THIS IS SOMETHING THE GREENIES SHOULD BE GETTING ANGRY ABOUT (BUT THEY DON'T)
Story from aboard a fishing trawler in the Irish sea:
"As the first batch was sorted, we watched in mounting horror as Mate, Francois Bruneel with Steve McDaid and Gary Hugman, the enormously impressive crew, threw marketable fish into red plastic bins - not unlike laundry baskets - sweeping the rest, undersize and unmarketable fish along the belt. Lubricated by a constant flow of sea water, they were flushed through a small opening in the hull, back into the sea, dead and dying, from whence they had so recently been plucked.
That was the horror. From that first, bulging net, the harvest of the sea, we estimated that at least ninety percent of the catch was dumped - or "discarded" in the clinical jargon of the trade. By far the bulk of this waste was immature plaice, thousands of baby fish, some only three or four inches long, tiny, perfect replicas of the few remaining adult fish which would be landed later that day and sold for the dinner plates of the nation.
Then came the next batch, smaller in quantity - much smaller. Good, clean adult fish, mainly prime plaice, ripe for the market, tossed swiftly into the red bins, ready for gutting and cleaning. This time the bulk of the "discards" amounted to unsaleable "dogs" - lesser spotted dogfish. These where were also flushed through the hatch. Plunging into the water, each shook itself like a canine, as if indignant at their treatment, and swum swiftly away from the trawler, none the worse for their experience.
So what was happening here? Why the obscene waste from the first batch - "next year's harvest", one of the crew observed bitterly - and so little from the second?
As we grouped in the tiny mess room after the nets had been "shot" for the second time, supping mugs of scalding tea, Skipper Dell explained. It was the nets he was forced to use. They had been specified by the EU commission in regulations under the Common Fisheries Policy, perversely - to the utter frustration of all the fishermen of Fleetwood - as a "conservation" measure, supposedly designed to aid "cod recovery" in the Irish Sea.
If you wanted logic, Dell continued, there was none - none that he and his colleagues could discern...."
More here.
U.K. GOVERNMENT WIND POWER SCHEMES ARE A JUGGERNAUT
Hard to stop even though nobody now thinks they are a good idea
"The Government's plan to dominate hundreds of square miles of Britain's countryside with wind turbines is the centre of a battle rapidly approaching its crisis. This year 30 new schemes have been approved, for turbines supposedly generating 770 megawatts of power - equal to the entire capacity of the 1,165 turbines erected to date. Up to 9,000 turbines are now at different stages of the planning process - and many are far bigger than the majority of those already built.
The Government is desperately bending the planning laws to get the turbines up because the EU requires us to generate 20 per cent of our power from renewable sources by 2020. Meanwhile, ever more scientists, engineers and conservationists are adding their voices to the argument that wind turbines are ludicrously costly and inefficient - and do not bring the ecological benefits they are supposed to achieve anyway. There are many who warn that the Government is making a catastrophic blunder.....
The statistics demonstrating the futility of wind power are now overwhelming. Electricity from wind is two-and-a-half times more expensive than from conventional sources. The claims for the amount of power generated by turbines - which consumers already subsidise to the tune of œ1.5 billion a year through higher bills - are wildly exaggerated. On the Government's own admission, the output of each turbine, thanks to the vagaries of the wind, is less than a quarter of "installed capacity" (24.1 per cent), so that the 1,165 turbines already built produce an average of only 186 megawatts: a fraction of that produced by one large conventional power station.
The saving in greenhouse gas emissions is minimal: the 1,165 turbines already built may "displace" 93 tons of CO2 an hour but, for comparison, five jumbo jets in flight will give off 100 tons an hour. And even this notional saving is discounted by the need to keep conventional power stations permanently ticking over, ready to take over for the three-quarters of the time when turbines are unable to generate.
The Government, as deluded by its windmills as Don Quixote, is backed by a strange alliance of ill-informed, sentimental greens and the wind-power companies themselves. The latter cannot believe their luck at a bonanza worth more than œ1 billion a year. On the opposing side, led by such eminent conservationists as Prof Bellamy and James Lovelock, is an increasingly clued-up army of critics, who cannot understand why we should desecrate vast tracts of Britain's most beautiful countryside for what they see as "the scam of the century".
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
*****************************************
Monday, October 18, 2004
Sunday, October 17, 2004
GLOBAL WARMING SCARE BASED ON INCOMPETENT MATHEMATICS
Now clearly proved even though a corrupt mainstream scientific journal tried to suppress it on plainly ridiculous grounds
Progress in science is sometimes made by great discoveries. But science also advances when we learn that something we believed to be true isn't. When solving a jigsaw puzzle, the solution can sometimes be stymied by the fact that a wrong piece has been wedged in a key place. In the scientific and political debate over global warming, the latest wrong piece may be the "hockey stick," the famous plot, published by University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann and colleagues. This plot purports to show that we are now experiencing the warmest climate in a millennium, and that the earth, after remaining cool for centuries during the medieval era, suddenly began to heat up about 100 years ago--just at the time that the burning of coal and oil led to an increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.....
But now a shock: independent Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records. But it wasn't so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.
Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called "Monte Carlo" analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!
That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen? What is going on? .....
McIntyre and McKitrick sent their detailed analysis to Nature magazine for publication, and it was extensively refereed. But their paper was finally rejected. In frustration, McIntyre and McKitrick put the entire record of their submission and the referee reports on a Web page for all to see. If you look, you'll see that McIntyre and McKitrick have found numerous other problems with the Mann analysis. I emphasize the bug in their PCA program simply because it is so blatant and so easy to understand. Apparently, Mann and his colleagues never tested their program with the standard Monte Carlo approach, or they would have discovered the error themselves. Other and different criticisms of the hockey stick are emerging (see, for example, the paper by Hans von Storch and colleagues in the September 30 issue of Science).
Some people may complain that McIntyre and McKitrick did not publish their results in a refereed journal. That is true--but not for lack of trying. Moreover, the paper was refereed--and even better, the referee reports are there for us to read. McIntyre and McKitrick's only failure was in not convincing Nature that the paper was important enough to publish.....
If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do), then you still should agree that we are much better off having broken the hockey stick. Misinformation can do real harm, because it distorts predictions..... A phony hockey stick is more dangerous than a broken one--if we know it is broken. It is our responsibility as scientists to look at the data in an unbiased way, and draw whatever conclusions follow. When we discover a mistake, we admit it, learn from it, and perhaps discover once again the value of caution.
More here
BIOTECH IS SAFE
Certainly a lot safer than crossing the road
"In the late 1990s, political scientist Gregory Conko had been studying food and pharmaceutical regulation as a fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and noticed the rising concerns in the European Union over genetically modification of crop plants. "I saw this was an issue that was getting much bigger and that it would likely also become a bigger issue in the United States," he says. So he began shifting his focus almost exclusively to examining issues of the regulation of genetically engineered foods. Last month, Conko and Henry I. Miller, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, published The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution (Praeger Publishers), a book that examines some of what they say are the major misunderstandings about agricultural biotechnology.
Excerpts from an interview with Conko:
After recombinant DNA techniques were first demonstrated in the early 1970s, the scientific community started to take a very close look at the technology. They determined that while it certainly increases the flexibility of the kinds of genetic modifications that one can make in microorganisms, plants, or animals, the techniques don't inherently increase the risks of engineered organisms.
With both old and new technologies, you could create a crop plant that might have significantly heightened environmental risks. If you're making an herbicide-tolerant plant, for example, you can do this with either conventional breeding techniques or with recombinant DNA technology. There is no risk difference between the two end products. The scientific consensus essentially holds that you don't want to look at the process used to create a particular new organism; you want to evaluate its characteristics to ensure that the plants themselves don't become invasive or spread harmful genes either to related crop plants or related wild plants.
Similarly on the food safety side, you want to ensure that the genes you're transferring into crop plants or into the food supply are safe, and you want to do that whether you're using recombinant DNA technology or not. Potatoes and tomatoes are both part of the nightshade family, and both produce toxins that, if they were present in high levels, could be very harmful to human consumers. So when you're creating or breeding new potato and tomato varieties, you want to be in tune to whether you may be accidentally increasing the level of toxins-and that's true regardless of whether you're using recombinant DNA or more conventional technology.
For a very long time, the National Academy of Sciences and specifically the National Research Council panel have gotten the question of scientific risk right. Through the last decade and a half, there have been reports essentially coming to the same conclusion: that there's no reason to believe that organisms created using recombinant DNA will be inherently risky, either for the environment or for human consumers.
More here
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Now clearly proved even though a corrupt mainstream scientific journal tried to suppress it on plainly ridiculous grounds
Progress in science is sometimes made by great discoveries. But science also advances when we learn that something we believed to be true isn't. When solving a jigsaw puzzle, the solution can sometimes be stymied by the fact that a wrong piece has been wedged in a key place. In the scientific and political debate over global warming, the latest wrong piece may be the "hockey stick," the famous plot, published by University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann and colleagues. This plot purports to show that we are now experiencing the warmest climate in a millennium, and that the earth, after remaining cool for centuries during the medieval era, suddenly began to heat up about 100 years ago--just at the time that the burning of coal and oil led to an increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.....
But now a shock: independent Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records. But it wasn't so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.
Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called "Monte Carlo" analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!
That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen? What is going on? .....
McIntyre and McKitrick sent their detailed analysis to Nature magazine for publication, and it was extensively refereed. But their paper was finally rejected. In frustration, McIntyre and McKitrick put the entire record of their submission and the referee reports on a Web page for all to see. If you look, you'll see that McIntyre and McKitrick have found numerous other problems with the Mann analysis. I emphasize the bug in their PCA program simply because it is so blatant and so easy to understand. Apparently, Mann and his colleagues never tested their program with the standard Monte Carlo approach, or they would have discovered the error themselves. Other and different criticisms of the hockey stick are emerging (see, for example, the paper by Hans von Storch and colleagues in the September 30 issue of Science).
Some people may complain that McIntyre and McKitrick did not publish their results in a refereed journal. That is true--but not for lack of trying. Moreover, the paper was refereed--and even better, the referee reports are there for us to read. McIntyre and McKitrick's only failure was in not convincing Nature that the paper was important enough to publish.....
If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do), then you still should agree that we are much better off having broken the hockey stick. Misinformation can do real harm, because it distorts predictions..... A phony hockey stick is more dangerous than a broken one--if we know it is broken. It is our responsibility as scientists to look at the data in an unbiased way, and draw whatever conclusions follow. When we discover a mistake, we admit it, learn from it, and perhaps discover once again the value of caution.
More here
BIOTECH IS SAFE
Certainly a lot safer than crossing the road
"In the late 1990s, political scientist Gregory Conko had been studying food and pharmaceutical regulation as a fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and noticed the rising concerns in the European Union over genetically modification of crop plants. "I saw this was an issue that was getting much bigger and that it would likely also become a bigger issue in the United States," he says. So he began shifting his focus almost exclusively to examining issues of the regulation of genetically engineered foods. Last month, Conko and Henry I. Miller, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, published The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution (Praeger Publishers), a book that examines some of what they say are the major misunderstandings about agricultural biotechnology.
Excerpts from an interview with Conko:
After recombinant DNA techniques were first demonstrated in the early 1970s, the scientific community started to take a very close look at the technology. They determined that while it certainly increases the flexibility of the kinds of genetic modifications that one can make in microorganisms, plants, or animals, the techniques don't inherently increase the risks of engineered organisms.
With both old and new technologies, you could create a crop plant that might have significantly heightened environmental risks. If you're making an herbicide-tolerant plant, for example, you can do this with either conventional breeding techniques or with recombinant DNA technology. There is no risk difference between the two end products. The scientific consensus essentially holds that you don't want to look at the process used to create a particular new organism; you want to evaluate its characteristics to ensure that the plants themselves don't become invasive or spread harmful genes either to related crop plants or related wild plants.
Similarly on the food safety side, you want to ensure that the genes you're transferring into crop plants or into the food supply are safe, and you want to do that whether you're using recombinant DNA technology or not. Potatoes and tomatoes are both part of the nightshade family, and both produce toxins that, if they were present in high levels, could be very harmful to human consumers. So when you're creating or breeding new potato and tomato varieties, you want to be in tune to whether you may be accidentally increasing the level of toxins-and that's true regardless of whether you're using recombinant DNA or more conventional technology.
For a very long time, the National Academy of Sciences and specifically the National Research Council panel have gotten the question of scientific risk right. Through the last decade and a half, there have been reports essentially coming to the same conclusion: that there's no reason to believe that organisms created using recombinant DNA will be inherently risky, either for the environment or for human consumers.
More here
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Saturday, October 16, 2004
WIND POWER OUT OF PUFF IN AUSTRALIA TOO
An intervention by federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell to halt development on a southern Victorian wind farm was a "political stunt" that might kill the burgeoning wind industry in Victoria, the state Government has warned. State Energy Minister Theo Theophanous said Senator Campbell was merely "pandering to a group of people" who opposed the farm after intervening on behalf of the Liberal candidate for the marginal seat of McMillan during the federal campaign. "OK, well, the election's over now, he should become a responsible Environment Minister," Mr Theophanous said. "This action has the potential to kill the wind energy industry if it's taken seriously."
Mr Campbell announced the intervention in the proposed Bald Hills wind farm on the Bass Coast of South Gippsland late on Tuesday. He said he was worried about native birds and migratory birds being caught up in the 52 125m-high turbines, and the associated power transmission line.
The above report appeared in "The Australian" newspaper on October 14, 2004 (p. 3)
GREENIES PUT ARMY PREPAREDNESS AT RISK
It's getting too expensive to prevent Greenie legal harassment
"The Army's largest major command is cautioning the Pentagon that its spending cuts could make it unable to comply with some environmental laws, putting the military at risk of having training sites shut down by activists' lawsuits. The Army Forces Command "is concerned that funding for the sustained management of the training lands ... dwindles dramatically" for the next several years, Maj. Gen. Larry D. Gottardi, a deputy chief of staff for the Forces Command, based at Fort McPherson, Ga., wrote in a Sept. 24 letter.
A spokesman for Gottardi, Barry Morris, said it's up to the military training ranges and bases to manage their natural resources. "How worried are we? I would say we're always concerned that something will impact on our training. That's why we closely monitor environmental laws and impacts," Morris said Tuesday. In the letter, Gottardi tells his Pentagon bosses that "regrettably" most Army projects to sustain the ecological health of its training ranges "were considered optional" and, therefore, will not be funded.
"The policy change also places the training mission in potential jeopardy by providing a sound legal basis for private parties or conservation activists to obtain court-ordered injunctions and effectively shut down all training operations," Gottardi wrote. That management is watched closely by environmentalists. "These are some of the most important wildlife habitats in the world," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a whistle-blower group that obtained Gottardi's letter. "In many cases, these lands have never been used commercially or recreationally."
In the last two years, Congress has approved several exemptions from environmental laws requested by the Pentagon. They include lowering the threshold for what is considered harassment of a marine mammal and fewer requirements for setting aside areas to help recovery of species of plants and animals in danger of vanishing. It remains unclear just what Congress requires the Pentagon to do to avoid having to set aside as much habitat for species, Gottardi wrote.
