Twisting the Global Warming Debate

HS - Jason Hartman Income Property Investing (1)Join Jason Hartman and Robert Zimmerman, space explorer and science journalist, as they explore the issues behind “global warming” and the impact these issues could potentially have on the human race. As Bob explains, science is being corrupted by political and governmental forces “either because they provide the financing or because a lot of people within those communities of government and political activism are trying to use science to twist it for their ends. The climate field has been badly warped by people inside and outside of the science community for political gain.” Bob does point out that public belief in global warming has plummeted significantly in the past few years. That drop coincides with the release of the Climategate information. Skeptics of global warming are called “deniers.” Jason asks the question, if global warming is real, is it even bad? Bob says there is very little trustworthy data as to whether it is bad. Almost all studies that say global warming is bad and we’re going to die are political in nature. He said the real data is in the recorded events in history, which shows that certain things happen as the earth cools and warms. Bottom line, it’s a “Chicken Little” situation, in which everything climate related is called “global warming” and people are beginning to not believe anything the scientific community says, including the real data, and that’s the real tragedy. Visit: www.HolisticSurvival.com

Bob also talks about his optimism in the United States as the engine of innovation. He explains we are no longer a country of tinkerers, but we are a country of services with more open-mindedness, which will promote more innovation. Jason and Bob discuss space exploration and the war going on between private and public space exploration in the U.S. Bob feels that as the move toward privatization of the space projects unfurls, we’re going to see over the next five years multiple companies able to put humans in orbit via the government. He also thinks that within a year, from private companies, we’ll begin to see the first flights of tourist spaceships with people onboard who have paid for the flight. Bob shares information about Templar’s findings of ten earthlike planets that are in what is considered “the habitable zone.” Robert Zimmerman has not only been fortunate to write about some of the most exciting moments in space history, he has also had the great and grand fortune to actually go where no one has gone before. In addition to his other titles, Robert is also the author of Behind the Black. When he was in college (around 1974,) he stayed up late one night to watch the movie Citizen Kane. When the movie was over, he was left breathless with wonder at its clarity of vision. Hungry to see more movies like this, he scanned the television dial and stumbled upon the opening shots of the classic and equally great MGM film, Grand Hotel.

For the next twenty years, he dedicated himself to making movies, hoping to create films as entertaining and as meaningful. Instead, he ended up making a large number of very bad low budget horror films in the New York City area. In later years, he wrote screenplays and helped produce several films. Most of these movies were mindless, mediocre, and completely forgettable. By the mid-nineties, he had had enough, and decided to change careers. During these same years, he was also cultivating other interests, almost all of which had to do with the human instinct for exploration. Robert got a master’s degree, studying early America colonial history because he was curious to learn how the most successful pioneer societies organized themselves. He followed the space program from childhood because he saw it as the future of the human race. And he got involved in cave exploration, because he simply didn’t have the math skills necessary to make it as a NASA astronaut, but still had the desire to explore unknown territory. And from what he could learn, caving was the one physical activity in which it was still possible for ordinary people to go where no one has gone before. Since Robert’s first wild cave trip in 1984, he has explored hundreds of caves in the United States, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Russia, and Ukraine. He has been involved in a number of projects, pushing and surveying virgin cave passages, walking in places previously untouched by human hands. He has even become a cartographer, drawing the maps of the caves he has helped discover and survey.

Once, Robert was even trapped inside a cave for 10 hours because of a flood. Even as he was having all these cool adventures, in 1996, Robert began the slow transition from movie-maker to full time non-fiction science writer. He had decided that — instead of making dismal, violent movies that said nothing positive about human nature — he would focus on telling the exciting stories of scientists, engineers, and astronauts in their never-ending efforts to push the limits of human experience, either as researchers trying to solve the mysteries of nature or as explorers trying to push the unknown.

Today, Robert has no regrets, having written four inspiring histories about the first forty years of space exploration, as well as more than a hundred magazine and newspaper articles about the adventure of science and astronomy. In the next two decades, the human race will begin the actual exploration and settlement of the solar system. He is honored to be able to tell that story, especially because the words he is writing are describing the founding heritage of all future generations — generations who will look back at Earth and see it only as the Old World. Robert Zimmerman can be reached at [email protected].

Narrator: Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family’s insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats, and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you’ll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Justin Hartman.

