RUSSIA SAYS IT HAS NO PLANS TO CAP CARBON EMISSIONS

So put that in your pipe and smoke it! There's no way you could lean on THEM!

Russia will not accept binding caps on its greenhouse gas emissions under a new climate regime, currently being negotiated to succeed the Kyoto Protocol after 2012, top officials said on Monday. Kyoto puts a cap on the average, annual greenhouse gas emissions from 2008-12 for some 37 industrialised countries, including Russia. But former communist countries are well within their emissions targets, which are compared to 1990 levels, because their industries and carbon emissions subsequently collapsed after they struggled to adapt to free markets.

As a top energy producer and consumer, Russia welcomed the fact that Kyoto had not limited its carbon emissions and expected the same of any future climate deal, said Vsevolod Gavrilov, the official in charge of Russia's Kyoto obligations. "Energy must not be a barrier to our comfort. Our emerging middle class... demands lots of energy and it is our job to ensure comfortable supply," he said.

"We don't plan to limit the use of fuel for our industries. We don't think this would be right," he said, referring to the current round of Kyoto. Asked if Russia would resist capping the use of fossil fuels, which emit the planet-warming gas carbon dioxide when burned, under a new climate deal after 2012, he said:"In the foreseeable future, this will not be our model, no." He pointed out that the United States had also declined to impose emissions caps.

But Russia welcomed investment from other industrialised countries to help it clean up its energy and industry, saying in this way it could prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. Under Kyoto, industrialised countries which are missing their emissions goals can pay for cuts elsewhere -- if that is cheaper -- getting carbon offsets in return.

OFFSET

Industrialised countries spent some 326 million euros last year buying such offsets from former communist countries, under Kyoto's Joint Implementation (JI) scheme. "We see (Kyoto) as a means, not as an end in itself... It is a way to get new technology for our industries," said Gavrilov.

A key way for Russia to profit from the planned 3 billion tonnes of emission reductions will be by trapping and processing natural gas, a by-product of oil production. By 2012, Russia has called for 95 percent of its associated gas to be harnessed and sold, whereas more than 25 percent of it is currently flared, wasting 20 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

"Why is the flaring of gas so common? It's because of economic barriers to building infrastructure that will process it," said Mikhail Stavsky, vice president of Russia's largest oil firm, Rosneft. With the help of trading in carbon offsets, Stavsky said that the profitability of such gas harnessing will roughly double, and the return on investment in the projects will come in 7 years, compared to 17 years without Kyoto.

Russia's gas export monopoly Gazprom will also use these mechanisms to harness the gas, said Alexander Ishkov, the head of its energy saving and environmental department. "We are expecting to cut tens of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent" by 2012, he said.

Out of the twelve emissions-reduction projects that have applied for JI approval, several are from companies at least partly owned by Gazprom, Oleg Pluzhnikov, Gavrilov's deputy at the Economy Ministry, told Reuters. "They are keeping a low profile for now. But when they see it working, I think they will put their name behind it."

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SHOCK, HORROR: UK TABLOIDS MORE BALANCED ON CLIMATE CHANGE

The Green/Left elite finally notice the workers

Coverage about global warming in UK tabloid newspapers has been significantly divergent from the scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change. That's according to Max Boykoff and Maria Mansfield of the University of Oxford, UK, who studied papers from 2000 to 2006. "This was surprising, because in other research on the UK broadsheet newspapers I've found that this coverage has been quite accurate," Boykoff told environmentalresearchweb. "We hope that this work will encourage tabloid newspapers to reflect further on the accuracy of their reporting on human contributions to climate change, particularly given their high readership in the UK publics. Contrarian comments in a column by Michael Hanlon in the Daily Mail or Jeremy Clarkson in The Sun may be off-the-cuff or playful at times, but they have a tremendous influence on how readership may understand climate change science and policy."

The team found that the Daily Mail was more divergent from the scientific consensus than other tabloid newspapers. There were generally two main influences behind the tabloids' divergence. "First was reliance on the journalistic norm of balance, where roughly equal attention was placed the view that humans contribute to climate change, and that our contribution is negligible," said Boykoff. "I had found this journalistic norm as influential in other earlier work on US newspaper and television coverage of anthropogenic climate change."

And secondly, almost a third of the divergent coverage was attributed to 'contrarian' views that make claims that humans' role in climate change is negligible. Tabloids have an important influence on public opinion in the UK as they have average daily circulations as much as ten times higher than many broadsheet newspapers. "Assessments of UK media influence on science-policy interactions have tended to focus on the broadsheet or 'quality' press sources - the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times and Times of London," said Boykoff. "However, we argue that these analyses have suffered from a blind spot in considerations, by overlooking what are called the 'tabloid press' - The Sun (and News of the World), Daily Mail (and Mail on Sunday), the Daily Express (and Sunday Express), and the Mirror (and Sunday Mirror)."

And readers of tabloids tend to come from different socio-economic backgrounds to broadsheet consumers, typically being more working class. "While these segments of the population have been of secondary importance in previous science-policy and science-media-policy analyses, such examinations need to take on a more central role, as these citizens make up critical components of potential social movements and public pressure for improved climate policy action," said Boykoff.

Many media workers interviewed for the study highlighted the political and economic constraints they face in reporting climate change. "For example, with little specialist science training it was challenging to cover the intricacies of climate change while they were also covering a broad range of other news 'beats'," said Boykoff. "There remain few science and environment correspondents in the UK tabloid newspapers, and this has been a challenge for accurate climate change reporting."

Boykoff and Mansfield have also been studying how various climate change issues are framed in the UK tabloid press, and the tone of the coverage. "From this, I am examining how these factors influence considerations of market-based and regulatory interventions to grapple with ongoing environmental challenges," said Boykoff. The researchers reported their work in the open-access journal Environmental Research Letters.

Source

NOTE from Benny Peiser, mentioning his skeptical CCNet newsletter: "Max Boykoff seems to blame a lack of scientific understanding among tabloid journalists for their more critical and less compliant climate change reporting. I rather doubt that lack of understanding is the underlying reason why some of these journalists, from time to time, provide more balanced and less one-sided views on climate change issues. After all, there are more than 30 journalists from the four UK tabloids mentioned (Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Mirror and The Sun) who receive CCNet on a daily basis. I would suggest that many of these journalists are very well informed about the scientific, economic and political controversies that are inherent in the climate debates. It would appear that the main difference between broadsheets and tabloids is that the latter choose to report, from time to time, about conflicting views and research - while the former, most of the time, tend to ignore or stifle them."





Greenies goof again

The worldwide effort by supermarkets and industry to replace conventional oil-based plastic with eco-friendly "bioplastics" made from plants is causing environmental problems and consumer confusion, according to a Guardian study. The substitutes can increase emissions of greenhouse gases on landfill sites, some need high temperatures to decompose and others cannot be recycled in Britain. Many of the bioplastics are also contributing to the global food crisis by taking over large areas of land previously used to grow crops for human consumption.

The market for bioplastics, which are made from maize, sugarcane, wheat and other crops, is growing by 20-30% a year. The industry, which uses words such as "sustainable", "biodegradeable", "compostable" and "recyclable" to describe its products, says bioplastics make carbon savings of 30-80% compared with conventional oil-based plastics and can extend the shelf-life of food.

Concern centres on corn-based packaging made with polylactic acid (Pla). Made from GM crops, it looks identical to conventional polyethylene terephthalate (Pet) plastic and is produced by US company NatureWorks. The company is jointly owned by Cargill, the world's second largest biofuel producer, and Teijin, one of the world's largest plastic manufacturers. Pla is used by some of the biggest supermarkets and food companies, including Wal-Mart, McDonald's and Del Monte. It is used by Marks & Spencer to package organic foods, salads, snacks, desserts, and fruit and vegetables. It is also used to bottle Belu mineral water, which is endorsed by environmentalists because the brand's owners invest all profits in water projects in poor countries. Wal-Mart has said it plans to use 114m Pla containers over the course of a year.

While Pla is said to offer more disposal options, the Guardian has found that it will barely break down on landfill sites, and can only be composted in the handful of anaerobic digesters which exist in Britain, but which do not take any packaging. In addition, if Pla is sent to UK recycling works in large quantities, it can contaminate the waste stream, reportedly making other recycled plastics unsaleable.

Last year Innocent drinks stopped using Pla because commercial composting was "not yet a mainstream option" in the UK. Anson, one of Britain's largest suppliers of plastic food packaging, switched back to conventional plastic after testing Pla in sandwich packs. Sainsbury's has decided not to use it, saying Pla is made with GM corn. "No local authority is collecting compostable packaging at the moment. Composters do not want it," a spokesman said.

