Let Me Tell You About the Boy Who Cried Wolf

By Rich Kozlovich

I know most have heard Aesop's fable about the boy who cried wolf, whose job it was to watch over the village sheep.  Apparently he found it boring.  So he thought it would  amusing to get everyone all excited and cried out,"Wolf! Wolf! The Wolf is chasing the sheep!" That of course got the villagers all worked up and they all ran up the hill only to find out...there was no wolf.....which amused the boy immensely.  

They warned him not to cry wolf when there's no wolf.  Which he ignored.  He was warned again and he ignored them again, and again until his cries became meaningless to the villagers, then a real wolf really did appeared and guess what?  It killed the sheep!   

What's the object of this story? 

Well, if your a conservative the object of that story is, no one believes a liar, even when they're telling the truth.   If you're a leftist the object of that story is, never tell the same lie twice. Leftists sort of take the view telling the truth is an excuse for a lack of imagination. 

And that's the crux of the matter, leftist keep telling the same lie over and over again, and darn few realize it. But understand this:  It really is a "singular lie".  In spite of that, and in spite of the fact everything they promote and everything they implement, mostly referred to as alternatives, ends up being disastrous society never seems to see, "the lie". 

• Green energy, a blatant failure, not to mention environmentally disastrous.   
• Electric cars, a blatant failure, not to mention environmentally disastrous.  
• Organic agriculture, a blatant failure, not to mention environmentally damaging. 

All predicated on Chicken Little claims of disaster. 

• Fifty years ago we were heading into a new massive Ice Age, and we all froze or starved to death.  Did you miss that?
• Fifty years ago Malthusians predicted our demise to starvation because we couldn't grow enough food for a growing world population.  And in 1970 it was claimed it was too late to fix it.  You missed that one also I assume.  And if we had adopted their "organic only" as the solution, the world would have starved.
  
• Of course, global warming has already destroyed the world.  Oh yes, that is if we were to believe what they said 25 years ago....we're all dead.  Oh, maybe you missed that too?  
• Then there was the claim we're running out of fossil fuels and need to go back to nature for the sake of future generations.  Well, every so often they come up with estimations of how much oil is left on the planet, and if we believed what they said in 1950 we ran out of oil over 60 years ago.  Did you miss that? 
• In reality we found and used billion of gallons more oil than they claimed we had and all the new estimations are much higher now than they predicted then.  And these new estimations will be wrong also.
  

These misfits have "cried wolf" over and over again, and yet, unlike the villagers in Aesop's fable, the world keeps falling for "the lie".  

Why?  

It's simple, the villagers were educated.  They knew the kid was a liar.  Today, we've been "educated" by a corrupt media, and corrupt government officials to believe these liars are telling the truth.  Many of whom tout PhD's, or have important positions in academia, industry, commence, industry trade associations and even the military.  Whether it's about the environment, the economy, public policy and even public health.  Even when there's more than enough evidence to show they're liars, con artists and charlatans, society falls for "the lie".

Why?

That's simple also.  Unless you've actually followed these misfits claims over the years, it doesn't appear they're telling the same lie over and over again, as a result society fails to see the pattern.  Fails to actually see there really is a "singular lie" being told.   So what's that "singular lie" everyone's missing and everyone absolutely needs to understand?  

"Give up your freedom, your land, your money, your families and give us the power to control every aspect of your life or you're doomed."

The specifics, the subjects and details are all immaterial.  Everything they say, everything they promote, everything they're trying to achieve is predicated on that one singular lie.  We really do need to get that.

Global Warming is the Mother of all Moral Panics!

by Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris | Jun 8, 2021 | Climate Change, Politics

 

In his newly published book, “Green Fraud,” Marc Morano, publisher of the influential Washington DC-based Climatedepot.com, explains, 

“Global warming hype and hysteria dominate the news media, academia, schools, the United Nations, and the U.S. government…School-skipping teen climate activists testify before the U.S. Congress and the United Nations, and young children are recruited for lawsuits against the U.S. government for its alleged climate ‘inaction.’ The phrase ‘climate emergency’ has emerged as the favorite for climate campaigners.

“But the arguments put forth by the global warming advocates grossly distort the true facts on a host of issues, ranging from rising sea levels and record temperatures to melting polar caps and disappearing polar bears.

“In fact, there is no ‘climate crisis’ or ‘climate emergency.’ The UN, climate activists, the media, and academia are using the climate scare as an opportunity to lobby for their alleged ‘solutions,’ which require massive government expansion and central planning.”

Early in the 20th century, the famous American journalist H.L. Mencken described what our nation is suffering through, perhaps now more than ever, when he said,

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamoring to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Human-caused climate change/global warming can be considered the mother of all hobgoblins.

Greta Thunberg, AOC, and countless others tell us it’s time to panic about climate change!

We actually think the opposite. It’s time to calm down.

What we’re concerned about is the distinct possibility that catastrophic man-caused climate change is now what sociologists call a “moral panic.” In other words, the panic surrounding climate change is far more dangerous than the issue itself.

It’s fascinating how human beings can whip themselves into a fervor over a supposed problem.

They don’t stop to consider the possibility that the problem is likely to be manageable. Or that the problem…may not even be a problem. It is just as British writer and publisher Tom Stacey explains in the “Prefatory Essay” to the late Professor Bob Carter’s 2013 book, 

“Catastrophilia is ever with us, accompanied by wild-eyed summons to action.”

As far back as the 16th Century, we had a moral panic in Europe, which led to the burning of thousands of innocent women claimed to be witches responsible for crop failures. The Friends of Science Society write: 

“’Weather Cooking’ was a crime that witches were accused of in the Medieval and Little Ice Age periods. When the weather got bad – it was clear to the ‘locals’ that someone had been up to something. So – witches were executed for ‘cooking’ bad weather.”

No one has been burned today, but careers by the scores have been destroyed for those in academia who admit to not believing humans control the thermostat of planet Earth. 

Let’s consider a couple of modern examples of moral panics that had huge costs in either funds wasted or lives lost (or both):

Y2K

When complicated computer programs were first written in the 60s, software designers used a two-digit code for the year, omitting the ‘19.’ As 2000 approached, the worry was that systems would not interpret the 00 properly, therefore causing major problems in the system.

In the late 1990s, nearly every tech expert agreed we needed to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to avoid a so-called ‘Millennium Bug,’ or Y2K catastrophe. The Orlando Sentinel reported: “The world spent an estimated $500 billion or so to keep the Y2K bug from supposedly throwing us back into the stone age.”

Despite that huge expenditure, we fell far short of fixing everything. Yet, on the morning of January 1, 2000, practically nothing happened.  Planes did not crash, trains did not collide, and life went on as normal. National Geographic explained:

“In the end, there were very few problems. In Ishikawa, Japan, a nuclear energy facility had some of its radiation equipment fail, but backup facilities ensured there was no threat to the public. The U.S. detected missile launches in Russia and attributed that to the Y2K bug. But the missile launches were planned ahead of time as part of Russia’s conflict in its republic of Chechnya. There was no computer malfunction.

