Haplocanthosaurus, where it belongs. Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Here is an example from Wisconsin in 1905 of a law banning corporate influence on public policy:¹⁰

No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political office.

Penalty: Any officer, employe, agent or attorney or other representative of any corporation, acting for and in behalf of such corporation, who shall violate [this act] shall be punished upon conviction by a fine of not less than one hundred nor more than five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment in the state prison for a period of not less than one nor more than five years, or by both … and if the corporation shall be subject to a penalty then by forfeiture in double the amount of any fine so imposed … and if a domestic corporation, it may be dissolved, … and if a foreign or nonresident corporation, its right to do business in this state may be declared forfeited.

Similar Ohio Law, 1908

Section 1, That no corporation doing business in this state shall directly or indirectly pay, use or offer, consent or agree to pay or use, any of its money or property for, or in aid, of any political party, committee or organization, or for, or in aid of, any candidate for political office or for nomination for any such office, or in any manner use any of its money or property for any political purpose whatever, or for the reimbursement or indemnification of any person or persons for moneys or property so used.

Section 3. Every corporation which violates section 1 of this act shall be punished by a fine of not more than five thousand nor less than five hundred dollars… Any officer, stockholder, attorney, or agent of any corporations which violates section 1 of this act who participates in, aids, or advises any such violation, and any person who solicits or knowingly receives any money or property in violation of this act shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than one year or a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, or both at the discretion of the court.¹¹

Other Wisconsin Laws

From research by Jane Anne Morris:¹

• corporations were required to have a clear purpose, to be fulfilled but not exceeded.
• corporations’ licenses to do business were revocable by the state legislature if they exceeded or did not fulfill their chartered purpose(s).
• the state legislature could revoke a corporation’s charter for a particular reason, or for no reason at all.
• the act of incorporation did not relieve corporate management or stockholders/owners of responsibility or liability for corporate acts.
• as a matter of course, corporation officers, directors, or agents could be held criminally liable for violating the law.
• state (not federal) courts heard cases where corporations or their agents were accused of breaking the law or harming the public.
• directors of the corporation were required to come from among stockholders.
• corporations had to have their headquarters and meetings in the state where their principal place of business was located.
• corporation charters were granted for a specific period of time, like 20 or 30 years (instead of being granted “in perpetuity,” as is now the practice.)
• corporations were prohibited from owning stock in other corporations in order to prevent them from extending their power inappropriately.
• corporations’ real estate holdings were limited to what was necessary to carry out their specific purpose(s).
• corporations were prohibited from making any political contributions, direct or indirect.
• corporations were prohibited from making charitable or civic donations outside of their specific purposes.
• state legislatures set the rates that corporations could charge for their products or services.
• all corporation records and documents were open to the legislature or the state attorney general.

All of these provisions were once law in the state of Wisconsin. And similar ones were on the books in most other states.

Sources

¹ ‘Fixing Corporations: The Legacy of the Founding Parents’ by Jane Anne Morris, Madison, Wisc.

² ‘Some Like It Hot’ By Chris Mooney, Mother Jones May/June 2005 Issue

In 1989, the petroleum and automotive industries and the National Association of Manufacturers forged the Global Climate Coalition to oppose mandatory actions to address global warming. …

…

[W]ith the release of the IPCC’s third assessment in 2001, a strong consensus had emerged: Notwithstanding some role for natural variability, human-created greenhouse gas emissions could, if left unchecked, ramp up global average temperatures by as much as 5.8 degrees Celsius (or 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by the year 2100. “Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science,” wrote Science Editor-in-Chief Donald Kennedy in a 2001 editorial.

Even some leading corporations that had previously supported “skepticism” were converted. Major oil companies like Shell, Texaco, and British Petroleum, as well as automobile manufacturers like Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler, abandoned the Global Climate Coalition, which itself became inactive after 2002.

Yet some forces of denial—most notably ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, of which ExxonMobil is a leading member—remained recalcitrant. In 1998, the New York Times exposed an API memo outlining a strategy to invest millions to “maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours with Congress, the media and other key audiences.” The document stated: “Victory will be achieved when…recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.’” …

Though ExxonMobil’s Lauren Kerr says she doesn’t know the “status of this reported plan” and an API spokesman says he could “find no evidence” that it was ever implemented, many of the players involved have continued to dispute mainstream climate science with funding from ExxonMobil. …

³ ‘Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank’ Mother Jones May/June 2005 Issue

ExxonMobil has pumped more than $8 million [from 2000 to 2003] into more than 40 think tanks; media outlets; and consumer, religious, and even civil rights groups that preach skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe.

⁴ ‘Medicare for All: The Only Sound Solution to Our Healthcare Crisis’ By Guy T. Saperstein, AlterNet, January 16, 2007.

The United States has the most expensive healthcare system on the planet. Even including the 47 million uninsured, the U.S. healthcare system costs almost double per capita what single-payer systems in Europe, Japan and Canada cost; in the United States, healthcare costs were $5,635 per person in 2005.

⁵ Bill Moyers Journal, July 10, 2009

The House Energy and Commerce Committee found that the major private health insurers had rescinded the policies of approximately 20,000 people in a five year period, to avoid paying out approximately $300 million in benefit claims.

⁶ ‘Familiar Players in Health Bill Lobbying Firms Are Enlisting Ex-Lawmakers, Aides’ by Dan Eggen and Kimberly Kindy, July 7, 2009, The Washington Post

The nation’s largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records.

…

The hirings are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight, according to disclosure records. …

The push has reunited many who worked together in government on health-care reform, but are now employed as advocates for pharmaceutical and insurance companies.

⁷ ‘An Inside Story of Wall Street Bank Crashes’ The Paragraph, December 26th, 2008

⁸ ‘Capital City’ by Kevin Drum, Mother Jones, Jan.-Feb. 2010

let’s take a virtual stroll down K Street and see what everyone is spending on the world’s second-oldest profession. It’s all laid out for us by OpenSecrets.org. The defense lobby? Pikers. They contributed $24 million to individuals and PACs during the last election cycle. The farm lobby? $65 million. Health care? We’re getting warmer. Health care was the No. 2 industry, at $167 million.

And the finance lobby? They’re No. 1, with a very, very big bullet. They contributed an astonishing $475 million during the 2008 election cycle. That’s up from $60 million almost two decades ago.

