Carcinogens on the Playground?

The PCB scare has hit the news yet again. A Westchester County school district is about to spend $100,000 to remove soil next to an elementary school, because the soil contains PCBs from window caulking. PCBs, used for their insulating and fire-resistant properties, were banned in 1977, when high-dose animal tests revealed an association with cancers and developmental problems. However, there is no evidence that tiny exposures from environmental contamination cause any health effects in humans. Indeed, studies in the most highly exposed groups -- workers who handled PCBs for decades -- showed no evidence of increased rates of cancer or developmental issues.

The cleanup plan is fueled by a number of alarmist claims. Dr. Daniel Lefkowitz, a father at the elementary school, requested testing of the caulking after reading a Harvard study that linked PCBs to health problems and compared PCBs to lead paint, which has in fact been shown to be a toxin at levels encountered in the environment -- unlike PCBs. While PCBs have had adverse health effects on laboratory animals, these occur only after long-term exposure at extremely high doses, which is in no way comparable to human environmental exposure. There has been no consistent, convincing evidence of health risk at levels such as those found in this caulking, according to the Westchester County Health Department.

EPA regulations are based on animal test findings, and use of such tests to predict adverse effects on humans, including cancer, is not scientifically valid. One cannot reliably predict human health effects based on rodent tests, as even mouse tests cannot predict results in rats. When natural substances found in everyday foods, such as broccoli and grapes, are tested using the same animal tests, they are found to cause as much disease in rodents as synthetic chemicals, which would mean that under a consistent regulatory scheme even "all-natural" foods served in the school cafeteria should come under attack.

Education and public health officials should also be concerned when one person's fears are taken seriously enough to result in wasting large sums of money on soil removal. Ironically, Dr. Lefkowitz has been lauded by school district personnel for placing them at the "forefront" of this issue, but since this scare has been refuted numerous times, why be proud of such an "accomplishment?"

It seems even more ironic, then, that a school district that has declared itself short on money is able to spend $100,000 on this cleanup effort. Surely, this money would be better spent on more urgent public health concerns, such as AIDS education, vaccine information, and even drivers' education, as these do involve real heath risks. Even testing for lead, a valid concern, has been put on the back burner. This school is teaching the wrong health priorities.

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"THREATS" TO THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

Australia has the largest coral reef in the world and Greenies are constantly finding something that "threatens" it. Such claims have been grossly exaggerated, argues Prof. Walter Starck, one of the world's pioneering investigators of coral reefs.

For over 50 years, Professor Walter Starck has done extensive research world-wide on over-fished reefs, sustainably-fished reefs and unfished reefs. His work has involved the discovery of much of what scientists now know about reef biology. In a recent Institute of Public Affairs Backgrounder, 'Threats' to the Great Barrier Reef (May 2005)*, Prof. Starck says:

"Over the years, we have been told that coral-eating starfish, oil pollution, over fishing, fertiliser run-off, silt, agri-chemicals, sewerage, anchor damage, people walking on the reef, ship groundings and global warming were each imminent threats to the reef. "None of these prophecies of doom, however, have become real and the GBR continues to be a vast and essentially pristine natural region where measurable human effects remain rare or trivial."

But because the reef is underwater, remote and inaccessible to the public, scientific prophets of doom capture the media's attention.

"Almost all of the so-called experts given credence by the media are office-workers with academic credentials but very limited direct experience of reefs. Their claims often amount to hypothetical explanations for very limited observations that, more often than not, describe entirely natural conditions, or are based on computer models that predict imaginary futures," says Prof. Starck.

Since the 1960s, Crown-of-Thorn starfish has been described as a major threat to the reef. Early blame for destructive outbreaks was laid on collectors taking Triton's trumpet shell, a natural predator of the starfish. However, this theory collapsed when it was realised that there were never enough trumpet shells to combat large outbreaks of Crown-of-Thorns. Eventually, it was realised that large Crown-of-Thorns outbreaks were a natural phenomenon, the product of millions of eggs from each spawning female, favourable temperature, currents and other oceanic conditions.

In fact, large outbreaks can be beneficial. When coral regenerates after a tropical cyclone destroys a reef, fast-growing branching and plate-like corals crowd out other slower-growing corals. An outbreak of Crown-of-Thorns thins out the fast-growing corals, which they prefer, allowing the slower-growing corals to compete.

Prof. Starck says concern for oil spills damaging the reef was "conjured up to oppose oil exploration in GBR waters." He points out: "Oil floats, coral doesn't and oil has never caused extensive damage to reefs anywhere." The worst oil spill in history was during the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein released 6-8 million tons of oil into the Persian Gulf, contaminating numerous local reefs. Comprehensive surveys were done, but there was no clean-up operation. Within four months most of the oil had naturally degraded, and within four years the affected reefs were "largely to fully recovered". Oil is not very toxic to reefs and it has been repeatedly found that the "clean-up efforts are not only ineffectual but actually result in worse damage than where nothing is done." The threat of oil pollution to the GBR is remote.

