Last night I was reading Jacob Darwin Hamblin's excellent Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism.
I strongly recommend the entire book. Last night I was focusing on Hamblin's historical account of debates occurring in the 1950s over whether or not atmospheric testing was impacting the weather.
Hamblin demonstrates that US meteorologists adamantly rejected the idea that atomic testing could have caused the highly unusual weather patterns in 1955 and 1956 despite considerable evidence suggesting potential impacts.
In the early 1960s, scientists working with the defense industry became more open to the idea that human action could geo-engineer the climate.
Hamblin describes these scientists' debates about the survivability of "total" nuclear war and their ideas for developing non-nuclear climate-altering weapons that might have more tactical impact, with less total destruction, than nuclear bombs.
According to Hamblin's account, J. F. Kennedy was concerned about the implication of these efforts to geo-engineer the climate and natural terrain, as illustrated by this passage warning Americans of the dangers of scientific experimentation:
"For, as science investigates the natural environment, it also modifies it--and that modification may have incalculable consequences, for evil as well as for good. . . . [S]cience tody has the power for the first time in history to undertake experiments with premeditation which can irreversibly alter our biological and physical environment on a global scale." (cited p. 147)
Kennedy secretly directed his cabinet to guarantee that any future experimentation with significant impacts would be reviewed at the highest levels of government.
Hamblin's account is really quite chilling. The scientists engaged in plotting earth's destruction were quite clearly collectively insane.
They were blinded by group think. They viewed the earth as infinitely "resilient." They did not incorporate impacts on DNA. They viewed total war as survivable. They were collectively psychotic and their legacy was institutionalized in our military-industrial-scientific complexes.
The scientists plotting the survivability of total war in the 1950s and 1960s are of the same ilk who promote "tactical" nuclear weapons use today. They are of the same ilk as those who claim that Fukushima took no lives and will have little-to-no measurable impact on health or reproduction.
I know what is wrong with these people because my father was a sociopath and I've come to recognize how they operate, how they deploy their strategies and tactics of disregard and dispossession.
The unfortunate reality is that sociopaths such as Teller can be seductive and their distorted truths can become the basis for scientific consensus, group-think, and institutional capture.
That happened during the Cold War and it is happening today with the myriad examples of crimes against humanity and the natural environment, as illustrated here:
Exclusive:
Navy Secretly Conducting Electromagnetic Warfare Training on Washington Roads
Monday, 07
March 2016 00:00 By Dahr Jamail,
Truthout | Report
David Ignatius, The exotic new weapons the Pentagon
wants to deter Russia and China. The Washington Post February 23, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-exotic-new-weapons-the-pentagon-wants-to-deter-russia-and-china/2016/02/23/b2621602-da7a-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines
Little noticed amid the daily news
bulletins about the Islamic State and Syria, the Pentagon has begun a push for exotic new weapons that can deter Russia and
China.
Pentagon officials have started talking openly about using the latest tools of artificial intelligence and machine learning to create robot weapons, “human-machine teams” and enhanced, super-powered soldiers…. Within the Pentagon, this high-tech approach is known by the dull phrase “third offset strategy,” emulating two earlier “offsets” that checked Russian military advances during the Cold War. The first offset was tactical nuclear weapons; the second was precision-guided conventional weapons. The latest version assumes that smart, robot weapons can help restore deterrence that has been eroded by Russian and Chinese progress.
Two additional examples of nuclear insanity: http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2016/03/two-excellent-reads-on-nuclear-insanity.html
MEANWHILE, FUKUSHIMA STILL LOOKING BAD
These are the second rate scientists who use the ideas of the real scientists and create dangerous technology. Given what we are getting from the medical world, we have to be very careful around science presently. Statins, the mmr vaccination and probably most vaccinations. Ability in mathematics and science tells us nothing about the person's ethics. But Americans are very enchanted by intelligence and find virtue boring. We now have a ring side seat in a society that is failing due to corruption. We can not even have meaningful elections as vote for the wrong kind of candidate and the party will find a way to deny him or her the nomination! Another word to toss out now is democracy. Meanwhile words have become more hurtful than sticks and stones!
ReplyDeleteI got a yllow fever vaccination before I went to peru. Damn glad I did. Dont want yeallow fever. Got hep B vax befoe working in a hospital. I know plenty of docs, nurses who have hep b and c from accidental sticks in hospitals. Got vaccination before i had menningitis from leukemia from open air bomb tests. if there were no vaxs or antibiotics thre quarters of us would not be around because of nuclear which may have been good for the earth. That was then. Now is now. I have loved ones. i am glad to be alive. The ravages my gramma and granpa saw were more natural but with all the radiation after 1945 we would not exist. Small pox vaxs in the 18th century from jenner and others and vaxs later kept a lot of people alive. The baby boomers now live to be 70. You would not be alive today william without vaxs and antibiotics william. you have enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle, still do. For you to say no vaccines william is hippocritical. Granted socioptahs like bill gates probably pulls shennanigans with vaccines but, there were people who developed some medical practices to keep kids and people from suffering horrible deaths. Radiation therapy is a joke but cancer is awful and almost incurable. Some vaccine prevent liver cancer from hep b. We all became more vulnerable after the advent of the atomic age but some vaxs also prevent undo suffering. I have seen hundreds of cases of cervical cancer from hpv. so sad
ReplyDeleteI know there is no need for fluoride. just another pollutant. No need for tetraethyl lead in gasoline. Many of us drove around gleefully in cars with te lead till 1995.
ReplyDeleteSome nascar racers still use tetraethly lead in race cars to prevent knocking in their bloody gas guzzling"high performance" death machine gas. Americans revel in excess and insanity. Let them eat cake they say.
More people could have and can stand up against nuclear power and not invest in nuclear power or nuk weapons. They could sivest now especially since fukushima. They say that their financial advisors or, someone else is making those decisions.
Americans could use less nuclear powered electricity by not living in mcmansions and doing wasteful crap. The most populate areas of america have guzzled evergy based on nuclear and hydrocarbons for years and sucked off the teats of the monsters. The highly proditable companies that built and maintain these living creature death machines.
Oil refineries, coal and oil plants, cars, and chemical co. send a lot of and many naturally occuring heavy metals into the environment . They send naturally occuring tons of heavy metals and radionucleides like polonium, radon, radium , etc into the water and air every year. Pollutants that have simmered deep in the ground for millions of years with uranium and lead. with uranium daughter products. All very dangerous. They have known it for years bt make the excuse that technology will eventually dix it. Stupidity, sociopathy, and waste.
Americans always could have protested nucs more and still can but even some of the "so called antinukes" did not,and still do not give a crap. The pronuc, old antinuc hippies and gaia, environmentalists make me sick.
Many people have investments and retirements with nuclear interests and military contractors vested.
Many people, even "so called antinucs" got rich off their speculations in the stock markets that were vested in mining, military industrial contractors, oil companies and energy companies that helped build nuclear power plants, and their contractors. Much of it intertwined with emperialism and cronie capitalism.
Contractors like hallibuten do oil field work and build nuclear power plants. Many amercans have had good lives and have good retirements from working for companies that had and have associations with the military industrial complex. "It is the american way."
"Oh but I simply invested and reaped the benefits, thats capitalism." Its like an old beat up gangster ruefully wishing there is and had been more law and order. Now the millenials have to reap what we have sewn. Pretty sociopathic.