WINDFARMS KILLING RARE BIRDS IN JAPAN TOO

(note: "ojirowashi" means "white-tailed sea eagle")

"Between February and March, several ojirowashi were killed in collisions with 100 meter tall windmills in Tomamaecho, Hokkaido. On Dec. 10, an ojirowashi was killed after colliding with a giant windmill at a facility recently built in Nemuro, Hokkaido. The incidents occurred above marine terraces where rising air currents make it easy for the raptors to fly. The ojirowashi is a species facing possible extinction, with the number in the country estimated at about 150. The deaths resulting shocked many people.

Cape Soya in Wakkanai, Hokkaido, is another location that can be dangerous to wild birds. The cape, which many migratory birds, including ojirowashi, pass on their way from Russia and Sakhalin, is currently constructing the largest wind power plant to date, with 57 windmills. Saiko Shiraki, a researcher specializing in ojirowashi at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, said construction of wind power plants should be given a second look because about half of the world's 5,000 ojirowashi pass by Cape Soya."

What is more: Steller's eagles (the world's largest) fly down from Kamchatka to winter on Hokkaido. They will be at risk too, say Japanese ornithologists.

In the UK, we have about 30 pairs of the magnificent white-tailed sea eagle. All of them are in Scotland, mainly in the Hebrides. Yet our politicians want to cover these islands with wind turbines. - Is that smart? Apart from killing the sea eagles, they will also wipe out the golden eagles, which are slow to reproduce (all eagles are). And where is the biggest windfarm in the world (700 MW) to be constructed? - In the Hebrides, within and around the Lewis peatlands Special Protection Area (for birds), Special Conservation Area (for peat), and RAMSAR wetland. Our politicians will get away with this crime if we don't stop them."

More here. Background information here





ECO-TERRORISM RISING

The Earth Liberation Front - the underground environmental network that has used sabotage, arson and vandalism to attack everything from logging equipment to genetically engineered crops and SUVs - has hit the foothills town and fast-growing nearby communities. And this time, the radical group's target is sprawl.

In late December, crude incendiary devices were found in three houses under construction at a luxury subdivision in Lincoln, Calif. Graffiti that read "Enjoy the world as is - as long as you can" was found along with buckets filled with gasoline, diesel fuel, wires and kitchen timers. In January, five more devices were found at a commercial building under construction in Auburn. And last month, a newly built apartment complex in the Amador County hamlet of Sutter Creek was targeted. "We will win," was scrawled in red paint at the site, but a sprinkler system rendered most of the devices useless before they went off.

No one has been injured. But the spate of attacks - and the arrest of four young locals in connection with the arson attempts - has stunned residents, infuriated developers and contractors and intrigued law enforcement officials who have tracked the elusive "elves" for years. Investigators still have not caught the members who burned down a San Diego apartment complex in August 2003, causing $50 million damage. The ELF has been tough to crack because its members operate in autonomous cells and are savvy about technology, surveillance and forensics. ELF attacks - which have occurred across the country - are often marked by two calling cards: graffiti and politically charged missives claiming responsibility for and explaining the "action." "It was done in honor of everyone who has felt helpless to sprawl and development, everyone who feels their rural lifestyles are being threatened by these mass-produced designer communities," reads the communique about two of the three arson attempts in the foothills near Sacramento, Calif.

Last month, a tip led FBI agents to Newcastle, Calif., resident Ryan Daniel Lewis, 21. He was indicted Feb. 24 in all three incidents, and was denied bail. Lewis, who lives with his parents on a 17-acre mandarin orange orchard, has pleaded not guilty, and his defense attorney has requested a jury trial. After Lewis' arrest, pipe bombs were found at the historic Placer County Courthouse in Auburn and a local DMV office. And last week, three other Newcastle residents - Jeremiah Colcleasure, 24, and sisters Eva and Lili Holland, ages 25 and 20 - have also been arrested in connection to the first three attempted arsons.

Joyce Estey, 65, agrees that the foothills are growing too quickly. But she questions why someone would turn to arson and pipe bombs to make their point. "You feel like you live in a rural area, and something like this doesn't happen here," said Estey, shortly after the news of Lewis's arrest. Estey regularly meets her daughter and grandson at the courthouse. Built in 1894, the majestic three-story building is the crown jewel of Old Town Auburn. But the attempted bombing makes her uneasy. "Why would they put a bomb in a courthouse that's more than 100 years old?" said Estey. "And doesn't a bomb or a fire pollute the environment?"

More here





Potential potato cure But it's biotech so the Greenies will oppose it: "Each year, about 350 million people worldwide are chronically infected with hepatitis B virus. Spread through blood and other bodily fluids, this virus puts them at high risk for cirrhosis, chronic liver disease and liver cancer -- diseases that kill about 1 million people each year. Yet through the magic of biotechnology, the lowly spud may change that. For centuries, potatoes have saved lives with their nourishment. Now they'e tackling diseases spread by viruses and bacteria. Using potatoes with a protein gene (called antigens) from HBV spliced into them, researchers have produced high levels of immunity-providing antibodies in volunteers who ate them. Their findings, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online, should lead to cheaper, safer and easier-to-deliver vaccines."

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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 are mirrors of this site here and here.

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DDT MISHANDLED WHEN NOT BANNED

There have been reports too numerous to mention about the banning of DDT coinciding with a rise in malaria deaths in the Third World. It would appear however that the relationship between the two events has not been straightforward in at least some cases. One of my more dedicated readers has drawn my attention to this academic journal article (PDF) which reviews the use of DDT in India. As is occasionally mentioned, Third World countries were exempted from the ban at their own discretion and it appears from the article that India already had its own DDT factories so continued to use it. After some years, however, the mosquitoes developed resistance to DDT so it was that resistance which caused malaria to rebound in India rather than the banning of DDT.

The real problem behind the malaria resurgence, then, was the quite criminal bureaucratic incompetence of India's socialist government in allowing resistance to develop. As the article says:

"Coverage rates are too low. To be effective a DDT spraying programme must cover a high (>90% of structures) portion of the targetted area. However India historically has undersupplied its spraying programme. For example, a study by NMEP reported that during the period of MPO from 1977 to 1984, insecticide spray (DDT, HCH, Malathion) could cover only 40-60% of the targetted areas."

Note that again: It is not only DDT which has been grossly misused in India but also the main alternative chemicals, HCH and Malathion. So it is getting to the point where NOTHING will kill an Indian mosquito.

So it seems to be bureaucratic incompetence rather than the Greenies that is reponsible for India's continuing malaria problem -- and the same seems to be true in Sri Lanka. Whether that applies in other countries, however, I have no information at this stage. Moral of the story? If the Greenies don't get you the socialists will!





A BILLION DOLLARS IS NOT ENOUGH FOR TOADS

After all, the money will only come out of the pockets of home buyers and who cares about them? They're rich!

Protecting the endangered arroyo toad in California could cost $1 billion over the next 10 years, the federal government says. The price tag includes purchasing land for toad habitat, delays in getting development projects through environmental regulations, and altering construction projects to minimize harm to toads, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service analysis says. About $937 million of the cost would fall on the real estate industry. "Some of the estimated costs already are occurring due to the listing of the arroyo toad and protective measures in place as a result of the listing," the Fish and Wildlife Service said. "These costs include lands set aside for toad conservation to compensate for loss of toad habitat, and measures needed to protect the toad while construction is ongoing."

The gravel-colored arroyo toad -- bufo microscaphus californicus -- lives in rivers with shallow, gravelly pools adjacent to sandy terraces. The adult toads burrow into the sand during the day and emerge at night to eat insects. Once found in streams from San Luis Obispo County to Baja California, the arroyo toad has been driven from an estimated 75 percent of its former range by human activity, federal officials say. Those include dams, farming and urbanization, and the introduction of non-native predators like rainbow trout and bullfrogs. The toad was declared in danger of extinction in 1994....

Representatives of the building industry, which has argued previous economic studies have underestimated the costs, said they had not yet reviewed the latest study and could not comment.

