NOW NATURAL GAS IS BAD

You can never please a Greenie. Without something to complain about they would lose their purpose in life

Natural gas battle shifts to imports: "Environmental activist groups, despite last year successfully calling for increased importation of foreign natural gas as an alternative to domestic drilling, are now engaging in a campaign to oppose natural gas imports. ... Having coerced the shift to natural gas, however, the activist groups now have embarked on a campaign to ban domestic natural gas drilling. Throwing up environmental arguments in opposition to virtually all new applications to drill for gas, the groups succeeded in creating a natural gas shortage severe enough by the summer of 2003 to capture the attention of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Congressional hearings."

GREENIES HATE ONE-ANOTHER TOO

The "red" Greenies show the usual mock-horror about ("racist") immigration limitation. But the Deep Greens REALLY hate people so want to keep anybody out that they can. The two groups recently fought for control of the Sierra Club and the reds seem to have won for now. Below is a report of part of the aftermath. Excerpt only:

"Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, needs to get out more. In the May-June 2004 issue of Sierra, the official publication of the Sierra Club, he penned an editorial entitled "The Virus of Hate." In it he discusses the tactics of various people "on the losing side" of the recent Sierra Club election, accusing them of having

"entered into an ugly alliance with individuals and groups whose motivations are clearly racist. As a result, earlier this year, I sadly opened a new file folder to deal with a virus-not a computer virus, but a very ancient human virus, one that now threatens to infect the Sierra Club: the virus of hate."

.....

But do not expect logic to slow down those who find the labels of racist and racism useful. The real hate is in the Carl Popes of this world who value political correctness above all else, and who see any honest discussion of racial/ethnic issues as anathema and as racist. Of course we all know why. If honest discussion of our major issues were to be the rule rather than the exception, their little pipe-dream world would collapse."

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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WATER IN THE DESERT IS BAD?

Israel's hydrological genius (he finds water when no-one else can) speaks:

"If you compare the archaeology of civilisations with the evidence of past climates you find that almost all major historical change in the Middle East has been the result of big changes in climate. When the climate becomes cooler the deserts get wetter, the land blooms and civilisations flourish. People came from the north bringing copper around 4000 BC, bronze around 2500 BC and iron in 1000 BC. But in between there were periods of aridity and crisis when the civilisations collapsed.

Q: That sounds a bit deterministic. What's the evidence?

Yes, this sort of environmental determinism isn't very popular. Historians and archaeologists put all the blame for historical catastrophes on human society. For instance, they blame the Sumerians in Mesopotamia for poisoning their soils with salt by over-irrigating them around 2000 BC. But we now know the climate became warmer and drier then, so they ran out of water to flush the soil clean. The Arabs were blamed for turning the Middle East into desert after the 7th century, when the real culprit was, climate. We can see this from the fact that lake levels fell all across the Middle East at the same times as civilisations failed. Also changes in oxygen isotopes in lake deposits and stalagmites show how the climate changed.

Q: Your views are controversial among environmentalists as well, aren't they?

Yes. I want to plant the deserts with trees, but I find environmentalists are like religious fundamentalists who don't want change. They cannot imagine another landscape from the one we have now. They say we should preserve the desert in the Negev. But we know that 2000 years ago it was wetter, and people farmed there. There were agricultural terraces and systems for channelling floods onto fields. So yes, I think we should plant the deserts with trees. The trees will soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Most deserts have fossil water beneath them that could be used. Again, people say we shouldn't use fossil water because it won't be replaced. But I say if fossil fuel created the problem, then it is not unreasonable to use fossil water to help solve it. This water will last for centuries. But the planners here agree with the environmentalists and want to leave the desert as it is."




THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC GOES POLITICAL

It's very sad the way the global warming myth has politicized lots of scientists. Drama beats facts hands down. It appears that The National Geographic is the latest publication to be corrupted by pseudo-science.




THE EVIL DHMO

I have mentioned this fun site before but here is an excerpt from their front page:

"Welcome to the web site for the Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division (DMRD), currently located in Newark, Delaware. The controversy surrounding dihydrogen monoxide has never been more widely debated, and the goal of this site is to provide an unbiased data clearinghouse and a forum for public discussion.

