Leftist projection again

Hydrologist Fiona Johnson, the dear lady below, is upset that debate about climate change is uncivil. So who is it who calls skeptics "deniers" (as in "holocaust deniers") and wants to lock them up? FiFi had better start talking to her own colleagues.

And she seems to be shocked that  "some people seem to believe that scientists can't be trusted."  Would that belief spring from "Mike's nature trick" or "hiding the decline"?  Would it spring from the chronic refusal by Warmists to make their raw data available?

And her argumentation about the evidence for global warming is brainless. She says:  "For climate change, the evidence is clear that carbon dioxide and temperatures are increasing".  But that is not the question.  The question is whether CO2 is CAUSING significant warming.  It's called the "climate sensitivity" question, dear lady.   FiFi is either a fluffhead or a crook
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Science is an exciting field to work in. There is a whole universe of problems out there waiting for someone to solve. But science doesn't exist in a vacuum.

For me, the most interesting part of being an engineer is using my research to help individuals, and society in general, make better decisions..

I would imagine the motivation is similar for the hundreds of scientists who spent months compiling the latest IPCC report released on Monday, and the thousands more who've spent their careers trying to understand the mechanisms of global warming, its timeframe and impacts.

The report has been well received by many, but for some people the report seems to be seen as a personal affront, written by a bunch of scientists solely for the purpose of destroying the world that they live in.

The reality is that the IPCC report is a document of careful language and moderated statements, approved by the governments of 195 countries.

When scientists work together to report results, our language is carefully calibrated, with the caveats and limitations of our work thought out and often explicitly discussed.

Science is a dialogue and our work is incremental – there is rarely a breakthrough paper.

We work together in teams and discuss, argue, revise and gradually make progress. This is a lifetime of work; a marathon, not a sprint.

There are many subtleties in any profession and we can't expect people outside of our individual fields to understand these. I don't expect to understand the legal arguments in a court of law or commercial deals. And it is unreasonable to expect that the measurement methods or the scientific process that I take for granted in my work are any more transparent to a lawyer.

At some point, though, unless we have unlimited time to become experts ourselves, we need to trust that the professionals in any field are good at what they do. That's what it means to be professional. But some people seem to believe that scientists can't be trusted.

Some level of scepticism is a good thing – no one should take all information at face value. But thinking that all scientists and engineers are wrong until proven otherwise does not give any credit for the amount of work that goes into my research, the IPCC reports and the work of all other scientists.

Interacting with the media brings another level of complication to the relationship between science and the community. Scientists are used to promoting their research at conferences, to peers and to funding authorities. But our incremental discoveries or improvements may not make for an interesting story for the daily media. Reporting timeframes, particularly in the digital age, are much quicker than the timelines that research operates on.

Information is more available than ever, but is the digital age improving the quality of the conversations? The anonymity of email and comments on websites and blogs means that people end up in a virtual shouting match where rarely anyone is listening properly.

I find it frustrating that the comments in social media and on forums degenerate in a fairly predictable way when it comes to so-called debates about human-induced climate change.

But we are having the wrong debate. For climate change, the evidence is clear that carbon dioxide and temperatures are increasing. Where is the interest in debating observations?

What is more interesting is when we have to make decisions that depend on the values that we hold as a community. Someone may value free markets, someone else may value the natural diversity of our coral reefs, whilst a third may value a large house on the beach. The debate that we need to have is how these values can co-exist or if they can't then how to prioritise them. But the current level of vitriol doesn't promote rational discussions.

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Clouds on the solar horizon

Consumers considering installing solar panels on their rooftops have far more to think through than the initial decision to “go solar.”

They may search for the best price, only to discover, as customers in central Florida did, that after paying $20,000-40,000 for their systems, they are stuck with installations that may be unusable or unsafe. BlueChip Energy — which also operated as Advanced Solar Photonics (ASP) and SunHouse Solar — sold its systems at environmental festivals and home shows. Buyers thought they were getting a good deal and doing the right thing for the environment. Instead, they were duped.

