Well, I never...!

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Maybe Al Gore can invent a UFO and save the planet....
or sell us carbon credits through the carbon credit company he owns...

... and maybe RobertD can answer some questions in the moon hoax thread with some actual evidence....
c'est possible?
no?

It makes sese acutaly, UFO's create crop circles, which leads to more populaity of agricultural areas, which leads to more crop production, which leads to more production of ethanol, which of course helps fight Global Warming!
(just in case you couldn't tell that was a joke )

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"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit."
Stephen Hawking

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein

Already discussed on this thread; and on the Bad Astronomer's blog.
Hellyer was the Canadian Defense minister, and was never personally privy to any inside information on UFOs at all (yet still believes that the USA is covering them up).

He shares the same idea as Stephen Greer of the Disclosure project, that the governments of the world (but obviously not Canada) have secretly retroengineered the technology from all the crashed UFOs and can solve the world's energy problems at a stroke (if they could only be bothered).

But it seems the secret cabal who have UFO technology stashed away simply don't feel like it. A particularly asinine delusion, in my opinion.

Actually, if Greer and Hellyer got their wish, and we were able to tap into easy energy such as ZPE or whatever, we would probably start producing so much waste heat that the Earth would start to suffer heat pollution, never mind the greenhouse effect.

This can be used as an argument against easy energy, actually; if there really are advanced civilisations in the sky (and personally, I am sure that there are) and they have access to ZPE or free energy from some other source, they would be likely to want to use that energy at every opportunity.
With free energy, every chunk of ice in the Oort cloud could be made into a warm, sunny water-planet full of life, surrounded by artificial ZPE-powered suns. Planets could be thrown around and assembled into massive structures with huge living areas, glowing with energy use.

In such a scenario, the stars themselves are less bright than the civilisations which no longer need them; a galaxy with such a high-energy-use profile would glow brighter than a lifeless one.
We don't see such anomalously bright galaxies, so civilisations which use ZPE probably don't exist.

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New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

ROFL.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Still, nothing like politicians praying to UFOs to get humanity out of the messes they get us into.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Deus Ex Machina

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Anyone else ever notice that all the careers of these political types crying for "UFO Disclosure" are always in the past-tense? He worked for the government, hmm any thoughts on why he is not still gainfully employed by them? And why this past-tesne politian theme is very consistant among these UFO'ers?

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

That's not a very convincing counterargument, I have to say. He could have kept his mouth shut at the time because he was afraid of being fired, or otherwise persecuted.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Seems like "getting fired" would be a small price to pay, in exchange for revealing the truth about both the existence of UFOs and the solution to apocalyptic anthropogenic global warming.

Regarding "otherwise persecuted", if he's not afraid of such persecution now, why would he have been afraid of such persecution then? And again, what manner of persecution could have been so scary that he wouldn't risk it, to reveal the truth about matters of such importance to all present and future humanity? And if it was so scary back then when he was in power, why isn't it so scary now that he's out of power?

Yours is not a very convincing counter-counter-argument, I must say. He could have kept his mouth shut at the time because he was already in a position of power and public esteem, and is only opening his mouth now in order to regain such a position, and that the claims he makes are not actually grounded in reality but rather political expedience.

He won't lose his job now + He's old -- he cares less. + Global warming has gained more visibility in the media. It would be more risky to persecute him now.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

That would only make sense if he knew that his "story" was nonsense...

However, if it wasn't nonsense, by revealing it he would instantly become the most famous and important person in the WORLD.

Getting fired would then become meaninglessly trivial by comparison.

So why would he be afraid of being fired??

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

It might make him famous, if he had a way of proving his story before being eliminated or otherwise coerced into silence. But he could have known about the existence of UFOs and not have been able to provide evidence.

And maybe he never had any desire to "blow the whistle" in the past (thought it was perfectly legitimate for the government to keep the UFOs secret), but has since changed his mind.

Hypothetically, of course.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

And aren't Canadian Ministers publically-elected officials? Who would fire him? The voting public, to whom he had just revealed the most important information of all time? And which of his fellow Cabinet members would dare propose to remove him from his Ministerial position, after he made such a revelation? It would be political suicide for them.

Indeed, if his story was truly credible and verifiable, why didn't he immediately form a political faction of his own, and attain the Prime Ministry on the wave of public approval that was sure to follow?

Or why didn't he step down from Canadian politics altogether, and seek the Secretary-Generalship of the United Nations?

The Prime-Minister.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

It wasn't really meant to be a convincing counter-argument, just an ammusing observation.

Anyway I think the corrolation between being EX employees and deciding to "now speak out" has less to do with "I was afraid of losing my job" and more to do with "I got use to the spotlight and now that it's gone, I want it back". But who am I to speak about the motivations of people I've never even met *shrugs*

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

Sorry.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

The most convincing counter-argument is that he knows nothing. He is not coming forward with new information which he learned when he was defence minister; instead he is saying exactly the same thing as all the other UFO proponents- that there are secrets being kept from the public (and from Canadian Defence Ministers) and it was time that the public (and Canadian Defence Ministers) were told what they were.

If he knows anything now is the time to tell it; but he has told nothing new.

In the UK we had a very similar case; Admiral Hill-Norton became convinced of the reality of UFO's and the existence of a cover-up; as an Admiral of the Fleet, former Chief of the Defence Staff of the United Kingdom and former Chairman of the NATO Military Committee he was not important enough to be actually entrusted with any UFO secrets himself, but he spent his retirement petitioning the UK Government to release these imaginary secrets he had never been told.

Some people do get a bit eccentric in retirement, it seems.

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New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

An eccentric UK citizen. Now that's really hard to believe!

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Did it ever occur to him that it's the retro-engineered alien technology that is causing global warming?

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov