Real Threats to Biodiversity and Humanity

Paul Driessen

References to climate change almost guarantee funding, even for research topics of little interest beyond academia and eco-activists. Polls reveal that most people worry most about energy and food prices, crime, living standards, Putin’s war on Ukraine, and increasing efforts to control their lives.

A recent  Rutgers University scientists sought to determine how much diversity is required among bee species to sustain wild plant populations. They concluded that ecosystems rely on many bee species to flourish – and “biodiversity is key to sustaining life on Earth,” especially with many species “rapidly going extinct due to climate change and human development.”

US Geological Survey wildlife biologist Sam Droege says wild bees are generally “doing fine.” However, they definitely face challenges, primarily due to habitat loss, disease, and competition from managed honeybees and bumblebees – not to pesticides, since most wild bee species don’t pollinate crops.

That brings us to one of Wokedom’s favorite topics: intersectionality– in this case, actual connections among bees, climate change, habitat losses, and threats to our energy, living standards and freedoms. 

Simply put, the gravest threat to wildlife habitats and biodiversity (and to people's rights, needs and living standards) is not climate change. It is policies and programs created, implemented and imposed in the name of preventing climate change.

Let’s examine habitat and biodiversity threats– without asking whether any climate changes today or in the future are still primarily natural, or are now driven by fossil fuels. Let’s just look at what purported solutions to the alleged “climate crisis” would likely do to the planet and creatures we love. 

In reality:

The most intensive land use – and thus greatest habitat destruction – is from programs most beloved, advocated and demanded by rabid greens: wind, solar, biofuel and battery energy, and organic farming.

Team Biden is still intent on getting 100% hydrocarbon-free electricity by 2035. It wants to eliminate fossil fuels throughout the US economy by 2050: no coal or natural gas for electricity generation; no gasoline or diesel for vehicles; no natural gas for manufacturing, heating, cooking or other needs.

America’s electricity demand would soar from 2.7 billion megawatt-hours per year (the fossil fuel portion of total US electricity) to almost 7.5 billion MWh by 2050. Substantial additional generation would be required to constantly recharge backup batteries for windless, sunless periods. Corn-based ethanol demand would disappear, but biofuel crops would have to replace petrochemical feed stocks for paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, cell phones, wind turbine blades and countless other products.

This is just for the USA. Extrapolate these demands to the rest of a fossil-fuel-free developed world ... to China and India ... and to poor countries determined to take their rightful places among Earth’s healthy and prosperous people – and “clean, green” energy requirements become monumental, incomprehensible.

We’re certainly looking at tens of thousands of offshore wind turbines, millions of onshore turbines, billions of photovoltaic solar panels, billions of vehicle and backup battery modules, and tens of thousands of miles of new transmission lines. Hundreds of millions of acres of US farmland, scenic areas and wildlife habitats would be affected –blanketed with enormous industrial facilities, biofuel operations and power lines.

Add in the enormous and unprecedented mining, processing and manufacturing required to make all these energy-inefficient technologies – mostly outside the United States – and the land use, habitat loss and toxic pollution would gravely threaten people, wildlife and planet.

Let’s take a closer look, now just from a US perspective, but knowing these are global concerns.

Solar power. 72,000 high-tech sun-tracking solar panels at Nevada’s sunny Nellis Air Force Base cover 140 acres but generate only 32,000 MWh per year. That’s 33% of rated capacity; 0.0004% of 2050 US electricity needs. Low-tech stationary panels have far lower efficiency and generating capacity, especially in more northern latitudes. Meeting 2050 US electricity needs would require Nevada sunshine and nearly 235,000 Nellis systems on 33,000,000 acres (equal to Alabama).

Triple that acreage for low-tech stationary panels in less sunny areas. For reference, Dominion Energy alone is planning 490 square miles of panels (8 times Washington, DC) just in Virginia, just for Virginia. Then add all the transmission lines.

Wind power. 355 turbines at Indiana’s Fowler Ridge industrial wind facility cover 50,000 acres (120 acres/turbine) and generate electricity just over 25% of the time. Even at just 50 acres per turbine, meeting 2050 US power needs would require 2 million 1.8-MW wind turbines, on 99,000,000 acres (equal to California), if they generate electricity 25% of the year.

But the more turbines (or solar panels) we need, the more we have to put them in sub-optimal areas, where they might work 15% of the year. The more we install, the more they reduce wind flow for the others. And some of the best US wind zones are along the Canada-to-Texas flyway for migrating birds – which would mean massive, unsustainable slaughter of cranes, raptors, other birds and bats.

