Here we go again: UN, Media recycle climate species ‘extinction’ fears – Dredge up discredited Paul Ehrlich for interviews

By: Marc Morano - Climate Depot May 6, 2019

Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore explains the species scare: “Since species extinction became a broad social concern, coinciding with the extinction of the passenger pigeon, we have done a pretty good job of preventing species extinctions."

Moore bluntly mocked species extinction claims made by biologist Edward O. Wilson from Harvard University. Wilson estimated that up to 50,000 species go extinct every year based on computer models of the number of potential but as yet undiscovered species in the world. Moore: “There’s no scientific basis for saying that 50,000 species are going extinct. The only place you can find them is in Edward O. Wilson’s computer at Harvard University. They’re actually electrons on a hard drive. I want a list of Latin names of actual species.”

UK scientist Professor Philip Stott, emeritus professor of Biogeography at the University of London: “The earth has gone through many periods of major extinctions, some much bigger in size than even being contemplated today...Change is necessary to keep up with change in nature itself. In other words, change is the essence. And the idea that we can keep all species that now exist would be anti-evolutionary, anti-nature and anti the very nature of the earth in which we live." ........To Read More....

Greenies Almost Have a Monopoly on Being Wrong

By Rich Kozlovich

(Editor's Note:  I originally published this on 4/3/12, but all the same issues are at play today as they were then, so I'm republishing this with updates.  RK)

As you read this please keep in mind that we hear over educated under smart people telling us that we are at a tipping point and we must ________(fill in the blank) right now or we will destroy all living things on the Earth. What they want us to do would put mankind back into the most primitive conditions imaginable. Here is an example of their insane thinking.

Bonnie Prince Charles has warned everyone over and over again that we've reached a critical tipping point regarding global warming, and in order to save the planet we must adopt a program that would seriously reduce mankind’s carbon emissions. He then promptly jetted off to spew the same nonsense elsewhere. That "critical tipping point" time has passed, and he keeps flying, and others as loony as he, take up the same cry.  But the great leveler of truth is history and reality, and they show science has been corrupted by a pseudo-pagan green ideology.

Environmentalist in and out of the government want to abandon the Keystone pipeline because of a beetle. Not because we know it will go extinct, it's because we don’t know if it will go extinct. Please read my article, More Coprolite Anyone?

It turns out that those on my side of the argument are now, and always have been…..well..…dare I think it....dare I say it? Yes, I will say it! We were right! Oops, there it is again!  Reality staring everyone in the face.

This appeared on Junkscience.com today. Shocker: Nature Conservancy chief scientist admits ‘data simply do not support the idea of a fragile nature at risk of collapse’

"The eco-fragility trope of Rachel Carson and Al Gore is wrong, says an unlikely source. … The fragility trope dates back, at least, to Rachel Carson, who wrote plaintively in Silent Spring of the delicate web of life and warned that perturbing the intricate balance of nature could have disastrous consequences."

"Al Gore made a similar argument in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance. And the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment warned darkly that, while the expansion of agriculture and other forms of development have been overwhelmingly positive for the world’s poor, ecosystem degradation was simultaneously putting systems in jeopardy of collapse."

"The trouble for conservation is that the data simply do not support the idea of a fragile nature at risk of collapse. Ecologists now know that the disappearance of one species does not necessarily lead to the extinction of any others, much less all others in the same ecosystem."  

"In many circumstances, the demise of formerly abundant species can be inconsequential to ecosystem function. The American chestnut, once a dominant tree in eastern North America, has been extinguished by a foreign disease, yet the forest ecosystem is surprisingly unaffected. The passenger pigeon, once so abundant that its flocks darkened the sky, went extinct, along with countless other species from the Steller’s sea cow to the dodo, with no catastrophic or even measurable effects."

The fact of the matter is the only people who were sold on this stuff are those who have an agenda and the ignorant. Being ignorant is a legitimate excuse because it means that we simply don't know.

We are all ignorant about an unending number of things. Being unwilling to find out is what makes people stupid. As for those with an agenda; they aren't ignorant, they are corrupt! They have screamed in rage about everything that makes living in an advanced society possible. They claim that modern living deprives everyone of utopia, which they can deliver by forcing everyone to ‘go green'.

Yet, all they have ever delivered is dystopia - disease, squalor, misery, deprivation, suffering and early death.

That's their history! So if they keep promoting things that leave disaster in its wake, we must conclude that absolutely is their agenda!  The greenies hate humanity!  We really do need to get that!

We also need to get this!  Everything we are told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality, and reality shows us over 95% of all species that has ever lived are extinct. Extinction is the rule, not the exception. When species become biologically incompetent the cease to exist! The rest of the world goes on in spite of that.

I have asked repeatedly for someone, anyone, to tell me what terrible ecological disaster occurred when the dodo bird went extinct? There was none. I understood this and I’m just a bug man, so how did these highly educated super smart people miss it?

There is a side bar to this story that fascinates me. The very ones who insist on demanding we must spend any amount of money, and bear any and every conceivable sacrifice necessary to save every species or nature will unravel, are for the most part, neo-Darwinists. Since they believe in the blatantly ridiculous Theory of Evolution - the  survival of the fittest - then shouldn’t they want incompetent species to go extinct in order for species that are better equipped to survive to take their place?

Truth and consistency of thought is a serious problem for these people.  However, there is one consistency the left/green movement embrace.  In order to promote all the things they promote they are required to embrace cognitive dissonance!  Believing in opposing views and  believing they're all correct.   Views that can only be categorized as articles of faith to a neo-pseudo-pagan secular religion! Leftism!  No amount of valid science, history or reality can disabuse them of their positions.

Here's reality we need to embrace!  Scientific integrity has been made an oxymoron by the embrace of leftist/green ideology, in effect making them Lysenkoists. In short, the question we should be asking is this.  Does ideology make smart people dumb, or insane?

