HUGE GREENIE BLUNDER

The ongoing Greenie hysteria about depleted uranium munitions has caused a partial switch worldwide to munitions that use tungsten as a substitute. But guess what? The switch was done purely under Greenie pressure, with no research to check on how safe the substitute was. But now some research HAS been done and the results are disastrous:

"The peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) today published online a paper reporting that weapons-grade tungsten alloys, newly incorporated into the battlefield munitions of several countries, rapidly cause tumors, then lung cancer, when embedded in rats to emulate shrapnel wounds.

Concern over the human and environmental health effects of other metals long used in weapons has led many countries to replace depleted uranium (in some armor-penetrating munitions) and lead (In small-caliber ammunition) with various alloys of tungsten. One motivation for such a replacement is widespread public concern about the health and environmental impact of continued use of metals such as uranium and lead, along with the belief that tungsten has only limited toxicity. "However, to our knowledge, none of these militarily relevant tungsten alloys have been tested for potential health effects, particularly as embedded shrapnel," the study authors write.

Rats were implanted with a low dose (4 pellets) or a high dose (20 pellets) of tungsten alloy. Other rats received 20 pellets of nickel, a known carcinogen, or tantalum, an inert control metal. In findings that surprised the researchers, 100% of the rats implanted with tungsten-alloy pellets developed extremely aggressive tumors surrounding the pellets, although tumor growth was slower in rats implanted with lower doses. The tumors then rapidly metastasized to the lungs of the rats, necessitating euthanasia of the animals well before the anticipated end of the study.

"[The findings raise] extremely serious concerns over the potential health effects of tungsten alloy-based munitions currently being used as non-toxic alternatives to lead and depleted uranium," write the authors.

Tumors grew in the high-dose tungsten alloy implanted rats within 4 to 5 months of implantation. Changes in these rats' blood, including significant increases in red and white blood cells, were apparent as early as one month after implantation.

"While switching to tungsten was an effort to create a 'greener bullet,' these surprising findings demonstrate the complexity of understanding how metals combined into alloys might affect human health. If the findings of this paper are validated by further research, it appears that soldiers could be at risk of surviving battlefield wounds only to develop an aggressive form of cancer," said Dr. Jim Burkhart, science editor for EHP.

Source (Link via Interested Participant)

So once again Greenie know-alls have created a problem rather than solving anything. There was very little evidence that depleted uranium did any harm but the Greenie substitute is very harmful indeed






Moyers Unhinged

Post lifted from Logical Meme

It’s so refreshing to see dinosaurs like Dan Rather and Bill Moyers ‘retiring’, thrashing and spewing a bit before they recede from the spotlight. I personally am refreshed knowing I won’t have to read too many more columns like the following tripe from Moyers in the upcoming NY Review of Books (a rare and privileged opportunity for Mr. Moyers to cut-to-the-chase and tell us what he really feels).

“Evangelical Christian Nazis Are Leading Us To An Environmental Apocalypse” is how Moyers might've titled his recent column. The column's actual title, now that I think about it, isn't too far off: “Welcome to Doomsday”. Oooooh, how scary, foreboding, and indicative of a superior intellect’s premonitions!

“We are witnessing today a coupling of ideology and theology that threatens our ability to meet the growing ecological crisis,” Moyers writes. After then spending much of his column suggesting that fundamentalists are running the (Bush) government, Moyers writes:

"I am not suggesting that fundamentalists are running the government, but they constitute a significant force in the coalition that now holds a monopoly of power in Washington under a Republican Party that for a generation has been moved steadily to the right by its more extreme variants even as it has become more and more beholden to the corporations that finance it. One is foolish to think that their bizarre ideas do not matter."

Wow, it’s all getting clearer to me now! Evil corporations provide the necessary financing for evangelical Christians to destroy the environment. Why hadn’t I seen this connection before?!

Moyers spits out a litany of misrepresentations of environmental law, policy, and processes under Bush, too many to respond to individually here, before he kicks it into overdrive with some of the most cringe-worthy melodrama feasible:

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer —pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age twelve; Thomas, ten; Nancy, eight; Jassie, three; SaraJane, one. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do."

The only thing missing is the image of the Native American elder with a visible tear trickling down his cheek. (Maybe Ward Churchill is available for a photo shoot? Quick, call his agent!).

Like Thomas “Kansas” Frank, Moyers then retreads the tired Marxist logic that “populist religion winds up serving the interests of economic elites.” In a shocking expose that is a testament to Moyers’ skills as a fact-based PBS/NPR reporter, he writes:

“Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the most influential Christian Right advocacy groups. Not one includes the environment as one of their celebrated ‘moral values.’"

Translation: Christians don’t care about trashing the environment! The inferences that Moyers makes with respect to this “fact” is so logically unsound it is laughable. That an individual does not characterize “the environment” (an increasingly loaded term when used by the left) as a “moral” issue in no way means that the same individual doesn't care about the environment. In fact, it is entirely possible that those same Christian advocacy groups have a higher-than-average concern for the environment. But exploring this plausible (and likely) hypothesis is too much work for Moyers. Like his compatriot Dan Rather, Moyers doesn't need to prove or argue for the obvious fact that 'Republicans don't care about the environment'. If we have to establish this assertion with facts and logic, for cryin' out loud, we'll never get out of the gate!

Moyers already knows this, and as his reference to King Lear makes apparent, he feels it.

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

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