A UFO crash at Roswell...or two?

A report on the Huffington Post says a retired Air Force Lt. Col claims there was not just one UFO crash in Roswell, NM in 1947, but two.  So after all these years of people investigating whether or not a UFO crash was covered up by the government, someone has decided to throw a second crash into the mix!

The retired officer says he was told about the crash by another officer.  So it doesn't sound like he was directly involved with investigation himself.  So I would take the story with a grain of salt.  But you can read the report here.

What happened to Flight 77?

I was watching an episode of Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura the other day where they were investigating the conspiracy theory that a missile hit the Pentagon instead of Flight 77.  It's not the first time I've ever heard of this conspiracy theory, but I've never really taken it too seriously.  Flight 77 was hijacked, so the story that it crashed into the Pentagon makes sense.  Besides, even if there was a conspiracy and the hijacking was an inside job, why would they need to use a missile anyways?

I must admit though, it is kind of odd there was no visible debris that looked like it came from an airplane.  But if it wasn't Flight 77, then what happened to it?  The episode didn't really say anything about that.  I asked someone I work with who's interested in conspiracy theories what he thought about it, and he suggested it may have been shot down over the ocean.  If so, and no one saw it, it would be very difficult to find any evidence for it if you don't even know where to look.

Without a plausible theory about what happened to Flight 77 that is backed up by some kind of evidence, it's going to be hard to convince people that a missile hit the Pentagon instead of Flight 77.  If Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon, then finding evidence of what happened to it would be the missing piece of the puzzle.  It would be difficult to deny that a missile (or possibly a bomb) hit the Pentagon if Flight 77 was found somewhere else.        If people who support the missile hitting the Pentagon theory really want to convince people they are right, then they need to figure out what happened to Flight 77.

But there may be no evidence to find.  It must have crashed or landed somewhere.  Maybe it really did crash into the Pentagon.  I'm not really convinced that it did or it didn't.  We may never know for sure.

A couple of former Area 51 workers speak out

Apparently, some Area 51 secrets from the 60s and 70s have been declassified, and a Seattle Times journalist interviewed a couple of former Area 51 workers who did contract work for the CIA at Area 51 during that time.

James Noce, one of the former workers interviewed, didn't have any stories about aliens or alien spacecraft though.  However, if you've heard stories about UFO crashes, Noce did tell a story that sounds familiar:

Noce remembers when "Article 123," as one of the A-12s was called, crashed on May 24, 1963, after the plane stalled near Wendover, Utah. The pilot ejected and survived.

Noce says he was among those who flew to the crash site in a giant cargo plane loaded with several trucks. They loaded everything from the crash into the trucks.

He remembers that a local deputy had either witnessed the crash or had quickly arrived at the scene. There also was a family on a vacation car trip who had taken photos.

"We confiscated the camera, took the film out," says Noce. "We just said we worked for the government."

He says the deputy and the family were told not to talk to anybody about the crash, especially the press.

"We told them there would be dire consequences," Noce says. "You scared them."

As an added incentive, he says, the CIA arrived with a briefcase full of cash.

"I think it was like 25 grand apiece, for the sheriff and the family," says Noce.

Robarge says of cash payments to cover things up, "It was common practice."

Another former Area 51 worker named T.D. Barnes said that he believes the Air Force and the "Agency" didn't mind the stories about alien spacecraft -- it helped cover up the secret planes they were testing.  He did tell a somewhat humorous story though:

On one occasion, he remembers, when the first jets were being tested at what Muroc Army Air Field, later renamed Edwards Air Force Base, a test pilot put on a gorilla mask and flew upside down beside a private pilot.

"Well, when this guy went back, telling reporters, 'I saw a plane that didn't have a propeller and being flown by a monkey,' well, they laughed at this guy — and it got where the guys would see [test pilots] and they didn't dare report it because everybody'd laugh at them," says Barnes.

Read the whole article here.

H/T

Earthquake Lights

In the past, people would try to discern what the weather would be by using various folk methods of weather forecasting.  Old time weather forecasts may be based on whether or not the sky is red in the morning or evening, how high starlings fly in the evening, or how tight a pine cone is closed.  There may be another method that has been overlooked though -- possibly a method for predicting earthquakes.