The analysis is coming out at a time when the Fish and Wildlife Service is taking comments on a revised plan for the designation of critical habitat for the arroyo toad. After originally proposing nearly 500,000 acres for critical habitat, the Fish and Wildlife Service has reduced the latest proposal to 95,655 acres, from Santa Barbara County to San Diego County. More than half of the acreage is in private hands....

Because of the toad's endangered status, 3,000 acres along Little Rock Creek in the Angeles National Forest have been closed to off-roaders, fishermen and campers since 1999.... The size of the proposed critical habitat is not large enough, according to the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity. The organization is examining the proposal to determine whether it will pursue legal action against it.

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 are mirrors of this site here and here.

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DRILLING FOR OIL IN ALASKA

Excerpt from Heardman. See the original for links

The gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes that preceded and continues about the opening of ANWR to oil exploration and possible production is truly amazing. We are talking about an area the size of South Carolina and developing a part of it smaller than the Charleston International Airport.

Most of this doomsaying is coming from those who say they support conservation and alternative fuel and energy sources such as wind energy as long as it's NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) such as the denizens of Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod off the coast because it might ruin the aesthetics out the window. These are also the same ones who block at every turn new refineries or nuclear power plants. People who have not just one SUV but several, have limosines and private jets yet want the little people to drive Yugos.

We were told without doubt that the Alaskan Pipeline would devastate wildlife and totally wipe out the caribou herds. The population of those herds have risen from 3,000 to 30,000...a tenfold increase.

The Inuit who live on the coastal plain of ANWR are solidly for the development. This item from the Nunatsiaq News says much:

IQALUIT - Inuit on Alaska's North Slope have found themselves at the crux of an international clash over oil and the polar environment.

The battlefield is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a vast plain of pristine tundra along Alaska's north coast, rich in polar bears, birds, caribou - and crude oil. Under U.S. law, the 7.7 million hectare refuge is protected from oil exploration and development. But over the last decade, Alaskan Inuit have tirelessly lobbied the president and Congress to change the law.

And this is from the Christian Science Monitor by George N. Ahmaogak Sr. mayor of North Slope Borough in Barrow, Alaska. He is an Inupiat Inuit leader.

Many people oppose drilling because they fear that human impact on the land, the wildlife, and the native Gwich'in Indians will forever change the Gwich'in culture. The Gwich'in live south of this area and subsist on a caribou herd that migrates from the Arctic coastal plain through the mountains into Gwich'in territory each year.

As a native leader who lives on the Arctic coast and also hunts caribou, I share their determination to protect the health of the herd. But I believe their fear for the future is unfounded......

But unlike the Gwich'in, my people have seen oil development in our region. Prudhoe Bay - North America's largest oil reserve - lies under our land. When it was discovered in the late 1960s, we instinctively assumed that oil production would destroy our traditional way of life. But we have learned it is possible to open the land to drilling and protect our way of life, too.

MERCURY PHOBIA HURTS KIDS

The scare story about vaccines containing mercury and causing autism is still with us, as a recent story on Fox 5 news here in New York City -- and a new book on the topic from St. Martin's Press -- suggest. (Indeed, the Fox 5 story caused such an outpouring of fear from parents that Fox 5 decided...to run it again.)

The newspaper AM New York jumped on the bandwagon on March 9, running a completely irresponsible, alarmist, and misleading (when not actually false) article titled "Mercury-Based Preservative in Vaccines May Be Putting Infants at Poisoning Risk." The story may have the unintended effect of sickening and killing infants and children. These needless, preventable deaths will be the predictable result of frightened parents avoiding vaccinations that they would have ordinarily made sure that their children received. Parents will recoil in panic over "poisoning" from mercury-laced vaccines -- which do not in fact exist.

The caption under a photo of vaccinations in the AM New York piece states "Vaccines carry a mercury-based preservative to prevent infection." This is false. The mercury-containing preservative Thimerosal has been removed from all vaccines given to children, except for tiny amounts in a few remaining flu vaccines; in any case, it has not been associated with any neurological disorder in children of any age as a result of vaccinations. Analysis of literally hundreds of thousands of study patients has confirmed the lack of any association between children's vaccines and neurological impairments, including autism-spectrum disorders.

The only people still not convinced of the truth of these statements are parents of autistic children, whose judgment is understandably clouded, and plaintiff's attorneys, whose "judgment" is based solely on how much money they can extort from drug companies over unfounded fears.

Meanwhile, unvaccinated children will go on to get preventable childhood diseases and transmit them to their schoolmates and household contacts. In this case, the reporters and editors who fancy themselves watchdogs of public wellbeing should be ashamed.

Source

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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 are mirrors of this site here and here.

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THE HYDROGEN DREAM

In presidential campaign of 2004, Bush and Kerry managed to find one piece of common ground: Both spoke glowingly of a future powered by fuel cells. Hydrogen would free us from our dependence on fossil fuels and would dramatically curb emissions of air pollutants, including carbon dioxide, the gas chiefly blamed for global warming. The entire worldwide energy market would evolve into a "hydrogen economy" based on clean, abundant power. Auto manufacturers and environmentalists alike happily rode the bandwagon, pointing to hydrogen as the next big thing in U.S. energy policy. Yet the truth is that we aren't much closer to a commercially viable hydrogen-powered car than we are to cold fusion or a cure for cancer. This hardly surprises engineers, fuel cell manufacturers and policymakers, who have known all along that the technology has been hyped, perhaps to its detriment, and that the public has been misled about what Howard Coffman, editor of fuelcell-info.com, describes as the "undeniable realities of the hydrogen economy." These experts are confident that the hydrogen economy will arrive-someday. But first, they say, we have to overcome daunting technological, financial and political roadblocks. Herewith, our checklist of misconceptions and doubts about hydrogen and the exalted fuel cell.

True, hydrogen is the most common element in the universe; it's so plentiful that the sun consumes 600 million tons of it every second. But unlike oil, vast reservoirs of hydrogen don't exist here on Earth. Instead, hydrogen atoms are bound up in molecules with other elements, and we must expend energy to extract the hydrogen so it can be used in fuel cells. We'll never get more energy out of hydrogen than we put into it.

"Hydrogen is a currency, not a primary energy source," explains Geoffrey Ballard, the father of the modern-day fuel cell and co-founder of Ballard Power Systems, the world's leading fuel-cell developer. "It's a means of getting energy from where you created it to where you need it."

Unlike internal combustion engines, hydrogen fuel cells do not emit carbon dioxide. But extracting hydrogen from natural gas, today's primary source, does. And wresting hydrogen from water through electrolysis takes tremendous amounts of energy. If that energy comes from power plants burning fossil fuels, the end product may be clean hydrogen, but the process used to obtain it is still dirty.

Once hydrogen is extracted, it must be compressed and transported, presumably by machinery and vehicles that in the early stages of a hydrogen economy will be running on fossil fuels. The result: even more C02. In fact, driving a fuel cell car with hydrogen extracted from natural gas or water could produce a net increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. "People say that hydrogen cars would be pollution-free," observes University of Calgary engineering professor David Keith. "Lightbulbs are pollution-free, but power plants are not."

In the short term, nuclear power may be the easiest way to produce hydrogen without pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Electricity from a nuclear plant would electrolyze water-splitting H2O into hydrogen and oxygen. Ballard champions the idea, calling nuclear power "extremely important, unless we see some other major breakthrough that none of us has envisioned."

Critics counter that nuclear power creates long-term waste problems and isn't economically competitive. An exhaustive industry analysis entitled "The Future of Nuclear Power," written last year by 10 professors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, concludes that "hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water depends on low-cost nuclear power." As long as electricity from nuclear power costs more than electricity from other sources, using that energy to make hydrogen doesn't add up.

Perform electrolysis with renewable energy, such as solar or wind power, and you eliminate the pollution issues associated with fossil fuels and nuclear power. Trouble is, renewable sources can provide only a small fraction of the energy that will be required for a full-fledged hydrogen economy.

