The Chronicle of Mann: Where Steyn Goes, No Mann Goes

By Mark Steyn November 25, 2014

The most interesting thing about today's hearing at the DC Court of Appeals was that Michael E Mann was a no-show. In this interminable procedural bollocks now well into its third year, he's supposedly the plaintiff - and yet in the last two years he has shown up in court on precisely one occasion. Dr Mann is not merely a fraud as a Nobel Laureate and a fraud as an octuply "exonerated" scientist, he's a fraud as a plaintiff, too.

I have learned over the years to have a particular contempt for serial litigants who never show up for their own cases. One of the reasons I worked so hard in Canada to get the Section 13 "hate speech" law repealed (which it now is) was that over a 15-year period the plaintiff on every single case was a man called Richard Warman. Yet he never once appeared in court - unlike the mostly poor and unrepresented defendants. To reprise my old line, the process is the punishment - and Warman was not a genuine plaintiff, but merely a man who loosed the process upon others and then got on with his life while they were ensnared in a time-consuming savings-draining nightmare…..To Read More…..

Confessions of a Public Defender

Editor’s Note:  On May 17, 2014 I posted a link to this May 9, 2014 article by Michael Smith. Given the recent insane comments made over the Ferguson shooting of a criminal thug, the media insists on calling a gentle giant, and the “leaders” of the black community making outrageous noises about right and wrong, I thought this article goes a long way in explaining their insanity. 

Still liberal after all these years, I am a public defender in a large southern metropolitan area. Fewer than ten percent of the people in the area I serve are black but over 90 per cent of my clients are black. The remaining ten percent are mainly Hispanics but there are a few whites.

I have no explanation for why this is, but crime has racial patterns. Hispanics usually commit two kinds of crime: sexual assault on children and driving under the influence. Blacks commit many violent crimes but very few sex crimes. The handful of whites I see commit all kinds of crimes. In my many years as a public defender I have represented only three Asians, and one was half black.

As a young lawyer, I believed the official story that blacks are law abiding, intelligent, family-oriented people, but are so poor they must turn to crime to survive. Actual black behavior was a shock to me.

The media invariably sugarcoat black behavior. Even the news reports of the very crimes I dealt with in court were slanted. Television news intentionally leaves out unflattering facts about the accused, and sometimes omits names that are obviously black. All this rocked my liberal, tolerant beliefs, but it took me years to set aside my illusions and accept the reality of what I see every day……What follow are my observations.....To Read More....

 

The 97% Lie

By Rich Kozlovich

Recently I attended my 50^th high school reunion where I had a discussion with an old friend about ....Global Warming.  It got started by a discussion about this blog and an explanation as to what I wrote about, including leftism and environmentalism. He then stated he was as far left as a person could go – which kind of surprised me since I always viewed him as a little smarter than most – and I said I was about as far right as one could be.  That led to global warming and my position on the subject.  He said - with complete assurance of being on the right side of this issue – so you’re anti-science?  I said I was just the opposite, wherein he cited the big Anthropogenic Global Warming lie – 97% of scientists agree.  I then told him that number was a lie and that was based on a handful of "scientists".

I then proceeded to explain that all the models used by these "scientists" in predicting climate have failed.  The Hockey Stick Graph has been proven fraudulent, Hanson’s figures have been shown to be inaccurate, and those inaccuracies were so obvious there is a legitimate question of fraud, that CO2 can be heated by the surrounding environment but won’t hold heat, and the three things that do impact climate – the sun’s cycles, the oceans decadal cycles and the number one factor that makes up our atmosphere - water vapor, which does hold heat - are not factored in any of those models.

The real question we should be asking ourselves is this.  How many scientists make up the 97%?   If I ask 10,000 a question and they all respond and 97% agree that means 9,700 answered in agreement.  That of course doesn’t mean they’re right, but it at least gives credibility to that statement – if they’re all scientists working in the same scientific discipline.

However, what if only a small fraction respond? What if 10,256 are asked a question and only 3146 respond?  But as it turns out they didn’t like the answers they were getting so they kept whittling down that number of respondents that would be included in the count to 77.  So it turns out that 97% of “scientists” are only 75.  That makes the statement “97% of scientists agree” a lie of omission.  The implication of that statement, although not directly stated, is that of the tens of thousands of scientists working in any scientific discipline all agree that mankind is causing global warming via humanities output of CO2, and it’s going to destroy civilization, when in reality there are only 75 who think that.  And among that number are those who do work in unknown scientific disciplines.

It get’s better.  What if they were only asked two questions?

 

1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

 

2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

 

So you ask....Is that’s it?  Yes that’s it!  Whenever you hear some claim about percentages it should perk up your junkscience radar.  It doesn’t mean percentages are being used to mislead, but it’s done so often we “always” need to take a deeper look into those kind of statements.  There’s a reason why “statistics” is called the arcane science.

So then let’s abandon statistical percentages in favor of real numbers.  Dr. Art Robinson’s GlobalWarming Petition Project garnered 31,487 American scientists, including 9,029 with PhDs, sign a petition saying:

 

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

There was a concerted effort to claim the number was debunked because those in the AGW camp deliberately perverted the process with fraudulent signatures, but that was discovered and fixed, and I got that from Art Robinson directly via e-mail.  An article in Forbes, “Peer Reviewed SurveyFinds Majority of Scientists Skeptical of Global Warming Crisis”,   states;

 

Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.
 