I only recently became familiar with a phenomena called "earthquake lights," a type of luminous phenomena that appears in the sky prior to some earthquakes.  The lights are usually blue or white flashes of light, but may also include a wider color spectrum.

Here is a picture of what is alleged to be earthquake lights that occurred prior to the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.

When I first read about earthquake lights the other day, it was in an article blaming them on a HAARP conspiracy.  According to the article I read, earthquake lights had been seen prior to the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.  I decided to see what else I could find out about earthquake lights, and I came across a question regarding earthquake lights on the FAQ page for the U.S. Geological Survey.  According to the answer for that question, earthquake lights have been reported since ancient times but were not acknowledged in the seismological community until the 1960s.  There are several theories as to what may cause the earthquake lights, but there is no single theory that has been agreed upon.

Considering earthquake lights have been reported since ancient times, all the occurrences can't be blamed on HAARP since HAARP wasn't established until 1993.  Whether or not any of the recent occurrences can be blamed on HAARP, I don't know.  Whatever the lights are, they appear to be some sort of natural occurrence.

It's not that I'm surprised that mysterious lights have been known to appear in the sky before an earthquake, but I am a little surprised that I haven't heard about it before.  It's possible I may have heard about it in the past, but if I did, I had forgotten about it.  So the question in my mind is why aren't these lights more widely publicized?  When I was a kid in school, we were taught that tornadoes sound like trains.  So I knew to associate a tornado with the sound of a train.  But I don't recall anyone ever mentioning that rainbow colored lights sometimes appear in the sky prior to earthquakes.  It may still be difficult to accurately predict an earthquake even if earthquake lights appear because they can appear as much as a few weeks in advance or even after the actual earthquake, and the lights may appear far away from the epicenter too.  But you'd think it would be a good idea to tell people that if they see mysterious rainbow colored lights appearing in the sky on an otherwise clear day, they may want to start securing anything fragile -- you know, just in case.

A little bit of irony

I read a two part article written by a skeptic who investigated the mysterious Phoenix Lights from 1997, and although I thought the article was well written and researched, I thought the author's analysis led to a rather ironic conclusion.  He explains why he doesn't think the lights were a single UFO and then speculates that the event was part of a psychological warfare experiment.  Here's an excerpt of his theory:

We know that military breakthroughs in technology usually occur a decade or more before civilian applications begin to appear. That’s one of the advantages the military has with generous taxpayer funding of its secret ‘black ops’ projects.

During the first decade of the 21st century, we began to see some of these advances in holographic research receive attention in science journals. An edition of Science Daily (June 15, 2005) carried an article summarizing science papers that had appeared in Optics Express and other specialized journals showing how a laser-based holographic system works in practice. One example given in the article of how this technology can be applied was the holographic image of circling fighter jets projected to a point in space.

Over the years I had heard rumors from civilian and military types that the technology necessary to project three-dimensional images to a point in space had been tested at Fort Huachuca and elsewhere during the 1990s. But until the Arizona Lights event in 1997, there had been no clear evidence that these electrical optical and laser devices had been used to target a civilian population to test their reactions to unusual phenomena.

Read part one of the whole article here.  Read part two here.

I didn't think much about it until I noticed that the author, Randall Fitzgerald, was labeled as a 'Scepticism Examiner'.  What I thought was ironic was that he was attempting to debunk the claim that the Phoenix Lights were a single UFO but presented a theory that it was a government psychological experiment instead.  Isn't  a secret government psychological experiment with classified technology usually the kind of thing a skeptic would try to debunk?  Yet here we have a skeptic presenting it as an alternative theory to a UFO sighting.  That's just a little bit ironic to me.

In his defense though, Fitzgerald's bio describes him as a "skeptic, not a cynic."  Maybe that's his way of distancing himself from the Michael Shermer's of the world.

I'm not suggesting his theory is wrong, but I'm not suggesting it is right either.  I'm not suggesting the the lights were planes or a single object either.  I don't know what they were, but the video footage I've seen appear to show lights that weren't moving across the sky.



Those lights in the video look stationary to me.

H/T's here and here.

A 2012 Blame Game?

A blogger going by the name George Washington wrote a post titled "Scientists Confirm the Effectiveness of The Big Lie - People Will Go To Extraordinary Lengths to Create False Justifications for Government Misdeeds" on his blog last year, citing research regarding why many Americans continued to believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 even though there was little evidence to support that belief. Here is an excerpt of what he wrote:

The researchers found, as described in an article in the journal Sociological Inquiry (and re-printed by Newsweek):

• Many Americans felt an urgent need to seek justification for a war already in progress
• Rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe.
• "For the most part people completely ignore contrary information."
• "The study demonstrates voters' ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information"
• People get deeply attached to their beliefs, and form emotional attachments that get wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality, irrespective of the facts of the matter.
• "We refer to this as 'inferred justification, because for these voters, the sheer fact that we were engaged in war led to a post-hoc search for a justification for that war.
• "People were basically making up justifications for the fact that we were at war"
• "They wanted to believe in the link [between 9/11 and Iraq] because it helped them make sense of a current reality. So voters' ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information, whether we think that is good or bad for democratic practice, does at least demonstrate an impressive form of creativity.

Maybe Yogi Berra was on to something when he said, "There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em."

I could apply those observations listed above to the global warming issue too.  If you've read my post titled "The Dihydrogen Monoxide Scare," then you probably already know that I am skeptical of anthropogenic global warming.  The global warming issue has gone from being a scientific issue to being a political issue.  Despite evidence to the contrary, many people are still willing to believe that carbon dioxide, the gas that we exhale and one of the building blocks of life, is a pollutant.  Anthropogenic global warming as a political agenda is aggressively pushed by the mainstream media and certain politicians, and I feel that a great deal of the 'grassroots' support for the global warming agenda comes from people who already admire politicians that push the agenda (which is the problem with mixing science and politics) .  People don't like the thought that a politician they admire is wrong or lying to them.

Ironically, Al Gore, an advocate of anthropogenic global warming, has admitted that carbon dioxide is not the primary cause of global warming (he now claims it only accounts for 40% of the warming), but he hasn't backed away from his political agenda pushing for a global carbon tax.  Al Gore has also been caught fudging numbers in an attempt to prove his claims of anthropogenic global warming.  Al Gore has also claimed that there is a scientific consensus stating that anthropogenic global warming is true, yet thousands of American scientists have signed a petition declaring their skepticism.  And then, of course, there's that whole Climategate scandal thing.  Regardless of how you spin it, what you want to believe, or how loud Al Gore can yell it; there isn't a scientific consensus stating that anthropogenic global warming is true.  I could sit here and post links on the subject all day, but at the end of the day, I would probably just be preaching to the choir for some people, while others would continue to believe that carbon emissions cause global warming.

But I digress.  What's really on my mind today is if climate disasters were to occur in the year 2012, would the anthropogenic global warming crowd blame the disasters on carbon emissions?  I think they probably would.  Here is an article listing 10 things that global warming allegedly caused.  Danny Glover even blamed the earthquake in Haiti on global warming.  Throughout the history of the world there have been earthquakes, now all of a sudden an earthquake only happens because of global warming?

If you've read my blogs for a while, you probably know that I have a 'wait and see' attitude about the 2012 predictions.  I hope there are no disasters in 2012, but if there are, I think there's a real good chance that some people are going to blame it on global warming.  It could be just the disaster they need to try to push their agenda through.

I hope that doesn't happen though.  Hopefully 2012 will come and go without disasters or a global carbon tax.

Green Fog

The "Paranormal Pastor" Robin Swope tells a story here about a lady named Mary who saw a ghost-like figure in the form of a green mist.  Mary described the green mist as writhing and twisting around in the air as if it were trying to take on a more solid form.

The green mist in the story reminded me of green fogs I've heard about from other stories. Green fogs have allegedly appeared in the Bermuda Triangle before.  The green fogs may have something to do with some of the mysterious disappearances reported in the Bermuda Triangle.

The story of the Philadelphia Experiment also describes a green fog. The Philadelphia Experiment was an alleged military experiment that supposedly attempted to make a warship invisible.  Here is a description from Wikipedia:

In most accounts of the experiment, the destroyer escort USS Eldridge, was fitted with the required equipment at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. Testing began in the summer of 1943, and it was supposedly successful to a limited degree. One test, on July 22, 1943, resulted in the Eldridge being rendered almost completely invisible, with some witnesses reporting a "greenish fog" appearing in its place.

