Its all they've got
"Ad hominem" arguments say that something is true or false because of the person who said it. So if Hitler said vergetarianism makes you healthier (which he in fact did say) then that proves that vegetarianiism does not make you healthier. Such arguments constitute one of the famous "informal fallacies" of elementary logic and are of no intellectual worth whatever. For an argument to be of any scholarly merit it has to look at the evidence for or against the propostion, not at who put forward the proposition. So note in the article below how often an oil company (oil companies are only a tiny step below Hitler for Leftists) is associated with the anti-Kyoto argument. An oil company is in fact the very first thing mentioned. And also note that no mention is made of any ulterior motive that pro-Kyoto spokesmen might have (such as the need for government research grants).
And note the contrast in that the pro-Kyoto conference is described as sponsored by "U.S. philanthropic foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts" -- without mentioning how Left-leaning that organization is!.
But perhaps most amusing is that the headline claims that the anti-Kyoto group are arguing against "facts" -- and then, although the article is a long one, it proceeds to give not a single one of such "facts"! All it reports are assertions. I have marked the "ad hominem" bits in red.
Kyoto Sceptics Try to Debunk Global Warming Facts
"A major oil producer ExxonMobil has sponsored a seminar featuring leading Australian and global sceptics disputing the science behind the Kyoto Treaty, ahead of two important international conferences this week backing the need for substantial reductions in greenhouse emissions.
Richard Dennis, the Deputy Director of the Canberra-based think tank The Australia Institute, dismissed the ExxonMobil-sponsored seminar in Parliament House on Monday as designed ''to muddy the waters'' over climate science in the eyes of key decision makers. ''The explicit strategic objective of these companies is not to win this debate but to postpone it ... For people who want to get another 10 or 20 years benefits out of existing policy setting then the easiest way to go about that is to sound entirely rational saying that we need more precision,'' he said.
Organiser of the seminar Alan Oxley, chairman of the pro-free trade Australian APEC Study Centre at Monash University in Melbourne, described the sceptics' seminar as a ''reality check'' on last week's announcement by Australian state governments that they would bypass the national government and their own national system to regulate and trade greenhouse gas emissions. Co-sponsoring the seminar were Xstrata Coal, which operates over 30 coal mines in Australia and South Africa, and Tech Central Station (TCS), a conservative U.S. commentary website which is published and funded by the Republican aligned lobbying firm DCI Group and its clients. Oxley hosts the Asia-Pacific pages of TCS. While Oxley emphasized the importance of his seminar, other than the speakers, it only managed to attract approximately 40 participants.
Before Russia ratified the Kyoto Treaty late last year bringing it into effect this February, critics complained that it should be opposed because it excluded developing countries such as India and China. China is the world's second largest source of greenhouse gases - the main cause of global warming and the International Energy Agency in Paris predicts that the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from 2000 to 2030 in China alone will nearly equal the increase from the entire industrialised world.
Oxley is now seeking to woo developing countries as potential allies in an effort to ensure the Kyoto Treaty lapses at the end of the first implementation period in 2012. In a backgrounder for the conference Oxley argued that the treaty ''will constrain efforts of governments in the developing world to raise living standards.''
The Kyoto Treaty came into force on Feb. 16, seven years after it was agreed. The accord requires countries to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Some 141 countries, accounting for 55 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, have ratified the treaty, which pledges to cut these emissions by 5.2 percent by 2012.
But the world's top polluter - the U.S. - has not signed up to the treaty and neither has Australia. Prime Minister John Howard said the international protocol would undermine the country's industries with ''no environmental gain to Australia''. ''Were Australia to ratify, investment would go to those countries with no greenhouse restrictions,'' Howard said on the website of the Office of the Prime Minister.
The U.S. government's chief climate change negotiator, Harlan Watson dismissed the Kyoto agreement as too inflexible at the seminar. ''It's certainly not something the United States is going to be willing to go forward with, nor do we believe a number of large developing countries, including India and China (will do so)'', he told the 'Australian Financial Review' daily.
While a special fund, the Clean Development Mechanism, has been established to finance projects that reduce greenhouse emissions in developing countries, Oxley complains that ''the approval process will deter investment and the conditions on projects (controlled by donors) will make them less attractive to developing countries than either ordinary foreign investment or normal aid projects.''
The Australia Institute's Denniss dismisses this argument. ''If there is a problem with the approval process then he should identify how to simplify it. Even if his concerns are valid that doesn't mean that it's not going to work,'' he told IPS.
