John Peterson spoke at the Global Trends Conference in Illinois on August 20-21, 1998. You can
download the transcript here.
Peterson, who admits that he is often asked to speak at engagements because of his entertaining, "out of the box" approach, broaches several bold topics in his Dinner Speech:
1) Zero Point Energy
2) Cold Fusion
3) Y2K Doom & Gloom
4) Global Cataclysm by Ice Melt
Zero Point Energy
"
There were about five different major areas with about 20 different people who were doing research work that literally makes it a possibility that within five years it will be quite clear that you can take energy out of the air. That fossil fuels will be obsolete. It's called zero-point energy."
1998 was 7 years ago. Where's our Zero Point –free energy?
Most likely, what Peterson was referring to wasn't some "20 people" at all. Why 20? why not 19 or 23? In fact, there was really only
one person that made the science news in 1997 regarding Zero Point Energy: Harold Puthoff. The same Harold Puthoff that teamed up with Russell Targ and "validated" Uri Geller's claims. The same claims that Johnny Carson effectively
invalidated on his show by simply not allowing Geller to use his own props.
Puthoff was featured in a
Scientific American article (Yam, 1997) in which it was stated, "
Puthoff's institute, which he likens to a mini Bureau of Standards, has examined about 10 devices over the past 10 years and found nothing workable." The article concludes with, "
In sizing up zero-point-energy schemes, it may be best to keep in mind the old caveat emptor: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
Steven Weinberg, a Nobel prize-winning physicist, pointed out the weak nature of Zero Point Energy in a PBS documentary,
Scientific American Frontiers. "
No doubt there is such a thing as zero point energy and it turns out to be incredibly small. We measure it because energy produces gravity -- that's what general relativity teaches us, that all energy can serve as a source of gravitation and if there was a lot of energy in empty space, there's a lot of empty space in the universe, and it would create very strong gravitational fields which would completely change the way the universe is evolved. And we would know that. And based on that sort of argument, you could say that in a volume of space the size of the earth, the amount of energy is less than maybe a gallon of gasoline."
Back to Peterson's speech: he states "
[a]nd now quantum mechanics tells us that it's not true that a vacuum wherever we are, space all over, in outer space and here, is full of huge amounts of energy.
So do we believe Peterson or Weinberg. Hmm... Weinberg is a Nobel prize-winning physicist and Peterson says, "
I won't bore you all with the details because I don't even understand the details about quantum flux and all kinds of stuff..." But Peterson maintains that they are "close to doing it" and that
they (he doesn't specify) have "done it in small scale on the test bench." I guess
they were too busy with their test benches to slid over to their PCs and type up a paper for peer review.
So Peterson moves on to
Cold Fusion: "
It's [ZPE]
real close to this whole area of cold fusion, you know that discredited thing from awhile back. Well, it turns out that there are about 150 laboratories that have replicated the cold fusion experiments; places like the Naval Research Laboratory and so on.
He's got that right, ZPE is "real close to Cold Fusion." 150 laboratories? Maybe in a 150 garages and basements of guys with GEDs because they were "too smart for High School." It wasn't too long after Pons and Fleischmann first announced their claim of cold fusion that it was thoroughly discredited by the scientific community because of poor methodology for the most part and out-right fraud as a secondary factor. The Pons & Fleischmann story is, however, a good read (Park, 2000) in understanding what pseudoscience is capable of.
Peterson's belief that cold fusion was still a viable concept 7 years ago is testament to his sensationalist attitude and desire to astound or entertain rather than the need to be accurate or objective. Park, in 2000, stated (p. 97) "
Cold fusion [...] is dead, but the corpse won't stop twitching. Inept scientists who had rushed to report confirmation, greedy university administrators who had tarnished the reputations of their institutions, gullible politicians who had wasted the taxpayers' dollars, and careless journalists who had accepted every press release at face value: all had an interest in pretending the issue had not been settled."
But Peterson will conclude on cold fusion by saying, "
Right now they don't know the theory and they don't know why it works" leaving us, again, to wonder what he really
does know. But he covers his bases with the statement, "
that people who are going to fight it the most are going to be the power companies, because they have all this sunken cost in this infrastructure," so if anyone points out that these energy developments haven't materialized, he can blame the establishment for covering up or suppressing the knowledge.