From 1998 to 2003, the generating capacity of wind power increased 28 percent in the U.S. to 6,374 megawatts, enough for roughly 1.6 million homes. The wind industry expects to meet 6 percent of the country's electricity needs by 2020. But economist Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England calculates that converting every vehicle in the U.S. to hydrogen power would require the electricity output of a million wind turbines-enough to cover half of California. Solar panels would likewise require huge swaths of land.

More here





CANADA'S PROBLEM MATHEMATICIAN

(In case you have never heard of him, Paul Martin is Canada's Prime Minister)

Steve McIntyre is Paul Martin's worst nightmare. A couple of years ago, the Toronto mining consultant got interested in the science behind global warming. Mr. McIntyre is not a scientist. He's just a curious citizen with a first-rate mathematical mind who was intrigued by the biggest public policy issue of the age. "It started as a hobby," he says. But soon his research on climate change took over his life -- at some cost, he says ruefully, to his business. Today, his conclusions are making waves around the world. For the politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa, they could mean an acute case of policy indigestion.

In a nutshell, Mr. McIntyre says one of the biggest claims made for climate change is wrong. The claim is that we are now experiencing a warming period unprecedented in the past thousand years. Maybe you've seen the famous graph -- the one shaped like a hockey stick, with the big spike at the end; this graph has been a major marketing tool for global warming. But Mr. McIntyre says the data show no such thing. Yes, the world is getting warmer. But this warming spell is nothing special. "The math involved is not particularly sophisticated," he says. "The errors would have been discovered long ago had there been even routine checking."

Mr. McIntyre's published findings, which he co-authored with Canadian scientist Ross McKitrick, have set off a storm of debate. One leading climate scientist says the study has made him fundamentally revise his views, and others say it's obvious that the original hockey-stick study is full of holes. Unlike almost everyone else in the highly charged climate-change debate, Mr. McIntyre has nothing personal at stake. He doesn't need to advance his career or get research grants. He's never taken money from any company or industry group. And he is astonished that climate science isn't subject to the same audits and due diligence that are carried out in any ordinary business. "And yet we're making billion-dollar decisions based on it," he says.

Well, make that $5-billion. Or maybe $10-billion. That awesome number is the latest figure being bandied about as the price tag for meeting our Kyoto commitments. It's no secret that Ottawa's Kyoto strategy is a shambles. Nobody can figure out what to do or how to do it, and Paul Martin is said to be mightily impatient with his ministers' inability to "reach a consensus" on a plan. But Mr. Martin has a bigger problem. It is slowly dawning on some folks in Ottawa that the science behind global warming isn't bulletproof after all.

The trouble is that global warming is no longer a scientific issue. It's also political and ideological. Within the science world, pressures to support the global-warming doctrine are rampant. Some scientists say they've been urged to suppress their data for the good of the cause. Meantime, the climate skeptics -- who include leading figures from Harvard and MIT, as well as dozens of Canadian scientists -- are all but ignored in the mainstream media. Even careful readers would scarcely know these people exist, or what arguments they make. (Don't count on the Conservatives for a good critique. Their position on Kyoto is incoherent.)

But wait. Don't most scientists still believe in the perils of man-made global warming? "Sure," says Mr. McIntyre. "And most stockbrokers believed in Enron."

He says that most scientists haven't analyzed the data, and that scientists, like everyone else, are subject to peer pressure and groupthink. "Just because everybody thinks something's true doesn't make it true." Even its strongest supporters admit that the Kyoto protocol is "flawed." They defend it because it's better than nothing, and remind us that we must act now, even if we don't know all the facts. But what if Kyoto is worse than nothing? What if the science is flawed, too? What if the world will keep on warming up and cooling down no matter what we do? And what if we simply don't know?

Source

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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 are mirrors of this site here and here.

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USE ANY EXCUSE FOR REGULATION -- EVEN IF IT ACHIEVES THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT IS INTENDED

Britain's Greenie "expert" at reducing traffic congestion wants to do it by slowing drivers down -- which will keep them on the roads longer -- which will INCREASE congestion!

Speed cameras are a major cause of traffic congestion and the technology to replace them already exists, Britain's new motorway "jambuster" has admitted. Derek Turner, who was appointed by the Highways Agency last month to tackle congestion on major routes, said speed governors, similar to those used in lorries and coaches, offered an alternative way of slowing traffic.

He said the device could help prevent the traffic jams caused by drivers braking sharply as they approach a camera. Mr Turner said: "Speed cameras do cause congestion. There is a lot of sophistication in the electronics field that you could introduce."

He also criticised car drivers who clog up motorways by taking short trips. He said: "A lot of the problem is to do with people joining the motorway at one junction and coming straight off at the next junction. These are strategic roads, designed for longer-distance traffic." He is considering placing more traffic lights on slip roads to encourage drivers to shun motorways. "If people can't get on to the motorway so easily, they will probably choose to use totally acceptable trunk roads," he said.

Andrew Howard, head of road safety at the AA Motoring Trust, said the comments seemed to be a "little bit batty". He said: "In a number of places ... previous roads have been replaced by motorways and have been seriously reduced in capacity in an attempt to stop people using them and in an attempt to make driving through surrounding villages less possible and less desirable." And he added: "I am a trifle baffled by the speed camera comment. "The only way I can think they affect congestion, they do make people go slower to be safe - and the answer to that is remarkably simple: go and put up signs so people know what the limit is."

Tony Vickers, spokesman for the Association of British Drivers, said Mr Turner's comments came as "no surprise at all" as he had been one of the major lights introducing the congestion charge in London. "He always made his priorities very clear. He sees private car users as the bottom feeders effectively, the people least entitled to any privileges whatsoever on the road." He described government policy since 1997 as "negative" and a "war on motorists", which had completely failed to reduce the numbers of cars on the roads.

Source





KILIMANJARO'S SHRINKING GLACIER AND GREENHOUSE GASES: A MOUNTAIN OF LIES

Senior officals from KYOTO PROTOCOL nations are gathering in London for a two day conference on so-called "man-made global warming" - global climate change that is SUPPOSEDLY the result of increased emissions of man-made "greehouse gases" due to industrialization and "excessive" use of "fossil" fuels.

Evidence exists that ENTIRELY DISPROVES THIS BUNK. Here it is...

EXHIBIT #1: Hysterical Left-wing Greenies' Make Outrageous Charges -

"Reuters": A photo of Mount Kilimanjaro stripped of its snowcap for the first time in 11,000 years will be used as dramatic testimony for action against global warming as ministers from the world's biggest polluters meet today. Gathering in London on Tuesday for a two-day brainstorming session on the environment agenda of Britain's presidency of the Group of Eight rich nations, the environment and energy ministers from 20 countries will be handed a book containing the stark image of Africa's tallest mountain, among others.

"This is a wake-up call and an unequivocal message that a low-carbon global economy is necessary, achievable and affordable," said Steve Howard of the Climate Group charity which organised the book and an associated exhibition. "We are breaking climate change out of the environment box. This crisis affects all of us. This is a global challenge and we need real leadership to address these major problems -- and these ministers can give that leadership," he told Reuters.

The pictures include one of Kilimanjaro almost bare of its icecap because of global warming, and coastal defences in the Marshall Islands threatened with swamping from rising sea levels.

EXHIBIT #2: REAL Scientists Counter with TRUTH -

(NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC) -

... reports of glacial recession on Kilimanjaro first emerged in 2002, the story was quickly picked up and trumpeted as another example of humans destroying nature. It's easy to see why: Ice fields in the tropics-Kilimanjaro lies about 220 miles (350 kilometers) south of the Equator-are particularly susceptible to climate change, and even the slightest temperature fluctuation can have devastating effects.

"There's a tendency for people to take this temperature increase and draw quick conclusions, which is a mistake," said Douglas R. Hardy, a climatologist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, who monitored Kilimanjaro's glaciers from mountaintop weather stations since 2000. "The real explanations are much more complex. Global warming plays a part, but a variety of factors are really involved."

According to Hardy, forest reduction in the areas surrounding Kilimanjaro, and not global warming, might be the strongest human influence on glacial recession.

