NASA Statement on Nomination for Agency Administrator
RELEASE 17-071 | September 2, 2017
The following is a statement from acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot on Friday’s announcement of the intended nomination by President Donald Trump of U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine to serve as the 13th NASA administrator:
“I am pleased to have Rep. Bridenstine nominated to lead our team. Of course, the nomination must go through the Senate confirmation process, but I look forward to ensuring a smooth transition and sharing the great work the NASA team is doing.
“I look forward to working with a new leadership team, and the administration, on NASA’s ongoing mission of exploration and discovery. Our history is amazing, and our future is even brighter, as we continue to build on this nation’s incredible global leadership in human exploration, science, aeronautics and technology.”
Bridenstine, a pilot in the U.S. Navy Reserve and former executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and Planetarium, was elected to the U.S. Congress in 2012 to represent Oklahoma’s First Congressional District. He currently serves on the House Armed Services Committee and the Science, Space and Technology Committee.
For information about NASA’s missions, discoveries and activities, visit: https://www.nasa.gov
Rep Jim Bridenstine Demands Obama Apologize on Global Warming, 6/11/13:
Just when you thought the BBC could not get any worse.
Standing in for Victoria Derbyshire on her current affairs programme yesterday morning, Matthew Price ran a report on the heavy floods this summer in Nepal and Bangladesh.
After telling us this had been one of the heaviest monsoons on record, he went on to interview Mark Pierce, Save the Children’s Director in Bangladesh, and Francis Markus of the International Red Cross in Nepal. (About 32 minutes in).
It did not take long for him to blame climate change for the floods.
He first directly asked Pierce :
“In a place like Bangladesh, do people start to say things are getting worse, it is something to do with climate change?”
Pierce unsurprisingly agreed, and said that even farmers could see climate change everyday, and see their land either flooded every year or facing drought.
Price then asked a similar question of Markus:
“In Nepal, do people at the sharp end relate this to climate change?”
In reply, Markus talks of immense changes in climate, and states “All the farmers in Nepal are kind of noticing that yields are less and less from year to year”, and goes on to tell us there has been nothing but nothing but droughts and floods in recent years.
Well, as you will all know by now, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation publish data which tells us exactly what is going on.
First, Bangladesh.
We can see that both yields and production of cereals has been steadily rising since the 1980s. Also, the prevalence of undernourishment has halved since the 1990s, despite a large increase in population:
Clearly neither the Red Cross nor the Save The Children representatives were telling us the truth, which does not surprise me. Meanwhile the naive BBC presenter has been so indoctrinated by global warming propaganda, that he never even thought for a second that he was being lied to.
As for “one of the heaviest monsoons on record”, this year’s has so far been perfectly normal, with 3% less rain than normal.
Drought conditions were particularly prevalent between 1900 and 1920, and again in the 1960s to 1980s, when the world was cooling down.
Conversely, the worst of the flooding took place in the late 19thC and 1940s and 50s.
Drought conditions prevailed in 2015 and 2016, but this was because of strong El Nino conditions. Indian scientists are well aware of this connection, which has nothing to do with global warming.
In short, the whole story reported by the BBC is a pack of lies. Indian monsoons are not becoming more extreme. If anything, the opposite is true.
Even Madhav Khandekar, IPCC lead author on extreme weather, accepts that there is nothing unusual about recent flooding in India. In a 2014 paper, he concluded that:
The floods and unfortunate deaths of several dozen people in the Kashmir region of India in September 2014 reignited the debate about increasing human emissions of carbon dioxide and their putative linkage to extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heat waves. What is missing from many of the media reports and scientific publications on this subject is critical analysis of past weather extremes to determine if there has been an increase in recent years.
In this brief report, past floods and droughts in the Indian monsoon are examined carefully and it is shown that such events have occurred throughout the excellent 200-year-long summer monsoon rainfall dataset. It is further documented that such floods and droughts are caused by natural variability of regional and global climate, and not by human carbon dioxide emissions.
In fact, if Price had bothered to check with the BBC Delhi correspondent, he would have discovered that the heavier the monsoon rainfall is , the better it is for India’s economy and many other things:
They are finally here, the monsoons, India’s most important weather phenomenon.
