CORPORATE WELFARE. BILLIONS FOR WALL STREET.

WHILE MANY OF YOU MAY BE ON THAT BANDWAGON DAMNING ALL WHO ARE ON "WELFARE", ALL WHO GET "GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES" , WHETHER IT'S THE POOR, OR THE ELDERLY, OR THE DISABLED, FEW OF YOU ARE AWARE OF THE BILLIONS MORE, YES, MORE, THAT TAXPAYERS GIVE EACH YEAR TO MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR CORPORATIONS. 
FACT:
CORPORATIONS GET TWICE THE AMOUNT WE SPEND ON "SOCIAL WELFARE", AND AN ACTUAL "ACT OF CONGRESS" GUARANTEES THEY ALWAYS WILL!

YES, VIRGINIA, CONGRESS PASSED AN ACT TO DOLE OUT YOUR TAXPAYER MONEY TO THE RICHEST COMPANIES ON EARTH, BILLIONS AT A TIME, EVERY YEAR! IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS, IT'S JUST IGNORANCE.
BUT KNOWLEDGE CURES IGNORANCE.
IT'S BLIND STUPIDITY THAT THERE IS NO CURE FOR.

SO, LET'S "WISE UP"!

THERE IS A WEBSITE YOU CAN GO TO THAT WILL SHOW YOU A LONG LIST OF AMERICAN CORPORATIONS WHO ARE MILKING AMERICAN TAXPAYERS LIKE COWS.

SUBSIDY TRACKER 
http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/subsidy-tracker

HOW MANY SUBSIDIES HAVE BEEN AWARDED TO CORPORATIONS? 
441,000 (277,000 state/local; 164,000 federal) 

HOW MANY SUBSIDY PROGRAMS ARE SET UP TO GIVE AWAY TAX COLLECTIONS TO BIG COMPANIES? 
704 (567 state/local; 137 federal) 

HOW MANY PARENT COMPANIES ARE GETTING THE "WELFARE LOOT"? 
1,833 

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE!

"Six parent companies have received $1 billion or more in federal grants and allocated tax credits (those awarded to specific companies) since 2000; 21 have received $500 million or more; and 98 have received $100 million or more. 

A group of 582 large companies account for 67% of the $68 billion total."

CARE TO GUESS WHICH TYPE OF CORPORATIONS GET THE MOST 'MOOLAH'?

ENERGY COMPANIES, OF COURSE! 
THEY'RE ALSO SOME OF THE BIGGEST CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTORS, TOO, ARE THEY NOT?
WHO CAN ADD 1 + 1 ON THIS ONE AND TELL THE TEA ROOM ABOUT MUTUAL BACK-SCRATCHING?
"YOU GIVE ME BIG OLD CAMPAIGN BUCKS, I'LL GIVE YOU BIG OLD SUBSIDIES!"

AND IN THAT SWEET DEAL, YOU LOSE, AMERICAN TAXPAYERS!
YOU LOSE.   

AS THE HUFFINGTON POST RECENTLY POINTED OUT: 
"As for government bailouts, Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase have all received hundreds of billions of dollars in guarantees of their toxic paper. 
(All of these banks, notably, have had to pay large fines in recent years for misconduct despite being rescued by American taxpayers.) 
Corporate welfare kings!"  

WELFARE KINGS, INDEED! 
REAGAN WAS LOOKING IN THE WRONG PLACE!

WELFARE KINGS, NOT QUEENS! 

BIG BUSINESS, NOT STRUGGLING SINGLE MOMS!
DUHHH? 

Some recipients of these subsidies are benefiting while suckering the unsuspecting, unquestioning taxpayers AND while also avoiding paying taxes. 

THAT'S RIGHT, MANY PAY NO TAXES! 

Enter Uncle Sam, the OTHER sucker!

From the subsidy tracker data:

"Federal subsidies have gone to several companies that have reincorporated abroad to avoid U.S. taxes. 

For example, power equipment producer Eaton (reincorporated in Ireland but actually based in Ohio) has received $32 million in grants and allocated tax credits as well as $7 million in loans and loan guarantees from the Export-Import Bank and other agencies. 

Oilfield services company Ensco (reincorporated in Britain but really based in Texas) has received $1 billion in support from the Export-Import Bank."

LIKE THE MAN SAYS ON HUFFPOST:

"It's time for a serious public rebellion to curtail welfare spending on giant, profitable corporations who use our public services and infrastructure, ship American jobs to dictatorial regimes overseas and even brazenly avoid paying their share of taxes to Uncle Sam. 

This is a clear left/right convergence issue that has been muddied by corporatist rhetoric about free markets and self-reliant capitalism for far too long. " 

AND NOW, MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, YOU SEE WHY YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS, THOSE LIARS WHO HAVE BEEN CAUGHT IN LIES AFTER EVERY ELECTION, HAVE BEEN FEEDING YOU MALARKEY ABOUT HOW WE MUSTN'T UPSET OUR BUSINESS OWNERS, MUSTN'T TAX OUR BIG BUSINESSES, ELSE WE'LL "LOSE" THEM? 

HELL! THEY'RE PAYING THEM TO MOVE OVERSEAS!

I TRIED TO ENLIGHTEN YOU BACK IN FEBRUARY WITH THIS ARTICLE, REMEMBER?

"AMERICAN CORPORATIONS PAID TO SEND JOBS OVERSEAS"

http://havacuppahemlock1.blogspot.com/2015/02/4-million-american-jobs-moved-overseas.html

PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THIS FACT, PLEASE! 

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SPENDS TWICE MORE ON CORPORATE WELFARE THAN IT SPENDS ON ALL SOCIAL WELFARE COMBINED!
THAT'S BEEN THE CASE FOR FAR TOO LONG!

EVEN BACK IN 2006, BEFORE OBAMA, THE FEDS GAVE BIG COMPANIES ABOUT $92 BILLION, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME SPENDING $59 BILLION ON ALL OF SOCIAL SECURITY, ALL OF MEDICARE, ALL OF "FOOD STAMPS", ALL OF "WELFARE CHECKS", ALL OF DISABILITY PAYMENTS COMBINED!  

AND YOU WONDER WHY AMERICA IS BROKE, WHY WE CAN'T BALANCE A BUDGET, WHY WE'RE IN THE SHAPE WE'RE IN?

CORPORATE WELFARE AND DEFENSE SPENDING TOP THE BIG TICKET LIST, PEOPLE!

IT ISN'T GRAMMA AND GRAMPS, OR THE POOR WHO ARE BURDENS TO SOCIETY!
IT'S THE FREE-LOADING CORPORATE FAT-CAT BASTARDS!

WHO'S MOOCHING OFF AMERICA?
WALL STREET!

WHO'S AGREEING TO THIS?
WHO KEEPS FEEDING THE GREEDY?
YOU!
ALL WHO HAVE FALLEN FOR THE SPIEL SLUNG AT YOU BY YOUR SOLD-OUT, ON-THE-TAKE, WALL STREET BUTT-KISSERS WHOM WE CALL "CONGRESSMEN" ...LET'S UNDERLINE THE CON IN CONGRESS, SHALL WE?

AMERICA, YOU'VE BEEN HOODWINKED, ROBBED, CONNED, LEFT HOLDING THE BAG!
BUT HOW BAD IS IT?

IT'S BAD.

THE 2005 "ENERGY POLICY ACT" PRETTY MUCH ASSURES THAT OIL, GAS, COAL COMPANIES AND NUCLEAR FACILITIES WILL FOREVER BE ON THE FEDERAL WELFARE ROLLS.

UNLIKE THOSE ON WELFARE, WHERE 'FOOD STAMP' RECIPIENTS AND THOSE WHO ACTUALLY GET 'WELFARE CHECKS' DROP OUT OF THE SYSTEM IN 1 TO 4 YEARS, AND UNLIKE THE ELDERLY, WHO WILL LIKELY DIE WITHIN 15-30 YEARS OF THAT FIRST SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK, BIG BUSINESS WILL BE ON THE GOVERNMENT WELFARE ROLLS FOREVER, FOREVER, AND LONG AFTER WE'RE ALL GONE, OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN WILL BE WORKING TO PAY FOR CORPORATE AMERICA'S HUGE, CONTINUAL WELFARE CHECKS!

How on earth can the richest companies on the planet qualify for federal handouts?

"...because no goods or services are directly returned to the government in exchange for these expenditures."

BUT WAIT!
THERE'S WORSE NEWS IN THE 2005 BILL, THAT GIFT FROM CONGRESS TO THEIR SWEETHEARTS ON WALL STREET.
CONGRESS REALLY WORKED THEIR BUTTS OFF TO SATISFY THEIR CORPORATE "JOHNS"! 

The bill ALSO gave the federal government NEW EMINENT-DOMAIN POWERS to do the big boys favors... like clear paths for power lines -- a long-standing demand of the nation's electric utilities. 
The utilities said they were being thwarted by "not-in-my-back-yard" opposition, so the politicians came to their rescue.  

YOU WANT ACCESS TO PRIVATELY OWNED PROPERTY?
SURE THING, SWEETHEART!
NOW WRITE ME A CAMPAIGN CHECK!
CONGRESS LOVES ITS BIG DONORS, MY, YES! 
LOOK HOW MUCH! 

The Washington Post contended that the spending bill is a broad collection of subsidies for United States energy companies; in particular, the nuclear and oil industries.
THAT IT IS!

"Every industry gets their own little program," said Myron Ebell of the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute. "There's pork in there for everybody."

The bill exempts oil and gas industries from some clean-water laws, streamlines permits for oil wells and power lines on public lands, and helps the hydropower industry appeal environmental restrictions. 

One obscure provision repealed a Depression-era law that has prevented consolidation of public utilities, potentially transforming the nation's electricity markets.

It also included an estimated $85 billion worth of subsidies and tax breaks for most forms of energy -- including oil and gas, "clean coal," ethanol, electricity, and solar and wind power. 

The nuclear industry got subsidies for research, waste reprocessing, construction, operation and even decommission. 

The petroleum industry got new incentives to drill in the Gulf of Mexico.

It exempts oil and gas companies from the Safe Drinking Water Act requirements when they inject fluids -- including some carcinogens -- into the earth at high pressure, a process known as hydraulic fracturing. 
Betty Anthony, director for exploration and production at the American Petroleum Institute, said states already regulate the process, but residents of Alabama, Virginia, West Virginia and other states have complained that it has polluted groundwater in their communities.

House Majority Leader, at the time,Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) also managed to insert at least $500 million in subsidies over a 10-year period -- with the option to double the amount -- for research into deep-water oil and gas drilling, a grant that many lawmakers expect to go to the Texas Energy Center in DeLay's home town of Sugar Land. 

OINK, OINK! WHAT A PIG'S JOY! 
LET THE PORK BARRELS ROLL! 

The bill also includes royalty relief for deep-water drilling projects, a strategy that helped jump-start production in the Gulf during the 1990s. 

The bill's most far-reaching provision may be the repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which has blocked the owners of utilities from owning other companies, and has prevented mergers in the electricity industry. 

Consumer advocates warned that the repeal will trigger a flurry of mergers and acquisitions by banks, oil firms and even foreign countries, leading to increased rates and Enron-style frauds. 

The bill's biggest winner was probably the nuclear industry, which received billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks covering almost every facet of operations. 

There were subsidies for research into new reactor designs, "fusion energy," small-particle accelerators and reprocessing nuclear waste, which would reverse current U.S. policy. 

Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Tex.) even inserted a $250,000 provision for research into using radiation to refine oil.
RADIOACTIVE OIL?
THAT'S INSANE, RIGHT?

The bill also included $2 billion for "risk insurance" in case new nuclear plants run into construction and licensing delays.
And nuclear utilities will be eligible for taxpayer-backed loan guarantees of as much as 80 percent the cost of their plants. 


EAT IT AND SMILE, AMERICAN TAXPAYERS!
LOOK WHAT YOUR BELOVED CONGRESSMEN DID FOR YOU! 

The bill passed the Senate, 74 to 26. 

All Maryland and Virginia senators voted for the bill, except Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.). 

In the House, the majority of area representatives approved the bill, which passed 275 to 156 . Voting against it were Reps. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Md.), Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). 

During the debate over the bill's numerous subsidies, taxpayer groups questioned why thriving energy companies need federal aid to produce energy.
THE ANSWER GIVEN TO THEM WAS, BASICALLY, "UP YOURS!

AND BUSH 2 DAMN SURE DIDN'T VETO IT! 
THE BUSHES MADE A FORTUNE IN OIL, AFTER ALL,
THEY OWED THEIR PALS! 

HOW MANY CONGRESSMEN OWE AT LEAST SOME OF THEIR MILLIONAIRE STATUS TO OIL, COAL, NUCLEAR, OR GAS STOCKS?
OR, MAYBE, TO THEIR LOBBYISTS? 

AND ALL OF US WILL PAY...AND PAY...AND KEEP PAYING! 

