All Episodes
Previous Next
July 23, 2010 - Art Bell
02:36:38
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Gulf Oil Spill and Climate Change - Peter Ward
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
From the Southeast Asian capital city of the Philippines, Manila, I bid you good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever the case may be, wherever you are.
I'm Art Bell for George Norris sitting in this evening.
He's getting a well-deserved night off.
It's wonderful to be here.
It's wonderful to be back every now and then.
So, there you have it.
We've got an interesting evening ahead of us.
Peter Ward will be here, a well-credentialed man indeed, who will talk to us about the oil spill and the environment and global warming and all that sort of stuff.
So, get ready, because here it comes.
Let's look at a few items.
Number one, yes, we just had a couple of earthquakes here in the Philippines.
Didn't feel them here in Manila, for the record, but they were 7.3 and 7.4 in Mininao, down toward Cacatabato.
And so that's, you know, that's like 550 or 60 miles or more from here.
We didn't feel a thing.
And believe me, on the 19th floor, we feel anything that happens.
All the ABs are well indeed.
In fact, we've got a picture up of Asia that I think you'll love.
I took this yesterday.
So that's how recent it is.
And you'll find it right on the front page of the CoastToCoastAM.com website.
Simply go there, click on the little picture of Asia, and then that's going to take you to another page.
And then you click on that one, and it gets bigger.
And it's really pretty.
She is a doll.
She is three months.
Three years and two months old now, and boy is she doing well.
She already has two or three boyfriends, and she's in school.
Now here they start school very, very early, so she is in pre-school, and she goes five days a week, has a little school uniform and the whole thing, so they start very, very early here, apparently in more ways than one.
I've got a little bit of news.
I didn't want to say anything about this until I successfully did it, in case I didn't.
But in America we have several classes of amateur radio.
You know, I'm a ham operator.
It's a big deal for me, right?
We have a reciprocal agreement here in the Philippines with the United States.
So if you have a ham license in the U.S., then you automatically are granted privileges here.
But of course, you know, you're kind of a poor, you're a D1 slash W6OBB in my case.
So, I thought I would take a pass, take a try at passing the class A test here, which is equivalent to the extra exam in the US.
And it's kind of tough because they ask different questions.
Not only do they ask different questions, but everything's in the metric system.
So, it takes a lot of conversion and thinking.
About the answers and the formulas and such.
Anyway, I passed.
I passed.
So, I will be among a handful, maybe perhaps two hands at the most that you could count of Americans here that have taken and passed the Class A test.
Now, at the same time, I would like to congratulate my wife.
Who passed the class C test equivalent to a technician class in the United States.
Actually a little better in a sense that you can use the HF bands except for 20 meters.
So she is going to be a licensed Philippine ham shortly.
Or technically I guess she is now.
But they will issue call letters shortly.
And I'm kind of hoping, I'm going to request I don't know.
Pretty cool.
which is pretty rare prefix. I just found out you can get them and so I'm gonna
request a 4f1 prefix instead of a du1 but either way I did it so that means no
more portable this or that because I'll be an actual licensed class A ham here
in the Philippines which is I don't know pretty cool just did it. Pretty much to
see if I could do it and get a shorter call and that kind of stuff.
So I'm pretty happy with myself.
Did it at a ham fest.
The National Telecommunications Commission came and gave a test and damned if I didn't pass.
We had a typhoon last week.
Yep, a typhoon.
It was It was only a category one, but it nevertheless killed 111 people here and did about 500 million pesos worth of damage.
That's a lot of damage actually.
All right, looking very briefly at the world news, never all that much of a pleasure.
North Korea is again threatening, and you know, I'm starting to wonder.
Anyway, says North Korea threatened Saturday to mount a powerful nuclear response to upcoming joint US-South Korean military drills.
We have those every year.
Calling them an unpardonable provocation on top of wrongly blaming Pyongyang for the sinking of a South Korean warship.
North Korea's powerful National Defense Commission led by The ever-present leader, Kim Jong-il, warned that its troops would counter the move to hold U.S.
military maneuvers involving a nuclear-armed U.S.
supercarrier with a retaliatory sacred war.
Now, you know, North Korea blusters a lot, and so you get sort of hardened to their words after a while.
But this sounds unusually ominous to me.
You know, in the face of the sinking of the South Korean warship, you have to put a little bit of money down on the possibility that they actually might do something really stupid.
Most nations you'd shrug and you'd say it's a bunch of baloney and rhetoric, which it normally is from North Korea, but I'm not sure this time, so you might want to keep a close eye on that.
Now, tropical depression now, Bonnie, is headed straight to the oil spill site, kind of like iron filings to a magnet.
Ships relaying the sights and the sounds from BP's broken oil wells stood fast Friday as the leftovers of Tropical Storm Bonnie blew straight for the site, threatening to force a full evacuation that would leave engineers clueless about whether a makeshift cap on the gusher was holding.
Vessels connected to deep-sea robots equipped with cameras and seismic devices would be among the very last to flee, and they would in fact ride out the rough weather if possible.
Unbelievable.
You know, a friend of mine last night asked, what have the people in the Gulf done to deserve all of this?
A California town Apparently is quite outraged to learn of its officials pay and they ought to be.
Bell, California of all places.
Residents in this modest blue-collar LA suburb where one in six people live in poverty were angry.
Their city manager it seems was paid more than President Barack Obama.
Their police chief more than the commander of the nearly 13,000 member LAPD.
They demand it.
Got the manager chief and another high-salary official to, I guess, retire.
Quit.
Otherwise, go find employment elsewhere.
Facebook is turning in.
You know, my wife is a Facebook addict.
Absolute addict.
A Facebook feud between two women who claim to love the same prison inmate Led to a high-speed chase and a crash, it's not funny really, that critically injured one of the rivals, killing her friend, left the second rival facing murder charges, Tori Emery, arraigned Friday in Pontiac's 50th District Court on multiple felonies, as friends of the dead woman were holding a car wash to pay for her funeral.
Zsa Zsa Gabor, by the way, in critical condition.
So looking around the world, it doesn't look that hot.
Well, actually it does.
It's quite hot.
June, the month of June, was the Earth's hottest month in all of recorded history.
That's right.
All of recorded history.
Had to get this news from France.
Last month was the hottest June ever recorded on Earth, according to the U.S.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but published in France.
Adding to global warming worries, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature data also found the January through June and April through June periods were the warmest On record.
That's all-time record, folks.
According to NOAA's National Climate Data Center, which based its findings on measurements that go back all the way to 1880.
And from the whole world's point of view, I guess 1880 is not that long.
But for as long as we've been keeping records, it would be the very hottest.
I am not going to read this.
But I will ask our upcoming guest, Peter Ward, about it.
Dr. Ward, I bet most of you have seen it, and it ran around the internet and scared the hell out of everybody, including me.
It was an article entitled, How BP Gulf Disaster May Have Triggered a World Killing Event in LA.
I don't know that the BP disaster is going to, of course I don't know it's not either, going to do such a horrible thing, but it was a long, interesting, somewhat technical, article and it really, it actually scared me.
I sent it to some friends and let them review it.
It scared them too.
So I would imagine quite a number of you have seen this article and we will try and talk about it a little bit.
Again, if you get the opportunity, go up and see the picture I took of Miss Asia yesterday.
Posted now on the internet for your viewing pleasure.
Three years and two months.
Boy, they They grow up so quickly.
So quickly.
This is just unbelievable.
Anyway, she has an attitude, a girl attitude.
Am I pretty?
Can I buy a dress?
A green dress is the latest wish.
Unbelievable.
Alright, so Peter Ward coming up in a moment.
Once again, I'm Art Bell for George Norrie, who's taking a well-deserved night off when you do this five or six nights a week.
Believe me, a night off is a refreshing thing to experience, and so I'm glad he's getting it.
Coming up now is Peter Ward, who is a professor of biology, a professor of earth and space sciences, an adjunct professor of astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Very well credentialed, huh?
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.
He is also Senior Counselor of the Paleontological Society and was awarded an Affiliate Professorship at the California Institute of Technology.
So, lots and lots and lots of creds for Dr. Ward.
Peter Ward, Dr. Peter Ward, welcome back to Coast to Coast AM.
It is so nice to hear your voice on the radio.
And I think there are many millions listening right now who are saying, Art, we love that voice.
We love to have you.
So I'm just honored to be here.
Thank you.
It's hard to even know where to begin, but I guess with the oil spill, do you have any late word, Doctor, on how Bonnie or the remnants of the tropical storm, now a tropical depression, will affect it?
You know, it's really just headed in the The worst direction it could be going, up off the coast of Florida right now, going west-northwest, headed straight for the spill, 35 mile an hour winds or so, but it's going to really rough up the water, and one can only imagine what it might do to the beaches.
I don't know.
Well, it's kind of good news, bad news, but the rough water at least, it's going to break up that oil into smaller blobs that dispersants can get a piece of, but once it gets on the beach, The bad news, of course, the wind hits it, the oil goes on the beach, and then you blow the sand on the oil.
It's just like, you know, when you put the sunscreen on and then you get in the sand, you're all gooey.
Those beaches become all gooey.
Unfortunately, it stays a long time too.
I want to talk a little bit, you said it might break it up even more, about the dispersants.
There's a lot of controversy about these dispersants, Doctor.
I wonder too, I mean, I don't know how approved they were.
Well, in fact, I got a little email about it.
Dear Mr. Bell, hoping to get your show before Peter Ward.
Since there is a question regarding the distance that the hurricane winds might go into the U.S., please ask him what would be the safest If any, if these winds get all the way up to the Great Lakes, I doubt that.
I'm afraid the discussion that the oil dispersant being the biblical wormwood might be true.
Now, I doubt it's that bad, a biblical wormwood, but what can you tell me, Doctor, about the dispersant being used?
What do you know about it, if anything?
Well, it's kind of scary to a lot of us.
I mean, you're putting in some really heavy-duty stuff.
To break oil up like that, you've got to have some major chemicals.
And because organisms, in many cases, are made up of hydrocarbons not that dissimilar from oil.
I mean, look, every single cell of any organism on this planet, its outer cell wall is made up of something called a lipid.
It's very close to what you're finding in a lot of these oils.
So yeah, we're breaking up the oil, but what are we doing to the plankton?
I mean, we're ripping the heck out of the interior of really the base of the food chain out there.
And this is where People are out there right now.
They're strained.
Well, not right now.
They're off the water.
But a lot of science, a lot of mainline science is being conducted now to find out exactly.
It could be the dispersants are actually going to do way worse damage ecologically than the oil, if that's possible.
That's what I'm hearing.
It's just such a lose-lose proposition, everything about this.
It's just heartbreaking.
Yes, it is.
Well, when you... Actually, all of the networks have been sending out their correspondents, those that don't get stopped by BP guards or, you know, whoever it is stopping the media, and I know they're not very media friendly out there.
When they do get out, they don't... I mean, they see a little oil.
You see strips of oil and stuff like that, but frankly, If what they're saying is true, what, 100 million, 200 million, somewhere in that range, gallons of oil have gone into the Gulf, you would expect to see large, gigantic areas of oil floating on the surface, and we're not seeing that at all, or very little of it, sort of more like strips floating on the surface, and most of us, including me, have the feeling that the majority of this oil
Well, I agree.
underwater because of the dispersants.
Now if it had been above water, that great big super skimmer that they brought along
would have been able to skim it up.
But they used the super skimmer for what, several days or a week or something and all
they got was water.
They didn't skim any oil because basically it wasn't there.
So it has to be somewhere.
100 million gallons or more has to go somewhere, right?
Well, I agree.
I mean, I couldn't agree with you more.
My biggest single worry has been where is the heavy stuff?
Once we have oil coming out, you think it's all the same stuff.
It's not.
In a barrel of oil, there's gasoline that you could use in your car once you refine it.
There's really light stuff you can use as jet engines of kerosene.
But there's also the really heavy sludge.
I mean, this is stuff that becomes motor oil or worse, or lubricants or worse.
This heavy stuff doesn't float.
I mean, you're talking about some really dense, yucky stuff that is sitting down there on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
And my single greatest fear is that it's kind of like Steve McQueen's first movie.
You know that one, The Blob, right?
Big fat black blob sitting at the base of the channels down there.
And it's just sitting there.
And they're sending submarines down.
They have this big NBC, big Oh, we sent out a reporter down to 50 feet or whatever.
They're not going to the right place.
They're really not looking where that oil, I think, should be.
That whole Gulf region already has suffered what we call these low oxygen or dead zones.
And the dead zones were there before the oil.
You add the oil to the dead zones and you're really looking at an ecological disaster at depth.
Yeah, as a matter of fact, I saw the NBC, the first report.
Last I heard they said they were, a day behind, headed for the off the Florida coast somewhere to look for oil.
But just about everybody who goes out to look for it really doesn't find it.
Now, 100 to 200 million gallons of oil, that's got to be somewhere.
So, I guess, Did you actually know the chemical makeup, or is it a secret, kind of like the Coke formula?
I mean, they're not telling us, right?
No, the other scary thing is, however much they say is out there, and the fact that the officials are saying 100 million gallons, it's so scary because that's really the tip of the iceberg.
This thing is way bigger than that.
B.P.
is going to be fined for every barrel they let loose.
So, of course, they're going to mobile.
They've always mobile this thing.
There's just so much oil down on that bottom.
And we are going to find this stuff sooner or later.
And it's not the oil that scares me.
That's what the oil turns into.
The two really worst byproducts are hydrogen sulfide, the rotten egg stuff, and methane.
Oh, methane.
We're going to get to methane.
All right, Doctor.
I'll hold it right there.
Professor Peter Ward is my guest.
I'm filling in for George Norrie from Manila, Philippines.
I'm Art Bell.
