Pat Sullivan Blog

WSJ - Science Doubts Global Warming

The Climate Change Climate Change

The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere.

• By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Associated Press

Steve Fielding

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

The rise in skepticism also came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected like Mr. Obama on promises to combat global warming, was attempting his own emissions-reduction scheme. His administration was forced to delay the implementation of the program until at least 2011, just to get the legislation through Australia's House. The Senate was not so easily swayed.

Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.

This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.

Republicans in the U.S. have, in recent years, turned ever more to the cost arguments against climate legislation. That's made sense in light of the economic crisis. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi fails to push through her bill, it will be because rural and Blue Dog Democrats fret about the economic ramifications. Yet if the rest of the world is any indication, now might be the time for U.S. politicians to re-engage on the science. One thing for sure: They won't be alone.

Could Australia Blow Apart the Great Global Warming Scare?

A great article from Australia. 

Ian Plimer's book, Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science, has been received with such enthusiasm and is into its third print run in as many weeks. [It's now up to the fifth printing.]  (To be releases in the US on July 1.)

What does Plimer's book say? Here is Sheehan's summary:

Much of what we have read about climate change, [Plimer] argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modeling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive."…

The Earth's climate is driven by the receipt and redistribution of solar energy. Despite this crucial relationship, the sun tends to be brushed aside as the most important driver of climate. Calculations on supercomputers are primitive compared with the complex dynamism of the Earth's climate and ignore the crucial relationship between climate and solar energy.

To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable—human-induced CO2—is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly

The Cap and Trade Bill in Congress needs to be stopped based on flawed science, dramatic increased costs to American consumers and the number of jobs that will be lost in America.

Brain Trauma - My Brain State Technologies Experience - Update 7

The first thing they do at Brain State Technologies is an assessment using the BST computer system.  They measure where you are.  How balanced or unbalanced the brain waves of your major lobes currently are?  The computer system then suggests protocols to be used in the ten sessions that typically are done when you become a client.  These protocols can be tweaked as they monitor the progress you make.  You also will be asked to fill out a subjective questionnaire regarding your health. While they ask about what you hope to accomplish in terms of your own physical and mental well being, their focus is to merely help the brain come back into a more balanced harmonious brain wave pattern. 

Brain State has worked with over 13,000 clients and have close to 200,000 sessions recorded in the database.  This is a huge database that grows everyday as they and their affiliates work with clients.  Because of the size of this database they have a very good idea what “normal” looks like.  They are also able to match specific brainwave patterns to certain pathologies.  They can tell that someone is depressed.  But they can also tell if that person is likely to hurt themselves or not.  They can see ADD, traumatic brain injury, anxiety states from the quick assessment they do.

When my assessment was done, Lee looked at the numbers without knowing anything from my questionnaire. He began to tell me what I felt and experienced.  Without knowing my past medical history basically could look at my brainwaves and see that I was likely experiencing certain health problems.  He asked me “when did you have an injury to your head?  Were you in an automobile accident?”  Keep in mind, I had not shared any of that with him.  He could simply “see” that in my patterns.  I was impressed to say the least. 

He  also said I did not sleep very well, struggled at times with anxiety and depression both of which were true.  He said my left and right side were VERY imbalanced and “not talking to each other at all.”  Same with my front and back.  He was concerned that I was taking some medications.  Occasionally medications can either slow and prevent the brain from changing very much.  But he said it likely would not matter a lot since during the assessment it was already clear that my brain was beginning to respond to the short “training” session they do in the assessment.

Ideally, they like to do your first 10 sessions over 5 days.  What they call an “intensive.”  My schedule would not allow that so I did my ten sessions over the next 2 weeks.  After the first one I felt a little “off”.   Something had definitely changed but it left me feeling a bit uncomfortable.  I shared that with Lee and he tweaked my next session a bit.  After the 2nd session I felt VERY much better.  Lee showed me where my brain waves had been 2 days earlier and where they were now.  The pattern looked totally different.

He explained the first session had shifted my autonomic nervous system which was stuck in a sympathetic dominant position , to a parasympathetic dominant position.  He explained that this was why I felt off.  The 2nd session they brought the sympathetic and parasympathetic pattern into balance.  Lee showed me the graphs and it was very interesting to see what they were talking about.  While I did not fully understand, it was clear in the first 2 sessions, my brainwaves had shifted dramatically.  In the next session, the two were brought essentially together.  And I could feel it!  I felt really good!

Here are pictures of my before and after brainwave patterns.  Download Pat_Sullivan-Session-1-15  More next post.

Brain Trauma - New direction - Update 5

Right about the time I was fully settling into my new meds and enjoying the sense of being even more focused and less impulsive, I got a call from my local doc, He wanted to talk with me about something new.  I thought, “just what I need, something new!”  I had just gotten everything working really well and he wants to talk me about something new?  But since he was doing me a big favor prescribing my meds for an out of town doctor, I went in to talk with him.