A year ago, it was revealed that BlueChip Energy’s solar panels had counterfeit UL labels — this means that the panels may not comply with standard safety requirements established by the independent global certification company Underwriters Laboratory. The Orlando Sentinel reports: “UL testing assures that a product won’t catch fire, will conduct electricity properly and can withstand weather. Without such testing, no one is certain if the solar panels may fail.” Additionally, it states: “Without the safety testing, they shouldn’t be connected to the electric grid” — which leaves customers nervous about possible risks such as overheating. Other reports claim that BlueChip inflated the efficiency rates of its photovoltaic panels, which do not meet “65 percent of the company’s published performance ratings.”

In July 2013, BlueChip’s assets were sold off at pennies on the dollar and customers were left with rooftop solar packages that now have no warranty.

With the shakeout in the solar photovoltaic industry, bankruptcy is a key concern for buyers. No company equals no warranty.

Two of China’s biggest panel makers have failed. On March 20, 2013, Suntech, one of the world’s biggest solar panel manufacturers, filed bankruptcy. Earlier this month Shanghai Chaori Solar became China’s first domestic corporate bond default. The Wall Street Journal reports that another, Baoding Tainwei, has reported a second year of losses and investors are waiting to “see if officials will let it fail.”

Regarding Suntech’s bankruptcy, an industry report says the following about the warranties: “While Suntech has said that it was committed to maintaining the warranty obligations on its products following the bankruptcy, we are unsure if customers will be willing to take a risk considering the firm’s faltering financials.”

Last month, it was reported that solar panels can be “dangerous in an emergency.” Firefighters have been forced to stop fighting a fire due to electrocution concerns. The report quotes Northampton, MA, Fire Chief Brian Duggan as saying electrocution is not their only concern: “cutting through the roof for ventilation would also take a lot longer.” Springfield fire commissioner Joe Conant says: “nothing will stop them if there’s a life to be saved, but if it’s simply to save the structure, solar panels may keep them from going on the roof.

A Fox News story on the risk solar panels pose to fire-fighters states: “Two recent fires involving structures decked with solar panels have triggered complaints from fire chiefs and calls for new codes and regulations that reflect the dangers posed by the clean-energy devices. A two-alarm fire last week at a home in Piedmont, Calif., prompted Piedmont Fire Chief Warren McLaren to say the technology ‘absolutely’ made it harder on firefighters. Weeks earlier, in Delanco, NJ, more than 7,000 solar panels on the roof of a massive 300,000-square foot warehouse factored into Delanco Fire Chief Ron Holt’s refusal to send his firefighters onto the roof of a Dietz & Watson facility.”

In part, due to the increased fire concerns, roof-top solar panels can increase the cost of homeowners insurance. A potential solar customer told me: “If you are thinking solar panels on the roof, check your home insurance. Ours would have added a costly rider to cover them and roof. That was another strike in our decision.”

Then, of course, there are new concerns about scam artists like the one in North Carolina who collected “money from victims under false pretense that he would buy and install solar panels in their residences.”

As if all of that wasn’t enough, a new potentially fraudulent scheme has just been exposed.

A recent report from the Arizona Republic, points to complaints the Arizona Corporation Commission — the state’s top utility regulator — is getting from Tucson customers of SolarCity Corporation. They claim: “the solar leasing company is misleading them regarding the state rules for hooking up a solar array.”

In essence, customers in Tucson are being told one thing by their utility, Tucson Electric Power (TEP), but something else by a private solar power company, SolarCity — the nation’s second largest solar electrical contractor. This has drawn the ire of Bob Stump, Chairman of the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC). “This is an issue of consumer protection and solar installer transparency,” Stump told the Arizona Republic.

Stump made his concerns clear in a March 12 letter to Lyndon Rive, SolarCity’s Chief Executive Officer: “I am concerned that you — as well as other solar providers — may be communicating with customers in a way that is both confusing and misleading and which deprives them of the balanced information they need in order to make informed decisions.”

The letter states: “Some customers … say that solar providers have told them that the rates, rules and regulations applicable to net metering are ‘grandfathered,’ thereby implying that the rates associated with net metering are not subject to change.” As a result, Stump says: “Customers are then surprised, disappointed, and angry to learn from TEP that this may not be the case.”