TO SEE SOME OF THE LATEST BIG MOOCHERS AND HOW MUCH YOU GAVE THEM, YOU MAY ALSO WANT TO GO HERE:
http://www.progress.org/banneker/cw.html 

THAT'S A DAMN FINE WEBSITE FOR CALLING CORPORATE AMERICA OUT ON WHY IT KEEPS ON TAKING.

EVEN THE ABOMINATION KNOWN AS THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION RECENTLY SLAPPED AMERICA FOR ITS CORPORATE WELFARE!
IMAGINE THAT!

"'The World Trade Organisation confirms that a $4bn export subsidy programme for some of America’s best known companies violates global trade rules.

A WTO rejection of the US appeal against an earlier judgment in favour of the European Union will pave the way for Brussels to slap up to $4bn in retaliatory sanctions on US goods, a move which Washington has described  as a “nuclear weapon”.'"  

IRONY  
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton made the corporate welfare bill an issue in the 2008 Democratic Primary by criticizing Senator Barack Obama's vote FOR the bill.
One Senator, Sanders, has said corporations get more like $125 BILLION every year!  

The Export-Import Bank Is Corporate Welfare At Its Worst 

"'This country has a  $6 trillion national debt, a growing deficit and is borrowing money from the Social Security Trust Fund in order to fund government services. We can no longer afford to provide over $125 billion every year in corporate welfare – tax breaks, subsidies and other wasteful spending – that goes to some of the largest, most profitable corporations in America.  

At a time when the government is under-funding veterans’ needs, education, health care, housing and many other vital services, over 80% of the subsidies distributed by the Export-Import Bank goes to Fortune 500 corporations.  
Among the companies that receive taxpayer support from the Ex-Im are Enron, Boeing, Halliburton, Mobil Oil, IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Motorola, Lucent Technologies, FedEx, General Motors, Raytheon, and United Technologies.'" 

HE OUGHT TO KNOW, RIGHT? 

BUT OTHERS PLACE CORPORATE WELFARE AT OVER $150 BILLION IN A YEAR!

SEE: http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2015_03/corporatism2x.png?h=2994&w=1350

Government Spends More on Corporate Welfare Subsidies than Social Welfare Programs...PERIOD!

Whenever CORPORATE welfare is presented to voters, it always sounds like a pretty reasonable, well-intended idea.  
SPIN DOCTORS CAN MAKE IT SOUND DOWNRIGHT PATRIOTIC! 

Politicians say that they’re "stimulating the economy" or helping struggling industries or "creating jobs" or "funding important research". 

CREATING JOBS OVERSEAS! 
SENDING ALMOST 600,000 AMERICAN JOBS OVERSEAS EACH YEAR SINCE 2005 TO MAKE MORE PROFITS!
SEE : http://havacuppahemlock1.blogspot.com/2015/02/4-million-american-jobs-moved-overseas.html 

AND CONGRESS MADE SURE THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER HELPS FUND ANY COMPANY THAT WANTS TO SHUT DOWN HERE AND MOVE TO FOREIGN SOIL!
"FUNDING IMPORTANT RESEARCH" TRANSLATES TO PORK BARREL SPENDING.
GO SEE FOR YOURSELVES THE PLAIN OLD DUMB THINGS OUR GOVERNMENT, OUR CONGRESS HELPS "FUND" AND CALLS IT "RESEARCH". 
http://cagw.org/reporting/pig-book

MORE CORPORATE WELFARE, CREATING EVER MORE WELFARE KINGS WHO LAUGH ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK, WHILE AMERICAN WORKERS LOSE JOBS, LOSE BENEFITS, LOSE HOPE OF HIGHER WAGES, AND DIG IN TO PAY THE COMPANIES, AROUND 2,000 TO 4,000 MAJOR COMPANIES, TWICE AS MUCH AS THE MILLIONS OF AMERICAN CITIZENS WHO RECEIVE ANY FORM OF "SOCIAL WELFARE".

2,000 FAT CATS GET TWICE AS MUCH WELFARE EVERY YEAR AS MILLIONS OF CITIZENS!

AND THIS IS OKAY WITH YOU, AMERICA? 

WE SHOULD NOT ONLY COMPLY WITH WALL STREET MOOCHING BUT NOT DEMAND TO KNOW WHO GETS HOW MUCH? 

IT'S OKAY THAT THIS IS NEVER IN HEADLINE NEWS?
REALLY? 

WHEN YOU STEAL MONEY FROM THE PAYCHECKS OF HARD-WORKING PEOPLE, YOU HURT THE ECONOMY, NOT HELP IT! 

WHEN YOU ROB AMERICAN WORKERS TO PAY THEIR EMPLOYERS SUBSIDIES, WELFARE, YOU HURT THE ECONOMY BECAUSE THE WORKERS DON'T HAVE THAT MONEY TO BUY GOODS OR SERVICES.

WHEN PEOPLE CAN'T BUY, THEN DEMAND IS DECREASED, AND OTHER SMALLER INDUSTRIES WHO SUPPLY MEGA-INDUSTRY ARE FINANCIALLY DAMAGED AND HAVE TO LAY PEOPLE OFF WORK!

WE SEE TODAY WALL STREET'S REACTION TO LOWER FUEL PRICES, WHICH HELPS THE AVERAGE WORKING MAN/WOMAN...THEY ARE FREAKING OUT!

LOWER FUEL, LOWER CRUDE IS A DISASTER TO WALL STREET!
WHY?
WHY?
TELL US WHY, WALL STREET, DOW JONES, STANDARD AND POOR?
CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL!

BIGGEST PIGS AT THE GOVERNMENT TROUGH     

Most of the pigs at the government trough are among the biggest companies in America, including: 

~ Boeing heads the list
~The Big 3 automakers
(Fiat Chrysler, Ford, but GM tops them all)
~Intel
~Alcoa
~Enron
~ Royal Dutch Shell
~Nike  

MEGA-FARM SUBSIDIES  
However, the largest fraction of corporate welfare spending, about 40%, went through the Department of Agriculture, most of it in the form of farm subsidies. (Edwards, Corporate Welfare, 2003) 

Well, that sounds OK. 
Someone’s got to help struggling family farms stay afloat, right? 

But in reality, farm subsidies actually tilt the cotton field in favor of the LARGEST industrial farming operations. 

SMALL FAMILY FARMS CAN'T COMPETE, SO THEY GO BANKRUPT OR SELL OUT TO THE BIG BOYS.

WHEN SMALL LOCAL FARMS GO UNDER, YOU WILL PAY MORE, MUCH MORE, AMERICA, TO HAVE THOSE GOODS SHIPPED IN FROM SOME MEGA-FARM HUNDREDS OF MILES AWAY!

THE BIGGEST PIGS GET THE MOST SWILL 
When it comes to deciding how to dole out the money, the agricultural subsidy system utilizes a process that is essentially the opposite of that used in the social welfare system. 

In the CORPORATE welfare system, the MORE money and assets you have, the MORE government assistance you get. 

Conversely, SOCIAL welfare programs are set up so that the more money and assets you have, the less government assistance you get. 

NOT FOR THE WALL STREET CROWD!

THE FAT-CATS IN CONGRESS KEEP CUTTING SOCIAL WELFARE TO THE BONE, BUT STEADILY INCREASE SUBSIDIES/FEDERAL WELFARE FOR THEIR DARLING DONORS, THE BIG SPENDERS WHO DROP THE MOST COINS IN THOSE CAMPAIGN TIN CUPS!

The result is that the absolute largest 7% of corporate farming operations receive 45% of all subsidies. (Edwards, Downsizing the Federal Government, 2004) 

THE TOP 7% OF THE "BIG BOYS" GET ALMOST HALF OF THE DOLE-OUT, THE WELFARE?
YES, YES THEY DO!

So instead of protecting family farms, family-owned businesses, local small companies, these subsidies actually enhance the ability of LARGE industrial operations to shut them out of the market. 

RESULT?

FOOD PRICES UP, CORPORATE PROFIT UP, AMERICAN WORKING CLASS SCREWED AGAIN!

THIS IS NOT RIGHT AND NOTHING CAN MAKE IT RIGHT, BUT WHAT AMERICANS DON'T KNOW... EMPTIES POCKETBOOKS, RIGHT?
FOR AMERICAN CONSUMERS, YES, BUT IT FATTENS THOSE CORPORATE MOOCHERS EVERY SINGLE YEAR!

THANK CONGRESS!
THANK A PIG-HEARTED PIG-FEEDER!

NOW YOU KNOW, AND KNOWLEDGE EMPOWERS!





A FEW OF MY SOURCES (perhaps not hyperlinked above)...I LOSE TRACK, MEA CULPA...

~http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2014/03/14/where-is-the-outrage-over-corporate-welfare/

~ http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/terrorism-risk-insurance-act-time-end-corporate-welfare

~ http://www.progress.org/banneker/cw.html

~ http://www.cato.org/research/corporate-welfare

~ http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2015_03/corporatism2x.png?h=2994&w=1350 

PLUTONIUM RELEASED FROM FUKUSHIMA HIGHER THAN IMAGINED

RECENT HEADLINE:
"DETECTED PLUTONIUM ISOTOPES FROM THE FUKUSHIMA DAI'ICHI DISASTER FOUND TO BE AT LEVELS PERHAPS 70,000 TIMES GREATER THAN 'SUPPOSED'."

PLUTONIUM HAS BEEN FOUND IN THE OCEAN AS WELL AS IN SOIL SAMPLES FROM AS FAR AWAY AS 160 KILOMETERS FROM THE CRIPPLED NUCLEAR PLANT, CARRIED ALOFT BY THE SEVERAL HYDROGEN(?) EXPLOSIONS AT THE DAI'ICHI FACILITY. 

PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT JAPAN HAS NO IDEA WHATSOEVER WHERE THE MELTED FUEL IS, HOW MUCH RADIATION IS CONSTANTLY BEING EMITTED FROM EVERY INCH OF THAT BROKEN-DOWN WRECK OF A FACILITY BECAUSE IT IS SO HIGH FEW INSTRUMENTS CAN MEASURE IT.

THIS IS AN ONGOING, NEVER-ENDING LEAK ON A SCALE NEVER BEFORE SEEN IN HUMAN HISTORY,
THERE ARE FOUR (4) DESTROYED OR HEAVILY DAMAGED REACTORS, FOUR, NOT ONE OR TWO!

AND THE ONE REACTOR THAT HAD THE MOST VIOLENT EXPLOSION WAS THE REACTOR THAT WAS USING "MOX" FUEL, WHICH HAD PLUTONIUM IN IT.

DO YOU THINK A RUSSIAN SCIENTIST INVOLVED WITH THE CHERNOBYL ACCIDENT JUST MIGHT HAVE A BETTER GRIP ON THINGS THAN THOSE WHO ARE JUST "GUESSING"? 

 "Dr. Alexey Yablokov, co-author of “Chernobyl:Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment," and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, warned today that the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan could be comparable to or potentially greater than the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl reactor explosion on April 26, 1986 in Ukraine. 
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, DC, Dr. Yablokov said: 

“We are seeing something that has never happened – a multiple reactor catastrophe including one using plutonium fuel as well as spent fuel pool accidents...“I am not optimistic about the situation at Fukushima,” Dr. Yablolov said. “It’s especially dangerous if plutonium is released as inhalation of plutonium results in a high probability of cancer. A release of plutonium will contaminate that area forever and it is impossible to clean up.”

Plutonium is deadly for 240,000 years. 

Dr. Yablokov cautioned against the downplaying of the seriousness of the radiation releases at Fukushima. “When you hear ‘no immediate danger’ then you should run away as far and as fast as you can,” he said. He pointed out that the area around Chernobyl is as contaminated today as it was almost 25 years ago when the accident occurred.  Cesium, americium, strontium and plutonium that deposited in soil have reached the roots of plants which then propel the radioactivity back to the surface.  “The contamination there last year is the same as 20 years ago,” he said.

WE REALLY NEED TO LET THAT SINK IN.
JAPAN SAYS IT HAS NO ALTERNATIVE BUT TO RELEASE CONTAMINATED STEAM AND WATER INTO THE ENVIRONMENT EVERY DAY.
THEY ALSO TELL US THAT THERE IS NO WAY THEY CAN SEE BEING ABLE TO SHUT THAT PLACE DOWN ANY SOONER THAN 30 TO 40 YEARS FROM NOW.  

THAT MEANS WE WILL SEE CONTINUED OCEAN AND AIR AND SOIL CONTAMINATION FOR ABOUT 4 MORE DECADES!
FUKUSHIMA IS NOT "OVER"!
FUKUSHIMA IS OUR FUTURE FOR A LONG, LONG TIME TO COME!

FROM THE ONSET, WE WERE BASICALLY KEPT IN THE DARK.
SOME OF THAT WAS BECAUSE OF TEPCO'S UNWILLINGNESS TO BE HONEST, SOME WAS BECAUSE OUR GOVERNMENT FEARED WE'D "PANIC". 