He was happy the new meds were really helping me.  Then he asked a piercing question.  “Do you want to stay on the meds the rest of your life?”  I said, “well, I would rather not but as long as they were helping me I have pretty well settled the issue that I would likely be taking the meds the rest of my life.”  He asked, ”What if there was a way to heal the brain and get off some or all the meds?”  Well that was no brainer (pun intended.)  Of course I would prefer to be healed and be off all the meds if I could.  He then began to share with me something new he had encountered first hand. His wife had been helped tremendously from long time issues with anxiety and depression.  He said I needed to check out Brainstate Technologies.

The idea behind BrainState Technologies began about 9 years ago by a computer scientist named Lee Gerdes who was seeking a way to get well from the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  He had been assaulted in San Francisco by 4 teens with baseball bats.  He was hit in the head 4 times and in the arm once.  He had lost the use of the arm and experienced many symptoms from the brain trauma.  Insomnia, anger outbursts, difficulty paying attention, anxiety, depression, etc. 

He had been the chief scientist for a public software company during the Internet bubble.  Highly functional but with great effort and will power.  It took all his energy every day to do his job.  But he was very difficult to be around for his employees.  He could blow up at any time. Reminded me of me.

He tried every mainstream and alternative medicine modality out there with very little help.  .  He began to wonder if his computer and physics background could help him develop something that would help him. When the company he worked for was sold, he and 2 programmers began to work on what eventually became Brainstate Technologies.

After a few years work he hit upon a way to help himself.  He fully recovered from PTSD and fully recovered the use of his left arm.  All this from using a software program that optimized and balanced his brainwave patterns.  After successfully trying it on other willing guinea pigs in his family and other friends, he set about to commercialize the technology.  His goal was simply.  To help people!

Basically, BST is a very advanced type of neurofeedback that is truly a breakthrough in my opinion.   It reads brainwaves  from various areas of the brain in real time, and then processes them with sophisticated software algorithms.  It then plays those waves back to the brain through auditory signals, essentially mirroring to the brain what it looks like.  It then begins to encourage (tweak) the brain towards a more optimal and balanced pattern. And it works. 

Through trauma of various kinds, the brain can get "stuck" in certain patterns in its effort to "protect" the person from further hurt or trauma.  Once stuck, the brain is very difficult to change using old technology.  Standard biofeedback and neurofeedback can help but can take hundreds of sessions.  Medicines can alter some functions and mask some symptoms but they usually cannot balance brainwave patterns.  In a matter of just a few sessions, Brainstate training can dramatically move the patterns to a more normal and balanced pattern.

There still remains a lot to prove for todays medical standards but studies are now underway with some major Universities to do just that.  Prove that optimizing brainwaves can alter things in the brain and body. 

I see it as Star Trek like medicine. I said in my book that I thought we would see more breakthroughs in medicine coming out of physics rather than biochemistry. The problem is that mainstream medicine is still very focused on biochemistry.  I am not saying that good can't or won't come out of biochemistry because it does and will.  I just believe that we will see major breakthroughs from areas other than biochemistry.  Brainstate is very promising in that regard.  More in my next post.

Brain Trauma - A New Doc - Update 3

I have found things are usually not simple.  Read my book and you will get some idea of how complicated a web of chronic unwellness can be.  Well taking Vyvanse was that way too.  The goal is to find the right dose.  One that lasted about 12 hours.  30mgs lasted about 5 hours in me.  When I talked to my doc about this after my first dose he said to take 60 and then increase it more till it lasted 12 hours.  He even said I could take a dose early and one later.  So over the next 6 days I kept increasing the dose till I was taking 90mgs.  And I crashed.  Totally crashed. 

I felt totally depressed.  I wept for no reason at all twice.  I was a mess in less than a week!  I immediately stopped the med and felt better.  But I was so disappointed.  It was so promising the first two days, but then went straight downhill from there.  I was perplexed.  So I researched.  I read and read.  I found a few blogs by psych docs who used Vyvanse extensively and mostly specialized in treating ADD.

What I read made me mad.  I learned it was important to very slowly raise the dose over several  weeks until the right dose was found both for effectiveness and duration.  One website was particularly helpful.  www.corepsych.com .  Dr. Charles Parker, in Reston VA,  wrote a blog that resonated with so many things for me.  First off, he had run the Amen Clinic in Washington DC for 5 years and then went back into practice treating patients.  (Amen Clinic is basically a diagnostic service to other docs.)  One of the services he offered was giving 2nd opinions on SPECT scans.    So I set up a teleconference.  I sent him all my scans, reports and filled a host of new forms for his office.  I then had a 2 hour conference with him by phone.   It was VERY interesting.