More here.
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
An intervention by federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell to halt development on a southern Victorian wind farm was a "political stunt" that might kill the burgeoning wind industry in Victoria, the state Government has warned. State Energy Minister Theo Theophanous said Senator Campbell was merely "pandering to a group of people" who opposed the farm after intervening on behalf of the Liberal candidate for the marginal seat of McMillan during the federal campaign. "OK, well, the election's over now, he should become a responsible Environment Minister," Mr Theophanous said. "This action has the potential to kill the wind energy industry if it's taken seriously."
Mr Campbell announced the intervention in the proposed Bald Hills wind farm on the Bass Coast of South Gippsland late on Tuesday. He said he was worried about native birds and migratory birds being caught up in the 52 125m-high turbines, and the associated power transmission line.
The above report appeared in "The Australian" newspaper on October 14, 2004 (p. 3)
GREENIES PUT ARMY PREPAREDNESS AT RISK
It's getting too expensive to prevent Greenie legal harassment
"The Army's largest major command is cautioning the Pentagon that its spending cuts could make it unable to comply with some environmental laws, putting the military at risk of having training sites shut down by activists' lawsuits. The Army Forces Command "is concerned that funding for the sustained management of the training lands ... dwindles dramatically" for the next several years, Maj. Gen. Larry D. Gottardi, a deputy chief of staff for the Forces Command, based at Fort McPherson, Ga., wrote in a Sept. 24 letter.
A spokesman for Gottardi, Barry Morris, said it's up to the military training ranges and bases to manage their natural resources. "How worried are we? I would say we're always concerned that something will impact on our training. That's why we closely monitor environmental laws and impacts," Morris said Tuesday. In the letter, Gottardi tells his Pentagon bosses that "regrettably" most Army projects to sustain the ecological health of its training ranges "were considered optional" and, therefore, will not be funded.
"The policy change also places the training mission in potential jeopardy by providing a sound legal basis for private parties or conservation activists to obtain court-ordered injunctions and effectively shut down all training operations," Gottardi wrote. That management is watched closely by environmentalists. "These are some of the most important wildlife habitats in the world," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a whistle-blower group that obtained Gottardi's letter. "In many cases, these lands have never been used commercially or recreationally."
In the last two years, Congress has approved several exemptions from environmental laws requested by the Pentagon. They include lowering the threshold for what is considered harassment of a marine mammal and fewer requirements for setting aside areas to help recovery of species of plants and animals in danger of vanishing. It remains unclear just what Congress requires the Pentagon to do to avoid having to set aside as much habitat for species, Gottardi wrote.
More here.
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Friday, October 15, 2004
PETROLEUM IS NOT A "FOSSIL FUEL"
Excerpt from the front page of the Gas Resources Corporation.
Modern petroleum science, - or what is called often the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins, - is an extensive body of knowledge which has been recorded in thousands of articles published in the mainstream, Russian-language scientific journals, and in many books and monographs. However, effectively nothing of modern petroleum science has been published in the U.S.A., and this body of knowledge remains largely unknown in the English-speaking world....
The articles on this site have been put here to accommodate the many requests for reprints and further information, received during the past few years following the publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. of an article formally enunciating the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins and demonstrating the high-pressure genesis of petroleum.
It deserves to be recognized that all of the contributors to these articles that deal with petroleum science and petroleum operations are all highly competent oil and gas men and women. All have extensive experience in discovering and producing petroleum.
In the pages containing articles connected with petroleum economics, there are several papers by Professor Michael C. Lynch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which address directly the myth of "oil exhaustion." There is also a link to an article by Professor Peter Odell of the London School of Economics concerning the common misperceptions connected with petroleum economics.
One should understand that these papers cannot give justice to the immense literature of modern Russian petroleum science. During the half century between 1951-2001, there have been thousands of articles published in the mainstream Russian scientific journals on the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins, and many books and monographs. For example, V. A. Krayushkin has published more than two hundred fifty articles on modern petroleum geology, and several books.
WHAT A LAUGH!
Government arranging some preening for the self-righteous
It's not easy being green, but California's government is trying to move the state's hotels in that direction. The new Green Lodging Program, which launched this week, includes a Web site listing hotels that comply with a range of environmental standards. State workers in California are encouraged to book "green" hotels when they travel on business.
Surf the site, and you'll find a list of 26 hotels that have changed the way they do business, including adding recycling systems, eco-friendly cleaning agents and landscaping methods that require less water and amenity dispensers instead of individual bottles and soap bars.
For a variety of reasons, you may not be able to stay at one of those properties on your next trip, but it couldn't hurt to ask at your next hotel if it belongs to such an organization. And if not, how come? It's time, people ... the planet ain't getting any younger.
Source.
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Excerpt from the front page of the Gas Resources Corporation.
Modern petroleum science, - or what is called often the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins, - is an extensive body of knowledge which has been recorded in thousands of articles published in the mainstream, Russian-language scientific journals, and in many books and monographs. However, effectively nothing of modern petroleum science has been published in the U.S.A., and this body of knowledge remains largely unknown in the English-speaking world....
The articles on this site have been put here to accommodate the many requests for reprints and further information, received during the past few years following the publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. of an article formally enunciating the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins and demonstrating the high-pressure genesis of petroleum.
It deserves to be recognized that all of the contributors to these articles that deal with petroleum science and petroleum operations are all highly competent oil and gas men and women. All have extensive experience in discovering and producing petroleum.
In the pages containing articles connected with petroleum economics, there are several papers by Professor Michael C. Lynch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which address directly the myth of "oil exhaustion." There is also a link to an article by Professor Peter Odell of the London School of Economics concerning the common misperceptions connected with petroleum economics.
One should understand that these papers cannot give justice to the immense literature of modern Russian petroleum science. During the half century between 1951-2001, there have been thousands of articles published in the mainstream Russian scientific journals on the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins, and many books and monographs. For example, V. A. Krayushkin has published more than two hundred fifty articles on modern petroleum geology, and several books.
WHAT A LAUGH!
Government arranging some preening for the self-righteous
It's not easy being green, but California's government is trying to move the state's hotels in that direction. The new Green Lodging Program, which launched this week, includes a Web site listing hotels that comply with a range of environmental standards. State workers in California are encouraged to book "green" hotels when they travel on business.
Surf the site, and you'll find a list of 26 hotels that have changed the way they do business, including adding recycling systems, eco-friendly cleaning agents and landscaping methods that require less water and amenity dispensers instead of individual bottles and soap bars.
For a variety of reasons, you may not be able to stay at one of those properties on your next trip, but it couldn't hurt to ask at your next hotel if it belongs to such an organization. And if not, how come? It's time, people ... the planet ain't getting any younger.
Source.
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Thursday, October 14, 2004
EVER MORE LAND KEPT AWAY FROM THE PEOPLE WHO ARE PAYING FOR IT IS WHAT THE "CONSERVATIONISTS" WANT
The latest push in Nevada:
"The new act sets aside another 770,000 acres -- 1,200 square miles -- of new wilderness. But darn it, it's just not enough.... Mr. Hartwell acknowledges it's already illegal for his "looters" to "pillage archaeological and historical sites" (of which, let us note, the Pahranagat range has none -- not a pyramid, not a cliff dwelling, not so much as one of the prehistoric rock walls which were torn down in profusion to build the modern city of Phoenix). And this so-called "looting" occurs despite all these onerous federal laws. Why? Precisely because those who use our tax money to promote this "preservation" religion can never get enough.
The federal government has plenty of resources to protect the great parks -- Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon. But the Parks Service is going broke and is far behind on deferred maintenance because congressional delegations -- responding to this endless and organized bellowing for more "protection" -- keep throwing more millions of acres at the guys in the Smokey the Bear hats, even as they protest they have no staff or resources to handle such sprawling acreages as the recently created "Mojave Desert Preserve." If you seek to "protect" 30 percent of America, you will end up with inadequate resources to "protect" anything.
Economists call this "the tragedy of the commons." Private ownership works darned well at protecting resources. But once they're "held in trust for all the people" by corrupt and/or incompetent government "stewards" (the kind who, say, find nothing amiss with spending a cool million dollars on a two-seat solar outhouse) ... let the looting begin.
Mr. Hartwell's solution? Why, just get rid of that "all-too-easy accessibility that nearby roads provide," of course. Block off even off-road trails by digging huge holes or dumping huge boulders across bottlenecks so as to stop hikers, hunters, rock collectors, "despoiling" off-roaders of any kind.
There are already 1.7 million acres of "wilderness" set aside in Nevada, of course -- 2.2 percent of the state's land mass. But that vastly underestimates the area of land effectively off limits to Nevada's human inhabitants, once we start considering wildlife ranges, gunnery ranges, the Nevada Test Site ... Heck, you can't even drive in and access Lake Mead from most of the dirt trails that used to lead down to the lake from the north and west, or use metal detectors there without being arrested and fined, and that's supposed to be a recreation area -- not an area "protected" from human use, but an area set aside entirely for human use!
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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The latest push in Nevada:
"The new act sets aside another 770,000 acres -- 1,200 square miles -- of new wilderness. But darn it, it's just not enough.... Mr. Hartwell acknowledges it's already illegal for his "looters" to "pillage archaeological and historical sites" (of which, let us note, the Pahranagat range has none -- not a pyramid, not a cliff dwelling, not so much as one of the prehistoric rock walls which were torn down in profusion to build the modern city of Phoenix). And this so-called "looting" occurs despite all these onerous federal laws. Why? Precisely because those who use our tax money to promote this "preservation" religion can never get enough.
The federal government has plenty of resources to protect the great parks -- Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon. But the Parks Service is going broke and is far behind on deferred maintenance because congressional delegations -- responding to this endless and organized bellowing for more "protection" -- keep throwing more millions of acres at the guys in the Smokey the Bear hats, even as they protest they have no staff or resources to handle such sprawling acreages as the recently created "Mojave Desert Preserve." If you seek to "protect" 30 percent of America, you will end up with inadequate resources to "protect" anything.
Economists call this "the tragedy of the commons." Private ownership works darned well at protecting resources. But once they're "held in trust for all the people" by corrupt and/or incompetent government "stewards" (the kind who, say, find nothing amiss with spending a cool million dollars on a two-seat solar outhouse) ... let the looting begin.
Mr. Hartwell's solution? Why, just get rid of that "all-too-easy accessibility that nearby roads provide," of course. Block off even off-road trails by digging huge holes or dumping huge boulders across bottlenecks so as to stop hikers, hunters, rock collectors, "despoiling" off-roaders of any kind.
There are already 1.7 million acres of "wilderness" set aside in Nevada, of course -- 2.2 percent of the state's land mass. But that vastly underestimates the area of land effectively off limits to Nevada's human inhabitants, once we start considering wildlife ranges, gunnery ranges, the Nevada Test Site ... Heck, you can't even drive in and access Lake Mead from most of the dirt trails that used to lead down to the lake from the north and west, or use metal detectors there without being arrested and fined, and that's supposed to be a recreation area -- not an area "protected" from human use, but an area set aside entirely for human use!
More here:
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
That wicked carbon dioxide is actually good for you: "A clear, odorless gas that is nontoxic to humans at many times current atmospheric levels, CO2 neither fouls the air, impairs visibility, nor contributes to respiratory disease. More important, CO2 is the basic building block of the planetary food chain, and rising concentrations help most plants grow faster and bigger, use water more efficiently and resist pollution and other environmental stresses. The ecological benefit of an atmosphere richer in CO2 is well-nigh universal, because all animals depend, directly or indirectly, on plants as a food source. Empirical studies suggest that the 100 parts per million increase in atmospheric CO2 content over the past 150 years has increased mean crop yields by significant amounts: for example, about 60 percent for wheat, 33 percent for fruits and melons, and 51 percent for vegetables. Were it not for the extra CO2 put into the atmosphere by fossil fuel combustion, many people now living might not exist or many forests now standing might have been cleared and turned into farmland - or both. Far from polluting the planet, CO2 emissions are greening the Earth, enhancing biodiversity and global-food availability."
Scientist finds huge jump in global warming gas
"A US scientist has noted a surprising jump in the amount of carbon dioxide, the gas that causes global warming, on the eve of a Greenpeace conference in London. According to figures published in The Guardian and The Independent, it was the first time that the quantity of carbon dioxide - the main greenhouse gas - in the atmosphere had risen by more than two parts per million over two consecutive years. Between 2001 and 2002 the number of parts per million of carbon dioxide rose from 371.02 to 373.10, an increase of 2.08 over the year. Then it rose again in 2003 to 375.64, an annual increase of 2.54.
The data was recorded at the summit of Mauna Loa mountain in Hawaii by US scientist Charles Keeling, who has been collecting the data since 1958. Keeling said that up to then rises of over two parts per million had been recorded in only four years - 1973, 1988, 1994 and 1998 - and each time it was a year marked by the climatic phenomenon known as El Nino. "The rise in the annual rate to above two parts per million for two consecutive years is a real phenomenon," he was quoted as saying.
The most disturbing thing for the 74-year-old scientist was that neither of those two years had been marked by El Nino and there was no data to explain the increase."
More here.
I guess the world must have suddenly sprouted 30% more factories in just two years. When will Greenies face the fact that most of the things that they try to blame on human activity are part of natural weather and climate fluctuations?
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Scientist finds huge jump in global warming gas
"A US scientist has noted a surprising jump in the amount of carbon dioxide, the gas that causes global warming, on the eve of a Greenpeace conference in London. According to figures published in The Guardian and The Independent, it was the first time that the quantity of carbon dioxide - the main greenhouse gas - in the atmosphere had risen by more than two parts per million over two consecutive years. Between 2001 and 2002 the number of parts per million of carbon dioxide rose from 371.02 to 373.10, an increase of 2.08 over the year. Then it rose again in 2003 to 375.64, an annual increase of 2.54.
The data was recorded at the summit of Mauna Loa mountain in Hawaii by US scientist Charles Keeling, who has been collecting the data since 1958. Keeling said that up to then rises of over two parts per million had been recorded in only four years - 1973, 1988, 1994 and 1998 - and each time it was a year marked by the climatic phenomenon known as El Nino. "The rise in the annual rate to above two parts per million for two consecutive years is a real phenomenon," he was quoted as saying.
The most disturbing thing for the 74-year-old scientist was that neither of those two years had been marked by El Nino and there was no data to explain the increase."
More here.
I guess the world must have suddenly sprouted 30% more factories in just two years. When will Greenies face the fact that most of the things that they try to blame on human activity are part of natural weather and climate fluctuations?
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
CALIFORNIANS CUT DOWN OTHER PEOPLE'S TREES
In effect
"California's lumber production is at its lowest level in 20 years; its timber harvests have fallen 60 percent since 1988. Nationally, logging on federal lands has fallen to its lowest level in half a century. The state imports about 75 percent of its wood and paper products from Oregon, the U.S. Southeast, Canada and Europe.
The drop in harvesting timber coincided with the environmental movement's 25-year campaign to stop logging in California. If environmentalists really cared about the environment around the world, why haven't they considered the effect their policy of stopping the harvesting of timber in California is having on forests outside of the state?
