Greenies clutching at straws in endeavour to discredit Monsanto weedkiller

It's the most common domestic weedkiller there is --   billions of gallons of it have been used.  If there were any problem with it, such problems would then by now be glaringly obvious.  But hundreds of millions of people have used it without complaint.  But compared with a few unverifiable complaints, all those millions count for naught in the strange world of the Green/Left.

The lawsuit below seems to be based on something Monsanto discussed doing but did not actually do.  How flimsy is that?

Monsanto are to be commended for continuing to supply us with useful agricultural products despite unremitting attacks from  Greenie fanatics


Yolanda Mendoza makes the most of time spent with her children after battling stage 4 non-Hodgkins lymphoma for more than a year. “I have nerve damage, I don’t feel the tips of my fingers, my jaw, its still, I still can’t feel it,” she said.

Mendoza blames glyphosate, the main chemical ingredient in the weed killer Roundup, which she used on her lawn every weekend.

“I had a backpack that held two gallons of water and I would strap it on and I would just walk around spraying,” she said.

Mendoza is one of hundreds of people around the country suing Monsanto, Roundup’s parent company. Their lawyers cite a 2015 World Health Organization study that says glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic” and damages DNA in human cells.

“The data that they look at, they cherry pick it,” said Dr. Donna Farmer, a Monsanto scientist who spoke with CBS News last summer.  “There is no data indicating that we should change any recommendations on how this product should be used. Glyphosate, the data is clear, doesn’t cause cancer,” Farmer said then.

But now, the data is in question.

Newly released court documents in a federal lawsuit suggest Monsanto planned to ghostwrite a positive report on glyphosate and get experts to back it up. A scientist wrote in an email “...we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names.”

Court documents also reveal conversations between Monsanto executives and an EPA director about a federal glyphosate review. “I doubt EPA and Jess can kill this, but it’s good to know they are going to actually make the effort,” a Monsanto executive wrote.

In a statement to CBS News, Monsanto said “These allegations are false. Monsanto scientists did not ghostwrite the paper.” The company reiterated “No regulatory body in the world considers glyphosate to be a carcinogen.”

But in California, a judge recently ruled the state can legally require them to warn customers the main ingredient for Roundup has the potential to cause cancer.

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Trump targets Obama’s global warming emissions rule for cars

President Trump will ask federal regulators Wednesday to formally evaluate the Obama administration’s landmark greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars.

The action, a top request from the automaker lobby to the new president, is the first step toward potentially weakening the aggressive standards that set a goal of a 54.5 mile-per-gallon auto fleet in 2025.

Trump will make the announcement during a trip to Michigan, the center of the domestic auto industry. He is expected to frame the action as a way to help auto industry jobs and consumer choice.

While automakers and congressional Republicans have pushed hard for the review and rollback, environmentalists and consumer advocates say former President Barack Obama’s standards protect the climate while saving consumers money.

A senior White House official told reporters Tuesday that the review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) greenhouse gas standards would fulfill a promise Obama made in 2012 to the industry. The EPA developed the standards as a single program alongside the Department of Transportation’s fuel economy rules, popularly known as Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards.

Automakers agreed to comply with the standards — which get stronger through the 2025 model year — in exchange for a formal review in 2018 into whether they’re still feasible for 2022 to 2025.

But the EPA under Obama completed that review in January, days before Trump’s inauguration, an action that automakers said violated their agreement.

“We’re going to pull back the EPA’s determination, because we don’t think it’s right,” the White House official said.

“And we’re going to spend another year looking at the data in front of us, making sure everything is right, so that when we come to 2018, we can set standards that are technologically feasible, economically feasible, that allow the auto industry to continue to grow and create jobs, which is very important to the president.”

The official called the previous administration’s process “very short-circuited,” and accused those regulators of ignoring “a voluminous record of data” about the shortcomings of the standards.

But the official cautioned that the Trump administration is not committing to roll back the standards at this point. Any changes would require a formal rulemaking process, which would likely take a year or more and could be subject to lawsuits from environmentalists and other opponents.

