\n
Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n He knows it because his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon \u2014 a polymath \u2014 was personally involved in proving it.<\/span><\/p>\n Bannon was brought into a major scientific experiment in 1994 as its \u201cActing CEO\u201d to find a way that would avoid the experiment\u2019s earlier finding that within a hundred years (i.e., by approximately 2095) this planet will be virtually uninhabitable unless global warming can and will quickly be reversed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n At that time, on 13 January 1995, Bannon was explaining the problem. He wasn\u2019t saying that the experiment\u2019s prior findings had been that death would result<\/span><\/a>, but instead casually discussed those findings, vaguely suggesting that they might have been mere computer simulations, which they weren\u2019t. The lead-in to him was\u00a0at 2:00 in the video<\/span><\/a>, where Bernd Zabel, Director, Biospheric Operations, speaks: \u201c[This experiment] gives us the power to measure what\u00a0happens, like air pollution, different CO2; we can measure here, instead of waiting\u00a0generations, you can measure that over a six-month period.”<\/span><\/p>\n Bannon\u2019s voice then is heard, explaining:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat a lot of the scientists who are studying global change, and studying the effects of\u00a0greenhouse gases, many of them feel that the Earth\u2019s atmosphere in a hundred years is\u00a0what Biosphere 2\u2019s atmosphere is today <\/i>[which atmosphere the experiment soon confirmed to be impossible for life to continue, no way to avoid this conclusion]. We have <\/i>[in a hundred years] extraordinarily\u00a0high CO2, we have very high nitrous oxide, we have high methane, we have lower\u00a0oxygen<\/i> [which gas is, of course, essential for humans] content, and so the power of this place <\/i>[the hermetically sealed domed-in area] is allowing those scientists who are\u00a0involved in studying global change, and which in the outside world <\/i>[outside <\/i>of their dome] really had to do with\u00a0computer simulation, this actually allows them to study and monitor the impact of\u00a0enhanced CO2, and other greenhouse gases, on humans, plants.\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n What he ultimately found there, in \u201cBiosphere 2,\u201d was that no way exists<\/i> to avoid the conclusion that that assessment he described (planetary death) would be the result of not reversing global warming; so, the entire operation was terminated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s why it was terminated with no announcement of its devastating finding:<\/span><\/p>\n The financier who owned it, Ed Bass,\u00a0was an oil billionaire and one of the Bass Brothers who soon was (along with his brothers, all of them relatives of the oil tycoon Sid Richardson) to be catapulting George W. Bush into the White House as the #1 global-warming denier (something crucially valuable to the oil-and-gas companies \u2014 especially in the U.S. White House).<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ed Bass knew that if he could scientifically establish that global warming would actually not be bad for life on Earth, then\u00a0his hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar gamble on financing this experiment<\/span><\/a>\u00a0would return far more than that in PR income from other oil-and-gas companies.\u00a0Ultimately, he spent $200 million on it<\/span><\/a> before abandoning the experiments. It was a lot of money, even for that billionaire<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Biosphere 2\u2019s calculations from its earlier experimental data had predicted that the plants and animals (including humans) wouldn\u2019t survive without drastic reductions in global-warming gases. Bannon was now the CEO of Biosphere 2, running actually a second and more rigorously controlled round of experiments there, to determine with more certainty what the\u00a0result would actually be of doing nothing about global warming.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The conditions he described in the video were what the financier was hoping that the new controlled experiment would disprove<\/i>. (With the lowered oxygen-content, and the far higher nitrous oxide<\/span><\/a> and the high methane<\/span><\/a>, humans could not exist, and fires would rage uncontrollably in global burning, which would lower the planet\u2019s oxygen-content even more<\/i>.)<\/span><\/p>\n The finding of Biosphere 2 turned out to be the contrary to that hope, which was the hope of all the carbon-fuels industries; and, so, the entire Biosphere operation was terminated and nothing was published from it. (That\u2019s similar to what the sugar-industry did with the \u2018scientific\u2019 research that they had financed, and what the tobacco-industry did, and what the GMO industry did, and what all industries do: they cherry-pick what they submit for \u2018scientific\u2019 publication, and so make \u2018science\u2019 a mere handmaiden to propaganda.)<\/span><\/p>\n The experiment had been introduced to the public as if it were testing human survival in interplanetary travel. Thus, it was called \u201cSpace Biosphere Ventures.