Here I am.
By the way, we're right in the middle of the rainy season here and the flu season here occurs during this time of the year.
Fortunately we got our flu shots.
My daughter is in school with 14 other children and the other day there were only four of them present.
So that gives you some idea of the spread of flu over here.
So this year we were Thanking goodness that we got our flu shots.
Kind of a combination of H1N1 and the regular yearly flu, which is what I think is going around right now.
So imagine that 10 out of 14 not in class because of the flu.
Makes you feel good to get the shot.
All right, Peter Ward, Dr. Peter Ward is my guest.
We're discussing the Gulf Oil Spill.
Somebody objected to the word spill.
He said when you spill coffee, that's a spill.
I don't know.
He doesn't suggest what it ought to be called.
It's a disaster.
It's a lot of things.
And it's awful.
But it's hard not to call it the Gulf Oil Spill.
I don't know.
I'll think about it.
Maybe there's another name that's more appropriate.
I want to talk about methane.
We'll do that with Dr. Peter Ward in a moment.
Tom in Oregon City, Oregon says, hey Art, more BS global warming from you.
You need to do some research.
The friggin temperatures are bad.
You, Art, are a hopeless dupe.
Dr. Ward, welcome back.
Thank you, thank you.
It's good to be in the company of another hopeless dupe.
All right, so, you know, we'll get to the global warming stuff in a bit, but actually in a way we are now anyway.
Methane, the pictures when the oil was coming out showed sort of a combination of black colored oil and very light colored or white colored Methane.
There was a hell of a lot of methane coming out of that well for a long time.
There are articles on the internet that will scare you to death, like this one.
I don't know if you saw it.
I'm sure you saw it.
From Earth Science.
How BP Golf Disaster May Have Triggered a World Killing Event.
Pretty strong stuff.
And a long article.
Did you read that?
You know, it's strange you say that, because I was on with Ian on several days after it started, and I said, hey, Ian, you know about methane?
This could blow up Miami.
And he goes, you're kidding.
I said, no, this guy Riskin, I've known about this guy for 10 years.
You know, a lot of us have known and tried to say this guy's got a really cool story.
I mean, I had to laugh a lot because Coast to Coast had this story three months ago.
Yeah, it's been around for a while, I know.
Way, way before that, I'm sure you and I have chatted about this, at least off air.
This has been a long time, and just people, they don't believe it because they say it's just too awful to be true, but there's a lot of truth to it.
Well, I'm not sure it's too awful to be true.
Actually, historically, things like this in the world certainly have occurred previously, so is it really too awful to be true?
I mean, where's all that methane going?
It's pretty much lying on the bottom, isn't it?
Well, methane is a really light gas, and when you see that stuff coming out, what happens, the reason you don't see it, it dissolves in seawater really fast.
I mean, it just does.
Gas dissolves in.
But it makes its way to the surface once the concentration is high enough, and then methane pops into the atmosphere.
It doesn't last long, about 15 years, 10 years.
And then it turns into a bunch of carbon dioxide.
So methane is like this.
Methane is a greenhouse gas on steroids.
Methane is like the bantam toughest, toughest guy out there for making the atmosphere warmer.
All that methane we are pumping up is just making your global warming skeptics, I think, I'm full of hot air.
I don't want to say that, mix the metaphors, but it is going into the atmosphere and making things hotter and hotter and hotter.
Do you recall, I think it was in Africa, wherever it was, there was a lake.
1982.
Yeah, very right.
Well, that methane apparently was on the floor of the lake or somehow stored and then released all at once, right?
Yep, it's just a great big burp, and that burp is both methane and carbon dioxide, and it killed 2,000 people and 8,000 cows, and they were much more worried about the cows initially, because that's the whole economy, in one night, and it's just a silent, awful killer.
But Riskin talks about this, this guy from Northwestern University, had it been pure methane, and his thought is, if the Black Sea burps out its methane content, prevailing winds blow it up over China. A lightning strike
hits and it takes China off the map
because you've burned it completely out of existence.
Wow.
Okay, I know scientists are down in the Gulf now trying to do all kinds of measurements, trying to figure
out where the oil is,
what sort of affect the dispersants are having and all the rest of it and they're
having a hell of a hard time doing it.
So, I guess you can't tell me the current state of the Gulf.
We really don't know, do we?
We don't, and I must take this moment to complain about our government because my group has tried to get one of these grants to work on this.
Here's the Catch-22.
They say, they announced to all of us that we have $20 million we're about to give out in grants of $200,000 apiece for fixing it or studying it.
So my group is, we work on hydrogen sulfide.
So we want to see what happens if you put oil in sediment and let it sit there for years, it turns into this very poisonous gas.
How quickly and what does it do to seagrass?
Seagrass is where all the baby fish and all the food fish and all the invertebrates spend their early days.
It's the daycare center for productive fish.
After 20 years, that oil is going to turn into poison that kills this off.
So we went to the government and they said, well, you can't turn in the grant until you get an email from us saying that you can turn in the grant.
So we wait and wait and wait and the deadline goes by and they said, well, We just didn't have enough people employed to take care of you guys, so sorry.
We can't do anything for you.
I mean, this is a true story, Art.
Oh, I have no problem believing it at all, unfortunately.
Yeah, I had a chance.
Our group, I think, can really make a contribution to deciding what areas is triage.
What areas in the Gulf where the seagrass grows should we say, look, there's so much oil and hydrogen sulfide, it'll never come back in a long time.
Dig it out.
versus those who say, well that's kind of marginal, that will probably come back and we have a way of studying that.
And they just say, we're too busy, we can't get to you right now.
Whatever.
We just found out that the last few months were like the hottest months ever recorded on the face of the globe in
all of recorded history.
Now, whenever we do anything that deals with global warming, we get these kinds of messages from some people who are not
just anti-global warming, they are...
God, what's the right way to phrase it?
Not only do they refuse to believe it, but they hate anybody who seems to believe it.
Now, I know there was the controversy, of course, with the, you know, the scientists and the emails and all the rest of it, and despite the vindication since in the investigation of those scientists, people still use it to say, ah, the whole thing's a damn hoax.
Well, let's talk about it a little bit.
Is it a hoax or is it irrefutably settled science?
There's no such thing as irrefutably settled science in the sense that there's always the chance that something might go haywire on us.
But in this particular case, look, the thing about the media is you always have to have the opposite side of things.
Well, let's do a story about gravity.
I mean, who's going to take, but then there's still these people who think that gravity makes things go up, not down.
You know, we don't do that.
We've settled that.
And global warming, it is settled.
It is settled that a greenhouse gas warms the atmosphere.
It is settled in my field that if you go back through deep time, I'm way back, you can detect from the rocks what was the CO2 level, what was the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
And how warm was the planet?
Just by seeing, are there fossil deposits of ice sheets?
Do we find the evidence, geological evidence, of fossil ice sheets?
Times of high CO2, we never find ice.
Times of low CO2, we have ice ages.
You can't be more settled than that.
We know that 1,000 parts per million, we're at 390 now and growing, 1,000 parts per million in the past has never had continental ice sheets.
In other words, you don't have the equivalent of Antarctica or the equivalent of Greenland.
What floats on the ocean is irrelevant.
The entire sea level flooding story comes from what is on land.
So it's Greenland and Antarctica which dictate sea level rise, which by the way is the single most important aspect of global warming.
We think about the heat, but it's sea level that's going to bankrupt us, and I hope we can go into that story.
Well, we will.
We all know the North Pole is well into melting.
It's, I forget, 40, 50 percent gone.
Something like that.
The whole North Pole.
It's going, going, gone.
That's right.
Right.
What is the state of Greenland in terms of melt?
Greenland is going very fast.
Greenland itself, if all of it melts, all of its ice cover, the sea level goes up to 20 to 24 feet.
Since I've talked to you, Art, I've become, even in my old age, I've become an Antarctic explorer.
I've been down there twice now.
In the last year and a half, I was able on two cruises and I had to live in this tent of mine for 40 days on the ice, which was a very interesting experience.
But what was just shocking is how fast the glaciers are retreating there and how quickly Antarctica is becoming essentially Greenland.
We were watching the colonization of Antarctica.
The role of the science I'm doing down there is to really try to discover at what level of CO2 can there still be ice?
If sea level rises even three feet, three feet is a catastrophe for world agriculture.
Three feet also changes every dock, every wharf, every single airport that is at sea level.
Manila Airport, I think, is really right down by the ocean, as is Hong Kong, and as is Sydney, as is L.A., as is San Francisco, on and on and on.
The money it will take for a two or three foot sea level change is going to make what happened in the housing market just look like a pittance.
I mean, we are really looking at a major catastrophe just from sea level change, and you're absolutely right, hottest June on record.
Come on!
I mean, how can you say this isn't happening?
I don't know.
It's denial.
A lot of people, of course, are in denial about any bad news, and a lot of people are in denial about anything that will force them to change the way they live.
So, that turns into anger.
And, you know, I see a lot of it.
Whenever we do a program on anything like this, you just get inundated with all this anger.
So, it is, without saying indisputable or whatever, it is pretty much settled science.
And the big brouhaha over the emails, It was damaging.
There's no way to suggest it was not damaging, even though there's been vindication since.
The timing, by the way, was sort of suspect, wasn't it?
Right before the big conference.
Well, I was interested to notice that it was front page news everywhere.
But when the big investigations finished and vindicated every one of those controversies, it was page ten news.
It's really interesting how that asymmetry came about.
And so you're left with the impression, everybody, lots of people read the front page and hear the front page news, which is the equivalent of sort of the Fox News, let's take it off.
Oh, they went crazy.
But Fox News never even mentioned it.
I know.
Not even a word.
I know, I know, I know.
Doctor, we should have been On alternative energies, back in the 70s, we should have had the wake-up call then.
We should have begun lots and lots of, well, all kinds of alternative energy.
At this point, here we are in 2010, and we never really got started.
I mean, there were a few solar panels that went up in the White House, came back down again when Ronald Reagan got in there.
I thought we were going to take off then, but we didn't.
And what I'm concerned with is, when we finally get to crunch time, unless we've already passed crunch time, and we may have, it's going to be too late.
It's simply going to be too late.
And is it yet too late?
Or are we close to that point?
Too late to me is when we have the first of the enormous global mortality moments.
I mean, when we have a giant mortality episode.
And I think, I'm afraid, that it may actually take that before people really take it seriously.
But you know, it's funny you talk about the alternative energy that was seen in the 70s.
Here's something else that you and I really knew and saw everywhere in the 70s, an organization called ZPG, Zero Population Growth.
It was all over then, and it has been gone now for 20 years.
I got very curious, who killed ZPG, as well as the electric car?
Turned out the ZPG was killed by the Bush administration.
They made a devout effort, in reality, to wipe us off.
It was said, look, we cannot have global population planning.
And the net effect is that by 2050, by 2060, we have 9 billion people.
We had the chance.
We had to do two things.
We had to reduce energy, but we also had to reduce population.
And in the 1970s, we had the chance.
Both of those.
Not just one will do.
You had to do both.
We did neither.
I really had hopes for a while there on the 70s that we were going to proceed, that solar panels would be everywhere, that Nevada, Arizona deserts would fill up with solar panels.
We'd have nuclear energy and all kinds of non-polluting energy going on.
There were so many ways we could have done it.
And yet, even today, after the Gulf oil spill, after everything that's happened, you don't hear a big movement toward anything of that sort.
Nothing at all.
I mean, if the Gulf oil spill didn't do it, if that didn't wake us up, as you point out, only, I guess, some sort of extinction event May do it, or partial extinction event of some sort.
What is most likely, just speculating, Dr. Warren?
Well, without flogging, I actually published a brand new book called The Flooded Earth, and the trouble with it is that I had a swing for the fences, so I began to look at the hotspots, and what happens, the worst hotspot of all is Bangladesh.
It's sea level three feet, so by 2100 you've got a three to five foot sea level rise, and Bangladesh You lose about 20-30% of the living area, but you lose way more of the agricultural area because salt goes sideways.
People think, oh man, sea level rise, that's going to cover over where I live.
Well, yes, but it does a worse thing.
It goes sideways through soil and it takes productive soil and makes it impossible to grow anything.
Bangladesh, 110 million people feeds itself.
It feeds itself well now because they can rotate three crops.
A three foot to five foot sea level rise, Bangladesh reduces The agricultural output by a third, while the population will have gone up by a third to a half again.
That equation means that Bangladesh is going to have to go to India.
India has nukes.
Bang.
There you go.
That scenario has been posited.
Actually, there's two or three books out.
I thought I was the first, and the book just came out July 1st.
I'm not the first.
The CIA worries about it.
The Department of Defense worries about it.
There are white papers about here.
The trigger points were people without living space and not enough food get pushed into somebody else's country and bang.
Well, you're absolutely right about Bangladesh, but you know, people in the U.S.
And the U.S.
still is a very powerful country, although the world is now being, certainly is shifting.
I heard that now China uses more energy than the United States, so they have passed us already in that category.
Bangladesh would disappear very quickly, but people in the U.S.
Yeah, it's Bangladesh.
It's so far away and yeah, they're used to hearing tragic stories about lots of people getting killed in Bangladesh and African places like that and it just sort of rolls off.
Well, also in my book I posit a night in which a million people died in the Low Countries.
We have the perfect storm where it is 2120 and you're in Holland.
And the Dykes give way, and Holland is already so low anyway.
A million people in Europe dying would certainly wake people up.
Oh, anything in Europe, North America, perhaps Japan, that would wake people up.
But, you know, in the poorer third world countries, Bangladesh and other countries like even here in the Philippines, other countries like that, they're used to hearing about disasters of this and that sort and high numbers of people dying.
In fact, we had a very mild Relatively mild typhoon passed right over Manila.
