The Climes They Are A Changin’

"That’s our most important mission, to make sure our kids and our grandkids have at least as beautiful a planet, and hopefully more beautiful, than the one that we have.”

USA President Barack Obama October 5, 2016

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© 2014, 2016 Doug Bentley

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IKE THE PROVERBIAL ICEBERG with only a fraction of its bulk visible above surface and greatest mass hidden, our rapidly evolving global climate change movement has many moving parts and dimensions: some visible, some not.

Most visible is the cumulation of scientific findings readily accessible to public scrutiny and evaluation. Comprehensive and visionary economic and political plans have been framed from them. The focal platform of the official movement is the United Nations sponsored 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, commonly called Agenda 2030. Agenda 2030 was adopted at the Paris Climate Change Conference on December 12, 2015. It was formally signed by representatives of more than 170 countries at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on April 22, 2016, the seventh anniversary of International Mother Earth Day. These landmarks are of unparalleled historical importance. They embody the globe coming together to steer a new course into the future. Yet they comprise only visible, surface layers of the climate change movement.

To get from where we are now to where Agenda 2030 states we need to be, we are required to wean ourselves off our current 75% energy dependence on fossil fuels. Weaning off our addiction to fossil fuels may resemble the withdrawal symptoms displayed by a cigarette smoker who decides to quit his habit cold turkey. They may be traumatic and painful. Major national economies are still very dependent on revenues from fossil fuels energy use. Conflicts and confrontation between traditional and new energy advocates is building. With one hand political leaders slap restrictions on our fossil fuels consumption; with the other they dish out funds to makers of expensive new energy sources.

Undergirding this energy battle is a deeper one over control of the new economic and political policies mandated by Agenda 2030. A sense that we’re rushing headlong and blindly into this managed future is cause for pause and debate.

UN official climate change science focuses on earth changes we can see. We can see glaciers melt, lands flood, rivers dry up, deserts spread. There’s a dearth of concern about how the 99%+ of the electromagnetic spectrum not visible to us contributes to unwanted changes in climate. Non-visible climate change also involves technologies which almost never make media headlines. These devices are covert technologies funded by bottomless defense industry budgets.

Everything mentioned above operates on the conviction that nature can be tweaked and reprogrammed to better meet our needs. It implies the belief that planetary climate can be controlled by and will ultimately obey bureaucratic regulation. What’s both remarkable and ironic is that this approach runs contrary to populist climate change consciousness.

The bedrock of the movement in popular culture is the pre-Cartesian belief that nature is animate; It’s alive and possesses a soul. Nature mysticism, or pantheism is not only pre-Cartesian, it has prehistoric roots. Populist climate change consciousness is revisiting our primitive and ancient connections between man and the planet we all call home. Meanwhile, the official climate change movement is the application of mechanistic thinking on the grandest scale in human history.

Populist advocates preach that this is not a matter of saving the planet; It’s a matter of saving the planet from us. Theirs is a recognition that earth was doing just fine before we came along and

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will continue to do just fine with or without us. Theirs is not, however, a repudiation of the claim that earth needs a UN seal of approval to do the things that it needs to do to stay healthy.

2.1 The Science

The Inuit elders who live in the Canadian arctic say that the sun has changed its position in the sky. This is their way of alerting us that earth’s polar axis has shifted relative to the positions of the sun. Polar axis movements, wobbles, even reversals have been documented through scientific investigation, historical record, legend and myths that originate in widely separated places and times around the world. When the polar axis moves it drags along the magnetic poles and jet streams, causing them to shift as well. Predictively, seasonal weather patterns are altered. The Great Salt Lake Desert in the United States is about 1,280 meters (4,200 feet) above sea level and 965 kilometers (600 miles) east of the Pacific Ocean coastline. It was once Pacific Ocean seabed. We did not cause any of these things to happen, nor can we control them.

When we burrow into the earth or seas and find evidence of ancient settlements we are viewing the history of pre-industrial climate change. In 2016, The British Museum in London launched its first major exhibition of underwater archaeology. On view were relics recovered from two ancient Egyptian cities. The relics were found under seven meters of water on the Mediterranean seabed. Nearby the submerged ruins, the legendary Cleopatra’s Palace sits in pristine splendor. 1,500 years ago an earthquake dispatched it to the same watery grave. The enigmatic Pyramid of Yonaguni-jima off the coast of Taiwan rises 75 meters (250 feet) from the sea floor. If it’s an artificial construction it could have been built near the end of the last ice age, as long ago as 11,000 years. The ancient sacred city of Dvārakā off the northwest coast of India sits 40 meters (130 feet) beneath ocean surface. Artifacts there have been dated to 7500BCE. Magnificent achievements of great civilizations all, these long buried cities and ruins were helpless victims of catastrophic, sudden natural climate change. Man had no hand in their fates.

All of the above are reminders to us that the anthropogenic theory of climate change being primarily caused by human industrial activity has its limits. Man’s effects on climate are limited to earth's crust and atmosphere. Terra firma and the air account for less than one percent of planetary mass. The familiar, solid earth is almost wholly unknown to us. We know less about the soil beneath our feet than we do about the first second after the big bang. Like our memories of life in our mother’s womb, mother earth continues to be a mystery veiled from us that denies penetration.

Viewed from space the white continent of Antarctica is entirely surrounded by blue ocean. Maps divide it up and assign a name to each part but there’s only one ocean on earth. People sail around the world on it all the time. Over 70% of this planet is covered by water. Of the remaining 30% of its surface, we landlubbers seem to want to live as close to sea as we can. Half of us live within 60 kilometers from a sea. The majority of our largest cities are built beside ocean coastlines.

