Has  James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies,  been taking bribes from George Soros and others?   I'm not an attorney so I don't know if Hansen has actually done anything illegal.  However,  as a political scientist  the situation definitely has an odor to it.  

There is no legitimate reason for any private body to spend $750,000 to "package" a government official the way  George Soros     allegedly did for James Hansen.    There is no legitimate reason for a government official to receive a grant from a private research organization  for supporting one of its causes as James Hansen allegedly received from the foundation directed by Sen. John Kerry's wife.    Hansen subsequently endorsed Kerry for President, possibly in  violation of federal law.

Bribery  primarily involves someone providing something of value  to a government  official  to  take an action  favored by the person providing the inducement.  The  term can also apply to an attempt to get someone to act  contrary to the desires  of  an employer.   Hansen's recent claim that energy company payments to non-government scientists to support some theory is a bribe is nonsense.  Payments to private individuals, including university professors, represents an employer employee relationship.
 
Hansen may be committed to the global warming nonsense, but if he is receiving anything of value from the private sector his continued commitment could be for personal financial gain.  I'm particularly  concerned about Hansen misusing his position to  present false data and  suppress  information  that challenges his theories.   These actions could  be  a response to a bribe. Those offering him inducements may want more than just his verbal support.

Hansen  suppressed  a discovery by NASA scientist Ferenc Miskolczi  that the equations used to calculate catastrophic warming contained a major flaw. The  equation  falsely assumed an atmosphere of infinite thickness. 

Steve McEntire discovered in  that  NASA's portrayal  of 1998 as being the warmest year in the U.S. was wrong and that 1934 was actually warmer.  The official explanation is that the original claim was a "mistake", but the federal government has a history of producing false data to support federal policies.  For that matter scientists have a long history of altering data to validate their theories.  Is NASA playing Enron type accounting games with data?
 
If someone at NASA was accepting a bribe, he might alter data with a plan to claim an honest mistake if someone discovered the error.  The official NASA response to discovery of the error is that the error is small, but  the change in temperature during the 20th Century was only 0.17% which is of questionable significance.  Lying about 1998 being warmer than 1934 made the claim of global warming seem more valid.  1934 being warmer than years late in the century provides a strong argument against the whole claim of global warming.     
  
NASA's claim of 2007 being the second warmest  is highly questionable and  inconsistent with the data.   NASA claims continued warming while other organizations disagree. 

NASA has been circumventing  federal regulations requiring review of federally funded research before it is distributed by having employee  Gavin Schmidt operate a privately funded website RealClimate to publish information.  Websites that question NASA's beliefs request visitors to donate money to fund the site.  RealClimate doesn't have to because it is subsidized by the same George Soros who has been aiding James Hansen.  What would be the response if the Department of Defense  used this approach to influence public opinion?

Recently NASA has been shifting research funds to scientifically worthless projects, such as computer studies about how global warming might affect tornadoes.  The studies ignore the fact that the only difference in temperatures comparing the future and now would come on the hottest days of summer when tornadoes are less frequent.  Temperatures would still pass through the normal  seasonal changes from winter to summer.

I don't know if James Hansen is guilty if is guilt of taking bribes  under the legal definition of the term.  However, he and his supporters routinely accuse those who disagree with them of doing  so because they are being "bribed".  Thus, Hansen by supporting the claims of those who pay him from the private sector is guilty of taking bribes under his definition of the term.

At 8 P.M a series of severe thunderstorms extended from northeast of Big Springs, Texas, to  west of Brookings, South Dakota, with a break in the line of severe storms in Nebraska.  There have been several reports of tornados but the wind damage thus far in Kansas appears to be front straight winds of 80 mph in some areas, including here in Hutchinson.