HELL! THERE'S NO NEED TO PANIC, BUT THERE IS A LOT OF NEED TO DO SOMETHING, TO TAKE ACTION, TO INFORM, ALERT, BE HONEST ABOUT IT!

IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE FUKUSHIMA DISASTER, THE HUFFINGTON POST WONDERED IN AN ARTICLE WHY SO MANY OF OUR RADIATION MONITORING SITES WERE SUDDENLY OFFLINE, UNAVAILABLE, "UNDER CONSTRUCTION". 

4 OUT OF 11 CALIFORNIA MONITORS WERE OFFLINE, 20 OTHERS OUT OF A NETWORK OF 124 WERE ALSO SHUT DOWN.

WHAT A HELL OF A TIME TO "PERFORM MAINTENANCE", ISN'T IT?
"The EPA's independent watchdog, Inspector General Arthur Elkins, told the AP he is considering reviewing the agency's emergency response planning, including the agency's RadNet system. 

Gaps in the system – as well as the delays in fixing monitors in some of Southern California's most populated areas – have helped to prompt hearings and inquiries in Washington and Sacramento."

DID YOU KNOW THAT ALL EPA RADIATION MONITORING STATIONS WENT OFFLINE IN FEBRUARY OF 2014?
YES, ALL OF THEM! 
EPA CLAIMED "A TECHNICAL GLITCH", BUT MANAGED TO GET IT BACK UP AND RUNNING THE NEXT DAY.

IT WAS NOTED BY MANY THAT THIS "UNEXPLAINED FAILURE" COINCIDED WITH HIGH RADIATION LEAKS FROM THE CARLSBAD, NEW MEXICO HUGE WIPP NUCLEAR WASTE SITE.
PRIOR TO SHUTDOWN OF "RADNET", AS I REPORTED ELSEWHERE ON THIS BLOG, MONITORS WERE SHOWING "OFF-THE-CHART" RADIATION FROM THE WIPP SITE.

INTERESTINGLY, ON MARCH 23, 2011, THE VOICE OF AMERICA REPORTED THAT THE U.S. IS WORKING DILIGENTLY ON A DRUG FOR RADIATION SICKNESS

"...that could not only protect people from dangerous levels of radiation exposure but also heal those actually exposed to damaging nuclear radiation."   

Ramesh Kumar, the CEO of a U.S. drug research firm called Onconova, says his company has just such a wonder drug in the works.

The company has been collaborating on the drug, called Ex-Rad, with scientists at a U.S. Defense Department research laboratory. Kumar says early animal trials have been promising."

WE'VE HEARD CESIUM, CESIUM, CESIUM SPOUTED FOR 4 YEARS NOW, AND VERY LITTLE ABOUT OTHER RADIOACTIVE NUCLEOTIDES, ISOTOPES, ESPECIALLY PLUTONIUM.
WHY BE CONCERNED ABOUT PLUTONIUM?
WHY DOES THIS MATTER SO MUCH?  

"Environmental contamination of radionuclides, such as plutonium, presents 

important potential health risks. Although significant amounts of plutonium do

 not occur in nature, environmental plutonium contamination is a concern 

because of historical events, (e.g., fallout from weapons testing, accidental 

release from nuclear reactors, and inadequate disposal practices)

[SOURCE:Ewing RC. Nuclear waste forms for actinides. Proceedings of the 

National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 1999;96(7):3432–

3439. [PMC free article]

The Fukushima nuclear accident dispersed airborne dusts that are contaminated with radioactive particles. When inhaled or ingested, these particles can have negative effects on human health that are DIFFERENT from those caused by exposure to external or "uniform" radiation fields. 

IN PLAIN ENGLISH, IT IS NOT IN ANY WAY THE SAME AS FLYING ON AN AIRPLANE OR EATING A DAMNED BANANA!
THAT OLD LINE IS INSANE AND THOSE SPOUTING IT MUST NOT WANT HUMANS TO LIVE OVER THIS ACCIDENT!

PLUTONIUM normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation states. It reacts with carbon, halogens, nitrogen, silicon and hydrogen. When exposed to moist air, it forms oxides and hydrides that expand the sample up to 70% in volume, which in turn flake off as a powder that can spontaneously ignite. It is radioactive and can accumulate in bones. These properties make the handling of plutonium dangerous.

A team led by Glenn T. Seaborg and Edwin McMillan at the University of California, Berkeley, first synthesized plutonium in 1940 by bombarding uranium-238 with deuterons. Plutonium is the heaviest primordial element by virtue of its most stable isotope, plutonium-244, whose half-life of about 80 million years is just long enough for the element to be found in trace quantities in nature. Plutonium is mostly a byproduct of nuclear reactions, where some of the neutrons released by the fission process convert uranium-238 nuclei into plutonium.
Both plutonium-239 and plutonium-241 are fissile, meaning that they can sustain a nuclear chain reaction.

There are two aspects to the harmful effects of plutonium: the radioactivity and the heavy metal poison effects. 

 Human radiation experiments studying plutonium were conducted without informed consent, and several criticality accidents, some lethal, occurred after the war. 

During the decay of plutonium, three types of radiation are released—alpha, beta, and gamma. Alpha, beta, and gamma radiation are all forms of ionizing radiation. Either acute or longer-term exposure carries a danger of serious health outcomes including radiation sickness, genetic damage, cancer, and death. 
The danger increases with the amount of exposure. 
[Emsley 2001, pp. 324–329] 

Alpha radiation can travel only a short distance and cannot travel through the outer, dead layer of human skin. 
Beta radiation can penetrate human skin, but cannot go all the way through the body. 
Gamma radiation can go all the way through the body. 
["Plutonium, CAS ID #: 7440-07-5". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.] 

Even though alpha radiation cannot penetrate the skin, ingested or inhaled plutonium does irradiate internal organs. 
[Emsley 2001, pp. 324–329] 

The skeleton, where plutonium accumulates, and the liver, where it collects and becomes concentrated, are at risk.
[Miner 1968, p. 545] 

SO, YOU SEE, IN 'STREET LANGUAGE', "PLUTONIUM IS A REAL BITCH!"


WHAT IS ALSO JUST A BIT MADDENING IS THAT SO MANY WELL-PAID "SCIENTISTS" KEEP SAYING THERE WERE NO "HOT PARTICLES" DETECTED IN THE USA...
YES, THERE WERE!      
[ A hot particle is a microscopic piece of radioactive material, which can become lodged in living tissue and deliver a concentrated dose of radiation to a small area, often for a very long time.] 

IN ONE STUDY:
Scientist Marco Kaltofen, M.S., PE, from the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA,  testing for radioactive isotopic releases from Fukushima, presented his findings at the American Public Health Association (APHA) annual meeting in Washington DC.

His paper, titled, "Radiation Exposure to the Population in Japan After the Earthquake," includes United States data analysis.
HE WAS NOT FUNDED BY ANY GOVERNMENT AGENCY OR ENTITY.


IN APRIL, 2012, HOT PARTICLES WERE DETECTED IN BOTH SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, AND IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS. 
[VIDEO INTERVIEW HERE: http://www.psr.org/resources/marco-kaltofen-on-radiation-spread.html]

AS FOR THE UNFORTUNATE PEOPLE OF JAPAN, SINCE THEIR "MINISTRY" HAS ELEVATED THE "ACCEPTABLE LEVELS" OF RADIATION THEY CAN BE EXPOSED TO, IT MAY INTEREST YOU TO KNOW THAT GARDEN SOIL FROM ALMOST ANY PLOT WITHIN 80-160 KILOMETERS FROM THE DAI'ICHI PLANT WOULD BE CONSIDERED NUCLEAR WASTE HERE IN AMERICA, OR IN GERMANY, OR THE UK...

SOIL SAMPLES FROM AS FAR AWAY AS TOKYO ALSO REGISTERED RADIATION LEVELS THAT, PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT, WERE CONSIDERED BY ALL NATIONS OF EARTH TO BE EXTREMELY HAZARDOUS TO HUMAN HEALTH, AND WOULD HAVE BEEN REQUIRED TO BE REMOVED AS NUCLEAR WASTE.  

I LIST SEVERAL KNOWN READINGS BELOW THAT DO NOT APPLY TO PLUTONIUM JUST SO ALL CAN SEE WHAT THE PEOPLE OF JAPAN ARE UP AGAINST.
THIS SURELY WOULD NOT BE ALLOWED ELSEWHERE!
THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY NEEDS TO HELP THE JAPANESE PEOPLE FORCE THEIR GOVERNMENT TO REVEAL THE EXTENT OF THIS CONTAMINATION AND DO SOMETHING TO HELP THEM...WHETHER BY MASS EVACUATION OR ASKING THE WORLD TO HELP THEM CLEAN THAT DAMNED PLACE UP!

On 18 October 2011, a hot-spot in a public square was found in the city of Kashiwa, Chiba in the Nedokoyadai district, by a resident walking with a dosimeter. 
He informed the city council. 
Their first readings were off the scale, as their Geiger-counter could measure only up to 10 microsieverts per hour. 
Later measurements by the Chiba environment foundation reported a final result of 57.5 microsieverts per hour. 
On 21 October the roads around the place were sealed off, and the place was covered with sandbags three meters thick. Further investigations and check-ups were planned on 24 October 2011.[ SEE:Mainichi Japan (21 October 2011) Chiba Pref. city finds major radioactive hot spot on public land.] 

These investigations showed on 23 October levels up to 276,000 becquerels radioactive cesium per kilogram of soil, 30 centimeters below the surface. The first comments of town officials on the find of 57.7 micro-Sieverts per hour were that there could not be a link with the Fukushima disaster, but after the find of this large amount of cesium, officials of the Science Ministry could not deny the possibility that the cause could be found at the Fukushima-site.[SEE: .[The Mainichi Daily News (23 October 2011) High-level radioactive cesium detected in soil in Kashiwa]

In October 2011, radiation levels as high as those in the evacuation zone around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant were detected in a Tokyo suburb. Japanese officials said the contamination was linked to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. 

Contamination levels "as high as those inside Fukushima's no-go zone have been detected, with officials speculating that the hotspot was created after radioactive caesium carried in rain water became concentrated because of a broken gutter". 
[SEE: Mark Willacy (25 October 2011). "Radiation hotspot found in Tokyo". Australia Network News. Archived from the original on 2012-04-23.]

In October 2011 hotspots were reported on the grounds of two elementary schools in Abiko in Chiba:
11.3 microsieverts per hour was detected on 25 September just above the surface of the ground near a ditch in the compounds of the Abiko Municipal Daiichi Elementary School. 50 centimeters above the ground the reading was 1.7 microsieverts per hour. The soil in the ditch contained 60,768 becquerels per kilogram. After the soil was removed the radiation declined to 0.6 microsieverts per hour at 50 centimeters above ground level.

10.1 microsieverts per hour was found at the Abiko Municipal Namiki Elementary School near the surface of the ground where sludge removed from the swimming pool of the school had been buried. The area was covered with a waterproof tarp and dirt was put on top of the tarp to decrease the radiation; 0.6 microsieverts per hour was measured 50 centimeters above the ground after this was done. 
[SEE: The Mainichi Daily news( 26 October 2011) High levels of radiation detected at 2 schools in Chiba Prefecture]


Radioactive cesium was found in waste water discharged into Tokyo Bay from a cement factory in the prefecture Chiba east of Tokyo. 
In September and October two water samples were taken, measuring 1,103 becquerels per liter and 1,054 becquerels per liter respectively. 
These were 14 to 15 times higher than the limit set by NISA. 

Ash from incinerators in the prefecture constituted the raw material to produce cement. In this process toxic substances are filtered out of the ashes, and the water used to clean these filters was discharged into Tokyo Bay. On 2 November 2011 this waste-water discharge was halted, and the Japanese authorities started a survey on the cesium contamination of the seawater of Tokyo Bay near the plant.  
[SEE: NHK-world (2 November 2011) Radioactive materials detected in Tokyo Bay Archived April 3, 2012, AND ALSO SEE: JAIF (3 November 2011) Earthquake-report ]

JAPAN RAISED "ACCEPTABLE LEVELS" SIMPLY BECAUSE IT CAN FIND NO WAY TO BRING THE LEVELS FROM FUKUSHIMA DOWN.

At a press conference in Tokyo (March 14, 2011), Masashi Goto, who worked for Toshiba as a reactor researcher and designer, said the mixed oxide (MOX) fuel used in unit 3 of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant contains plutonium, which is much more toxic than the fuel used in the other reactors.  

MOX fuel is a mixture of uranium and plutonium reprocessed from spent uranium, and is sometimes involved in the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium. 
Goto added that the MOX also has a lower melting point than the other fuels. 
When asked why the explosion at the No. 3 reactor seemed much more violent than Saturday's explosion at the No. 1 reactor building, Goto said he suspected that more hydrogen had accumulated in the building before exploding. 