I have to agree with his assessment of information infrastructure becoming more satellite-based and globally accessible changing the way governments can control information. We've already started seeing some of the
http://www.dfme.org/archives/000241.html ]implications of this in Iran.[/url]
Y2K Doom & Gloom
"
Y2K is the first of a series of a class of potential big surprises that this planet has never seen before, that they are, number one, global; number two, intrinsically out of control, and number three, they could really hurt you." Peterson clearly overestimated the Y2K issue, as did many in government or the private sector. But the hysteria that surrounded Y2K was brought on by the very "experts" that Peterson claims to be and piggy-backed by everyone who, rightfully, took them to be authoritative. Peterson says, "
the possibility, the very real possibility, exists that you could have large-scale electrical failure, electrical power plant failures, that the transportation systems won't work. The CIA says it's 60 countries, 60 countries are going to economically fail because of Y2K." At least he says "possibility," but the message is clear: Doom & Gloom.
I'm sure VRob and others will defend such a prophecy by offering a sort of "Pascal's Wager" that it would be better to expect the worse and get what we got, which was nothing. Perhaps that's the right attitude. But I think Peterson is just another example of a sensationalist working the crowd.
"
And Y2K is an example of an event that government will not, cannot control. There is no way that you get success. I mean, they've got their own problems. The IRS is going to fail over this thing, I mean literally. [...]this is a big deal. And government has got their own kind of problem and they are not going to ever be able to control this.... More anti-government diatribe that points to Peterson's attitude of an 'overall conspiracy of the government,' much the same sentiment echoed in Fitts' work. Fitts is also the nutter that went on and on
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0405/S00066.htm ]implying how the U.S. government or aliens were the likeliest suspects in the 9/11 attack on the WTC.[/url] She's critical of
those that profit from 9/11, but by simply typing "9/11" and "fitts" into a google search bar demonstrates that she is apparently making a good living in the wake of the tragedy.
Global Cataclysm by Ice Melt
Peterson goes on: "
You've got the ice cap potentially melting and sliding into the ocean. This is a real thing that scientists have decided that the Antarctic, a big chunk of ice in the Antarctic that's what 16 miles deep or whatever... [...] If the ice cap fell, the oceans would almost instantaneously rise 150 feet and you'd have these big tsunamis, like a big bathtub in the Pacific Ocean, these big waves running back and forth. I mean, it's stuff that is wild. You've seen some of this stuff in movies."
Oppenheimer cites in
Nature (1998) that the mean rise in global sea level, should the ice sheet collapse, would be 5-6 meters. Certainly enough to cause wide-scale flooding, but not nearly the nearly 50 meters that Peterson is citing. The fastest rate that Oppenheimer gives in three possibilities is 50 to 200 year sharp discharge of a process that will take 250 to 400 years overall. Based on data current to 1998, he suggested that the likeliest rate of WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Sheet) contribution to the net global sea-level rise to be 0-19 cm / century over the course of 500 to 700 years. The glaciers of the WAIS are situated in such a manner as to provide relative stability and, even if they were to "detach" they're floating or pinned by underlying bedrock. Wave action in the immediate region would be interesting, but hardly any chance of "back and forth" tsunamis in the Pacific as Peterson suggests.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes, "
[o]ur ignorance of the specific circumstances under which West Antarctica might collapse limits the ability to quantify the risk of such an event occurring, either in total or in part, in the next 100 to 1,000 years. It must also be said that "collapse" in this context refers to a
system collapse by which the WAIS is a system of ablation and accumulation. Not a 'sudden
collapse of a massive chunk of ice that crashes into the ocean.' Most of it is floating or resting on bedrock. A portion of the shelf detaching from the rest of it's glacier wouldn't displace a lot of water. If I'm wrong, please correct me.
All in all, some of Peterson's claims at this speech in 1998 are factual, some are based on loose interpretations of actual events, and some are simply hyperbole and sensationalist entertainment.
So I ask, what is the significance of Fitts' meeting with Peterson in the overall attempt to provide legitimacy and status to the "aliens are among us" theme that she so desperately clings to? And why is she so desperate to get this message out?
Either she is:
1) completely genuine: genuine in her claims and the information she them on is too
2) genuinely deceived: genuine in her claims but the information she bases them on is fallacious, fictitious or deceptive
3) delusional
4) lying
The evidence doesn't bear out the first possibility.
Are there additional possibilities?
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References:
Alda, Alan (2000).
Scientific American Frontiers: "Beyond Science?" Episode 802
Houghton, J. T. et al (1996). Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, pp. 359–405, Cambridge University Press
Park, Robert L. (2000).
Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud Oxford University Press
Yam, Philip (1997).
Exploiting Zero Point Energy Scientific American December 1997, pp. 82-85.