Go offshore, and even President Biden’s call for 30,000 MW of electricity (2,500 monster 12-MW turbines) wouldn’t meet New York State’s peak summertime electricity needs.

Biofuels and wood pellets. America already grows corn on acreage totaling more than Iowa, just to meet 2021 ethanol needs. Anti-fossil-fuel interests need to calculate how many acres of soybeans, canola and other biofuel crops would be needed to replace all those petrochemical feed stocks. (They also need to calculate water, fertilizer, labor, tractor, processing and other requirements.) And of course, acreage not removed from food production would have to be converted from bee and wildlife habitats.

Climate activists also insist it is sustainable to cut down thousands of acres of North American hardwood forests (nearly 300,000,000 trees per year) and turn them into wood pellets – which are hauled by truck and cargo ship to England’s Drax Power Plant. There they are burned to generate electricity, so that the UK can “meet its sustainable, renewable fuel targets.” And that’s just one “carbon-neutral” power plant.

Organic farming. The environmentalist dream of converting all US (and even all global) agriculture to 100% organic would also reduce wildlife habitats dramatically – especially if humanity is to simultaneously eliminate world hunger ... and replace petrochemicals organically.

Organic farms require up to 30% more land to achieve the same yields as conventional agriculture, and most of the land needed to make that happen is now forests, wildflower fields and grasslands. Organic farmers (and consumers) also reject synthetic fertilizers, which means more land would have to be devoted to raising animals for their manure, unless human wastes are used. More lost wildlife habitat.

They reject modern chemical pesticides that prevent billions of tons of food from being eaten or ruined, but utilize toxic copper, sulfur and nicotine-based pesticides. They even reject biotechnology (genetic engineering) that creates crops that are blight-resistant, require less water, permit no-till farming, need fewer pesticide treatments, and bring far higher yields per acre. Translation: less wildlife habitat. 

There are alternatives, of course. Government mandates and overseers could require that “average” American families live in 640-square-foot apartments, slash their energy use, ride only bicycles or public transportation, and fly only once every few years. We could also switch to “no-obesity” diets.

Indeed, scientists are again saying we common folks could “reduce our carbon footprints” by eating less beef and chicken, and more insect protein, perhaps ground-up bugs – or roasted bumblebees. Or we could just reduce the number of “cancerous, parasitic” humans. (Perhaps beginning with wannabe overseers?)

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow(www.CFACT.org)and author ofEco-imperialism: Green Power-Black Deathand many articles on the environment.

 

UN Biodiversity Meeting Supports Gene Drives, Rejects Environmentalists

By Hank Campbell — December 23, 2016 @ The American Council on Science and Health

The UN Convention on Biodiversity meeting - typically dominated by environmental activists lobbying bloated quasi-world-government committees - recently met in Cancún and when we weren't talking about their enjoyment of catered dinners and $600 a night rooms in a resort town completely lacking in biodiversity, we were talking about the other hypocrisy in the environmental movement; claiming they care about science when they really want to ban all of it.

In this case — synthetic biology. Right now, activists have limited themselves to seeking bans on Genetically Modified Organisms - GMOs - but those are a precise legal term for one product. Mutagenesis and lots of other biological manipulation from 50 years ago are still allowed to be called "Organic" and have gotten a free pass.

Younger activists see the hypocrisy in only banning one type of agricultural science and have been putting on pressure to change that; they want to proactively ban all future biology. In this case, gene drives, a way to cut and paste a desired gene into each organism, making a trait present in an entire population. Public health officials are excited about the technology because it can end diseases like malaria. Environmental activists should be excited too, because it can end malaria without pesticides, but they're not because, who knows, maybe they hate science more than they love poor people.

When the UN group met in 2014, gene drives, which are possible in any organism that reproduces sexually and can support the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR–Cas9 (which is almost all insects, plants and animals) - were too far off in the future to raise money scaring people about but them, but since 2015 it has progressed rapidly, leaving anti-science groups without the well-oiled publicity machine they usually have at these meetings. They knew they had to be against it but they couldn't figure out why, so they muttered the usual stuff about extinction and more testing being needed.

As if any scientist hadn't thought of that.

An actual expert, our Dr. Julianna LeMieux, spent the last few months educating the public about the technology, and her voice of reason has won out. As Joshua Krisch also notes in The Scientist, the UN pushed back against the anti-science barbarians at their gate in Mexico and the final agreement instead only sanely urged caution in testing gene drives.

Exactly what every scientist has said.

The activist group Friends of the Earth, which has led the charge in claiming gene drives will cause extinction of all life on earth, were soundly rejected, but it's not over yet. As Andrea Crisanti, a molecular parasitologist at Imperial College London who is working on gene drives to control malaria, told Ewen Callaway for Nature, “Those who are opposed to this technology will be more organized next time.”