After days of speculation about the date, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) announced on Wednesday that the monsoons had arrived in Kerala. India receives 80% of its annual rainfall during the monsoon season, which runs between June and September.
The monsoon will gradually spread across India by 15 July, bringing cheer, hope, insects, relief from the heat, better farm output, GDP growth and lower inflation.
The arrival of the monsoons is like finding a river after crossing a desert. This year, a deluge is predicted. Weather forecasters expect at least 5-6% more rainfall than usual. This will affect things ranging from bank interest to the fortunes of the fertiliser industry. It will also alleviate the drinking water crisis in many parts by replenishing ground water.
But the joy doesn’t last long.
The hot summer gives way to complaints of “It’s not the heat it’s the humidity”. Meanwhile insects and mosquitoes multiply, bringing diseases in their wake.
As the Indian farmer sows a new crop, the city folk face water-logging that makes it difficult to get out. Sometimes it rains so much, especially in the financial nerve centre of Mumbai, that the city is flooded.
In Kenya itself, the value of agricultural production has been at record high levels for the last two years:
Of course, these drastic increases in agricultural productivity are due to a number of factors, and trying to unravel a climate signal is well nigh impossible. Not that that will stop grant addicted climate scientists making up their own fake evidence.
One is entitled to wonder why the BBC thought it appropriate to even make the comment they did, instead of giving their listeners the actual facts?
There is only one slight problem – the newly built tanker is actually an icebreaker itself, as Matt McGrath goes on to elaborate:
The Christophe de Margerie is the world’s first and, at present, only ice-breaking LNG carrier.
The ship, which features a lightweight steel reinforced hull, is the largest commercial ship to receive Arc7 certification, which means it is capable of travelling through ice up to 2.1m thick.
On this trip it was able to keep up an average speed of 14 knots despite sailing through ice that was over one metre thick in places.
Popular Science has more details on the project to build another 15 of these icebreaking tankers:
There’s a lucrative shipping route between Europe and Asia that has the potential to cut thousands of miles and months of time off the trip. The only catch: it’s covered with thick, ship-sinking Arctic ice.
Heavy ice blocks the Arctic route from December to July, more than half the year. Even with icebreaking escort ships, few merchant vessels run it.
Now, Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering is building the world’s first icebreaker tankers–16 of them–to carry liquid natural gas (LNG) through the route year-round. LNG tankers today have to be escorted by icebreaking ships that clear the way through the Northern Sea Route.
The Yamal LNG project, run by companies in Russia, France, and China, proposes drilling more than 200 wells in the Arctic to produce 16.5 million tons of LNG per year, supported by Daewoo’s first 16 Arc7 tankers. Year-round, Yamal LNG will ship LNG from the project’s Sabetta port in Russia’s Yamal Peninsula westward to Europe, South America, India, China, and South Korea. For the warmer half of the year, it’ll also ship east from Sabetta to Japan and South Korea.
As Russia leans more heavily on fuel exports and the prices for them drip lower and lower, a dormant 17th-century Russian ambition is coming back to life: to open the Arctic year-round.
French oil company Total, who are involved in the Yamal project also have this:
To transport Liquefied Natural Gas from Yamal LNG, which is located in the Arctic and constitutes one of the world’s biggest LNG projects, Total and its partners have designed a new type of ship: an LNG ice-breaker. This innovative solution allows large shipments of LNG to be transported efficiently and at a steady pace throughout the year and without the assistance of ice-breakers. The ship, which is 300 metres long and has a capacity of 172,600 m3, can sail in temperatures that fall as low as -52°C and in ice thickness up to 2.1 metres. Between December 2016 and 2019, 15 LNG ice-breakers will be commissioned. In this article, we delve into this technological microcosm.
The tankers are certified as Arc7, which is the Russian system of classifying ice breakers and ice strengthened ships. The classification goes up to Arc9 for the strongest ships.
So the fact that the Christophe de Margerie has just made this trip has nothing at all to do with global warming.
It is however a reminder that the French, along with Russia and China, will carry on developing oil and gas reserves, regardless of whatever was agreed at Paris.