Within the next decade the human race may welcome its eight billionth member. A cubic volume equal to eight billion people can fit into a space the size of The Grand Canyon many times over. We may all fit comfortably inside the safety of a single canyon, but we’re explorers by nature. Humans live on 3% of earth’s land surface, but we’ve planted our footprints on half of it. And our explorative nature may now be responsible for the extinction of every living creature on land, in sea and air.

2.1.1 Clearing The Air

Rising 9,170 meters (30,085 feet) from base to summit, Hawaii’s gigantic Mauna Loa volcano is home to a little observatory which many consider the birthplace of modern climate change science. The observatory has been recording changes in carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the air since 1958. Its findings are known as the Keeling Curve. The Keeling Curve is a graph upon which much of modern climate change theory is based. We need to look into why atmospheric CO2 is important to earth’s climate.

CO2 concentration in the air is measured in parts per million (ppm). At the beginning of the industrial revolution in Europe in the early 19th Century, CO2 levels in the air were estimated to be about 280ppm. 280ppm is then considered to be the baseline for measuring the effects of human industrial activity. Today’s CO2 levels hover around 400ppm. Although CO2 currently comprises only about 0.04% or 1/2,500th of our atmosphere, a minuscule fraction, it’s responsible for most heat absorption in it. That’s why monitoring CO2 levels is important.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the international body which adjudicates official climate change science. Its role is to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to climate change; It gauges impacts and future risks, and puts in place strategies for mitigating risks. The IPCC’s procedure for assessing scientific papers normally requires three stages. There’s an initial review by an IPCC approved expert author in the field. If warranted, the paper is then reviewed by an IPCC official and the expert author. Finally, an IPCC body reviews all accompanying summaries. If approved, the paper is published and distributed through IPCC approved channels.

This procedure is unique to the science of climate change. Science publishing is normally handled by six major companies: the American Chemical Society, SAGE Publications, Taylor & Francis Group, Springer, Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell. These publishing houses adjudicate research across the entire scientific spectrum.

Numerous IPCC published scientific studies affirm that the primary driver of accelerated climate change is excess CO2 emissions spewed by us into the air. Most CO2 emissions originate in the fossil fuels industry. IPCC published scientists warn us that excess atmospheric CO2 impacts our climate in ways we have never experienced before. To understand this warning we need to take a deeper look into what happens when CO2 accumulates in air.

We know that a CO2 level of 280ppm is a baseline value not due to modern industrial activities. The current 120ppm rise in atmospheric CO2 levels to 400ppm since the start of the industrial revolution has multiple causes. Most of them are man-made. But the crucial issue is not CO2 concentration in air; The real issue involves the ocean’s ability to absorb it.

The ocean is the earth’s natural heat sink. Excess CO2 in the air is primarily absorbed by it. IPCC findings show that the ocean cannot continue to absorb CO2 levels currently being generated by human activity. If we don’t slow and reduce airborne CO2 emissions, the ocean will become warmer and warmer. According to the science, this will trigger a runaway greenhouse gases (GHG) effect that may be irreversible. We need to shift focus and find out what’s going on in our ocean.

2.1.2 Cooling the Water

About 36 billion tons of CO2 are discharged into the air every year. 30% of it is absorbed by the ocean as heat. This heat is transported around the globe by circulating ocean currents which themselves are becoming warmer. Water temperatures are increasing all through the ocean, not just on its surface.

Since the Keeling Curve began tracking GHG emissions in 1958 over 90% of excess heat trapped by GHGs has been stored in the ocean. There is about fifty times as much carbon in the ocean now as there is in the air. This carbon buildup causes a decrease in ocean pH, referred to as ocean acidification. pH is a logarithmic scale used by chemists to specify the acidity or basicity of liquids.

When ocean pH levels drop marine food chains are threatened; Organisms like corals, crustaceans, algae, mollusks and shellfish die out. The devastation taking place in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef coral system and its effects on the many marine animals dependent on it is a barometer of dropping pH. And there’s a further complication; As ocean temperatures rise the ocean’s ability to absorb more atmospheric CO2 diminishes. The ocean overheats and CO2 concentrations in the air rise even more rapidly; The runaway GHG effect begins.

Reports surface almost daily of mass marine life die offs along beaches and coasts in the Pacific. Millions of fish and sea mammals are washing ashore dead. Birds are falling dead out of the sky and dying from avian flu. These die offs are unprecedented, increasing in frequency, and we are powerless to prevent them. The ocean is, literally, dying before our eyes.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, when the ocean was in pristine youth, CO2 concentrations in the air were much higher than they are now. They held steady at about 2,000ppm for tens of millions of years, five times our current level of 400ppm. Ocean life flourished during this and subsequent periods. Biology’s evolutionary tree put forth new branches at every opportunity. By all accounts, the earth, its ocean, land and air did very well together for a long, long time.

The situation changed when warm-blooded sea mammals appeared. Unlike their cold-blooded neighbors, sea mammals need a stable temperature range in order to prosper. Though they’ve adapted to life in polar climates today, the survival of sea mammals through half a billion years is evidence that ocean temperatures have not varied excessively.

We need to ask why plants and animals on the land, sea and in the air not only survived, but exploded across the planet in every growing numbers when atmospheric CO2 levels were five times as high as they are today. Why didn’t the ocean boil and land burn?

2.1.3 What’s CO2 & Why is it Poisoning the Earth?

Before climate change scientists identified excess CO2 emissions in the air from fossil fuels consumption as global public enemy #1, biologists regarded CO2 as a basic building block of life. CO2 is for plants what O2 is for us. We need oxygen in the air to breathe and live; Plants need carbon dioxide for the same reason. We breathe what plants exhale; They breathe what we exhale. Without oxygen in sufficient amounts we will die in minutes; Without carbon dioxide in sufficient amounts plants will die out. Without atmospheric CO2 in sufficient amounts earth would be a dead planet.

