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Anti-Vaxxers and the New Apostolic Reformation's Radiance International in Los Angeles and Micah Conrad's Story in the Washington Post
September 1, 2020 / wonderingeagle
The Washington Post recently told the story of Micah Conrad of Los Angeles, California. A kid in his late 20's who was raised in evangelicalism and today producing videos for the anti-vaxxer movement. A deeper look revealed Conrad has links to the Radiance International in Hollywood, California as led by Jonathan and Sharon Ngai who are deeply involved in the New Apostolic Reformation Movement. This is the story of a lost individual and this post offers concerns about the New Apostolic Reformation movement. In addition you can read the entire Washington Post story in this blog post.
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
"To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution."
Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.
Proverbs 22:6 NIV
Micah Conrad from Facebook
Radiance International
On August 31, 2020 in the Washington Post there is the story about Micah Conrad. Micah is a guy in his 20's helping to edit and publicize videos for an organization propagating anti-vaccination material. The name of the story is called, "Infected by doubt." This blog which is largely a documentation of my time in evangelicalism as well as my rejection of it and the journey from faith has written a few times about this topic. This blog is a strong supporter of science and you can read the problems with the anti-vaccination movement in, "The Anti-Vaccination Movement, Much Like Polio, Needs to be Eradicated; Plus the Center for Inquiry Confronts this Dangerous Faction." Then this blog published the response by a U.C.L.A doctor to the Judy Mikovits plandemic conspiracy theory in, "A U.C.L.A. Medical Doctor Responds to the Plandemic Conspiracy and Explains the Problems with Conspiracy Theories."
When I read the Washington Post article which you will see below I poked around and saw something more disturbing. This blog learned a little about the church tied to the story, Radiance International which is linked to the House of Prayer movement out of Kansas City, Missouri. Radiance has a Hollywood House of Prayer and is also linked to a New York House of Prayer. Radiance is led by Jonathan and Sharon Ngai who met at University of Southern California and who also attended Fuller Theological Seminary. Jonathan and Sharon Ngai also serve on the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders. Jonathan has written about Radiance on The Elijah List. The Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders believe that Jair Bolsonaro is God's answer to turning Brazil into a Christian kingdom. Individuals in this movement believe that Donald Trump is the anointed one and sought to protect Trump from those who seek to bind the president during his impeachment for practicing extortion against the Ukrainian president. Inside the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders you will find people like Rick Joyner. This blog has written about Rick Joyner. Joyner has claimed that the United States Constitution has come from the Bible. You can read about this in, "Rick Joyner on How Everything in the Constitution Comes From the Bible." Then Joyner called on congregations to form militias and to train for the upcoming Civil War. You can read about this in, "Recalling When Trish Stern Pushed Rick Joyner. Plus Considering Joyner's New Comments on Militias is Theo Williams' Wooded Hills Outside Germantown, Wisconsin Preparing for the Next Civil War?" These are the circles that the Ngai's move in. And that will help explain a little about Micah Conrad.
So before I turn you over to the Washington Post article let me reflect on a couple of issues with the New Apostolic Reformation movement from my perspective. I came from a hyper charismatic church outside Milwaukee that tried to raise a person from the dead. You can read about it in, "How Healthy was Wooded Hills Church? A Personal Reflection on the Issues which Existed; Plus Concerns about the Influence of Mike Bickle's Kansas City International House of Prayer."
Personal Revelation is Toxic and How Micah Conrad is a Spiritual Drunk Driver
In the story you learn of Micah who claims he is trying to find God's will. Inside a movement such as the House of Prayer movement people are opened up to manipulation. You can never be spiritual enough and you have to totally lean on God. Personal revelation is everything. I myself heard of some crazy stories of people who invested everything and were selling out to the Lord. They walked away from their job, or they uprooted their family. After trying that myself I had to live with the ramifications myself. Today I wonder how many people destroy their life and their family when they seek that personal revelation.
But when that personal revelation supports conspiracy theories involving science the result is far deadly. So Micah is rejecting science around COVID-19 and playing a role in propagandizing the information. What he is doing in this blog's view is the equivalent of standing in a movie theater and screaming fire. Its one thing to believe in a conspiracy theory yourself. But when your actions harm others and risk their life – that is where it stops. Its like drinking alcohol. You can drink alcohol. Heck you can drink alcohol to the point of getting drunk in the privacy of your home. Buy you do not have the right to get behind the wheel of a car, then drive and turn it into a weapon. In this blog's perspective Micah is no different than a drunk driver due to the harm he is creating.
The Toxic Influence of John Eldredge
In the story below there are references to being a hero. Being masculine is also alluded to when it comes to hunting and fishing. Micah also comes out of the home schooling culture which this blog does not focus on but acknowledges it can be quite toxic. One of the people who influenced male masculine thinking in evangelicalism and who is popular in charismatic circles is John Eldredge. With books like "Wild at Heart" , "The Sacred Romance" and "Waking the Dead" the theology in those books played up and reinforced the idea that the man rescues the female and be the hero. How many men, myself included at one point, wanted to save the princess and reach the lost? The irony is that instead we evangelicals were lost. At the time period Micah was growing up in the early 2000's John Eldredge and his theology was popular in these circles. For many people Eldredge is still popular. The overly masculine idea associated with hunting, fishing and guarding and winning over a female is flawed in many ways. Now note I am not opposed to hunting or fishing or like minded behaviors. I am opposed to a theology system that emphasizes them and then says this is what a man is.
Upon exiting evangelicalism and wrestling with all the problems here are some other questions I would ask Micah Conrad. Is is masculine to embrace lies? Is it masculine to attack the truth or to cut videos that mislead people? Is it masculine to bring people harm? Is it masculine to possibly play a role in contributing to the death of a person that can be avoided? Evangelicals are obsessed with sexual sin and porn. Can it be said that Micah is creating content that is just like pornography? Harmful, dangerous and false? Actually can you say that editing and releasing videos that legitimizes disinformation is worse than pornography. Why say that? Because at least with porn you know its fantasy. That is it not reality. Yet Micah Conrad is taking disinformation and passing it off as fact. That is not masculine in my book.
Conspiracy Theories and Evangelicalism
Here is another problem with evangelicalism that pops up at this blog from time to time. Part of the reason why evangelicalism is toxic is because it plants its flag in conspiracy theories. Evangelicals are addicted to them and this in itself is a unique problem. Catholics or the Orthodox church don't embrace conspiracy theories. Neither do mainstream Protestants. Its only the evangelicals who embrace conspiracy theories. In addition add the component that evangelicals fall for new fads every couple of years and that only adds to the problem.
Conspiracy theories like the Plandemic which some evangelicals are promoting actually have an adverse affect. They backfire and reveal how many evangelicals lack faith. They also show how gullible they can be. In a highly charismatic movement like the NAR this kind of garbage abounds and it is everywhere. This blog wrote two blog posts about the problem with conspiracy theories. "Ed Stezter is Correct About Evangelicals Buying into Conspiracy Theories. Plus How Survivors of Harvest Bible Chapel Who Traffic Conspiracy Theories Can Empower James MacDonald" and "Recommended Read in the Religion News Service: Why Do American Evangelicals Fall For Conspiracy Theories?" Individuals like Ed Stetzer and Joe Carter have stated that conspiracy theories are slander and this blog agrees with them.
Evangelicals and Junk Science and Alternative Medicine
There is one final aspect to raise before I let you read the Washington Post article. The other day I was texting a friend from Wisconsin. I wrote a post about my old worship leader from my third wave church which you can read in, "When Church is Dangerous to Your Health: Kevin Byrum's Uplink in Menominee Falls, Wisconsin Discourages Face Masks During a Pandemic." Kevin Byrum was very much into clean living. Emphasize healthy eating, natural foods in his life. He followed regimens to purge "toxins" from his body and more. And yet he has also embraced alternative medicine that in itself is flawed. In the end I would propose his "healthy" lifestyle is a zero sum gain that means nothing. Viruses and infectious disease does not care how well you take care of yourself. Virus and diseases can level and destroy people and populations. The sad part is that the United States is a victim of its success. People like Micah Conrad have no idea how many people in the post World War II war years lived in fear of polio. His ignorance of the coronavirus is also showing. I have known both healthy people who have struggled with the coronavirus and also the elderly. As of this writing this blogger has a friend whose Mom is in a hospital in the Chicago area with her health declining. She thought COVID-19 was a hoax because Fox said so. Then she contracted COVID-19 and a medical crisis is playing out in their family. What is sadder then getting a disease that mostly likely could have been avoided? Well in this case this family fled the Eastern Bloc and Communism and rejected that Soviet propaganda in the 1970's only to fall victim to other cable programming propaganda while living in the suburbs of Chicago.
In the case of Micah Conrad reality hits hard. Or it will hit hard. One of the reasons why I rejected evangelicalism is due to its rejection of science. I respect and follow scientists and listen to them. Individuals who attended Yale, Cornell , UCLA, University of Washington, etc… and work in medicine deserve our respect. When a vaccine for COVID-19 is available what are the chances that organizations like the SBC and the EFCA are going to require their missionaries to have a vaccine before going out into the field? Its also likely that European, African and Asian countries will probably require a vaccine before getting a Visa. We're not at that stage yet but I can see it on the horizon. How sad is it that individuals like Micah Conrad reject science, and yet embrace junk science. How sad is all this happens while he still speaks of faith? Jesus said that he is the way and the truth and the life. How can you be into truth it you are up to your eyebrows in conspiracy theories? How can you be into truth if you embrace discredited claims that vaccines cause autism, of the COVID-19 pandemic was planned by the government? No wonder evangelicalism is a sick and cancerous movement.