Some versions of the story also claim that the USS Eldridge teleported to Norfolk, Virginia or traveled back in time for about 10 seconds.

Wikipedia also points out in its article on the subject that the Philadephia Experiment is widely regarded as a hoax. Some parts of the story do sound a bit-far fetched, but it's possible that the story may at least be partially true.  The military probably did want to make an invisibility cloak of some sort and may have attempted to do so, but whether or not they were successful, I don't know. Attempting to make an invisibility cloak would not be the strangest experiment carried out by a government around that period of time (the Nazis and Soviets were known for strange experiments too). The more far-fetched parts of the story may have been exaggerations or disinformation.

But what of the green fog mentioned in the story? Oddly enough, the green fog may be what lends some degree of credibility to the story. Bruce Gernon described seeing an "electronic fog" during an experience he had in the Bermuda Triangle. He did not report the fog he saw as being green, but he has reported seeing "green flashes" around the Florida Keys (the fog and flashes may not be directly related though).

In an interview with Bruce Gernon and Rob MacGregor that I found here, MacGregor mentions a researcher named John Hutchinson who created the Hutchinson Effect, in which objects of various materials levitate under the influence of intense electromagnetic activity.  While Hutchinson was conducting experiments, a green fog appeared.  So electronic fog and green fog may be similar types of phenomena.  If so, could there be some kind of connection between the electronic fog Gernon described and the green fog that appeared during the Philadelphia Experiment?

So what are these green fogs?  In the Hutchinson Effect and the Philadelphia Experiment, the fog seems to have been the result of electromagnetic activity induced by man-made technologies.  But what about the reports of green fogs in the Bermuda Triangle or the green mist mentioned in Pastor Swope's article?  Green mists/fogs aren't really all that common in ghost stories, but Pastor Swope's story is certainly not the only one to mention a green mist/fog (see a couple more here and here).  So is green fog also a naturally (or supernaturally) occurring phenomena?

I'm not sure what these green fogs are.  I'm not sure what causes them to be green (or appear to be green) either.  Taking the man-made examples into consideration, the green fog seems to be more of an effect than a cause.  My guess is the phenomena can occur naturally (or supernaturally), but the phenomena can also be duplicated by man with the right electronic technologies.

But regardless of what causes it, if you ever see a green fog, don't be surprised if something weird happens.

--------------------------------
P.S.  I left a comment on a blog posting written by Rob MacGregor mentioning that I had cited something he said in this post.  In his response to my comment, he mentioned another story about green fog that he included  in the book he wrote with Bruce Gernon named The Fog.  According to that story, a fisherman and his partner were pursued by a bank of green fog while fishing off the coast of Florida at 2 AM. As the green fog neared them, they ran for it and called it a night.

So there is another example of green fog around the Bermuda Triangle.

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P.S.S.  I also want to clarify that the reason I think the green fog may lend some credibility to the story about the Philadelphia Experiment is because it happened before these other stories were written.  So these other examples of green fog/mist and the Hutchinson Effect that Rob mentioned may lend some credibility to the story about the Philadelphia Experiment because green fog was also said to have been witnessed during the experiment.  If the Philadelphia Experiment was completely fictional, what are the odds that the story tellers of the time would have mentioned green fog?  I can't dismiss the possibility that the Philadelphia Experiment is a hoax, but it seems unlikely (though not impossible) that the story tellers of the time would have been familiar with green fog in this context.

2012: What about us?

In the latest episode of Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory, Jesse and his team investigated claims that wealthy individuals and the government were building underground bunkers to prepare for a disaster that may occur in the year 2012.

It's no secret at all that there are people building underground bunkers in preparation for 2012.  However, the government isn't quite so forthcoming about what they are building their underground bunkers for.  It was reported that the government has been building an increasing number of underground bunkers over the last 10 years.

Hmm...the Cold War ended nearly 20 years ago.  So why would the government have embarked on a bunker building frenzy during the last 10 years?  What is it they are afraid of?

