GREENIES SPINNING LIKE A TOP

The good old Ozone layer again. There is absolutely no evidence that the ban on CFC refigerants has had any effect whatever. The ban on CFCs was agreed in 1987 but it took years for it to be widely implemented. Roughly speaking, it is only for about the last 10 years that it has been in actual force. So what has happened over those last ten years?

"Weatherhead and Signe Bech Anderson of the Danish Meteorological Institute in Copenhagen analyzed data from satellites and ground stations and information from 14 modeling studies. They found that ozone levels have stabilized or increased slightly in the past 10 years. But full recovery is still decades away".

Sad news. Certainly no sign of increased ozone. But what is the heading on the article from which I have taken that quote? It is Ozone layer shows signs of recovery: scientists (!!!).

And one of the scientists concerned is quoted as saying: ""We now have some confidence that the ozone layer is responding to the decreases in chlorine levels in the atmosphere due to the leveling off and decrease of CFCs," said Dr Betsy Weatherhead, of the University of Colorado in Boulder. Not only is the ozone layer getting better, we feel it is due to the Montreal Protocol," she added in an interview.

She disbelieves her own evidence but DOES believe her "feelings". Some scientist! Environmentalism sure rots the brain!

Update:

Comment from a reader:

"I have one little problem with the theory of CFCs destroying the ozone. The destruction is supposedly caused by a chemical reaction proposed by Drs Roland and Molina. However, this chemical reaction has never been observed in nature and couldn't be made to occur in the laboratory. That tends to make one a little bit skeptical of the correctness of the explanation for the ozone hole, unless you are an environmentalist and the facts don't matter."






MORE NONSENSE

The article below describes an atmospheric change that has been going on since the mid-1800s -- yes: 1800, not 1900 -- and says that it must be due to all the manmade pollution of the industrial era -- even though coal and oil-burning industry spread worldwide only in the late 20th centrury:

An important wind circulation pattern over the Pacific Ocean has begun to weaken because of global warming caused by human activity, something that could alter climate and the marine food chain in the region, new research suggests. It's not clear what climate changes might arise in the area or possibly beyond, but the long-term effect might resemble some aspects of an El Nino event, a study author said.

El Ninos boost rainfall in the southern United States and western South America and bring dry weather or even drought to Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere in the western Pacific. As for the Pacific food chain near the equator, the slowdown might reduce populations of tiny plants and animals up through the fish that eat them, because of reduced nutrition welling up from the deep, said the author, Gabriel Vecchi. Vecchi, a visiting scientist at a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in Princeton, N.J., and colleagues present their results in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

The slowdown was detected in shipboard and land-based data going back to the mid-1800s. It matches an effect predicted by computer climate simulations that trace global warming to a build-up of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, the researchers report. But simulations that consider only natural influences fail to produce the observed slowdown, Vecchi said. So, it appears the slowdown is largely due to the man-made buildup of greenhouse gases, the researchers concluded. And the result lends more credibility to computer models that trace global warming to greenhouse gases, at least for their ability to forecast what will happen in the tropics, Vecchi said.

The study focused on what scientists call the Walker circulation, a huge wind pattern that covers almost half the circumference of Earth. The pattern traces a huge loop. Trade winds blow across the Pacific from east to west. The air rises in the western Pacific and then returns eastward at an altitude of a few miles. Then it sinks back to the surface and starts the loop again. The new study is based on barometric pressure readings, since differences in air pressure drive winds near the equator. Results suggest the average wind speed in the Walker circulation has weakened by about 3.5 percent since the mid-1800s. It has weakened faster since World War II than in the long-term trend since the mid-1800s, Vecchi said. Computer simulations say the circulation might weaken another 10 percent by 2100, Vecchi said.

Dennis Hartmann, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, said the study makes a strong case that the Walker circulation has slowed. While such an effect had been predicted as a result of global warming, he said, "it's not been demonstrated before as clearly as they've done here."