All I can say is thank God I am done with evangelicalism. This article in the Washington Post and the references to evangelicalism just make me grateful I am done. If I lived in Los Angeles and Micah wanted me to come to his church I would decline. There is nothing appealing to the faith of Micah Conrad. Instead there is a legacy of harm, which is what evangelicalism does in the end. As a "faith" movement ultimately it hurts people.
It began as a freelance job. Micah Conrad would wake up midmorning, check his email and begin downloading videos that had arrived while he slept. He would brew coffee, drinking it on the narrow patio of the small apartment he shares with his wife in a sun-bleached building near the intersection of Hollywood and Sunset boulevards in Los Angeles. Then it was back inside, where he would edit footage for the next 10 hours at a standing desk in the corner of their bedroom.
A 26-year-old aspiring filmmaker clinging to the lowest rungs of Hollywood's hierarchy, Conrad often took work as it came. The virtual conference whose presentations he was now polishing provided at least a week of steady employment at a time when the coronavirus pandemic had cut off many of his regular sources of income.
Then, on a Sunday night in late April, he went on Facebook to announce that the conference was providing him with something else: a revelation that challenged his understanding of his body, his government and — above all — the infection that was ending and changing lives across the country.
Conrad had been editing videos for an event called the Health Freedom Summit. The faces he was studying for so many hours on his computer screen belonged to some of the world's most influential anti-vaccine activists and coronavirus skeptics.
TOP: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at a rally in Olympia, Wash., in 2019. (AP/Ted S. Warren) Middle: Andrew Wakefield addresses a gathering hosted by the American Rally for Personal Rights in Chicago in 2010. (AP/Charles Rex Arbogas) BOTTOM: Judy Mikovits, outside the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nev., in 2011. (David Calvert for AP Images)
There was Andrew Wakefield, the British ex-doctor behind a fraudulent study linking autism to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine; Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose transformation from crusading litigator to anti-vaccination firebrand had outraged other members of one of America's most storied political dynasties; Judy Mikovits, a disgraced virologist who would soon become famous for her starring role in "Plandemic," a video that promoted conspiracy theories about the pandemic while attacking Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's top infectious-disease expert.
Conrad was unsure what to make of these speakers, he told his 600 Facebook friends. But he believed they deserved a fair hearing.
"I've had countless moments where I completely stopped work, and just listened to what these people had to say about topics like COVID-19, the government setting America up for mandatory Vaccinations, and how we are so brainwashed by what the mass media is telling us day in and day out," he wrote, including a link to the summit's Facebook page. "Before you make a potential life changing decision about your health and personal freedoms, ask yourself WHO and WHAT ultimately convinced you. Challenge your own facts and reasoning."
The reaction from his online social circle was swift — and divided.
"Yeah boii! Lots of people waking up," one friend enthused in a comment on his post.
"This is not 'health freedom,' this is stoking paranoia for the purpose of political gain," another warned. "These people do NOT have your best interest at heart."
Conrad had never given much thought to politics or public policy. But he had stumbled into a debate that could reshape a country reeling from the worst pandemic in a century. When he wrote his Facebook post, covid-19 had killed at least 52,000 people in the United States. Since then, the death toll has more than tripled and almost 6 million Americans have become infected. Amid inconsistent, incomplete or incompetent state and federal efforts to contain the virus, many Americans have placed their hopes in the breakneck quest for a vaccine.
But even if a safe and effective vaccine is developed, its universal embrace is not assured. The haste with which vaccines are being pursued, bungled messaging by public health officials and President Trump's politicization of the science surrounding the virus have all contributed to doubts about inoculation against covid-19.
Those doubts are also being fueled by anti-vaccination activists, who are seeking an unprecedented victory for their movement by undermining confidence in a drug that could end the pandemic.
For months, they have spread messages rejected by an overwhelming majority of scientists and doctors. Among them are the ideas that common vaccines are inherently dangerous, that the coronavirus can be conquered by spending time in the sun and taking vitamin supplements, that Gates is plotting to profit from the pandemic and even that covid-19 symptoms are caused by plutonium from exploding satellites.
Scientists don't agree on the threshold for herd immunity, the percentage of the population that must become resistant to the virus in order to halt its spread. But most do agree that a vaccine will have greater odds of success if large numbers of people are immunized — and that outcome is in doubt.
A CNN poll in mid-August found that 40 percent of Americans said they would not try to get a coronavirus vaccine if it were widely available at a low cost. In a literal sense, the fate of the virus and the country it has crippled hang on American public opinion — on the opinions of people like Micah Conrad.
Before he began work on the Health Freedom Summit, Conrad had accepted health officials' warnings about the threat of the coronavirus and their advice for reducing the risk of contracting it. But he had also been raised, like many Americans, to question authority. Behind the heavy curtains that blocked Southern California's sunlight from his bedroom-cum-office, that skepticism was being stoked. Here were men and women whose names were followed by PhD and MD, saying that face mask recommendations were the first step toward a new age of tyranny and that the coronavirus was no more dangerous than the common cold.
"These are knowledgeable people," Conrad said, "and they're saying stuff that's very, very different than what's in the media right now."
When Conrad wrote his Facebook post in the spring, he was still sorting out whether he would get a coronavirus vaccine. But the simple fact of his uncertainty posed a challenge for the doctors, scientists and politicians trying to beat back the pandemic.
Conrad had received his early childhood vaccinations. He had little exposure to the fringe figures who for decades have promoted anti-vaccine ideology. In 2016, he voted for Hillary Clinton.
If someone like him could be persuaded to reject a coronavirus vaccine, how many others might follow?
'Every dude can be a hero'
Tanned, tall and lean, Conrad blends in among the aspiring creative types drawn to his adopted city. He lives in Los Feliz, a fashionable neighborhood north of downtown L.A., where young people can be found at odd hours of the work day picking at pastries alfresco along Hillhurst Avenue or testing their legs against the hills of Griffith Park.
But he passed his formative years in a very different environment. Conrad grew up on the rural western shore of Michigan's lower peninsula. His family home was on several forested acres above a ravine; a creek running across the property empties a half-mile west into Lake Michigan. His dad was a salesman. His mom, an art teacher, left her job to care for and eventually home-school Conrad and his sister. Life was insular and could feel remote.
Conrad loved it.
"It was just a boy's heaven," he said. Like many home-schoolers, the Conrads found that lessons could often be completed by lunchtime, allowing Micah to wander the woods by afternoon. He hunted deer and fished in the backyard creek for steelhead trout. But Micah was not a budding Marlboro Man, according to his mother, Sue Conrad.
"When he saw his dad clean a fish for the first time, he just about lost it," she recalled.
Gentle and inquisitive, Micah — along with his sister, who would go on to become a professional ballerina — also showed artistic tendencies from an early age. A pivotal moment in his life-defining obsession with film came when he and his dad watched a movie not universally hailed as high art: "Rambo III."
Action and superhero stories would remain Micah's preferred genre. Beneath the explosions and schlock one-liners, he believed, these movies revolved around timeless and important themes: the power and consequences of individual choices, the possibility for even the most ordinary person to do something extraordinary. A Batman poster adorns the walls of Micah's apartment today.
"What I love about him is that he's just a normal guy like everyone else. He's just a dude," Micah said. "But he reminds us that every dude can be a hero."
Another powerful influence shaped Micah's life from an early age: religion. The family regularly attended a nondenominational Christian church in the nearby town of Holland, and he remains a believer. His mother said she sought to instill in him a desire to understand God's will and to follow his conscience when making decisions.
It was her own conscience that led Sue Conrad to embrace alternative diets and health care. She believed that a healthy, well-nourished immune system was often more important than the interventions of modern medicine. Although she vaccinated both her children, Micah received fewer inoculations than his older sister. The last was a tetanus booster after he cut himself playing outside at age 5. Vitamin supplements accompanied a family diet that revolved around wild game and fresh fruits and vegetables.
"I'm not going to say we didn't run through Taco Bell when we needed some fast food when we were out," Sue said. "But by and large, their food was as natural as we could get it."
It was this idiosyncratic mix of influences — sermons and Stallone, venison and Taco Bell — that Micah brought with him to L.A. in 2013 after completing an associate degree at a film school in Grand Rapids, Mich. He worked as a production assistant, a visual-effects artist, a teleprompter operator. He fell in love and married. He both embraced and distrusted the profoundly secular, liberal culture that held sway in Hollywood.
So when a series of speakers appeared on his computer screen challenging that culture's received truths, Micah sat up and listened.
'The dark side'
As the pandemic worsened this spring, some health experts believed it would spell the end of the anti-vaccine movement by showing the danger of a virus for which no inoculation is available.
Tara C. Smith, an epidemiologist and professor at the Kent State University College of Public Health, knew that optimism betrayed unfamiliarity with the tactics of those who challenge vaccine safety. And she knew that far from crippling the movement, the pandemic provided it with a rare opportunity.
The same public-health establishment long reviled by anti-vaccination activists was now urging strict limitations on Americans' freedom to shop, eat in restaurants or gather for religious worship. Vaccine opponents rushed to join forces with Trump supporters holding demonstrations to reopen the economy in defiance of expert advice.
"I'm not surprised at all that these combined into a new flavor of science denial," Smith said.
