JUSTICE: MARXIST GREENIE DIES OF MOSQUITO BITE
He would almost certainly still be alive today if DDT were still in use -- as would the millions who have died of malaria in the third world
Many are remembering Walt Contreras Sheasby, the Southern California socialist organizer, Green Party member and advocate for the underdog, for his scholarship and his dogged devotion to the cause of human rights. The 62-year-old Sheasby, a former resident of Sierra Madre, died Aug. 19, spending mearly 10 days in Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Fontana after first suffering from the effects of the mosquito-borne West Nile Virus, according to Robert Shaw, a spokesperson for the San Bernardino County Coroner's Office....
Sheasby and Kovel, the author of numerous books on nature and capitalism who ran for president from the Green Party's left against Ralph Nader in 2000, both considered themselves "Red/ Greens" for their work with that party and their political leanings toward socialism.....
Others, like readers of this paper, may remember when a clearly agitated Sheasby, a four-time Green Party candidate for public office since 1992, responded impatiently to a story written about him by former Weekly reporter Erica Zeitlin. Sheasby, it seemed, became irritated the more Zeitlin pressed for details on a Marxist study group that Sheasby was heading up in the Pasadena area. But finally, he lost his cool and lit into Zeitlin, who ultimately left the Weekly about a year later to work for an anti-sweat shop campaign spearheaded by former state Sen. Tom Hayden. "If you're asking these questions because you're interested in writing a titillating article that panders to anti-Marxist sentiments, then you can just write some other article," Sheasby snapped.
To all of this, Zeitlin and co-writer Jaymee R. Cuti wrote back via email advising Sheasby to "chill out, comrade," a recommendation that apparently didn't go over very well. Two weeks later Sheasby wrote back, quoting Marx directly on the role of journalists....
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Monday, August 30, 2004
THE PLANKTON PANIC
Oh Dear! One has to laugh. There was a HUGE panic among Greenie scientists last year about North Sea plankton. This was one headline: "North Sea Facing Collapse Of Its Ecosystem. Fish Stocks And Sea Bird Numbers Plummet As Soaring Water Temperatures Kill Off Vital Plankton".
The latest article, however, is a lot more cautious -- as well it should be. Generally speaking, warmer temperatures are associated with more species diversity and greater plant growth (including greater algal growth) -- which in turn boosts populations of everything that eats plants or eats plant eaters. Warming of a sea should therefore be associated with a change in the mix of fish species but with more fish overall. And during the mediaeval warm period, the North Sea was said to be teeming with herring -- a very much sought-after fish. So the latest headline is simply: "Plankton respond to warmer seas".
And it is not now even certain that there has been any change in the plankton population. Just one excerpt from what the various scientific commenters had to say:
"Thorsten Blenckner, at the University of Uppsala, said that setting these results in a global context must be approached cautiously. "First, plankton were sampled from a fixed depth of approximately 10 meters," Blenckner, who was not involved in the study, told The Scientist. "However, the warmer upper layer might change more as a consequence of climate change, leading to differences in the way plankton distribute themselves in the water column."
"Second, fishing practices over the duration of the study period have changed markedly, which might have altered the species composition anyway, even without climatic effects." Still, Blenckner said, "the study certainly suggests a tendency towards phenological change, but more work must be done to determine how widespread the effects are."
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Oh Dear! One has to laugh. There was a HUGE panic among Greenie scientists last year about North Sea plankton. This was one headline: "North Sea Facing Collapse Of Its Ecosystem. Fish Stocks And Sea Bird Numbers Plummet As Soaring Water Temperatures Kill Off Vital Plankton".
The latest article, however, is a lot more cautious -- as well it should be. Generally speaking, warmer temperatures are associated with more species diversity and greater plant growth (including greater algal growth) -- which in turn boosts populations of everything that eats plants or eats plant eaters. Warming of a sea should therefore be associated with a change in the mix of fish species but with more fish overall. And during the mediaeval warm period, the North Sea was said to be teeming with herring -- a very much sought-after fish. So the latest headline is simply: "Plankton respond to warmer seas".
And it is not now even certain that there has been any change in the plankton population. Just one excerpt from what the various scientific commenters had to say:
"Thorsten Blenckner, at the University of Uppsala, said that setting these results in a global context must be approached cautiously. "First, plankton were sampled from a fixed depth of approximately 10 meters," Blenckner, who was not involved in the study, told The Scientist. "However, the warmer upper layer might change more as a consequence of climate change, leading to differences in the way plankton distribute themselves in the water column."
"Second, fishing practices over the duration of the study period have changed markedly, which might have altered the species composition anyway, even without climatic effects." Still, Blenckner said, "the study certainly suggests a tendency towards phenological change, but more work must be done to determine how widespread the effects are."
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Sunday, August 29, 2004
WACKY GREEN JUDGES
"In 1983, Dr. Fred Purcell and his brother purchased an interest in 216 acres in Travis County near Austin, Texas, which lie within 1,200 acres, which sit at the intersection of two major highways in a rapidly growing commercial and residential area. The Purcells' property, on which they installed water and wastewater gravity lines, force mains, lift stations, and other utilities, contains a number of caves. In 1988 and 1993, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) declared six invertebrate species that live in the caves "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). These cave bugs (arachnids, arachnids, and insects, some with eyes, some eyeless) range in length from 1.4 mm to 8 mm. Importantly, the cave bugs are found only in parts of Texas' Travis and Williamson Counties. Plus, there is no commercial market for them; nor do people travel to Texas to see them.
In 1989, the FWS told the Purcells that development of their property would violate the ESA because it would constitute a "take" of cave bugs. In 1990, in an effort to alleviate the FWS's concerns, the Purcells deeded six acres, containing caves and sinkholes in which the cave bugs were known to live, to a non-profit environmental organization. But then, in 1993, after Dr. Purcell cleared brush from his property, the FWS told him that he was under criminal investigation for "taking" endangered species. In 1998, after years of stonewalling, which drew a rebuke from a federal judge, the FWS barred the Purcells from using their property.
In 1999, the Purcells and their partners sued... In 2003, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the lower court's decision, ruling that, because "takes" of cave bugs threaten the "interdependent web" of all species, the cave bug's habitat may be regulated....
On May 27, 2004, the Purcells and their partners asked the Supreme Court to hear their case and to announce, whether, in interpreting the Commerce Clause consistent with the vision of the Founding Fathers in the Court's 1995 Lopez ruling, the Court really meant it. On August 6, the United States will respond. The Commerce Clause implications are quite serious given that half of all ESA-listed species exist only in one state and occur only on private land...."
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
"In 1983, Dr. Fred Purcell and his brother purchased an interest in 216 acres in Travis County near Austin, Texas, which lie within 1,200 acres, which sit at the intersection of two major highways in a rapidly growing commercial and residential area. The Purcells' property, on which they installed water and wastewater gravity lines, force mains, lift stations, and other utilities, contains a number of caves. In 1988 and 1993, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) declared six invertebrate species that live in the caves "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). These cave bugs (arachnids, arachnids, and insects, some with eyes, some eyeless) range in length from 1.4 mm to 8 mm. Importantly, the cave bugs are found only in parts of Texas' Travis and Williamson Counties. Plus, there is no commercial market for them; nor do people travel to Texas to see them.
In 1989, the FWS told the Purcells that development of their property would violate the ESA because it would constitute a "take" of cave bugs. In 1990, in an effort to alleviate the FWS's concerns, the Purcells deeded six acres, containing caves and sinkholes in which the cave bugs were known to live, to a non-profit environmental organization. But then, in 1993, after Dr. Purcell cleared brush from his property, the FWS told him that he was under criminal investigation for "taking" endangered species. In 1998, after years of stonewalling, which drew a rebuke from a federal judge, the FWS barred the Purcells from using their property.
In 1999, the Purcells and their partners sued... In 2003, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the lower court's decision, ruling that, because "takes" of cave bugs threaten the "interdependent web" of all species, the cave bug's habitat may be regulated....
On May 27, 2004, the Purcells and their partners asked the Supreme Court to hear their case and to announce, whether, in interpreting the Commerce Clause consistent with the vision of the Founding Fathers in the Court's 1995 Lopez ruling, the Court really meant it. On August 6, the United States will respond. The Commerce Clause implications are quite serious given that half of all ESA-listed species exist only in one state and occur only on private land...."
More here
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Saturday, August 28, 2004
The Frankenfood Myth
Some book review excerpts:
In this provocative and meticulously researched book, Henry Miller and Gregory Conko trace the origins of gene-splicing, its applications, and the backlash from consumer groups and government agencies against so-called “Frankenfoods”—from America to Zimbabwe. They explain how a “happy conspiracy” of anti-technology activism, bureaucratic overreach, and industry maneuvering has resulted in a regulatory framework that squanders advances in biotechnology and denies farmers and consumers in the U.S. and abroad the benefits of this safe and environmentally beneficial tool.
The authors go on to suggest a way to emerge from this morass, which stems in no small part from a cynical lobbying strategy by the very biotechnology companies that now find themselves so heavily regulated and frequently attacked. They propose a variety of business and policy reforms that can unlock the potential of this cutting-edge science, while ensuring appropriate safeguards and moving environmentally friendly products into the hands of farmers and consumers.
“Misguided public policies have seriously restricted research on, and applications of, genetic engineering in agriculture. Miller and Conko analyze why and how this has occurred. They point out the danger that the present unwarranted regulatory oppression will become the norm, and they make a strong case for drastic change in present policies. Their call for policies based on realistic risk-benefit considerations needs to be heard loudly by those responsible for the present fiasco.”
“People are starving because frightened, ignorant, self-centered people coined the word ‘Frankenfood.’ Genetically engineered crops could save millions of lives, if regulators and misguided activists would just get out of the way. Scientists have done their part; they created the technology to feed a lot of starving people. Miller and Conko are doing their part; they’ve written a book that will change the debate over biotechnology and how it’s regulated. Miller and Conko describe biotech’s potential to both alleviate human suffering and improve environmental stewardship, and they offer science-based models for regulation. It’s time for the rest of us to do our part – read the book, fight the power, and feed the people. The hard work is done; all we have left to do is get policy-makers to do the right thing.”
“Henry Miller and Gregory Conko have accurately and lucidly portrayed the current distortion in policymaking toward the new biotechnology. They describe how demagoguery by well-funded, well-organized opponents has capitalized on fears and uncertainties toward gene-spliced crops; how these attacks stifle thoughtful, deliberative policy-making; and how they are slowing the progress of a powerful new tool. Miller and Conko brilliantly expose the peril of allowing the precautionary principle to drive risk analysis and policymaking. Their thorough and articulate deconstruction of the precautionary principle should serve as a guide to developing regulatory policy, not only for biotechnology, but for any new idea or technology.”
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Some book review excerpts:
In this provocative and meticulously researched book, Henry Miller and Gregory Conko trace the origins of gene-splicing, its applications, and the backlash from consumer groups and government agencies against so-called “Frankenfoods”—from America to Zimbabwe. They explain how a “happy conspiracy” of anti-technology activism, bureaucratic overreach, and industry maneuvering has resulted in a regulatory framework that squanders advances in biotechnology and denies farmers and consumers in the U.S. and abroad the benefits of this safe and environmentally beneficial tool.
The authors go on to suggest a way to emerge from this morass, which stems in no small part from a cynical lobbying strategy by the very biotechnology companies that now find themselves so heavily regulated and frequently attacked. They propose a variety of business and policy reforms that can unlock the potential of this cutting-edge science, while ensuring appropriate safeguards and moving environmentally friendly products into the hands of farmers and consumers.
“Misguided public policies have seriously restricted research on, and applications of, genetic engineering in agriculture. Miller and Conko analyze why and how this has occurred. They point out the danger that the present unwarranted regulatory oppression will become the norm, and they make a strong case for drastic change in present policies. Their call for policies based on realistic risk-benefit considerations needs to be heard loudly by those responsible for the present fiasco.”
“People are starving because frightened, ignorant, self-centered people coined the word ‘Frankenfood.’ Genetically engineered crops could save millions of lives, if regulators and misguided activists would just get out of the way. Scientists have done their part; they created the technology to feed a lot of starving people. Miller and Conko are doing their part; they’ve written a book that will change the debate over biotechnology and how it’s regulated. Miller and Conko describe biotech’s potential to both alleviate human suffering and improve environmental stewardship, and they offer science-based models for regulation. It’s time for the rest of us to do our part – read the book, fight the power, and feed the people. The hard work is done; all we have left to do is get policy-makers to do the right thing.”
“Henry Miller and Gregory Conko have accurately and lucidly portrayed the current distortion in policymaking toward the new biotechnology. They describe how demagoguery by well-funded, well-organized opponents has capitalized on fears and uncertainties toward gene-spliced crops; how these attacks stifle thoughtful, deliberative policy-making; and how they are slowing the progress of a powerful new tool. Miller and Conko brilliantly expose the peril of allowing the precautionary principle to drive risk analysis and policymaking. Their thorough and articulate deconstruction of the precautionary principle should serve as a guide to developing regulatory policy, not only for biotechnology, but for any new idea or technology.”
