antarctica that covers most of Antarctica and is 8,000 feet deep, if Antarctica was completely melted, most of the water would go nowhere!
Here is the real story on greenhouse gases.
Fully 95% of greenhouse gas is water vapor, which glow warmer apocalyptic computer models ignore.
While there is less water vapor in drier climates like the Arctic and more in the tropics, averaged for all locations, water vapor is between 2 and 3% of the atmosphere, while carbon dioxide levels are four hundredths of a percent.
There is 60 times as much water vapor on average in the air than CO2, which is why CO2 accounts for 3.6% of the greenhouse effect.
Water vapor accounts for 95%, while methane, nitrous oxide and other gases make the remaining 1.4.
But of course, most CO2 is produced naturally, such as by plants and the oceans, over 96.7%.
In fact, human activity, those cursed gasoline engines and cars and so forth, Count for some 3.2% of CO2 in the planet's air.
If you multiply 3.6% times 3.2%, you get mankind's carbon dioxide contribution to the total greenhouse effect presently warming the Earth.
Slightly more than a tenth of one percent.
One-tenth of one percent.
That's our total contribution.
All of the demands to de-industrialize America, drive less, save energy, use toilet paper on I don't want to read the rest of that, I guess.
Both you and Peter Ward and the rest of the Paranoid Nutcases need to relax and get a grip.
All the computer models are so wrong that they're a joke and they deliberately omitted the facts to push their agenda to reduce the population to less than 1 billion.
You tell him, or I will, that he is crazy as Al Gore and the world would be much better without all of them.
In fact, we can all hope that when they start the euthanasia, maybe the members of the global warming religion will volunteer to die first.
Signed, Glenn.
And Professor, I want you to respond to that before we break.
Well, boy, some people really need to get a life, don't they?
Or maybe just relax a little and enjoy the life that they do have.
That's a lot of burrowing away at a lot of really spurious figures.
Okay, let's take a few of them.
Not enough ice on the planet to raise the sea level more than 20 or 30 feet, if it all melted.
Well, you know as well as I do that when you have thousands of feet of ice on a continent as large as Antarctica, and you turn all of that ice, which is sitting on land, and dump it into the ocean, it has a huge effect.
Well, he says if Antarctica was completely melted, most of the ice would go nowhere.
Well, that's nonsense.
Ice would be gone.
If it's melted, the ice can't go anywhere because it isn't there anymore.
It's water.
And the water is going to go to the ocean, which is all connected, and cause a global rise.
All right, he says, let's see, 95% of the greenhouse gas is water vapor, which glow warmer apocalyptic computer models ignore, while there is less water vapor in drier climates like the Arctic and more in the tropics.
Average for all locations, water vapor is between 2 and 3% of the atmosphere, while carbon dioxide levels are four hundredths of a percent.
Well, what your interesting listener forgot to note is that The global warming heats the entire planet, and that when you take specific parts, like this over the desert, there's not a lot of water vapor.
We're looking at a planet-wide phenomenon of warming, and we're estimating at least a planetary rise in temperature between 4 and 6 degrees before the end of this century, if the worst of the models, or 2 to 3 in the best cases.
But either way, significant rise of the entire planet's temperature.
That doesn't matter whether there is or there isn't water vapor.
You're looking at the entire planet.
Water vapor is an excellent greenhouse gas.
But as the planet gets warmer, and CO2 helps it get warmer, the water vapor becomes even more efficient at helping raise temperatures.
So, those are all just sort of nonsense figures.
Nonsense.
Okay.
Professor, we're going to break here.
We'll be right back.
All right, Professor Ward's book is Life As We Do Not Know It.
Is that correct, Professor?
Well, that's an older one.
No, the one I've got out now is called Under a Green Sky.
It just came out two weeks ago.
Under a Green Sky.
Is that actually what we would eventually get, a green sky?
Yeah, that title comes from, again, I was talking to David Battisti, a really great modeler, and we were talking about what the future will look like in a globally warmed world.
And he was telling me about up in the Arctic, things will really be different because in a globally warmed world, his calculations show the clouds will be higher than they are now in a position that they do not exist.
He said, if you look up in the sky in the Arctic, you would never see a truly clear day.