This episode wasn't your typical run-of-the-mill 2012 documentary though.  They didn't mention anything about the predictions of ancient oracles or the I Ching, and they barely even mentioned the Mayan calendar.  Jesse and his team focused on scientific data regarding expected solar storms in 2012.  It's alleged that the solar storms could be powerful enough to knock out the power grid, cutting off electricity throughout the nation.

So the conspiracy theory aspect of all this is that the government is allegedly building these bunkers in preparation for problems occurring as a result of solar storms in 2012.  I'm not surprised that politicians and elitists - the epitome of greed and selfishness - would only be concerned with saving themselves, but what about us?  What would the rest of us do if we woke up one morning and there was no electricity anywhere in the nation?

Here's some things to consider:

• Not only would your appliances not work, but you wouldn't be able to turn the TV on for news reports.  The TV station may have back up generators to power their equipment, but if you didn't have a generator of your own, that wouldn't do you any good.  Even if you did have a generator of your own, the solar storms may knock the television satellites offline too.  So even if you had a way to turn on your TV, there may be nothing transmitting.
• Landline telephones probably wouldn't be working.  Your cell phone may be battery operated, but the cell phone towers may be offline.  So you might not be able to call anyone.  
• Even if your laptop still had battery power, the internet may be offline, but even if the internet itself wasn't offline, if you didn't have electricity to power your modem, you still wouldn't be able to connect to the internet.  And even if you used an aircard sold by cell phone companies to connect to the internet, if the cell phone towers were offline, it wouldn't do you much good.  
• Radio stations may have backup generators, but it's possible the solar storms could interfere with radio transmissions too.  
• If you couldn't get your phone or the internet to work, the only people you would be able to contact immediately are your neighbors and anyone you know within driving distance.  Keep in mind that you would probably only be able to drive as far as the gas in your tank would get you because without electricity, gas pumps would be offline.  
• The nation would probably be in a state of martial law.

So what would happen after people started realizing that the power outage wasn't just limited to their street?  I imagine different people would react differently.  Many people probably wouldn't bother going to work.  For some people, there probably wouldn't be much point in going to work if they worked in a field where electricity was necessary to do their work.  Many people would probably be focused on contacting their family and friends.  A lot of people would probably sort to looting.  It would probably be a good idea to avoid looting though.  For one, looting a 65 inch TV and a $4000 computer isn't going to do you much good without electricity, and two, a looter that is bigger and faster than you might take offense if you took the 65 inch TV he was coming for.  

Of course, there is also the possibility that it wouldn't be safe to go outside at all.  The radiation from the storms may be unhealthy.  But you might not have any way of knowing that, and you might not have much of a choice either.  

So what should we do if such an event were to occur?  It's difficult to plan ahead of time since you don't know what kind of situations you may be presented with.  Ideally, I'd hope that people would focus on meeting up with their friends and family and then deciding what to do from there.  There would probably be a lot of people looting, but let the looters fight amongst themselves.  It could take months or years for power to be restored.  You might have to adapt to living without electricity for a while.  

Hopefully people would see it as an opportunity to come together and get along with each other.  Looting might happen in the beginning, but hopefully people would eventually see it as an opportunity to share and help others in need.  If faced with such a situation (and assuming the radiation itself wasn't deadly), people would have the opportunity to turn what appeared to be a bad situation into something good by spreading good will.  

But it would it only be an opportunity.   People would have to decide for themselves if they wanted to take that opportunity.

2012: A Potential Conspiracy?

It seems to me that there are three main camps when it comes to opinions on what might or might not happen during the year 2012.  One camp is expecting the end of the world as we know it.  Another camp is expecting a great awakening.  A third camp is not expecting anything significant to happen.

The reasons why people think something significant will happen vary.  The reasons why others think nothing significant will happen are usually relegated to reasons including the claim that the Mayans didn't really predict the end of the world at the end of the long count calendar, the often cited prophecies that never played out as predicted, and/or the idea that something like that can't be predicted.

But when you think about it, predicting such an event could lead to it occurring.  Even if the alignment of the stars and the sun's solar maximum resulted in a relatively mundane non-event, someone - or a group of people - could potentially take the prophecy into their own hands.  There are plenty of nuclear weapons in the world, if one psycho leader with his finger on the button decides to start launching some nukes, we could witness an end of the world scenario as a result of that.

