ECO-TERRORIST CRUMBLES

Another loser who hates the world



In an apparent bid for leniency, one of three people charged in an eco-terrorism plot pleaded guilty in Sacramento federal court Tuesday and agreed to testify against the other two. Lauren Weiner pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy in connection with the trio's alleged plans to blow up commercial and governmental facilities in the Sacramento region. She agreed to cooperate with the government's investigation and prosecution of the case, including testifying against co-defendants Eric Taylor McDavid and Zachary O. Jenson. The 20-year-old Weiner admitted that one of their targets was the U.S. Forest Service's Institute of Forest Genetics in Placerville.

McDavid, Jenson and Weiner were accused in a grand jury indictment with conspiring to blow up the genetics lab in Placerville, the Nimbus Dam and nearby fish hatchery in Rancho Cordova, and cellular telephone towers and electric power stations in unspecified locations. Weiner also admitted the group planned to take credit for their actions on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front, which the FBI has identified as a terrorist movement dedicated to violent attacks on what its followers believe are symbols of society's destruction and exploitation of the environment. Congress has defined federal crimes of terrorism to include those involving the use of explosives that are "calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct."

Weiner is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 8, but she probably will not be sentenced until the prosecutions of McDavid and Jenson are completed. The 28-year-old McDavid, originally from Foresthill and who prosecutors claim was the leader of the group, and Jenson, 20, who is homeless, have been held without bail since being arrested Jan. 13. Weiner was released on $1.2 million bail and has been living with her mother in Pound Ridge, N.Y.

The case is based on extensive electronic surveillance -- both audio and video -- and on information from a paid FBI informant who posed as an ELF sympathizer and infiltrated the group.

As part of her written plea agreement, Weiner acknowledged her approval of targeting cellular telephone towers and other corporate facilities with homemade explosives. She admitted purchasing two books -- "The Poor Man's James Bond" and "The Survival Chemist." "On Jan. 11, Weiner assisted in purchasing several items to be used in making destructive devices, including canning jars, coffee filters, a mixing bowl, a hot plate, petroleum jelly, a gasoline can, bleach, an extension cord and battery testers," according to the plea agreement.

During the six days before their arrest in a shopping center parking lot in Auburn, the three defendants, along with the informant, occupied a cabin in Dutch Flat that had been rigged by the FBI for audio and video surveillance before the foursome moved in.

Weiner pleaded guilty to a charging document filed Tuesday by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ellen Endrizzi that replaced the indictment only for Weiner. The charging document describes reconnaissance visits she and her cohorts made Jan. 10 to the dam and hatchery and later to the genetics lab. Two days later, according to the information, Weiner took part in measuring and heating bleach "in order to create crystals necessary for an explosive device."

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THE INDEPENDENT'S DIRTY TRICKS

Few organisations relish occupation of the moral high ground more than the Independent newspaper, a fact evidenced by its daily attempts to attain the summit thereof by varying, often bizarre routes (last week's front-page campaign to save the bumblebee comes to mind). As with so many moralists, however, the Independent's own behaviour reveals it to be woefully lacking in the ethical area.

This time the specific case in point concerns the organisation's treatment of Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish statistician who feels that - given that global warming is just one of several problems facing humanity this century (others being, inter alia, provision of clean drinking water, education and health care to the world's poor) - the Kyoto accord is a sub-optimal strategy in terms of maximising total global utility. For expressing and supporting this view, Mr. Lomborg - a former Greenpeace supporter - has been vilified with the venom reserved for the apostate.

In some respects, therefore, the May 18 column by Johann Hari (now available here) is typical of the treatment meted out to Mr. Lomborg on a regular basis. What's different in this case - given that it appears in a supposedly respectable newspaper - is not the vindictiveness of the original attack, but the fact that the blatant falsity of the accusations is being completely ignored by the editors, who don't deign even to acknowledge receipt of Mr. Lomborg's polite and repeated attempts at correction.

As for Mr. Hari's errors, I've covered them in detail here, and so apologise for the repetition - briefly, in ascending order of importance, they are that:

Mr. Lomborg's claims to be an environmentalist are lies - "... nor is he an environmentalist. He claims to have been a member of Greenpeace, but the organisation cannot find any records of him." (This from the text on Mr. Hari's website. The relevant passage in the dead tree edition reads "He claims to have been a member of Greenpeace, but the organisation says he was never active in their campaigns." It's unclear which version came first, or why the strange change was made).