Jason Hartman: Welcome to the Holistic Survival show. This is your host Jason Hartman where we talk about protecting of people, places, and profits you care about in these uncertain times. We have a great interview for you today and we will be back with that in less than 60 seconds on the Holistic Survival show. And by the way be sure to visit our website at holisticsurvival.com. You can subscribe to our blog which is totally free, has loads of great information, and there’s just a lot of good content for you on the site. So make sure you take advantage of that at holisticsurvival.com. We’ll be right back.

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Jason Hartman: My pleasure to welcome Robert, or Bob Zimmerman, and he is an expert, a space historian, a science journalist, and talks a lot and has addressed a lot of issues relating to the actual science of climate gate and climate change. And his website is behindtheblack.com, I think you’ll find this interview to be quite fascinating, and he comes to us from Tucson, Arizona. Bob how are you?

Robert Zimmerman: Good day. Thank you for having me on.

Jason Hartman: My pleasure. Hey, before we were taping I shared a quote with you that I find to be a fascinating quote and I said it on one of my other shows. And it is this, I think it came out of the dying days of the Soviet Union and the quote is, “Green trees have red roots.” And you know it seems Bob that there’s a lot of junk science out there now a days and I don’t know if science has become. . .if we still even use the scientific method or if it’s just more about politics and consensus, or voting or popular science now a days.

Robert Zimmerman: I sigh Jason, I sigh with distress, because one of the things I write. . .I’ve written books on history of space exploration, it’s where I come from originally. But I’m very much interested above all in the importance of science, and what makes science. . .what made science so successful for the human race for the last 400 plus years, and that is it has always been focused 100% on the search for truth. You have to find out what’s really going on and that requires a certain skepticism and willingness to dismiss theory if the facts don’t fit theory. And a willingness also to not put theory first. Don’t try to force the facts to fit the theory. And the tragedy of much of our science in the last half century is increasingly it’s being corrupted by political and governmental forces. Either because they provide the financing or because a lot of people within those communities of government and political activism are trying to use science to twist it to their end. And this area in particular is demonstrated by the whole climate research field which has been very badly warped and damaged by many political advocates both outside and inside the scientific community that want to use that science for political gain. And it’s a very big tragedy, it is destroying, not only the science itself, but it’s destroying the public’s trust in the science that’s being produced. I’d like to point out that right now public belief in the concept of global warming has plummeted in the past two years. It’s dropping significantly. I had a link on that in Behind the Black. And it almost dates exclusively to when the climate gate emails were first released in 09 and a new batch has been released just in late 2011 and both of those very clearly show the most prominent scientist in the global warming field working together to squelch any opposition to not use data that conflicts with their theories to distort the scientific process to start to peer review scientific process whereby they actually will try to prevent legitimate scientific research from being published because it disagrees with their conclusions. To use the UN process, which is political in itself, this is the inter-governmental panel on climate change, the IPCC, to use that panel and its periodic reports to sell the idea of global warming, and the dangers thereof. And what I find most disturbing about that, Jason, is that use of power fix within science means it’s very difficult to find out what’s really going on in the science and it makes it very difficult for scientists themselves to really find out what’s going on, because their careers become threaten if they don’t tow the party line, that’s what we found.

Jason Hartman: Yeah that’s a good point. I mean scientist in a sciences in general need to be treated like the supreme court where it’s a nonpolitical issue. And science has been so politicized over the last several years that now the truth and objectivity it just goes out the window doesn’t it? I mean especially because a lot of science comes from our universities and universities, yeah I mean it’s hard for anybody to disagree, they have a very left or dent most of them and of course there’s political pressure as you say. Scientists need to be like a jury, they need to not be. . .have outside influences acted upon them, just so they can actually engage in scientific method right?