Then there is the claim of over-fishing. There have been hundreds of surveys of the most fished species on the GBR, coral trout. These involved actual counts of the number of fish, not estimates or figures from mathematical models. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) won't publish these studies.

Says Prof. Starck: "These studies show that coral trout are abundant everywhere, and that there is little to no difference between the most frequently fished reefs near population centres and remote rarely visited ones, nor between reefs which are open to fishing and those closed to it. "The figures clearly indicate that our most heavily fished species is, in fact, being only lightly harvested. They also strongly imply that no environmental benefits whatever should be expected to accrue from the recently increased restrictions on fishing ... "

Most disturbing of all, the existence of this exceptional body of knowledge and its total disregard by GBRMPA raises serious questions about the factual basis, scientific quality, and, indeed, even the integrity with which GBRMPA's management of the reef is being conducted" - i.e., the steady closure of more and more reef area to commercial and recreational fishing...... Prof. Starck concludes that "the statistics leave the claims of over-fishing without a shred of credibility ... Where is the evidence? ... There isn't any." The claim of unsustainability, he says, "is beyond ridiculous. It is incompetent. It amounts to claiming that the GBR is the most unproductive reef area in the world with less than one per cent of the productivity of other reefs."

Another claimed threat to the reef is land runoff containing fertiliser, silt and agri-chemicals, together with sewage from island resorts and boats. Several years ago, the GBRMPA funded an extensive study that involved pumping various concentrations of nutrients onto a reef. Even when the nutrient levels reached many time natural levels, there were no algal blooms or damage to the reef. While plans for the experiment received a lot of publicity, the good outcome, that nutrients were not damaging the reef, received only scant notice in the national press.

Recently, it has been realised that there are frequent surges of nutrients over the outer face of the reef from the deep ocean, raising nutrient levels to many times that being washed off the Queensland coastal region. "Far from being damaging to the reefs, it is now thought to enrich them," Prof. Starck says. Despite this evidence, he says that young marine biologists are still being brainwashed into telling visitors to the reef not to urinate in the seawater for fear of raising nutrient levels, without seeming "to notice that swarming sea-bird colonies on nearby reef islets can be excreting as much urea as a thousand humans do every day with no noticeable ill effect."

Prof. Starck says that overall estimates of human-attributed nutrient to the GBR are, at most, only a few per cent, which would not be harmful to the reef. It would be beneficial to reef health. As an example of extreme "ecological correctness", he recounted how GBRMPA officials decided to ban tourists on Green Island from feeding their food scraps to a large resident fish population that gathered for a daily feed of tourist leftovers. Officials decided that this procedure was "unnatural". Instead, the scraps were taken back to be disposed of at the Cairns dump, once a mangrove area, that has been flattened and filled in.

The scraps contribute to breeding clouds of flies, and "in the wet season, putrefying water regularly overflows into the adjacent inlet, resulting in fish kills. An elegant solution has been replaced by an idiotic one."

What about the claim that farmers cropping and grazing, and land-clearing for houses, have caused siltation that can kill inner reefs? Prof. Starck says that pre-European aboriginal burning of large coastal areas was a source of erosion, and natural hill-slope erosion in rain-forests is quite high because of the lack of forest ground-cover. In contrast, pasture and sugar-cane can actually reduce erosion, as can introduced weeds, as these provide better ground-cover than sparse native vegetation......

The prevailing views have led to the winding down of the Queensland reef fishing industry, and the substitution of an easily sustainable fishing industry with imported seafood from already over-exploited marine resources, particularly in developing countries.

Finally, Professor Starck says that at the heart of the problem is the misuse of science, its degeneration "into a peculiar quasi-religious blend of new-age nature worship, science, left-wing political activism, and anti-profit economics ... "Science, by becoming advocacy, has made itself and its practitioners part of the problem. As a result, it has greatly weakened its power to provide real solutions for real problems

Even more here





The Importance of Population

Below is yet another attempt to talk facts to the simplistic thinkers who claim to know all about population. The nonsense has been going on ever since Malthus but the know-alls never seem to notice how their prophecies don't work out. I myself pointed out how nonsensical overpopulation scares were over 30 years ago. See here and here. And if you don't know about it already, click here for the story of the second greatest population false prophet of them all -- Paul Ehrlich. Greenies think that people are pollution but the truth is that people are resources

Dr. R. T. Ravenholt was Director of USAID's Population Program from 1966 to 1979. His letter in today's New York Times gives some hint about why foreign "aid" programs have been so unsuccessful. Dr. Ravenholt wants more emphasis on birth-control for Africans. Here's his punchline:

Resources divided by the population equals the human condition.

Dr. Ravenholt believes that there's a fixed amount of stuff (and stuff to make stuff) to go around. This view, of course, is widespread. If it were true, Dr. Ravenholt would be correct that fewer people would mean more material wealth. Birth control would then be key to economic prosperity. But Dr. Ravenholt's belief is mistaken. Evidence against this belief is under our noses. Compare Manhattan to Mississippi.