There are a couple of things that should stand out. One – Why – if these claims of a Global Warming crisis is legitimate do the supporters of this idea have to make attempts to distort and destroy the efforts of others who disagree through corrupt practices unless they already know their position is untenable? Two - If their position was valid, does reality demonstrate the correctness of their position and their conclusions?

It doesn’t!  In the real world any small amount of warming that was taking place officially stopped 18 years ago, in direct contrast to everything their models predicted, all the while CO2 levels have risen and temperatures have dropped.

When science gets rich it becomes politics, and government grant money has made the term scientific integrity an oxymoron.  Here are a paraphrased series of quotes I’ve lumped together that bear honest reflection about science and my personal motto - and what’s supposed to be every scientist’s motto - De Omnibus Dubitandum.

“Scientific issues cannot be decided by a vote of scientists. A consensus is not, at any given time, a good predictor of where the truth actually resides, and I do not think that a consensus has anything to do with whether a hypothesis is correct. Check out the history of science you will find that scientific discovery is generally made by ignoring the ‘consensus.  Science is based on skepticism and experimental proof.  The warming since 1650 AD (not 1900) is part of a real ‘millennial cycle’ whose amplitude cannot yet be explained by any quantitative theory.  Also, the computer climate models are both too complex to be readily understood and too simple to describe reality. Believing their results is an act of faith."

You will find much more here in an article that appeared on the blog Watt's Up With That entitled, "What Else Did the 97% of Scientists Say".

The Gruberization of Environmental Policies

Paul Driessen Nov 28, 2014

Call it the Gruberization of America’s energy and environmental policies.

Former White House medical consultant Jonathan Gruber pocketed millions of taxpayer dollars before infamously explaining how ObamaCare was enacted. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” he said. “It was really, really critical to getting the bill passed.” At least one key provision was a “very clever basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.”

The Barack Obama/Gina McCarthy Environmental Protection Agency is likewise exploiting its lack of transparency and most Americans’ lack of scientific understanding. EPA bureaucrats and their hired scientists, pressure groups and PR flacks are getting rich and powerful by implementing costly, punitive, dictatorial regulations “for our own good,” and pretending to be honest and publicly spirited.

EPA’s latest regulatory onslaught is its “Clean Power Plan.” The agency claims the CPP will control or prevent “dangerous manmade climate change,” by reducing carbon dioxide and “encouraging” greater use of renewable energy. In reality, as even EPA acknowledges, no commercial-scale technology exists that can remove CO2 from power plant emission streams. The real goal is forcing coal-fired power plants to reduce their operations significantly or (better still) shut down entirely.

The agency justifies this by deceitfully claiming major health benefits will result from eliminating coal in electricity generation – and deceptively ignoring the harmful effects that its regulations are having on people’s livelihoods, living standards, health and well-being. Its assertion that reducing the USA’s coal-related carbon dioxide emissions will make an iota of difference is just as disingenuous. China, India and other fast-developing nations must keep burning coal to generate electricity and lift people out of poverty, and CO2 plays only a tiny (if any) role in climate change and destructive weather events.

The new CPP amplifies Obama Administration diktats targeting coal use. Companion regulations cover mercury, particulates (soot), ozone, “cross-state” air pollution, sulfur and nitrogen oxides that contribute to haze in some areas, and water quality. Their real benefits are minimal to illusory … or fabricated.

American’s air is clean, thanks to scrubbers and other emission control systems that remove the vast majority of pollutants. Remaining pollutants pose few real health problems. To get the results it needs, EPA cherry picks often questionable research that supports its agenda and ignores all other studies. It low-balls costs, pays advisors and outside pressure groups millions of dollars to support its decisions, and ignores the cumulative effects of its regulations on energy costs and thus on businesses, jobs and families.

Now, for the first time, someone has tallied those costs. The results are sobering.

An exhaustive study by Energy Ventures Analysis, Inc. tallies the overall effects of EPA regulations on the electric power industry and provides state-by-state summaries of the rules’ impacts on residential, industrial and overall energy users. The study found that EPA rules and energy markets will inflict $284 billion per year in extra electricity and natural gas costs in 2020, compared to its 2012 baseline year.

The typical household’s annual electricity and natural gas bills will rise 35 percent or $680 by 2020, compared to 2012, and will climb every year after that, as EPA regulations get more and more stringent. Median family incomes are already $2,000 lower since President Obama took office, and electricity prices have soared 14-33 percent in states with the most wind power – so these extra costs will exact a heavy additional toll.

Manufacturing and other businesses will be hit even harder, the study concluded. Their electricity and natural gas costs will almost double between 2012 and 2020, increasing by nearly $200 billion annually over this short period. Energy-intensive industries like aluminum, steel and chemical manufacturing will find it increasingly hard to compete in global markets, but all businesses (and their employees) will suffer.

The EVA analysis calculates that industrial electricity rates will soar by 34 percent in West Virginia, 59 percent in Maryland and New York, and a whopping 74 percent in Ohio. Just imagine running a factory, school district or hospital – and having to factor skyrocketing costs like that into your budget. Where do you find that extra money? How many workers or teachers do you lay off, or patients do you turn away? Can you stay open?

The CPP will also force utility companies to spend billions building new generators (mostly gas-fired, plus wind turbines), and new transmission lines, gas lines and other infrastructure. But EPA does not factor those costs into its calculations; nor does it consider the many years it will take to design, permit, engineer, finance and build those systems – and battle Big Green lawsuits over them.