And the other deal, he said, look, you know, I suspect the sky would take on a greenish tint.
The sun running through those very high clouds would probably subtly change the color I mentioned this to my book editor, and they jumped all over that.
They said, you mean the sky's going to change color?
And I said, well, this guy thinks so.
Well, they ran with it anyway.
I think it's kind of fun anyway, isn't it?
I don't know if I'd call it fun.
I'd call it worrisome.
Jeff in Cleveland, thanks for waiting.
You're on with Professor Ward.
Hi, Mr. Bell.
Yes, sir.
It's an honor and a pleasure to be on your wonderful show.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
My main contention here is that I think the data we're going on here is just a little bit too skimpy to be making these large-scale judgments.
I don't think anyone can say that we can clearly determine right now that the world is permanently heating up or permanently cooling down, with or without the help of man.
You know, the evidence does show that we are warming up, but we don't have a good, long scale to compare it to, since we've only been here a few thousand years compared to the, you know, millions of planets that have been here before us.
Professor?
Yeah, well that's a great point, and the big worrisome aspect of this whole global warming debate is that, at least in planetary temperatures, we only have records, as your listener pointed out, not just for some of the data he's talking about with CO2, but But planetary temperatures is such a short-termer, and that's why a number of us are trying to come at this problem from an entirely different data set.
This is why we want to look at past climate change, where we have longer time frames to look at.
The rock record lets us look comfortably at millennial timescales, and we can get very good numbers from these.
The ice cores, for instance, from Antarctica, you can segregate it down at a 20-year interval of time, but you can go back Over half a million years, or even longer.
And from any one of these ice cores, we can get an exact reading, plus or minus a tiny little bit, of what the carbon dioxide level was, what the oxygen content was, what the age of it was.
And from these, there's a really good and accurate record.
And going back into deeper time, the stuff I work on, from calcium carbonate nodules, we can work out what past CO2 levels were.
And then we compare that to what the fossil record tells us.
And so we, from this, we can watch CO2 go up or down.
And in times when it went really fast up, when we had these big flood basalts, we have at the same time, or soon after, big mass extinctions.
So that's the point here, is the past is saying that, look, when we had really rapid carbon dioxide rises in the past, it has led to mass extinction.
Those rises are very similar to the rates of rise we're seeing today.
Well, we have another mass extinction.
Who knows?
But would we be derelict and not pointing out this comparison?
I think so.
My only other comment would be that is there any chance, I mean, given the amount of data we have, can we be sure that these are all cause and effect relationships and that we're not, in fact, just imposing a post hoc theory here on this?
That just because certain aspects are shown at these times, these great extensions, that they were In fact, the cause and not a byproduct or unrelated event.
Oh, sure.
I mean, you're absolutely correct.
You can never prove anything in science.
I don't think you know that well.
We can disprove hypotheses.
And quite often, you know, those of us who speak with the greatest assurance in the world, then bang, you know, five years later, somebody comes up with something that absolutely destroys that particular paradigm.
Something new has to be built.
Yeah, but there's so much at stake here.
There's a lot at stake, and we call them as we see them.
And this isn't just me.
You know, this is a pretty big fraternity of geologists and climate people.
And I'm just trying to bring it all together in this book.
But it's certainly not all my work.
It's a lot of people's work.
Well, we look at what the administration is doing right now, for example, Professor, X-ing out worrisome statements by top climate scientists in this country, really the top guys, and again and again and again, going to international meetings and X-ing out language and that sort of thing.
Is there some scientist that's advising in the White House on which they're basing this contrarian policy?
I don't think any scientist is advising them.
I think they're just having absolute political advising.
I suspect that President Bush's chief science advisor is Karl Rove.
He seems to be the advisor on everything else.
He's certainly the advisor on dealing with prosecutors.
And everything looks political.
So everything is filtered through politics and forget science.
In this particular case, they make up their minds and then they just move ahead.
Tom in Texas.
You're on with Professor Peter Ward.
Good evening, gentlemen.
Two points, if you don't mind, I'd like to make.
First, when you speak of the carbon dioxide levels coinciding with mass extinctions in the past, why do you believe that it is the global warming that caused the mass extinction?