Voting for Wildlife Extermination

By Paul Driessen

I would like to thank Paul for allowing me to re-publish his works. This first appeared here. RK

The latest justification for extending the industrial wind electricity production tax credit (PTC) is that we need an “all of the above” energy policy. The slogan falls flat, even when it’s expanded to “all of the above and below” – which is rarely the case with radical environmentalists and “progressive” politicians, who steadfastly oppose “any of the below” (ie, hydrocarbons). - technically, economically and environmentally - it should be implemented. If it flunks, it should be scrapped.

Industrial wind energy mandates, renewable portfolio standards, subsidies, feed-in tariffs and production tax credits fail every test. They flunk environmental standards disastrously. In fact, they are subsidizing the slaughter of countless eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, herons, cranes, egrets, other birds and bats.

The wind PTC epitomizes “you didn’t build it.” If any business “didn’t get there on your own,” or was “successful because, along the line,” somebody (in government) “gave you some help” – it is Big Wind.

Industrial wind energy has been mandated, propped up, subsidized, built and protected by government. Elected and unelected officials at the federal, state and local levels have given it every unfair advantage that taxpayer and ratepayer money, legal favors and exemptions, and crony corporatism could bestow upon it. Meanwhile, in numerous cases, the same legislative, regulatory, environmentalist and industrialist cronies have penalized and marginalized Big Wind’s hydrocarbon and nuclear competitors – often for the same reasons that are ignored with wind energy.

Industrial wind is actually our least sustainable energy resource.It requires perpetual subsidies to survive. The tax revenues it takes from productive sectors of the economy, the insufficient and unreliable nature of wind electricity, and the exorbitant electricity rates that wind turbines impose on factories and businesses, kill two to four jobs for every "green" job created. Wind is a net job loser .

Big Wind also imposes excessive environmental impacts. It requires vast amounts of raw materials and land for turbines, backup power and long transmission lines. The extraction and processing of rare earth metals and other materials devastates large agricultural, scenic and wildlife habitat areas and harms people’s health, especially in China. Worst, the turbines are returning numerous bird and bat species to the edge of extinction, after decades of patient, costly efforts to nurse them back to health.

These are not sparrows and pigeons killed by housecats. They are bats that eat insects and protect crops . They are some of our most important and magnificent raptors, herons, cranes, condors and other majestic sovereigns of our skies. They are being chopped out of the air and driven from numerous habitats.

The American Bird Conservancy (ABC)and other experts estimate that well over 500,000 birds and countless bats are already being killed annually by turbines. The subsidized slaughter “could easily be over 500” golden eagles a year in our western states, Save the Eagles International biologist Jim Wiegand told me. Bald eagles are also being killed at alarming rates that could soon reach 1,000 per year.

In the 86-square-mile area blanketed by the Altamont Pass wind facility, no eagles have nested for over 20 years, and golden eagle nest sites have declined by half near the actual facility, even though both areas are prime eagle habitat, says Wiegand. Wildlife expert Dr. Shawn Smallwood estimates that 2,300 golden eagles have been killed by Altamont turbines over the past 25 years.

The wind industry keeps the publicly acknowledged death toll “low” and “acceptable” by employing deliberately flawed methodologies, says Wiegand. Companies have crews search around turbines that are not operating; search only within narrow radiuses of turbines, thus missing birds that were flung further by the impact or limped off to die elsewhere; search for carcasses only every 2-4 weeks, allowing scavengers to take most of them away; avoid using dogs to sniff for bodies; not count disabled or wounded birds and bats; and pick up carcasses, under the guideline of “slice, shovel and shut up.”

High security at most wind turbine sites makes independent analysis almost impossible, adds ABC wind energy coordinator Kelly Fuller. Even the faulty (fraudulent?) raw bird kill data are rarely made public and are difficult to access even through the Freedom of Information Act. Amazingly, the US Fish & Wildlife Service does not require that the information be made public. What little does get released is too often filtered, massaged and manipulated – and now the FWS may allow the industry to put even these suspect body counts into private data banks that would not be subject to FOIA.

The FWS and Justice Department prosecuted and fined oil companies for the unintentional deaths of just 28 small migratory birds (no raptors and no rare, threatened or endangered species) over several months throughout North Dakota. They fined ExxonMobil $600,000 for accidentally killing 85 birds over a five-year period in five states. But they have never prosecuted or penalized a single wind turbine company for its eco-slaughter. Now they are going much further.