“Countries such as Italy, Russia, and South Korea had done little to prepare for Y2K. They had no more technological problems than those countries, like the U.S., that spent millions of dollars to combat the problem.”

Sentinel Staff member Ramsey Campbell summed up the situation well (“EXPENSIVE Y2K BUG NIBBLED AWAY MILLIONS,” January 12, 2000):

“It was all a big fuss over nothing. It’s like that old joke about a gimmick for keeping elephants away: “There aren’t any elephants in Florida,” says one guy. “See – it works,” replies another.

“But that $500 billion did go somewhere…Somebody ought to make a movie about it. I already have the perfect title – Revenge of the Nerds: With a Vengeance.”

Fukushima

It has been almost a decade since a major earthquake, and a devastating tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. 

Approximately 160,000 people were evacuated from the Fukushima nuclear power plant area shortly after it was damaged by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami because of fear of radiation exposure. It is estimated that 1,600 people died prematurely from stress-related illness in the evacuation process. While there were indeed thousands of lives tragically lost due to the tsunami and subsequent pollution from wastewater, there was not a single case of radiation-induced illness or death due to escaped radiation. 

The UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation issued a press release two years later that said:

“Radiation exposure following the nuclear accident at Fukushima-Daiichi did not cause any immediate health effects. Eight years later, still, none have appeared. It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public and the vast majority of workers…To date, there have been no health effects attributed to radiation exposure observed among workers, the people with the highest radiation exposures.”

The ‘precautionary’ action, taken in response to hypothetical health risks, was more harmful than the risks themselves.

Moral Panics

Here’s what you need to know about moral panics. There are five defining elements: Concern, Consensus, Hostility, Disproportionality, and Volatility.

It begins when people become concerned about a problem that they believe threatens community interests. The danger of a changing climate meets that requirement.

A Consensus arises that there is an urgent crisis. This “consensus” is typically not real, just a manufactured perception. The absurd unsupportable claim that “97 percent” of scientists agree that burning fossil fuels is creating a climate catastrophe fits nicely as a moral panic phenomenon. The junior author of this article discussed this at The Heartland Institute’s rebuttal of the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit.

Anyone who disagrees with this so-called “consensus” is met with hostility, and more, as we said above. No better example is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island wanting dissenters imprisoned.

Sociologists call them folk devils, or in this case, ‘science deniers.’

The solution to the problem is Disproportionally out of scale with what is actually known.

Spending inconceivable amounts of money to change every aspect of how we live…yeah, that’s certainly disproportional.

And, finally, moral panics are typically volatile. They flare up but then go away pretty quickly. Have you heard anything about Y2K in recent years? This is where climate change doesn’t fit the model, and it seems clear why.

There is always a storm, drought, flood, record high, or even record low temperature in any given week. There’s always something an alarmist can point to and say, ‘see⏤climate change!’

It doesn’t matter⏤those weather extremes are a constant in nature……Or that there is no proof man’s activities are causing some extreme, unnatural variation. The panic has become familiar… and… predictably….valuable.

While there may be a legitimate cause for concern initially, the panic gets amplified by people and organizations capitalizing on the fear people feel.

The news media hypes the panic because exploiting fear and creating conflict is the foundation of their business model.

People who sell expertise or products designed to fix the problem encourage the hysteria.

Remember, during Y2K, lots of tech companies and software developers made a fortune.

Panic can be highly profitable.

Of course, those who seek power use the scare to seize as much as they can, as fast as they can. Consider how Governors and Premiers in the US and Canada jumped quickly to enforce draconian lockdowns across society, ruining small businesses and doing far more damage to the health and prosperity of their citizens than the Coronavirus likely ever could. Two papers that should be read by all politicians include:

• October 2020: “COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink,” by Dr. Ari Joffe, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton and a Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at University of Alberta; 
• April 2021: “Covid Lockdown Cost/Benefits: A Critical Assessment of the Literature,” by Professor Douglas W. Allen of the Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia.

Finally, this is the most important thing about many moral panics… those pushing the hysteria often have the same goal in mind. That goal is to create a compelling incentive for changes in public policy that favor those stoking fear. 

So, what do you think? Climate alarmists say there is no time for debate or private sector innovation. They assert that we must spend unfathomable amounts of money and blindly trust the politicians and bureaucrats who will spend it. We must sacrifice many freedoms… capitalism… even our way of life. We don’t know about you, but that’s what we’re concerned about. 

---

NOTE: We have Mark Mathis of the Clear Energy Alliance to thank for portions of this article. See Mark’s four-minute video on this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qesALW45okw.

Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

Dr. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute. He is an internationally renowned scientist, author, and speaker who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on environmental issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the national government and many foreign countries. After graduating from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological Engineering, he received the nation’s first Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition, and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute. He has 40 years experience as a mechanical engineer/project manager, science and technology communications professional, technical trainer, and S&T advisor to a former Opposition Senior Environment Critic in Canada’s Parliament.

Viewpoint: ‘Health impact of chemicals doubled in last 5 years’? Gullible media misreporting flawed studies mislead the public

Geoffrey Kabat | August 19, 2020

This article or excerpt is included in the GLP’s daily curated selection of ideologically diverse news, opinion and analysis of biotechnology innovation.  Plastics and pesticides: Health impacts of synthetic chemicals in US products doubled in last 5 years, study finds,” a July 22 CNN headline announced to the world. Referring to a paper recently published in the journal Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, the media outlet told its readers in no uncertain terms what’s at stake:

The proof is piling up: Many synthetic chemicals can harm your health and that of your children. Evidence has doubled in the last five years about the negative impact on our health of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in plastics, pesticides, flame retardants and other merchandise….

“It’s a global problem,” the paper’s senior author told CNN. “These are chemicals used in consumer products all across the world.”...............

In fact, the astounding claim that the “health impact of synthetic chemicals in US products” has doubled in the space of five years is in no way supported by the Lancet analysis. The media coverage of the paper, and indeed the paper itself, are part of a decades-long trend among some scientists and activists to amplify the risk of exposure to chemicals in consumer products far beyond what can be justified by the evidence..............

A key fact that the review authors failed to acknowledge anywhere in their paper is that most of the exposures reported in the studies they examined add up to trace amounts of the various compounds. That is, they can be detected with sophisticated analytical techniques but are below the level where they are likely to cause any harm.  This poses a problem for epidemiologic studies..........While focusing on trace chemical residues, studies investigating EDCs often fail to account for the many lifestyle factors that have documented health effects and are likely to dwarf the possible impacts of EDCs................

This conclusion deserves careful scrutiny for many reasons, the most important being that the Lancet review and the new JAMA Network Open study failed to acknowledge that BPA has been the subject of extensive, high-caliber research over the past two decades. This research has demonstrated that human exposure to BPA is extremely low and that the compound is efficiently metabolized and excreted in urine, even in infants. Furthermore, BPA’s estrogenic potency is orders of magnitude lower than that of the natural hormone estradiol.