Anti-vaccine messages have at least tripled from their pre-pandemic level, said Joe Smyser of the Public Good Projects, a health policy nonprofit that tracks vaccine information in social media, blogs, online news publications and other sources through an initiative called Project VCTR.
"Just from a research point of view, it's fascinating to watch," Smyser said. "Whereas public health is very disorganized in our approach to the pandemic, anti-vaxxers are extremely organized and are hosting online summits and doing advocacy training."
One effort that caught Smyser's attention was the Health Freedom Summit. Released online in late April, it ultimately drew approximately 35,000 registrants, said Alana Newman, one of the organizers.
Newman, who lives in Louisiana, praised Conrad's editing work for the summit, which included sepia graphics and an ominous soundtrack that begins and ends the presentations. "Any idea he suggested, he implemented it, and went beyond my wildest dreams as to how beautiful the results were," she said.
The conference's recurring message was that government officials were exaggerating the threat of the coronavirus in an attempt to violate individual liberties, culminating in a program of forced, universal vaccination that was possibly tied to a plan for worldwide population surveillance.
"We are seeing a destruction of the economy, a destruction of people and families . . . and unprecedented violations of health freedom," Wakefield said. "And it's all based upon a fallacy. "
Mikovits — who would reach millions in "Plandemic," which was removed by Facebook, YouTube and others for misinformation that could put people at risk — warned that wearing masks would actually make people sick.
"Viruses don't float through the air," she said. "You can't spread it the way they're saying it's spreading, so the masks are hurting the people wearing them, and I can't say that enough."
Such statements are contradicted by data and broad scientific consensus. Not only is the coronavirus airborne; many researchers now believe that it spreads even more easily through air than initially known. Since reopening its economy, the United States has experienced an explosion of infections and deaths.
In Florida, one of the states that has been ravaged by covid-19 since efforts to contain the virus were relaxed, Michael Green was dumbfounded by Conrad's tentative endorsement of the Health Freedom Summit speakers on his Facebook page. Green, a 31-year-old visual effects artist and film editor who worked with Conrad in California before moving to Tampa, was among those who pushed back in the comments section of Conrad's April post.
"I wouldn't say that I'm really good friends with Micah, but I've hung out with him on multiple occasions," Green said in an interview. "To see somebody that you do care about end up being persuaded into this — whatever you want to call it — it's frustrating. Because you want to just be, like, 'No, dude, don't do it. It's the dark side.' "
Newman — whose interview with a Washington Post reporter was interrupted when a police officer confronted her at a store where she was shopping without a required mask — defended the views espoused in the conference, saying federal and state officials' response to the pandemic had been excessive. Regardless of the merits of the arguments made at the summit, she said, people should be able to hear them and reach their own conclusions.
"What's the threat," Newman said, "of people considering ideas?"
A few days before the summit went live at the end of April, Conrad said, he was on a call with Newman and Stephanie Lind, the event's co-host. Lind was a friend of Conrad's who had brought him on board for the project. Conrad asked how publicity for the conference was going. Was word about the summit getting out?
There was a problem on that front, Lind admitted: Facebook had shut down their ads.
Conrad was confused. Was there a copyright problem?
No, Lind told him: The summit had been tagged as coronavirus misinformation. Facebook was in the midst of a crackdown on false or misleading material that could abet the spread of the virus.
"It took me a second to process that," Conrad recalled. "I was like, 'Wow. So Facebook is deciding to label what we're doing as misinformation. Where are they getting that story from? And is that their right?' "
Amid those questions, Conrad felt sure about one thing: By helping to spread messages others were trying to suppress, he was doing the right thing.
"It didn't make me concerned about what I was doing," he said of the social media Goliath's censorship. "It made me motivated to get it out."
His conviction grew in the days and weeks after the summit during discussions with his 29-year-old wife, Dasha, an aspiring actress. The pair had met at church and married in 2018. Dasha Conrad, who immigrated from Kazakhstan to Texas with her mother as a child, had heard about the Illuminati, an 18th-century secret society founded in Bavaria that has been grist for countless conspiracy theories. The notion of a shadowy network of elites directing the course of history made sense to her. Assertions that powerful people had orchestrated the pandemic did not seem far-fetched.
"The whole system is corrupt," she said. "I don't know the whole answer. I just know that we have to be awakened to it."
The Conrads talked about what was being said in the videos Micah edited. Why were social media companies and public health officials going to such lengths to stop those voices? Were they afraid of what might happen if people were allowed to decide for themselves what was true and what was false?
And so the Conrads made their own decision. They might not be able to verify all the Health Freedom Summit information. But they saw plenty of reasons to distrust the authorities pushing for a coronavirus vaccine.
A vaccine that Micah and Dasha Conrad would not be getting.
"I don't think it's necessary to put that into our bodies," Micah said. Instead, the couple would focus on boosting their immune systems through exercise and healthy food, with diets that include intermittent fasting and a regimen of homemade juices.
Micah said he is not opposed to all vaccines and acknowledges the benefits they have provided to many. He and Dasha weren't rejecting every mainstream medical suggestion for combating the coronavirus. They continued to wear masks in public places out of respect for those around them.
But Micah's trust in some of that guidance was continuing to erode. He was asking more questions and scouring the Internet for answers. On June 24, about 10 weeks after he had first urged his friends on social media not to trust what they were hearing about the pandemic from the government and the media, he again went on Facebook, quoting from a widely circulated post that cast doubt on the effectiveness of masks.
"Ooo, this is interesting," Conrad wrote to his friends. "What are your thoughts?"
The debate did not get far. Facebook removed his post, telling him in a notification that it violated the company's standards on "misinformation that could cause physical harm."
Micah still believed he was just exercising his right to free speech, asking questions that encouraged people to think for themselves. But to those patrolling social media for coronavirus falsehoods, it was clear which side he was on.
Story editing by Lynda Robinson. Photo editing by Mark Miller. Video editing by Peter W. Stevenson. Design by Tara McCarty. Graphic by Emily Guskin. Copy editing by Emily Codik. Scott Clement and Emily Guskin contributed to this story.
Conspiracy Theories, Evangelical Issues, Evangelicals and Science, Evangelicals and Spiritual Abuse, Third Wave Theology, What is a Man?, What is Sin?, Wooded Hills Church (Milwaukee, WI)
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4 thoughts on "Anti-Vaxxers and the New Apostolic Reformation's Radiance International in Los Angeles and Micah Conrad's Story in the Washington Post"
I have heard of the New Apostolic Reformation on other blogs. None of it good.
Most of them center around really crazy Spiritual Warfare shticks. These are the "Pagan Temple Screamers" who gave us "Operation Ice Castle", i.e. something about trying to climb Mount Everest to do Spiritual Combat with the Demon "Queen of Heaven". Claimed they had killed Mother Teresa with their Imprecatory Prayers. (Where I come from, that's called casting a Death Hex.) Spiritual Mapping locations where demons had influence (geomancy? divination?) and Walking Perimiters (setting Wards?) Special Secret Signs confirming their Prophetic Acts. Filling up the "Ampitheatre of Diana" in Ephseus to pray and shout "Jesus is LORD!" organized by that ManaGAWD Ted Haggard.
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2015/04/24/peter-wagner-and-mt-everests-queen-of-heaven-towards-understanding-of-groups-like-the-arc/
Reading what I just wrote and linked to above, this sounds like Jack Parsons & Elron Hubbard's occult antics in late Forties Pasadena up in Devil's Gate Reservoir, filtered through South Park. Except WEIRDER.
Not really that much distance between Witchcraft and Witchfinders-General.
Personal Revelation is Toxic
In my church (RCC), most every flat-out Flake Cult with Rosaries started with some Prophet's Private Personal Revelation. (The "Baysiders" being the most well-known, though there was another headquartered in my area called the "Hill of Hopers".) Private Revelation is such a characteristically Catholic way to flake out it's even called "Mary Channeling", and after hearing so much of it you become very skeptical of the whole concept.
(If you want to see the Hill of Hopers' cult compound, bring up Bing Maps, search on "Hill of Hope". The cult will come up as "St Joseph's Hill of Hope Inc"; select it. The map will go to a pointer where Orange, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino Counties come together in the Chino Hills. Switch map view from "Road" to "Aerial" or "Birds Eye" and zoom in. These guys started out with Private Revelation around 1980 and ended up with a five-person Trinity — Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Virgin Mary, and St Joseph. Started infiltrating the Diocese of Orange back in the late Eighties/early Nineties with sympathetic diocesan priests until the new bishop shut them down hard. Tridentine Latin Mass ONLY (of course) valid ONLY from their approved Priests. After they got shut down they moved to the cult compound on the above map and have apparently been there ever since.)
About a year ago, I came across the Hill-of-Hopers in a YouTube video — one of those which reads Reddit stories sent in by followers. This one was a group of Cult stories from Cult survivors, and one of them was Hill of Hope.
The story was about knowing the son of the woman who had the Private Revelation and founded the cult. How the Son of the Founder didn't like it, was gettng out — and disappeared at the same time the Hill-of-Hopers were having a large concrete slab poured for some major construction project at their compound.
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Welcome to Darkspear Never Die. We are a social and raiding guild of the Horde faction in the World of Warcraft, on the EU-Magtheridon server. Use the links above to have a stroll around and take a look at what we do.
We raid a few times a week, for both progression and fun, organise various events (members can take a look at the in-game calendar), and generally enjoy the worlds of Azeroth and Draenor together!
With Legion now upon us, we know there are a lot of new and returning players that are looking for a guild to call home. We're a relatively mature guild who care about having a safe, non-toxic environment in which to make friends and have fun. If you're looking, we'd be happy to take you. No applications, no restrictions.
