Pretty simple really.
Too many people.
The cause of all our problems including the subject of the forum article.
But we are evolving ourselves out of existence.
Sadly though we are going to take all the other animal species with us.

What does ateday suggest doing about "too many people"?

This is an excellent article is dead right. Thank you Julian Cribb. Toxic chemical emissions is where the UN should be devoting its effort, not CO2 emissions.

A point not made in the article is that many, perhaps most, of the chemicals do not decay. Unlike nuclear waste hey have no half life. And, unlike nuclear waste they are not contained and kept separate from the environment. They will be toxic for ever, and released to the environment. And we keep adding to the pile.

Toxic pollution from coal fired electricity generation is responsible for some 25,000 avoidable fatalities per year in the USA and many more work-days-lost and massive costs to the health system. Coal fired electricity generation is responsible for about 15 fatalities per TWh of electricity in the USA and the world average is 60 fatalities per TWh. Nuclear causes just 0.09 fatalities per TWh. So replacing coal with nuclear would save over 1 million fatalities per year (double that by 2050).

Furthermore, if nuclear was allowed to be cheap, as it could and should be, electricity could be rolled out more quickly to the billions of people who don't yet have it. That would avoid millions more fatalities per year by replacing, dung, wood and coal used in cooking and heating.

The people who oppose nuclear power are basically evil. Their morals are repugnant.

[some argue renewables can do the same job as nuclear. That is a statement from ignorance. Renewables are an enormous waste of money with no realistic prospects of contributing much except for small niche applications.

Your worrying about situations that are irrelevant nobody has a guaranteed lifespan .
The chemicals your on about help us get to wherever we do .

While I have the greatest respect for Julian in his time as science correspondent with the Australian, as a commentator he seems to have descended into madness..

This point: "Agent Orange phase of the Vietnam war (and which is now documented as having killed or maimed 400,000 people and deformed half a million babies)". Both figures are straight fantasy. I think you'll find that the 400,000 figure is more than the death toll of the entire war when both sides were making serious efforts to kill one another, and civilians.Agent Orange has been accused of all sorts of things but not of being directly poisonous to humans. Julian really needs to give his sources on that one.

As for this business about industrial chemicals being found here and there.. most of it is, I suspect, trace elements far below any any concentrations that might cause harm. People living in industrial societies that use these chemicals are living longer, not shorter lives, and are active for a greater proportion of their lives. Julian should make some effort to explain away that fact.

But Julian, this is wonderful news! It means I don't have to worry about global warming, Asian Flu, hunger, farm clearances OR nanotechnology takeover any more, because we're soon all going to die from toxic chemicals!

You've no idea how much better that makes me feel!

Julian, having seen your previous contribution to OLO on global warming, I am inclined not to take anything you say seriously.

To assist me assess this effort, would you let us know whether you have varied your research sources, or still rely on the usual: WWF, Greenpeace, The Lancet and Wikipedia

"Testing shows that almost every individual is now a walking contaminated site."

We're done like a dog's dinner. No doubt about that. No where is safe from systems thinking. If x, then also a,b,c,d and e. Or if x then A squared, B squared, C squared, etc. Bollocks.

Chemical poisoning is a new one. I'll add it it rising sea levels, over population, starvation, polar bear deaths, extermination by asteroid, plague and scorpions rising up out of the earth.

Even so, a very well written piece of propaganda. Nice internal consistency.

Very important empowering information, we all need to know; and far too important to be used as a "simplistic" platform to push a patently political wheelbarrow!
And no its not simple ateday.
As EJ asks, what do you propose doing about "too many" people?
Come on, don't be shy, you must have some practical suggestions?
Ethnic cleansing, interment camps and gas ovens perhaps? Yawol?
Or should we just stop all food aid and let all those starving millions just die?
Well, even if we could find within us that extreme level of extraordinary calloused indifference!?
The starving will not simply disappear meekly into the night, but before they go, will forage for/rip out absolutely everything that can be eaten or burnt, grub, seed, root or twig!
[Boiled grass anyone, generously sprinkled with a scrumptious serving of ground dried grasshopper and peppery flies?] "?" [ Well, they came with the grass.]
Leaving behind lunar landscapes, that can only ever add to the growing lists of planet earth's permanent deserts!
Or are you yet another of those hollow, empty, echoing vessels that make the most sound, with no useful, practical or pragmatic ideas to actually contribute?
This is one of those conundrums we will have no other choice but to apply trade sanctions to resolve, so that we are singing from the same song sheet!
Like we did when we got the Chinese to take the poisonous lead products out of our children's' toys!
Nor can we continue to allow our waste, replete with a whole host of chemicals and hormones, to be continue to be flushed into our oceans, at the start of the food chain; and or, into the very lungs of the planet!
Rhrosty

When this article is read in conjunction with the one by Nick Rose about Eisenstein's book, it shows clearly what a mess we humans have made of our world all in the name of greed and profit.