The Service has proposed to grant “programmatic take” permits that would allow wind turbine operators to repeatedly, systematically, legally and “inadvertently” injure, maim and kill bald and golden eagles –turning what has been outrageously selective (non)enforcement of endangered species laws into a 007 license to kill. While the new rule “is not specifically designed for the wind industry” (as an industry spokesman helpfully pointed out), Big Wind will be by far the biggest beneficiary.

The FWS says it can do this based on illusory “advanced conservation practices” that are “scientifically supportable,” approved by the Service, and “represent the best available techniques to reduce eagle disturbance and ongoing mortalities to a level where remaining take is unavoidable and incidental to otherwise lawful activity.” The Service also claims “mitigation” and other “additional” measures may be implemented where necessary to “ensure the preservation” of eagles as a species.

When its goal is to restrict development, the FWS frequently defines species, subspecies or “distinct population segments” for sage grouse, spotted owls, “jumping mice” and other wildlife – or labels a species “imperiled” in a selected location, even when it is abundant in nearby locations. With eagles, the proposed “take” rules strongly suggest that the Service could easily say the presence of eagles in some parts of the Lower 48 States or even just Alaska would mean their preservation is ensured, even if they are exterminated or driven out of numerous habitats. (Ditto for other species imperiled by wind turbines.)

Attempts to “mitigate” impacts or establish new population segments will almost certainly mean imposing extra burdens, restrictions and costs on land owners and users outside of turbine-impact areas.

Another vital, majestic species being “sliced” back to the verge of extinction is the whooping crane, North America’s tallest bird. Since 2006, installed turbine capacity within the six-state whooping crane flyway has skyrocketed from 3,600 megawatts to some 16,000 MW – and several hundred tagged and numbered whooping cranes “have turned up missing and are unaccounted for,” says Wiegand. And yet, another 136,700 MW of new bird Cuisinarts are planned for these six states!

The Service knows this is happening, and yet turns a blind eye – and Big Wind is not about to admit that its turbines are butchering whooping cranes, bald eagles, Peregrine falcons, bats and other rare species.

This subsidized slaughter and legalized carnage cannot continue. Every vote to extend the PTC, or approve wind turbines in or near important bird habitats and flyways, is a vote for ultimate extinction of majestic and vital species in numerous areas all over the United States.

Wind energy is not green, eco-friendly, sustainable or sensible. Extending the subsidized slaughter is not something any members of Congress, state legislatures or county commissions – Republican or Democrat – should want to have on their conscience.

Paul Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which is sponsoring the All Pain No Gain petition against global-warming hype. He also is a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death.

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Rio+20 is Greatest Threat to Biodiversity

Paul Driessen

Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by David Rothbard

I would like to thank Mr. Driessen for allowing me to reprint his works. Paul is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), which is sponsoring the All Pain No Gain petition against global-warming hype. He also is a senior policy adviser to the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death, a book that I heartily recommend. I have given at least 30 copies of this book to people including members of Congress.

The UN Conference on Sustainable Development is underway in Rio de Janeiro. This time, 20 years after the original 1992 Rio “Earth Summit,” thousands of politicians, bureaucrats and environmental activists are toning down references to “dangerous man-made climate change,” to avoid repeating the acrimony and failures that characterized its recent climate conferences in Copenhagen, Cancun and Durban.

Instead, “Rio+20” is trying to shift attention to “biodiversity” and alleged threats to plant and animal species, as the new “greatest threat” facing Planet Earth. This rebranding is “by design,” according to conference organizers, who say sustainable development and biodiversity is an “easier sell” these days than climate change: a simpler path to advance the same radical goals.

Those goals include expanded powers and budgets for the United Nations, UN Environment Programme, US Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies, and their allied Green pressure groups; new taxes on international financial transactions (to ensure perpetual independent funding for the UN and UNEP); and more mandates and money for “clean, green, renewable” energy.

Their wish list also includes myriad opportunities to delay, prevent and control energy and economic development, hydrocarbon use, logging, farming, family size, and the right of individual countries, states, communities and families to make and regulate their own development and economic decisions.

Aside from not giving increased power to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats and activists, there are two major reasons for stopping this attempted biodiversity-based power grab.

1)There is no scientific basis for claims that hundreds or thousands of species are at risk.

Up to half of all species could go extinct by 2100, asserts astronomer and global warming alarmist James Hansen, because of climate change, “unsustainable” hydrocarbon use, human population growth and economic development. At Rio+20 activists are trumpeting these hysterical claims in reports, speeches and press releases. Fortunately, there is no factual basis for them.

Of 191 bird and mammal species recorded as having gone extinct since 1500, 95% were on islands, where humans and human-introduced predators and diseases wrought the destruction, notes ecology researcher Dr. Craig Loehle. On continents, only six birds and three mammals were driven to extinction, and no bird or mammal species in recorded history is known to have gone extinct due to climate change.

