Author Archives: G.S. Griffin

Even Oil Companies Know Global Warming is Man-Made

Posted on by under Politics

When fossil fuel industry scientists investigated global warming in the 1970s and 80s, they acknowledged the truth

In December 2015, a Pulitzer-prize winning environmental news organization published the findings of its investigation into exactly what U.S. and multinational oil companies privately knew about the negative effects of burning fossil fuels.

As it turns out, from 1979 to 1983, the oil and gas trade group American Petroleum Institute and the world’s largest oil companies like Exxon, Mobile, Amoco, Phillips, Texaco, Shell, and the companies that later formed Chevron, formed a secret “CO2 and Climate Task Force” to study the interaction between man-made CO2 (carbon dioxide) and the environment.  

Internal documents and admissions by the former Task Force head reveal that the industry’s own scientists and engineers acknowledged CO2 was already rising, that the fossil fuel industry was generating more CO2, and even considered self-regulation to mitigate the damage to the planet.

It was previously made known that Exxon’s scientists agreed as early as 1977 that climate change was occurring, and eventually determined CO2 was warming the planet, melting Arctic ice, and poisoning the Earth’s ecosystem.   

The oil and gas companies buried their findings and, as the former head of the CO2 and Climate Task Force admits, turned to lobbying Congress to prevent any regulations on fossil fuel emissions. After all, regulations, while good for the Earth, would cut into profits.

Such efforts would require misinformation campaigns to discredit climate change. So for example:

In 1998, a year after the Kyoto Protocol was adopted by countries to cut fossil fuel emissions, API crafted a campaign to convince the American public and lawmakers that climate science was too tenuous for the United States to ratify the treaty.

President George Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol “in part…based on input” from oil industry lobbyists, as a State Department official said, according to an internal government document.

Since then, the State, particularly with Republicans in power, has been complicit in downplaying the danger, such as in 1990, when the White House modified a report for a Congressional committee completed by a government scientist (see Zinn, A People’s History of the United States).

Likewise, many Republican politicians recently did their part to serve the fossil fuel industry by condemning the December 2015 COP21 United Nations climate change conference in Paris, during which advanced nations agreed to slash carbon emissions.  

Lobbying has grown into an extraordinarily important practice for oil and gas companies, as massive sums of cash help keep politicians in line with industry objectives and garner profitable subsidies. The industry spent nearly $41 million on politicians’ campaigns in 2013 and 2014. Total, the industry spent over $326 million lobbying the U.S. government.

The government spent nearly $34 billion on the fossil fuel industry in the same time period, in the form of subsidies. Some see that as a massive return on an investment.

The industry is also unafraid to buy off scientists, such as Wei-Hock Soon, who was paid over $1 million by the fossil fuel industry to discredit climate change.

If deniers claim to know better than scientists about climate change, ask them to explain the role of photosynthesis

A 2013 meta-analysis of scientific research on the topic from 1991-2011 revealed a 97.1% consensus that anthropogenic (man-made) global warming exists (the director of the National Physical Science Consortium notes that if one includes the studies that imply it exists, the consensus rises to 99.99%).

30 gigatonnes of human-produced CO2 now poison the atmosphere each year. We’ve climbed to 400 parts per million, and may reach 1,000 parts per million by the end of the century.

Why is that a problem?

Well, the heart of the issue is this: air pollution, including CO2, methane, carbon monoxide, CFCs, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides, can kill people. This is done directly and indirectly.  

The concern is the increasing gigatonnes of CO2 and other pollutants produced by human industry in the advanced world has reached a level that photosynthetic organisms, which regulate planetary CO2 levels, cannot safely handle. Ocean and land plants convert CO2 in the atmosphere into sugars and carbohydrates to consume.   

Earth’s ecosystem has a system of eliminating pollutants, but there is only so much the system can handle. As human industry produces more CO2, photosynthetic organisms cannot consume the supply, and CO2 builds up in the atmosphere and warms the planet to an unnatural degree (the greenhouse effect). By one calculation, humans are changing the climate 170 times faster than natural forces.    

Deforestation and habitat destruction exacerbate the problem, wiping out photosynthetic organisms crucial to keeping the planet habitable. The Amazon provides 20% of humanity’s oxygen; nearly 20% of it has been destroyed in the last 50 years. Since just before the industrial age, humanity has destroyed about 35% of the world’s forests.

50% of Earth’s species will face extinction by 2100.

Despite what the fossil fuel industry claims, human interference can disrupt or slow nature’s processes of greenhouse gas elimination, prompting unnatural increased temperatures (which intensify extreme weather like floods, snowstorms, hurricanes, and droughts), ocean acidification (CO2 dissolution into the ocean lowers pH levels, which is decimating marine ecosystems), and detrimental changes in freshwater routes and sea levels due to melting Arctic ice.

The situation is growing increasingly dire, and thus not only is ignorance and denial of the issue a national embarrassment, it encourages an increasingly lethal reality.