The ocean is not earth’s only means of regulating atmospheric CO2; It also uses plants. Plants are natural air purifiers. They filter out and dispose of atmospheric toxins. The more CO2 available in the air for them to breathe, the healthier and more plentiful earth’s plant and animal life has geologically proven to be. Optimum CO2 levels for most plants are between 800ppm and 1,200ppm, two to three times current level.

There’s room for debate over whether climate change models accurately predict future conditions; There’s no doubt higher CO2 levels produce more, faster growing, larger plant populations. A billion years of geological evidence provide proof.

If atmospheric CO2 continues to rise the ocean will not be able to absorb any more of it. On the other hand, plants will flourish and spread. The contribution that more plants can make to climate change mitigation has not been acknowledged enough by scientists and advocates in the official movement. When it’s factored in, climate change models look less alarming.

The theme of the 2016 International Mother Earth Day on April 22, 2016 at the UN was Trees for the Earth. April 22, 2016 was also the day the Paris Agreement on Climate Change was signed there. The Trees for the Earth theme eloquently lists some contributions trees make to mitigating unwanted effects of climate change and enriching our lives. According to it:

“1. Trees help combat climate change.

They absorb excess and harmful CO2 from our atmosphere. In fact, in a single year, an acre of mature trees absorbs the same amount of CO2 produced by driving the average car 26,000 miles.

2. Trees help us breathe clean air.

Trees absorb odors and pollutant gases (nitrogen oxides, ammonia, sulfur dioxide and ozone) and filter particulates out of the air by trapping them on their leaves and bark.

3. Trees help us to counteract the loss of species.

By planting the right trees, we can help counteract the loss of species, as well as provide increased habitat connectivity between regional forest patches.

4. Trees help communities and their Livelihoods.

Trees help communities achieve long-term economic and environmental sustainability and provide food, energy and income.”

It’s a mission of the UN to plant new forests. This is noble; The sentiment deserves applause. But the execution of the mission is seriously flawed. Like the proverbial iceberg which opened this chapter, most of a tree lives in its root system, hidden beneath the beautiful giant we see. Root systems in forests may develop and evolve through thousands of years. When reforestation projects plop down new tree seedlings in neat Cartesian rows, the original and new root systems vie for nutrients.

Newly planted forests full of trees with trunks only a few inches in diameter and packed together in bunches a few inches from one another can’t compete, either with each other or with an existing root system. Most reforested trees are eventually crowded out and die. When these match-stick forests become wildfires the cause has to do with incompetent forest management policies and practices, not fossil fuels.

2.1.4 Conclusion

Man’s activities are not the only contributor to climate change. Natural factors like solar cycles and phases, earthquakes and volcanic disruptions on land and sea, magnetic pole fluctuations and jet stream changes can cause massive changes in climate. Archaeological digs prove that whole cities can be consigned to ocean deeps in a heartbeat. But these things are beyond the ken of our control. We can only manage our activities.

According to our best climate change scientists the globe is warming at an unprecedented speed. They present us with an apocalyptic scenario in which the seas shall rise and lands be flooded. The sun shall scorch us with great heat. Forests shall be turned to ash, rivers will wither and dry up. Birds will fall dead from the sky in great numbers. Our hearts will fail us from fear of the things that are yet to come. It’s widely quoted that 97% of these scientists agree that the major cause of accelerated climate change is human industrial activity. I hope they’re right. If they’re not we face the uncomfortable prospect that 97% of our best climate change scientists are wrong. That would truly be an alarming finding.

Agenda 2030 is set in stone. It’s a world altering, world binding document. The science underpinning it is not. Science is never certain and settled. What’s becoming alarming about climate change science is not only its findings. It’s that honest challenges to those findings are being constrained. Climate change science is a science, not a religion; It’s based on fact, not belief. Yet sound scientific challenges to official IPCC findings by leaders in their fields fail to find a publisher. Experienced researchers fail to gain funding or find their funding stopped. Some who challenge the official science become pariahs in their fields.

To exaggerate the effects of climate change is just as dishonest as to deny them. When those who uphold the claims of official climate science exaggerate or distort the findings, they undermine their validity. More, they undermine the integrity of the science.

2.2 The Economics

Solar energy is the most abundant permanent energy resource there is. But its use in renewable solar, wind, biomass, hydro and ocean energy production makes up less than 25% of current world energy consumption. Natural gas, crude oil and coal energy sources account for almost 75% of consumption. Coal is relatively inexpensive to refine and distribute and is found in most countries. It’s the main energy source powering industrial development in China, India and most of the developing world. Global oil reserves have grown by 60% in the last two decades; Reserves of conventional natural gas have grown by 36% over the same period. Despite such spectacular growth in energy production, over one billion people still live without access to any modern energy services.

A main goal of Agenda 2030 is that, by the year 2100, oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy producers will provide less than 15% of total world energy consumption. Solar thermal and photovoltaic energy will supply about 70% of our needs. No new energy sources are envisioned in this 80 year projection.

The fossil fuels* industry has propelled us from the horse-and-buggy days of the later 19th Century to the edges of the solar system in our own. It employs tens of millions of people around the globe in many of our largest corporations; The human, financial and infrastructural assets they

hold are second to none. It makes sense to redirect these assets in service to the goals of Agenda 2030. Instead, the IPCC imposes measures to dismantle them. The fossil fuels industry is under fierce attack by proponents of cleaner, greener energy technologies. Their weapon of choice is a carbon fuel tax.

[* The term “fossil fuels” commonly includes hydrocarbon-containing natural resources not derived from animal or plant sources. These are properly termed “mineral fuels.” I use “fossil fuels” throughout to avoid irrelevant confusion.]

