Today we’ll start with a letter from Money Morning reader Anon:
“First let me say how much I enjoy your money morning commentary. I feel that my thoughts are very much aligned with yours, although you may not agree by the end of this email.
“This is the first time in my life I have ever put my thoughts out there (I’m in my 50′s now) but over the past couple of years I have become so frustrated with government, banks, corporations, big pharmaceutical companies, etc., that I felt the need to put something down on paper.
“I have never been a conspiracy theorist until now, but the more I go into it the more credible it seems on so many levels. You have exposed the banks, the property spruikers and others in your articles and I commend you for it. I feel that this is just the tip of the iceberg and there is a lot more on a much deeper level that we don’t know about.
“I know that your main focus is to help people like myself to create and protect wealth, so I hope you don’t see me as a ranting paranoid nutter going off at a tangent.
“What I’m trying to get across is my absolute frustration about it all and being so powerless. The things you write in your articles are so spot on but I feel helpless against the tide.
“I was watching a program on TV the other night about Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers back in the 70′s. Even though I lived through those times I knew little about it and like everyone else accepted what the mainstream media put out without question. I saw Ellsberg and his followers as hippie, pot smoking traitors, but now I see them as heroes putting the truth out there and questioning these bureaucrats trying to run our lives, just as you do in your articles.
“The most unnerving aspect of it all is that even though Ellsberg eventually got the truth out and everyone agreed with him and were disgusted by the government actions, they chose to ignore it and continued as though nothing had changed. If Nixon hadn’t panicked and instigated the Watergate Affair, he would have remained as president and Ellsberg would still be in jail (he was originally sentenced to 115 years in jail).
“This is what I fear will happen with Wikileaks and to a lesser degree with the banking debacle and other events that you expose in your articles. Well I’ve ‘banged on’ or ranted enough for now so I’ll sign off.
“Hope you don’t think I’m a nutter, but I needed to air some of those grievances. Keep up the good work ‘keeping the bastards honest’. Kind regards…”
It’s funny, isn’t it? How conspiracies about government and corporate corruption are often found to be not quite as whacky as the mainstream would have you believe.
Our “conspiracy theory” two years ago about Australia’s banks being weak and needing bail-outs turned out to be spot on. Even though at the time we were ridiculed, and told that Australia’s banks were the best and safest in the world.
So no, Anon, you aren’t a nutter.
Yesterday we received an email from another reader:
“I sent your articles to a friend of mine who is a bank manager for , and another who is a finance manager for , and they said you sound paranoid and deluded, hah hah… a perfect recommendation for me to keep on reading, and you to keep on writing.”
That’s just as funny. Prior to seeing the email, the bank manager and finance manager wouldn’t have had a clue about the secret loans from the US Federal Reserve.
And even now they’ve read it, because it isn’t anywhere in the mainstream press, they think your editor is “paranoid and deluded”.
Well, here’s an experiment on paranoia, delusion and conspiracy theories. What would you say if I wrote this: The Queensland government and Bureau of Meteorology may have caused the Queensland floods.
Stick with me here… don’t hang up on this email yet…
I know what you’d say. You’d probably say I’m a disgrace. That I’m a lowdown scumbag for trying to pin the floods on government… that I’ve reached an all-time low.
Well, before you think too badly of me, read the article below. It was kindly sent to us by Money Morning reader Christine. It’s from the Sydney Morning Herald, dated 8th August 2010:
“A rain-making method developed by Thai kind Bhumipol Adulyadej is set to aid Queensland in battles with drought after an agreement between the state government and the Thai royal household.
“The Queensland government’s access to the rain-making technology, developed by King Bhumipol over the past 30 years, came a year after the state approached the royal household last year.
“As a result, Queensland is set to be the first major region outside Thailand where the rain-making technology will be put into full effect.”
It took our anonymous Money Morning reader above over twenty years to figure out that some conspiracy theories turn out to be conspiracy fact.
But perhaps after reading these quotes from the Sydney Morning Herald, our claim about the Queensland government’s involvement in the floods may not seem, well, so outlandish at all.
Look, I’m not saying the state government has been fiddling about with nature. I am saying that forty seconds ago you may have called me a scumbag, but now, after reading the Sydney Morning Herald article, perhaps you don’t think I’m a scumbag.
