Braving the Electric Universe hypothesis
Key references Venus
To avoid climate skeptics jumping to unscientific
conclusions and switching off even reading my journey of
discovery and analysis of, and short introduction to, the
Electric Universe hypothesis, I am not only starting from
comfortable Climate Skeptic ground (retelling my story);
I am also forewarned by Leif and others as to what criticisms
I need to address. I am including pictures throughout because
to me their electrical qualities register very visually.
Here's a selection of auroras.
When I did a U-turn from climate alarmist
to climate skeptic, it took me six weeks' hard labour to
be sure that my U-turn was scientifically valid in all the
major climate science issues. I had followed, therefore
had to de-debunk, each of the myriad warmist "debunks"
of common climate skeptic arguments (or warmists' inaccurate
and misleading versions of "skeptics issues")
as seen at Skeptical
Science, etc. After six weeks I never looked back, but
continued to be amazed, horrified and despairing, at the
emotional intransigence and ignorance of warmists, and the
blight they were bringing not just to our economies but
also to the very fabric of Science. Since I took weeks hunting
down evidence, counter-evidence and counter-counter-evidence,
I wrote it all up to save others the chore and make accessible
all the key issues in Climate Science, both scientific and
human / political. Here's my Climate
Skeptics' Science Primer: updated 12/02/11.
Up With That and Climate Audit were my
lifelines for openness, intelligence, imagination, courtesy
- and essential cross-references. And with all that, I could
begin to discern the good science for myself and recognize
WUWT had much good stuff as well as some questionable stuff.
Here I discovered real scientific giants and practitioners
with integrity like John Daly. Yet I would periodically
notice that some contributors who were excellent climate
sceptics appeared to be simply parroting orthodox dogma
in other "fringe sciences". But for a long time
I was busy enough with investigating fringe issues where
even climate skeptics disagree. My lack of higher science
or statistics training made me feel vulnerable if not useless
when experts weighed in to tell me what tosh I was spouting
and I couldn't answer them because I couldn't even understand
their arguments. So I simply learned to avoid difficult
issues that were non-essential to the work of flushing out
the truly harmful bad climate science.
Electric Universe theory was just such an
issue to avoid: loudly dissed by solar expert Leif Svalgaard
and others I respect. Yet I was intrigued by the petulant
nature of the dismissals, juxtaposed with loud not-always-very-scientific-looking
enthusiasm from others, and personal baiting skirmishes
in both directions. But I left well alone and refused to
hold an opinion until I had time to investigate properly.
Then I set to work. I explored Amazon.com
- the US Amazon reviews are an excellent though not foolproof
way to explore current issues and start to discern where
the quality arguments lie. It emerged that at present there
are 2 classic books on the Electric Universe (EU) hypothesis:
Electric Universe, by Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott;
Electric Sky, by Donald E Scott. My first moment of
excitement came when I realized Donald E Scott was a retired
professor of electrical engineering. Retired, therefore
no political careering, much more likely to be trustworthy.
And if Scott himself had done a U-turn, written a well-reviewed
book about EU, and could write, regarding TEU:
then I had to take the EU hypothesis seriously.
I visited Donald Scott's website, and there
I hit gold. There was a lucid account of the whole subject,
written for the intelligent amateur scientist in a series
of pages that I could comfortably read on screen. I enlarged
the print size and used Firefox in full-screen mode. http://www.electric-cosmos.org/indexOLD.htm
Scott got better and better. I started to
recognize the same battles that climate skeptics have with
scientific orthodoxy, the same issues of peer-review corruption
and refusal to publish, the same passion for true science
and true scientific method, the same sorrow over corruption.
Just unfamiliar names. He had answers for the "debunkers"
that were laid on my own doorstep, over time. Here was the
equivalent of Monckton
answering Schmidt, answering Abrahams, or Svensmark
answering Damon and Laut. A sadly familiar pattern that
occurs right across Science. Read here
(short) and then here
(great video) for just such another Cinderella experience.
There was even more. The new science seems
to fit so much astronomical evidence perfectly, like Cinderella's
shoe, opening up a whole new magical world, just as magical,
varied, and satisfying as what the telescope showed Galileo.
Plasma functioning as electrical currents seems to fit all
the evidence from the Sun, interstellar space, galaxies,
all kinds of stars, the lot - and quietly erases all the
need for funny extra new concepts such as Dark Matter, WIMPs
and MACHOs. It answers insoluble problems that orthodoxy
sweeps under the rug; it answers unresolved problems in
Red Shift, neutrino population, and lots more. Coming from
a retired professor of electrical engineering, it all seems
so obvious, so lucid, so simple. Why has astrophysics been
so dogmatic and ignorant regarding (1) the nature of electric
plasma - this is thoroughly lab-tested and well-known to
electricians, and (2) its powerful similarity to dozens
of known phenomena in astronomy? Why have astronomers not
taken Maxwell more seriously? But then, why should climate
skeptics be surprised? We've seen everything.