In their introduction, the authors of the Lancet paper referred to DDT, an insecticide whose indiscriminate use following World War II gave rise to the environmental movement in the 1960s. But the DDT experience also provides a cautionary tale, which they failed to mention.
In 1993 an early epidemiologic study reported that, compared to women with relatively low blood levels of a DDT metabolite, women with relatively high levels had a three-fold increased risk of developing breast cancer. The results were widely publicized and generated intense concern among women. However, when a large number of further studies were done, their results consistently failed to support the existence of an association............To Read More....

Earth's Climate History: What the Doomsayers Don't Want Voters to Know

January 19, 2020 By John Eidson

Absent historical context, extreme weather can be overhyped in ways that lead uninformed voters to conclude that acts of God such as severe droughts and floods never happened before humans began using fossil fuels. In fact, extreme weather has occurred with monotonous regularity for millions of years.  Below is an infinitesimal sampling of the endless multitude of catastrophic weather events in Earth’s past, many of which occurred long before the Industrial Revolution..........What you’ve just read is a tiny slice of Earth’s turbulent climate history that global warming doomsayers hope voters will never know. And, because there’s an agenda behind climate hysteria that has nothing to do with “saving the planet” – I wrote about that agenda here  -- there’s not much they won’t do to truck voters to believe that global warming is causing the environment to fall apart at the seams. They even changed the name of the alleged threat.............To Read More.....

More Fake Five-Alarm Climate Crises from the Mainstream Media, the IPCC

By Paul Driessen | August 28, 2019

“Mainstream” news outlets have dutifully featured climate cataclysm claims that have no basis in reality.

Efforts to stampede the USA and world into forsaking fossil fuels and modern farming continue apace.

UN and other scientists recently sent out news releases claiming July 2019 was the “hottest month ever recorded on Earth” – nearly about 1.2 degrees C (2.2 degrees F) “above pre-industrial levels.” That era happens to coincide with the world’s emergence from the 500-year Little Ice Age. And “ever recorded” simply means measured; it does not include multiple earlier eras when Earth was much warmer than now.

Indeed, it is simply baseless to suppose that another few tenths of a degree (to 1.5 C above post-Little Ice Age levels) would somehow bring catastrophe to people, wildlife, agriculture and planet. It is equally ridiculous to assume all recent warming has been human-caused, with none of it natural or cyclical.

Moreover, as University of Alabama-Huntsville climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer has noted, this past July was most likely not the warmest. The claim, he notes, is based on “a fairly limited and error-prone array of thermometers which were never intended to measure global temperature trends.”

The measurements come primarily from airports and urban areas that are artificially warmed by cars, jets, asphalt, air conditioning exhausts and other human heat sources that warm the measuring sites as much as ten degrees F above temperatures in rural areas just 10 to 25 miles away. They do not reflect satellite data or “global reanalysis” estimates that would give a much more accurate picture.

The “hottest month” assertions also ignore major changes in measurement technologies, especially for ocean data, over the past 100-150 years. Perhaps most important, they ignore the paucity or absence of data for millions of square miles of oceanic, Siberian, Arctic and other regions, many of which have much cooler temperatures that would drive average planetary temperature figures downward. (And let’s not forget the record cold temperatures recorded for February 2019 in many parts of the world.)

The news media, however, dutifully repeated the spurious hottest-ever assertion as fact – and made no effort to seek out or quote skeptical experts like Spencer. Far worse, most of the experts who developed and propagated the overheated planet claims know all of this. But they have a narrative, an agenda, and are not going to let inconvenient facts get in the way. The “mainstream media” behaves similarly.

Then, a few days later, the same doom-saying “experts” issued dire warnings that global agriculture is on the brink of disaster. A “landmark report” by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said our dangerously warming planet is continuing to damage lands and forests, imperiling mankind’s ability to produce food. Climate change has become a growing danger to global food supplies, it intoned.

Prolonged rains well into the 2019 Midwestern U.S. spring season certainly delayed planting and could affect 2019 corn and other harvests. However, bumper crops elsewhere in the world cast serious doubt on this latest round of IPCC and media fear-mongering.

India’s rabi (winter) wheat crop weighed in at an official record of 101.2 million tons. Near-record corn (maize) exports and sunflower seed harvests were forecast for Ukraine. In Argentina, wheat farmers expect a record harvest – and in Crimea too. The Canadian National Railway logged all-time grain movement records. The USDA’s October 2018 Crop Report showed record northern USA canola production.

 Better hybrid seeds, biotech seeds, and modern fertilizers, pesticides, tractors and farming practices all played a role, as did weather that cooperated with farmers, if not with climate alarmists. However, another major factor is more carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere – which helps crop, forest and grassland plants grow faster and better, and also withstand droughts better. In fact, Dr. Craig Idso has estimated, rising CO2 levels generated some $3.2 trillion in cumulative extra global crop yields between 1961 and 2011, and another $9.8 trillion in predicted CO2-enhanced global crop harvests by 2050.

And now, in a bout of schizophrenia, the IPCC has further muddled its climate chaos message. Now it claims modern agriculture and forest industries are “victims” of climate change. They also cause climate chaos and must thus be part of “the solution.” Agriculture is responsible for over a quarter of total global greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide and methane), and therefore must change its practices to save the world.

Plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide is 0.04 percent of the atmosphere, and methane represents 0.00017 percent – of which one-third is from natural sources (termites, swamps and bogs) and two-thirds from human activities: 39 percent of that from fossil fuels, 16 percent from landfills, 9 percent from waste management and 27 percent from farms.

In other words, agricultural methane could possibly be 27 percent of two-thirds of 0.00017 percent of atmospheric methane (CH4) – and that barely detectable 0.00003 percent (30¢ out of $1-million) of the atmosphere is supposedly driving dangerous manmade climate change. And based on that, we must change our farming and eating habits.

Instead of beef, humans must switch to nutritious and environmentally sound alternatives like green pepper, soy, asparagus and squash, says the IPCC. Instead of the full package of beef, pork and poultry, we should eat buckwheat, soy, pears and kidney beans – or other “globally optimal plant replacements.” Of course, locusts, grasshoppers, grubs and other insects are also excellent protein sources, it notes.

The 20,000-some activists, bureaucrats and politicians heading to Salt Lake City for the August 26-28 UN climate change and sustainability conference will no doubt be following that sage advice. (Perhaps they’ll share their menu and Bugs Not Beef recipes.) They could also have had a global teleconference, instead of flying and driving halfway around the world – instead of spending millions of dollars, consuming millions of gallons of aviation and vehicle fuel, and emitting prodigious quantities of CO2 and CH4.

But they’re much more comfortable lecturing the hoi polloi of humanity on how we must travel, eat, and heat and cool our homes (no cooler than a comfortable 82 F in summer, say EPA-Energy Star experts) in more sustainable and climate friendly ways. UN elites much prefer to tell the poorest people on the planet how much they will be permitted to develop and improve their living standards.