Explore our many Special Reports, including the DHMO FAQ, a definitive primer on the subject, plus reports on the environment, cancer, current research, and an insider expos, about the use of DHMO in the dairy industry".

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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GREENS NOT RED ENOUGH

The far-Left "Counterpunch" site is disgusted with the U.S. Green Party. Why? Because the Greens don't want to hurt John Kerry's chances in the upcoming Presidential election. To "Counterpunch", Kerry is a far-Rightist as bad as Bush. Here is what they say about the Greens:

"Apparently, the Green Party has not only lost its mind, it's lost its entire central nervous system, including the spine--especially its spine. They've surrendered to the politics of fear. And once the white flag is raised there's little chance of recovering the ground you've given up".

I was of course pleased to see that they recognize Greenie politics as the politics of fear but how they arrived at that conclusion escapes me. But the whole article seems profoundly thought-disordered to me. If the Greens DID take votes away from Kerry, that would help Bush get elected. Is getting Bush elected what "Counterpunch" wants? It seems so. I cannot follow their reasoning at all. Not that I am surprised by that. It is also not surprising that, as far-Leftists, they seem to hate EVERYBODY -- with the possible exception of Ralph Nader.

More here. (Slow loading).

FORGOTTEN SCIENCE

The balance of scientific opinion seems to be that there probably HAS been a very slight increase in global temperature in recent years -- though there is also evidence of no change. But it is the CAUSE of any change that is the issue. Is it because mankind has suddenly started putting out a lot of pollutants in recent years -- as the Greenies claim? Given the DECLINE in heavily polluting activities like the once-widespread burning of coal, it seems very unlikely. But THAT is what the "Kyoto" enthusiasts have to prove: That mankind is the influence on global temperature change. And that is precisely what the Greenies CANNOT prove. Why? Because global temperature fluctuations have been going on as far back as we can see, long before modern technology existed, long before even the steam engine. And that NATURAL phenomena cause global temperature change has been known since at least the 1860s. Yes -- 1860s, not 1960s. One of the pioneers of research into global temperature change was Scotsman James Croll, born in 1821. Note this comment about him:

"Croll was the first to suggest that cyclical changes in the shape of the Earth's orbit, from elliptical (which is to say, slightly oval) to nearly circular to elliptical again, might explain the onset and retreat of ice ages. No-one had ever thought before to consider an astronomical explanation for variations in the Earth's weather. Thanks almost entirely to Croll's persuasive theory, people in Britain began to become more responsive to the notion that at some former time parts of the Earth had been in the grip of ice."

More on Croll here


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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.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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THE HUGE COSTS WE ALL PAY

Most people do not realize how much Greenie impositions cost us already

"Despite their rhetoric, the environmentalists who keep the movement going with countless organizations, by lobbying the government, and with a constant propaganda program, care little about a healthy, growing, successful economy. They say they do, but so much of what passes for environmentalism is actually a constant attack on the most basic elements of the nation's economy.


Recently I saw a PBS documentary on the building of the Grand Coulee Dam that transformed the economy of the northwest, providing inexpensive electricity that stimulated the growth of business and the irrigation needed for agricultural expansion. I was struck by a comment by one of those who built the dam during the days of the Roosevelt administration. He said, if the Environmental Protection Agency had been around in the 1930s, the dam would never have been built.


This explains why there hasn't been a new oil refinery built in the United States since the 1970s, why the electrical grid on which we depend has not been upgraded for decades, why there hasn't been a new mining operation opened to get at our abundant resources of coal and other minerals, why the cost of natural gas continues to rise because we need more pipelines, and why this nation still hasn't been able to tap an estimated sixteen billion barrels of crude oil in Alaska.


It explains why the cost of new and old housing continues to rise. The environmental restrictions on building new housing for a growing population have to be passed along to the buyers. Developers must assume the cost of various environmental impact studies. If an "endangered species" is found on the property, it can stall the project for years. Old homes often have to add the cost of radon reduction, asbestos removal or the removal of an old oil tank before they can be sold to new owners. The "risks" involved are virtually nonexistent."