Is there an outcry? Of course not. The pigs are at the trough and nothing will deter them from gutsing down their share and that of someone else if they can.

Some of the comments on this thread show clearly that many humans also have a death wish and really don't care what is being done to them in the name of profit.

The sooner humans become extinct, the better!

And again the key is to adapt.
"Silent Spring" was probably where I first became aware of the global reach of chemical pollution. It was a long time ago, but didn't that book talk about DDT being found in the polar regions and in the animals living there.
The law of unintended consequences - DDT was a major boon in the early attempts to eradicate malaria. And then it went everywhere. But, and there's no getting around this, we're still here, walking toxic chemical repositories as may be.
We do adapt. Perhaps now it's time to adapt our thinking, to find a way out of our dependence on hydrocarbon-generated power and its offshoot, the petrochemical industry, and take another look at thorium.

The article mentions a couple of chemicals by name, nitrogen and phosphorus.
Nitrogen is nearly 80% of the atmosphere we breath and phosphorus is reasonably common being found in iron ore for example. It is also a principal ingredient in super-phosphate fertilizer where the source is the bird crap of past eras accumulated in remote areas. I wonder where the birds obtained their diet supplies.

Even the carbon in coal has been accumulated by the vegetation of an era some 300 million years ago from the atmosphere of that era. My complaint is that we are using it at a rate that will see none left for the essential needs of our grand children's great grand children.
Peter Lang makes sense about nuclear power. It is far safer for everyone than the coal fired industry particularly if based on Thorium. A coal fired power station (such as Bayswater or Eraring in NSW, each 2660MW) releases about 6 tonnes of Uranium into the atmosphere each year. That would scare most people but remember the bulk (over 99.7%)of that is U238 with a half life of a 4.468 billion years so it decays far slower than some of the carbon in your body.

One recent technical talk on the subject suggested that 100MW Thorium based power plants could be mass produced at about the same rate as the Boeing production line produces aircraft and every backward area in the world could have the necessary number. Waste from these plants is not the problem common with the Uranium route.

Enough Thorium is available for at least 2000 generations. I am expecting a DVD on the subject shortly.

Julian, I read some time ago of an entrepreneurial West Australian, who had apparently built a very high heat furnace; hot enough to reduce most toxic man made complex chemical compounds, back to their relatively benign components, and produced power and some profit, while doing it, if memory serves?
So I wonder if anyone in their right mind, can actually mount a defence for simply disposing of extremely toxic chemicals; flushing them down the toilet, or worse, out into farmland, where they can combine with our food chain or water table?
I've lived through times, when we all once regarded tobacco and DT/PB's/organo phosphates, as harmless and or beneficial products.
Ditto asbestos, mercury, lead and the cadmium we used to plate corrugated iron with, to prevent it rusting while doing duty on our roofs.
Why, I read recently where some Canadian building products firm had relocated to India, just so they could continue to use asbestos in their domestic Indian wall cladding products!?
Apparently, it improved the bottom line!?
There was a time when we would tar and feather these types, and run them out of town on a rail! Perhaps we need to reinstitute and dispense, some old time justice?
I mean, it's not like the so-called authorities are acting on these and the other things you've highlighted.
The only time the pollies seem to want to listen to the average mug voter, is just around election time?
Perhaps we could get them to listening to us, rather than powerful sectional interests?
If we always put the incumbent last on the voting slip, at least until we had cleaned all the dross out of our parliaments, and or, their international equivalents?
Rhrosty.

There are a number of statements in this article which I believe do not stack up to scrutiny.

Firstly, the rise in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers is due to increased life expectancy, not chemicals. After all in 1900 the average life expectancy was around 50 yrs of age in the western world. This meant these diseases did not have time to show up in the population.

2. The increased life expectancy around the world is occurring despite this supposed increase in chemical exposure.

3. Improvement in diagnosis and identification has led to the finding of many new illnesses not that they didn't exist before. Chemicals are not creating new diseases.

"In Australia, for example, coal pollution is estimated to kill four times more people than motor vehicle accidents." REALLY ? Evidence please!

good lets prepare for death. Heaven and hell are for eternity.

Julian, Rachel Carson produced a book that was 100% nonsense. I think your article has made a similar score.

I notice that you do have another source, besides Rachel Carson: UNEP, which would have about the same credibility as the IPCC. Where UNEP does not have the nonsense you seek, you obviously make it up.

You say: “Possibly the only thing that can prevent the worldwide poisoning of humanity and all life is consumer concern and refusal to buy polluting products or to tolerate babies being born pre-contaminated.”

Even you must feel some embarrassment at publishing a cringe-worthy statement like this.

The whole article is in fact a load of assertions. Julian does not bother with sources for almost all of it, and most of the stats he uses are highly questionable.