Green land grabs on steroids

Using bees to block human activities on land 15 times bigger than Virginia – or even more

Paul Driessen

Special interest environmental groups got stung recently by an 8-0 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that held private landowners cannot be compelled to forego future economic uses of their property and at their own expense convert their land into suitable habitat for an endangered frog. Now radical greens are eyeing even bigger land grabs.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has sued the Department of the Interior for failing to designate “critical habitat” for the “endangered” rusty patched bumblebee. It’s the latest of many Endangered Species Act (ESA) lawsuits, abusive sue-and-settle litigation, and other actions involving insects, and it led to an eleventh-hour Obama Administration endangered designation for the rusty patched bee.

Interior points out that extremely limited knowledge about RPBs makes critical habitat determinations impossible. The NRDC counters that Interior must designate habitats based on “best available evidence.” The problem is, available information is so inadequate, conjectural, false or falsified that it must absolutely not be used to justify the astounding potential impacts of RPB habitat designations. 

Groups that have bee-friended them claim RPBs were “once common” in many Northeastern and Midwestern states. However, back then bees and other insects were studied for taxonomic purposes – not to assess species’ diversity and populations. So no one knows how many there used to be, or where.

The activists also claim RPB populations declined rapidly beginning in the mid-1990s, because of habitat loss, disease, climate change and especially the use of crop-protection pesticides. That’s not what they were saying a few years ago, before wild bees replaced honey bees in anti-pesticide campaigns.

Back in 2013, when it petitioned the FWS for RPB endangered status, even the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation said the bee’s apparent decline was due to habitat loss and multiple diseases that spread from domesticated honeybees to wild bees.

“The exact cause for the loss of the rusty patched is unclear,” says University of Virginia biology professor T’ai Roulston. “But it’s almost certainly related to disease,” especially a fungal gut parasite that “can shorten the lives of worker bees and disrupt mating success and survival of queens and males.”

Habitat loss is clearly another factor. Over the past half-century, cities and suburbs expanded, and farmers increasingly emphasized large-scale monoculture crops like corn and canola for food and biofuels. That reduced underground RPB nesting sites and the varieties of flowers that wild bees prefer.

The Obama FWS ignored these facts, arbitrarily downplayed its earlier disease and habitat loss explanations, and began blaming pesticides, especially advanced-technology neonicotinoid pesticides, which became a scapegoat for wild bee health problems after it became obvious to everyone that fears of a honeybee apocalypse were unfounded. A busy, understaffed Department of the Interior let the last-minute Obama era RPB endangered species designation take effect in early 2017.

Little evidence supports the pesticide claims, and much refutes them.

For example, a wide-ranging international study of wild bees, published in Nature Communications, found that only 2% of wild bee species are responsible for 80% of all crop visits. Most wild bees never even come into contact with crops or the pesticides that supposedly harm them.

Even more compelling, the Nature study determined that the 2% of wild bees that do visit crops – and so would be most exposed to pesticides – are among the healthiest bee species on Earth. 

Other studies found that neonic residues are well below levels that can adversely affect bee development or reproduction. That’s because most neonics are used as seed coatings that are absorbed into plant tissue as crops grow. They protect plants against insect damage – targeting only pests that actually feed on the crops – but are largely gone by the time mature plants flower. Neonics are barely detectable in pollen.

None of these facts will matter, however, once the FWS starts designating RPB critical habitats. The agency and environmentalists will be able to delay, block or bankrupt any proposed or ongoing project or activity within a habitat if they can make any plausible claim that it might potentially harm the bee. Building new homes or hospitals, laying new pipelines, improving roads and bridges – a farmer’s decisions about plowing fields, planting crops or using pesticides – could all be subjected to litigation.

The potential geographic reach of these critical habitat designations is enormous.

RPBs are likely to be found “in scattered locations that cover only 0.1% of the species’ historical range,” the FWS has said. That doesn’t sound like much. However, 0.1% of the bee’s presumed or asserted historical range is nearly four million acres – equivalent to Connecticut plus Rhode Island.

Even worse, that acreage is widely dispersed in itty-bitty parcels across 13 states where amateur entomologists have supposedly spotted rusty patched bumblebees since 2000. That’s some 380 million acres: 15 times the size of Virginia! That is green land grabs on steroids, and it’s just the beginning.

No one knows just where those parcels might be. So environmental groups could pressure and sue government agencies to halt projects – or agencies could do it at their own volition, to delay or block gas pipelines, for example – while large areas are carefully examined for signs of rusty patched bumblebees.

New York regulators might be especially prone to doing that, considering the governor and legislature’s unbending opposition to “climate destabilizing” natural gas, even as gas and electricity prices climb ever higher in the Empire State.

More ominously, anti-pesticide and other environmental groups want yellow-banded, western and Franklin’s bumblebees designated as endangered. These species were supposedly once found in tiny areas scattered over a billion acres in 40 US states! Other anti-pesticide, anti-fossil fuel, pro-Green New Deal activists also want beetles and other bugs designated as endangered. It’s all about control.

The ultimate effect – if not their intent – would be to let radical groups use “threatened or endangered” insects to delay or veto countless projects and activities across nearly the entire United States.

Probably most Americans would say delaying or even scuttling certain projects and activities might be warranted when the threatened or endangered species holds a position of significance in the animal kingdom, and really is down to the last of its kind.

But bees, beetles and other bugs? Especially when we don’t know how many there ever were, or where? Or what might actually be threatening their continued existence, if it really is threatened? Highly unlikely.

Just as relevant, why aren’t the same eco-activist groups expressing the same concern – or any concern, really – about bald and golden eagles, other raptor and bird species, or multiple rare bat species that are being decimated by wind turbines? Whooping cranes are teetering on the brink of extinction, and yet their Canada to Texas flyway is now home to hundreds of bird-butchering turbine rotors.

The resulting carnage is ignored by greens and regulators alike, and Big Wind operators prohibit independent biologists from entering the killing grounds to get accurate counts of bird and bat carcasses.

