Maybe Chicken Little Wasn’t Paranoid After All

New York Times ^ | 7/6/08 | ANDREW C. REVKIN

[Soliton]

Fortunately, the odds are good that the next one will fall over one of our oceans, which take up more than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface, or the planet’s still-vast stretches of uninhabited lands. How much in taxpayer dollars should be invested to pinpoint such hazards is one of the toughest risk-management exercises around.

[Soliton]

This is the globalist backup plan if global warming fails like the AIDs scare did. They will want us to allow the UN to raise billions to fund a "manhattan project" to make the earth safe from even small meteors.

This will be the next "greatest threat for all mankind".

Thanks to the NYT for getting the ball rolling.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Earth Destroyed: Women and Minorities Hardest Hit

[TheWasteLand]

This is the next great "crisis" the left will use to justify centralizing power and control? Meteors?

What's next after this one joins the proletariat and the environment in the dustbin of history - the boogeyman?

[tlb]

It amazes and horrifies me how some use Al Gore’s scam as an excuse for knee-jerk opposition to any and all science. As with all things you have to look under the hood before judging. Tunguska was no myth.

>>>This is the next great “crisis” the left will use to justify centralizing power and control?

Speaking of chicken little. How do you propose the wicked international conspiracies of lefties or Bilderbergers or whoever could seize “control” over you through another space project? Did something happen with Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo I missed?

There was a conference in 2004 on this subject. Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart and Cong. Dana Rohrabacher had some interesting comments.

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=2071

[TheWasteLand]

Speaking of chicken little.

I'll ignore the snark in your reply and show you what I'm talking about.

The left has a long track record of using "crises" to justify increased control and centralization.

See Marx, Karl. The crisis was the "inevitable" collapse of capitalism. To avoid catastrophe, power must be centralized in the hands of the proletariat - actually in the hands of bureaucrats who know how to "plan" best. See "The Black Book of Communism" for details.

See Wilson, Woodrow. The crisis was World War I. To avoid catastrophe, power must be centralized in the hands of bureaucrats who know how to "plan" best. See the book "Liberal Fascism" for details on the lengths to which he centralized power and control.

See Roosevelt, Franklin D.. The crisis was the Great Depression. To avoid catastrophe, power must be centralized in the hands of bureaucrats who know how to "plan" best (called the Brain Trust). See the book "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression" for details. Also, read up on the National Recovery Administration if you want a taste of centralization of power and control under FDR.

See Gore, Al. The crisis is "global warming" and the destruction of Earth's biosphere. To avoid catastrophe, power must be centralized in the hands of scientists - actually in the hands of bureaucrats who know how to "plan" best. See Kyoto Accord, Carbon Tax, Carbon Cap and Trade, etc.

Do you understand what I'm talking about now?

[tlb]

>>>Do you understand what I’m talking about now?

Not a bit since nothing you say has any relation to the issue at hand. Dragging Marx in this for heavens sake.

A program by astronomers to catalog the debris of the solar system and chart the orbits has no application I can see to everyday life and politics. None whatsoever. Just a few years ago another one of these asteroids passed between the moon and earth. It was a very near miss and we didn’t see it coming. If we now can find these things it seems sensible we do.

When all is said and done, this is simply one more space project. Many have come before, many will follow. Reasonable people can can debate the general or scientific usefulness of any one of them, but I don’t see totalitarianism to have come or likely to result from any of these.

Beyond that to jump on ANY random science discussion just because a second rate politician named Al ran a scam is absurd. I’ve seen it on other threads, most recently one on volcanoes and geology. I usually let it slide but sometimes the paranoia really has to be answered.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2024140/posts

[TheWasteLand]

Thanks for fixing my paranoia. I bow before your vast altruism and intellect.

So tell me grand poobah, back in the day, how many "reasonable people" thought totalitarianism would result from another NASA program starring one Dr. James E. Hansen?

[Soliton]

How do you propose the wicked international conspiracies of lefties or Bilderbergers or whoever could seize “control” over you through another space project?

Fox is talking about it now.

Dana Rorhabacher's proposal from last month will be siezed upon:

"Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) said in a phone interview on Friday that he supports former Apollo astronaut Russell Schweickart's proposal to assign responsibility for dealing with threatening asteroids to a government agency. Rohrabacher said he will push Congress and the president to "take action on this by the end of the year." Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) said in a phone interview on Friday that he supports former Apollo astronaut Russell Schweickart's proposal to assign responsibility for dealing with threatening asteroids to a government agency. Rohrabacher said he will push Congress and the president to "take action on this by the end of the year."