Al Gore’s new movie, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, has been in theaters for about a month now, and has received rather tepid reviews.
The Kindle e-book version of Gore’s movie, despite being very colorful, has been doing even worse and is currently running at #20,768 overall on Amazon, and is not ranked #1 in any sub-category.
Next month, hundreds across the country will participate in “Out of the Darkness” walks to raise awareness about suicide and to support the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP).
AFSP and similar groups like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and Active Minds claim there are “stigmas” and “barriers” to treatment for mental illness and there is not enough “awareness.” Two facts are missing in their messaging.
First, with as much as a fourth of some U.S. populations on antidepressants and ubiquitous quizzes and ads for them, there is neither a lack of “awareness” ––or are the drugs working. Why are suicides at an all time high at the same time psychoactive drug use is at an all time high?
Secondly, the groups are funded by Pharma to increase drug use and are widely considered unethical front groups, also called astroturf.
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, founded in 1987, is steeped in Pharma money. In 2008, AFSP merged with the Suicide Prevention Action Network USA or SPAN which had announced in 2004 that “SPAN USA’s efforts to develop and expand its suicide survivor network received a major boost with a recent grant from Eli Lilly and Company Foundation,” and “The foundation generously provided funding to support training, education and collaborative opportunities for SPAN USA’s existing network and enable further expansion into all 50 states.” No lack of transparency there.
In AFSP’s 2009 report, its leading donors were Pharma companies and it attributes a new screening project to “funding from Eli Lilly and Co., Janssen, Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.” It also credits Eli Lilly for printing its brochures. No lack of transparency there, either.
In 2011, AFSP appointed psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff president of the organization until his troubles began. Nemeroff became the subject of a congressional inquiry and was found to have so much unreported Pharma income, the $9.3 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to study depression that he managed was suspended, which happens rarely. He left Emory University in disgrace.
A 1999 textbook written by Nemeroff and his colleague Alan Schatzberg was found, in 2010, to be written and funded by GlaxoSmithKline. Both Nemeroff and Schatzberg remain at AFSP and are termed “leaders.”
AFSP’s 2012 annual report reveals a $100,000 donation from Forest Laboratories, and donations from Eli Lilly, Pfizer and five other Pharma companies.
“AFSP also boasts the honor of having a former president – David Shaffer – who was responsible for leading the development of the now somewhat infamous TeenScreen,” writes Mad in America. “TeenScreen is a controversial tool that Marcia Angell (Harvard Professor and former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine)…described as, “just a way to put more people on prescription drugs.”
The now defunct TeenScreen which screened young people for early signs of depression had “ties to the pharmaceutical industry,” reported the Scientific American.
Screening and intervention are widely accepted now to be nothing but sales tools—even to the mainstream medical establishment. In “How We Do Harm,” Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society and an oncologist, devotes a chapter to how prostate screening is often done just for money sometimes with disastrous and deadly results.
AFSP’s annual report names Pharma companies Sunovion, Janssen, Forest, Pfizer and Otsuka America Pharmaceuticals as financial donors. AFSP also named Phil Satow, former Forest executive, to its Project 2025 Advisory Committee. Satow has worked for many Pharma companies and is co-founder and board chair of the very pro-drugJED Foundation.
Preventing Suicides or Causing Them?
While SSRIs can be useful in some depressions, they can also cause suicide–a fact written clearly on all their package inserts. In 2005, after meeting with parents whose children killed themselves on the drugs and public health officials, the FDA attached the following “Black Box” warning to SSRI antidepressants.
Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Anyone considering the use of PAXIL [one SSRI] or any other antidepressant in a child, adolescent, or young adult must balance this risk with the clinical need. Patients of all ages who are started on antidepressant therapy should be monitored appropriately and observed closely for clinical worsening, suicidality, or unusual changes in behavior. Families and caregivers should be advised of the need for close observation and communication with the prescriber.
One chilling demonstration of the danger to young adults is seen in the military where SSRI use and suicides have reached astounding proportions. More than a third of the deaths were in soldiers who never deployed so combat stress was not a factor.