Source






U.S. takes new view on DDT in Africa

U.S. government officials are enthusiastically endorsing and funding the use of DDT in sub-Saharan Africa after years of resisting calls from scientists who said the insecticide would be the best weapon for fighting malaria, despite lingering objections by some environmentalists. "We're really pretty aggressive" about supporting DDT use against the mosquitoes that spread malaria, said Michael Miller, deputy assistant administrator of the Bureau of Global Health for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Added Richard Green, director of the Office of Health, Infectious Diseases and Nutrition in USAID's global health bureau: "We think DDT is an excellent insecticide and that, in some circumstances, it has some advantages over some other insecticides that are available."

The insecticide credited with eliminating malaria in the Western world years ago was outlawed in the United States in 1972 and is banned in most countries because of environmental concerns and unsubstantiated fears it can harm humans. "We think DDT is safe when used correctly and are not aware of any human health risks," Mr. Green said.

USAID is the federal government's lead agency in efforts to help African countries find ways to battle the continent's deadliest disease, which kills about a million Africans yearly, most of them young children and pregnant women. DDT is generally cheaper and more effective than other insecticides in preventing household bites.

Later this year, Mr. Miller said, USAID will begin using DDT as part of malaria-control efforts in three nations -- Mozambique, Ethiopia and Zambia. Nearly $10 million in federal funds has been allocated this year for "indoor residual spraying" in those three countries. DDT will be one of 12 different insecticides employed in the effort, which officials hope to start in December, and it will be the one used in most of the spraying in Mozambique, Mr. Green said. Mozambique's interest in DDT is significant, because it had long ignored pleas by its neighbor, South Africa, to use it. South Africa became a DDT booster in 2003, after using it to end a malaria epidemic in the eastern part of the country.

Of the $99 million that USAID is spending on malaria control this year, $20 million is being used for indoor spraying with DDT or one of the other 11 insecticides authorized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as malaria preventives, Mr. Green noted. About one-third of USAID's total budget for malaria is financing the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI), which seeks to reduce malaria deaths by 50 percent in 15 African countries by 2010 and will spend $1.2 billion to that end. This year, PMI is doing indoor spraying in hundreds of thousands of homes in three countries -- Uganda, Angola and Tanzania -- using insecticides other than DDT.

"Between 1 million and 1.5 million people will be protected," Mr. Green said. Mr. Miller said DDT may be used in Uganda next year.

More here






Australian Green group accepts uranium mines

Even some Greenpeace people are supportive!



One of the nation's largest environment groups, WWF Australia, has accepted the federal Government's push to expand uranium mining and exports. WWF chief executive Greg Bourne, former boss of BP Australasia, told The Australian yesterday the nation was "destined under all governments to be mining uranium and exporting it to a growing world market". "We have been mining uranium and exporting it for many years and we're doing more because demand is going up, whether people like it or not," he said. "The key issues are if we're going to be a nation exporting uranium, we have to know absolutely it's only being used for peaceful purposes and waste products are being stored safely."

The move is likely to drive a wedge through the environment movement, which is fighting to make the Government's planned uranium exports to China - and the nuclear power debate - a federal election issue next year. Former Greenpeace International executive director Paul Gilding, who is now an environmental consultant, yesterday defended WWF's uranium position. "I think it's rational to say: we oppose nuclear power, but given there is nuclear power let's make sure we make it as safe as possible," he said. "The risk to anybody in this area is it's such a highly ideological, almost religious, debate." Mr Gilding said WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund, had "always been the one closest to the corporate conservative side, and good luck to them. Someone needs to be."

Mr Bourne's comments come just weeks after John Howard signed a uranium export deal with China under which billions of dollars of Australian uranium could be shipped to the Asian powerhouse to fuel as many as 40 new nuclear power plants. As a condition of the deal, China has agreed not to use Australian uranium in nuclear weapons. Environment groups argue there are insufficient monitoring and safety procedures in place to prevent that occurring.

Labor is reconsidering its long-held opposition to expanding uranium mining. While resources spokesman Martin Ferguson has called for Labor to ditch the policy, environment spokesman Anthony Albanese, from the Left, is fiercely opposed to change.

More here

***************************************

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.

*****************************************