From all accounts, they do not support us harvesting trees from the forests in California to supply even the 25 percent that we now get from in-state. Environmentalists continue to oppose meaningful forest management to thin dangerously overgrown stands, a practice that would help to provide for California's lumber needs and reduce the growing problem of deforestation outside California.
Do we not have a moral obligation to those forests outside our state to try to provide for our own needs? In light of the high tree density in many of our forests in California, and the opportunity to salvage damaged trees, wouldn't it be sound environmental policy to thin out our forests and salvage the timber from the fires to avoid affecting other forests? Much of the salvageable timber from burned areas is left to rot or buried in landfills or incinerated. Is this a wise use of this resource?
These areas, once the timber is salvaged or thinned out, could then be subjected to controlled burns (when the conditions permit), to remove any remaining debris. Seedlings could then be planted if needed to rehabilitate areas where trees were salvaged.
Wouldn't this make more sense than continuing to provide for our needs from forests outside our state? The environmentalists' agenda is elite and immoral; they prevent the harvesting of California's trees, even though it is a sustainable resource, without worrying about the impact on other forests outside of California. Is this sound environmental policy?
More here.
CALIFORNIA: A GREENIE FAD DIES
The rhetoric is familiar -- and so is the ultimate result -- government waste
"Burying state offices to save energy seemed like a fine idea in the 1970s, but today's state government is treating the grass-covered "subterranean" building much like an avocado shag rug: something that just has to go. The state Department of General Services, which acts as landlord to state agencies, has placed the sunken office complex at Seventh, Eighth, N and O streets in downtown Sacramento squarely on the chopping block. It plans to replace the single story of offices housed below a sculpture park with a complex up to 22 stories tall. "The underground building is very small," said Anne Cavanagh, General Services project director in charge of planning for the offices. "In modern planning, you want higher density." In other words, it's a waste of expensive downtown real estate.
The state's lack of regard for the underground building contrasts markedly with the fanfare it received in September 1977, when its design was chosen over 40 others in an architectural competition. Both the underground building and its companion structure, a solar-paneled building across the street, were among a group of then cutting-edge structures conceived under Gov. Jerry Brown. When the $17 million underground-and-solar complex was completed in 1982, the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Engineers called it "the nation's most energy-efficient office building."
Enamored with the "small is beautiful" philosophy and squeezed by high fuel prices, Brown and his team of architects sought to showcase energy-saving technology and provide a hospitable place for people to work. They wanted designs to mesh with, not overwhelm, the surrounding residential community. "The whole focus was on using state buildings to demonstrate things we thought should be done," said Sim Van der Ryn, the state architect during Brown's first four-year term."
More here
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
In effect
"California's lumber production is at its lowest level in 20 years; its timber harvests have fallen 60 percent since 1988. Nationally, logging on federal lands has fallen to its lowest level in half a century. The state imports about 75 percent of its wood and paper products from Oregon, the U.S. Southeast, Canada and Europe.
The drop in harvesting timber coincided with the environmental movement's 25-year campaign to stop logging in California. If environmentalists really cared about the environment around the world, why haven't they considered the effect their policy of stopping the harvesting of timber in California is having on forests outside of the state?
From all accounts, they do not support us harvesting trees from the forests in California to supply even the 25 percent that we now get from in-state. Environmentalists continue to oppose meaningful forest management to thin dangerously overgrown stands, a practice that would help to provide for California's lumber needs and reduce the growing problem of deforestation outside California.
Do we not have a moral obligation to those forests outside our state to try to provide for our own needs? In light of the high tree density in many of our forests in California, and the opportunity to salvage damaged trees, wouldn't it be sound environmental policy to thin out our forests and salvage the timber from the fires to avoid affecting other forests? Much of the salvageable timber from burned areas is left to rot or buried in landfills or incinerated. Is this a wise use of this resource?
These areas, once the timber is salvaged or thinned out, could then be subjected to controlled burns (when the conditions permit), to remove any remaining debris. Seedlings could then be planted if needed to rehabilitate areas where trees were salvaged.
Wouldn't this make more sense than continuing to provide for our needs from forests outside our state? The environmentalists' agenda is elite and immoral; they prevent the harvesting of California's trees, even though it is a sustainable resource, without worrying about the impact on other forests outside of California. Is this sound environmental policy?
More here.
CALIFORNIA: A GREENIE FAD DIES
The rhetoric is familiar -- and so is the ultimate result -- government waste
"Burying state offices to save energy seemed like a fine idea in the 1970s, but today's state government is treating the grass-covered "subterranean" building much like an avocado shag rug: something that just has to go. The state Department of General Services, which acts as landlord to state agencies, has placed the sunken office complex at Seventh, Eighth, N and O streets in downtown Sacramento squarely on the chopping block. It plans to replace the single story of offices housed below a sculpture park with a complex up to 22 stories tall. "The underground building is very small," said Anne Cavanagh, General Services project director in charge of planning for the offices. "In modern planning, you want higher density." In other words, it's a waste of expensive downtown real estate.
The state's lack of regard for the underground building contrasts markedly with the fanfare it received in September 1977, when its design was chosen over 40 others in an architectural competition. Both the underground building and its companion structure, a solar-paneled building across the street, were among a group of then cutting-edge structures conceived under Gov. Jerry Brown. When the $17 million underground-and-solar complex was completed in 1982, the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Engineers called it "the nation's most energy-efficient office building."
Enamored with the "small is beautiful" philosophy and squeezed by high fuel prices, Brown and his team of architects sought to showcase energy-saving technology and provide a hospitable place for people to work. They wanted designs to mesh with, not overwhelm, the surrounding residential community. "The whole focus was on using state buildings to demonstrate things we thought should be done," said Sim Van der Ryn, the state architect during Brown's first four-year term."
More here
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Monday, October 11, 2004
DELIBERATE DISHONESTY AMONG "SCIENTISTS"
"Last week, The New York Times delivered the worrisome news that a team of scientists has concluded that maximum hurricane winds will increase 6 percent by the 2080s, thanks to global warming. I was very upset to read that news, but not because I'm afraid my great-grandchildren will get blown away. My concern is what those scientists' work says about the state of climate science.
The researchers reached their conclusions using a series of climate models called General Circulation Models. They assumed that the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide-the main global warming gas-will increase by 1 percent per year, compounded yearly. That would warm the ocean, which would create slightly stronger storms. But there's a problem: Any atmospheric scientist who is worth his or her salt knows that atmospheric carbon dioxide is not increasing at that rate and has not been doing so for decades. And that makes a real difference in the modeling results. The increase has been about four-tenths of a percent per decade, averaged over the last 30 years - not 1 percent. Charitably, throw in another tenth of a percent because of other human "greenhouse" emissions (though the two major ones, chlorofluorocarbons and methane, are declining or holding steady). That means that the researchers' models are envisioning twice the actual increase in carbon dioxide as has been occurring for decades....
The reason that carbon dioxide is growing so slowly is because the world is gradually becoming more energy-efficient as its people become more affluent. That results in both a reduction in per-capita emissions and a reduction in the number of "capits" that are born, as rich folks have fewer kids. Among big countries, this trend started in the United States. It is now spreading globally as the enriching world buys more-efficient cars and power plants. This trend isn't going to change anytime soon. That means the growth rate in carbon dioxide over the next few decades is likely to be the same as the rate for the last few. Using the more realistic rate delays the time that hurricane winds will increase by 6 percent from the 2080s to the 2180s - 175 years from now. And it's pretty hard to speculate what impact humanity will have on nature over nearly two centuries in time.....
Because carbon dioxide increases have been bouncing around four-tenths of a percent per year for three decades, why do climate modelers insist on using the wrong number? It seems peculiar that people who have the equivalent of doctorates in applied physics (which is what climate science is) would somehow be perfectly happy to do something they know is wrong..... There are literally hundreds of scientific papers out there in which climate models use this wrong number. Each of those papers gets sent to three outside peer-reviewers. The fact that 1 percent continues to be used only means one thing: when it comes to global warming, hundreds of scientists must prefer convention to truth. But why? Is it because, when the real numbers are put in, there's no story for The New York Times to report?
More here:
MORE FROM JANE GALT ON "SMART GROWTH"
On 4th I put up excerpts from two articles that attacked "smart growth" -- one of which was by "Jane Galt". She has since put up another big post on the subject -- from which I have pulled just a few excerpts. I agree with her that the "mixed use" ideas of smart growthers are sound. Mixed use is what happens naturally anyway. It's only planners who stop it. But the idea that there is any generally better alternative to car-based transport is just a dream.
The excerpts:
"Let me start by saying that I'm firmly behind many of the aims of smart growth, such as mixed-use zoning. I think the attempt to ensure that poor people can't come within 100 miles of you by restricting zoning to one-acre lot single-family homes is one of the more repulsive uses of the state. This is saying something, from someone who basically thinks that most uses of the state are pretty repulsive.
Where I depart from the smart-growth/new-urbanist is in rejecting the belief, which I think is hopelessly naive, that If You Zone it They Will Come. While I agree that there is more of a market for denser, old-style suburban living than is currently being satisfied, I do not believe that those consumers are a majority of home buyers.
And I strongly disagree with the Smart Growthers that you can have meaningful mass transit at population densities much lower than New York City's.....New York City is the only city in the US where mass transit accounts for the majority of commutes.... if you want a place where public transportation is really dominant, Manhattan is the only game in town. That should tell proponents of mass transit something about what kind of densities are really necessary to make public transportation work. My affiliation of the smart growth cause with city living is thus not ignorant accident; it's a deliberate rejection of the idea that you can have walkability without high density.
The libertarians are not passing laws preventing the old, young, or disabled from living in walkable areas (I am unfamiliar with the notion that someone can be "too poor to drive", and statistics on poor households indeed show that most of them have at least one car). They just aren't agitating for laws forcing everyone else to live in neighbourhoods most hospitable to the old, young, and disabled. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the smart-growth crowd on disabling the pernicious zoning practices that keep denser housing from being built--but they get in a snit because we won't help them pass laws keeping anything else from being erected".
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
"Last week, The New York Times delivered the worrisome news that a team of scientists has concluded that maximum hurricane winds will increase 6 percent by the 2080s, thanks to global warming. I was very upset to read that news, but not because I'm afraid my great-grandchildren will get blown away. My concern is what those scientists' work says about the state of climate science.
The researchers reached their conclusions using a series of climate models called General Circulation Models. They assumed that the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide-the main global warming gas-will increase by 1 percent per year, compounded yearly. That would warm the ocean, which would create slightly stronger storms. But there's a problem: Any atmospheric scientist who is worth his or her salt knows that atmospheric carbon dioxide is not increasing at that rate and has not been doing so for decades. And that makes a real difference in the modeling results. The increase has been about four-tenths of a percent per decade, averaged over the last 30 years - not 1 percent. Charitably, throw in another tenth of a percent because of other human "greenhouse" emissions (though the two major ones, chlorofluorocarbons and methane, are declining or holding steady). That means that the researchers' models are envisioning twice the actual increase in carbon dioxide as has been occurring for decades....
The reason that carbon dioxide is growing so slowly is because the world is gradually becoming more energy-efficient as its people become more affluent. That results in both a reduction in per-capita emissions and a reduction in the number of "capits" that are born, as rich folks have fewer kids. Among big countries, this trend started in the United States. It is now spreading globally as the enriching world buys more-efficient cars and power plants. This trend isn't going to change anytime soon. That means the growth rate in carbon dioxide over the next few decades is likely to be the same as the rate for the last few. Using the more realistic rate delays the time that hurricane winds will increase by 6 percent from the 2080s to the 2180s - 175 years from now. And it's pretty hard to speculate what impact humanity will have on nature over nearly two centuries in time.....
Because carbon dioxide increases have been bouncing around four-tenths of a percent per year for three decades, why do climate modelers insist on using the wrong number? It seems peculiar that people who have the equivalent of doctorates in applied physics (which is what climate science is) would somehow be perfectly happy to do something they know is wrong..... There are literally hundreds of scientific papers out there in which climate models use this wrong number. Each of those papers gets sent to three outside peer-reviewers. The fact that 1 percent continues to be used only means one thing: when it comes to global warming, hundreds of scientists must prefer convention to truth. But why? Is it because, when the real numbers are put in, there's no story for The New York Times to report?
More here:
MORE FROM JANE GALT ON "SMART GROWTH"
On 4th I put up excerpts from two articles that attacked "smart growth" -- one of which was by "Jane Galt". She has since put up another big post on the subject -- from which I have pulled just a few excerpts. I agree with her that the "mixed use" ideas of smart growthers are sound. Mixed use is what happens naturally anyway. It's only planners who stop it. But the idea that there is any generally better alternative to car-based transport is just a dream.
The excerpts:
"Let me start by saying that I'm firmly behind many of the aims of smart growth, such as mixed-use zoning. I think the attempt to ensure that poor people can't come within 100 miles of you by restricting zoning to one-acre lot single-family homes is one of the more repulsive uses of the state. This is saying something, from someone who basically thinks that most uses of the state are pretty repulsive.
Where I depart from the smart-growth/new-urbanist is in rejecting the belief, which I think is hopelessly naive, that If You Zone it They Will Come. While I agree that there is more of a market for denser, old-style suburban living than is currently being satisfied, I do not believe that those consumers are a majority of home buyers.
And I strongly disagree with the Smart Growthers that you can have meaningful mass transit at population densities much lower than New York City's.....New York City is the only city in the US where mass transit accounts for the majority of commutes.... if you want a place where public transportation is really dominant, Manhattan is the only game in town. That should tell proponents of mass transit something about what kind of densities are really necessary to make public transportation work. My affiliation of the smart growth cause with city living is thus not ignorant accident; it's a deliberate rejection of the idea that you can have walkability without high density.
The libertarians are not passing laws preventing the old, young, or disabled from living in walkable areas (I am unfamiliar with the notion that someone can be "too poor to drive", and statistics on poor households indeed show that most of them have at least one car). They just aren't agitating for laws forcing everyone else to live in neighbourhoods most hospitable to the old, young, and disabled. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the smart-growth crowd on disabling the pernicious zoning practices that keep denser housing from being built--but they get in a snit because we won't help them pass laws keeping anything else from being erected".
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Sunday, October 10, 2004
AN ANTI-GREENIE IN THE GUN
No wonder it is mostly retired professors who feel safe enough to criticize Greenie myths. (I am one myself!)
"For those of us who see television news and commentary as a vast, statist wasteland, the work of John Stossel has been welcome relief. Each week on the ABC show 20/20, Stossel has his "Give Me a Break" segment in which he comments acerbically on the latest follies of government regulation and taxation.
Stossel's brief commentary, along with the numerous shows he does on the limitations of government, has earned him a large following among conservatives and libertarians. It has also earned him numerous enemies in television, government, and among leftist groups. And like the conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby, who was recently ousted from the Boston Globe, Stossel finds his career in deep trouble because of an innocent error.
Earlier this year, Stossel twice broadcast a comparison of fruits and vegetables grown "organically" (that is, with manure as fertilizer) and that same produce grown by conventional means with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. (I saw one of those segments.) According to Stossel's research, the conventional produce was actually safer than the organic stuff and was better for the environment. This was a major challenge to environmentalist orthodoxy. However, as we shall see, there was a small problem with what he said, and it is that problem that has become the fig leaf covering the real reason that some prominent people want Stossel's scalp....