The most important fact of science to consider
is that magnetic field strength is inversely proportional
to distance, not to the square of distance as are gravity
and light. Don't ask me why, but it is clear that the lack
of the inverse square law will multiply effects hugely at
cosmic distances. Why has this simple feature of electromagnetic
theory not been noticed by astronomers? Guess. It has. But
increasingly, recently, those who notice and consider the
implications get sidelined and join the EU group instead
- if they continue thinking for themselves. The prominent
astronomer Halton Arp was actually banned from using telescopes
There are many EU features that simple perusal
of pictures from the NASA astronomical collection shows
over and over again. One feature is the striking preponderance
of curiously regular, circular craters. Yet gravitational
origin would suggest a preponderance of more irregular,
more elliptical craters. Such circularity has all the hallmarks
of electrical discharges, which choose to strike perpendicularly
AFAICT. Another feature of electrical discharge strikes
is the repetition of circular mini-craters to form a "string
of pearls". Look at this video
Above (1) a picture thought to hint at "Dark
Matter" but why not simply electrical? (2) filaments,
above all the signature of electric currents and electromagnetism
causing the plasma of space to radiate (3) latest findings
regarding our own Solar System - note the "electric
motor" appearance is magnified (4) the "magnetic"
Sun - such incredibly precise mathematics can only be the
imprint of a strong electromagnetic field, nothing gravitational.
Click most pics here to enlarge. Mercury (black/white
pictures) has an amazingly detailed enlargement if you click
the zoom, showing many examples of filaments, circular craters
(effectively 100%), "string-of-pearl" lines of
craters, and other phenomena associated with plasma electrics.
Below (1) Europa (a moon of Saturn) shows
remarkable filament-like surface markings; (2,3) Mercury,
ditto, also crater formation; (4) Mars, various electrically-resonant
formations. Gravity simply fails to explain the sheer length
of radiating filaments on Mercury.
This page gets edited as my initial flux of
enthusiasm gets tempered with more information. I find more
and more evidence that the central hypothesis is correct,
namely that for galactic scales, we have to put electromagnetic
forces as dominant forces, that can outweigh gravity, in
order to explain the physics of the universe. However, I
still have to look at the links to global mythologies and
Velikovsky. My intuition says, there is important material
here, but I wonder if the timeline is far too recent. For
inistance, it appears that humankind has a collective unconscious
(? genetic) memory of dinosaurs called "dragons"
yet the timescale is far longer than Saint George seems
to indicate. Anyway, without fair inspection, I refuse to
either accept or reject.
My animation of the Crab Nebula, starting
with the shortest wavelengths (x-rays - blue)
and progressing through the visible spectrum (green) to
radio frequencies (beyond infrared).
The driving power here obviously looks like an electric
Maybe "experts" will throw the book
at me, and I will not understand them. Yet I know how paradigm-shifters
get crucified, and there are others in the climate skeptics
community who have both the scientific knowledge and the
openness to look at the detailed arguments here, and separate
the good science here from the fanciful floss and bad science
on the one hand, and the unwarranted attacks of "pseudoskeptics"
on the other hand. I think, on balance, that there is some
very important material here; moreover it affects Climate
Science particularly as we consider how little we understand
about sensitive interactions within the solar system that
affect solar cycles and magnetic fields and cosmic ray flux,
all of which affects, or at least strongly correlates with,
climate and weather. And after years of battling with purblind,
obstinate pseudoskeptics in Climate Science, I know the
psychological feel of them. Scott himself includes some
more technical papers and some excellent Monckton-like rebuttals
of astrophysics orthodoxy's "rebuttals".
Curiously, in my reluctance to learn the nitpicking
details of the science I would need to know, if I am to
answer Leif Svalgaard et al, I am watching myself moving
to a position rather closer to that of Geoff Sharp. Yet
I don't ever want to lose the enthusiastic and careful collection
of details that Leif does at his best, plus Leif is a maverick
himself in his own community, who also suffers lack of recognition
of his particular excellence in consequence. What I do plead
for is care to stay with the Socrates-like dialectic of
true Scientific Method: (1) a person proposes a Thesis
(2) a critic answers with an Antithesis that points
out things the Thesis does not answer satisfactorily (3)
everyone is now under pressure to look for Synthesis
- a new Thesis which accounts for all the details of both
Thesis and Antithesis. Never either-or. Always both-and.
Thus the Electric Universe does not disregard the workings
of gravity, it merely shows how they can, in many astronomical
instances, be eclipsed by the powers of electricity, which
can explain phenomena with elegance and simplicity, without
recourse to strange dark matter or any other strange baggage.
All I want to do here is make this tremendous
hypothesis accessible to climate skeptics generally. Donald
Scott's web pages answer that need as fully as anyone could
wish. Scott was a professor in electrical engineering with
plasma physics, and author of textbooks. On retirement from
the University of Massachusetts, he moved to Arizona to
develop his longstanding interest in astronomy.
Presentation to NASA Goddard Space
Lightning-scarred Planet Mars, Part
Part 2 http://www.thunderbolts.info/online_videos_scarred_mars_two.htm
on Venus. I've linked, below, to serious
(1) Venus emits more heat than
she absorbs from the Sun, and must therefore
have a very hot core, which nullifies all proof that
her heat is caused by a runaway GHG effect;
(2) NASA scientists and others have closed
ranks in fudging the data and evidence, claiming
inaccurate readings despite a large number of readings
taken from several probes, and despite the many excellent
visual and radar readings now used to construct a
topographical map of the whole planet.
Read the evidence and make up your own
mind. It took me a while to elicit on the EU forum,
though I was certain the evidence was there, unlike
EU detractors frequently maintain. See:-
(1) Google Books for
"venus radiates more heat than receives"
Scientist 13 November 1980, "Monitor"
Scientist 10 April 1980, "Joking Aside: Fools
Rush In" by John Gribbin
(2) Charles Ginenthal
effectively demolishes the Venus-runaway-warming notion,
esp. from halfway through Part 4 on. See U-tubes:
5 and the
Holden states crucial points, this page gives
important information and clues, IMHO - even though
I may not particularly agree with other pages on this
website. Judge the message, not the messenger.