Britain's supermarkets compete to claim the greatest commitment to the environment with plant-based products. The bioplastics industry expects rising oil prices to help it compete with conventional plastics, with Europe using about 50,000 tonnes of bioplastics a year. Concern is mounting because the new generation of biodegradable plastics ends up on landfill sites, where they degrade without oxygen, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. This week the US national oceanic and atmospheric administration reported a sharp increase in global methane emissions last year.

"It is just not possible to capture all the methane from landfill sites," said Michael Warhurt, resources campaigner at Friends of the Earth. "A significant percentage leaks to the atmosphere." "Just because it's biodegradable does not mean it's good. If it goes to landfill it breaks down to methane. Only a percentage is captured," said Peter Skelton of Wrap, the UK government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme. "In theory bioplastics are good. But in practice there are lots of barriers."

Recycling companies said they would have to invest in expensive new equipment to extract bioplastic from waste for recycling. "If we could identify them the only option would be to landfill them," said one recycler who asked to remain anonymous. "They are not wanted by UK recycling companies or local authorities who refuse to handle them. Councils are saying they do not want plastics near food collection. If these biodegradable [products] get into the recycling stream they contaminate it. "It will get worse because the government is encouraging more recycling. There will be much more bioplastic around."

Problems arise because some bioplastics are "home" compostable and recyclable. "It's so confusing that a Pla bottle looks exactly the same as a standard Pet bottle," Skelton said. "The consumer is not a polymer expert. Not nearly enough consideration has gone into what they are meant to do with them. Everything is just put in the recycling bin."

Yesterday NatureWorks accepted that its products would not fully break down on landfill sites. "The recycling industry in the UK has not caught up with other countries" said Snehal Desai, chief marketing officer for NatureWorks. "We need alternatives to oil. UK industry should not resist change. We should be designing for the future and not the past. In central Europe, Taiwan and elsewhere, NatureWorks polymer is widely accepted as a compostable material."

Other users said it was too soon to judge the new technology. "It's very early days," said Reed Paget, managing director of Belu. "The UK packaging industry does not want competition. It's shortsighted and is blocking eco-innovation." Belu collects its bottles and now sends them to mainland Europe. "People think that biodegradable is good and non-biodegradable is bad. That's all they see," said Chris Goodall, environmental analyst and author of How to Live a Low-carbon Lifestyle. "I have been trying to compost bags that are billed as 'biodegradable' and 'home compostable' but I have completely failed. They rely on the compost heap really heating up but we still find the residues."

Bioplastics compete for land with biofuels and food crops. About 200,000 tonnes of bioplastics were produced last year, requiring 250,000-350,000 tonnes of crops. The industry is forecast to need several million acres of farmland within four years.

There is also concern over the growing use by supermarkets of "oxy-degradable" plastic bags, billed as sustainable. They are made of conventional oil-based plastic, with an additive that enables the plastic to break down. The companies promoting it claim it reduces litter and causes no methane or harmful residues. They are used by Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut and KFC in the US, and Tesco and the Co-op in the UK for "degradable" plastic carrier bags. Some environmentalists say the terminology confuses the public. "The consumer is baffled," a Wrap briefing paper said. "It considers these products degradable but ... they will not degrade effectively in [the closed environment of] a landfill site." A spokesman for Symphony Plastics disputed that. "Oxy-bioplastic can be re-used and recycled, but will degrade and disappear in a short timescale", he said.

Source






A Greenie recognizes Green Fascism



He seems unaware, though, that Fascism and environmentalism were associated from the beginning -- particularly in "Das dritte Reich". See here.

Here is something all right-thinking liberals can agree on. Saving the planet is good; manipulating humanity through eugenics is bad. The trouble is that these two ethical opposites come together when we talk about population control as a means of protecting the environment. Most of us breed. And those of us who do have one ecological footprint in common: our offspring. Me included. So all greens have to ask: is having babies bad for the planet?

Fair enough. But there is another question that I find increasingly being asked. Should we be trying to stop others having babies, especially people in poor countries with fast-growing populations?

I must say I thought this kind of illiberal thinking had been banished from the environmental movement. But it keeps seeping back. When I give public talks on climate change, I am often asked if all the efforts in the rich world won't be wiped out by rising populations in the poor world.

Isn't overpopulation more dangerous than overconsumption? I say no. But the unpalatable truth is that a lot of environmental thinking over the past half century has been underpinned by an unhealthy preoccupation with the breeding propensity of Asians and Africans. They were, it was often held, polluting the human gene pool as well as the planet. Such thinking was not fringe: it involved some of the great names of the environment movement.