"Clearing for agriculture and forest fires-often caused by honey collectors trying to smoke bees out of their hives-have greatly reduced the surrounding forests," he says. The loss of foliage causes less moisture to be pumped into the atmosphere, leading to reduced cloud cover and precipitation and increased solar radiation and glacial evaporation.

Evidence of glacial recession on Kilimanjaro is often dated from 1912, but most scientists believe tropical glaciers began receding as early as the 1850s.

Stefan L. Hastenrath, a professor of atmospheric studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has found clues in local reports of a dramatic drop in East African lake levels after 1880. Lake evaporation indicates a decrease in precipitation and cloudiness around Kilimanjaro.

"Less cloud coverage lets more sunlight filter through and hit the glaciers," Hastenrath said. "That increase in sunlight then provides more energy for evaporation of the glacier."

Hastenrath found further evidence in sailing expedition reports from the same period. "Ships along the East African coast recorded very fast equatorial winds around 1880," he said. "Just like today, swift westerlies are always linked with drier seasons in East Africa, so it's very likely Kilimanjaro had a dry period around this time."

Along with a higher risk of evaporation, a drop in precipitation also makes for a dark glacial surface, made up of old, dirty snow. A darker glacial surface absorbs more solar radiation than fresh, white snow (like a blacktop playground baking in the sun).

Global warming began to take effect in East Africa by the early 20th century.

FACTS IN SUMMARY:

(1) The current recession of Mt. Kilimajaro's glacier began a CENTURY BEFORE fossil fuel use became global.

(2) The current recession of Mt. Kilimanjaro's glacier is the result of LOCAL activities which can be addressed locally - and have NOTHING to do with use of fossil fuels in other parts of the world.

(3) The current recession of Mt. Kilimanjaro's glacier is also effected by regional wind current patterns and local cloud cover - and NOT CLIMATIC CHANGES OR GLOBAL WARMING.

(4) The "Greenies" ADMIT that Mt. Kilimanjaro was GLACIER FREE 11,000 YEARS ago; WELL... there were NO SUV's then, and NO man-made "greenhouse gases" to cause this; therefore, asserting that "greenhouse gases" are causing it now is HIGHLY SUSPECT.

THEREFORE: it is OBVIOUS that KYOTO is a COLOSSAL WASTE, a MASSIVE DIVERSION of valuable resources which could be better spent in ways that would more directly and quickly SAVE AND IMPROVE the lives or more people in the Third World who are currently suffering as a result of REAL ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS - like dirty water, and water borne diseases.

Instead of shackling our First World's industrial base (the world's money-making/wealth-generating machine) with WORTHLESS "GREEN" laws, we should be be building water treatment plants in the Third World and begin spraying large areas with DDT.

That is, if we REALLY want to help improve the lives of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people.

I have the feeling the GREENIES relentless and irrational attachment to KYOTO and against "fossil fuels" has more to do with making themselves feel good, than improving the lives of anyone.

More HERE from BJORN LOMBORG (an op-ed titled: "Save the world, ignore global warming") and HERE.

UPDATE: Welcome SHAKING SPEARS readers - and if you're not one yet, you should be EVERYDAY!

(Post lifted from Astute Blogger. He might also have mentioned that some glaciers elsewhere are rapidly getting bigger -- such as the Franz Josef glacier in New Zealand. Tricky stuff that global warming! Using local phenomena to make global inferences is of course the real idiocy involved. You can "prove" anything by argument from example)

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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 are mirrors of this site here and here.

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LOL! BIG BACKDOWN AT THE "HOCKEY STICK" BLOG

The Michael Mann crowd have now taken note of what I have noted several times (e.g. on on 13th. and on July 16th last year) -- that increased carbon dioxide levels historically FOLLOW warming periods rather than preceding them. And as Hume pointed out long ago, the essential feature of the notion of cause is that causes PRECEDE effects. So increased carbon dioxide levels do not cause the warming (as Greenies say) but rather the warming causes the increase in carbon dioxide. So here is what the global warmers say about all that. I have highlighted the words to note as they try to weasel their way out of it:

"This is an issue that is often misunderstood in the public sphere and media, so it is worth spending some time to explain it and clarify it. At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so.

Does this prove that CO2 doesn't cause global warming? The answer is no.

The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.

The 4200 years of warming make up about 5/6 of the total warming. So CO2 could have caused the last 5/6 of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming.

It comes as no surprise that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount of summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun that happen every 21,000 years, have long been known to affect the comings and goings of ice ages. Atlantic ocean circulation slowdowns are thought to warm Antarctica, also.

From studying all the available data (not just ice cores), the probable sequence of events at a termination goes something like this. Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm.... etc., etc."

As you see from the words I have highlighted in red, they are reduced to speculation. They admit that they don't know what is going on. They even admit that other things than carbon dioxide do historically cause warming. And THESE are the quacks who want the world to spend billions of dollars on the basis of their being right!






MORE EVIDENCE POINTING TO FLUCTUATIONS IN SOLAR OUTPUT (WHICH MUST CAUSE TEMPERATURE CHANGES ON EARTH)

It would be surprising if the well-known sunspot cycle was the only regular cycle in solar activity

"With surprising and mysterious regularity, life on Earth has flourished and vanished in cycles of mass extinction every 62 million years, say two UC Berkeley scientists who discovered the pattern after a painstaking computer study of fossil records going back for more than 500 million years.

Their findings are certain to generate a renewed burst of speculation among scientists who study the history and evolution of life. Each period of abundant life and each mass extinction has itself covered at least a few million years -- and the trend of biodiversity has been rising steadily ever since the last mass extinction, when dinosaurs and millions of other life forms went extinct about 65 million years ago.

The Berkeley researchers are physicists, not biologists or geologists or paleontologists, but they have analyzed the most exhaustive compendium of fossil records that exists -- data that cover the first and last known appearances of no fewer than 36,380 separate marine genera, including millions of species that once thrived in the world's seas, later virtually disappeared, and in many cases returned. Richard Muller and his graduate student, Robert Rohde, are publishing a report on their exhaustive study in the journal Nature today, and in interviews this week, the two men said they have been working on the surprising evidence for about four years. "We've tried everything we can think of to find an explanation for these weird cycles of biodiversity and extinction," Muller said, "and so far, we've failed."

But the cycles are so clear that the evidence "simply jumps out of the data," said James Kirchner, a professor of earth and planetary sciences on the Berkeley campus who was not involved in the research but who has written a commentary on the report that is also appearing in Nature today. "Their discovery is exciting, it's unexpected and it's unexplained," Kirchner said. And it is certain, he added, to send other scientists in many disciplines seeking explanations for the strange cycles. "Everyone and his brother will be proposing an explanation -- and eventually, at least one or two will turn out to be right while all the others will be wrong."

Muller and Rohde conceded that they have puzzled through every conceivable phenomenon in nature in search of an explanation: "We've had to think about solar system dynamics, about the causes of comet showers, about how the galaxy works, and how volcanoes work, but nothing explains what we've discovered," Muller said.

The evidence of strange extinction cycles that first drew Rohde's attention emerged from an elaborate computer database he developed from the largest compendium of fossil data ever created. It was a 560-page list of marine organisms developed 14 years ago by the late J. John Sepkoski Jr., a famed paleobiologist at the University of Chicago who died at the age of 50 nearly five years ago. Sepkoski himself had suggested that marine life appeared to have its ups and downs in cycles every 26 million years, but to Rohde and Muller, the longer cycle is strikingly more evident, although they have also seen the suggestion of even longer cycles that seem to recur every 140 million years.....

Muller's favorite explanation, he said informally, is that the solar system passes through an exceptionally massive arm of our own spiral Milky Way galaxy every 62 million years, and that that increase in galactic gravity might set off a hugely destructive comet shower that would drive cycles of mass extinction on Earth....."

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 are mirrors of this site here and here.

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YOU CAN'T WIN WITH GREENIES

You might as well drive a fuel-thirsty car. You will get taxed as if you do anyway. Upping taxes on fuel-efficient cars shows what the REAL Greenie agenda is. It's not the environment. It is good old socialism -- government control of people and their property

So. You bought some tin-can hybrid econotoy powered by a burble motor, greased with biodegradable, recycled chicken fat. Saving that gas. Doing your thing for the environment. Wearing your greenie baseball cap. Feeling all good about yourself.