The order will be the latest in a line of orders and actions from Trump to repeal or weaken Obama environmental regulations.

Trump last month ordered the EPA to begin the process of repealing Obama’s Clean Water Rule. EPA head Scott Pruitt has canceled a regulation on chemical plant safety and an effort to gather data for a potential methane emissions rule for oil and natural gas drilling.

Trump has proposed cutting a quarter of the EPA’s budget, and is expected to sign an order as soon as this week to start undoing the Clean Power Plan, the coal leasing moratorium on federal land and other climate change programs.

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Scum protesters

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wrapped up its $1.1 million cleanup of the Dakota Access pipeline protest camps on federal land in North Dakota, hauling away 835 dumpsters of remaining trash and debris. The site, once occupied by thousands of environmental demonstrators, is now vacant.

The federal cleanup at the last of the three camps, Sacred Stone, was declared finished Thursday.

A Florida sanitation company completed work that began Feb. 23 to hasten the massive restoration project started in late January by the Standing Rock Sioux.

Meanwhile, a local animal shelter rescued four more dogs found at the North Dakota encampment, bringing the total number of dogs found after the last of the protesters evacuated to 12.
“We are happy to report that all animals have been accounted for throughout the Dakota Access Pipeline protest sites,” Furry Friends Rockin’ Rescue of Bismarck-Mandan said in an online post.

The tribe, aided by state and local agencies as well as some protest volunteers, launched the cleanup over concerns that snowmelt would inevitably wash tons of garbage and waste left by protesters into the Cannonball River.

Corps Capt. Ryan Hignight said a total of 8,170 cubic yards of debris was removed from the three camps — Sacred Stone, Oceti Sakowin and Rosebud — all within the flood plain on federally managed land. “In total, there were 835 roll-off dumpsters of trash and debris removed from the three camps together,” Capt. Hignight said in an email.

Some items, including propane tanks and lumber, were set aside for recycling, The Associated Press reported.

The crew cleaned up only garbage on federal land. Sacred Stone, where 2,160 cubic yards of debris were removed, is partially on tribal land. “I am unable to confirm if the camp not located on corps-managed land is clean,” said Capt. Hignight.

The protesters descended on the area by the thousands last year in a show of opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline, a 1,172-mile, four-state project expected to be completed and ready to flow oil as early as this week.

Two tribes, the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux, filed an appeal Monday of a federal judge’s decision last week denying their request for a preliminary injunction to stop the project and asked the judge to block the delivery of oil until the appeal is heard.

Volunteers with Furry Friends rescued six puppies and two adult dogs shortly after the evacuation and picked up another four dogs March 5. “Thank you to Fort Yates Game and Fish for holding the four dogs until FFRR could bring them into our care,” said the shelter. “Another thank you goes to Morton County Sheriff Department for allowing us to use their animal impound facility for quarantine.

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Doctor groups take up global warming advocacy

These people are just political prostitutes.  Doctors of all people should know that COLD weather is the danger to health.  Have they not noticed that they are busier during winter?

Under a political advocacy campaign launched Wednesday, a coalition of physician groups will tell the public that their health is threatened by catastrophic man-made global warming, also called climate change.

Participating doctors will also urge government action to reduce the damage believed to be caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

Skeptics of global warming say climate models have failed to predict the current hiatus in global warming. Global warming believers say that when properly adjusted for accuracy, temperature trends show no hiatus.

The Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health is led by Dr. Mona Sarfaty, Director of the Program on Climate and Health in the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.

The consortium said in a press release that it represents more than half of American physicians. Its members include the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, Immunology; American Academy of Family Physicians); American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP); American College of Physicians (ACP); ecoAmerica, and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

On Wednesday, the consortium issued a report titled, “Medical Alert! Climate Change Is Harming Our Health.”

The consortium pointed to a recent study by Abt Associates, a group that works on environmental sustainability and global warming issues. The study said reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the Northeastern states has prevented from 300 to 830 early adult deaths.

