Manhattan Project

Manhattan Project-sized effort is needed to create artificial Arctic ice ‘to prevent climate catastrophe’

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Polar bears are struggling because they use sea ice to hunt seals and other prey

Wind turbines could be used to create more sea ice in the Arctic in a massive geoengineering scheme on the scale of the Manhattan Project, scientists have said.

The increasing loss of ice, which reflects much of the heat from the sun, and the release of currently frozen stores of potent greenhouse gas methane threaten to create runaway global warming that would affect the entire planet.

Experts believe the Arctic could be essentially free of sea ice for the first time in about 100,000 years within the next few decades. The famously impassable North West Passage is already open to shipping and fossil fuel companies are considering drilling in the region.

A team of scientists from Arizona State University has now suggested trying to counteract the loss of sea caused by rising temperatures in the Arctic, which has seen increases well above the global average. In Svalbard, winter temperatures have been up to 11C higher than the late 20th century.

They said this could be done by using wind power to pump water from below the existing sea ice to the surface, where it would freeze more readily.

It would, however, be a massive undertaking on the scale of the Manhattan Project, which saw the US develop the first nuclear bomb.

Climate scientist Dr Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute in California, has warned that the rapid warming of the Arctic is “unprecedented” and could have a “catastrophic” effect on the climate of much of the world.

The jet stream, the usually steady flow of air circling the globe near the Arctic, has already changed, developing large loops which carry warm air towards the North Pole and freezing air south.

Arctic and Antarctic sea ice reaches record lows

The researchers estimated covering more than 10 per cent of the Arctic with the wind-powered pumps would cost about $500bn (£404bn) over 10 years.

However, writing in Earth’s Future, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, they said doing this “could more than reverse current trends of ice loss in the Arctic”.

They warned that even if humans stopped producing carbon dioxide emissions it would still be “too late to prevent loss of summer sea ice in the 2030s”.

 “Restoring Arctic sea ice thus probably requires a local solution tailored to that part of the climate system,” the scientists wrote.

“Happily, though, any prevention of Arctic sea ice loss has the advantage of arresting the most powerful feedback in the climate system and making global climate change easier to deal with.”

The pumps could also potentially be used to increase the amount of sea ice cover to beyond historic levels.

“Could this approach be used to help the Arctic cool the Earth more effectively than it did in the 1980s and before?” the researchers wondered.

Fresh snow reflects up to 90 per cent of sunlight, while sea ice reflects up to 70 per cent. Open water, however, absorbs about 94 per cent of the energy from the sun.

“[The] loss of sea ice represents one of the most severe positive feedbacks in the climate system, as sunlight that would otherwise be reflected by sea ice is absorbed by open ocean,” the researchers wrote.

“We propose that winter ice thickening by wind-powered pumps be considered and assessed as part of a multi-pronged strategy for restoring sea ice.

“Deployment over only 10 per cent of the Arctic… would require consumption of only about 13 per cent of the US steel production, and roughly five per cent of worldwide container ship capacity.

“These are expensive propositions, but within the means of governments to carry out on a scale comparable to the Manhattan Project.”

Other suggestions for geoengineering to reduce the effects of climate change include creating clouds by pumping seawater into the air, reflecting light from the sun in space, planting massive forests to absorb carbon dioxide and adding fertiliser to the sea in select areas to increase the numbers of organisms that absorb carbon dioxide.

Such projects have been criticised in the past for tinkering with the planet, but the researchers argued it was time to accept humans were already altering the climate artificially and needed to do something about it.

The researchers said: “The term ‘geoengineering’ is used pejoratively by those who feel it is morally irresponsible to try to alter the climate system in an attempt to prevent ecological disasters, mass extinctions, and human misery brought on by displacement, famine and war.