Both NAMI and Active Minds swoop down on campuses after suicides to suggest that not enough antidepressants are being prescribed–despite the clear dangers posed for that age group and sometimes without knowing if the victim was already on the pushed drugs. To remove the fabricated stigma to mental problems, Pharma funded groups visit public schools to suggest more young people should be on drugs. They even produce posters with the message that mental illness is “cool.” Their efforts may not help the young people but they sure help Pharma.
A jury in Los Angeles, California, has ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay a record $417 million to a woman who claimed the talc in the company’s iconic baby powder caused her ovarian cancer.
The verdict follows a series of court rulings against J&J over the product.
The plaintiff, Eva Echeverria, alleged that J&J had failed to adequately warn consumers about its talcum powder’s potential cancer risks when used for feminine hygiene.
Echeverria had used the baby powder on a daily basis since the 1950s until two years ago, according to court papers.
She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2007. Her lawsuit said she developed the cancer as a “proximate result of the unreasonably dangerous and defective nature of talcum powder.”
“Mrs. Echeverria is dying from this ovarian cancer and she said to me all she wanted to do was to help the other women throughout the whole country who have ovarian cancer for using Johnson & Johnson for 20 and 30 years,” her attorney Mark Robinson said.
J&J will appeal the jury’s decision, claiming that scientific evidence supports the safety of Johnson’s baby powder, according to the company’s spokeswoman Carol Goodrich.
The Los Angeles jury verdict is the latest and largest in a series of rulings against J&J for its baby powder, the regular use of which hundreds of women claimed caused their ovarian cancer.
In May, a court in St. Louis, Missouri ordered J&J to pay over $110 million to a Virginia woman who claimed she developed ovarian cancer after decades of using its talcum powder.
Earlier, three other lawsuits in St. Louis against the company and its baby powder had similar outcomes — with juries awarding damages of $72 million, $70.1 million and $55 million, respectively.
While the verdicts were awarded to women who regularly used the company’s baby powder for feminine hygiene, the question whether the product does any harm to babies did not come up.
Over 2,000 lawsuits were filed in different US cities accusing J&J of insufficient warning to consumers about cancer risks connected to its talc-containing products.
Some of the lawsuits were tossed out. In March, a St. Louis jury rejected the claims of a Tennessee woman with ovarian and uterine cancer who blamed talcum powder for her cancers. A judge in New Jersey tossed out two similar cases saying the plaintiffs’ lawyers did not present reliable evidence linking talc to ovarian cancer.
In many ways, the climate debate has hardly changed since I got interested in it about ten years ago. Public opinion wobbles up and down with hardly any real change. The same tired arguments and claims come round again: every climate conference is the last chance to save the planet; the Arctic ice is always about to vanish in one or two years, or ten years; climate scientists continue to be accused of selecting data sets to create hockeysticks and manipulating data; and teams of climate scientists keep producing reports saying almost exactly the same thing as the previous reports, which then get misrepresented and hyped by the media.
So when something does appear to change it’s worth taking note of. I have a feeling that a split may be developing on the ‘warmist’ side, between what we might call the ‘extremists’ and the ‘moderates’. Here are three recent examples of this.
Consensus?
Some social scientists believe that telling people that there’s a consensus on climate change acts as a ‘gateway belief‘ leading to public action, even though their own data does not really support this claim. Others have questioned this, saying that consensus messaging is an unhelpful distraction, see Geoff’s recent post and also this paper that says that other factors such as scientific integrity are more important.
Uninhabitable Earth?
One of the most ridiculous recent alarmist articles was The Uninhabitable Earth, by a journalist for New Yorker magazine, full of doom, terror, alarm, starvation and plagues. Because of this, it got a lot of attention, which presumably was the intention, and it even has its own wikipedia page. While David Roberts atVox said that trying to scare people in this way was fine, many mainstream climate scientists criticised the article. A team at Climate Feedback (usually used to attack sceptical articles in the media) said that its scientific credibility was low and it exaggerated the risks. New Scientist said that such doomsday scenarios were unlikely to happen, and even Michael Mann thought that the article overstated the evidence.
Gore’s sequel?