Robert Zimmerman: Yes and the most disturbing part of this is how many scientists have allowed their own political beliefs to influence them. One of the things that a lot of the global warming activists in the scientific community are doing is they call anyone who expresses skepticism about global warming, any scientist who expresses skepticism about global warming, they call them deniers. Which is taking from a term that was used for those that wanted to deny the holocaust. And so what they’re implying is that those scientists who had expressed skepticism at global warming, those scientists who had expressed skepticism are divorced from reality. They’re not even willing to consider the real fact of global warming. Just like expressing skepticism. And the trouble is that science is skepticism. No good science can take place if people are not allowed to express skepticism, because without skepticism you can’t find out what the truth is. That’s one thing. Second, so one of the ploys used by a lot of global warming activist in the science community now, I’m not talking now about activist so much, it’s scientists who are activists. One of the things is they call people names, deniers. And that’s not of course the true scientific debate. That’s calling someone a name to try and shut them up. And the second thing they do is they appeal to authority. They say well the skeptics haven’t been published in peer review journals, all the global warming data is in peer review journals. Well the climate data emails have clearly demonstrated that one of the reasons a lot of skeptics had trouble getting published is because the global warming activist scientists have colluded together to try to keep skeptics from getting published in peer review journals. Legitimate science is getting squelched from getting published in peer review journals because of politics. And so that’s the second thing they do, they literally act to shut people up. And so the sum totalness is that the science is now distorted and what I think is the greatest tragedy of this Jason, is that let’s assume for a minute that global warming is happening. Now I have certain skepticism about that, but they are all legitimate science that suggests that there’s been warming.

So let’s assume for a sake of argument that it is. And let’s also assume that global warming will do the human race and the earth significant harm. Now I’m actually much more skeptical of that. But for the sake of argument let’s assume that the global warmists are right, and that yes we’re all gonna die from global warming. Well this political activism has actually done our society and global warming activism to tell the most arm of all. Because today nobody believes any global scientists when they say the earth is warming. They have cried wolf too often. They’ve become untrustworthy to the public’s eye. And this is one of the reasons that there’s a conference in South Africa right now, the annual Conference of Climate change People, who are trying to now past legislation, treaties, put together treaties to make us pay billions for climate research as well as restrict our use of carbon fossil fuels, and those treaties are failing, no one wants to sign them. And the reason is no one believes these people any more. So if it’s really happening, and it’s gonna really do us harm by not allowing the truth to be the number one goal, these global activists haven’t done their own cause the most harm. And they’ve done us the most harm because we’ll not be able to deal with the problem if it really does exist.

Jason Hartman: Well that’s a very very selling endpoint, because you know I’ve seen a certain element in the feminist movement for example has tried over the course of years to change the definition of an awful thing, rape. And thereby minimize the impact and the power of it actually happening, by crying wolf and all sorts of little things and more minor offenses. They make the real offense, the real bad ugly thing, they increase people’s tolerance to it I guess I could say, you know it’s chicken little, it’s the sky is falling, I don’t know exactly how to articulate the point here. But that is a very dangerous thing because if you keep yelling fire all day in a crowded theatre, eventually people will say oh this is just a false alarm, it’s not really happening.

Robert Zimmerman: As the building burns down.

Jason Hartman: As the building really does finally burn down, yeah.

Robert Zimmerman: I mean this is exactly what’s going on with climate research right now. The whole field has been very badly harmed. And one of the things that’s harmed it more than anything else is the fact that almost all the scientific organizations and the community itself has not cleaned house after the climate gate emails were released. I’ve read those emails, they’re very clear mallfusions- 00:11:49 and corruption within the science field by these particular scientists. And there have been a number of so called, and I call then so called investigations of these scientists, and in every case they’ve cleared them. And I’ve read those investigations and they are clear white washes. In one case, and this is at Penn State University investigating Michael Mann. Michael Mann is famous for what they call the hockey stick graph. This is a graph that suggested that in the last 2000 plus years the climate was extremely stable, no temperature changes at all until the last 100 years when it only shot up and that produces the hockey stick. Well a lot of scientists have questioned his graphs. He’s refused to deal with those questions. He’s quoted extensively in the climate gate emails in which he shows a willingness to squelch any opposition and a willingness to exclude data that doesn’t fit his theories. It’s shown in those emails. So Penn State had an investigation and they cleared him on it.

And that investigation won, interviewed only one person essentially. They interviewed Michael Mann and they asked Michael Mann, “Did you do anything wrong?” And Michael Mann said, “No, I did nothing wrong”. So the investigation said oh okay. The investigation closed, case cleared, no problem. This is also Penn State University, the president of that university was the main guy behind that investigation of Michael Mann. He was also the same president who was fired recently because he also white washed the investigation into child abuse scandals at Penn State University. There’s an interesting link between the two. Now because the scientific community itself is not clear, it’s not clearing, not cleaning house, and really rejecting the scientists who showed corruption, it is staining their whole field and they don’t seem to be aware of the harm they themselves are doing to themselves by not cleaning house. And this is a terrible problem.