More here

THOSE NAUGHTY POWERLINES AGAIN

Wayne Lusvardi writes:

"The July 5, 2004 issue of The San Francisco Chronicle has an article by reporter Ryan Kim "Power Line Route Raises Concern about Health" about a proposed Pacific Gas and Electric 27-mile long 230,000 volt electric transmission line near San Francisco. The article indicates how government environmental health services have been politicized to pander to the concerns of nearby homeowners along the preferred route. No less than the California Department of Health Services is reported to have surveyed published studies and concluded electromagnetic fields might cause increased risk of childhood leukemia, adult brain cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease and miscarriages, although it is reported there is no conclusive link.

The original article can be found on SFGate.com here. Professor John Moulder, PhD, Medical College of Wisconsin, has created a definitive site on the health effects of power lines. See here and here

It is interesting to note that those who are so concerned about radiation from power lines damaging human DNA seem nonchalant about the lack of a common dietary substance, folic acid, derived from most green leafy vegetables, a deficiency of which can create DNA damage that mimics radiation damage. Bruce Ames, the most eminent cancer scientist in the world, has reported the effects of folic acid deficiency on human DNA in the October 2001 issue of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention. See here and here."

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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Greenhouse fear 'a scam'

By JO KNOWSLEY

DISTINGUISHED botanist David Bellamy has branded fears about global warming as "the biggest scam to hit the world". The UK conservationist said there was no evidence that human actions had caused temperatures to rise around the globe. Dr Bellamy argued that global warming was the result of an entirely natural scientific pattern, and might even be a good thing.

He accused governments of needlessly wasting billions of dollars on measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Dr Bellamy also hit out at "scare tactics" used in the campaign. "It is scientifically proven that 99 per cent of the world's greenhouse emissions come from natural sources over which we have no control," Dr Bellamy said. "Yet millions are being spent which will have no effect whatsoever on global warming. "It is a scientific fact that it is increases in temperature which are responsible for increases in natural C02 (carbon dioxide) levels, not the other way around, as the public is repeatedly told."

The above article appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on July, 4, 2004. Prof. Bellamy is of course well-known for his nature shows on T.V. and his advocacy of many environmental causes






MORE CALIFORNIA DREAMING

"California's newly released regulatory initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from new cars sold in that state represents the triumph of symbolism over substance. It's an ill-considered gesture that ought to annoy partisans on both sides of the global warming fence. How much will these new emission rules help in the fight against global warming? 'Not much' would be a charitable answer.

Back-of-the envelope calculations derived from computer simulations performed by climatologist Tom Wigley (who, by the way, supports aggressive action to address the threat of global warming) suggest that even if every state in the union adopted California's new program, global temperatures would drop by something less (actually, probably far less) than one-tenth of 1 degree Fahrenheit by 2050. What everyone in the scientific community understands but few want to discuss publicly is that stopping global warming - or even slowing it down appreciably - requires the near total abandonment of fossil fuels."

More here.

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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.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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A GREAT 4TH JULY PRESENT

Wow! It looks like there has now been a major backdown by the authors of the original "Greenhouse" article. The crooked scientists behind the Greenhouse scare (Mann, Bradley and Hughes) have at last been forced to own up to fudging their data. The very foundation of the "greenhouse" scare has been kicked away. For those who can handle scientific text, here is the summary of what has just happened (MBH98 is the original "scientific" Greenhouse paper) by the scientists who forced the backdown:

"The Corrigendum in Nature today (July 1, 2004) by Professors Mann, Bradley and Hughes is a clear admission that the disclosure of data and methods behind MBH98 was materially inaccurate. The text acknowledges extensive errors in the description of the data set. Even more important is the new online Supplementary Information (SI) site, which concedes for the first time that key steps in the computations behind MBH98 were left out of (and indeed conflict with) the description of methods in the original paper.

