C2C Commentary: Mother Nature is Gonna Kill Us All!

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My current job as a newspaper carrier requires that I be up at 2:30 AM to be delivering newspapers, which are supposed to be on my subscribers' porches by 6:30...and they are...and my subscribers LOVE me.

It also means that I listen to at least one hour of Coast to Coast AM, which runs from 11 PM to 2 AM, and then the first two hours are repeated on the local radio station. I ususally listen to the hour up until 4 AM and then switch to the local NPR station to catch one hour of BBC news and then one hour of NPR news...by about which time I am done with the routes.

So, now that you know that I am cultured...

Coast to Coast AM is the biggest early-morning talk show in the US. It was started by Art Bell initially as a politics/opinion show, but then morphed into the current science/science-fiction/mystery/supernatural/UFO/occult/etc show that it is now. I tune in for entertainment purposes...and to find out exactly how everyone in the world is going to die today.

Whether it be from a comet strike, a massive solar flare, mad cow disease, bird flu, an alien invasion, our military doing experiments with the ionosphere (HARP), the government's attempts to impose total control over the people, the secret societies, the Illuminati, global warming, the Yellowstone volcano, or The Day After Tomorrow (co-written by Art Bell)...it appears that we are all going to die from some sort of cataclysm, and Coast to Coast is there to warn us and inform us...

The problem I have with C2C is that they are so self-absorbed. They bring us these perils, they put on people who are "experts" who back up the hysteria, and then they sorta pat themselves on the back for keeping people informed to these potential dangers. For example, in the matter of the US ports deal being done by Dubai Ports World, C2C credited itself with breaking the story, and then with stopping the deal. "We won one," C2C host George Noory said to the audience in the aftermath of government moves to kill the deal.

Of course, C2C had little to do with the progress of the deal or the story of DP World and the US ports...but the fact that C2C thinks that it is a prime mover in these sorts of things means that they can then put forward hysterical doom & gloom stories, pat themselves on the back for bring us the warnings, etc, etc...

Recently, George Noory had Linda M. Howe as a guest on the show. She had done a special investigation into global warming, and she came on the show with grim news. The environment is nearing the point of no return, and soon we will be experiencing an environment that has not been experienced since the age of the dinosaurs. The ice sheets of Greenland and the Arctic were going to melt, the sea level was going to rise at least three feet, coastal areas were going to be sunk, the snow atop Mount Kilimanjaro will be gone in nine years, and the people who rely on snowcap for water will become "environmental refugees", and we're all going to die...

Now, I don't totally discount the possibility of mankind being a cause or contributing factor to global warming, simply because mankind has had an increasing inpact on the environment since the Industrial revolution of the 1800s. Over the past 200 years, we have had an increasing ability to mold the environment to support and service our needs.

However, to say that mankind is the only factor, or the main factor in global warming is a stretch. For one thing, even the scientific guests that appear on C2C don't agree on the causes of global warming. One scientist points out that there is a chain of volcanoes under the Arctic Ocean, or in the northern Pacific. These volcanoes heat the area to about 3000 degrees, and spew all kinds of CO2 into the air...CO2 being the primary cause of global warming. Even if you take this particular set of facts out of the equation, there is still the fact that land-based volcanic eruptions spew all sorts of soot and ash into the air, which contributes to the general environment. Another C2C scientist believes that the culprit behind global warming is not CO2, but water vapor...so even the scientists who come on C2C as guests can not agree on the cause of global warming.

The hysteria at C2C also discounts other factors in the global environment. They hype the melting of the ice in Greenland. Art Bell practically ridiculed a caller who pointed out that the Vikings colonized and farmed Greenland...before the mini ice age of 1320 or so to the mid 1400s. This actually happened...they have records of this, yet it was splashed by C2C. So, this means that the conditions we are seeing on Greenland happened before, they are happening now, and they will happen again. C2C points at the breakdown of the North Atlantic conveyor current that keeps Europe's weather moderate during the winter, but they poo-poo the notion that snowfall in other parts of the far north has any effect whatsoever to off-set the melting being seen in Greenland and elsewhere.

Finally, C2C seems to think that the United States is a major contributor to the problem...us with all our cars and industry. They miss several facts, like that the US is continuously trying to green up its industry. A global map produced by NASA a year or so ago showed that North America is one of the lowest producers of atmospheric pollution in the world. The other fact that C2C misses is also indicated by the same map, which shows that southern and eastern Asia produce the most atmospheric pollution. C2C misses the fact that India, with its 600 million people, and China with its roughly 3 billion people are just now going through industrialization, which means that they are busy putting up factories, building roads, and driving cars, and like the US and Britain and the rest of Europe at this point in their development, neither China nor India have much in the way of regulation over the industrialization of their country...which means that they can throw pollution into the air with little concern for their own people, or the general environment.

Note that one of the reasons that the Kyoto Accord was not ratified by the United States was because China and India were not included...meaning that the countries responsible for the most pollution did not have to adopt any restrictions.

Coast to Coast AM is good when it comes to entertainment. But as a source for news, it falls flat.

It also fails when it comes to informing us about possible "threats" because the show then turns around and congratulates itself for bringing the news. Finally, it also fails because differing points are not given serious consideration while the point they want to push is given little criticism.

There are a couple other issues that C2C brings each morning that I want to talk about. They will be easy to spot...just look for "C2C Commentary".

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John B.
Blogger Guy