Dangerous manmade climate change deniers like me were of course not invited to participate in this taxpayer-financed UN event. We never are. So the Heartland Institute organized a separate August 26 program nearby, at which alternative evidence and perspectives were presented and live-streamed.

Heartland speakers will explain why climate change is some 97 percent natural, not manmade (contrary to that supposed, and phony, 97 percent consensus that says otherwise); and why real-world evidence does not support IPCC claims about dangerously rising seas, increasingly violent storms or worsening droughts. My talk focusrf on why biofuel, wind, solar and battery technologies are not clean, green, renewable or sustainable.

I point out, for example, that replacing 100 percent of U.S. gasoline with ethanol would require some 360 million acres of corn – seven times the land area of Utah. Replacing the more than 25 billion megawatt-hours of electricity the world consumed in 2018 would require some 100 million 400-foot-tall 1.8-MW bird and bat-butchering wind turbines that would actually generate electricity only about 20 percent of the time.

Assuming just 15 acres apiece, those monster turbines would require some 1.5 billion acres – nearly 80 percent of the entire Lower 48 United States! And those wind turbines would need some 200 times more raw materials per megawatt than combined-cycle gas turbine power plants. Building and installing them would require massive increases in mining and quarrying all across the globe.

The UN and IPCC delegations and Green New Dealers absolutely do not want to talk about any of this – much less about slave and child labor for cobalt, rare earth and other metals that are the foundation for their make-believe renewable, sustainable, no-fossil-fuel future. No wonder they don’t invite us.

These are vitally important issues. They demand robust, evidence-based debates – with all interested and affected parties participating – including the world’s poor and manmade climate chaos skeptics.

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

More Five-Alarm Crises from the IPCC

By Paul Driessen

Efforts to stampede the USA and world into forsaking fossil fuels and modern farming continue apace.

UN and other scientists recently sent out news releases claiming July 2019 was the “hottest month ever recorded on Earth” – nearly about 1.2 degrees C (2.2 degrees F) “above pre-industrial levels.” That era happens to coincide with the world’s emergence from the 500-year Little Ice Age. And “ever recorded” simply means measured; it does not include multiple earlier eras when Earth was much warmer than now.

Indeed, it is simply baseless to suppose that another few tenths of a degree (to 1.5 C above post-Little Ice Age levels) would somehow bring catastrophe to people, wildlife, agriculture, and the planet. It is equally ridiculous to assume all recent warming has been human-caused, with none of it natural or cyclical.

Moreover, as the University of Alabama-Huntsville climate scientist, Dr. Roy Spencer has noted, this past July was most likely not the warmest. The claim, he notes, is based on “a limited and error-prone array of thermometers which were never intended to measure global temperature trends.”

 

The measurements come primarily from airports and urban areas that are artificially warmed by cars, jets, asphalt, air conditioning exhausts and other human heat sources that warm the measuring sites as much as ten degrees F above temperatures in rural areas just 10 to 25 miles away. They do not reflect satellite data or “global reanalysis estimates” that would give a much more accurate picture.

The “hottest month” assertions also ignore major changes in measurement technologies, especially for ocean data, over the past 100-150 years. Perhaps most important, they ignore the paucity or absence of data for millions of square miles of oceanic, Siberian, Arctic and other regions, many of which have much cooler temperatures that would drive “average planetary temperature” figures downward. (And let’s not forget the record cold temperatures recorded for February 2019 in many parts of the world.)

The news media, however, dutifully repeated the spurious hottest-ever assertion as fact – and made no effort to seek out or quote skeptical experts like Spencer. Far worse, most of the experts who developed and propagated the “overheated planet” claims know all of this. But they have a narrative, an agenda, and are not going to let inconvenient facts get in the way. The “mainstream media” behaves similarly.

 

Then, a few days later, the same doom-saying “experts” issued dire warnings that global agriculture is on the brink of disaster. A “landmark report” by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said our dangerously warming planet is continuing to damage lands and forests, imperiling mankind’s ability to produce food. Climate change has become a growing danger to global food supplies, it intoned.

Prolonged rains well into the 2019 Midwestern US spring season certainly delayed planting and could affect 2019 corn and other harvests. However, bumper crops elsewhere in the world cast serious doubt on this latest round of IPCC and media fear-mongering.

India’s rabi (winter) wheat crop weighed in at an official record of 101.2 million tons. Near-record corn (maize) exports and sunflower seed harvests were forecast for Ukraine. In Argentina, wheat farmers expect a record harvest. In Crimea too. The Canadian National Railway logged all-time grain movement records. The USDA’s October 2018 Crop Report showed record northern USA canola production.

 

Better hybrid seeds, biotech seeds, and modern fertilizers, pesticides, tractors, and farming practices all play a role, as did weather that cooperated with farmers, if not with climate alarmists. However, another major factor is more carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere – which helps crop, forest, and grassland plants grow faster and better and also withstand droughts better. In fact, Dr. Craig Idso has estimated, rising CO2 levels generated some $3.2 trillion in cumulative extra global crop yields between 1961 and 2011 and another $9.8 trillion in predicted CO2-enhanced global crop harvests by 2050.

 

And now, in a bout of schizophrenia, the IPCC has further muddled its climate chaos message. Now it claims modern agriculture is not just a “victim of climate change.” It also causes climate chaos and must thus be part of “the solution.” Agriculture is responsible for over a quarter of total global greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide and methane), and therefore must change its practices “to save the world.”

Plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide is 0.04% of the atmosphere, and methane represents 0.00017% – of which one-third is from natural sources (termites, swamps and bogs) and two-thirds from human activities: 39% of that from fossil fuels, 16% from landfills, 9% from waste management and 27% from farms.

In other words, agricultural methane could possibly be 27% of two-thirds of 0.00017% of atmospheric methane (CH4) – and that barely detectable 0.00003% (30¢ out of $1-million) of the atmosphere is driving dangerous manmade climate change. Based on that, we must change our farming and eating habits.

Instead of beef, humans must switch to “nutritious and environmentally sound” alternatives like green pepper, soy, asparagus and squash, says the IPCC. Instead of the full package of beef, pork and poultry, we should eat buckwheat, soy, pears and kidney beans – or other “globally optimal plant replacements.” Of course, locusts, grasshoppers, grubs and other insects are also excellent protein sources, it notes.

The 20,000-some activists, bureaucrats and politicians heading to Salt Lake City for the August 26-28 UN climate change and sustainability conference will no doubt be following that sage advice. (Will they share their menu and veggie-insect recipes with us?) They could also have had a global teleconference, instead of flying and driving halfway around the world – instead of spending millions of dollars, consuming millions of gallons of aviation and vehicle fuel, and emitting prodigious quantities of CO2 and CH4.