As for the bit about dead bodies leaking chemicals into the ground water.. well, I suppose the caskets aren't air tight let alone water proof, or are they?

Actually Julian in his haste to condemn industry overlooked an instance where there is a problem. One Indian sect does not burn or bury its bodies it leaves them in the open air for vultures and still do this.. However, they found the vultures were being affected by a chemical that accumulated in the livers of people.. did affect the people but killed the birds.. Last I heard they were looking for a way to get the vultures back.. too many bodies moldering..

Julian you are to be congratulated and thanked.

Like so many we have been concerned at the rapid decline in the CAGW alarmism. We had wondered about the onset of CPOW (Catastrophic Peak Oil Warning), then the COPW (Catastrophic Over Population Warning, the CFPW (Catastrophic Food Production Warning), then CGMFW (Catastrophic Genetically Modified Food Warning) and now we have COCW (Catastrophic Other Chemicals Warning).

I was beginning to worry the we humans might run out of things to worry about until you came to the rescue.

If it wasn’t for community minded people such as you we would have no reason to stay in bed each morning.

I’m sure that there will be many more human induced calamities that Agenda 21 can point us to.

Thank you and keep up the good work.

With respect, but a bit of a correction, Curmudgeon. You are referring to the Zoroastrians from Persia who happen to have some members living in India, not to an Indian sect. They are often considered to be the forerunners of the monotheistic religions which swept the world about 2500 years ago. It pre-dated Judaism and her two offspring, Christianity and Islam.
Their Towers of Silence were, and are, used as a way of exposing their dead to birds of prey, and they have been doing it this way for centuries.
But you are right that the vultures are dying. Some think it might be AIDS, others toxic overload. Either way, to stand under a Tower of Silence is a bit like standing under an eagle's nest. The reek of raw meat on the turn is slightly overpowering.

Julian, don't worry about the knockers. They are too stupid to realize that poisoning ourselves and everything else on Earth is counterproductive.

I thank you for your fine though alarming article! Intelligent people will appreciate your truth-telling.

Idiots and Flat-Earthers will ridicule it!

The logic of the argument goes like this:

1. State the problem in hyperbole terms but don’t use sources.
2. Reduce the problem to the personal eg, 1.4 kilos per person.
3. Say the problem is getting worse.
4. Link the problem to a well known evil ‘Agent Orange’ in an unpopular war to give it a moral dimension – talk about children.
5. Introduce systems theory so that we’re knee deep in chemicals (not shown).
6. Link to pregnant women in developing nations (what about the children?)
7. Introduce spurious claim that 86 million people each year are disabled by chemicals.
8. Make link to heart disease in the west.
9. Attack mining and energy industry.
10. Make bizarre claim about Alzheimers (simply untrue – it’s a prion disease caused by bending proteins)
11. Hold up Carson’s Silent Spring as the new Bible.
12. Make motherhood claim for consumers to boycott capitalism

For your assignments tonight please discuss the use of validity in arguments and show where there might be flaws in this structure by Dr Cribb.

As both an idiot and flat earther, I cannot but applaud the comments of Spindoc and Leo Lane. Directly to the point and succinctly accurate.

I cant believe people can read Cribb's efforts and dismiss them as if their are no serious environmental concerns around. There are. I thank Cribb for addressing an issue which gets much less airtime by Australia's media.

The deniers will be pleased to hear we have just entered a new phase of global cooling: Sydney has recorded its highest temperature so until we top that things will be showing a downward trend.

The following book is an interesting read for those who are concerned about chemical exposure and health, and the vested interests profiting from unnecessary chemical exposure.

Slow Death by Rubber Duck: How the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects Our Health by Rick Smith, Bruce Lourie

As with many things these days, governments have failed to act in out best interests.

halduel
duly noted - tnks for that..

Chris Lewis
the problem with Julian's arguments is that they are dismissable because they are so obviously unsourced exaggerations. If Julian wants anyone to pay attention he should put some work into his stuff, especially on this site.

Candide
the problem is that the temperatures are meant to be much higher. Greenhouse warnings are now more than 20 years old and the forecasts have been for much higher temperatures than the ones we are getting now - much, much higher. No one has denied that the earth is in a climatically warm patch.. the question has always been why, and can we make any useful forecast from the theory?

Cheryl. You forgot another element to your list. Refer to an expert organisation without vested interest in the topic in question. For example, he could have quoted the World Bank (you know, the 4 to 6 degree climate experts.)

Candide. Just a little caution with declaring the hottest recorded thingy. Check the late 1800's and 1930's for temp records. Or the MWP or the RWP.

Cheryl, thanks for your workmanlike analysis of Julian’s nonsense. I was offhand in my dismissal of it, but I found the result of your application to the task to be quite elevating.