Many of those wondrous and vitally important species would likely be wiped out entirely if anything like the Green New Deal sprouts hundreds of thousands of 400-foot-tall onshore turbines across the USA.

The Interior Department’s Fish & Wildlife Service needs to bring further balance and sanity to the ESA, to ensure that conflicting and competing needs are examined and balanced – fully, carefully and honestly.

All this underscores why the Endangered Species Act must be revised. It also explains why radical environmentalists and their allies will fight any changes tooth and nail, along with any nominee who might try to make any changes in any Trump land use, environmental or agricultural agency or policy.

These are complex but vital policy issues, requiring rational, responsible discussions and decisions.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and author of books and articles on energy, climate, environmental and human rights issues.             

Is the Insect Apocalypse Really Upon Us?

Claims that insects will disappear within a century are absurd, but the reality isn’t reassuring either.

Ed Yong

In 1828, a teenager named Charles Darwin opened a letter to his cousin with “I am dying by inches, from not having anybody to talk to about insects.” Almost two centuries on, Darwin would probably be thrilled and horrified: People are abuzz about insects, but their discussions are flecked with words such as apocalypse and Armageddon.

The drumbeats of doom began in late 2017, after a German study showed that the total mass of local flying insects had fallen by 80 percent in three decades. The alarms intensified after The New York Times Magazine published a masterful feature on the decline of insect life late last year. And panic truly set in this month when the researchers Francisco Sánchez-Bayo and Kris Wyckhuys, having reviewed dozens of studies, claimed that “insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades.” The Guardian, in covering the duo’s review, wrote that “insects could vanish within a century”—a crisis that Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys believe could lead to a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems.”  

I spoke with several entomologists about whether these claims are valid, and what I found was complicated. The data on insect declines are too patchy, unrepresentative, and piecemeal to justify some of the more hyperbolic alarms...........First, some good news: The claim that insects will all be annihilated within the century is absurd. Almost everyone I spoke with says that it’s not even plausible, let alone probable. “Not going to happen,” says Elsa Youngsteadt from North Carolina State University........To Read More....

Have We Lost Our Minds?

By Rich Kozlovich

Some years back Burt Prelutsky  wrote an article entitled “Those poor, poor perverts”.   The basis of the article was a discussion as to how ridiculous are the arguments surrounding pedophiles and how they are to be treated by society.

He uses the old story of how “intellectuals” (Editor's Note: He used the word “nuts”, but they were the intellectuals of the day.  Nothing has changed!) would sit around for hours and discuss how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

See, television did cure one thing.

The only problem is that so many of those who are in decision making positions apparently don’t waste their time on television, mores’ the pity, because they now sit around and decide how many feet away from a school a convicted pedophile may live who has been released from prison.

Prelutsky makes a point that should be obvious to the most casual observer:

 “For what reason would any sane society ever release such a person from jail? The notion that kids are safe if the creep lives 2,000 feet away from where they play is perfectly loony. What about the kids walking to and from those parks and playgrounds? “

He points out that it is like releasing all the bank robbers from the prisons and telling them they can’t live any closer that two blocks away from a bank and expecting this to be the solution to their wanting to rob banks. He goes on to say, “judges and lawmakers seem happy to ignore the rates of recidivism among rapists and pedophiles. Is there anyone else, aside from defense attorneys, who would argue that a man who’s raped a six year old child deserves a second chance?”

We have ceded our own common sense to the “experts”! Are they really all that credible?  So credible that we willingly abandon traditional values, common sense and moral balance?

Where is our moral compass?

As unpleasant an issue as this is, I use it to show a peculiar mindset that has permeated society that really is nuts. Concern about pedophiles, bank robbers and other assorted villains of society is the common concern that we all must share. We also have the added concern of those who are destructive to society in a much larger and more insidious way. The green movement! The group industry and society as a whole must have concerns about.  That's the environmental movement, and those who promote it inside and outside industry.

They promote junk science and outright fraudulent science as fact, and those who should be at the fore front standing against this nonsense turn into cheerleaders, and everyone laps it up like ice cream.

We are willing to accept nonsense from these people because the media is on their side. The EPA is clearly complicit as they continue spewing out a lava flow of scientifically dubious regulations. They support junk science through grant money.  Integrated Pest Management and Green Pest Control are these kinds of endeavors.

The green movement even has legislators held hostage to them via their monetary support.

Some years back a California congressman wanted to make changes to the Endangered Species Act…not repeal it as is really needed…..just add some sanity to it; and the Sierra Club spent a ton of money to defeat him and they did. They stated that “this was a lesson” to other legislators. This makes them more deadly to more people over a broader scope of humanity than bank robbers or even pedophiles.

Do we as an industry really believe all the nonsense they spew out? Do we really believe that we can really come to some sort of mutually acceptable final agreement with them? No matter what many of the prominent people in our industry say publicly; when I talk to them personally and off the record, they all acknowledge that it is all claptrap.

A lobbyist I have known for years makes the point that in any negotiations there must be some compromise, and I agree. The problem we seem to have is being able to understand the difference between compromise and capitulation. If during these discussions we give up something, I would like to know what the other side is giving up.

I am not talking about just being quiet for a while either. Or being quiet while their brethren from some other greenie group attacks us, which is what usually happens. There is no command and control system within the green movement. They will not only continue attacking industry they will attack their green brethren as sell outs for not being green enough.

If you give up 25% of something and they go away until next year, but they will be back the very next year demanding that you give up another 25%,  And this will go on, and on, and on until you no longer have anything to give up.

When you dance with the Devil you don't call the tune, you can't name the dance, you don't lead and you may not be able to leave the dance floor. Why don't we get it?

If you think this is an extreme and unreasonable view; ask Kentucky Fried Chicken. They backed down on point after point and the animal rights people said that this was a “good start”. There will be no end to their demands because the Neville Chamberlain “Policy of Appeasement” philosophy will not work on people with an agenda?