⁹ ‘Don’t Reinflate the Old Bubbles’ By Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post, October 14, 2009

What we’re witnessing here is pretty simple: another bubble in financial assets. All that “liquidity” created by the Federal Reserve and other central banks has accomplished its task and prevented a global financial meltdown. But unless they move now to begin sopping up that liquidity, the central bankers run a serious risk of reinflating many of the same bubbles that got us into this mess in the first place.

…

The problem is that because we didn’t get into this recession in the normal way, the normal analysis and remedies are not appropriate. Slow growth and high unemployment are indeed going to be a big problem over the next several years, but they aren’t going to be solved by pumping out lots of cheap money that is used to speculate in stocks, bonds and commodities rather than be invested in the real economy. And if all this speculation has the effect of driving up the price of commodities and driving down the value of the dollars we use for imports, then it is perfectly possible to wind up with high inflation and high unemployment at the same time — as happened in the late 1970s.

The right policy response is for the Fed to begin withdrawing some of this extraordinary monetary stimulus even as the rest of the government steps up its effort to stimulate the real economy. That means more money for extended unemployment benefits; more aid to the states so that they can maintain the most vital public services; and more money to expand mass transit, state college and university systems, efficient energy production and basic scientific research. The economist Paul Krugman estimates that for every dollar in extra debt that will be required to finance this fiscal stimulus, about 40 cents will be repaid almost immediately in the form of tax revenues from higher short-term economic growth. And if the money is invested wisely in quality projects with high returns, the other 60 cents could wind up being a boon to future generations, rather than a burden.

¹⁰ ‘Wisconsin statutes. 1919: embracing all general statutes in force …, Volume 2, section 4479a’ edited by Lyman Junius Nash, Arthur Frederick Belitz

¹¹ ‘DEMOCRACY FOR SALE: How Ohioans Kept Corporations out of Politics; How and When They Re-entered’ — American Friends Service Committee

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

For comparison, here is a look back at other warm periods:⁹⁶

• The Medieval Warm Period (900-1400 A.D.) brought more warmth to northern Europe and some other regions of the Northern Hemisphere, but did not much raise average world-wide temperature. The highest average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during this period were about those of the mid-20th century.

• The Mid-Holocene Epcoh (6000 years ago) marked the peak warmth of the current natural inter-glacial period. Since then, the Earth should be gradually and naturally cooling towards the next ice age in 50,000 years or so. But today’s warming climate change has halted that trend for a while, and may even — with continued fossil fuel burning — cancel the next ice age.⁹⁷⁹⁸

• The Eemian Stage (120,000 years ago) was the prior inter-glacial period. Regular wobbles in the Earth’s orbit cause the coming and going of the Earth’s ice ages on about a 100,000 year cycle. The orbital wobbles affect the amount of solar radiation hitting the planet. When the solar radiation on the continents strengthens, it triggers the inter-glacial warming. After hundreds of years of warming, CO2, having maybe been flushed from the deep ocean, rises in the atmosphere, which amplifies the warming, driving the glaciers back towards the poles.⁹⁹

• The Pliocene Epoch (5.3 – 2.6 million years ago) was the last warm period before the glacial cycles started. Northern Hemisphere ice sheets had not yet formed, as high atmospheric CO2, the Earth’s orbital state, and constant El Nino winds and ocean currents likely kept them at bay.¹⁰⁰

• The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (55 million years ago) was a big warming climate change (5 – 8°C over a few thousand years) from an already-warm climate. Somehow, a huge amount of greenhouse gas got up into the atmosphere, as clathrates in the ocean may have melted to free trapped methane, or a massive volcano may have heated up vast swaths of coal.¹⁰¹

• During the Mid-Cretaceous Age (120 to 90 million years ago) the Earth was very different. Rolling back 100 million years of continental drift, we find the continents clumped together, giving very different ocean currents and climatic rhythms. CO2 levels were at least twice today’s, and it was so warm that the tropical breadfruit tree likely grew in Greenland (55°N).

Each warm period has its own story, but today’s is not yet finished. The effects of today’s climate change could put heavy stress on human and other life that has gotten used to the more-or-less regular climate since the last ice age.¹⁰² As more CO2 is added to the atmosphere, the outlook for future life becomes more dire. Now, it is up to the human species to muster its social sense and clever wit, and stop the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere that it started.

Sources

⁹⁰ IPCC FAQ 6.2: Is the Current Climate Change Unusual Compared to Earlier Changes in Earth’s History?

⁹¹ IPCC FAQ 6.1: What Caused the Ice Ages and Other Important Climate Changes Before the Industrial Era?

… There are three fundamental ways the Earth’s radiation balance can change, thereby causing a climate change: (1) changing the incoming solar radiation (e.g., by changes in the Earth’s orbit or in the Sun itself), (2) changing the fraction of solar radiation that is reflected (this fraction is called the albedo – it can be changed, for example, by changes in cloud cover, small particles called aerosols or land cover), and (3) altering the longwave energy radiated back to space (e.g., by changes in greenhouse gas concentrations). In addition, local climate also depends on how heat is distributed by winds and ocean currents. All of these factors have played a role in past climate changes.

⁹² IPCC FAQ 2.1: How do Human Activities Contribute to Climate Change and How do They Compare with Natural Influences?

FAQ 2.1, Figure 2. Summary of the principal components of the radiative forcing of climate change. All these radiative forcings result from one or more factors that affect climate and are associated with human activities or natural processes as discussed in the text. The values represent the forcings in 2005 relative to the start of the industrial era (about 1750). Human activities cause significant changes in long-lived gases, ozone, water vapour, surface albedo, aerosols and contrails. The only increase in natural forcing of any significance between 1750 and 2005 occurred in solar irradiance. Positive forcings lead to warming of climate and negative forcings lead to a cooling. The thin black line attached to each coloured bar represents the range of uncertainty for the respective value. (Figure adapted from Figure 2.20 of this report.)

⁹³ IPCC FAQ 8.1: How Reliable Are the Models Used to Make Projections of Future Climate Change?

There is considerable confidence that climate models provide credible quantitative estimates of future climate change, particularly at continental scales and above. This confidence comes from the foundation of the models in accepted physical principles and from their ability to reproduce observed features of current climate and past climate changes. Confidence in model estimates is higher for some climate variables (e.g., temperature) than for others (e.g., precipitation). Over several decades of development, models have consistently provided a robust and unambiguous picture of significant climate warming in response to increasing greenhouse gases.