Traitor! In your typically short-sighted zeal, you may not have realized you were just bollixing everything for your state tax collectivists. Less gas, less tax. Less tax, less spend.

Oh, don’t be so naïve. There’s never going to be less spend, just more tax. Ha! If they can’t get it for the gas they’ve convinced you to conserve, they’ll get it for the green mile you go. You can’t stop going. You gotta get there. There’s a Sundance Rally before Telluride on your way to the Freakers Ball. Racking the miles.

Oregon knows, already feeling the gas tax pinch. Got them a university, Oregon State. Engineers there got a solution, already being “road tested,” as they say. Gonna tax you by the mile. Gonna slap a GPS gadget on your car, which you’ll undoubtedly get to pay for along with your mandatory five-point seat corset (those belts just let too much fat hang loose) and your mobile safe-baby vault.

The GPS loopengooper will measure your mileage, down to fractions of millimeters. When you eventually pull in for the smidgen of gas you need, a new, smarter than you gas pump will get all intimate with your odometer and tax you, standing right there with the pump still in your hand, for the miles driven. Tax Kaching! You ain’t even gonna have enough change left for a Twinkie or a Ho Ho.

Oregon’s already got it going. California is watching closely. New tax gimmicks tarry for no man. We’d urge you to start walking, but your cell phone already knows where you are, and they can pack some pretty mean electronics into the sole of a Nike.

Source




BIDINOTTO REPLIES TO KRISTOFF

The underlying problem for environmentalists is not that they typically engage in factual distortions and scaremongering for a good cause. The problem is that their cause isn't good. Among the "unexamined assumptions" and "outdated concepts" of environmentalism that ought to be challenged are its core philosophic premises -- chief among them, the idea that "pristine nature" has inherent or "intrinsic value" in itself, independent of any usefulness to humans. This anti-human premise in fact lies at the root of most environmentalist scaremongering and "extremism." And ironically, Kristof himself is a major public purveyor of that premise.

Consider the recommendations in his [Kristoff's] latest article. He insists that "priority should go to avoiding environmental damage that is irreversible, like extinctions, climate change and loss of wilderness. And irreversible changes are precisely what are at stake with the Bush administration’s plans to drill in the Arctic wildlife refuge, to allow roads in virgin wilderness and to do essentially nothing on global warming. That’s an agenda that will disgrace us before our grandchildren."

But note what is tacitly implied in this passage. Why does he equate "environmental damage" with "extinctions" and "loss of wilderness"? Why is it a "disgrace" for the Bush administration "to allow roads in virgin wilderness" or "to drill in the Arctic wildlife refuge"?

These are not concerns and criticisms based upon scientific or economic facts; they are based on certain philosophical values. In fact, I dissected Kristof's value premises in some of my earliest blog entries, "A conflict of values in the Arctic" and "Krisfof's Choice -- and ours." I noted that, in a series of articles, Kristof had opposed any oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve, even though he readily conceded all the following scientific and economic facts:

* that the 3,000 acres under consideration for drilling represent only a minuscule fraction of the refuge's vast area;

* that the area targeted for exploration is a frozen patch of barren tundra with zero aesthetic appeal, and isn't "environmentally sensitive" even by green standards;

* that the Prudhoe Bay area of Alaska, the bustling center of existing oil drilling, hasn't caused a biological holocaust, but on the contrary is teeming with wildlife -- that herds of carabou, for instance, have even quintupled in the area;

* and that modern drilling techniques are far less environmentally intrusive than even those then used at Prudhoe Bay.

In addition to all this, Kristof also acknowledged that "It's also only fair to give special weight to the views of the only people who live in the coastal plain: the Inupiat Eskimos, who overwhelmingly favor drilling (they are poor now, and oil could make them millionaires). One of the Eskimos, Bert Akootchook, angrily told me that if environmentalists were so anxious about the Arctic, they should come here and clean up the petroleum that naturally seeps to the surface of the tundra."

Finally, he admitted that "we need to get our oil from somewhere, and Americans are dying now in Iraq because of our dependence on foreign oil." Surely that's a fact which ought to trump all other considerations.

But no. In his series conclusion, Kristof simply tossed out the window all of these compelling factual scientific, economic and geopolitical considerations...when balanced against a single premise -- the alleged inherent value of untouched wilderness:

The argument that I find most compelling is that this primordial wilderness, a part of our national inheritance that is roughly the same as it was a thousand years ago, would be irretrievably lost if we drilled. The Bush administration's proposal to drill is therefore not just bad policy but also shameful, for it would casually rob our descendants forever of the chance to savor this magical coastal plain -- and to be slapped in the butt by a frisky polar bear." [emphasis added]

I replied:

"So there it is. Balanced against human lives, it's far more important to Mr. Kristof (and those of his spiritual brethren who can afford private excursions to remote Arctic wastelands) that he can be awakened by being slapped on the butt by a bear.

"On behalf of our kids in Iraq, would that some bear had slapped him in the face."

The problem, you see, isn't environmentalist "extremism" or "moderation." As I note in my extended essay on environmentalism, even self-styled "moderate" environmentalists like Kristof all share the notion that "pristine nature" represents a kind of moral-metaphysical ideal, and that the presence and activity of people "degrades," "mars," "blights," "ruins," etc., the purity and perfection of an "unsullied" natural environment. Pick up any environmentalist book, listen to any environmentalist spokesman, and you'll find such language tossed about with abandon. And all of them tacitly assume a value system in which humans and their activities are, by nature, immoral.

Those are the real "unexamined assumptions" and "outdated concepts" at the heart of environmentalism -- whether the proponents are violent "extremists" like PETA and ELF, scientific "alarmists" like the NRDC and climatologist Stephen Schneider or self-declared "moderates" like writers Schellenberger, Nordhaus and Kristof.

What does it mean, in practice, to hold a philosophy that pristine nature has intrinsic value in itself, and that Man and his activities are intrusive threats to the so-called ecological balance? Ideas have consequences, and the policies and laws arising from this philosophical outlook have been devastating to human life and well-being -- as I show in my own article, "Death By Environmentalism."

In the closing comment of his recent column, Nicholas Kristof says, "So it’s critical to have a credible, nuanced, highly respected environmental movement. And right now, I’m afraid we don’t have one." He's right, at least in his last conclusion. But he doesn't grasp the reason.

If environmentalists truly care to do something about their own waning credibility and influence, what they first need to confront -- and reject -- is their anti-human philosophy. For the environmentalist movement will never earn credibility and respect unless it jettisons the morally bankrupt assumption at its very foundation.

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 are mirrors of this site here and here.

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GREENIES LACK CREDIBILITY

From Kristoff in the NYT

""The Death of Environmentalism" resonated with me. I was once an environmental groupie, and I still share the movement's broad aims, but I'm now skeptical of the movement's "I Have a Nightmare" speeches.

In the 1970's, the environmental movement was convinced that the Alaska oil pipeline would devastate the Central Arctic caribou herd. Since then, it has quintupled.

When I first began to worry about climate change, global cooling and nuclear winter seemed the main risks. As Newsweek said in 1975: "Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend ... but they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century."

This record should teach environmentalists some humility. The problems are real, but so is the uncertainty. Environmentalists were right about DDT's threat to bald eagles, for example, but blocking all spraying in the third world has led to hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths.

Likewise, environmentalists were right to warn about population pressures, but they overestimated wildly. Paul Ehrlich warned in "The Population Bomb" that "the battle to feed humanity is over. ... Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." On my bookshelf is an even earlier book, "Too Many Asians," with a photo of a mass of Indians on the cover. The book warns that the threat from relentlessly multiplying Asians is "even more grave than that of nuclear warfare."

Jared Diamond, author of the fascinating new book "Collapse," which shows how some civilizations in effect committed suicide by plundering their environments, says false alarms aren't a bad thing. Professor Diamond argues that if we accept false alarms for fires, then why not for the health of our planet? But environmental alarms have been screeching for so long that, like car alarms, they are now just an irritating background noise.