 The weather service has reported golf ball sized hail here, but the hail near my house on the west side of town was only pea to marble sized.    The severe storm moved through here at about 4 P.M. with heavy rain  that for a short time reached monsoon levels.  A series of smaller storms followed.   I took a walking tour of the immediate vicinity after the rain stopped and noticed significant tree damage.  The tree damage probably would have been worse had it not been for the ice storm last winter and previous severe thunderstorms that reduced the number of limbs available to be damaged.

On a light note 2 elephants escaped from a circus in Wakeeny, Ks. during the storm, possibly because they were spooked by the tornado sirens.

The storms continue to move east and the system continues to have the potential to produce severe storms and possibly major tornadoes.  The fact that the storms are part of a line rather than separate storms is reducing the potential for tornadoes.  Single super cell storms are more likely to produce strong tornadoes because the air moving upward is concentrated in a  major updraft.   With a line of storms multiple updrafts spread out the air so it doesn't have to move as fast to move up.  The situation is similar to what happens  with a river.   The water moving through a narrow channel moves much faster than water moving over a wide area.

The center of the low pressure system  is currently in Nebraska and the pressure has risen to 991.1 mb.
 
Hopefully the storm will continue to weaken before it reaches the higher humidity air to the east.  

There is a major difference between conditions now and those in 1974.  The 1974  Outbreak occurred  in  April  when there was a supply of much cooler air available  to provide a greater  temperature  differential.   Colder air causes the warm moist air to condense faster and produces stronger downdrafts as that cold air falls.  As the cold rain and hail filled air falls it creates a  suction that pulls up warm moist air as  well as  pushing that air up  from the bottom.

Meteorlogists are concerned that the Central U.S. may face an attack by our "terrorist" in residence  Mother Nature.  Weather conditions are substantially similar to those that existed at the beginning of the  super tornado outbreak of April, 1974.    Over a 16 hour period 148 tornadoes killed 330 people and injured 5,484 along a 2,500 mile path in 13 states.
This included the tornado that devastated Xenia, Ohio. 

The Super Outbreak produced 6 F5 and 23 F4 tornadoes.   

Today as in 1974  the weather is being influenced by a  La Nina  condition in the Pacific.  Mark C. Bove of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) in a paper published in 1999 noted a connection between ENSO and tornadic activity in the U.S. La Ninas were associated with tornado outbreaks and strong tornadoes.  The tornado that wiped out Greensburg, Kansas,in May, 2007,   occurred while the current la Nina was developing.

The area along the Mississippi may be at particularly strong risk due to a plume of 70 F dew point air extending along the Mississippi that covers most of Illinois as well as southeastern Iowa and northeastern Missouri.    A tropical storm strength  low pressure system (989.2 mb) is currently moving through western Kansas

According to Bove,  "The results indicate that El Nio [El Nino] events reduce tornadic activity in the southern plain states, while El Viejo [la Nina] events increase tornadic activity in the Ohio River Valley and Deep South. Results further show that El Nino inhibits the chances of multiple tornado outbreaks, while La Nina facilitates large tornadic outbreaks and produces more devastating tornadoes."

Ignorant individuals like Al Gore blame bad weather on "global warming" but cool La Ninas cause  more damage than warm el Nino events. 

Currently  a line of thunderstorms has recently developed in central Kansas stretching northeast from Greensburg.  As of 2:30 P.M.  tornado warming has been issued for the area near Hudson based on radar data.  Spotters in Ellsworth County along I-70 have reported a rotating wall cloud.  the line of storms is moving east about 10- 15 mph with individual storms moving at 40 - 60 mph.    Tornado warnings have also been issued for western Kansas  and for the areas around Wakeeney.   Tornado warmings have also been issued in Nebraska. 
Wichita State University has announced that evening classes after 5:00 PM. have been cancelled as a precaution.


National weather service radars can be found at http://radar.weather.gov/ 
To save complete radar images if you have Seamonkey as your browser.  right click and choose save page.  Make sure the box shows web page complete.  The save page function will save an html file as well as a folder of the same file name.