Probably the richest 23 contiguous square miles on the planet is Manhattan. It is also a speck of earth that is among the worlds most densely populated, with each square mile, on average, packed with 67,000 residents. More than 1.54 million people live on Manhattan and some 2.12 million people work there all amidst the millions of visitors who flock to that island every year.

According to conventional belief, Manhattanites should be among the earths most destitute and wretched peoples. Yet despite the fact that Manhattan has no forests, farms, pastures, fisheries, or mines, per-capita income there is a sky-high $73,000.

Compare Manhattan to the 46,907 square miles that are Mississippi, a state boasting a great deal of fertile farm land, bountiful lakes and rivers, and thick forests. Mississippi is also blessed (if conventional belief is valid) with a human-population density less than 1/1000th that of Manhattan (61 Mississippians per square mile compared to 67,000 Manhattanites per square mile). According to conventional belief, Mississippians should be much wealthier than Manhattanites. But instead they're much poorer. Per-capita income in Mississippi is less than $16,000, a mere 22 percent of that of Manhattan.

After I first published these paragraphs in November 2003, I received a good deal of e-mail informing me that my comparison is invalid - the chief complaint boiling down to "you simply can't compare Manhattan to Mississippi." Why not? If those (like Dr. Ravenholt) who believe that "resources divided by the population equals the human condition" are correct, then why are Manhattanites so much more materially wealthy than Mississippians? Why should such an obvious and central truth not be in evidence when looking at Manhattan compared to Mississippi? I asked this question to all my correspondents. The reply to my question was, in effect, "other things are happening to create this difference in material wealth."

No doubt `other things' explain the wealth difference between Mississippians and Manhattanites. But an overlooked factor is not found elsewhere; it's found smack-dab in the population numbers themselves. Manhattan is a rich place in large part because it's densely populated with a lot of free people. People create wealth. Julian Simon's lesson cannot be repeated too often: free human beings are the ultimate resource. When people are reasonably free, it's more correct to say that "resources times population equals the human condition."






NEW ZEALAND'S KYOTO EMBARRASSMENT

The Government is vowing to stick to its climate-change obligations despite a $1 billion botch-up over the extent of its greenhouse gas emissions. Opposition parties are calling for New Zealand to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol after a shock report yesterday found that the Government's calculations of New Zealand's net greenhouse gas emissions were out by millions of tonnes. The recalculation of New Zealand's liabilities means that the Government may have to pay more than $500 million in carbon charges in 2012. Previously, officials believed New Zealand would hold a $500m credit by 2012.

Officials have been asked to come up with drastic new measures to reduce New Zealand's carbon emissions, which could include a ban on older Japanese imported cars, increased use of biofuels and a new forestry planting programme. Pete Hodgson, convener of the Ministerial Group on Climate Change, told Parliament last year that New Zealand would be a net seller of carbon credits in the first commitment period and stood to gain economically and environmentally from ratifying the treaty. In 2002, when Parliament agreed by 61 votes to 56 to ratify the protocol, Hodgson told The Press: "We will make some money out of Kyoto - not a lot, but a few hundred million dollars a year." But Hodgson told a parliamentary select committee yesterday that far from meeting its target with 32.6mt CO2e (carbon dioxide units per million tonnes) to spare, fresh forecasts showed New Zealand would fall short by 36.2mt CO2e. Officials calculating New Zealand's obligations under the protocol appear to have counted some forests twice, by adding plantations that were scrub in 1990 - the year countries that have signed the protocol use as a benchmark for reducing their emissions. They also failed to take account of the rapid increase in vehicle emissions arising from New Zealand's booming economy.

The latest revaluation is a huge embarrassment for the Government, which has battled to convince the public that its decision to become the first developed country to ratify the treaty was a wise move. Business groups and farmers have also opposed ratification, arguing the protocol will undermine New Zealand's competitiveness in key export markets, particularly with many competitors in Latin America and Asia excluded from the first target period between 2008 and 2012. New Zealand's top trading partners, Australia and the United States, are refusing to ratify the protocol.

National said yesterday that it was reviewing its policy on the protocol in the wake of the shock announcement. National has said previously it will pull out of Kyoto in 2012 unless Australia and the US join, but environment spokesman Nick Smith said the party may now bring this forward. Smith said Hodgson should go over what he termed a "$1b cock-up". "The scale of this error cannot be explained by changes in forest plantings or increased emissions," Smith said. "The reality is that Labour has made a gross miscalculation that will cost New Zealand dearly in jobs and incomes. "This shocking revelation exposes the folly of Labour's decision to rush in and ratify Kyoto ahead of Australia and the US."

Labour also faced a chorus of jeers from ACT and from its support party, United Future, which called the Kyoto Protocol "stupid" and demanded New Zealand abandon it immediately. "It's time for ideological purity to be shunted aside and common-sense policies to be implemented," said United Future environment spokesman Larry Baldock......

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.

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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