GREENIES NOW ATTACKING COWS

Dairies cause more smog than cars, according to the San Joaquin Valley air district. Recent science shows milk cows produce at least 60 percent more smog-forming chemicals than previous estimates, which were based on aging studies, valley air officials say. And that's "likely to be an underestimate," said Rick McVaigh, director of permit services for the air district, which released a draft pollution-per-cow estimate Monday.

Dairy industry representatives are outraged that the district would rely on incomplete and irrelevant science, they say. "It's unbelievable what they've come up with," said Michael Boccadoro, spokesman for a dairy lobbying group known as Community Alliance for Responsible Environmental Stewardship. "It's a joke."

That the air district hasn't calculated exactly how many tons of pollution dairies produce didn't stop it from announcing that milk cows are once again the valley's largest source of smog-forming gases. State regulators had moved milk cows from first to sixth place last month -- behind trucks, cars, oil and gas production, pesticides and consumer products -- when it recalculated 1930s data. But stakeholders now have a new generation of data to haggle over. Some admire the district's chutzpah, and others criticize its estimate as inflated by foreign studies completed under circumstances far different from those at California dairies. "It's critical they get the number right (or we'll be) chasing emissions that don't exist," said Boccadoro. "(The district) has managed to mess it up." Last week the state air board declared emissions data from dairies incomplete, prompting it to regulate dairies by size rather than total emissions. That was prudent, he said, this was not.

But others say the district is right to be protective, and to look outside California for answers if it must. "I think (the district's number) reflects additional research of the literature," said Bakersfield resident Bill Descary, who sat on a panel advising the district on dairy emissions. "We don't want dairies to invest in equipment that's not needed, (but) if it is needed, it's critical." That panel, which included dairy people and environmentalists, couldn't agree on the science. The district's announcement broke their tie. Last week's state air board action dealt with existing dairies, establishing which ones will have to upgrade their facilities to cut pollution. The district's latest announcement mostly affects new dairies, which will likely have to change the way they handle manure and possibly cover lagoons, among other precautions, district officials say.

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MERCURY MANIA AGAIN

The New York Times gave huge coverage to what one doctor called "voodoo science" by helping further the cause of anti-mercury activists. The Times' June 25, 2005 edition devoted one-fourth of its front page and a full page inside to widely criticized claims that there is a link between autism and mercury.

The article is the result of the anti-mercury crusade that also led to a recent ABC report. The Times article titled "On Autism's Cause, It's Parents vs. Research" focused on a group, Safe Minds, which asserts that a mercury-containing preservative called thimerosal may increase the likelihood of autism in children, despite numerous scientific studies that found no such link.

Both autism stories focused on the widely discredited claims of anti-mercury extremists while admitting that such beliefs were unsubstantiated. Both ABC and the Times reported the link between thimerosal and autism as a "debate" even though numerous studies have found no such link. The two Times reporters who authored the story, Gardiner Harris and Anahad O'Connor, said "But the debate over autism and vaccines is not likely to end soon."

In fact, of the six studies the Times cited only one asserted that there was a link between thimerosal and autism. This study, however, was widely disregarded due to methodology. One doctor quoted in the story even called it "voodoo science," while others said it was "uninterpretable."

Also, in line with ABC story, the Times included Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s position using an excerpt from an article he wrote in "Rolling Stone" magazine where he accused public health official of conspiring with drug makers to hide the dangerous of effects of thimerosal. However, the Times made no mention of Kennedy being an environmental activist and lawyer, not a doctor or scientist.

Kennedy is president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, which, as was reported in "ABC's Mercury Straw Man," is an environmental group that started an anti-mercury campaign to combat what it sees as a risk posed by mercury in waterways. Neither ABC nor the Times mentioned that Kennedy has also worked as the senior attorney for the left-wing Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a radical environmental group that also has an ongoing campaign against mercury in waterways and vaccines.

Neither the Times, nor ABC bothered to report the full story about the mercury complaint. This is just the latest round of attacks on carbon-based energy companies, in this case, coal plants. According to an NRDC press release from Oct. 7, 2004, that called for administration support for a global treaty limiting mercury use: "There are alternatives for most all mercury uses," said Michael Bender of the Mercury Policy Project and a representative of the Ban Mercury Working Group, a global coalition of 28 organizations. The release went on to claim that "The biggest sources of mercury in the United States include coal-fired power plants."

Even the Web site for the Waterkeeper Alliance made the same claim, but neither news organization bothered to report it. According to the site: "Complaint links power plant emissions with widespread mercury contamination." The release claimed that the group "has formally requested a response from the US government to allegations that its failure to enforce provisions of the US Clean Water Act against coal-fired power plants violates international agreements."

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PEAK OIL, ETHANOL AND ANTISEMITISM

Not being satisified with posting to seven daily blogs of my own, I also post regularly to Majority Rights -- a group blog that is heavily infested by antisemites. I am a sort of "token nigger" there. I regularly contradict everything the antisemites say. But they are nonetheless tolerant enough to put up with me for all that. Tolerant antisemites? The world is stranger than you can imagine, as some physicist once said. But having one bee in your bonnet is not always enough, it seems. Some of the other posters there have got their knickers in a knot about the "peak oil" theory (i.e. oil will run out and we will all be doomed). So I have also been having a few shots at them over that. Below I reproduce my latest salvo in that campaign. If anyone is interested in the economics and technology of ethanol production, I would be interested to hear from them

I don't know how much simpler I can make this for the peak oil ratbags but it seems that I need to: Sugarcane is a huge grass that grows like mad in the tropics and somewhat less insanely in the subtropics. It is thus growable on a huge slice of the earth's surface. One year after planting it has huge stems which are absolutely full of sugary juice. And the technology for getting the juice out is prehistoric. You just crush the stems and the juice flows out. In most of the tropics (though not in Australia) there are vendors who will sell you for a few rupees (or whatever the local currency is) a fresh drink of very palatable cane juice which they produce by feeding cane stems through a little hand-powered crusher. So a sugar mill is a very simple thing. The only complexity arises out of the need to extract granular sugar out of the juice.