The eye came right over and 111 people died and I'm sure it barely even made the news.
Dr. Ward, hold on.
We're at yet another break point.
We'll continue.
Dr. Peter Ward, global warming, methane, the mess in the Gulf, all of it to be discussed throughout the night from Manila in the Philippines.
I'm Art Bell.
Hi everybody from Southeast Asia.
It's great to be here.
I am Art Bell and filling in this night for George and I know George and I disagree on the whole global warming thing and that's fine.
That's, you know, what a good network ought to be all about and that is both sides of any question.
Wouldn't you agree?
Even if you disagree, wouldn't you agree?
Lots of these Fort Lauderdale, Florida art Think of all the jobs that would be created to move society away from the coast.
Just think of all the uninhabitable cold areas that would finally become habitable.
I just can't wait till we grow coconut trees in Chicago.
Bring on global warming.
I can't wait.
I've got so many of these you wouldn't believe it.
That's an attitude for you.
We'll be back with Dr. Peter Ward in a moment.
Shane from Dallas, Texas suggests we call it the Gulf Oil Rupture.
That kind of brings to mind a question.
Dr. Ward, rupture, that's an interesting word.
I've heard a number of reports that not just at the well site.
But near the well site, within miles and miles, they are actually seeing ruptures in the seabed and they're seeing stuff come up from these ruptures.
Anything to that?
What do you know?
For the same report, I thought it interesting that two entirely different news sources cited unnamed government sources, anonymous government sources, government scientists who refuse to name themselves.
I mean, this is usually You know, we scientists love, we don't get much hoo-ha-ha.
It's nice to hear, see our name in the press once in a while.
But the fact that every one of these was anonymous, somebody's putting a big lid on this.
And Art, what have you heard about DP on the same vein that is buying up scientists down there and bribing them not to say anything?
I'm getting reports along that line, too.
Well, I've also read those, but since you are a scientist and have a lot of friends working, you know, in that area, I'm sure, you would know more about it than I would.
Have you had any offers?
No, I'm a fish in this little business, I'm afraid.
Oh gosh, it's so unethical.
The whole thing, it's just, again, it's just another heartbreak.
In terms of the rupture, you know, there's so much pressure They went into this without really doing sort of due diligence on the technology.
They should have known, theoretically, that you've got so much pressure when you're dealing with that many thousands of feet under the seabed, which is already under a mile of ocean.
Come on!
I mean, we're talking about some phenomenal pressure.
And it just seemed to me that the chances of this sort of thing happening would be... I know we're not talking about one in a thousand.
We're talking about kind of over and over and over.
How often would you go flying if one out of every three airplanes fell out of the sky?
Is that the scenario we have for deep water wells?
Well, again, it comes to mind that had we continued from the 1970s, we wouldn't have to be drilling in 5 and 10,000 feet of water to get oil that we desperately need.
You know, what scares me, Art, is that I had the great luck to spend a sabbatical in Australia.
And Australia is a very hot place in a way, but they still have some cooler regions.
But nevertheless, most of their country now is converting to roofs that have solar cells, or at least roofs that are white.
Our science advisor told our president, why don't we just paint every roof in America light-colored?
It would have a giant effect.
That doesn't cost virtually anything.
Not even that gets done.
I know.
I'm truly puzzled.
I really, honestly am puzzled.
And I guess it all, bottom line, it comes back to money, doesn't it?
I mean, oil is really big money.
And really big money finds a way to politicians.
And when it does, then what big oil wants, big oil And I have a feeling what they want is to use every last little bit of oil before we do anything else.
Yes?
I get that same feeling.
And the scary thing for me, I bashed the Bush administration earlier.
I'm going to bash the Obama administration now.
They are really losing, I think, an awful lot of credibility and independence.
And the one thing that really struck me was that the yucca nuclear repository in Nevada, Yucca Flat. They've decided
to just scrap that. Now, we have to add nuclear to the mix. I hate to say it, but it's
gonna have to be one of the pieces. And yet, to go ahead and start building more
nuclear plants without any sort of repository for the waste is insanity.
Well, it is.
You know, in France, they deal with it.
They process the waste.
Why can't we do that?
Why can't we do what France does?
Art, you tell me!
I have no idea who, what, it just seems to me there are no grown-ups in charge in places at a moment in history that is so critical.
I saw, I went to your website, I saw that cutie.
What a beautiful child.
Thank you.
I've got a 12, 13 year old who's in the next room listening to this whole interview.
He's going to stay up.
Said, Dad, I'm not going to go to sleep.
Four hours.
I said, no, I'm not going to sleep.
Those are the future and they deserve some grownups somewhere, somehow dealing with this mess.
Well, like a modern day Moses, you went away 40 days to a tent in Greenland.
What was that like?
Mmm, it was Antarctica, actually, and it was... Oh, you went to Antarctica?
I thought it was Greenland.
No, no, twice.
You went to the Antarctic mine.
Oh yeah, we went right down across the Drake Passage, and we got to take Ramamine all the way down, five days across the Drake, dropped off on a little island called James Ross.
Wow.
Nothing living.
I was in the tent.
I was in... I've never been in a situation where I was never above, ever above freezing for so long.
And every day we'd go out and do our work, and we'd come back, and of course it never got dark.
But it never got warm, and so before you got in your bag, we went out and actually run, so our body got warm enough to get in the downed bags and just be able to stay warm enough.
It's just so strange to live in a place where you never get above freezing.
On the other hand, it's usually so much colder there that there's enough sunshine coming down that our campsite began to sink in the mud.
It used to be permafrost, and it's just going, going, gone.
The place is melting all around you.
Yeah!
I thought that was the one place that, not a great deal, I mean I knew about the ice shelf that split, I knew about perhaps trouble with Ross, the Ross ice shelf, but my god, you notice that much melting in the Antarctic?
Oh absolutely, and the strange thing, I was down there with a guy named Eric Steig who works at my university, up until our trip Every continent had been known to be warming, but the skeptics said, except Antarctica!
Except Ike has been down there 10 or 15 times on ice core drilling.
And he published in Nature that the very week we first got down there, the cover of Nature was a picture of Antarctica showing that it too had warmed up.
So he was brought out on the Senate floor by the senior senator from Oklahoma and accused of faking the data.
It was read into the Senate record.
I mean, well, so we got this radio message.
By the way, you've been accused of faking it, but we're there.
You can't just see it all around you.
So here's the single scariest scenario, is that what we have something called an ice sheet collapse.
This is the West Antarctic ice sheet.
This is the greatest pile of ice on land in the world, except that the land is piled on a bunch of it's below sea level.
This thing can break off.
In 10 years and caused 20 to 30 feet of sea level rise in 10 years.
There's just, there's no way you could even deal with that on an economic or a human scale.
I mean, it would just be, it would be a billion people dead.
And we know this has happened.
We can see it from the geological record.
It has happened at times when you had short term upturns of temperature.
The last one was a million years ago, but the change that led to it was a warming, a CO2 increase.
Nothing like what we're doing now.
It is the single greatest threat to our species, not for extinction, but for one of these, what do we call it Art?
A mortality pulse?
A mass dying?
There's got to be something.
But that is the single greatest threat to us now, is an ice sheet collapse on the WA, the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet.
And you're saying that would add how many feet?
Well, they're thinking of maybe it'd be only 10, but the thought is it'd be maybe 20 feet of sea level rise in 10 years at most, or less.
And so, when you think about where agriculture is, how much agriculture, especially you in Asia, know that rice growing does best in fertile soil right down low in sea level, where the river has brought in the most productive material, the deltas of the world.
Now the single most productive agricultural areas on the planet, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Nile, the Mekong, I mean on and on and on, that's where your rice is grown.
Even a 3 foot sea level rise destroys, utterly destroys every single delta on this planet and we will have 3 feet in at most 70 years.
And my fear is in 40 years.
I mean this is what's facing us.
When Whitley Striever and I wrote The Coming Global Superstorm, we suggested there could be rapid climate change.
Not slow, but rapid.
And at the time, oh gee, it got a lot of laughter.
Since that time, there's been a lot of hard science suggesting that rapid climate change is not only possible, but probable.
Yes?
Oh, absolutely.
You didn't hear me laughing, and you didn't hear the people I hang out with laughing, which are some pretty good climate people.
Details can always be wrong, but concepts, in this particular case, you're absolutely right.
And the ice cores have shown you were right.
We've seen 10 degree centigrade changes in 10 years from the ice cores.
10 degrees doesn't sound like much until you realize that's the whole globe.
That's everywhere.
Let's see however hot it is in New York.
It's 100 degrees.
Oh, how did you like it to be 110 degrees instead?
And there you go.
Why am I laughing?
I don't know.
Sometimes, you know, gallows humor is the only way you get through something.
And still, I guarantee we will not get through to some of the people that are fast blasting me and emailing me.
You know, that's a pretty important question.
Doctor, how do we get through to these people?
How do we finally get through to them?
Well, I think there's, again, this concept of triage, and sometimes there will be people that you could never get to, and what we do instead is try to educate our kids.
One of my big bugaboos right now is just the level of illiteracy, science illiteracy, in America.
I spent a lot of time in the Philippines, actually.
I work on the Chamber of Nautilus, or I used to.
I was at Dumaguete City, I was all through Negros, Cebu, and I spent a long time, and I have an enormous, an enormous sense of appreciation For the level of science literacy in the Philippines.
It is amazing.
In fact, for a third world, poor country, the literacy rate here is through the roof.
It's unbelievable.
Well, it is.
I challenge we Americans to be as good as the Philippine people in understanding the relationship between humanity and nature and for reading.
And so what I have been trying to do is just Get to the kids.
I mean, really get to the kids.
And my kids, 13, what he loves are video games.
Where I learned a lot of science for some science fiction novels, I think we need to go to the video game industry and challenge them.
Make science literate video games.
Not shooters, but games so exciting that still teach you principles.
I believe that is, that's how you get to the American kids.
But we've got to get to them.
We've just got to get to them.
Well, if that's the only way we can get to them, that's a sad fact indeed.
But unfortunately, look, you know, there gets to be a point where you realize you pick your poison and the poison is illiteracy or video games.
And if the video games is the way to do it, then you do it.
I mean, I try to tell my kid, do you want to read or do you want to play the video game?
Well, the video game wins.
But why can't we make the video game so stimulating and interesting that you pick up stuff from it?
When we get to the point where there is coconuts dropping from the trees in Chicago, much as it may seem like a joke to the fellow who wrote this, so much on the planet will have changed.
So many people will have been, here comes the big one folks, if you're listening, I hope you're listening, the displacement of human beings as sea level rises.
People are going to have to seek new homes.
They're going to move from point A to point B. And I know this is going to seem outrageous to you, but that is going to cause wars.
There will be wars because of this.
Do you agree?
Absolutely.
I spent an hour on the phone with one of the New York newspapers today.
Just again, I had this book coming out.
They read the book and said, you've got to be kidding.
New York City, that's not going to happen.
It's just the simple predictions of four feet by 2100, 2120, so of course it's going to happen, and it's not just the rise in sea level, but it's the storm surge.
From those storms, you just had that typhoon go over.
Why is it we call them typhoons in the Pacific and hurricanes in the Caribbean?
Anyway, I've been through Pacific typhoons, and they are the scariest things.
Oh, they are.
One of the things, Dr. Ward, is that, of course, when something begins, when the genesis for it is way across the Pacific, many of them are generated fairly close by, but many of them are generated way back east.
They've got a very long, long way to travel across a very warm Pacific, and so they can grow to immense size.
I mean, just monster storms because the Pacific is so big.
Yeah, I had to go through one in New Caledonia and another in tropical Australia, both times in ships.
People tell me all the time, oh, I never get seasick.
And I said, well, you've never been in a typhoon in the Pacific, but those storms are just going to get worse.
Well, that's really already happening.
The season back in the Caribbean is just beginning the Atlantic season and already it's been, from a, you know, like a Category 5 point of view, not that bad, but that is still ahead of us.
It's going to be a rough season and it's going to get rougher and rougher and rougher.
People are already noticing this and why is that happening?
Why are the storms getting bigger?
Answer, heat.
Heat.
That's it, folks.
Heat.
A typhoon or hurricane.
These are ways, they're sort of nature's air conditioners for the planet.
When there's too much heat, that heat is fuel for these storms, be they Atlantic or Pacific, and warm water, warm air, all of it, heat.
And so you get bigger and more frequent storms.
And that's what we're facing.
And that's just the beginning.
I don't know how we get through to people, Professor.
I really worry about this because not only government, and certainly we would have expected more from the Obama administration than we've seen so far, a whole lot more, but I'm afraid they may be succumbing to the same financial pressures that we talked about a little while ago.
I imagine it would happen to any political entity.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know how to get through to people, and if we don't get through to people, it's going to be, if not already, too late.
Well, I'm going to challenge you briefly here.
Just to my surprise, I just went back to the website.
This is the 11th time I've been on Coast to Coast, and I think eight with you.
I challenge you, Art, to come back more.
We need you.
I don't know what the politics of Coast to Coast is.
I know it's probably a pain for you, but I certainly miss you on this show.
George is great, but we need both you guys.
It's kind of voice a reason.
Well, thank you.
Well, I mean, you know, I'm just not the sort of person that sucks up, but I think we do need you and we need you for these reasons.
We have to get across this message.
You know, I hate to be sort of a negative kind of person, but I just I don't think we're going to get to these people.
Of disbelief, the level of anger.
I mean, listen, I'm getting messages calling you and me communists.
We're communists.
For even voicing such a... I'm sure you get emails like that, right?
All the time.
All the time.
Yep.
We're communists?
For saying that the globe is warming?
That the temperatures are warmer than ever despite, you know, like today's headline, you know, that the warmest June in all of recorded Earth history.