When asked about the worst-case scenario, Goto said he would "rather not think about that." He also said there are too many factors to figure to make a solid conclusion on what will happen.


THAT THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY AND ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSIONS ALLOW THIS "NEW ACCEPTABLE LEVEL" FOR THE PEOPLE OF JAPAN SHOULD BE CRIMINAL, A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY, IN MY OPINION AND IN THE OPINION OF MANY FAR MORE EDUCATED PEOPLE IN THE NUCLEAR ENERGY FIELD THAN I AM.

BACK TO THE PLUTONIUM 
In a leaked TEPCO report dated June 2011, it was revealed that plutonium-238, −239, −240, and −241 WERE released "to the air" from the site during the first 100 hours after the earthquake, the total amount of plutonium said to be 120 billion becquerels (120 GBq) — perhaps as much as 50 grams.

The same paper mentioned a release of 7.6 trillion becquerels of neptunium-239 – about 1 milligram.
As neptunium-239 decays, it becomes plutonium-239.

TEPCO made this report public for a press conference on 6 June, 2011, but according to the Fukushima Diary website, THE MEDIA KNEW and "kept concealing the risk for 7 months and kept people exposed".


TEPCO admitted for the first time on 12 October 2012 that it had failed to take stronger measures to prevent disasters for fear of inviting lawsuits or protests against its nuclear plants. 
[ See: Fackler, Martin (12 October 2012). "Japan Power Company Admits Failings on Plant Precautions". The New York Times.]
[See: Yamaguchi, Mari (12 October 2012). "Japan utility agrees nuclear crisis was avoidable". Boston.com. Associated Press.]  

MONEY WAS MORE IMPORTANT THAN PEOPLE'S LIVES?
APPARENTLY SO!

On 30 September 2011, the Japanese Ministry of Education and Science published the results of a plutonium fallout survey, for which, in June and July 2011, 50 soil samples were collected from a radius of slightly more than 80 km around the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Plutonium was found in all samples. 

The highest levels found BY THE 'MINISTRY' (of Pu-239 and Pu-240 combined) were 15 becquerels per square meter in Fukushima prefecture, and 9.4 Bq in Ibaraki prefecture, compared to a global average of 0.4 to 3.7 bq / kg from atomic bomb tests. 

[SHOULD ANYONE TRUST THE MINISTRY, TEPCO, ANYONE IN JAPAN CONNECTED TO THE GOVERNMENT AFTER SO MANY LIES?]

A recent study published in Nature found up to 35 bq / kg plutonium 241 in leaf litter at sites around the plant.
[SEE: Zheng, Jian; Tagami, Keiko; Watanabe, Yoshito; Uchida, Shigeo; Aono, Tatsuo; Ishii, Nobuyoshi; Yoshida, Satoshi; Kubota, Yoshihisa; Fuma, Shoichi; Ihara, Sadao (2012). "Isotopic evidence of plutonium release into the environment from the Fukushima DNPP accident". Scientific Reports 2: 304. doi:10.1038/srep00304. PMC 3297203. PMID 22403743.]

Earlier in June, 2011, researchers had detected Plutonium 46 kilometers from the plant.  


US National Library of Medicine 
National Institutes of Health
Published online 2012 Mar 8.

"Compared to the Pu isotopic composition seen after the Chernobyl accident, 

the Fukushima accident Pu had a slightly higher 241Pu/239Pu atom ratio, but 

lower ratio of 240Pu/239Pu (Fig. 2).

 However, due to the large amount of 239+240Pu (about 8.7×1013 Bq) released 

from the Chernobyl accident, the activity ratio of 241Pu/239+240Pu  OF THE 

CHERNOBYL ACCIDENT (83±5) IS MUCH LOWER THAN THAT OF THE 

FUKUSHIMA DNPPP ACCIDENT (107.8, average of S2 and S3 litter, 241Pu decay 

corrected to March 15, 2011). 

[FINALLY! SOME TRUTH!]

The Pu atom ratios increase with the increase of the fuel burn-up time in the reactor. 

The relatively higher 241Pu/239+240Pu activity ratio of the Fukushima DNPP accident might be because of the damage to the Unit 3 reactor, which had a mixed core, containing both uranium fuel and mixed uranium and plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel; the latter was about 6% of the core fuel.

The additional production of 241Pu from the 239Pu fuel may have enhanced the 241Pu/239+240Pu activity ratio and 241Pu/239Pu atom ratio inside the reactor during normal operation before the accident.

According to the air dose monitoring data from the MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) and the atmospheric dispersion simulation by SPEEDI (System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information), a high concentration plume of released radionuclides moved to the northwest from the power plant during the daytime on March 15, 2011, and a large amount of radionuclides were deposited on the ground by precipitation. 

In addition, on March 21, 2011, high deposition rates were observed in the Kanto Plain, i.e., Ibaraki, Tochigi, Saitama, and Chiba Prefectures and Tokyo9. 

To understand any deposition of Pu isotopes on the ground and to elucidate its isotopic composition, we collected surface soil samples for the determination of activities of 137Cs and Pu, and Pu atom ratios (240Pu/239Pu, 241Pu/239Pu) in: 
Chiba, Kamagaya, and Mito Cities in the Kanto Plain; the Evacuation-Prepared Area (J-Village, 20 km south of Fukushima DNPP); and the Deliberate Evacuation Area (S1, in Katsurao Village, 25 km WNW of Fukushima DNPP; S2, in Namie Town, 26 km NW of Fukushima DNPP; and S3, in Iitate Village, 32 km NW of Fukushima DNPP) (Fig. 1). 

The determination of Pu isotopes was done using a sector-field ICP-MS10. Details of the separation and purification of Pu are described elsewhere (see Methods Section).


Taeko Shinonaga, head of Radioanalytical Laboratory at Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen (research institution founded jointly by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education & Research and Bavaria’s Finance Ministry), scientists from Technische Universitat Munchen (Germany), Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft 2013 meeting :

Global Fallout Pu in Japan [GF]

Pu240: 1,360 Bq
Pu241: 645 Bq
Total: 208,005 Bq

Fukushima Pu found in our study

Pu240: 197,000 Bq [145 times GF]
Pu241: 43,700,000 Bq [67,752 times GF]
Total: 44,061,000 Bq [212 times GF]

"Detection of long-lived plutonium isotopes in environmental samples by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) — Plutonium isotopes 239Pu, 240Pu and 242Pu are anthropogenic radionuclides emitted into the environment by nuclear activities.

Pu is accumulated in the human body and hence, poses a considerable hazard to human health. Due to the long half-lives, these isotopes are present in the biosphere on large time scales and a build-up can be expected.
Therefore it is important to study the contamination pathway of Pu into the drinking water…
a method to detect long-lived Pu isotopes by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is being developed.
AMS requires only few milligrams of sample material… Consequently, more samples from different locations can be taken which is essential when searching for locally increased Pu concentrations as in the Pacific Ocean after the Fukushima accident… Samples from different locations in the Pacific Ocean and from the snow-hydrosphere are planned…

THE FOLLOWING IS TAKEN FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELY SITE HERE: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5g8968gj

[E]vents such as the catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan [have] resulted in the contamination of large areas of oceans, ground-water, soils, and sediments by actinides, such as uranium and plutonium… migration of actinides [is] an important environmental concern… Knowledge of the incorporation mechanisms of actinides into… natural materials is therefore required… for predicting the migration of radionuclides…

BERKELEY WAS DOING SOME VERY GOOD RESEARCH ON THE FUKUSHIMA DISASTER, UNTIL IT PERHAPS REPORTED A LITTLE TOO MUCH INFO?

BECAUSE THE EPA TOOK DOWN SO MANY MONITORING SITES, AND THEN WE "LOST" BERKELEY, LOCAL PEOPLE TOOK UP THE CAUSE AND YOUTUBE WAS LIT UP WITH RADIATION REPORTS, WITH SOME VERY KNOWLEDGEABLE PEOPLE REPORTING FROM ALL ACROSS AMERICA.  

YES, AS ALWAYS, THERE WERE SOME "NUT CASES", BUT ALSO SOME CONCERNED SCIENTISTS AND LAY PEOPLE WHO JUST WANTED ALL OF US TO KNOW WHERE WE STAND.

AND WE DESERVE TO KNOW.
JAPANESE PEOPLE AND ALL PEOPLE OF EARTH NEED TO KNOW.
NO MATTER WHAT THE TRUTH IS, WE NEED TO KNOW. 
KNOWLEDGE CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SURVIVAL AND NOT SURVIVING.  




 OTHER SOURCES PERHAPS NOT CITED ABOVE, AS HYPERLINKS OR IN BRACKETS:

~ Grube BJ, Stevens W, Atherton DR. Retention of plutonium in hepatocytes and sinusoidal lining cells isolated from rat-liver. Radiation Research. 1978;73(1):168–179. [PubMed]

~ Taylor DM. Environmental plutonium in humans. Applied Radiation and Isotopes. 1995;46(11):1245–1252. [PubMed]  

~ Coverage of the press conference with the Russian scientist Dr. Yablokov can be viewed on C-Span at: 
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Chernob

~ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3679905/




~ http://www.cnet.com/news/plutonium-threat-at-japan-reactor-expert-warns/

~ https://intranet.pacifico-meetings.com/amsysweb/publicacionOnline.jsf?id=146  

~ http://jbpress.ismedia.jp/articles/-/7890?page=2
Which translates to ""High concentrations of plutonium from the soil of rice field 50 km or more distant primary"....etc

FEAR NOTHING BUT THE ABSENCE OF TRUTH!

[DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER, WHO PASSED AWAY MARCH 17, 2015.
HE WAS 87 YEARS YOUNG AND A WORLD WAR II NAVY VETERAN.
IT WAS HE WHO TAUGHT ME THE VALUE OF ALL LIFE, AND HE WHO TAUGHT ME THAT WE MUST HAVE TRUTH AT ANY AND ALL COST. I WAS ONLY 3 YEARS OLD THE FIRST TIME I REMEMBER HEARING THE WORDS  "QUESTION EVERYTHING!" FROM MY DAD.
I WILL, I PROMISE! THANK YOU, DAD, FOR THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE DRIVE TO FIND TRUTH.]

I NEED YOU TO IMAGINE WITH ME THAT YOU ARE LOST AT SEA, ADRIFT AND HOPING TO LAND ON AN ISLAND AND SURVIVE. 

YOU LAND ON MY ISLAND.

I AM THE ONLY HUMAN LIFE FORM ON THIS LUSH, LIFE-GIVING ISLAND WHERE FOOD IS PLENTIFUL AND FRESH WATER ABUNDANT.

I GREET YOUR ARRIVAL.
NEITHER OF US KNOWS IF THE OTHER IS "FRIEND OR FOE".
WE ARE BOTH WARY OF ONE ANOTHER.
THAT IS MERELY INSTINCTUAL...BEING WARY.

WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW IS WHICH BEAUTIFUL FRUITS THERE ON MY ISLAND, OR WHICH SPECIES OF ANIMALS CAN BE DEADLY, CAN KILL YOU IF YOU INGEST THEM.
I DO KNOW.

IF I WITHHELD THAT KNOWLEDGE FROM YOU, JUST DIDN'T TELL YOU WHAT I KNEW THAT WOULD SAVE YOU FROM DEATH OR SERIOUS ILLNESS, WOULDN'T I BE CONSIDERED A DEVIOUS MURDERER?
I COULD SHARE, TELL YOU WHAT TO AVOID, BUT JUST WOULDN'T?
HOW CRUEL WOULD THAT BE?

WOULD YOU CONSIDER ME A FEAR-MONGER IF I TOLD YOU WHICH SPECIES WOULD KILL YOU?
WOULD YOU SEE MY MOTIVE AS FEAR-MONGERING IF I TOLD YOU WHY AND HOW THOSE POISONOUS SPECIES MIGHT KILL YOU?
SHOULD YOU TRUST ME?
WOULD YOU TRUST ME?
IF YOU VALUED YOUR LIFE, YOU JUST MIGHT.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO VALUE YOUR LIFE.
I VALUE YOUR LIFE...ALL LIFE, HUMAN, PLANT, ANIMAL.
I WAS TAUGHT TO VALUE ALL LIFE.
EVEN IF I HAD NOT BEEN TAUGHT TO, LIFE  ITSELF, OVER THE PAST 60+ YEARS OF MY LIFE, HAS SHOWN ME THAT ALL LIFE IS VALUABLE.

NOT ALL HAVE THE TIME ON THEIR HANDS THAT I HAVE.
I'VE BEEN RETIRED NOW FOR ALMOST 8 YEARS.
I  HAVE LITTLE BUT TIME.

RESEARCH WAS ONE OF MY PASSIONS FOR ALL MY TIME ON EARTH, AND I DO RESEARCH VERY WELL....NO BRAG, JUST A FACT.
I RESEARCH MUCH LIKE OTHERS BREATHE...ALL THE TIME.