Mr. Lomborg reiterates that he was a regularly paying member of Greenpeace in the 80s. I'll let Mr. Hari's apparent assumption that only Greenpeace members (or, perhaps, only those "active in their campaigns") may call themselves environmentalists pass without further comment.

"He has never written a peer reviewed scientific paper, and there's a reason for that." This claim represents either shocking ignorance or a shocking lie on Mr. Hari's part. In fact, the entire book The Skeptical Environmentalist - the one which so offends Mr. Hari - was stringently peer reviewed by its publisher, Cambridge University Press. Indeed, anticipating controversy, Cambridge subjected Mr. Lomborg's work to a more than usually rigorous review process, which included a climatologist, an environmental economist (and IPCC reviewer), and an expert in biodiversity and sustainable development (see my prior post for details).

The preceding incorrect assertions lead Mr. Hari to conclude, falsely, that "the two central planks of his public image - here is a green guy who has reassessed the scientific evidence and come up with a new reading - are false" (i.e., that Mr. Lomborg is a liar on two fronts).

Mr. Hari blatantly misrepresents Mr. Lomborg's position on climate change policy, characterising it as an argument that "we should do nothing about run-away global warming", and as a call "for junking the whole idea of restraint and opting for climatic anarchy". In fact, Mr. Lomborg has termed as "optimal" a 6% reduction in current emissions levels, increasing to 10% by 2100.

It is of course possible that Mr. Hari made these assertions from mere ignorance - anyone who refers to the great scientist "Gallielo" (final sentence, print and online versions), or who thinks that the book of "Revelations" [sic] predicts a 1,000 year war (rather than a post-Armageddon millennium of peace), is automatically to be suspected thereof. What's truly upsetting about the whole affair is the reaction of his employers to Mr. Lomborg's attempts to clear his name; i.e., to completely ignore them.

Last Tuesday, Mr. Lomborg sent a polite response via the email address designated by the Independent for letters to the editor, detailing the errors in Mr. Hari's column. Nothing, not even an acknowledgment of receipt, was received in return. On Thursday, he specifically addressed the same response to "reader's editor" Guy Keleny. (In addition, I had previously informed Mr. Keleny of the inaccuracies in Mr. Hari's column.)

Once again, not even the courtesy of an acknowledgment of receipt was forthcoming. Mr. Keleny's regular corrections column, published Saturday (not online), was more concerned with whether "bêtes noire" or "bêtes noires" represented correct usage than with honourably acting to set the record straight vis-à-vis Mr. Lomborg. Needless to say, no correspondence from the latter has been published.

It is, of course, one thing for a columnist to launch a passionate attack against those with whom he disagrees - indeed, this is in large part what they're paid to do. And it's inevitable that mistakes will be made at times (although it's not clear whether Mr. Hari's transgressions of fact were mere errors or deliberate lies). But the column in question was specifically labelled as an attempt to destroy the credibility of that opponent (to "bury the high priest of fossil fuels", as the print edition headline put it; "it is time to bury him", the lead paragraph reiterates) - and was based on assertions that aren't "suspect", or "controversial", but which are quite easily shown to be blatant misstatements of fact.

In such a case, the most basic demands of moral conduct require that the Independent take corrective steps - their refusal to do so is indefensible; their failure to even acknowledge Mr. Lomborg's communication(s) is unspeakably rude. When it was written, Mr. Hari's column may merely have been extraordinarily bad journalism - given what the Independent's editors now know, but refuse to admit to their readers, it has since become libel.

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Warmed Over: Al Gore's new movie is the feel-good hit of the summer--but not much more.

It's only been out a week, but audiences seem not to have poured forth from Al Gore's movie and, in an unprecedented reversal of political polarity, demanded higher gasoline prices. This is bad news for Republicans, who will bear the burden of high gas prices to the polls in November. Not that Mr. Gore's movie advocates higher gasoline prices. It reportedly doesn't advocate any policy that would actually relieve the fears of climate worriers. When he last sought the White House in 2000, recall, it was Mr. Gore who persuaded President Clinton to open up the strategic reserve to provide consumers with cheaper gas, harm to the climate be darned.