To follow the passage of the storms go to     http://www.wunderground.com/US/Region/US/2xFronts.html

Unless some other candidate enters the race  I will be voting for you  in November.  However, that is only because neither of the likely Democratic candidates has the experience to be the  nation's Chief Executive Officer.   Your acceptance of  the nonsense about purported "global warming", which Meteorologist John Coleman calls "the greatest scam in history", indicates a level of gullibility that is undesirable in presidents. 

I can understand how American leaders would believe that Saddam Hussein still had significant amounts of  Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Hussein had used such weapons in the past and there was no evidence he had destroyed them.  U.N. inspectors discovered unloaded nerve gas shells shortly before the U.S. invaded Iraq.   

However, there is no evidence for "global warming".   There is no evidence of any significant  temperature change other than the normal rise and fall of temperatures over time.  The earth has warm years and cool years, warm decades and cool decades.   The process that is supposed to produce global warming is physically  impossible. 

Those who claim the existence of global warming admit that temperatures only changed by 1 F  or 0.17% during the entire 20th Century.    A one degreee variation is insignificant   considering that daily temperatures fluctuate by 20 - 30 F    and by  over 100 F from winter to summer in  temperate areas during the year.  The passage of a strong cold front can drop temperatures by 30 F  in a matter of hours.

A one degree change over a century could easily be explained by differences in equipment or changes in the locations where the equipment is located.   Today's  equipment  is of questionable reliability.    Many sites have characteristics that artificially produce higher temperatures.

 Temperature varies by more than one degree in different parts of my yard.  Temperatures went up and down during the 20th Century and have declined since 1998.  The concept of a global average temperature itself is of questionable value.

Jean Baptiste Fourier first suggested that  infrared radiation  (IR) from the surface heated the atmosphere, but Fourier also believed that star light could heat the earth.  He believed that gas molecules converted the radiation into heat.   Niels Bohr  demonstrated in  his Nobel Prize winning research that  absorption of  specific wavelengths of light by gas molecules changed the energy state of their electrons rather than causing them to become hotter.

Land and water heat the air by conduction rather than radiation.  70% of the earth's surface is water which is a very poor radiator anyway.   Supporters of global warming have failed to provide any evidence that the low energy radiation produced by earth's surface can heat anything.

Those who believe in global warming claim that it is caused by carbon dioxide (CO2) trapping a small range of IR.  However,  physicist R.W. Wood, who invented IR photography, demonstrated in 1909 that the process of trapping IR didn't cause greenhouses to stay warm.  Instead they stayed warm because they trapped heated air which doesn't readily lose heat energy by converting it into radiation.  His experiment used solid barriers to trap IR.  CO2 is less than 400 parts per million in the atmosphere and is hardly capable of trapping IR the way the solid barriers Wood used could.

Ferenc Miskolczi resigned in protest from NASA after it suppressed a study indicating that the equations used to show CO2 would cause substantial  global warming contained a serious flaw that rendered the equations invalid.  His corrected equations show no warming.

Dr. Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner in their essay  "Falsification of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effects Within the Framework of Physics" argue that the process global warming believers talk about would be a perpetual motion machine that physicists claim would violate the laws of physics.

Did NASA's James E. Hansen commit perjury when he testified before House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on March 19, 2007?

Ferenc Miskolczi had previously informed NASA that the equations being used to predict catastrophic global warming were invalid. Yet Hansen told Congress that "greenhouse gases" posed a serious threat.

"The predominance of positive feedbacks, along with the inertia of the oceans and ice sheets, has profound practical implications. It means that if we push the climate system hard enough it can obtain a momentum, it can pass tipping points, such that climate changes continue, out of our control. Unless we begin to slow down the human-made climate forcings, there is the danger that we will create a different planet, one far outside the range that has existed in the course of human history (References 7, 8, 9)."