As a vocal advocate for responsible energy — which I define as energy that is efficient, effective and economical — I have closely followed what is happening with Arizona’s solar industry. There, when the ACC proposed a modification to the net-metering policies to make them more equitable to all utility customers, the solar industry mounted an aggressive PR campaign in attempt to block any changes. When the decision was made in November to add a monthly fee onto the utility bills of new solar customers to make them pay for using the power grid, I applauded the effort.

In light of this new issue, with a leading solar company misleading customers, it is time for the nation’s regulators to take a hard look at their states’ policies. Remember, this past summer, Georgia regulators voted for solar leasing such as SolarCity offers.

Pat Lyons, one of New Mexico’s Public Regulatory Commissioners, watched what happened in Arizona’s net metering battle. Upon learning about SolarCity’s potential deception, he was alarmed. “As solar leasing, like SolarCity pushes, moves into additional markets, regulators across the country need to be aware of the potential pitfalls and misrepresentations.”

It is vital that solar providers be held to the same high standard to which we hold our electric utilities and are made to answer tough questions about consumer protection, safety, and operation issues. Stump’s letter to SolarCity’s CEO asked for responses to his questions by March 31 and said he will “be placing this matter on a Commission open meeting agenda in the near future in order to discuss these important concerns with my fellow commissioners.”

It may be too late to protect some solar customers in Tucson, but there is still a chance to make sure others are treated fairly. If things don’t change, the dark clouds hovering over the industry will be raining on unsuspecting customers.

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The Secret Anti-Global-Warming Machine

Hey! All you progressive Democrats out there? Whatever you've been doing to prevent global warming? Cut it out! Now! Hear me? It's spring for cripe sakes. It's supposed to be warming up - even around here in the Maine mountains - and it's not. There's more than two feet of snow on the ground out there and more coming! And it doesn't melt right away like it's supposed to this time of year either. All the skiers and snowmobilers are ready too, but it just keeps building up. People are getting tired of this, and I'm blaming you.

I've been looking back at the last five years since you took over down and I'm starting to catch on. You started off raising and spending all that "stimulus" money - a trillion dollars almost - and I can't see any economic stimulus going on at all! Where is it? Joe Biden kept telling us four years ago us that "Recovery Summer" was on its way. Well it never came! We're all still waiting out here. Now we're thinking summer itself isn't coming this year either, much any less economic recovery! Spring hasn't shown up and we're thinking summer won't either.

You said there were thousands of shovel ready jobs out there, and you were going to use that trillion dollars to build infrastructure like they did back in the Great Depression. Well where is it? You guys said Herbert Hoover was an idiot and you blamed him for the Great Depression, but at least he built the Hoover Dam! It's still there - still generating electricity - and it only took five years to finish. It's been that long since you raised and spent that trillion dollars, so what have you got to show for it? Nothing! Where did all the money go? We could have built lots of Hoover Dams.

And how about the Golden Gate Bridge? That was built with stimulus money during the Great Depression and it's still there too. It cost $35 million, and that would be over $500 million in today's money. We could have built over fifteen hundred Golden Gate Bridges with the money you guys spent on this "stimulus," but we don't see any bridges. We don't see anything!

You promised lots of green jobs too. Where are they? You spent billions on solar energy development, and windmill development, and battery development. How many of the companies you invested in are bankrupt? How come the cost of electricity keeps going up? Where did all that money go?

Like I said, I've been thinking about all this and my theory is that you didn't spend the money on economic stimulus at all. You didn't spend it on renewable energy either because those companies are gone - poof! It's looking to me like all that was a big smokescreen. I'm thinking you spent it all on some secret project to prevent global warming that you're not telling us about, and it's all gotten out of control! That's why it's so friggin' cold!

You really wanted to do it with your "Cap and Trade" bill, but it couldn't pass the Senate. You wanted to take over the energy industry like you took over the health care industry with Obamacare. So, what did you do instead? You took the trillion dollars for stimulus and you spent it all on a secret Anti-Global-Warming Machine and it's bringing on another ice age! I'll bet it's got a giant super-computer that has outsmarted its programmers. You had all your best computer geeks working on that instead of the Obamacare web site - and that's why it's so screwed up. You put all the geek wannabes to work on Obamacare and they were all morons!