“It is argued that: our knowledge of the climate system is imperfect; that lessening the effects of climate change in one area (eg temperature increases) does not fix the problem in other areas (eg precipitation patterns, ocean acidification); that the only solution to all of these problems is a rapid reduction in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions; that actively working to improve the climate presents a moral hazard, as producers of carbon dioxide emissions will feel less pressure to work toward a solution; and that assuming an active role in the climate commits us morally and practically to a permanent role in the climate.

“All of these arguments are valid, and perhaps stewardship of the Earth’s climate is not a responsibility to be desired; but again, the alternative is to continue altering the climate without any purpose or plan.

“We prefer the term ‘geodesign’ in recognition of the fact that the climate is a highly integrated system that may be impossible to ‘fix’ simply through application of a technology, yet which might be improved by viewing the climate as a planetary system, accepting the role of humans in the climate, and designing a new role for humans in the climate.”

Harvard Study Finds Fluoride Lowers IQ .

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Fluoride is added to 70 percent of U.S. public drinking water supplies to aid in the prevention of cavities.

This benefit is dubious at best, as there is practically no difference in tooth decay rates between fluoridated and non-fluoridated countries, and no difference between states that fluoridate a high versus low percentage of their water.

Yet, while fluoride in drinking water does NOT decrease rates of tooth decay, numerous studies show that this chemical has a wide array of devastating health effects – one of them being lowered IQ.

Yet Another Study Links Fluoride to Lower IQ Levels

A review of brain studies involving the use of fluoride has concluded that one of the adverse effects of fluoride exposure on children is damage to their neurological development.1 According to the Harvard researchers, children who lived in high-fluoride areas had “significantly lower IQ than those in low fluoride areas,” with the authors noting:

“The results support the possibility of an adverse effect of high fluoride exposure on children’s neurodevelopment.“

This just adds to the growing number of animal and human studies demonstrating the damage fluoride inflicts on your brain, including your pineal gland. The results of one study looking at children’s intelligence in two towns – one with fluoridated water and one without – were particularly revealing, with about 28 percent of the children in the low-fluoride area scoring as “bright, normal or higher intelligence” compared to only 8 percent in the high-fluoride area.2

Further, 15 percent of children in the high-fluoride city had signs of mental retardation, compared with only 6 percent in the low-fluoride city. And the study even accounted for other potential variables, such as lead exposure, iodine deficiency or a history of brain disease or head injury. There have been over 23 human studies and 100 animal studies linking fluoride to brain damage. This includes such effects as:3

Reduction in nicotinic acetylcholine receptors Reduction in lipid content Impaired antioxidant defense systems
Damage to the hippocampus Damage to the Purkinje cells Increased uptake of aluminum
Formation of beta-amyloid plaques (the classic brain abnormality in Alzheimer’s disease) Exacerbation of lesions induced by iodine deficiency Accumulation of fluoride in the pineal gland

 

Some of these effects have been observed even at low levels of exposure, such as 1 part per million (ppm) of fluoride in water. This is below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ‘safe’ drinking water level for fluoride, which is 4 ppm, and right around the levels used in water fluoridation programs, which may range from 0.7-1.2 ppm.

Did you know that the United States is one of only eight countries in the entire developed world that fluoridates more than 50 percent of its water supply? Even China does NOT allow water fluoridation because it’s too toxic and causes damage, according to their studies. Instead, the waste product from their phosphate fertilizer industry is shipped to the United States, where we add it to our water supply!

This is a very important point: the fluoride added to your water is NOT even pharmaceutical grade.

It’s a toxic industrial waste product, which is also contaminated with lead, arsenic, radionucleotides, aluminum and other industrial contaminants. The story gets even more convoluted, as now declassified files of the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Energy Commission show that the original motivation for promoting fluoride and water fluoridation in the United States was to protect the bomb-, aluminum-, and other fluoride-polluting industries from liability. In the early days some of the sodium fluoride used to fluoridate water supplies in the U.S. came from Alcoa.

