Fwd: Why people believe conspiracy theories

[John Nissen]

Hi Tom,

As a reader of The Bulletin, you may have read this issue.  I was particularly interested to read about Fukushima from a researcher [1] since I had inside knowledge from somebody who had lived near there and said that the nuclear fall-out danger was covered up, right from the start.  Children were allowed to play outside at school, despite parents' concerns.  Thousands of children then got problems with thyroid glands, which the researcher didn't pick up on.  

I followed the clear-up operation, in which hundreds if not thousands of workers were involved, each for a short time because of exposure to radiation.  The operations were extremely risky, because a single mistake could have meant meltdown.  There was just one person who was writing about all the hazards; the authorities were silent.  They were also silent about the huge plume of radioactive material released from settling tanks into the Pacific Ocean, which affected fish and fishermen.

This was a classic case of cover up.  We have another case of cover up with the scientists who advocate for the Emissions Reduction Alone strategy: it is doomed to failure.  Ideally this fact should be exposed in The Bulletin.  What chance?  Instead the need for SRM is treated as a kind of conspiracy theory: conspiring against the ERA strategy, e.g. with the moral hazard argument.  

Needless to say, Trump has fallen for this conspiracy theory, raised by one of his side-kicks, and is trying to ban work on SRM I believe.  Will the Democrats rise to the occasion, if they take over after Trump?  Is there any sign that they recognise the urgent need for SRM and are working on SRM deployment behind the scenes?

Cheers, John

[1] Maxime Polleri

Counting the dead at Fukushima

https://thebulletin.org/2026/03/counting-the-dead-at-fukushima/

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists <newsl...@thebulletin.org>
Date: Mon, Mar 16, 2026 at 1:19 PM
Subject: Why people believe conspiracy theories
To: <johnnis...@gmail.com>

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[Tom Goreau]

Unfortunately I’m not a regular reader of Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, but I have all the oldest issues: my grandfather (who was at Alamogordo and Bikini) was a founding member, and my father died at 45 of cancer induced by radiation exposure at Bikini.

 

I’ve tried to work with the Bulletin for years to publish my grandfather’s amazing photographs of both, and my father’s pathbreaking work at Bikini measuring CO2 and O2 exchange between atmosphere, ocean, and coral reefs, but found no interest.

 

I’m close to the Bikini Atoll exiles, I’ve been to all their communities to show the old photos, but they have been politically marginalized since they were forcibly exiled from the islands they had lived on for at least 3500 years. I’ve been trying for years to find funding to protect their children’s schools from flooding by the sea, but without luck.

 

So I can’t judge the Bulletin’s priorities, but I suspect they are very reluctant to deviate from nuclear weapons issues with the view it might dilute their credibility?

 

Lunatic naked emperors will exploit any ignorant lie enabling them to steal and kill the planet, and idiots will ape them. As the Americans say, you can’t fix stupid.

 

I’m going to have a lot less time now, writing a book, Coral Reef Natural History From Beginning to End, for Oxford University Press, a companion to Farewell To Ice.

[Tom Goreau]

Fukushima did release a huge radioactive plume, but this went into the Kurushio current, one of the strongest vertical mixing areas in the ocean, and so was rapidly diluted in the huge Pacific ocean to generally negligible levels, except perhaps for seafood along the most productive part of the East Japanese coast.

 

A friend of mine, Nick Fisher, was the first to measure Fukushima radio-isotopes in fishes caught off California, but this is more a measure of the extreme sensitivity of such measurements than actual hazard, because the amounts were so tiny.

 

Most were short lived isotopes that have decayed away.

 

The real concern seems to be Tritium in groundwater around Fukushima, which will remain for a long time.

 

BTW, HPAC bounces my messages

 

From: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>

Date: Tuesday, March 17, 2026 at 07:14
To: Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org>
Cc: Peter Wadhams <peter....@gmail.com>, Douglas Grandt <answer...@mac.com>, Herb <hsim...@gmail.com>, Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>, healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

[Paul Klinkman]

Dear Restorers,

I'm fine with an open marketplace of conspiracy theories.  Conspiracy theories tend to have legs when it can be shown that somebody wants to make big profits on dishing out their alternative explanation of reality.  

In Japan's case, after their national catastrophe it quickly became a Japanese state secret and a criminal felony for Japanese citizens to report on all unwanted medical information about the Fukushima meltdowns.  The Japanese ruling parties had quite a bit to lose from bad publicity.  So did TEPCO stockholders, where TEPCO owned the Fukushima complex.  So did General Electric, whose standard model reactors melted down.  Finally, the entire U.S. and international nuclear weapons industry has much to lose if it can be shown now many civilians got thyroid nodules from any particular nuclear power meltdown.

I'm a climate conspiracy theorist.  The fossil fuel industry throws money around like wine.  They buy off elections early and often with dark millions of dollars.  As people on this group know, the world is heading for a big crash test and the crash test's big dummy isn't wearing his safety belt on this particular run.  

The energy conspiracy takes on many dimensions.  For example, it takes 92% of a gallon of ordinary fuel to make U.S. corn ethanol equivalent in energy to that gallon of fuel.  The corn ethanol program is expensive and rather worthless for inhibiting climate change.    

Yes, nuclear power is always an economic bad joke, where nuclear power freeloads off of Uncle Sugar.  Nuclear energy is a fuel hog right off of the bat, comparing lifetime fossil fuel use  to the amount of electricity that current nuclear power stations make in their life cycles.    I expect that the nuclear power industry has a vast lobbying budget that encompasses a rather large dark side -- troll farms, planted stories, big fat election money, big investments in the growing archconservative media empires that now dominate almost all of the world's news output....

Conspiracies affect climate R&D too.  Expensive solutions that can be monopolized not only get almost all of Congress's R and D money, but they also get talked about by all of the troll farms' paid off whisperers.  The biggest financial joke is always hydrogen fusion.  I'm quite sure that I have many great, cost-effective climate solutions in my public interest inventor's portfolio, to a level of detail where I know where I'd drill the metal bolt holes for each gadget, yes I'm quite open source, just look up my name online.  However, climate change is a verboten idea in the first place, and on the second level where people accept the theory of climate change, sadly it still isn't what you know, it's who you know.  So, have fun in the middle of that upcoming crash test, everybody.

Yours in Hope,

Paul Klinkman