They are the anointed! They know best about all things. They truly believe their individual and collective intellect is far greater than all of the practical experience accumulated by mankind over the centuries. Theirs is the “vision of the anointed”, and must not be ignored, no matter the consequences.

As a result of the policies they have promoted they clearly have become the 20th century’s greatest mass murders, and are working just as hard in the 21st century to maintain that status.

Ford Motor Company found out the hard way. In a Fox News article Steve Milloy points out:

“After Ford caved into pressure from left-wing activist investors and issued a report stating that it “views stabilization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and energy security as critical and related business issues that warrant precautionary, prudent and early action,” the enviros thanked Ford in return by accusing his company of putting “more heat-trapping pollution into our skies each year than the entire country of Mexico”; continuing to “produce more global warming pollution on average than any other automaker”; continuing to make SUVs; and fighting a California law that would require a 30 percent reduction in automobile carbon dioxide emissions by 2016.”

Let’s not kid ourselves; what they really want is Ford, and the rest of the automobile industry, out of business.

So, what do they want from us in pest control? Well, I am sure that if we would offer to kill ourselves that they would agree that this would be a nice "start"!

If you look at who has affected people’s health positively and negatively you will find that it is the pesticide application industries that have saved and extended lives, and it's the environmental movement who has taken lives.

So why do we listen to them? Why does anyone?

I am the last one to decry their desire for a simple life without all the modern conveniences; if that is what someone wants, then I say…enjoy! However, if all of these people think their ideas are so great, why are all the greenies and their supporters living in the developed world and not in the third world where their policies hold sway? If they really believe all of the stuff they spew out, they need to take a personal stand and move there.

They could really make an impact on everyone’s mind by taking their children with them also.

Certainly that must make sense to everyone! After all, why would a greenie want to expose themselves and their children to all of these terrible chemicals and advanced technology of an advanced nation?   Right?

They need to move to one of the many areas of the world where there are no roads, few cars and no running water contaminated with any chlorine or fluoride. No electricity, no vaccinations, no genetically modified foods, no fungicides, no anti-bacterial cleaners, all organic food, no pesticides, no air conditioning.

Will there be many takers? I have no doubt there would be few, if any!  You can be sure that the greenies will be as close to the modern conveniences and the society they claim to despise as surely as bank robbers will rob banks and pedophiles will hang around children.

To paraphrase the earlier question asked by Burt Prelutsky:

“For what reason would any sane society ever believe anything these people say?"

The notion that society would be better off adopting the ideas and philosophies of the green movement is perfectly loony.” And yes!  We really have lost our minds!

Let's try and get this once and for all.  The left is irrational, misanthropic and morally defective, that's history and that history is incontestable. Dystopia follows the left like Sancho Panza followed Don Quixote.  A madman!

We Are NOT Headed For World Without Insects - Insect Decline Survey Hitting Headlines Non Systematic, Patchy & With Limited Data

By Robert Walker | February 11th 2019 | Print | E-mail

 

Please don’t be scared by this, it is just the journalists hyping things up again. It does not mean what it seems to mean from the headlines. Insects can’t vanish and we will continue to be able to grow our crops and do agriculture. The study itself involves a lot of extrapolation on inadequate data, not their fault, it is just that there hasn’t been that much research done on insect populations for them to draw on.

The number of studies they found, 73, is not a lot for the whole world and the studies are limited. The authors are also getting criticism on twitter by experts for the way they conducted the survey, for instance they found it with a literature search in "Web of Science" for “[insect*] AND [declin*] AND [survey]” which seems likely to bias in favour of groups that are declining as well as miss out many surveys that don’t happen to use the term “survey”.

They should have stated the limitations of the survey and they do not seem to have taken the extra care needed for a survey likely to influence public opinion and decision making. This was a traditional review, and not the carefully conducted systematic review that you get in medicine and that first began to be used in conservation in 2006.........To Read More......

David Bernhardt: Cleaning the Augean Stables

By Rich Kozlovich

In days gone by I would just assume everyone had at least heard of the Greek mythological Twelve Labors of Heracles I doubt that’s true today, but to the point.

The fifth task imposed by his cousin King Eurystheus was to clean the stables of Augeas in one day, which were a disaster since these stables housed 3000 oxen, and had never been cleaned, therefore these stables were full of manure. It was believed Hercules would be incapable of doing it in one day so the king agreed to give a tenth of his herd to Heracles but:

“Hercules………tore a big opening in the wall of the cattle-yard where the stables were. Then he made another opening in the wall on the opposite side of the yard.” (Editor's note:  Heracles or Hercules? either is acceptable.  I used what was presented by the authors. RK)  

"Next, he dug wide trenches to two rivers which flowed nearby. He turned the course of the rivers into the yard. The rivers rushed through the stables, flushing them out, and all the mess flowed out the hole in the wall on other side of the yard.”

 Well, the king didn’t like the fact he accomplished this task since now he had to give up a tenth of his herd. Therefore he reneged and demanded more tasks from Heracles because he was paid to do it.

It was a stupid story, and like all the Green myths is filled with irrational paradigms, but the story is instructive in this way: No matter what you do to appease tyrants, it will never be enough.  The greenies and their acolytes in government, just as corrupt King Eurystheus dealt with Heracles, it will never be satisfied. 

On Feb. 12, 2019 Coral Davenport posted this article: Top Leader at Interior Dept. Pushes a Policy Favoring His Former Client saying:

• "David Bernhardt, the agency’s acting chief, wants to roll back endangered-species protections on a tiny fish, a change that benefits few outside a California group he once represented as a lobbyist."