Al Gore has a new film out, called “An Inconvenient Sequel”. He’s currently in the UK promoting it, which started the recent Lawson kerfuffle. Apparently his film has been an inconvenient flop at the box office. It’s no surprise that Bjorn Lomborg in the Wall Street Journal says that the film misses a few inconvenient facts. But what is more inconvenient for Mr Gore is that the Guardiandoesn’t like it either, describing it as “desultory and surprisingly vainglorious” and awarding it only two stars. Apparently it is “more a portrait of Gore than a call to arms”.
The left-leaning New Republic writes of The Troubling Return of Al Gore, saying “But not everyone on the left is celebrating Gore’s reemergence—and for reasons that sometimes contradict each other. Some worry he’s too polarizing a figure, and therefore could paralyze progress on climate change.” They also have a paragraph supporting the main hypothesis of this post: “This skepticism about Gore reveals a lot about the climate movement, which has fractured significantly since An Inconvenient Truth. Whereas a decade ago there was a relatively united focus on spreading awareness about climate change, today there is no clear consensus on how to fight it.”
Psychologist and climate activist Adam Corner isn’t impressed either, saying that Al Gore’s Inconvenient Sequel could just make climate rift worse. He says the film preaches to the converted and focuses too much on Gore himself, asking “wouldn’t a smarter choice, in terms of reaching beyond the usual suspects, have been for Gore to remove himself from the picture, dial down the Republican-baiting, and instead provide a platform for new, less politically divisive voices?” And here’s another review from a believer, describing the film as “just middling”.
It’s quite hard to find a positive review of the film. The Boston Globe is reasonably positive, saying that it has a number of memorable moments, but only gives it three stars.
Judith A. Curry is an American climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests include hurricanes, remote sensing, atmospheric modeling, polar climates, air-sea interactions, and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for atmospheric research. She is a member of the National Research Council’s Climate Research Committee. As of 2017, she has retired from academia.Curry is the co-author of Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans (1999), and co-editor of Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences (2002), as well as over 140 scientific papers. Among her awards is the Henry G. Houghton Research Award from the American Meteorological Society in 1992.
Regarding climate change, she thinks that the IPCC reports typically neglect what she calls the “Uncertainty Monster” in projecting future climate trends, which she calls a “wicked problem.” Curry also hosts a popular science blog in which she writes on topics related to climate science and the science-policy interface.
Judith Curry has argued that climatologists should be more accommodating of those skeptical of the scientific consensus on climate change. Curry has stated she is troubled by what she calls the “tribal nature” of parts of the climate-science community, and what she sees as stonewalling over the release of data and its analysis for independent review. In February 2010 Curry published an essay called “On the Credibility of Climate Change, Towards Rebuilding Trust” on Watts Up With That? and other blogs. Writing in The New York Times, Andrew Revkin calls the essay a message to young scientists who may have been disheartened by the November 2009 climate change controversy known as “Climategate”. In September 2010, she created Climate Etc., a blog related to climate change and hosted by Curry. She wrote that “Climate Etc. provides a forum for climate researchers, academics and technical experts from other fields, citizen scientists, and the interested public to engage in a discussion on topics related to climate science and the science-policy interface.”[8] She wrote: “I have a total of 12,000 citations of my publications (since my first publication in 1983). Climate Etc. gets on average about 12,000 ‘hits’ per day, and 300-400 comments.” She gets ” zero academic credit or incentives for my blogging and tweeting,” but hopes that ” social media and the associated skill set [will become] better recognized within the academic system.” Curry testified before the US House Subcommittee on Environment in 2013, remarking on the many large uncertainties in forecasting future climate. In October 2014, Curry wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal where she argued that human-caused warming near the end of the 21st century should be less than the 2-degrees-Celsius “danger” level for all but the IPCC’s most extreme emission scenario, which is far later than the IPCC prediction of a 2-degrees-Celsius warming before 2040.
Modern biofuels have been touted as a greener alternative to petrol and diesel since the early 1900s. It seems like a good idea on paper, and they do work – but their use and production doesn’t come without problems.
The first generation of biofuels – mainly ethanol made from plant crops – and second generation, derived from plant and animal waste streams, both had environmentalists and others concerned about the competition for land and nutrients between biofuels production and food production.