Leo, Cheryl et al. The scientific and governmental sources for all the statements made in this opinion piece are given in an 8000-word essay I have written. If anyone knows a way to cite 70-odd sources in a 1000-word oped, I'd like them to tell me! However if anyone wants to see the sources and evidence (and is not one of those allergic to peer-reviewed science), I'll be happy to send them a copy. This is too important an issue to be diverted by tendentious claims of 'no evidence'. There is an absolute mountain of it, openly available to anyone who wants to look for it.

"If Julian wants anyone to pay attention he should put some work into his stuff, especially on this site," says Curmudgeon.

Curmudgeon, most people on this site when they left university actually left it. Cheryl obviously didn't and neither did you.

You appear to want comments and articles to be written as if those who write them are undergraduates jumping through academic hoops. Do you also want footnotes and a bibliography?

This is a forum for educated adults although, looking at the comments by a few, it falls short in some cases. Most people know that we are poisoning ourselves and our planet and don't need pages of references and footnotes to prove it.

Please put your university days behind you. You are becoming tedious!

This reference provides corroborative evidence of Julian's essay.
And of the information provided in the Rubber Duck book too - black ducks rule OK!

http://www.ourstolenfuture.org

Candied. Just for your interest:

http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Sydney_re-adjusted.png

What an amazing (and near incredible) response this thread has demonstrated to what is demonstrably an exceedingly worthwhile and scholarly article about a most serious issue. The Twitterers have been out in earnest. (The responder who stated that 'Silent Spring' was a load of bollocks really needs to get a grip before it's too late.)

Curmudgeon, I don't know what lobby group(s) you and Cheryl purport to represent, but you both really need to elevate your thinking beyond the limited bounds of your predisposed bias - the 'bigger picture' awaits your serious engagement.

Those who choose to nit-pick, could you please explain what accounts for the marked increase in our own immediate environment of childhood diabetes and asthma? Or of deformed fish, mass fish-kills and whale beachings? Let alone the breeding problems being experienced by fairy penguins and albatrosses?

How can anyone Not have suspicions about the potential impacts of the mass production of industrial chemicals of all manner, especially under such lightly controlled and regulated conditions, when even the PET bottles which grace the shelves of our supermarkets are known to release a hazardous toxin into their contents over time?

To all those who say "show me the science" I say "open your eyes"! (And your mind.)

It took a while to wake up to the impacts of CFC's and a range of highly toxic organophosphates, but beyond our purview masses of who-knows-what chemicals are being produced in first and third world countries, probably with minimal scrutiny. We only get to hear about the Bopals and such, but, what price 'progress'?

A cautionary article, worthy of far more earnest consideration.

When they poison you slowly then it is hard to prove which chemical did what.

The West has only the facade of democracy with large Corps dictating to our Govts what is acceptable.

The Vietnamese are still suffering from Agent Orange.Who has been held accountable?

Arjay and Saltpetre, yours are voices of sanity and reason amidst the clamoring of the 'THICKS' who believe whatever they are told by the Masters of the Universe!

There is a concerted campaign by the 'THICKS' on OLO to stop any questioning of the status quo or any criticism of it. This is clearly evidenced by the comment on this thread and that of Nick Rose.

The 'THICKS' love routine and hate any debate or discussion which is contrary to their narrow world view.

Getting a 'THICK' to think is a difficult task, perhaps even impossible.

...Toxic chemicals; another name for "Population Control". Surely a good thing in the end!

David G:

...I am almost convinced you have a "Problem"!

Prompete, thanks for the link to the graphs – not quite sure what point you are making with them, but I note that three of the four lines are showing rising temperatures, and the graph with the declining temperature line seems to stop at 2010, while the other one looks to be up to date.
Saltpetre, you might also have added alarming decline in human male sperm count, which has not been directly linked to any particular chemicals but has occurred alongside the increase in environmental plastics which mimic oestrogen as well as all the other chemicals we carry in our bodies.

Candide. I think the purpose of the link was to illustrate that in graph 1, the red (raw data) line is roughly in sync with the blue (published) data line but in graph 2, following 'adjustments', there is an apparent divergence.

The 'new' adjusted published line, produced I am sure with adjustments for UHI, station relocation etc etc is quite stark and leads me to consider very carefully statements by many in the MSM, ABC etc when new 'records' are constantly published.

Yes, I agree with you in observing a continuing temperature increase from 1860 to 1995, indicating a definite trend, a trend I would expect to see as the planet recovers (?) from the little ice age and moves toward the temperatures experienced during the Roman warm period etc. (although these temperatures are derived from proxy data sources which, again, I have to view with a degree of scepticism.

We're I a scientist with all the relevant expertise I may well be less sceptical of all the claims and counter claims I guess. Cheers.

diver dan ,toxic chemicals another name for "population control" surely a good thing in the end.Then he accuses David G of being unhinged?

Diver Dan,time for some serious introspection.