She then goes on to attempt to cast aspersions on Bernhardt’s integrity saying among other things:

• “Because Mr. Bernhardt’s actions would disproportionately benefit one of his former clients, independent ethics specialists said that, under the terms of the Trump administration’s ethics pledge, which Mr. Bernhardt signed, he should not have been given clearance to act. Its “revolving door” provision requires former lobbyists to recuse themselves for two years from any particular matter or specific issue on which they lobbied in the two years before joining the administration.”

So, apparently it was better that former heads of these departments and agencies worked for their clients, the green movement?   Whether they were ever paid by them or not is immaterial. They were philosophical clients.  They were worked unendingly to attain the goals of the activists over and over again as has been shown by the many “Sue and Settle” articles exposing the conspiracy between green activists and bureaucrats at the EPA, the Wildlife Services, and others.  Constantly twisting and turning simple laws into often times insurmountable and irrational regulations, never intended by Congress. 

So I say good for Trump!!!!!

At least now we know there’s someone in there that actually knows what he’s talking about, and knows first-hand the chicanery they adopt and horsepucky greenies spew out to get their way, and how to overcome it.

The ESA has done little to actually save species but it’s been the “go to law” that allows activists and deep state bureaucrats to overturn Constitutional guarantees regarding private property, one of the goals of all socialist movements.

The Endangered Species Act really is doing what it's supposed to do. Halt human progress. Saving species is just the emotional hook, and the Congress that voted on this had the so-called 'romantic' species in mind, and were shocked when the Tennessee Valley dam project came to a screeching halt over the snail darter.

Congress actually had to pass special legislation to overcome this outrage. The ESA gave individuals standing to sue the government over environmental issues, which is now out of control with the EPA actually helping activists sue them in order to get power the legislature didn't deem appropriate to give to them. Now we're saving microscopic shrimp to the detriment of pesticide users, and it's one of the most prolific species on the planet.

Once again, I find Trump’s insights into these irrational, misanthropic and morally defective laws to be amazing, and no politician running for President would have an iota of the courage he’s demonstrated to bring this to a halt.

Kudos to Trump!!!!!!! We need a Herculean figure to clean out the swamp. I hope he can divert a river of wise decisions that does it.

I’ve posted and written extensively about this. You may wish to peruse some of the articles, including that regarding the Delta smelt.

Let’s start with:

Endangered Species Act: Blast from the Past.

By Rich Kozlovich

For the benefit of those who are new to the pest control industry and new to Paradigms and Demographics - or those who just refused to pay attention: Here are some Endangered Species Act articles that give the history on how outrageous this piece of legislation is.  This will explain TVA vs. Hill. which is fundamental to our battle. 

ESA Outrages, Part I Thursday, September 18, 2008 ESA Outrages, Part II Monday, September 22, 2008 ESA Outrages, Part III Saturday, October 18, 2008

Congress needs to step in to end this game of ‘endangered chicken’ once and for all. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is recklessly driving the taxpayers’ truck on a collision course with our economy, food producers, true species steward landowners and taxpayers.

"Let’s hope Congress takes the keys away before more damage is done." - Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, in testimony to the United States House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources.  "It is clear the ESA has been used to accomplish the goals of radicals and those seeking to expand the reach of government,” Staples communicated to the Committee in a prepared statement of testimony.

By Rich Kozlovich

ESA Today August 4, 2012

ESA Today Sunday, July 8, 2012

Endangered Species Act

Thirteen Days of ESA

Green Gold

ESA Outrages, Part I

ESA Outrages, Part II

ESA Outrages, Part III

Then please avail yourself of some of my personal choices.

Donald Trump Stopped Democrats from Killing Alaskans

Trump’s Interior Department seeks to end abuse of migratory bird treaty Act

Endangered Species Act: The Frog That Jumped The Shark

Population Doomster Paul Ehrlich’s New Eco-Scare: ‘Biological Annihilation’

Nipping a legal problem in the bud

Are neonicotinoid insecticide seed treatments endangering wild bees?

The Sue-and-Settle Racket

Preserve the habitat of imaginary woodpecker?

Conservation – not more control

Shades of the Old Soviet Union - "Red" Wolf Acolytes of a Dying Ideology

Federal Permits Will Allow Wind Farms to Kill More Bald Eagles

Forgotten (or Expunged?) History - Wolves

The Cock Crows for Rural America

Court expands ESA protections on climate grounds

The biggest land grab, ever

By Paul Driessen|11th, 2019 |Environment| 0 Comments @CFACT

 

The Natural Resources Defense Council recently sued the Department of the Interior for failing to designate “critical habitat” for the “endangered” rusty patched bumblebee, thereby reducing the bee’s chances of survival.

This is the latest of many Endangered Species Act (ESA) lawsuits and other actions involving insects and leading to an eleventh-hour Obama administration endangered designation for the rusty patched bee.

Interior points out that extremely limited knowledge about the rusty patched bee makes critical habitat determinations impossible. The NRDC counters that Interior must designate habitats based on “best available evidence.”

However, that information is so inadequate, conjectural, false or falsified that it must not be used to justify the astounding potential impacts of rusty patched bee habitat designations.

The litigious groups claim the rusty patched bumblebee was “once common” in many Northeastern and Midwestern states. However, during that “historic” era, bees and other insects were studied for taxonomic purposes — not to assess species’ diversity and populations. So no one knows how many there used to be, or where.

The groups also claim rusty patched bee populations declined rapidly beginning in the mid-1990s, because of habitat loss, disease, climate change and especially the use of crop-protection pesticides. That’s another convenient revision of history.

Not long ago, even the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation said RPB decline was due to habitat loss and multiple diseases that spread from domesticated honeybees to wild bees.

“The exact cause for the loss of the rusty patched is unclear,” says University of Virginia biology professor T’ai Roulston. “But it’s almost certainly related to disease,” especially a fungal gut parasite that “can shorten the lives of worker bees and disrupt mating success and survival of queens and males.”

Habitat loss is clearly another factor. Over the past half-century, cities and suburbs expanded, and farmers increasingly emphasized large-scale monoculture crops like corn and canola for food and biofuels. That reduced underground RPB nesting sites and the varieties of flowers that wild bees prefer.