\u201d This way, if it failed to obtain the desired result \u2014 which is what happened \u2014 it could simply be described as having been an unsuccessful experiment pertaining to space-travel<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s the way the newsmedia reported, and still discuss, it. Even today,\u00a0wikipedia<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0and even ecological sites<\/span><\/a>, and even scientists<\/span><\/a>, give the oil-and-gas industries\u2019 cover-story about it, as if describing it this way were a historical account of the matter; and as if this type of institutional \u2018science\u2019 (selective publication and non-publication of scientific studies that are financed by interests which have a financial stake in their outcomes) constitutes real science; the myths thus go on \u2014 and so lead us to an \u201cEnd Times\u201d that will actually result from a denial<\/i> of science, a mere aping of science. Corrupt \u2018science\u2019 is no science at all. It\u2019s just a form of PR. It is a variant of religion (manipulated and faith-based mass-beliefs \u2014 mass-propaganda), not of science, at all. Why did even environmental organizations have no curiosity about an oil billionaire\u2019s financing such a costly study of human survival during space-travel<\/i>? They didn\u2019t think to be at all fishy, that cover-story?<\/span><\/p>\n Insiders within the petroleum industry had been concerned since the 1970s that maybe they\u2019d need to stop doing what they were doing, and so Exxon Corporation financed their own research<\/span><\/a>, whose findings in 1979 confirmed those of the existing scientific consensus<\/span><\/a>, at which moment Exxon buried the findings and simply pushed forward with oil-and-gas exploration to find even more carbon to burn into the atmosphere and make even more money for themselves. Exxon publicly contradicted the global-warming consensus, and, like the rest of the carbon-fuels industries, poured millions of dollars into \u2018non-profits\u2019 that denied the existence or human causation of climate-change. But all of those studies, both pro and con, were based only upon theoretical models that were based upon real-world data, and Ed Bass in the 1980s decided to fund the first real-world physical<\/i> micro-model of the Earth\u2019s atmosphere, to find out whether perhaps the situation wasn\u2019t so dire after all \u2014 which favorable empirical finding, of course, would be enormously valuable to all of the carbon-fuels industries to promote.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In the period 1991-1995, Ed Bass spent 200 million dollars on this, which was the first-ever series of increasingly rigorously controlled experiments employing a hermetically sealed miniature \u2014 a miniaturized physical, instead of merely a computerized, model \u2014 of Earth\u2019s biological-and-physical ecosystem. He did it in order to test empirically whether this planet\u2019s ecosystem will improve, decline, or end, if the growth of carbon gases continues on its existing course. Planetary death within a hundred years was found, and therefore the myth continues that these experiments were about space-travel and came to no conclusion; the cover-story prevails, history is suppressed. Myths prevail this way.<\/span><\/p>\n Unlike the earlier Exxon-funded study, the one that Bass funded would not be able simply to be hidden from the public; so, that cover-story was invented in order to make possible hiding its finding if the outcome turned out to be other than what was hoped-for.<\/span><\/p>\n Apparently, the people who had been initially hired to live in this controlled environment did not know what the actual purpose of the experiments was. Bannon was hired by Bass in order to enforce their continued participation according to their five-year contract commitment<\/span><\/a>, once the environment they were living in was just starting to become unlivable. The fired employees claimed that Bass was committed to paying them even if they had been fired for just cause. But, of course, once the employees knew how dangerous their job actually was, they quit; they wouldn\u2019t continue with the existing situation. According to\u00a0USA Today<\/i>, on 15 November 2016<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n The first two-year experiment was besieged with problems. A scientist was injured and had to be evacuated, crops wouldn\u2019t grow, carbon dioxide levels soared, the dome was infested with ants and cockroaches and costs were skyrocketing to about $1 million a month, according to court records and interviews.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Nonetheless, \u201cBannon successfully managed the project until it was transferred to Columbia University in 1996, which operated it as a research site. In 2007, it was sold to the University of Arizona.\u201d Bannon hired new people and also made changes in the experiments, so that there could be no doubt as to what the results would be meaning. Then, without any announced findings, when Bass sold the operation in 1996, that was the end of his effort to overcome (by means of the first and only miniaturized physical model of the Earth\u2019s environment) the existing scientific consensus regarding climate change<\/span><\/a>. He had financed the research, but didn\u2019t want to do yet further damage to his net worth by publishing the results.<\/span><\/p>\n The likelihood is practically nil that President-elect Trump hasn\u2019t been informed about the actual fact by his chief strategist, who played the key role in the final round of these controlled experiments. Bannon clearly described there the atmospheric issues that were being examined, and they all pertained to global \u2018warming\u2019. He was overseeing the ultimate physical-and-biological test about this matter, which is of such crucial interest to oil-and-gas billionaires.