As usual with OLO, the polarisation takes a only a short time to manifest itself. It makes it tedious to wade through the innuendo and the sweeping generalisations. e.g. Carson's book Silent Spring. It was not forensically perfect but it did create a focus for what was and is going on.

The amount of energy spent arguing here is a waste. Accept the fact that Julian Cribb cannot be expected to support his statements on-line and that his credentials as a science journalist are impeccable. If anyone is in doubt about the voracity of what is said, the posts above contain on-line sources - "our stolen future" is a good start. Otherwise look at Google Scholar and check for yourself. Is BPA toxic to us/animals or not? Go look for the data yourself.

But what is worse is what underlies all this. "Food Inc" - still available at SBS (http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/13406275550/Food-Inc.?utm_source=Programs:Documentary:Most-Popular)typifies the major issues.

Our regulators are not regulating well enough, our chemical and biological monitoring has been "outsourced" i.e. we do nowhere near enough testing of environmental sources for the things that might (or do) have a history of biological damage anymore.

Corporate control is just that.

Renew, I am astounded by the number of seemingly brain-dead people on OLO, people who cling desperately to the status quo as though it was perfect.

It doesn't matter that we are headed for a nuclear holocaust as long as nothing upsets Wall Street. Most of them don't even know that the U.S. is engaged in trying to dominate the world or that things in America for its citizens are dire.

They could find out if they wanted to but they think it's far better to live in a fantasy world and ignore the warning signs. Wait until they have to bow down to Yanks. Then they'll complain, "Why didn't someone warn us!"

Ignorance is not bliss, I'm afraid.

DavidG, have you left school yet?

Your naivety, in accepting Julian’s baseless assertions, and your immature propensity to insult other participants of OLO is a real giveaway.

Julian’s ploy of saying that there is evidence, but it is somewhere else, is like the AGW Fraud backers’s tactic of “the majority of the world’s scientists” say so, when in fact not one of them are prepared to say that there is any science showing a measurable effect of human emissions on climate.

The simple fact is that they have no science, or authority, and neither does Julian. He sounds like a World Wildlife Fund advertisement.

DavidG. Your propensity for insults, derision, name calling etc for all those here on OLO with opinions, well founded or not, that differ from yours, undercuts all and any argument you put forward. Can't you see that? As Leo Lane accurately observes, have you left the year 9 school yard yet?

Renew. I am one of those who have, after many many years of following 'saint Carson', have questioned much of her 'science' or, as some have attributed 'junk science'.

On the other hand, her efforts and lifelong work did indeed engender a beneficial shift in the existing 'industrial/agribusiness paradigm. A shift that was much needed and has proven beneficial in many and unexpected ways.

How, therefore, can those who follow her lead possibly campain against the introduction of GM modification of food? It is a true example of cognitive dissonance.

I grow increasingly concerned with, not just the sheer volume of regulation, it's inept application and increasing impact on freedom of choice/speech.

I see Julian as just another of those commentators whipping up another 'panic/scare campain which, if allowed to run to its inevitable conclusion, will result in a further raft of regulation with huge expense, detrimental unintended consequences and a further erosion of liberties.

A fine contribution, Julian Cribb, followed by the usual predictable crap responses from the Panglossian brigade chanting, "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds." Yeah, right. As for what can be done? Nothing while we elect people who are totally unqualified in anything except legal issues to govern us. Our environment is protected by a man who knows nothing about the environment. Agricultural decisions are made by someone who knows nothing about agriculture, the list of incompetent holders of responsible portfolios is long and complete. Not a single politician knows diddley squat about anything except how to manipulate voters in order to be re-elected. That's the extent of their expertise, and we wonder why it's all going belly up. It's too late to do anything. We're stuffed; on our own; its up to each individual to prepare for what's coming.

Ybirp, please don't startle the mules!

Prompete and Leo don't like those who condemn our corrupt capitalist world and its worship of greed and war and they will try to kill the messenger with infantile insults if they get half the chance. Fortunately, I am immune to such childishness.

Meanwhile, the Yanks get on with their HAARP experimentation, their imperial agenda of invasion and occupation and plunder, their support of the barbaric rogue nation of Israel, and the tricking of their sycophantic Allies of which Australia is one, etc.

Heads In The Sand, boys, is their motto!

I like you, David G, and a few others too.... very few.

Actually, Prompete, I am arguing the opposite to what you say. In my detailed study of this issue I conclude that regulation is very unlikely ever to solve this, by attempting to control 83,000 chemicals and an infinite number of mixtures, one at a time. I am indeed arguing for personal liberty - the liberty of informed, and well-educated consumers and citizens to refuse to have themselves and their babies poinsoned by the mindless release of 10 million tonnes of carcinogens and toxins. You and Leo see nothing wrong with this, apparently, which is your privilege, but is not likely to earn you any respect or credence. If you doubt what I say, and have the guts, I challenge you to go and have your blood tested.