⁹⁴ ‘Bush on “The Fundamental Debate”’ – RealClimate.org, 2006-03-31

Data show that carbon dioxide levels are rising, they are now 30% higher than at any time during at least the past 650,000 years, and likely even the past several million years. This rise is caused entirely by human activities. This is also demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt by data – for a start, we know how much CO2 we have emitted, and the observed rise is equal to 57% of this (the rest has been taken up by ocean and biosphere). That carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping longwave radiation, is also a measured fact and well-established physics since the 19th Century. …

What about a “natural” explanation for the observed global warming? There is none. Indicators and measurements of solar activity show no increasing trend over the past 60 years. The orbital cycles, which cause the ice ages, would currently tend towards cooling, if anything. There is no remotely feasible alternative explanation for the observed warming published in the scientific literature.

⁹⁵ IPCC FAQ 9.2: Can the Warming of the 20th Century be Explained by Natural Variability?

… Human activities over the last 100 years, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, have caused a rapid increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Before the industrial age, these gases had remained at near stable concentrations for thousands of years.

⁹⁶ ‘Paleoclimatic Data Before 2000 Years Ago’ – National Climate Data Center

⁹⁷ ‘The global cooling myth’ – RealClimate.org, 2005-01-14

Interpretations of future changes in the Earth’s orbit have changed somewhat. It now seems likely (Loutre and Berger, Climatic Change, 46: (1-2) 61-90 2000) that the current interglacial, based purely on natural forcing, would last for an exceptionally long time: perhaps 50,000 years.

⁹⁸ ‘The Long Thaw: How Humans are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate, David Archer Publisher’s description:

In The Long Thaw, David Archer, one of the world’s leading climatologists, predicts that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide we may eventually cancel the next ice age and raise the oceans by 50 meters.

Archer shows how just a few centuries of fossil-fuel use will cause not only a climate storm that will last a few hundred years, but dramatic climate changes that will last thousands. Carbon dioxide emitted today will be a problem for millennia. For the first time, humans have become major players in shaping the long-term climate. In fact, a planetwide thaw driven by humans has already begun. But despite the seriousness of the situation, Archer argues that it is still not too late to avert dangerous climate change–if humans can find a way to cooperate as never before.

⁹⁹ ‘What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?’ – RealClimate.org, 2004-12-03

From studying all the available data (not just ice cores), the probable sequence of events at a termination goes something like this. Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties. This leads to even further CO2 release. So CO2 during ice ages should be thought of as a “feedback”, much like the feedback that results from putting a microphone too near to a loudspeaker.

In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway. From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming.

¹⁰⁰ ‘Rolling up the circus tent: Dispatch #7’ – RealClimate, 2007-12-19

The Pliocene was the latest warm time in the Northern Hemisphere before the great glaciations of the Pleistocene closed in. To some extent, as we increase the atmosphere’s CO2 content, we are traveling backward in time so far as climate is concerned. Hence the Pliocene, which ended about two million years ago, has attracted a lot of attention as an analog climate for what may lie ahead. It’s not a perfect analogy, but the challenge of understanding Pliocene climate provides another test of the operation of model physics in a warm climate. …

… There was also a modelling talk by M. Vizcaino, evaluating several factors proposed to have accounted for Pliocene warmth. The ones that seem to contribute the most to conditions unfavorable for Northern Hemisphere glaciation are elevated CO2, the orbital configuration, and a permanent El Nino.

¹⁰¹ ‘Climate myths: It’s been far warmer in the past, what’s the big deal?’ – by David L Chandler, New Scientist, 16 May 2007

The warmest [“hothouse Earth” period] was probably the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which peaked about 55 million years ago. Global temperatures during this event may have warmed by 5°C to 8°C within a few thousand years, with the Arctic Ocean reaching a subtropical 23°C. Mass extinctions resulted.

The warming … was caused by the release of massive amounts of methane or CO2. It was thought to have come from the thawing of methane clathrates in deep ocean sediments, but the latest theory is that it was caused by a massive volcanic eruption that heated up coal deposits. In other words, the PETM is an example of catastrophic global warming triggered by the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

¹⁰² ‘Climate myths: It’s too cold where I live – warming will be great’ by Michael Le Page, New Scientist, 16 May 2007

As global temperature climbs to 3°C above present levels – which is likely to happen before the end of this century if greenhouse emissions continue unabated – the consequences will become increasingly severe. More than a third of species face extinction. Agricultural yields will start to fall in many parts of the world. Millions of people will be at risk from coastal flooding. Heatwaves, droughts, floods and wildfires will take an ever greater toll.

There are two factors should borne in mind when thinking about the impacts. Firstly, even countries that escape the worst of the direct effects will feel the economic effects of what happens elsewhere. There may be social and political problems too, as migration increases and water becomes increasingly scarce in some regions.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

• Just before 9-11, Bush ignored warnings of a coming Osama bin Laden terror attack, but it was Reagan who, as part of his campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan, boosted fanatical jihadists and gave bin Laden his start.⁴¹⁴²⁴³

• Bush, on his first week in office, planned for carving up the oil fields after an Iraq invasion, but it was Reagan who took the solar panels off the White House and returned the nation to its oil-guzzling ways.⁴⁴⁴⁵

• To muster support for invading Iraq, Bush published phony intelligence reports, like those claiming that Iraq was working with al-Qaeda.⁴⁶ In that he followed the lead of Reagan, who, to gain support for aid to brutal regimes in Latin America, set up “The Office of Public Diplomacy” to use CIA propaganda techniques against the American people, and who, to gain support for his military build up, edited radio transcripts to give the false picture that the Soviets willfully shot down civilian flight KAL-007.⁴⁷⁴⁸

• Bush, in his “Global War on Terror”, pursued torture of captives and dragged the nation’s honor into the muck, but he was just bringing home the policy of Reagan, who supported torture by Latin American regimes fighting leftist rebellions.⁴⁹⁵⁰

• Bush broke laws with programs such as his domestic warrantless wiretapping, just like Reagan, with programs such as the Iran-Contra caper, which secretly bypassed Congress’s ban against aiding the brutal Contra rebels against the people of Nicaragua.⁵¹⁵²

• Bush pushed corporate deregulation and slowed anti-fraud enforcement during a time of massive Wall Street fraud, which helped bring about the Bush Economic Crash — putting millions out of work and causing trillions in bank bailouts, but he was riding out the deregulation wave started by Reagan, who signed the deregulation law that brought about the huge Savings and Loan Crash in the 80’s.^53545556

• Bush fiddled for eight years while global warming climate change mindlessly marched ahead, and, like Reagan, ignored and cut enforcement of environmental standards.⁵⁷⁵⁸

Now, President Obama has just signed a law to plan remembrances for Reagan on the 100th anniversary of his birth (on Feb 6, 2011).⁵⁹ Let’s take the occasion to do more than honor Reagan with a postage stamp — let’s honor our country by teaching a factual history of his regime and its effects to our children.