"It is because of these climate feedbacks and the inertia of the ocean and ice sheets that the global warming problem differs fundamentally from the problem of conventional air pollution (Reference 12). By the time that the public can clearly see the existence of climate change, there is momentum in the system for a great deal of additional change. As a result we are probably already very near, if not beyond, the dangerous level of interference with atmospheric composition. I have discussed the possibility of drawing down atmospheric CO2 by burning biofuels in power plants and capturing and sequestering the CO2 (Reference 13). However, by far the most effective actions at this time would be to slow current emissions to the atmosphere, while better understanding and improved technologies are developed."

My inclination is that he didn't commit perjury even though his statements were inconsistent with Miskolczi's study. The transcript of the testimony doesn't indicate he was testifying under oath. Also other portions of his testimony indicate that agency representatives were expected to provide official explanations even though there might be a question about the accuracy of those statements.

However, I'm not an attorney so I'm not sufficiently familiar with the concept of perjury as it actually applies in a U.S. court of law. I didn't think I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby should have been prosecuted for perjury.

Someone who is familiar with the law regarding perjury needs to investigate the situation to determine if Hansen violated the law.
 

President George W. Bush has once again claimed the existence of a threatened calamity that is contradicted by a government study.

Does the claim involve WMD in Iraq? No, if it did the Main Stream Media would have put the story on page one and it would have led the evening network news programs.

Those people who believe in the threat claim that it could involve mass destruction, but it doesn't involve a military weapon.

Several years ago NASA whistle blower Ferenc Miskolczi discovered a major flaw in the equations that have been used to predict catastrophic global warming. When Arthur Milne developed the equations 80 years ago he mistakenly assumed an infinitely thick atmosphere as a boundary condition. Assuming boundary conditions is a common practice when solving differential equations, but boundary conditions involving any amount in any way related to infinitely makes no sense for any situation  other than black holes.

In fairness to Milne his  field  was stellar atmospheres rather than planetary atmospheres.

Miskolczi eventually resigned from NASA because the agency chose to suppress the study that discussed the error. Miskolczi has revised the equations and they no longer indicate the type of catastrophe suggested by NASA bureaucrats.

Prior to reading about Miskolczi's work I had thought those who talked about the idea of a very minor atmospheric gas controlling atmospheric temperature were liars or intellectually challenged. Now that I know they were using an equation containing [from my perspective] such a blatant flaw, I can understand how they would make such a mistake. However I cannot understand how real scientists could continue to make that mistake. Of course government bureaucrats masquerading as scientists don't care about scientific accuracy.

There is more evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction than there is for catastrophic "global warming". Hussein had previously used WMD against his enemies and still possessed plans for a nuclear program and unloaded nerve gas shells when the U.S. invaded. C02 levels went up throughout the 20th Century but the temperature went up and down which indicates there is no connection.

Those who are criticizing conversion of corn and soybeans to fuel have a good point. Diverting food crops to fuel doesn't do much to increase energy resources, even though it reduces food supplies.

Corn and soybeans have been bred for eating to provide energy for animals. Corn and soybeans cannot be efficiently converted to fuel. Too small a portion of the plants can actually be used to produce ethanol. Using wind energy for ethanol plant operation provides a greater net energy yield, but not enough to really increase energy resources.

Technology to convert corn stalks and soybean leaves to ethanol would improve the yield, but such technology would eliminate the need to use corn and soybeans. Waste paper and tree trimmings could be used without diverting food crops to fuel.

Currently algae provide a much more productive source of biofuels. Glen Kertz president and CEO of Valcent Products says that algae can produce 100,000 gallons of oil per acre compared to 30 gallons of oil from corn and 50 gallons per acre from soybeans.

 

Unfortunately, ignorant politicians think that the carbon dioxide that "fertilizes" algae is a pollutant that should be prohibited. Algae production facilities connected to coal fired power plants can increase the amount of energy produced from the same amount of coal without reducing food supplies.

he people who want to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) don't understand the biosphere. Carbon and oxygen are two of the most important elements for biological life. 65% of the human body is oxygen and 18.5% is carbon. Plants are carbon structures with the percentage of carbon varying according to the type of plant.