Then you used the National Security Agency to spy on all our phone calls, all our emails, all our internet searches - so you could keep it all secret! The NSA didn't see the Benghazi  Attack coming, did it? That took you all by surprise, and you made up a story about some stupid internet video nobody ever saw, and you kept that story up for weeks! And the NSA obviously wasn't keeping an eye on Syria, was it! Obama said Assad was going to fall "any day now" and he's still in there! Hillary Clinton said she "reset" our relations with Russia, but you didn't see the Crimea invasion coming, did you? No! Because the NSA was so busy keeping the Giant Anti-Global Warming Machine secret, they didn't have time to spy on our enemies like they're supposed to. They're spying on us instead.

And last week you said you were pulling an all-nighter to discuss global warming. Hah! This time I believe you! You were trying to figure out how to get a handle on that machine, because if you don't, it's going to be like this right through 'til next winter!

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Scaring the World about its Climate‏

By Alan Caruba

Ever since the creation in 1988 of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it has engaged in the greatest hoax of modern times, releasing reports that predict climate-related catastrophes as if the climate has not been a completely natural and dynamic producer of events that affect our lives.

The IPCC was set up by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program. It has enlisted thousands of scientists to contribute to its scare campaign, but as Joseph Bast, the president of The Heartland Institute, noted in a recent Forbes article regarding the vast difference in the assertions of the IPCC scientists and those of its puckishly named Nonintergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), “What is a non-scientist to make of these dueling reports? Indeed, what is a scientist to make of this?”

“Very few scientists are familiar with biology, geology, physics, oceanography, engineering, medicine, economics, and scores of other more specialized disciplines that were the basis of the claims…” The IPCC has depended on the ignorance of those scientists outside their particular disciplines and recruited them to be involved in the UN hoax. The rest of us look to them to provide guidance regarding issues involving the climate and, as a result, have been deliberately deceived.

The NIPCC, anticipating the latest IPCC addition to its climate scare campaign, has just issued a new addition to its “Climate Change Reconsidered” reports. The first volume was 850 pages long and the latest is more than 1,000 pages. It represents the findings of scores of scientists from around the world and thousands of peer-reviewed studies. At this point they represent some twenty nations.

I have been an advisor to The Heartland Institute for many years and have been exposing the climate change lies since the late 1980s. A science writer, I have benefited from the work of men like atmospheric physicist, S. Fred Singer, a founder of the NPCC who has overseen five reports debunking the IPCC since 2003.

The Heartland Institute has sponsored nine international conferences that have brought together many scientists and others in an effort to debunk the UN’s climate scare campaign.

I have always depended on the common sense of people to understand that humans have nothing to do with the climate except to endure and enjoy it. We don’t create it or influence it.

The global warming campaign is based on the Big Lie that carbon dioxide (CO2) traps the Sun’s heat and warms the Earth, but the fairly miniscule amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (0.038%) does not do that in a fashion that poses any threat. Indeed, it is the Sun that determines the Earth’s climate, depending where you happen to be on the Earth. Next to oxygen, CO2 is vital to all life on Earth as it is the “food” on which all vegetation depends. More CO2 is good. Less is not so good.

The IPCC has depended in part on the print and broadcast media to spread its Big Lie. It also depends on world leaders, few of whom have any background or serious knowledge of atmospheric science, to impose policies based on the Big Lie. These policies target the use of “fossil fuels”, oil, coal and natural gas, urging a reduction of their use. The world, however, utterly depends on them and, in addition to existing reserves, new reserves are found every year.

One reason the IPCC has been in a growing state of panic is a new, completely natural cooling cycle based on a reduction of solar radiation. As James M. Taylor, the managing editor of Heartland’s “Environment & Climate News”, pointed out recently, “Winter temperatures in the contiguous United States declined by more than a full degree Celsius (more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit) during the past twenty years.” He was citing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. “The data contradicts assertions that human induced global warming is causing a rise in winter temperatures.”

In addition to the recent extremely cold winter, there have been others in 2000-2001 and 2009-2010. There will be more.

The IPCC report is full of claims about global warming, now called “climate change” since the world is obviously not warming. In March, Taylor rebutted an IPCC claim that crop production is falling, noting that global corn, rice, and wheat production have more than tripled since 1970. In recent years, the U.S. has set records for alfalfa, cotton, beans, sugar beets, canola, corn, flaxseed, hops, rice, sorghum, soybeans, sugarcane, sunflowers, peanuts, and wheat, to name just a few.