First he agreed that I had been under-treated for very obvious issues and he was kind of upset about it.  He said they basically took the approach of trying to simply stabilize me from the ups and downs I had experienced for the past 35 years.  But they had ignored major findings and did not treat me.  He also said he felt that Amen had missed a significant finding that would explain why I responded so well to Vyvanse at first and then crashed.   He said he sees it all the time in his practice. 

Rarely does only one condition exist but rather there are usually “co-morbid”  conditions.  Typically, if all the issues are not dealt with, then one med can often either not work or cause other problems.  This is why it is not unusual for people on psych meds to struggle to find the right med or combination of meds that will actually work and help them to function at a higher level.

He said the condition that Amen did not mention was the fact my whiplash accident caused injury to both the front AND back of my brain.  The front was related to my ADD symptoms but the back was tied more to depression because the injury damaged the area where serotonin has more of an effect.  Dopamine effects the front and serotonin the back primarily (admittedly simplistic).  Truth is both are working throughout the brain but these are primary areas where they work.

He explained that dopamine and serotonin were sort of on a teeter totter with each other.  When one goes up, the other goes down. In my case, my teeter totter was broken in that BOTH dopamine and serotonin were both starting out low.  Raising dopamine drove serotonin even lower.  That is why I crashed into a weepy depression.  Vyvanse dramatically increased dopamine in my PFC.  But as it did so it lowered my serotonin even lower.  He said my initial response to Vyvanse told him that it was likely a good med for me, but we had to raise serotonin and  noradrenalin as well.  For this he recommended Pristiq.  

Pristiq is another very new med.  It is the son of Effexor.  Pristiq is a SNRI. It raises both serotonin and noradrenalin. Pristiq is an isolated metabolite of Effexor that appeared to be the most effective and active metabolite.   It was believed from studies that it was a much “cleaner” med than Effexor with  a lower side effect profile than Effexor and other SNRIs and SSRI’s.  

One major problem that working with Dr. Parker caused was the fact that he was in VA and I was AZ.  The rules would not allow him to be my official doctor unless I actually saw him in person.  Since it was quite an inconvenience for me to do this I took a different course.  I went back and visited an doc, an MD who I had worked with often in the past 12 years or so as he tried to help me unravel all my mysterious symptoms.  He was a good guy, a friend and often had been helpful to me.  I told him all the new stuff I had learned from Amen Clinic and Dr. Parker.  He was excited to learn I had uncovered a huge underlying cause of many of the issues we had struggled with over the years.  I asked him if he would work with me and Dr. Parker by prescribing the meds that Dr. Parker recommended.  He said that as long as he understood what we were trying to accomplish with each med he would be happy to do this. 

Now this is a bit unusual because most docs would never do this.  THEY are the experts and don’t need any other doc telling them what to do!  His involvement will become an important piece of this update as you will see later.

So within a few days I was on Pristiq and Vyvanse.  And I began to feel much better.  We very gradually worked the dose of Vyvanse up to where I could feel it’s effects for about 12 hours.  The effects quickly became much more subtle than my original reaction.  I simply could tell that I was far more focused and calm.  My thoughts did not go racing through my head.  I found out what it was like to have a working Executive Center.  I felt I could consider business options much more effectively.  I did not have my usual tendency to impulsively make a decision.  If something bothered me, I could simply think about it for awhile until settling on a direction.  And Vyvanse did not push me into depression because Pristiq was doing a great job raising the levels of other neurotransmitters.  I felt like my brain was hitting on most if not all cylinders again.  It felt great!  But there were still problems to solve.  More in the next post.

Brain Trauma - My brain works better - Update 2

The pre-frontal cortex is the executive center of the brain.  It is where problem solving, emotion and complex thought takes place.  Damage, or under functioning in the PFC is what most often causes  inattention, distractibility and impulsiveness.  It is the source of most ADD/ADHD.

The more I read the report from Amen the more it was obvious to me everyone simply had either missed or ignored this finding for some reason.  I have my suspicions but I won’t get into that.  But from the SPECT scan, it was very clear there was very little blood flow in my PFC.

So I went back to my doc and asked why nothing had ever been done about the main finding from Amen Clinic?  He said, “what do you mean?”  I showed him the report and he sort of just looked at it and said well that is interesting.  I had told him many months before that since my accident, many years ago,  I struggled with inattention, being easily distracted and very impulsive.  I also experienced times of explosive anger where I could go off in a near rage but then 30 seconds be totally fine.  Everyone else around me though would be a mess however! 

He said these were all classic symptoms of ADD/ADHD and damage to the PFC.  I asked why we had not done anything about this before?  He replied, “well you seemed to be responding well to the things we were doing and it did not occur to me to do anything more.”  I was not happy with him but what are you going to do?  I had been helped but now I realized I could probably be helped a whole lot more.