If however cane-sugar were to be used solely for ethanol production, the sugar-production step would not be needed. You could just feed the freshly-crushed juice to yeast bugs in a nice warm environment (and the tropics ARE warm) and they will excrete alcohol as a waste product of their metabolism. And since alcohol has a different specific gravity from water, it is very easily separated out. And that alcohol can go straight into an internal combustion motor and will make the motor roar like a lion -- which is why racing cars use it.

The only reason ethanol is not widely used is cost. When crude oil was $30 a barrel, ethanol cost about twice as much to produce as gasoline. All those cane-farmers had to be paid. But crude is now touching $60 a barrel so if that price stays there fairly permanently, I suspect that you are going to see ethanol-compliant engines going into mass-production. There ARE a few adjustments needed to run a car on pure ethanol for any length of time -- mostly to do with corrosion control if I remember rightly.

Brazil already of course has such engines. Because they are such a big producer of cane-sugar, Brazil long ago set in train moves to run everything on ethanol rather than gasoline. They were rightly criticized at the time for making motor fuel more costly than it needed to be (when crude was at $30 a barrel) but they seem to be having the last laugh now.

And producing ethanol from cane is extremely "sustainable". It needs no complex inputs or technology and cane can be grown on the same soil year after year as long as there is a suitable input of nitrates. And the nitrates can come either from superphosphate application or from rotating the crop with legumes (beans and peas). Australian sugar farmers do both -- and have been doing so for around 150 years. So there are no mysteries or significant problems with it.

So I do hope the peak oil ratbags will now move on to some other fallacy. Jew-bashing perhaps?

Update

The quote I had in mind above was: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine" -- attributed to Sir Arthur Eddington, English astronomer (1882 - 1944)





GLOBAL WARMING AS A GUSHER OF HYPOCRISY

The whole charade is just to make politicians look good

Almost a decade ago I suggested that global warming would become a "gushing" source of political hypocrisy. So it has. Politicians and scientists constantly warn of the grim outlook, and the subject is on the agenda of the upcoming Group of Eight summit of world economic leaders. But all this sound and fury is mainly exhibitionism -- politicians pretending they're saving the planet. The truth is that, barring major technological advances, they can't (and won't) do much about global warming. It would be nice if they admitted that, though this seems unlikely.

Europe is the citadel of hypocrisy. Considering Europeans' contempt for the United States and George Bush for not embracing the Kyoto Protocol, you'd expect that they would have made major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions -- the purpose of Kyoto. Well, not exactly. From 1990 (Kyoto's base year for measuring changes) to 2002, global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, increased 16.4 percent, reports the International Energy Agency. The U.S. increase was 16.7 percent, and most of Europe hasn't done much better. Here are some IEA estimates of the increases: France, 6.9 percent; Italy, 8.3 percent; Greece, 28.2 percent; Ireland, 40.3 percent; the Netherlands, 13.2 percent; Portugal, 59 percent; Spain, 46.9 percent. It's true that Germany (down 13.3 percent) and Britain (a 5.5 percent decline) have made big reductions. But their cuts had nothing to do with Kyoto. After reunification in 1990, Germany closed many inefficient coal-fired plants in eastern Germany; that was a huge one-time saving. In Britain, the government had earlier decided to shift electric utilities from coal (high CO2 emissions) to plentiful natural gas (lower CO2 emissions).

On their present courses, many European countries will miss their Kyoto targets for 2008-2012. To reduce emissions significantly, Europeans would have to suppress driving and electricity use; that would depress economic growth and fan popular discontent. It won't happen. Political leaders everywhere deplore global warming -- and then do little. Except for Eastern European nations, where dirty factories have been shuttered, few countries have cut emissions. Since 1990 Canada's emissions are up 23.6 percent; Japan's, 18.9 percent. We are seeing similar exhibitionism in the United States. The U.S. Conference of Mayors recently endorsed Kyoto. California and New Mexico have adopted "targets" for emission cuts, reports the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. All this busywork won't much affect global warming, but who cares? The real purpose is for politicians to brandish their environmental credentials.

Even if rich countries actually curbed their emissions, it wouldn't matter much. Poor countries would offset the reductions. "We expect CO2 emissions growth in China between now and 2030 will equal the growth of the United States, Canada, all of Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Korea combined," says Fatih Birol, the IEA's chief economist. In India, he says, about 500 million people lack electricity; worldwide, the figure is 1.6 billion. Naturally, poor countries haven't signed Kyoto; they won't sacrifice economic gains -- poverty reduction, bigger middle classes -- to combat global warming. By 2030, the IEA predicts, world energy demand and greenhouse gases will increase by roughly 60 percent; poor countries will account for about two-thirds of the growth. China's coal use is projected almost to double; its vehicle fleet could go from 24 million to 130 million.

Like most forecasts, these won't come true. But unless they're wildly unreliable, they demonstrate that greenhouse emissions will still rise. Facing this prospect, we ought to align rhetoric and reality..... If we can't predict the stock market and next year's weather, why does anyone think we can predict the global climate in 75 years? Global warming is not an automatic doomsday. In some regions, warmer weather may be a boon.

What we have now is a respectable charade. Politicians and advocates make speeches, convene conferences and formulate plans. They pose as warriors against global warming. The media participate in the resulting deception by treating their gestures seriously. One danger is that some of these measures will harm the economy without producing significant environmental benefits. Policies motivated by political gain will inflict public pain. Why should anyone applaud?

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

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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