The Earth would benefit from more, not less, CO2 emissions, but the Obama administration has been engaged in imposing hundreds of new regulations aimed at reductions. It targets the development and expansion of our energy sector. The President has repeated the lies in his State of the Union speeches and we have a Secretary of State, John Kerry, who insists that climate change is the greatest threat to mankind and not the increase of nuclear weapons.

Every one of the Earth’s seven billion population are being subjected to the UN’s campaign of lies and every one of us needs to do whatever we can to bring about an end to the United Nations and reject the IPCC’s claims.

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5 Ways Environmentalism Harms the Environment

Friends of the Earth, Earthwatch, Environmental Defense Fund, Green Cross International, The Climate Project, World Resources Institute, WWF, and of course the inevitable Greenpeace.

These are just some of the  environmental organizations that have for decades been pushing for – and in many cases outright lobbying for – ever more stringent environmental regulations to save the Earth and humanity from supposed catastrophe. Undoubtedly the majority of the people involved with these and other organizations are well-intentioned individuals that sincerely believe in their cause. That is not to say, however, that they are absolved from scrutiny as to the consequences of their (political) actions; you judge a tree by its fruits.

As it turns out, it can be quite convincingly argued that the very people and organizations purportedly fighting for protection of the environment are achieving much different outcomes, and one does not have to dig very deep at all to discover what those outcomes really are. As you read this, understand that this is not a ringing endorsement of a throw-away society, but rather an honest attempt at dissecting the arguments made for increasingly strict environmental policies and examining the results thereof.

1. Tilting the balance in favor of large corporations

“Green” regulations, like any and all forms of regulation, disproportionally hurt small and medium-sized businesses. After all, large (multinational) corporations have the financial resources and manpower that their smaller competitors lack to deal with the regulatory burden. As such each and every new law passed further threatens the very existence of mom-and-pop stores in your neighborhood. And unlike multinationals they don’t have the lobbying power to turn the regulatory tide, either. The result? Fewer local stores in your area, forcing you to drive farther away for your groceries. True, you will likely plan ahead to avoid having to go to the store every day, but that means you now need a car to transport all those groceries in. You might not have needed that car to begin with if you could just stop by your local grocer that’s now gone out of business.

2. Increasing pollution with “green” energy

Wind turbines don’t come falling from the sky. They require vast amounts of steel produced in steel mills and the fiber composite that make up the blades is manufactured in a chemical plant. Then there is the issue of rare earth metals (or rare earths), used in everything from electric car batteries to wind turbines to solar panels. Nearly all production today takes place in China, where both people and the environment suffer due to the hazardous and radioactive byproducts released in the process. Mines and processing plants are struggling to keep up with the demand artificially pushed up by governments in the form of tax incentives and massive subsidies.

3. Impoverishing people

Speaking of subsidies, one of the major recipients has been the “green jobs” industry. In an attempt to appeal to a broader audience, the argument is that specific policies would lead not only to a better environment, but also boost the economy through the creation of “good jobs”. Though the proponents of green jobs have yet to find agreement on what defines such a job, what has become clear is that the net effect on employment is actually negative. In the UK 3.7 jobs are lost for every green job while in Spain the ratio stands at 2.2 jobs lost per green job. Poof!

To make matters worse, prominent green jobs reports such as the UNEP report even go so far as to rail against high-productivity jobs lest they “pose the dual challenge of environmental impact and unemployment”[1]. Apparently the report’s authors are totally oblivious to the fact that increased productivity is what makes a society wealthier, and that the inefficient use of resources for the sake of “spreading the work” will inevitably make everyone poorer.

It goes without saying that poor people will naturally care less about the environment and more about where their next meal is going to come from. While rich people have the luxury of worrying about the environment, poor people do not. So the wealthier a society, the more likely it is to take good care of the environment.

4. Wasting resources mandating recycling

I know this is going to sound counterintuitive – as it did to me – but recycling does not always save energy or money. The latter makes sense considering the top-down approach that has dominated environmental initiatives; if there was any money in recycling, force would not have been necessary to bring it about. New York City’s recycling program, for instance, costs the taxpayer almost double what it would cost to just throw glass, metal, and plastic away.