How “science-based” are EPA’s regulations, really? Its mercury rule is based on computer-generated risks to hypothetical American women who eat 296 pounds of fish a year that they catch themselves, a claim that its rule will prevent a theoretical reduction in IQ test scores by an undetectable “0.00209 points,” and similar absurdities. Its PM2.5 soot standard is equivalent to having one ounce of super-fine dust spread equally in a volume of air one-half mile long, one-half mile wide and one story tall.

No wonder EPA has paid its “independent” Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee $181 million and the American Lung Association $25 million since 2000 to rubberstamp its secretive, phony “science.”

Rural America will really be walloped by the total weight of EPA’s anti-coal regulations. Nonprofit electricity cooperatives serve 42 million people in 47 states, across three-fourths of the nation’s land area. They own and maintain 42 percent of America’s electric distribution lines and depend heavily on coal. They have already invested countless billions retrofitting coal-fired generators with state-of-the-art emission control systems, and thus emit very few actual pollutants. (CO2 fertilizes plants; it is not a pollutant.)

EPA’s air and water rules will force these coal units to slash their electricity generation or close down long before their productive lives are over – and before replacement units and transmission lines can be built. Electricity rates in these rural areas are already higher than in urban areas, but will go much higher. Experts warn that these premature shutdowns will slash electricity “reserve margins” to almost zero in some areas, make large sections of the power grid unstable, and create high risks of rolling blackouts and cascading power outages, especially in the Texas panhandle, western Kansas and northern Arkansas.

The rules will thus put the cooperatives in violation of the Rural Electrification Act and 16 other laws that require reliable, affordable electricity for these far-flung communities. EPA’s actions are also putting rural hospitals in greater jeopardy, as they try to cope with “Affordable Care Act” rules and other burdens that have already caused numerous closings. As USA Today reported, the shuttered hospitals mean some of the nation’s poorest and sickest patients will be denied accessible, affordable care – and people suffering strokes, heart attacks and accidents will not reach emergency care during their “golden hour,” meaning many of them will die or be severely and permanently disabled.

EPA never bothered to consider any of these factors. Nor has it addressed the habitat, bird, bat and other environmental impacts that tens of thousands more wind turbines will have; the “human health hazards” that wind turbines have been shown to inflict on people living near them; or the high electricity costs, notorious unreliability, and increased power grid instability associated with the wind and solar installations that EPA seems to think can quickly and magically replace the coal-based electricity it is eliminating.

Congress, state legislators and attorneys general, governors and courts need to stop these secretive, duplicitous, dictatorial Executive Branch actions. Here’s one thought. Heartland Institute Science Director Jay Lehr helped organize the panel that called for establishing the Environmental Protection Agency. In a persuasive analysis, he says it’s time now to systematically dismantle the federal EPA and replace it with a “committee of the whole” of the 50 state environmental protection agencies.

The new organization would do a far better job of protecting our air and water quality, livelihoods, living standards, health and welfare. It will listen better to We the People – and less to eco-pressure groups.

Taxpayer Alert: Big Wind is pressing Congress for yet another bailout

Mary Kay Barton

Taxpayers beware! While you were sleeping, enjoying your family and eating turkey, Congress has been busy.

Congressional Republicans are negotiating with Senate Democrats to extend the infamous wind energy Production Tax Credit through to 2017, after which it will supposedly be phased out, just as was supposed to happen in the past. This sneaky, dark-of-night “lame duck” session tactic should be flatly rejected.

While you’ve been busy just trying to make ends meet, wondering why the cost of everything is going up, and agonizing over how your children and grandchildren will ever pay the mounting $18 TRILLION dollar national debt – the wind industry lobbyists’ group, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), just sent Congress a letter seeking to extend the federal, taxpayer-funded wind Production Tax Credit (PTC).

The list of signers to AWEA’s letter include rent-seeking industries and “green” groups who’ve all benefitted by tapping into taxpayers’ wallets via the Big Wind PTC (aka: Pork-To-Cronies). It certainly isn’t hard to figure out why these corporations pay many millions of dollars to hire lobbyists and run national TV advertising campaigns geared at convincing crony-politicians to vote to continue these TAXES and higher energy prices on American citizens.

AWEA’a letter is typical of wind industry propaganda. It makes specious claims about creating jobs and reducing pollution, without providing a shred of evidence to PROVE any of their claims. AWEA apparently hopes Congressional officials are “too stupid” to understand what energy-literate citizens nationwide know: Industrial wind can NEVER provide reliable power. It raises electricity costs, even after subsidies are factored in. It kills more jobs than it creates. It defiles wildlife habitats and kills eagles, hawks, other birds and bats – with no penalties to Big Wind operators.

Here’s the reality: After 22+ years of picking U.S. taxpayers’ and ratepayers’ pockets, industrial wind has NOT significantly reduced carbon dioxide emissions. It has not replaced any conventional power plants, anywhere. However, the $Trillions spent on these “green” boondoggles to date have significantly added to the $18+ TRILLION dollar debt that our children and grandchildren will have to bear.

AWEA’s own statements from years and decades past can be used against them. To cite just one example, 31 years ago, a study coauthored by the AWEA stated

The private sector can be expected to develop improved solar and wind technologies which will begin to become competitive and self-supporting on a national level by the end of the decade if assisted by tax credits and augmented by federally sponsored R&D.

[American Wind Energy Association, et al. Quoted in Renewable Energy Industry, Joint Hearing before the Subcommittees of the Committee on Energy and Commerce et al., House of Representatives, 98^th Cong., 1^st sess. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983, p. 52.]