But they’re much more comfortable lecturing the hoi polloi of humanity on how we must travel, eat, and heat and cool our homes (no cooler than a comfortable 82 F in summer, say EPA-Energy Star experts) in more sustainable and climate-friendly ways. UN elites much prefer to tell the poorest people on the planet how much they will be “permitted” to develop and improve their living standards.

 

Dangerous manmade climate change “deniers” like me were of course not invited to participate in this taxpayer-financed UN event. We never are. So the Heartland Institute organized a separate program, a few blocks away, at which alternative evidence and perspectives will be presented and live-streamed.

Heartland speakers will explain why climate change is some 97% natural, not manmade (contrary to that phony 97% consensus that says otherwise); and why real-world evidence does not support IPCC claims about dangerously rising seas, increasingly violent storms or worsening droughts. My talk will focus on why biofuel, wind, solar and battery technologies are not clean, green, renewable or sustainable.

I will point out for example that replacing 100% of US gasoline with ethanol would require some 360 million acres of corn – seven times the land area of Utah. Replacing the more than 25billion megawatt-hours of electricity the world consumed in 2018 would require some 100 million 400-foot-tall 1.8-MW bird and bat-butchering wind turbines that would actually generate electricity only about 20% of the time.

Assuming just 15 acres apiece, those monster turbines would require some1.5 billion acres – nearly 80% of the entire Lower 48 United States! And those wind turbines would need some 200 times more raw materials per megawatt than combined-cycle gas turbine power plants. Building and installing them would require massive increases in mining and quarrying all across the globe.

The UN and IPCC delegations and Green New Dealers absolutely do not want to talk about any of this – much less about slave and child labor for cobalt, rare earth, and other metals that are the foundation for their make-believe “renewable, sustainable, no-fossil-fuel” future. No wonder they don’t invite us.

These are vitally important issues. They demand robust, evidence-based debates – with all interested and affected parties participating – including the world’s poor and manmade climate chaos skeptics.

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

                

Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death

By Paul Driessen (Hardcover - Mar 15, 2006)

$21.78$41.50

Rated 4 out of 5 by 19 reviewers on Amazon.com

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Delingpole: My Solution to Climate Change? Eat Prince Charles

James Delingpole 12 Jul 2019 @ Breitbart.com

The Prince of Wales has warned global leaders that if we don’t tackle climate change in 18 months the human race will go extinct.

The Prince of Wales has warned global leaders that if we don’t tackle climate change in 18 months the human race will go extinct.

I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival.

OK. So assuming, for a moment, that the Prince of Wales isn’t just spouting gibberish, what kind of measures might we need to adopt in the next 18 months to “keep climate change to survivable levels”?

Happily, we have a good idea courtesy of Lord Deben, chairman of the government’s Climate Change Committee. Writing in the Prince of Wales’s favourite magazine Country Life, he says:

It simply demands that we live more sustainably – that we stop wasting water, become really energy efficient, cut food waste, eat 20 percent less meat, take all our energy from renewable sources and ensure our homes are properly insulated and ventilated.

That word “simply” is doing a lot of work there.

If you’re a carnivore like me, for example, you might not take too kindly to the notion that some dodgy peer who has made at least part of his fortune by promulgating green hysteria has the right to issue directives on how many bacon sarnies or burgers you can reasonably consume per week.

But I have an even bigger red flag waving over that glib suggestion that we should “take all our energy from renewable sources”.

All of it? Really??

The late Professor David Mackay, a Cambridge engineer and chief scientist at the UK government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change once looked at what decarbonising the economy by going 100 per cent renewable might look like for the British landscape. Needless to say, it wasn’t pretty.

It would involve:

Building 61,000 wind turbines. 

Covering 5 per cent of the UK landmass — the equivalent of Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire, Lancashire, and Staffordshire combined — with solar arrays. (That would be 100 x more solar PV than his been installed in the whole world to date.) 

Damming most of the rivers in the West Highlands of Scotland to generate hydropower. 

Building huge barrages across rivers such as the Severn, destroying intertidal mud flats and devastating bird and fish species. 

Using the entirety of Britain’s agricultural land to grow biofuels.

David Mackay was by no means a climate change sceptic. But he was honest enough a scientist to be able to tell his government employers what they didn’t want to hear: that the idea that the UK could power itself by 100 per cent renewable energy was an “appalling delusion”.

Building 61,000 wind turbines.
Covering 5 per cent of the UK landmass — the equivalent of Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire, Lancashire, and Staffordshire combined — with solar arrays. (That would be 100 x more solar PV than his been installed in the whole world to date.)
Damming most of the rivers in the West Highlands of Scotland to generate hydropower.
Building huge barrages across rivers such as the Severn, destroying intertidal mud flats and devastating bird and fish species.
Using the entirety of Britain’s agricultural land to grow biofuels.

David Mackay was by no means a climate change sceptic. But he was honest enough a scientist to be able to tell his government employers what they didn’t want to hear: that the idea that the UK could power itself by 100 per cent renewable energy was an “appalling delusion”.

Though it’s claimed that 14 per cent of the world’s energy is renewable, this is misleading. The majority of this — three quarters — comes from burning what is euphemistically called ‘biomass” — most of it what you and I call wood.

In other words the environmental movement is claiming as a triumph something that actually is a disaster: millions of people in the Third World are still reliant on the same inefficient, environmentally destructive, health-damaging energy technology that was used by cavemen.

As for wind turbines — ugly and seemingly ubiquitous a nuisance though they are — these currently provide less than one per cent of global energy.

Global energy demand, meanwhile, has been growing at about two per cent per year for the last 40 years. So, just to provide sufficient wind power to cover that increase in demand, how many wind turbines would need to be built?

Matt Ridley answers that question here:

If wind turbines were to supply all of that growth but no more, how many would need to be built each year? The answer is nearly 350,000, since a two-megawatt turbine can produce about 0.005 terawatt-hours per annum. That’s one-and-a-half times as many as have been built in the world since governments started pouring consumer funds into this so-called industry in the early 2000s.
At a density of, very roughly, 50 acres per megawatt, typical for wind farms, that many turbines would require a land area [half the size of] the British Isles, including Ireland. Every year. If we kept this up for 50 years, we would have covered every square mile of a land area [half] the size of Russia with wind farms. Remember, this would be just to fulfil the new demand for energy, not to displace the vast existing supply of energy from fossil fuels, which currently supply 80 per cent of global energy needs.

Apart from the obvious visual blight, the environmental cost of building so many wind turbines would be enormous.

As Andrew Montford notes in a report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation called Green Killing Machines, nothing damages the environment quite like a wind farm.

The impact on bats is thought to be particularly serious, with turbines causing pressure waves that make their lungs implode. One recent study raised the possibility that whole populations of some bat species might be threatened. Birds, and particularly raptors, may collide with turbines: direct collision might cause 20 avian fatalities per turbine per year although considerably higher numbers have been mooted.

By coincidence, yesterday I found myself driving past the Prince of Wales’s country house near Tetbury in the Cotswolds, a strong competitor for the most beautiful area of England.