We're communists because of that.
Well, then I'm a communist.
Well, now see, somebody will take that statement isolated and printed somewhere
Peter Ward admits he's a communist. It will not be in context, but
I guarantee somewhere somebody will trust me on this. It's just pure
hatred and I do understand it
from an economic oil company political point of view I understand that
But the average person, half of them out there, near half of them anyway, thinking that people who would talk about the kind of things we're talking about are communists, that's, Dr. Ward, that's just outrageous and already we're at another break point.
Surrounded by sea made up of 7,000 plus islands, the Philippine Islands, Southeast Asia, I'm Art Bell.
Good morning.
Good evening.
Good afternoon.
Literally, for everybody, we're all around the planet, but we definitely own the night.
That is, in areas where there is night at this moment.
Other areas, like this one, for example, where the sun is high in the sky and it's about 2.34 in the afternoon.
There's a very interesting question brought up by John in San Jose, California.
We'll get to it in a moment.
Please ask Peter, what is causing other planets in our solar system to heat up?
And there's truth in that and we'll tackle it or talk about it in a moment.
Peter Ward, just so you know, once again, He's not a communist, number one.
He's a professor of biology, a professor of earth and space sciences, an adjunct professor of astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle.
He's not a communist.
He's principal investigator of the University of Washington node of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which involves the leadership of over 25 scientists studying the possibility Probability, let's make that, of finding life beyond the earth.
He's also Senior Counselor of the Palaeontological Society.
He was awarded an Affiliate Professorship at the California Institute of Technology.
It's worth reminding you who you are listening to, and he will be back in a moment.
Nobody, including myself, would suggest that we may not be in the midst of a natural cyclical change, as well as the man-made changes that are adding to whatever that might be.
But John in San Jose brings up a good point.
He says, please ask the professor what's causing The other planets in our solar system to heat up, and there's been a lot of news about that, Doctor, that other planets are heating as well, certainly Mars and other planets.
What part do you think, what's going on with that?
Yeah, that's a very legitimate question.
Look, none of us want to sort of rush the judgment, and going back to this global warming, this has been a lot of hard work for a long time.
But the big fight has been, in past years, has it been caused by gases that we humans are putting up?
So is it really the effect of humanity, or could it be that the sun has increased the amount of radiation coming out?
So about three years ago, for the first time, there was the report that came out that said, hey look, the planets, the other planets, are also warming up, and we don't see any Volvos or cars or factories or greenhouse gases being produced there.
So it must mean that what is happening here is that we are actually warming up because the Sun is increasing its output.
The Sun surely, it's theoretically possible, it goes through cycles and we do know that over long periods of time the Sun continues actually to warm and will continue to warm until about, let's see, 8 billion years from now it will expand over a few hundred billion years beyond the orbit of the Earth and heat us up.
Well, that's a long way off.
But nevertheless, the Sun is getting warmer and warmer and warmer every single year.
So, of course, all the planets.
But the question becomes, how warm are the planets getting relative one to another?
You know, they're all warming the same amount, but in fact, the Earth is warming hundreds of thousands of times faster than the other planets are.
And the second thing is, it's really hard to take the temperature of a planet.
Look, it's hard for us to take the temperature of this planet.
But once you have a distant planet, what you're trying to do is you're using a telescope, or you're using spectral analyses to try to see on the bounce back of these waves, let's see, I've got to measure the equator, I've got to measure this, I've got to measure that, except it's just this tiny disk out there.
So the science of it is very different, but the fact that we are warming so much faster than the others makes it...
Irrelevant to say that the sun's doing it all.
It's not.
Something's warming us up a lot faster than the others and what that something is are greenhouse gases.
Okay, but it's fair to say both things can be going on concurrently.
We can be warming as a result of one sort or another of cyclical changes, which we know the earth has gone through many times, and then lumped on top of that what man is contributing.
So that's certainly fair to say, right?
Yep, and the other side of the coin is that the Earth itself, the most significant form of heat we've had for a long period of time has been the interior of the Earth, and that's cooling.
And so we continue to warm even though the central fires of the Earth themselves are running out of the radioactive material, and slowly over time the Earth itself has been cooling from that internal heat.
Yet in spite of that, we still keep warming.
So you've got other possibilities too.
And just when you add it all together, it just really does look like greenhouse warming has really warmed us up over the last two or three hundred years.
Looking around the planet, certainly Bangladesh would be about first on the list if you fly to Bangladesh.
It already looks like most of the country is Underwater or sharing what little land there is with water.
So it would go very, very quickly.
What other areas would you name that would be in dire, fast trouble with ocean rise?
And then we'll move to the safer places.
But there's Bangladesh.
What other areas would you worry about?
I would not buy real estate in Venice.
Pretty as it looks.
Venice has to be the most endangered city on the planet.
But unfortunately, the Dutch and the Belgians, the low countries, they're called the low countries, and boy, they are low, and they are in trouble.
They're built up, and they have two big problems.
One is the rise of the sea.
And once again, it's not just the sea, but the rising sea also lets the storms have a higher springboard, something called storm surge.
That's really what nailed New Orleans.
So they've got that problem, but the other big problem for them is they've got rivers going right through them.
If two front wars are terrible things, one front is the North Sea, which is encroaching on Holland and Belgium, but the other is that the fact that it's getting warmer means that it doesn't snow as much in the mountains anymore.
In the winter, all the precipitation hitting the Alps is not turning to snow as it used to, but a lot of it at ever higher elevations is turning to rain.
It used to be in Holland that you could have the bad winter storms, and then you have the bad spring floods, but the two rarely coincided.
But now you've got the bad winter storms with the bad winter floods, because you don't have snow in those mountains.
It rains right out, the rivers fill up, and you've got rivers going right through, and it's that combination.
They're building dikes on the sea, and they're building dikes against the rivers, and it's when the two intersect that you have the worst problems.
That is ground zero right there.
Bangladesh, Venice, and certainly the lower countries are in the worst state for sea level rise.
And of course the island nations.
Yes, I shouldn't have forgotten that.
They are the worst.
I mean, Nauru and all of the low-lying atolls.
Hats off to New Zealand.
New Zealand has taken it upon itself as a country to take all of those low-lying islands, in their region at least, and take all the refugees.
And that is something that the world is going to have to do more and more and more of.
And the New Zealand's said, yep, we see what's happening out here.
And you're absolutely true.
I should not have forgotten those.
Right.
Yes, they're getting ready to evacuate some islands, as a matter of fact.
If all of this really gets bad and people begin moving, mass migration, as I mentioned earlier, it's going to lead to war.
Now, let's just imagine for a moment an attack on, say, Bangladesh by India with nuclear weapons.
And one can imagine several other areas where nuclear exchanges can occur, but just imagine that one for a moment.
Scientists talked about a nuclear winter.
I wonder, is that a solution to global warming, nuclear winter?
I hope not.
But there is a solution.
In that vein, as you know, Paul Crutzen, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, suggested, I guess about five years ago now, that what we need to do is just dump massive quantities of sulfur particles in the atmosphere.
And that this is the equivalent of Mount Pinatubo, the famous volcano, which really did lower the temperature of the Earth.
That's right.
In its Philippine eruption.
Was that the 80s?
90s?
That would be... I think it was the 80s.
I thought.
And it just was big enough.
It was way worse than St.
Helens.
No, maybe the 90s.
You know, I've got to look it up.
Someone fast blast me.
Maybe it was the 90s.
I know a bunch of our people from my university went.
I didn't.
But it did change the temperature of the Earth.
So Krusen said, hey, let's salt the atmosphere.
With the equivalent of Mt.
Pinatubo ash.
Let's put sulfur particles up there, aerosols.
That would certainly lower the temperature of the planet.
Unfortunately, look, one of the big crises right now is happening right off my coastline, Washington State.
The ocean is getting more acid.
And the acidification is coming because more and more carbon dioxide is being dissolved back into seawater.
And when it does so, it increases acidity.
If you take this Really by this giant global engineering, a geoengineering project of lowering the temperature of the atmosphere, you're going to increase the salinity of the oceans and kill the plankton.
Right now in the North Sea and further north in the Arctic areas, plankton that have calcareous shells, little tiny guys, they're actually little floating snails called pteropods, their shells are dissolving off the soft parts because the oceans are so acid that it is Removing the ability for calcium carbonate.
It's like putting... We put in this beautiful marble floor filled with beautiful ammonite fossils when I redid my house some years ago, and my son at the time spilled a glass of orange juice.
Well, that was the end of the beautiful polished limestone.
It dissolved it away.
Well, that's what's happening out in the oceans now.
We're getting this nice acid from the global warming.
So, Crutzen's idea isn't going to work.
Well, what about space mirrors?
What about particles?
What about other Shade, sun shades up there, and this is certainly being discussed over and over and over again.
I actually wrote an article trying to detail these and critique them and decide which is good and which is bad.
And it always comes back down to the simple solutions, the ones that will work, are low tech, not high tech.
And low tech such as painting your roof and low tech, burying charcoal in soil, putting iron in the middle of the Pacific to cause phytoplankton to bloom.
This is, you don't need big machines, you need A great will and understanding that this is a problem that has to be solved.
So, if there is a number one thing that we could do to begin changing the temperatures, you would say it would be what?
Lower the number of people on the planet.
We've got to reduce the population over a period of time.
That is it!
I mean, that's it, you know?
And the thing you hear is the circularity of it all.
To lower population growth, you need to increase standards of living of all people, because women with a higher standard of living have fewer kids.
When you have fewer kids, you're going to lower the emissions, global warming is going to go down, and we stabilize things.
But to have a higher standard of living requires the ability for you to have access to more energy.
Higher standard of living generally comes along with a car and a house and all the stuff.
And all that stuff requires a power plant and requires a lot of carbon to go
to the atmosphere.
So this is the circularity. We increase standard of living all over the globe for all nine billion of us.
To do that, we will have to, I think, really end up melting the ice sheets and up goes sea level.
Professor, what sort of case do you think that scientists could make in an appeal to the Vatican, let's say,
to change their stance on birth control?
I was raised a Catholic.
I was brought up in a Catholic household.
I went to church every Sunday.
I continue to be outraged by the fact that the Catholic Church does not see What too many people are doing to this planet.
There just has to be a case made by all religions that look, you know, there's standards of living.
Everybody has the right to a high standard of living instead of the way it is now.
To do that, however, we have to remove somehow the burden of all these extra mouths, which require all this extra energy, which is warming our planet and causing the seas to rise.
Yes.
Well, it's going to be a hell of a battle.
It really is.
Take this country that I'm in.
As an example, we're about 87% Catholic here.
And thankfully, our new president, President Aquino, appears to be pro-birth control.
But it's going to be a heck of a battle.
It really is.
You know, you've got the church that is very, very powerful here.
And I just, I don't see what kind of appeal is going to work.
I just don't think the Vatican's going to change the mind.
The church is very, very fixated on this idea of no birth control, more Catholics, lots more Catholics.
That's a lot of souls.
You gotta have those souls out there, you know?
Producing souls.
I don't know, I don't know.
There's a fantastic organization called TED, T-E-D, and they have some wonderful talks that are free if you just Google TED.
There's a fantastic talk about just global population rise and who, where it's taking place and how it's working.
It's only like 20 minutes.
It's really a very interesting sort of take on what's going on, and it's just, again, It breaks my heart that we have all these brand new mouths to feed and every one of them is required for us to burn more energy.
Sure.
And it's going to be coal and it's going to be oil.
And that's the big two.
All right.
We covered the most dangerous spots on Earth pretty well.
Obviously, not everything about a warmer world is going to be bad.
I mean, not literally everything.
There are going to be some areas that are going to, I suppose, benefit in some way from a warmer world.
So, let's talk about the safest places.
Well, I'm going to shamelessly plug my book, The Flooded Earth, because I make the bold prediction, which is pretty simple.
The two richest places on the planet, in the 2100s, are going to be Russia and Canada.
And the reason being is that global warming is going to produce the wheat-growing areas in those areas, in those two countries, to a greater extent than anybody else.
The sad news about carbon dioxide rise, that higher CO2, you would think plants do better.
Plants respire.
They take in carbon dioxide.
In more and more carbon dioxide-rich environments, plants should grow more.
But the sad studies recently have shown that actually increasing CO2 levels reduces Those crops that we want most, corn and wheat and rice, all three of them, reduce their yield in much higher CO2.
So we've got that whammy.
And the second whammy is that by 2100, of course, we've got the three to four foot sea level rise, which is going to knock out at least 10% of food production right on the coastal areas.
So it's those one twos.
Canada and Russia have really great northern wheat growing areas, winter wheat and They are going to increase the length of time because of the warmer conditions that can grow that wheat.
They also have the second important thing.
The whole 21st century is all about food and all about water.
It's about good water that you can drink and that takes care of your crops.
And it's about bad water, sea level rise coming up against your coastlines.
Both of them are positioned in great shape.
So, middle America, which has been the wheat belt, the everything belt, we grow food for the world, that's going to shift north to Canada.
But a lot more than that is going to shift, isn't it?
In other words, where the food is, where the good water is, it's going to be where the political power rests as well, ultimately, isn't it?
It's going to change a lot more than just where the food is grown.
Yes, and to that end, the greatest flashpoint in the world is going to be the triangle of China, Russia, and Pakistan.
I'm sorry, China, India, and Pakistan.
Because right now, the big fight is for the water coming out of the high mountains, the Himalayas.
And who controls it?
And who's upriver?
All three of those are huge population growth areas.
All three need the water for energy, but they need it for their crops.
We just don't get real news here.
And the news is that one part of China has, for the last 10 years, the greatest drought, the longest drought in Chinese history has been taking place in the regions closest to the Himalayas.
And it's been ongoing for a decade because of climate change.