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Friday, August 27, 2004
Endangered Species Act sparks battle: "The Endangered Species Act has left Native Americans and environmentalists pitted against farmers and ranch families 30 years after it was passed. Nowhere is that conflict more apparent than in Klamath Falls, OR, where in 2001 federal officials shut off irrigation water to protect endangered fish. 'How did 2001 affect me? My farm, how do you say, went 'bye bye,' said former farmer Venacio Hernandez. Environmentalists consider the act a success because it protected threatened species by stopping development and saving habitat. The act was passed to protect 100 species but it now protects more than 1,300, sealing off millions of acres from development. 'There has to be balance. If we continue down this road -- doing away with the ESA to solve this problem -- we are deceiving ourselves,' said Allen Foreman of Klamath Tribes"
No choice for the poor: "Affluent societies expend countless hours on 'fluff' choices while ignoring places in the world where choices are very different and truly tough. In third world countries, people choose between food or malaria medicine because they can't have both. During drought, poor farmers must choose between feeding their kids today, or feeding the family cow for milk tomorrow. ... Green do-gooders invade third-world countries to 'help' them avoid the 'bad choices' we Americans made -- those awful choices that led to abundant food, advanced medical care and unprecedented wealth -- the same wealth that paid for their airfare."
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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No choice for the poor: "Affluent societies expend countless hours on 'fluff' choices while ignoring places in the world where choices are very different and truly tough. In third world countries, people choose between food or malaria medicine because they can't have both. During drought, poor farmers must choose between feeding their kids today, or feeding the family cow for milk tomorrow. ... Green do-gooders invade third-world countries to 'help' them avoid the 'bad choices' we Americans made -- those awful choices that led to abundant food, advanced medical care and unprecedented wealth -- the same wealth that paid for their airfare."
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Thursday, August 26, 2004
SCIENCE CONTRADICTS THE U.N. ON GLOBAL WARMING (SURPRISE!)
"How many times have we heard from Al Gore and assorted European politicians that 'the science is settled' on global warming? In other words, it's 'time for action.' Climate change is, as recently stated by Hans Blix, former U.N. Chief for weapons detection in Iraq, the most important issue of our time, far more dangerous than people flying fuel-laden aircraft into skyscrapers or possibly detonating backpack nukes in Baltimore Harbor.
Well, the science may now be settled, but not in the way Gore and Blix would have us believe. Three bombshell papers have just hit the refereed literature that knock the stuffing out of Blix's position and that of the United Nations and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC claims to have carefully corrected the temperature records for the well-known problem of local ("urban," as opposed to global) warming. But this has always troubled serious scientists, because the way the U.N. checks for artificial warming makes it virtually impossible to detect in recent decades -- the same period in which our cities have undergone the most growth and sprawl.
The surface temperature record shows a warming rate of about 0.17?C (0.31?F) per decade since 1979. However, there are two other records, one from satellites, and one from weather balloons that tell a different story. Neither annual satellite nor balloon trends differ significantly from zero since the start of the satellite record in 1979. These records reflect temperatures in what is called the lower atmosphere, or the region between roughly 5,000 and 30,000 feet.
Four years ago, a distinguished panel of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concluded that a real disparity exists between the reported surface warming and the temperature trends measured in the atmosphere above. Since then, many investigators have tried to explain the cause of the disparity while others have denied its existence.
So, which record is right, the U.N. surface record showing the larger warming or the other two? There's another record, from seven feet above the ground, derived from balloon data that has recently been released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In two research papers in the July 9 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, two of us (Douglass and Singer) compared it for correspondence with the surface record and the lower atmosphere histories. The odd-record-out turns out to be the U.N.'s hot surface history.
This is a double kill, both on the U.N.'s temperature records and its vaunted climate models. That's because the models generally predict an increased warming rate with height (outside of local polar regions). Neither the satellite nor the balloon records can find it. When this was noted in the first satellite paper published in 1990, some scientists objected that the record, which began in 1979, was too short. Now we have a quarter-century of concurrent balloon and satellite data, both screaming that the UN's climate models have failed, as well as indicating that its surface record is simply too hot."
More here:
GREEN OR TERRACOTTA?
"I'm indebted to Prof Parth Shah from New Delhi, for explaining to me that I'm a Terracotta.
If you're a green, you believe in wildlife (without humans) and wilderness, you want to change attitudes, you believe in communal ownership.
If you're a Teracotta - a material which comes from the earth, but only through the medium of human agency, you believe that humans are part of the world ecology, that you want to see wise use of environmental resources rather than mere wilderness, that you want to change incentives (rather than the minds of politicians) and that private ownership and property rights are probably the best way to protect scarce things, like the environment. Makes sense to me."
(From the Adam Smith blog.)
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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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
"How many times have we heard from Al Gore and assorted European politicians that 'the science is settled' on global warming? In other words, it's 'time for action.' Climate change is, as recently stated by Hans Blix, former U.N. Chief for weapons detection in Iraq, the most important issue of our time, far more dangerous than people flying fuel-laden aircraft into skyscrapers or possibly detonating backpack nukes in Baltimore Harbor.
Well, the science may now be settled, but not in the way Gore and Blix would have us believe. Three bombshell papers have just hit the refereed literature that knock the stuffing out of Blix's position and that of the United Nations and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC claims to have carefully corrected the temperature records for the well-known problem of local ("urban," as opposed to global) warming. But this has always troubled serious scientists, because the way the U.N. checks for artificial warming makes it virtually impossible to detect in recent decades -- the same period in which our cities have undergone the most growth and sprawl.
The surface temperature record shows a warming rate of about 0.17?C (0.31?F) per decade since 1979. However, there are two other records, one from satellites, and one from weather balloons that tell a different story. Neither annual satellite nor balloon trends differ significantly from zero since the start of the satellite record in 1979. These records reflect temperatures in what is called the lower atmosphere, or the region between roughly 5,000 and 30,000 feet.
Four years ago, a distinguished panel of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concluded that a real disparity exists between the reported surface warming and the temperature trends measured in the atmosphere above. Since then, many investigators have tried to explain the cause of the disparity while others have denied its existence.
So, which record is right, the U.N. surface record showing the larger warming or the other two? There's another record, from seven feet above the ground, derived from balloon data that has recently been released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In two research papers in the July 9 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, two of us (Douglass and Singer) compared it for correspondence with the surface record and the lower atmosphere histories. The odd-record-out turns out to be the U.N.'s hot surface history.
This is a double kill, both on the U.N.'s temperature records and its vaunted climate models. That's because the models generally predict an increased warming rate with height (outside of local polar regions). Neither the satellite nor the balloon records can find it. When this was noted in the first satellite paper published in 1990, some scientists objected that the record, which began in 1979, was too short. Now we have a quarter-century of concurrent balloon and satellite data, both screaming that the UN's climate models have failed, as well as indicating that its surface record is simply too hot."
More here:
GREEN OR TERRACOTTA?
"I'm indebted to Prof Parth Shah from New Delhi, for explaining to me that I'm a Terracotta.
If you're a green, you believe in wildlife (without humans) and wilderness, you want to change attitudes, you believe in communal ownership.
If you're a Teracotta - a material which comes from the earth, but only through the medium of human agency, you believe that humans are part of the world ecology, that you want to see wise use of environmental resources rather than mere wilderness, that you want to change incentives (rather than the minds of politicians) and that private ownership and property rights are probably the best way to protect scarce things, like the environment. Makes sense to me."
(From the Adam Smith blog.)
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Wednesday, August 25, 2004
THE SYMBIOSIS BETWEEN GREENIES, THE MEDIA AND GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRATS
Some excerpts from Kary Mullis, Nobel prizewinner for chemistry
"Who are these people who make comfortable salaries arranging scientific symposia and stories for the media? They aren't politicians. Politicians don't know anything about scientific things. They just want to look like they do. Somebody has to advise them. Who are those advisors? It's an important question because those people--who are always having to come up with the imminent disasters that can be prevented by governmental projects, sponsored by informed and well meaning politicians-are manipulating you. They are parasites with degrees in economics or sociology who couldn't get a good job in the legitimate advertising industry. They are responsible for a lot of the things that you accept year after year as your problems. The problems they imagine for you are as imaginary as the commercials during Seinfeld about some Australian outback macho guy, with a Hollywood model by his side, driving a four-wheel-drive vehicle, with pathetic halfwits in pursuit due to a misunderstanding about the relative merits of the vehicles.
Who pays these experts? Is it the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the United Nations is supporting with our money? Or is it the Environmental Protection Agency, which you were bitching about today because your company was having to close down one of its plants due to some fish that might go extinct, and you might get transferred in the shuffle? Is it the Tropical Oceans and Global Atmosphere Group? Is it the Arctic Climate System Study? Is it the Marlowe Walker Eternity Endowment? Is it the World Ocean Circulation Experiment? Is it the World Bank's Global Environment Facility? Is it Greenpeace? The Sierra Club? You are too tired from your day at work to try to figure it out. That's what James Buchanan predicted. But the sun never sets on the British Empire or bureaucrats--environmentalists, as many of them are called today. Sleep soundly. Your planet is in well-fed hands."
The walls of the ivory tower of science collapsed when bureaucrats realized that there were jobs to be had and money to be made in the administration and promotion of science. Governments began making big investments just prior to World War II. Scientists and engineers invented new firearms, sharper things, better engines, harder things, airplanes that could fly faster, radar to detect them, antiaircraft guns to shoot them down, antibiotics for the pilots who got shot down, amphetamines to keep everybody awake long hours, daylight savings time to lengthen the hours, and finally one big bomb that in a shocking finale brought World War II to a breathtaking and hideous end.
Very little experimental verification has been done to support important societal issues in the closing years of this century. Nor does it have to be done before public policy decisions are made. It only needs to be convincing to the misinformed voter. Some of the big truths voters have accepted have little or no scientific basis. And these include the belief that AIDS is caused by human immunodeficiency virus, the belief that fossil fuel emissions are causing global warming, and the belief that the release of chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere has created a hole in the ozone layer. The illusions go even deeper into our everyday lives when they follow us to the grocery store.
People believe these things, and a slew of others, not because they have seen proof but because they are ingenuous: they have faith. These issues don't have to be on faith. They are not transcendental. Some of them are hard to investigate, because you can't do experiments easily with people's daily lives, but they can be investigated, then confirmed or dismissed. If not, scientists should not be talking about them. Newton would not have allowed someone to carry on about saturated fats and heart attacks inside the Royal Society because like so much of the nutritional garbage that we are assaulted with daily, it is all conjectural, awaiting further study that will probably not be done.
Scientists who speak out strongly about future ecological disaster and promote the notion that humans are responsible for any changes going on are highly suspect. Turn off the TV. Read your elementary science textbooks. You need to know what they are up to. It's every man for himself as usual, and you are on your own. Thank your lucky stars that they didn't bother to change their clothes or their habits. They still wear priestly white robes and they don't do heavy labor. It makes them easier to spot."
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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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Some excerpts from Kary Mullis, Nobel prizewinner for chemistry
"Who are these people who make comfortable salaries arranging scientific symposia and stories for the media? They aren't politicians. Politicians don't know anything about scientific things. They just want to look like they do. Somebody has to advise them. Who are those advisors? It's an important question because those people--who are always having to come up with the imminent disasters that can be prevented by governmental projects, sponsored by informed and well meaning politicians-are manipulating you. They are parasites with degrees in economics or sociology who couldn't get a good job in the legitimate advertising industry. They are responsible for a lot of the things that you accept year after year as your problems. The problems they imagine for you are as imaginary as the commercials during Seinfeld about some Australian outback macho guy, with a Hollywood model by his side, driving a four-wheel-drive vehicle, with pathetic halfwits in pursuit due to a misunderstanding about the relative merits of the vehicles.
Who pays these experts? Is it the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the United Nations is supporting with our money? Or is it the Environmental Protection Agency, which you were bitching about today because your company was having to close down one of its plants due to some fish that might go extinct, and you might get transferred in the shuffle? Is it the Tropical Oceans and Global Atmosphere Group? Is it the Arctic Climate System Study? Is it the Marlowe Walker Eternity Endowment? Is it the World Ocean Circulation Experiment? Is it the World Bank's Global Environment Facility? Is it Greenpeace? The Sierra Club? You are too tired from your day at work to try to figure it out. That's what James Buchanan predicted. But the sun never sets on the British Empire or bureaucrats--environmentalists, as many of them are called today. Sleep soundly. Your planet is in well-fed hands."
The walls of the ivory tower of science collapsed when bureaucrats realized that there were jobs to be had and money to be made in the administration and promotion of science. Governments began making big investments just prior to World War II. Scientists and engineers invented new firearms, sharper things, better engines, harder things, airplanes that could fly faster, radar to detect them, antiaircraft guns to shoot them down, antibiotics for the pilots who got shot down, amphetamines to keep everybody awake long hours, daylight savings time to lengthen the hours, and finally one big bomb that in a shocking finale brought World War II to a breathtaking and hideous end.
Very little experimental verification has been done to support important societal issues in the closing years of this century. Nor does it have to be done before public policy decisions are made. It only needs to be convincing to the misinformed voter. Some of the big truths voters have accepted have little or no scientific basis. And these include the belief that AIDS is caused by human immunodeficiency virus, the belief that fossil fuel emissions are causing global warming, and the belief that the release of chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere has created a hole in the ozone layer. The illusions go even deeper into our everyday lives when they follow us to the grocery store.
People believe these things, and a slew of others, not because they have seen proof but because they are ingenuous: they have faith. These issues don't have to be on faith. They are not transcendental. Some of them are hard to investigate, because you can't do experiments easily with people's daily lives, but they can be investigated, then confirmed or dismissed. If not, scientists should not be talking about them. Newton would not have allowed someone to carry on about saturated fats and heart attacks inside the Royal Society because like so much of the nutritional garbage that we are assaulted with daily, it is all conjectural, awaiting further study that will probably not be done.