Consider 9/11/01.  Think about how the events that occurred on that day changed things.  Sometimes you hear people mention how something was different before 9/11.  Some of the most notable changes were restrictions on flights, the Patriot Act, and wire tapping.  I can recall a change I was faced with at the time.  When 9/11 occurred, I was a merchandiser for Pepsi-cola, and two of the stores I was responsible for on my route were the commissaries at Fort Bragg.  On 9/10, I was able to just drive right on base and go to the stores.  Much of Fort Bragg had been open like that for a long time.  After 9/11, I found myself waiting in LONG lines at gates trying to get on the base.  Suddenly, my work day got a lot longer because of it.  To make matters worse, civilians could only get on the base at certain gates.  So I had to take a different route than what I was used to get on the base.  I imagine many other people have stories as to how the events of 9/11 affected their lives at the time and may still affect them today.

In addition to 9/11, there were also the 7/7/05 attacks in London and the Madrid bombings in 2004.  The Madrid bombings occurred three days before the general elections there, and the attacks may have altered how people voted in those elections.  As you can see, events such as these can bring about change.  It should also be noted that all of these events were brought about by men with agendas.

So what if an event like these occurred in 2012?  What if multiple events such as these occurred at the same time in 2012?  If something like this did occur during 2012, the timing might not  be a coincidence.  The conspirators may have planned it specifically to occur during that time because of the hype about all the predictions.

I hope there are no more attacks like the 9/11 attacks (actually, I hope we can all just learn to get along and there be no more attacks or fighting at all, but that might be wishful thinking), but I wondered, if a 9/11 type of event did occur in 2012, which camp of people would get to say "I told you so?"  If a 9/11 type of event is all that occurred, I imagine many people in the end of the world crowd and the great awakening crowd would point to it as the event predicted to occur. Depending on the event's aftermath, they may start saying "I told you so."  However, if that is all that occurs, the skeptical crowd will just point out the fact it was an event that could have occurred anytime.  I doubt they would attach any significance to it occurring during the year 2012.  It might not be clear who was right.

So I guess the question I've been leading up to here is, what would have to happen (or not happen) for one of the camp's to be able to say, "I told you so" and clearly have been right?  What scale would the event have to occur on?  What type of event would have to occur?  Would it matter if it was man-made, or would it have to be a natural disaster?  Would it have be some sort of unprecedented spiritual awakening?  Or would it have to be a message from extraterrestrials?  Will any of the camps be able to clearly say "I told you so" and be right?

I'm not really a part of any of the three main camps.  I just sort of have a "wait and see" attitude.  Regardless of what does or doesn't happen, I guess I  have no choice but to wait and see before I will know the answers to the questions I asked above.

2012: The Movie

I saw the movie 2012 over the weekend and was mildly disappointed by it.  The effects were good and it had some intense moments, but overall, I wasn't impressed.  I think I may have set my expectations too high.  It's already a topic of interest to me, and Roland Emmerich also made one of my favorite movies ever, Stargate.  In addition to that, I had low expectations for Emmerich's movie 10,000 BC, but I was actually quite impressed with it after seeing it.

I think I was expecting a more profound message from 2012.  I thought the ending was rather disappointing.  Essentially, you have (spoiler warning!) a bunch of elitists snobs building arks to save themselves.  They could care less about saving anyone besides themselves.  They even kept the whole project a secret.  Even towards the end when they let the other people waiting get on, the people waiting were still people that had originally paid to get on!  The only non-elitists to make it was John Cusack's group of people who snuck on board.  I thought it was a crappy ending to have the most selfish people in the world be the survivors of the disaster.  And to think, they would be the people to start civilization all over again.  What a disaster that would be.  They'd all probably be at each others throats trying to decide who got what.  And would actually do the labor involved in building a new civilization?  The whole idea of an end of the world scenario is coupled with the idea of a new beginning.  There's not much point in having an end of the world scenario if things are just going to go back to being how they were before.