The CO2 oxygen cycle is critical to the functioning of the biosphere. Animals exhale CO2 which plants then use to produce the molecules such as sugars and starches that animals use for food. Plants release oxygen into the air which animals inhale and combine with the carbon compounds to grow or perform various body functions.

CO2 is a major source of that carbon that provides the structure for plants. Absorbing CO2 through the leaves allows plants to use their roots for water and minor nutrients, particularly during the initial growth when they don't have extensive root systems. Some plants grow better as the amount of CO2 in the air increases. Some greenhouses use CO2 enrichment equipment to add CO2 to improve plant growth.

Humans are already removing large amounts of carbon from the environment through such actions as construction of wooden buildings and making paper. Much paper and plant wastes are buried in landfills making the carbon unavailable to become part of plants.

The combustion of fossil carbon fuels offsets the removal of carbon from the environment and increases the planet's ability to grow more plants. Adding carbon to the ground to replace carbon in harvested plants isn't as practical as adding carbon to the air in the form of CO2.

Plants are normally thought of in terms of their biological function, but they have an inportant physics function. Plants are the original solar energy storage devices. Globally plants convert huge amounts of solar radiation into the chemical bonds of complex carbon molecules. This process reduces the amount of solar energy converted to heat energy.

The molecules plants produce can be extremely long lived. If fossil fuels are ancient plant wastes as is commonly believed, the combustion of fossil fuels releases solar energy stored millions of years ago.

Each CO2 molecule contains 2 oxygen atoms which are essential to animal life because animals breathe oxygen. Burying oxygen would reduce the amount available for humans to breathe and adversely affect human health.

A better way to "get rid" of CO2 would be to encourage plant growth to return the oxygen to the air humans breathe. For example, power plants that produce CO2 could have attached greenhouses to recycle the CO2 into oxygen for humans to breathe and plants to convert to food or fuel.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Gilligan Sebelius has something more in common with the title character of "Gilligan's Island" than just her maiden name.

The Professor on "Gilligan's Island" used his intelligence and knowledge to find ways to get the castaways off the island. Then, Gilligan would inevitably and inadvertantly sabotage the Professor's plan.

Isaac Berzin may not be employed as a professor but he does have the academic qualification of a Ph. D. Dr. Berzin has developed a technology that allows coal powered electric plants to not only produce electricity but produce additional fuel. Incidentally,.Bob Metcalfe the codeveloper of the Ethernet is the interim CEO of the the company Berzin founded.
 

For someone like Gilligan carbon dioxide might be a pollutant. Berzin recognizes that CO2 is one of the raw materials used by the original solar energy devices such as algae to convert solar energy into the chemical bonds that bind carbon atoms to other atoms.

According to Glen Kertz of Valcent Products algae can produce 100,000 galloms of oil per acre compared to 30 gallons of oil from corn and 50 gallons from soybeans. 

Sunflower Electric's proposed power plant would use coal to provide electricity while producing the raw material that Dr. Berzin's technology would use to convert the abundant sunshine of the state "where the skies are not cloudy all day" into usable energy. The sun is our primary source of energy. Algae are very efficient solar energy storage devices.

In nuclear energy a facility which produces nuclear fuel in addition to using it is called a breeder reactor. The Sunflower facility is the carbon fuel equivalent of a breeder reactor.

Governor Sebelius claims to support the concept of renewable energy. So why does she oppose the renewable energy facilities Sunflower wants to construct? Could it be that she and the legislators who agree with her are no smarter than Gilligan?

 

The U.S.Environmental Protection Agency needs to adopt regulations for human emissions of dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO). Last year the Supreme Court ruled last year that carbon dioxide (CO2) qualifies as a pollutant subject to government regulation under existing pollution control laws. The gaseous form of DHMO can produce more adverse effects than CO2. Some people refer to DHMO as dihydrogen oxide.