At one level, we're all environmentalists now. The Pew Research Center found that more than three-quarters of Americans agree that "this country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment." Yet support for the environment is coupled with a suspicion of environmental groups. "The Death of Environmentalism" notes that a poll in 2000 found that 41 percent of Americans considered environmental activists to be "extremists." There are many sensible environmentalists, of course, but overzealous ones have tarred the entire field.

The loss of credibility is tragic because reasonable environmentalists - without alarmism or exaggerations - are urgently needed.

Given the uncertainties and trade-offs, priority should go to avoiding environmental damage that is irreversible, like extinctions, climate change and loss of wilderness. And irreversible changes are precisely what are at stake with the Bush administration's plans to drill in the Arctic wildlife refuge, to allow roads in virgin wilderness and to do essentially nothing on global warming. That's an agenda that will disgrace us before our grandchildren.

So it's critical to have a credible, nuanced, highly respected environmental movement. And right now, I'm afraid we don't have one.





ANWR'S OIL AND MICHAEL JACKSON'S NEVERLAND

ANWR is 16 MILLION acres. That's big.

The footprint for the STATE OF THE ART, WORLD-CLASS proposed oil drilling facility in ANWR is 2,000 acres. That's sounds big, but it isn't as big as it sounds. That's 1/8000ths of ANWR'S total area!

PUT IT INTO PERSPECTIVE: The NEVERLAND RANCH - Michael Jackson's ranch in California is 2744 acres - that's about 40% BIGGER than the proposed oil facility. (And what allegedly goes on in Neverland is more disgusting than what goes on in any an oil facility anywhere!)

By the way: Canada - our #1 foreign source for oil - currently extracts oil from an area in Canada right near ANWR, and just like ANWR - with the approval of the Native Americans who live there. If they can do it safely, so can Americans! ALSO: if Norwegians and Brits can safely extract oil from the dangerous North Sea, then we Americans can certainly extract oil safely from good old terra-firma!

And to those who claim that the ONE MILLION BARRELS P/D that ANWR might produce is a paltrey amount which not worth the risk I say: When Iraq's oil production went UP to one-million barrels it was an important and positive milestone for Iraq and the global oil markets. Now, Iraq produces 2 million barrels a day. If ANWR produces 50% of what Iraq produces, then I'd say we were doing ALL RIGHT! The U.S. Geological Survey, updated May 2000, estimated that the area might contain up to 16 billion barrels of oil — five years of U.S. imports. That's nothing to sneeze at!

THEREFORE: Opposition to drilling in ANWR is irrational. Which is probably why it fits right in with Leftist policies.

More HERE (facts from the DOI), and HERE (why Canadian Native Americans favor drilling for oil in Canada, but oppose it in the USA).

(Post lifted from Astute Blogger)

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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 are mirrors of this site here and here.

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MALARIA RESURGENT -- THANKS TO THE GREENS

Malaria had almost been wiped out before DDT -- one of the world's safest chemicals -- was banned under the pressure of baseless Greenie panic-mongering about a "silent spring"

The number of cases of malaria may be double that previously estimated, a team of researchers has found. A team of scientists, led by Robert Snow, based at the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratories in Kenya found that over half a billion people could be infected with the killer disease.

The research, which has been published in 'Nature', estimated that there were around 515 million clinical cases of malaria in 2002, although the actual figure could be between 300 and 660 million. The study also found that the figures dramatically rose in areas outside Africa, where the new figures were at least three times as high as those previously estimated by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Malaria is caused by a mosquito-borne parasite and it is thought to be one of the world's biggest killers. The new study, which has been published in Nature, used a computer model to construct a detailed world map to demonstrate how many people are likely to be experiencing malaria symptoms.

The team divided the world into regions where the disease is present, excluding areas above a certain altitude, where the parasite would be less able to survive, and extremely built-up areas where there was less clean water in which the mosquitoes could breed. The search was further refined by the addition of population density estimates, the risk of becoming infected from a mosquito bite and medical reports on the likelihood of an infection developing into full-blown fever and other symptoms.

The report has been published as a global effort to tackle malaria is increasing. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which co-ordinates government and private funding, has put œ3.1 billion into researching these diseases since it was established in 2002.

However, public health advisors and advocates have said that more money is needed, mainly because it has already known how to treat malaria, through the use of measures such as insecticide-treated bed nets and drugs.

Experts at the WHO have confirmed that they will be working with Mr Snow's team to refine their own estimates of malaria infection. Eline Korenromp, from the WHO's malaria-monitoring unit in Geneva, Switzerland, said that the organisation's latest figures, due to be published later this year, are between 350 and 500 million and largely overlap with the findings of Mr Snow's team.

Source





ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF HOW GREENIES HURT ORDINARY PEOPLE

One of the many headaches that George W. Bush inherited from his predecessor was the Puerto Rican Island of Vieques. In the waning years of the Clinton administration, protesters demanded that the U.S. Navy abandon bombing and naval gunfire exercises that had taken place on the largely uninhabited island for nearly seventy years. It became a leftist cause. Liberal icons bumped into one another to fly to Puerto Rico, boat over to the island, trespass (but never on a day that there was an exercise scheduled) and get arrested for the benefit of the New York Times or Newsweek. They included the Reverend Al Sharpton, Mrs. Jesse Jackson, Joan Baez, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Edward Olomos, Michael Moore and Ramsey Clark, just to name a few.

Hillary Clinton, then running for the U.S. Senate in New York, chastised the U.S. Navy for not bowing to the "will of the citizens of Puerto Rico," until her husband, a week before the election, issued an executive order to phase out the facility by 2003, despite recommendations to the contrary by his own Secretary of Defense and the Chief of Naval Operations.

In 2002, the bombing exercises were transferred to an Air Force bombing range in central Florida, not far from the Jacksonville and Pensacola Naval Air Stations. In January, many of the protesters were back in Puerto Rico, celebrating the final bombing exercise on Vieques and waved Puerto Rican flags and placards that read "U.S. Navy, get out of Puerto Rico."

On February 21, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that the U.S. Navy will close the Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station in Puerto Rico in 2004, eliminating 1200 civilian jobs as well as 700 military positions. This naval facility is estimated to put nearly $300 million annually into the local economy. The next day a stunned Governor Sila Calderon, held a news conference in San Juan, protesting the base closure as a serious blow to Commonwealth's fragile economy. The governor stated that "The people of Puerto Rico don't now or never did have an interest in closing the Vieques bombing range or the Roosevelt Roads naval base. My government is interested in both staying in Puerto Rico."

When asked, Admiral Robert J. Natter, Commander-in Chief, Western Atlantic Command, said, "Without Vieques, I see no further need for the facility at Roosevelt Roads. None."

Source




CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS FOLLOW TEMPERATURE CHANGES SO ARE NOT CAUSATIVE

Abstract of a recent scientific paper from the Netherlands:

This paper provides a literature study of the observations on temperature changes and the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It investigates the cause-effect relationship between these parameters, and makes an alternative interpretation to that given by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC assumes increased used of fossil fuels is the major cause of the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And the increasing carbon dioxide leads to global warming because of infrared absorption by this gas. The following observations are not in agreement with the assumed direct correlation.

1. There is a very gradual increase to the annual human production of carbon dioxide, but the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not proportional to the human emission. The annual uptake of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is highly variable.

2. The measured average global temperature is also very variable and it is not proportional to the observed concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The variable amount of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere each year, follows reasonably well the specific average value of the temperature in that year. This leads to the suggestion that the temperature causes the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (i.e. the opposite of the IPCC's assumption): the annual average temperature varies under various influences, and this causes variable additions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. These influences can be external (cosmic) or internal (due to inherent instability of the climate system).

