GREENIE ATTENTION-SEEKERS IN BRITAIN

I cannot imagine that there is ANYWHERE in Britain where a SUV is a necessary means of transport but we live in an era of unprecedented energy abundance and cheapness so if people enjoy wasting it they are entitled to

Eleven climate change protesters were arrested yesterday after chaining themselves to Land Rovers at the start of a national campaign against 'gas guzzling' four-wheel drive vehicles. At dawn up to 1,000 Greenpeace activists stormed Ford dealerships across the UK and attached wheelclamps on sports utility vehicles or handcuffed themselves to their steering columns. The environmental group promised a summer of mobilisation against the marketing of 4x4 vehicles for urban use by Ford, which owns Land Rover. They particularly dislike its latest model, the Range Rover Sport, which they see as aimed at city drivers. Placards calling the dealerships as 'climate crime scenes' were erected on forecourts in seven cities - including London, Leeds, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow - in an attempt to disrupt sales.

At a dealership in Kensington, targeted because of its location in the heartland of the 'Chelsea tractor', police arrived minutes after the protesters. Arrests came after more than two hours of negotiations with officers, who eventually carried out body searches to find the keys to heavy-duty chains around protesters' waists.

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WINDMILLS BAD FOR BATS

A study of two wind energy farms in West Virginia and Pennsylvania estimates as many as 2,600 bats were killed by the whirling blades during a six-week period last year. Between Aug. 1 and Sept. 13, 2004, researchers with the Bats and Wind Energy Cooperative found 765 dead bats on the ground at the Mountaineer Wind Energy Center's 44 wind towers in Tucker County, a report summary released Sunday shows.

Researchers estimate that between 1,364 and 1,980 bats were actually killed in that period at Mountaineer, and many more before and after. An estimated 400 to 660 bats were killed at Meyersdale Wind Energy Center in Pennsylvania, which has about 20 wind towers, according to the study. "Based on 2004 findings, BWEC scientists recommend comparisons of feathered versus normally operated turbines during periods of low wind, the condition under which most bat mortality occurred," researchers said in a statement.

Turbines produce electricity only when the blades are turning. Owners can lose money any time blades are feathered, either as a safety measure in very high winds or for the proposed tests. That could raise the average price of wind power. Feathered turbine blades are turned parallel to the wind direction to keep them from spinning. "The goal is to measure exactly how much mortality can be prevented and at what cost to industry. To date, the BWEC has not been able to identify a project owner willing to host such experiments."....

With public, private and industry funding, BWEC scientists planned three years of experiments to figure out why bats were colliding with wind turbines and to develop possible solutions.....

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PARTIAL DDT COMEBACK?

Like any pesticide it needs resistance-management but so what?

In the pantheon of poisons, DDT occupies a special place. It's the only pesticide celebrated with a Nobel Prize: Swiss chemist Paul Mueller won in 1948 for having discovered its insecticidal properties. But it's also the only pesticide condemned in pop song lyrics -- Joni Mitchell's famous "Hey, farmer, farmer put away your DDT now" -- for damaging the environment. Banned in the United States more than 30 years ago, it remains America's best known toxic substance. Like some sort of rap star, it's known just by its initials; it's the Notorious B.I.G. of pesticides.

Now DDT is making headlines again. Many African governments are calling for access to the pesticide, believing that it's their best hope against malaria, a disease that infects more than 300 million people worldwide a year and kills at least 3 million, a large proportion of them children. And this has raised a controversy of Solomonic dimensions, pitting environmentalists against advocates of DDT use. The dispute between them centers on whether the potential benefits of reducing malaria transmission outweigh the potential risks to the environment.

But the problem isn't that simple. This is a dispute in which science should play a significant role, but what science tells us is that DDT is neither the ultimate pesticide nor the ultimate poison, and that the lessons of the past are being ignored in today's discussion. The United Nations Environment Program has identified DDT as a persistent organic pollutant that can cause environmental harm and lists it as one of a "dirty dozen" whose use is scheduled for worldwide reduction or elimination.

But some DDT advocates have resorted to anti-environmentalist drama to make their case for its use in Africa. They have accused environmental activists of having "blood on their hands" and causing more than 50 million "needless deaths" by enforcing DDT bans in developing nations. In his best-selling anti-environmentalist novel "State of Fear," Michael Crichton writes that a ban on using DDT to control malaria "has killed more people than Hitler."

Such statements make good copy, but in reality, chemicals do not wear white hats or black hats, and scientists know that there really are no miracles. Malaria is caused by a protozoan parasite that is transmitted by mosquitoes. For decades, there have been two major strategies for curbing the disease: killing the infectious agent or killing the carrier. Reliably killing the protozoan has proved difficult; many older drugs are no longer effective, new ones are prohibitively expensive, and delivering and administering drugs to the susceptible populace presents daunting challenges. Killing the carrier has long been an attractive alternative. And DDT has been an astonishingly effective killer of mosquitoes.....

DDT advocates are right to suggest that DDT may be useful as a precision instrument under some circumstances, particularly considering that environmental contamination in Africa may be less of a problem than it has been in temperate ecosystems because the chemical can degrade faster due to higher temperatures, moisture levels and microbial activity. Moreover, resistance evolves due to random mutation, so there are, by chance, malaria-carrying mosquito species in Africa that remain susceptible to DDT despite more than two decades of exposure to the chemical. But environmentalists are right to worry that the unwise use of DDT, particularly where it is likely to be ineffective, may cause environmental harm without any benefit.

In 2000, I chaired a National Research Council committee that published a study titled "The Future Role of Pesticides in U.S. Agriculture." Our principal recommendation is germane to discussions of malaria management: "There is no justification for completely abandoning chemicals per se as components in the defensive toolbox used for managing pests. The committee recommends maintaining a diversity of tools for maximizing flexibility, precision, and stability of pest management." Overselling a chemical's capacity to solve a problem can do irretrievable harm not only by raising false hopes but by delaying the use of more effective long-term methods. So let's drop the hyperbole and overblown rhetoric -- it's not what Africa needs. What's needed is a recognition of the problem's complexity and a willingness to use every available weapon to fight disease in an informed and rational way.

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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.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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