Jason Hartman: Yeah, it’s like any industry. A smart prudent industry would rather be self regulated than government regulated. But if you don’t do it yourself and you don’t clean up the bad apples in your own industry, then you know someone else is gonna have to come in and do it and it’s gonna be a lot more harsh and a lot less pleasant, that’s for sure.

Robert Zimmerman: Well I think what’s gonna happen here Jason, is that it’s not so much that someone else will come in and clean house so much as funding will start to disappear. And I think further elections are gonna continue to bring in people. And I’m not necessarily against it, but it’s gonna brand people who are gonna be much more skeptical about giving large amounts of money to climate research that these scientists have been getting for the last few decades. Now I’m not so sure that’s good or bad, but that’s what’s gonna happen.

Jason Hartman: Right, right, right. And I don’t want to make this whole discussion between us today and the show about the climate issue, but just let’s touch on a couple more points if we can real quickly. The first real thing I think that people. . .you know there’s so many layers to this debate, whether it’s true or not true, you people can argue until the cows come home as the old saying goes, but one question that I’ve always wondered is true or false let’s assume that it’s true. Let’s assume that the temperature is rising. And let’s even assume that it’s because of the activities of human kind. It’s because of our profligate waste and consumption and pollution and all of these reasons, or maybe it’s just the fact that we exhale and we should stop breathing, which I find to be an interesting one just right there alone. But let’s just say it’s true for a minute. The first question I would have is, is it even bad. I mean look there are all sorts of areas around the world where people suffer from famine. That if the earth warmed it seems to me more areas would be arable, there’d be farmable land and more food could be produced and more people could have food and resources. I mean is it even bad if it’s happening.

Robert Zimmerman: You know Jason you’re hitting on a very important point about this. I mentioned earlier that I have some skepticism about what global warming is happening, but there is no doubt we are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And there is solid theoretical data that says more carbon dioxide could produce a greenhouse effect. I’m more skeptical that the theory, because it’s unproven, but it’s nonetheless is legitimate concern. And climate has been warming in the last 150. . .actually longer than that, last 700, 600 years. In fact it’s been warming steadily since the end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago. But there are lots of reasons why that warming could have been occurring and has nothing to do with carbon dioxide. But the second part of the global warming advocacy aspect campaign is that global warming is going to do great harm, and there is very little trustworthy research to prove that. This is something I’ve looked for a lot. Almost all studies that say we’re all gonna die from global warming are political and not very good trustworthy science. What we do have though is actual data of actual events when the earth cools we have famine, we have shorter crop seasons, we have less food, we have serious problems. And we know that because there was something called the little ice age in the 16, 17 hundreds. There was periods of time during that where there were years with no summer. They had crop failures, they had famine. And so you’re 100% right, warming could very well be a benefit to the human race. We don’t know. I’m not arguing that’s the case. We don’t know. We do know though that a cooling process is harmful. So I look at this whole argument and it’s once again, to me it’s a lot of global warming people it’s a chicken little thing, they’re screaming the sky is gonna fall. If it gets warm it’s global warming, if it gets cold it’s global warming. No matter what happens, if it snows it’s global warming. If I have a hangnail it’s global warming. When that happens people begin to not believe anything you say. And that’s the tragedy, it’s destroying people’s trust in science. And we are a technological society that depends on that, and that’s the great tragedy.

Jason Hartman: We certainly are. You know speaking of science for a moment, it really saddens me that there are just not enough people going into the sciences. At least not in America. Maybe in India they are, or in China they are, but in America, we used to be so strong in research and development and sciences. And you know I can only think off the top of my head here of one friend of mine who is a scientist, he’s a microbiologist, and all my friends, myself included are in marketing or some sort of fluffy business like that, that is not really producing anything real. So it’s a self criticism too. But you know when I was a kid I loved the sciences and recently I saw a movie and it was about this complete scam artist on Wall Street who make nothing, move money around and create things that are of no real value in the real world most of the time. And the movie was called margin call. And did you happen to see that movie by any chance?

Robert Zimmerman: No I did not.