I drove through valley after valley of idyllic, unspoiled countryside, interrupted only by the occasional chocolate box village of honey-coloured stone with ducks and moorhens being photographed by Chinese tourists who clearly couldn’t believe somewhere quite so perfect-looking could actually exist.

This is the kind of place where you choose to live if, like the Prince of Wales, you are very, very rich. His net worth has been estimated at around $400 million — not unusual for a climate change alarmist.

From multimillionaire Leo Di Caprio to multimillionaire Al Gore, multimillionaire Sir David Attenborough to multimillionaire Tom Steyer, from multimillionaire Sir Richard Branson to multimillionaire Emma Thompson, environmentalism is a hugely attractive religion which enables you to achieve two perfectly wonderful things simultaneously.

First, it enables you to parade your moral virtue by showing that even though you are disgustingly rich you are still in fact an incredibly caring person.

Second, it means you can lecture the revolting lower orders on how they should live their lives and you can campaign to make everything more expensive and miserable for them, as Sir David Attenborough did earlier this week when he urged that air tickets should be hiked up. Obviously, people like Attenborough will go on flying regardless because they’ll still be able to afford it whatever environmental levies are imposed. But stopping other people from doing it will mean that airports and holiday destinations will be less crowded, just as Mother Gaia intended.

Anyway, as I drove through Prince of Wales country, marvelling at the deliciousness of the views, I wondered how many of the people living on the gorgeous private estates in which the Cotswolds abounds share Prince Charles’s views on the environment. Quite a few I suspect. I know of one super-rich hedge fund manager who has donated to Extinction Rebellion, for example, which strikes me as a classic example of the cognitive dissonance to which the super-rich seem prey. On the one hand they are clever enough and, presumably, capable of sufficient due diligence to have been able to have made vast fortunes; on the other, all their powers of discernment, intelligence and research appear to have left them when it comes to the issue of climate change.

How are we going to get it into their thick, overprivileged heads that the Net Zero carbon dioxide by 2050 targets for which they are so passionately advocating will destroy everything they hold dear?
They’ll only learn, I think, when they finally get what it is they’ve been asking for:

Piles of shredded raptors landing with a thud on the estates around Balmoral, sliced and diced by wind turbines. 

Solar farms and wind farms obliterating every last stretch of the Cotswolds. 

Wading birds driven forever out of the Severn Estuary by a tidal barrier. 

Their cleaning ladies, gardeners, and grooms turning up to work in tears because their parents have just frozen to death in fuel poverty.

They won’t like it. But by then it will be far too late.

‘Children killer’ glyphosate found in Cheerios? Experts dismantle Environmental Working Group’s herbicide food residue study

Cameron English, Jon Entine | June 17, 2019

Last week, on June 12 2019, the organic industry-funded Environmental Working Group (EWG) issued a news release that claimed, “Major food companies like General Mills continue to sell popular children’s breakfast cereals and other foods contaminated with troubling levels of glyphosate, the cancer-causing ingredient in the herbicide Roundup.”

EWG’s announcement is the third of its kind focusing on the alleged dangers of glyphosate residues in our food. It was immediately trumpeted by fringe activist groups—that’s par for the course—but was also covered, almost entirely uncritically, by mainstream sources, such as CNN:

What’s the news here?

Like its predecessors, released in July and October 2018, this EWG ‘study’ was based on a “round of tests” that was not peer reviewed by independent experts. Its scientists claimed that they found dozens of instances in which food it tested did not pass its “children’s health benchmark” for assessing potential exposure level hazards.

EWG did not mention that its ‘benchmark’ is entirely made up, has no clear scientific basis and is at odds with historically established and globally recognized benchmarks used by regulators in every country. The EWG “safety threshold” is 100 times lower than even the most conservative cut-off established by oversight agencies around the world, including the EPA. Curiously but not surprisingly considering EWG’s historical willingness to distort science, the threshold it settled upon just ‘happens’ to coincide with the infinitesimally trace amounts of glyphosate it found on Cheerios. ............To Read More....

Endocrine Disruption Is A Medieval Spell in the Hands of Environmentalists

By Rich Kozlovich

The Federal Environmental Protection Agency is back on the endocrine disruption (ED) bandwagon and it's important we understand the history of this issue in order to make sure more "new" science on ED's isn't being made up as was the "old" science on ED's. Truth is the sublime convergence of history and reality - unless you're the EPA - then truth is meaningless. We need to get that.

In chapter one of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring she talks about some community where "a strange blight" crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community".

Then she claims there were all sorts of maladies sickening and even killing the sheep, chickens, cattle, unexplained deaths among children and adults who would suddenly sicken and die....and the birds disappeared....and the people had done it to themselves. There was only one problem with this story. That town didn't exist! She even says it doesn't exist! Then goes on to claim some of these things are happening in a lot of communities - somewhere. Yet she conveniently fails to give a name even one of those cities or towns. Why? Because these communities didn't exist!

Reality and green speculatory scare mongering rarely have anything in common, and time is the great leveler of truth. As the cancer scare was running out of steam, environmentalists needed a new voodoo scare. Endocrine disruption was just the thing. The National Academy of Science more accurately refers to them as hormonally active agents" (HAAs), a term that's bound to generate anxiety.

A 1996 book called Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival?--A Scientific Detective Story, caught the public's attention, especially when they called these chemical "environmental estrogens".........[that] disrupted normal hormonal processes, even at low exposure levels generally accepted as safe." According to the book mankind's future was in serious jeopardy because ED' s were going to impact our fertility, intelligence, cause attention deficit disorder and even jeopardize our survival.

According to Geoffrey C. Kabat in his book Getting Risk Right, "hormones are chemical messengers secreted by ductless glands and travel through the blood stream to affect distant organs. Hormones play a role in orchestrating the body's growth, maintaining physiologic balance, and sexual functioning and development." "Once secreted a hormone must be transported via the blood stream to the target organ by a carrier protein. Once ether it binds to a receptor and the hormone-reception unit binds to a specific region of a cell's DNA to activate particular genes."

As Michael Fumento noted in his paper " Hormonally Challenged": "Virtually any real or possible human or animal health problem may be blamed on these chemicals, including cancer, birth defects, falling sperm counts, lesbian seagulls (giving rise to the term "gender benders" for HAAs), and alligators with shrunken members", impacting all life like some medieval witch's spell in a Brothers Grimm fairy tale instead of science.

In comes Steven F. Arnold of the Tulane University Center for Bioenvironmental Research who along with his gang published a study in June of 1996 "claiming that combinations of pesticides and PCBs were up to 1,000 times more potent as endocrine disruptors than the individual chemicals alone."

Carol Browner - head of EPA at the time - declared: "The new study is the strongest evidence to date that combinations of estrogenic chemicals may be potent enough to significantly increase the risk of breast cancer, prostate cancer, birth defects and other major health concerns." She went on to say: "I was astounded by the findings. Dr. Lynn Goldman, EPA pesticide chief, claimed "I just can't remember a time where I've seen data so persuasive … The results are very clean looking."