In other words, the PTC should have ended 20 years ago, because wind energy would be self-sustaining by then. It wasn’t. It still isn’t. It never will be. We need to pull the PTC plug now!

Here are some details about the bill that is currently being negotiated during the lame duck session –before the newly elected, Republican majority Senate takes office and can do much about it.

In 2016, wind developers would be eligible for 80% percent of the PTC's value. They could also claim 60% of its value through the first nine months of 2017, after which it would supposedly expire.

The proposed congressional deal also seems to continue basing PTC eligibility on when project construction project begins. That opens huge doors for abuse.

The last time Congress extended the PTC, as part of its “fiscal cliff” deal in 2013, it said “eligibility” for taxpayer largesse covered projects “under construction,” rather than requiring that they be “placed in service” by a certain date. In practice, this means just a shovelful of dirt has to be moved by that date.

Remember too that the Production Tax Credit supposedly expired last year. But this clever language has allowed construction and expansion in the meantime. Meanwhile, Lois Lerner’s Internal Revenue Service has helpfully said projects that were started or “safe-harbored” prior to the PTC’s most recent pseudo-expiration can claim tax credits if they are in service by 2015. And then they can claim the $23-per-MWh credit for ten more years!

What a wonderful holiday gift for Big Wind and its political sponsors – at your expense.

Our government should NOT be in the business of picking and choosing the winners and losers in the energy marketplace – while assaulting and harming the very citizens they are forcing to pay for this “green” energy scam. It’s time for government to get out of the way and let the markets work!

The best solutions will rise to the top of their own accord because they will provide modern power at the best prices – thereby maintaining the reliable, affordable power that has made America great.

Citizens nation-wide have awakened to this massive “green” energy scam. Many have sent letters to Congress like the one below. You can join the fight by contacting your representatives and urging them to do the right thing: Protect American consumers, taxpayers and ratepayers. END Wind Welfare (#EndWindWelfare)!

Here’s a sample letter that you can use or modify: Citizens’ Plea - DO NOT RESUSCITATE the Wind Energy Production Tax Credit

Dear Senator or Congressman:

We, the undersigned, join millions of U.S. taxpayers & ratepayers nationwide in urging you and your colleagues to eliminate the 22-year old wind Production Tax Credit (PTC).

You should know by now that wind energy is a net technical, economic and environmental loser. Why would we want to waste more $Billions of taxpayers’ hard-earned money on a net loser?

The addition of industrial wind in the United States has not reduced our need to maintain and build reliable generation, nor does it add materially to our job force. Because wind energy is so diffuse, unreliable and volatile, it can never supply the reliable, affordable electric generating capacity that our modern society demands. Instead, it creates unprecedented industrial sprawl that is responsible for massive habitat fragmentation, species decline, and the wonton slaughter of countless birds and bats.

By forcing gigantic wind turbines on entire communities where only a few benefit, it has devastated civility in targeted townships, and destroyed rural heritage as landscapes are forever changed.

Renewable energy tax policy has also fostered a generation of developers bent on sticking turbines on every free acre that has transmission access, no matter who is in the way. It is simply unconscionable that, to date, no U.S. elected official has called for appropriate health studies to protect the health, safety and welfare of U.S. citizens who are suffering as a result of living within the sprawling footprints of industrial wind factories. As a result, it’s no surprise that more than twelve active lawsuits are pending against wind projects in as many states, with many more sure to follow.

The issues surrounding wind power expansion also impact energy prices and disrupt otherwise functional markets. The PTC provides project owners with a significant out-of-market revenue source, which invokes predatory pricing practices that unfairly harm the economics of reliable generators. In fact, at 2.3¢/kWh, the subsidy's pre-tax value (3.5¢/kWh) equals, or exceeds the wholesale price of power in much of the country.

There is no justification for a government program that manipulates and harms otherwise healthy, competitive businesses for the benefit of a few.

After 22-years of tax credits, the business of Big Wind is not about energy production. It is about tax avoidance and tax subsidies. Warren Buffet recently reminded us that wind investment makes no sense without the handouts from taxpayers. Wind energy will never be competitive with the price of the fuel it saves, and would not exist but for the PTC.

After more than two decades, the wind industry is well situated to stand on its own without the PTC. It is unreasonable to continue to force taxpayers to support it. Your constituents know it, and you should, too.

This is why we respectfully request that Congress resist any temptation to reinstate the expired PTC or associated investment tax credit (ITC).

Respectfully submitted,

[signed]

 

Demagoguery Beats Data

By Rich Kozlovich

“What is more frightening than any particular policy or ideology is the widespread habit of disregarding facts. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey put it this way; "Demagoguery beats data." Thomas Sowell

The pest control industry seems to be faced with the same problem. We're constantly told how we have to restrict pesticide use. We are told we must find alternatives to what we're using. We're told we must adopt “least toxic” (whatever that means) pest control programs.

Why?

Because they claim that pesticides may affect our health and the environment adversely.  This isn’t only from the environmental activists outside of government.  It's also the constant refrain from those environmental activists within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

It costs about three hundred million dollars to bring a pesticide to market - are we to assume that we don’t know what all the potential effects these products may have on people and the environment? Actually - yes! We aren’t allowed to test people, so we don’t really know what any product will do, whether it's pesticides or automobiles, until it is in common use. With pesticides ultimately the final testing ground will be agriculture.