If you want to get in touch, whisper / mail us in game (the guild master's toons are listed on the roster under "Warchief", though feel free to say hello to any of the officers).
Whoever is raiding on a particular day is part of the team. Pugs, friends, regulars, guild members… everybody is treated equally. All we ask is that each member of the team respects the guild's rules.
Guild members should always sign up to the calendar events well in advance of raids to guarantee their place. Events will usually tell you the requirements for signing up, but if you have any questions, please ask an officer. If you sign up, we expect you to arrive prepared and in plenty of time, and we expect you to stay for the full duration of the raid (usually 20:20–23:00 server time, but check the calendar). If you know you will be late, or might have to leave early, make sure you let an officer know with as much advanced notice as possible.
The team works best when it is reliable and consistent. Therefore, failing to turn up when expected, or leaving without warning, will make it less likely you'll be accepted onto the team in future.
We will endeavour to take all guild members who are signed up and who meet the criteria for a given night's raid. For progression raids that span multiple nights (that's almost all of them), priority will go to those that joined us the previous night, though we will always do our best to accommodate as many guild members as possible. For example, let's say that Monday's raid is a continuation of Thursday's. If you can't make it on Thursday, but you're signed up for Monday, then Thursday's team members will get priority when forming the team for Monday; in the vast majority of cases we will be able to expand the team to include you, but sometimes, either because we've hit the group size limit, or doing so would be impossible due to the raid makeup, we may be unable to take you.
Darkspear Never Die's raid team has more than one raid leader: Ross, Shinda, and Khantos comprise the raid council. They share the role of leader, and can all make executive decisions during a fight, like who should and should not receive an in-combat resurrection. Ross has final final say, though rarely exercises that power, as the council is normally in agreement.
The raid council welcomes feedback from team members, so feel free to contact them outside of raids if you have a question.
Loot rules will be decided before each boss, depending on the raid makeup and how much gear the team needs from that boss. A progress boss is normally done with Personal Loot chosen, because it increases the chance of the team getting useful items. Once enough people need nothing from a boss, we'll switch to Master Looter, unless the raid makeup is really skewed.
Tradeable loot belongs to the player it drops for; however, if they do not need it, we ask that it be put up for a roll. Similarly, if a piece of loot drops that is a minor upgrade for you, but a major upgrade for another regular member (or would complete their tier set, for example), please consider allowing the gear to go where the benefit would be greatest. A well-geared raid group benefits you, whether or not you personally get loot, allowing for faster progress and more loot!
Obviously, some trading is impossible cross-realm, so these rules only apply where trading is possible.
The whole team must be civil and polite at all times. Raiding can be stressful, exciting, and sometimes frustrating, but team members must not allow that to turn into animosity, anger, or rudeness. If you feel this is unavoidable, and you are too angry or stressed to perform, whisper one of your raid leaders so you can step out temporarily or for the remainder of the raid.
We expect team members to come to raids prepared for the fights, both tactically and materially. That means knowing the fights we'll be tackling (by reading guides and watching videos, if you have no previous experience), having any add-ons installed that the team use, and having seals, flasks, potions, and runes ready before the start of the raid. We also expect everybody to make good use of potions (e.g. one pre-pull, and one mid-fight) and healing tonics.
During fights, team members are encouraged to speak up on voice comms about important mechanics as they are playing out, but debates and conversations must wait until after the fight. If you die, don't forget that the rest of the team will likely still be concentrating, so the fewer distractions the better.
After a wipe, we tend to evaluate what happened, to see what we can do better on the next pull. Between fights, therefore, all team members are encouraged to make suggestions or give advice, if they noticed anything or anyone in particular need of improvement. That doesn't mean shaming someone for their mistakes, but rather helping your teammates improve their skills.
All final strategic decisions rest with the raid council.
We raid for enjoyment and for the challenge of defeating difficult bosses. We're not too interested in cheesing mechanics, and "we need higher DPS" will be our last solution to wiping. It is very rare for wipes to be caused solely by low DPS; the vast majority of wipes are caused by mistakes. We will not remove a well-playing (but low DPS) member, if there are still other people making critical mistakes. We want everyone in the team to improve and defeat bosses together, and that means everybody taking ownership of their own shortcomings.
We aim to accept people of all skill levels, and will give as much assistance as possible to assure that individuals can perform at the necessary skill level required for current progress. This might entail spending some time with a new member before they join a raid, helping them get up to speed, and will probably entail a few trial nights to see what might need to be worked on.
Removing someone from a raid, or the team itself, will only ever be a last resort, either for disciplinary reasons, or if that person is obviously and consistently preventing progress. That doesn't mean we won't give them another chance in the future, it just means more work will be needed to get them up to the required level of the team.


Chef Guys Pepperoni Marinara Pasta Sauce takes your pasta to flavor town. Chunks of real pepperoni tomatoes onions and garlic mix it up for an off the hook pasta sauce or pizza topper – just add cheese. Its off da hook – Guy Guys pasta sauces are gluten free.Features. Pack of 6.. Item Weight – 25 Oz.IngredientsCrushed Tomatoes Water Concentrated Crushed Tomatoes Tomatoes Pepperoni Pork Beef Salt Spices Sugar Water Oleoresin of Paprika Natural Smoke Flavoring Lactic Acid Starter Culture Garlic Powder Flavoring Sodium Nitrite Ascorbic Acid BHA BHT Citric Acid Onions Sugar Olive Oil Salt Garlic Basil Pepper Parsley Oregano.DirectionsRefrigerate after opening. Shake well.


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Blogging takes a lot of time, effort and can be extremely frustrating. I don't think many realize that blogging is work. It can be fun, it can be exciting, and it can be lucrative; however, the blogger has to give up a lot of themselves in order to achieve their goals. Even when they are successful it comes with a price.
If you've noticed, lately I haven't been 'blogging with intent' as much as I have in the past. The several programs that I once was a part of, all came to a close. Coincidentally, they all came to a close at around the same time! That meant that a huge chunk of my potentially 'sponsored' posts disappeared. One huge program that I was a part of for several years (from beginning to end), came to its finale. The Brand P&G actually decided that it no longer was feasible to maintain its Canadian PGMom program. Other programs came to an end; but were transferred over to other Social Media Groups … that means that the programs may or may not become active again. In turn, that means that I am left unsure as to what may come.
The reality of it is, most Brands change the Media Groups they work with often. I prefer not to get into details, and to keep this whole topic light. My intent is just to explain what is going on, in regards to my absence from blogging.
So you're probably thinking "where does this leave us?" … I'm actually thinking the same thing. I'm not the only blogger thinking this either. Many bloggers are currently wondering what their next step will be. I'm hoping that things will pick up and that I become just as active as I once was. Until then please know that I have been focussing on my health.
I have never been a blogger but see all the work that goes into it. I know for every company you are able to represent that you have probably been rejected by countless others. Every interaction takes lots of emails and phone calls and work. It seems to be changing for all blogs right now. Thank you for the work have done in the past and will continue to do. Hope things will turn around and you will be busy again and able to pick and choose who you represent.
Thank you so very much for your supportive words Dianne. You said a mouthful of truth and I appreciate how much you've put into your comment. You're correct about how many more rejections we get! Wow! You hit the nail on the head. It is tiring, and it often feels like we do it all for nothing. Then, when we least expect it, someone amazing (like you) reminds us that someone values us and what we do. So thank you.


From November 24 to the 27th, people from the Mexican town of Alamos and abroad enjoyed the second International Jazz Festival that took place at the historical Casa de los Tesoros.
Alamos is one of the most beautiful towns south of the border. It has a privileged weather as well as a US community formed by artists. Also has an unusual architectural patrimony consisted in old small haciendas from the sixteen and seventeen centuries.
The music was brought by Mexican band Galo Verde Bosadelika and the Doc Jones Quartet. Bosadelika is a group formed in Cuernavaca by Brazilian and Mexican musicians inspired mainly by samba, bosa-nova, progressive rock and prehispanic Mesoamerican sounds. They played renditions of brazilian classics Nelson Cavaquinho and Eumir Deodato. Their principal brand is the authenthic sound of a Rhodes Piano Mark III as well as prehispanic instruments. Their line up is formed by Fernanda Robinson on percussions and hom pax (a Mayan instrument constructed with the stick of an agave plant), Josue Vishnu Madera, bass, Max Potenza, drums and Francesco Taboada Rhodes piano.
Doc Jones Quartet impressed the audience with the technic of their line up as well as their talent for improvisation.
The highest moment of the festival was a jam played by Bosadelika and Doc Jones Quartet. "It was a privilege for our band to play with master Doc Jones and his virtuoso musicians." said Francesco Taboada.
Next year edition is already being programmed and the aim is to have a larger festival wich also will include music and dance clases for the locals. We look forward to meet you in Alamos next year!


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Next-Gen, Ultra-HD Video Game Console Announced: Playing Outside
Entertainment · Apr 17, 2019 · BabylonBee.com
U.S. - A next-generation, ultra-HD console has been announced: Playing Outside.
The console is a cooperative venture between Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. The three big players in the home console market pooled their resources to build what they're calling "the most advanced console ever."
Playing Outside has high-definition graphics, unlike anything you've ever seen before, incredible framerates, and high-resolution textures all the way down to the atomic scale, according to a spokesperson.
All games on the console are completely free-roaming, open-world adventures. You can level up your stats throughout the gameplay, whether you want to put a lot of points into athletics, intelligence, or a gender studies degree. The gender studies degree is already being called underpowered by beta testers, however.
