The Greenies Hate Us

Oz Politics has found some survey results that "floored him". Had I not expected them, they would have floored me too. He looked at the opinions expressed by the candidates whom the various political parties put up to represent them at a recent Australian election. I'll just pick out two results which confirm vividly what I have always said about the Greenies as being people-haters:

When asked "How proud are you to be Australian"?, below are the percentages who answered "Very proud"

Conservative coalition candidates: 96.2%
Labor Party candidates: 53.6%
Green Party candidates: 17.9%

What a contrast!

Perhaps even more revealing were the answers to the question: "How much respect do you have for individual freedom?". The percentages in each party who answered "A lot of respect" were the following:

Conservative coalition candidates: 67.5%
Labor Party candidates: 18.8%
Green Party candidates: 7.6%

One wonders why the Greenies don't all go and live somewhere else. Canada, maybe? (Hat tip to Evil Pundit)




BIG GRIZZLY PANIC

Greenies admit that they are just using Grizzlies as a front for their general anti-development campaign

The Bush Administration will announce plans this week to remove the grizzly bear from the endangered species list, provoking a furious response from conservation groups. The White House is backing a plan to remove the protected status of the bears in areas surrounding the Yellowstone National Park because their numbers have gone up spectacularly in the 30 years since they were listed. If adopted, the plan could lead to the reintroduction of grizzly hunting across 2.4 million hectares (6 million acres) of wild and spectacular land in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

The grizzly, or Ursus horribilis, is one of America's most fabled animals, and once roamed unchecked from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean. By 1975, however, after hunting and the destruction of much of their habitat because of human expansion, only 200 grizzlies survived in the greater Yellowstone area. Today, after one of the greatest accomplishments of the Endangered Species Act, more than 600 grizzlies live in the greater Yellowstone region. The population is growing at between 4 per cent and 7 per cent a year. Many scientists, and the US Fish & Wildlife Service, believe that Yellowstone holds as many bears as its landscape can support.

Grizzlies have also begun roaming well beyond the park's borders, killing cattle, angering ranchers and triggering alarming face-to-face encounters with householders, whose rubbish bins are a welcome food source for the bear.

Under the Bush Administration plan, bears outside Yellowstone Park will no longer have federal protection. Instead, the three states will assume responsibility for their management, gaining far greater flexibility to open the areas for bear hunters. Already, in the past two years, 21 grizzlies have been illegally killed in northwest Montana alone. Bears inside Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks will remain protected.

The Sierra Club, a conservation group, and the National Resources Defence Council (NRDC) both claim that the end of federal protection will leave the grizzly vulnerable to habitat loss and persecution. They also say the plan is aimed at opening the way for oil and gas drilling, development and logging in the area. "Federal protection is the only reason these bears exist in Yellowstone today, and they aren't ready to survive without it," Louisa Willcox, director of the NRDC's wild bears project, said. "Delisting the Yellowstone bear prematurely would drive it back to the brink of extinction." She added: "It would open their habitat to oil and gas drilling and would allow hunters to kill bears that roam outside the park."

Lance Craighead, a bear biologist, said that many bears already live in areas outside the national parks. He said: "Development there has been restricted because of the bear's status. But once it's off, then the Bush Administration has nothing to slow down oil and gas development and timber harvest in those areas

More here




BETTER FISH STOCKS DURING WARM PERIODS

(From "The use of historical catch data to trace the influence of climate on fish populations: examples from the White and Barents Sea fisheries in the 17th and 18th centuries" in Journal of Marine Science, Volume 62, Issue 7 , October 2005, Pages 1426-1435 by Dmitry L. Lajus et al.)

"We analysed catch records of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), cod (Gadus morhua), and halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus and Reinhardtius hippoglossoides) from the 17th and 18th centuries from several locations of the Barents and White Seas areas. Historical records, found in Russian archives, allow analysis of long-term series of catches, and sometimes of the average weight of the fish. In total, we obtained data on catches of salmon for 51 years (for the period from 1615 to 1772) and of cod and halibut for 33 years (for the period from 1710 to 1793). These data are comparable with respect to fishing effort within the series. The data on Atlantic salmon are also comparable with statistical data for the period 1875-1915. We found notable fluctuations in catches and sometimes in the average weight of salmon. There was also fluctuation in catches of cod and halibut. Both observational comparison of catch series and temperature data and formal statistical analysis showed that catches tended to decrease during relatively colder periods."

(The Doi (permanent) address for the full article above is here)




COMMENTS FROM SCIENTISTS ON THE FOX NEWS SELLOUT TO THE GLOBAL WARMING SCARE

(The first by Michael R. Fox Ph.D., who has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level. His interest in the communications of science has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows):

"Fox News Reporter Rick Fulbaum signed off at the end of the 60-minute special on "Global Warming" this Sunday Nov. 13, 2005, by repeating the Fox News mantra "We Report, You Decide". Fulbaum and Fox News failed to provide any data upon which to make any decision. Where were the actual global temperature data from stations from around the world, where were the discussions of the fatal flaws of solar, wind energy, and ethanol to name a few? Where were the discussions of electrical energy, and what it has meant to the strength of our nation. Where were the discussions of the consequences of huge electrical shortages to a nation such as ours?

As a fan of Fox News network I was hoping the reporters would care enough about their credibility to present some of this information to be "fair and balanced". Instead the program promoted some of the same old green silliness we got during the Carter era 30 years ago.

I remember a speech by a newspaper editor when discussing the media's relationship to the truth. He said "Our only obligation to the truth is to quote liars accurately". I was also reminded of the observation of David Horowitz "How can we be fully educated if we are told only half the story?" Historian Robert Conquest also observed "How can a citizen be called fully educated if he has been trained to misunderstand the world". How can Foxnews consider itself to be "fair and balanced" if they tell only half the story, and that half with little merit?