2.2.1 The Carbon Fuel Tax

The idea of placing a tax on atmospheric carbon discharges from fossil fuels products has been floating around for almost three decades. In 1988 the United Nations set up The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This was the first official step to address climate change issues. Those of us old enough to remember the 1980s recall asphyxiating smog clouds that turned our largest cities into London fog. Motor vehicles trailed toxic sprays of leaded gas. Oxygen masks were worn by those unable to breathe the noxious air.

Almost a decade later the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, signed by representatives of 150 countries, set voluntary guidelines for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions below levels measured in 1990. The Kyoto Protocol identified CO2 as the main culprit in GHG emissions; scientific investigation then focused on it like a guided laser beam.

IPCC sanctioned studies and reports identified carbon fuel tax as the most efficient measure available for reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. It could be applied to the energy sector, and nowhere else. The Province of British Columbia in Canada, where I currently live, is a leading jurisdiction in administering a carbon fuel tax. When one buys either gasoline or diesel for one’s vehicle here: or natural gas, propane or coal for one’s home; Carbon fuel tax is charged at the point of purchase. It’s a user-pays system. Tax rates vary from fuel to fuel according to the amount of carbon each discharges. Heavy carbon pollutants are taxed highest. The carbon fuel tax serves as an incentive to each user-payer to improve their energy usage efficiency. The effectiveness of the tax can be measured by drops or rises in revenue collected by the government. The goal of the program is to receive no revenue at all from taxing carbon use!

2.2.2 Dreams and Reality

According to IPCC climate science, the macroeconomic effects of climate change will be varied and grim. If atmospheric CO2 emissions are not reduced soils will lose moisture, forests shrink, deserts spread in the warming climate. Water demand will increase even as water shortages multiply. Crop yields will fall; Food prices will rise. Coastal cities will flood; Their local economies will disappear. Demand on cooling technologies will increase; So will electricity prices. The costs of treating air and water pollution will rise. Diseases will increase, placing more demands on expensive and overburdened health services.

Those least able to afford the damages will be hit hardest by them. Developing countries may lose 9% of their gross domestic product every year to worsening climate change impacts. The sole bright spot in these scenarios, except for the iconic hungry polar bears, will be warmer temperatures that reduce the severity of winter in temperate zones.

Since the start of the scientific revolution (7) in the mid 16th Century, man has striven to conquer nature and bend it to suit his will. We will need all of our accumulated knowledge and ingenuity to defeat what could be our fiercest adversary in this ongoing battle: ourselves, and our addiction to oil.

Almost 90% of man-made CO2 emissions in the air originate in the fossil fuels industry. The dismantling of it is only the opening battle in what could be an economic war which lasts decades. Though not directly responsible for spewing out lethal doses of CO2, the drilling, mining, timber harvesting, ranching and farming industries will face mounting pressures to modify their practices too. Animal husbandry will die out because it’s an inefficient use of arable land. Pasture lands will be ploughed under and used to grow crops; Prime agricultural soil will be diverted from food to fuel crops. Meatless diets will be imposed by a powerful health care services industry. Every aspect of our economy and our lives will be micromanaged. Bureaucrats will tell farmers what they can and cannot grow; They will tell us what we can and cannot eat.

It’s one thing to call for changes in human activity. That’s the easy part. It’s another matter to force tens of millions of people and their families to sacrifice their livelihoods on the basis of computer simulations and hypotheticals. We’re witnessing sharp drops in employment in traditional energy sectors. National economies which depend heavily on their fossil fuels industry are decaying.

Low income families in the developing world depend on cheap coal to meet their needs. Forcing the poorest among us to abandon inexpensive and plentiful local coal energy in favor of inefficient, difficult to access, expensive alternative energy is not the right thing to do. When fuel costs increase food costs increase. Spreading poverty in developing nations must not be collateral damage in the rush to score political points in rich ones.

When we seek to eliminate an existing strength, everything is weakened. The global fossil fuels industry is the only industry which can finance, manufacture and distribute new clean, green technologies on a global scale. Those who advocate its ruin need to be reminded that whether our next generation of mass transport runs on gas, electricity, solar power or air, it will still be ground-based transportation. More forests and green spaces will need to be chopped down and cleared to make room for new super-freeways carrying millions more new high-tech vehicles.

Agenda 2030 promotes solar energy powered vehicles as the technology of choice for future transportation. How close are we to deploying this most abundant permanent energy resource to solving our global transportation needs?

On March 9, 2015 Solar Impulse 2, a long-range experimental solar-powered aircraft, left Dubai to begin a circumnavigation of earth. It carried a crew of one, the pilot. Due to numerous technical and weather delays the glider did not complete its circumnavigation until July 26, 2016. The pilot, Bertrand Piccard, said of his craft that it shows that “Solar energy is the pathway to a future with reduced carbon emissions and a safer, cleaner planet Earth.” (8) Piccard’s achievement was celebrated and praised by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a live broadcast from the aircraft to the UN General Assembly.

One solar glider carrying one pilot circumnavigated the globe in 161/2 months. The torturous flight of Solar Impulse 2 does not herald any “pathway to a future with reduced carbon emissions and

a safer, cleaner planet Earth.” Rather, it underscores how miserably the next generation of solar transportation technologies fail to deliver on their promise.

Were Ban Ki-moon celebrating the launch of a fleet of 500 solar-powered jumbo jets carrying 1,000 passengers each and able to circumnavigate the globe in 12 hours, then that would be a game changer. The flight of Solar Impulse 2 proves that we’re not ready to dispose of the fossil fuels industry yet.

2.2.3 Atomic Suicide

I empathize with the plight of the fossil fuels industry. It’s not our enemy. The fossil fuels industry wants to be and can be the climate change movement’s powerful partner. Its efforts to clean up its act are to be encouraged, not derided.