Pollution, whether in air, water, or soil, is devastating to the lungs, heart, and arteries, especially in children and the elderly. The organ failure and cancer it causes slashes lifespans by years; by the end of the century two billion people will live in air above the safe level set by the World Health Organization. 95% of the world already breathes air with unhealthy levels of pollution. A 2013 report in the New York Times revealed air pollution is already killing over 1 million Chinese each year (China has had to shut down entire cities, including its capital, for days due to toxic air). By 2017, India was experiencing the same death toll. In 2010, nearly 55,000 Americans died from soot and smog. It was 155,000 in 2015. A huge increase in ozone smog is expected for the U.S. and the rest of the world. Breathing in air with increased CO2 actually reduces human cognitive ability. For example, one study found that every increase in pollution of 5 micrograms per cubic meter was equivalent to a loss of over a year of education, plus an increase in psychological distress. Cities around the globe are already so polluted that outdoor exercise does more harm to your body than good. Some, like Beijing, are shrouded in smog: a warning of what humanity could potentially do to the entire planet.

A 2012 report commissioned by 20 nations and conducted by DARA and the Climate Vulnerable Forum revealed pollution is killing nearly 4.5 million people a year worldwide. It was 7-9 million in 2015, one in six global deaths, mostly due to air pollution. This is more than war, malnutrition, AIDS, and malaria combined. 

As The New Yorker reported, historic famines are killing millions. In the past few decades, we’ve seen a 50-fold increase in the number of areas on Earth experiencing extreme heat. Within a century, many places will simply become uninhabitable. The Middle East has already recorded temperatures of over 160 degrees Fahrenheit. The high temperatures alone would be a death sentence for half the world if we warm the planet another ten degrees, which is possible. If the heat doesn’t kill you, the lack of water and food will, as areas that grow bountiful crops today will be too hot to grow any. Warming will also mean a global spread of malaria (likely infecting billions) and other diseases carried by insects that reproduce faster in hotter temperatures, more fires burning down oxygen-producing forests, increased ocean acidification (which can also lower oxygen levels), and more violent storms (monsoons, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods). Melting icecaps will raise sea levels (decimating coasts and affecting fresh water routes), release both greenhouse gases and diseases trapped for millions of years in the arctic ice, and reflect less heat than they do today.

The 2014 National Climate Assessment concluded that the 2-degree rise in the global temperature was worsening heat waves and droughts in the U.S., with more forests dying from both wildfires and growing swarms of insects that thrive in the heat. At our current rate, the planet will warm 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit by 2040, putting coastlines permanently underwater, worsening droughts, food shortages, and fires, and destroying much of the coral reefs within our lifetimes.

At present rates of CO2 and methane pollution, warming could reach 10 degrees by 2100. The World Bank recently reported that in our lifetime maize-growing land in Africa will be nearly eradicated by heat and drought, and increasingly frequent and violent monsoons and tsunamis will ravage Asia. Hundreds of thousands more people are already dying from hunger aggravated by climate change, and over $1 trillion has been sapped from the global GDP. It is expected to decline significantly due to global warming. 

Millions are going to die, yet oil and gas corporations resist emission caps and clean energy initiatives.

Global warming denial is based on ignorance

Ignorance meaning a lack of knowledge or education, not stupidity.

As a primary example, “climate change” did not replace “global warming” in scientific and political circles because researchers realized ideas about man-made global warming were wrong or no longer a problem.

In reality, the terms are not synonymous, and have been used about equally for decades; only recently has “climate change” ever-so-slightly surpassed “global warming” in usage, at least in books on the topic published in the U.S.

The only hard evidence of politicians seeking to replace “global warming” with “climate change” is a memo from Republican political strategist Frank Luntz that advocates conservatives make the change:

It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming… “Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming”…  

Rather than a grand conspiracy to cover up what would be the greatest mistake in scientific history, or to make a hoax more palatable to the common person, the use of “climate change” may be more desirable to scientists and Americans who trust them, as the term encompasses problems beyond rising temperatures, problems mentioned above.

NASA’s education website, for instance, explains this is the precise reason they use “global climate change” instead of “global warming.”

As a secondary example of how denial is based on ignorance, some insist rising global temperatures are only part of the pattern of naturally rising and falling global temperatures–that the actions of mankind have nothing to do with it, as if the planet’s leading geoscientists and climatologists simply don’t have a firm grasp of global temperature cycles! As if all the research, experiments, measurements, and data provided by the international scientific community over the last several decades simply failed to account for this.

Not only is that an insult to the scientists who devote their lives to studying this issue, it betrays an almost frightening ignorance of how the scientific method eliminates unwanted variables.

Thus it bears repeating: 97% of recent research concludes humanity’s burning of fossil fuels, and other dangerous practices, are creating unnatural global warming and all its horrid side effects.

Obviously, conservatives can find scientists who deny all this, but there is no need to pretend there’s a fierce debate about man-made global warming within the scientific community. That battle resides outside it; most scientists must shake their heads in disbelief.  

As a third and final example of ignorance and denial, consider how in years with dropping global temperatures, extreme winter weather, record snowfalls, and new Arctic ice reformation, climate change deniers rejoice.  

Due to lack of education, they see such events as “evidence” that anthropogenic global warming is false. They fail to understand that global temperatures can fall one year and rise the next, but over time follow an upward trend.

Screen Shot 2017-07-04 at 12.12.15 PM

via National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Note in the graphic how some years the global temperature falls, yet overall has risen since the time of the Industrial Revolution and is indeed picking up the pace (also note the correlation with CO2 concentrations).

As one scientist put it, “It’s all in the long-term trends.”

The world is changing

Despite oil industry propaganda campaigns and a loyal army of disbelieving conservative citizens and politicians, the U.S. and the world are moving in the right direction to reduce CO2 and other emissions, slow global warming, and create a cleaner, safer planet for coming generations. To paraphrase one political cartoon that begged deniers to err on the side of caution, “What if global warming is a hoax and we create a better world for our children for nothing?”

