Observations From the Back Row!

These are my picks for the day. There is some background links to the last post that you may wish to follow. You may be interested to know that the top ten countries to hit Paradigms and Demographics this past week was was the United States, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, France, United Kingdom, Canada, Netherlands, South Korea and Brazil. Thank you for you interest and I hope you will enjoy this week's posts.

A history of scientific alarms

There is a long and dismal history of alarming forecasts that were literally too bad to be true. But many people believed these predictions that human actions would harm the environment and thereby cause disaster for people…..The alarms were based on forecasts, but not ones from proper scientific forecasting methods… The media are culpable in promulgating these false alarms… Rational skeptical responses require time and effort to assemble, and don't have the same emotional urgency……Alarmists are often rewarded for their efforts. They typically ask government to ‘do something'…… government research funds and recognition tends to flow to alarmists.

Here then, in brief, is a Top 20 of environmentalist alarms and their outcomes. Please, let's learn from them by not being so gullible!  20 environmentalist alarms:

Population growth and famine, 1798
Timber famine economic threat, 1865
Soil erosion agricultural production threat, 1934
Fluoride in drinking water health effects, 1945
DDT and cancer, 1962
Population growth and famine (Ehrlich), 1968
Global cooling, 1970
Population growth and famine (Meadows), 1972
Industrial production, acid rain and forests, 1974
Electrical wiring and cancer, etc, 1979
CFCs, the ozone hole, and skin cancer etc, 1985
Listeria in cheese, 1985
Radon in homes and lung cancer, 1985
Salmonella in eggs, 1988
Environmental toxins and breat cancer,1990
Mad cow disease (BSE), 1996
Dioxin in Belgian poultry,1999.
Mercury in fish's effect on nervous system development, 2004
Mercury in childhood inoculations and autism, 2005
Mobile phone towers and cancer, 2008

Court: Process more important than EPA health claims
So EPA can’t cheat in the name of public health. On Friday the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered the Obama EPA to reconsider its rulemaking for emissions from cement kilns (Portland Cement Association v. EPA).

EPA defended rushing through the rulemaking without defining a key term on the basis of air quality and public health. The court dismissed this argument as follows:

… EPA asserts it could not delay finalizing the NESHAP rule until after it promulgated a definition of solid waste. EPA insists such a delay would have been harmful to air quality and health. Perhaps. But reasoned decisionmaking is not a dispensable part of the administrative machine that can be blithely discarded even in pursuit of a laudable regulatory goal. “The importance of reasoned decisionmaking in an agency action cannot be over- emphasized. When an agency . . . is vested with discretion to impose restrictions on an entity’s freedom to conduct its business, the agency must exercise that discretion in a well- reasoned, consistent, and evenhanded manner.”

This noteworthy dicta from the D.C. Circuit may very well reflect a court newly skeptical of EPA — a circumstance that may bode well for other ongoing litigation involving the agency, including the greenhouse gas and cross-state air pollution

Six Questions for EPA on Pavillion
Draft report from EPA in Denver produces lots more questions than answers; EID poses a few of its own - Call it a sign of the “Times,” let’s say, that less than 24 hours removed from the release of EPA Region 8’s report on groundwater sampling near Pavillion, Wyo., nearly a thousand different news stories have been generated — in 12 different countries, and best we can tell, four different languages. But set aside the breathless headlines for a moment and the triumphant quotes from a small segment of folks committed to ending the responsible development of natural gas, and one’s left with a pretty straightforward question: Is EPA right? And if so, what exactly does that mean moving forward?

Of course, before you can answer the second question, it’d be helpful if you had a good answer for the first. And the truth is, as we sit here today, less than 20 hours A.P. (After Pavillion), we simply don’t. What we do know, however, even at these early stages, is that several of the assertions put forth in EPA’s report yesterday don’t quite square with the facts as they actually exist on the ground out there. Because of that, a number of folks are starting to ask some pretty basic questions about what the agency found and how it went about finding it. Below, a few of the most obvious:

I Just Bet My House on the Outcome of Science Trial of the Century
No truer headline will you read. Yesterday this author literally wagered his home, life savings, and all his possessions on the outcome of a crucial global warming lawsuit currently ongoing in Canada.  So what is it that drove me to such apparent recklessness endangering not only my own well-being but that of my family?

Well, to me this pivotal lawsuit encapsulates the archetypal 'good versus evil' battle no conscientious parent can ignore. Facing each other is Plaintiff, Dr. Michael Mann (he of ‘hockey stick’ graph infamy) representing so-called UN ‘consensus’ climate science. Mann claims his work proves humans are dangerously warming the planet. Defendant, retired Canadian climatologist, Dr. Timothy Ball believes Mann was a key player in the Climategate scandal and has hidden his dodgy tree-ring data for over 13 years to cover up fakery in the numbers. Mann and his ilk are not only responsible for scaring the bejesus out of our kids but are being used as part of a bigger plot involving population control and wealth re-distribution; none of which is good for your family or mine.......Without experts as principled as Dr. Ball it is very unlikely the general public would be any the wiser about the grotesque billion-dollar fraud called man-made global warming. So please donate what money you can and become part of this force for good.

My Take - I have been following this suit since the beginning and I still wonder what is wrong with Mann's mind.  Does he really believe in the work he has pushed onto the public, even after it has been destroyed by other scientists? This trial is going to be in Canada so perhaps they don't have 'discovery' there, but in America 'discovery' means that you have to turn everything over to the other side, including all of those e-mails he has refused to turn over to Atorney General Cuccinelli. I do think this is a bit strange on his part!

However, as I said, I have been following this thing from the beginning and here is the information I posted on the March 28th Observations From the Back Row. You will have to scroll down a bit!

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