Regrettably, Fox News reverted to being a propaganda ministry for the political left. Within the hour, Fox News dredged up many of the green cliches without provided any temperature data to support the warming claims. If one wonders whether the temperature is increasing or decreasing, he should check the thermometers (or in this case the temperature data). Nor was there any explanation of what energy is, no discussions of what a net energy source is, how it is made, and how energy benefits us all.

The same political movement which has opposed nuclear energy, oil energy, hydro energy, is now opposed to the rest of the fossil fuel, coal. Collectively these produce more than 98 percent of the nation's electrical energy. Oil fired energy provides a huge fraction of the energy needed for transportation. This movement is opposed to it all. If this movement can't abolish these sources outright, they are regulated to such a level as to make them too costly. These agendas need to be part of the discussions, too.

And what is it about the green lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, which Fox News finds so appealing? Is he an energy expert? Or is he just a noisy Kennedy lawyer, unskilled in physics, chemistry, and engineering? And what is it about Laurie David the self-appointed energy expert that Fox News found so appealing? What do these people know about climate, energy, and how energy is made, converted, and transported? What are their qualifications, and did Fox News look for anyone more qualified?

Was it the network's intent to actually train its audience, as Conquest might have observed, to misunderstand the world's climate? If not why not include people who do know about energy, energy flows, and climate? As a scientist I can state that if these "specials" make scandalous assertions without provided actual climate data, actual sea level data, actual ice data, and actual insolation data in these presentations, we can't take these shows seriously....

Fox News would do well to remember the advice by the great physics Nobelist Richard Feynman about the pursuit of truth and the limits of modeling (which the climate modelers would do well to remember):

"In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience; compare it directly with observation to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment (real data) it is wrong. It's that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is -- if it disagrees with experiment (the actual data) it is wrong."

What could be simpler to understand? In the pursuit of truth the first obligation of a scientist (or anyone else) is to prove himself wrong. Regrettably, too many people today including people with law degrees, Ph.Ds and television shows, do not abide by this rule.

In stark contrast they don't pursue the truth, but instead advocate for particular agendas destructive as they may be, and a point of view (theirs), and suppress, ignore, and ridicule any data which do not support these agendas. It would have been more informative to the viewing audience if Fox News had adopted the powerful guidance from Feynman.


Other comments:

"Climatologist Patrick J. Michaels, the author of several books on climate change including "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media," believes the contribution of human activity on planetary warming will be "modest" and pointed out several examples of what Fox News omitted in terms of the scientific debate. "The net ice balance in Antarctica is positive, it is gaining ice," Michaels said, noting that the Fox News special only focused on areas where ice is melting to imply an alarming rise in sea level is imminent. Michaels is an environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

Antarctica "will contribute to reduction in sea level because it is gaining ice ... The net ice balance in Greenland is very close to neutral," Michaels added. Other scientific information was lacking, according to Michaels. "There have been three periods in the last 2,000 years in which Alaska was as warm as it is now; the show failed to mention that," he said. "Because of the nature of planetary warming and the central behavior of our computer models, we now know with considerable confidence that warming within the foreseeable future will be modest," Michaels added. "The other side, which I now include Fox News on, seems to do everything it can to suppress that story."

Michaels also disputed an assertion by Laurie David on Fox News Channel's "On The Record: With Greta Van Susteren" last week. After noting that people should "worry a lot" about climate change, David asserted, "there's been more consensus on this issue than there was consensus on smoking causes cancer." "To counter the argument that climate change will be modest requires invalidating billions of dollars worth of climate models," Michaels responded.

Meanwhile, the author of a new book debunking alarmist predictions on climate change is charging that Fox News Channel got "hoodwinked" by airing only one perspective. "The American people are being hoodwinked not just by the green activists, but by the scientists who get billions of dollars for creating global climate models that can't even forecast backward, let alone forward," said Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues in an interview with Cybercast News Service.

Avery is the co-author of the upcoming 2006 book entitled "Unstoppable Global warming-Every 1500 Years." The book is written with S. Fred Singer, the president of The Science & Environmental Policy Project. Avery maintains that any modest planetary warming is part of Earth's natural cycle. Avery joined Michaels in disputing what he termed the "alarmist" scientific scenarios in the Fox News special. "We are in our third warming in recorded human history. We had the Roman warming and the Romans thrived," Avery said. The second warming was during the medieval period, when "most of the castles and cathedrals of Europe were constructed ... because there was more food and thus more people and more labor."

Looking at more recent history, "the Arctic was warmer in 1930 than it is today," Avery said, insisting that any current warming trend is not unique or alarming. "We have evidence from around the globe in ice cores, sea bed sediments, cave stalagmites and pollen of fossilized pollen, that show that these [climate] cycles have existed for the last million years. They are moderate, natural and solar linked," Avery said. Contrary to the Fox News special, which depicted large portions of Florida being inundated in the future with rising sea levels as ice melts, Avery said there is nothing to worry about. "It's not a disaster. Every single species on the planet has been through at least 600 of these two degree (Celsius) warming cycles," he said, referring to past warming periods.

Jody Clarke, the spokeswoman for the free market environmental group Competitive Enterprise Institute, (CEI) joined in the criticism of the Fox News special. Clarke said she was "surprised" by the opening disclaimer, which explained that viewers would "hear primarily from those experts and citizens who believe that global warming is a crisis." Clarke said after watching the show, she realized that the disclaimer "should have said all of the experts will express this particular point of view," noting the absence of any contrarian scientific point of view in the hour-long program. CEI sent a letter to Fox News CEO Roger Ailes last week protesting that only one scientific perspective was featured in the special"."

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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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