And we've got this enormous problem with water coming to those three countries.
Who's going to get it?
The fight will be over water and the fight will be over land.
And that is the nature of the upcoming world.
And there's not much on the horizon that's going to change that, is there?
Well, there could be a miracle, Art.
You and I know science does strange things.
Look, a miracle could take place in Livermore, California, because that is where they're testing the hottest laser ever.
If they can make the laser temperatures hot enough, the hope is fusion generation.
If you have fusion power, you've got it.
But you and I went through cold fusion.
My friends at Caltech say this is the greatest bunch of nonsense ever, but the Caltechies hate people at
Berkeley anyway, so I take it with some grains of salt, but nevertheless,
please let it work.
Or Harrison Schmitt, the guy that went to the moon that says we need to go to the moon and get helium-3 because we
could do our power plants off helium-3.
Please let that work.
Otherwise, it is coal, and when our president says there's clean coal, that's the worst oxymoron ever.
There is no clean coal.
What there is is a whole bunch of coal.
Coal is the cheapest form of power on the planet.
As oil gets more and more expensive, coal stays cheap.
There's just a whole bunch of it there.
Right.
America has a lot of coal.
Canada has a lot of coal.
And I, for the life of me, cannot understand, I really can't, Professor, why That's the direction we're going to move after the last of the easily available, well, look, the easily available oil, what am I saying?
It's already gone.
We're going to move toward coal?
Is that where we're headed?
Is that a good place to be going?
I don't know.
From Manila in the Philippines, I'm Art Bell.
So happy to be here this night, morning or afternoon, depending on where you are.
And we really are heard around the world.
I get emails from virtually every corner of the world.
It's wonderful to be here.
Dr. Peter Ward is my guest.
We're discussing, well, I guess the oil.
problem in the Gulf, I'll come up with something.
And global warming, generally.
And whether it's real or whether we're just, well as some have said, a bunch of communists pumping out
stuff that people don't like. People just don't like change and they don't
like negative change, change that will affect their lives
negatively.
If it's done correctly, you know, there really won't be the kind of change that I think a lot of people fear.
And I think a lot of people fear it's back to the Stone Age or something, but it doesn't have to be that way.
There are a lot of fixes, as Dr. Ward has suggested, simple things that people can do that would begin to change the world.
You could paint all of the rooftops a light color, white, reflective of sunlight.
And there would be just so many things that we could do and we're not doing.
And what I wonder is why we're not doing them and why people are so...
Angry is the only word I can come up with.
There are others, but not suitable for Coast.
Really angry when they hear about this.
I've wondered about this for a long time.
A question that I think I'll pose when we come back is, if ultimately there's not so many safe places on Earth, Is there, is there eventually, because obviously we're going in the other direction right now, is there going to be a new race for space to get to new cooler territory?
We'll be right back.
Well, this is interesting.
Zandra in Knoxville, Tennessee, fast blasted me that Art, everybody is being assured there's absolutely no shortage of oil.
There's an infinite supply, it is said, on the planet.
And I guess my view would be, well, if that is true, then what in the hell are we doing drilling for oil in 5 and 10,000 feet of water?
Obviously, it's not all that safe to do that.
And obviously, there can be disasters when we do that.
So if there was an infinite supply, then, well, heck, why are we doing that, Professor?
No, I totally agree.
This is the last really hard reach.
And the other thing is, look, people are jockeying to get to the Arctic Sea as summer ice goes away or the winter ice goes away.
And more and more of that is exposed.
Russia and Canada and the U.S.
are all fighting.
Why would they be fighting to get Oil that is such a very difficult place to get to, at least in the Gulf.
You've got you don't freeze up.
You're not talking about absolute complete six months of darkness drilling down deep into the ocean at sub freezing temperatures all around you.
They wouldn't go there if there was lots of oil everywhere.
One wouldn't think so.
There are disputed areas, for example, close to where I am, we have the Spratly Islands, claimed by the Philippines, claimed by China and others, and there's eventually going to be some sort of conflict about it all.
Why?
Because there is thought to be oil in the Spratlys, and that's just one little area that I know of and I can talk about, but we're going to be fighting over the last oil.
Again, we're drilling in dangerous areas to find oil.
Well, if there's an infinite supply of oil, why are we doing that?
Oh, I agree.
Peak oil is a real concept, and Hubbard years ago suggested that there's going to be this nice bell-shaped curve.
You hit the top and then it rolls down.
Well, that's why we see China right now building power plants that are coal only.
Why would they do that if there's so much oil?
It's so much easier to make electricity from oil than it is from coal.
Sure, all of this should be obvious.
Eventually, one does ask this question, and that is, will there be a new race for space, not this decade or next, but eventually, to find some place where we can comfortably live?
Could that occur?
It could occur.
Personally, I think there's a much greater chance the big fight's going to be over Greenland than it's going to be over Antarctica.
I look at the deep past.
Mammal species, if you look at the fossil record of them, Normally last about 7 million years.
We are only up to 200,000.
That's an average mammalian species.
So if we're average, we've got another 6 million years, at the rate at which we are melting ice within, well, a few thousand years, both Antarctica and way before that, Greenland will be without any ice at all.
The bad news about both Greenland and Antarctica is that Ice, when it sits on a rock surface, pushes it down.
And once it melts away quickly, it bounces back.
But we have pushed and squished the middle of Antarctica and the middle of Greenland so deeply that once the ice goes away, unless we build dams around the outside, both will get filled up with inland seas.
We can't afford to let that happen.
We're going to have to use... These are huge new areas that will be productive.
We could have a lot of humans living there.
Antarctica is an enormous place.
Yes, it would be six months dark, six months light, but it will still be warm enough that you can grow crops there.
So we're going to have to do some geoengineering to make sure those things don't get filled with salt water and are lost to agriculture.
So that's, I think, the next 10,000 years is going to be the colonization.
I do think, I know it sounds cynical, but I suspect sea level is going to rise a minimum of 10 feet.
And my guess is about 40 feet.
Before we come to our senses and stop things over the next few thousand years.
40 feet.
What senses are there left once... 40 feet of sea rise.
Yeah, that's my guess.
What's left?
Well, there's a lot left.
It turns out if you look at the 40 foot contours, there's plenty of land, but you've certainly lost all the coastal plains.
And so people have moved up.
Unfortunately, when you move up, up usually means the soil is way worse and it's rockier and this and that.
So we will have sort of really done away with the greatest agricultural gifts that this planet gave us, which is the lowland soil areas.
But we'll muddle through, we'll get through with that.
But we can't afford to lose Antarctica and we can't afford to lose Greenland.
So big dams around the outside can be built.
And once again, I've done that in this book, Flooded Earth, I've kind of mapped out our next 5,000 years in the book and showing how you can and what we can do and what we'll have to fix and how we'll have to get around because my guess is this flooding is inevitable.
I just don't think we have... Oh sure, but I mean before you sort of gloss over it, 40 feet, if you were to make a map...
and with 40 feet of sea rise and then compare it to a map of today or 20 years ago,
it would look a lot different and there would be a billion, two billion people
gone, dead. Displaced. Well, we'll just say displaced. But yeah, the Gulf Coast is gone.
Much of the eastern seaboard all the way up to the Appalachians is gone.
The big Puget Lowlands is gone.
The Sacramento Valley is now a great big inland sea.
A lot of Australia.
I mean, just on and on and on and on and on.
It's just, it's a whole, it's a water world.
It's a wholly different world.
Yes.
Speaking of water world, about 10 years ago I did a show with a fellow who had plans for a floating Absolutely.
In fact, the Dutch are planning on that right now.
The Dutch are really smart.
They recognize that, like I think, there's an inevitability to a pretty significant sea level rise.
And what are we going to do about it?
Is that a future possibility?
Absolutely. In fact, the Dutch are planning on that right now.
The Dutch are really smart.
They recognize that, like I think, there's an inevitability to a pretty significant sea level rise.
And what are we going to do about it?
So as our country goes underwater, they are already now thinking of very large living areas,
which are floating.
These are just gigantic floating regions.
And the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, of all things, asked four different architects to come up with a New York of the 21st century.
And they recognize, as I do, that right now New York is trying to, the intersection of land and sea in New York is hard.
Concrete, seawalls, the Battery Street Tunnels, and the Battery Street Streets of cement areas, you've got to soften this intersection.
You've got to have streets that can let saltwater at periods flow through them.
Look, right now we're building cities that have no ability to deal with infiltration of salt.
All engineering, all city infrastructure is built on the idea that yes, it's going to rain a lot, but it's fresh water.
Our bridges, everything else, we just do not recognize right now what saltwater can do to things.
So we have to retrofit.
And New York is already thinking that they're planning on a five-foot sea level rise.
What happens?
And what happens is that in a hurricane, if sea level is five feet higher than it is now, there's no way you can get people to be evacuated out of the city.
I mean, you just can't do it.
A Katrina storm hitting New York where the sea level is two feet higher than now, everything breaks down transportation-wise.
You just can't get out.
So you're going to have mass mortality.
That's what's going to kill people, Art.
It's going to be the storms, the super storms hitting a globally warmed world where sea level has gotten up just enough that all these freeways and railway tracks and all the ways we have to get people out of cities, they don't work.
You're stuck there in a killing zone.
Look, before it ever gets to the point that you're talking about with the earth changes, you know of the magnitude where populations are shifting from one part of the continent to another or from continent to continent.
There are going to be wars, Dr. Ward.
I mean, that's big wars, bad wars, nuclear wars that are going to occur over water, over land, over immigration, over all kinds of things like that with the displacements that are going to occur.
And so, again, let's talk a little bit about what would occur with a war.
I don't know if you've studied that, but surely there would be some sort of nuclear winter, wouldn't there?
Yeah, there would, and I have studied that.
My first part of my career was trying to figure out what killed the dinosaurs, so I was working right near Berkeley when the Alvarez's were there.
I knew them well, and I was actually trying to prove that it was caused by impact, and I think I did a good job, at least in The group of fossils I worked at.
So I knew about the Sagan nuclear winter ideas and I was talking to guys like Owen Toon and people from the Colorado atmospheric groups and from Rhode Island, there's a big group, there's modelers in Arizona.
And so at these meetings, these guys would show what happens when a two kilometer, five kilometer asteroid hits the Earth.
A lot of dust goes up in the space.
Well, a nuke does the same thing.
And what killed the dinosaurs were months and months of darkness caused by the impactor coming in.
Well, that's what nuclear winter is.
Same thing.
Except nuclear winter has all the damn, sorry, all the bad radiation with it, too.
And you've got to deal with that as well.
And so this is certainly square one here on what we would have to deal with.
Even small nukes throw up a whole lot of stuff.
Art, I'm old enough, I lived in Seattle, Washington, when the Russians were exploding the largest nuclear bombs ever exploded on planet Earth.
And we, remember, we were not allowed to drink milk after a while.
I was like 8, 9, 10, 12 years old.
And the early, earliest 1960s, in 59, 60, and these big bombs, these big atmospheric bombs, were messing up.
It was cesium and strontium-90 that were just in the atmosphere, getting into the cows, concentrated in milk.
School lunch, we couldn't drink the milk.
This is really nasty stuff when big things blow stuff up into the atmosphere.
Bombs, even small bombs do it.
So it is a hideous possibility.
And I think that, again, the single greatest threat to me of anything is still sea level rise.
Yes, but you say a hideous possibility.
I think it's a hideous probability.
If what you're saying about the sea level rise occurs, I don't see how you avoid wars.
I just don't.
It's probable, not possible.
It's probable.
And I just want to correct something.
Suzanne in Albuquerque, New Mexico says, Art, for goodness sakes, I can't believe you're saying that the Vatican needs to rethink its stand on abortion.
Suzanne, I didn't say that.
I said it needs to rethink its stand on birth control.
Now, they may be one and the same to you, but What is not yet created is not aborted.
I'm certainly not at all in favor of abortion.
But birth control is an entirely different story.
And we do need to bring population control to the Catholic world.
And I'm not anti-Catholic.
In fact, I go to Catholic Church.
I can clearly see that population is a gigantic factor.
It certainly is here in the Philippines and much of the rest of the Catholic world.
So there's got to be a way to control population or, I don't know, the rest of it may be simply academic.
It's just a matter of time, which seems as though it is anyway.
Peter, we're going to go to the lines, the phones, at the bottom of the hour, but anything that we didn't cover or should cover, Well, we've been pretty grim, Art.
I was going to ask you a question that still relates to this, but nevertheless, it's kind of fun and kind of interesting.
Have you been following the massive jellyfish blooming events that have been happening for the last year?
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
It's peculiar.
It is strange.
And what was the story just a day or two ago about the jellyfish that was actually dead?
Yes, it was.
What happened?
What was that all about?
Oh, it cracked me up.
At this time of year, the big red ones, it was the East Coast I believe, it was somewhere in New England, but a big jellyfish had gone up against a screen barrier to keep big jellyfish out so people could swim.
And then apparently the tide went down and jellyfish and the sun are not, that's not a very compatible couple.
Anyway, the thing disintegrated.
What should have happened is that one of the lifeguards should have seen, uh-oh, a big jellyfish and come over with some really strong gloves on and just put it in a plastic bag and carried it away.
Instead, they let it sit there, waves hit it, it breaks up, and the stinging cells, as you well know in any of these jellyfish, are things called nematocysts on the tentacles.
Each one is a self-contained little stinger, like a bee stinger, with poison in it.
Well, those broke into a zillion tiny pieces of stinging flesh, They're just washed into the area where the people were.
So it was kind of stupidity, right?
Darwin Award-type stuff.
At least it wasn't a killer jellyfish.
But what I find fascinating is that we're seeing blooms, if you will.
Bloom meaning the gigantic population increases of jellyfish in lots of different places.