4 U.S. cities now receive 100% of their energy from renewables, the largest being Burlington, Vermont (42,000 people). Wind energy is now as cheap as natural gas. The price of solar power is plunging; Forbes recently reported it will likely be the cheapest form of energy on the planet in 10 years.

Renewable sources comprise 100% of Idaho’s, Maine’s, Delaware’s, and Rhode Island’s energy production, 92% of Iowa’s and Washington’s, 94% for South Dakota, 45% for New York, 40% for Florida, 25% for California.    

Denmark generates 40% of its energy from clean sources, Germany 26%. Some days, Denmark generates over 100% of its electricity needs via wind power and shares power with other nations! Wind power in Scotland can already generate enough power to give every home electricity; the nation will run on 100% renewables by 2030. Many European cities are banning cars in their city centers to eliminate smog.

Realistic plans exist to get nearly 140 nations and all 50 U.S. states 100% green by 2050. 

We have the technology to create solar-powered roads that charge your car as you drive, and buildings that eat smog and generate zero emissions. Scientists want to develop technology that mimics photosynthetic organisms, “carbon capture and storage” systems that can purge the CO2 humans have pumped into the atmosphere–some believe it’s the only way to save Earth’s biosphere, given business and conservative resistance to CO2 caps.    

There is truly nothing humanity cannot do, whether our actions poison the planet or save it.

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The Death of Tamir Rice and the Death of White Ethics

Posted on by under Race Relations

The death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy killed by police in Cleveland, Ohio, has perhaps highlighted better than any similar case both the dire need for justice system reform and the extent to which some whites struggle with even the most basic concepts of ethical thinking.    

On a frigid day in November 2014, Rice was playing with a pellet gun in an open-carry city, outside a recreation center. A 9-1-1 caller reported a “guy…probably a juvenile” pointing a gun that was “probably fake” at other people, “scaring” them. The pellet gun was missing the orange tip that indicated it was fake, and somehow the caller’s suggestion it wasn’t real (nor that Rice was likely a child) was not relayed to the officers heading to the scene.  

The police drove their vehicle onto the grass, pulled up next to Rice, and an officer-in-training, Timothy Loehmann (formerly declared unfit for duty by another police department due to emotional instability), allegedly fearing that Rice was reaching for his pellet gun, shot him within two seconds of coming to a stop.

Watch the video here; the police arrive at the 7:07 mark.

According to the Cleveland police, Loehmann had his door open and shouted three times at Rice as the vehicle approached him. The police did not park at a safe distance, take cover, and demand via loudspeaker that Rice drop the gun and surrender. Such actions would have clearly made the situation safer for themselves as well as for Rice, and possibly led to a far different ending.

After Rice was shot, his older sister, playing nearby, ran toward him, but was forced to the ground by the officers; she was handcuffed and put in the police cruiser.

Officers then stood around Tamir as he lay wounded. One officer had his hands on his hips when a man, identified by police as an FBI agent who was in the neighborhood, entered the frame and administered first aid. It was the first medical care the boy received in the four minutes that followed the shooting.

Rice was taken to the hospital, but died the following day.

Tamir Rice’s name became a rallying cry for Black Lives Matter activists and other enraged Americans, black and white, seeking to reform a nation where, due to both conscious and subconscious anti-black biases, blacks are far more likely to be killed by police than whites.

In court, the city blamed the boy, insistent of his “failure…to exercise due care to avoid injury” and claimed the boy’s family was suffering damages “caused by their own acts.”

This is a pattern of white behavior seen throughout American history: blacks, even those who are children, or unarmed, or nonviolent, are consistently blamed for their own deaths, not only due to their actions toward police in the moment, but life choices beforehand.

Black victims, writes Anthea Butler,

…are vilified. Their lives are combed for any infraction or hint of justification for the murders or attacks that befall them: Trayvon Martin was wearing a hoodie. Michael Brown stole cigars. Eric Garner sold loosie cigarettes. When a black teenager who committed no crime was tackled and held down by a police officer at a pool party in McKinney, Tex., Fox News host Megyn Kelly described her as “No saint either.”

Early news reports on the Charleston church shooting followed a similar pattern. Cable news coverage of State Sen. and Rev. Clementa Pinckney, pastor of Emanuel AME who we now know is among the victims, characterized his advocacy work as something that could ruffle feathers. The habit of characterizing black victims as somehow complicit in their own murders continues.

In other words, black foolishness, shortsightedness, aggressive nature, or criminality lead to black deaths. “If you don’t want to get killed by police, stop breaking the law!”

This line of thinking conservative whites use is rarely applied to themselves or their own children. If a white conservative, or his or her son or daughter, ever made the mistake of stealing cigars, illegally selling cigarettes, mouthing off, disobeying, or even getting physical with a police officer, said white conservative would likely not find a policeman justified in shooting to kill. He or she would expect the police to find a nonviolent, non lethal solution to the situation. He or she would want to live, or want his or her child to live, to see a constitutionally-guaranteed day in court.

Even prosecutor Tim McGinty, the white attorney assigned to show the grand jury what criminal charges the officers could possibly be charged with, participated in blaming the boy for his death.