David G, what do you know about HAARP ?

Bazz, not a great deal but few people do because HAARP is all hush-hush and is part of American plans to control the world.

The Yanks are fiddling with stuff they know little about all in an attempt to amass even more weapons of mass destruction (as if the world didn't have enough of these horrors already).

If you want more info just Google HAARP! It's pretty complex stuff but you'll get the picture!

Cheers

Bazz, I submit the following extracts for your information. They were taken from an article written by Professor Michel Chossudovsky which can be found on Global Research:

“The US military has developed advanced capabilities that enable it selectively to alter weather patterns. The technology, which is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), is an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative – ‘Star Wars’. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, operating from the outer atmosphere and capable of destabilizing agricultural and ecological systems around the world.

Weather-modification, according to the US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report, ‘offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary’, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes.

Established in 1992, HAARP, based in Gokona, Alaska, is an array of high-powered antennas that transmit, through high-frequency radio waves, massive amounts of energy into the ionosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere). Physicist Dr Bernard Eastlund called it ‘the largest ionospheric heater ever built’.

JulianC. Point taken.

Well David G I suspected that your reply would be similar to what you
in fact gave. I needed to be better informed of your knowledge before I replied.
I have already been aware of Haarp for some 30 years.

All I can say is that you should not engage in subjects like this when
you can display such obvious ignorance of the subject.

You are obviously not aware of the basic rules of electromagnetic wave
propagation. I did have a look at the Haarp articles thrown up by Google.
There is a surprising number of conspiracy sites.
The yanks seem to have conspiracy groups for everything.

I had a similar dispute with 579 after which I realised he did not
have the knowledge to be able to take part in the discussion.
You are likewise in a similar situation. It is not your fault of
course as it is quite a severely technical subject.

I presume also you would be suspicious of the "Woodpecker" and also
you would not have even heard the Haarp or the Woodpecker.
BTW, do you think that Jindalee is a local Haarp derivative ?

The best reply I can give to you is to get hold of some text books on
radio and in particular HF propagation.
Otherwise you will get stuck with Arjay's label.

OK Bazz, if the Google sites are useless, and you know so much - including that there's no harm in any of the programmes you mention, how about a link or three to articles that will give us the facts about these harmless experiments in altering the environment in which we evolved

You see ypgirp, you are approaching the problem from the wrong end.
You need to know what the ionosphere is and how it handles HF radio signals.
If you had that knowledge you would know how the conspiracy sites are silly.
I could rattle off a lot of words about erp, ierp, peak power, path
attenuation, antenna gain etc etc and what would that mean to you ?
That is not to put you down as only a few people work in these areas.

I suspect that the only secret work at that Haarp site was an attenpt
to stop the Russians using OTHR (Over The Horizon Radar) to see radar
targets in the US. That of course is only a guess.
Actually, it might have made it easier !
The Haarp site used to be in Maine US at first if I remember correctly.

You said;
these harmless experiments in altering the environment in which we evolved

That question is itself meaningless.
I doubt if there would be any such articles.
Some conspiracy nuts who believed it was for communicating with
alien life forms might say it has no effect on earth, but that would be about it.

The technology is old and has been used here in Australia and in the
Antartic and many other parts of the world for donkey's years.
It is still used today for experimental and prediction work.
I think all the US was doing was the same but using higher power to
see if they could improve the reflection properties for a period by
strengthening the ionisation of an area to enable communication using
that section above the site. Another guess.

Really that is about all there is to it.
Don't worry no men in dark suits in black vans are likely to park
outside because we have been talking about this.
Cheers Bazz

Re HAARP FYI.

Posted by spindoc, Sunday, 6 January 2013 9:26:09 AM

Thank you Bazz for sort of satisfying my curiosity. I find it all too east to suspect the worst about just about everything the USA does in the name of progress or freeing the world for democracy, decency and so on, when I consider the deaths of millions at that country's hands since 1945. By the 1980s, former CIA man John Stockwell had put the figure at six million from mass bombing in Southeast Asia to employing death squads in South America. Updated figures suggest the US military and the CIA have been directly and indirectly responsible for around ten million deaths - which isn't mass murder, of course, it's war on terror.
Add to that countless others whose lives have been sacrificed on the altar of US corporate profit; e.g. hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers who have taken their own lives over the past decade and a half largely as a result of US agribusiness manipulating global commodity prices courtesy of policies enacted on its behalf by the US government or due to the corporate monopoly, or frontier technology, of terminator seeds that also landed farmers in debt which was just too much for them to bear. The US was merely helping to feed the world - weren't they?
Fortunately for my state of mind, you've convinced me I was foolish to imagine that the intentions of US tinkering with the ionosphere etc. would be anything other than benign.

ybgirp, I guess many people hear the reports of some technology causing
cancer, or even just headaches and not having any technical knowledge
just believe what they read or see on the TV.
There was an example on the TV tonight on channel 7.
It was about smart meters. This man who did not act much like a
nutcase, said all he had to do was drive past a house with a smart
meter and he gets a headache !
There were other people who claimed they make them ill and no doubt
soon someone will sue because a relative died.
Those same people sit and watch their TV for hours.
I understand that the smart meters in Melbourne use a mobile phone
link back to the company computer.
I just wonder how many of these people have mobile phones !