Mr. Obama’s Fish and Wildlife Service ignored these facts, arbitrarily downplayed its earlier disease and habitat loss explanations, and began blaming pesticides, especially advanced-technology neonicotinoid pesticides, which have become a scapegoat for wild bee health problems.

Little evidence supports the pesticide claims, and much refutes them.

For example, a wide-ranging international study of wild bees, published in Nature, found that only 2 percent of wild bee species are responsible for 80 percent of all crop visits. Most wild bees never even come into contact with crops or the pesticides that supposedly harm them.

Even more compelling, the Nature study determined that the 2 percent of wild bees that do visit crops — and so would be most exposed to pesticides — are among the healthiest bee species on Earth.

Other studies found that neonic residues are well below levels that can adversely affect bee development or reproduction. That’s because coating seeds ensures that neonic pesticides are absorbed into plant tissues — and thus target only pests that actually feed on the crops.

None of these facts will matter, however, once the Fish and Wildlife Service starts designating the rusty patched critical habitats. The agency and environmentalists will be able to delay, block or bankrupt any proposed or ongoing project or activity within a habitat if they think it might potentially harm the bee: From building new homes or hospitals, to laying new pipelines or improving roads and bridges — to saying when, where or if a farmer can plow fields, plant crops or use pesticides.

Make no mistake, the potential geographic reach of these critical habitat designations is enormous.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has said rusty patched bumblebees are likely to be found “in scattered locations that cover only 0.1% of the species’ historical range.” However, 0.1 percent of the presumed historical range is nearly 4 million acres — equivalent to Connecticut plus Rhode Island.
Worse, that acreage is widely dispersed in itty-bitty parcels across 13 states, where amateur entomologists have supposedly spotted rusty patched bumblebees since 2000. That’s some 380 million acres: 15 times the size of Virginia.

No one knows just where those parcels might be — enabling environmental groups and government agencies to halt projects while large areas are carefully examined for signs of rusty patched bumblebees.

More ominously, anti-pesticide and other environmental groups want yellow-banded, western and Franklin’s bumblebees designated as endangered. These species were supposedly once found in tiny areas scattered over a billion acres in 40 states. Radical greens also want beetles and other bugs designated as endangered.

The ultimate effect — if not their intent — would be to let those radicals use “threatened or endangered” insects to delay or veto countless projects and activities across nearly the entire United States.

All this underscores why the Endangered Species Act must be revised. It’s also why environmentalists and their allies will battle any changes tooth and nail.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled 8-0 that the Fish and Wildlife Service could not use the ESA to compel landowners to create habitat at their own expense, and forego future economic use of their private property, in order to expand an endangered frog’s range.

The court and Interior Department should now bring further balance and sanity to the act, to ensure that conflicting and competing needs are examined and balanced — fully, carefully and honestly.

This article originally appeared in The Washington Times

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Big property rights victory at the Supreme Court

November 28, 2018  By Rick Moran
 

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a landowner who challenged the government's designation of 1,500 acres of land as "critical habitat" for an endangered frog species.

Edward Poitevent sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who said the land in question – in his family's possession for decades – was critical to the survival of the dusky gopher frog, even though the species had not inhabited the land since 1965.

Daily Caller:

"I am really overjoyed that an eight to nothing court agreed with me that the service's decision was absurd and nightmarish for property rights in the United States," landowner Edward Poitevent told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a Tuesday interview. 

"We all actually thought something like this would happen, but what's really stunning is this is an eight to nothing decision," Poitevent said. 

The Fish and Wildlife Service told Poitevent in 2011 his land, which has been in his family for generations, would be listed as backup critical habitat for the dusky gopher frog, which hasn't been seen there since 1965.  The only known domain of the frogs was a single pond in southern Mississippi as of 2001, but the government said the Louisiana zone was the only other possible habitat it could identify.

One small problem with Fish and Wildlife's decision: The land where the frog hadn't lived in more than 45 years had changed..............To Read More......

When 'reasonable' burdens aren't

November 27, 2018 By Gary M. Galles

While most eyes were on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination battle, the Supreme Court opened its term by hearing Weyerhaeuser v. Fish and Wildlife Services, a property rights case with substantial implications for Americans.

The case is an appeal of a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling for the government involving about a hundred remaining dusky gopher frogs in Mississippi. The Fish and Wildlife Service designated 1,500 acres of privately-owned land in Louisiana as critical habitat for the frog. But the frogs have not lived in Louisiana for 50 years. The location’s loblolly pines would need to be removed and replaced with longleaf pines, which require periodic burning. Yet Fish and Wildlife has decided that forcing the owner to forgo other profitable opportunities and adapt his land for the frog is “reasonable” without even conducting an environmental impact study.

The case focuses on the “reasonableness” of designating as “critical habitat” private land which is not currently suitable for the frogs but could be made so at some cost. (Essentially most ownership rights would be transferred to the frogs.) Justice Samuel Alito captured the issue well when he said, “The question is who is going to have to pay and who should pay for the preservation of this public good.”............ To Read More

My Take - Another federal agency that needs to be seriously rolled back or even better yet - eliminated!  This agency, along with the EPA, the Bureau of Land Management and other agencies  have done more to undermine Constitution rights than any reasonable person can find acceptable. 

Their actions, ignored by the Congress, promoted by almost every administration since 1960, heralded by a corrupt media, and enforced by a corrupt federal judiciary, clearly is a treasonous effort to destroy the Constitution by the leftists who've infested the federal government for over 100 years. 

Why is that so hard to grasp? 

Because it's was done slowly, and promoted to the public as being done to save the planet, and a large number of those involved are true believers failing to grasp the very real danger these agencies represent. 