So the American academic Garrett Hardin said in his classic and still-revered environment text Tragedy of the Commons in 1968, "Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all." It must be "relinquished to preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms." Lest we have any doubt who should do the relinquishing, he wrote elsewhere about how college students should have more children than those with low IQs.

Or take Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb from the same era. That book said the world could no longer feed itself and called for population control "by compulsion if voluntary methods fail." Meanwhile the British book Blueprint for Survival, published by The Ecologist magazine, sided with the demagogue-of-the-day Enoch Powell in calling for "an end to immigration". Far from being ostracised as a right-wing tract, its recipe was supported by Friends of the Earth and Peter Scott, the TV wildlife king and founder of the World Wildlife Fund. And this is not ancient history. Only recently, US groups opposed to all migration tried to get their policies adopted by the blue-chip environment group, the Sierra Club. To many they sounded like a fringe group. Actually they were an echo of the earlier mainstream.

And the echo is becoming louder. We hear it in the climate change debate. No matter that the average European or North American has carbon emissions 10 times greater than the average Indian or African, somehow it is those pesky breeding foreigners who are really to blame. And now food shortages are growing and we will get more. Ehrlich, we are bound to be told, was right after all. You have been warned: green fascism could soon be on the march.

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The Precautionary Principle: Possibly the biggest sham of our time

Post below recycled from Depleted Cranium.

A Precautionary principle sounds logical: When you aren’t sure if something might cause harm, be careful and don’t do anything that could be dangerous, especially to anything really important like human lives, the environment and so on. It also seems like it would not be a new or revolutionary concept. However, Precautionary Principle is really a lot more extreme and a lot less common sense than one might think.

The term actually dates back to 1998, when The Wingspread Conference on the Precautionary Principle was convened by the Science and Environmental Health Network was issued the statement: ”

“When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”

And with this one statement, “Precautionary Principle” became the next big thing and was totally the “in” concept for everyone in the enviro-political movement to go to workshops on and state talking about - just to show how up to date they are.

The concept was pushed as if it were somehow amazing and should be the guiding principle behind EVERYTHING. The EU formally adopted Precautionary Principle in 2000 as the fundamental basis of environmental policy, without really ever defining what it was or how it should be applied. Not surprisingly, San Fransisco in the US has adopted the policy as well.

But there’s a problem. precautionary principle assumes that something should be considered harmful or potentially harmful until proven otherwise. Depending on your definition of “proof,” you may run into some problems here. If one goes by the principle that nothing in science is ever proven true beyond any doubt, then you automatically have a paradox where it is impossible to ever do anything on the grounds that it might possibly maybe be harmful.

In precautionary principle, no evidence is needed that something is harmful or even could be harmful. No plausible reason to believe it could be harmful is needed either. In many cases no amount of scientific evidence against the thesis that something is harmful ever seems to be reasonable to counter the argument that something is “not proven safe.” Good scientists are often reluctant to state something is “impossible” - for example, the designer of a nuclear reactor may be highly confident that the reactor will never melt down and that even if it did the containment vessel would hold the material. But despite this, the designer would understandably be reluctant to say it *cannot* happen. After all, it’s not impossible that the containment structure won’t be breached by a hit by a massive meteor, even if it is astronomically unlikely.

In this circumstance, precautionary principle moves the burden of proof, creating a ridiculous burden to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that any claim of harm, no matter how far fetched is 100% false. Since no evidence is ever needed to make a claim and no reasoning for the claim is required either, it’s possible to claim anything might be harmful in one way or another.

Therefore by this logic:

“I think CF lightbulbs will increase the number of herpes cases.”

“Why?”

“I just do. I think I had a dream about it or something.”

“Is there proof to the contrary?”

“No no studies have ever been done into the use of CF lightbulbs and the transmission of herpes”

“Can we do one?”

“Yes, but it’s hard, if not impossible to be totally conclusive about that kind of link, especially if it’s small.”

“Therefore we must ban CF lightbulbs”

On the risk of doing nothing:

Another big issue with “precuationary principle” is that it assumes that it is always best to do nothing when the action is not proven beyond the smallest shadow of a doubt to be harmful. However, since it always favors inaction, this can be significantly worse than taking an action. For one thing, refusing to accept anything new or anything which might possibly be harmful will tend to have economic and societal consequences, which although indirect, can lead to a much greater harm to life health and the environment.