Scientists who speak out strongly about future ecological disaster and promote the notion that humans are responsible for any changes going on are highly suspect. Turn off the TV. Read your elementary science textbooks. You need to know what they are up to. It's every man for himself as usual, and you are on your own. Thank your lucky stars that they didn't bother to change their clothes or their habits. They still wear priestly white robes and they don't do heavy labor. It makes them easier to spot."
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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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Tuesday, August 24, 2004
DETECTING CLIMATE CHANGE IN CURRENT WEATHER IS DUMB
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is generally in favour of the global warming theory. It gets them funding. But they are good enough scientists to point out that current weather proves nothing. Strange weather goes back a lot further than what global warming theory would require. Just a few excerpts:
"Australians don't need to have read Dorothea Mackellar's My Country to know that they live on a continent of drought, flooding rains and many other spectacularly savage climatic events. Now staff at the Bureau of Meteorology have captured it all in Drought, Dust and Deluge: A Century of Climate Extremes in Australia.
"We live today in a time of speculation and concern about the possible impacts of global warming," writes the bureau's director, Geoff Love, in the foreword to the new book. "In particular, there is increasing speculation that some weather and climate extremes are becoming more frequent. In speculating about the future, however, it is instructive to consider the past. In order to fully appreciate the significance of what the future might hold, we should be aware that the climate, particularly its extremes, is neither steady, nor necessarily undergoing a constant trend."
Flooding is, overall, Australia's costliest form of natural disaster with average losses estimated at $400 million a year, the bureau says. In 1972, a thunderstorm dumped a record 78.5 millimetres on Melbourne's CBD in one hour - 100,000 tonnes of water over one square kilometre. The resulting flash flood inundated shops and put the trains out of action.....
The world record for the longest sequence of days with maximum temperatures equal to or above 100 Fahrenheit (37.8C) was set in Western Australia's Marble Bar in 1923-24 - 160 days. The highest temperature recorded in Australia using standard observing techniques was 50.7C at Oodnadatta in South Australia in 1960 and Sydney's CBD record of 45.3C was in 1939.
Heatwaves have accounted for more deaths in Australia than any other climatic event, the bureau notes. The 1939 scorcher killed 438 people in South Australia, Victoria and NSW.
Drought is the most economically costly climatic extreme. The modern nation was born in the midst of the 1895-1902 "Federation Drought". It was so bad that the NSW Government declared February 26, 1902, a day of "humility and prayer", such was the concern about Sydney's water supply.
Many scientists, including the controversial Tim Flannery, are adamant that the warming of the globe has resulted in more extreme weather such as cyclones and heat waves. There is a strongly held view that the "drought" is actually the start of a long-term climatic shift towards hotter, drier conditions....
As for things like storms, more data is needed to determine if they are becoming more destructive or more frequent. "Theoretically, there should be more storms with global warming because the atmosphere can hold more moisture," Collins said. Similarly, the idea that the dry spell is a result of global warming rather than another El Nino cycle is "quite possible", but will require years more data to be sure."
More here
AND A BRITISH EXPERT AGREES
"Hurricane Charley lashed the coast of Florida over the weekend, causing at least 19 deaths and billions of dollars of damage. The biggest swarm of locusts in a decade is currently devouring crops in West Africa. News reports show us dramatic photos of the village of Boscastle in Cornwall, England, looking like a town swept into the sea after yesterday's floods. The rest of the UK has tropical storm Bonnie, which killed three people in America, to look forward to (though by the time it reaches us it will only be 'high winds and rain'). And there have been 'extreme weather conditions' in Australia, China and Utah over the past week, too.
Bad weather stories have dominated the headlines. Some claim the strange weather systems are a spin-off of global warming, proof, according to one commentator, 'that our overheating planet is going to have ever more "extreme weather" episodes'. Others warn of worse to come. According to John Powell, deputy executive director of the World Food Programme, tens of millions of the world's poorest people are threatened by 'an unprecedented wave of freak and extreme weather' . Has Mother Nature lost the plot?
Dr Mark Saunders, a weather expert at University College London (UCL), says we need to cool down. 'I don't think the weather we have seen is particularly unusual, to be honest. Somewhere in the world you will always get extreme weather events - whether it's a storm, a flood, or a drought. There are always people being affected by extreme weather. There is no study to my knowledge which shows that more people are being affected now, or that more people will be affected by freak weather this year than in previous years.'
Indeed, says Saunders, when it comes to the most violent form of extreme weather - hurricanes - there has been a downward shift in recent years. Hurricanes are Saunders' main area of expertise. He is Lead Scientist at the Tropical Storm Risk Centre in the Department of Space and Climate Physics at UCL, a leading authority on predicting and tracking storms. Hurricane Charley may have been one of the most destructive in recent years, killing 19 and leaving 800,000 homes and businesses without electricity - but Charley cannot be seen as evidence of a rise in extreme weather episodes, says Saunders. 'The past four years have been unusually quiet for hurricanes.'
'We knew this would be an "active" year, we predicted that. Around eight hurricanes are predicted to strike America this year. But we have to remember that Charley is really the first main hurricane event for several years. Overall, the losses from hurricanes have been running at about 80 per cent below average since 2000".
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is generally in favour of the global warming theory. It gets them funding. But they are good enough scientists to point out that current weather proves nothing. Strange weather goes back a lot further than what global warming theory would require. Just a few excerpts:
"Australians don't need to have read Dorothea Mackellar's My Country to know that they live on a continent of drought, flooding rains and many other spectacularly savage climatic events. Now staff at the Bureau of Meteorology have captured it all in Drought, Dust and Deluge: A Century of Climate Extremes in Australia.
"We live today in a time of speculation and concern about the possible impacts of global warming," writes the bureau's director, Geoff Love, in the foreword to the new book. "In particular, there is increasing speculation that some weather and climate extremes are becoming more frequent. In speculating about the future, however, it is instructive to consider the past. In order to fully appreciate the significance of what the future might hold, we should be aware that the climate, particularly its extremes, is neither steady, nor necessarily undergoing a constant trend."
Flooding is, overall, Australia's costliest form of natural disaster with average losses estimated at $400 million a year, the bureau says. In 1972, a thunderstorm dumped a record 78.5 millimetres on Melbourne's CBD in one hour - 100,000 tonnes of water over one square kilometre. The resulting flash flood inundated shops and put the trains out of action.....
The world record for the longest sequence of days with maximum temperatures equal to or above 100 Fahrenheit (37.8C) was set in Western Australia's Marble Bar in 1923-24 - 160 days. The highest temperature recorded in Australia using standard observing techniques was 50.7C at Oodnadatta in South Australia in 1960 and Sydney's CBD record of 45.3C was in 1939.
Heatwaves have accounted for more deaths in Australia than any other climatic event, the bureau notes. The 1939 scorcher killed 438 people in South Australia, Victoria and NSW.
Drought is the most economically costly climatic extreme. The modern nation was born in the midst of the 1895-1902 "Federation Drought". It was so bad that the NSW Government declared February 26, 1902, a day of "humility and prayer", such was the concern about Sydney's water supply.
Many scientists, including the controversial Tim Flannery, are adamant that the warming of the globe has resulted in more extreme weather such as cyclones and heat waves. There is a strongly held view that the "drought" is actually the start of a long-term climatic shift towards hotter, drier conditions....
As for things like storms, more data is needed to determine if they are becoming more destructive or more frequent. "Theoretically, there should be more storms with global warming because the atmosphere can hold more moisture," Collins said. Similarly, the idea that the dry spell is a result of global warming rather than another El Nino cycle is "quite possible", but will require years more data to be sure."
More here
AND A BRITISH EXPERT AGREES
"Hurricane Charley lashed the coast of Florida over the weekend, causing at least 19 deaths and billions of dollars of damage. The biggest swarm of locusts in a decade is currently devouring crops in West Africa. News reports show us dramatic photos of the village of Boscastle in Cornwall, England, looking like a town swept into the sea after yesterday's floods. The rest of the UK has tropical storm Bonnie, which killed three people in America, to look forward to (though by the time it reaches us it will only be 'high winds and rain'). And there have been 'extreme weather conditions' in Australia, China and Utah over the past week, too.
Bad weather stories have dominated the headlines. Some claim the strange weather systems are a spin-off of global warming, proof, according to one commentator, 'that our overheating planet is going to have ever more "extreme weather" episodes'. Others warn of worse to come. According to John Powell, deputy executive director of the World Food Programme, tens of millions of the world's poorest people are threatened by 'an unprecedented wave of freak and extreme weather' . Has Mother Nature lost the plot?
Dr Mark Saunders, a weather expert at University College London (UCL), says we need to cool down. 'I don't think the weather we have seen is particularly unusual, to be honest. Somewhere in the world you will always get extreme weather events - whether it's a storm, a flood, or a drought. There are always people being affected by extreme weather. There is no study to my knowledge which shows that more people are being affected now, or that more people will be affected by freak weather this year than in previous years.'
Indeed, says Saunders, when it comes to the most violent form of extreme weather - hurricanes - there has been a downward shift in recent years. Hurricanes are Saunders' main area of expertise. He is Lead Scientist at the Tropical Storm Risk Centre in the Department of Space and Climate Physics at UCL, a leading authority on predicting and tracking storms. Hurricane Charley may have been one of the most destructive in recent years, killing 19 and leaving 800,000 homes and businesses without electricity - but Charley cannot be seen as evidence of a rise in extreme weather episodes, says Saunders. 'The past four years have been unusually quiet for hurricanes.'
'We knew this would be an "active" year, we predicted that. Around eight hurricanes are predicted to strike America this year. But we have to remember that Charley is really the first main hurricane event for several years. Overall, the losses from hurricanes have been running at about 80 per cent below average since 2000".
More here.
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Monday, August 23, 2004
THE DUST STORM MENACE: GLOBAL COOLING!
This article from "New Scientist" is highly amusing -- because it such a mixture of fact and fiction. The claim that the Greenland icecap is melting is pure fiction, for instance. And we can discount the "explanation" for the African dust-storms. Putting the prime blame on a few SUV's instead of desertification due to chronic overgrazing is laughable. But the claim that dust-storms fertilize plankton which then absorb lots of that wicked carbon dioxide that Greenies hate is reasonable enough. So if that is causing the oceans to cool down and oceans are 70% of the earth's surface, where does that leave global warming? We seem to have a case here of Greenies being at war with one-another. Excerpts:
"Dust storms are increasing globally with far-reaching consequences for the environment and human health, scientists are warning. Up to three billion tonnes of dust is blown around the world annually, says Andrew Goudie at the University of Oxford, UK. Dust storms originating in Saharan Africa have increased ten-fold over the past 50 years, threatening human health and coral reefs thousands of miles away, and contributing to climate change, he warns.
The problem is far worse than previously believed, he says after studying 50-years-worth of global satellite imagery. A major cause, he says, is the increasing use of four-wheel drive vehicles to replace camels to cross the deserts. "Toyota-isation" - a term Goudie coined to describe the constant desert journeys made by Toyota Land Cruisers - is scarring the desert's protective surface layer, releasing dust into passing winds. "If I had my way, I would ban them from driving off-road," he said.....
Deforestation, overgrazing, and the shrinking of lakes, such as Lake Chad and the Aral Sea, have also contributed to the problem. Dust storms, measuring an average 200 kilometres across and carrying up to 100 tonnes of dust, are carried as far away as Greenland or the US by winds at the base of storms. The effects have been wide-ranging - coral reefs 3000 km away in the Caribbean have been destroyed by Saharan dust. Ice caps in Greenland are melting, causing raised sea levels, because the dark dust deposited there absorbs heat from the sun rather than reflecting it in the way pure ice does....
Dust storms will increasingly effect climate change, although experts are unsure exactly how. Airborne dust reflects sunlight back, while also insulating the earth's heat. In a vicious cycle, particles landing in the seas encourage plankton growth, which absorb carbon dioxide - a major greenhouse gas - and so cool the ocean surface...."
Kyoto global warming treaty proving unworkable: "Recent developments in Japan, Russia, and Canada suggest the international Kyoto Protocol is doomed to failure ... with or without U.S. participation. In Japan and Canada, both of which came very close to rejecting the treaty, meeting emission reduction targets is proving extremely difficult. Canadian conservatives are pledging to pull the nation out of Kyoto if they attain victory in future national elections. In Russia, government officials continue to publicly deride the lack of scientific and economic justification for the treaty."
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
This article from "New Scientist" is highly amusing -- because it such a mixture of fact and fiction. The claim that the Greenland icecap is melting is pure fiction, for instance. And we can discount the "explanation" for the African dust-storms. Putting the prime blame on a few SUV's instead of desertification due to chronic overgrazing is laughable. But the claim that dust-storms fertilize plankton which then absorb lots of that wicked carbon dioxide that Greenies hate is reasonable enough. So if that is causing the oceans to cool down and oceans are 70% of the earth's surface, where does that leave global warming? We seem to have a case here of Greenies being at war with one-another. Excerpts:
"Dust storms are increasing globally with far-reaching consequences for the environment and human health, scientists are warning. Up to three billion tonnes of dust is blown around the world annually, says Andrew Goudie at the University of Oxford, UK. Dust storms originating in Saharan Africa have increased ten-fold over the past 50 years, threatening human health and coral reefs thousands of miles away, and contributing to climate change, he warns.
