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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


A new study confirms that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide lengthens the plant growing season.

Chicken Little was wrong! A new study confirms that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide lengthens the plant growing season.

Previous studies have documented a lengthening of the growing season in many parts of the world. In the United States, the time between the last spring frost and the first autumn freeze has gone up by nearly two weeks since 19002; in Europe, a study of more than 540 plant species found that, on average, spring events such as flowering had shifted about a week earlier from 1971 to 2000, and the onset of autumn had been pushed back by about four days3.

Such shifts have long been attributed to warming temperatures. But CO2 also plays a part, says study co-author Heidi Steltzer, an ecosystem ecologist at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado.

Putting aside the uncertainty about whether carbon dioxide can even cause global warming, the assumption that global warming itself will be a bad thing has never been demonstrated clearly, while there is evidence that it might actually be beneficial.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

11 comments

  • Cotour

    You know, if you keep posting articles like this you may at some point have to put some time aside for reeducation. Apparently you have not received the memo ” human driven climate change is settled”, the existence of human beings is destroying the earth!

  • Orion314

    As Jerry Pournelle once put it: “It’s easier to grow crops in sand rather than in snow”

  • In their opinion, people are a bad thing, malthusians all of these chicken little earth first activists.

  • If there hadn’t been global warming 12,000 years ago, there wouldn’t be any civilization for the AGW acolytes to complain about.

  • Publius 2

    It has always puzzled me why those who condemn humanity’s existence for damaging the planet, like those who warn about the catastrophe of overpopulation, do not seem to be willing to set an example for the rest of us and self-destruct.

  • Cotour

    I am listening right now 10:20, 4/28/14, WNYC, to this MSNBC talking head Chris Hayes. This is what speaks for the left, you decide what flavor of moronic this guy is. I just listened to him talking to Brian Leher and making an analogy between the seriousness of his new baby’s temperature increasing 1 to 2 degrees and the earth’s atmospheres temperature increasing.

    And this article about how he compares “climate change” with slavery. Has he ever thought about how the government is creating a form of slavery to the debt obligation and the peoples slavery to Obamacare? I guess he does not think in such a manner, only how the humans on earth can keep the earths temperature at what we have to assume is the current “correct” temperature that it is at this moment in time.

    http://thedailybanter.com/2014/04/chris-hayes-totally-compares-climate-change-to-slavery/

  • Cotour

    Another Chris Hayes example:

    He also comments on Mr. Piketty who the arts section of the New York Times arts section says is putting out some real serious restructuring of capitalism theories, I choose to default to the Wall Street Journal on such matters. In all honesty I have not heard or read any of Mr. Piketty and his “new” theories related to capitalism and how everything must be redistributed.

    Seems I have heard such theories before. I will in time dig into it though.

    http://www.salon.com/2014/04/28/chris_hayes_thomas_piketty_is_misunderstood_and_the_climate_crisis_is_worse_than_you_think/

  • Edward

    I’m going to disagree that the current temperature is the “correct” temperature. I came across a report that the Polar Bear may be in trouble because the arctic ice is too thick for the seals (a favorite Polar Bear meal) to make breathing holes. The Polar Bear will have less to eat, because they apparently grab the seals when they come up through the holes for air.

    The conclusion can only be that this year must be *too cold* and that we need the arctic to be warmer. Global warming as a good thing?

    (Of course, I don’t know how the Polar Bears survived when the temperatures were so much cooler a couple of centuries ago, but that wasn’t part of the story.)

    http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/alaskan-polar-bears-threatened-too-much-spring-ice-0
    “What’s shocking is that the PBSG have now admitted that the ‘movement of bears’ issue essentially invalidates the 2006 population estimate and the much-touted ‘reduced survival of cubs’”

  • Cotour

    Supporting evidence that “global warming” / “climate change” causes colder or is it warmer temperatures.

    http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/2014-closing-in-on-coldest-start-to-the-year-in-us-history/

    The left may have to again change their terminology, hell they may have to switch over to global cooling if it keeps up this way!

  • Interesting to read the comments from the agw proponents and then the skeptics reply’s back at them, warmists are clueless!

  • Cotour

    The bears have survived for millions of years, as they and all other life forms have, some surviving and some not, despite the frantic opinions of those who would have a consensus and agenda driven opinion on the subject.

    How did the world properly function without the opinions of man before man existed? And I reiterate, this does not mean that humans should not be aware and concerned with what they do and how they do it and with developing the best, cleanest and most efficient technologies as possible to accomplish what must be accomplished.

    Where I sit right now, 12,000 years ago was under two miles of ice. So if you were to ask me if the planet was warming I would have to say, yes, I believe that the planet is in a general warming mode. And 12,000 years is a relative blink of the eye. And ask me if I believe that there is run away tipping point indicated by the amount of PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere where the seas rise 260 feet and the weather turns more chaotic than it normally is, I would have to disagree with you.

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