These items were published on the instruction of the Editorial Board of Nature in response to a Materials Complaint that we filed in November 2003. That our complaint was upheld and the Corrigendum was ordered represents a vindication of our view that, prior to our analysis, there had been no independent attempt to verify or replicate this influential but deeply flawed study, something which was forestalled, at least in part, by inadequate and inaccurate disclosure of data and methods.

This is only the first step in resolving the dispute we initiated last fall. The Corrigendum and the SI contain the gratuitous claim that the errors, omissions and misrepresentations in MBH98 do not affect their results. If this were true, then a simple constructive proof could have been provided, showing before and after calculations. This is conspicuously missing from the Corrigendum and the new SI. We have done the calculations and can assert categorically that the claim is false. We have made a journal submission to this effect and will explain the matter fully when that paper is published."

More here.






GREENIE CONFUSION

"The Green Party rejected the independent campaign of Ralph Nader at its convention last weekend. Instead, the Greens nominated a little-known attorney and activist from California, David Cobb, as their presidential candidate. ... the contrast between Cobb and Nader-Camejo ... was stark. The most important issue is that Cobb and his supporters represent a so-called 'safe-states' strategy. The idea is that the Green Party presidential candidate should help defeat George Bush in the November election by not running an all-out campaign in 'battleground states' where the Greens could do well enough to tip the balance to Bush -- as Nader is accused of doing in the 2000 election. ... Supporters of Nader and Camejo at the convention rejected this argument. 'We're the Green Party,' Gloria Mattera, co-chair of the New York state Green Party, told a Nader-Camejo rally. 'It's not our job to elect a pro-war Democrat into the White House.'"

More here.

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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.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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GREENIE DOMINO STRATEGY

"Exactly 50 years ago, the idea of the "domino theory" first found its way into popular discourse in the context of Communist aggression in Southeast Asia. While it sounds a bit like a Cold War relic today, the phrase remains useful to explain certain events. Consider the activist Rainforest Action Network's (RAN) recently concluded four-year campaign against Citigroup, one of America's most respected financial institutions.

In 2000, RAN accused Citigroup of loaning money to economic development projects that were purportedly destroying the world's "remaining old growth forests" and "accelerat[ing] climate change." When Citigroup disputed the charges, RAN strategists went to work. Over the next four years, RAN staged dozens of anti-Citigroup stunts, including student rallies and boycotts, anti-Citigroup TV ads, and street protests. RAN activists also hung banners in front of Citigroup's New York headquarters and demanded that Citigroup not make loans to economic development projects in undeveloped regions of the world, to ensure that they remain pristine.

Last January, Citigroup gave in— it sued for peace. In exchange for an end to RAN's campaign, Citigroup promised to "promote higher environmental standards through its business practices," particularly in the areas of "endangered ecosystems, illegal logging, ecologically sustainable development, and climate change." Translation: Citigroup will no longer help finance projects that environmentalists don't like. It will help NGOs start drawing what an activist once referred to as "green lines" around poor countries, setting them off-limits for conventional forms of intense development.

Now, having browbeaten Citigroup into accepting their agenda, will RAN activists put away their banners and protest signs, and retire from the field? Hardly. According to an article in the April issue of Peacework, the protest Left's self-declared "trade journal," RAN's Citigroup campaign is merely one battle in a very ambitious long-term campaign to turn businesses into instruments of green social engineering. Citigroup, you might say, was just the first domino."

More here:




ANOTHER SCIENTIFIC ATTACK ON GREENIE MYTHS

There are still plenty of real scientists around who are prepared to blow the whistle on Green nonsense. I have just put up here a review of the latest debunking book. Excerpt:

"Remember the science news story that bird eggs would not survive in the wild because of spraying DDT? Jack W. Dini, a materials engineer with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, exposes this and many other frauds and half-truths as nothing more than non-scientific myth in his book Challenging Environmental Mythology: Wrestling Zeus (2003). Dini writes that public environmental policy has turned into a movement of mythological proportions that believes it is impervious to scientific examination or criticism. Dini shows that much of what we have been led to believe is true about environmental conditions is actually myth."