What annoys me is that the technical people in the TV stations don't
stop this nonsense from going to air.
I realise that the journalists would not stop it as they are as a race
of people totally stupid anyway.

I am probably in the same situation in regard to global warming.
I don't have the physics and wx knowledge to be able to come to a firm
belief in AGW or otherwise. However I have worked in instrumentation
and control systems so I have some understanding of the data logging,
and things like three term control loops.
That helps but not much.
What makes me skeptical is the mad rush to spend $Billions on an
attempt to control the climate. It seems reckless.

Bazz, you do not need physics or scientific knowledge to ascertain whether there is any basis for the AGW assertion.

There is no scientific basis for the assertion that human emissions have any measurable effect on climate.

It is a plausible theory, but does not stand scrutiny, since in practical terms human emissions have no demonstrable effect on climate.

The IPCC, a political organization headed by a disreputable railway engineer promotes the AGW fraud. Their backhanded admission that human emissions have no effect, is their assertion that it is “90% certain”. Apparently there are five independent scientists who endorse this. Originally there were seven, but two withdrew. Another 55 scientists endorsed it, but all were conflicted in interest. Like having the Climategate miscreants endorse an assertion.

A petition signed by more than 31,000 scientists asked the US Senate to take no action on AGW until there was scientific evidence to support it. Perhaps that was one of the factors in the US taking none of the action advocated by the scare mongers, and declining to sign the Kyoto Agreement.

In view of the absence of warming over the last 15 years, when CO2 in the atmosphere has uniformly increased, the whole CO2 assertion needs revision, not just the baseless assertion about human emissions.

Thank you again Bazz - this comment of yours, "I realise that the journalists would not stop it as they are as a race of people totally stupid anyway," is probably true, but I would add that mainstream journalists and interviewers are also conscienceless in that they are prepared to always give the 'official' version of everything and never demand the right to report alternative points of view. An obvious example being the adulation poured over Obama by Australian media when he paraded his daughters and expressed pity for the children shot at a school recently. Surely a reporter worth his/her salt would have mentioned that this same Obama has authorised the massacre and maiming of several thousands of innocent men women and children during his three years in office?
Leo, the cause of global warming is no longer particularly relevant, however, the fact that the climate is changing is very relevant. As it's clearly not possible for us to do anything to stop it, any money spent should go towards preparation for probable unpleasantness, such as lack of fresh water, droughts, diminishing food supplies, marine inundation... or do you think precautionary policies are also a waste of money?

Of course the basis is relevant ybgirp, without this fraudulent basis we would not have the completely useless lowering of emissions, done at great cost, for no result.

We would not have carbon tax, taxpayer funding of detrimental nonsense like wind farms and solar. We would not have a destructive policy on land use.

We would recognize our good fortune in having a plentifule supply of cheap energy in the form of copious coal deposits, and activists would have even less excuse for their behaviour, which is based on the false assertion that human emissions have any significance in climate.

Think it through ybgirp, before you make off the cuff remarks.

Breakthrough! There is No Global Warming - no, just unpredictable extremes of hot and cold across the globe, averaging to a nice balmy normal; and unpredictable extremes of wet and dry, averaging again to a nice, seasonally adjusted, Normal. Wow. Problem solved. Weird climate, but no real change in averages, means or medians, so, heck, we're all fine, off the hook. That was scary, just for a minute.

The Earth's just fine, iPads and population (human) booming, mining and construction going gangbusters; getting rid of useless forests to make way for precious palm oil and chick peas; also getting rid of useless critters, like elephants, lions and rhinos, which rip the food out of the very mouths of our much more important cattle and sheep, or, worse still, kill and eat them! Monstrous. And, as for whales (cockroaches of the sea), eating all that plankton our, I say Our, fish depend upon, or, worse still, Eating Our Fish. Deplorable. (Some people may eventually have to do without their daily dose of tiger penis soup, but, hey, that's life.)

Tons of coal and oil at our disposal (and uranium as a backup - or the Holy Grail), and between the Particle Accelerator, the Hubble Telescope and String Theory, we are only inches away from uncovering the great mystery of the Universe, the big Why. Gosh, we're so smart, it just makes you want to weep.

