AN ANTI-GREENIE IN THE GUN

No wonder it is mostly retired professors who feel safe enough to criticize Greenie myths. (I am one myself!)

"For those of us who see television news and commentary as a vast, statist wasteland, the work of John Stossel has been welcome relief. Each week on the ABC show 20/20, Stossel has his "Give Me a Break" segment in which he comments acerbically on the latest follies of government regulation and taxation.

Stossel's brief commentary, along with the numerous shows he does on the limitations of government, has earned him a large following among conservatives and libertarians. It has also earned him numerous enemies in television, government, and among leftist groups. And like the conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby, who was recently ousted from the Boston Globe, Stossel finds his career in deep trouble because of an innocent error.

Earlier this year, Stossel twice broadcast a comparison of fruits and vegetables grown "organically" (that is, with manure as fertilizer) and that same produce grown by conventional means with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. (I saw one of those segments.) According to Stossel's research, the conventional produce was actually safer than the organic stuff and was better for the environment. This was a major challenge to environmentalist orthodoxy. However, as we shall see, there was a small problem with what he said, and it is that problem that has become the fig leaf covering the real reason that some prominent people want Stossel's scalp....

Stossel's analysis, however, lacked one component, that being whether or not there was pesticide residue on the conventional foods. His researcher said there was none, and like any journalist, who depends upon the accuracy of his staff, Stossel went with the story. However, it turned out that no tests had been conducted. It was an honest mistake, and, in reality, one that should have been irrelevant, since toxicology has long shown that pesticides can easily be washed from produce and that the tiny doses that might be left pose absolutely no threat to human health.

Unfortunately, statists who have long seethed at Stossel's commentary have been able to leap onto this small glitch and have turned it into a major anti-Stossel campaign. The ABC News hierarchy has already suspended the researcher without pay and Stossel's critics are demanding that Stossel be fired, despite the fact that he has already made a public correction of his "error."

The stench of hypocrisy here is overwhelming. Leftist journalists for years have trumpeted inaccurate information on environmental issues for years. Time Magazine has even proudly announced that it has renounced all journalistic "objectivity" in its quest to convince its readers that we are in a life and death environmental crisis. In other words, in modern journalism good science does not matter when the environment is at stake. Other news organizations are following the same path. Therefore, since some of the targets of Stossel's criticism have been environmentalists and the outright falsehoods they promote, it is not difficult to see why Stossel has been in the crosshairs of leftists for many years.....

Stossel has been the unending target of his journalistic peers. It now looks as though they have an issue with which to hang him. While every other mainstream "news" organization has committed far worse sins against the truth, Stossel has done something that is truly unforgivable. He has exposed the hypocrisy of the media, and for that there can be given no quarter until the man is destroyed".

More here.





CYCLES IN SUN ACTIVITY COINCIDE WITH CLIMATE CHANGE ON EARTH

"Records of cosmic ray byproducts from Antarctica and Greenland suggest a pattern of low cosmic ray flux (and high solar magnetism) approximately 800 to 900 years ago, followed by several periods of high cosmic ray flux (low solar magnetism) for the next few centuries, and a return to generally low cosmic ray fluxes (and high solar magnetism) beginning in the 19th Century.

Remarkably, the records of cosmic-ray byproducts sometimes show surprisingly good correlation with independent records of past change in local environments.

* One example comes from cave formations in southern Arabia, where researchers at Heidelberg and Bern find that periods of smaller calcite growth rings, indicating reduced rainfall during northerly shifts in monsoon patterns, correspond to periods of high amounts of cosmic ray byproducts between 9,900 and 5,500 years ago, the period of their study.

* Researchers in The Netherlands provide another. They found increases in moisture-thriving plants in bogs in eastern Netherlands from 4,500 to 2,500 B.C., generally during periods of greater concentrations of cosmic ray byproducts.

* Seafloor sediments from the North Atlantic, signifying sharp cooling periods very roughly every 1,500 years over the last ten thousand years, largely coincide with periods of increased cosmic ray byproducts, according to Columbia University work.

* And elevated populations of diatoms in Lake Arolik, Alaska, denote periods of greater lake productivity that tend to recur during periods of high cosmic ray flux, according to researchers at the University of Illinois and elsewhere.

Many similar correlations between local environmental indicators and cosmic ray byproduct concentrations have been found, largely owing to advances in measuring technology. There have been many attempts to explain the good correlations between the dramatic changes in observed local environments and observed production of cosmic ray byproducts. But most amount to guesswork, rather than providing truly satisfactory answers.

One suggestion made has been that cosmic rays striking dust particles in the air might help to trigger clouds to form, perhaps thereby changing precipitation or temperature patterns or both. But how and which types of clouds might be formed, and their effects on climate or other environmental measures, remain too sketchy to conclude anything reliable and quantitative.

Another suggestion involves the varying Sun itself. While the sun's magnetism modulates the incident of cosmic ray flux, at the same time the sun's total energy output is changing, along with particular wavelengths of the sun's energy and fast moving-particles streaming out of the Sun's wind. Total energy output of the Sun has been observed by satellite instruments to vary so slightly over the last two decades, that the change seems too small to create the observed dramatic ecosystem changes. Yet, it may be that some aspects of ecosystems are very sensitive to tiny amounts of some or many of the changes in the solar output, or yet again that small solar changes are amplified by the oceans or clouds.

Currently, though, it is impossible to say with accuracy what causes the many newly discovered correlations between the cosmic ray byproducts found in terrestrial reservoirs and ecosystem changes. That leaves forecasting future ecosystem change with rather large gaps in reliability.

More here

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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