Sources

⁴⁰ ‘‘Bush’ sewage plant proposal makes ballot’ – AP, July 18, 2008

A measure seeking to commemorate President Bush’s years in office by slapping his name on a San Francisco sewage plant has qualified for the November ballot.

…

“We think that it’s important to remember our leaders in the right historical context,” said McConnell, a member of the group that was formed after friends came up with the renaming idea.

“In President Bush’s case, we think that we will be cleaning up a substantial mess for the next 10 or 20 years,” he said. “The sewage treatment facility’s job is to clean up a mess, so we think it’s a fitting tribute.”

⁴¹ ‘The Bush-Bin Laden Symbiosis’ By Robert Parry, August 11, 2006

The CIA tried to warn Bush about the threat with the hope that presidential action could energize government agencies and head off the attack. On Aug. 6, 2001, the CIA sent analysts to Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, to brief him and deliver a report entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.”

Bush was not pleased by the intrusion. He glared at the CIA briefer and snapped, “All right, you’ve covered your ass,” according to Suskind’s book.

Then, ordering no special response, Bush returned to a vacation of fishing, clearing brush and working on a speech about stem-cell research.

⁴² ‘Ronald Reagan: Worst President Ever?’ By Robert Parry, June 3, 2009

[The Afghanistan] war was dramatically ramped up under Reagan, who traded U.S. acquiescence toward Pakistan’s nuclear bomb for its help in shipping sophisticated weapons to the Afghan jihadists (including a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden).

⁴³ ‘Pakistan and the ‘Global War on Terrorism’‘ by Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, January 8, 2008

In December 1984, the Sharia Law (Islamic jurisprudence) was established in Pakistan following a rigged referendum launched by President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Barely a few months later, in March 1985, President Ronald Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 166 (NSDD 166), which authorized “stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen” as well a support to religious indoctrination.

…

“ … the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

“The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, …” (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)

⁴⁴ ‘Bush’s Belated Accountability Moment’ By Nat Parry, ConsortiumNews.com, November 12, 2006

In Ron Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty, O’Neill described the first NSC meeting at the White House only a few days into Bush’s presidency. An invasion of Iraq was already on the agenda, O’Neill said. There was even a map for a post-war occupation, marking out how Iraq’s oil fields would be carved up.

O’Neill said even at that early date, the goal of invading Iraq was clear. The message from Bush was “find a way to do this,” according to O’Neill, who was forced out of the administration in December 2002.

⁴⁵ ‘Prodigal Sun’ – Mother Jones, March 2000

The [DOE’s Solar Energy Research Institute] study, a yearlong investigation by some of the nation’s leading scientists, provided a convincing blueprint for a solar future. It showed that alternative energy could easily meet 28 percent of the nation’s power needs by 2000. The only thing that solar and wind and other nonpolluting energy sources needed was a push, the study concluded — the same research funding and tax credits provided to other energy industries, and a government committed to lead the way to reduced reliance on fossil fuels. … [Reagan’s] Energy Secretary Jim Edwards killed the study, all right, but not before it had been published in the Congressional Record.

… The budget for the solar institute — which President Jimmy Carter had created to spearhead solar innovation — was slashed from $124 million in 1980 to $59 million in 1982. Scientists who had left tenured university jobs to work under Hayes were given two weeks notice and no severance pay. The squelching of the institute — later partly re-funded and renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory — marked the start of Reagan’s campaign against solar power. By the end of 1985, when Congress and the administration allowed tax credits for solar homes to lapse, the dream of a solar era had faded. The solar water heater President Carter had installed on the White House roof in 1979 was dismantled and junked. Solar water heating went from a billion-dollar industry to peanuts overnight; thousands of sun-minded businesses went bankrupt. “It died. It’s dead,” says Peter Barnes, whose San Francisco solar- installation business had 35 employees at its peak. “First the money dried up, then the spirit dried up,” says Jim Benson, another solar activist of the day.

⁴⁶ ‘Pentagon Officer Created Phony Intel on Iraq/al-Qaeda Link’ By Matt Renner, t r u t h o u t, Friday 06 April 2007

Newly released documents confirm that a Pentagon unit knowingly cooked up intelligence claiming a direct link between Iraq and al-Qaeda in order to win support for a preemptive strike against the country.

A report prepared by the Defense Department’s Inspector General for Carl Levin, the Democratic Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, explicitly shows how former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith used his Defense Department position to cook intelligence claiming a connection between the terrorist organization and Saddam Hussein’s regime.

…

But according to the IG’s declassified report, “a Senior Intelligence Analyst working in the Joint Intelligence Task Force-Combating Terrorism (JITF-CT) countered point-by-point, each instance of an alleged tie between Iraq and al-Qaida …”

⁴⁷ ‘Iran-Contra’s ‘Lost Chapter’‘ – By Robert Parry, June 30, 2008

That chapter — which we are publishing here for the first time — was “lost” because Republicans on the congressional Iran-Contra investigation waged a rear-guard fight that traded elimination of the chapter’s key findings for the votes of three moderate GOP senators, giving the final report a patina of bipartisanship.

…

The American people thus were spared the chapter’s troubling finding: that the Reagan administration had built a domestic covert propaganda apparatus managed by a CIA propaganda and disinformation specialist working out of the National Security Council.

“One of the CIA’s most senior covert action operators was sent to the NSC in 1983 by CIA Director [William] Casey where he participated in the creation of an inter-agency public diplomacy mechanism that included the use of seasoned intelligence specialists,” the chapter’s conclusion stated.

“This public/private network set out to accomplish what a covert CIA operation in a foreign country might attempt — to sway the media, the Congress, and American public opinion in the direction of the Reagan administration’s policies.”

However, with the chapter’s key findings deleted, the right-wing domestic propaganda operation not only survived the Iran-Contra fallout but thrived.