The problem is far worse than previously believed, he says after studying 50-years-worth of global satellite imagery. A major cause, he says, is the increasing use of four-wheel drive vehicles to replace camels to cross the deserts. "Toyota-isation" - a term Goudie coined to describe the constant desert journeys made by Toyota Land Cruisers - is scarring the desert's protective surface layer, releasing dust into passing winds. "If I had my way, I would ban them from driving off-road," he said.....
Deforestation, overgrazing, and the shrinking of lakes, such as Lake Chad and the Aral Sea, have also contributed to the problem. Dust storms, measuring an average 200 kilometres across and carrying up to 100 tonnes of dust, are carried as far away as Greenland or the US by winds at the base of storms. The effects have been wide-ranging - coral reefs 3000 km away in the Caribbean have been destroyed by Saharan dust. Ice caps in Greenland are melting, causing raised sea levels, because the dark dust deposited there absorbs heat from the sun rather than reflecting it in the way pure ice does....
Dust storms will increasingly effect climate change, although experts are unsure exactly how. Airborne dust reflects sunlight back, while also insulating the earth's heat. In a vicious cycle, particles landing in the seas encourage plankton growth, which absorb carbon dioxide - a major greenhouse gas - and so cool the ocean surface...."
Kyoto global warming treaty proving unworkable: "Recent developments in Japan, Russia, and Canada suggest the international Kyoto Protocol is doomed to failure ... with or without U.S. participation. In Japan and Canada, both of which came very close to rejecting the treaty, meeting emission reduction targets is proving extremely difficult. Canadian conservatives are pledging to pull the nation out of Kyoto if they attain victory in future national elections. In Russia, government officials continue to publicly deride the lack of scientific and economic justification for the treaty."
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Sunday, August 22, 2004
GREENIES THREATEN THE WINE INDUSTRY
"California is under attack by parasites, of both the six-legged and two-legged variety. The former are glassy-winged sharpshooters, leaf-hopping insects that are among the state's most insidious agricultural pests. They carry Pierce's disease, a lethal bacterial infection of grapevines and other major crops, for which there is no cure. The two-legged parasites are the activists and regulators who are making safe, effective new agricultural technologies unavailable in California....
The meager weapons currently available to attack the sharpshooter are part of a state-federal program that pays for the inspection of plants shipped from areas known to be infested by glassy-winged sharpshooters and for the testing of potential chemical and biological control agents. In the long run, however, detection and control are doomed to fail. As acknowledged by Dale Brown, president of the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association, "Genetic resistance is where we want to go."
There are several ways to introduce or enhance the resistance to Pierce's disease in new variants, or varieties, of grapevines. One logical approach is to transfer genes that confer resistance into California's grapes from distantly related, non-commercial grapes that possess natural immunity. But conventional grape breeding is a notoriously slow and uncertain process, and attempts to use the more sophisticated and efficient gene-splicing techniques have run afoul of EPA and local regulatory policies.....
The EPA discriminates against gene-spliced varieties, by regulating even more stringently than chemical pesticides any plant that has been modified with gene-splicing techniques to enhance its pest- or disease-resistance. This policy, which has been attacked repeatedly by the scientific community as unscientific and irrational, has badly damaged agricultural research and development. It flouts the widespread scientific consensus that gene-splicing is more precise, circumscribed and predictable than other techniques. New gene-spliced varieties can not only increase yields, make better use of existing farmland and conserve water, but -- especially for grains and nuts -- are a potential boon to public health, because the harvest will have lower levels of contamination with toxic fungi and insect parts than conventional varieties. Moreover, by reducing the need for spraying crops with chemical pesticides, they are environmentally and occupationally friendly.
Agbiotech's potential is proven. A decade ago, an epidemic of papaya ringspot virus had virtually destroyed Hawaii's $64 million a year papaya crop, but by 1998 biotech researchers provided virus-resistant varieties that have preserved the industry. Yet, the EPA holds gene-spliced plants to an inappropriate, extraordinary standard, requiring hugely expensive testing as though these plants were highly toxic chemicals. In effect, these policies impose a hugely punitive tax on a superior, and badly needed, technology."
More here
Anti-biotech bills find little traction in state legislatures: "Despite recent high-profile measures in California counties and in the Vermont legislature to ban or heavily regulate genetically enhanced crops, most state legislatures are following the federal government's lead in rebuffing the opponents of biotechnology. In 2002, 130 bills and resolutions addressing biotechnology were introduced in state legislatures, according to a May 2004 study conducted by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology. Fifty of the 130 measures were in support of biotechnology."
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
"California is under attack by parasites, of both the six-legged and two-legged variety. The former are glassy-winged sharpshooters, leaf-hopping insects that are among the state's most insidious agricultural pests. They carry Pierce's disease, a lethal bacterial infection of grapevines and other major crops, for which there is no cure. The two-legged parasites are the activists and regulators who are making safe, effective new agricultural technologies unavailable in California....
The meager weapons currently available to attack the sharpshooter are part of a state-federal program that pays for the inspection of plants shipped from areas known to be infested by glassy-winged sharpshooters and for the testing of potential chemical and biological control agents. In the long run, however, detection and control are doomed to fail. As acknowledged by Dale Brown, president of the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association, "Genetic resistance is where we want to go."
There are several ways to introduce or enhance the resistance to Pierce's disease in new variants, or varieties, of grapevines. One logical approach is to transfer genes that confer resistance into California's grapes from distantly related, non-commercial grapes that possess natural immunity. But conventional grape breeding is a notoriously slow and uncertain process, and attempts to use the more sophisticated and efficient gene-splicing techniques have run afoul of EPA and local regulatory policies.....
The EPA discriminates against gene-spliced varieties, by regulating even more stringently than chemical pesticides any plant that has been modified with gene-splicing techniques to enhance its pest- or disease-resistance. This policy, which has been attacked repeatedly by the scientific community as unscientific and irrational, has badly damaged agricultural research and development. It flouts the widespread scientific consensus that gene-splicing is more precise, circumscribed and predictable than other techniques. New gene-spliced varieties can not only increase yields, make better use of existing farmland and conserve water, but -- especially for grains and nuts -- are a potential boon to public health, because the harvest will have lower levels of contamination with toxic fungi and insect parts than conventional varieties. Moreover, by reducing the need for spraying crops with chemical pesticides, they are environmentally and occupationally friendly.
Agbiotech's potential is proven. A decade ago, an epidemic of papaya ringspot virus had virtually destroyed Hawaii's $64 million a year papaya crop, but by 1998 biotech researchers provided virus-resistant varieties that have preserved the industry. Yet, the EPA holds gene-spliced plants to an inappropriate, extraordinary standard, requiring hugely expensive testing as though these plants were highly toxic chemicals. In effect, these policies impose a hugely punitive tax on a superior, and badly needed, technology."
More here
Anti-biotech bills find little traction in state legislatures: "Despite recent high-profile measures in California counties and in the Vermont legislature to ban or heavily regulate genetically enhanced crops, most state legislatures are following the federal government's lead in rebuffing the opponents of biotechnology. In 2002, 130 bills and resolutions addressing biotechnology were introduced in state legislatures, according to a May 2004 study conducted by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology. Fifty of the 130 measures were in support of biotechnology."
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Saturday, August 21, 2004
AN INTERESTING THEORY ABOUT GREENIE SCARES FROM A READER:
"I remember when I was a teenager in the 80's we were all doomed soon because we were going to run out of oil. Part of this fear was probably inspired by OPEC at the time but the argument wasnt that OPEC was making the oil disappear, we were just running out, according to scientists.
Then I remember following global warming in magazines like Omni and Discover in the late eighties and we were all doomed. Lately reading about how they keep finding more and more oil it occurred to me that the fear of running out of oil disappeared around the same time global warming became a looming disaster. At least this is what it looked like in the popular media.
This can't be a coincidence. It's my guess that when the environmentalists could no longer scare us with empty tanks, and scientists could no longer tap this fear for alternate energy resources, and Democrats could no longer blame Republicans and big oil for this nearing economic disaster, a new cause took its place. It probably wasnt planned but just happened automatically.
Now occasionally I see the oil shortage scare popping up, and this happened at the same time global warning theories are starting to crumble. But I believe something fascinating is going to happen soon. Not too long ago we banned CFCs because of the hole in the ozone, even if many scientists thought this might be a natural cycle. After they turned off the CFCs the hole in the ozone still got bigger. The scientists were a little puzzled but I actually saw some blame it on global warming!!! But then the hole got smaller and they are now claiming we saved all life on earth despite depriving poor countries of cheap refrigeration that the developed countries benefited from for so long.
I believe that soon, both the global warming theories and the oil shortage theories will crumble simultaneously and finally under overwhelming evidence and this will horrify Greenies everywhere, and terrify underfunded scientists everwhere, as the world grows richer guiltlessly buring the seemingly endless supply of fossil fuels...
And then a miracle happens! Natural cycles will cause the hole in the ozone to grow bigger again, and a link will be found between burning fossil fuels and the depletion of ozone. It will be some crazy chemical reaction like carbon monoxide or acid rain reacts with salt water and it releases bromine that floats up and destroys ozone".
The ozone hole does indeed fluctuate but it probably fluctuates too wildly to be of any further use to the Greenies. As is reported here, the hole was at its biggest in 2000 -- well after CFCs had been banned. Even more interesting, however was that in 2002 the hole shrank so much that it disappeared -- being replaced by two much smaller holes. Then in 2003 it was back at its second largest size ever. Extreme changes like that clearly indicate random natural fluctuation rather than systematic influence from ozone or anything else man-made. Even Greenies would not like a theory that could be turned on its ear in 12 month's time.
GREENIES RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW
Another way Greenie measures kill
"The U.S. Senate will devote most of March to debating a $35-billion energy package that supposedly will protect Americans from both greedy sheikhs and global warming. But if enacted as proposed, the measure actually would result in a good deal of American blood needlessly spilled on U.S. highways.
At the heart of the proposal is a dramatic tightening of automotive fuel economy standards fleet-wide to 35 miles per gallon by 2013. Current standards require passenger cars to average 27.5 mpg and light trucks 20 mpg. But the vehicle downsizing necessary to meet such a standard would jeopardize the safety of American motorists far more than any threat posed by an oil embargo or melted ice caps. For all the fury against trading blood for oil in foreign policy, the fuel economy chorus largely disregards the lives lost to satisfy mileage requirements.....
Fortunately, Americans have heeded their own experiences rather than the tired rhetoric of the auto-bashers. Indeed, small trucks comprise nearly half the vehicles on the road today, and most motorists instinctively know what empirical research and the laws of physics confirm: larger vehicles are safer than small ones.
But stricter CAFE standards would require further downsizing of the nation's fleet. A 10-percent reduction in weight, for example, increases mileage by 8 percent on average, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. However, reducing vehicle weight by 500 pounds also increases crash fatalities between 14 percent and 27 percent annually (2,000 to 4,000 additional deaths), according to research by Harvard University and the Brookings Institution. And the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has found that cars with a curb weight under 2,500 pounds account for two-and-a-half times as many crash fatalities as sport utility vehicles weighing 5,000 pounds or more....
Driving habits largely beyond the reach of government intervention are the primary cause of most traffic fatalities. Nearly two-thirds of those killed in crashes were unbuckled, and 40 percent of all traffic deaths were alcohol related.
As to the notion that SUVs are major contributors to global warming, Robert Crandall of the Brookings Institution has shown that emissions from all new vehicles amount to around 2 percent of all CO2 emissions in the U.S. "Changing truck fuel standards is an inefficient way to address global warming," he says.
Congress has been fully apprised of CAFE's inherent dangers. In the upcoming Senate debate, then, lawmakers need only decide whether to score political points or save American lives.
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
"I remember when I was a teenager in the 80's we were all doomed soon because we were going to run out of oil. Part of this fear was probably inspired by OPEC at the time but the argument wasnt that OPEC was making the oil disappear, we were just running out, according to scientists.
Then I remember following global warming in magazines like Omni and Discover in the late eighties and we were all doomed. Lately reading about how they keep finding more and more oil it occurred to me that the fear of running out of oil disappeared around the same time global warming became a looming disaster. At least this is what it looked like in the popular media.
This can't be a coincidence. It's my guess that when the environmentalists could no longer scare us with empty tanks, and scientists could no longer tap this fear for alternate energy resources, and Democrats could no longer blame Republicans and big oil for this nearing economic disaster, a new cause took its place. It probably wasnt planned but just happened automatically.
Now occasionally I see the oil shortage scare popping up, and this happened at the same time global warning theories are starting to crumble. But I believe something fascinating is going to happen soon. Not too long ago we banned CFCs because of the hole in the ozone, even if many scientists thought this might be a natural cycle. After they turned off the CFCs the hole in the ozone still got bigger. The scientists were a little puzzled but I actually saw some blame it on global warming!!! But then the hole got smaller and they are now claiming we saved all life on earth despite depriving poor countries of cheap refrigeration that the developed countries benefited from for so long.
I believe that soon, both the global warming theories and the oil shortage theories will crumble simultaneously and finally under overwhelming evidence and this will horrify Greenies everywhere, and terrify underfunded scientists everwhere, as the world grows richer guiltlessly buring the seemingly endless supply of fossil fuels...
And then a miracle happens! Natural cycles will cause the hole in the ozone to grow bigger again, and a link will be found between burning fossil fuels and the depletion of ozone. It will be some crazy chemical reaction like carbon monoxide or acid rain reacts with salt water and it releases bromine that floats up and destroys ozone".