COMBINE THAT WITH MY UNCONDITIONAL LOVE FOR MY FELLOW CREATURES.

I LOVE LIFE, BUT HAVE LITTLE PATIENCE WITH THOSE WHO DON'T WANT THE KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED TO PRESERVE LIFE, EVEN THEIR OWN LIVES. 

I HAVE NO PATIENCE WITH THOSE I SEE AS PEOPLE WHO WOULD STOP OTHERS FROM HAVING KNOWLEDGE TO HELP THEM LIVE.
WE ALL KNOW THAT SOME DO NOT CARE IF OTHERS LIVE OR NOT.

SOME ARE EVEN INTENT ON DESTROYING THE LIVES OF OTHERS.

I ADMIT, I WOULD TAKE THE LIFE OF ANYONE WHO CAME TO TAKE MINE.
I WOULD NEVER ALLOW A WOULD-BE MURDERER TO END MY LIFE.

I WOULD FIGHT TO KEEP MY LIFE, EVEN IF I KNEW IT WAS ONLY FOR A DAY.
I LOVE MY LIFE MORE THAN I COULD EVER LOVE THE LIFE OF A WOULD-BE MURDERER. 
CALL IT A FAILING...CALL IT ANYTHING YOU PLEASE.
I INTEND TO LIVE.

WHEN YOU COME HERE TO THE OLD HEMLOCK TEA ROOM, I OFFER YOU ALL MY RESEARCH FOR FREE, ALL THE GATHERED DATA, ALL THE HOURS, DAYS, MONTHS, YEARS, DECADES OF MY INCESSANT SEARCHING FOR FACTS AND TRUTH.
I OFFER IT FREELY...BECAUSE I CARE.

I ALSO OFFER YOU MY PASSION FOR LIFE, HOPING IT CREATES A LIKE PASSION IN ALL WHO READ HERE TO HANG ON TIGHTLY TO LIFE.
WHILE WE HAVE LIFE, WE HAVE HOPE FOR A BETTER LIFE....FOR ALL.

WHEN THE FACTS WRING MY HEART OUT, WHEN THE TRUTH STABS ME LIKE A KNIFE, WHEN FACTS MAKE ME WEEP OR ENRAGE ME, I STILL PUBLISH FACTS.
WHEN THE TRUTH OF A THING GOES COMPLETELY AGAINST MY BELIEF SYSTEM, I STILL ACKNOWLEDGE IT AS TRUTH.
I MUST.
TRUTH IS TRUTH, LIKE IT OR NOT.
TRUTH LIBERATES.
TRUTH IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF ALL THINGS WE CAN FIND.

I GET NO MONETARY GAIN, NO FAME, NO ANYTHING FOR POSTING HERE THE TRUTHS I FIND....EXCEPT THE PEACE OF MIND THAT I WENT LOOKING FOR TRUTH, FOUND IT, AND CAN SHARE IT WITH YOU.
I SIMPLY WANT US ALL TO LIVE, SURVIVE, CARRY ON.

FEAR?
FEAR DESTROYS US!
I LEARNED TO RESIST FEAR, TO CAST IT OUT OF MY MIND.
YOU CAN, TOO.

JUST REPLACE FEAR WITH THE POWER THAT KNOWLEDGE CREATES.
WHEN WE KNOW, WE CAN MAKE NECESSARY CHANGES.
WE MUST KNOW.
KNOWING IS CONDUCIVE TO LIFE! 
WE MUST SEEK WAYS TO CARRY ON AND TO HELP EACH OTHER CARRY ON.

THAT'S ALL THIS BLOG IS...TRUTH, FACTS, AN OFFER OF HELP SO WE CAN ALL LEARN...AND NOT PERISH! 

WE LEARN, OR WE PERISH.

I CHOOSE NOT TO PERISH.

I CHOOSE TO HELP ALL PEOPLE, ALL SPECIES, TO LIVE.
EMPOWERED.
UNAFRAID TO FIGHT TO LIVE.

GOT IT?
NO FEAR!
FEAR IS NOT JUST A MIND-KILLER...IT IS A LIFE-DESTROYER.
HAVE NO FEAR!

NOTHING I WILL EVER WRITE HERE IS INTENDED TO CREATE FEAR, BUT TO ERADICATE FEAR.
KNOWING THE TRUTH SHOULD NEVER CREATE FEAR, BUT RATHER GIVE US NEW POWER, SO WE NEVER HAVE TO FEAR.

WE MUST PURSUE TRUTH ABOVE ALL ELSE, AND TRUTH SHOULD NEVER CREATE FEAR!

THOSE WHO WOULD HAVE YOU BLIND TO TRUTH DO NOT CARE IF YOU LIVE OR DIE. 

THOSE WHO LIE TO YOU ARE THE SAME AS MURDERERS.
THEY ROB YOU OF BOTH TRUTH AND LIFE!
RESIST THEM!

DEMAND TRUTH!
IT IS THE GREATEST TREASURE ON THIS PLANET!

AND IF TRUTH HURTS...SMILE AND BEAR IT!

PAX VOBISCUM!

CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL

EVEN THE GREATEST DENIERS OF CLIMATE CHANGE, THOSE WITH THE GEORGE C. MARSHALL INSTITUTE, THAT 'THINK-TANK' OF NAY-SAYERS, NOW AGREE THAT YES, WE ARE SEEING CLIMATE CHANGE.

DO YOU KNOW THE HISTORY OF THE MARSHALL GROUP?
DID YOU KNOW ITS FOUNDERS WERE ALL PHYSICISTS WHO WORKED ON THE MANHATTAN PROJECT, THE ATOMIC BOMB, THAT IT WAS INVOLVED IN HELPING THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY WIN ITS CASE IN COURT. THAT ALL WHO HAVE BEEN A PART OF THAT INSTITUTE ARE IN SOME WAY CONNECTED TO THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY? 

DO YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT LIES BEHIND THE DENIERS OF GLOBAL WARMING IS VERY RICH MEN LIKE GEORGE SOROS TELLING AMERICANS THAT ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERN IS A COMMUNISTIC OR FASCIST IDEA? 

YOU REALLY OUGHT TO KNOW WHO'S "SPEAKING OUT ON ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS"!
THIS GROUP FOOLED YOU SEVERAL TIMES BEFORE!

WITH CITIES ON BOTH COASTS GOING UNDERWATER, WITH NEW YORK CITY PREPARING FOR THE RISE IN SEA LEVELS, HOW COULD THEY NOT AGREE, RIGHT?

BUT THE MARSHALL GROUP STILL DOESN'T WANT US TO BLAME HUMAN BEINGS, OR INDUSTRY, OR EMISSIONS, OR ANYTHING THAT SUGGESTS WE HUMANS CAN STOP IT.

THE MARSHALL GROUP NOW ADMITS THERE IS GLOBAL WARMING, BUT THEY ARE STILL THE "MERCHANTS OF DOUBT" WHO SPEND FORTUNES TELLING US NOT TO BLAME ANY OF IT ON HUMANS, NO, NOT IN ANY WAY!

I FIND THAT THE NEW DEFINITION OF BOTH INSANE AND STUPID.

TAKE A COOL, PERHAPS AIR-CONDITIONED STORE ROOM, EMPTY, AND STUFF EVEN 6 OR 8 PEOPLE INTO IT. CLOSE THE DOOR, DO NOT ADJUST THE AIR-CONDITIONING.
SEE WHAT HAPPENS IN AN HOUR, 4 HOURS...A DAY.
 IN ALMOST NO TIME, SOME WILL BE HAMMERING ON THE DOOR TO GET OUT, COOL OFF, GET A FRESH BREATH OF AIR.

REMEMBER A TREE-SHADED PLAY AREA ROM YOUR CHILDHOOD.
NICE, COOL, A GOOD PLACE TO SPEND HOURS.

REMOVE THE TREE, SCRAPE OFF THE GRASS, LAY DOWN SOME ASPHALT.
HOW LONG, ON A SUMMER DAY, WOULD YOU ALLOW A CHILD TO PLAY ON THAT?

WHERE THAT SHADE TREE STOOD, WHERE WE WERE COMFORTABLE SITTING OR PLAYING FOR HOURS BECOMES A HOT, UNBEARABLE PLACE WHERE ONE TRULY CAN "FRY EGGS ON THE SIDEWALK".

IMAGINE A RURAL SETTING...ONE HOUSE EVERY MILE OR EVEN HALF-MILE OR SO.
TREE-LINED RURAL DIRT ROAD. LITTLE TRAFFIC.
ADD HOUSES UNTIL THERE IS LESS THAN 12 FEET BETWEEN THEM.
ADD HUNDREDS OF CARS, OUTDOOR HEATING/COOLING UNITS, CONCRETE DRTIVEWAYS, ETC.

SEE ANY DIFFERENCE?

COMMON SENSE....IT'S JUST COMMON SENSE.
ADD HUMANS AND THE THINGS HUMANS USE AND YOU DO CHANGE THE ENTIRE ENVIRONMENT.

WE'VE REMOVED THE "LIFE-GIVERS" IN FAVOR OF LIFE-TAKERS.
WE'VE SCRAPED AWAY AND BUILT UPON UNTIL WE ARE ALMOST MAXED-OUT.

SO WHY DO THOSE LIKE THE MARSHALL GROUP KEEP DENYING THAT HUMAN ACTIVITY HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH CLIMATE CHANGE, GLOBAL WARMING?
IF YOU REALLY CARE, READ ON.

One of the most important persistent and consistent voices going back to the late 1980s, challenging the scientific evidence, is the George C. Marshall Institute, a think tank in Washington DC. 
For decades, they have either denied the reality of global warming or insisted that, if there is warming, it is NOT caused by human activities or, as they say today, they insist that the "scientific uncertainties" are too great to warrant government regulation.

THERE IT IS!
THEY DON'T WANT GOVERNMENTAL REGULATION OF THE "MONEYMAKERS", THE MEGA-CORPORATIONS WHO MUST BE ABLE TO DESTROY THE ENVIRONMENT AND CREATE GLOBAL WARMING SO THE ECONOMY CAN FLOURISH. 

IT'S ABOUT BILLIONS, TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN PROFITS.
THEY SIMPLY DON'T WANT TO SPEND MEGA-BUCKS TO MAKE A SMALLER ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT.  
THEY JUST DO NOT WANT THE EXPENSE.
IF MILLIONS DIE, MILLIONS MORE WILL TAKE THEIR PLACE, SO WHY WORRY ABOUT THE EFFECTS ON HUMAN BEINGS?
WE'VE SEEN IN MANY DOCUMENTS BEFORE HOW THE GIANTS OF INDUSTRY HAVE NOT CARED ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION. 
THEY ARE CONCERNED ONLY WITH PROFITS, PROFITS, $$$$$.

THEY DON'T WANT THAT REGULATED!  

Today the Marshall Institute no longer denies the reality of man-made climate change, but they continue to cast doubt on climate science. 
For example, in March, 2011, they had on their website, 'Many of the temperature data and computer models used to predict climate change are uncertain, as are our understandings of important interactions in the natural climate. 
Reducing these many uncertainties requires a significant shift in the way climate change research is carried out.'

TRANSLATION?
"YES, WE SEE THAT A MILE OF CONCRETE IS HOTTER THAN A MILE OF GRASSLAND, BUT SCREW THAT! IT'S "UNCERTAIN" HOW MUCH HOTTER!"

THEY HAVE SHIFTED TACTICS, NOW THAT ALL CAN SEE THE GLARING FACTS OF GLOBAL WARMING AND SEA LEVEL RISE, THE MELTING GLACIERS AND ARCTIC/ANTARCTIC , THE CHANGED MIGRATION PATTERNS OF MAMMALS AND BIRDS, THE DRIFTING OF BOTH PLANTS AND ANIMALS EVER NORTHWARD TO ESCAPE A WARMER SOUTH...

THEY HAD TO SWITCH TO SOMETHING NEW...SO NOW IT'S "BAD SCIENCE", THEY CLAIM.
SCIENCE IS FINE WHEN THEY WANT MAN TO HAVE MONKEYS AND POND SCUM FOR ANCESTORS, BUT SCIENCE FAILS WHEN IT PRESENTS INCONVENIENT TRUTHS?
IT'S "UNCERTAINTIES IN DATA" WHEN IT MEANS SPENDING PROFITS TO SAFEGUARD HUMAN AND GLOBAL LIFE. 

A poll done by the Yale Project on Climate Change working together with the Gallup polling organization showed that in 2007, 72% of Americans were completely or mostly convinced that global warming was underway. 

62% of American citizens AT THAT TIME believed that life on earth could continue without major disruptions ONLY IF society took immediate and drastic action to reduce global warming. 
Frank Luntz, a Republic Party strategist, AGREED, and said so in 2006, "I think most people would conclude that there is global warming taking place, and that the behavior of humans are affecting the climate..."
BUT...HE ALSO ISSUED A "STRATEGY MEMO" TO HIS COHORTS WHO WERE RUNNING FOR OFFICE THAT YEAR ...
READ ON...