After the grand jury refused to indict the policemen, a common occurrence in the U.S. judicial system for police that kill both whites and blacks, McGinty explained police actions in this case were “reasonable” and that Rice’s “size made him look much older” and that he had “been warned his pellet gun might get him into trouble that day…”  

In other words, Rice’s physical appearance and his refusal to listen to reason are why he is in a grave, not the fact the police are likely infected by conscious or subconscious anti-black sentiment, didn’t give Rice a reasonable chance to surrender, and don’t carry non lethal bullets, a technology readily available that could save thousands of American lives.

McGinty, abandoning any facade of neutrality, said, “…the evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police.”

The victim’s family declared in a statement:

Prosecutor McGinty deliberately sabotaged the case, never advocating for my son, and acting instead like the police officers’ defense attorney… In a time in which a nonindictment for two police officers who have killed an unarmed black child is business as usual, we mourn for Tamir, and for all of the black people who have been killed by the police without justice. In our view, this process demonstrates that race is still an extremely troubling and serious problem in our country and the criminal-justice system.

McGinty recommended to the grand jury that no charges be filed. A Washington Post editorial explained recently how grand juries are designed

…to be a tool of prosecutors. They don’t hear from both sides in a case, like a trial jury would. They hear only from the prosecutor, who decides what evidence and testimony is presented.

The family called on the Department of Justice to “conduct a real investigation,” and quickly a petition for such an inquiry and a new jury exploded online.

To many conservative white Americans, this was a tragedy, a tragic misunderstanding, but police actions were justified, meaning right or reasonable, because the police believed Rice was about to pull out a real gun and open fire.

This, of course, ignores the fact that had the officers parked at a distance and tried to talk Rice into putting down his fake gun, which he probably would have, the officers would have felt much safer than if they were mere feet away from the boy after charging in. The police put themselves in “danger.”

Tamir Rice’s death revealed how confused conservative white ethics have become, marked by the inability to apply the same set of moral principles to others that are applied to oneself or one’s own family.

The decisions of the police, and the decision of the grand jury, that left Tamir Rice dead and his killers free are deemed reasonable and right by many conservative whites. Yet if one such conservative white had a son, daughter, friend, spouse, or sibling who made the same “mistakes” as Tamir Rice (not heeding a warning, being large for his or her age, playing with a gun without an orange tip in an open-carry city, not throwing up his or her hands the instant the police arrived, etc.), would ideas concerning what’s reasonable and right change?

If said conservative white could say honestly, “If it was my son, the police acted reasonably in killing him” then he or she has been morally consistent. This writer finds that idea, that justification for his or her child’s death, equally disgusting as the justification for Rice’s murder, but at least ethical standards have been applied equally to oneself and others.

If said conservative white has a change of heart, and says, “If it was my son, the police actions were not justified,” we can see how bankrupt white ethics are in matters of race. If one is so willing to say police acted rightly and reasonably when shooting Tamir Rice, why would it not be the same for your own loved ones, were all other factors (words, behaviors, perceptions, etc.) identical?        

This is likely a testament to the conscious and subconscious racism virtually all American whites have, according to psychological studies, a demonstration that black lives are not as worthy of life as white lives in the minds of many conservative whites.

True, such a response could suggest that one values the lives of one’s family more than those of other families, an idea that could be based in evolutionary fact, yet an idea any ethical person can nevertheless decide to be abhorrent and any critical thinker can realize likely ignores, without cause, the subconscious prejudices scientific study has revealed to be present.

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On the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

Posted on by under Politics

 

 

While it is well-established that American intelligence agencies and the Bush Administration knew an Al-Qaeda attack on U.S. soil was imminent and did not do enough to stop it, some believe the story to be even darker: that the U.S. government allowed, or orchestrated, the attack to serve domestic and foreign policy purposes. This is one of the few conspiracy theories where both motives and science can guide us to the most likely conclusion.

* * *

Intelligence briefers reported to President George W. Bush in August 2001 that Osama bin Laden was determined to attack the U.S. by hijacking planes (see The Concise Untold History of the United States, Stone and Kuznick).

These warnings were ignored. Stone and Kuznick write that

Bush disdainfully told his CIA briefer, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.” Yet with a straight face, Bush told a news conference in April 2004, “Had I any inkling whatsoever that the people were going to fly airplanes into buildings, we would have moved heaven and earth to save the country.”

Dissident journalist I.F. Stone once said, “All governments lie.” That Bush would lie to protect the image of his administration from the glare of the worst security breach in U.S. history is predictable.

But was there more? Did, as the “9/11 Truthers” suggest, the government allow the attack to occur, or use explosives to demolish the World Trade Center after it was struck by planes? All in order to justify profit war in the Middle East and the expansion of State power at home?

Believers in this theory range from high-profile entertainers like Mark Ruffalo, Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen, Rose O’Donnell, and Ed Asner to physics teachers, theologians, engineers, and architects.

Building 7

The World Trade Center was composed of more than the Twin Towers, Buildings 1 and 2. Buildings 3, 4, 5, and 6 were severely damaged by the collapse of the Twin Towers. But Building 7, a 47-story structure, fell as well, not in the morning like the Twin Towers, but at 5:21 p.m.

9/11 Truthers believe Building 7 was purposefully demolished, that it fell neatly into its own footprint at free fall speeds, precisely as demolished buildings do. They claim that if there was no controlled explosion, the perimeter columns would have slowed the descent. The 9/11 Truth website documents witnesses in and around Building 7 who reported explosions, at mid-morning and in the afternoon before the structure fell.