Up in England, they were so common and so big that they're apparently just absolutely filling up the nets.
So that the fishermen can't get their fish.
But what I see is that this is, look, these guys are really low on the evolutionary tree of animals.
These are right down there.
They come from really warm water systems.
Very primitive warm water systems.
These are canaries.
I mean, these are canaries in the mine shaft of world's oceans, telling us that there's some really deep, deeply dysfunctional stuff going on there.
I just find it fascinating that That these guys are riding in like the fifth apocalypse in their little jelly bodies.
But it's telling us something profoundly, I think.
So it is telling us something profoundly.
Oh yeah, oh yeah!
This isn't just like... I mean, in our long lives, how many times have you heard stories about jellyfish, monstrous population blooms of jellyfish in many parts of the world?
You know, I teach marine biology.
This hasn't happened in my lifetime.
All of a sudden.
All of a sudden.
You know, I saw the story and I went, hmm, why?
And you're saying it's because of warm waters.
Oh, absolutely.
These guys just do better in warm oceans.
They came from warm oceans.
The ancient world was a lot warmer than now.
We had way more CO2 in the past.
This, we're going back, you know, we're rapidly approaching sort of the greenhouse world that we know of, we call the Mesozoic.
The Jurassic Park world was a greenhouse world with CO2 where it will soon be here.
And all those worlds even prior to that were globally warmed and we had an awful lot of these things called cnidarians or cilenterates.
They were the dominant life form.
Real simple, jellyfish, corals, and all their ilk, real soft-bodied, never have Really big, hard skeletons other than the hard, stony coral.
And these guys, they're coming back!
Hey, I like this world!
I remember this!
Alright, somebody that goes by the name of Boss, identifying himself as only from the Great Northwest says, Art, why are you afraid of opposing opinions on this subject?
There are many out there who have suffered the wrath of the fascists left to try to bring you to the truth.
Lord Mocton, that's Lord Mocton, and George Taylor, to name a couple of ice sheets, Sometimes you get too much snow because of warming.
I mean, you're not getting the normal freeze, you're getting the snow instead.
I mean, just let's look at this.
these ice sheets that's what he's saying sometimes you get too much snow because
of warming I mean you're not getting the normal freeze you're getting the snow
instead I mean just let's look at this the other thing that made me laugh
opinion and science those those don't equate here all right Hold it right there.
We'll be right back.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
Indeed so.
Here I am.
My guest is Professor Peter Ward.
We're talking about the oil problem in the Gulf.
We're talking about global warming and the general state of things.
Listen, bring it on.
Now, I've read some of what's come in from the keyboards, but it's time to leave the keyboards and come to the phones.
If you, and I've instructed the call screener, and yes we do screen calls when we have a guest here, to allow those who are in opposition to Dr. Ward and myself for that matter, to come on through, come on down, And voice your opposition.
We'd love to hear from you.
You don't have a good debate unless you have both sides of an issue.
And so I am indeed inviting you to pick up the phone.
And while I'm certainly going to implore you to try and be polite, but in opposition, you're welcome.
Absolutely welcome.
Looking forward to it.
The great debate, and it is a great debate, isn't it?
I'm Art Bell, this is Coast to Coast AM and we will be right back.
Well, okay.
You ready, comrade?
I'm ready.
I'm ready.
I'm going to grab the right phone.
Now I'm ready, ready, ready.
All right.
I have no idea what lies ahead, but there's only one way to find out.
And I guess this would be East of the Rockies.
East of the Rockies, if it's you, you're on the air.
Yes, this is East of the Rockies.
Jeff calling from Ferguson, Missouri.
Okay, welcome.
Thank you.
Just a quick comment to my question, if I can, if I can make it fast.
Uh, when the left, uh, does all this stuff for, uh, global warming, taking care of the planet, stuff like that.
It's called, they're called taking care of the planet.
When people like me who are conservative, conservatives, uh, that get solar stuff, the gardens, they're called survivalists, white ring survivalists.
I kind of noticed that.
Yeah, that's an interesting observation, actually.
But, uh, anyway, um, if the planet decides to go all screwing, no matter what we do, Changing light bulbs or anything like that.
Can we really make a difference if the planet itself decides to go all screwy?
No matter what we do?
Alright, well I guess that's a reasonable question.
Professor, what say you?
If the planet, despite whatever else happens, goes completely screwy, No, there's not going to be a lot we can do.
Is there up against nature?
And what will be?
We're not much.
We can apply the best science we have, but maybe that will not be enough.
Well, I take a little bit of exception to the word the planet decides.
The planet's not going to decide anything.
We're the only creatures on this planet that really can decide much of anything in a way powerful enough to affect the planet.
There's no other animal on this planet that can really Make a decision and therefore change stuff.
We made the decision.
We don't like to be cold in winter and the effect is we've really changed it.
So, I don't think the planet has anything to say about it.
I think it's almost entirely humanity which is making these decisions.
Well, a favorite saying of mine would be that Mother Nature doesn't get mad.
She gets even.
I agree.
There you go.
So, in other words, if something is wickedly out of balance, you know, there's something Mother Nature, I guess, tries to return the balance.
It's that simple.
To California, Mendocino, I believe, California, you're on the air with Dr. Peter Ward and Art Bell.
Good morning.
Good morning, yes, Art and Peter.
My question is on how we can possibly have decent Oversight of what's going on, for instance, in the Gulf.
And here in California, our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is about to retire.
We have a Filipino woman who is being put up before the voters.
And it seems to me that somebody like that who would understand the impact of how water would affect our coastline and up into Stockton and the levees and all, the Delta Zone, would be the kind of person that we need in government to have that kind of oversight.
Love government or not, that's the way it is.
And by the way, this woman, Put herself, supported herself after law school as a blackjack dealer in Reno, Nevada.
So I thought you might be interested in that little aside.
But the aspect of like Thad Allen, is he the admiral of the Coast Guard or is he a civilian?
It appears sometimes that he's retired and then other times they show him with the four stars.
Is he now a spokesperson for BP?
What is his role at this point?
It's very confusing to the public.
And you know, to know what's going on, I think it'd be helpful for the public and to know the representation that we have in there.
In spite of all its flaws, at least we're supposed to have transparency as opposed to the obscurity of corporations.
It seems there's a corporate takeover here.
So I'd like your take on how we should look at these situations possibly in the future.
What would be a decent structure so we have Significant and effective oversight on these horrible type situations which are bound to occur again.
Thank you.
Okay.
They are bound to occur.
Professor?
Yeah, well, a great caller, and boy, you speak in beautiful sentences.
I mean, honest.
I lived eight years in Davis, California.
I worked at UC Davis, and one of my best friends, Jeff Mount, there is worrying greatly about things you're talking about.
Water.
Water in the Great Valley, the Central Valley.
You guys in Central California, you've got that entire Delta region that is going to be so affected by sea level change.
We have to keep the Sacramento Valley and the San Joaquin Valley producing food or we're going to run into one of these enormous, enormous mortality events.
And when you're saying that we need great representation, I mean, you've hit the nail on the head.
What we need more than anything else on this planet right now It's leadership that is coming from, A, wisdom, but B, a great sense of intellect.
I mean, we need people who can think and really work out where the problems are, where the priorities are, and how to fix them.
And right off the bat, this whole golf business, this Thad Allen, we're all just praying that the man seems as competent as he appears to be.
He gives a great TV appearance.
So far, it looks as if his leadership is leading this out, if it is his leadership.
But I get a quiet sense of confidence.
But where I'm now worried is the announcement that the other oil companies are going to put together a rapid response team.
Well, that's great on the surface.
Who's going to lead it?
Who decides that, OK, now is the time to spring into action?
Which of the companies puts out with the closest or pays the most or whatever?
I mean, where do we find that leader?
And this is just all over in every one of these situations.
We have to come up with people with the correct leadership skills right now.
It's just so clear it hasn't happened in the BP response.
It seems to be happening now, but it took a while, didn't it?
Peter, I don't understand how we get people elected to office who are Insulated from the pressures of the money that comes from oil.
I just don't understand how we do it with the current structure.
In fact, it's not just America.
It's virtually every country.
You know, money rules and the rest walks.
And so how do we get people into office that are insulated from that sufficiently to bring policies that are going to prevent a catastrophe in the fairly near future?
Term limits.
Term limits.
I think term limits are a great thing.
And certainly, we see people who go in and do great work, and just over time, it seems that they erode away.
The scariest model for what long-term corrosion, I think, happens to politicians is exactly what we're seeing taking place in Mexico now.
The drug money is so intense.
It's so huge.
We see all of those institutions going down.
Well, if the oil money is not They're not killing people like the drug money is, but they're certainly perverting situations and especially organizations.
There is just so much money.
When gasoline went up to $4 a gallon around here and those profits were in the billions per month, that had to affect a great number of people.
I don't know how leadership arises, but I do know that Oil and drugs, they're both huge big money enterprises and the corrosive power of each is enormous.
Let's go to Bill in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Hi Bill, you're on with Professor Ward.
Hi Mr. Ward and Art, thanks for taking my call.
My question is, the Horizon Well out in the Gulf, It's pulling oil from 10,000 feet under the sea.
When I was in school, I always thought that the oil came from plant life and animal life.
How could it possibly be that deep?
Yeah, well, that's a great question.
When I was growing up, they had one of these great ads for a place called Sinclair Oil.
And the way it was, there was this dinosaur walking around, and then it fell down to the ground, and it got sucked up on this oil well.
I remember that.
I remember that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wow!
I said, Dad, look!
Dinosaurs turned to oil, and they're in our core!
You're absolutely right.
The oil did come from plant life, and it did come from some animal life, mostly plant life.
But that's plant life that got squished.
I mean, these are plants that are so far from being plants now.
They've been in rock for a long time, and they've been so heated and so compressed that even their cell walls have changed.
They've gone through this metamorphism from really complex structures like cells that we have today to very simple long-chain carbons.
But these long-chain carbons Or what we call reduced, and reduced carbon contains energy.
You oxidize it and boom, out comes power.
So you're right, it is plants, but it's plants that are, in the case of the oil down there, we're talking plants that are 50 to 60 to 70 million years ago they were plants, and they've been sitting down in that sediment for all that time since.
Well, you know, it's funny.
I do remember that.
And I also remember ads when I was younger from doctors who would come on television and tell us that cigarettes are healthy and good for us.
You remember that?
Oh, I do.
And it's funny, too, because we have this long-running three-year series.
I think it's this U.S.
called Mad Men.
And in it, they've got these ad guys trying to figure out how to Teach people that smoking can't hurt you even while they're smoking like crazy.
Yeah, it's an interesting point of view.
Okay, let's go to the first time caller line and say, good morning, you're on the air, where are you?
Hey Art, how you doing there?
And Dr. Peter Ward, how you doing there?
I'm doing well, thanks for asking.
It's two in the morning where I am.
Oh, maybe it's one in the morning.
Yeah, it's almost three here.
I'm in Alexandria, Louisiana, and I really do appreciate, Gina, your call screener.
Thank you for taking my call and everything.
My name is Cornelius.
I listen to you all 970 K-S-Y-L.
And Art, I was the one that predicted if the Saints win, it'd be the end of the world.
It's your fault, man.
It's your fault.
Anyway, I was telling Gina, I just wanted to know if it If it gets any worse, will it be the end for us if it does get any worse?
So that was my question.
I'll take my answer off the air.
Well, when you say, before you go, when you say the end for us, do you mean everybody or do you mean, for example, you there in Louisiana?
I tell you R, that's a good question too.
I know With this moratorium, it's going to be the end for us as far as, you know, economically.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
There is that.
You know, in Louisiana they're very dependent, of course, on the drilling that's going on.
But you know what?
I understand we need oil.
And I understand that no matter what we do from today forward, and I was saying this in the 70s, that we've got to have oil until we have something else.
What's really ticking me off Is that we don't have something else yet.
That we're not moving in that direction.
That even the disaster in the Gulf has not started us moving heavily in the direction we should be moving.
And if this doesn't do it, what will?
So, Professor, I don't know, his question was, is it the end?
Well, it's not the end.
I think it's actually the way.
I think it could be the beginning.
I think you could look at this as there's going to be, first of all, the United States of America has never in its history, since Andrew Jackson, concentrated as much on the Gulf region.
I have been glued to my television screen and I've been telling my kids, look, we're going down there.
I've got to see this place.
It looks so beautiful, and yet you see the heart-wrenching aspects of it.
But the richness of the place, I think the Gulf, I think you're going to see an enormous rebirth here.
I think anybody who goes through a near-death experience comes back, if they have any wisdom at all, and realizes, wow, that was close.
I'm going to do something now.
I've got some time left.
And this is my sense of what's going to happen in the Gulf, that we are going to see a rich cultural region become even richer.
The survivorship that comes out of this, I think, is going to bind you Gulf people.
I just see it's going to be really a wonderful, optimistic new place.
Maybe that's just what you're thinking.
But I really do, in a way, I envy you.
You're going through a united experience.
Well, you know, I do think that...
People in the Gulf have a sort of a rebirth of thought about things, but I don't think that that translates to a national rebirth at all.
In fact, once the cap went on the well, you'll notice that the media coverage changed drastically.
It hasn't gone away, but we forget about things very quickly, out of sight, out of mind.
I hope it's not true, but I fear it is.
Wildcard Line, top of the morning.
You're on the air with Dr. Peter Ward and Art Bell.
Oh, hello, Art Bell.
It's an honor to talk to you because back in the 90s, my mom would take middle of the night drives and listen to you.
My brother would quote say, Mom, please don't put the scary guy on until I fall asleep.
The scary guy, okay.
Well, my question is, what is the most economical and efficient way to change our habits?
The most economical way to change our habits?