The ozone hole does indeed fluctuate but it probably fluctuates too wildly to be of any further use to the Greenies. As is reported here, the hole was at its biggest in 2000 -- well after CFCs had been banned. Even more interesting, however was that in 2002 the hole shrank so much that it disappeared -- being replaced by two much smaller holes. Then in 2003 it was back at its second largest size ever. Extreme changes like that clearly indicate random natural fluctuation rather than systematic influence from ozone or anything else man-made. Even Greenies would not like a theory that could be turned on its ear in 12 month's time.
GREENIES RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW
Another way Greenie measures kill
"The U.S. Senate will devote most of March to debating a $35-billion energy package that supposedly will protect Americans from both greedy sheikhs and global warming. But if enacted as proposed, the measure actually would result in a good deal of American blood needlessly spilled on U.S. highways.
At the heart of the proposal is a dramatic tightening of automotive fuel economy standards fleet-wide to 35 miles per gallon by 2013. Current standards require passenger cars to average 27.5 mpg and light trucks 20 mpg. But the vehicle downsizing necessary to meet such a standard would jeopardize the safety of American motorists far more than any threat posed by an oil embargo or melted ice caps. For all the fury against trading blood for oil in foreign policy, the fuel economy chorus largely disregards the lives lost to satisfy mileage requirements.....
Fortunately, Americans have heeded their own experiences rather than the tired rhetoric of the auto-bashers. Indeed, small trucks comprise nearly half the vehicles on the road today, and most motorists instinctively know what empirical research and the laws of physics confirm: larger vehicles are safer than small ones.
But stricter CAFE standards would require further downsizing of the nation's fleet. A 10-percent reduction in weight, for example, increases mileage by 8 percent on average, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. However, reducing vehicle weight by 500 pounds also increases crash fatalities between 14 percent and 27 percent annually (2,000 to 4,000 additional deaths), according to research by Harvard University and the Brookings Institution. And the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has found that cars with a curb weight under 2,500 pounds account for two-and-a-half times as many crash fatalities as sport utility vehicles weighing 5,000 pounds or more....
Driving habits largely beyond the reach of government intervention are the primary cause of most traffic fatalities. Nearly two-thirds of those killed in crashes were unbuckled, and 40 percent of all traffic deaths were alcohol related.
As to the notion that SUVs are major contributors to global warming, Robert Crandall of the Brookings Institution has shown that emissions from all new vehicles amount to around 2 percent of all CO2 emissions in the U.S. "Changing truck fuel standards is an inefficient way to address global warming," he says.
Congress has been fully apprised of CAFE's inherent dangers. In the upcoming Senate debate, then, lawmakers need only decide whether to score political points or save American lives.
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Friday, August 20, 2004
ENVIRONMENTALISM KILLING MILLIONS IN POOR COUNTRIES
On Friday the science journal Nature published a series of papers on malaria and its control. Focusing on this preventable and curable disease is crucial and timely; malaria is the biggest killer of children in Africa accounting for over 1 million deaths world wide each year. Furthermore, we are now at the halfway point through the World Health Organization's (WHO) Roll Back Malaria program which can only be described as an unmitigated failure. Unless urgent and far reaching reforms are made to Roll Back Malaria and its partner organizations, malaria's death toll will continue unabated. One partner, UNICEF, the UN children's agency, is even sending a pianist instead of urgently needed nets and drugs
The WHO, World Bank, the US aid agency, USAID, and UNICEF launched Roll Back Malaria in 1998. Their aim was to halve malaria deaths by 2010. So far malaria deaths have risen by 12%.
Some countries are getting malaria control right though. Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa have successfully driven the incidence of the disease to almost all time lows. Zambia, one of the world's poorest countries is also witnessing increased success against the disease. The common thread among these countries is that they are rolling out highly successful new combination drug therapies and are running insecticide spraying programmes to kill adult mosquitoes that rest indoors. Crucially, these malaria control programs are funded not by UN bodies or established donor agencies but by the relatively new Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) and the private sector.
Unlike GFATM, the Roll Back Malaria partners are unwilling to fund interventions that work but upset environmentalists, such as indoor insecticide spraying. They are also not living up to their own funding requirements. One article in Nature points out that the funding the Roll Back Malaria partners promised to control the disease has not been delivered. In April 2000 the World Bank promised to pledge between $300 and $500 million to combat malaria. So far, the Bank claims to have authorized loans of between $100 and $150 million. Yet if malaria is to be successfully controlled, at least $5 billion needs to be devoted to prevention and treatment programmes every year.
During the 1950s and 60s, USAID funded the WHO's malaria eradication program. Although this program was prematurely terminated, US taxpayer funding was responsible for saving millions of lives; were that only true now. Like the World Bank, USAID's funding is inadequate; as importantly, it ignores what malarial countries actually need. USAID claims that it spends 34% of its $65.6 million malaria budget on disease treatment, but admits that it actually doesn't buy any drugs. With drug resistance rising, changing over to new effective therapies is essential. USAID's refusal to provide funds for those drugs is tantamount to a death sentence for anyone unfortunate enough to be infected with malaria.
Many African countries want to increase indoor spraying with insecticides, yet here, too, USAID's policy is failing since the agency prefers to focus its prevention strategies on insecticide-treated nets.
More here
CLIMATE SCIENCE VERSUS THE GLOBAL WARMING RELIGION
Excerpts from an article by Philip Stott -- professor emeritus of biogeography in the University of London:
"In any discussion of climate change, it is essential to distinguish between the complex science of climate and the myth - in the sense of Roland Barthes, or the 'hybrid', following Bruno Latour - of 'global warming'. The latter is a politico-pseudoscientific construct, developed since the late 1980s, in which the human emission of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, is unquestioningly taken as the prime driver of a new and dramatic type of climate change that will result in a significant warming during the next 100 years and lead to catastrophe for both humanity and the Earth.
This, in turn, has morphed since 1992 and the Rio Conference on the environment into a legitimising myth for a gamut of interconnected political agendas - above all for a range of European sensibilities with regards to America, oil, the car, transport, economic growth, trade, and international corporations. The language employed tends to be authoritarian and religious in character, involving the use of what the physicist PH Borcherds has termed the 'hysterical subjunctive'. Indeed, for many, the myth has become an article of a secular faith that exhibits all the characteristics of a premodern religion, above all demanding sacrifice to the Earth.
By contrast, the science of climate change starts from the principle that we are concerned with the most complex, non-linear, chaotic system known, and that it is distinctly unlikely that climate change can be predicted by reference to a single factor, however politically convenient that factor....
First, is the climate changing? The answer has to be: 'Of course it is.' Evidence throughout geological time indicates climate change at all scales and all times. Climate change is the norm, not the exception, and at any moment the Earth is either warming or cooling. If climate were ever to become stable, it would be a scientifically exciting phenomenon. To declare that 'the climate is changing' is therefore a truism. By contrast, the global warming myth harks back to a lost Golden Age of climate stability, or, to employ a more modern term, climate 'sustainability'. Sadly, the idea of a sustainable climate is an oxymoron. The fact that we have rediscovered climate change at the turn of the Millennium tells us more about ourselves, and about our devices and desires, than about climate. Opponents of global warming are often snidely referred to as 'climate change deniers'; precisely the opposite is true. Those who question the myth of global warming are passionate believers in climate change - it is the global warmers who deny that climate change is the norm".
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
On Friday the science journal Nature published a series of papers on malaria and its control. Focusing on this preventable and curable disease is crucial and timely; malaria is the biggest killer of children in Africa accounting for over 1 million deaths world wide each year. Furthermore, we are now at the halfway point through the World Health Organization's (WHO) Roll Back Malaria program which can only be described as an unmitigated failure. Unless urgent and far reaching reforms are made to Roll Back Malaria and its partner organizations, malaria's death toll will continue unabated. One partner, UNICEF, the UN children's agency, is even sending a pianist instead of urgently needed nets and drugs
The WHO, World Bank, the US aid agency, USAID, and UNICEF launched Roll Back Malaria in 1998. Their aim was to halve malaria deaths by 2010. So far malaria deaths have risen by 12%.
Some countries are getting malaria control right though. Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa have successfully driven the incidence of the disease to almost all time lows. Zambia, one of the world's poorest countries is also witnessing increased success against the disease. The common thread among these countries is that they are rolling out highly successful new combination drug therapies and are running insecticide spraying programmes to kill adult mosquitoes that rest indoors. Crucially, these malaria control programs are funded not by UN bodies or established donor agencies but by the relatively new Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) and the private sector.
Unlike GFATM, the Roll Back Malaria partners are unwilling to fund interventions that work but upset environmentalists, such as indoor insecticide spraying. They are also not living up to their own funding requirements. One article in Nature points out that the funding the Roll Back Malaria partners promised to control the disease has not been delivered. In April 2000 the World Bank promised to pledge between $300 and $500 million to combat malaria. So far, the Bank claims to have authorized loans of between $100 and $150 million. Yet if malaria is to be successfully controlled, at least $5 billion needs to be devoted to prevention and treatment programmes every year.
During the 1950s and 60s, USAID funded the WHO's malaria eradication program. Although this program was prematurely terminated, US taxpayer funding was responsible for saving millions of lives; were that only true now. Like the World Bank, USAID's funding is inadequate; as importantly, it ignores what malarial countries actually need. USAID claims that it spends 34% of its $65.6 million malaria budget on disease treatment, but admits that it actually doesn't buy any drugs. With drug resistance rising, changing over to new effective therapies is essential. USAID's refusal to provide funds for those drugs is tantamount to a death sentence for anyone unfortunate enough to be infected with malaria.
Many African countries want to increase indoor spraying with insecticides, yet here, too, USAID's policy is failing since the agency prefers to focus its prevention strategies on insecticide-treated nets.
More here
CLIMATE SCIENCE VERSUS THE GLOBAL WARMING RELIGION
Excerpts from an article by Philip Stott -- professor emeritus of biogeography in the University of London:
"In any discussion of climate change, it is essential to distinguish between the complex science of climate and the myth - in the sense of Roland Barthes, or the 'hybrid', following Bruno Latour - of 'global warming'. The latter is a politico-pseudoscientific construct, developed since the late 1980s, in which the human emission of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, is unquestioningly taken as the prime driver of a new and dramatic type of climate change that will result in a significant warming during the next 100 years and lead to catastrophe for both humanity and the Earth.
This, in turn, has morphed since 1992 and the Rio Conference on the environment into a legitimising myth for a gamut of interconnected political agendas - above all for a range of European sensibilities with regards to America, oil, the car, transport, economic growth, trade, and international corporations. The language employed tends to be authoritarian and religious in character, involving the use of what the physicist PH Borcherds has termed the 'hysterical subjunctive'. Indeed, for many, the myth has become an article of a secular faith that exhibits all the characteristics of a premodern religion, above all demanding sacrifice to the Earth.
By contrast, the science of climate change starts from the principle that we are concerned with the most complex, non-linear, chaotic system known, and that it is distinctly unlikely that climate change can be predicted by reference to a single factor, however politically convenient that factor....
First, is the climate changing? The answer has to be: 'Of course it is.' Evidence throughout geological time indicates climate change at all scales and all times. Climate change is the norm, not the exception, and at any moment the Earth is either warming or cooling. If climate were ever to become stable, it would be a scientifically exciting phenomenon. To declare that 'the climate is changing' is therefore a truism. By contrast, the global warming myth harks back to a lost Golden Age of climate stability, or, to employ a more modern term, climate 'sustainability'. Sadly, the idea of a sustainable climate is an oxymoron. The fact that we have rediscovered climate change at the turn of the Millennium tells us more about ourselves, and about our devices and desires, than about climate. Opponents of global warming are often snidely referred to as 'climate change deniers'; precisely the opposite is true. Those who question the myth of global warming are passionate believers in climate change - it is the global warmers who deny that climate change is the norm".
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Thursday, August 19, 2004
THE DYING SCREAM OF THE WIND-FARM ADVOCATES
This headline in The Guardian tells us how desperate the windmill-lovers are getting now that even many Greenies now don't like windmills: "Behind the rural nimbyism of the protests against wind farms is the sinister presence of the nuclear lobby"
Ah! The arch-demon has been called up out of hell -- "the nuclear lobby". Kneejerk Leftist horror is now to be expected. Windfarm opponents like far-Left "Senator Ted Kennedy in the USA and noted environmentalist David Bellamy in the UK would however be pretty amazed to hear themselves identified as pro-nuclear campaigners.
The whole article is an amusing piece of Soviet-style propaganda that is almost self-fisking. But if you want your fisking done for you, Envirospin does an excellent job of it.
GLOBAL WARMING MANIACS
Policy-makers from Mars
"According to a new study appearing in the August 13 issue of the journal Science, "We already have the technology we need to take the world off the path toward dramatic climate change." But a cursory glance at the advance summary reveals that the study, conducted by Princeton Environmental Institute's Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI), is completely out of touch with economic, political, and environmental reality.
The forthcoming study claims that each of 15 recommended strategies could eliminate up to 1 billion tons annually of carbon emissions by 2054, though by not considering their costs the authors make their recommendations useless as public policy proposals. "The study basically says that if you coerce everybody to use a lot less energy and don't care about the cost, you can significantly reduce emissions," said Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis. "We needed Princeton University to tell us that?".....
CMI Strategy 9 is to add double the current global nuclear capacity to replace coal-based electricity. "This proposal should go over big with the no-nukes environmental establishment."