Was the carbon dioxide not created by massive volcanic action and the ash in the air and the blanketing of the Earth, which is the traditional thought process as to why There were extinctions.
It's not the carbon dioxide.
It's the effect of the volcano itself.
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
I mean, CO2 at that concentration doesn't hurt anything.
You know, nobody's dying from CO2.
But what I try to make clear, and probably didn't do it well enough, is that what the CO2 does, it causes conditions that produces anoxic oceans.
Now, we have a big lab we're just putting together now, testing the idea from a group at Penn State.
That the anoxic oceans themselves become the habitat for purple sulfur bacteria.
These are photosynthetic bacteria that can only live in sunlight, but can only live where there's no oxygen.
So you have to have zero oxygen water at the surface.
Well, there's nothing like that on the planet today.
But the past oceans were anoxic over and over.
They only get anoxic when global temperatures are really high.
When you have such conditions, these bacteria produce hydrogen sulfide gas.
200 parts per million hydrogen sulfide gas is enough to kill a human.
So we have very small concentrations of this stuff coming out of the ocean.
It's certainly capable of producing the mass extinction among animals that we see.
You know, not everything dies out.
There's different susceptibilities.
But in these chambers at my lab now, we're testing photosynthetic properties of plants and germination of seeds, because it looks to me like The first thing that goes in these mass extinctions are land plants.
And we have really good evidence at the Permian that we have something happen, and then we have a huge wedge of sediment that comes pouring into the oceans through all the rivers.
Well, the only way you can get that is if you kill off plants, the roots die off, they're released, all the soil, and it gets pushed into the sea.
And we see this pattern over and over.
A land plant extinction, a big push of sediment from the land into the oceans, followed by a marine extinction.
You know, the rain extinction is powered by the fact that without plants on land, you don't get the springtime runoff with phosphates and nitrates, and that whole cycle breaks down.
So, you're absolutely right.
It's certainly not CO2.
And it's certainly not just straight global warming that caused these things.
Now, the missing piece, again, was found just two years ago in this Penn State study, where big sulfur isotope changes were found, and these could... Like, clarifying that, I have one other comment, if you don't mind.
Yep, go for it.
And I'm not a scientist, but I believe we've got the tail wagging the dog here.
It's not so much that we are producing CO2 to detrimental levels from man.
I believe it is the fact that our oceans, is it not true that our oceans convert CO2 into oxygen quite a bit more than any plant on land?
It's algae that does the bulk of the conversion.
Is that a true statement?
Yeah, well, it's not the oceans, but as you said, it's the plants in them.
I think some people think that the forests are actually certainly as effective.
I mean, there's as much plant biomass in the forests.
Much of the oceans are deserts.
Near land, yes, where you have big phytoplankton blooms, you certainly get a lot of oxygen being produced, but a bigger worry, I think, is the destruction of rainforests, where an awful lot of oxygen gets converted.
I don't know what the exact figures land and sea.
I can certainly find out.
Okay.
All right.
Let's go to Edward in Austin, Texas.
You're on with Professor Ward.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes.
I appreciate having the opportunity to talk to you.
One thing I'd like to find out is I've got a friend named Richard who's close to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Right.
And he works with the Department of Energy.
And he's got a couple of PhDs.
And one night we were talking, and we came across the debate.
What I suggested to him was the observations I'd made.
And he was doing some research on whether the burning of fossil fuels was contributing to CO2 emissions, or if there might be another source.
And he was speculating highly that there was another source.
And I began to say to him that I was taking flying lessons at San Marcos.
When I went over a field that was 200 acres, it was brown due to overgrazing.
I had a tremendous thermal.
So I had a very, there was a huge micro environmental change of thermals that was created by this.
And flying over Austin to do a touch and go.
I went over buildings and it was rather frightening.
I couldn't keep the elevation.
I was even pitching forward to try to get down.
But then I told them I made an observation that when Mexico was burning some fields in a two week period, the clouds were, the sky was gray, was brown with what the smoke that they had put up And you know, I stayed on this had a bigger effect than 100 years of automobiles of manufacturing.
It literally polluted the skies.
It was beyond anything that I could imagine.