Court rejects activists’ effort to over-criminalize Endangered Species Act

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D. November 8th, 2018 1 Comment @ CFACT

“Should a motorist who accidentally ends up with an endangered insect on his windshield while driving down the highway face criminal charges?”

The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) posed this question in explaining a recent little-noticed but important ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals. With an emphatic “no,” the court blocked an effort by WildEarth Guardians to expand prosecution under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to include accidental harm to a threatened or endangered species.

In WildEarth Guardians v. Department of Justice, the court upheld the feds’ longstanding position that limits prosecution under the ESA to those who knowingly harm or disturb a protected species. In the parlance of the ESA, it is a crime to “knowingly” “take” a protected species. The WildEarth Guardians’ suit, by contrast, sought to require defendants to know their actions, even if purely accidental, would cause a take of a protected species.

“The case was an unprecedented attempt to force federal prosecutors to bring criminal cases they have no desire to bring,” said Jonathan Woods, a PLF attorney. PLF represented the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association, the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau, and the New Mexico Federal Lands Council as intervenor-defendants in the case, which dates to 2013.

Not Facing Imprisonment for Accidentally Harming or Disturbing a Protected Species

By restoring the traditional interpretation of the ESA, the Ninth Circuit delivered a significant victory for PLF’s clients “and everyone else, for that matter,” Woods explained, “because they need no longer fear that they might accidentally get to close to a protected insect, spider, or rodent and face imprisonment for it.”

Readers may be surprised to learn that it was the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court that handed down such a far-reaching decision, one that went against an environmental group and upheld limitations to the ESA’s prosecutorial powers. The court has long been viewed as a friendly venue for plaintiffs pursuing left-wing causes.

But in this case, the Ninth Circuit, rather than rule on the substance of the suit, decided that WildEarth Guardians lacked standing to bring their challenge because they failed to show that overturning the traditional interpretation of the law would benefit any of the environmental interests the group cited in their suit. By deciding the case on standing, however, the court, according to PLF’s Woods, “has left open the possibility that the United States could change its interpretation or future lawsuits may force it to do so.”

The Extreme Theory Underlying the Lawsuit

Woods emphasizes just how extreme the theory behind the lawsuit was. He explains:

“If the lawsuit had succeeded, you could be locked up in a penitentiary for a year and fined $100,000 if you accidentally hit a rare rodent scurrying in front of your car on a dimly lit highway. You could suffer the same fate if you accidentally disturbed the wrong insect while building a tree house for your kids. You would even commit a serious crime if, someone else having run over a rare animal in front of your house, you moved it before your kids went out to play and were disturbed by it. Simply put, the lawsuit aimed to criminalize a wide range of ordinary and innocent acts simply because the person who committed them was unlucky enough to be near a threatened or endangered species.”

While welcoming the court’s decision, Woods believes “we’d all be a little safer if it has done so in recognition that the law does not permit criminal statutes to be stretched to reach innocent activities."

Ranchers Face Wolves at the Gate

Written byJames Murphy Monday, 01 October 2018

The Diamond M ranch sits on the Kettle River in northeast Washington State, close enough to the Canadian border that a well-thrown rock might hit a range-riding Mountie and cause an international incident. It is a frontiersman’s dream: acres of prairie surrounded by wooded areas with the pristine Kettle River flowing through the middle of it. It’s an idyllic rural place where rough-hewn cowboys, who love the land as if it were family, gently tend their cattle. It hardly seems the place for a thing as dirty as a political battle.

But a bloody political battle — complete with actual death threats — is exactly what the McIrvin and Hedrick families who ranch the land are embroiled in. They are engaged with people who care little for truth and care even less for freedom. Environmentalist mobsters have targeted the family business because, sometimes, necessary action entails thinning the wolf pack in a lethal manner. And when even a single wolf is killed, environmentalists go predictably insane.

“We get a lot of death threats. My wife had to stop answering the phone,” said Len McIrvin, the patriarch of the family that runs the Diamond M. “They say it would be better if you were dead than a wolf…. Another call comes in that said, ‘If you’d like your kids to come home on the school bus, you’d better leave the wolves alone.’”..........To Read More.....

First Yellowstone-area grizzly hunt in 40 years blocked by federal judge

By Laura Zuckerman, Reuters August 30, 2018

 

A federal judge in Montana on Thursday issued a court order temporarily blocking the first trophy hunts of Yellowstone-area grizzly bears in more than 40 years, siding with native American groups and environmentalists seeking to restore the animals' protected status.

 

The 14-day restraining order by U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen in Missoula, Montana, came two days before Wyoming and Idaho were scheduled to open licensed grizzly hunts allowing as many as 23 bears in the two states to be shot and killed for sport.

 

Groups opposing the hunts had sought a restraining order while waiting for the judge to rule on the larger question of whether the federal government should return Endangered Species Act safeguards to grizzlies in the greater Yellowstone region......To Read More....

 

My Take  - Another good reason for eliminating the Endangered Species Act. 

A double ban gets a double reversal

Interior Department reverses activist-initiated Obama-era ban on farming activities in refuges

Paul Driessen

I don’t pull my punches over destructive, inhumane or just plain lunatic policies demanded by extreme environmentalists. I criticize them, as well as friends and “good guys,” when I think they got it wrong on energy or environmental issues. I also offer praise when it is deserved.

When Department of the Interior (DOI) Secretary Ryan Zinke – whom I admire greatly – let a last-minute Obama endangered species designation for the “Rusty Patched Bumblebee” (RPB) take effect in March 2017, I faulted the decision (here and here). Now I want to praise his recent decision to reopen certain wildlife refuges to modern farming practices.

The RPB decision did the unthinkable. It gave Interior’s often hyper-activist U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) potential veto power over every farm operation, building project and land use decision across 378 million Eastern and Midwestern acres, the RPB’s (possible) erstwhile habitat. That’s equal to Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana combined!