A couple of years later, they switched to the even more hazardous waste product hydrofluorosilicic acid from the phosphate fertilizer industry.

While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially claims that “For more than 65 years, water fluoridation has undergone extensive scientific studies and reviews to assess its public health benefits and risks. For many years, panels of experts from different health and scientific fields have provided strong evidence that water fluoridation is safe and effective,”4 this claim appears to have the flimsiest of foundations.

According to a 2006 report from the National Research Council,5 extensive amounts of research are inconclusive, or still missing and need to be conducted to evaluate the whole-body impact of fluoride …

Not only that, but their scientific review also identified research suggesting a variety of harmful effects, from skeletal fluorosis, bone fractures, and, potentially, even cancer. With that in mind, how can the CDC claim that “extensive research” has concluded water fluoridation is safe for ALL community residents, without differentiation between infants and adults, the sick or the healthy?

How can the CDC possibly claim, as they often do, that water fluoridation is one of the top public health achievements of the last century? Fluoride is a toxic agent that is biologically active in the human body where it accumulates in sensitive tissues over time, wreaks havoc with enzymes and produces a number of serious adverse health effects—including neurological and endocrine dysfunctions. So why is it still being added to so much of the U.S. water supply?

Healthy Food – Not Fluoride – Essential for Healthy Teeth

Fluoride’s predominant action is on the surface of your tooth (although even this is now questionable) and not from inside the body – so the idea that many Americans are still being forced to swallow it for their teeth defies all common reason. Good oral health and strong, healthy teeth are NOT the result of drinking fluoridated water and brushing your teeth with fluoridated toothpaste. Rather it’s virtually all about your diet.

Dr. Weston A. Price, who was one of the major nutritional pioneers of all time, completed some of the most extensive research on this topic back in the early 1900s and documented his findings in his classic book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. He found native tribes who were eating their traditional diet had nearly perfect teeth, and were almost 100 percent free of tooth decay — and they did not have toothbrushes, floss, toothpaste, or root canals and fillings.

But when these tribal populations were introduced to sugar and white flour, guess what happened … their health, and their perfect teeth, rapidly deteriorated, just like the kids in El Salvador. By avoiding sugars and processed foods, you prevent the proliferation of the bacteria that cause decay in the first place.

Most people whose diet includes very little sugar and few processed foods have very low rates of tooth decay. So the simple act of limiting, or eliminating sugar, and avoiding processed foods — along with regular cleanings with your natural mercury-free dentist — will ensure that your teeth and gums stay healthy and cavity-free naturally.

Infants and Children Among Those Most at Risk

Breast milk contains very little, almost no, fluoride, and this is by design. Remember, fluoride is a neurodevelopmental toxin that can damage a baby’s brain. As Dr. Paul Connett, co-author of the book, The Case Against Fluoride, explained:

“In the view of many critics of fluoridation, including Arvid Carlsson, Nobel laureate in medicine/physiology, it is reckless to expose infants to levels of fluoride orders of magnitude higher than that found in breast milk.

In the U.S., infants who are fed formula reconstituted with fluoridated tap water receive the highest levels of fluoride (per kilogram bodyweight) in the human population. Specifically, infants who are fed formula made with fluoridated water at the current level of 1 part-per-million (1 ppm = 1 mg/liter) fluoride will receive a dose up to 250 times more than the breastfed infant.

Even with the proposal by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to lower fluoride to 0.7 ppm in fluoridation schemes, bottle-fed infants will still receive up to 175 times more fluoride than the breastfed infant.

… Even though health agencies in the U.S. and other fluoridating countries have recognized that children are being grossly over-exposed to fluoride (41 percent of American children aged 12-15 now have some form of dental fluorosis), they are unwilling to concede that fluoride may be impacting the brain. Their approach has been either to ignore these studies completely or to challenge the relevance and the methodology of the fluoride-brain studies. They have thus far failed to conduct any IQ studies of their own.”

Source: Dr. Mercola