In other words you shouldn’t assume every whacky-sounding theory is the result of a “paranoid and deluded” mind.
And a quick search of the Interweb uncovers more details of Queensland’s rain-making mania…
It turns out the Queenslanders had already been cloud-seeding to try and create rain. A January 2008 Courier Mail article reports:
“Showers have fallen after the first two flights of Queensland’s cloud seeding trial.
“Paul Brady, managing director of MIPD, the company doing the seeding, said yesterday that the project would be a success.
“’We believe it works but the scientific level of proof is different to ours,’ Mr Brady said.”
According to our pals at Wikipedia (we still haven’t donated!):
“Cloud seeding, a form of weather modification, is the attempt to change the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds, by dispersing substances into the air that serve as cloud condensation or ice nuclei, which alter the microphysical processes within the cloud. The usual intent is to increase precipitation (rain or snow), but hail and fog suppression are also widely practiced in airports.”
Back to the Courier Mail…
The article quotes Queensland Sustainability Minister Andrew McNamara who was planning to spend $7.6 million over four years to test cloud-seeding:
“Successful cloud seeding won’t solve southeast Queensland’s water crisis on its own but would be part of an overall package, including recycling, more efficient water use, desalination and new storage facilities…”
Then he said – in a pre-emptive kick in the teeth to the Queenslanders now suffering from the floods:
“This project will focus on the Wivenhoe and Somerset dam catchments.”
The article states, “Seeding would not end droughts but could boost inflows to dams.”
We underlined that last bit.
That would be the same Wivenhoe dam, that thanks to the inflow of rain reached nearly 200% of capacity. It required emergency measures to drain off the massive amounts of water. Drainage that may have increased the flood damage.
Based on these reports and a document from the Victorian Government it seems cloud seeding has been taking place in Queensland since 2007. The four-year trial isn’t due to end until this year.
The report states:
“The Queensland Government is undertaking a four-year cloud-seeding project in South East Queensland which commenced in November 2007.
“The aim of the project is to find out if cloud seeding is a viable way of enhancing the rainfall over South East Queensland’s dam catchments. The intention is to determine whether it is worthwhile investing in cloud seeding in the long term to increase water storage. It is recognised that cloud seeding is not a means for breaking the drought.”
Strangely enough we haven’t heard much from the Queensland Government in recent days about how the cloud-seeding project is going.
But what it comes down to is this. Wouldn’t it be a terrible irony if the science experts who have warned about the terrible impact of manmade global warming in a hundred years, were part responsible for helping nature make a bad flood even worse today?
This is just more proof of what we’ve said all along. Even if – and we’re not convinced – global warming is real, who’s to say the pointy-headed science boffins can do anything about it?
I mean, if their efforts involve trying to manipulate the climate in the opposite direction, who’s to say the results won’t be even worse? That they’ll end up creating more rain and lower temperatures just when nature was moving that way anyway.
The fact is, humankind individually and collectively isn’t smart enough to figure everything out. That’s what markets are for. Individuals interacting, each in their own selfish interest will always create a better result than a committee of individuals deciding on a course of action.
That’s the difference between freedom and central planning. One works, the other doesn’t.
Attempts to manipulate markets, whether it’s financial markets, flea, fruit and veg, or climate markets will always yield the same outcome – unintended and usually bad consequences.
Remember: the science and maths boffins who think they know everything about climate change are the cousins of the science and maths boffins who thought they knew it all about finance.
The market proved that false in 2008 when the global economy crashed… because their failsafe computer models turned out to be as useful as a chocolate teapot. And soon enough the climate scientists who think they can manipulate the climate could get a taste of their own medicine too. And they ain’t gonna like it.
As ‘andrew of qld’ wrote on the Courier Mail comments page almost a year ago, “stop trying to play god with the skys you clowns”.
We couldn’t agree more. But it’s a big wish. The urge to meddle is built in to most humans. And unfortunately, it’s government that gives meddlers the perfect outlet to do their worst.
Cheers,
Kris Sayce
For Money Morning Australia
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Horshack – whether he knows what he’s talking about or not, that the Chinese are trying to destroy the Jewish banking cartel is what we like to hear
@97 you it down pat 100%
the Chinese r worried they getting double-crossed by the White-Man with very forkish Tounge & its become a game of Manouvers
Bring out a 100,000 Shintaros & be done with it ,,i say
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