Luntz advised Republican candidates not to use the phrase 'global warming', but to call it climate change instead. The reason, he explained, was because climate change is a lot less frightening than 'global warming'.  

He argued that Republican candidates running for office should use scientific uncertainty as a political strategy, that they should emphasize the scientific uncertainty around the issues and insist that there was no scientific consensus. 

So he wrote, 'The scientific debate remains open, voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community.  Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate."  

YES, AMERICAN VOTERS, HE DID WRITE THAT AND IT WAS "LEAKED"! HE WAS BUSTED...BUT FEW GAVE A DAMN.

HE TURNED "UNCERTAINTY" INTO A TOOL TO MAKE THE MASSES DOUBT, MERELY SO THE MASSES DID NOT DEMAND A CHANGE IN THE WAY AMERICAN BUSINESSES AND OUR VERY AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE (2 CARS IN EVERY GARAGE, URBAN SPRAWL, COAL-BURNING POWER PLANTS, ETC) WERE ENDANGERING US AND ANIMALS AND THE ENTIRE ENVIRONMENT... BECAUSE MONEY WAS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HUMAN OR ANY OTHER LIFE!  

WHAT MOST AMERICANS DO NOT KNOW IS THIS:
"In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had written unequivocally, 'Human activities are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents that absorb or scatter radiant energy. Most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.' So the IPCC said that in 2001. 
But in fact the science had actually coalesced earlier than that. 
In the second assessment report of the IPCC published in 1995, the scientists had written, "'The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human impact on global climate.' "

BUT WAIT, LET US ASK...
Did those summaries in the IPCC and in the US National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society and many other scientific societies who had attempted to summarize the scientific work, were those summaries consistent with what was published in the rank and file, peer reviewed scientific journals? 
YES! VERY MUCH SO, YES! 

Through a random sample of 1,000 articles in the ISI, Institute for Scientific Information database, it was found that in fact NONE of the articles dissented from that IPCC position....NOT ONE! 

 In fact, there was essentially unanimity in the scientific community at that time that the balance of evidence DID suggest a discernible impact, and that most of the observed warming was likely to have been due to greenhouse gas emissions. 
Professor Naomi Oreskes  published this finding in Science Magazine in 2004.

In 2005, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told the citizens of California,"I say the debate is over, we know the science, we see the threat and we know the time for action is now."
He announced an initiative in California to commit the state of California to Kyoto level controls on greenhouse gas emissions.

BUT BEFORE THIS, A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT, GEORGE H.W. BUSH HAD AGREED WITH THE CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENTISTS!
YES, HE DID! 

In 1992, 193 nations, including the United States and Australia, signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and when President George H. W. Bush signed the Framework Convention he called on world leaders to translate the written document into 'concrete action to protect the planet'. 

SO WHAT HAPPENED? 
WHY DID THE INITIATIVE TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING CHANGE?   
 What happened to this political consensus, this scientific consensus, that global warming was discernible, was a REALITY? 
What happened to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change?

THE HISTORY OF CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE GOES BACK OVER 100 YEARS!   

John Tyndall was the man who first established the concept of a greenhouse gas. 
Through a series of experiments in the 1850s, Tyndall showed that certain gases, particularly carbon dioxide and water vapor, had a very distinctive property of being highly transparent to visible light, but rather opaque to infrared.   
Water vapor and carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere, he showed, allowed light to come in from the sun, but had a tendency to TRAP HEAT.  
Tyndall understood this is a very important fact about the earth, because without this natural greenhouse effect, the earth would be as cold as the moon or Mars and be a completely inhospitable place for life. The natural greenhouse gas was basically a "good" thing. 

The first person to suggest that changes in the greenhouse gas concentration could change the climate even more so, but who lived in a cold climate and saw warming as a better thing, was Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish geochemist.  

Arrhenius was the first to suggest that by burning fossil fuels, mostly coal, we were adding additional carbon dioxide to the atmosphere above and beyond the natural CO 2 levels, and that this could change the climate through an increase in the absorption and trapping of heat in the atmosphere, so that doubling CO 2 would lead to an average global temperature increase of 1.5º to 4.5º centigrade. 
HIS FORMULA IS STILL USED TODAY!

THE MAN HELPED ESTABLISH THE NOBEL INSTITUTE AND NOBEL PRIZE. HE WAS NOT SOME "NUTCASE". 

The first person to suggest that GLOBAL WARMING might be a bad thing was Guy Stewart Callendar, a British steam engineer.   
In 1938, Callendar was the first to suggest that global warming was probably already underway.   
He compiled some of the early measurements of CO 2 in the atmosphere from, mostly, Europe, and in a publication in the quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society suggested that temperature might in fact already be beginning to increase. 
That was in 1938.
1938!  

In 1939 war broke out in Europe, Callendar became involved in war work, as did many other scientists. The issue was not really revisited in a serious way until the 1950s, when it was taken up by a number of scientists in Europe, the United States and Australia, and most particularly by two men, Hans Seuss and Roger Revelle, both professors at the University of California, San Diego.

In 1957, Suess and Revelle published an article in the peer reviewed journal, Tellus, in which they suggested that mankind was performing a great, perhaps too risky  geophysical experiment -- taking carbon dioxide that had been stored in rocks over the course of hundreds of millions of years of geological history, and returning a very significant amount of that carbon dioxide back to the atmosphere over the course of only a few decades (burning coal). 
This argument was also made by a number of people including Bert Bolin in Sweden, who later would work on acid rain and also founded the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

Revelle's argument in 1957 was not that global warming was necessarily already underway, but that we needed to pay attention and track the issue. One of the most important ways to track it would be measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to see if Callendar was correct, that it was actually already increasing. 

Through the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58, he obtained funding for the beginning of this project to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The person who undertook that work beginning in 1958 was Charles David Keeling, who began the systematic measurement of carbon dioxide as part of the International Geophysical Year. 
This became Dave Keeling's life work. 
He continued it until he died just a few years ago. 

For his untiring work, he won the National Medal of Science in the United States, awarded to him by President George W. Bush, and he produced what is now known as the Keeling Curve, which today is probably the single most reproduced time series data in the history of science.

By 1965 Keeling had already concluded that there was in fact a detectable increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 

[THIS, ALSO, IS SIMPLY COMMON SENSE! ADD MILLIONS OF HUMANS AND ANIMALS TO FEED THEM EACH YEAR, ADD BUILDINGS TO HOUSE THEM, VEHICLES TO TRANSPORT ALL, FACTORIES TO PRODUCE THE GOODS HUMANS NEED, ADD EXTRACTING NATURAL RESOURCES TO ACCOMMODATE THEIR PRESENCE. TAKE AWAY THE VERY THINGS THAT PRODUCE OXYGEN AND TAKE IN CARBON DIOXIDE. REMOVE TREES, GRASSES, VEGETATION... DO THE MATH, THE SIMPLE MATH...WHAT DO YOU GET?]

This result discovered by these scientists who were in agreement, WERE, led to the U.S. President Science Advisory Committee writing a report with an appendix written by Revelle and Keeling, in which they made one of the early specific predictions of what the impact of increasing carbon dioxide might be. In 1965, they wrote, 'By the year 2000 there will be about 25% more CO 2 in our atmosphere than at present, and this will modify the heat balance of the atmosphere to such an extent that marked changes in climate could occur.' 

NO DOUBT ABOUT IT IN 1965!

Keeling and Revelle's report eventually landed on the desk of President Lyndon Johnson, and in 1965, in a special message to congress, Lyndon Jonson declared, 'This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.' 


There was soon an emerging consensus in the expert community that, given the rise of CO 2 that Keeling had documented, sooner or later warming would be expected to occur AND CONTINUOUSLY RISE. 
This consensus was expressed by numerous scientific bodies in many parts of the world.  

One of the most concise summaries came from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1979, who wrote, 'a plethora of studies from diverse sources indicate a consensus that climate changes will result from man's combustion of fossil fuels and changes in land use'.

NOTE THE USE OF THE WORD "CONSENSUS".
NOTE THE WORDS "WILL RESULT".

So if anyone says nobody knew, OR that nobody COULD HAVE known, we surely can point to all the above and say that that's not true.
YES, WE DID KNOW!


PRESIDENTS KNEW, GOVERNORS KNEW, SCIENTISTS KNEW AND THEY ALL TOLD US WHAT THEY KNEW.
PLANS WERE MADE TO CORRECT THE SITUATION, TO STOP THIS IN ITS TRACKS.   

AND THEN...  
A RIFT, A DIVISION, ALL BASED ON HOW LONG UNTIL OUR EMISSIONS SPELLED BIG DISASTER.  

Most scientists writing in the 1970s thought that 'will result' meant perhaps by the year 2000 or even later. Figures like 2030, 2040, 2050 sometimes got bandied about.  
One scientist who briefed the Carter administration on this issue in 1979 remembers being asked by an official in the White House, 'so when is all of this going to happen?'  
And one of the scientists said, 'well maybe in 40 years.' 

The White House official said, 'get back to me in 39!'

A few mavericks, EVEN THEN, in the 1970s, suggested that climate change (GLOBAL; WARMING) might already be underway.  

One of these was John Perry, who was chief staff officer for the Climate Research Board at the US National Academy of Sciences. 
In 1981 he pointed out a very interesting idea. 
He wrote, 'Physically, a doubling of CO 2 is no magic threshold. 
If we have good reason to believe that a 100% increase in carbon dioxide will produce significant impacts on climate, then we must have equally good reason to suspect that even the small increase we have already produced may have suddenly altered our climate.' 

This is a really important point, because we always talk about DOUBLING CO 2, and maybe that sometimes leads people to think it's almost as if nothing will happen until we get to the DOUBLING. 
Of course we know that things are ALREADY happening, RIGHT NOW. 

So Perry concluded, "Thus climate change is not a matter for the next century, we are most probably doing it right now."

 That was in 1981.

WERE WE REALLY CREATING GLOBAL WARMING BY A "MERE" MAYBE 30% INCREASE IN GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS?
IN 1981?
THE DATA SAID YES.

In 1982 Roger Revelle again addressed the question in an article in Scientific American, and he wrote 'Models of the world's climate indicate that the answer is probably yes, but an unambiguous climate signal has not yet been detected.' 

Six years later, NASA climate modeller, James Hansen and his team, concluded that the signal HAD been detected.  

In work published in the Journal of Geophysical Research and also the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and in testimony to the US Congress, James Hansen declared that he was 99% certain that climate change was indeed underway.

The New York Times reported in August of 1988 that "issue of an overheating world has suddenly moved to the forefront of public concern"...

AT THE SAME TIME as the scientific understanding was beginning to coalesce, we see a politically motivated campaign created to cast doubt on it.  

THE PARANOIA OF BIG INDUSTRY WENT OFF THE CHARTS! 
GOVERNMENT REGULATING BIG BUSINESS, FORCING COSTLY CHANGES TO "BUSINESS AS USUAL", MAKING LAWS TO CLEAN UP OUR  AIR, WATER, SOIL CAUSED THE BIGGEST POLLUTERS TO RISE LIKE A HUNGRY LION FROM SLEEP.

THE WALL STREET GIANTS WERE NERVOUS, AND THOSE THEY FUNDED AT ELECTION TIME WERE GETTING THEIR INSTRUCTIONS...
"STOP THIS RIGHT NOW, OR ELSE NO BIG CONTRIBUTIONS FOR YOU!"
MONEY TALKS!
THOSE WITH HONOR FOR SALE LISTEN.
GLOBAL WARMING HAD TO BE MADE TO LOOK LIKE SOME EVIL PLOT AGAINST AMERICAN VOTERS!

CAMPAIGN AGAINST TRUTH  
The campaign focused on the claim that the science was unsettled and therefore it would be premature for governments to act to do anything about it. It turns out that the origins of this claim can actually be traced back to a relatively small handful of people. 


And that's how we got that beacon of denial, that fortress of naysayers, the George C. Marshall Institute, ensconced in Washington DC to be near Congress, which is its willing slave...for the right amount of $$$$, for sizeable dumps into the old "war chests" 

THE ELITE TOP FEW PERCENT OF THOSE WHO CONTROL AMERICA DON'T WANT YOU TO DEMAND A BETTER, CLEANER, HEALTHIER WORLD.
THEIR ANCESTORS "INVENTED" POLLUTION, AND IT'S CHEAPER TO KEEP IT!

CLEANUP NOW WOULD COST A FORTUNE, AND THEY WANT TO KEEP THEIR FORTUNES, THANKS!  

WHAT HAPPENS TO US "PEONS" IS OF NO CONCERN TO THEM....THERE ARE PLENTY MORE WHERE WE CAME FROM.