Dan Rather and other reporters said the collapse looked like a controlled implosion. The owner of a Danish controlled demolition company, shown the footage but not told what it was, was confident it was a man-made implosion.

Researchers from the Worchester Polytechnic Institute and the University of California – Berkeley, as reported in the New York Times, found that the steel of Building 7 had melted, requiring 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit of heat, far hotter than the fires supposedly burned. 9/11 Truthers believe thermite and sulfur were used to lower the melting point of steel.

Fueling ideas of a government cover-up, 9/11 Truthers point out the national media rarely showed Building 7’s collapse, focusing only on the Twin Towers; that the 9/11 Commission Report did not mention Building 7 at all; that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) delayed its report on Building 7 each year from 2005-2008; and that the NIST report has a plethora of omissions, fabrications, and contradictions.

The Remember Building 7 website builds a similar case.

Anti-conspiracy theorists counter that:

What is often conveniently left out of the story are actual reports from NYFD firefighters at the scene, which describe huge, raging, unfought fires on many floors at once and visible deformations and creaking [sic] of the building prior to its collapse… Tower 7 was not hit by an airplane; however, it was struck by a 110-story flaming skyscraper, the North Tower. The fires raged for hours, and they eventually caused a critical column (#79) to fail because of thermal expansion; NIST determined that this column was crucial to the building and could even be considered a design flaw. Its failure would have collapsed the building even without the other structural damage from WTC 1’s collapse and the fires.

Indeed, “about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out” when the One WTC crushed Building 7. Support columns that did not take damage were not designed to handle the entire weight of the building, and thermal expansion contributed to their failure, as some fires burned for up to 7 hours, fueled by diesel fuel many tenants used to power emergency generators, a possible source of explosions.

And though conspiracy theorists judge Building 7 to free fall for 2.25 seconds and insist the NIST admitted this, the report actually argues that indeed the breaking of perimeter columns slowed the descent and only the north face of the structure free fell, for but 8 stories.

Further, the building did not implode in on itself as neatly as a standard demolition: “In actuality, it twisted and tilted over to one side as it fell, and parts of the building severely damaged two neighboring buildings (the Verizon and Fiterman Hall structures).”

The Twin Towers

Similarly, 9/11 Truthers believe the Twin Towers could not have fallen after being struck by planes, that there must have been a demolition to finish the job (some Truthers, it should be noted, believe the Towers were never struck by planes at all, despite all the video footage by media outlets and everyday New Yorkers).

According to the theory, the Towers experienced free fall while taking the path of greatest resistance, which points to demolition. They marvel at how fast the towers collapsed, 15-20 seconds from the beginning of each collapse to the end.

Further, Truthers point out that as fire and heat cannot melt steel, the Twin Towers would be the first of such structures to ever fall to these elements in world history.

As one meme put it, 1.5 hours after fire broke out in the Towers, they were falling to the ground; but 20 hours after a similar structure, the Windsor Building in Madrid, started burning (February 2005), it remained standing.

Of course, such comparisons are easily dismissed as inappropriate: the Twin Towers were struck by jets, while the Windsor Building and other structures were not.

After suffering explosions equivalent to 400 tons of T.N.T., eliminating structural members on floors 90-96 on One WTC and 75-84 on Two WTC, the inferno inside only reached 1832 degrees Fahrenheit, but

experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn’t need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength—and that required exposure to much less heat. “I have never seen melted steel in a building fire,” says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. “But I’ve seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks.”

“Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F,” notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. “And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent.” NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.

Therefore, the impact and fires “eventually caused floor trusses to sag, pulling the perimeter walls inward until they finally snapped. At this instant, the entire upper section of each tower fell the height of one floor, initiating an inevitable, progressive, and utterly catastrophic collapse of each of the structures.”

Screen Shot 2017-11-17 at 10.21.41 AM

via Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

As noted in the diagram, the collapse of perimeter walls under the weight of the structure above created a chain reaction of increasing mass and speed (quick, but not free fall).

During the collapse,

…air—along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse—was ejected with enormous energy. “When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it’s going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window,” NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder [says].

This explains the blasts from the sides of the Towers as they fell, which Truthers point to as evidence of other explosions inside the buildings.

Again, as with Building 7, Truthers believe thermite was used to intentionally lower the melting point of steel (even though this is never used in actual demolitions!). They believe molten iron, iron oxide (rust), and pure aluminum found at Ground Zero are evidence of thermite reactions, rather than the more natural explanations anti-conspiracy theorists insist upon.

The Achilles Heel

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the 9/11 conspiracy theory.

Much more is claimed by organizations like 9/11 Truth and Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and countered by scientists, architects, and engineers in publications like Popular Mechanics and Scientific American.

For instance, that only explosives could send debris sailing hundreds of feet away from the Towers as they fell; that the hole in the Pentagon was too small to have been made by a Boeing airliner and was therefore created by a missile; that the government issued an Air Force stand down order to allow planes to reach their targets; that the government destroyed evidence; etc.

Yet certain questions point to, rather than diabolical genius on the part of Bush’s government, almost unimaginable incompetence should this be an inside job.

Most striking: any controlled demolition of Building 7 would carry some risk of exposure. Why demolish Building 7 as part of some sinister plot in the evening of 9/11, when the World Trade Center was already in ruins? The pointlessness and absurdity of such a plan are astounding. It offers no benefit whatsoever, only increased risk of actual evidence being found linking the State to the crime.