Furthermore, failure to take an action or adopt a method or technology will always favor approaches of inaction which will commonly have a greater impact. For example, if seat belts were a new technology, one might be able to use precautionary principle to argue that there is no proof that they will not injure the body by trying to stop it too quickly or that they will not trap people in burning cars. One might even go as far as to say that there is no proof that they will not have the effect of making people feel secure and therefore drive more erratically and therefore cost lives. Thus, by precautionary principle, no matter how many crash test studies are done and no matter how much theory and design goes into seat belts, there would be grounds for banning them.

This presents another paradox because precautionary principle does not allow for any kind of “risk management” or “acceptably small risk” no matter how small. It can be taken to the point of being ridiculous and often is. It does not allow for any assessment of the risk of inaction. Building a cell phone tower near a school would be considered to be against precautionary principle because there “may be some risk,” but it does not consider that if it were not built near the school it may be more difficult to build and therefore put the lives of workers in more danger. It may also offer poorer coverage and therefore cost the life of a motorist who is unable to call in an emergency. These possibilities, though small, are certainly no smaller than the risk of building near a school.

Example of Applying Precautionary Principle to Inaction:

“The house is on fire. We had better put it out with this extinguisher before the fire spreads and consumes the house.”

“How do we know the extinguisher will not make it worse? Perhaps the extinguisher is full of gasoline and pressured with propane instead of CO2.”

“But how could that happen?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps someone filled it with gas as a joke. Perhaps someone who did not understand the English writing on it believed it was a gas container and filled it.”

“That sounds far fetched.”

“Yes but you cannot prove it could not happen. We have no proof this is not the case.”

“You are right, by precautionary principle we should not attempt to put out the fire.”

Some common sense and when to be cautious:

If you’re not absolutely certain something is safe, then you probably shouldn’t bet your life or anyone else’s on it. Sounds like common sense, right? And in general it is. This is why, even if an aircraft company is pretty damn sure their latest design is totally safe and reliable from wind tunnel testing and calculations, they still build a prototype and give it a good shakedown with an experienced test pilot before it gets the all clear to carry passengers. This is why drugs are tested on tissue cultures, animals and controlled volunteer groups many times before they are put out on the market. It’s also why lifeboats are installed on ships, even if the owners are really damn sure that the ship is not going to sink. It’s always a good idea to take that extra measure of security in case you’re wrong.

In engineering a concept which is goes along these lines is called “factor of safety.” It basically means the margin between what stresses an item is going to be subjected and the stresses that would cause it to fail. Factor of safety tends to be very high for items where there is any uncertainty involved and where a failure could be catastrophic. Exactly how much of a factor of safety is considered necessary depends on certain things. In circumstances where a failure could result in a loss of life, factor of safety is generally high. This is especially true whenever there are uncertainties, such as when a certain type of structure is being built for the first time or in high risk environments like space flight or submarines.

For example, if a bridge is intended to carry a certain amount of traffic, then the design will call for enough strength to support the maximum possible load expected on the bridge, plus an extra load beyond its intended capacity. The reason is simple: to insure a comfortable margin of safety so even if one of the calculations is a little off or if one of the gutters has an undetected flaw in it or even if there has been some damage to the bridge, everyone can rest assured that it won’t come crashing down. (At least, it is not supposed to. If not maintained properly or too much load is placed on it.. well that’s another thing.)

Engineers are asked to work between opposing forces of safety and cost. In many cases, a large factor of safety is practical because the cost of adding more material than is absolutely necessary is nominal. However, in some cases, there is also a need to keep effeciency of materials and construction to the maximum. An example of this is aircraft. Building an aircraft considerably stronger than it needs to be for routine operation would add too much weight and could actually effect safety (as well as effeciency and performance) negatively. In such circumstances, the factor of safety may be smaller, but in order to achieve this while still maintaining acceptable confidence in the safety of the aircraft, the degree of uncertainty must be reduced, thus necessitating rigorous testing and quality control.

Another application of “factor of safety” can be found in pharmaceuticals. In general, doctors are not permitted to prescribe the amount of a medication which would theoretically kill a patient. They’re not even allowed to prescribe anything close to it. Furthermore the greater the difference between a therapeutic dose of a drug is from the lethal dose of the drug is, the greater the factor of safety and thus the safer the drug is considered. Drugs with smaller factors of safety are always monitored very carefully, but those which have very little chance of causing problems are not subjected to the same scrutiny. A drug with a small factor of safety might be considered unsuitable for situations where it is not completely necessary to preserve life or health.