Here's a test. What if science showed conclusively that global warming is produced by natural forces, with all the same theorized ill effects for humanity, but that human action could forestall natural change? Or what if man-made warming were real, but offsetting the arrival of a natural ice age? Would Mr. Gore tell us meekly to submit to whatever nature metes out because it's "natural"?

Mr. Gore's next movie should be about the urge to propitiate the gods with sacrifices, a ritual whose appeal did not go out with the Aztecs. Yes, Al, let us give billions to alternative energy bureaucrats and emissions regulators. This we do as a tribute to your shamanism, although it will make little appreciable difference to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That said, a valid service is performed in satisfying the eternal human appetite for gloom and doom (and no virgins were sacrificed), distracting people from the reality of life, which is that we all are doomed, while the universe, the Earth and all that environmentalists hold dear will go remorselessly on and on without us.

In a million years, the time it takes the earth to sneeze, the planet will likely be shorn of any conspicuous sign we were ever here, let alone careless with our CO2, dioxins, etc. Talk about an inconvenient truth.

How much more securing, in a way, to believe we are ruining the planet than the planet just does not care about us, and will run rampant with life long after we are dust. And how pleasant to be able to transmute our fury over our fate into incoherent feelings of self-heroism against our present "enemies." Thus Washington Post columnist, and future dust, Sebastian Mallaby: "By their contempt for expert opinion on everything from Iraqi reconstruction to the cost of their tax cuts, Republicans have turned [Al Gore] into a hero. By their serial dishonesty, Republicans have created a market for 'An Inconvenient Truth.' " That felt good, didn't it? That satisfied a need.

But we digress. A remarkable and improbable thing is that, despite presumably devoting decades of study to the subject of global warming, nothing Al Gore has learned leads him to say anything that would strike the least informed, most dogmatic "green" as politically incorrect. He doesn't discover virtues in nuclear power. He doesn't note the cost-benefit advantages of strategies that would remove CO2 from the atmosphere, rather than those that would stop its creation. Anybody who deeply searches into any subject of popular debate inevitably comes back with views and judgments to shock the casual thinker. Mr. Gore utterly fails to vouchsafe this reliable telltale of seriousness.

That man-made carbon dioxide has a net planetary warming effect is an important hypothesis, one that science can make stronger or weaker, but can't prove. It may be true, but a layperson only has to look into the antecedents of today's "consensus" to realize it wouldn't be too surprising if tomorrow's consensus were that CO2 is cooling, or neutral, or warming here and cooling there.

And evidence of warming is not evidence of carbon-driven warming. These are different things, at least until scientists can be reasonably certain they've eliminated other factors and interrelationships that contribute to climate variability. But scientists are not close to understanding or even knowing all the factors that play into "climate change," a process that might as well be called "climate," since climate is always changing.

Finally, warming and what might cause warming are subjects entirely separable from the urge to gather up all the most dire and extreme speculation about what a warming earth would be like for humans and present it as scientific "truth."

Mr. Gore's narrative isn't science, but science fiction. It also contains a large element of political fiction, relying on the hack theme of good guys versus bad guys. Hint to filmmakers: An honest policy argument usually takes the form of one of two questions: "Whose rights trump?" and "What's welfare maximizing?" Mr. Gore did not discover global warming and hasn't been a voice in the wilderness. Our political system has looked at the question closely, in a way Mr. Gore's film doesn't, and repeatedly concluded that the cost of action is greater than the known or surmised risks. That's all it can do. Thus the Senate and Presidents Clinton and Bush all made clear that they wouldn't sign up for a Kyoto gesture that imposes real costs with no real benefits.

This argument will come back again and again, as it must. As for the auteur, where many politicians seem like overhungry adolescents, Mr. Gore seems like a stifled 9-year-old--by turns spoiled and bullied, unwilling fully to meet expectations but unwilling also to take his own path. So what about gas prices? He needs to decide: Does he want to be a presidential contender or does he want to be the deliverer of "inconvenient truths" about climate change?