Likewise, the events after 9/11 make little sense were this a government conspiracy.

It is well-established that Bush and his inner circle sought to attack Iraq from the moment the planes struck the Twin Towers.

Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council counterterrorism coordinator at the time, said, “When the 9-11 attacks occurred, Bush cabinet members immediately discussed how that tragedy could be used to justify an invasion [of Iraq]” and “Bush himself asked me to try to pin the blame for 9-11 on Iraq.”

The administration was so eager to blame Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld ordered strike plans against Iraq on September 11, while the ruins of the twin towers still smoldered (see Stone and Kuznick).

A false case was made for war against Iraq; real evidence that Iraq participated in the attack or was planning to do so in the future never materialized; the “evidence” the government presented—that one of the 9/11 hijackers met with an Iraqi intelligence official, that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger, kept mobile biological weapons labs, and helped train Al-Qaeda—all turned out to be forgeries and lies.

Secretary of State Collin Powell presented all this to the United Nations (Bush told him, “Maybe they’ll believe you”), but later called it a low point in his career (see Stone and Kuznick).

Michael Morell, a CIA official who served as Bush’s intelligence briefer, admitted in 2015 that the Bush administration took the information he provided and distorted it. Later, Bush administration officials like Cheney and Rumsfeld ordered the use of torture in Iraq in an attempt to turn their lie into a truth, to establish a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda operations (see Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects).

In reality, after 9/11 the Bush Administration saw an easy opportunity to eliminate an enemy dictator, who had formerly been a close U.S. ally but had since gone rogue, and seize control over one of the largest oil reserves in the world (see Chomsky, Imperial Ambitions; Hegemony or Survival).

Iraq, one of the richest prizes in the world, was both militarily weak and, with a little dishonesty, could be made into an enemy with weapons of mass destruction that supported the 9/11 attacks.

9/11 Truthers rightly insist that before 9/11 the U.S. sought to expand its control of the Middle East for its natural resources. In 1999, Dick Cheney told oil industry leaders, “The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.” Cheney even set up a secret energy task force to plan how the U.S. could best control the world’s oil (see Stone and Kuznick).

Truthers also correctly note how 9/11 was used as justification for any foreign or domestic policy whim of American leaders, no matter how violent, deadly, authoritarian, or barbaric.

Seizing Afghanistan and Iraq could open the door to further interventions and tighter control of the region. “Pentagon officials foresaw a five-year campaign with a total of seven targeted countries, beginning with Iraq, followed by Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and the biggest prize of all, Iran” (see Stone and Kuznick).

In the National Security Strategy of 2002, the Bush administration declared it had the right to launch pre-emptive wars against any nation that it perceived to be a future threat, and that no nation should be allowed to challenge America’s global dominance (see Foner, Give Me Liberty!).

Yet based on the historical facts, had the government orchestrated, or allowed, the 9/11 attacks, and was going to craft the greatest lie in American history, it seems more likely it would have simply pinned the blame on Saddam Hussein.

First, not only is it clear Iraq was a U.S. target from the beginning, it is obvious why Iraq would have been seen as a more valuable conquest than Afghanistan. While Afghanistan is extremely rich in natural gas and minerals, its oil wealth is estimated at 3.6 billion barrels (but 0 proved reserves). Contrast this to Iraq, which has 144 billion barrels of proved reserves (the Bush administration quietly announced it would be American oil companies such as Halliburton, whose former CEO was Dick Cheney, that would rebuild the Iraqi oil industry, reaping billions in profits).

Second, dismissing Al Qaeda and simply blaming Iraq would have saved the Bush administration from having to conjure up tall tales of Hussein having weapons of mass destruction or that he supported the 9/11 attacks.

Again, here we have a redundant fabrication. Just as there was no need to demolish Building 7 after the World Trade Center was demolished, there was no need to lie about Iraq having biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons, or being a haven for Al Qaeda terrorists, or supporting the 9/11 plot, when a simpler, earlier lie would have sufficed (and likely have been immediately accepted by the American populace without question): that Iraq planned and executed the destruction of the Twin Towers.

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Other Gods Born to Virgins on December 25 Before Jesus Christ

Posted on by under Religion

There are common themes in ancient religion that make one wonder if Christianity was not the one exception to the rule that societies tend to adopt beliefs, stories, and traditions from one another.

True, it’s not always clear whether common themes are a testament to the human exchange of ideas or to the universal imagination of early human thought (parallels may exist between religions on entirely different continents, for example, but that does not necessarily mean one influenced another).

But what is clear is where certain ideas in human history did not originate.

Long before Yahweh and Jesus Christ, many religions had gods who were born in strange, miraculous ways, at times to virgins, who came to earth, and (though these are not the focus of this article, but rather another) performed miracles, taught about judgement and the afterlife, were killed, reborn, and ascended into heaven.

True, these stories are different from those of Christ, but the common archetypes in cultures in close proximity to Palestine suggest pagan influences on the biblical story of Christ’s birth.

For example, December 25 was an important birthday for many human gods.

Most Christians understand Christ was not actually born on this date (biblical scholars believe he was born in the spring, because the Bible mentions shepherds in the fields at the time of his birth).

The idea that Christ was born on December 25 doesn’t appear in the historical record until the fourth century A.D.; the earliest Christian writers, such as Origen, Tertullian, Irenaeus, and the gospel authors, are silent on the subject.