In a few circumstances, there is known to be a very high probability of danger or there are great unknowns. In these circumstances it is considered justified to expend more on safety than would be normally considered necessary in other circumstances. A case in point would be sending men to the moon. The Apollo program had vigorous safety measures, which were increased after the tragic Apollo-1 accident. Despite being tested on static stands and simulations, all rocket stages were tested without humans on board before being used for a manned flight. The Apollo command and lunar modules were completed by Apollo-7, but they were tested in earth orbit and then in lunar orbit before the first attempt to land on the moon. The first landing was brief and carried sparse equipment to save capacity. Later landings increased capability and duration. These safety measure would prove worth their price when Apollo-13 was nearly lost. Despite all the safety measures taken on the program, it was still understood to be a high risk mission and was undertaken by astronauts who understood the dangers. Richard Nixon’s speech writers had even prepared a speech to be given in the event of a loss of the crew.

Precautionary Principle: This is where common sense gets twisted into something very nonsensical.

Case in point: Cell Phone Towers and Wireless Transmitters

According to some, precautionary principle should be applied to cell phone transmitters and other RF devices. The proposals are to restrict the deployment of such towers and to especially assure that they are never placed remotely near to residential structures, schools, population centers and similar. Furthermore, proposals have been made for shielding on buildings in order to reduce exposure.

The consequences of doing so would include great expense on both mobile companies and customers, dramatically reduced quality of service and the need for cell phones to transmit at higher power levels in many areas, thereby actually increasing local RF field intensity. Such restrictions would also dramatically reduce the potential revenue to site owners from leases, including excluding schools and public property from lucrative site leases. Furthermore, the reduced quality of service can impact the use of cell phones for reporting emergencies as well as the ability of the system to triangulate the location of emergency calls. Because many of these protests also address government and dispatch radio services, such as TETRA, restrictions can also have an impact on the quality and reliability of communications to first responders, law enforcement and other emergency services.

Reasons not to worry:

-Extensive scientific study has failed to find any proof or even solid evidence showing any adverse health effects.

-Several extremely large and well controlled studies have been done on the subject and approved by well respected and credible scientific bodies.

-The inverse square law assures that any RF radiation exposure is extremely small at a normal distance from the transmitter.

-The levels at the base of a transmitter are often lower than those near a phone or even around wireless headsets, baby monitors, remote controls and alike.

-More than a half century of use of UHF and microwave communications, many much more powerful has failed to produce any noticable effects on health at low levels.

-The exposure limits set for RF radiation from transmitters are significantly lower than the levels at which damage to health has even been shown to be possible.

-No credible mechanism by which low-level RF radiation could have chronic health effects has been proposed.

-All or nearly all the claims of electrosensitivity, acute effects, health problems around transmitters and alike have failed to be verified by scientific tests, but they are very easily explained by very well established psycological and sociological effects which are analogous to numerous other cases seen throughout history.

Reasons to worry:

-RF radiation fields are rare, but not unheard of in natural settings where humans evolved.

-A lot of people have claimed that they could be harmful, although no valid evidence has been produced.

-RF radiation is known to be hazardous at very high levels, although this is primarily due to dielectric heating.

- It is remotely possible that a long term health effect from exposure to RF fields exists, but is so extremely weak and exists in so few cases that it has failed to stand out from the statistical noise despite the extensive studies done. Long-term associations with conditions like cancer can be difficult to verify when the link is not statistically strong and clear-cut.

The Interest in Precautionary Principle:

One might think that something as general as “Precautionary Principle” would not really be exciting enough to have any organizations devoted to it. This is not the case, however. There are several organizations which not only support Precautionary Principle, but have made it a major part of their reason for being or are entirely dedicated to the idea of precautionary principle. Seems a bit strange really to sit around and talk about precautions and how they can be stretched to the extreme, but that’s what they do!

Organizations:

The Precautionary Principle Project

Precaution.org - The Environmental Research Foundation

The Science And Environmental Health Network

Taking Precaution - The Bay Area Precautionary Principle Working Group

Environmental Commons

Be Safe Precautionary Campaign

Southeast Regional Precautionary Conference

The Center For Health, Environment and Justice

A Small Dose of Toxicology

Oregon Center for Environmental Health

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For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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