Humans add DHMO to the air through various activities including combustion of hydrogen containing fuels such as natural gas and petroleum based fuels.

The only alleged adverse affect of CO2 is that it supposedly causes increased atmospheric temperatures through a process that some physicists say doesn't exist. Some climatologists claim that CO2 causes adverse warming by trapping infrared radiation even though physicist R.W. Wood demonstrated in 1909 that trapping IR doesn't cause greenhouses to be warmer.

DHMO is said to be more effective at trapping IR under the process that greenhouse gas believers claim is causing global warming which means it should qualify as a pollutant under the same criteria as CO2. DNMO comprises 2-4% of the atmosphere, but CO2 is less than 0.04% DHMO can cause climate changes even if the greenhouse gas warming process doesn't exist.

One gram of the gaseous form of DHMO can melt almost 7 grams of ice which means adding DHMO to the air can increase the melting of glaciers and the polar ice caps. The same thermal characteristics that allow DHMO to melt ice allow it to prevent temperatures from dropping below a threshold. Scientists have long known that increasing the amount of DHMO in the atmosphere can keep the low temperature above freezing which can increase the melting of ice and prevent it from refreezing.

The severity of flooding and hurricanes depends upon the amount of DHMO in the atmosphere. Severity of both increases with increases in the amount of atmospheric DHMO. Obviously, human DHMO emissions can increase the severity of floods and hurricanes and the EPA should regulate such emissions.

DHMO can corrode metal and damage wood products among other adverse environmental effects. DHMO can adversely affect human health.

Some people might argue that DHMO cannot be a pollutant because it occurs naturally in the atmosphere. The Supreme Court didn't find that claim important regarding CO2. Various natural processes put CO2 into the atmosphere including venting from the oceans and volcanoes. According to the Court's ruling in Massachusetts et. al. v. Environmental Protection Agency the law is so broad that it allows regulation of any chemical released into the atmosphere. DHMO qualifies as a chemical for the same reasons CO2 does.

Plants need DHMO, but they also need CO2. Some greenhouses deliberately increase the amount of CO2 in the air to increase plant growth. The Supreme Court didn't consider the need plants have for CO2 to justify exempting it from government efforts to force the atmosphere to adhere to human law precisely regulating its content.

For a further discussion of DHMO and its affect on temperature see my previous post on the subject.

Joseph D'Aleo has applied the cognitive dissonance theory of Leon Festinger to global warming fanatics. 

"When discomfirmatory (contrary) evidence is presented, Festinger found one condition that often determined whether the belief is discarded or maintained with new fervor by belief with a strongloy held belief. That was whether or not the individual believer has social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand strong discomfirming evidence. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, you might expect the belief to be maintained and the believers to attempt to proselytice or persuade non-members that the belief is correct even in the face of data suggesting otherwise."

The large number of people who have a vested interest in global warming provide support for those who are merely believers in the concept. 

The report by the recent conference by climate skeptics is available online.

The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology states that the English floods of last spring were the result of natural factors rather than global warming.

Hungarian scientist Ferenc Miskolczi has discovered the greenhouse gas equation  Arthur Milne developed in 1922 contains a serious flaw.  Milne mistakenly solved the differential equation involved by assuming an infinitely thick atmosphere.  Miskolczi was working for NASA at the time and NASA suppressed  his report which contradicted NASA's claims.   

Miskolczi resigned in protest, stating in his resignation letter, "Unfortunately my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results."

Miskolczi rewrote the equations and the modified equations don't indicate a runaway greenhouse effect.   His equations indicate a limit to any greenhouse effect. Thus even if there is a greenhouse effect it cannot do what the Rev. Al Gore claims it will do.

Research by Stephen Schwartz also challenges claims of a runaway greenhouse effect.