AND, BECAUSE MOST HAVE BEEN DUMBED-DOWN ENOUGH TO ACCEPT WHAT THE "GREAT GODS OF INDUSTRY", OUR BLESSED "JOB-GIVERS" TELL US, WHAT OUR POLITICAL PARTY CHIEFS TELL US TO THINK AND BELIEVE, NO QUESTIONING THEIR TAKE ON THINGS, WELL, AMERICANS SIMPLY CHOSE TO LIVE LIKE ANIMALS IN A FEED LOT, IN EVER-GROWING TOXIC FILTH AND ....AND LIKE IT!  
SURE THERE ARE DAYS WE HAVE AIR QUALITY WARNINGS AND SEE PEOPLE DROP DEAD FROM "JUST" THE AIR THEY TRIED TO BREATHE, BUT IT'S "TOO LATE" TO CHANGE THAT, RIGHT?
SURE OUR KIDS HAVE MORE ASTHMA, MORE ALLERGIES, AND OUR ELDERLY HAVE A HARD TIME BREATHING IN GREATER NUMBERS.
BUT THAT'S ALL "COINCIDENCE", RIGHT?
RIGHT?

AND THE ICE IS MELTING AND THE SEAS ARE RISING AND WE HAVE NEW RECORDS SET EACH YEAR ON HOTTEST SUMMER ON RECORD, ON LONGEST DROUGHT IN HISTORY, ON SKIN DAMAGE/SKIN CANCERS, ON "MYSTERY ILLNESSES" THAT TAKE OUT A FEW HERE AND THERE...ALL COINCIDENCES, ALL OF THEM, RIGHT?
RIGHT?

NO WORRIES!
WE'RE FINE.
EARTH IS FINE.
AIR IS FINE.
ATER IS FINE.
SOIL IS FINE.
AREN'T WE JUST FINE?

PSSSST!
HEY, YOU!
DO YOU KNOW WHERE THIS "EXPERT" GROUP ON THE "MYTH OF CLIMATE CHANGE" CAME FROM? 

ROCKET MEN.
THE FOUNDERS OF THE MARSHALL "INSTITUTE" WERE COLD WAR ERA PHYSICISTS... WHO HELPED BUILD ROCKETS, MISSILES, WEAPONS THAT SCARED THE ENTIRE WORLD! 
They'd worked on the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb and rocketry and other nuclear weapons delivery systems. 

Robert Jastrow was an astrophysicist who was the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, very active in the American space program, active in the Apollo program and other rocketry programs. 

 William Nierenberg was a nuclear physicist who had begun his career on the MANHATTAN PROJECT, working on isotope separation and the was a long-time director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography where he supervised and sponsored many Navy oceanographic research projects associated with submarine detection, acoustic detection of Soviet submarines and the accurate guidance of submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles. 

Fred Seitz was a solid state physicist who had worked with Eugene Wigner, one of the fathers of the ATOMIC BOMB, and at one time the president of the US National Academy of Sciences. 

MANHATTAN PROJECT?
ATOMIC BOMBS?
GUIDED MISSILES?
NO WORRIES OVER GLOBAL WARMING, EH?

THOSE GUYS DIDN'T WORRY WHEN THE WORLD WAS ON THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION!
THEY LIKED IT!
THEY HELPED MAKE IT SO! 
NICE PAYCHECKS, STELLAR CAREERS! 

SO, TRUST GUYS LIKE THAT ON THE CLIMATE?
SURE, SURE, WHY NOT, RIGHT?
RIGHT? 

NO!
NO, WE SHOULD NOT TRUST THEM BECAUSE THEY FOOLED US ALL BEFORE!
THEY DUPED US ALL PREVIOUSLY, THIS "MARSHALL INSTITUTE" GANG!

These men had known each other throughout their career. 
Both Seitz and Nierenberg had served as science advisor to NATO. 
They had been on various advisory committees together. 

In the 1980s, they found themselves working together on an advisory panel to the Reagan administration on the question of strategic defence, or what most of us know of as Star Wars, the idea of a missile shield to protect the United States from incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles.

In 1984 they created the Marshall Institute TO DEFEND REAGAN'S STRATEGIC DEFENSE  against a boycott of it by US scientists. 
AGAINST 6,500 U.S. SCIENTISTS WHO SAW "STAR WARS" AS A FIRST-STRIKE SCENARIO!

Strategic defence was highly controversial, both in the United States and elsewhere, because it was a departure from the long established Cold War doctrine of mutual assured destruction.  
It seemed impossible to build a perfect impermeable missile shield, not technologically feasible. But even if it were, in a way that would be worse, because it would be politically destabilizing! 

After all, if you thought you had an effective missile shield, then you might be tempted to launch a FIRST STRIKE, thinking that you would be immune to retaliation.

Well, for this reason, many scientists who had worked quite happily on weapon systems during the '60s, '70s and '80s, refused to work on strategic defence. 

6,500 American scientists and engineers signed a petition declaring a boycott of strategic defence program funds. 
6,500! 
This was unprecedented in the history of the Cold War. 

During the Cold War there had been numerous individual scientists who sometimes for personal reasons declined to work on particular weapon systems, but there had never been a wholesale rejection of a nuclear weapons program by OVER 6,000 American scientists.

This greatly disturbed the Reagan administration and it greatly disturbed Seitz, Nierenberg and Jastrow, who supported SDI and who argued against the majority of their technical colleagues that SDI was feasible, that it could be made to work, and moreover that it was necessary and even urgent. 

DID THEIR MINDS CHANT, "FIRST STRIKE, FIRST STRIKE!"

Between 1984 and 1989, Jastrow, Seitz and Nierenberg worked to defend SDI by promoting an alarming view of Soviet strength and a very frightening picture of American military weakness. 
"THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!"

They wrote numerous articles, opinion pieces, white papers, ALL defending SDI and claiming that the Soviet Union was overtaking the United States in military and technical superiority. 

The National Review article, 'American has five years left!', was a real piece of work, something you should look at to see HOW these guys PUT A SPIN on things to get the public to SWALLOW THE BITTER PILLS!

 Skeptics like to claim that climate scientists are alarmists, but you see that actually that shoe is on the other foot. 
The MARSHALL guys are EXPERTS on creating "FALSE ALARMS"!

America did not have five years left, it was actually the Soviet Union that had less than five years left.
After the Berlin Wall fell, Russia dissolved!

SAME GUYS NOW TELL US NOT TO BELIEVE SCIENCE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING, THEN WE SEE COASTAL CITIES FLOODING, SIGNS EVERYWHERE THAT OUR ENVIRONMENT AND WE, YES, WE ARE FAILING IN HEALTH AS WELL....

THE MARSHALL BOYS ARE SPIN DOCTORS AND THEY HAVE SPUN A WEB OF DECEIT THAT IS KILLING US!


WE ARE LITERALLY DYING TO DENY GLOBAL WARMING!

PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THIS NEXT PART!
THIS IS WHERE THE STORY OF THE "ILLUSTRIOUS" MARSHALL INSTITUTE PEOPLE GETS EVEN MORE INTERESTING! 

Frederick Seitz, who was the founding chairman of the board of the Marshall Institute, was a nuclear physicist. 
BUT THERE'S MORE! THERE IS WORSE!

In 1979, he took a new job in his retirement. 
He had retired from his work as a physicist and went to work for...
THE R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO CORPORATION! 

He took a position with R. J. Reynolds as a consultant, directing a biomedical research program in which he distributed over $45 million to scientists doing research that could IN ANY WAY cast doubt on the science that established the harms of tobacco.

HE WAS PAID TO FIND WAYS TO FOOL AMERICANS, AND AGREED TO HELP FORMULATE THE LIES AND FALSIFY RESEARCH THAT SMOKING WAS NOT DEADLY!
SMOKING WAS JUST FINE!
JUST FINE...LIKE GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT A PROBLEM, IS JUST FINE?

We know from the research of other scholars that one of the principal strategies of the tobacco industry, to defend tobacco against the scientific evidence of its harms, was doubt-mongering, to insist that the science was unsettled, that we didn't really know for sure if tobacco was really dangerous, that we couldn't explain all the mechanisms, that there were a lot of uncertainties.  

"PSSST! How come two sisters could both smoke a pack a day, one gets cancer, the other doesn't?"
SEE HOW IT WORKS? 

Therefore, because of these uncertainties,  "it would be premature for the government to intervene to regulate tobacco use."

IF THIS DOES NOT RING A BELL FOR YOU, IF YOU DON'T SEE THE SAME THING IS BEING DONE BY THE MARSHALL GROUP TODAY THAT WAS DONE FOR THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY, YOU MUST BE A NEW KIND OF DEEP STUPID...SORRY FOR YOU!  
THEY'RE EVEN USING THE EXACT SAME PHRASES!

In 1989 these two stories merged.  
The Cold War ended and the Soviet enemy began to disintegrate. 
The west had won the Cold War, and you might have thought that these old Cold War Warriors would be happy, that they would be satisfied that their life's work had come to such a positive fruition.  
They might have rested content, but they didn't.  
It's kind of like old generals who can't stop fighting the last war.

What we see is that they find a new enemy. 
This new enemy is what they called ENVIRONMENTAL EXTREMISM, what they considered to be, OR WERE PAID WELL TO CONSIDER TO BE, an exaggeration of environmental threats by people with an alleged LEFT-WING AGENDA.

OH, NO! NOT A LEFT-WING AGENDA IN A RIGHT-WING STRUGGLING ECONOMY!  
ANYTHING BUT THAT!  

IF AMERICANS START SCREAMING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL CLEANUP, FOR NEW LAWS TO PROTECT THEM AND THE ENTIRE EARTH FROM THE RUIN CAUSED BY INDUSTRY, PROFITS WOULD DROP! 
THE ECONOMY WOULD SUFFER IF BIG BUSINESS HAD TO USE ANY OF THEIR PROFITS TO CREATE BETTER AIR QUALITY, TO INSURE NON-TOXIC WATER AND SOIL!  
NOOOOO!  
THAT WON'T DO!  

MUST SAVE THE MERCHANTS OF WALL STREET!
DAMN THE LOWLY MASSES!
THIS MEANS WAR!

AND WAR IT IS!
 THE NEW ENEMY ARE THOSE DAMNED ENVIRONMENTALISTS. 

BUT THE MARSHALL GROUP AND THOSE WHO URGED THEM ON HAD LEARNED USEFUL LESSONS FROM THAT TOBACCO WAR.

The lessons that Frederick Seitz had learned working for the tobacco industry, the old  tobacco strategy - DOUBT-MONGERING was liberally applied to the new issue of climate change.  

They began to insist that the science is unsettled, that we don't really know and that there isn't a consensus among the scientific experts.

SAME EXACT THINGS THAT THEY USED TO TRY TO SAVE THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY!

'Doubt is our product' ran the infamous memo written by one tobacco industry executive in 1969, 'since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists in the minds of the general public.' 

Now this is an incredibly important memo. 

It's been reproduced by many scholars in many different contexts, and it was a crucial piece of evidence in the US federal prosecution of the tobacco industry, because it showed that the tobacco industry giants deliberately worked together, conspired to lie about the carcinogenic effects of nicotine and tars.

The tobacco industry was found guilty of conspiracy under the Racketeering and Corrupt Organisations Act, because of documents like this that showed that the tobacco industry consciously set out to challenge the scientific evidence by manufacturing doubt.

THEY MANUFACTURED DOUBT...NOT VIABLE PROOF, JUST DOUBT!

One of the key insights the tobacco industry realized early on was that for this doubt-mongering campaign to be credible, for it to be effective for journalists who'd quote them, it wouldn't do for tobacco industry executives to get up and say, we don't really know if tobacco is harmful.

Most of us would realize that that didn't pass the laugh test. 

But if the tobacco industry could get SCIENTISTS to say it, and particularly if they could get distinguished scientists, prestigious scientists, a president of the US National Academy of Sciences to say it, well that would have a lot of credibility. 

In particular, the documents show that the tobacco industry understood that it would have credibility with the media, and that THE MEDIA might not quote a tobacco industry executive, but they would quote the president of the US National Academy of Sciences. 

So a key component of this strategy was the recruitment of scientists, was finding scientists who would be willing to participate in this activity. 

 AGAIN, MONEY TALKS, AND AGAIN, MEN WHO SEE HONOR AS A MARKETABLE COMMODITY SOLD THEIRS TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER!

The "tobacco strategy" is spread to a whole set of other environmental issues, and now we see scientists supplying NEW doubt, exaggerating doubt, emphasising doubt, amplifying doubt, about the reality of acid rain, the severity of the ozone hole and of course the human causes of global warming.   

CREATION OF DOUBT IS A BOOMING INDUSTRY!
THE MARSHALL INSTITUTE IS CASHING IN!
KA-CHING-KA-CHING! 

There's even a rear guard action in recent years to revisit the scientific evidence of the harms of DDT and to claim that DDT should never have been banned in the first place.
DDT IS GOOD FOR AMERICANS!