⁴⁸ ‘GOP & KAL-007: ‘The Key Is to Lie First’‘ By Robert Parry

One of the baldest — and now admitted — lies was the case of Korean Air Lines flight 007. On the night of Aug. 30, 1983, the KAL 747 jumbo jet strayed hundreds of miles off-course and penetrated some of the Soviet Union’s most sensitive air space, by flying over military facilities in Kamchatka and Sakhalin Island.

Over Sakhalin, KAL-007 was finally intercepted by a Soviet Sukhoi-15 fighter. The Soviet pilot tried to signal the plane to land, but the KAL pilots apparently did not see the repeated warnings. Amid confusion about the plane’s identity — a U.S. spy plane had been in the vicinity hours earlier — Soviet ground control ordered the pilot to fire. He did, blasting the plane out of the sky and killing all 269 people on board.

The Soviets soon realized they had made a horrendous mistake. U.S. intelligence also knew from sensitive intercepts that the tragedy had resulted from a blunder, not from a willful act of murder (much as on July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes fired a missile that brought down an Iranian civilian airliner in the Persian Gulf, killing 290 people, an act which Reagan explained as an “understandable accident”).

But in 1983, the truth about KAL-007 didn’t fit Washington’s propaganda needs. The Reagan administration wanted to portray the Soviets as wanton murderers, so it brushed aside the judgment of the intelligence analysts. The administration then chose to release only snippets of the taped intercepts packaged in a way to suggest that the slaughter was intentional.

⁴⁹ ‘Report: Torture started with Bush’ By Mark Benjamin, Salon.com

“The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive (interrogation) techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.” That is one of the raw conclusions of a two-year Senate investigation into torture.

…

According to the report, the torture ball started rolling with the president and his Feb. 7, 2002, memorandum stating that the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply to al-Qaida or the Taliban. The CIA and the Department of Defense began scurrying to establish their brutal interrogation regimes, while the White House and top Bush administration officials brushed aside legal hurdles and approved specific, horrifying techniques.

⁵⁰ ‘Lost History: ‘Project X’ & School of Assassins’ By Robert Parry © 1996

For years, human rights activists have accused the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas of teaching torture and assassination techniques to military officers from around the Western Hemisphere. For just as long, the Pentagon has denied the charge.

Then, late on Friday afternoon, Sept. 20, the Pentagon released a report admitting that some of those concerns were well-founded. From 1982-91, the School of the Americas used seven U.S. Army intelligence training manuals, written in Spanish, which advocated executions, torture, blackmail and other forms of coercion, including the kidnapping of a target’s family members.

…

… In winning the election in 1980, President Reagan had publicly renounced President Carter’s strong emphasis on human rights.

In the months immediately after Reagan’s election, right-wing Salvadoran “death squads” went on a rampage of political slaughter, including the rape-murder of four American churchwomen. In 1981-82, the “death squads,” often consisting of plain-clothes soldiers, butchered thousands of perceived leftists with little criticism from a White House that was drawing a line against communism. In December 1981, a U.S.-trained Salvadoran battalion swept through the remote village of El Mozote and massacred about 800 men, women and children.

The Reagan administration also warmed up to the Guatemalan army as it launched extermination campaigns against suspected leftist strongholds among that country’s Indian population. Most controversial of all, the CIA began organizing the Nicaraguan contra rebel army to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government. The contras, too, gained a quick reputation for human rights atrocities during raids into northern Nicaragua.

⁵¹ ‘Spying on the Nation’ – Frontline, PBS

Although the president told the nation that his NSA eavesdropping program was limited to known Al Qaeda agents or supporters abroad making calls into the U.S., comments of other administration officials and intelligence veterans indicate that the NSA cast its net far more widely. AT&T technician Mark Klein inadvertently discovered that the whole flow of Internet traffic in several AT&T operations centers was being regularly diverted to the NSA, a charge indirectly substantiated by John Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the official legal memos legitimizing the president’s warrantless wiretapping program. Yoo told FRONTLINE: “The government needs to have access to international communications so that it can try to find communications that are coming into the country where Al Qaeda’s trying to send messages to cell members in the country. In order to do that, it does have to have access to communication networks.

⁵² ‘Weinberger, Bushes & Iran-Contra’ By Robert Parry, March 29, 2006

In the early-to-mid 1980s, Ronald Reagan had sought to avoid a head-on clash with Congress by taking his foreign policy underground, using cutouts like Israel to ship missiles to Iran and White House aide Oliver North to funnel supplies to the contra rebels fighting in Nicaragua.

After those operations were exposed in 1986, Congress also tried to avert a constitutional showdown by papering over the illegal presidential actions and accepting the cover story that top officials, such as Reagan and Bush, were mostly out of the loop.

But those unresolved constitutional questions exploded back to the surface after Sept. 11, 2001, when George W. Bush asserted virtually unlimited presidential authority to override or ignore federal law as Commander in Chief. In effect, the younger George Bush was staking out power openly that Reagan and the elder George Bush had exercised only in secret.

⁵³ ‘Bush and Ken Lay: Slip Slidin’ Away’ By Sam Parry, February 6, 2002

Other parts of the Bush energy plan tracked closely to recommendations from Enron officials. Seventeen of the energy plan’s proposals were sought by and benefited Enron, according to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., ranking minority member on the House Government Reform Committee. One proposal called for repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which limits the activities of utilities and hindered Enron’s potential for acquisitions.

⁵⁴ ‘Bush II Slowed SEC During Financial Fraud Fury’ – The Paragraph, June 18th, 2009

⁵⁵ ‘An Inside Story of Wall Street Bank Crashes’ – The Paragraph, December 26th, 2008

⁵⁶ ‘Reagan Did It’ By PAUL KRUGMAN, May 31, 2009

“This bill is the most important legislation for financial institutions in the last 50 years. It provides a long-term solution for troubled thrift institutions. … All in all, I think we hit the jackpot.” So declared Ronald Reagan in 1982, as he signed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act.

…

The immediate effect of Garn-St. Germain, as I said, was to turn the thrifts from a problem into a catastrophe. The S.& L. crisis has been written out of the Reagan hagiography, but the fact is that deregulation in effect gave the industry — whose deposits were federally insured — a license to gamble with taxpayers’ money, at best, or simply to loot it, at worst. By the time the government closed the books on the affair, taxpayers had lost $130 billion, back when that was a lot of money.

But there was also a longer-term effect. Reagan-era legislative changes essentially ended New Deal restrictions on mortgage lending — restrictions that, in particular, limited the ability of families to buy homes without putting a significant amount of money down.