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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GREENS ARE TOO MUCH EVEN FOR THE LEFT SOMETIMES

A confused Leftist writes:

"'It is in our interest,' the politician said last week, 'to bring the eight to 12 undocumented immigrants out of the shadows and become citizens of this great nation.'

'We have to control our immigration,' said the other politician. 'We have to limit the number of people who come to this country illegally ? . I don't like the idea of legalization because then the question is how do you prevent the next wave and the next?'

The first quote is from Republican Senator John McCain, speaking before La Raza, the Latino civil-rights group.... And the second quote? That was from Mr. Progressive himself, Ralph Nader, speaking to Pat Buchanan in an interview for Buchanan's magazine, The American Conservative."

So while the largely conservative McCain was making a gesture against a right-wing ballot measure, the supposedly progressive Nader was getting palsy-walsy with someone who is about as far to the right as you can go in American politics and still get on television. And while Nader did emphasize his disagreement with Buchanan on the level of public benefits that immigrants should receive, he conveyed, albeit in a convoluted way, that he and Pat were seeing very much eye to eye -- against amnesty for undocumented aliens, for example. This is the man who lectures the Democratic Party about its lack of principles?"

Nader once stood for the Greens and the Greens hate people. Greenies want to REDUCE the population, not increase it. So being anti-immigration is respectable policy among the Greens

BUT THESE GREENS ARE RED!

The Green Cobb: "On the heels of an exciting win at the much anticipated Green Party presidential nominating convention last weekend, Texas attorney David Cobb said he plans to live up to every expectation party delegates have of him. For Cobb, that doesn't mean just being a third party alternative to George W. Bush or John Kerry, or serving as a grassroots messenger to American voters. Cobb said he will be the anti-war candidate who represents voters who opposed the invasion of Iraq and support the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. 'The war is going to be one of the absolutely central issues in this campaign,' Cobb told FOXNews.com. 'I am a peace candidate, and we are running unflinchingly on that message.' Greens say that despite Kerry's blustering on Iraq, the Massachusetts senator still voted to authorize the war and President Bush's broader War on Terror."

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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THE KYOTO SAGA LINGERS

Russia's Kyoto decision still up in the air:


"On May 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced to the world that, in order to gain European Union (EU) backing for Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), he would 'speed up movement towards ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.' Many have interpreted this to mean the internal debate in Russia over what to do about Kyoto is over....

As the Los Angeles Times was careful to point out, "Putin stopped short of pledging a positive vote on ratification, cautioning that his government still had concerns about the 'obligations' imposed by the treaty. He also said it was still 'not 100% certain' parliament would endorse the Kyoto treaty." None of this should come as a surprise, as this is the same line his government has followed since it stepped back from the treaty in October last year....

Professor Oleg Sorokhtin from the RAS's Institute of Oceanography was quoted by the Russian news agency TASS as saying, "The Kyoto Protocol is not needed at all, as even considerable emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have almost no effect on the Earth's temperature but contribute to agricultural productivity and to the restoration of forest resources."....

With scientific backing for his advisors' concern about the effects of the protocol and the opposition of the Duma, it would seem President Putin left enough get-out clauses in his May 21 announcement to ensure Russia does not have to go through with ratification. Indeed, the announcement that the Academy of Sciences is to make a further report suggests this was anticipated."

GREENIE HERO DISSES THE GREENIES

James Lovelock of 'Gaia' fame says the Greenie dislike of science makes them impotent, foolish and irrelevant -- to summarize:

"European politicians appear to accept the near inevitability of global warming but, oddly, turn to the green movement and its lobbies for guidance, more than to scientists. I see myself as a green but I speak as a scientist. Despite their good intentions, the majority of the greens are more concerned about the trivial risks from chemicals and radiation than about the serious risk of adverse global changes; consequently, their advice to governments is flawed.... The error of the modern green movement is its self-indulgence, its hypochondriac obsession with personal hazards to health such as pesticide residues and other unwanted chemicals in foodstuff, nuclear radiation and genetic manipulation. Greens foster the illusion that if the planet were farmed organically all would be well....