Late December, the time of the winter solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year), was full of pagan European celebrations. The Roman Empire declared December 25 a holiday to celebrate the birth of their adopted Syrian god Sol Invictus in 274 A.D. Some 50 years later, Roman Emperor Constantine officially adopted December 25 as the day for celebrating Christ’s birth.

Before 1,000 B.C. we have the following gods or demigods born on December 25: Horus, Osiris, and Attis. Before 200 B.C. we have Mithra, Heracles, Dionysus, Tammuz, Adonis, and others (see All About Adam and Eve, by Richard Gillooly). Some of these characters, you will see below, were also born to virgins.

Interestingly, in ancient mythology, many gods are born to women with names derived from “Ma,” meaning mother: Myrrha in Syrian myth, Maia in Greek myth, Maya in Hindu, Mary in Hebrew.

A god or demigod’s birth was often accompanied by incredible sights and came about through the actions of another god.

John D. Keyser writes,

We learn, from classical authors, that the notion of the gods visiting mortal women and becoming fathers of their children was commonly entertained throughout the near East in Greek and Roman times…

‘The gods have lived on earth in the likeness of men’ was a common saying among ancient pagans, and supernatural events were believed in as explanations of the god’s arrival upon earth in human guise.

Stars, meteors, and heavenly lights allegedly signaled the birth of many man-gods, including Christ, Yu, Lao-tzu, various Roman Caesars, and Buddha (see Gillooly). This parallels the strange and fantastic events that surround the births of purely mythological figures, such as Osiris in Syria, Trinity in Egypt, and Mithra in Persia.

But nothing was more spectacular than virgin birth.

Virgin birth, and a reverence and obsession with virginity, was a common theme in ancient religions before the time of Christ and near where Christianity originated (see “The Ancient Beginnings of the Virgin Birth Myth,” by Keyser). It marked the child as special, often divine.

Two thousand years before Christ, the virgin Egyptian queen Mut-em-ua gave birth to Pharaoh Amenkept III. Mut-em-ua had been told she was with child by the god Taht, and the god Kneph impregnated her by holding a cross, the symbol of life, to her mouth. Amenkept’s birth was celebrated by the gods and by three kings, who offered him gifts.

Ra, the Egyptian sun god, was supposedly born of a virgin, Net. Horus was the son of the virgin mother Isis. In Egypt, and in other places such as Assyria, Greece, Cyprus, and Carthage, a mythological virgin mother and her child was often a popular subject of art and sculpture.

Attis, a Phrygian-Greek vegetation god, was born of the virgin Nana. By one tradition, Dionysus, a Greek character half god and half human, was the son of Zeus, born to the virgin Persephone.

Persephone also supposedly birthed Jason, a character with no father, human or divine. Perseus was born to a mortal woman named Danae, and fathered by Zeus. Zeus also slept with a mortal woman (though daughter of a nymph) named Io, and they had a son and a daughter. He slept with the mortal Leda, who gave birth (hatched, actually) Helen of Troy and other offspring.

Even Plato in Greece was said by some to have been born to a virgin, Perictione, and fathered by the god Apollo, who gave warning to Ariston, Perictione’s husband-to-be.

Some followers of Buddha Gautama decided he was born to the virgin Maya by divine decree. Genghis Khan was supposedly born to a virgin seeded by a great miraculous light. The founder of the Chinese Empire, Fo-Hi, was born after a woman (not necessarily a virgin) ate a flower or red fruit. The river Ho (Korea) gave birth to a son when seeded by the sun. Zeus, in snake form, impregnated the mother of Alexander the Great. Krishna was born to the virgin Devaka. In Rome, Mercury was born to the virgin Maia, Romulus to the virgin Rhea Sylvia (see “An Old Story,” Chapman Cohen).

Though not a virgin birth story, Augustus Caesar was supposedly born when Apollo slept with a mortal woman named Atia, and was later called a “savior” and the “Son of God,” whose birthday was celebrated — a birthday that “marked for the world the beginning of good tidings through his coming,” to quote the Romans (see How Jesus Became God, Bart Ehrman).

The Persian god Mithra was made the “Protector of the Empire” by the Romans in 307 AD, right before Christianity was declared the official religion. Some versions of Mithra’s story, predating Christianity, make him the son of a human virgin. His birth, on December 25, was seen by shepherds and Magi, who brought gifts to a cave, the place of his birth (see Godless, by former pastor Dan Barker).

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U.S., Canadian City Governments Ending Homelessness by Offering Jobs

Posted on by under Politics

It is a radical idea: If you have fallen to the bottom of the social pit, found yourself without money, a home, or possessions, and cannot find work in the private sector of the free market, you can go to your city government for a job.

In what is reminiscent of Depression-era New Deal programs that gave work to millions and long-held socialist ideals of guaranteed employment for the poor, some U.S. and Canadian cities are using tax wealth for wages to homeless workers, who clean up and improve communities.

Each year, 3.5 million Americans (1.35 million children) will experience homelessness at some point. 18.5 million homes stand empty in the U.S., waiting for citizens who can afford them, the mark of a social system where goods and services are distributed according to purchasing power, ensuring those with the least purchasing power also have the greatest need for goods and services.

On any given night over 600,000 Americans are homeless, living in shelters, transitional homes, cars, parks, tent cities, or under bridges. 23% are children under 18; 36% of homeless people are homeless with a family; about 10% are veterans; over 40% are disabled; 20-25% suffer from mental illness. 90% of homeless women are domestic abuse victims, most fleeing their tormentors.