My empathy does not extend to the nuclear energy industry. The first requirement of a technology is that it be safe. Nuclear energy, both in peaceful and non-peaceful forms, has failed this yardstick. When a nuclear fission device explodes its radiation level peaks immediately then falls rapidly. When a nuclear reactor breaks apart (ie. Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi) contamination levels continue to rise and rise until escaping contamination is contained. Which then is potentially worse: an exploded bomb or a leaking reactor; Hiroshima or Fukushima Daiichi?

When it comes to the plight of the Pacific Ocean, concern needs to focus on the present situation at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. Damaged reactors there have been leaking radioactive contamination 24/7 since 11 March 2011. This disaster isn’t a computer generated hypothetical impact of a hypothetical rise in sea level decades from now. It’s a real, present man-made climate change catastrophe. Climate change scientists and activists who mount global outcries over hypothetical ocean rises have built a wall of stony silence around the Fukushima Daiichi issue. Where is their outrage?

From time to time a small group of eminent, distinguished nuclear physicists, with much fanfare, reset the hands of an imaginary clock: the nuclear doomsday clock. I can think of no individuals more responsible for placing us in the precarious situation of living only a nuclear tick away from extinction than eminent, distinguished nuclear physicists. Nuclear energy is a mephistophelean power which will eventually kill us all. Unlike the fossil fuels industry, it needs to be dismantled and eliminated now.

2.2.4 Conclusion

The McMurdo Station, an American climate research center in Antarctica, is located about 4,500 kilometers by air from Auckland, New Zealand, the nearest city of note. It’s one of the most inaccessible and isolated places on earth. Daily mean temperatures at the station never reach 0°C. Resident scientists there toil in a -25°C deep freeze in sunless winters that seem never-ending. Such souls write the story of climate change science. It’s a story painstakingly pieced together through the collective efforts of unsung heroes like McMurdo Station scientists. They are modern day scientific heroes, spending lonely lives sequestered in isolated outposts no one in his right mind would want to visit, even for a day.

But research scientists who spend their lives measuring movements of glaciers in remote regions are not the best persons to ask for guidance on human affairs. They make good advisers, but poor policy-makers. We should not hand over power to set global economic policy to them. Few of us are willing to forego our earthly pleasures to ease the suffering of hungry polar bears. Neither can we understand how glaciers melt in regions where temperatures never reach freezing point. We don’t know what makes climate change scientists tick; They don’t understand what makes us tick.

A carbon fuel tax is the bureaucratic tool of choice to stave off alarming events these scientists fear must come. It may or may not help curb GHG emissions. What’s certain is that it will increase fuel costs. Subsidizing the development of price-prohibitive, anemic, unreliable wind and solar energy power sources need not be done at the expense of cheaper, plentiful fuel sources that have proven their worth.

Governments around the world will soon be funneling trillions of dollars every year into new energy projects. When scientists dip into public purses to finance their adventures the public has a right to know how those adventures will benefit the common good. Such a yardstick serves to focus science on our most urgent needs.

Next to clean air, our most urgent bodily need is clean water. 97.5% of water on earth is salt water. We need to turn ocean water into fresh, drinkable water. The most important and urgent technological breakthrough that can be made in the energy industry is the development and deployment of efficient, inexpensive desalination technologies on a macro scale.

Solar energy may be the most abundant permanent energy resource there is, but clean air and water are our body’s main energy sources. Our body must have both. Despite the praise of Ban Ki-moon, efficient desalination of ocean water will contribute more to “a safer, cleaner planet Earth” than a fleet of Solar Impulse 2 gliders ever can.

2.3 The Politics

In an era of modest to high economic growth, dynamics of competition, innovation, and entrepreneurial investment are driving elements. Low or no growth economic eras are moved by different dynamics; government intervention in economic affairs tends to increase. When government bureaucracies grow they tend to obstruct business growth rather than facilitate it.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the ultimate administrator of the carbon fuel tax. The IPCC is a mega-bureaucracy of global scope which reaches into our homes. Let’s look at how it manages its responsibilities. We’re entering a labyrinth littered with acronyms, so I’ll let the IPCC speak for itself.

“The three participating institutions have established a Steering Committee with participation of UNDP (United Nations Development Programs), UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Program) and the Global Taskforce (GTF) of local and regional governments who gathers the major local government associations and global networks. The Steering Committee works in close collaboration with national, regional and local governance stakeholders, taking into consideration the necessary leadership that local and regional governments need to exercise for the implementation of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) at local level. In this sense, national associations of local governments are being mobilized by the GTF while UNDP and UN-Habitat

are working through their national offices in the participating countries, bringing the different stakeholders together, ensuring coordination with the national level and bringing along other agencies from the UN system. UNDP and UN-Habitat Regional Centers will also be involved as they bring their experience in promoting knowledge management and exchange of experiences. Furthermore, international organizations, research institutes, academic institutions, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations), CSOs (Civil Society Organizations), the private sector, foundations and other institutions gathering relevant knowledge and experience will be also invited to contribute to the process. At national level, ONE UN (United Nations Development Group) will lead the whole governance system in order to guarantee participation, coherence and coordination among UN entities.” (9)

2.3.1 The Chains of Behemoth

The IPCC mega-bureaucracy is a visual hierarchy; Its chain of command can be represented with a simple organizational diagram. Visual hierarchies are static structures. There's a place for everyone and everyone must stay in their place. Decision-making is centralized; There's no space for creative initiative. Business is always conducted through appropriate channels which have appropriate procedures which must be followed. The word "appropriate" is used often by bureaucrats who work in visual hierarchies.