While many of the presenters at Oxley's conference were critical of the science underpinning the Kyoto Treaty, scientist John Zillman defended the quality of the process and the integrity of its projections which government negotiators drew upon in the formulation of the Kyoto Treaty. Zillman, who for a decade was Australia's lead negotiator to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change advising governments on climate science, describes himself as being ''on the conservative side of the IPCC consensus'' estimate. He said that he was ''not aware of any other mechanism with anything like the same pressures for objectivity. So my answer is that the IPCC assessments are the most reliable source of information on climate change that yet exists.'' Zillman also expressed his concern that in recent years the work of the IPCC had been hampered by a range of factors including some governments ''representing their political agendas as scientific argument'' and individuals identified as lead authors being co-opted to review comments that were based ''much more on ideology than science''.
On Wednesday a conference in Melbourne will hear from British scientists emphasizing the need for major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century. A third conference will be held in Sydney on Thursday and Friday with support from the major U.S. philanthropic foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts and with the involvement of environment departments from both Australia and New Zealand.
Dennis argues the ExxonMobil-sponsored seminar was designed to shield the Australian government from public criticism expected to emerge from participants at the other conferences later this week. ''The Australian government is pretty lonely in the climate change debate ... and there aren't many people who are passionately in favour of banging out more emissions into the atmosphere. So I think the government just needs a little bit of cover,'' he said. While the manager of ExxonMobil's Science, Strategy and Programs, Brian Flannery, acknowledged that the climate science demonstrates ''the existence of risk that may be serious for society and ecosystems'' he argued that the most appropriate action was to pursue further climate research ''to improve the understanding of risks.''
It is an argument that Denniss has little time for. ''Let's face it what money market trader can predict interest rates to four decimal places in fifty years time. None. Does this mean we don't employ monetary policy today? Of course not. You make decisions based on the available information,'' he said. ''Yet when it comes to something like climate change, apparently until we know what the weather is going to be like on Tuesday, Mar. 16, 2074 the climate change sceptics think it would be irrational for governments to act,'' he said."
Source
WHO WANTS W.H.O.?
Paul Volcker's report last week on the oil-for-food scandal uncovered shocking incompetence and venality at the United Nations. But if Congress really wants to reform the agency, the place to start is the World Health Organization (WHO), which, in the latest absurdity, has embarked on a campaign to drive baby formula underground -- and, eventually, off the face of the earth. The big losers if the WHO is successful will, of course, be the world's poor -- the same victims of WHO blunders in fighting HIV/AIDS and malaria.
With AIDS, the WHO got a black eye for placing 18 Indian-made ripoff medicines on its list of approved drugs. Those medicines turned out to be uncertified copies of the patented HIV drugs from which they were copied. With malaria, the WHO has refused to encourage the use of DDT and other proven insecticides and has engaged in what a group of scientists, writing in The Lancet, called "medical malpractice" in its use of a poor regime of anti-malarial drugs.
A U.N. agency that was set up in 1948, the WHO, more and more, has come under the influence of radical health and environmental activists, who push a bitterly anti-enterprise ideology. Congress should insist that the WHO stick to the basics. Instead, having botched campaigns against the two worst epidemics in the world, the WHO, incredibly, is focusing its attention on the bottle-feeding of infants.
You probably remember the infant-formula imbroglio -- a real blast from the left-wing past. Promoters of breast-feeding managed to smear the use of healthy formula to nourish babies and discourage marketing of bottle-feeding products. Now, breasts are back.
In January, the WHO recommended the adoption of an extreme anti-bottle-feeding resolution at the 57th World Health Assembly -- the WHO's annual meeting, set for mid-May in Geneva. The immediate objective of the resolution is to force infant-formula packages to carry warning labels akin to those on cigarettes or liquor. The ultimate goal is to scare mothers into abandoning bottle-feeding.
There's a deep irony here. The WHO wants to discourage the use of baby formula, whose efficacy and safety have been established over many decades -- while at the same time, the WHO has been approving untested anti-AIDS drugs. Certainly, there is no questioning the benefits of breast-feeding. But many women lack the time or, in some cases, the health to feed their babies from their own breasts. For them, infant formula is an excellent substitute. For example, if a woman wants to pursue an active career outside the home, breast-feeding is often impractical. Infant formula provides the freedom that many women want, and deserve. Trying to make formula anathema is to thrust such women back to the Dark Ages. This question of choice for women is especially compelling in developing nations, where economies are beginning to draw females, as well as males, into the work force in key positions.
But radicals advocate a double standard for the poor -- in feeding babies as well as in HIV therapy.
More here
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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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