Jason Hartman: Okay. Well it was really interesting because this young kid who was like 27 years old in the movie discovered this huge firm and I think it may have been Lehman, I don’t know who they were really showing that firm to be in the movie. But this huge firm was in huge trouble and they were about to fail. He figured it out by accessing the risks and all these derivatives and all this junk stuff. And at 2 in the morning he was called into a meeting with the head of the company, the big wig who flew in and met him and he said, “Hey kid what’s your background”? And you know I can’t remember exactly what he says, but he says he went to MIT and basically he did his thesis on this scientific thing about rockets and propulsion and stuff. And the head of the firm says so basically you’re a rocket scientist, and he says yes. And then the head of the firm says, “What are you doing here on Wall Street?” And he says, “Well the money is so much better”. And you know that’s a sad commentary to me, it really is.

Robert Zimmerman: Well you know Jason I’m a little more hopeful on this respect, because my fundamental foundation of what I believe in is based on the concept of freedom and in the United States we still have that to a great extent. We’re the engine of innovation even to this day. Even with an oppressive society that really wants to regulate everything and we’ve elected government officials in both parties that thing government should solve all problems, which means we are regulating everything in that respect. Even with that oppressive overview of our society you still get innovators like Elon Musk building Iraq in the last 4 years in a capsule privately built and he’s not the only company doing this kind of rocket.

Jason Hartman: Don’t get me wrong though, I’m all for privatization, believe me. It’s just sad that Wall Street will pay you $700 thousand a year to basically be a financial engineer, yet if you go to work for Musk Company or NASA or any other company, you ‘re not gonna make anywhere near that amount of money.

Robert Zimmerman: No, you’re not gonna make as much, but you know I’m still more hopeful a lot of people going into these fields because this is what they want to do. That’s what freedom generates. People do choose to do what they want to do. And you can make good money in doing those fields in a free society and people are doing that. I’m also more hopeful to. . .the one thing that has changed in the United States that I think what you’re keen on is that in the. . .when I was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s and earlier than that this was a manufacturing company made with both a lot of tinkerers and engineer types. And it’s engineering that makes it possible to do a lot of the science that we love. And what has happened as a country is we’re no longer a nation of tinkerers, we’re a service economy. And scientists in a sense are part of that service economy. They depend on the engineers to build their space crafts for them and the rockets for them. And so to that extent I sense that also if the nation has changed, it’s no longer tinkerers. We’re no longer building things like we once did. But freedom does still allow for new people to come along who can do it for us, or join our society and do it for us in our society and that’s to a great extent what is happening. So I’m a little more optimistic about it.

I also think, Jason, that the internet is acting to open up people’s minds and allow for a lot more innovation and flexibility. I like to tell a story about how you saw no new rocket engines being built in the United States for most of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, none. And now in the last 10 years you’ve seen at least two different companies come up with new rocket engines. And I think that’s a reflection of the openness the internet is bringing. People now can get information from infinite number of sources. They do it, it creates an open-mindedness, they no longer have expected wisdoms that they have to follow, they go to the web and find the information for themselves. And that makes them more open minded which means then allows for greater innovation. And I think we’re gonna see that. And I’m hopeful in this respect.

Jason Hartman: Well I hope you’re right and I’m glad that you are more optimistic than I. So I definitely hope that you’re right. Let me take a brief pause and we’ll be back in just a minute.

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Jason Hartman: Let’s get out of this world for a moment and talk about outer space. What is going on there? It’s an exciting time with Richard Branson and Dick Rutan and Elon Musk, and all these different initiatives out there. You know it does seem to concern me that other countries seem to be making so much more of a push than the U.S. right now in terms of their space programs.

Robert Zimmerman: Jason you’ve got a war going on right now between private and public space exploration that’s literally within the United States. For the last 50 years we have actually been copying, this is very ironic, but we’ve been copying the soviet model for building a space program. We won the space race. . .Kennedy put us in the space race to prove that a free people and private enterprise could do it better. And in the 60’s essentially even though NASA came up with the basic concepts and lead the way, the outer space program in the 60’s was essentially built by private enterprise. But, we won the race and we somehow thought oh, a government space program is the way to do it, and that’s the soviet model.

So the last 40 years we tried to use the soviet model with a space program designed and built and run by a government agency. And it essentially has not worked, we haven’t got anywhere. So in the last decade there has been a, especially, and this is a very ironic thing, the Obama administration, which many people would have called him a socialists, but he definitely is a president who believes government should run things, he likes the soviet model. He had decided that the space exploration part of the United States government should no longer follow that, instead it should be private enterprise. This is actually the opposite of what a so called conservative president George Bush did, he picked the government model. He wanted a government build space program. This is great irony.