The technique of the suspended judgment is an anchor of Cartesian methodology. The technique allows a process or experiment to run indefinitely. Stopping them in order to assess outcomes can be delayed perpetually. Its misuse in science occurs when a line of research is artificially extended. Experiments are unnecessarily prolonged. The technique is the keystone of the one-trick pony scientist who leverages one original idea into a lifetime of economic rewards for himself. Abuse of the technique serves the economic interests of scientists, not interests of science or the public.

The bureaucratic application of the technique of the suspended judgment is a cornerstone of how all mega-bureaucracies function. Mega-bureaucracies like the IPCC must use the technique because it's built into the way they manage problems. All visually structured mega-bureaucracies are slow-moving behemoths. A problem, even an urgent one, can take years, even decades, to filter through its chain of command. In the 1980s the Canadian Parliament unanimously passed a resolution to end child poverty in Canada by the start of the 21st Century. Studies on how to do that are still being commissioned by the Canadian government. Meanwhile, child poverty numbers continue to rise.

Like the Canadian government, most of a mega-bureaucracy's resources are consumed in studying and processing problems, not in solving them. Whenever we look to government bureaucracy to solve a problem, we hand over control of the problem to government. If government does take on the problem, it first repackages it into a form which fits its procedures. The problem becomes a "case." When a case is open, it's processed through the appropriate channels in the appropriate way. A mega-bureaucracy's appropriate procedures are comprehensive enough that they can can keep a case file open in perpetuity.

When government mega-bureaucracy deems a case high priority, the case is first assigned to an appropriate department. A budget proposal is drawn up and submitted. When the budget

proposal is approved, in-house bureaucrats and outside experts may be assigned to study the case. When a workable solution emerges from their study, it’s forwarded to a decision-making department for further study. Recommendations are made, new laws are drafted. After further study, lawmakers prioritize the case and set a date for formal discussion and debate over the draft law. If the draft law is approved by lawmakers and authorized, it’s sent back to the mega-bureaucracy to be administered. Bureaucrats employ more bureaucrats to handle the red tape created by the new law and recommended solution. The case file remains open forever. This is how government bureaucracies like the IPCC process high priority problems.

All bureaucracies grow. All government bureaucracies also require that business conform to their procedures, not the other way around. All economic activity is structured according to government laws. Tax rules govern the work of accountants, business owners, employees and all persons who are economically active. Businesses must record and account for any items listed in tax codes.

Government accounting practices are extremely efficient at tracking and recording every penny that a tax payer or business earns. They’re also notoriously inefficient at tracking how tax payer money is spent. Every year, billions of dollars of public revenue are lost through bureaucratic mismanagement, waste and corruption.

2.3.2 Big Bureaucracy No Democracy

Both official climate change science and administrative control of the carbon fuel tax are funneled through the same agency, the IPCC. When science is subject to control by non-scientists the result is non-transparency and corruption. When the carbon fuel tax is subject to control and manipulation by non-elected bureaucrats the result is non-accountability and waste.

We know how carbon fuels will be taxed and how carbon fuel taxes will be collected. We know that, every year, trillions of dollars in carbon fuel tax will flow into government coffers at all levels. We know the UN will receive a percentage of carbon fuel taxes collected in the quaint but revealing form of tithes. But it’s difficult to trace the money trail after it leaves government coffers. It’s difficult to know how, where and to whom government revenues from the tax will be distributed. What will funds from the carbon fuel tax be used for and who will receive the disbursements? Answers are opaque.

The global financial and economic crisis of 2007-2008 triggered the greatest transfer of wealth to the world’s wealthiest in modern history. Those too big to fail were bailed out by those with little to spare. John D. Rockefeller became the world’s first confirmed US$ billionaire in 1916, a century ago. Forbes magazine listed 946 billionaires in the world in 2007, prior to the financial crisis. In 2016, 1,810 billionaires we named in Forbes’ list. It took 91 years to reach 946 billionaires after Rockefeller cleared the bar in 1916. It took only nine years to almost double that number.

Aside from the Rothschild family, the world’s first trillionaire will likely be a major stakeholder in the gathering climate change economy. Proceeds from the carbon fuel tax must not become personal bank accounts for the world’s economic oligarchy. We must be vigilant to ensure that carbon fuel tax revenues do not end up only in the pockets of the wealthy and powerful.

The IPCC will impose its will upon member nations and designated stakeholders in a unilateral manner. It’s a top down organization of transnational bureaucrats managing national ones who

manage local ones. IPCC bureaucrats only talk to other bureaucrats; they don’t practise democracy.

The voices of we the common people have been locked out of IPCC discussions. We’re no longer stakeholders in the forums where great decisions are made. Our most important economic decisions are being made without our knowledge, input or participation. They’re being ratified without public review or debate by governments we elect to protect and promote our interests.

When the people whom we elect to safeguard our rights and freedoms are the same people who give them away they need to be held accountable. In the panic to establish a global government by bureaucracy our elected and non-elected elites have decided that we the common people will have no voice or vote in the outcome. This marks an extinction level event for democratic representation and individual liberty.

2.4 Dark Technologies

This section is titled Dark Technologies not because technologies discussed here are sinister. They’re dark because they function in non-visible regions of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS). Until now our discussion on climate change has confined itself to the 0.0035% of the EMS which we can see. Here we discuss effects of climate change caused by the other 99.9965% of the EMS we cannot see. A serious discussion on climate change needs to look into issues other than the plight of hungry polar bears and melting icy habitats.