The massive species losses claimed by Hansen, Greenpeace, WWF and others are based on extrapolations from the island extinction rates. Some are just wild guesses or rank fear-mongering, with nothing remotely approximating scientific analysis. Other extrapolations are based on unfounded presumptions about species susceptibility to long or short term climate shifts – fed into clumsy, simplistic, non-validated virtual reality computer models that assume rising carbon dioxide levels will raise planetary temperatures so high that plants, habitats, and thus birds, reptiles and animals will somehow be exterminated. There is no evidence to support any of these extinction scenarios.

Indeed, there is no empirical evidence to support claims that average global temperatures have risen since 1998, or that we face any of the manmade global warming or climate change cataclysms proclaimed by Hansen, Gore and others.

2) The greatest threats to species are the very policies and programs being advocated in Rio.

Those policies would ban fossil fuels, greatly increase renewable energy use, reduce jobs and living standards in rich nations, and perpetuate poverty, disease, death and desperation in poor countries.

Today, over 1.5 billion people still do not have electricity, or have it only a few hours each day or week. Almost 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day. Millions die every year from diseases that would be largely eradicated by access to reliable, affordable electricity for cooking and refrigeration, clinics and hospitals, clean water, sanitation, and businesses and industries that generate jobs, prosperity and health.

Opposition to large-scale electricity generation forces people to rely on open fires for cooking and heating – perpetuating lung diseases and premature death, from breathing smoke and pollutants. It also destroys gorilla and other wildlife habitats, as people cut trees and brush for firewood and charcoal.

Wind turbines slice up birds and collapse bat lungs, exacting an unsustainable toll on eagles, hawks, falcons, and other rare, threatened and endangered flying creatures.

Turbine and solar arrays cover and disrupt millions of acres of farmland and wildlife habitat, to provide expensive, intermittent power for urban areas. They require backup generators and long transmission lines, and consume millions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass, polymers and rare earth minerals – extracted from the Earth, often in countries whose pollution control regulations and technologies are substantially below US, Canadian, European and Australian standards.

Corn-based ethanol requires tens of millions of acres, billions of gallons of water, millions of tons of fertilizer and insecticides, and enormous quantities of hydrocarbon fuels.

And yet, President Obama told Ghanaians in 2010 that poor, electricity-deprived, malnourished Africans should rely on biofuel, wind and solar power – and not build even gas-fired power plants.

Hunting, subsistence living and poverty are among the greatest risks to species. Denying poor families access to reliable, affordable electricity is a crime against humanity.

The Rio+20 biodiversity and sustainability agenda means artificially reduced energy and economic development. It means rationed resources, sustained poverty and disease, and unsustainable inequality, resentment, conflict, and pressure on wildlife and their habitats.

Simply put, 99% of humans and wild kingdom species are being ill served by the 0.1% UN and environmentalist elites gathered in Brazil, and purporting to speak for mankind and planet.

Our Creator has endowed us with a world rich in resources, and even richer in intelligent, hard-working, creative people who yearn to improve their lives and be better stewards of our lands, resources and wildlife. The primary obstacles to achieving these dreams are the false ideologies, anti-development agendas and suffocating regulations being promoted at the Rio+20 Summit.

If we can eliminate those obstacles, the world will enjoy a rebirth of freedom and opportunity, voluntarily stable populations, and vastly improved health, welfare and justice for billions. We will also bring far greater security to Earth’s wondrous multitudes of wild and scenic areas, and plant and animal species.

That would be an enormous gain for our planet and people.

Observations From the Back Row

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De Omnibus Dubitandum
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Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: $205,075 to Move a Bush

While this is only slightly related to Resourceful Earth’s work on natural resources, its too comical/depressing not to share:

The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to “translocate” a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045-billionhighway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009.

“In October 2009, an ecologist identified a plant growing in a concrete-bound median strip along Doyle Drive in the Presidio as Arctostaphylos franciscana,” the U.S. Department of Interior reported in the Aug. 10, 2010 edition of the Federal Register. “The plant’s location was directly in the footprint of a roadway improvement project designed to upgrade the seismic and structural integrity of the south access to the Golden Gate Bridge.

“The translocation of the Arctostaphylos franciscana plant to an active native plant management area of the Presidio was accomplished, apparently successfully and according to plan, on January 23, 2010,” the Interior Department reported.

The bush—a Franciscan manzanita—was a specimen of a commercially cultivated species of shrub that can be purchased from nurseries for as little as $15.98 per plant. The particular plant in question, however, was discovered in the midst of the City of San Francisco, in the median strip of a highway, and was deemed to be the last example of the species in the “wild.”