Jason Hartman: It is ironic, yes I agree.

Robert Zimmerman: Incredibly ironic, but because Obama has proposed this. . .and it was started actually during the Bush administration by the previous NASA administrator, so I don’t want to just say it’s Obama. There are now a plethora of private companies developing rockets and space crafts for putting people into orbit. And we stand on the threshold of having the ability in the United States of having competing companies able to put humans in space at reduced costs. Now the competition is the best part of this. This is the old American idea, because what it does is it reduced costs and it increases innovation because they each want to get the business. And so I think in the next. . .we’re in a difficult transition, because of the space war we don’t have the government system anymore, the shuttles retired. And we don’t have the private systems. So we’re stuck depending on the Russians to get astronauts into space.

But in this difficult transition which we’re moving to their private system and in the next 5 years we’re gonna start to see multiple companies be able to put humans in space and that’ll be really exciting. And we should just hold on. And at the same time and separate from getting humans into orbit for government purposes, I mean this is where the government is the customer, we also have a private space prison industry building, and that’s gonna be another customer for all these private companies. And within a year you’re gonna see I think the first flights of spaceship 2 and Virgin Galactic spaceships suborbital rocket ship, and that’s gonna have tourists on it who paid for the flight. And once that starts happening you start to get profits from space exploration. The profits pay for further investment and development. So it doesn’t cost anyone anything really. It’s the profits who are making it happen. So I’m very hopeful of that. Give it another 5 years, we’re gonna be exploring this whole system absolutely.

Jason Hartman: Well listen I’m a dive in the wall capitalist, so you don’t have to convince me that that’s the better way. The only question I would have is that when the initiative is so large, I mean when I was a kid I was very much interested into the space program and so forth, and I thought for sure by now we would have a man mission to Mars. And when you look at something of that magnitude, and that is an incredible magnitude, can private enterprise really do that. . .

Robert Zimmerman: I’m cutting you off, I’m sorry. You have to have faith in it. It’s why the United States became the wealthiest most powerful nation in the world achieving things that nobody else could ever do.

Jason Hartman: You don’t have to convince me my friend I agree of course.

Robert Zimmerman: You were a free society. You know there’s a story I could tell you about how 18P back in 1961, they launched Telstar, it was the first communication satellite, it was privately built, privately financed, privately launched, they paid for the launch. Totally private funds. And they were ready in 1961 to build a constellation of satellites that would have replaced the transcontinental ocean cables. It would have been much more efficient, they wanted to get rid of the cables because they could have much better capacity from space. It would be much more efficient and much cheaper. And they were willing to do this, and had they been allowed to go ahead and do this they would have had been launching multiple satellites every year, which would have fueled a new rocket industry. And the rocket industry would then have been making profits. It could have gone into investment to lower the cost to get into orbit. The problem is that AT&T was prevented from doing this. Instead Kennedy and congress came up with COMSAT and they decided that satellite communication should be under a government run operation, and it literally choked American development in space for the next decade. It wasn’t until Nixon came up with the open skies policy and allowed American companies once again to launch their own satellites, but we began to get some private enterprise in space.

But in that interim period it squelched the potential industry that could have existed. And I tell you now that if freedom is allowed to function here and capitalism there is no bounds, there is no limit, this all can be done. People want to go to space. There’s customers there that want to go. There have been more than enough surveys that show the tourism industry is robust, that the space tourism industry has lots of customers. They did surveys where they told wealthy people how horrible an experience it could be to go into space on a suborbital flight, and how expensive it’s gonna be. And they found there was a bit potential multi-billion dollar industry of customers still willing to go once you start having those people pay the bucks.

The companies that are building rockets like Elon Musk, they’re not doing it just for profit. They want to go to space, they want to do exploration. Well they can pump the profits back into their company to further the capability. Virgin Galactic does a suborbital flight for its tourists. Well they start to make enough money they can then transition into doing orbital flights for tourists. And then if they make enough money, and they will, they can then make Luna orbital flights for tourism. And if they start to make enough money you can start to actually consider putting in tourism hotels on the moon. It just goes from there. I might sound wide eyed in this, but I have to tell you, but that’s how the United States became a powerful country, we allowed freedom to function and people following their dreams and needs. And I think capitalism will pay those bills. I have no doubt it.