The study also said reducing greenhouse gas emissions in those states has averted, 39,000-47,000 lost work days, 35-390 non-fatal heart attacks, 8,200-9,900 asthma flare-ups, 180-220 hospital admissions, as well as saving money.

"Here's the message from America's doctors on climate change: it's not only happening in the Arctic Circle, it's happening here,” Sarfaty said in the press release. “It's not only a problem for us in 2100, it's a problem now. And it's not only hurting polar bears, it's hurting us.”

Sarfaty has made numerous political contributions, nearly all to Democratic groups or candidates. These include former president Barack Obama, 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, according to the Federal Election Commission’s website.

The consortium is run by The George Mason University Program on Climate & Health.

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Australian Prime Minister announces plans for $2 billion hydro scheme that will need no new dams

This looks like being a very clever way of bypassing Greenie protest but it is very expensive.  You could build several coal-fired stations for the same cost

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has revealed plans for a $2 billion expansion of the iconic Snowy Hydro scheme that could power up to 500,000 homes through a new network of tunnels and power stations.

The surprise intervention, a potential game-changer in the political brawl over flaws in the nation's electricity system, will increase the scheme's 4100 megawatt capacity by as much as 50 per cent.

The four-year project would massively increase the amount of renewable energy storage capacity in Australia through pumped hydro technology, which involves using cheap electricity to pump water uphill so it can be later released downhill through turbines, creating electricity when demand is high.

No new dams would be built, but a fresh series of tunnels and power stations are on the agenda, at an estimated cost of $1.5 to $2 billion. A feasibility study should be completed by the end of 2017 and the search for expansions sites will led by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. The Tantangara Dam is understood to be an early area of interest.

The Snowy Hydro Scheme as seen from the air. © Supplied The Snowy Hydro Scheme as seen from the air. The Snowy Hydro scheme was instigated under Labor prime minister Ben Chifley in 1949 and completed in 1974. About 100,000 men and women from more than 30 countries helped build a network of nine power stations, 16 dams, 145 kilometres of tunnels, and 80 kilometres of aqueducts.

The Commonwealth owns 13 per cent of the scheme, NSW 58 per cent and the Victorian government 29 per cent. Those state governments could also be asked to assist with funding the expansion.

Mr Turnbull said the Snowy Hydro had been built with the capability to be expanded and his government planned to maximise its capacity.

"The unprecedented expansion will help make renewables reliable, filling in holes caused by intermittent supply and generator outages. It will enable greater energy efficiency and help stabilise electricity supply into the future," Mr Turnbull said.

"By supercharging the Snowy Hydro precinct, we can ensure affordable and reliable electricity for Australian households and businesses."

"It will enable greater energy efficiency": Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said of the Snowy Hydro expansion. © Andrew Meares "It will enable greater energy efficiency": Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said of the Snowy Hydro expansion. Mr Turnbull said the expansion would create thousands of engineering and construction jobs and have no impact on water supplied water to irrigators in New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland.

It would also effectively kill off any short or medium-term to privatise the scheme, which was raised by the Coalition's Commission of Audit in 2014. The Howard government considered privatisation in 2006, but later dropped it.

The proposed expansion could, in one hour, produce 20 times the 100 megawatts of power from the proposed battery farm announced by the South Australian government earlier this week.

Mr Turnbull will make the announcement in the heart of the Snowy Mountains on Thursday morning, a day after meeting the chief executives of major east coast companies and securing guarantees of additional supply for the domestic market during peak periods.

Earlier this week, Mr Turnbull was also briefed by ARENA chief executive Ivor Frischknecht on pumped hydro storage.

Australia currently has 2.5 gigawatts of pumped hydro power capacity, with most of it from three projects: the Tumut 3 plant in the Snowy, the Wivenhoe Dam near Brisbane and the Shoalhaven scheme south of Sydney. All three projects are used for electricity generation, water storage and irrigation and if all operated at full capacity, they could power 3.3 million homes

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