A direct link between global warming and our use of the non-visible EMS exists because electromagnetic radiation always generates heat, known as thermal radiation. Every electronic device we use heats up the local environment a tad. Microwave ovens show that the same microwaves that transmit FM radio and television signals can also cook food. Touch a hot lightbulb and you might singe your finger. Touch the back of a cooling appliance like a refrigerator or air conditioning unit and you could regret doing so. Large industrial facilities like electric and nuclear power plants consume and heat up enormous volumes of water just to cool themselves down. And who dares touch a hot car radiator after a leisurely drive through the countryside?

Keeping electrical devices cool generates local thermal radiation. Infrared ray imaging makes heat signatures visible to us. When we view the world around us with infrared sensing eyes we might think that electronic devices are alive. They look like warm glowing bodies. There are billions upon billions of electronic warm bodies on the planet, with thousands added every minute. The cumulative effect of their thermal radiation emissions create electric winds. Electric winds are movements of thermal radiation through our atmosphere which impact air temperature and humidity. The role of man-made electric winds created by our use of the non-visible EMS is a real global climate change issue.

2.4.1 The Electric Hurricane

The 1880s in Europe and America marked the beginning of large scale electrical power transmission networks. Streets in major cities were soon strung with power lines that turned night into day. For the first time, factories, homes, businesses, and transportation routes could function 24/7 on artificial light. Economies powered by electricity exploded in number and size.

In the last half of the 20th Century, electronic communications technologies turned humanity into an interconnected global village.

There’s no question that large scale efficient transmission of electrical power has enriched our lives exponentially. One need only disconnect all electrical and electromechanical devices to realize that human life has benefited from ready access to inexpensive, efficient electric power.

Our use of electricity continues to rise rapidly. Since the first telegraph wire was strung in the middle 19th Century, development and use of the EMS has climbed like a rocket launch. We now pump out one million times as much electromagnetic radiation into the air, land and sea than pre-20th Century man did. When we focus on this invisible environment and our runaway use of it a different understanding of climate change emerges.

We come into contact with extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fields (EMFs) everywhere. In our homes, electrical lighting and appliances like refrigerators, ovens, dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers, air conditioners and water heaters are common sights; In the workplace, computers, photocopiers, fax machines, and fluorescent lights are standard fixtures. Electromagnetic fields generated by these devices can affect our bodies on a cellular level. ELF fields can play a role in worsening and accelerating cardiac, vascular, neurological and mental illnesses. That smartphone we’re addicted to can interfere with cardiac pacemakers, defibrillators, and hearing aids.

We must live with a certain amount of ionizing radiation as natural and a normal necessity of life; Exposure to the sun can cause skin cancer. But exposure to potentially harmful levels of radiation is now routine in our modern lifestyle.

An x-ray machine used in nuclear medicine emits ionizing radiation. It’s used in cancer treatment because it kills cancer cells. Ionizing radiation kills healthy cells too. X-ray machines are also used for security. Travelling by air may require submitting to an x-ray security scan. Another industrial application of ionizing radiation is a nuclear power plant. A nuclear power plant releases radioactive material which can expose us to low doses of radiation. Uranium mines and radioactive waste facilities can too.

A nuclear electromagnetic pulse is caused by a nuclear explosion. Atomic weapons tests in the air, from the end of World War II until 1980, released radioactive fallout which settled into the water and land, affecting every environment. Many foods we eat are grown in soil which now contains radioactive minerals. Animal food products contain them too.

It’s estimated that 80% of radioactive contamination from leaking reactors at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan has ended up in the Pacific Ocean. The catastrophe is ongoing testimony to how nuclear contamination can create an immense footprint in the ocean that harms the lives of people and organisms thousands of kilometers away for decades.

Meanwhile, powerful particle colliders like the one at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland generate much more powerful events than ones created in nuclear reactions. We know nothing at all about the effects of quantum particle or plasma collisions on any kind of environment.

2.4.2 Darker Technologies

IPCC approved climate change science is civilian science. Its findings are public knowledge that one can easily access. Weather modification science is military science. The former grabs news headlines daily; The latter rarely surfaces in public view.

Military climate change science employs technologies that temporarily modify local weather patterns. The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Alaska is home to the Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI). The IRI is a radio frequency transmitter that can temporarily excite sections of the ionosphere. This region of earth’s upper atmosphere absorbs the sun’s energy and turns much of it into heat. When it’s focused in the ionosphere HAARPs IRI transmitter can directly interfere with local temperature and climate. A non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP) weapon, the IRI generates very large NNEMP events, such as lightning strikes capable of damaging large structures. NNEMP events can also fry insulin pumps, certain prosthetics and heart pacemakers.

The ionosphere is also affected by Schumann resonances. Schumann resonances are global ELF waves generated by earth's electromagnetic field. There’s speculation that HAARPs IRI transmitter can interfere with Schumann resonances. If so, effects on local climate created by the IRI transmitter can have global repercussions that cannot be contained.

The relationship between civilian and classified sciences has always been close. When a military agency finds a use or potential use for an invention or theory it can classify them with arbitrary impunity. The act of classifying something prevents public access to it. Even the original inventor or theorist has no right or avenue of appeal once their discovery has been officially classified. Civilian scientists can find their research snatched away from them. University researchers who must plead and beg for scarce public funds find their original work eclipsed by peers bankrolled by unlimited military budgets. Much valuable science never reaches the public forum.

When The United States Department of Defense (DOD) provides funds to a civilian company or legal entity, contracted discoveries or inventions made by the company can become DOD property. Not only is intellectual ownership forfeited, the company must abide by operational secrecy codes enforced under possible penalty of imprisonment without trial for company directors. Countless remarkable discoveries and inventions sit locked in classified DOD files which will never be opened.

We’re familiar with the cliché: “Knowledge is power.” Retaining power today is a matter of encrypting and hording knowledge, not of distributing it. The better kept the secret, the more powerful the secret-keeper. This is the role of disinformation. Disinformation conceals true knowledge and distributes lies. To the keepers of secrets, distributing lies is standard practice.