I do not profess to be particularly knowledgeable or excited about flora, but I cannot for the life of me understand why it matters that this plant was located in the “wild” especially if everyone was fine with moving the plant anyway. It certainly doesn’t exist in the “wild” after the government spent $200,000 to move it to a new location. It’s effectively been planted/altered by man at that point, as far as I can tell.

Biodiversity Bombshell: Polar Bears And Penguins Prospering, But Pity Those Paramecia!
Just last year, the World Wildlife Fund’s climate blog headlined that “Polar Bear Population in Canada’s Western Hudson Bay Unlikely to Survive Climate Disruption.” But it seems that since then this subpopulation, previously believed to be among the most threatened subpopulations due to global warming, has made a miraculous recovery. According to aerial surveys released by the Government of Nunavat this month, their numbers are at least 66% higher than expected. This region, which straddles Nunavat and Manitoba, is critical because it’s considered to be a bellwether for how well polar bears are faring elsewhere in the Arctic.

GMO label movement faces hurdles in Vermont
Advising people that their food contains food is somewhat counterproductive. It’s only real purpose is to enable activists and scare mongers to frighten consumers about, well, nothing, actually.

Charles Clover: Green Rage Against Shale Gas Is Irrational
This Sunday marks the 42nd anniversary of Earth Day. Once again, we can expect an all-out assault covering all communication channels, a barrage of all the most stale ideas concocted by the most backward-looking eco-obsession.

Peter Foster: Human Day
Property rights are the best guides to custody of the ¬environment - For more than 40 years, Earth Day has both reflected genuine environmental concern and mirrored the UN’s attempted eco power grab. Sunday’s Earth Day comes two months ahead of the vast, but significantly brief, UN Rio+20 conference. Both are pale reflections of their original radical aspirations. Earth Day is still celebrated, but 42 years of crying wolf have inevitably had an effect. The event has also been corporatized, greenwashed and taken over by such announcements as that of the “50 sexiest environmentalists.” Rio+20 will represent the graveyard of aspirations for all prospective — and inevitably less sexy — Captains of Spaceship Earth, Global Saviours, and High Priests of Gaia.

My Take - “Captains of Spaceship Earth, Global Saviours, and High Priests of Gaia" - we have far too many of these types in the pest control industry. One fumigator I am familiar with classifies himself as a “world problem solver” because he embraced the eco-clamor to replace methyl bromide.  Now his “solution” is under attack and I hear nothing from or about him.

The primary registrant asked for support from the pest control industry to keep their product, sulfuryl fluoride on the market. Yet I didn’t hear a peep from them when that piece of junk science known as the Montreal Protocol eliminated their competition methyl bromide!

These people just don’t get it. No solution will stand the test of time with the greenies. They will embrace any “solution” to one of their non-problems today as long as it suits their needs in order to attack some product they wish to destroy. Afterwards .... whatever is left out there will be fair game.

Foolish people in our industry (and I include the manufacturers at the top of that list) will work to find something to replace a perfectly good product with one that is acceptable to the greenies.

After the greenies have attained their goal, they turn on the replacement product and those who manufacture, sell or use those products. There is no safe ground with the green movement. They are irrational; they are misanthropic; they are not our friends; they cannot be trusted because they have no command and control structure!  Why can’t we get that?

Patrick Michaels: Celebrating Earth Day: Is Another Half-Acid Apocalypse On the Way?  Editor’s Note: Ignore the ad and it will go away in a few seconds.
What with it being Earth Day and all, it’s a good time to reflect on the sorry track record of environmental apocalypse prognostication and make a little forecast of our own, namely that something called “ocean acidification” is going to be the latest, greatest threat to our survival. “This time we mean it”, my greener friends are saying.

Observations From the Back Row: 5-11-11

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“De Omnibus Dubitandum”

Langmuir's Laws of bad science

• - 1 .The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
• - 2. The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of the low level of significance of the results.
• - 3. There are claims of great accuracy.
• - 4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested.
• - 5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.
• - 6. The ratio of supporters to critics rises to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to zero.