These restrictions were put in place in the 1930s by political leaders who had just experienced a terrible financial crisis, and were trying to prevent another. But by 1980 the memory of the Depression had faded. Government, declared Reagan, is the problem, not the solution; the magic of the marketplace must be set free. And so the precautionary rules were scrapped.

⁵⁷ ‘The four global warming impact studies Bush tried to bury in his final days’ by Joseph Romm, Grist, 21 Jan 2009

… For eight years [the Bush administration] have avoided their statutory obligation to detail the impacts of climate change on this country. And they have systematically muzzled government climate scientists from discussing those impacts with the public or the media.

It was easier to find people in the Bush administration to talk about torture or warrantless wiretaps, than it was to get someone to speak on (or off) the record on the likely impact of Bush’s policy of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions on Americans.

On Friday January 16, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program actually released four major Synthesis and Assessment reports. You may remember the last report the CCSP released — U.S. Geological Survey stunner: Sea-level rise in 2100 will likely “substantially exceed” IPCC projections, SW faces “permanent drying” by 2050. I was told by scientists knowledgeable about the CCSP process that all of the major impact reports were slowed down in the review process to make sure they came out after the election.

…

These are all substantive and comprehensive studies, almost on a par with the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment.

⁵⁸ ‘A look back at Reagan’s environmental record’ Grist, 10 Jun 2004

“The Reagan administration adopted an extraordinarily aggressive policy of issuing leases for oil, gas, and coal development on tens of millions of acres of national lands — more than any other administration in history, including the current one [Bush II],” said the Wilderness Society’s David Alberswerth.

Before delving further into Reagan’s track record, it’s worth recalling his infamous public statement that “trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,” and that if “you’ve seen one tree you’ve seen them all.” This is not, in other words, a president who demonstrated much ecological prowess.

…

The list of rollbacks attempted by these administrators is as sweeping as those of the current [Bush II] administration. Gorsuch tried to gut the Clean Air Act with proposals to weaken pollution standards “on everything from automobiles to furniture manufacturers — efforts which took Congress two years to defeat,” according to Clapp. Moves to weaken the Clean Water Act were equally aggressive, crescendoing in 1987 when Reagan vetoed a strong reauthorization of the act only to have his veto overwhelmingly overridden by Congress. Assaults on Superfund were so hideous that Rita Lavelle, director of the program, was thrown in jail for lying to Congress under oath about corruption in her agency division.

The gutting of funds for environmental protection was another part of Reagan’s legacy. “EPA budget cuts during Reagan’s first term were worse than they are today,” said Frank O’Donnell, director of Clean Air Trust, who reported on environmental policy for The Washington Monthly during the Reagan era. “The administration tried to cut EPA funding by more than 25 percent in its first budget proposal,” he said. And massive cuts to Carter-era renewable-energy programs “set solar back a decade,” said Clapp.

Topping it all off were efforts to slash the EPA enforcement program: “The enforcement slowdown was staggering,” said a staffer at the House Energy and Commerce Committee who helped investigate the Reagan administration’s enforcement of environmental laws during the early ’80s. “In the first year of the Reagan administration, there was a 79 percent decline in the number of enforcement cases filed from regional offices to EPA headquarters, and a 69 percent decline in the number of cases filed from the EPA to the Department of Justice.”

⁵⁹ ‘Obama designates day for Reagan’ By Michael Collins June 2, 2009

… [Nancy Reagan] stood with her hand on Obama’s shoulder as he signed the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission Act into law.

The bill will create an 11-member panel that will recommend and carry out plans to celebrate Reagan’s 100th birthday, such as special stamps or commemorative coins. No federal money can be spent on the commission or its activities.

Sewage pipe image found HERE.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

I saw some protesters walking back and forth outside, and I knew that I wanted to do more than that and that this kind of injustice demanded a higher level of disruption. And so, I just decided that I wanted to go inside and cause a bigger disruption.x⁴⁴

DeChristopher went inside, and when someone asked him if he was there to bid, he said “yes”. He showed his driver’s license, signed a form and got an bidder’s paddle for the auction:

[O]nce I was in there, I realized that any kind of speech or disruption or something like that wasn’t going to be very effective, but I saw pretty quickly that I could have a pretty major impact on the way this worked. And it just took me a little bit of time to build up the courage to do that, knowing what the consequences would be. And so, I started bidding and started driving up the prices for some of the oil companies. And throughout that time, I knew that I could be doing more and could really set aside some acres to really be protected. And so, then I started winning bids and disrupting it as clearly as I could.

Eventually, the authorities caught on to DeChristopher’s game, and ushered him out:

The federal officials who took me into custody said that I cost the oil companies in the room hundreds of thousands of dollars and prevented 22,500 acres of land from being sold for fossil fuel development. I had a very open conversation with the federal agents about my motivations and values. They were friendly, respectful, and somewhat sympathetic.x⁴⁵

The form DeChristopher had signed held a notice of the penalty for fraudulent bidding — up to five years prison.

I knew that as bad as this could possibly turn out, if I ended up going to prison, then I could live with that. But if I saw an opportunity to protect the land of southern Utah and I saw an opportunity to keep some oil in the ground and give us a better chance for a livable future and I passed up that opportunity, then I wouldn’t be able to live with that.

News of DeChristopher’s action brought him much support from across the country. Patrick Shea, the BLM chief under President Clinton, became DeChristopher’s lawyer pro-bono, and via Bidder70.org, people sent in $45,000 for a down payment on the $1.7 million that DeChristopher owes.

I see that, you know, for all the problems that people can talk about in this country and for all the apathy and, you know, the eight years of oppression and the decades of eroding civil liberties, America is still very much the kind of place that when you stand up for what is right, you never stand alone.