CMI Strategy 10 is to increase wind capacity by 50 times relative to today, for a total of 2 million large windmills. "The word boondoggle was invented for just such proposals, and in case CMI has not heard, there's a growing grassroots backlash against wind farms."
CMI Strategy 13 is to increase ethanol production 50 times by creating biomass plantations with an area equal to 1/6th of world cropland. This strategy is a prescription for decimating millions of acres of forest and other wildlife habitat. "I thought environmentalists liked trees and wildlife, but I guess these days anyone can qualify as long as they embrace the Kyoto agenda of climate alarmism and energy rationing."
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
This headline in The Guardian tells us how desperate the windmill-lovers are getting now that even many Greenies now don't like windmills: "Behind the rural nimbyism of the protests against wind farms is the sinister presence of the nuclear lobby"
Ah! The arch-demon has been called up out of hell -- "the nuclear lobby". Kneejerk Leftist horror is now to be expected. Windfarm opponents like far-Left "Senator Ted Kennedy in the USA and noted environmentalist David Bellamy in the UK would however be pretty amazed to hear themselves identified as pro-nuclear campaigners.
The whole article is an amusing piece of Soviet-style propaganda that is almost self-fisking. But if you want your fisking done for you, Envirospin does an excellent job of it.
GLOBAL WARMING MANIACS
Policy-makers from Mars
"According to a new study appearing in the August 13 issue of the journal Science, "We already have the technology we need to take the world off the path toward dramatic climate change." But a cursory glance at the advance summary reveals that the study, conducted by Princeton Environmental Institute's Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI), is completely out of touch with economic, political, and environmental reality.
The forthcoming study claims that each of 15 recommended strategies could eliminate up to 1 billion tons annually of carbon emissions by 2054, though by not considering their costs the authors make their recommendations useless as public policy proposals. "The study basically says that if you coerce everybody to use a lot less energy and don't care about the cost, you can significantly reduce emissions," said Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis. "We needed Princeton University to tell us that?".....
CMI Strategy 9 is to add double the current global nuclear capacity to replace coal-based electricity. "This proposal should go over big with the no-nukes environmental establishment."
CMI Strategy 10 is to increase wind capacity by 50 times relative to today, for a total of 2 million large windmills. "The word boondoggle was invented for just such proposals, and in case CMI has not heard, there's a growing grassroots backlash against wind farms."
CMI Strategy 13 is to increase ethanol production 50 times by creating biomass plantations with an area equal to 1/6th of world cropland. This strategy is a prescription for decimating millions of acres of forest and other wildlife habitat. "I thought environmentalists liked trees and wildlife, but I guess these days anyone can qualify as long as they embrace the Kyoto agenda of climate alarmism and energy rationing."
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
THE ASBESTOS FRAUD
"It is, arguably, the biggest racket in American history - asbestos litigation. It is bigger than bootlegging during the Prohibition era. Bigger than cocaine trafficking during the drug-addled 1970s. Bigger than securities fraud during the get-rich-quick 1990s.
That's why a new, underreported study published in the latest issue of Academic Radiology ought to be read by judges presiding over asbestos-related lawsuits, and by lawmakers on Capitol Hill debating the merits of asbestos litigation reform. In the study, an independent panel of doctors reviewed 492 chest X-rays entered as evidence by trial lawyers in asbestos lawsuits. The panel found that fewer than 5 percent of the X-rays revealed possible asbestos-related lung damage.
Yet, the doctors who were paid by trial lawyers to act as "expert" witnesses in the asbestos lawsuits, the doctors who originally read the X-rays, concluded that 96 percent showed asbestos-related abnormalities. "It was astonishing," Dr. Joseph. N. Gitlin, the lead author of the study, an associate professor of radiology at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, told The New York Times.
The gross disparity in the findings of the panel of doctors who conducted the independent study and the doctors who sold their "expert" testimony to asbestos trial lawyers cannot be attributed to mere differences in interpretation of the X-rays.
What we have here is prima facie evidence of medical fraud. Indeed, it is the unholy alliance between buckraking trial lawyers and unethical physicians that is driving the proliferation of asbestos lawsuits in this country.
Roughly 730,000 asbestos claims have been filed over the past four decades, including 200,000 that are currently pending in state and federal courts throughout the fair land. The total cost of asbestos litigation to American businesses has increased from $1 billion in 1982 to a whopping $70 billion in 2002, according to a study by the Rand Institute for Civil Justice."
More here.
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
"It is, arguably, the biggest racket in American history - asbestos litigation. It is bigger than bootlegging during the Prohibition era. Bigger than cocaine trafficking during the drug-addled 1970s. Bigger than securities fraud during the get-rich-quick 1990s.
That's why a new, underreported study published in the latest issue of Academic Radiology ought to be read by judges presiding over asbestos-related lawsuits, and by lawmakers on Capitol Hill debating the merits of asbestos litigation reform. In the study, an independent panel of doctors reviewed 492 chest X-rays entered as evidence by trial lawyers in asbestos lawsuits. The panel found that fewer than 5 percent of the X-rays revealed possible asbestos-related lung damage.
Yet, the doctors who were paid by trial lawyers to act as "expert" witnesses in the asbestos lawsuits, the doctors who originally read the X-rays, concluded that 96 percent showed asbestos-related abnormalities. "It was astonishing," Dr. Joseph. N. Gitlin, the lead author of the study, an associate professor of radiology at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, told The New York Times.
The gross disparity in the findings of the panel of doctors who conducted the independent study and the doctors who sold their "expert" testimony to asbestos trial lawyers cannot be attributed to mere differences in interpretation of the X-rays.
What we have here is prima facie evidence of medical fraud. Indeed, it is the unholy alliance between buckraking trial lawyers and unethical physicians that is driving the proliferation of asbestos lawsuits in this country.
Roughly 730,000 asbestos claims have been filed over the past four decades, including 200,000 that are currently pending in state and federal courts throughout the fair land. The total cost of asbestos litigation to American businesses has increased from $1 billion in 1982 to a whopping $70 billion in 2002, according to a study by the Rand Institute for Civil Justice."
More here.
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
THE CURRENT HIGH OIL PRICES REFLECT INFRASTRUCTURE SHORTAGES, NOT OIL SHORTAGES
This article says that the current low supply of petroleum products and resultant high prices is not a political problem in the main oil-supplying countries but the result of a failure to drill new wells and build new refineries -- two things that have been greatly held up by Greenie histrionics. Excerpts:
This time the Saudis have not been able to come up with the oil. They claimed last week to have 1.3 million more barrels a day of available production, but there is widespread doubt they can produce that much now, or even after two new fields go on line later this year. Why not? The international energy business has been starved of major capital investment for two decades, since the price swoon of the early 1980s scared oil companies.....
Most oil market commentary still makes it sound as if high prices are a passing phenomenon. Each spike is attributed to the threat of a loss of Iraqi exports, or of Saudi instability, or of Yukos' problems in Russia, even though what is happening there seems unlikely to affect oil production, just to change who profits from it....
The problem is not a lack of oil in the world. The problem is getting the oil to refineries and then to market. The large, undeveloped resources are in West Africa, around the Caspian Sea and in Siberia, two of which have issues of political stability and the third with severe weather.....
It does not make much difference whether oil is pumped out of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge because a shortage of oil is not the biggest problem. "The real problem is the shortage of infrastructure to obtain and deliver the commodity," Currie said. "That seemed to go completely unnoticed until the last six months." Neither Europe nor the United States shows any indication of willingness to build new refineries.
More here
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
This article says that the current low supply of petroleum products and resultant high prices is not a political problem in the main oil-supplying countries but the result of a failure to drill new wells and build new refineries -- two things that have been greatly held up by Greenie histrionics. Excerpts:
This time the Saudis have not been able to come up with the oil. They claimed last week to have 1.3 million more barrels a day of available production, but there is widespread doubt they can produce that much now, or even after two new fields go on line later this year. Why not? The international energy business has been starved of major capital investment for two decades, since the price swoon of the early 1980s scared oil companies.....
Most oil market commentary still makes it sound as if high prices are a passing phenomenon. Each spike is attributed to the threat of a loss of Iraqi exports, or of Saudi instability, or of Yukos' problems in Russia, even though what is happening there seems unlikely to affect oil production, just to change who profits from it....
The problem is not a lack of oil in the world. The problem is getting the oil to refineries and then to market. The large, undeveloped resources are in West Africa, around the Caspian Sea and in Siberia, two of which have issues of political stability and the third with severe weather.....
It does not make much difference whether oil is pumped out of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge because a shortage of oil is not the biggest problem. "The real problem is the shortage of infrastructure to obtain and deliver the commodity," Currie said. "That seemed to go completely unnoticed until the last six months." Neither Europe nor the United States shows any indication of willingness to build new refineries.
More here
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Monday, August 16, 2004
TAXPAYERS FUND GREENIE POLITICKING
"Even though most environmental groups are determined to oust President Bush from office this November, those groups are benefiting from an unprecedented level of federal assistance, according to a Washington, D.C., research group. It's possible that some of that money is also being used in the campaign against a second Bush term, Capital Research Center (CRC) reported in an editorial, citing audits conducted by the White House Office of Management and Budget. The audits, according to CRC's David Healy, show that in the fiscal year 2004 budget, $143 million was channeled to environmental groups that disclose their finances. That's nearly twice as much as the $72 million that the groups got in fiscal year 1998.
Between 1999 and 2004, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation saw its federal awards increase nearly six-fold while its private donations were increasing at a much smaller rate. Nature Conservancy's federal grant money doubled between 1999 and 2004, even though the group has been plagued by scandal, Healy reported. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters (LCV) all received taxpayer dollars from the Bush administration, yet the groups have been working together to mount an anti-Bush "Environmental Accountability Fund," Healy wrote.
For example, according to Healy, the groups have organized "anti-Bush efforts in key battleground states. In New Mexico ... LCV is recruiting volunteers in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, while the Sierra Club has added two full-time campaign staffers, and NRDC has aired at least two radio spots."
The green groups are not shy about enlisting the help of famous Democrat politicians or liberal-minded celebrities either. Former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, who is associated with Audubon Society, was quoted by Healy as blasting the Bush administration's environmental policies. "I cannot remember, I cannot recite to you a single positive new policy or program sponsored by the current administration," Udall reportedly said....
But an expert on federal grants to non-profit organizations, who wished to remain anonymous, told CNSNews.com that property owners were "extremely unhappy" about environmental policy and with their perceived lack of influence on federal policy during a recent Interior meeting. "This kind of funding has turned around and is starting to bite [the Bush administration,]" the expert asserted.....
Robert Bidinotto, editor of Organization Trends and Foundation Watch, published by Capital Research Center, said that though federal grants may not be used directly for political activism such as Environmental Accountability Fund, the funds nevertheless helped the environmental groups launch political campaigns. "Grants, at the very minimum, boost these groups' size, visibility, influence, clout, cache; all of these things are directly transferable to activities such as Bush-bashing during the election year," he said. The result, Bidinotto said, is "that as the funding from the administration has been going up, so has the volume of [the environmental groups'] voices.""
More here
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
"Even though most environmental groups are determined to oust President Bush from office this November, those groups are benefiting from an unprecedented level of federal assistance, according to a Washington, D.C., research group. It's possible that some of that money is also being used in the campaign against a second Bush term, Capital Research Center (CRC) reported in an editorial, citing audits conducted by the White House Office of Management and Budget. The audits, according to CRC's David Healy, show that in the fiscal year 2004 budget, $143 million was channeled to environmental groups that disclose their finances. That's nearly twice as much as the $72 million that the groups got in fiscal year 1998.
Between 1999 and 2004, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation saw its federal awards increase nearly six-fold while its private donations were increasing at a much smaller rate. Nature Conservancy's federal grant money doubled between 1999 and 2004, even though the group has been plagued by scandal, Healy reported. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters (LCV) all received taxpayer dollars from the Bush administration, yet the groups have been working together to mount an anti-Bush "Environmental Accountability Fund," Healy wrote.
For example, according to Healy, the groups have organized "anti-Bush efforts in key battleground states. In New Mexico ... LCV is recruiting volunteers in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, while the Sierra Club has added two full-time campaign staffers, and NRDC has aired at least two radio spots."
The green groups are not shy about enlisting the help of famous Democrat politicians or liberal-minded celebrities either. Former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, who is associated with Audubon Society, was quoted by Healy as blasting the Bush administration's environmental policies. "I cannot remember, I cannot recite to you a single positive new policy or program sponsored by the current administration," Udall reportedly said....
But an expert on federal grants to non-profit organizations, who wished to remain anonymous, told CNSNews.com that property owners were "extremely unhappy" about environmental policy and with their perceived lack of influence on federal policy during a recent Interior meeting. "This kind of funding has turned around and is starting to bite [the Bush administration,]" the expert asserted.....
Robert Bidinotto, editor of Organization Trends and Foundation Watch, published by Capital Research Center, said that though federal grants may not be used directly for political activism such as Environmental Accountability Fund, the funds nevertheless helped the environmental groups launch political campaigns. "Grants, at the very minimum, boost these groups' size, visibility, influence, clout, cache; all of these things are directly transferable to activities such as Bush-bashing during the election year," he said. The result, Bidinotto said, is "that as the funding from the administration has been going up, so has the volume of [the environmental groups'] voices.""