"We've finally perfected graphics, sound, and even brand-new smell, taste, and touch technology," said a rep. "You won't believe how incredibly immersive and realistic this game is. It's like you're actually outside, playing with your friends. Because, you know, you are."
There is one major downside to Playing Outside: if you die in the game, you die in real life. Experts warn you should play the game carefully.
Unforgivable Sin Now Thought To Be Whiteness
Weird: Everyone Who Attended Bernie Sanders' Town Hall Has Reported Their Wallet Missing

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


(CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — UK record companies' trade association the BPI has announced that it is to launch a week-long promotion for British music in Berlin.
Under the banner "British Music Week" the BPI will work with a series of local partners to focus consumer attention on UK music.
The promotion, set to run from May 19-26 is the latest in a series of BPI initiatives aimed at increasing exposure for British music at home and abroad.
Berlin's biggest listings magazine Tip, which will run features on UK artists, and reviews of the British gigs.
The BPI is also teaming up with the British Embassy in Berlin to run a masterclass on the UK music industry and networking event for representatives of the British and German record industries.
BPI Development Director Steve Redmond said; "Germany has long been one of the most important markets for UK music. British Music Week in Berlin will provide an opportunity for the industry, the media and the public to celebrate some of the exciting new music coming from the UK."
The British Ambassador to Germany, Sir Peter Torry, KCMG said: "I am delighted to hear that Berlin will host a British Music Week in May. "
"I look forward to hearing and seeing the cream of British talent at the various events being planned for this week; it is particularly pleasing to see follow up to the successful Popkomm events we have held in the Embassy for the last two years."
Spencer Thiele from Karrera Klub said, "Karrera Klub has been promoting, supporting and indeed living British music in Berlin for almost a decade. British Music Week gives us a unique opportunity to present music lovers with a wide range of British acts, be they established or up-and-coming bands."
Peter Radzuhn, Head of Music of Radio Eins, said, "Our listeners will love British Music Week. British music has a very significant bearing on the Radio Eins music policy. British Music Week will allow us to further underline this music policy and at the same time discover some new acts."
Hagen Liebing, Tip Music Editor said: "For more than 30 years Tip has been enjoying and promoting British music in our city. We don't care if it's mega-selling or just for fans, as long as it is wonderful music. "
"So bring us the next Beatles, Stones, Stone Roses, La's, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Teenage Fanclub, Oasis, Ferdinands or Monkeys – we're eager to tell Berlin about it!"


Don't criticise others unless it is constructive. Do you need to pass on how you feel about someone? Do they need to know? Do other people need to know? Probably not! If someone rubs you up the wrong way, it is generally much better to ignore them and let it go than criticise or moan about them to others. Trust me the sooner you brush it off, the better for you. Other people's bad behaviour and outlook on life is their problem, not yours!
Always come with a potential solution when discussing a problem. There will always be issues and problems that crop up at work, yes they are annoying and yes you could complain about them but wouldn't it be better if you fixed them? Positive people find solutions to problems, and this is an excellent trait for an Assistant to have.
Surround yourself with other positive people. Find other people in the office that have a great outlook on life. These are your tribe!
Don't gossip… ever. Gossip is the worst and benefits no one, particularly in the office. Try not to get involved as hard as it might seem.
Remember your sense of humour, this will see you through the worst of times.
Take a break when you are having an awful day. Go for a walk, read a book in your local cafe. Getting out of the office for an hour will give you some perspective on what is happening and a break to refocus on what you need to do to sort all that crap out!
Set some goals and strategies for your career. Working towards something that is bigger than the day to day grind will give you something to focus on. Seeing something through and working towards something challenging is exciting and when you complete it will give you a real boost. So, goals help when the day to day tasks are getting you down.
Reward yourself for your positive outlook particularly when you've had a horrible day. Open that bottle of wine, buy that nice bag, watch that Netflix series, spend time with the people that make you feel good.
There will always be things, situations or people that upset you. Life would be great if everyone were kind to each other, but that's just not going to happen. So, instead decide how you want to deal with these people so that they don't upset you. Nobody at work should have that much power over you to the point they upset you everytime you interact. So instead of dreading to see them, except that they are going to be horrible or cause you problems and know that you can deal with it. It is amazing how your attitude changes towards someone when you expect them to be terrible. You might even end up laughing about it.
Be kind to people. It can be hard when you are busy, or your colleagues are asking you neverending questions that have nothing to do with your work and eat into your time. I get it! But being kind to people, showing empathy and understanding (while sticking to your boundaries) makes you feel better.
Having a positive attitude at work really can be the key to your success. People want to be around positive people with a can-do attitude. Be one of those people.


You can read the 62-page opinion at this link. This is quite a big deal, especially in its unanimity. The en banc DC Circuit in Wagner v. FEC holds that the ban on contractor contributions to federal candidates is supported by two interests: (1) preventing corruption and (2) promoting sound merit-based administration of federal contracts. On the first point, the court discussed the special dangers of corruption which occur in the contracting process. The court surveys various state and federal corruption scandals, many of which involve the procurement of government contracts. On the second interest, the court relies in large part on the Hatch Act cases, in particular on the government's interest in somewhat curtailing the First Amendment activities of government employees in order to assure a merit-based governmental process.
Perhaps what is most important doctrinally about this ruling is the court's rejection of the argument that a higher level of scrutiny should apply because the law imposes a ban, rather than merely a limit, on contractor contributions. Relying upon the Supreme Court's decision in FEC v. Beaumont (which upheld the ban on corporate contributions to candidates), the Court held the ban was still subject to the lesser "exacting scrutiny" which applies to contribution limits. Opponents of the ban have argued that Beaumont's reasoning has been undermined by more recent Supreme Court cases, such as Citizens United. But the DC Circuit did not accept that argument.
This question (the vitality of Beaumont and the constitutionality of a ban, rather than limit on contributions) remains the most interesting issue which could provide a basis for the Supreme Court to grant cert. in the case. It is not clear whether the Court will bite on this one, for reasons I will be writing about in coming days.
Also interesting is that the DC Circuit did not address whether federal contractors may make contributions to Super PACs. ("Nor do they challenge the law as the Commission might seek to apply it to donations to PACs that themselves make only independent expenditures, commonly known as "Super PACs." Oral Arg. Recording 5:59-26:33 ("Super PACs . . . . are not at issue here; none of my clients wants to make a contribution to them or anything like them.").) If indeed contractors can make such contributions, then the ban won't be all that effective in stopping corruption.


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ECON 2720 - Business History
Find Primary Resources
Find Secondary Resources
Find Scholarly Articles
Resources to Help with Writing Your Essay
Handouts + Presentations
Video: Midterm Marks Got You Down? 7 Steps to Get Back on Track
Wayback Machine - Internet Archive
Digital archive for web pages. Search the Wayback Machine using your company's url to see how their website changed over the years.
Canadian Corporate Reports - McGill Digital Archive
Find company reports dating back to the 1900s.
Provides access to most public securities documents and information filed by issuers.
Marketline Advantage
History, SWOT and Industry information.
Dates of Coverage: Past 2 years - Current
Contains full-text newspaper articles, columns, editorials, and features from over 275 Canadian newspapers, dating from the late 1970s to the present.
Dates of Coverage: Late 1970's - Current
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Globe and Mail
Scanned full text of this Canadian national newspaper, including articles, editorials, advertisements, classified ads, photos, editorial cartoons, etc.
Dates of Coverage: 1844 - 2012
Maclean's Magazine Archives
Provides full-text pdf copies of the entire contents of Maclean's Magazine from 1905-2015. Topics include investigative reporting, opinion and analysis on politics, economy and business, science and technology, society, arts and culture, education and work.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Toronto Star
Digitized version of the Toronto Star newspaper from 1894 to 2016.
Economics literature (both theory and application). Covers economic history and more.
Dates of Coverage: 1993 - Current
Peer-reviewed sources and business related journals. Also includes industry profiles and company data.
Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database (CBCA)
Canadian Business and Current Affairs. Includes trade journals, scholarly journals, magazines, books, newspapers and reports.
ABI/INFORM
U.S. and international coverage of over 1,300 business publications. Full text articles about business conditions, trends, corporate strategies and tactics, management techniques, competitive and product information, and more.
Use these resources to help you write your essay.
Last Updated: Nov 2, 2021 2:31 PM
URL: https://guides.lib.uoguelph.ca/ECON2720
Subjects: ECON - Economics


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The British Academy and the CBRL British Institute in Amman organised a series of joint activities with a focus on research methods in social science. On 25 November, a seminar for university lecturers from across the MENA region focused on the state of methodological training in MENA and how such training could be better integrated in teaching and research programmes.
On 26-27 November, a two-day workshop, held in Amman, brought together a cohort of early career scholars from Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and the occupied Palestinian territories, with the aim to enhance their knowledge about the application of qualitative and quantitative research methods in social science.


Needlepoint Owl Loafers for Men. The loafers are stitched by hand and are fully lined in soft kid leather. Currently available in size 10, 10.5, 11, 11.5 and 13. The width is medium. Custom orders for sizes not listed may be placed; the delivery time is 5-6 months. Our men's loafers run pretty true to size. They will stretch a bit as they are worn and are so comfortable, you will never want to take them off. Enjoy your Needlepoint Shoes By Paige!


