The gift that keeps on giving...
Just for grins, I searched for "Holdren".
As in
John Holdren. Obama's Science Czar. The guy who said the following:
- Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
- The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation's drinking water or in food;
- Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
- People who "contribute to social deterioration" (i.e. undesirables) "can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility" -- in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
- A transnational "Planetary Regime" should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans' lives -- using an armed international police force.
Full documentation
here.
Scroll down, keep reading and remove sharp objects and liquids from around your computer -- this stuff is real...
I got six hits.
The first one (
1066337021 if you don't have the originals) is from Thu, 16 Oct 2003 and deals with the Soon / Baliunas paper. This email is part of a back and forth thread bit here is a juicy bit or two -- everything from Holdren:
Colleagues--
I append here an e-mail correspondence I have engaged in over the past few days trying to educate a Soon/Baliunas supporter who originally wrote to me asking how I could think that Soon and Baliunas are wrong and Mann et al. are right (a view attributed to me, correctly, in the Harvard Crimson). This individual apparently runs a web site on which he had been touting the Soon/Baliunas position.
While it is sometimes a mistake to get into these exchanges (because one's interlocutor turns out to be ineducable and/or just looking for a quote to reproduce out of context in an attempt to embarrass you), there was something about this guy's formulations that made me think, at each round, that it might be worth responding. In the end, a couple of colleagues with whom I have shared this exchange already have suggested that its content would be of interest to others, and so I am sending it to our "environmental science and policy breakfast" list for your entertainment and, possibly, future breakfast discussion.
Emphasis mine: WTF: "ineducable"
Soon and
Baliunas are not lightweights by any means. They, in 2003, were raising the question that since our Sun is a variable star, might its variations contribute to the periodic warming and cooling that our planet (and Venus, Mars & Saturn) have observed. More
here.
The remaining five emails are from a burst starting 03 January 2009.
An excerpt from
1231166089 (scroll down a bit):
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike MacCracken [mailto:mmaccrac@xxxx]
Sent: 03 January 2009 16:44
To: Phil Jones; Folland, Chris
Cc: John Holdren; Rosina Bierbaum
Subject: Temperatures in 2009
Dear Phil and Chris--
Your prediction for 2009 is very interesting (see note below for notice that went around to email list for a lot of US Congressional staff)--and I would expect the analysis you have done is correct. But, I have one nagging question, and that is how much SO2/sulfate is being generated by the rising emissions from China and India (I know that at least some plants are using desulfurization--but that antidotes are not an inventory). I worry that what the western nations did in the mid 20th century is going to be what the eastern nations do in the next few decades--go to tall stacks so that, for the near-term, "dilution is the solution to pollution". While I understand there are efforts to get much better inventories of CO2 emissions from these nations, when I asked a US EPA representative if their efforts were going to also inventory SO2 emissions (amount and height of emission), I was told they were not. So, it seems, the scientific uncertainty generated by not having good data from the mid-20th century is going to be repeated in the early 21st century (satellites may help on optical depth, but it would really help to know what is being emitted).
That there is a large potential for a cooling influence is sort of evident in the IPCC figure about the present sulfate distribution--most is right over China, for example, suggesting that the emissions are near the surface--something also that is, so to speak, 'clear' from the very poor visibility and air quality in China and India. So, the quick, fast, cheap fix is to put the SO2 out through tall stacks. The cooling potential also seems quite large as the plume would go out over the ocean with its low albedo--and right where a lot of water vapor is evaporated, so maybe one pulls down the water vapor feedback a little and this amplifies the sulfate cooling influence.
Now, I am not at all sure that having more tropospheric sulfate would be a bad idea as it would limit warming--I even have started suggesting that the least expensive and quickest geoengineering approach to limit global warming would be to enhance the sulfate loading--or at the very least we need to maintain the current sulfate cooling offset while we reduce CO2 emissions (and presumably therefore, SO2 emissions, unless we manage things) or we will get an extra bump of warming. Sure, a bit more acid deposition, but it is not harmful over the ocean (so we only/mainly emit for trajectories heading out over the ocean) and the impacts of deposition may well be less that for global warming (will be a tough comparison, but likely worth looking at). Indeed, rather than go to stratospheric sulfate injections, I am leaning toward tropospheric, but only during periods when trajectories are heading over ocean and material won't get rained out for 10 days or so.
Would be an interesting issue to do research on--see what could be done.
In any case, if the sulfate hypothesis is right, then your prediction of warming might end up being wrong. I think we have been too readily explaining the slow changes over past decade as a result of variability--that explanation is wearing thin. I would just suggest, as a backup to your prediction, that you also do some checking on the sulfate issue, just so you might have a quantified explanation in case the prediction is wrong. Otherwise, the Skeptics will be all over us--the world is really cooling, the models are no good, etc. And all this just as the US is about ready to get serious on the issue.
We all, and you all in particular, need to be prepared.
Best, Mike MacCracken
Emphases mine -- so our models (why is it always PLURAL?) do not work but we need to keep this quiet until we can figure out how to spin this...
The rest of these five emails only cc: John Holdren, he does not contribute to the discussion. I am thinking that there were some other emails that were not released where he plays a pertinent part. Still, there are some wonderful bon mots:
Excerpted from
1231254297:
-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Jones [mailto:p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx]
Sent: 05 January 2009 16:18
To: Johns, Tim; Folland, Chris
Cc: Smith, Doug; Johns, Tim
Subject: Re: FW: Temperatures in 2009
Tim, Chris,
I hope you're not right about the lack of warming lasting till about 2020. I'd rather hoped to see the earlier Met Office press release with Doug's paper that said something like - half the years to 2014 would exceed the warmest year currently on record, 1998!
Still a way to go before 2014.
I seem to be getting an email a week from skeptics saying where's the warming gone. I know the warming is on the decadal scale, but it would be nice to wear their smug grins away.
Chris - I presume the Met Office continually monitor the weather forecasts. Maybe because I'm in my 50s, but the language used in the forecasts seems a bit over the top re the cold. Where I've been for the last 20 days (in Norfolk) it doesn't seem to have been as cold as the forecasts.
You should ferret out the remaining emails as there is a fascinating link between a pro-AGW blog and some of the Climate papers. Who gets to publish and who does not...
On the scale of one to ten, I would rate these as a Marvin the Martian
Earth Shattering Kaboom!
Fun times. Schadenfreude at its best...
Posted by DaveH at November 21, 2009 10:11 PM