Stossel's analysis, however, lacked one component, that being whether or not there was pesticide residue on the conventional foods. His researcher said there was none, and like any journalist, who depends upon the accuracy of his staff, Stossel went with the story. However, it turned out that no tests had been conducted. It was an honest mistake, and, in reality, one that should have been irrelevant, since toxicology has long shown that pesticides can easily be washed from produce and that the tiny doses that might be left pose absolutely no threat to human health.
Unfortunately, statists who have long seethed at Stossel's commentary have been able to leap onto this small glitch and have turned it into a major anti-Stossel campaign. The ABC News hierarchy has already suspended the researcher without pay and Stossel's critics are demanding that Stossel be fired, despite the fact that he has already made a public correction of his "error."
The stench of hypocrisy here is overwhelming. Leftist journalists for years have trumpeted inaccurate information on environmental issues for years. Time Magazine has even proudly announced that it has renounced all journalistic "objectivity" in its quest to convince its readers that we are in a life and death environmental crisis. In other words, in modern journalism good science does not matter when the environment is at stake. Other news organizations are following the same path. Therefore, since some of the targets of Stossel's criticism have been environmentalists and the outright falsehoods they promote, it is not difficult to see why Stossel has been in the crosshairs of leftists for many years.....
Stossel has been the unending target of his journalistic peers. It now looks as though they have an issue with which to hang him. While every other mainstream "news" organization has committed far worse sins against the truth, Stossel has done something that is truly unforgivable. He has exposed the hypocrisy of the media, and for that there can be given no quarter until the man is destroyed".
More here.
CYCLES IN SUN ACTIVITY COINCIDE WITH CLIMATE CHANGE ON EARTH
"Records of cosmic ray byproducts from Antarctica and Greenland suggest a pattern of low cosmic ray flux (and high solar magnetism) approximately 800 to 900 years ago, followed by several periods of high cosmic ray flux (low solar magnetism) for the next few centuries, and a return to generally low cosmic ray fluxes (and high solar magnetism) beginning in the 19th Century.
Remarkably, the records of cosmic-ray byproducts sometimes show surprisingly good correlation with independent records of past change in local environments.
Many similar correlations between local environmental indicators and cosmic ray byproduct concentrations have been found, largely owing to advances in measuring technology. There have been many attempts to explain the good correlations between the dramatic changes in observed local environments and observed production of cosmic ray byproducts. But most amount to guesswork, rather than providing truly satisfactory answers.
One suggestion made has been that cosmic rays striking dust particles in the air might help to trigger clouds to form, perhaps thereby changing precipitation or temperature patterns or both. But how and which types of clouds might be formed, and their effects on climate or other environmental measures, remain too sketchy to conclude anything reliable and quantitative.
Another suggestion involves the varying Sun itself. While the sun's magnetism modulates the incident of cosmic ray flux, at the same time the sun's total energy output is changing, along with particular wavelengths of the sun's energy and fast moving-particles streaming out of the Sun's wind. Total energy output of the Sun has been observed by satellite instruments to vary so slightly over the last two decades, that the change seems too small to create the observed dramatic ecosystem changes. Yet, it may be that some aspects of ecosystems are very sensitive to tiny amounts of some or many of the changes in the solar output, or yet again that small solar changes are amplified by the oceans or clouds.
Currently, though, it is impossible to say with accuracy what causes the many newly discovered correlations between the cosmic ray byproducts found in terrestrial reservoirs and ecosystem changes. That leaves forecasting future ecosystem change with rather large gaps in reliability.
More here
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
No wonder it is mostly retired professors who feel safe enough to criticize Greenie myths. (I am one myself!)
"For those of us who see television news and commentary as a vast, statist wasteland, the work of John Stossel has been welcome relief. Each week on the ABC show 20/20, Stossel has his "Give Me a Break" segment in which he comments acerbically on the latest follies of government regulation and taxation.
Stossel's brief commentary, along with the numerous shows he does on the limitations of government, has earned him a large following among conservatives and libertarians. It has also earned him numerous enemies in television, government, and among leftist groups. And like the conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby, who was recently ousted from the Boston Globe, Stossel finds his career in deep trouble because of an innocent error.
Earlier this year, Stossel twice broadcast a comparison of fruits and vegetables grown "organically" (that is, with manure as fertilizer) and that same produce grown by conventional means with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. (I saw one of those segments.) According to Stossel's research, the conventional produce was actually safer than the organic stuff and was better for the environment. This was a major challenge to environmentalist orthodoxy. However, as we shall see, there was a small problem with what he said, and it is that problem that has become the fig leaf covering the real reason that some prominent people want Stossel's scalp....
Stossel's analysis, however, lacked one component, that being whether or not there was pesticide residue on the conventional foods. His researcher said there was none, and like any journalist, who depends upon the accuracy of his staff, Stossel went with the story. However, it turned out that no tests had been conducted. It was an honest mistake, and, in reality, one that should have been irrelevant, since toxicology has long shown that pesticides can easily be washed from produce and that the tiny doses that might be left pose absolutely no threat to human health.
Unfortunately, statists who have long seethed at Stossel's commentary have been able to leap onto this small glitch and have turned it into a major anti-Stossel campaign. The ABC News hierarchy has already suspended the researcher without pay and Stossel's critics are demanding that Stossel be fired, despite the fact that he has already made a public correction of his "error."
The stench of hypocrisy here is overwhelming. Leftist journalists for years have trumpeted inaccurate information on environmental issues for years. Time Magazine has even proudly announced that it has renounced all journalistic "objectivity" in its quest to convince its readers that we are in a life and death environmental crisis. In other words, in modern journalism good science does not matter when the environment is at stake. Other news organizations are following the same path. Therefore, since some of the targets of Stossel's criticism have been environmentalists and the outright falsehoods they promote, it is not difficult to see why Stossel has been in the crosshairs of leftists for many years.....
Stossel has been the unending target of his journalistic peers. It now looks as though they have an issue with which to hang him. While every other mainstream "news" organization has committed far worse sins against the truth, Stossel has done something that is truly unforgivable. He has exposed the hypocrisy of the media, and for that there can be given no quarter until the man is destroyed".
More here.
CYCLES IN SUN ACTIVITY COINCIDE WITH CLIMATE CHANGE ON EARTH
"Records of cosmic ray byproducts from Antarctica and Greenland suggest a pattern of low cosmic ray flux (and high solar magnetism) approximately 800 to 900 years ago, followed by several periods of high cosmic ray flux (low solar magnetism) for the next few centuries, and a return to generally low cosmic ray fluxes (and high solar magnetism) beginning in the 19th Century.
Remarkably, the records of cosmic-ray byproducts sometimes show surprisingly good correlation with independent records of past change in local environments.
* One example comes from cave formations in southern Arabia, where researchers at Heidelberg and Bern find that periods of smaller calcite growth rings, indicating reduced rainfall during northerly shifts in monsoon patterns, correspond to periods of high amounts of cosmic ray byproducts between 9,900 and 5,500 years ago, the period of their study.
* Researchers in The Netherlands provide another. They found increases in moisture-thriving plants in bogs in eastern Netherlands from 4,500 to 2,500 B.C., generally during periods of greater concentrations of cosmic ray byproducts.
* Seafloor sediments from the North Atlantic, signifying sharp cooling periods very roughly every 1,500 years over the last ten thousand years, largely coincide with periods of increased cosmic ray byproducts, according to Columbia University work.
* And elevated populations of diatoms in Lake Arolik, Alaska, denote periods of greater lake productivity that tend to recur during periods of high cosmic ray flux, according to researchers at the University of Illinois and elsewhere.
Many similar correlations between local environmental indicators and cosmic ray byproduct concentrations have been found, largely owing to advances in measuring technology. There have been many attempts to explain the good correlations between the dramatic changes in observed local environments and observed production of cosmic ray byproducts. But most amount to guesswork, rather than providing truly satisfactory answers.
One suggestion made has been that cosmic rays striking dust particles in the air might help to trigger clouds to form, perhaps thereby changing precipitation or temperature patterns or both. But how and which types of clouds might be formed, and their effects on climate or other environmental measures, remain too sketchy to conclude anything reliable and quantitative.
Another suggestion involves the varying Sun itself. While the sun's magnetism modulates the incident of cosmic ray flux, at the same time the sun's total energy output is changing, along with particular wavelengths of the sun's energy and fast moving-particles streaming out of the Sun's wind. Total energy output of the Sun has been observed by satellite instruments to vary so slightly over the last two decades, that the change seems too small to create the observed dramatic ecosystem changes. Yet, it may be that some aspects of ecosystems are very sensitive to tiny amounts of some or many of the changes in the solar output, or yet again that small solar changes are amplified by the oceans or clouds.
Currently, though, it is impossible to say with accuracy what causes the many newly discovered correlations between the cosmic ray byproducts found in terrestrial reservoirs and ecosystem changes. That leaves forecasting future ecosystem change with rather large gaps in reliability.
More here
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Spud car: "Toyota's latest environmentally friendly concept car is made from spuds. Rear bumpers, trims and mats in the ES3 prototype hatchback are built from a plastic derived from a natural acid in sweet potatoes. The organically formed substance is perfectly biodegradable as well as being as tough as conventional materials, reports the "Daily Mirror". A spokesman for the car firm told the paper: 'It's proven science and environmentally kinder. Eco-plastic has enormous potential.' Toyotas made using potatoes are being introduced in Japan and may soon be launched in the UK."
ELITES BLOCK A WIND-FARM
Elite scenery threatened! Horrors! Only peasants have to bear the burdens caused by Greenie fads
"In a carefully orchestrated campaign to block the proposed Nantucket Sound wind project, a bill pending in the Senate contains a provision that would stop all such projects cold. The amendment, filed by Sen. John Warner, R-VA, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, would prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from processing any permits for wind farms on the Outer Continental Shelf until Congress approves more comprehensive regulations controlling such development.
The amendment, according to Seth Kaplan, senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation in Boston, was tacked onto the defense authorization act, already approved by both the House and Senate, and now in conference committee before it is re-voted in both chambers and sent to President Bush for his signature. Besides Warner, another key senator serving on that conference committee is Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-MA, who strongly opposes the project....
Cape Wind Associates, of Boston and Yarmouthport, hope to build the country's first off-shore wind farm, a 130-turbine project in a 24-square mile area over Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound....
Two years ago Warner stepped into the wind farm debate here, far from his normal stomping grounds, saying that locating a wind farm in Nantucket Sound was "questionable." Besides the Cape Wind project, the Warner amendment would also deflate hopes of the Long Island Power Authority to construct its own off-shore wind farm east of Long Island's Jones Beach in the Atlantic Ocean"
More here.
GREENIES ARE PRO-VERMIN
"The next time you see rats roaming around public housing units in New York City, think of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. He and a handful of his colleagues in other states are working hard to make the city's public housing safe-for rats, mice, cockroaches and other city "wildlife." Working with a collection of green activists, Spitzer and five other state attorneys general recently announced that they might sue the feds for using pesticides in public housing-poor, minority families living in vermin-infested buildings not withstanding.
The AGs claim they want to promote "integrated pest management," which just means using a variety of means to control pests-including pesticide use. But these taxpayer-funded "consumer advocates" seem more interested in their own irrational quest to eliminate chemicals.
Advocating the opposite is the National Organization of African-Americans in Housing (NOAAH)-a nonprofit consumer-advocacy group promoting healthy housing for minority groups. The organization explains on its Web site 1) that proper use of pesticides can help control health problems that plague many low-income and minority households, and 2) that Environmental Protection Agency's regulations on pesticides keep public-exposure levels so low that the risk of proper use of these products is tiny.
Cockroach infestations are a particularly serious contributor to the nation's allergy and asthma problems. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that about 6 million children suffered from asthma in 2000 and about 4 million suffered asthma attacks. According to the CDC, asthmas disproportionately affect poor, minority children living in the inner city, and cockroach-related allergies are among the most common and problematic. These kids miss school more often, have more emergency medical visits, and lose more sleep than do kids with other kinds of allergies.
Rats also are a common problem for poor, urban minority children according to Dr. Pamela Nagami, author of the new book "Bitten: True Medical Stories of Bites and Stings." Doctors in a Los Angeles Hospital, she reports, tallied the number of rat bites they treated over a three-year period and found that all the patients were either Hispanic or African-American. Nagami says that rats, which are carriers of more than 70 diseases, commonly bite the faces and hands of children under 5 years old while these kids are asleep in their homes."
More here.
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
ELITES BLOCK A WIND-FARM
Elite scenery threatened! Horrors! Only peasants have to bear the burdens caused by Greenie fads
"In a carefully orchestrated campaign to block the proposed Nantucket Sound wind project, a bill pending in the Senate contains a provision that would stop all such projects cold. The amendment, filed by Sen. John Warner, R-VA, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, would prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from processing any permits for wind farms on the Outer Continental Shelf until Congress approves more comprehensive regulations controlling such development.
The amendment, according to Seth Kaplan, senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation in Boston, was tacked onto the defense authorization act, already approved by both the House and Senate, and now in conference committee before it is re-voted in both chambers and sent to President Bush for his signature. Besides Warner, another key senator serving on that conference committee is Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-MA, who strongly opposes the project....
Cape Wind Associates, of Boston and Yarmouthport, hope to build the country's first off-shore wind farm, a 130-turbine project in a 24-square mile area over Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound....
Two years ago Warner stepped into the wind farm debate here, far from his normal stomping grounds, saying that locating a wind farm in Nantucket Sound was "questionable." Besides the Cape Wind project, the Warner amendment would also deflate hopes of the Long Island Power Authority to construct its own off-shore wind farm east of Long Island's Jones Beach in the Atlantic Ocean"
More here.
GREENIES ARE PRO-VERMIN
"The next time you see rats roaming around public housing units in New York City, think of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. He and a handful of his colleagues in other states are working hard to make the city's public housing safe-for rats, mice, cockroaches and other city "wildlife." Working with a collection of green activists, Spitzer and five other state attorneys general recently announced that they might sue the feds for using pesticides in public housing-poor, minority families living in vermin-infested buildings not withstanding.
The AGs claim they want to promote "integrated pest management," which just means using a variety of means to control pests-including pesticide use. But these taxpayer-funded "consumer advocates" seem more interested in their own irrational quest to eliminate chemicals.
Advocating the opposite is the National Organization of African-Americans in Housing (NOAAH)-a nonprofit consumer-advocacy group promoting healthy housing for minority groups. The organization explains on its Web site 1) that proper use of pesticides can help control health problems that plague many low-income and minority households, and 2) that Environmental Protection Agency's regulations on pesticides keep public-exposure levels so low that the risk of proper use of these products is tiny.
Cockroach infestations are a particularly serious contributor to the nation's allergy and asthma problems. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that about 6 million children suffered from asthma in 2000 and about 4 million suffered asthma attacks. According to the CDC, asthmas disproportionately affect poor, minority children living in the inner city, and cockroach-related allergies are among the most common and problematic. These kids miss school more often, have more emergency medical visits, and lose more sleep than do kids with other kinds of allergies.