In years gone by the structural pest control industry used far more liquid pesticides than we do now, and we were only using 4% of all the pesticides manufactured, liquids only being a part of that percentage. Four percent doesn’t make much money when the cost of testing is so high. Therefore any pesticide manufactured must be manufactured for use on corn, tobacco, cotton, rice, wheat, soybeans, etc. or it isn’t manufactured. We've changed what we're using in structural pest control dramatically over the last thirty years, we did so because of efficacy. We shifted to a higher reliance to baits for cockroaches and ants because of their effectiveness.  However we must understand - if a pesticide is used in structural pest control it is because it has been used profitably elsewhere and for some time. We get it last.

New technology in structural pest control is usually old technology everywhere else where pesticides are needed and used. So what must we conclude from that? If these products have been used extensively, and for some time, then the effect on people and the environment must absolutely be known to EPA.

So what then must we conclude from that?  Logically we can only conclude they don’t care what the facts are. They've apparently made up their minds to advocate the same view as the environmental activists and are not going to let facts stand in the way.  These "Sue and Settle" lawsuits, which is nothing short of illegal collusion between environmentalists  and government bureaucrats, gives clear evidence of that.   Between regulators, activists, universities, researchers, self serving politicians, and a compliant media,  they have managed to keep the public ignorant and frightened through “filtered facts” which has now given the completely opposite view of what is actually occurring.

Their answer to any criticism is that we must adopt IPM or "green" pest control, which cannot be truly defined. Name one thing you know for sure about IPM! Everybody has their own perception as to what it means, what products can be used, what techniques should be used, where and when they should be used if ever. This will always be debated because IPM is an “ideology, not a methodology” and "green" is nothing short of neo-pagan mysticism.

If these products are so dangerous and EPA has the authority to remove products that are harmful from the market, and they have traced the results of use of these products over the years - why don’t they do it? They clearly have the power and they certainly have the desire -  why don’t they do it? It is quite simple - the facts must not support such an action.

Why are they promoting IPM to the tune of thousands of dollars a year in the form of grant money? Is it because there are no facts to support the elimination of these products and no matter how many times they change the rules (Food Quality Protection Act is one example along with re-registration requirements) to make it impossible to use pesticides they still can’t find the science to support the ban of pesticides, so they attempt to do it through a back door called IPM, organic or green pest control.  And why IPM or green pest control?  Because if there's no alternative there's no problem.  IPM and Green Pest Control are their representatives of an alternative.

The public is constantly told by the media that pesticides cause every conceivable malady.  When it is discovered they're wrong or the facts were deliberately perverted - as in the Alar case - it's passed off as journalism. The activists jump up and down swearing it was good journalism. The media jumps up and down defending their right to say what they want no matter what the real truth is and no matter who is hurt, and as in the Alar case, refusing to publicly acknowledge their misconduct.

What are the facts regarding pesticides? There is no evidence that pesticides have adversely effected the general health of the population! In fact, if you compared the world before modern pesticides and today we find that we are better fed and healthier than ever in this nation’s history or any other nation that has adopted extensive pesticide use. Only the countries who are unable or unwilling to adopt modern practices suffer the consequences of dystopia; poverty, misery, disease, squalor, hunger, starvation and early death.

There has been a great deal of talk regarding trace amounts of chemicals in our waters and land, and even trace amounts of over 200 manmade chemicals in our bodies. So what? This must be a good thing since the advent of these products people are living longer and healthier lives. The appearance of chemicals has nothing to do with toxicity. It's the dose makes the poison, not it's presence, and there are toxic chemicals necessary for good health which appear in detectable trace amounts in our bodies.

Still we have educated individuals teaching (and being taught) in our schools and universities that manmade chemicals are the great evil and we need to go "green" or “all-natural” or “organic”. Whatever those terms mean!  I love the claim that things are "chemical free".  Let's get our heads on right about chemicals.   The universe - including you - is made up of chemicals - if it's chemical free it doesn't exist. 

Most people have been misled into thinking that "organic" foods are healthier, and "organic" food is pesticide free.  That's blatantly false!  As far as the claim they taste better - taste is subjective and in point of fact nothing could be further from the truth.

Note the following information by Dr. Bruce Ames.

Dr. Bruce Ames (a biochemistry professor at the University of California) pointed out in 1987 that we ingest in our diet about 1.5 grams per day of {natural} pesticides. Those foods contain 10,000 times more, by weight, of {natural} pesticides than of man-made pesticide residues. More than 90% of the pesticides in plants are produced {naturally} by the plants, which help protect them from insects, mites, nematodes, bacteria, and fungi. Those natural pesticides may make up 5% to 10% of a plant's dry weight, and nearly half of them that were tested on experimental animals were carcinogenic. Americans should therefore feel unconcerned about the harmless, infinitesimal traces of synthetic chemicals to which they may be exposed. The highly publicized traces of synthetic pesticides on fruits and vegetables worried some people so much that they began to favor ``organically produced'' foods, thinking that they would not contain any pesticides. Most people are not aware that organic gardeners can legally use a great many pesticides, so long as they are not man-made. They can use nicotine sulfate, rotenone, and pyrethrum (derived from plants), or any poisons that occur naturally, such as lime, sulfur, borax, cyanide, arsenic, and fluorine.

This apparently is OK because its “natural”. Chemicals are chemicals and guess what - they all have chemical names. If I presented you the following menu would you eat it? By the way, these foods are known carcinogens.