Three days ago, the Bush wilderness sale hit another stumbling block in a federal court case brought by several environmental groups.x⁴⁶ The judge ordered the administration not to cash any of the auction checks on the grounds that “development of domestic energy resources … is far outweighed by the public interest in avoiding irreparable damage to public lands and the environment”. Shea commented on that news:

The Temporary Restraining Order will be good evidence for Tim’s case, but he still has a separate criminal process to go through. … We are getting good cooperation from the Federal government in trying to resolve Tim’s case, we expect after Tuesday [inauguration day] the cooperation will increase.x⁴⁶

Sources

⁴⁰ ‘America Puts Brakes on Drive for More War, note 103’ – The Paragraph, 2006-11-30

⁴¹ ‘Papers Detail Industry’s Role in Cheney’s Energy Report’ By Michael Abramowitz and Steven Mufson, The Washington Post, Page A01, July 18, 2007

⁴² ‘What Am I Bid for the American Wild?’ By Michael Winship, ConsortiumNews.com, January 10, 2009

⁴³ ‘Bogus BLM oil bidder: I’ve got the lease money’ by Patty Henetz, The Salt Lake Tribune, 2009-01-10

⁴⁴ ‘Posing as a Bidder, Utah Student Disrupts Government Auction of 150,000 Acres of Wilderness for Oil & Gas Drilling’ – Democracy Now, 2008-12-22

⁴⁵ ‘Why I Disrupted A Fraudulent Auction’ by Tim DeChristopher, Bidder70.org, 2008-12-21

⁴⁶ ‘Court Orders Government to Stop Land Leasing in Utah’ – The National Resources Defense Council, 2009-01-18

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Further Reading

‘Fossil Fuel Global Warming More Certain than Ever’ The Paragraph, 2005-10-16

Links

RC Wiki: “An index for debunking of various popular media occurrences of climate-related nonsense.”

RealClimate: “Climate science from climate scientists.”

Sources

²⁰ ‘IPCC, 2007: Summary for Policymakers – Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis’ – pdf file

Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years. The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.
~~~
The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling infl uences on climate has improved since the TAR, leading to very high confidence7 that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, with a radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] Watts per square meter.
~~~
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.
~~~
At continental, regional and ocean basin scales, numerous long-term changes in climate have been observed. These include changes in arctic temperatures and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones.
~~~
There is now higher confidence in projected patterns of warming and other regional-scale features, including changes in wind patterns, precipitation and some aspects of extremes and of ice.

²¹ ‘Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank’ Mother Jones May/June 2005 Issue

ExxonMobil has pumped more than $8 million [from 2000 to 2003] into more than 40 think tanks; media outlets; and consumer, religious, and even civil rights groups that preach skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe.

²² ‘Some Like It Hot’ By Chris Mooney, Mother Jones May/June 2005 Issue

²³ ‘‘How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic – Global warming is a hoax’ by Coby Beck

Here is a list of organizations that accept anthropogenic global warming as real and scientifically well-supported:

• NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
• National Academy of Sciences
• State of the Canadian Cryosphere
• Environmental Protection Agency
• The Royal Society of the UK
• American Geophysical Union
• American Meteorological Society
• American Institute of Physics
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• American Meteorological Society
• Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

²⁴ ‘How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic – Greenland used to be green’ by Coby Beck

First, Greenland is part of a single region. It can not be necessarily taken to represent a global climate shift. See the post on the Medieval Warm Period for a global perspective on this time period. Briefly, the available proxy evidence indicates that global warmth during this period was not particularly pronounced, though some regions may have experienced greater warming than others.

…

Instead of hunting whales in kayaks, [the Vikings] farmed cattle, goats, and sheep — despite having to keep them in a barn 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a full 5 months out of the year. It was a constant challenge to get enough fodder for the winter. Starvation of the animals was frequent, emaciation routine. Grazing requirements and growing fodder for the winter led to over-production of pastures, erosion, and the need to go further and further afield to sustain the animals. Deforestation for pastures and firewood proceeded at unsustainable rates. After a couple of centuries, it led to such desperate measures as cutting precious sod for housing construction and even burning it for cooking and heating fuel.

When finally confronted with several severe winters in a row, they, along with the little remaining livestock, simply starved before spring arrived.

²⁵ ‘Swindled!’ by William and Gavin, RealClimate, 9 March 2007

On Thursday March 8th [2007], the UK TV Channel 4 aired a programme titled “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. We were hoping for important revelations and final proof that we have all been hornswoggled by the climate Illuminati, but it just repeated the usual specious claims we hear all the time.

Bumper Sticker

“Grand Oil Party” bumper stickers are sold out at MoveOn.org, but I will send one to the first reader of The Paragraph who emails quinn @ theparagraph.com with his name and address. THE BUMPER STICKER HAS BEEN CLAIMED.

Ohio Oil Votes

In this study all Republican Ohio congressmen are 100% pro-oil, and no Democratic Ohio congressman is more than 25% pro-oil.

(1) Energy Policy Act – Yes is a pro-oil corporate welfare vote
(2) Delete ANWR drilling – No is a pro-oil vote
(3) Delete royalty breaks – No is a pro-oil corporate welfare vote
(4) Address global warming – No is a pro-oil profits vote
(5) Energy Bill #2 – Yes is a pro-oil corporate welfare vote

Notes:

• In this article not voting is counted as a vote for the winning side.
• (i) = incumbent
• Rep. Strickland is running for Governor of Ohio
• Rep. Brown is running for Senate

Sources

¹ ‘The Best Energy Bill Corporations Could Buy: Summary of Industry Giveaways in the 2005 Energy Bill’ – Public Citizen

² ‘Senate Democrats are Working to Lower Energy Prices’ – democrats.senate.gov

³ ‘On the Conference Report, Bill: H R 6, Senate Vote’ – Washington Post Votes Database

⁴ ‘On the Conference Report, Bill: H R 6, House Vote 445’ – Washington Post Votes Database

⁵ H.AMDT.72 Amends: H.R.6 – Library of Congress / Roll Call

⁶ ‘On the Amendment (Kerry Amdt. No. 844 )’ – U.S. Senate

⁷ H.AMDT.96 Amends: H.R.6 – Library of Congress / Roll call

⁸ ‘H.R. 3893, Gasoline for America’s Security Act of 2005, Cost Estimate’ – Congressional Budget Office] / Roll call

⁹ ‘Bush promotes energy options’ By Ron Hutcheson, Knight Ridder

`It’s great that the president is talking about our addiction to oil, but his policies are feeding the habit,’‘ said Jeremy Symons, director of the National Wildlife Federation’s global warming campaign and a former staffer on Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force.

``The budget that came out funds less than half of what the recent energy bill promised for renewable energy and energy efficiency — the two most readily available opportunities to break our addiction to oil,’‘ Symons said.

¹⁰ ‘Is It Still The Grand Oil Party?’ by Eamon Javers, Business Week

¹¹ ‘Grand Oil Party’ – Blognonymous

… we saw a set of polar bear tracks ambling off to the west. They were older tracks judging by how drifted they were; however, with all this open water around us one must be near. We have placed our camp on orange alert as a result of the sighting. …

… The day started nice enough, the wind had shifted, cooling things a bit and firming up the snow. But like so many of the other ‘good’ conditions we experienced, it didn’t last.