But so it looked like agriculture and he was doing research on that.
And maybe when we finish here, we can get off the air because you probably ought to get his last name and see what research he did develop.
Okay, your question is, could that be a greater effect?
I think that agriculture is having, we're so highly regulated in industrial emissions, in automobile emissions.
Alright, we don't have a lot of time here, so I've got to kind of get your question.
Okay, well, I'd like to see how much research he has done in this, and if he's even looked at this proposition.
And I fast-blasted you, Art, in the first hour.
I do have a solution on the Iraq deal.
All right, all right.
Professor?
Well, certainly there's a lot of pollutants.
You know, I lived in Sacramento Valley where they used to burn the rice fields every fall, and this guy would turn as brown as your listener just mentioned.
But that's particulate stuff that falls out after a week or two or three.
Certainly the burning of forests to produce fields, and we get some of the smoke I've seen it here.
coming over the west coast of Seattle. I've seen it here.
You get it too. Yes.
This is a global phenomenon and this certainly is adding to the entire CO2
budget of the planet is our burning of so much forest and so this this this
aspect of agriculture yes is a huge problem. Okay.
We've had a big problem, Professor, with bees.
No, we have a big problem with bees.
Colony collapse disorder.
Is there any chance it's climate-related?
Have you even thought about it?
Yeah, because I was asked that same question, actually, in a radio station two days ago.
Again, it's a problem that my friend Joe Kirschvink isn't on.
He's also a bee expert.
He has discovered the magnetite, not only in bees, but in human brains.
I should hook him up with you one of these nights.
Your listeners will love this guy.
Let us absolutely do that.
I'll get him on.
I think he'd be wonderful for your listeners.
He discovered directionality in humans.
He found that we have magnetic particles and that some people do have greater directionality.
But going back to the bee question, I was asking him... I'll tell you what, Professor, we're at the top of the hour.
Hold the bee question until after the break.
My guest is Professor Peter Ward.
I'm Art Bell.
Here I am.
Hi, everybody.
It's great to be here.
My guest is Professor Peter Ward.
And in a moment, we will ask if there's any possibility that this whole bee thing is somehow climate-related.
We'll be right back.
I think that to one degree or another, most all of us, whether we want to admit it or not, see the changes going on around us.
Now, Professor, it's just asking you for a guess, but is it possible that this Well, yeah, I think it might be.
Again, I was talking to friends about this today because it's everywhere, isn't it?
It's not just here.
We were in Australia for four months.
I just came back with my family and the honey bee problem is there.
It's in Europe.
A bee expert who happens to be here with me right now suggests it's viral.
And I asked, what about the parasites?
There's also a parasite that's dealing with these.
And he thinks it's the virus.
Well, viral attacks on populations, you know, they rise and they fall,
but they certainly could be stimulated by something that's new or strange.
So why not say change in climate?
I had actually heard that Australia was one of the rare places where it wasn't going on.
So it's there now, too.
Oh, yeah.
Perth, Australia was being hard hit.
They have fruit growers who are trying to wring in their hands saying, what are we going to do?
We need honeybees.
All right.
Let's go to Paul in Inglewood, California.
You're on with Professor Ward.
Oh, hi.
Thanks for having me on.
Sure.
Mr. Ward, I didn't catch your credentials at the beginning of the show, but you're not the same Ward out of Colorado, right?
No, no, no.
That crazy nutcake?
No.
Okay.
I'm a different nutcake.
I was just being facetious, actually.
I knew you weren't.
But I noticed that you did mention that the CO2 that was trapped under the oceans and, of course, as the oceans heat up, it's being released, right?
Yeah, that's what the... Well, Art brought that up as something that...
Possibility.
Caller, pause for just a second.
Professor Ward is a Professor of Biology, Professor of Earth and Space Sciences, Adjunct Professor of Astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle, Principal Investigator of the University of Washington Node of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which involves the leadership of over 25 scientists studying the probability of finding life beyond Earth, He's also a senior counselor of the Paleontological Society and was awarded an affiliate professorship at the California Institute of Technology.
Does that help?
No, that's pretty qualified, Art.
No, it just means I got old.