The human emission of carbon dioxide may be contributing to the accumulation of this gas in the atmosphere - although we do not know to what extent - but this does not necessarily contribute to an extra temperature rise through infrared absorption. The temperature of the atmosphere is not exclusively determined by the radiation balance, but also by the high circulation rate of water. Evaporation from the Earth's surface absorbs heat and transports it to the higher air layers where condensation releases the heat so cool water returns to the surface as precipitation. This contributes to the pleasant climate on Earth.

The alarming message about a global temperature rise originates from measurements made at weather stations almost all in land areas. Weather balloons did not register this. The temperature of the troposphere has been measured world-wide since 1979. These observations - that include the oceans - do not as yet indicate a significant rise.

Taking into consideration the rapid passage of water through the atmosphere, which is expected to provide for an effective natural and self-regulating thermostat, provides explanation of several observations which are still puzzling in the current IPCC conception.

Climate change is a natural phenomenon that has always happened. It is generally assumed that since ~1870 there has been a trend of slight temperature increase over land. But this trend shows no direct annual relationship with the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere.

Source

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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 are mirrors of this site here and here.

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GREENIES LOSE A ROUND

The b******s even want to stop us using burnt trees! Note the arrogance:

Loggers began chopping down trees Monday inside a wildfire-ravaged old-growth forest after authorities hauled away environmentalists trying to block the logging from taking place. Loggers toting chainsaws, axes and fuel cans hiked past the protest site on the Siskiyou National Forest and a short while later the roar of chainsaws and trees crashing to earth could be heard. Authorities arrested 10 people and towed away a disabled pickup draped with an Earth First banner.

The battle has become the focus of a national debate between conservationists and the Bush administration over how to treat the millions of acres of national forest that burn every year in wildfires and whether to log any of the remaining old growth in national forests. Old-growth forest reserves were designated primarily for fish and wildlife habitat under a 1994 forest plan. That act was created to balance logging against habitat for salmon and the northern spotted owl.

About 50 protesters assembled at the forest before dawn in an attempt to stall logging that had been made possible by the expiration of an injunction. "We have no laws in our forest so we will be the law," said Joan Norman, 72, of Selma, before Forest Service law enforcement officers picked her up in her metal lawn chair blocking a logging road bridge.

John West, president of Silver Creek Logging Co., said the protesters had a right to their say, but a federal court injunction that held up the logging for months has expired, and work has to proceed quickly to avoid further loss of the fire-killed timber to insects and rot. "The people of this country have given the Forest Service the responsibility for taking care of this land," West said. "The Forest Service is trying to do that."

Monday's logging occurred at the site of a wildfire that charred 500,000 acres and was the largest in the nation in 2002.

The Forest Service and timber industry contend that by cutting trees on a small fraction of the forest burned by the fire, they can finance work to speed the growth of a new forest while providing much-needed timber for local mills.

More here





THE SKY IS NOT FALLING

A litany of false prophecies:

It's time for a new perspective on all the ominous warnings about global warming, scarcity of resources, overpopulation, deforestation, etc: Yes, we do have problems with the environment that we must address. But some of these problems no longer exist or never did, and our technological advances are doing a good job of addressing the others. Yet the doomsayers act as if the problems are ignored, which is just not true.

For one example, after hearing scary talk about global overpopulation for most of our lives, it is now predicted by U.N. and independent researchers that the world's population will stabilize by midcentury, then start declining. Why? Technological advances have yielded great affluence, and affluent families tend to be smaller.

The plunging fertility rate is already creating problems with Europe's social welfare programs. There aren't enough workers joining the job force to pay for benefits. But this phenomenon is not limited to developed countries. The fertility rate is also dropping in Third World nations as they become richer.

Along with talk about overpopulation, we also used to hear that if big industrial nations kept up their insatiable demands for limited resources, we would run out ofthose resources. Instead, thanks to technology, we enjoy abundance, not scarcity.

For another example, the green movement would have us believe that because of our indifference to environmental preservation, we are mowing down our forests to feed our rapacious industries.

But that's false, according to Jack Hollander, professor emeritus of energy and resources at UC Berkeley. "Technological advances [have] contributed to saving the American forests. As new fossil-fuel-powered agricultural machines were introduced early in the 20th century, farmers were able to produce crops more efficiently, so they needed less land for a given output," Hollander wrote in his book, "The Real Environmental Crisis: Why Poverty, Not Affluence, is the Environment's Number One Enemy."

What happened in Vermont is a good example. In the 1700s, Vermont was almost totally covered with forest, yet by 1850 so much clearing had taken place for agricultural use that the forest cover had dropped to 35 percent. People feared that Vermont would become a wasteland. Today, however, Vermont's forest cover has sharply rebounded to the point where it is now seen in 77 percent of the state.

In the United States as a whole, over 300 million acres of forest were lost between 1600 and 1920 due to farming and the use of wood for cooking and heating. Forest acreage began to stabilize around the turn of the 20th century and has been expanding since 1920. At present, total forest acreage is 737 million acres - almost three-quarters as much as in 1600.

Since the 1950s, timber growth has consistently exceeded harvest. The wood supply in the United States will be available indefinitely because industry and government continue to invest in efficient forest management techniques and technologies.

For a third example, let's look at global warming. Robert C. Balling Jr., a climatology professor at Arizona State University, points out that the Kyoto Treaty isn't so much about preventing this supposed phenomenon asit is about vindicating a political process that led to a dubious U.N. and world "consensus." This process has made it difficult for sound science to triumph in evaluating whether the threat is real, but what is known is hardly a cause for alarm, Balling and other respected scientists contend.

The key point here is that the possibility of global warming isn't just being ignored by Kyoto critics, as Kyoto supporters say. Instead, it's being taken seriously by scientists whose own research leads them to question the consensus.

Unfortunately, the environmental movement is now more about protecting its fund-raising efforts than protecting the environment. Whatever the facts, greens aim to scare people into thinking environmental catastrophe is right around the corner - and that only your dollars will allow them to stop it.

But the reality isn't that scary at all, and when real problems pop up, they are being dealt with, not ignored.

Source

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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 are mirrors of this site here and here.

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THE PRICE OF GASOLINE

Neal Boortz comments:

Gas prices are on the way up. Look for over two bucks a gallon for most of your Spring and Summer driving. The problem here is not that the world's supply of oil is running short. The problem is that the supply is undependable. Every time Islamic goons blow up an oil pipeline in Iraq you see a spike in oil prices. Add the terrorism problem to the fact that we don't have enough refining capacity .. and you have expensive gas.

How many years has it been since an oil refinery was built in the United States? I think that it's been over 25 years. Can't you imagine that this is having some affect on getting gas to the pumps for your Summer driving? And then there's all those special blends. We have about 55 different blends for different parts of the country .. all demanded by the eco-whacko crowd. The refineries can't keep up.

Who to blame? How about environmentalists? Any plan to build a new refinery is immediately met by a tidal wave of opposition from so-called "environmental" groups. Ditto for any suggestion that we start retrieving the supplies of crude oil and natural gas from the Gulf shore of Florida and the Pacific coast. No can do, the environmentalists don't like it. Then, of course, there's ANWR. On its best days ANWR looks like a vacant urban lot. Most of the time it looks like an iced-over K-Mart parking lot. There's oil there, but we can't get to it. Again .. blame the environmentalists.

What about nuclear power plants? Environmentalists again.

Remember, for many of the so-called environmentalists, the goal isn't protecting the environment. The real goal is weakening America. The environmental movement became the refuge-of-choice for socialists and communists who had nowhere else to go after the fall of the Soviet Union and the worldwide communist movement. Here they found a movement they could use to further their goals of weakening capitalism and the American economy ... and anyone who dares to challenge them is branded as a wicked capitalist who wants dirty air and water.

When you fill up your tanks for your trip to grandmas, remember to thank your friendly local environmentalist groups for their help.

Source






Facts versus fears on biotechnology: "By reducing the need to cultivate for weed control, herbicide-tolerant crops greatly decrease soil erosion (by nearly a billion tons per year), keeping sediment out of lakes and streams. No-till farming also reduces fuel use (by some 300 million gallons of gasoline a year), and increases carbon dioxide uptake by soils -- good news for anyone worried about global warming. Increased crop yields, in turn, mean African farmers can grow enough crops to feed livestock, so they can regularly include protein in their diets for perhaps the first time in their lives. But anti-GM activists won't let anything as silly as facts affect their misplaced resolve to stop biotech progress in its tracks."