Rats also are a common problem for poor, urban minority children according to Dr. Pamela Nagami, author of the new book "Bitten: True Medical Stories of Bites and Stings." Doctors in a Los Angeles Hospital, she reports, tallied the number of rat bites they treated over a three-year period and found that all the patients were either Hispanic or African-American. Nagami says that rats, which are carriers of more than 70 diseases, commonly bite the faces and hands of children under 5 years old while these kids are asleep in their homes."
More here.
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Friday, October 08, 2004
ARROGANT GREENIE BUREAUCRATS THINK THEY OWN THE COUNTRY
A four-year "study"? Why not let the people vote on it instead?
"The Bureau of Land Management's surprise decision last week to halt permit work on three controversial gas wells west of Choteau is part of a broader plan that will halt drilling on the Rocky Mountain Front for at least the next four years, the agency announced Tuesday. Rather than taking a piecemeal look at individual leases, the BLM has decided to do a thorough study of the entire Front, said Rebecca Watson, assistant secretary of land and minerals management for the Department of Interior. The study will allow government agencies to make some long-term decisions about the future of the ecosystem, she said. [Good of them!]
Also Tuesday, another branch of the Interior Department, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, announced an ambitious proposal to place conservation protection on about 170,000 acres along the Front. The announcements came during a news conference in Billings.
The BLM late last week stopped work on a million-dollar environmental review of a proposal to drill three natural gas wells in the Blindhorse Outstanding Natural Area of the Front."
More here.
AUSTRALIA'S "WORST DROUGHT" ACTUALLY QUITE ORDINARY
Wok Hughes is once again hitting the climate doomsters with the facts:
"Many claims have been made by advocacy groups the media and prominent people that 2002 was the "..worst drought in a hundred years.." or "..worst drought ever..". In early 2003 we were very suspicious of these claims because most rainfall histories we reviewed showed dryer episodes than 2002 at varying time-spans back into the past but very rarely did we have to look back 100 years to find a dryer episode. At that time we did not have an Australia-wide dataset but earlier in 2004 we noticed the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) had posted on an ftp site a ~370 station "high quality rainfall dataset" (HQRD) which we have reviewed.
What did we do ? We examined annual data for each station, and after rejecting stations that either; had no data for 2002, or had too many missing years or garbled data. We ended up with 253 stations with useful series of annual rainfall totals, most of which extended back about a century, some about 120 years and a few from more remote areas covered maybe half of the 20C. We then manually checked the number series to pinpoint the most recent dryer episode compared to 2002, taking into account 2001 if that was also a dry year. The timespans back to the next worse drought episode were rounded to the nearest decade and colour coded with a mapping program used to portray the station localities.
It is obvious from the map that for vast areas of Australia the 2002 drought was simply a repetition of a similar but dryer event not too distant in the past. Claims of "..worst drought in a hundred years.." or "..worst drought ever.." can only be justified for a very small proportion of the area of Australia, mainly in western Queensland. The name "Great West Queensland Drought of 2002" is proposed.
How is it that the Myth of "Australia's worst drought" grew so fast and these manifestly inaccurate claims get such wide currency ? We have to realize that the media thrives on gloom and doom bad news stories to sell papers and rate well on TV. This will not change but we must be very sceptical of any claims made on the media connected with the environment. The media are natural allies of Green groups who have made an art form of distorting the science of natural phenomena to generate gloom and doom / sky falling in stories to convince us how terrible our society is so we will vote for them or at least give them money. In the case of drought there are also farming and rural groups suffering financial uncertainty and it is unreasonable to expect an accurate view of distant historical events from them".
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
A four-year "study"? Why not let the people vote on it instead?
"The Bureau of Land Management's surprise decision last week to halt permit work on three controversial gas wells west of Choteau is part of a broader plan that will halt drilling on the Rocky Mountain Front for at least the next four years, the agency announced Tuesday. Rather than taking a piecemeal look at individual leases, the BLM has decided to do a thorough study of the entire Front, said Rebecca Watson, assistant secretary of land and minerals management for the Department of Interior. The study will allow government agencies to make some long-term decisions about the future of the ecosystem, she said. [Good of them!]
Also Tuesday, another branch of the Interior Department, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, announced an ambitious proposal to place conservation protection on about 170,000 acres along the Front. The announcements came during a news conference in Billings.
The BLM late last week stopped work on a million-dollar environmental review of a proposal to drill three natural gas wells in the Blindhorse Outstanding Natural Area of the Front."
More here.
AUSTRALIA'S "WORST DROUGHT" ACTUALLY QUITE ORDINARY
Wok Hughes is once again hitting the climate doomsters with the facts:
"Many claims have been made by advocacy groups the media and prominent people that 2002 was the "..worst drought in a hundred years.." or "..worst drought ever..". In early 2003 we were very suspicious of these claims because most rainfall histories we reviewed showed dryer episodes than 2002 at varying time-spans back into the past but very rarely did we have to look back 100 years to find a dryer episode. At that time we did not have an Australia-wide dataset but earlier in 2004 we noticed the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) had posted on an ftp site a ~370 station "high quality rainfall dataset" (HQRD) which we have reviewed.
What did we do ? We examined annual data for each station, and after rejecting stations that either; had no data for 2002, or had too many missing years or garbled data. We ended up with 253 stations with useful series of annual rainfall totals, most of which extended back about a century, some about 120 years and a few from more remote areas covered maybe half of the 20C. We then manually checked the number series to pinpoint the most recent dryer episode compared to 2002, taking into account 2001 if that was also a dry year. The timespans back to the next worse drought episode were rounded to the nearest decade and colour coded with a mapping program used to portray the station localities.
It is obvious from the map that for vast areas of Australia the 2002 drought was simply a repetition of a similar but dryer event not too distant in the past. Claims of "..worst drought in a hundred years.." or "..worst drought ever.." can only be justified for a very small proportion of the area of Australia, mainly in western Queensland. The name "Great West Queensland Drought of 2002" is proposed.
How is it that the Myth of "Australia's worst drought" grew so fast and these manifestly inaccurate claims get such wide currency ? We have to realize that the media thrives on gloom and doom bad news stories to sell papers and rate well on TV. This will not change but we must be very sceptical of any claims made on the media connected with the environment. The media are natural allies of Green groups who have made an art form of distorting the science of natural phenomena to generate gloom and doom / sky falling in stories to convince us how terrible our society is so we will vote for them or at least give them money. In the case of drought there are also farming and rural groups suffering financial uncertainty and it is unreasonable to expect an accurate view of distant historical events from them".
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Thursday, October 07, 2004
THE USA IS A LOW EMITTER OF "POLLUTANTS"
(On a comparable basis)
I got my fair share of abuse recently on the BBC. "Isn't the U.S. an awful country?" ranted a Labor MP. "With only 5 percent of the world's population, it produces 20 percent of those terrible gases that are warming our atmosphere. How dare President Bush say he won't go along with the U.N.' s Kyoto Protocol on global warming!"
Holding up America as the environmental bad boy is just as ill-advised. Sure, the United States leads in per capita emissions of carbon dioxide. But what does that mean? Instead, people should focus on is how efficient we are with respect to these emissions. If India and China produce, say, one half of our emissions per citizen (as they will in a few years), they still emit far more than we do. And if their gross domestic product remains below ours, they then suffer from the twin sins of emissions and inefficiency.
So, let's get real and see how many bangs we get for each carbon dioxide buck. The best way to do this is to divide our greenhouse emissions by our economic output, which gives emissions per dollar of gross domestic product. For the 10 biggest emitters, the worst in this respect is Russia, where 148 million people produce virtually nothing. The scope of Russia's poverty is now beginning to show up in life expectancies, which are nose-diving toward the 1900 level of 50 years for males.
For this effort, let's assign the Russians an emission-economic rating of 100, the worst rate. On this relative scale, America rates a 33. The best are the Japanese, at 18, not far ahead of the United States, and mainly because of their intensive use of nuclear power. For comparison, South Africa rates a 69, Saudi Arabia-- despite its high GDP from oil revenues-- a 62, and our Canadian neighbors 36. Among the 10 largest emitters, in terms of economic efficiency, America comes in third, after Japan and Germany. That's not bad, considering our lack of nuclear, which, in recent years has provided only a bit more than 10 percent of our total energy. The basic figures needed to make these calculations are easily obtained from various government agencies, such as the Departments of Energy and Commerce.
On average, about one-third of a nation's energy use goes to transportation. So, everything else being equal (a condition that rarely obtains except in arguments like this!) nations that are bigger geographically are going to emit more carbon dioxide, even after adjusting emissions for economic efficiency.
One solution is to adjust emissions per unit GDP for the area of each country. In this calculation, the United States comes in as the number one most efficient nation on earth. The worst is the United Kingdom, where everyone is crabbing about Bush's position on Kyoto.
More here
A LEADING AUSTRALIAN CONSERVATIVE CALLS A SPADE A SPADE
"The Greens are like watermelons -- green on the outside and red like communists on the inside -- Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson said yesterday. Speaking at a luncheon at the Ballina RSL in the marginal northern NSW seat of Page, Mr Anderson said Greens leader Bob Brown and his party were a danger to democracy.
The extraordinary attack in the seat held by National Party MP Ian Causley by a margin of 2.8 per cent is the latest offering in a Coalition campaign to persuade wavering supporters not to experiment with a protest vote to the Greens. "They are watermelons, many of them, green on the outside and very, very, very red on the inside," he said. "They're talking about things like legalising drugs -- you know, ecstasy over the counter -- that would be terrific," he said sarcastically. "Abolishing valuable programs like work-for-the-dole and making work-for-the-dole available whether you wanted to work or not." Mr Anderson asked the 80 people at the lunch not to vote for the Greens because they were radicals. "They are not a halfway house, and please tell your friends to look long and hard before you think about going that way."
Mr Anderson said that if the Greens had existed in the 1950s, they would have been members of the Communist Party. "This idea that they are some warm, nice midway house between the Coalition and the Labor Party overlooks the fact that they're actually a home for people who in the 1950s would have joined the Communist Party." "
More here.
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
(On a comparable basis)
I got my fair share of abuse recently on the BBC. "Isn't the U.S. an awful country?" ranted a Labor MP. "With only 5 percent of the world's population, it produces 20 percent of those terrible gases that are warming our atmosphere. How dare President Bush say he won't go along with the U.N.' s Kyoto Protocol on global warming!"
Holding up America as the environmental bad boy is just as ill-advised. Sure, the United States leads in per capita emissions of carbon dioxide. But what does that mean? Instead, people should focus on is how efficient we are with respect to these emissions. If India and China produce, say, one half of our emissions per citizen (as they will in a few years), they still emit far more than we do. And if their gross domestic product remains below ours, they then suffer from the twin sins of emissions and inefficiency.
So, let's get real and see how many bangs we get for each carbon dioxide buck. The best way to do this is to divide our greenhouse emissions by our economic output, which gives emissions per dollar of gross domestic product. For the 10 biggest emitters, the worst in this respect is Russia, where 148 million people produce virtually nothing. The scope of Russia's poverty is now beginning to show up in life expectancies, which are nose-diving toward the 1900 level of 50 years for males.
For this effort, let's assign the Russians an emission-economic rating of 100, the worst rate. On this relative scale, America rates a 33. The best are the Japanese, at 18, not far ahead of the United States, and mainly because of their intensive use of nuclear power. For comparison, South Africa rates a 69, Saudi Arabia-- despite its high GDP from oil revenues-- a 62, and our Canadian neighbors 36. Among the 10 largest emitters, in terms of economic efficiency, America comes in third, after Japan and Germany. That's not bad, considering our lack of nuclear, which, in recent years has provided only a bit more than 10 percent of our total energy. The basic figures needed to make these calculations are easily obtained from various government agencies, such as the Departments of Energy and Commerce.
On average, about one-third of a nation's energy use goes to transportation. So, everything else being equal (a condition that rarely obtains except in arguments like this!) nations that are bigger geographically are going to emit more carbon dioxide, even after adjusting emissions for economic efficiency.
One solution is to adjust emissions per unit GDP for the area of each country. In this calculation, the United States comes in as the number one most efficient nation on earth. The worst is the United Kingdom, where everyone is crabbing about Bush's position on Kyoto.
More here
A LEADING AUSTRALIAN CONSERVATIVE CALLS A SPADE A SPADE
"The Greens are like watermelons -- green on the outside and red like communists on the inside -- Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson said yesterday. Speaking at a luncheon at the Ballina RSL in the marginal northern NSW seat of Page, Mr Anderson said Greens leader Bob Brown and his party were a danger to democracy.
The extraordinary attack in the seat held by National Party MP Ian Causley by a margin of 2.8 per cent is the latest offering in a Coalition campaign to persuade wavering supporters not to experiment with a protest vote to the Greens. "They are watermelons, many of them, green on the outside and very, very, very red on the inside," he said. "They're talking about things like legalising drugs -- you know, ecstasy over the counter -- that would be terrific," he said sarcastically. "Abolishing valuable programs like work-for-the-dole and making work-for-the-dole available whether you wanted to work or not." Mr Anderson asked the 80 people at the lunch not to vote for the Greens because they were radicals. "They are not a halfway house, and please tell your friends to look long and hard before you think about going that way."
Mr Anderson said that if the Greens had existed in the 1950s, they would have been members of the Communist Party. "This idea that they are some warm, nice midway house between the Coalition and the Labor Party overlooks the fact that they're actually a home for people who in the 1950s would have joined the Communist Party." "
More here.
*****************************************
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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Wednesday, October 06, 2004
AUSTRALIANS DON'T LIKE WIND-FARMS EITHER
"Rural residents in two states can't sleep at night because of noise from a Queensland Government-owned corporation's alternative energy projects. Homeowners in Queensland and Victoria have all but resigned themselves to the noise of the Stanwell Corporation wind turbines, which they claim have devalued their properties. Stanwell Corporation has said it is doing the right thing and has told residents there is no problem with noise. But Jim and Dot Newman say they have to turn up their air conditioner and shut the windows and doors just to sleep at night.
The couple live on a 106ha dairy farm at Windy Hill on the Atherton Tableland in north Queensland across the road from 20 wind turbines built by Stanwell in 2000. Mrs Newman said the throbbing, thumping noise from the generators could be heard at all hours of the day. "It was very frustrating in the beginning and makes us extremely upset, but there is nothing we can do about it," she said. Within 12 months, the couple, who are in their fifties, had had enough and they decided to move but they still cannot find a buyer.
A number of Victorian residents know exactly how the Newmans feel and are equally angry at Stanwell Corporation. In Victoria, Stanwell Corporation have built three wind farms including 12 turbines at Toora, 188km southeast of Melbourne, in the South Gippsland region. Kath and Terry Hurst of Toora were told by Stanwell they would not be disturbed by the wind farms. After doing some research the couple along with two other residents launched an unsuccessful bid through the Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal to stop the development.
Stanwell build two 50m pylons 750m and 810m from their house. "It was terrible, we had real trouble sleeping and the worst part was we decided to move and it took 18 months to sell the place," Mr Hurst said. Mr Hurst said while the local property market was booming, they lost money selling their house".
More here.
