Asked what conclusion the Bush administration should draw from two hurricanes of such high intensity hitting the US in quick succession, Sir John said: "If what looks like is going to be a horrible mess causes the extreme sceptics about climate change in the US to reconsider their opinion, that would be an extremely valuable outcome."
"A stunning survey of the latest evidence for intelligent life on Mars. Mac Tonnies brings a thoughtful, balanced and highly accessible approach to one of the most fascinating enigmas of our time."
--Herbie Brennan, author of Martian Genesis and The Atlantis Enigma
"Tonnies drops all predetermined opinions about Mars, and asks us to do the same."
--Greg Bishop, author of Project Beta
"I highly recommend the book for anyone interested in the search for extra-terrestrial artifacts, and the political intrigues that invariably accompany it."
--David Jinks, author of The Monkey and the Tetrahredron
"Mac Tonnies goes where NASA fears to tread and he goes first class."
--Peter Gersten, former Director of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy
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(Includes my essay "The Ancients Are Watching.")
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4 comments:
You'll get your wish. Unfortunately, it's going to bite everyone else's asses as well.
It seems likely that Ken is fundamentally right. I'm not so sure about whether or not man can effect large-scale changes to the Earth's environment, however, the climate changes on the other planets (not just Mars, but also Venus, Jupiter and Pluto) at the same time as Earth is an awfully huge coincidence.
The cause is academic, though. Our response to it should be the same whether or not it's man's fault.
It's the Sun, folks. Mars is warming, we're warming, and these systems are so HUGE that I misdoubt humanity's capability to affect them seriously. It is fact that one could set off an H-Bomb in a large hurricane's eyewall and have little long term effect on that storm. The energies involved are beyond our abilities.
Wait a second. We've been spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial age. This isn't a matter of a "single year," in which case I would certainly have to agree with you that anthropogenic climate change is a myth.
I'm not declaring the Sun's role is absent or insignificant. But climate modeling shows us that some of the dangerous effects we're observing are intertwined with human activity. In the case of global warming, industrial emissions are morbidly exacerbating seasonal phenomena. Our role is *not* insignificant.
Actually, now that I've pumped up a solar-system-wide phenomena, I should mention that among mainstream astonomers it is far from clear that the cause is the sun. Many are arguing that it's something particular to the patch of space the solar system is going through.
Myself, I don't know. On the one hand, the sun has been acting freaky. On the other hand, one of the freaky things is that the sun has been growing visibly dimmer over the last 25 years. That insinuates a reduction in emitted energy (although some folks claim that the sun has been increasing the amount of energy emitted in nonvisible wavelengths).
So, even if you go with the idea that it's not an Earth-centric phenomena, that doesn't really clarify the picture a great deal.
For the record, Mac, I'm not saying that human activities are insignificant, nor am I saying that we don't have to be worried about our environmental impact. I am saying that the current effects we see aren't limited to the Earth, so whatever their cause is likely not limited to the Earth as well.
But what do I know? This is well out of my field. By the way, I omitted supporting links because I'm lazy, but I can supply them if anyone wants. Or go to DRT and search for global warming. You'll get a bunch of supporting material through there, too.
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