SURELY SOME "CREDIBLE SCIENTISTS" CAN BE PAID TO SAY SO?
SURELY. 

AND JUST AS SURELY, MANY WHO HATE THOSE "DAMNED TREE-HUGGING HIPPIES", THOSE DAMNED ENVIRONMENTALISTS, THOSE DAMNED ANIMAL RIGHTS GROUPS, THOSE DAMNED "SAVE THE PLANET" WEIRDOS, THOSE POOR UNFORTUNATES SUING THEIR ASSES OFF FOR ILLNESSES AND DEATHS CAUSED BY TOXIC ENVIRONMENTS, THOSE WHO HATE ALL WHO WANT A CLEAN AIR WORLD, WILL BUY THE GARBAGE SPOON-FED THEM BY A GLOBAL ELITE WHO WOULDN'T PISS ON THE LOWLY MASSES IF THEY WERE ON FIRE.

AMERICANS LOVE TO HATE.
AMERICANS LOVE WAR.
AMERICANS, "SUPER-PATRIOTS", WILL MAKE DAMN SURE WE DON'T HAVE CURSED ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS!  
THEY WILL BUY WHAT INDUSTRY IS SELLING....ALL THE WAY TO THEIR GRAVES!  

In every one of these cases, we see this small group of MARSHALL INSTITUTE  physicists denying the severity of these problems. 

In every single case, the SAME pattern, over and over and over again, INSISTING that the science was "too uncertain to justify government action". 
It involves the systematic misrepresentation of the actual scientific evidence, just as the tobacco industry did before. 

You know the old adage, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.  
It's like fool me 17 times, please, I'm willing! 
The SAME thing over and over again.  
Yet, because it's a seemingly different issue with different scientists, different journalists, people don't see the pattern. 

THEY JUST DON'T WANT TO SEE THE PATTERN!
THEY WANT TO BE DUPED!
THEY WANT TO DENY THE HUGE MONSTER IN FRONT OF THEM JUST AS THEY ALWAYS HAVE!
MONSTERS ARE SCARY!
WHO CAN FACE SUCH A FEARSOME THING?

ONLY THE TRULY BRAVE, THAT'S WHO!
ONLY THE VALIANT!
ONLY THE ONES WHO HAVE A WARRIOR'S HEART!

Why would distinguished scientists misrepresent scientific evidence? 
Why would distinguished scientists like a president of the US National Academy of Sciences attack his own scientific colleagues, misrepresent their work, launch personal attacks on them, accuse them of fraud? 
Why would a scientist do that to his fellow scientists? 

IT ISN'T ALWAYS ABOUT MONEY, BELIEVE IT OR NOT.  
What we really see is that it's often IDEOLOGICAL and that it's driven by the ideology that George Soros has given the title 'free market fundamentalism'. 

Free market fundamentalism is really a kind of end member of a wide spectrum of beliefs that can be broadly categorized as modern neoliberalism. 

This is a set of beliefs that are focused on the value of deregulation and releasing the so-called magic of the marketplace.  
It came to prominence in the early 1980s, and this is not a coincidence, so one of the interesting things about this story is that the scientific evidence of global warming is coalescing just as a political consensus is moving towards deregulation.  
This is a historical contingency that has very, very great political and social consequences. 

It came to prominence in the early 1980s under Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, Ronald Reagan in the United States, but it continued through the 1990s, you saw it in Australia under the John Howard administration.

But its intellectual roots are much earlier. 
They're to be found in the ideology of two key thinkers, Milton Friedman, the American economist and founder of the Chicago School of Economics, and Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian economist considered one of the founders of modern neoliberalism. 

So what is this crucial argument of neoliberal ideology? 

Milton Friedman's most important book was a work called 'Capitalism and Freedom' published in 1962, right at the coldest moment of the Cold War, at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. 

Friedman's argument was really encapsulated by his title, and it's an argument against communism and in favour of capitalism. 
His argument is that civic freedom and free markets are inextricably linked, because if a state wants to control markets through centralized planning, the only way you can control markets is to control the people who act in those markets. 
Therefore it's inevitable that if you abandon free markets, you will abandon freedom more generally, and you'd be on a slippery slope to tyranny, to Soviet style communism.

Hayek was an Austrian economist who fled Austria after the Anschluss and went to the United Kingdom where he became a professor at the London School of Economics. 
He believed that Austrian fascism had arisen in response to the failures of socialism, and he became a passionate opponent, not only of Soviet style communism, but of Western European social democracy as well, arguing that it would put us on the road to serfdom, that today you lose your economic freedom, tomorrow you lose your civic, political or religious freedom.

The contrarians in our story took this argument even further and argued that environmentalism was the slippery slope to socialism. 
Why? 

Because environmentalists almost invariably argued for regulation. Whether it was acid rain, the ozone hole or second-hand smoke, all of these things seemed to imply that the government needed to step in to do something to protect people from these harms, from the negative externalities. 
They argued that it was only a small step from the regulation of acid rain or second-hand smoke towards government control of our lives more broadly.

These ideas were articulated in various places, but most clearly by a fourth scientist who joined this cause, and that was Fred Singer, the bête noire of many climate scientists, who continues today to attack climate science.

 Like the others, Singer's biography was remarkably close to the other three. He was also a Cold War physicist, in fact he was the proverbial rocket scientist. 
He had worked on the early satellite rocketry programs in the 1950s and was the first director of the US National Weather Satellite Service. He often claims to be a climate scientist because of this connection to the weather service, but he was the director of the weather service not in his capacity as a climate scientist, which he was not, but as a rocket scientist who knew how to get those satellites up into space.

In the 1980s, Singer worked with the Reagan administration to cast doubt on the significance and severity of acid rain, arguing that controlling sulphur emissions was a billion dollar solution to a million dollar problem, so implying that environmentalists had exaggerated the significance of acid rain, and it wouldn't be significant enough to justify what it would cost to fix. 

This is an argument we hear again today regarding global warming.

In the 1990s he teamed up with Fred Seitz and Bill Nierenberg to cast doubt on the scientific consensus of the ozone hole and the evidence of the harms of global warming. 

I mentioned already that from 1979 to 1985 Fred Seitz had worked with the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and similarly in the early 1990s we see Fred Singer joining forces with the Philip Morris Tobacco Company, to defend tobacco in the form of second-hand smoke. 

This defence took the form of offence. It took the form of an attack on the US Environmental Protection Agency. In 1993 Fred Singer teamed up with a lawyer named Kent Jeffreys and wrote a report called EPA and the Science of Environmental Tobacco Smoke. 

This is one of the delicious ironies in the story and one of the few places that the tobacco industry made a serious tactical error.

CREATE FEAR.
CREATE A MONSTER TO MAKE THE MASSES HATE THE TRUTH. 

So it's this worry, this anxiety, this fear, that leads to the suspicion, even the allegation, that environmentalists are really socialists in disguise. 

George Will, the columnist for The Washington Post, has accused environmentalism of being a dream tree with red ( i.e. COMMUNIST) roots. 

The US senator, James Inhofe, a senator from Oklahoma, has threatened to indict climate scientists for conspiracy to lie to congress, and accused them of being part of a conspiracy to bring down global capitalism.

"TO BRING DOWN GLOBAL CAPITALISM."
THERE IT IS!
THERE IS WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!
Let's go back for a moment to Fred Singer and Kent Jeffreys' 1993 report, and notice that it's published by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute.  

So who are the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute?
 Well, they're a think tank whose goal is 'the extension and perfection of democracy and economic liberty and political freedom'. So here we have again this assertion or assumption that economic liberty and political liberty go hand in hand.

 In practice though, if we ask how does the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute try to promote liberty, the answer is through lower taxation and less regulation OF INDUSTRY. 

Who was Kent Jeffreys, this co-author? 
It turns out he was a lawyer affiliated with the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. 

What is the Cato Institute?
 A think tank dedicated to individual liberty, limited government and free markets. 

The Competitive Enterprise Institute?
 A group dedicated to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity and strengthening free markets. 

Free markets, free markets, free markets.
FREE FOR WHOM?

So it begins with the Marshall Institute and this rather small group of people, but then it begins to spread very, very widely. 

The list of different think tanks and institutes, I've counted at least 20 or 30, ALL banding together for a common cause...  
SAVE THE INDUSTRIALISTS, SAVE THE FREE MARKET!

Some of  the most important ones to join this battle are the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Acton Institute, Frontiers of Freedom, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the list goes on and on and on. 

FREE MARKETS, NO REGULATIONS, SAVE INDUSTRY!

So all of these groups SAY they promote freedom, all of these groups SAY they promote liberty. 
Who could disagree with that? 

But if we ask the question who funds these groups and who do they really represent, then what we find is that they're funded by regulated industries, regulated industries that produce products that have serious negative consequences that are not addressed by the free market, what economists call the negative externalities, the consequences that are not reflected in the market price. 

So we have at the very beginning of this story the tobacco industry, the fossil fuel industry, the mining industry, the chemical industry FUNDING ALL THESE SO-CALLED THINK-TANKS. 

In addition, we see funding for these think tanks coming from libertarian foundations. 
Most of these (with the exception of Coors who made his money on beer), if you ask them where did the money from these foundations come from originally, all of them have roots in the fossil fuel industry.  
THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY.

BIG OIL, COAL, LOGGING INDUSTRIES, ALL NEED TO DESTROY THE ENVIRONMENT FOR PROFIT....ALL. 
THEY WILL NOT OPERATE PROFITABLY ENOUGH TO SUIT THEM IF THEY HAVE TO CLEAN UP AFTER THEMSELVES AS THEY GO!

Of course, there's a profound irony at the heart of this story, because while we have delayed acting on global warming, the problem has gotten steadily worse. 

Many scientists now think we are reaching, or perhaps have even passed crucial tipping points that could lead to true crises like the breakup of West Antarctica that would lead to FEET rather than inches of sea level rise. 

The longer we wait, the more we increase the likelihood that we WILL need intrusive government action to prevent such catastrophes. 

Ironically, by fostering delay, the merchants of doubt have made it more likely that the very thing they most dreaded will actually occur.
THEY COULD VOLUNTARILY CLEAN UP THEIR ACTS, BUT WON'T!

I would submit that no one is an advocate of intrusive government, BUT, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin pointed out, liberty for wolves does mean death to sheep. 

ALL societies accept some limitations on the actions of others, because without such limits there would be no civil society  

 We DO regulate behavior and we do it to protect people from negative externalities, from unintended consequences, from unacceptable costs to INNOCENT bystanders. 

We create those limits based on our judgement of the potential harms and risks, based on our judgement of what those negative externalities are. 

This is why it is so important for us to understand the science, because it's the science that tells us what is happening and what is likely to happen if we don't do something to control greenhouse gases.  

It is the science that explains the risks and the harms that we face.  
It's for that reason that it is the science that has come under such virulent attack.

In 1990 Richard Darman, the director of the Office of Management and Budget under President George H. W. Bush, dismissed the concerns of environmentalists derisively, saying Americans did not fight and win the wars of the 20th century to make the world safe for green vegetables. 

THAT MORON DIDN'T KNOW, OR ELSE IS TOO DUMB TO CARE, THAT AS THE GREEN THINGS GO, SO GO WE ALL!

We didn't make the world safe for green vegetables, nor for polar bears, nor for Pacific Islanders, and if we don't do something pretty soon, it may not be safe EVER AGAIN for OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN either.
THEY DESERVE A FIGHTING CHANCE! 

MINERS USED TO TAKE SMALL BIRDS OR SMALL MAMMALS INTO THE MINES AND IF THOSE CREATURES BEGAN ACTING SICK OR FELL DEAD, THE MINERS RAN OUT TO  SAVE THEMSELVES.
THEY KNEW THAT THE "LESSER ANIMALS" ARE FAR MORE SENSITIVE TO THE TOXINS IN AIR THAN HUMANS ARE.

LOOK AT THE OCEAN AND SEE THE BILLIONS OF MARINE LIFE OVER THE PAST 3 OR 4 YEARS THAT HAVE DIED, WASHED ASHORE DEAD.

LOOK AT THE SKIES, FROM WHICH MILLIONS OF BIRDS OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS HAVE STARTED FALLING DEAD . 
STARLINGS TO SWANS, DROPPING DEAD.

LOOK AT OUR RIVERS. EVERYTHING, FROM DUCKS TO FROGS, IS DYING THERE AS WELL.

BUTTERFLIES, PLANTS DYING IN UNPRECEDENTED NUMBERS...AS ARE HUMANS.

AS GO THE "LESSER LIFE FORMS", SO GO WE ALL.
THOSE OLD MINERS 200 TO 2000 YEARS AGO KNEW THAT!
WE LEARN...OR WE PERISH.
OUR CHOICE.

BELIEVE THE LIES...YOU DIE.

KNOWLEDGE EMPOWERS US TO SURVIVE!
WHAT WE KNOW CAN SAVE US.
WHAT WE REFUSE TO SEE CAN DESTROY US.