Renewable energy might be a good idea in the long term, and is a showy way for politicians to prove that they are doing something, but it is already too late to expect it to play a significant role; global warming is already happening and is likely to intensify. To supplement the feeble energy supplies from renewables by lashings of natural gas is a risky option, particularly for Britain. The European encouragement of subsidised renewable energy might be justified were there no alternative tried and tested energy source - but there is: clean and safe nuclear energy. The objections to it are unscientific and perverse, but the green lobbies have preached against it until some European governments have been forced to act against the public good and allow it to be phased out....

Moreover, the economist Shimon Awerbuch reminded us that the magical appearance of a clean, safe and economic source of energy would do little to stop the burning of fossil fuels, such is the human tendency to over-consume. Indeed, the spread of wind turbines in Germany has been accompanied by an increase in coal combustion, the dirtiest of all fuels. The earth system, Gaia, functions because within it are powerful restraints to growth, as we will discover. We have to make our own restraints if we are to avoid those the Earth will apply. Perhaps the unreasoning fear of nuclear energy at least implies some built-in restraint.

So what will happen and what should we do? There are three main alternatives. The first is laissez faire: continue to enjoy a warmer 21st century, and make cosmetic attempts to hide global warming. I suspect that this is what will happen in much of the world. Second is the deep green way: eat nothing but organic food, use nothing but renewable energy and raw materials. These policies might restore the Earth to health but at the cost of a massive reduction in the numbers of people and possibly the loss of some civilisations. There may be a third, less unpleasant, way: the high-tech road. It would require us to take global change seriously and lessen the footprint of humans on the Earth. First, and most important, it would mean no more natural habitat destruction. To attempt to farm the whole Earth to feed people makes us like sailors who burned the timbers and rigging of their ship to keep warm. Then we must embrace science and engineering; we need their skills and inventions to lessen our impact on the Earth. If more food comes from less land by genetic engineering then use it; better still, if food can be synthesised by the chemical and biochemical industries from carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen, then let's make it and give Earth a rest. We need a portfolio of energy sources, with nuclear playing a big part, at least until fusion power is an option, and we must stop fretting over the minute risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. In Britain, one quarter of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that pervasive carcinogen, oxygen......

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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POSSUMS TRUMP PEOPLE

"MELBOURNE'S problem packs of bayside rats have acquired a dangerous new appetite for car cables. Not content emptying seaside cafes of customers and sending families running from beaches, rats in the City of Kingston are now snacking under car bonnets and turning residents' vehicles into death traps. Braeside woman Megan Michelis was horrified to discover rats had gnawed large holes in the wires, accelerator cables, and battery casing in her car. She lives in fear that rat-related damage will lead her to have an accident while driving her daughters around.

"My kids are in the car every day. I'm supposed to check under the bonnet daily to make sure it's safe to drive. But I don't know what I'm looking for," she said. Her husband's car, a new $60,000 Prado, has also been chewed into disrepair by hungry vermin. She is angry that Kingston council refuses to play pied piper to her family's rat problem. "I pay rates and they're not willing to bait. It comes across that the rats have more rights than us," she said. "I told a lady at the council that there was a plague and she said, 'It's not a plague, there's just a large number of rats'."

The City of Kingston council recognises a rise in suburban rat sightings within its borders, but does not regard Ms Michelis's Waterways home near Braeside as a problem area. Ms Michelis said the council told her if bait was laid without an environmental report being concluded, innocent possums could die. But the Waterways resident denies there are any possums near her home. "There's only tiny trees here because it's a new estate. We've never seen a possum," she said. We've had rabbits, foxes and rats, but no possums. And anyway, they're willing to kill people in cars, but not kill a possum?""

More here

AUSTRALIAN ALPS DEFY GLOBAL WARMING?

From the Sydney DAILY TELEGRAPH's "Skiwatch" segment by Arthur Stanley -- of 29 June, 2004

"With a 1m snow base before the end of June and great piles of snow outside alpine lodges, questions are being asked about the scientific models predicting gloom and doom for the Australian ski industry.

Since the first CSIRO warnings about the effects of global warming on the snow line- with a worst case scenario pointing to a snow drought in 2020 - we've had one of the greatest seasons on record (2000), excellent seasons in 2002-03 and one of the biggest Junes in history to kick off 2004.