One thing I do want to bring up.
The world population, since we're all breathing CO2, everything that has breath, and we have gone over the billions mark now, right?
And the deforestation, which you mentioned earlier, as the world's forests are being chopped up and burned down, right?
And those are the things that absorb the CO2.
Why wouldn't there be more CO2 in the atmosphere?
Well, you're absolutely right about that.
And Art brought up another good one, the fact that the oceans have really been our best friend in removing CO2, scrubbing it out.
I mean, the natural systems for removing CO2 are cold sea waters the best.
So let's say we warm the sea water, it doesn't take as much.
As the Arctic Ocean is warm, they're going to get rid of their CO2.
And so everything accelerates. As it gets warmer, it gets warmer.
It sounds stupid, but it's reality.
You know, I just caught something on the Discovery Channel the other night,
and they were talking about ferns, fossils down in Antarctica.
Now, so we do have a history of extreme warmth periods.
Of course, there's plate tectonics where they migrated, and I don't know how much that's had to affect with the fossils being discovered down in Antarctica.
Yeah, we are concerned, but you know when you make statements about Karl Rove and stuff, you know, picking the lawyer thing.
That's kind of like, you know, push you over there and now Gore's camp.
Well, I know, but Collar, it was a reasonable question.
My question was, with the attitude that we all observe of the administration about the climate, it's reasonable to ask, are they acting on scientific advice at the White House or political advice?
Well, it's one of, you know, it's, you know, the answer to that, there's so much, we're so polarized today, you know what I mean?
Yes, I do.
But listen, this is one place where we really cannot afford to be polarized.
You know, it appears to be hard science.
Now, if we want to turn that into politics, then we do it at our own peril, as the professor said.
So, I thought it was a reasonable question.
Carolyn in New York City, you're on with Professor Ward.
Oh, hey, good morning.
Thanks for putting me on.
And first, our congratulations on the blessed event.
We're all looking forward to it.
On pins and needles here.
Yeah, we'll tell Erin, I said, happy, happy.
Thank you.
That was really nice when you put her on the air a while back.
She's really sweet.
Anyway, as to your guest there, well, I don't disagree with, you know, that climate changes are happening.
I totally disagree with you have some highly speculative conclusions and It just seems like there's a big scientific community out there that's, you know, ping-ponging back and forth.
Very manipulated data, and anyone who's taken Statistics 101, you know, knows how easy it is to throw a bunch of numbers together.
What do you think he has said, ma'am, that's highly speculative?
Well, first let me say, he really seems to have an agenda that bioengineered solutions are the only thing, you know, that need to be forced You know, that need to be implemented, and they, you know, you can really, you know, put in there that it's probably going to have to be done by a one-world government.
Are you aware of, there's been reports, like the Iron Mountain Report, and that's one of the scenarios that they outlined in that report, that it might be necessary to create, you know, first we all know about the alien invasion that, you know, they're saying they might have to create to force a government, but they also said that an environmental catastrophe That might have to be manipulated or created to force through a one-world government.
Well, okay, Professor, clearly nations are not agreeing on any of this right now, and I think that's probably what brought on the comment.
Any mention of a one-world government is going to put people up in arms, of course.
But any, I don't know, Professor, how do we, this is a one-world problem.
I mean, a one-world government may be the wrong way to say it.
I certainly didn't mean to get people up in arms, but we're going to need a one-world solution.
There you go.
Getting governments to agree on something or anything is nearly impossible, and it may take some sort of catastrophic event to cause that, if it can even be caused.
Unfortunately, as far as the climate is concerned, by the time a truly catastrophic event, clearly caused by it, occurs, it'll be too late.
Exactly.
Alright, Sam in Tucson, you're on with Professor Ward.
Thank you Art, appreciate you having me on.
Certainly.
And I would be the first one to agree that we need to get our fossil fuels.
However, I I disagree with the professor, and the reason is because I've watched other presentations by other scientists, and there is one on the internet called the Global Warming Swindle, and I would challenge anybody to go to that.
Have you seen that, professor?
No, I haven't.
What is it in that presentation, Collar, that you'd like to bring up?
Well, there are several things.
One is, they said, the scientists there maintain that the cause is not CO2.