Homelessness is both caused and perpetuated by poverty, job loss, eviction or foreclosure, domestic abuse, substance abuse, mental illness, disability, and other factors.

The homeless speak of humiliation, stigmatization, feeling “disconnected from the world,” working “full-time” to survive each day, being denied services at business because of their appearance when they do have cash, denied emergency room care when they needed it because they were suspected of faking to “get out of the rain.” A survey showed about 60% of homeless people perceive discrimination from law enforcement and businesses.

Perhaps this stems from widespread American stereotyping of the poor as being lazy, lacking ambition, willpower, work ethic, common sense, even intelligence…despite the fact that nearly half of Americans now live in poverty or in low-income households.

Even social workers aren’t exempt from this stereotyping. A homeless man, Lars Eighner, remembered:

My interview with the social worker made it clear only three explanations of homelessness would be considered: drug addiction, alcoholism, and psychiatric disorder. The more successful I was in ruling out one of these explanations, the more certain the others would become.

Professional people like to believe this. They like to believe that no misfortune could cause them to lose their own privileged places. They like to believe that homelessness is the fault of the homeless–that the homeless have special flaws not common to the human condition, or at least the homeless have flaws that professional people are immune to. (A People’s History of Poverty in America, Pimpare)

Albuquerque, New Mexico in September 2015 began a program that pays a small crew of homeless workers $9 an hour (and a small lunch) to clean up blighted areas of the city. It is paid for through both private donations and tax funds.

Mayor Richard J. Berry said:

It’s about the dignity of work… If we can get your confidence up a little, get a few dollars in your pocket, get you stabilized to the point where you want to reach out for services, whether the mental health services or substance abuse services — that’s the upward spiral that I’m looking for… The indignity of having to beg for money cuts through the soul.  

One of the workers, Ramona Beletso, who has slept in cardboard boxes and struggled with alcohol use, said, “I worked for my money. And that feels good.”

Theoretically, initiatives such as this need not exclude disabled persons, either, as workers can be paid for non-physical tasks that improve their communities, such as helping children learn to read at public libraries.

At about the same time that program launched, Reno, Nevada started paying its own small group of homeless residents $10 an hour for three days of work each week to clean up the Truckee River. The city will provide recommendation letters and financial and interview training to help workers find employment in the private sector.

A councilwoman said:

The public has expected something creative and different from us, so I’m glad that we have committed funding to this. It’s not only about instilling pride in the workers from a good hard-day’s work, but also cleaning up the river for the community.     

A homeless worker, through tears, promised at a press conference, “We will make you proud.”

In both Reno and Albuquerque, supervising crews are on hand during the work shifts.

A similar program, this one funded through donations and a tax on businesses within a Business Improvement Zone, can be found in Canada. Winnipeg pays homeless persons $11 an hour to pick up trash, shovel snow, and other tasks. In 2014, 86 people worked at various times for the city.

An organizer noted it gives workers experience and references for later use, and that the program lets

People see their capabilities and believe in themselves again. They’ve still got gas in the tank. They’re still capable, and it’s a catalyst to get back into the workforce… When we go out you see innate gifts…the leaders, helpers, caretakers…

A worker named Randy Malbranck discussed the competition for spots on the crews: “You don’t always get in but sometimes — usually — you do.” Oftentimes, people who don’t “get in” end up volunteering. He praised the organizers as “tremendous,” and the job has allowed him to move closer to his goal of renting an apartment. “I think it’s very good. If somebody needs work or needs a little bit of money, it helps… The next step is to just get a full-time job.”

In Albuquerque and Winnipeg, people acknowledge that sometimes paychecks are used for drugs or alcohol or other wasteful things that will perpetuate their societal condition. Malbranck said, “There are some people who use the money for the needs that got them here in the first place. It’s unfortunate, but you have to work with that.” Yet these are not handouts. People are earning money, and spending it how they will. Treatment for mental illness and substance abuse is not an unimportant part of solving homelessness.  

Inspired by what’s happening in these cities, others, like Victoria in Canada, are planning to follow suit. It is part of a more general effort to find humane, effective ways of ending the humiliation and human suffering of homelessness, not just through government initiatives like jobs or housing vouchers, but also private ones.

In Nashville, Madison, and Austin, for example, individuals, ministries, and social activist groups have built tiny homes for the homeless, most charging a small rent. A study in Charlotte, North Carolina found that building even free housing for the homeless is cheaper than leaving them on the streets; massive health care and incarceration costs are cut when people are housed.

Perhaps it is as Nelson Mandela said: “Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”

All this is in stark contrast to the barbaric ways other cities are addressing homelessness. Many major cities, like Washington, D.C., have wiped out homeless camps. A Huffington Post writer summarized:

Cities are increasingly making homelessness a crime. A 2014 survey of 187 cities…found that 24 percent of cities make it a city-wide crime to beg in public, 33 percent make it illegal to stand around or loiter anyplace in the city, 18 percent make it a crime to sleep anywhere in public, 43 percent make it illegal to sleep in your car, and 53 percent make it illegal to sit or lie down in particular public places. And the number of cities criminalizing homelessness is steadily increasing.

Some cities and businesses around the world install spikes under bridges and redesign benches in an attempt to drive away homeless people looking for a place to sleep.

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