More here
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Sunday, August 15, 2004
ECONOMISTS AGAINST THE GREENIES
Economists say global warming is a minor problem compared to alternative things we could be spending money on:
"There's a scientific consensus, we're often told, that global warming is a problem-despite the opinion of qualified experts ranging from the Russian Academy of Sciences to the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT that it isn't. Yet, even if those worried scientists are right, science can't tell us whether acting to prevent further global warming is worth the trouble. For that, we have to look to economics. And in that field there is a growing consensus that global warming is the least of our problems.
This was underlined recently in Denmark, where The Economist and Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, brought together eight of the world's leading economists, including three Nobel laureates, for the "Copenhagen Consensus" project during the last week of May. From the beginning, the project clearly identified its mission: "The goal of the Copenhagen Consensus project was to set priorities among a series of proposals for confronting ten great global challenges." In other words, the point of the Consensus was to list the challenges facing the world, and their possible solutions, in order of value for money. The projects that would provide the greatest good for mankind for the least amount of money would top the list....
In fact, the panel ranked all three suggestions for action concerning global climate change-an "optimal carbon tax," a "value-at-risk carbon tax," and the Kyoto protocol-last on the Consensus's ranking of 17 project possibilities, and even termed these options "bad investments." ... The expert panel regarded all three proposals as having costs that were likely to exceed the benefits. The panel recognized that global warming must be addressed, but agreed that approaches based on too abrupt a shift toward lower emissions of carbon are needlessly expensive. ... The panel urged increased funding for research into more affordable carbon-abatement technologies.
This ranking backed up previous research that has shown that all the main suggestions for dealing with global warming-the Kyoto Protocol, reducing all greenhouse-gas emissions globally to 1990 levels, or limiting carbon-dioxide presence in the atmosphere to double the pre-industrial level-would lead to economic disaster, slapping the world with a cost that would far exceed the benefit. A widely accepted 1999 study, for instance, found the cost of the Kyoto Protocol to be $220 billion in 1990 dollars, while providing only $95 billion in benefits. We are better off doing nothing.
It is unfortunate that the world cannot currently alleviate all of its challenges. But it is important to understand that, with the world's limited resources, efficient spending is a critical aspect to accomplishing the greatest benefit globally. Wasting money on climate-change programs like the Kyoto Protocol is a misallocation of scarce resources that is at best negligent, and at worst reckless. As the Consensus agreed, the imposing costs of the reduction of greenhouse gases hinder any program attempting to reduce climate change. But programs such as those combating HIV/AIDS come at a comparatively low cost while offering incredibly large benefits".
GASOLINE MEDDLING BAD ECONOMICS TOO
Gasoline nonsense: "As recently as the early 1990s, the nation's gasoline supply was fungible. The same regular, mid-grade, and premium fuel was sold from coast to coast. But today, we have a bewildering variety of gasoline recipes in use across the country. Each of these specialized blends was designed to help clean the air, but the decade-old track record for the experiment in boutique fuels indicates that it has done more economic harm than environmental good."
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Economists say global warming is a minor problem compared to alternative things we could be spending money on:
"There's a scientific consensus, we're often told, that global warming is a problem-despite the opinion of qualified experts ranging from the Russian Academy of Sciences to the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT that it isn't. Yet, even if those worried scientists are right, science can't tell us whether acting to prevent further global warming is worth the trouble. For that, we have to look to economics. And in that field there is a growing consensus that global warming is the least of our problems.
This was underlined recently in Denmark, where The Economist and Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, brought together eight of the world's leading economists, including three Nobel laureates, for the "Copenhagen Consensus" project during the last week of May. From the beginning, the project clearly identified its mission: "The goal of the Copenhagen Consensus project was to set priorities among a series of proposals for confronting ten great global challenges." In other words, the point of the Consensus was to list the challenges facing the world, and their possible solutions, in order of value for money. The projects that would provide the greatest good for mankind for the least amount of money would top the list....
In fact, the panel ranked all three suggestions for action concerning global climate change-an "optimal carbon tax," a "value-at-risk carbon tax," and the Kyoto protocol-last on the Consensus's ranking of 17 project possibilities, and even termed these options "bad investments." ... The expert panel regarded all three proposals as having costs that were likely to exceed the benefits. The panel recognized that global warming must be addressed, but agreed that approaches based on too abrupt a shift toward lower emissions of carbon are needlessly expensive. ... The panel urged increased funding for research into more affordable carbon-abatement technologies.
This ranking backed up previous research that has shown that all the main suggestions for dealing with global warming-the Kyoto Protocol, reducing all greenhouse-gas emissions globally to 1990 levels, or limiting carbon-dioxide presence in the atmosphere to double the pre-industrial level-would lead to economic disaster, slapping the world with a cost that would far exceed the benefit. A widely accepted 1999 study, for instance, found the cost of the Kyoto Protocol to be $220 billion in 1990 dollars, while providing only $95 billion in benefits. We are better off doing nothing.
It is unfortunate that the world cannot currently alleviate all of its challenges. But it is important to understand that, with the world's limited resources, efficient spending is a critical aspect to accomplishing the greatest benefit globally. Wasting money on climate-change programs like the Kyoto Protocol is a misallocation of scarce resources that is at best negligent, and at worst reckless. As the Consensus agreed, the imposing costs of the reduction of greenhouse gases hinder any program attempting to reduce climate change. But programs such as those combating HIV/AIDS come at a comparatively low cost while offering incredibly large benefits".
GASOLINE MEDDLING BAD ECONOMICS TOO
Gasoline nonsense: "As recently as the early 1990s, the nation's gasoline supply was fungible. The same regular, mid-grade, and premium fuel was sold from coast to coast. But today, we have a bewildering variety of gasoline recipes in use across the country. Each of these specialized blends was designed to help clean the air, but the decade-old track record for the experiment in boutique fuels indicates that it has done more economic harm than environmental good."
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Saturday, August 14, 2004
MR. FLIP DOES A FLOP
And what good would his latest idea do anyway?
"John Kerry took time in Nevada this week to criticize President Bush's decision to use Yucca Mountain as the national repository for nuclear waste. Kerry said the decision was based on politics, not science. Yet in 1999, Kerry encouraged speeding up the timing of making Yucca Mountain ready to accept nuclear waste.
HUMAN EVENTS has obtained a March 23, 1999, letter [see below] to then-Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Frank Murkowski (R.-Alaska), signed by Kerry, calling for the acceleration of a nuclear waste acceptance schedule.
When the letter was sent to Murkowski, the Committee was working on legislation to advance the siting and construction of Yucca Mountain -- the site designated by Congress in 1987 as the only site the Department of Energy was allowed to study as a future permanent storage repository."
REVIEW OF A BOOK BY AUSTRALIA's CHIEF GREENIE
Excerpts:
"He makes a strong case for preserving the wilderness but does not try to justify this against the needs of people in the world who are starving. He himself highlights the disparity between the rich and the poor of the world but does not recognise that preserving the wilderness is a luxury only rich countries can afford.
During the devastating Canberra fires, Brown, who usually hogs the media, avoided TV like the plague because he knew that Green opposition to burn-offs was partly to blame for the disaster. In the book he acknowledges (p.54) the role of the high volume of flammable fuel but does not concede that it was in part due to Green opposition to fuel-reduction burns.....
It is surprising that Brown supports the discredited Paul Ehrlich whose dire predictions have not eventuated. India has not had a famine for over 20 years and while Brown decries the poverty of North Korea he does not seem to object to their wasteful expenditure on armaments, including nuclear technology.
Brown's call (p.65) for a "global parliament" is risible given the abject failure of the UN especially in curbing persecutors of Christians in the Sudan, Indonesia and China. What is the point of a world parliament if we do not have a world army or police to carry out the decisions of the parliament?
He is quite intemperate in claiming that the Vatican has called for a world of 40 billion people who, in his words, would have "just enough room to copulate", when the Pope has repeatedly taught that responsible parenthood is the ethical way to slow down the birth-rate without recourse to abortion and other anti-life practices.
Brown is satisfied that the Australian birthrate, which is below replacement, "has had a healthy fall". He is wrong in saying that immigration is "our main source of population growth". We receive 100,000 immigrants but we lose 40,000 by emigration while the number of births is almost 250,000.
His optimistic view of the world forces him to ignore the devastation caused by Hitler, Stalin and Mao while not giving the US any credit for financing the destruction of thousands of Russian nuclear warheads.....
He repeats the tired old claim that acre after acre of forest is being harvested but makes little estimate of the extensive replanting that is taking place. In Australia over one million trees are planted each year."
More here
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
And what good would his latest idea do anyway?
"John Kerry took time in Nevada this week to criticize President Bush's decision to use Yucca Mountain as the national repository for nuclear waste. Kerry said the decision was based on politics, not science. Yet in 1999, Kerry encouraged speeding up the timing of making Yucca Mountain ready to accept nuclear waste.
HUMAN EVENTS has obtained a March 23, 1999, letter [see below] to then-Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Frank Murkowski (R.-Alaska), signed by Kerry, calling for the acceleration of a nuclear waste acceptance schedule.
When the letter was sent to Murkowski, the Committee was working on legislation to advance the siting and construction of Yucca Mountain -- the site designated by Congress in 1987 as the only site the Department of Energy was allowed to study as a future permanent storage repository."
REVIEW OF A BOOK BY AUSTRALIA's CHIEF GREENIE
Excerpts:
"He makes a strong case for preserving the wilderness but does not try to justify this against the needs of people in the world who are starving. He himself highlights the disparity between the rich and the poor of the world but does not recognise that preserving the wilderness is a luxury only rich countries can afford.
During the devastating Canberra fires, Brown, who usually hogs the media, avoided TV like the plague because he knew that Green opposition to burn-offs was partly to blame for the disaster. In the book he acknowledges (p.54) the role of the high volume of flammable fuel but does not concede that it was in part due to Green opposition to fuel-reduction burns.....
It is surprising that Brown supports the discredited Paul Ehrlich whose dire predictions have not eventuated. India has not had a famine for over 20 years and while Brown decries the poverty of North Korea he does not seem to object to their wasteful expenditure on armaments, including nuclear technology.
Brown's call (p.65) for a "global parliament" is risible given the abject failure of the UN especially in curbing persecutors of Christians in the Sudan, Indonesia and China. What is the point of a world parliament if we do not have a world army or police to carry out the decisions of the parliament?
He is quite intemperate in claiming that the Vatican has called for a world of 40 billion people who, in his words, would have "just enough room to copulate", when the Pope has repeatedly taught that responsible parenthood is the ethical way to slow down the birth-rate without recourse to abortion and other anti-life practices.
Brown is satisfied that the Australian birthrate, which is below replacement, "has had a healthy fall". He is wrong in saying that immigration is "our main source of population growth". We receive 100,000 immigrants but we lose 40,000 by emigration while the number of births is almost 250,000.
His optimistic view of the world forces him to ignore the devastation caused by Hitler, Stalin and Mao while not giving the US any credit for financing the destruction of thousands of Russian nuclear warheads.....
He repeats the tired old claim that acre after acre of forest is being harvested but makes little estimate of the extensive replanting that is taking place. In Australia over one million trees are planted each year."
More here
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Friday, August 13, 2004
GREENIE PLANNERS GET A BLACK EYE FROM THE PUBLIC
And note the Greenie hypocrite who didn't want for himself what he advocated for others
Maple Lawn Farms and its picturesque rolling fields sit three miles south of Columbia and midway between the converging metropolitan areas of Baltimore and Washington....
To Maryland's state planners and leading environmental groups, the 508-acre site is ideally suited for "smart growth." Besides its convenient location, the property has access to water and sewer lines and lies within walking distance of three schools. They envision something like a town: a cluster of shops, offices, apartments and homes at a minimum density of about four to five homes per acre.
Yet it isn't going to turn out that way. As has often happened under Maryland's celebrated smart-growth program, which calls for building compactly in "smart-growth areas" such as Maple Lawn Farms to preserve land elsewhere, neighborhood protesters opposed the project for being too big and too dense. And contested projects like Maple Lawn Farms are a major reason that the innovative program enacted seven years ago has yet to make a significant dent in Maryland's sprawling building patterns..... When a specific development was proposed, vehement local opposition whittled the project down, first to 1,372 homes, then to 1,168 and finally to 1,116, or a density of 2.2 homes per acre, well below smart-growth norms.
Neighbors of the Howard County project contend that like other portions of metropolitan Washington, they're struggling with crowded roads and schools and want to preserve as much open space as they can in their neighborhoods.
"Each and every Fulton Manor homeowner spent a considerable amount of money to buy their property, build their dream home and raise their families in an idyllic country setting," John D. Morton, president of a nearby homeowners association, wrote in a typical plea to the county's Zoning Board during its deliberations on Maple Lawn Farms. "Today our dreams appear to be turning into a nightmare."
Planners say that reducing the size of Maple Lawn Farms will lead developers responding to a continuing demand for housing to build their projects in the fields and woods smart growth was designed to preserve. But even the former chairman of the Howard County chapter of the Sierra Club, which as a national organization advocates smart growth, objected to the Maple Lawn project. He lives about a mile away and said he preferred a development with fewer homes.
"My area has mostly five acre or larger lots," Dennis Luck said in testimony filed with the Zoning Board. "We expected to see the area population grow with like development."
More here
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
And note the Greenie hypocrite who didn't want for himself what he advocated for others
Maple Lawn Farms and its picturesque rolling fields sit three miles south of Columbia and midway between the converging metropolitan areas of Baltimore and Washington....