That's the effect.
The cause is the raise in temperature, and the CO2 as a result of that, the raise in CO2, the increase, is the result of the increase in temperature.
And they've plotted out a graph there showing exactly that the heat Increase leads the CO2 increase.
And so, Art, what I'd like to do is forward you an email with a link on there where you can go watch that presentation.
You're welcome to do it.
So your contention is the heat increase comes before the CO2 increase?
Yes.
Professor?
That's what this time... I'm sorry, Professor?
Well, I can't speak to that.
I haven't seen those data, and it certainly would be news to me, but... Well, I'm sure you've got a computer.
Check out the global warming swindle, I think you said.
I've got an open mind.
Okay, good.
Sam in Houston, you're on with Professor Ward.
Good morning, Art.
Hi.
I heard you talking earlier about dead zones in the ocean.
I've heard it many times, caused by global warming.
Well, I'm not sure if that's accurate, but they're certainly there.
I was inquiring about them.
Well, what I'd like to talk about is, so, back in the 60s, over 40 years ago, I was a Navy diver.
And I was diving in the San Bernardino Straits, a little over 200 feet.
Now, the bottom's 7 1⁄2 miles down, but I was only down 200 feet.
And for several days, I made dives.
Of course, I was in the water a long time because I had to make stops coming up.
I saw no sea life whatsoever during the entire period of time.
And this was 40 years ago, long before global warming.
Okay.
And on the same note, I was an avid hunter until 23 years ago, but there were days I'd go out hunting and see no wildlife.
It was just hazy.
Things aren't around.
And I was just wondering if a person's got a movie to sell or a book to sell and they don't have negative information, nobody's going to buy it.
Fair comment.
That's a fair comment.
People don't buy happy books.
Professor?
They don't even buy my unhappy books.
San Bernardino Strait, seven and a half miles deep, that's news to me.
That's pretty deep.
It sure is.
Yep.
All right, Jim in Washington, you're on with the professor.
Hi.
Well, thank you, Art, for taking me on, and congratulations on that beautiful wife and that new little girl you got coming.
But, Professor Ward, if we're such culprits, and we're causing all this carbon dioxide and everything with our fancy cars and our airplanes with our furnaces blowing and our trains and our boats and everything, who was the ones that was here before that caused all the carbon dioxide?
Well, nobody did it.
The Earth did it.
And as I tried to explain before, there have been Short-term periods of really intense volcanism.
Humans have never witnessed this type of volcanism, but we can certainly see the remains of it in great big fields of lava.
Now imagine the Hawaiian volcano, but over gigantic areas where it's really wet, roping lava.
So those things are short-lived, and they spew an awful lot of carbon dioxide out, and associated with those in the past have been mass extinction events.
So that's my thesis.
Well, they said there's more volcanoes going off at this time, more global warming everywhere around the world than ever before.
That's not true at all.
Volcanic activity is slowing through time, and the Earth is getting cooler and cooler because we're losing radioactive stuff down below.
There's much more activity in the past than now.
And I live out here at Union on the Hood Canal, so I know what you're talking about, the Hood Canal.
Yeah, well, that's septic, as you know.
That's a lot of septic.
All those vacation homes are now lining up on the Hood Canal.
Well, Art, thank you for taking my call, and my brother and my nephew were also married to Filipino women, and they were very, very happy.
Thank you, Jim, and take care.
To John in St.
Louis.
Yes, Art, thank you for letting me talk on your show, and I just wanted to... First of all, if you don't mind, can I answer a question you asked weeks ago about why there's so much evil in the world, and that will lead directly into my response to Mr. Ward.
If you can connect it, as a judge would say, go ahead.
Okay, no, no, I can connect it.
First of all, let me say that I'm a Catholic priest, and I was at the Naval Academy for two years, and I studied oceanography, and I wanted to major in meteorology, but then I chose religious life.
But I've always been fascinated by meteorology, and I just wanted to quote to you A meteorological forecast that was made 1,500 years ago.
Now, you know the cliché that, thank you, Mr. Weatherman, we just got done shoveling 15 inches of partly cloudy out of my driveway.
You see, the science is not exact.