It was with a lot of hope, and hype, that production of the third generation of biofuels was started. Unlike their predecessors, these biofuels are derived from algae, and so in theory the food vs fuel dilemma of crop-based biofuels would be solved.
Fossil fuel oil and gas originated from ancient algae in large measure, so the concept here is to replicate the essence of the creation of fossil fuels, albeit accelerated and optimised with modern chemical engineering. It was claimed that using algae would be much more efficient than creating biofuels from terrestrial plants and that the technology would make use of poor quality land not able to grow other crops.
Millions of dollars, euros and other currencies have been spent trying to get the algal marvel to work. Much of the money has been directed at refining the engineering process, electrically lighting the crop – which grows in a liquid suspension – harvesting and draining it. The solution to optimisation was seen as primarily technological non-biological, though species selection and growth conditions were also acknowledged as important factors.
Damp squib
However, it turns out that the hype has been misplaced. Our research has found that the production of algal biofuels is neither commercially nor environmentally sustainable. The attainable production levels are a fraction of those that were claimed. The amount of biofuel produced from prolonged culture of algae in pilot-scale systems is actually not too dissimilar from those of terrestrial plants: around 5,000 to 10,000 litres per hectare per year.
In fact, the rate of production from algae growing in the vast ponds required for truly massive production is, for a given area of land, similar to that seen in the most productive areas of the ocean. It amounts to around 4g of carbon from CO₂ fixed into biomass per square metre every day.
So what’s the problem? Why aren’t algal biofuels as good as had been hoped? Quite simply, it’s biology.
The dream has been broken not by failings in engineering, but by the inefficiency of biochemistry. Simulations of microalgal biofuel production show that to approach the 10% of EU transport fuels expected to be supplied by biofuels, ponds three times the area of Belgium would be needed. And for the algae in these ponds to produce biofuel, it would require fertiliser equivalent to 50% of the current total annual EU crop plant needs. Ironically, such ponds would also need to be located near heavy industry which produces CO₂ to provide the level required by the microalgae for photosynthesis.
Problems of scale
The problem with third-generation biofuels has always been scaling up the production rates measured in small culture flasks to growth in thousands of cubic metres in size. In the larger cultures, the biomass density of the algae – needed to make the culture and harvesting processes economical – defeats desired growth rates because the organisms shade light from each other. This means that they do not get the sunlight needed to photosynthesise and produce the carbon-rich compounds needed for to make the biofuel fast enough.
There have also been misunderstandings of how the algae react to their environment. Importantly, those vital carbon-rich compounds only really accumulate in cells that are nitrogen-limited and so are growing slowly. Early production estimates assumed high carbon-rich content in fast-growing cells but this has not proved to be the case.
Could we not genetically modify a solution to the inherent biological inefficiency? Perhaps, but should we really tamper with factors that are so fundamental to life on Earth and risk generating unstoppable harmful algal species that could destroy fisheries and damage drinking water supplies? Even if we did create the perfect algae for biofuels production, the need for all that fertiliser and CO₂ would remain.
Ultimately the public have paid for this failed vision – but their money has not been wasted. If there’s one thing that humans need more than fuel it is food – and this work can help us understand how to better grow microalgae to support the farming of fish and shellfish, and produce dietary supplements, like Omega-3. Mass microalgal production could also create food containing omega fatty acids to farmed fish, for example, meaning that we would no longer need to fish in rivers and oceans to make fishmeal for them.
The future for mass microalgal cultivation is still literally and metaphorically green, it just does not rest with biofuels production.
Al Gore – Truth to Power. Really? Yup, Truth to Power! Al Gore & Truth to Power??
I’m scratchin’ my head! That title, alongside the very concept of Al Gore speaking truth to power, is preposterous. And yet many people will be enamoured of this very idea.
Choosing to ignore the FACT that Al Gore has long been a part of the very power problem the rest of us have had to deal with. The very idea/ concept of Gore as a speaker of “Truth to Power” is so absurd. So inconsistent with reality, Truth &common sense that it can only be concluded the title was chosen as some kind of bad joke on all of us.