But time - the great leveler of truth - once again came into play. According the journal Science, Arnold was found to have "committed scientific misconduct by intentionally falsifying the research results published in the journal Science and by providing falsified and fabricated materials to investigating officials." It was also found "there is no original data or other corroborating evidence to support the research results and conclusions reported in the Science paper as a whole."

Steve Milloy noted: "by August 1997, Arnold was forced to retract his study from publication. His retraction stated, "We … have not been able to reproduce the results we reported." He later added, "I can't really explain the original findings."'

Six months after the Food Quality Protection Act was enacted (which required the EPA to identify chemicals which were HAA's) it was reported there wasn't a lab anywhere in the world that could replicate the Tulane study, and it was then formally withdrawn. Now we know why — he cheated. The penalty imposed on Arnold was a five-year ban from federal grants. Although a lifetime ban and perhaps even criminal prosecution would have been more appropriate — after all, he was found guilty of "intentionally falsifying" taxpayer-funded research".

He wasn't alone by the way, there's the hermaphrodite frog study and the small phallus alligator study, but space makes it impossible to discuss them all.

Yet the endocrine disruption component of the FQPA remains requiring the EPA to identify chemicals which are considered HAA's. In 2001 they were spending 10 million dollars a year attempting to meet that requirement. But they've had trouble declaring chemicals as HAA’s. Why?

Well there's that time as the great leveler of truth problem.

I've followed this issue from the beginning and I knew the problem they were having was - and still is - separating the ED potential of synthetic chemicals versus those which are naturally occurring. And that's the rub.

In his book The Really Inconvenient Truths Iain Murray states:

"The entire theory that industrialization is causing severe endocrine disruption falls completely apart when exposures to naturally occurring endocrine modulators are taken into account. Plants naturally produce endocrine modulators called "phytoestrogens" to which human being are expose at levels that are thousands and sometimes millions of time higher than those of synthetic chemicals. Humans consume these chemicals every day without adverse effects some even contend these chemicals promote good health."

He goes on to say:

"Laboratory experiments have shown that there are so-called "endocrine disruptors" present in forty-three different foods common in the human diet, including corn, garlic, pineapple, potatoes, and wheat. Most amusingly, soybean, that product so beloved by liberal environmentalists, is a particularly potent source of phytoestrogens"....."it appears that on average human beings consume just over 100 micrograms of estrogen equivalents a day from natural sources. Compare that to the amount of industrial chemical amount of 2.5 micrograms."

He also notes:

"As it turns out phytoestrogens are actually much more potent than the chemicals that act like estrogens. Our friend DDT, for instance, has a relative potency to natural estrogen of 0.000001, meaning it takes one million molecules to have the same impact of one molecule of real estrogen."

And what is the most potent ED the public is exposed to? Oral contraceptives! And that number is massive. Oral contraceptives are the most potent ED in the nation's waterways today. But EPA only screen and test pesticide chemicals, commercial chemicals and environmental contaminants because they claim pharmaceutical regulation is a Food and Drug Administration concern. That's an easy way for the EPA to avoid facing the fact if they "compared contraceptives and phytoestrogens these two sources would dwarf the impact of pesticides."

Solution? Repeal or seriously revise the Food Quality Protection Act, which has nothing to do with food, protection or quality. But it has had a great deal to do with creating the national bed bug plague.    And that really is a Medieval curse. 

Dear EWG, Cinnamon Rolls Aren't Toxic

By Ana-Marija Dolaskie — June 2, 2017

 

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) loves ratings and listicles. Just take a look at their recent guide to the best and worst sunscreens, or their list of top pesticides consumers should avoid. But they must not love delicious baked goods, since they also go after cinnamon rolls, muffins, and donuts — and the supposed culprit isn't new nor surprising.

This time, the EWG zeroed-in on propyl parabens — derivatives of p-hydroxybenzoate — which they claim act as endocrine disrupters in humans. Endocrine disrupters is a term often used by activists when concrete scientific data fails to show a connection between chemicals and toxicity or carcinogens. The EWG even gives a detailed list of food items that contain propyl parabens, like Sara Lee's cinnamon rolls, Weight Watchers' cakes, and Weis' chocolate candies. In fact, the list is about the only thing they got right in their campaign since propyl parabens indeed are present in these foods. And for good reason.......To Read More.....

Dear EWG, Why Are You Shaking Down Companies to Get on Your 'Verified' List?

By Josh Bloom — June 1, 2017
 

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. This holds true for individuals, companies, and NGOs. Let's focus on the Environmental Working Group. Although their science is generally appalling, they sure have marketing down to an art. 

This can, in no way, be more apparent than the group's new program (scam?), which is called EWG Verified™. It's actually very clever. Let's say that you own a company whose label doesn't contain the names of enough scary sounding ingredients that are not in that product. Then how will you get people will pay extra (for no good reason) to buy what you're selling? How can you step it up? Pay off EWG, and the next thing you know—bang! You're on their list of "verified products." Cool! And if you don't, well, then you're hosed. Because you and all of the other companies that sell stuff that isn't EWG Verified™ are going to look like you're putting Sarin gas in the mouthwash. EWG is nothing if not consistent. If you look at the ingredients on it "EWG Unacceptable List," pretty much all of them either 1) cause cancer, or 2) are endocrine disruptors. .....To Read More....

It's World Homeopathy Week! All 8 Days of It

By Josh Bloom — April 10, 2017

Every now and then, people screw up. Who amongst us has never made a mistake? Even the American Council gets it wrong now and then. Yet, we are nothing if not humble. Since it's World Homeopathy Week, this provides the prefect opportunity for some self reflection and humility. Is it possible that we have been unfairly criticizing homeopathy and homeopaths all this time?

In the interest of keeping an open mind, I decided to search for evidence that might indicate that I may have been wrong all along. It was a humbling experience, but I'm glad I did it. I feel so...... cleansed. I was dumbfounded by what has been in front of my face all this time that I failed to see. Clearly, I was so arrogant and unshakeable in my belief system of traditional science that I did not give homeopathy the respect that it deserves. I feel shamed.

So, the very least I can do to atone for my sins is to present some of what I uncovered during my journey toward self-enlightenment. The evidence speaks for itself...........

Test subject #1, the (dis)honorable Mike Adams, did respond in a manner that was consistent with homeopathic science......To Read More...

Editor's Note: Mike Adams styles himself the Health Ranger.

The chemicals anxiety machine

Candidates, Civil Rights Commission and greens use phony health threats to scare voters

Paul Driessen

Rank politics and baseless health scares are driving anxiety, North Carolina election campaigns, civil rights claims and plans for class action lawsuits, all of which could bring electricity rate hikes that will cause real job, health and civil rights problems for families – for no health or environmental benefits.

As I noted in an earlier article, North Carolina state toxicologist Ken Rudo has publicly disagreed with the US Environmental Protection Agency and other NC “tox” experts, who say levels of chromium-6 detected in some NC waters are safe. The contaminant comes from coal ash deposits and other sources.