But I want to give you a statement made 1,500 years ago.
Keep in mind, I'm a Catholic priest.
No, go ahead.
And I'm taking liberties with this because Al Gore's been invoked and he said this is a spiritual issue, this is a moral issue.
So I'm taking just a little liberty, but I'm being scientific.
Let me explain.
Pope St.
Gregory the Great said this, alright, in regards to what our Lord said in Luke chapter 21, verse 9, You shall hear of wars and seditions.
You know, you ask why there's so much evil in the world.
Be not terrified, these things must first come to pass, but the end is not yet present.
And then he said to them, nation shall rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be great earthquakes in diverse places, and pestilences, and famines, and terrors from heaven, and there shall be great signs.
Now let me go to the meteorologist, Pope St.
Gregory the Great.
He points out, he says, behold how our Lord says, when you shall hear of wars and seditions, be not terrified.
These things must first come to pass, But the end is not yet presently.
We should weigh these words of our Redeemer in which he tells us that we must suffer things both from without and from within.
This is coming to the weather.
For wars are waged by a foreign enemy and seditions arise among fellow citizens.
When therefore he would warn us of troubles from within and from without, our Lord tells us what shall be done on one hand by our enemies and on the other hand by our brethren.
But to these evils All right, Father, we're almost out of time.
That's a great sign.
shall not follow immediately. He adds, nation shall rise against nation, kingdom against
kingdom, and there shall be great earthquakes in diverse places, and pestilences and famines
and terrors from heaven. And there shall be great signs.
SPROUL JR.: All right, Father, we're almost out of time.
That's a great sign.
FATHER BARTON LUTZ, JR.: I'm almost to that point. The last tribulation shall be preceded
by many tribulations, and these evils going before in quick succession point to the unending
evils that are to follow them. And therefore, after the wars and seditions, the end shall
not be immediately, because many evils must go before to announce the woe that shall have
no end. And here's the weather forecast. But since so many signs of tribulation are
mentioned, it behooves us briefly, emphasis, to consider each one by itself, for of necessity
we shall suffer some from heaven, some from earth, and some from the elements, and some
from men.
First, he says, nations shall rise against nations.
In this, behold, the disturbances among men.
There shall be great earthquakes in diverse places.
This concerns the wrath from heaven.
There shall be pestilences.
Father, I'm sorry, we're out of time.
For this speaks of bodily disorders.
There shall be... I'm almost there, Mark.
Just a minute.
Just a couple more sentences.
This speaks of bodily disorders.
There shall be famines.
In this we shall see barrenness of the earth and terrors from heaven and tempests.
This refers to the disturbances of the atmosphere.
For since all things must come to an end before the consummation, all things shall be troubled.
And we who have sinned in all things, in all things we shall be punished, that it may be fulfilled as it is written, the whole world shall fight with him against the unwise.
Father, did you tell all this to the screener?
Pardon me?
Did you tell all this to the screener?
No, this is leading into my point.
I've completed that part, now I'm going to hit that.
Very quickly, we're out of time.
Okay, very quickly.
You claim that you're a scientist, and yet you bring in all these political slams, like against President Bush and this.
If you listen to Glenn Beck's show, who exposed the climate of fear hidden agenda of global warming, who interviewed many scientists who are in the fraternity you spoke of, the fraternity of scientists who are told what to say, not what they have observed, all to lose their jobs.
Okay.
All right.
We're going to have to hold it there.
Yikes.
Yikes.
All right.
I'm not going to ask you to respond to that because, Professor Ward, I assume you have just told us what you absolutely believe to be true based on the science.
Well, yeah.
I didn't know what the question was there.
Nor did I. Nor would I even endeavor to argue with it.
At any rate, listen, my friend, I want to thank you for being on the program tonight.
It has been an absolute pleasure.
And your new book is?
Under a Green Sky.
Under a Green Sky.
I have to tell you really quickly, all my undergraduates, my stature has gone way up.
This is the fourth time I've been on your show.
I get these emails saying, you know, You're an art, Bill.
You are cool.
My friend, thank you for being here and be cool.
Thanks.
Good night.
All right, folks, that's it.
We'll take about a 24 hour break and do this all over again.
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