Guest Post By Joanne Nova: On climate change, the wrong choice kills people either way Here’s a topic close to my heart. Before I became involved in climate change and currencies, my hot topic-of-choice for years was medical research and health. In my honours degree I worked to get a tiny step closer to treating Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. When I saw that The Australian Government was threatening to cut medical research, I wanted to put a razor fine point on just what muddy thinking costs us. This article I wrote is published in The Weekend Australian today. We can’t afford to get the decision wrong on climate change. We must fight the battles that matter, not build fortresses against imaginary foes. Joanne Nova

Trust Me, I Speak for ScienceTwo recent posts here have been about the role of trust in the environmental debate. Briefly, Mark Lynas and George Monbiot seem to expect everybody to share their trust in scientific authority, yet not so long ago, they were themselves suspicious of it. It was the obedient slave of big business, they said. Now they and anti-nuclear environmentalists are busy calling each other ‘deniers’, while claiming to be speaking ‘for science’. What arguments that make this kind of appeal to scientific authority seem not to understand is that a relationship of trust is a pre-condition of scientific authority. You can’t have any kind of authority without some kind of relationship of trust; it’s like trying to have a party without beer, music, food and friends. So Lynas and Monbiot’s claims to speak for science merely bounce off their anti-nuclear opponents: ‘you’re repeating nuclear industry propaganda’, they claim — exactly the argument Lynas and Monbiot have been using all these years against their own adversaries in institutional science. Those claiming to be speaking for science are too easily identified as speaking for something else.

The Ecology of Stupid– or –The Greenies tremble before their demanding God: "Nature"The Guardian has a revealing editorial today, which makes the claim that: Biodiversity: It’s the ecology, stupid.  At every level, human civilisation is underwritten by the planet’s countless and still mostly unidentified wild things

As discussed in the previous post, the idea that civilisation is underwritten in this way is a secular revision of Divine Providence. Environmentalism’s politics is forged by this view of nature with an equally bleak conception of human nature — equally a contemporary, secular account of original sin. The logic of these conceptions of the natural world and humanity lead to environmentalism’s tendency to produce political ideas that resonate with the worst from the Dark Ages.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:

Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax -

Of cabbages and kings,

And why the sea is boiling hot,

And whether pigs have wings."

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The American Council on Science and Heatlh, 2011: Week 12

Posted by Rich Kozlovich

Mini-strokes may cause major consequences
Transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) may be referred to as "mini-strokes," but there's nothing mini about the increased risk for stroke and heart attack which comes in their wake.

Expanded approval for shingles vaccine
Varicella zoster virus (VZV), the pathogen that causes chickenpox when first encountered in early childhood, can reawaken decades later and cause the painful skin eruption known as shingles.

New melanoma drug gets green light from FDA
Bristol-Myers Squibb's new melanoma drug Yervoy won approval from the FDA on Friday after a randomized clinical trial showed that patients with metastatic melanoma treated with the drug lived about four months longer than patients in the control group - although the median survival among the treated patients was only ten months.

Can Actos Prevent Diabetes?
After allegations were made linking the diabetes drug rosiglitazone (Avandia) to an increased risk of heart attack, it was taken off the market in Europe, and its use was severely restricted here by the FDA.

ER cases higher among Ecstasy users
Known to invoke feelings of ecstasy, the eponymous illicit party drug, also known as MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine), is the cause of an increasing number of medical emergencies, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

In defense of vaccines
ACSH staffers were pleased to encounter a variety of pieces defending vaccines as a vital public health practice. A book review in today's The New York Times, for instance, features an excellent work by informed consumer and Vanity Fair Contributing Editor Seth Mnookin.

The EPA: More trouble than it’s worth and should be abolished, says Dr. Miller
Happy 40th Birthday, EPA, and may it be the last, says Hoover Institution Fellow and former ACSH trustee Dr. Henry Miller.

CSPI dyeing to link food coloring to ADHD
Like the mole in the whack-a-mole game, the Center for Science in the Public Interest's Michael Jacobson just keeps coming back for a good whack in the head. This time, he has tried to resurrect the unfounded claim that food dyes trigger Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in kids who are predisposed to it - an issue first introduced in the 1970s by Dr. Ben Feingold.

My Take - Another day, another scare.  Their ability to recycle these things is uncanny.  Then again....there is another generation out there that didn't hear this unfounded scare before.  Another generation that can be misled and misinformed.  Another fallacious scare that can generate money and recruit ignorant protestors. 

Running and knees: perfect together
Yesterday, National Public Radio (NPR) ran a timely health story countering the popular notion that running poses a threat to knee health.

The X-Ray(t)ed Truth: Airport scanners pose no health threat
After the Transportation Security Administration announced the installation of new body scanners in airports last year, the mass media ran amok, hyping up the public's fears of excess radiation exposure and privacy violations.

Elderly excluded from many drug trials for treatments aimed at them
A new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine shows that 43 percent of 251 clinical trials investigating heart failure show evidence of ageism.