RUSSIA WAS DRAGOONED INTO "KYOTO" BY THE EU
The anti-American EU bribed the Russians into signing. It was a quid pro quo for getting into the WTO, with its opportunities for trade deals
"Moscow, a signatory to the protocol, had prevaricated for years over ratifying and there were signs yesterday that it approved ratification over the heads of some in the political elite who say it will harm the economy and is based on suspect science. Andrei Illarionov, an economic adviser to Mr Putin who attended the cabinet meeting, said Russia had been forced to approve a pact that would damage it economically. "It's a political decision, it's a forced decision," he said. "It's not a decision we are making with pleasure. The decision will be very harmful to Russia's national interest in the short, medium and long term."
Mr Putin sent a clear signal that he approved the protocol in May after the European Union supported Russia's campaign to join the World Trade Organisation. The EU was jubilant at the decision, calling it a "huge success".
The Confederation of British Industry said the Russian govenment's move was "good news for companies and the environment" but gave warning that the treaty would not mean much if countries such as the United States, India and China continued to drag their feet.
More here
And this article (written in 2002!) explains why the EU was desperate to get Russia onboard and thus get the treaty up and running. Key quote:
"The EU apparently intends to claim that all U.S. goods are impermissibly subsidized by the United States' refusal to adopt Kyoto-style energy taxes. Last week, FOE fired the first shot in this inevitable conflict, demanding the EU apply penalties against energy-intensive U.S. products in retaliation for the United States not going along with Kyoto.
Such a penalty, or alternatively an EU "eco-dumping" suit, would force the pro-growth World Trade Organization to address anti-growth multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) such as Kyoto. It is not clear whether the WTO, confronted with this conflict, would remain true to its pro-growth mission. Such a suit would also trigger a landmark battle over the freedom of states to refuse to adopt the policies of others, without incurring penalty for unfair trade practice".
So it's all about turning the WTO into a sort of world government
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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
*****************************************
"Rural residents in two states can't sleep at night because of noise from a Queensland Government-owned corporation's alternative energy projects. Homeowners in Queensland and Victoria have all but resigned themselves to the noise of the Stanwell Corporation wind turbines, which they claim have devalued their properties. Stanwell Corporation has said it is doing the right thing and has told residents there is no problem with noise. But Jim and Dot Newman say they have to turn up their air conditioner and shut the windows and doors just to sleep at night.
The couple live on a 106ha dairy farm at Windy Hill on the Atherton Tableland in north Queensland across the road from 20 wind turbines built by Stanwell in 2000. Mrs Newman said the throbbing, thumping noise from the generators could be heard at all hours of the day. "It was very frustrating in the beginning and makes us extremely upset, but there is nothing we can do about it," she said. Within 12 months, the couple, who are in their fifties, had had enough and they decided to move but they still cannot find a buyer.
A number of Victorian residents know exactly how the Newmans feel and are equally angry at Stanwell Corporation. In Victoria, Stanwell Corporation have built three wind farms including 12 turbines at Toora, 188km southeast of Melbourne, in the South Gippsland region. Kath and Terry Hurst of Toora were told by Stanwell they would not be disturbed by the wind farms. After doing some research the couple along with two other residents launched an unsuccessful bid through the Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal to stop the development.
Stanwell build two 50m pylons 750m and 810m from their house. "It was terrible, we had real trouble sleeping and the worst part was we decided to move and it took 18 months to sell the place," Mr Hurst said. Mr Hurst said while the local property market was booming, they lost money selling their house".
More here.
RUSSIA WAS DRAGOONED INTO "KYOTO" BY THE EU
The anti-American EU bribed the Russians into signing. It was a quid pro quo for getting into the WTO, with its opportunities for trade deals
"Moscow, a signatory to the protocol, had prevaricated for years over ratifying and there were signs yesterday that it approved ratification over the heads of some in the political elite who say it will harm the economy and is based on suspect science. Andrei Illarionov, an economic adviser to Mr Putin who attended the cabinet meeting, said Russia had been forced to approve a pact that would damage it economically. "It's a political decision, it's a forced decision," he said. "It's not a decision we are making with pleasure. The decision will be very harmful to Russia's national interest in the short, medium and long term."
Mr Putin sent a clear signal that he approved the protocol in May after the European Union supported Russia's campaign to join the World Trade Organisation. The EU was jubilant at the decision, calling it a "huge success".
The Confederation of British Industry said the Russian govenment's move was "good news for companies and the environment" but gave warning that the treaty would not mean much if countries such as the United States, India and China continued to drag their feet.
More here
And this article (written in 2002!) explains why the EU was desperate to get Russia onboard and thus get the treaty up and running. Key quote:
"The EU apparently intends to claim that all U.S. goods are impermissibly subsidized by the United States' refusal to adopt Kyoto-style energy taxes. Last week, FOE fired the first shot in this inevitable conflict, demanding the EU apply penalties against energy-intensive U.S. products in retaliation for the United States not going along with Kyoto.
Such a penalty, or alternatively an EU "eco-dumping" suit, would force the pro-growth World Trade Organization to address anti-growth multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) such as Kyoto. It is not clear whether the WTO, confronted with this conflict, would remain true to its pro-growth mission. Such a suit would also trigger a landmark battle over the freedom of states to refuse to adopt the policies of others, without incurring penalty for unfair trade practice".
So it's all about turning the WTO into a sort of world government
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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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Tuesday, October 05, 2004
MORE ON SO-CALLED "SMART" GROWTH
A comment from a reader now living in the South
"You left out one important detail. In the 60s and 70s many people WERE going back to cities - Boston was undergoing an explosion of new construction and remodeling of old Brownstone houses, etc. Many people just liked the city life, and didn't like driving. But with another product of extreme liberalism and activist judges - BUSSING - all this inertia turned in the other direction - toward the suburbs.
No doubt much suburban development would have occurred anyway, but certainly at a slower pace. When the business climate deteriorated, businesses moved out as well. You know the rest.
With children grown up, my wife and I might just like NYC - but I refuse to live in a town where cops don't allow citizens to defend themselves, and where taxes must subsidize "the disenfranchised" and provide hotel rooms to any and every "homeless" bum.
One of my colleague's daughters was a social worker. She worked with "the homeless" here. What an earful about "the homeless" I got last week. She said that none of these people could stay off drugs; you simply couldn't ever give them enough - housing, counselling, food, money, anything. She decided that she or anyone else could not help these people".
My reader is right. Here in Brisbane, Australia, where we have none of the American social pathologies alluded to above, there is an absolute explosion of new residential construction in the heart of the city
PLANTATION PINE TREES ARE BAD NOW
And you MUST not log natural forests. And plastic comes from oil. And making steel burns lots of coal. So: Back to the caves!
Changes in U.S. forests caused by land use practices may have inadvertently worsened ozone pollution, according to a study led by Princeton University scientists. The study examined a class of chemicals that are emitted as unburned fuel from automobile tailpipes and as vapors from industrial chemicals, but also which come naturally from tree leaves. These chemicals, known collectively as VOCs, react with other pollutants to form ozone, a bluish, irritating and pungent gas that is a major form of smog in the lower atmosphere.
While clean-air laws have reduced the level of man-made VOCs (volatile organic compounds), the tree-produced varieties have increased dramatically in some parts of the country, the study found. The increase stems from intensified tree farming and other land use changes that have altered the mix of trees in the landscape, said Drew Purves, the lead author of the study that included scientists from four universities. "There are seemingly natural but ultimately anthropogenic (human-caused) processes in the landscape that have had larger effects on VOC emissions than the deliberate legislated decreases," said Purves.
The study may help explain why ozone levels have not improved in some parts of the country as much as was anticipated with the enactment of clean-air laws, Purves said. Environmental technologies such as catalytic converters and hoses that collect fumes at gas pumps have substantially reduced human-produced VOCs. However, in some parts of the country -- particularly the area extending from Alabama up through the Tennessee Valley and Virginia -- these improvements may have been outweighed by increased VOC emissions from forests, mainly because of tree growth in abandoned farmland and increases in plantation forestry.
They found that areas where farmland has been abandoned during the last century have early generations of trees that produce higher levels of VOCs than older growth forests. In the South, pine plantations used for their fast-growing supplies of timber have proven to be havens for sweetgum trees, which are major producers of VOCs. Indeed, virtually every tree that grows fast -- a desirable quality for forestry production -- is a heavy emitter of VOCs. "It's just one of those biological correlations," said Purves. "What you want is a fast-growing tree that doesn't produce a lot of VOCs, but that doesn't seem to exist."
Noting President Ronald Reagan's notorious 1980 reference to trees causing pollution (Reagan said: "Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation."), the authors conclude: "The results reported here call for a wider recognition that an understanding of recent, current and anticipated changes in biogenic VOC emissions is necessary to guide future air-quality policy decisions; they do not provide any evidence that responsibility for air pollution can or should be shifted from humans to trees." [Which translates as: "Reagan was right!"]
More here.
FAR-LEFT SUPPORT GREENS
One of Australia's most Left-wing unions has switched its support to the Greens -- because they are the most protectionist. Environmentalism is often just another cloak for an impoverishing Far-Left agenda
"In a break with tradition, the AMWU will donate $100,000 to the Australian Greens in the run-up to next month's federal election. National president, Julius Roe, confirmed that around half his organisation's election spend would go to the Greens in recognition of their "consistent support for issues that will make a difference to our members and their families". Roe highlighted the positions taken by Bob Brown's party with regard to free trade and industrial relations.
The AMWU will also make contributions of up to $10,000 to 16 individual ALP candidates who have supported union members on free trade and manufacturing jobs.
Roe is urging union members to get involved in the campaign to evict John Howard from the Lodge. "This Government is the most anti-worker in Australia's history," Roe says. "It is in the interests of all our members, and their families, that it is defeated on October 9. "It has betrayed Australia's economic, cultural and political independence by putting George Bush's interests ahead of our own. The war in Iraq, and the US Free Trade Agreement were clear examples of that."
Roe conceded the AMWU had been "very disappointed" by ALP support for Howard on free trade, particularly after the Senate committee it dominated listed dozens of concerns."
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
*****************************************
A comment from a reader now living in the South
"You left out one important detail. In the 60s and 70s many people WERE going back to cities - Boston was undergoing an explosion of new construction and remodeling of old Brownstone houses, etc. Many people just liked the city life, and didn't like driving. But with another product of extreme liberalism and activist judges - BUSSING - all this inertia turned in the other direction - toward the suburbs.
No doubt much suburban development would have occurred anyway, but certainly at a slower pace. When the business climate deteriorated, businesses moved out as well. You know the rest.
With children grown up, my wife and I might just like NYC - but I refuse to live in a town where cops don't allow citizens to defend themselves, and where taxes must subsidize "the disenfranchised" and provide hotel rooms to any and every "homeless" bum.
One of my colleague's daughters was a social worker. She worked with "the homeless" here. What an earful about "the homeless" I got last week. She said that none of these people could stay off drugs; you simply couldn't ever give them enough - housing, counselling, food, money, anything. She decided that she or anyone else could not help these people".
My reader is right. Here in Brisbane, Australia, where we have none of the American social pathologies alluded to above, there is an absolute explosion of new residential construction in the heart of the city
PLANTATION PINE TREES ARE BAD NOW
And you MUST not log natural forests. And plastic comes from oil. And making steel burns lots of coal. So: Back to the caves!
Changes in U.S. forests caused by land use practices may have inadvertently worsened ozone pollution, according to a study led by Princeton University scientists. The study examined a class of chemicals that are emitted as unburned fuel from automobile tailpipes and as vapors from industrial chemicals, but also which come naturally from tree leaves. These chemicals, known collectively as VOCs, react with other pollutants to form ozone, a bluish, irritating and pungent gas that is a major form of smog in the lower atmosphere.
While clean-air laws have reduced the level of man-made VOCs (volatile organic compounds), the tree-produced varieties have increased dramatically in some parts of the country, the study found. The increase stems from intensified tree farming and other land use changes that have altered the mix of trees in the landscape, said Drew Purves, the lead author of the study that included scientists from four universities. "There are seemingly natural but ultimately anthropogenic (human-caused) processes in the landscape that have had larger effects on VOC emissions than the deliberate legislated decreases," said Purves.
The study may help explain why ozone levels have not improved in some parts of the country as much as was anticipated with the enactment of clean-air laws, Purves said. Environmental technologies such as catalytic converters and hoses that collect fumes at gas pumps have substantially reduced human-produced VOCs. However, in some parts of the country -- particularly the area extending from Alabama up through the Tennessee Valley and Virginia -- these improvements may have been outweighed by increased VOC emissions from forests, mainly because of tree growth in abandoned farmland and increases in plantation forestry.
They found that areas where farmland has been abandoned during the last century have early generations of trees that produce higher levels of VOCs than older growth forests. In the South, pine plantations used for their fast-growing supplies of timber have proven to be havens for sweetgum trees, which are major producers of VOCs. Indeed, virtually every tree that grows fast -- a desirable quality for forestry production -- is a heavy emitter of VOCs. "It's just one of those biological correlations," said Purves. "What you want is a fast-growing tree that doesn't produce a lot of VOCs, but that doesn't seem to exist."
Noting President Ronald Reagan's notorious 1980 reference to trees causing pollution (Reagan said: "Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation."), the authors conclude: "The results reported here call for a wider recognition that an understanding of recent, current and anticipated changes in biogenic VOC emissions is necessary to guide future air-quality policy decisions; they do not provide any evidence that responsibility for air pollution can or should be shifted from humans to trees." [Which translates as: "Reagan was right!"]
More here.
FAR-LEFT SUPPORT GREENS
One of Australia's most Left-wing unions has switched its support to the Greens -- because they are the most protectionist. Environmentalism is often just another cloak for an impoverishing Far-Left agenda
"In a break with tradition, the AMWU will donate $100,000 to the Australian Greens in the run-up to next month's federal election. National president, Julius Roe, confirmed that around half his organisation's election spend would go to the Greens in recognition of their "consistent support for issues that will make a difference to our members and their families". Roe highlighted the positions taken by Bob Brown's party with regard to free trade and industrial relations.
The AMWU will also make contributions of up to $10,000 to 16 individual ALP candidates who have supported union members on free trade and manufacturing jobs.
Roe is urging union members to get involved in the campaign to evict John Howard from the Lodge. "This Government is the most anti-worker in Australia's history," Roe says. "It is in the interests of all our members, and their families, that it is defeated on October 9. "It has betrayed Australia's economic, cultural and political independence by putting George Bush's interests ahead of our own. The war in Iraq, and the US Free Trade Agreement were clear examples of that."
Roe conceded the AMWU had been "very disappointed" by ALP support for Howard on free trade, particularly after the Senate committee it dominated listed dozens of concerns."
More here.
*****************************************
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
*****************************************
Monday, October 04, 2004
DEBUNKING "SMART GROWTH" VERSUS "SPRAWL"
"Any policy encouraging drivers to use their axles of evil is now suspect. Americans still love their own cars, but they're sick of everyone else's. The car is blamed for everything from global warming to the war in Iraq to the transformation of America into a land of strip malls and soulless subdivisions filled with fat, lonely suburbanites. Al Gore called the automobile a ''mortal threat'' that is ''more deadly than that of any military enemy.'' Cities across America, with encouragement from Washington, are adopting ''smart growth'' policies to discourage driving and promote mass transit. Three years ago, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new freeway just outside Los Angeles, Gov. Gray Davis declared that it would be the last one built in the state. Standing at the cradle of car culture, he said it was time to find other ways to move people.