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Great Expectations: A Review of How to Expect What You're Not Expecting
How to Expect What You're Not Expecting: Stories of Pregnancy, Parenthood, and Loss
Jessica Hiemstra and Lisa Martin-DeMoor, eds.
TouchWood Editions, 2013; $19.95
After my first miscarriage in 2001, I searched in vain for books on the subject. Apart from the dry and directive pamphlets put out by fertility specialists and grief counselors, there were few options. Though invisible to most people, my loss was a gaping gulf that separated me from the rest of the maternal world, from those whose parental lives were proceeding as planned. This lack of supportive and insightful reading on the subject reinforced my sense of isolation, deepening my loss. In this lonely and barren place, a book such as How to Expect What You're Not Expecting edited by Jessica Hiemstra and Lisa Martin-Demoor, would have been most welcome.
How to Expect is a wise book and a much-needed addition to the now slowly expanding collection of books about pregnancy and loss, such as Peggy Orenstein's memoir Waiting for Daisy and the anthology About What Was Lost: 20 Writers on Miscarriage, Healing and Hope, edited by Jessica Berger Gross. These two books, both published in 2007, have initiated an important dialogue about pregnancy, miscarriage, stillbirth, and infertility. How to Expect, the fourth in a series of anthologies about modern families put out by Canadian publisher TouchWood Editions, broadens the discussion started by Orenstein and Gross in both interesting and profound ways. In addition to pieces on miscarriage and infertility, stillbirth, premature birth, and the birth of a child with severe disabilities, one also finds in How to Expect essays that examine other struggles and losses about which so many parents are also frequently silent: the difficulties of single parenting or coping with a parent's dementia and the "loss" of a child to drugs or alcohol or depression. While this list of topics might seem a vast and depressing line-up, the effect of reading these essays all together is strangely comforting. How to Expect is an antidote to the shame and loneliness that silence engenders: an honest, insightful exploration of the complex pleasure—and sometimes devastating cost—of trying to create a family.
The title of How to Expect is a clever inversion of the title of the ubiquitous pregnancy guide, What to Expect When You're Expecting, as well as a refutation. In the nineteen essays included here, again and again readers see how little control parents have, how even the best intentions and most careful plans don't always result in outcomes either hoped for or expected. For instance, in "Largo, Lento, Grave," Chris Tarry and his wife, Michelle, decide to have a child and move quickly to talking about timing the birth, possible names (Chloe and Zachary), and even a decorating scheme for the nursery. "[T]his was New York, after all, the kid needed to be on a schedule," Tarry comments. He and Michelle follow all the rules: they have sex on schedule; Michelle takes prenatal vitamins and prenatal yoga classes; but they still have difficulty conceiving, and then, once pregnant, Michelle suffers a miscarriage. Tarry equates this process of first hoping for a baby and then grieving over its loss to the tempo designations on his metronome, moving from "Accelerando (quickly, and with excitement)" to "Lagrimoso (tearfully)" to "Obbligato (required, indispensable)." Another essay, "Female Trouble" by Susan Olding, is a meditation on the word barren, and the narrator starts with a visit she made to a birth control clinic as a young woman. Writing of her young self, Olding says, "How strong was my need to control my own life, every moment, every breath of it. How deep my faith that such a thing was possible." Like Tarry, Olding comes to see the flaws in this belief that one can control one's own destiny—that one can "expect," and then receive what one expects. Finally, in "Missing Data," Laura Rock notes the way childbirth practices of the 1990s encouraged pregnant women to take charge of their labor and delivery by writing up birthing plans—once again falsely reinforcing the idea of control—when in fact "there is no way to prepare, no matter how much data you amass as a shield." Rock ends with this simple yet elegant advice: "Expect anything."
If the authors included here didn't expect loss, neither could they predict its tenacity. As much as a parent might try, loss refuses to be erased or replaced, even by subsequent good fortune. In "Swan Song," Chris Arthur writes that the loss of his son "demands endurance; it does not admit of any cure." Olding, too, reveals the tenacity of loss. Unable to conceive, she is encouraged by well-meaning but misguided friends to invest in her role as a writer, to "give birth to books." She is lucky, she admits, to have other identities—writer, teacher, friend, and wife—but Olding says, "none of this erases my desire to bear and raise my own child. No matter how I look at it, infertility is a loss, a painful, too private bereavement." In "Delivery," the final essay of the anthology, Carrie Snyder reminds us, as she reminds herself, "there is only ever the illusion of conclusion, of ending." Readers will appreciate that the essays collected here don't offer false hope or easy answers, one single road to happiness. As in life, with pregnancy there is no formula, no control, no guarantee.
What is there, then? Music, painting, poetry, and spending time in nature are some of the ways these writers bear heartbreak, try to make sense of it. Janet Baker, in "Story: On the Order of Things or What I Really Want to Say," turns to painting to give expression to her life with Gary, her severely handicapped son. As the hesitancy within her title suggests, words alone won't suffice. Sadiqa De Meijer's "Stork Bite" ends with a poem by Herman de Coninck, one that insists poetry is what makes life bearable. In "Invisible Mending," Fiona Tinwei Lam finds in writing fiction a way that "the heart and imagination may work together to transcend death." And in "How to Bury a Yellow Toque," Jessica Hiemstra illustrates how art offers both the means to understand as well as solace: "Artists make windows / out of dusk and shallow water… / offer us poems to recite in the dark, verses / to comfort us when we are confined by solitude." With such rich and evocative language, How to Expect never feels grim or bereft, even as it confronts the hard truths of family life.
The anthology offers both honesty and comfort, so it is easy to imagine buying How to Expect for a suffering friend. Indeed, within the collection, friendship is a theme that runs alongside that of loss. Throughout How to Expect, authentic connection takes the sting out of loss as well as the accompanying guilt and self-blame. For instance, in "Threshold," Lorri Neilsen Glenn writes, "As we have learned to breathe again, we have found other parents—far more than we have imagined—with stories that echo ours. All along, we were not alone, but none of us had the courage to talk then. We talk now." An invitation more than a guide, an illustration more than a prescription, How to Expect is an exquisite reminder that those of us who have lost a child are not alone. And just as we may wish to talk, the essays within How to Expect talk with us.
Rachel Hall's short stories and essays have been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, most recently Midwestern Gothic, Lunch Ticket, and Bellingham Review. She has received awards and honors from publications such as Lilith and Glimmer Train, and from the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, and Ragdale. Hall lives, writes, and teaches in Western New York.
More from Rachel Hall


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Hacking the Planet
By Arun Gupta Illustrations by Gary Martin Don't believe that politicians and corporations lack the will to address climate change. They have the will to deny the science of climate change, the will to sabotage negotiations on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and the will to foist half-baked schemes on us to address global calamity. This is why Copenhagen will not be a failure. It will be a stunning success. The wealthy and powerful have succeeded in blocking, for now, the shift to a society, economy and polity that sustains the vast breadth of humanity and the planet. Instead, we will be given shoddy fixes. One will be a technological fix, geoengineering, which has been described as "hacking the planet." The second will be a market fix, cap and trade, which aims to turn pollution into a tradable commodity in a new privatized atmosphere. The aim of both is to sustain extractive industries, the fossil-fuel economy, consumer capitalism and globalized inequality and deprivation. Moreover, both fixes will give the appearance, but not essence, of urgent action; create new modes of accumulation for industrial and financial capital; and accelerate ecological devastation. So what is geoengineering? In a broad sense it is manipulation of the biosphere. By this definition, we have been geoengineering the earth over the last 250 years by spewing nearly 500 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. There are two forms of geoengineering. One would alter the "albedo," or the ratio of sunlight reflected back into space. The other involves scrubbing the atmosphere of excess carbon and storing it. Managing solar radiation works faster, but the drawbacks are greater than carbon capture and storage. The proposals sound like science fiction: launching a trillion mirrors into space to shade the earth, deploying fleets of robotic ships to spray saltwater mist to brighten clouds, erecting artificial forests to filter atmospheric carbon, juicing the oceans with iron to stimulate phytoplankton that will gorge on carbon. All are untested, and all have known drawbacks and unknown consequences and would turn the atmosphere into one more human artifact to be managed by bureaucrats and capitalists. But it's already started. Technology firms from California to Australia are dumping iron and urea in the ocean, recycling carbon dioxide emissions and capturing carbon from the air. The potential market for these fixes ranges from tens of billions of dollars to trillions. The payoff is being able to sell the results as "offsets" in carbon-trading markets. And guess who foots the bill? To even consider such risky ventures assumes we are too weak and shortsighted to stop mining coal, driving cars or torching rainforests, but we are mighty and wise enough to reconfigure the entire planet to fit our desires. Then again, it's easier to imagine the end of the world, as the pedestrian blockbuster 2012 does, than an end to driving SUVs to big-box stores to buy more junk we don't need. There is a virtual inevitability to geoengineering. On the one hand, capitalism can continue business as usual, on the other it can create a new industry at the public's expense. Plus, with no regulation in place, any company, government or billionaire is free to start geoengineering the earth. Prominent government bodies including the National Academy of Sciences and Britain's Royal Society, have been holding workshops and releasing studies on geoengineering. Last year, the Council on Foreign Relations held a workshop on with the ominous title, "Unlilateral Planetary Scale Geoengineering." Ready or not, here comes Earth 2.0. In Carbon Trading, perhaps the definitive work on the subject, Larry Lohmann writes that "there is only one way of addressing the climate crisis: to keep most remaining coal, oil and gas in the ground." Reducing greenhouse gases to the level where they no longer threaten cataclysm means "net negative emissions," which involves phasing out coal, engaging in continental-scale reforestation and radically different agricultural practices