Not surprisingly, Erin Brockovich has sided with Dr. Rudo. She became rich and famous by promoting “toxic chromium” scares, co-authored a recent letter with the radical Environmental Working Group raising Cr-6 alarms, and will speak on election eve at Catawba College in NC to stir things up still further.

The issue is also playing prominently in the NC gubernatorial campaign. Democrat candidate Roy Cooper says well water is unsafe and is hammering the Duke Energy power company for creating the deposits and sitting Governor Pat McCrory (who once worked for Duke) for rescinding a “do not drink” order.

Not to be outdone, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) claims chromium-6 is seeping out of ash deposits, contaminating drinking water supplies and “disproportionately affecting” minority families. Communities near “waste disposal” and “industrial” facilities have “extremely high” rates of cancer, heart and other health issues, a Commission report asserts, lumping those facilities in with coal ash sites.

The contaminants get into well water, drinking water, and even “recreational waters” that are “heavily used for fishing, boating and swimming,” the Commission report states. The problem “extends for miles” around communities near coal ash deposits, which are “disproportionately located in low-income and minority communities,” making this a civil rights issue that government must address.

The USCCR wants the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and NC Department of Environmental Quality to examine the civil rights implications, classify coal ash as a “hazardous waste,” force utility companies to relocate deposits, and compensate people for healthcare expenses and land devaluations.

A persuasive and well-documented dissent by Commissioner Gail Heriot (pages 113-142 of the report) demolishes the USCCR assertions. Her analysis deserves widespread attention both on environmental and civil rights matters, and on how some people deliberately use these issues to generate racial animosity.

No one on the Commission, she notes, has any expertise in waste disposal, toxicology, epidemiology or medicine, and thus had no business issuing pronouncements on coal ash toxicity. There is “strong” evidence that coal ash facilities “are not disproportionately located” near racial minorities. Lumping coal ash together with other facilities that involve dangerous chemicals, and then blaming coal ash, is invalid.

Ms. Heriot is also perturbed that USCCR Chairman Martin Castro suggested that NC communities are bring “victimized by environmental racism.” These kinds of “incendiary allegations” are inappropriate, she says; they “fan the flames of racial resentment” based on insufficient or false information.

Interestingly, tests in 2014 consistently found Cr-6 in city water supplies above 0.07 parts per billion, unnecessarily triggering “do not drink” advisories to some well water users, the Greensboro News & Record reported. However, May 2016 tests could not even detect the chemical, the paper noted. 

The 0.07 ppb standard is equivalent to 7 seconds in 3,300 years. The EPA and NCDEQ safety standard for Cr-6 in drinking water is 100 ppb, and a 2012 scientific paper in the Journal of Applied Toxicology concluded that regularly drinking water with 210 ppb poses no health or cancer risks. That safe, non-carcinogenic 210 ppb level is 3,000 times higher than the 0.07 ppb “trigger warning” level.

There is no evidence that Cr-6 levels found in U.S. drinking water cause any of the laundry list of health problems presented by the USCCR. For the EWG to say barely detectable 0.02 ppb levels are dangerous and carcinogenic in water that 218 million Americans drink every day is disingenuous and incendiary. Moreover, coal ash is mostly inert, with most metallic components in tiny amounts and/or bonded tightly in crystalline (glassy) sand particles. Very little leaches out. Moreover, chromium-6 occurs naturally in rocks and soils throughout the USA. It is not solely a byproduct of coal burning or industrial processes.

Saying grave health concerns arise from such minimal Cr-6 levels as 0.02 or 0.07 ppb in drinking water is groundless; saying health impacts arise from its its presence in recreational waters is absurd. Indeed, Ohio’s EPA director dismisses the EWG claims as “scare tactics” to raise money.

All this suggests that the USCCR and EWG claims are just part of the campaign to eliminate coal-fired power plants and the reliable, affordable electricity they generate. The claims could also be setting the stage for more collusive sue-and-settle lawsuits between the USEPA and environmentalist groups – with those who will be most affected having no opportunity to testify and no voice in the outcome.

Forcing utility companies to spend billions relocating huge ash deposits to “lined, watertight landfills” (in someone else’s backyard) will bring no health or environmental benefits. But it will bankrupt companies, send electricity prices soaring, reverberate through our economy, and raise true civil rights issues. As Ms. Heriot notes, “driving up the cost of power has its own disparate impact” on minority families.

Black and Hispanic families spend a 10-50% greater share of their income than white families on heating, air conditioning, lights and other electrical costs, National Black Chamber of Commerce president Harry Alford points out. They are also more likely to suffer still lower living standards and even lose their jobs, as employers respond to higher electricity prices by laying more people off.

If rates nearly double from current costs in coal-reliant states like North Carolina and Virginia (9 cents per kilowatt-hour) to those in anti-coal New York (16 cents) or Connecticut (17 cents), poor families will have to pay $500-1,000 more annually for electricity. Hospitals, school districts, factories and businesses will have to spend additional thousands, tens of thousands or millions.

Where will that cash come from?

Will businesses have to lay off dozens or hundreds of employees, or close their doors? If they pass costs on to customers, where will families find that extra cash? If hospitals cut services or raise fees, how will that affect patient costs and care? Might the EWG and USCCR provide financial assistance?

Fat chance.

By necessity, hospitals are energy intensive. The average U.S. hospital uses 31 kilowatt-hours of electricity per square foot per year. For facilities like the 665,000-square-foot Inova Fairfax Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Northern Virginia, that translates into $1,855,000 per year at 9 cents/kWh, but $3,505,000 at 17 cents. That’s a $1.6-million difference.

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Comprehensive Cancer Center in Winston-Salem, NC is 530,600 square feet. That’s $1,480,000/year at 9 cents/kWh or $2,796,000/year at 17 cents: a $1.5-million gap.

Ohio State University’s James Cancer Center and Solove Research Institute in Columbus is1.1 million square feet. That’s $3,069,000/year at 9¢/kWh versus $5,797,000 at 17 cents: a $2.7 million shortfall!  

Those cost increases would result in lost jobs and reduced patient care. Now try to imagine the impacts on schools, factories, churches, grocery stores, malls and thousands of other major electricity users – to address health problems that exist only in the fertile minds of a few activists and regulators.

The war on coal, petroleum, nuclear and hydroelectric power is an eco-imperialist war on reliable, affordable electricity – and on poor and minority families. Policies that drive energy prices up drive people out of jobs, drive companies out of business, drive families into green energy poverty.

An yet these fundamental “civil rights” and “environmental justice” issues are rarely mentioned by the USCCR, EWG, EPA, NAACP, Democratic Party or self-appointed “civil rights leaders.” Too many of them also oppose charter schools for minority kids who are getting shortchanged by public schools, and regulatory reforms to spur job creation in minority communities. Will common sense ever prevail?

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and other books on the environment.