Jason Hartman: Well good stuff. How about this planet that was recently discovered that is the most earth-like planet. 72 degree temperatures, a sun very much like ours. The only problem is it’s 600 million light years away.

Robert Zimmerman: It’s 600 light years away.

Jason Hartman: Oh 600, not 600 million, okay.

Robert Zimmerman: We’re much better off, which would still take millions of years for a regular rocket that we have to day to get there. This was discovered by a telescope called Kepler space telescope which is looking at one particular spot in the sky. It’s a large area in the sky of several moon widths across. In that area Kepler looks has been looking continuously now, and will look for at least another year and a half, probably longer. And it looks at approximately 100 thousand stars. And it measures their brightness continually at great accuracy. And what that does is, if any of those stars fluctuate in brightness at all, Kepler sees it. And even a tiny change it can see. And if a plane, even an earth size planet should cross in front of that star it’s gonna lower the amount of light that Kepler sees from that star. And Kepler can see that difference. So if a planet that orbits a star every 290 days goes in front of the star every 290 days Kepler will see that and it did see that with this star, this particular star. They found a planet orbiting this G type star, much like our sun just slightly dimmer. It orbits it’s star every 290 days. The planet is about 2 ½ times the size of the earth, which makes it a rocky planet, though a very strange one from our perspective. We have no rocky planets [00:33:19] bigger than the earth, but this is one. And it’s basically right in smack dab in the middle of what we call the habitable zone. A planet located that close to that star at that distance from that star is going to have a climate temperature and energy we’ve seen with star, very similar to what the earth receives.
Now, the thing that’s exciting about this discovery to me is not so much this particular planet, it’s that Kepler has right now 48 earth like planets, candidate planets in its observation, they’re not confirmed yet. Of those, 10 earthlike planets are in the habitable zone.

Those 10 planets are gonna be a range of sizes. They haven’t told us what they are yet because they’re only candidates, they’re not yet confirmed. But many of them are gonna probably be almost exactly the same size as the earth in the habitable self. So I think what’s exciting about what Kepler’s doing is that it’s going to in the next 2 years almost certainly find planets orbiting sun-like stars that are earthlike in every way. Now when you have a planet crossing in front of a star, as the sun’s light the star’s light goes past the planet. It goes through its atmosphere. And so astronomers looking at that light can get spectrum of the planet’s atmosphere. We can find out what the atmosphere of these earthlike planets are like. So I think within 5 plus years we have a very good chance of finding a earthlike planet just like ours orbiting a star. Just like ours that has oxygen in its atmosphere, and water in its atmosphere. Well we find those things we’re looking at a planet that not only can we possibly live on, but so can others. And that Jason is one of the reasons why in the announcement I posted on Behind the Black, I was at the press conference, at least digitally, where they made this announcement.

They talked about how SETI, which is looking for extraterrestrial communications, they have decided to focus their searches on the planets that Kepler’s finding, because these have a very good chance of having intelligent life on them. And this is incredibly exciting. In the next decade we could be looking at planets where intelligent life like ours could live.

Jason Hartman: Do you think any of it has visited us before?

Robert Zimmerman: Who knows? I can’t answer the question. You know the universe is a vast and gigantic place. Scientists do wonder about this. Why you would think we would have been able to detect some alien communications from other planets, other stars by now. Because there’s been a. . .the galaxy’s old. If there is an advance civilization out there you’d think it would be doing communications, not to us, but just to each of themselves, they’d have television broadcast, and you’d think we would be able to detect those signals. And we have not detected any such signals. And that’s a mystery to scientists, they don’t understand why. It doesn’t disprove the existence of other alien races, but it isn’t a puzzlement. Personally you know the statistics are on the side of multiple other civilizations. But until we actually find one we don’t know.

Jason Hartman: Last question I got for you before we wrap up is did we break the speed of light just a month or so ago or is that a myth. I mean what’s going on with that latest one. Now that wasn’t a particle accelerator. Maybe you can just explain what happened and what your thoughts are on it?