and figuring out how to sequester huge amounts of carbon safely for millennia. But this would mean a completely new global political economy based on sharing resources and reducing inequality. This terrifies the rich. So rather than offering a plan for slashing carbon emissions, at Copenhagen they will demand carbon trading and offsets as the cure-all. Trading pollution was pioneered in the United States decades ago, and its supporters, such as liberal oracle Paul Krugman, always cite trading in sulfur dioxide as a stellar case of an efficient pollution market. Yet, proponents rarely acknowledge that this market was extremely narrow, involving one polluting gas and a few hundred participants, industrial polluters. The rights were given away for free, amounting to billions in public subsidies. The actual reductions were modest, and absolutely no innovation was spurred in alternative energies or conservation. Coal still accounts for roughly half of all U.S. power generation. Other systems such as the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme have been unqualified failures for reducing emissions but smashing successes for increasing profits. One study by the NGO International Rivers found that some 76 percent of projects approved under the CDM had already been completed. In essence, these projects would have happened anyway so they provide no additional emissions reduction. It's just an accounting trick. Advocates of carbon trading contend there can be a manageable global market where projects to reduce emissions can be properly evaluated, instituted, measured, regulated, managed and then traded for profit free of corruption. This flies in the face of decades of epic fraud and corruption in global financial markets. For example, Lohmann discusses the pop group Coldplay's release of A Rush of Blood to the Head. The band said it would "offset" part of the album's carbon footprint by planting 10,000 mango trees in southern India. It turned out that half the trees had never been distributed or were dead within a few years. In the world of offsets, this qualifies as a success story. In a case involving General Motors, Chevron and American Electrical Power, the Nature Conservancy purchased 50,000 acres of Brazilian Atlantic forest in 2002 either to use as offsets or to trade. Local and native communities who used the land for food and materials have been banned from the forest. According to Mother Jones, the international carbon market developed under Kyoto "now accounts for more than $126 billion in offset transactions." By 2012, the Financial Times recently speculated, the global carbon trading market could amount to $1.2 trillion if the United States commits to a cap-and-trade system. Virtually every investment bank in the world has a carbon trading division; it could be the largest commodities market in the world by 2020, and outfits like the New York Stock Exchange, J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are developing "carbon-trading platforms." The goal of carbon trading and geoengineering is twofold: new areas of profit, and new forms of enclosure that turn the entire biosphere itself into commodity units; forest, farmlands and oceans, mainly in the global south, will be seized under these markets because property rights will be enshrined above all else. Ultimately, even the sky will be commodified by turning the carbon cycle itself into a tradable, privately owned asset. 7 Ways to Geoengineer the Earth SOLUTION: THE MATRIX Use high-altitude weather balloons, airplanes and even naval guns to disperse sulfate particles into the stratosphere to block sunlight. This is based on the effects of the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, which injected an estimated 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, cooling the planet by 0.5 degrees Celsius for more than a year. DRAWBACKS: Arctic ozone depletion; a more acidic environment; decreased soil moisture and rainfall; uneven regional effects; impact on Asia's monsoons, which could prove disastrous for billions; unknown effects on photosynthesis; reduced effectiveness of solar power; no change in increasing ocean acidification; and the need to keep the sulfate pump working continuously. SOLUTION: SUNSHIELD Launch a trillion mirrors or more into space where they would reflect some of the sunlight back, thus reducing the global mean temperature. DRAWBACKS: The cost could be in the hundreds of trillions of dollars (makes the Wall Street bailout look like peanuts). There are the usual hazards of decreasing solar radiation, such as no effect on ocean acidification and less solar power. Then there's the fact that the global water cycle is more sensitive to a change in solar radiation than the carbon cycle. Simply put, lowering temperatures to the pre-industrial norm would push global rainfall below the norm. And the sunshield could be used as a weapon. Imagine the Pentagon threatening to block a "rogue nation's" sunlight. SOLUTION: GERITOL Dump iron filings in the oceans to spawn blooms of phytoplankton that soak up carbon dioxide via photosynthesis. The theory is that when the phytoplankton die they will sink to lower depths carrying the carbon with them. At least two California companies, Planktos and Climos, are already trying to cash in by selling ocean fertilization as offsets. DRAWBACKS: The only way to test ocean fertilization is to do it on a massive scale for decades in an environment in constant flux, making it extremely difficult to measure results. Effects include nutrient robbing and oxygen depletion. According to Nature, the weekly science journal, "even if the entire Southern Ocean were fertilized forever with iron" this would sequester only one-eighth of the carbon now being generated annually. Another recent Nature study found that in one case of natural iron fertilization, the amount of carbon sequestered in lower depths "was almost 80 times smaller than the amount that scientists had determined during a similar study." In other words, it doesn't work. SOLUTION: FANTASY ISLANDS Construct huge white, plastic islands and float them in the oceans to mimic the reflectivity of polar ice. Melting ice is one critical feedback loop that is speeding up warming. Snow-covered ice reflects up to 85 percent of solar radiation, while open water reflects a paltry 7 percent. So as sea ice melts, the ocean absorbs more heat, causing more ice to melt. DRAWBACKS: The amount of area to be covered could amount to hundreds of thousands of square miles, resulting in an immense and expensive engineering project. It's uncertain how this would affect weather patterns and sea life under the islands. The growth and shrinkage of northern sea ice plays a critical role in heat transfer from the oceans to the atmosphere, which is already affecting weather patterns throughout the northern hemisphere, whereas fake islands would remain fixed in size and place. SOLUTION: WHITER, BRIGHTER CLOUDS Known as "marine cloud brightening," this technique involves deploying thousands of robotic ships to spray atomized saltwater mist into the lower layer of stratocumulus clouds that cover about 25 percent of the world's oceans. Theoretically, these brightened clouds could reflect enough solar radiation to offset the global warming expected from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which we're quickly headed toward. Drawbacks: Apart from the usual problems of tinkering with sunlight, the effects would likely be regionalized. According to Nature, brighter clouds also cool only during the day and do best in summer, whereas global warming is an around-theclock phenomenon. There are questions about whether it is technologically possible to create small enough salt droplets and what the feedback would be on the cloud layers. Since all sorts of climatic activity is driven by temperature differences between the land and oceans, no one knows how weather patterns will be affected. SOLUTION: ARTIFICIAL TREES Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University, has teamed up with Global Research Technologies in Arizona to construct artificial trees coated in an absorbent material like limewater to bind with carbon dioxide. The carbon would then be removed and stored in used gas and oil reservoirs where it would supposedly stay put for eons. DRAWBACKS: Cost is a huge issue. Britain's Institution of Mechanical Engineers estimates in a new report that it would take 10 million trees at about $20,000 each to absorb just one-eighth of carbon dioxide produced annually. Removing half the world's carbon dioxide by this method comes to $800 billion and the report notes this is only 20 percent of the costs, with most of the expense coming from "recovery from the sorbent filter material." Plus there are unknowns as to whether captured and stored carbon would actually stay in the ground; if it started to leak on a large scale, warming could snap back. SOLUTION: MOVE THE EARTH This is the most outlandish idea, while admittedly tongue in cheek. Writing in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science in 2001, three scientists described how to "slingshot" an asteroid about half the size of Long Island past Jupiter and then the Earth, transferring the orbital energy in the process. Voilà! Earth's orbit is nudged about 30 miles further out, reducing incoming solar radiation. Repeat as needed. DRAWBACKS: The asteroid could cause a speed-up in the Earth's rotation; the asteroid's tidal bulge would be 10 times the force of the moon's, "leading to likely tsunamis, immense storms and other disruptions"; other planets may have to be moved as the Earth is moved, which could destabilize the whole solar system; "it seems that the Moon will be lost from Earth orbit during this process"; and a wayward asteroid could smack into the Earth, effectively sterilizing the biosphere of life.
Arun Gupta Nov 19, 2009
By Arun Gupta
Illustrations by Gary Martin
Don't believe that politicians and corporations lack the will to address climate change. They have the will to deny the science of climate change, the will to sabotage negotiations on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and the will to foist half-baked schemes on us to address global calamity.
This is why Copenhagen will not be a failure. It will be a stunning success. The wealthy and powerful have succeeded in blocking, for now, the shift to a society, economy and polity that sustains the vast breadth of humanity and the planet.
Instead, we will be given shoddy fixes. One will be a technological fix, geoengineering, which has been described as "hacking the planet." The second will be a market fix, cap and trade, which aims to turn pollution into a tradable commodity in a new privatized atmosphere. The aim of both is to sustain extractive industries, the fossil-fuel economy, consumer capitalism and globalized inequality and deprivation. Moreover, both fixes will give the appearance, but not essence, of urgent action; create new modes of accumulation for industrial and financial capital; and accelerate ecological devastation.
So what is geoengineering? In a broad sense it is manipulation of the biosphere. By this definition, we have been geoengineering the earth over the last 250 years by spewing nearly 500 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
There are two forms of geoengineering. One would alter the "albedo," or the ratio of sunlight reflected back into space. The other involves scrubbing the atmosphere of excess carbon and storing it. Managing solar radiation works faster, but the drawbacks are greater than carbon capture and storage.
The proposals sound like science fiction: launching a trillion mirrors into space to shade the earth, deploying fleets of robotic ships to spray saltwater mist to brighten clouds, erecting artificial forests to filter atmospheric carbon, juicing the oceans with iron to stimulate phytoplankton that will gorge on carbon.