We don't seem to change much in the U.S.
or in the world until we're forced to change.
Until there's an emergency or enough people die or that forces change.
Other than that, we don't change.
You know, we have a comfort level and we don't want that to change.
Well, I know the easiest way.
Just put $5 a gallon tax on gasoline.
You're going to see a big change.
We'll never do it.
Anybody who suggested it would be lined up in the dawn in shock.
Nevertheless, look what the Europeans do.
Most of their fiscal money comes from gasoline tax.
They spend at least two to three times more per gallon, equivalent gallon, than we do.
You put five bucks a gallon on it, and all those trips to the store all by yourself, you didn't need to do anyway, they're gone, right?
You're going to start doing rapid transit.
We're going to stop sucking so much oil out of the ground.
That's going to be a big change.
You know what?
I think you're right.
I mean, you actually hit on something.
If you were to add five bucks a gallon to gas, that would change a great deal.
In fact, in the world of smoking, That did change the world.
It really got a lot of people to kick the habit simply because they couldn't afford it anymore.
So you're absolutely right, Professor.
That's a good call.
Add $5, but of course, it's a political death.
Yep, it is.
It is.
And so the whole question becomes, how much national courage and national will do we really have?
Not that much.
Not that much.
Cigarettes was a pretty easy target.
Revenue, we all think it's bad, so slam tax on it.
It did work, but that's an easy target compared to oil and gas.
International Line, you're on the air with Dr. Peter Ward and Art Bell.
Hi.
Hi, first time, thank you.
I'm Dr. Peter.
My question is that, is it U.S.
currency is attached to the oil?
That's why America doesn't want to do anything about it.
We show that you have a lot of oil in the United States, but I don't know what's going on in the world that the U.S.
has to All over the world, to war or anything like that.
So I just wonder, is that the case, the money tied up to the oil?
Of course it's the case.
Oil, money, money, oil.
Right, Professor?
Boy, you're right, partner.
So, you know, that says it.
Money, oil, politicians, decisions affected by oil and money.
How do we change that?
Beats me!
From a country where they turn back time.
Good morning, I am Art Bell, filling in for George Noray, a well-deserved night off.
My guest is Dr. Peter Ward.
We're talking about the oil mess.
We're talking about the environment, global warming.
Yes, global warming.
And getting all kinds of keyboard feedback of a negative sort, as well as the other.
But come on, folks.
Those of you typing, pick up the phone.
If you've got an objection to the concept of a globe warming, at least in part, by man's hand, then don't be shy.
Pick up the phone.
I've instructed, I've come to understand her name is Gina, to allow those with a contrary point of view to just get right through.
So hopefully you are, you've got a phone in your hand and you're dialing.
We'll be back with hopefully some of you in a moment.
Doctor, how have people come to this idea that oil is endless?
That there's just more oil than human beings could ever use on the planet, or in the planet, and it's just endlessly resupplied.
How do people come to this conclusion, especially in view of the fact that we're now having to drill in 10,000 feet of water to get oil?
Well, I get a sense that how many drivers that are out there now really have gone through an oil shock where you went up to a station that wasn't there.
The first oil embargo I just, there's a lot of people driving around now who were not alive then, who just never saw it.
Something that is always there, you can't even find a gas station that doesn't have oil in most cases, at least in America.
You drive around, it's everywhere.
You just get the sense that you read about it as scarce, and yet every two or three or four blocks, there it is.
How could anything be scarce be so common?
I think that's the sense of it that I get.
Maybe that's it.
I'm passing a lot of gas stations.
Lots of gas stations.
And ads.
We do.
We have a problem here where we get disconnected from the little mechanism, the software mechanism that allows me to bring on the next caller.
Let me give it a try here.
Let's make it the wildcard line.
Yes, I think we've done it.
You're on the air.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How are you?
Very well, sir.
Where are you?
Connected in New York.
I'm hoping someday you do a program on asthma in honor of your late wife and someday talk about that as part of even global warming.
I don't know if there's any connection at all with the breathing of human beings and the breathing of plants and the difficulty people have.
Anyway, to discuss the doctor's idea that You know, that the world is warming faster than the other planets.
That leaves a lot of room for my speculation that the planets near the Sun might be warming faster than the Earth, and planets farther away might not be warming as fast because they're farther away.
And they don't get affected by the Sun's heating up as much as the Earth would be.
I'm just curious, in addition to worrying about the fact that plants can, other than corn and wheat and all, can adapt to greater CO2 and possibly breathe some more compensating different gases back into the atmosphere, as well as genetic engineering to work on those crop plants, And the possibility that birth control can keep us from the genius necessary to solve these problems, even if they are true.
I still need to know about this distance from the other planets being factored in to the doctor's idea that we are warming so much faster than other planets.
Does that mean the total of all the planets?
Does that mean Mercury and Venus, which are nearer the Sun, versus Mars?
And Jupiter and Pluto?
What is it?
Okay.
Professor, it's a pretty good question.
You did say that it's very difficult to judge the actual amount of warming going on on the other planets, and I would agree with that.
One would think that, well, how do we prove that the Earth is warming many, many times faster than the other planets?
How do we do that?
Well, the caller has a great point that obviously Mercury is so close to the Sun that the amount of heat, the temperature of that planet is really, really high.
But the statement that really, the statement came out to try to challenge this idea that there's global warming on Earth.
Once the statement said, hey, look, it's not just the Earth, all the planets are warming.
And therefore, we have some mechanism that is not unique to the Earth.
But in fact, it's unique to or certainly operational on the rest of the solar system.
So that could be used and was used as a way to try to falsify this idea that there is human caused, or even naturally caused, but certainly greenhouse warming on the Earth.
But it's all about relative, isn't it?
You know, we're asking Are all the planets warming at about the same rate?
Or is one of them warming way faster?
If it were just the Sun.
If the Sun were heating up all of a sudden, Mercury being closest would show the greatest absolute amount of warming.
Of course.
But the fact that the Earth is showing what is really going to be 5 or 6 degrees in the next 60-70 years at the IPCC is to be agreed.
That's so far out of the ballpark of anything else happening to the solar system.
I mean, it's just, it's just outrageous what's going on compared to the others.
Yeah, Mercury is going to raise so many degrees above what it was.
It's a relative statement.
So again, it's just, it totally discredits the idea that it is not something of our atmosphere, but it's something of outer space that's warming us.
Okay, good enough wildcard line.
You are on the air from wherever you are with Dr. Peter Ward and Art Bell.
Hi.
Good morning, Art.
Good morning.
How are you?
I'm calling from Allentown, VA.
Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Okay.
I have a comment and a question for Peter.
Good morning, Peter, as well.
Good morning, sir.
Don't call me.
Take the password and see me in the morning.
I'm sorry.
It's four o'clock in the morning here, 415.
I know it's in the afternoon there, so, Art, where you are.
Let's see, I was watching a documentary online, and they mentioned a Nicolas Cage film that came out March of 2009, called Knowing, about prophecy.
This is the comment, and there's a CNN report that matches the prophecy that he's seen, and they say that there's been a Gulf oil spill explosion Spill off the coast of Louisiana.
And this film was released a year and a month exactly to the day of the of the oil spill.
And the horizon oil spill.
Anyway, that's my comments and my question is.
There's a lot of oceanic volcanic activity in the ocean floor, which they say it's increased fourfold within the last 50 years or so.
I used to be a total Global warming enthusiasts, and I would quote statistics and records and historical documents, you know, till the cows came home.
But now I'm kind of in the middle about it because of these facts that are coming forward about, you know, oceanic activity where there's hot gases coming up from the volcanic activity, which are making the temperatures above the ocean in the atmosphere heat up.
And I know these are You know, peaks and valleys of this happening throughout history.
I wonder if Dr. Ward, if you have any comment on that?
Go right ahead.
I mean, after all, there are a lot of earth changes, an unusual number of earth changes ongoing.
And I'm talking about earthquakes and volcanoes and all the rest of it.
The Ring of Fire is on fire and has been for some time now.
And it seems to be increasing.
So it's logical.
I mean, after all, we just saw a volcano where?
In Iceland.
Yeah, well we certainly have variations from place to place.
Volcanoes don't go off all the time.
They go off and they sit dormant for a long time.
There's a lot of undersea venting going on and volcanism increasing and that could be
contributing to all this as well, right Doctor?
Yeah, well we certainly have variations in place to place.
Volcanoes don't go off all the time.
They go off and they sit dormant for a long time.
They go off and they sit dormant.
The combatants point of view that there might be an area in the ocean in which there's been
a huge increase in volcanic activity, that certainly is going to be the case depending
on the spot.
But for every place where there's going to be increased activity, there's probably going to be a place with decreased activity.
If you take the thousand-year view of the Earth and look at The amount of volcanism coming up from the center of the planet, and this comes out as point sources.
I mean, there's a very good reason there was a volcano in Iceland.
You're sitting right on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
I mean, you've got an enormous plate pulling away from another enormous plate, and up comes this hot magma.
That's why Iceland's there in the first place.
But you take the longer view, and what we, over five or six years, look like.
Wow, that's a really significant trend.
It's not.
The planet is not going through this huge increase in heating.
If you look at the longer view, in fact, the planet is cooling.
It's just that we get sucked into the short-term cycle of looking at things.
Wow, there's a trend.
But you expand.
Geological time is so long.
You start looking at centuries and millennia.
And then thousands of millennia, and these things average out.
The planet's cooling.
It's not warming up.
You know, the anti-global warming people would come at you with exactly the same argument, you know.
Well, yeah, they can't.
And here's why they can't.
Because if you go back, I'll pick any one of them on.
Let's go over the last 200 years, then I'll take you back 10 million, 15, 20, 50 million years.
And you show me, you show me anything that shows two or three hundred Parts per million increase in CO2 over the last 50 million years.
Come on, show me.
Pay up, pay up, you can't do it.
You just can't do it.
Right, but trust me, that wouldn't stop them from coming at you with the same argument.
They really wouldn't.
You mean facts?
No, I'm talking about...
I'm talking about previous heating on the planet.
Certainly there has been.
Oh, sure.
There's been plenty of heating.
There's been lots of heating.
But over long periods of time, the Earth, the radioactivity in the center of the Earth has been diminishing slowly.
That furnace is burning out over time.
And that we are just, we should see long-term global cooling taking place.
And instead, over the last 200 years, we've got this great big run-up.
And there's just one way you can explain it, and that's carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
There you are.
East of the Rockies.
You're on the air with Art Bell and Dr. Peter Ward.
Good morning.
Yeah, Art.
It's good to hear your voice over the airwaves again.
Amen.
Amen.
I'm always loving that when it happens.
What I was wondering, you co-wrote a book that they made a movie out of.
And I was just curious as to the possibility of that actually happening as far as changing the currents in the ocean and actually having a, not so much to the way the movie portrayed it, because I don't think it could actually happen that way, but actually having cooling down of the earth.
I'll take a crack at it.
The worst mass extinctions in the history of the planet happened because of things that aren't described very well.
A change of the thermal circulation, the thermohaline circulation patterns happened at the end of the Permian, happened at the end of the Triassic, it happened at the end of the Paleocene, and these things led to greater than 50% mass extinctions because those changes created gigantic global climate change.
There you are.
Okay, we'll go west of the Rockies and say top of whatever time of day it is.
what Hollywood did was make it dramatic. Nevertheless, the concept is absolutely correct.
Okay, we'll go west to the Rockies and say top of whatever time of day it is, you're
on the air with Dr. Peter Ward and Art Bell.
A comment and a question.
The comment is to concur with Peter that yes, we do need to hear more from you.
Just remember one of, repurpose one of Peter's comments that there's no adult in charge at this critical moment in history.
At any rate, the question has to do with ClimateGate and climate change, and to remind people that the reason that people are angry is that we all felt duped.
We felt made fools of when ClimateGate came up.
Now, since then, I've heard there have been three major hearings on ClimateGate, and the outcome of those hearings, I understand, was that it should have been a non-event in terms of what the overall The outcome of the hearings, you know, in terms of the premise of global warming was correct all along, and that ClimateGate should never have happened, it should never have been made such a big deal of, and it just pulled the rug out from the whole movement.
I mean, everyone is confused now.
That's why they're angry.
So, does Peter know what the conclusion of the three major hearings on ClimateGate said to us all?
And if he doesn't, maybe he could come back someday and inform us.
Oh, no, I think he does.
I mean, in every case, the scientists were found to be guilty of perhaps emotionalism, but not guilty of falsifying or of trying to dupe anybody or of anything.
Look, we're humans, you know, and we're humans and we see a catastrophe happening.
And some of us are driven crazy by this.
We have kids.
We see the absolute craziness that our atmosphere is becoming.
Of course we get emotional.
An email, as you know, is the most hateful form of communication ever produced by humanity.
And when you start- Well, it becomes that.
If you look, for example, at chat rooms, they always start out with the best intentions, the most polite people, and given two or three days, or a week or two weeks at the most, it will always, inevitably, Despite the best efforts of moderators, degenerate into name-calling and much worse.
It just happens.
People get behind a keyboard and it's, I don't know, it's like getting behind the wheel of a car.
You know, it's suddenly a monster in them comes forth.
And I don't know what it is, but you're absolutely right.
That's what happens.
Well, in this case, again, earlier in the show, I think we tried to point out that there was a great deal of hoopla about this, but then once these hearings were over, it was little to be heard from at the same decibel level, I guess.
How about that?
Let's just say it clearly.
In every case, there was exoneration for the scientists.
Yes, they may have said something emotionally they shouldn't have said, but when the investigators looked at the science, There was vindication all along the line.
Vindication, vindication, vindication.
But it didn't get publicized.
Is that fair?
That's absolutely the case.
So that means global warming is real.
Hmm.
Right?
No, only a communist would think that.