Robert Zimmerman: Alright, in Geneva they have built in Europe something called the large Hadron Collider. It’s located at CERN. It’s basically a super collider, it’s a giant tunnel in a great circle and they’re using electricity. They accelerate particles down that tunnel. And they accelerate them to collide with each other, to experiment in particle physics. And the reason they built this particle accelerator was to do very detailed physics at the very subatomic particles to look for the god particles, the Higgs boson. I’m not going to get into that at all because that’s kind of obscure. But it’s Einstein, it’s at the very ultimate level of particle physics. But in the process of having these particles collide they produce neutrinos. Neutrinos are a result of a lot of nuclear fusion. The sun produces billions and billions, to quote Carl Sagan, billions and billions of neutrinos every second. They are flying through your body right now, billions of them right now even as I speak. Neutrinos are ghost like. They do not interact very often with any other particles. They go right through the earth. They have very little mass, they’re very energetic.

Well the scientists at CERN decided to do an experiment. Using very sophisticated precise equipment, they decided to see if they could measure the travel time of those neutrinos produced at CERN, how long did it take them to get to detectors in Italy. So Geneva to Italy, it’s not a very long distance, but these are very precise instruments and they can measure down to nanoseconds, very increments of time. And so they did this experiment. And what they found with the initial attempt was that the neutrinos would arrive in Italy about 16 nanoseconds early. In other words at the speed of light they should arrive in x-amount of time. They were arriving at x-minus 16 nanoseconds, which meant they appear to be traveling slightly faster than the speed of light.

Jason Hartman: That is incredible. So the speed of light is 186 thousand miles per second. That means you can go around the earth more than 7 times in a second. That’s just incredible.

Robert Zimmerman: Now the thing about this is Jason it’s very important. Almost all science in the last hundred plus years is based on Einstein’s theories which say that the speed of light is an absolute constant, you cannot go faster than it. So if this was true it’s an incredible discovery. It’s over discovery, it overthrows all science. Now this gets back to climate change. It does really because the physics community did not immediately squelch this result. Oh, no, no that goes against theory we can’t even consider it. It’s garbage and they didn’t throw it out. They allowed the result to be published. And not only did they allow it to be published, the physics became extremely excited by it and started to do a lot of testing. Some results have said the result is garbage, it’s bad research. Others have said no, it might be true. Others have done theoretical work to try to explain it. They’ve responded positively to this the way science should. And I wish that the climate field would respond in the same way when someone comes up with skeptical data like this. It’s actually been very exciting. The data so far is suggesting that it’s probably an error in the instrumentation in the experiment itself. You’re dealing with extremely precise numbers and tiny numbers. It’s very easy to make a mistake. But nonetheless they haven’t just dismissed it, they’re trying to track it down and they haven’t yet succeeded yet.

Jason Hartman: So more to come on that one, that’s really fascinating. Any closing thoughts you have about our future, about space exploration, whatever, and then we’ll wrap up. Of course your website BehindTheBlack.com. Any other thoughts you’d like to share?

Robert Zimmerman: Well I have to say you know I post on Behind the Black almost continuously in scientific discoveries. I’m most interested above all in exploration Jason. I’m a cave explorer, I do cave mapping. I’ve actually had the opportunity to go where no one has ever gone before many times my caves exploring caves. And I don’t consider that any different actually than scientific research. We are always pushing the envelope and trying to learn new things that we didn’t know before. And we have mysteries, the universe is filled with endless mysteries and our curiosity is trying to answer those mysteries. I think engineering building the new rocket is the same thing. You never built it before and you make it work. You’ve gone some place no one’s ever gone before. And that’s where I am as a person and that’s where I like to post them Behind the Black, just those kinds of things. And that’s where I’m going. And I’m very optimistic of the future, I actually think many of our problems in the end we’ll all come out on top. That’s where I come from because humans have a really incredible spirit and we don’t let bad times get us down for very long.

Jason Hartman: They may get us for a while, but ultimately at least as history has shown we always find a way to come through and triumph over them. Well Robert Zimmerman, BehindTheBlack.com, thanks so much for joining us today.

Robert Zimmerman: My pleasure Jason, thank you for having me.

Narrator: Thank you for joining us today for the Holistic Survival show. Protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our creating wealth show, which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunity in today’s economy. Learn more at www.jasonhartman.com, or search Jason Hartman on iTunes. This show is produced by the Hartman media company offering very general guidelines and information. Opinions of guests are their own and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice please consult an appropriate professional. Information deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. (Image: Flickr | mirjoran)

Transcribed by Ralph


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