Still, it would be one thing to spend all that taxpayer money on recycling if it actually saved resources. Unfortunately even that is not necessarily the case. Trees are planted and grown on tree farms specifically to make paper and as such do not contribute to deforestation. Other materials such as glass and aluminum can be effectively recycled, benefitting both the environment and the economy. However, businesses involved with the production of these materials have an inherent incentive to recycle anyway, so there is no need for regulatory requirements there.

5. Carbon taxes

Carbon taxes help funnel money into wind and solar power, which also come with environmental problems even in addition to the aforementioned. Solar thermal technology, for instance, consumes huge quantities of water – you know, the substance that is generally already lacking in areas where solar panels are the preferred “renewable energy” source (e.g. California, southern Spain).

Solar panel fields and wind farms are also very land-intensive, and wind farms negatively impact animals in the form of habitat loss and fragmentation. Besides, few people find wind turbines scattered over the countryside to be of benefit to the landscape. Some even suffer negative health effects that have been linked to living near a wind farm.

Finally, carbon taxes aggravate the aforementioned problems of favoring large over small businesses and impoverishing people.

Given these issues it would behoove environmentalists to consider the unintended consequences of their push for continued “climate action”, even aside from the debate over whether or not climate change is man-made to begin with. Having blind faith in politicians and special interest groups that try to greenwash their agenda to appeal to your sense of justice may not be the best strategy if you really care about the environment.

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Trouble on the prairie: Feds call chicken ‘threatened,’ but what about the residents?

The specter of big government regulation has been cast over western Kansas, and opponents are fearing the worst.

Following the announcement Thursday that the lesser prairie-chicken has been reclassified as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act, farmers, ranchers and advocates are warning the decision will have far-reaching effects for rural residents of the state.

“This is not a good result for agriculture in Kansas,” said Jim Sipes, Farm Bureau director for the southwest corner of the state. “It’s going to lead to a lot of restrictions on land use, and that’s going to lead to a lot of energy development issues.”

For cash-strapped rural counties in western Kansas, Sipes said, local governments rely heavily on the energy industry to provide a stable tax base. With added restrictions enacted by the listing, it will only increase pressure to raise property taxes.

Ken Klemm, a Sherman County rancher and president of the Kansas Natural Resources Coalition, sides with other opponents in arguing that it’s the lack of rainfall, not humanity’s encroachment, that has led to a decline in the lesser prairie-chicken’s population in recent years.

“The heavy hand of the Endangered Species Act will not make it rain,” Klemm told Kansas Watchdog.

Klem said the Range-wide Conservation Plan – a response from the five states covering the chicken’s habitat intended to pre-empt the ruling – could result in more than $2 billion in reduced property valuations. But Ron Kaufman, spokesman for the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism, says folks shouldn’t get worked up just yet.

“It is very premature to try and forecast what will happen with western Kansas,” Kaufman said.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service public affairs specialist Lesli Gray reiterated to Kansas Watchdog that protections afforded under the “4(d) rule” will protect individuals who inadvertently kill the protected species as long as they’re enrolled in an approved conservation plan, like the RWCP. Gray noted, however, that the agency has yet to determine what it considers a successful recovery of the bird’s population.

“We’ll work with states and industry and other folks to develop that recovery plan,” Gray said.

But to opponents, even more infuriating is the rationale used to justify the decision. Both sides can agree on one thing: Lesser prairie-chicken numbers have been on the rise since 1997, though a recent drought has caused a significant dip. But the feds say that doesn’t go back far enough.

According to the official ruling released Thursday (caution: it’s a slog at 444 pages), USFWS officials are speculating on pre-European settlement population figures as cause for such concern.

“An examination of anecdotal information on historical numbers of lesser prairie-chickens indicates that numbers likely have declined from possibly millions of birds to current estimates of thousands of birds,” the decision stated.

How’s that for certainty?

Klemm said such a rationale is nothing short of ridiculous.  “If that’s what they’re going to use as a yardstick to judge species under the Endangered Species act, watch out,” he stated.

Klemm added that the KNRC will look to join any legal action taken against the federal government because of the decision.

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For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

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