The U.N. will release a report next year with recommendations:

"The possibility that an asteroid will strike the Earth on Sunday, April 13 2036 has reverberated across the globe, with the world’s citizens wondering what anyone is doing about it with the UN at least two years away from version 1 of an anti asteroid" plan.http://www.itwire.com/content/view/9748/1066/

A global plan requiring sacrifice will be recommended:

"The biggest problem for any treaty as Schweickart sees it is the inherently altruistic nature of anwering the problem - by funding a global plan nations would have to accept individual sacrifices for the good of the whole of planet. Familiarity with the toothless Kyoto Protocol on climate change is instructive on how difficult that can be to achieve. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/17/un_asteroid_treaty/"

The Russians will get on board:

ST. PETERSBURG. June 30 (Interfax) - The asteroid Apophis may hit planet Earth in 2036, Director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Applied Astronomy Institute Andrei Filkenstein told the media on Monday. "Apophis will reach the orbit of geostationary satellites in 2029. It may hit Earth later, as it makes a number of revolutions," he said. "It is highly probable that the asteroid will hit the Earth in 2036 if its trajectory passes through a 1.5-kilometer 'gate'," he said. There is no way to stave off this danger so far, but scientists have suggested a number of worthy ideas, the astronomer said. http://bigblog.com/space_science/asteroid-impacts-on-earth-a-protection-plan-1488314234.html

Non-governmental Groups are already forming complete with professional lobbyists.

Just before the UN releases its report, there will be scare articles, movies, TV specials, all designed to frighten the crud out of people.

Hoolywood stars will hold a telethon

Look up "Sallust's Theorem"

[SunkenCiv]

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[KoRn]

“It may be subtle,” he said, “but failure of the international decision process is the most likely reason that we’ll take a hit in the future.”

I believe this guy overrates the significance of us mortals just a bit...

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Fretting about detection avoids the obvious dilemma: knowing about a problem and solving it are two very different things.

As far as detecting rogue celestial objects, the answer might lie with a single devise, a powerful, wide angle laser. In a way, acting like a spotlight, used to illuminate enemy aircraft at night in WWII.

Right now we know that if you shine a 3.5m wide laser at the Moon, through Earth’s atmosphere, when it hits the moon, it will be over about a 2km area, at 90% strength. We know this because it is done right now at the Apache Point Observatory laser-ranging program in southern New Mexico.

Granted, objects that threaten Earth are much further away, but would become glaringly obvious with even faint illumination. And since most threatening objects come from only a single sector of space, the asteroid belt, it strongly reduces the amount of space we need to search.

But what do we do about it? That may depend on the threat. If it is small enough, we might just blow it into pieces too small to do much harm.

Larger than that, we can use distance to our advantage with deflection, using some technique to deviate its path by a tiny amount that will be multiplied over distance to miss the Earth entirely.

And for the really large threats, we might attach engines to smaller bodies, and put them on a collision course with the threat body.

In any case, this will involve prepositioning drone spacecraft in deep space.

[Soliton]

True. Then we should do it and charge the rest of the world for the protection.

[fella]

Then we should do it and charge the rest of the world for the protection.

A reasonable fee/tax/charge (whatever so long as they send the money) of say a dollar a day per indidivual should pay for this ...... ah ........ 'protection'. Just send the money to The Soprano Family Inc. LLC. in New Jersey U.S.A. (The Postal Service knows where).

That sure is a nice town/city/country you have there, sure would hate to see something 'happen' to it. Ya know what I mean?

[Smokin' Joe]

In any case, this will involve prepositioning drone spacecraft in deep space.

Such would be roundly attacked, with the Socialist nations contending that we were only going to use the incoming masses as weapons of mass destruction (pardon the pun).

I have long maintained that the high ground of space is a strategic asset, and that whomever occupies it would only have to throw rocks.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

I’ve speculated in past that a space shuttle cargo bay full of grapefruit to bowling ball sized hardened ceramic balls, if dumped at once, could leave a lasting impact over an area many square miles across.

Much simpler than a concept like ‘The Rods of God’, and an area weapon instead of a point weapon, once deployed, there would be no possible defense.

Depending on altitude, the space shuttle could be on the far side of the planet when these were deployed, so far out of harms range itself.

[Smokin' Joe]

It sounds reasonable to me, as far as weapons go. Kinetic energy is the major factor in sabot rounds and antimissile weapons today. Who would need a nuke (and all the troubles keeping the device functional) with a 1000+ kg mass coming in hot, much less a cluster of them?

I figured the right spot on the moon could throw rocks all day, and still have time to take out any incoming retaliatory strikes long before they got there.