Cream of Mushroom Soup, Carrots, Cherry Tomatoes, Celery, Mixed Roasted Nuts, Tossed Lettuce and Arugula with Basil-Mustard Vinaigrette, Roast Turkey, Bread Stuffing (with onions, celery, black pepper & mushrooms), Cranberry Sauce, Prime Rib of Beef with Parsley Sauce, Broccoli Spears, Baked Potato, Sweet Potato, Pumpkin Pie, Apple Pie, Fresh Apples, Grapes, Mangos, Pears, Pineapple, Red Wine, White Wine, Coffee, Tea., Jasmine Tea. (Source: American Council on Science and Health)

Here are the chemicals that make up this natural meal.

Hydrazines, aniline, caffeic acid, benzaldehyde, caffeic acid, hydrogen peroxide, quercetin glycosides, caffeic acid, furan derivatives, psoralens, aflatoxin, furfural, allyl isothiocyanate, caffeic acid, estragole, methyl eugenol, heterocyclic amines, acrylamide, ethyl alcohol, benzo(a)pyrene, ethyl carbamate, furan derivatives, furfural, dihydrazines, d-limonene, psoralens, quercetin glycosides, safrole,furan derivatives ,benzene, heterocyclic amines, psoralens,allyl isothiocyanate,ethyl alcohol, caffeic acid,ethyl alcohol, furfural,acetaldehyde, benzene, ethyl alcohol, benzo(a)pyrene, ethyl carbamate, furan derivatives, furfural,benzo(a)pyrene, coumarin, methyl eugenol, safrole,acetaldehyde, caffeic acid, coumarin, estragole, ethyl alcohol, methyl eugenol, quercetin glycosides, safrole,acetaldehyde, benzaldehyde, caffeic acid, d-limonene, estragole, ethyl acrylate, quercetin glycosides,ethyl alcohol, ethyl carbamate,benzo(a)pyrene, benzaldehyde, benzene, benzofuran, caffeic acid, catechol, 1,2,5,6-dibenz(a)anthracene, ethyl benzene, furan, furfural, hydrogen peroxide, hydroquinone, d-limonene, 4-methylcatechol,benzo(a)pyrene, quercetin

For those that read the chemicals listed above you will notice that some of them are repeated a number of times. I deliberately left the list in that way because you are getting a multiple dose in the above Thanksgiving meal.

Does that sound so bad now? It is unfortunate that so many in positions of authority and responsibility continue to allow filtered facts to become the conventional wisdom. More importantly it is impossible for any society to make intelligent long term decisions when preconceived notions are allowed to dictate what “facts” will be allowed to be presented. Then again, facts are confusing and that certainly is the last thing the public needs, after all it is the last thing the environmentalists and their minions want. It might interfere with all those scares they are constantly presenting as eminent disasters. That in turn would foul up contributions and then the greatest disaster of them all would occur. They would have to go out and get real jobs.

All of this is disturbing, but what I find most disturbing is the unwillingness of our industry's information deliverers - the trade journals and trade associations -  to stand up to these people and publish the truth. When we fail to stand up and be counted we're appeasers and enablers.  Eventually that will turn us into traitors to our own industry.

Editor's Note:  I ran this some years back but it's as noteworthy now as it was then, and as I read this I decided to run this every year at this time.  Best wishes to all!   RK

A Time For Reflection!

By Rich Kozlovich
 
As a history buff I'm more aware of all the warts and blemishes of American history than most - and there are a lot of them.  How do I know that? Because we publish where we’ve erred in our history books for everyone to see!  If a nation can't recognize and expose the history of it's errors and flaws of character - it can't fix them. 
 
At one time you couldn’t find anything in Japan about the atrocities they committed in China in what is known as the Rape of Nanking where hundreds of thousands of civilians were murdered.   Or how they murdered over 250,000 civilians in China over the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo.  In the town of Ihwang, “They shot any man, woman, child, cow, hog, or just about anything that moved, They raped any woman from the ages of 10 – 65, and before burning the town they thoroughly looted it.”  He continued, writing in his unpublished memoir, “None of the humans shot were buried either, but were left to lay on the ground to rot, along with the hogs and cows.”

Then we have the modern Stalin apologists who claim that no one killed all those millions of people in Russia, and if millions did die; it wasn't Stalin's fault. But if millions did die, and Stalin did order those deaths; it was because he was trying to save millions more from the maniacs within his government. Accordingly, Stalin and Baria, his chief of the secret police, were in reality the heroes, not the villains, and all the evidence to the contrary constitutes a conspiracy of lies. 

Whatever our faults - compared to the rest world's history - we stand tall.

We’ve entered a long period of historical ignorance here in a country where there’s more information available from more sources than ever in human history – and we’re ignorant of it.  For me that goes beyond frustrating.  Below is an article written by the sister of a friend of mine whose family fled Castro’s Cuba.  You might just find this worth a bit of your time for reflection. 

3 Billion and Counting - Lest We Forget!

 By Rich Kozlovich

 

When will we learn that the ban on DDT is based on lies? When will we accept the idea those who promoted the ban, and those who continue to defend it today, need to be held accountable for the human misery this ban caused? Dystopia follows green like Sancho Panza followed Don Quixote. A madman! To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective.

Obama's Cruel and Costly Climate Hoax

By Alan Caruba

 

This appeared here and I thank Alan for allowing me to publish his work.  RK

The intense cold that many Americans are encountering arrives more than a month before the official start of winter on December 2l.

To discuss this, we need to keep in mind that weather is what is occurring now. Climate is measured over longer periods, the minimum of which is thirty years and, beyond that, centuries.