I sympathize with the critics... But I no longer believe that my tastes should be public policy. I've been converted by a renegade school of thinkers you might call the autonomists, because they extol the autonomy made possible by automobiles. Their school includes engineers and philosophers, political scientists like James Q. Wilson and number-crunching economists like Randal O'Toole, the author of the 540-page manifesto ''The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths.'' These thinkers acknowledge the social and environmental problems caused by the car but argue that these would not be solved -- in fact, would be mostly made worse -- by the proposals coming from the car's critics. They call smart growth a dumb idea, the result not of rational planning but of class snobbery and intellectual arrogance. They prefer to promote smart driving, which means more tolls, more roads and, yes, more cars.
Suppose you have a choice between two similarly priced homes. One is an urban town house within walking distance of stores and mass transit; the other is in the suburbs and requires driving everywhere. Which one would you pick?
If you chose the town house, you're in a distinct minority. Only 17 percent of Americans chose it in a national survey sponsored by the real-estate agents' and homebuilders' trade associations. The other 83 percent preferred the suburbs, which came as no surprise to the real-estate agents or others who spend time in subdivisions. For all the bad press that suburbs get in books like ''The Geography of Nowhere'' -- whose author, James Kunstler, calls America a ''national automobile slum'' -- polls repeatedly show that the vast majority of suburbanites are happy with their neighborhoods.
You could argue that Americans are deluded because they haven't been given a reasonable alternative. Smart-growth advocates say that suburbs have flourished at the expense of cities because of government policies promoting cheap gasoline, Interstate highways and new-home construction. What if the government, instead of devastating urban neighborhoods by running expressways through them, instead lavished money on mass transit and imposed high gasoline taxes to discourage driving?
As it happens, that experiment has already been conducted in Europe with surprisingly little effect. To American tourists who ride the subways in the carefully preserved old cities, the policies seem to have worked. But it turns out that the people who live there aren't so different from Americans. Even with $5-per-gallon gasoline, the number of cars per capita in Europe has been growing faster than in America in recent decades, while the percentage of commuters using mass transit has been falling. As the suburbs expand, Europe's cities have been losing people, too. Paris is a great place to visit, but in the past half-century it has lost one-quarter of its population.
''Cities are spreading virtually everywhere in the world despite all the antisprawl measures,'' says Peter Gordon, a professor at the University of Southern California School of Policy, Planning and Development. ''As soon as people have enough money, they want their car.''
Consider some of the prevailing beliefs:
Sprawl traps drivers in traffic hell. It's true that highways have gotten much more congested, but the worst traffic tends to be in densely populated urban areas that haven't been building new roads, like New York and Chicago -- the kind of places hailed by smart-growth planners but now avoided by companies looking for convenient offices. During the 1990's, the number of suburban workers surpassed the number downtown. These commuters still encountered traffic jams, but by not driving downtown they could still get to work reasonably quickly. The length of the average commute, now about 25 minutes, rose just 40 seconds in the 1980's and about 2 minutes in the 1990's. Sprawl didn't trap drivers -- it gave them an escape.
Sprawl is scarring the American landscape. If by ''landscape'' you mean the pasture or forest near your home that has been paved, then sprawl does look like an abomination. Who wouldn't prefer to be surrounded by greenery, especially when you're not paying property taxes for it? But if you look at the big picture, America is not paving paradise. More than 90 percent of the continental United States is still open space and farmland. The major change in land use in recent decades has been the gain of 70 million acres of wilderness -- more than all the land currently occupied by cities, suburbs and exurbs, according to Peter Huber, author of ''Hard Green: Saving the Environment From the Environmentalists.'' Because agriculture has become so efficient, farmers have abandoned vast tracts of land that have reverted to nature, and rural areas have lost population as young people migrate to cities. You may not like the new homes being built for them at the edge of your town, but if preserving large ecosystems and wildlife habitat is your priority, better to concentrate people in the suburbs and exurbs rather than scatter them in the remote countryside.
Mass transit is the cure for highway congestion. Commuter trains and subways make sense in New York, Chicago and a few other cities, and there are other forms of transit, like express buses, that can make a difference elsewhere. (Vans offering door-to-door service are a boon to the elderly and people without cars.) But for most Americans, mass transit is impractical and irrelevant. Since 1970, transit systems have received more than $500 billion in subsidies (in today's dollars), but people have kept voting with their wheels. Transit has been losing market share to the car and now carries just 3 percent of urban commuters outside New York City. It's easy to see why from one statistic: the average commute by public transportation takes twice as long as the average commute by car.
Drivers are getting a free ride. Yes, the government spends a lot more money on highways than transit, but most of that money comes out of the drivers' pockets. If you add up the costs of driving -- the car owner's costs as well as the public cost of building and maintaining highways and local streets, the salaries of police patrolling the roads -- it works out to about 20 cents per passenger mile, and drivers pay more than 19 of those cents, according to Cox. A trip on a local bus or commuter train costs nearly four times as much, and taxpayers subsidize three-quarters of that cost.
New highways just make things worse. Environmentalists and smart-growth planners say that more highways merely create more problems because of ''induced demand,'' also known as the if-you-build-it-they-will-come theory. They argue that any new stretch of highway will fill up quickly because drivers discover new uses for it. Adding new lanes or roads may ease traffic temporarily, they say, but ultimately you're doomed to become like Los Angeles.
A new freeway does indeed attract new drivers, but that doesn't mean it's not worth building. Besides benefiting those drivers (no small thing), it eases the strain on the road network. This year's report from the Texas Transportation Institute confirms other research showing that when you take population growth into account, traffic congestion has been increasing more rapidly in the cities that haven't been building roads. The reason for Los Angeles's traffic morass is that it didn't build enough freeways, incredible as that sounds. The great symbol of sprawl is not what it seems when you compare it with other cities using the Census Bureau's definition of an ''urbanized area,'' which extends until the point where there's open countryside. By this definition, Los Angeles is the most densely populated city in America, with 7,068 persons per square mile of urbanized area. Its traffic is terrible because it built only about half the freeways originally planned, so that it now has fewer miles of freeway per capita than any other major city."
MUCH more here.
"SMART GROWTH" IS ONLY GOOD FOR RICH FOLKS
Like most Greenie ideas
"If I had to design my perfect place to live, it would be a townhouse, on a square of similar townhouses that opened up onto a large communal yard where children and dogs could romp. A train station would be no more than a few blocks away, as would shops, schools, and other accoutrements of refined living. But unlike the smart growth folks, I recognise that this is, to a large extent, a fantasy.
Smart growth is great if you are an upscale professional, preferably without children, who can score a relatively large apartment fairly close to work. It's a lot less fun for the majority trying to cram your family into four or five rooms. Smart growth is great if you are savvy enough to manipulate an urban school system into keeping your children away from the poor kids; it is not so nice for the majority who must make do. Smart growth is great if you can afford to have everything you buy delivered, or are in excellent physical condition with a physically undemanding job; it is not so great if you have to come home from your shift at the nursing home to lug groceries a quarter-mile down the street, and then up three flights of stairs.
Smart growth is great if you can afford to eat in the plethora of restaurants; it is not so enjoyable if you have to scrape up an extra 20% for the ingredients in tuna casserole. Smart growth is great if you have a nanny to take the kids to the park during the day; it is not so terrific if you have to choose between wasting several precious hours standing around the playground, or letting your kids languish inside. Smart growth is great if you can afford taxis when you need them; it is not so good if you are forced to take three busses to get somewhere you really need to be. Smart growth is great if your family members are all affluent enough to take care of themselves; it is not so fulfilling when you have to shove your ailing mother into the kids room when her resources fail.
Smart growth, in other words, is wonderful for those with the werewithal to smooth over its little rough spots. But ask the priced out secretaries commuting 2 hours a day from Yonkers how "liveable" New York is.....
The fact is, public transportation is an absolute failure everywhere it has been tried except for cities which grew up around a public transportation network in the pre-automobile era. Public transportation -- and I am second to none in my love for public transportation, and have a fabulous commute besides -- is more expensive, both in money and environmental costs, than automobiles outside of New York, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Chicago. That's right, I said it's more environmentally costly than giving every person on the train a car, because a train running empty consumes an enormous amount of energy.
In order to persuade people to live in a public transit zone, rather than an auto zone, the trains have to run frequently enough, and for a long enough period, for people to be able to base their lives around them. Those five cities (and I'm not sure about Philly) produce net energy gains only because they shift an enormous number of people during rush hour; enough to offset the inevitable losses during off peak periods, when the trains expend a tremendous amount of energy to move very few people. If your trains aren't jam packed for six hours a day during rush periods, you can never make up the losses. Such usage levels require a whole infrastructure at each end of the journey, a network of very dense development that affords the benefits, like a wide array of restaurants and bars, that attract people to such areas. But that sort of development is complementary; restaurant owners and developers won't build where there isn't enough traffic to support them, and people won't move where the lifestyle isn't well established. Plus the train network has to be huge to allow people to quickly get from their house to their office; they can't up and move to a different train line every time they get a new job. And unless you (or nature) sharply restrict mobility, people won't choose those places anyway; the majority of Americans want a detached house with a yard, and they'll vote with their feet.
Putting a monorail in LA is not going to make Angelenos live like Manhattanites. (more's the pity)."
More from "Jane Galt" 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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"Any policy encouraging drivers to use their axles of evil is now suspect. Americans still love their own cars, but they're sick of everyone else's. The car is blamed for everything from global warming to the war in Iraq to the transformation of America into a land of strip malls and soulless subdivisions filled with fat, lonely suburbanites. Al Gore called the automobile a ''mortal threat'' that is ''more deadly than that of any military enemy.'' Cities across America, with encouragement from Washington, are adopting ''smart growth'' policies to discourage driving and promote mass transit. Three years ago, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new freeway just outside Los Angeles, Gov. Gray Davis declared that it would be the last one built in the state. Standing at the cradle of car culture, he said it was time to find other ways to move people.
I sympathize with the critics... But I no longer believe that my tastes should be public policy. I've been converted by a renegade school of thinkers you might call the autonomists, because they extol the autonomy made possible by automobiles. Their school includes engineers and philosophers, political scientists like James Q. Wilson and number-crunching economists like Randal O'Toole, the author of the 540-page manifesto ''The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths.'' These thinkers acknowledge the social and environmental problems caused by the car but argue that these would not be solved -- in fact, would be mostly made worse -- by the proposals coming from the car's critics. They call smart growth a dumb idea, the result not of rational planning but of class snobbery and intellectual arrogance. They prefer to promote smart driving, which means more tolls, more roads and, yes, more cars.
Suppose you have a choice between two similarly priced homes. One is an urban town house within walking distance of stores and mass transit; the other is in the suburbs and requires driving everywhere. Which one would you pick?
If you chose the town house, you're in a distinct minority. Only 17 percent of Americans chose it in a national survey sponsored by the real-estate agents' and homebuilders' trade associations. The other 83 percent preferred the suburbs, which came as no surprise to the real-estate agents or others who spend time in subdivisions. For all the bad press that suburbs get in books like ''The Geography of Nowhere'' -- whose author, James Kunstler, calls America a ''national automobile slum'' -- polls repeatedly show that the vast majority of suburbanites are happy with their neighborhoods.
You could argue that Americans are deluded because they haven't been given a reasonable alternative. Smart-growth advocates say that suburbs have flourished at the expense of cities because of government policies promoting cheap gasoline, Interstate highways and new-home construction. What if the government, instead of devastating urban neighborhoods by running expressways through them, instead lavished money on mass transit and imposed high gasoline taxes to discourage driving?
As it happens, that experiment has already been conducted in Europe with surprisingly little effect. To American tourists who ride the subways in the carefully preserved old cities, the policies seem to have worked. But it turns out that the people who live there aren't so different from Americans. Even with $5-per-gallon gasoline, the number of cars per capita in Europe has been growing faster than in America in recent decades, while the percentage of commuters using mass transit has been falling. As the suburbs expand, Europe's cities have been losing people, too. Paris is a great place to visit, but in the past half-century it has lost one-quarter of its population.
''Cities are spreading virtually everywhere in the world despite all the antisprawl measures,'' says Peter Gordon, a professor at the University of Southern California School of Policy, Planning and Development. ''As soon as people have enough money, they want their car.''
Consider some of the prevailing beliefs:
Sprawl traps drivers in traffic hell. It's true that highways have gotten much more congested, but the worst traffic tends to be in densely populated urban areas that haven't been building new roads, like New York and Chicago -- the kind of places hailed by smart-growth planners but now avoided by companies looking for convenient offices. During the 1990's, the number of suburban workers surpassed the number downtown. These commuters still encountered traffic jams, but by not driving downtown they could still get to work reasonably quickly. The length of the average commute, now about 25 minutes, rose just 40 seconds in the 1980's and about 2 minutes in the 1990's. Sprawl didn't trap drivers -- it gave them an escape.
Sprawl is scarring the American landscape. If by ''landscape'' you mean the pasture or forest near your home that has been paved, then sprawl does look like an abomination. Who wouldn't prefer to be surrounded by greenery, especially when you're not paying property taxes for it? But if you look at the big picture, America is not paving paradise. More than 90 percent of the continental United States is still open space and farmland. The major change in land use in recent decades has been the gain of 70 million acres of wilderness -- more than all the land currently occupied by cities, suburbs and exurbs, according to Peter Huber, author of ''Hard Green: Saving the Environment From the Environmentalists.'' Because agriculture has become so efficient, farmers have abandoned vast tracts of land that have reverted to nature, and rural areas have lost population as young people migrate to cities. You may not like the new homes being built for them at the edge of your town, but if preserving large ecosystems and wildlife habitat is your priority, better to concentrate people in the suburbs and exurbs rather than scatter them in the remote countryside.
Mass transit is the cure for highway congestion. Commuter trains and subways make sense in New York, Chicago and a few other cities, and there are other forms of transit, like express buses, that can make a difference elsewhere. (Vans offering door-to-door service are a boon to the elderly and people without cars.) But for most Americans, mass transit is impractical and irrelevant. Since 1970, transit systems have received more than $500 billion in subsidies (in today's dollars), but people have kept voting with their wheels. Transit has been losing market share to the car and now carries just 3 percent of urban commuters outside New York City. It's easy to see why from one statistic: the average commute by public transportation takes twice as long as the average commute by car.
Drivers are getting a free ride. Yes, the government spends a lot more money on highways than transit, but most of that money comes out of the drivers' pockets. If you add up the costs of driving -- the car owner's costs as well as the public cost of building and maintaining highways and local streets, the salaries of police patrolling the roads -- it works out to about 20 cents per passenger mile, and drivers pay more than 19 of those cents, according to Cox. A trip on a local bus or commuter train costs nearly four times as much, and taxpayers subsidize three-quarters of that cost.