Another thing I didn't think seemed right was how quickly the earth recovered from the disasters.  If what I've heard scientists say is true about the so-called 'super volcano' known as Yellowstone National Park, then an eruption would not only cause massive destruction to North America, but the ash cloud could be in the air for years.  This would result in something like a nuclear winter which would cause plant life to die and, as a result, animal and human life would begin to die off too.  It's possible people could still survive it, but there wouldn't be many.  So the idea that everything was fine after 27 days seemed to be a bit of a stretch to me.

One other thing I thought about was that the disasters may also cause the world's nuclear arsenal to detonate, magnifying the disasters that much more.  That would cause a nuclear winter even if the eruption of Yellowstone didn't.  It would create a situation quite unpleasant for any surviving humans.

I guess Emmerich was trying to go for a somewhat happy ending, but I think he fell short on this one.

The Dihydrogen Monoxide Scare

Back in 2004, the city councilors of Aliso Viejo, California were so concerned about the potential threat of poisoning from dihydrogen monoxide, they took steps to protect the community from its potential dangers. They even considered banning foam cups after they learned dihydrogen monoxide was used in its production. Here is how one article described it:

Researchers found that the presence of dihydrogen monoxide in Aliso Viejo had reached startling levels: it was present in its crude form, often spilling unmonitored on to the city streets; it was found to be a crucial ingredient in many common chemical compounds; its presence was even detected in that most ubiquitous of civilised artifacts, the styrofoam cup.

And it got worse: dihydrogen monoxide is lethal if inhaled, causes severe burns in its gaseous state, and is the major component in acid rain. Prolonged exposure to solid dihydrogen monoxide can cause severe tissue damage. It can, said the city council report, "threaten human safety and health".

The issue was also raised by a New Zealand MP in 2007. Some people have been pointing out the potential threats of dihydrogen monoxide since the 1990s though. Back in 1997, a high school student named Nathan Zohner garnered attention from newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations, universities, and congresspeople because of his research on the subject. Here are some of the things that have been said about dihydrogen monoxide:

Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there. Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.

Dihydrogen monoxide:

• is also known as hydroxl acid, and is the major component of acid rain.
• contributes to the "greenhouse effect."
• may cause severe burns.
• contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
• accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
• may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.

Quantities of dihydrogen monoxide have been found in almost every stream, lake, and reservoir in America today. But the pollution is global, and the contaminant has even been found in Antarctic ice. DHMO has caused millions of dollars of property damage in the midwest, and recently California.

Fortunately, the government has never banned dihydrogen monoxide. In the cases above where politicians got involved, someone eventually pointed out to them that dihydrogen monoxide – more commonly abbreviated as H2O – is water.  Zohner titled his science project, "How Gullible Are We?" What a fitting name.

We can laugh about these cases now. But, there is a similar case out there that has garnered way more attention and has even become mainstream now. Instead of saying water is bad though, they tell us carbon is bad. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) – the very gas we exhale and that plants breathe – is portrayed to be some kind of 'pollutant'. They try to convince people that increasing CO2 emissions somehow causes global warming. They also like to point out how bad it is to breathe in the CO2 emissions from automobiles and factories…but that is just elementary school science! In elementary school, you learn about how animals exhale CO2, and plants breathe it in. In return, plants provide animals with oxygen. It's just part of the symbiotic relationship of plants and animals on Earth. It's not that CO2 is toxic, it's just that were not supposed to breathe it regardless of what the source is.

Despite what some people may say, there is no scientific consensus that definitively states that global warming is caused by increasing CO2. It's not the first time the Earth has warmed. Did increasing CO2 emissions cause the Medieval Warm Period? The current global warming isn't anything unusual, its just part of the solar cycle. The Earth and the solar system go through periods of warming and cooling based on solar activity. Are our SUVs causing the polar ice caps of Mars to melt? Are Jupiter's increasing temperatures caused by our factories? Any effect CO2 emissions may have on temperatures is minimal. The biggest irony of all this is the so called 'Green movement'. Plants exposed to increased levels of CO2 grow stronger and healthier (one of the documentaries at the end of this post shows a study done about this). It should come as no surprise to anyone with an elementary school education that plants grow better in an environment saturated with the very gas they breathe. So essentially, if you want to be 'green', you better be increasing your carbon output!