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GREENIE-INSPIRED MISMANAGEMENT OF AUSTRALIA'S COASTAL WATERS

Particularly around Australia's vast coral reefs

Annual harvest trends, catch per unit of effort and catch per unit of area, are fundamental metrics of fishery management. Figures for the Great Barrier Reef show no evidence of decline and the catch per unit of area is less than 1 per cent of what is widely considered sustainable for reef fisheries. Why are these standard metrics being ignored by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA)? What is the evidence in support of GBRMPA claims of over-fishing?

The Great Barrier Reef commercial fishing harvest is now limited to an annual quota of 3,061 tonnes. Averaged over the 347,000 km2 of reef and lagoon area in the Great Barrier Reef, this comes to just under 9 kg/km2/year. The average harvest, over a broad range of reef areas elsewhere in the Pacific, is 7,700 kg/km2/year, and even the conservation NGO, World Resource Institute, cites 4,000 kg/km2/year as being a sustainable level for coral-reef fisheries. The entire West Indian/Caribbean reef area is less than half that of the Great Barrier Reef and the reef fish harvest is over 100,000 MT. The Florida Keys, with less than 1 per cent the reef area of the Great Barrier Reef, has for many years sustainably supported a larger catch than the entire Great Barrier Reef.

With a harvest quota of less than one per cent of the widely accepted sustainable yield for reef fisheries, why do we then also have extensive closed areas, limited licences, quotas, closed seasons, size limits, bag limits, prohibited species, gear restrictions and even restrictions on the sale of catch?

Figured over the entire reef and lagoon area, the boats participating in the Great Barrier Reef commercial line fishery enjoy an average density of over 500 km2 per boat. The average number of days fished per boat, however, is only about 50 per year. Thus, the mean fishing boat density comes to over 4,000 km2 per boat on any particular day. For all practical purposes, commercial fishing pressure on the Great Barrier Reef as a whole is virtually non-existent.

There are of course some more favoured and accessible areas that do receive greater fishing pressure than other areas, but this only means that most of the region receives even less than the extremely low average figures indicate. However, as the extensive coral trout surveys (conducted by GBRMPA but unpublished) clearly show, even these popular areas show no clear evidence of over fishing.

With a fishing intensity of one small vessel in over 4,000 square kilometres of reef waters and a total harvest restricted to an annual catch that averages 90 grams per hectare, claimed threats of over-fishing are simply absurd and the increasingly elaborate restrictions entirely unwarranted.

Economic value

GBRMPA has widely claimed the value of Great Barrier Reef-based tourism to be worth $3.5 billion, and the reef component alone as being $1.4 billion. They also have often cited the value of commercial fishing as being only about $119 million. The actual reef component of most visitors' stays is a single day-trip during which they spend a few hours on the reef, and only about half of all visitors to the region even visit the reef. The value of reef tours (about $150 million) is in fact very close to the value of reef-based commercial fishing (about $130 million).

Attributing the total value of all regional tourism to a one-day visit to the reef by about half of all visitors is no more justifiable than would be attributing it all to commercial fishing, based on the fact that most visitors eat seafood during their stay. When the value of recreational fishing (about $240 million) is added, the value of fishing activity can be seen to be over twice that of reef tourism.

Is the value of Great Barrier Reef tourism claimed by GBRMPA deliberately intended to mislead Parliament and the electorate, or just grossly incompetent economic analysis?

In the lead-up to the recent large expansion of no-fishing "green zones", GBRMPA estimated the impact on commercial fishing to be between $0.5 million and $2.5 million. The Great Barrier Reef fishing industry restructuring cost estimate is now $50 million and could easily double before completion. On top of this is the ongoing economic loss, which a University of Queensland study has estimated to be $23 million annually in foregone production.

Was this GBRMPA mis-estimate also a deliberate attempt to mislead Parliament and the electorate, or just incompetence again?

It is also interesting to note that, in the most recent Access Economics report commissioned by GBRMPA (and also widely cited by them), the estimate of the Great Barrier Reef catchment area's tourism value is $4.3 billion. By implication and misrepresentation, GBRMPA is laying claim to the entirety of regional tourism, when the true Great Barrier Reef component is about 3.5 per cent of this amount. In other words, they are exaggerating by about 3,000 per cent.

