Garnaut, Minchin - warming or cooling, the earth does its own thing

Senator Ross Garnaut has a PhD in economics from ANU and Senator Nick Minchin has a BA in Law and Economics, neither appear to have the qualifications to talk about whether or not the world is cooling or warming. Ross Garnaut has worked with Profs Frank Jotzo and Stephen Howes  from ANU and Professor Peter Sheenan from Victoria University on various reports for the Garnaut Climate Change Review.  They're all economists, none are climate scientists and yet so much store is put in their words.  ABC TV reports yesterday (Internet and short tweets ) that Nick Minchin said the globe is more likely to be cooling appeared (as Steve said in his post below), rather divisive placed as they were underneath dramatic televised images of the Japanese earthquake. What was intended. That we read the earthquake as yet another example of global warming or cooling? I wish the media would stop treating viewers like they are idiots. However, having said this there is much speculation over the Internet and on Twitter as to whether the HAARP facility is responsible for causing the recent earthquake in Japan, even though Japanese people and the world are aware that Tectonic plates and fault lines have been responsible for all recordable earthquakes that have occurred in their region. I tire of all this speculation. I believe, as others do that the organic world has its own ebbs and flows, it is powerful and sometimes extremely frightening as it goes about doing what it does. I like this short descriptive piece of text I found on the Internet this morning, written by B.E. Mahall and F.H. Bormann on the Physorg website

The Earth has its own set of rules, solidly grounded in laws of physics and chemistry and emergent principles of geology and biology. Unlike our economic model, these are not artificial constructs. They are real, and they govern. Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tornadoes, 100-year floods, massive wildfires and disease epidemics are dramatic examples of parts of nature, neither all service nor all harm, creating and destroying, and governed by rules that are indifferent to humans. Our anthropocentric economic model for interacting with the world ignores and is proving to be incompatible with Earth's rules, and is therefore on a direct collision course with them.

To achieve a more accurate model of our relation to nature, we need to see ourselves as part of nature, governed by nature (not economics), beholden to nature for ecosystem services and subject to nature's disturbances.

We need to view our existence in nature as dependent on numerous functions we are unable to perform ourselves, and without which we couldn't survive. And we need to recognize that we now have the power and the reckless inclination, driven by shortsighted anthropocentrism, to disrupt these functions to the degree that Earth will become uninhabitable for us.

HAARP: Brecon Walsh

Sorry to HAARP again, but

In June 2010, rings, loops, starbursts and other strange patterns showed up on the Australian Bureau of Meteorology radar, and given that cyclones Olga and Ului lashed Queensland, and Melbourne was bombarded with hailstones in one of the most intense and costly storms in the city's history, conspiracy theorists decided that it was all due to HAARP. However, these radar images were explained on one Australian website as subject to anomalous propagation of the radar signal which results in false echoes...anomalous propagation is easily identified and is displayed as a mass of low intensity echoes constantly changing shape with no apparent direction of movement.

Two of the primary sources for the conspiracy theory citing HAARP are Colin Andrews, an avid UFO believer and Dr Nick Begish, author of many articles on HAARP, including The Military's Pandora Box and on technology and mind control.

The heatwave in Russia in 2010 and the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 combined with recent intense rain and flooding in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria as well as the 7.5 earthquake in Northwestern Pakistan in January this year, has incited more conspiratorial conjecture resulting in a literal flooding on the Internet, Twitter and mobile text of concern that the USA may be targeting particular zones on the world map.

I'm sorry, but if the USA are so clever with this technology why have they sent so many troops to war, why didn't they just direct their high powered radio frequency device, like some kind of gamma ray from a 1950s science-fiction movie on Afghanistan, or is this what the conspirators are trying to say: that the USA was a little off target when they fired on Pakistan? Using this kind of perverse logic may we assume that someone on Capital Hill has it in for Mr Rudd? And why were we Melbournians targeted. Ridiculous! I'm just not convinced! However, having said this there are some articles by people with more noteworthy credentials than Andrews and Begish. One such article is by Professor Michel Chossudovsky - Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa who has published an article entitled: It's not only greenhouse gas emissions: Washington's New World Order weapons have the ability to trigger climate change. However, he does conclude that, While there is no concrete evidence of HAARP having been used, scientific findings suggest that it is at present fully operational. What this means is that HAARP could potentially be applied by the US military to selectively modify the climate of an "unfriendly nation" or "rogue state" with a view to destabilizing its national economy. Just as I thought, it's all fear mongering. If people have someone to blame they won't feel out of control, after all the weather is an uncontrollable and sometimes extremely destructive force.