I haven't studied differential equations for  a few decades, but I do remember that guessing at values for variables is sometimes used to solve differential equations because of their complexity.  However, there are two values that should never be used, infinity and zero.  These two numbers have special  mathematical properties that make them unsuitable for this purpose. For example, you may  remember learning that division by zero is impossible. However, there is one special case in which division by zero is possible, zero divided by zero.  The test to determine if  division is correct is multiplication. Zero multiplied  by any other number is zero so zero divided by zero can be any number.

In the real world it might be possible to a zero amount of any commodity, but not an infinite amount. An infinitely thick atmosphere  would also be infinitely massive, i.e. a  super black hole.  In an infinitely thick atmosphere it wouldn't make any difference what the gases were because the gravitational attraction  would be so high that radiation could not escape. 

In fairness to Milne, his research dealt with stellar atmospheres rather than planetary atmospheres.  Milne unsuccessfully attempted to develop a competing theory to Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

Dr. Donald W. Miller, Jr.,  who teaches cardiac surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine argues that  the peer review process  is stifling scientific research in his essay "The Trouble With Government Grants".  Miller says that   those in charge of approving government grants   "abuse the trust and power of government, which does not know science, to advance their own careers and, in some cases, protect their investments in companies that profit from the reigning paradigm."

He states   "When the [federal government] peer review grant system was established in 1946 people assumed that scientific progress occurs in an evolutionary incremental and cumulative fashion."  Both the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation continue to use this process.  This process discourages funding of those who disagree with the ideas held by those who approve grants such as global warming, according to Miller.

Miller favors switching to the approach used by the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which  was established  after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1958. 

. "Eighty project managers, who each handles $10-50 million, are given free reign to foster advanced technologies and systems that create "revolutionary" advantages for the U.S. military. Managers, not subject to peer review or top-down management, provide grants to investigators who they think can challenge existing approaches to fighting wars."

 

Bell Labs was using a similar approach to research at the time. 

It shouldn't be surprising that  those  in the field of biology would believe that scientific theories developed gradually, because biology made the same assumption about the development of biological life.  Those familiar with the history of physics theories realize that science sometimes precedes abruptly with revolutionary changes in ideas.  In the 19th century physicists believed that atoms were the smallest particles of matter and couldn't be further subdivided.  In 1897 J.J. Thomson forced complete replacement of that theory be demonstrating   that atoms were actually composed of smaller charged particles.  He proved the existence of  electrons  and correctly theorized that atoms also had protons and neutrons.  During the next 20 years physicists like Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr produced more revolutionary theories

 It may come as a surprise to conservatives, but University of Ottawa physics Professor Denis G. Rancourt suggests that the real purpose of the global warming myth is to  hide the threat posed by profit driven corporations:  "I argue that by far the most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might; and that the global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth. In my opinion, activists who, using any justification, feed the global warming myth have effectively been co-opted, or at best neutralized."

Certainly "power-driven financiers" can benefit from the trade of carbon credits.    

Trade in stocks and commodities carries a lot of risks because prices go up and down. Stock investments can be adversely affected by panic selling.   Carbon credits potentially offer an opportunity (at least for those who enter the market early) for a continued increase in value, at least  so long as they can maintain the global warming hysteria.  However, a continuation of the current cold trend could potentially wipe out the value of the assets if people decide the whole thing is a fraud.  

The global warming hysteria may also divert attention from real ways humans might change the environment  such as by deforestation, although Rancourt doesn't deal with the particular issue.  For example, Al Gore  claims global warming is causing melting of snows on Mount Kilimanjaro when the real cause is elimination  of the rain forest which provides the moisture that becomes snow.

Rancourt makes an interesting observation on the relative impact of warmer and colder weather:  "In addition, whereas there is evidence of negative consequences to populations from sustained regional cooling (e.g., Europe’s Little Ice Age, 1300-1850 AD) and whereas global ice ages (occurring every 40-100 thousand years or so) clearly have significantly affected human populations, there is no known case of a sustained warming alone having negatively impacted an entire population... As a general rule, all life on Earth does better when it’s hotter: Compare ecological diversity and biotic density (or biomass) at the poles and at the equator."