The light soon went flat and we were once again stumbling blindly forward. It started to snow too, and hard. We wondered if another blizzard was on its way, but it just kept falling at the same steady rate all day. The new snow stuck thickly to the bottom of our skis, made them heavy with no glide. Stopping to scrape the snow and ice off only helped for a few minutes. We switched to snowshoes.

When we put on our MSR snowshoes, it’s like putting a truck into four-wheel drive. We are able to pull the sled-canoes up and around ice that would be impossible with skis. On the down side, our travel slows and we expend extra energy lifting (instead of sliding with skis) each step. Still, without snowshoes, we would still be on the ice post-holing our way to madness or worse.

The only really good part of today was that we were able to laugh about it once it was over. For over six hours, we snowshoed. The sled-canoes seemed like a pallet of bricks and stopped dead at even the slightest pause in forward momentum. The ice was worse – small pans, pressured together in random ways, lots of open water leads filled with compressed snow and some brash ice. We had to veer so much east and west that at times, we thought we might be going in circles.

It’s hard to convey the feelings we have during a day like today. Several times we were near temper tantrum level when a sled-canoe got stuck or a piece of ice disintegrated underneath us. There’s intense fear when facing a tenuous brash ice crossing or relief like when three car-sized chunks of ice heeled over just after (not while) we had hopped across them. Frustration and despair as we scout the route and see more bad ice. Physical exhaustion as we try to pace our efforts. Hunger. Desire to stop and quit. Drive to keep moving forward.

When we finally reached a big flat piece of ice with 15 minutes left in the travel day, we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

It is equally hard to describe our emotions now that today is nearly complete. Before today we had hoped for good ice to the Pole, now we expect bad.

Sources

¹ ‘Project Thin Ice’ – Greenpeace

² ‘Last Day in Grand Marais’ – Explorers’ Blog, April 27, 2006

³ ‘Not Easy’ – Explorers’ Blog, June 15, 2006

‘ Working Group I: The Scientific Basis; Figure 1’ – IPCC

Sources

¹ ‘The Discovery of Global Warming’ by Spencer Weart “In 1896 a Swedish scientist published a new idea. As humanity burned fossil fuels such as coal, which added carbon dioxide gas to the Earth’s atmosphere, we would raise the planet’s average temperature. This “greenhouse effect” was only one of many speculations about climate, and not the most plausible. Scientists found good reason to believe that our emissions could not change the climate. Anyway major change seemed impossible except over tens of thousands of years.”

² ‘A.2 The First and Second Assessment Reports of Working Group I’ – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] “… the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” – Second Assessment Report, 1996 [¶]

³ ‘Some Like It Hot’ by Chris Mooney “Victory will be achieved when recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom’.” – American Petroleum Institute [¶]

⁴ ‘Some Like It Hot’ by Chris Mooney “… these [free-market, antiregulatory] groups are funded by ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company.” [¶]

⁵ ‘Contrarians’ by Stephen H. Schneider “… these contrarians are given disproportionate representation in the media (see Mediarology) and by certain governments, especially the Bush Administration, so far …”

⁶ ‘A.1 The IPCC and its Working Groups; Box 1: What drives changes in climate?’ – IPCC “The Earth absorbs radiation from the Sun, mainly at the surface. This energy is then redistributed by the atmospheric and oceanic circulations and radiated back to space at longer (infrared) wavelengths. For the annual mean and for the Earth as a whole, the incoming solar radiation energy is balanced approximately by the outgoing terrestrial radiation. Any factor that alters the radiation received from the Sun or lost to space, or that alters the redistribution of energy within the atmosphere and between the atmosphere, land, and ocean, can affect climate.” [¶]

⁷ ‘C.1 Observed Changes in Globally Well-Mixed Greenhouse Gas Concentrations and Radiative Forcing’ – IPCC “the observed increase in CO2 is predominately due to the oxidation of organic carbon by fossil-fuel combustion and deforestation” … “Most of the emissions during the past 20 years are due to fossil fuel burning, the rest (10 to 30%) is predominantly due to land-use change, especially deforestation.” [¶]

⁹ ‘What is the Evidence for Global Warming?’ by Robert R. Stewart “b. Stable isotopic composition, especially the ratio (18O/16O) where 18O is the concentration of the oxygen 18 isotope, and 16O is the concentration of oxygen 16 isotope. The ratio gives temperature at which H2O condensed as water or snow. c. Air bubbles trapped in the ice gives atmospheric gas content, especially the concentration of carbon dioxide.”

¹⁰ ‘Deciphering Mysteries of Past Climate From Antarctic Ice Core’ by Vostok Project Members “These [ice core] studies … tie carbon dioxide and methane concentrations to temperature” [¶]

¹¹ ‘Paleoclimatic Data Before 1000 Years Ago’ – NOAA “The latest peer-reviewed paleoclimatic studies appear to confirm that the global warmth of the 20th century may not necessarily be the warmest time in Earth’s history, what is unique is that the warmth is global and cannot be explained by natural forcing mechanisms”

¹² ‘The truth about global warming’ By Sandi Doughton, Seattle Times staff “With each passing year the evidence [that greenhouse gases are altering the world’s climate] has gotten stronger — and is getting stronger still.” [¶]

¹³ ‘ Working Group I: The Scientific Basis; Figure 1’ – IPCC

¹⁴ ‘Deciphering Mysteries of Past Climate From Antarctic Ice Core’ by Vostok Project Members “The chronology of the ice at Vostok has been established down to 2546 m, which is dated at 220,000 years before present.” [¶]

¹⁵ ‘C.1 Observed Changes in Globally Well-Mixed Greenhouse Gas Concentrations and Radiative Forcing’ – IPCC “There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.” – Third Assessment Report, 2001 [¶]

¹⁶ ‘Hot and Bothered: An Interview with Ross Gelbspan’ Interviewed By Dave Gilson, April 18, 2005 “… the purpose of this publicity campaign using greenhouse skeptics was to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.” [¶]

¹⁷ ‘The truth about global warming’ By Sandi Doughton, Seattle Times staff “… climate researchers say skeptics are recycling discredited arguments or selectively using data to make points. And as Oreskes showed, few skeptics publish in peer-reviewed journals, which check for accuracy and omissions.” [¶]