<\/span><\/p>\n And all of the additional acquired evidence from the Earth\u2019s own biosphere<\/span><\/a> \u2014 our planet \u2014 has been confirming this<\/span><\/a>, so that our planet has now entered clearly into the end-stage \u201cemergency<\/span><\/a>\u201d from which there can be no exit other than soon a lifeless planet: subsequent events confirming yet further the findings by Biosphere II, by repeating those findings but now on a planetary scale<\/span><\/a>. The Conservative leader of Britain, Theresa May, responded to this by terminating her government\u2019s operation that tracks climate-change<\/span><\/a>: conservatives had held off action against global burning until the process had gotten clearly out-of-control, and now they stop even tracking our accelerating descent into oblivion. On the U.S. Supreme Court the Republicans even terminated President Obama\u2019s only real action against global burning<\/span><\/a>. But the meaningful failures weren\u2019t in the judiciary, but instead in the Executive branch during the entire period after Biosphere 2, including especially the Presidency of George W. Bush (chosen, of course, by the Republican judges), which sealed our planet\u2019s coffin. <\/span><\/p>\n Any optimism, after this sequence of events, has to be of a very limited type; but, within that scope, the coming Trump Presidency can reasonably be discussed, as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n For a realistic hopeful interpretation of the future Trump Presidency, see this<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n For a realistic hopeless interpretation of the future Trump Presidency, see this<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n At the present moment, I myself am on the fence about Trump\u2019s Presidency. The best sense that I can make of the current situation, and my chief worry about it, is actually even shorter-term than global burning. This concern is about how quickly the more-violent stages of the period we have remaining will arrive; and it\u2019s that the Trumpians don\u2019t understand the war between Sunni Islam, led by Saudi Arabia, versus Shiite Islam, led by Iran, and that they therefore don\u2019t recognize that America is on the wrong side of this<\/span><\/a> \u2014 we\u2019re partnered with, and against, the wrong people, in Islam\u2019s global war<\/span><\/a>. Iran isn\u2019t and never was America\u2019s enemy; America, ever since overthrowing Iran\u2019s progressive democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh<\/span><\/a> in 1953 and replacing him with a fascist dictatorship, has been Iran\u2019s enemy. All the aggression in U.S.-Iranian relations has actually been on America\u2019s side (which ended up producing in 1979 \u2014 as \u201cblowback<\/i>\u201d against America\u2019s Dulles-brothers fascism<\/span><\/a> \u2014 the fundamentalist-Shiite takeover of Iran\u2019s government). By contrast, 9\/11 was a Saudi operation<\/span><\/a>. Fundamentalist-Sunni aggression against the U.S. is clear, but it\u2019s unaddressed because the U.S. aristocracy are allied with those Sunni aristocracies. The U.S. under Trump should gradually build toward an official U.S. apology to the Iranian people (but the Sauds and Thanis and Sabahs, and other fundamentalist-Sunni aristocrats, would be outraged against that, because they lead this fascism and rely upon the U.S. aristocracy to protect them and their regimes). <\/span><\/p>\n This U.S.-fascist 1953 coup in Iran was America\u2019s original sin. It still poisons world affairs. Trump\u2019s Presidency will fail if he fails to understand this basic fact of recent history.<\/span><\/p>\n The brilliant pseudonymous journalist and news-commentator \u201cTyler Durden\u201d posted at his \u201cZero Hedge\u201d site on November 19th \u201cWar Breaks Out Between Neo-Cons And Libertarians Over Trump’s Foreign Policy\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and described in a thoroughly unbiased way the Trumpians\u2019 internal conflict. To boil it down: the \u201cNeo-Cons\u201d want to reduce President Trump\u2019s focus against jihadists, and increase the focus against both Iran and Russia. (Congressional Democrats are, like congressional Republicans, overwhelmingly in the \u201cNeo-Con\u201d camp, though they don\u2019t refer to themselves as being \u201cneoconservatives,\u201d nor any other type of \u201cconservatives.\u201d Hillary Clinton<\/span><\/a> herself was strongly neoconservative<\/span><\/a> though she never said so publicly<\/span><\/a>. She also was pro-global-warming<\/span><\/a>, though she never said so publicly<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n Unlike the issue of global burning (euphemistically called \u2018warming\u2019), Trump is probably ignorant of the issue of U.S.-Iranian relations, and of the global war between Sunni and Shiite Islam<\/span><\/a>. He might even be ignorant of the shameful continuation of the anti-Russian Cold War by America after it had ended on the Russian side in 1991<\/span><\/a>. Whether he will act in accord with either understanding (global burning, and\/or our wrong alliances and wars) remains still unclear. But at least in regard to global burning, he almost certainly understands<\/i> the truth: given that his chief strategist is Stephen Bannon, Trump would have to be an idiot not<\/i> to. Whatever he might say or do about global burning, he can reasonably be presumed to know the truth about that matter, irrespective of whether he knows the truth about history during the past century.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org He knows it because his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon \u2014 a polymath \u2014 was personally involved in proving it. Bannon was brought into a major scientific experiment in 1994 as its \u201cActing CEO\u201d to find a way that would avoid the experiment\u2019s earlier finding that within a hundred years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":280414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[115,30,1036,74,96,654,34,1009,6257,49,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-280398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-climate-change","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-global-warming","14":"tag-iran","15":"tag-islamic-state","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-usa-news","18":"tag-warfare","19":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}