Only a communist would think that.
All right.
Somebody told me that.
On the air, comrade, with Peter Ward and Art Bell.
Hi.
Hi.
How's it going, Art?
It's going okay.
Not a lot of time before the break here.
Quick question.
All right.
I've got a quick statement and a quick question.
I'm speaking for the educated people that understand that global warming is not man-made.
It's not that we don't believe in climate change.
Of course we do.
But being man-made is ridiculous.
We understand that this is a cyclical event, not only affecting Earth, but all the other planets.
Finally, we've got you.
Listen, caller, we're out of break.
So what I'm going to do is ask you to hold on the line through the break.
We'll do what we have to do and come back to you.
Can you do that?
Yes, sir.
Okay, stay right where you are.
From Manila in the Philippines, other side of the world, from the majority of you, I'm Art Bell and we will be right back.
Yes, the other side of the world, from the majority of you.
I'm telling you.
I'm a technology nut, and what Premier Radio has done that allows a four hour talk radio, long form talk radio, to be done from the other side of the earth on a regular basis is astounding.
Absolutely astounding.
I don't know that it's ever been done before.
I'm sure for shorter periods it has, but something of this nature, long form, On a fairly regular basis or I guess I should say irregular basis.
No, that has not been done.
So it's just an amazing feat that tells you how the world has changed.
I wish the world would change in some other ways.
We will be back in a moment.
And here we go.
Our caller who was on hold is back and you're on the air.
Hi, I just wanted to say my name is Michael from Seattle and Back to what I was saying before.
For the people that are mad about global warming, we do understand that there is climate change.
But it being man-made is ridiculous.
And we understand that it's a cyclical event affecting the Earth and all the other planets.
The educated see that the government and globalists are using the tax as basically a tax on breathing.
And for those of you that don't believe that the government doesn't have your best interests at heart, As the same thing as believing people won't accept global warming because it's too scary.
You won't accept it because it's scary for you to accept that the government is treasonous and doesn't care about you.
And overpopulation is a eugenics PowerPoint that is brought up to make it seem alright to sterilize and depopulate the masses, all under the guise of saving the planet, when in actuality it's meant to depopulate the planet for better chances of control over fewer people.
I'd like to quote David Wilcox in saying that in order for a person to believe a lie, it demands ignorance.
And for the people that are not ignorant, they see the lie for what it is, just a lie.
And everything that I said is documented.
Anybody who wants to check it out can go look at a little book called Ecoscience.
It's 1100 pages, all documenting how to manufacture a global warming or climate change fiasco.
In order to do such things as depopulate the planet.
And my question for your guest is, will you have a true debate with somebody that's researched this topic to no end and be on coast-to-coast with Alex Jones in a two-way debate?
Professor?
I don't really want to go anywhere there.
That's such a load of crap.
I've been three and a half hours here and it's been quite civil, but that's just a load of crap.
Um, okay.
Um, you know, except for the last part, I don't know about Alex Jones, but perhaps somebody of, um, I don't know, some credentialed person who is in disagreement with you on the scientific facts, if we can find such a person.
Oh, I'd be happy to do that.
I mean, that sounds great.
But, you know, that was a screed.
I know.
Well, I said, anybody who disagrees, fine, lay it on.
I think he...
Kind of destroyed his own case, and I'm not suggesting that governments are not using this in the way that governments use any problem, because they are.
But whether or not, you know, he stopped by saying global warming is ridiculous, and he gave us nothing beyond that.
You know, he launched into the political side of things after that, so it's too bad.
But if we get a credentialed person who would like to disagree with you, then I would think it might be of some interest.
And I'd welcome that, and I would do it in a minute.
Okay.
All right, fair enough.
Have you, by the way, Doctor, had such a debate?
Have you ever done it on air or, you know, in front of a large audience?
Not over global warming, but I debated in front of a thousand people about evolution to some creationists in Seattle.
That was an interesting moment, actually.
People actually paid to come hear this.
And it was interesting to the point that the opposite side, and we have the Discovery Institute in Seattle, they're sort of the leading intelligent design group, and they shipped in via bus about 400 people who began booing every time I was trying to talk.
And just so scared, my boy, who was like eight years old, he was surrounded by these people hating his father, and he just got terrified.
It really turned into an awful, awful event.
So, debates are interesting things if you do them in the spirit of intellectualism, but this was thuggery.
I have done the other debates, but that one was about enough.
I hear you.
All right.
Let's see.
This would be one of the wildcard lines.
You're on the air.
Good morning.
Yes.
Is this wildcard line?
It is, and you're on the air.
Okay.
Very good.
Art, one of the reasons I love you is that you know how to make radio By the art of the panic.
When you panic, you don't panic, and you get great radio.
With that being said, to Dr. Ward, Dr. Ward is a fellow Seattleite, and as you know, Seattleites are probably the smartest people in the country.
In fact, we almost walk like gods among the people of the rest of the United States.
I want to challenge you on your statement of voice of reason that you said by saying that
Art is the voice of reason you said that basically that George nor is not now as the nori height
Who is committed to coastal Andy the coastal entity which basically a religion
George nori Voice and what he has in his head. He does so much to keep
so many people calm That it's
It's on the fact that's really unbelievable so I don't think I said that.
Do you remember me saying anything about George Norrie?
I was on his show just two weeks ago.
You said a voice of reason.
George Norrie is a voice of reason.
The kind of stuff that guy has got in his head and how he runs his program, he is a voice of reason.
He didn't say anything about George Norrie.
No, he said that you were the voice of reason, and that you should be there more, and that, uh, basically saying that George Norrie wasn't.
And the bone I have to pick with you, Art, is basically, I mean, this whole program has been political.
It's like you're running a coup to get your old job back to dethrone Norrie, and it's not going to work.
I mean, we're dedicated.
You think that's what it is?
You need better screeners, Art?
No, no, no, no.
I told the screener to let him through.
No, I don't want the old program back.
I enjoy being here on a very irregular basis and that was a decision I made some time ago and I'm very pleased with that decision.
I wouldn't change it for a moment.
Look, I said it earlier and I'll say it again.
George, I disagree on this topic, and that's fine.
This program, for years and years and years, even back when I ran it full-time, generously allowed all points of view, and I don't claim to have the only valid point of view.
I think that the fact that we do have both points of view on this program, unlike some other networks, is a positive thing, not a negative thing.
And again, you didn't say a word about George Norrie.
He interpreted what you said about me to be some sort of attack on him, which could not be further from the truth.
Let's go to the International Line.
You're on the air.
Good morning.
Good morning, Art.
Hi.
Peter, hi.
Yeah, I just wanted to comment on two things.
You were talking about term limits and big taxes on gasoline.
I believe we're never going to change this political system until we outlaw lobbyists, number one.
I think that's the only thing that would really bring change.
And as far as global warming and global cooling, I think it's happening at the same time, and I think, you know, the powers that be, the shadow government, the globalists, I think they're doing it on purpose.
I mean, we have all these high-powered lasers, and we have the harps working, and, you know, I saw a 60-minute interview with a scientist talking about climate, and in the same room with him, while the interview's going on, There's a NASA watchdog guy sitting right there, and I'm sure to make sure he doesn't say the wrong thing.
So I think it's all man-made.
I think we're melting the poles on purpose, not so much for oil, but for the gold, for the rubies, you know, for the minerals and all that other stuff.
And I think they are destroying the planet on purpose, and I don't think we're going to change anything.
Unless we outlaw these big corporations from running the government.
Okay.
Alright.
She makes a point.
I hear you about the lobbyists.
I agree.
Boy, I absolutely agree.
It's just how our government got to be this way.
I don't know, but it did.
I can't disagree.
Money drives it all, and I don't know of any natural way that we can change that.
None at all.
Good morning.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Dr. Peter Ward and Art Bell.
Hi there.
It's great, it's an honor to be on here, you know, talking to both of you.
Thank you.
My name's Charles.
I think that, I really think that you That the people need you to, besides, I mean, I love George Sodeth, and I think that the people need you to be on a tad bit more.
Not.
I mean, I know how you like it every once in a while, but maybe twice as much as you do, you know?
Well, I enjoy being here, but I enjoy it only occasionally now.
You know, I did it for a lot of years, every single night, six nights a week for many, many years, and so I'm quite pleased with the current schedule where I get to be here every now and then, and it's fine.
But thank you.
The comment that I have is that I really, even though it's a terrible thing, and it's always a terrible thing when this type of thing happens, personally I think that before anything is going to happen, I think there needs to be a revolution.
The right, although I hate using the right and the left, junk, everybody's different, but basically the right is notoriously aggressive and controlling and Brow beats everybody into what they need.
And the left has a more peaceful way of trying to go about things.
But I think that needs to shift.
I think the left needs to become a lot more aggressive.
Because, really, we don't need oil and coal.
And there's not really any reason to have it.
It's cheaper to have like solar panels and things like that.
There's many states that will refund you for them, you know.
But I think there needs to be a revolution.
I wish you were right.
Unfortunately, Collar, I'm afraid you're not.
We do need oil.
We do need coal until we get something that is economically feasible to replace them.
But until we start down that road, There is no destination in sight.
Frequently that works with travel.
You know, you go down the road and eventually you get to your destination.
Trouble with what we're doing is we haven't begun the journey.
We almost started a couple of times and you would think if anything would start us down that road it would be what just occurred in the Gulf.
But I don't see it happening yet.
I'm sorry.
And all the things that people have talked about.
The politics, the money that's attached to politics is going to keep our engine from starting.
Let's go to the, I believe it's the International Line.
You're on the air.
Good morning.
Hi.
I'm Anna and I'm calling from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
I'm on the East of the Rockies Line.
You're right.
East of the Rockies.
Thank you.
A few days ago I was taking through a compendium of great scientific advances of the 20th century.
And this subject tonight Just ties right in with it.
In that book, it's stated that in 1974, NASA was working on these projects.
They had the whole idea of how to do it.
They wanted to set up colonies in space at the points where the colonies would be held in a stable orbit by the gravity of the sun The moon and the earth, that they would hold that special place.
Lagrange points they're called.
They would be mining the moon for minerals to build, to get the materials to build those colonies.
The colonies would then beam back microwave energy from the sun to provide an energy source for Earth.
And relieve the Earth of all of this pollution that is the result of the way that we make our energy now.
And then they were going to go on to continue to mine and manufacture on the Moon to go further into space to explore more.
Now, if we could do that in 1974, and the plans existed then, My question is, is it really true that the way some people say who call this show that we did get kicked off the moon because we were too uncivilized?
Or are these political movements to benefit the few who are in and have influence with the Earth's government?
Okay.
Professor?
Well, let me pick one crack.
If you go to Hawaii, for instance, you will find that there's no mining.
Nobody mines in Hawaii.
It's just pure lava.
In 1974, we were really hoping that the moon had a lot more mineral wealth, and it turned out that it did, because the moon is really just like Hawaii, except big.
It's not as nice of an ocean.
The beaches aren't as good.
I'm sorry, everything's the rocks to me, but the rocks there are just really poor in metals.
To do what you want to do, we need metals.
There is the possibility of fusion material, and Art and I mentioned this earlier, there's a helium out there.
But the microwaving of energy certainly has been discussed back and forth, but here's the scary part, listener, and it was really a great question.
It would be done by the government, and would you really want to trust the government to be sending lethal microwaves towards tiny little spots on the earth, where if you miss, that you end up microwaving, just like a turkey, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg and college?
Yeah, so it's really scary, the amount of energy you need.
In a tight beam, that's a scary thing to be aiming at the Earth.
This is kind of like target practice.
You don't want to shoot back towards the people.
And that's what that would be doing.
Look, we're going to find the technology to be able to do that.
We don't quite have it yet.
But what you said about NASA really abandoning, we abandoned the moon.
I mean, that's still one of the greatest heartbreaks of my life.
It is, it is for me as well.
Alright, we don't have a lot of time left.
Let us go, I think, well, trying to go anyway, West of the Rockies.
You're on the air.
Hi, my name's Michael.
How are you, Doctor?
How are you, Art?
I'm good.
Thanks, Michael.
Good grief, what a beautiful evening for back and forth.
I have a comment, a question, I know it's quick, and a And a challenge for the doctor.
A comment is, were we not in the first instance when we had vehicles using water, such as the Stanley Steamer?
My question is, I have another comment, really.
In order to get rid of K Street, we have to get rid of C Street.
Jeff Charlotte, the family.
Secondly, if we Have the ability and the technology to do all that we say that we do, or that we can do, such as your last comment about microwaves, which is a great one.
Can we not just run vehicles off of water, like the military's doing currently right now with their Humvees?
And the challenge is, if you want to be a stellar doctor, why not bring that to the forefront?
Bring the technology, brainstorm, and put together something that the American public All right, caller, we are just out of time, simply out of time.
So, Professor, if you have a quick comment on that, running on water?
Well, the Stanley Steamer, I'm not quite sure, isn't, what made it steam?
Isn't it coal?
Was that a coal car?
I mean, you're right back to square one on it.
I don't understand how Humvees run on water.
Water would only work if you really had a hydrogen car.
I don't know about that either.
I mean, you've got to heat the water, as you point out.
Exactly.
And that's square one.
But hydrogen technology, I mean, hopefully it'll work.
I just, I don't know enough about it.
Cross fingers, knock on wood, something better coming along.
Till then, I guess we keep drilling.
Drill, baby, drill.
Professor, thank you so very much for being here.
Once again, it will not be the last.
If we can dig up somebody of your stature, we'll see if we can arrange a debate.
Otherwise, it's been a great night.
I thank you, sir.
Yes, sir, and looking forward to our next time.
Good night.
Alright folks, that's it from Southeast Asia for this night.
You all have a great night, and I will see you the next time they call my name.
▲
Export Selection