We are colder these days because the Earth has been in a cooling cycle for 19 years and that cycle is based entirely on the Sun which has been radiating less heat for the same period of time.

Describing the role of the Sun, Australian geologist, Ian Plimer, said, “There is a big thermonuclear reactor in the sky that emits huge amounts of energy to the Earth…The Sun provides the energy for photosynthesis. The Sun is the bringer of life to Earth. If the Sun were more energetic the oceans would boil. If the Sun were less energetic the oceans would freeze and all life on Earth would be destroyed.”

We don’t control the Sun. Or the climate. It controls us.

Consider the fact that the Sun has a diameter of 865,000 miles. The Earth’s diameter is 7,917.5 miles. Thus, the Sun’s diameter is 109 times greater than the Earth’s. Carbon dioxide is barely 0.04% of the Earth’s atmosphere. Reducing it as the U.S.-China agreement proposes would have zero effect on the Earth’s climate.

We not only can, but should ignore the blatant lies of President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, both of whom have been saying things about “climate change” without a scintilla of science to back them up. They’re not alone, however. In August, the U.N. Climate Chief, Christiana Figueres, warned of climate “chaos” in 500 days and told the World Health Organization that climate change was on a par with the outbreak of Ebola as a public health emergency.

It was big news on November 11 when The Wall Street Journal’s lead story on its front page reported that “The U.S. and China unveiled long-term plans to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to climate change, a surprise move aimed at kick-starting a new round of international climate negotiations and blunting domestic opposition to cuts in both countries.”

Someone needs to tell the Wall Street Journal there is no “climate change” that is not entirely NATURAL and unrelated to anything humans are doing.

The announcement plays into the longtime efforts of the environmental movement to impose energy limits on the world’s population. Similar limits will be called for when climate talks are launched in December by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Lima, Peru.
Why the leaders of nations keep calling for limits that can only result in the reduction of energy production, the loss of economic benefits from industrial activity and the jobs it provides, and the modern lifestyle of advanced nations is one of life’s great mysteries.

If you really disliked America, you would no doubt pursue President Obama’s anti-energy agenda. That agenda is expressed by a series of climate and pollution measures that an article in Politico.com says “rivals any presidential environmental actions of the past quarter-century—a reality check for Republicans who think last week’s election gave them a mandate to end what they call the White House’s ‘War on Coal.’”

The authors of the Politico.com article, Andrew Restuccia and Erica Martinson, note that Obama’s assault on the nation is “Tied to court-ordered deadlines, legal mandates and international climate talks” over the next two months, all in the name of a climate change “And incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will have few options for stopping the onslaught, though Republicans may be able to slow pieces of it.”

“The coming rollout includes a Dec. 1 proposal by EPA to tighten limits on smog-causing ozone, which business groups say could be the costliest federal regulation of all time; a final rule Dec. 19 for clamping down on disposal of power plants’ toxic coal cash; the Jan. 1 start date for a long-debated rule prohibiting states from polluting the air of their downwind neighbors; and a Jan. 8 deadline for issuing a final rule restricting greenhouse gas emissions from future power plants. That last rule is a centerpiece of Obama’s most ambitious environmental effort, the big plan for combating climate change that he announced at Georgetown University in June 2013.”

This vile assault flies in the face of actual climate trends: record low tornadoes record low hurricanes, record gain in Arctic ice, record amount of Antarctic ice, no change in the rate of sea level rise, no evidence of a Greenland meltdown, and again no warming for 19 years.
As this and future winters turn colder, arrive sooner and stay around longer, Americans will be affected by the reduction of coal-fired plants that generate electrical power. The nation will encounter blizzards that will leave some homeowners and apartment dwellers without heat. It is predictable that some will die.

A cruel and costly climate hoax is being perpetrated by President Obama and, in particular, by the Environmental Protection Agency. The new Congress must take whatever action it can to reverse and stop the harm that it represents; people’s jobs and lives depend on it.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Needed: Accurate climate forecasts

Focusing on carbon dioxide (because that’s where the money is) threatens forecasts, and lives

Paul Driessen and David R. Legates

President Obama’s agreement with China is about as credible as his “affordable care” pronouncements.

Pleistocene glaciers repeatedly buried almost half of the Northern Hemisphere under a mile of ice. The Medieval Warm Period (~950-1250 AD) enriched agriculture and civilizations across Asia and Europe, while the Little Ice Age that followed (~1350-1850) brought widespread famines and disasters. The Dust Bowl upended lives and livelihoods for millions of Americans, while decades-long droughts vanquished once-thriving Anasazi and Mayan cultures, and flood and drought cycles repeatedly pounded African, Asian and Australian communities. Hurricanes and tornadoes have also battered states and countries throughout history, in numbers and intensities that have been impossible to pattern or predict.

But today we are supposed to believe climate variability is due to humans – and computer models can now forecast climate changes with amazing accuracy. These models and the alarmist scientists behind them say greenhouse gases will increasingly trigger more “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people, species and ecosystems,” a recent UN report insists.

In reality, carbon dioxide’s effect on devastating weather patterns is greatly overstated. We are near a 30-year low in hurricane energy (measured by the ACE index of “accumulated cyclone energy”), and tropical cyclone and storm activity has not increased globally over that period. In fact, as of November 18, it’s been 3,310 days since a Category 3-5 hurricane hit the US mainland – by far the longest stretch since records began in 1900. This Atlantic hurricane season was the least active in 30 years.