2.5 Climate Change Consciousness

The labyrinths of climate change science, economics and politics will be continually updated and revised. That’s how science works. Our collective perceptions of how we relate to earth will change with the changes, too. What will persist and manifest more and more is climate change consciousness. It’s the bedrock upon which the climate change movement is built.

Pope Francis has become a leading spokesperson of the climate change movement. This need not surprise us. Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism, teaches that we are born in sin and that flesh is the source of sin. IPCC climate change science has identified our industrial activities as the main source of sins we commit against mother earth. How we treat the earth is always a reflection of how we treat ourselves. When we treat our bodies as rubbish bins or containers for unhealthy habits our bodies become sick. When we treat the earth in the same way, both we and the earth become sick. Roman Catholicism believes that natural man sins against God; IPCC science believes that industrial man sins against God’s creation. Both believe that man is, by nature and actions, out of sync with earth. Perhaps so. Our need to dominate nature began with Adam’s naming of the animals in the Garden of Eden:

“Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals….” (Genesis 2:19-20)

Francis Bacon (1561–1626), in a breathtaking display of one-upmanship, sought to exponentially magnify our God-given right to dominate when he penned what would become the goal of future science. The purpose of science, he wrote, would be “to endeavor to establish the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe.” (10) With that phrase, Bacon made mother nature, a feminine principle, submissive to masculine science. The mission and goal of science would be to dominate not only nature but the cosmos itself.

Later, under Cartesian science, nature would become a machine to be programmed and tamed: the cosmos, inanimate matter in motion. Since nature was now an inanimate machine, vestiges of animistic thought were dismissed as superstitions. Under Darwin’s evolution theories mother earth became a terrifying womb; She devoured her weak offspring through the merciless mechanism of natural selection. This wasn’t the loving earth womb and mother painted by romantic idealists and nature poets.

2.5.1 The Romantic and The Scientist

The scientific revolution of the 17th Century created the industrial revolution of the 19th. 20th Century acceleration in technological innovation multiplied our ability to dominate. In this Century we will save the planet, as long as it submits to our solutions.

Populist climate change consciousness is a sign that scientific fragmentation through specialism has reached an extreme. Our technologies, gadgets, scientific instruments, turned outwardly to dominate and explore the cosmos are transforming our inner world. Climate change alarmism is driving us to return to our original role as stewards of the earth. Ownership of private property is superseded by collective rights. We come; we leave. The lands and waters stay forever. We can no longer say that we own them.

Populist climate change consciousness is pre-Cartesian, pre-Capitalist and post-Democratic. It evokes nostalgia for a simpler, more childlike relationship to earth. But this time we’re awake. We’ve got the tools that centuries of science have armed us with. We can’t return to a rear-view nostalgic: a romantic, eco-topian sense of living amidst idyllic nature. We must keep moving forward with the modern Cartesian agenda.

The pre-scientific nature mysticism of populist climate change consciousness and modern Cartesian science are opposing philosophies with numerous differences. Nature mysticism, or pantheism believes that earth is a self-healing organism; Scientific Cartesianism believes that earth is a mechanism that needs to be fixed by man when it breaks. Nature mysticism believes that man needs to fuse himself and his activities with nature; Cartesianism believes that man needs to dominate nature by dividing it up. Nature mysticism believes that nature has a soul and that the cosmos is intelligent; Cartesianism believes that nature has no soul and that the cosmos is random. Nature mysticism sustained man’s religious, social and agricultural cultures with minor damage to nature for hundreds of thousands of years. Scientific Cartesianism has attacked traditional religious, social and agricultural cultures and caused major damage to nature in less than two centuries.

IPCC led official climate change consciousness is Cartesian. It represents a magnification of mechanistic philosophy through the global application of scientific methodology. Its approach rests on the conviction that mathematical formulas govern natural processes. If we but input the right algorithms, the desired outcomes will propagate. This is a new form of numerology, or number mysticism: created by computers, not God.

Contrary to populist assumption, IPCC led climate change consciousness has never been about a return to the mythic romantic savage at one with pristine nature.

2.6 A Summing Up

The climate change movement actually pivots on one central question: What is earth? Is earth an animate organism who can heal herself or is it a machine that we can and need to reprogram?

If earth is a living organism, as nature mystics believe, then natural processes will restore homeostatic balance when it drifts awry. Spreading deserts might cause more fresh water from ice melt to be produced. A rising ocean level caused by fresh water glacier melt might not be a sign of runaway greenhouse gases. It might be a sign that earth is restoring its optimal hydration balance.

If nature is animate it might also be a mistake to try to inhibit atmospheric CO2 concentrations. More CO2 in the air stimulates plant growth. Natural reanimation of the planet’s plant stocks benefits everyone and everything. Before trying to fix nature, perhaps we need to relearn how to listen to it. It might be trying to tell us that it’s not broken.

IPCC science would be unscientific to presume that its theory is settled and certain. It would be arrogant to assume that its theory is the only possible one. A complex sequence of events: If CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere rise, then ocean temperatures will rise, then polar ice shields will melt, then ocean levels will rise; is not a scientific certainty.

In the previous chapter we found that each link in a causal chain is less probable to occur than preceding ones. IPCC science fixates on atmospheric CO2 as its fulcrum for measuring climate change. All other possible triggers are excluded. Increasingly frequent seabed magma eruptions, solar cycles and phases, cloud pattern shifts, atmospheric EMS fluctuations and ocean current changes can also cause ocean temperatures to rise.

The official science of climate change has hung its collective hat on the findings that a little observatory in Hawaii has been faithfully pumping out for almost six decades. Perhaps the ante it has placed on The Keeling Curve is too high.