Earthquake: Southwestern Pakistan

Brecon just alerted me to the fact that a 7.2 earthquake was reported on 18 January 2011 in Southwestern Pakistan. I'm not sure of the extent of the damage. An hour or so later a 5.4 earthquake was reported in Tarapaca, Chile. There were approximately 27 earthquakes worldwide on that day and most days there are many more. Several million earthquakes occur annually; thereby, thousands occur each day, although most are too small to be located. The last earthquake experienced in Australia was on Wednesday, 27 October, 2010 and it measured 4.4 on the richtor-scale. I say all this because I imagine, given the amount of natural disasters people on this planet are currently experiencing, conspiracy theorists may attribute these earthquakes to HAARP, when in fact they are a very common occurrence. This of course does not undermine the current danger to people in Pakistan, who already have to contend with the Taliban and relentless fighting.

Straw Men Burn Best

The High frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Gakona, Alaska, directs a high frequency radio signal into Earth's upper atmosphere to study how the Earth's atmosphere affects radio signals. The project has been controversial since its inception.


We all know a photograph (or satellite imagery) cannot lie. So when a circular anomaly appeared on some weather maps of South West Australia in early 2010 it was offered as evidence that the HAARP was causing anomalies in Australian weather systems.


The rise and rise of conspiracy theories that explain natural disasters as man made perhaps reflect a greater shift to a secular society. Previously, conspiracy theories explained natural disasters in terms of perceived immorality that inspired divine retribution in the shape of drought, or flood, or earthquake or fire.


If natural disaster can be averted by right behaviour and prayer then perhaps it can be forestalled, in modern times, by unmasking political conspiracy and rogue science. Either way, a little witch burning - there's not much difference in the mind between science and witchcraft, is there? - seems to have a calming affect on the human spirit.

My Country ~ El Nina or HAARP?

Last night I got a text message from Brecon Walsh, presumably in response to my mention of the floods in Queensland or the fact that the media is saturated with compelling images of so many flood ravaged towns. Brecon's message simply said 'El Nina or HAARP weather war?'
El Niño (Sp ~male child)/La Niña (Sp ~female child) causes a kind of see-saw affect between dry and wet conditions. The current flooding in Australia, particularly in Queensland and NSW has been attributed to El Niño weather patterns. The Bureau of Meteorology explains that a major La Nina event continues to affect the Pacific Basin. La Niña periods are generally associated with above normal winter, spring and summer rainfall, particularly over eastern and northern Australia.
The BOM maintains the La Niña years of 1916, 1917, 1950, 1954 through 1956, and 1973 through 1975, were accompanied by some of the worst and most widespread flooding this century. Any external influences other than those produced by 'natural' causes would surely be mentioned. On that note, I looked at the HAARP research institute, which studies the properties and behavior of the ionosphere and they adamantly state that 'the HAARP facility will not affect the weather'.
Our own Australian Government, IPS Radio and Space Services are well aware of the HAARP facility, particularly their use of High Frequency radio waves into the ionosphere.

My response to Brecon, based on my limited research this morning and my memories of the many floods (and droughts) that Australia has experienced, is that there is no conspiracy to alter world temperatures by an American organization (but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't remain vigilant to the deeds of those in power); the fact is that we are a land of extremes. One of the earliest poems generations of Australian children learnt by heart was one by Dorothea Mackeller called My Country. The lines from her poem ~ the beauty and the terror, droughts and flooding rains and flood and fire and famine, perfectly describes Australia's weather patterns.

It's a sad fact that in a few weeks when the floods have subsided, many Australian's will have to deal with devastating forest fires. Let's hope there's no repeat of Ash Wednesday (1983) and Black Saturday (2009)!