He said that we could find out really quickly if I could be helped by an ADD stimulant.  He said I would likely know in a few days if I could feel better.  So he wrote a Rx for Vyvanse.  Vyvanse is the son of Adderall.  A new med that cannot be abused like other amphetamines.  This is due to the fact that the Amphetamine is bound to Lysine and has to be metabolized to release the stimulant.  And the stimulant is only released gradually based on how fast you metabolize it.  The goal is to find a dose that lasts about 12 hours.

So the next morning I took the smallest dose, 30mg and went to work.  About 45 minutes later I went “WOW”.  An amazing quietness came over my brain.  My thoughts slowed in a way that I could not remember ever feeling.  My thoughts were not altered, they just came at me in a slower, more controled way.  My head was quiet!!  I had grown so accustomed to thoughts racing through my head that I thought it was normal!!  35 years of having a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) how did I know what normal was? I knew I had developed many compensatory skills to deal with the pace of my thoughts but now I did not need to work hard to pay attention or to stay calm.

Well, if this new brain speed was normal I wanted more of it!  I almost cried.  I felt so amazingly good.  It was not a euphoric feeling.  It was just a feeling of calm, quiet and control over what was going on in my head.  I knew I had hit on a new answer for my health.  More in the next post.

Brain Trauma - It's always something - Update 1

This post begins a series that covers a significant update to my Brain Trauma Chapter, available only here on the web.  I did not cover it in my book because I learned about it after it was published.  There will be several coming posts to this and will eventually be formatted in the correct order that they were written.  I have been waiting for sometime to finish writing these just to see how things settled out.  It has been a pretty amazing last 8 months.  There will be lots of new information that I hope you will find useful.  -  Pat

For almost 2 years I have been on cruise control feeling really good.  I still had some issues come up every now and then, but for the most part I had been getting along good.  Then in August of 08, I got severe stomach flu.  I had severe diarrhea, and high fever.  Doctor said it would likely end in less than 7 days.  And I did feel better around the 7th day.  But every other day I continued to feel very fatigued and I would have fever and night sweats.  I went back to the doc and asked “why does this virus keep hanging on”.  He questioned me and simply said it is not a virus, you just have not replenished your electrolytes.  You are severely dehydrated.  What you are experiencing right now is nothing more than the symptoms of dehydration and loss of salts.

So out I went to the store and bought a ton of Pediolyte and V8.  Within a day I was physically feeling much better.  I kept drinking a lot for the next few days and my strength grew.  But something was wrong.  I felt "off", mentally and emotionally.  I felt like I was on the edge of the cliff of another “pit” experience.

Those of you have read my book, know that I refer to episodes that occurred to me off and on for 35 years as “the pit”.  About 6 weeks after having a serious car accident in my sophomore year in college (1972), I experienced my first pit.  I suddenly found I could not sleep, I was very anxious for no reason at all, I felt confused and depressed.  I had severe GI problems.  My fight or flight response kicked into high gear and I had little control over it.  Over the next 2 years I dragged myself through college and learned techniques and things that would help me.  By the time I graduated I felt about 80% recovered.  I stayed that way for a few years before falling into the pit again.  This pattern continued for the next 35 years.  But gradually I learned how to get out of the pit faster because of the many things I learned.  I write about most of those things in my book and in two additional chapters here on this blog.

Well this infection, with its fever and debilitating diarrhea, and big disruption to my sleep patterns put me at the edge of the pit.  I could feel myself right there.   But I never really fell all the way in.  I attribute that to the fact that the meds I had been put on by the Amen Clinic kept my damaged brain much more stable.

I saw my psych doc and he said that this was exactly the kind of thing that caused many of his patients to relapse.  He said dehydration, lack of sleep was very disruptive to the brain.  He temporarily increased my meds and that helped.  But I still felt off.  Perhaps it would just take more time to recover I thought.

A few weeks later I sort of crashed physically.  I was simply tired and worn out.  I wrote about that experience here.  I realized I needed to go back on small doses of hydrocortisone as I had used for many years.  The infection etc seemed to have worn out my adrenals again.  I had weaned off for some months but the new physical challenge simply wore me out.  Almost immediately I felt very much better, at least physically.  My energy returned.  But I still felt off.

I began to do what I always do when I don’t feel right.  I research.  I considered many things.  I went back and re-read the long report I got from Amen Clinic.  I re-read Dr. Amen’s books and website.  Gradually I came to a huge conclusion.  I was not being treated for the number one thing that Amen clinic said in their report.   The main finding by Amen clinic said my pre-frontal cortex was basically turned off.

The more I studied this I realized that basically I was being under treated.  I was being treated to remain stable but the main area of my brain that had been hurt in the accident was being left untreated.  And the way to treat it was very obvious.  I was upset both at Amen, my psych doc and myself.  “How could they ignore this major issue when there was a straightforward way to treat it?”  Why did I miss it?  More in the next post.