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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 are mirrors of this site here and here.

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THAT NAUGHTY E-WASTE

Just another way of wasting money and raising taxes

Haste maketh waste, and in the fast- paced world of technology, there's a lot of it. In California, home of the technology revolution, 10,000 home computers and TVs are retired daily. While that amounts to a tiny fraction of the state's total waste stream, the issue is creating heaps of hype and hysteria about what to do with the growing amount of electronic waste or "e-waste." This year, California became the first state to hold consumers responsible for their e-mess. Californians buying a TV, home computer or laptop must now pay $6 to $10 to finance a costly program to collect and recycle all used machines throughout the state.

While the fee may seem insignificant, there is little reason to believe it will remain low for long; the cost to recycle a single computer is six times that amount. Advocacy groups such as the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, who have been aggressively lobbying the state and Congress for mandatory recycling laws, already are arguing the fee does not go far enough. They would like to see the fee raised to $60 per product to cover the full costs of recycling. California's new law also requires manufacturers to rethink the way they build computers. By 2007, they must phase out lead - currently used in computers to protect users from the tube's X-rays - mercury, cadmium, and other substances crucial to the operation of PCs.

The widespread panic is based on misinformation spread largely by powerful eco-activist groups who believe the growing amount of electronic waste reflects the ills of a "throwaway" society and that recycling e-waste is our moral obligation to achieve "zero waste tolerance." Among the myths bandied about are that e-waste is growing at an uncontrollable, "exponential" rate; and that heavy metals contained in computers are leaking out of the landfills, poisoning our ground soil.

In reality, e-waste has remained at only 1 percent of the total municipal waste stream since the U.S. EPA began calculating electronics discards in 1999. Furthermore, the annual number of obsolete home computers is expected to level off at 63 million this year and will then begin to decline. While that still sounds like a lot of computers, it's not an unmanageable amount. Our landfills are fully equipped to handle all our waste - e-waste included.

Nor is there any scientific evidence that e-waste in landfills presents a health risk. Landfills are built today with thick, puncture-resistant liners that keep waste from coming into contact with soil and groundwater. Timothy Townsend of the University of Florida, a leading expert on the effects of electronic waste in landfills, conducted tests in 2003 on 11 municipal landfills containing e-waste from TV and computer monitors, along with other solid waste. He and his associate Yong-Chul Jang found concentrations of lead far below the safety standard and less than 1 percent of what EPA's lab tests had predicted. "There is no compelling evidence," according to Townsend, that e-waste buried in municipal landfills presents a health risk.....

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AWKWARD!

By now you would think that the idea of global warming was a fait d'accompli but even with predictions of soaring temperatures and the incessant cries of "global warming" it seems that things are not so hot on the climate change front. Global temperatures are yet to exceed the levels of 1998 despite the carbon dioxide emissions for the last six years being about 10 per cent of the total increase since 1750, according the UK's Climate Research Unit and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The average temperature in 2004 was 0.45C above the 1961-90 average but 1998's temperature was 0.13C higher again. It must anguish the proponents of global warming to see that all this extra gas appears to have no discernible effect.

There is little doubt that certain parts of the world are warming but it doesn't take an expert climatologist to understand that with global average temperatures still below 1998 levels it would seem that many regions are showing only very minor warming, little change or even perhaps some cooling.

Australian average temperatures show a similar pattern to global temperatures with 1998 still the highest in the approximately 85 years of reliable records. Last year's average temperature was 0.45C above the 1960-91 average, a long way short of the 0.84C above that average in 1998. According to the Bureau of Meteorology 2004 was merely the tenth highest on record, behind even the distant years of 1973, 1980, 1988. What's more, two of the six years since 1998 had average temperatures below that 1960-91 average. It would be premature to say that we are now entering a cooling phase but it could be a distinct possibility.

The late Dr Theodor Landscheidt, a specialist in studies of solar activity predicted that solar activity will now decline until about 2030 and this will cause a mini-ice age just as it did several times in the last 2,000 years. Whether that prediction will be correct remains to be seen but just now the earth is not warming as quickly as the pundits say that it should.

But it is more than just temperatures which have raised questions about global warming matters. Just last month the journal Geophysical Research Letters published an article by two Canadian researchers, McIntyre and McKitrick, which disputed the "hockey stick" graph of temperature, the famous graph which attempts to show that temperatures in the last 20 years have been the highest in the last 1,000 years. With complex mathematics and statistics they showed that the method used to create that graph would produce a similar graph from even random data. (Pre-print copy available here (pdf file 122KB).) This finding has caused quite a stir in several countries with contrary articles appearing in The Wall Street Journal, Canada's National Post and several Dutch newspapers.

The theories underlying climate change were also disputed at a conference at Gummersbach, Germany, on February 18 to 20. Called Kyoto - Climatic Predictions: Meaningfulness of the models and strategies for action, this conference was unusual because global warming sceptics were invited to present their arguments.

Feeling was running high in Germany following recent strong publicity for Michael Crichton's new book State of Fear in the widely-read Stern magazine with 17 pages devoted to the discussion of climate issues criticising some of the unjustified exaggeration of climate change issues, under the main title "Climate Catastrophe: a panic scare?". This was after Der Spiegel, another weekly, published an interview with Professor Hans von Storch in which he described the "hockey stick" graph as rubbish and criticised the unfounded hype of potential risks by climate alarmists.

One sensation of the Gummersbach conference was the announcement that out of 500 European climate researchers surveyed, 25 per cent still doubt whether most of the warming during the last 150 years can be attributed to human activities and CO2 emissions. So much for the supposed consensus on global warming among climate scientists. So much also for claims that only a tiny minority are sceptical. Speakers at this conference also disputed fundamental claims about global warming. Professor Mangini of the University of Heidelberg said with regard to the geological past, scientists are agreed about ice core evidence which suggests that the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels followed an increase of temperatures - and not the other way round. Professor Gerlich of the Technical University of Braunschweig argued that at 0.03 per cent of the total volume of the atmosphere the concentration of carbon dioxide was simply too insignificant to cause any measurable temperature change. He and Britain's Julian Morris had little time for mathematical modelling with Gerlich suggesting that climate modellers were worse than astrologers, the latter of whom at least observed real planets and their movements.

Those comments about modelling may well be true if the predictions by Australia's CSIRO are anything to go by. The CSIRO models appear to be unable to accurately reproduce the temperature and rainfall in the last 40 years. What hope is there that their predictions for the next 100 years will even be close? In a recent paper in Ecological Modelling, Craig Loehle of the USA analysed 2 temperature sequences of 3,000 years. He concluded, as many global warming sceptics have before him, that anywhere from a major portion to all of the warming of the 20th Century could plausibly result from natural causes.

On February 25, 2005 David Taverne, a member of Britain's House of Lords, stated in parliament that he was in favour of reducing carbon dioxide emissions but went on to mention several of the uncertainties about climate change. He particularly noted the tendency for the IPCC's draft documents to initially show uncertainties but replace these with more definite statements prior to publication, a process he described as "sexing up". He went on to say, "There is a sort of political taboo about the issue. If you express doubts, you must be in the pay of the oil industry or a Bush supporter. There is a slight whiff of eco-McCarthyism about."

With natural events now being seen as the likely cause of recent warming, the accuracy of models being questioned, growing disquiet about global warming in several countries, more dissent among scientists than claimed, the "hockey stick" looking rather mangled, and temperatures failing to behave in the manner they are supposed to - and whether one will attract the ire of eco-McCarthyists or not for saying so - it seems that global warming theories may be headed for meltdown.

If global warming theories are indeed incorrect and carbon dioxide is not the cause, then the primary justification for the Kyoto Agreement disappears, and with it the associated concept of carbon trading, alternative energy systems, and funding for research projects. No wonder a few people are getting a little hot under the collar.

Source

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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 are mirrors of this site here and here.

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