Moreover, there has been no warming since 1995, several recent winters have been among the coldest in centuries in the United Kingdom and continental Europe, the 2013-14 winter was one of the coldest and snowiest in memory for much of the United States and Canada – and the cold spell could continue.

Accurate climate forecasts one, five or ten years in advance would certainly enable us to plan and prepare for, adapt to and mitigate the effects of significant or harmful climate variations, including temperatures, hurricanes, floods and droughts. However, such forecasts can never be even reasonably accurate under the climate change hypothesis that the IPCC, EPA and other agencies have adopted. The reason is simple.

Today’s climate research defines carbon dioxide as the principal driving force in global climate change. Virtually no IPCC-cited models or studies reflect the powerful, interconnected natural forces that clearly caused past climate fluctuations – most notably, variations in the sun’s energy output.

They also largely ignore significant effects of urban and other land use changes, and major high-impact fluctuations like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (El Niño and La Niña) and North Atlantic Oscillation. If we truly want reliable predictive capabilities, we must eliminate the obsession with carbon dioxide as the primary driver of climate change – and devote far more attention to studying all the powerful forces that have always driven climate change, the roles they play, and the complex interactions among them.

We also need to study variations in the sun’s energy output, winds high in the atmosphere, soil moisture, winter snow cover and volcanic eruptions, Weatherbell forecaster Joe D’Aleo emphasizes. We also need to examine unusual features like the pool of warm water that developed in the central Pacific during the super La Niña of 2010-2011 and slowly drifted with the wind-driven currents into the Gulf of Alaska, causing the “polar vortex” that led to the cold, snowy winter of 2013-2014, he stresses.

“The potential for climate modeling mischief and false scares from incorrect climate model scenarios is tremendous,” says Colorado State University analyst Bill Gray, who has been studying and forecasting tropical cyclones for nearly 60 years. Among the reasons he cites for grossly deficient models are their “unrealistic model input physics,” the “overly simplified and inadequate numerical techniques,” and the fact that decadal and century-scale circulation changes in the deep oceans “are very difficult to measure and are not yet well enough understood to be realistically included in the climate models.”

Nor does applying today’s super computers to climate forecasting help matters. NOAA, the British Meteorological Office and other government analysts have some of the world’s biggest and fastest computers – and yet their (and thus the IPCC’s and EPA’s) predictions are consistently and stupendously wrong. Speedier modern computers simply make the “garbage in, garbage out” adage occur much more quickly, thereby facilitating faster faulty forecasts. Why does this continue? Follow the money.

Billions of dollars are doled out every year for numerous “scientific studies” that supposedly link carbon dioxide and other alleged human factors to dwindling frog populations, melting glaciers, migrating birds and cockroaches, and scores of other remote to ridiculous assertions. Focusing on “dangerous human-induced” climate change in research proposals greatly improves the likelihood of receiving grants.

American taxpayers alone provide a tempting $2.5 billion annually for research focused on human factors, through the EPA, Global Change Research Program and other government agencies. Universities and other institutions receiving grants take 40% or more off the top for “project management” and “overhead.” None of them wants to upset this arrangement, and all of them fear that accepting grants to study natural factors or climate cycles might imperil funding from sources that have their own reasons for making grants tied to manmade warming, renewable energy or antipathy toward fossil fuels. Peer pressure and shared views on wealth redistribution via energy policies, also play major roles.

When Nebraska lawmakers budgeted $44,000 for a review of climate cycles and natural causes, state researchers said they would not be interested unless human influences were included. The “natural causes” proposal was ultimately scuttled in favor of yet another meaningless study of human influences.

The result is steady streams of computer model outputs that alarmists ensure us accurately predict climate changes. However, none of them forecast the 18-years-and-counting warming pause, the absence of hurricanes, or other real-world conditions. Nearly every one predicted temperatures that trend higher with every passing year and exceed recorded global temperatures by ever widening margins.

The constant predictions of looming manmade climate disasters are also used to justify demands that developed nations “compensate” poor and developing countries with tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in annual climate “reparation, adaptation and mitigation” money. Meanwhile, those no-longer-so-wealthy nations are implementing renewable energy and anti-hydrocarbon policies that drive up energy costs for businesses and families, kill millions of jobs, and result in thousands of deaths annually among elderly pensioners and others who can no longer afford to heat their homes properly during cold winters.

Worst of all, the climate disaster predictions are used to justify telling impoverished countries that they may develop only to extent enabled by wind and solar power. Financial institutions increasingly refuse to provide grants or loans for electricity generation projects fueled by coal or natural gas. Millions die every year because they do not have electricity to operate water purification facilities, refrigerators to keep food and medicine from spoiling, or stoves and heaters to replace wood and dung fires that cause rampant lung diseases. As Alex Epstein observes in his new book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels:

“If you’re living off the grid and can afford it, an installation with a battery that can power a few appliances might be better than the alternative (no energy or frequently returning to civilization for diesel fuel), but [such installations] are essentially useless in providing cheap, plentiful energy for 7 billion people – and to rely on them would be deadly.”

By expanding our research – to include careful, honest, accurate studies of natural factors – we will be better able to discern and separate significant human influences from the powerful natural forces that have caused minor to profound climate fluctuations throughout history. Only then will we begin to improve our ability to predict why, when, how and where Earth’s climate is likely to change in the future. Congress should reduce CO2 funding and earmark funds for researching natural forces that drive climate change.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: To save the world from the save-the-Earth money machine. David R. Legates, PhD, CCM, is a Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware, USA.