Australia will always have good and bad seasons but with advances in cloud seeding and snowmaking, including on-mountain snow factories, the Australia alpine industry - literally buried in snow as it is at present- is justifiably arguing it will stay fit and healthy for many years to come.

More snow is on the way this week."

None of this will dissuade Greenies of course. When Ice Ages are blamed on global warming they are for all intents and purposes defending an unfalsifiable hypothesis. So any kind of climatic change can be taken as supporting evidence. As change is only constant in nature they will thus never run out of ammunition.

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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THE FRAUD THAT GREENIES LOVE

"The Preble's meadow jumping mouse is a timorous nocturnal beast of the highland prairie, protected from human dominion in Colorado and Wyoming since 1998 by the Federal Endangered Species Act. Dr. Rob Roy Ramey II is a scientist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science who will tell anyone who asks, including Congress, that he thinks the trouble with Preble's is that they are not threatened with extinction at all. Not even a proper subspecies, he adds. Dr. Ramey believes that the mouse got on the protected list based on guesswork and outdated science, and that it is genetically identical to its cousin, the Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse, which hops in happy abundance in Montana and South Dakota. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service, spurred in part by his research, which it helped finance, is midway through a Preble's reassessment and is scheduled to make a recommendation about the creature's legal status by early next year.

But the standoff of man and mouse is already turning up a lot of other questions that have little to do with rodent DNA, mouse habitat or the vicissitudes of the scientific method. Environmentalists say, for example, that what's good for a Preble's - clean water to drink and open land on which to jump - is good for other earthborn mortals too, including humans, and that having the mouse on the threatened list has been a powerful lever to safeguard the regional environment in a rapidly developing corner of the West. If the mouse goes, they say, so too will those protections to the land. The mouse's threatened status has compelled communities that are building new water projects to leave areas undisturbed for mouse habitat, park managers to keep hikers and bikers on trails, and ranchers to take extra care in maintaining drainage ditches where the mice can cluster.....

Critics of Preble's protection say that politics have been put ahead of science. "Colorado and Wyoming have spent countless millions to recover a species that never should never have been listed in the first place," said Ryan Lance, the Endangered Species Act policy coordinator for Wyoming, which also helped pay for Dr. Ramey's research and filed a petition late last year to remove the mouse from the threatened list. Mr. Lance said he thought the prospects were good that the Preble's would be turned out to its own resources and thrive, with the protections never missed.....

Dr. Ramey, an avid rock climber who once spent six days suspended on the side of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park doing research on Peregrine falcons, said he believed science must always be willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater, ruthlessly questioning and challenging every past conclusion and assumption because that is how truth is derived. He also believes that some species advance toward protected status less on the basis of science than on political pressure..."

More here

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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THAT OLD OIL SCARE AGAIN

That pesky oil:

"Fears about running out of oil have become widespread in America. A slew of books have recently put forward the imminent oil depletion argument: Hubbert's Peak by Kenneth Deffeyes (2001), The Party's Over by Richard Heinberg (2003), and Out of Gas by David Goodstein and The End of Oil by Paul Roberts, both published this year. Like earlier concerns about oil depletion, the current panic has little basis in the geology of oil. The argument that we are about to run out of oil has been around for as long as oil has been produced....

We apparently have both too little oil and too much. The most pessimistic forecasters argue that, not only is industrial civilisation about to collapse as it runs out of oil, but it will be tipped over the edge by global warming as a consequence of past energy use.

On a technical level, the new pessimism about oil draws heavily on the work of two retired petroleum geologists, Colin Campbell and Jean LaherrŠre, and the earlier work of Shell geologist M King Hubbert. But the theoretical basis of the pessimistic predictions is weak; and the empirical track record of their approach has been a failure.....

In his paper 'The New Pessimism about Petroleum Resources', Michael Lynch, president of the consulting firm Strategic Energy and Economic Research, illustrates how Colin Campbell's ongoing predictions of an imminent peak in production have consistently proven wrong while his estimates of total reserves have had to be revised upwards.