All are untested, and all have known drawbacks and unknown consequences and would turn the atmosphere into one more human artifact to be managed by bureaucrats and capitalists. But it's already started. Technology firms from California to Australia are dumping iron and urea in the ocean, recycling carbon dioxide emissions and capturing carbon from the air. The potential market for these fixes ranges from tens of billions of dollars to trillions. The payoff is being able to sell the results as "offsets" in carbon-trading markets. And guess who foots the bill?
To even consider such risky ventures assumes we are too weak and shortsighted to stop mining coal, driving cars or torching rainforests, but we are mighty and wise enough to reconfigure the entire planet to fit our desires. Then again, it's easier to imagine the end of the world, as the pedestrian blockbuster 2012 does, than an end to driving SUVs to big-box stores to buy more junk we don't need.
There is a virtual inevitability to geoengineering. On the one hand, capitalism can continue business as usual, on the other it can create a new industry at the public's expense. Plus, with no regulation in place, any company, government or billionaire is free to start geoengineering the earth.
Prominent government bodies including the National Academy of Sciences and Britain's Royal Society, have been holding workshops and releasing studies on geoengineering. Last year, the Council on Foreign Relations held a workshop on with the ominous title, "Unlilateral Planetary Scale Geoengineering."
Ready or not, here comes Earth 2.0.
In Carbon Trading, perhaps the definitive work on the subject, Larry Lohmann writes that "there is only one way of addressing the climate crisis: to keep most remaining coal, oil and gas in the ground."
Reducing greenhouse gases to the level where they no longer threaten cataclysm means "net negative emissions," which involves phasing out coal, engaging in continental-scale reforestation and radically different agricultural practices and figuring out how to sequester huge amounts of carbon safely for millennia.
But this would mean a completely new global political economy based on sharing resources and reducing inequality. This terrifies the rich.
So rather than offering a plan for slashing carbon emissions, at Copenhagen they will demand carbon trading and offsets as the cure-all.
Trading pollution was pioneered in the United States decades ago, and its supporters, such as liberal oracle Paul Krugman, always cite trading in sulfur dioxide as a stellar case of an efficient pollution market.
Yet, proponents rarely acknowledge that this market was extremely narrow, involving one polluting gas and a few hundred participants, industrial polluters. The rights were given away for free, amounting to billions in public subsidies. The actual reductions were modest, and absolutely no innovation was spurred in alternative energies or conservation. Coal still accounts for roughly half of all U.S. power generation.
Other systems such as the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme have been unqualified failures for reducing emissions but smashing successes for increasing profits. One study by the NGO International Rivers found that some 76 percent of projects approved under the CDM had already been completed. In essence, these projects would have happened anyway so they provide no additional emissions reduction. It's just an accounting trick.
Advocates of carbon trading contend there can be a manageable global market where projects to reduce emissions can be properly evaluated, instituted, measured, regulated, managed and then traded for profit free of corruption. This flies in the face of decades of epic fraud and corruption in global financial markets.
For example, Lohmann discusses the pop group Coldplay's release of A Rush of Blood to the Head. The band said it would "offset" part of the album's carbon footprint by planting 10,000 mango trees in southern India. It turned out that half the trees had never been distributed or were dead within a few years.
In the world of offsets, this qualifies as a success story. In a case involving General Motors, Chevron and American Electrical Power, the Nature Conservancy purchased 50,000 acres of Brazilian Atlantic forest in 2002 either to use as offsets or to trade. Local and native communities who used the land for food and materials have been banned from the forest.
According to Mother Jones, the international carbon market developed under Kyoto "now accounts for more than $126 billion in offset transactions."
By 2012, the Financial Times recently speculated, the global carbon trading market could amount to $1.2 trillion if the United States commits to a cap-and-trade system. Virtually every investment bank in the world has a carbon trading division; it could be the largest commodities market in the world by 2020, and outfits like the New York Stock Exchange, J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are developing "carbon-trading platforms."
The goal of carbon trading and geoengineering is twofold: new areas of profit, and new forms of enclosure that turn the entire biosphere itself into commodity units; forest, farmlands and oceans, mainly in the global south, will be seized under these markets because property rights will be enshrined above all else. Ultimately, even the sky will be commodified by turning the carbon cycle itself into a tradable, privately owned asset.
7 Ways to Geoengineer the Earth
SOLUTION: THE MATRIX
Use high-altitude weather balloons, airplanes and even naval guns to disperse sulfate particles into the stratosphere to block sunlight. This is based on the effects of the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, which injected an estimated 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, cooling the planet by 0.5 degrees Celsius for more than a year.
DRAWBACKS: Arctic ozone depletion; a more acidic environment; decreased soil moisture and rainfall; uneven regional effects; impact on Asia's monsoons, which could prove disastrous for billions; unknown effects on photosynthesis; reduced effectiveness of solar power; no change in increasing ocean acidification; and the need to keep the sulfate pump working continuously.
SOLUTION: SUNSHIELD
Launch a trillion mirrors or more into space where they would reflect some of the sunlight back, thus reducing the global mean temperature.
DRAWBACKS: The cost could be in the hundreds of trillions of dollars (makes the Wall Street bailout look like peanuts). There are the usual hazards of decreasing solar radiation, such as no effect on ocean acidification and less solar power. Then there's the fact that the global water cycle is more sensitive to a change in solar radiation than the carbon cycle. Simply put, lowering temperatures to the pre-industrial norm would push global rainfall below the norm. And the sunshield could be used as a weapon. Imagine the Pentagon threatening to block a "rogue nation's" sunlight.
SOLUTION: GERITOL
Dump iron filings in the oceans to spawn blooms of phytoplankton that soak up carbon dioxide via photosynthesis. The theory is that when the phytoplankton die they will sink to lower depths carrying the carbon with them. At least two California companies, Planktos and Climos, are already trying to cash in by selling ocean fertilization as offsets.
DRAWBACKS: The only way to test ocean fertilization is to do it on a massive scale for decades in an environment in constant flux, making it extremely difficult to measure results. Effects include nutrient robbing and oxygen depletion. According to Nature, the weekly science journal, "even if the entire Southern Ocean were fertilized forever with iron" this would sequester only one-eighth of the carbon now being generated annually. Another recent Nature study found that in one case of natural iron fertilization, the amount of carbon sequestered in lower depths "was almost 80 times smaller than the amount that scientists had determined during a similar study." In other words, it doesn't work.
SOLUTION: FANTASY ISLANDS
Construct huge white, plastic islands and float them in the oceans to mimic the reflectivity of polar ice. Melting ice is one critical feedback loop that is speeding up warming. Snow-covered ice reflects up to 85 percent of solar radiation, while open water reflects a paltry 7 percent. So as sea ice melts, the ocean absorbs more heat, causing more ice to melt.
DRAWBACKS: The amount of area to be covered could amount to hundreds of thousands of square miles, resulting in an immense and expensive engineering project. It's uncertain how this would affect weather patterns and sea life under the islands. The growth and shrinkage of northern sea ice plays a critical role in heat transfer from the oceans to the atmosphere, which is already affecting weather patterns throughout the northern hemisphere, whereas fake islands would remain fixed in size and place.
SOLUTION: WHITER, BRIGHTER CLOUDS
Known as "marine cloud brightening," this technique involves deploying thousands of robotic ships to spray atomized saltwater mist into the lower layer of stratocumulus clouds that cover about 25 percent of the world's oceans. Theoretically, these brightened clouds could reflect enough solar radiation to offset the global warming expected from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which we're quickly headed toward.
Drawbacks: Apart from the usual problems of tinkering with sunlight, the effects would likely be regionalized. According to Nature, brighter clouds also cool only during the day and do best in summer, whereas global warming is an around-theclock phenomenon. There are questions about whether it is technologically possible to create small enough salt droplets and what the feedback would be on the cloud layers. Since all sorts of climatic activity is driven by temperature differences between the land and oceans, no one knows how weather patterns will be affected.
SOLUTION: ARTIFICIAL TREES
Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University, has teamed up with Global Research Technologies in Arizona to construct artificial trees coated in an absorbent material like limewater to bind with carbon dioxide. The carbon would then be removed and stored in used gas and oil reservoirs where it would supposedly stay put for eons.
DRAWBACKS: Cost is a huge issue. Britain's Institution of Mechanical Engineers estimates in a new report that it would take 10 million trees at about $20,000 each to absorb just one-eighth of carbon dioxide produced annually. Removing half the world's carbon dioxide by this method comes to $800 billion and the report notes this is only 20 percent of the costs, with most of the expense coming from "recovery from the sorbent filter material." Plus there are unknowns as to whether captured and stored carbon would actually stay in the ground; if it started to leak on a large scale, warming could snap back.
SOLUTION: MOVE THE EARTH
This is the most outlandish idea, while admittedly tongue in cheek. Writing in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science in 2001, three scientists described how to "slingshot" an asteroid about half the size of Long Island past Jupiter and then the Earth, transferring the orbital energy in the process. Voilà! Earth's orbit is nudged about 30 miles further out, reducing incoming solar radiation. Repeat as needed.
DRAWBACKS: The asteroid could cause a speed-up in the Earth's rotation; the asteroid's tidal bulge would be 10 times the force of the moon's, "leading to likely tsunamis, immense storms and other disruptions"; other planets may have to be moved as the Earth is moved, which could destabilize the whole solar system; "it seems that the Moon will be lost from Earth orbit during this process"; and a wayward asteroid could smack into the Earth, effectively sterilizing the biosphere of life.