To Maryland's state planners and leading environmental groups, the 508-acre site is ideally suited for "smart growth." Besides its convenient location, the property has access to water and sewer lines and lies within walking distance of three schools. They envision something like a town: a cluster of shops, offices, apartments and homes at a minimum density of about four to five homes per acre.
Yet it isn't going to turn out that way. As has often happened under Maryland's celebrated smart-growth program, which calls for building compactly in "smart-growth areas" such as Maple Lawn Farms to preserve land elsewhere, neighborhood protesters opposed the project for being too big and too dense. And contested projects like Maple Lawn Farms are a major reason that the innovative program enacted seven years ago has yet to make a significant dent in Maryland's sprawling building patterns..... When a specific development was proposed, vehement local opposition whittled the project down, first to 1,372 homes, then to 1,168 and finally to 1,116, or a density of 2.2 homes per acre, well below smart-growth norms.
Neighbors of the Howard County project contend that like other portions of metropolitan Washington, they're struggling with crowded roads and schools and want to preserve as much open space as they can in their neighborhoods.
"Each and every Fulton Manor homeowner spent a considerable amount of money to buy their property, build their dream home and raise their families in an idyllic country setting," John D. Morton, president of a nearby homeowners association, wrote in a typical plea to the county's Zoning Board during its deliberations on Maple Lawn Farms. "Today our dreams appear to be turning into a nightmare."
Planners say that reducing the size of Maple Lawn Farms will lead developers responding to a continuing demand for housing to build their projects in the fields and woods smart growth was designed to preserve. But even the former chairman of the Howard County chapter of the Sierra Club, which as a national organization advocates smart growth, objected to the Maple Lawn project. He lives about a mile away and said he preferred a development with fewer homes.
"My area has mostly five acre or larger lots," Dennis Luck said in testimony filed with the Zoning Board. "We expected to see the area population grow with like development."
More here
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Thursday, August 12, 2004
IF THE CLIMATE GURUS CAN'T PREDICT 3 MONTHS AHEAD, HOW CAN WE BELIEVE THEIR PREDICTIONS FOR THE MORE DISTANT FUTURE?
That's what Australian scientist Warwick Hughes asks. Excerpt:
"The predictive skills of Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM): We have all heard our "climatmeisters" predicting how the world will be hotter decades into the future. Let's examine closely how good they are at predicting the real world climate just three months ahead. The BoM publishes monthly a three month rolling "Outlook" prediction of temperature and rainfall probability maps for Australia. A comparison of a series of 26 of the "outlook maps"(prediction) and the real world result demonstrates that the BoM modellers have problems in getting the outlook to resemble the observations. "
Click here to see graphics of how badly they get it wrong
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
That's what Australian scientist Warwick Hughes asks. Excerpt:
"The predictive skills of Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM): We have all heard our "climatmeisters" predicting how the world will be hotter decades into the future. Let's examine closely how good they are at predicting the real world climate just three months ahead. The BoM publishes monthly a three month rolling "Outlook" prediction of temperature and rainfall probability maps for Australia. A comparison of a series of 26 of the "outlook maps"(prediction) and the real world result demonstrates that the BoM modellers have problems in getting the outlook to resemble the observations. "
Click here to see graphics of how badly they get it wrong
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
AN HONEST SCIENTIST PASSES
Dr. J.G. Edwards dies but millions in the third world die from malaria every year because of a virtual ban on DDT.
"The removal of the unwarranted stigma from DDT and the saving of many future lives is now nearer at hand than it has been in the last 30 years thanks to the efforts of Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, who passed away on July 19 at the age of 85. Though Dr. Edwards is best known to the general public as the author of the now-classic 1961 book "A Climber's Guide to Glacier National Park," his work as an entomologist and professor at San Jose State University may prove to be his most important legacy.
Dr. Edwards led the opposition to environmental extremist efforts to ban DDT in the wake of Rachel Carson's infamous 1962 book "Silent Spring." The testimony of Dr. Edwards and others during Environmental Protection Agency hearings in 1971 on whether to ban the insecticide led to an EPA administrative law judge ruling that, "DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man. DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man. The uses of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife."
Inexplicably - or so it seemed - DDT was nonetheless banned by EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus. Dr. Edwards investigated and uncovered disturbing statements and troubling connections between Ruckleshaus and anti-DDT environmental extremist groups. In a May 1971 speech before the Wisconsin Audubon Society, Ruckleshaus acknowledged being a member of the anti-DDT National Audubon Society and to have "streamlined" EPA procedures so that DDT could be banned even before the administrative hearings had been completed.....
Perhaps the most well-known allegation about DDT was that the insecticide supposedly caused declines in the populations of birds such as the bald eagle. Dr. Edwards knew this was wrong. He knew that these bird populations had declined decades before DDT had ever been used. More importantly, the bird populations were actually rebounding during the years of peak DDT use, according to bird counts".
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
Dr. J.G. Edwards dies but millions in the third world die from malaria every year because of a virtual ban on DDT.
"The removal of the unwarranted stigma from DDT and the saving of many future lives is now nearer at hand than it has been in the last 30 years thanks to the efforts of Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, who passed away on July 19 at the age of 85. Though Dr. Edwards is best known to the general public as the author of the now-classic 1961 book "A Climber's Guide to Glacier National Park," his work as an entomologist and professor at San Jose State University may prove to be his most important legacy.
Dr. Edwards led the opposition to environmental extremist efforts to ban DDT in the wake of Rachel Carson's infamous 1962 book "Silent Spring." The testimony of Dr. Edwards and others during Environmental Protection Agency hearings in 1971 on whether to ban the insecticide led to an EPA administrative law judge ruling that, "DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man. DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man. The uses of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife."
Inexplicably - or so it seemed - DDT was nonetheless banned by EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus. Dr. Edwards investigated and uncovered disturbing statements and troubling connections between Ruckleshaus and anti-DDT environmental extremist groups. In a May 1971 speech before the Wisconsin Audubon Society, Ruckleshaus acknowledged being a member of the anti-DDT National Audubon Society and to have "streamlined" EPA procedures so that DDT could be banned even before the administrative hearings had been completed.....
Perhaps the most well-known allegation about DDT was that the insecticide supposedly caused declines in the populations of birds such as the bald eagle. Dr. Edwards knew this was wrong. He knew that these bird populations had declined decades before DDT had ever been used. More importantly, the bird populations were actually rebounding during the years of peak DDT use, according to bird counts".
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Tuesday, August 10, 2004
THE EARTH IS NOW A LOT COLDER THAN IT WAS
More evidence that the earth experiences large natural temperature fluctuations
"Remnants of plants that could be several million years old have been discovered in samples of mud recovered from the bottom of Greenland's three-kilometre-deep (two-mile-deep) ice cap, the head of a group of international scientists said. "There is a big possibility that this material is several million years old -- from a time when trees covered Greenland," Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, who heads a team of international scientists involved in the North Greenland Ice-core Project, said in a statement. "The presence of plant material under the ice indicates that the Greenland ice sheet formed relatively fast, as a slowly growing glacier would have flushed or pushed these light particles away."
Dahl-Jensen, of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute, said the findings were important as they could shed light on the past climate and environment and could answer questions as to whether exotic life forms still exist under the ice. She said the remnants of plants were discovered in samples recovered from beneath the ice cap this summer. "Reaching bedrock, frozen reddish mud was recovered with several centimetre-sized fragments of organic material looking like pine needles or pieces of bark," Dahl-Jensen said.
The North Greenland Ice-core Project is an international project that involves participants from nine countries. It aims to understand the last ice age, which swept over much of the earth's northern hemisphere more than 100,000 years ago."
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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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
More evidence that the earth experiences large natural temperature fluctuations
"Remnants of plants that could be several million years old have been discovered in samples of mud recovered from the bottom of Greenland's three-kilometre-deep (two-mile-deep) ice cap, the head of a group of international scientists said. "There is a big possibility that this material is several million years old -- from a time when trees covered Greenland," Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, who heads a team of international scientists involved in the North Greenland Ice-core Project, said in a statement. "The presence of plant material under the ice indicates that the Greenland ice sheet formed relatively fast, as a slowly growing glacier would have flushed or pushed these light particles away."
Dahl-Jensen, of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute, said the findings were important as they could shed light on the past climate and environment and could answer questions as to whether exotic life forms still exist under the ice. She said the remnants of plants were discovered in samples recovered from beneath the ice cap this summer. "Reaching bedrock, frozen reddish mud was recovered with several centimetre-sized fragments of organic material looking like pine needles or pieces of bark," Dahl-Jensen said.
The North Greenland Ice-core Project is an international project that involves participants from nine countries. It aims to understand the last ice age, which swept over much of the earth's northern hemisphere more than 100,000 years ago."
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Monday, August 09, 2004
CLIMATOLOGY: THE CROOKED SCIENCE
"Two recent findings, one right next to Washington D.C., the other as far away as is possible to imagine, demonstrate the limits of what we can learn from scientific models. When researchers put together theories to predict what should happen, that's a model. When the model conflicts with reality, the model is flawed. Yet there are some scientists who don't accept that, which should give us pause to think about their claims.
We saw it in late July when the Washington Post reported that water samples from the major rivers pouring into the Chesapeake Bay showed no declines in the presence of two major pollutants since the mid-1980s. Yet the computer model that the Chesapeake Bay Program used to report progress in environmental cleanup estimated a 40-percent reduction in the pollutants. That model had been praised as the "Cadillac of watershed models" and "well-constructed and useful for prediction." The program has accepted the criticism and adjusted its model.
We also saw it in the recent discovery by astronomers of very old galaxies far out in space, in places where the current state-of-the-art models predict there should only be very young galaxies. The scientists have taken the news in their stride, admitting that much of what they thought happened in the early universe was wrong.
We see this sort of thing all the time in science. British scientists whose models at one time were predicting hundreds of thousands of human deaths as a result of "mad cow disease" now only predict another 40 or so. Even Stephen Hawking admitted this week that he was wrong on a theory about black holes he first formulated in the 1970s.
Scientists change their minds when data contradicts their models - except in one area, the relatively new scientific discipline known as climatology. If the climate models that predict massive rises in temperature over the next century are correct, the atmosphere should warm before the surface. But atmospheric data from both satellites and weather balloons show only a trifling rise in temperature over the past couple of decades, while the surface temperature has been rising steadily. In 2000, a National Research Council study confirmed the data's discrepancy with the model. The proper scientific response would be to reexamine the models and adjust them to fit reality. But that hasn't happened in climatology."
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
"Two recent findings, one right next to Washington D.C., the other as far away as is possible to imagine, demonstrate the limits of what we can learn from scientific models. When researchers put together theories to predict what should happen, that's a model. When the model conflicts with reality, the model is flawed. Yet there are some scientists who don't accept that, which should give us pause to think about their claims.
We saw it in late July when the Washington Post reported that water samples from the major rivers pouring into the Chesapeake Bay showed no declines in the presence of two major pollutants since the mid-1980s. Yet the computer model that the Chesapeake Bay Program used to report progress in environmental cleanup estimated a 40-percent reduction in the pollutants. That model had been praised as the "Cadillac of watershed models" and "well-constructed and useful for prediction." The program has accepted the criticism and adjusted its model.
We also saw it in the recent discovery by astronomers of very old galaxies far out in space, in places where the current state-of-the-art models predict there should only be very young galaxies. The scientists have taken the news in their stride, admitting that much of what they thought happened in the early universe was wrong.
We see this sort of thing all the time in science. British scientists whose models at one time were predicting hundreds of thousands of human deaths as a result of "mad cow disease" now only predict another 40 or so. Even Stephen Hawking admitted this week that he was wrong on a theory about black holes he first formulated in the 1970s.
Scientists change their minds when data contradicts their models - except in one area, the relatively new scientific discipline known as climatology. If the climate models that predict massive rises in temperature over the next century are correct, the atmosphere should warm before the surface. But atmospheric data from both satellites and weather balloons show only a trifling rise in temperature over the past couple of decades, while the surface temperature has been rising steadily. In 2000, a National Research Council study confirmed the data's discrepancy with the model. The proper scientific response would be to reexamine the models and adjust them to fit reality. But that hasn't happened in climatology."
More here
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Sunday, August 08, 2004
Acid rain 'has climate benefits'
"Acid rain, which has long been blamed for damaging forests and killing wildlife, has some positive effects in constraining global warming, say researchers.
Sulphur dioxide from industry can help cut the amount of the greenhouse gas methane emitted by peat bogs, according to scientists from the Open University, Nasa and Sweden. It does this by suppressing bugs that produce more methane as global temperatures rise.
A study in Scotland suggested that the global effect of acid rain from 1960 to 2030 could cut methane emissions to pre-industrial levels. But Dr Vincent Gauci, of the Open University, said increasing sulphur pollution was unwise because of acid rain's negative effects".
Source
See here for some of those other "negative" effects
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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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
*****************************************
"Acid rain, which has long been blamed for damaging forests and killing wildlife, has some positive effects in constraining global warming, say researchers.
Sulphur dioxide from industry can help cut the amount of the greenhouse gas methane emitted by peat bogs, according to scientists from the Open University, Nasa and Sweden. It does this by suppressing bugs that produce more methane as global temperatures rise.
A study in Scotland suggested that the global effect of acid rain from 1960 to 2030 could cut methane emissions to pre-industrial levels. But Dr Vincent Gauci, of the Open University, said increasing sulphur pollution was unwise because of acid rain's negative effects".
Source
See here for some of those other "negative" effects
*****************************************
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.
Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here
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Jim Hansen and his twin