New highways just make things worse. Environmentalists and smart-growth planners say that more highways merely create more problems because of ''induced demand,'' also known as the if-you-build-it-they-will-come theory. They argue that any new stretch of highway will fill up quickly because drivers discover new uses for it. Adding new lanes or roads may ease traffic temporarily, they say, but ultimately you're doomed to become like Los Angeles.
A new freeway does indeed attract new drivers, but that doesn't mean it's not worth building. Besides benefiting those drivers (no small thing), it eases the strain on the road network. This year's report from the Texas Transportation Institute confirms other research showing that when you take population growth into account, traffic congestion has been increasing more rapidly in the cities that haven't been building roads. The reason for Los Angeles's traffic morass is that it didn't build enough freeways, incredible as that sounds. The great symbol of sprawl is not what it seems when you compare it with other cities using the Census Bureau's definition of an ''urbanized area,'' which extends until the point where there's open countryside. By this definition, Los Angeles is the most densely populated city in America, with 7,068 persons per square mile of urbanized area. Its traffic is terrible because it built only about half the freeways originally planned, so that it now has fewer miles of freeway per capita than any other major city."
MUCH more here.
"SMART GROWTH" IS ONLY GOOD FOR RICH FOLKS
Like most Greenie ideas
"If I had to design my perfect place to live, it would be a townhouse, on a square of similar townhouses that opened up onto a large communal yard where children and dogs could romp. A train station would be no more than a few blocks away, as would shops, schools, and other accoutrements of refined living. But unlike the smart growth folks, I recognise that this is, to a large extent, a fantasy.
Smart growth is great if you are an upscale professional, preferably without children, who can score a relatively large apartment fairly close to work. It's a lot less fun for the majority trying to cram your family into four or five rooms. Smart growth is great if you are savvy enough to manipulate an urban school system into keeping your children away from the poor kids; it is not so nice for the majority who must make do. Smart growth is great if you can afford to have everything you buy delivered, or are in excellent physical condition with a physically undemanding job; it is not so great if you have to come home from your shift at the nursing home to lug groceries a quarter-mile down the street, and then up three flights of stairs.
Smart growth is great if you can afford to eat in the plethora of restaurants; it is not so enjoyable if you have to scrape up an extra 20% for the ingredients in tuna casserole. Smart growth is great if you have a nanny to take the kids to the park during the day; it is not so terrific if you have to choose between wasting several precious hours standing around the playground, or letting your kids languish inside. Smart growth is great if you can afford taxis when you need them; it is not so good if you are forced to take three busses to get somewhere you really need to be. Smart growth is great if your family members are all affluent enough to take care of themselves; it is not so fulfilling when you have to shove your ailing mother into the kids room when her resources fail.
Smart growth, in other words, is wonderful for those with the werewithal to smooth over its little rough spots. But ask the priced out secretaries commuting 2 hours a day from Yonkers how "liveable" New York is.....
The fact is, public transportation is an absolute failure everywhere it has been tried except for cities which grew up around a public transportation network in the pre-automobile era. Public transportation -- and I am second to none in my love for public transportation, and have a fabulous commute besides -- is more expensive, both in money and environmental costs, than automobiles outside of New York, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Chicago. That's right, I said it's more environmentally costly than giving every person on the train a car, because a train running empty consumes an enormous amount of energy.
In order to persuade people to live in a public transit zone, rather than an auto zone, the trains have to run frequently enough, and for a long enough period, for people to be able to base their lives around them. Those five cities (and I'm not sure about Philly) produce net energy gains only because they shift an enormous number of people during rush hour; enough to offset the inevitable losses during off peak periods, when the trains expend a tremendous amount of energy to move very few people. If your trains aren't jam packed for six hours a day during rush periods, you can never make up the losses. Such usage levels require a whole infrastructure at each end of the journey, a network of very dense development that affords the benefits, like a wide array of restaurants and bars, that attract people to such areas. But that sort of development is complementary; restaurant owners and developers won't build where there isn't enough traffic to support them, and people won't move where the lifestyle isn't well established. Plus the train network has to be huge to allow people to quickly get from their house to their office; they can't up and move to a different train line every time they get a new job. And unless you (or nature) sharply restrict mobility, people won't choose those places anyway; the majority of Americans want a detached house with a yard, and they'll vote with their feet.
Putting a monorail in LA is not going to make Angelenos live like Manhattanites. (more's the pity)."
More from "Jane Galt" 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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Sunday, October 03, 2004
CLIMATE PANIC IS AN OLD FOLLY AMONG "LEARNED" MEN
"In the 1770s the Lunar Society of Birmingham, England, whose members were some of the leading thinkers of the era, regularly gathered to discuss their concerns about global climate change. They were interested in the scientific aspects of the change, but being entrepreneurs as well as thinkers, they also formulated plans to cope with it. Their basic strategy was to stop the cooling of the earth by dragging icebergs away from the Arctic regions to let them melt in the tropics. That's right: they were worried about global cooling.
The Lunar Society of Birmingham (1766-1809) was an informal club of never more than 14 men, who met to exchange information on scientific experiments, discuss scientific theory; and promote their own entrepreneurial activities. As the name indicates, they met on the Monday nearest the full moon each month. Among them were several godfathers of the Industrial Revolution, men whose contributions to science and technology, as well as industry and manufacturing, render their names still familiar: James Watt, developer of the steam engine, and his business partner, Matthew Boulton, who was also founder of the Birmingham Mint and a major manufacturer of metal products; Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles and a distinguished naturalist in his own right; William.....
Small summarized: "I am led by this and many other reasons to suppose, nay to believe, that the frozen space of the Globe is annually increased at the rate of about the 300th part of a degree of latitude . . . so that after a certain number of years all Europe, and finally the whole surface of this earth, will be frozen, as the Moon is now and has long been." Quickwitted and ingenious as he was, Small had a scheme to deal with this horrifying prospect, namely, a "project for producing perpetual summer," which he outlined for Watt. The central feature was to use gunpowder to blow up the polar ice, thus creating icebergs, which could be towed to the tropics. There the icebergs would serve as air-conditioning units, rendering the tropics more temperate and habitable. Simultaneously, of course, the removal of ice from the arctic would slow the southerly spread of the freeze that threatened to cover all Europe and finally the whole earth.
Small's next words give us a glimpse of his views on the political institutions of his day, especially monarchy, and are interesting in light of Jefferson's connection with Small. "I will be bold to say, that if all the gunpowder which has been spent by their Imperial and Royal Majesties the Emperors and Empresses of Constantinople, Germany and Russia, the Kings of France, Spain, Britain and Prussia, within these last twenty years, had been laid out upon it [his iceberg project], the powder would have produced at least as much benefit to every one of them as it has done by being expended on their own schemes. I have had thoughts of writing a circular letter to these potentates, and if you give me any encouragement, notwithstanding my laziness, I will still do it, although there is but little to be made of kingly heads, I fear.".....
In a very long "philosophical footnote" to the above passage, Darwin says that visitors to the north provided evidence that the "islands of ice" steadily grow and that the winds passing over them deliver cold temperatures to points south. "We cannot doubt that the northern ice is the principal source of the coldness of our winters . . . " Darwin wrote. "Hence the increase of the ice in the polar regions, by increasing the cold of our climate, adds, at the same time, to the bulk of the Glaciers of Italy and Switzerland."
The great firm of Watt & Boulton became much too busy in the next few years making steam engines to pursue the "iceberg removal" project. The idea of moving icebergs to achieve various human objectives still comes up from time to time: to irrigate the vegetable gardens of California or to provide more drinking water to Los Angeles. But so far as modifying the climate is concerned, our preoccupations have reversed in the past two centuries: from global cooling in the late 1700s to global warming in the late 1900s".
More here.
Bring back DDT, quickly
It's not just the best way to control disease-bearing mosquitoes - it's safe, too
"The West Nile virus deaths being reported across North America are a grim echo of a larger tragedy. Each year 1 million lives are taken worldwide by another mosquito-borne killer: malaria. Though nearly eradicated decades ago, malaria has resurged with a vengeance. But the real tragedy is that its horrific death toll is largely preventable. The most effective agent of mosquito control, the pesticide DDT, has been essentially discarded - discarded based not on scientific concerns about its safety but on environmental dogma.
The environmental crusade against DDT began with Rachel Carson's anti-pesticide diatribe "Silent Spring," published in 1962 at the height of the worldwide anti-malaria campaign. The widespread spraying of DDT had caused a spectacular drop in malaria incidence - Sri Lanka, for example, reported 2.8 million malaria victims in 1948, but by 1963 it had only 17. Yet Carson's book made no mention of this. It said nothing of DDT's crucial role in eradicating malaria in industrialized countries, or of the tens of millions of lives saved by its use.
Instead, Carson filled her book with misinformation - alleging, among other claims, that DDT causes cancer. Her unsubstantiated assertion that continued DDT use would unleash a cancer epidemic generated a panicked fear of the pesticide that endures as public opinion to this day.
But the scientific case against DDT was, and still is, nonexistent. Almost 60 years have passed since the malaria-spraying campaigns began - with hundreds of millions of people exposed to large concentrations of DDT - yet, according to international health scholar Amir Attaran, the scientific literature "has not even one peer-reviewed, independently replicated study linking exposure to DDT with any adverse health outcome." Indeed, in a 1956 study, human volunteers ate DDT every day for over two years with no ill effects then or since.....
So if scientific facts are not what has driven the furor against DDT, what has? Estimates put today's malaria incidence worldwide at around 300 million cases, with 1 million deaths every year. If this enormous toll of human suffering and death is preventable, why do environmentalists - who profess to be the defenders of life - continue to press for a global DDT ban?
The answer is that environmental ideology values an untouched environment above human life. The root of the opposition to DDT is not science but the environmentalist moral premise that it is wrong for man to "tamper" with nature. The large-scale eradicationof disease-carrying insects epitomizes the control of nature by man. This is DDT's sin....."
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
*****************************************
"In the 1770s the Lunar Society of Birmingham, England, whose members were some of the leading thinkers of the era, regularly gathered to discuss their concerns about global climate change. They were interested in the scientific aspects of the change, but being entrepreneurs as well as thinkers, they also formulated plans to cope with it. Their basic strategy was to stop the cooling of the earth by dragging icebergs away from the Arctic regions to let them melt in the tropics. That's right: they were worried about global cooling.
The Lunar Society of Birmingham (1766-1809) was an informal club of never more than 14 men, who met to exchange information on scientific experiments, discuss scientific theory; and promote their own entrepreneurial activities. As the name indicates, they met on the Monday nearest the full moon each month. Among them were several godfathers of the Industrial Revolution, men whose contributions to science and technology, as well as industry and manufacturing, render their names still familiar: James Watt, developer of the steam engine, and his business partner, Matthew Boulton, who was also founder of the Birmingham Mint and a major manufacturer of metal products; Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles and a distinguished naturalist in his own right; William.....
Small summarized: "I am led by this and many other reasons to suppose, nay to believe, that the frozen space of the Globe is annually increased at the rate of about the 300th part of a degree of latitude . . . so that after a certain number of years all Europe, and finally the whole surface of this earth, will be frozen, as the Moon is now and has long been." Quickwitted and ingenious as he was, Small had a scheme to deal with this horrifying prospect, namely, a "project for producing perpetual summer," which he outlined for Watt. The central feature was to use gunpowder to blow up the polar ice, thus creating icebergs, which could be towed to the tropics. There the icebergs would serve as air-conditioning units, rendering the tropics more temperate and habitable. Simultaneously, of course, the removal of ice from the arctic would slow the southerly spread of the freeze that threatened to cover all Europe and finally the whole earth.
Small's next words give us a glimpse of his views on the political institutions of his day, especially monarchy, and are interesting in light of Jefferson's connection with Small. "I will be bold to say, that if all the gunpowder which has been spent by their Imperial and Royal Majesties the Emperors and Empresses of Constantinople, Germany and Russia, the Kings of France, Spain, Britain and Prussia, within these last twenty years, had been laid out upon it [his iceberg project], the powder would have produced at least as much benefit to every one of them as it has done by being expended on their own schemes. I have had thoughts of writing a circular letter to these potentates, and if you give me any encouragement, notwithstanding my laziness, I will still do it, although there is but little to be made of kingly heads, I fear.".....
In a very long "philosophical footnote" to the above passage, Darwin says that visitors to the north provided evidence that the "islands of ice" steadily grow and that the winds passing over them deliver cold temperatures to points south. "We cannot doubt that the northern ice is the principal source of the coldness of our winters . . . " Darwin wrote. "Hence the increase of the ice in the polar regions, by increasing the cold of our climate, adds, at the same time, to the bulk of the Glaciers of Italy and Switzerland."
The great firm of Watt & Boulton became much too busy in the next few years making steam engines to pursue the "iceberg removal" project. The idea of moving icebergs to achieve various human objectives still comes up from time to time: to irrigate the vegetable gardens of California or to provide more drinking water to Los Angeles. But so far as modifying the climate is concerned, our preoccupations have reversed in the past two centuries: from global cooling in the late 1700s to global warming in the late 1900s".
More here.
Bring back DDT, quickly
It's not just the best way to control disease-bearing mosquitoes - it's safe, too
"The West Nile virus deaths being reported across North America are a grim echo of a larger tragedy. Each year 1 million lives are taken worldwide by another mosquito-borne killer: malaria. Though nearly eradicated decades ago, malaria has resurged with a vengeance. But the real tragedy is that its horrific death toll is largely preventable. The most effective agent of mosquito control, the pesticide DDT, has been essentially discarded - discarded based not on scientific concerns about its safety but on environmental dogma.
The environmental crusade against DDT began with Rachel Carson's anti-pesticide diatribe "Silent Spring," published in 1962 at the height of the worldwide anti-malaria campaign. The widespread spraying of DDT had caused a spectacular drop in malaria incidence - Sri Lanka, for example, reported 2.8 million malaria victims in 1948, but by 1963 it had only 17. Yet Carson's book made no mention of this. It said nothing of DDT's crucial role in eradicating malaria in industrialized countries, or of the tens of millions of lives saved by its use.
Instead, Carson filled her book with misinformation - alleging, among other claims, that DDT causes cancer. Her unsubstantiated assertion that continued DDT use would unleash a cancer epidemic generated a panicked fear of the pesticide that endures as public opinion to this day.
But the scientific case against DDT was, and still is, nonexistent. Almost 60 years have passed since the malaria-spraying campaigns began - with hundreds of millions of people exposed to large concentrations of DDT - yet, according to international health scholar Amir Attaran, the scientific literature "has not even one peer-reviewed, independently replicated study linking exposure to DDT with any adverse health outcome." Indeed, in a 1956 study, human volunteers ate DDT every day for over two years with no ill effects then or since.....
So if scientific facts are not what has driven the furor against DDT, what has? Estimates put today's malaria incidence worldwide at around 300 million cases, with 1 million deaths every year. If this enormous toll of human suffering and death is preventable, why do environmentalists - who profess to be the defenders of life - continue to press for a global DDT ban?
The answer is that environmental ideology values an untouched environment above human life. The root of the opposition to DDT is not science but the environmentalist moral premise that it is wrong for man to "tamper" with nature. The large-scale eradicationof disease-carrying insects epitomizes the control of nature by man. This is DDT's sin....."
More here.
*****************************************
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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Jim Hansen and his twin