What this boils down to is not science, but money. Funding is the driving factor for scientists espousing global warming caused by CO2 emissions. It's political propaganda for those who want a 'global carbon tax'. Yes, there are people that want to tax the very air that you exhale.



So what we have here is not good science, but a way for some people to make a lot of money. One thing you have to understand is data is not infallible. Data is oftentimes up to interpretation, and just as some religious leaders like to take holy books and cherrypick certain scriptures out of context to prove a point, so to can scientists cherrypick certain pieces of data to prove their point. If you choose to watch the videos at the end of this post, you can see how data regarding global warming has been taken out of context by many scientists.

Here is my satirical view of what has happened here:

[Some rich guys hear someone say that global warming may be caused by CO2 emissions.]


Rich guys: Hmm…maybe we can make some money off of this?

Rich guys: Hey, you over there with the PhD…c'mere.

Rich guys: Have you heard anything about global warming being caused by CO2 emissions?

PhD guy: I think I've heard it mentioned before.

Rich guys: Well, we're looking for someone that can confirm that global warming is caused by CO2 emissions. We were wondering if you might be able to do some research about it for us.  [The rich guys open up a suitcase full of money at this point.]

PhD guy: Oh…yes…I think I could do that research for you!

Rich guys: Alright…you do this for us, you'll be a made man.

So what you have here is research inspired by funding. When other scientists see that scientists saying one thing get funded well, they decide to jump on the bandwagon. Truth is truth though. Just because a well funded scientist says something is true, doesn't necessarily mean it is true. Nor does it become true because some younger scientists seeing dollar signs go around repeating what their well funded elder scientists tell them.

The truth is, CO2 is not a pollutant. It's a part of life on Earth. The Earth – and solar system – has warmed in recent years due to increasing solar activity. The effect of CO2 emissions on global warming is minimal, if not negligible.

But there's a lot of money to be made by trying to convince people that factory and automobile emissions are a threat to the environment.

I wonder if the dihydrogen monoxide hoax was deliberately started in response to the carbon dioxide gloom and doom scenarios. Essentially, both are taking one of the essential building blocks of life on Earth and portraying it as some sort of toxic gas. The main difference is the latter is serving a lot of people well financially.


Suddenly, the dihydrogen monoxide scare doesn't seem as funny anymore.

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Here are some documentaries I recommend about the global warming scare.

The Paul McCartney Conspiracy Theory

In case there's anyone reading this that hasn't heard of it before, there's long been a conspiracy theory that the 'real' Paul McCartney was killed in a car wreck in 1966.  According to the conspiracy theory, the Beatles feared this would interfere with their rise to fame, so they chose to cover up the accident and replaced the 'real' Paul with a look-a-like that was also a sound-a-like (and apparently a song writer too!).

The whole thing is a little silly and the Beatles have always denied the allegations, but the theory is backed up with all sorts of 'evidence'.  The 'evidence' is based on what the conspiracy theorists claim are 'clues' about Paul's alleged death.  Many of the clues come from lyrics in their songs or album cover art.  Some come from videos, others come from playing certain songs in reverse.

Well the reason I bring this up is because I found a really cool website about this conspiracy theory.  It lists all the various 'clues', but it also has a list disputing the validity of many of the clues (the site's author admits he doesn't believe in the conspiracy himself, but made the website because he was always "fascinated by conspiracies.").  While many of the alleged 'clues' are silly and some even come from albums released before Paul's alleged death, there are still a few 'clues' that are interesting.  The Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album has a lot of alleged clues, and the Beatles appear to be attending the funeral of a guitar made of flowers (said to be Paul's bass guitar).  I do find it odd that on many of the albums, Paul does seem to be the odd man out in some way, whether he's facing a different direction, wearing a zipper when the others are wearing buttons, or being shown on a red background while the rest are shown on a white background.

While this is one of the sillier conspiracy theories people have come up with over the years, it's nonetheless entertaining.  But I guess I'm just "fascinated by conspiracies" too.

Check out the website and all the clues here: paulisdead.co.uk/ (Update: Unfortunately that link no longer works...but you can still find an archived copy on the wayback machine.  Not all of the images are available on the archived copy though.  There is also a  Wikipedia entry if you want more information).