Polluting the Planet? You've got to be joking. We're just clearing the decks to make way for more institutes of higher learning and/or jacuzzis; and, what the heck, our medicos and scientists will save us from anything Really harmful. Belief, my friend, have faith in the ultimate infallibility of Us. Gosh, we're so cool.

50% of food being wasted? Yipes, we've got room for another 8 billion, so we're laughing. Wot, me worry? Bollocks.

Leo, some of my skepticism comes from the use of computer models and
for something like weather and climate and then 50 years into the
future seems very fragile to me.
Then, the refusal to use the Upsalla Global Energy Groups figures for
available oil, coal & gas seems to make it a case of blind mans bluff.

Here's a shocking news item -
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-billionaires-secretly-fund-attacks-on-climate-science-8466312.html
Who would have thought it

Kjell Aleklett has grossly underestimated the non-conventional 'oil' fraction, but you don't/won't acknowledge that, Bazz.

Anyway, please enlighten, what actual experience have you had with, in your words, "use of computer models and for something like weather and climate".

Which computer models, to be more specific?

Interesting link, Candide - Voltaire would be laughing at the Panglossian response of governments and society to our problems - The oceans are over fished so let's allow a super trawler to clear out Australia's fisheries too. We're running out of food and air pollution from burning coal and other hydrocarbons is killing and making sick millions of people world wide, so we're going to destroy a few thousand hectares of farmland so we can sell tens of thousands more tonnes of coal to the polluters. There's a plague of dementia in old people who are clogging nursing homes because the government won't let them die, no matter how they plead.
And the 'Anonymous donors' have won the climate change war, it's far too late now for any human action, even if we knew what to do.
We can't even elect parliamentarians who will do the best for the country, they spend their time fighting instead of thinking, learning and governing wisely.

Qanda, no computer model programs at all.
However I can see how small inaccuracies can become very significant
over long periods of time.
To try and guess the climate that far out seems to be pushing your luck.

As far as I am aware, Aklett's data has turned out to be quite accurate.
I hope you have not been taken in by the shale oil hype ?

Thanks Bazz, I misunderstood - I wrongly inferred you had some experience with the various climate models.

Insofar as Aleklett, can you link to some independent source concerning his accuracy?

Best not pre-empt AR5 just yet.

Qanda,
No I have never seen anything that contradicted the Upsalla data.
Somewhere I saw a graph using the Upsalla data that showed the
temperature rise to be about the same amount lower than the lowest
IPCC track was below the 2nd lowest IPCC projection.

Anyway, while I am skeptical I am not rusted on.
I do suspect though that it would be cheaper to adapt to whatever happens.
It is now fairly obvious that co2 emissions are not going to be suppressed by all countries.

I don't know what Julian Cribb did with his 1.4kg of chemical output but I'm pretty sure 99.9999% of mine just broke down in the field where it was sprayed or has ended up in landfill where it will make an interesting archeological dig some time around year 2451.

The mark of a trully sloppy intellect is the failure to actually account for the amounts one is trying to scare people with. He does accept, I hope, that most chemical compounds break down quite quickly after application. If they did not then the chemical industry could simply run off mountains of the stuff at tremendous economies of scale and then stockpile the stuff for later use. But they don't because the compounds do break down.

This has little to do with the preceding comments, but does fit the title - The greatest human impact.
Check out this article and weep for the idiocy of our politicians and economists who are leading us to self destruction.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33723.htm

Lance Boyle, evidence please for your assertion that most chemicals break down quite quickly - and even if they do, exactly what do they break down into - more, but different chemicals? And what about all the chemicals, heavy metals etc in our river beds and bays as a result of using waterways as chemical dumps

>>And what about all the chemicals, heavy metals etc in our river beds and bays as a result of using waterways as chemical dumps<<

What indeed?

http://www.dhmo.org/dihydrogen-monoxide/

Cheers,

Tony

Good one, Tony, the good old DHMO (Di-hydrogen Monoxide), potential carrier, purveyor and distributor of all manner of waste products and toxins - and even occasionally deadly itself, particularly in backyard pools, rivers and ocean surf. Chemical composition - 2 Hydrogen atoms plus 1 Oxygen atom: H2O.

Ha, Ha, clever boy, had us going there for a while.

On a more serious note though, if you take a look at the very interesting and informative link provided by ybgirp near the bottom of the preceding page (12) on this thread, it becomes apparent that in the not too distant future our potable and irrigation H2O may have to be produced by distillation (due to groundwater contamination) - which would certainly poke a hole in the economic balloon (as well as being rather inconvenient). (Of course, in some areas rainwater may still be sufficiently free of contaminants and toxins to be useful to households, as long as one doesn't live too close to a mine or industrial complex.)

Brave New World, or disintegrating and very fatigued old one? (Not too late, perhaps, but the clock is ticking - or should that read 'the fuse is fast burning down'?)

I fear it's a fuse, Saltpetre. Excellent metaphor, by the way.