All to “protect” a ground-nesting bee that provides minimal pollinating services, has supposedly been sighted” a number of times since 2000 in 13 states, has long been rare for multiple reasons, and got its “endangered” status due to an collusive sue-and-settle lawsuit between agitators and regulators.

This is the same FWS that told a timber company it had to create “potential” habitat on its land in Louisiana for a “dusky gopher frog” that has not been seen in the state for 33 years and could not survive on the 1,544 acres of company land selected by the FWS, because the chosen area did not offer essential habitat conditions. So Fish and Wildlife ordered the company to convert the land into “suitable” habitat, at company expense – after which the company could never cut trees in the area!

The RPB decision was particularly perilous for farmers because, just a few years earlier, the Service had eagerly negotiated yet another sue-and-settle style agreement with radical greens in the Center for Food Safety, to ban genetically engineered crops (aka GMOs) and neonicotinoid insecticides on the extensive lands the FWS leases to farmers in often enormous U.S. wildlife refuges.

The ban was issued without any public consultation or comment period. Worse, it was wholly at odds with USDA and EPA findings on the environmental safety of both GMOs and neonics. But it was a huge gift to activists who have been campaigning against those technologies for years. It set a dangerous precedent of basing government decisions on “precautionary” criteria, much like Europe’s wholly unscientific regulatory process, which is completely antithetical to the risk-based U.S. system.

The infinitely malleable “precautionary” pseudo-guideline says chemicals and other technologies should be restricted or banned if there is any possibility (or accusation by radical activists) that they could be harmful, even if no evidence-based cause-effect link can be shown.

Even worse, the “Precautionary Principle” only examines (often inflated) risks from using technologies that activists or regulators dislike. It never considers the risks of not using them – or risks that using them could reduce or eliminate. Just as perversely, anti-technology factions ignore or actively suppress evidence of harmful impacts from supposed alternatives – and from any technologies they support.

The European Union has formalize the Precautionary Principle as official policy. Regulators thus have carte blanche authority to take any action, at any time, no matter how arbitrary, based on the claim that sometime in the future, in ways not yet understood, something might possibly have a negative impact on people or the environment. Scientific evidence is not needed.

It’s an open door to regulation by activists who are experts at raising alarms and making claims of impending Armageddon unless a targeted technology is banned. Europe’s embrace of “precaution” in agricultural regulation is a major reason why the continent has become a net importer of food, despite having some of the most fertile land and predictably temperate weather in the world.

If this horrendous refuge precedent had stood, combined with the Endangered Species Act, it could have given a few USFWS activist regulators the power to micro-manage enormous swaths of the American public and private landmass, and large segments of the nation’s agricultural and construction economy.

Its impacts would have been felt almost as widely as the infamous “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule that presidential candidate Donald Trump vowed to kill and which the EPA under Scott Pruitt began to dismantle – or the even more insidious Paris climate treaty, which would have given international and United Nations climate alarmists control over the entire U.S. economy.

I’m therefore happy to note that Mr. Zinke Department has implemented a double reversal of the USFW double ban. In an August 2 memo, Interior again spelled out the need to raise crops in parts of wildlife refuges to provide food for people and forage for ducks, geese and other wildlife – and to note the important role that genetically engineered plants and neonics play in that effort.

Of course, the GMO-neonic ban never made an iota of scientific sense. Hundreds of government and independent studies – and decades of eating and other real-world experience – confirm that GMOs are as safe for human and animal consumption as the almost 100% of crops that have been genetically modified by traditional breeding … or by soaking seeds in harsh chemicals or bombarding them with radiation to cause multiple mutations, some desirable, others unknown, but just fine with organic food promoters.

Equally important, the massively funded environmentalist campaign against neonics was based heavily on the wholly fabricated “bee-pocalypse” scare of several years ago. As most people now know, honeybee populations have been rising the entire time since neonics were first used, and the problems honeybees had for several years were due to due to Varroa destructor mites and an assortment of bee diseases.

Anti-neonic agitation also ran headlong into EPA’s scientific risk assessments. Even amid the regulatory frenzy of the final Obama years, EPA could find no scientific reason to take away the long-standing approvals of these vital crop production tools, which target only insects that actually feed on crop plants.

Not surprisingly, though, once the honeybee-pocalypse was debunked, activists immediately switched gears to the equally fraudulent claim that wild bees are on the path to extinction – because of neonics, of course. However, wild bee problems are also almost entirely due to disease and long-term habitat loss.

The vast majority of wild bee species are “doing just fine,” prominent U.S. Geological Survey wild bee expert Sam Droege has noted. Even more telling, a recent global study of wild bees found that those which pollinate crops and thus come into most frequent contact with neonics are flourishing.

Greens have already announced they will sue to block the refuge decision, but that’s par for the course.

Secretary Zinke deserves high praise for starting to rein in USFWS’s regulatory power grab. However, it’s only a start. There’s much more left to do: at Interior, Agriculture, Energy and of course EPA.

Next up should be the Fish and Wildlife Service’s role in implementing the Endangered Species Act. Even if congressional attempts to rein in some of the worst abuses of the ESA finally succeed, after years of futility resulting from environmentalist intransigence, agency activists will find ways around them.

Mr. Zinke also deserves major kudos for pushing back on the nonsensical claim that 129 million dead trees in California, repeated conflagrations that completely wipe out wildlife habitats and species, over 700,000 once-Golden State acres burned so far this summer (Rhode Island plus Washington, DC), and 57 Californians killed by forest fires in two years – are due to that all-purpose villain: climate change.

As the Secretary makes clear, this horrific destruction is the result of near-criminal mismanagement of that state’s forests, at the behest of rabid greens who refuse to allow any timber harvesting anywhere. 

There’s an old saying that “personnel is policy.” Secretary Zinke next needs to replace DOI zealots with permanent, career service land and resource managers who can keep the eco-power-grabbers under control, by honestly, dispassionately and transparently applying evidence-based science to rulemaking.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and other books and articles on energy, climate change, economic development and human rights.