Also, in order to create a crisis, the pessimists have to discount so-called 'unconventional' sources of oil, such as tar sands, as too dirty or uneconomic; methane hydrates are apparently too speculative; coal liquefaction would take too long to come on line; and so on. Every alternative is shot down.....

A far more sensible approach would be to see potentially declining oil supplies as simply a practical problem. From this perspective there are reasons not to panic. Headlines suggesting that prices are at record highs are misleading, since they do not take inflation into account. Corrected for inflation, today's prices are around half the high of the early 80s price spike. Also, today's economy is less dependent on energy in the sense that it is much more efficient; we get much more useful work out of the same amount of oil..... As long as we feel guilty about improving our lives, energy will always seem to be a problem. But running out of oil isn't something we need to worry about."




The Campbell/Hubbert scare is also debunked here. Summary:

"Recently, numerous publications have appeared warning that oil production is near an unavoidable, geologically-determined peak that could have consequences up to and including "war, starvation, economic recession, possibly even the extinction of homo sapiens" (Campbell in Ruppert 2002.) The current series of alarmist articles could be said to be merely reincarnations of earlier work which proved fallacious, but the authors insist that they have made significant advances in their analyses, overcoming earlier errors. For a number of reasons, this work has been nearly impenetrable to many observers, which seems to have lent it an added cachet. However, careful examination of the data and methods, as well as extensive perusal of the writings, suggests that the opacity of the work is- at best- obscuring the inconclusive nature of their research".

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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THE GREENIES WILL LOVE THIS

Getting back at those horrible people:

The "animal threat": For all of America's vigilance against terrorists, danger does not always come on two legs. The threat posed by beavers, woodchucks, deer, blackbirds and other seemingly benign critters has come under federal investigation. A study ordered by Congress amounts to a compendium of dangers from the feathered, the four-legged and the no-legged:
27,000 injuries a year from rodents.
$1 billion in damage a year from cars hitting deer.
15 deaths a year from snake bites.
6,000 collisions between birds and airplanes in 2000. Starlings are known as ``feathered bullets'' because they can cause so much trouble.
$70 million in annual livestock losses from predators, mainly coyotes.
etc.

HILARIOUS! THE EPA HAS GIVEN UP ON CARS

"A new series of whimsical public service announcements from the Environmental Protection Agency are lampooning the notion that cars can be made more energy efficient while the ads encourage conservation at home.

A top E.P.A. official said the $1 million campaign was developed by a branch of the agency that specializes in energy-saving home appliances and was not intended to send a message about cars.... In a 60-second version of the public service announcement, a woman named Suzanne says she is concerned about pollution and global warming, but laments the homegrown efforts of her husband, Mark, to cut emissions from the family car. Mark - nerdy, pudgy, harried - is shown rigging up their car, first with a sail, then a microwave contraption using huge satellite dishes, and finally a helium tank with a bulbous hose.

"The E.P.A. says the energy we use in our home can cause twice the greenhouse gases of a car," Suzanne says, adding that she has started buying energy-saving household products. Buying a cleaner car, or say, a smaller sport utility vehicle, does not appear to be a viable alternative for reducing emissions. The ad ends with a shot of Mark pushing the car down a hill and Suzanne saying, "He still marches to the beat of a different drum." At one point, the car fills with helium, Mark starts talking like Mickey Mouse and two men in the backseat shake their heads and say "Genius!"

Indeed, as the E.P.A. says, energy use at home can cause twice the emissions of a single car. But most families have more than one car and emit roughly the same amount of global warming gases in their vehicles as in their homes, said David Friedman, senior policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental research and advocacy group. "With a car, you can cut your fuel use in half by using a hybrid," he said. "You're not likely to cut your electricity use in half by using more efficient appliances."

Mr. McLean, the E.P.A.'s director of the Office of Atmospheric Programs, said, "We were just trying to give people a benchmark." -- "If you have two cars," he added, "they would be equal.""

So having two cars means twice the pollution? I guess that shows my limits. I can drive only one car at a time!

More here.

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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.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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