In fact, I can’t imagine a more surreal title for a Hollywood movie/documentary/psyop.
And yet in our bizarro world- There it is. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.
While reading about this movie, it’s worth keeping in mind the reality of what Hollywood is. Perception Management/Culture creation/Citizen manipulation
Nothing has changed from the time of Bernay’s statement to date. Nothing! We’ve just recently witnessed the “White Helmets” winning an Oscar. Of course Al Gore’s first “documentary” was an Oscar winner also. This should speak volumes to us all. Prestigious awards used to hoodwink the masses. […]
And Al Gore’s first documentary won an Oscar. Same as the White Helmets. Can you imagine the ridiculousness in both those wins? Wonder if this new one will be so duly honoured?
Tomorrow Al Gore’s latest “documentary” is set to hit the theatres here in Canada.
Yup, he’s still speaking truth to power. And if you really believe that… Check your critical thinking skills, please!
Of course I have zero intention of ever watching this movie. Just like I have zero intention of ever forcing the White Helmets documentary into my conscious or unconscious mind for that matter.
I’ve noticed a plethora of fear mongering “news” stories regarding “climate change” or as I prefer, AGW, today. These are undoubtedly timed and should be considered as promotional material for the Al Gore “Truth to Power” Perception management flick.
And, I cannot forget to mention that this documentary will surely, as is intended, inflame the left/ right identity politics divide.
Please don’t say- Oh, he’s a right wing guy, a capitalist and any other labels that serve as distraction from the very good points he is making.
“Not many people remember Al Gore’s 2007 book, The Assault on Reason.
Then there’s the book jacket that talks about the “politics of fear” and an opening chapter that warns: “If leaders exploit public fears to herd people in directions they might not otherwise choose, then fear itself can quickly become a self-perpetuating and free-wheeling force that drains national will and weakens national character.”
A propaganda manual to fill readers with alarming images and claims
Fear, adds Al Gore the great climate fear-monger, can be promulgated using three techniques: repetition, misdirection and making the irregular seem regular. “By using these narrative tools alone, anyone with a loud platform can ratchet up public anxieties and fears, distorting public discourse and reason.”
Gore’s politics-of-fear warning in 2007 targeted George W. Bush for allegedly resorting to fear of terrorism to invade Iraq. Irony awareness is apparently not part of Gore’s personality.
Irony awareness is definitely not part of Gore’s personality. The irony of Gore speaking “Truth to Power” is not lost on myself!
Chang fed Gore a flabby question about Canada that was bound to produce the following: “For me, Justin Trudeau is a breath of fresh air…He and his team were absolutely instrumental in helping us get the Paris agreement.” Funny, I thought Stephen Harper set the ground for Canada’s participation in the Paris agreement.
Why yes it was the Harper government that laid the ground work for Paris.
Of course there is a book with lots of images, and not too many words, to accompany and reinforce the unconscious carrier of propaganda film It’s hard for the masses to understand words– So like small children loving their picture books- Al Gore spreads his rubbish via imagery.
As a propaganda manual, Sequel uses a magazine-style format to fill readers with alarming images and claims. There are graphs and pictures of soaring carbon emissions and temperatures, hurricane deaths, famines, rising sea levels, drownings, forest fires, droughts and more. Typical statement: “We are now trapping as much extra heat energy in the atmosphere as would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs on the Earth’s surface every day.” Those few words of text appear over a giant colour photo of an iconic atomic bomb explosion spread across two full pages.
Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | April 4, 2024
A principal goal of Stark Realities is to “expose fundamental myths across the political spectrum” — and few myths are as universally embraced as the notion that US participation in World War II (1941-1945) lifted the American economy out of the Great Depression.
This myth is dangerous not only because it leads citizens and politicians to see a bright side of war that doesn’t really exist, but also because it helps foster a belief that government spending is essential to countering economic downturns. That belief, in turn, has helped propel us to a point where the national debt now exceeds $34.6 trillion, with interest payments alone on pace to reach $1 trillion a year in 2026, inviting financial catastrophe. … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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A commercial LNG tanker has sailed across the colder, northern route from Europe to Asia without the protection of an ice-breaker for the first time.
Aletho News 