Reef management

Reef managers are now claiming that the Great Barrier Reef has the best-managed reef fishery in the world. What we have in fact is the most over-managed, costly, highly restricted, smallest, and least productive reef fishery in the world. By this criterion we could also have the best-managed grazing industry and agriculture as well. All we have to do is reduce them by 99 per cent and any associated problems will become negligible.

How much of the widespread public support for GBRMPA is based upon misinformation they themselves have promoted?

Water quality reviews

Threats to water quality are currently a major GBRMPA concern receiving wide publicity. In particular, siltation, nutrient run-off and herbicide contamination from agriculture have been cited as major concerns.

David Williams has conducted the most comprehensive review to date of effects of run-off on the Great Barrier Reef. His work was conducted for GBRMPA and funded by them. He found there was little evidence of such impacts. In the summary, he stated, "clear impacts of enhanced run-off of sediments, nutrients and contaminants (as a result of land use) on coral reefs of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem have proven difficult to detect. Impacts are unlikely for the majority of reefs that are located well offshore."

An earlier detailed review, focused particularly on nutrients, likewise said: "It is tempting to conclude that the water quality status of the central Great Barrier Reef is not at immediate risk and that at current nutrient input rates, external sources will have little future impact on water quality ...".

How does GBRMPA reconcile these findings with its claim of declining water quality? Where is the evidence for declining water quality that these researchers were unable to find? Agricultural use of fertiliser and herbicides has been decreasing for some years. What is the evidence for an increasing impact? How does agri-chemical run-off in the rivers - that is within Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) safe guidelines - become a threat to the reef when diluted a further million-fold in the ocean?

Overview

Australia has the world's third largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), just below those of the United States and France, but ahead of Russia, with the total area actually exceeding that of its land territory. In terms of EEZ area, Australian fisheries harvest rate is about one-twentieth that of the US. The wild caught harvest here comes to just under 40 kg/km2 per year. In the US, the relatively small sub-tropical Gulf coast region alone produces over three times the total commercial catch of all of Australia.

Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Mexico, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Burma have only a fraction of the EEZ area of Australia and are each producing over five times or more wild caught harvest than Australia, in addition to as much as 25 times greater aquaculture production.

Despite our small population, vast EEZ and ideal circumstances for extensive aquaculture, we still do not even produce enough seafood to meet domestic demand. Imports now amount to 70 per cent of consumption by edible weight and cost $1.8 billion. A CSIRO study estimates that, by the year 2020, an additional 610,000 MT will be needed to meet growing demand. This amount represents an almost 400 per cent increase in imports over the next one-and-a-half decades.

This raises two very important questions:

First, is the relatively low level of the Australian wild catch fishery really at the limit of capacity for the resource? Is an annual harvest of only 0.4 kg/ha actually the maximum that our waters can sustain? If our fish stocks are so depleted, why do so many Indonesian fishermen keep coming so far, and facing such risks, if the resource is truly so meagre? Are they coming here to sunbathe?

Second, why should Australian aquaculture be at a cost disadvantage to Europe, North America or Japan - all of which have booming aquaculture industries much larger than Australia's, despite more difficult natural conditions, plus equal or greater cost for land, labour and equipment? The overwhelming disadvantage of Australian aquaculture and fisheries is clearly neither natural nor economic, but government-imposed restrictions, demands, changes and uncertainties.

A much more empirical, rational, evidence-based and experimental approach to management is sorely needed. A far more inclusive, cohesive, organised, determined and effectively aggressive approach must be taken by the industry itself.

Commercial fishermen, aqua-culturists and recreational anglers all face similar threats from an overzealous and incompetent bureaucracy. All must put aside blaming one another and join forces to confront the real enemy. Divide and conquer is the bureaucrats' most effective tactic, and a united front of opposition is the one thing they and their political overseers cannot ignore. Everyone involved will have to accept some compromises in formulating objectives. Clear, well-reasoned demands are badly needed. Legal, political, public relations and scientific expertise is essential, and money will have to be spent.

In the end, a key objective must be for the industry itself to assume a strong role in its own management and regulation. This is entirely in keeping with fundamental democratic principles and the only means of avoiding the kinds of disastrous decisions now being made by academic experts and managers with little knowledge of the realities of either the industry or the actual resource.

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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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