Biodiversity doesn’t feed people, but GM crops do
During a United Nations meeting in Bali to discuss a treaty on plant genetics, La Via Campesina, which according to an article in The Atlantic, is said to be an international farmers' movement comprised of 150 organizations in 70 countries, decided not to waste time addressing real agricultural problems like the rising cost of food, starvation in underdeveloped nations and the poor crop yields in certain areas.

My Take - If there was ever an obvious and hysterically insane cause this is it. Norman Borlaug saved untold millions of lives because of his Green Revolution which emphasized high yield crops, pesticides and fertilizers.....and the greenies vilified him for it. Now that he is dead; what is his legacy? He saved untold millions and untold millions more are surviving now and untold millions more will survive into the future because of his work.

Borlaug supported GM foods because they are necessary and no harm to society or the environment has ever been shown by their use. We have lost our minds when we listen to these madmen who would rather see millions die than use GM foods. Since their policies are going to kill untold numbers of children why should we believe them when they tell us to adopt their policies because "it’s for the children"? The legacy of the greenies is that untold millions have suffered and died; untold millions will suffer and die long into the future because of them.  This insane resistance to GM foods must be brought to a halt and the greenies need to be prosecuted!

Surprise: FDA tells Star Scientific its dissolvable tobacco lozenge not regulated under tobacco law
In a surprise ruling, the FDA determined last week that tobacco product maker Star Scientific Inc. is free to market and sell its Ariva-BDL and Stonewall-BDL dissolvable tobacco lozenges independent of FDA regulation since the products do not fall under the jurisdiction of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

Study lauds BPA- and DEHP-free diet: But where’s the harm?
If it were up to The Silent Spring Institute and the Breast Cancer Fund, both activist groups disguised as environmental and health advocacy organizations, they would have you believe that the results of their newest study, with funding from the Passport Foundation, justify the need to convert to a non-packaged, organic food (and maybe raw?) diet.

My Take - I would like to recommend viewing Alan Caruba's BPA Series. This link will take you to the first three articles in his six part series.

FDA counters KV’s premature warning against compounding early-labor prevention drug
KV pharmaceuticals recently won exclusive rights to the marketing of the pre-term labor prevention drug they've branded Makena. Priced at a whopping $1500 per shot, the therapy may cost up to $30,000 per pregnancy since it usually requires 20 weekly injections to prevent premature labor in patients who have a predisposition to or a history of going into premature labor.

The (Minnesota) clone wars: Is there a scientist in the House (or Senate)?Sometimes politics and science do not mix, as illustrated by the GOP effort in Minnesota to push a so-called cloning ban that, as written, would bring the state's stem cell research to a halt.

Fewer lung cancer deaths among women, but smoking’s toll keeps rising
In a survey asking approximately 250,000 people about their current and past smoking habits, researchers learned that smoking causes half a million deaths annually in the U.S. - an increase from the prior estimates of about 450,000 deaths.

Seat belts, not plastic bans, save lives
Lung cancer deaths aren't the only fatality on the decline.

My Take - If the greenies and their allies irrational scares were accurate the risk charts would be upside down.  Why?  Because all of the things that they claim are so disastrous are at the bottom of the charts.  Pesticides are at the very bottom, yet you would believe from the hysteria they generate that people are dropping dead all over the place.  Since that, very obviously, isn't happening they resort to logical fallacies and claim that exposure can cause cancer in old age.  Since cancer is an affliction of the aged they can claim they are correct, yet cancer has been on the decline for decades and if you were to compare the demographics between the population one hundred years ago and the demographics of our population you would notice two startling and obvious differences regarding cancer.  There were very few people who lived to be over 65 (that is why they picked 65 as the retirement age for Social Security) and there were very few smokers; the two top cancer demographics.  When that is taken into consideration the cancer rate really drops. In point of fact; name their hysterical claims that didn't turn out to be a red herrings!

PSA tests: When screening may cause more harm than good
Over the past few years, prostate cancer screening using the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test has received a lot of media flack while various health organizations and physicians struggle to outline specific guidelines for the exam.

My Take - For men over forty....go see your doctor every year.  As we age...twice a year. 

White-coat effect responsible for almost 40 percent of resistant hypertension
While sitting at the physician's office, some people may become anxious as they await their looming encounter with The Doctor.

HCV triumph: Taming the “silent killer”
For patients with hepatitis C, the only available treatment up till now has limited efficacy and debilitating side effects. But that is all about to change.

If there is a health scare today, the American Council on Science and Health will most likely have the answer by tomorrow; and for members it will appear in your e-mail. No effort on your part, except to read the answer. All that the ACSH is interested in are the facts and they are prepared to follow them wherever they lead. Who can ask for more?  Please Donate Now!

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