"The Joke" you say? Yes, the joke is on us, all of the people on Earth who believed and the many who continue to believe these environmental doomsday predictions. The predictions are often initially made by self-serving academic "scientists" seeking grant money to further their careers. These scientific "truths" are then picked up by environmental "non-profit" organizations (e.g. Sierra Club) and used to frighten and motivate the public to contribute money and join the panicked rush to "save the planet".
Once politicians smell the blood in the water of public opinion, they do what they do best. They jump on the popular bandwagon, act is if they know what they're talking about, and with sincerity oozing from every pore they plead with the public to help them save Mother Earth, whales, polar bears and everything in between by what else, donating to their campaigns and voting for them. (Think buffoons like John Kerry, Al Gore, and now Obama.)
Finally, the liberal mainstream media picks up on the emotional sensationalism surrounding the repeated threats of impending doom and prints claims like those made in the following article and publishes them as if they were the gospel itself. It is a tried and true method of manipulating and fleecing the public, and unfortunately, it is unlikely to end any time soon.
Meanwhile, we can only hope to help educate and inform those who will listen and learn, and perhaps, if people must tighten their belts enough, they will recognize this environmental fraud for what it is and vote these self-righteous, hypocritical environmental opportunists out of office.
Peter
Fifteen Foolish Forecasts: How did environmentalists get it so wrong on Earth Day 1970?
April 22, 2011 ·
What was once Earth Day has now morphed into Earth Hour and Earth Week. The success of the celebration can only be explained by the fact that no one ever bothers to go back to check the accuracy of the eco-wackos’ past predictions.
For example, the predictions made at the first Earth Day in 1970 were wrong. No, wrong isn’t a strong enough word. They were spectacularly wrong. Let’s cover all the tenses and say they were wrong, they are wrong, and then make our own prediction and say they will be wrong in the future.
Jim Morrison, gone. Elvis Presley, gone. Michael Jackson, gone. But none of them were killed by the environment.
Need proof? Here are some of the hilarious, remarkably wrong predictions made on Earth Day 1970.
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist
“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist
“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day
“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”
• Martin Litton, Sierra Club director
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day
“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson
“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
Today, Earth Day, the eco-wackos will surely get their day moment in the spotlight and their soundbites on the nightly news. They’ll predict a future even grimmer than they predicted 41 years ago.
And they’ll be just as wrong 41 years from now.
Source: Reason.com
Showing posts with label environmentalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environmentalism. Show all posts
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
The Real Danger This Earth Day: ENVIRONMENTALISM
I've been necessarily away for a while and it looks as if the myth of man-caused global warming, or call it climate change....whatever.....is dying and fading away, as we have predicted it would. http://thefellowshipofscientifictruth.blogspot.com/ The truth always, ultimately, eventually prevails. However, let us not forget the damage that has been done, to our economy, to the integrity, respect and credibility of our scientific institutions, and scientists themselves.
Most of all, this "Earth Day", let us remember who is and has been behind this "environmental" "green" movement, why, and how. The battle over global warming may be over, but the war over environmental reason and sanity versus liberal, idealistic fascism goes on. Case in point? Look at the current battle with the EPA trying to stop oil and gas drilling by creating the "boogie-man" of "dangerous" hyro-fracking of wells. http://geopetesview.blogspot.com/
The environmental extremists will not give up easily. Their minds are set; their crusade against capitalism, economic health, and freedom is clear. The war is not over, not by half. The following article says it well.
Peter
What Greens Really Believe
Written by Alan Caruba, Warning Signs
April 20 2011
Earth Day was established in 1970 and millions of Americans and others around the world have been steadily brainwashed to embrace the impression that environmentalism is about protecting the Earth, but when Greens talk among themselves, it is a very different story and a frightening one at that.
The massive propaganda program that supports the Green agenda is impressive in its scope. Its locus is the United Nations whose Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was revealed in 2009 to be a complete hoax based on the manipulation of computer models to predict a warming due to excess carbon dioxide. There never was any threat from CO2. It is a gas that is vital to the growth of all vegetation on Earth. It represents a very minor, even minuscule, part of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Nothing, however, deters the Green agenda and, since the first Earth Day, it has penetrated the nation’s schools and, of course, its politics, deliberately deterring and thwarting access to the nation’s vast reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas; the greatest such reserves in the world! It is a drag on business development. It is the ultimate nanny state seeking to alter people's lifestyles through coercion, legislation, and persuasion.
What most people are unaware of is the fascistic hatred of mankind that underlies the philosophic basis of environmentalism.
Kenneth Boulding, originator of the “Spaceship Earth” concept, was quoted by William Tuck in “Progress and Privilege”, 1982, as saying “The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals, but absolutely limited by the state.” Lamont Cole, an ecologist, has said, “To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem."
Stewart Brand, writing in the Whole Earth Catalog, wrote, “We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into the Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion—guilt-free at last!”
I doubt most people are wishing for a disaster and, when they occur such as the earthquakes in Haiti and in Japan, the first instinct of decent people worldwide is to mobilize to help those affected. This is a very human reaction, but it is not a Green one.
Helen Caldicott of the Union of Concerned Scientists characterized capitalism, saying “Free enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process…Capitalism is destroying the earth.”
It is no coincidence that Earth Day is also the birthday of Vladimir Illich Lenin, the founder of the former Soviet Union and devotee of Karl Marx, the creator of Communism. The Communist revolution worldwide led to the murder of an estimated one hundred million throughout the last century.
At the heart of environmentalism, aside from its wish for far fewer humans, is a hatred of capitalism. The failures of communism and socialism everywhere attest to the way state control of all aspects of life is ignored by Greens.
David Foreman, founder of Earth First!, said, “We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects…We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, hold dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wildness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settle land.”
Thus, agriculture, the key to civilization, is decried as harming the Earth and all manner of business and industrial enterprises, dependent on the provision of energy, is regarded as evil.
Major environmental organizations, Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club to name just two, oppose the use of coal, oil, and natural gas to provide energy.
So much of what environmentalism preaches and claims in its propaganda is utterly false, but telling lies is part and parcel of the Green message.
Timothy Wirth, a former U.S. Senator (D-CO) said, “What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Virtually everything being advocated by the Obama administration represents this willingness to take action and tell lies about the nation’s need for energy, with the exception of the worst ways of producing it, wind, solar, and biofuels. Even before gasoline prices climbed to new highs, negatively affecting all aspects of life in America, Dr. Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy, was advocating higher prices.
The few quotes cited here do not begin to illuminate the horrors that environmentalism would visit on mankind or the nihilistic view it holds, but they represent a far greater body of Green writings and statements over the years that indicate the extent of the threat it poses to humanity.
A deluge of environmental propaganda will precede Earth Day, April 22, 2011. It should be seen as a warning to all who believe in the Creator and all who wish to advance a world at peace, one in which humanity benefits from trade, prosperity, and modern technology worldwide.
Most of all, this "Earth Day", let us remember who is and has been behind this "environmental" "green" movement, why, and how. The battle over global warming may be over, but the war over environmental reason and sanity versus liberal, idealistic fascism goes on. Case in point? Look at the current battle with the EPA trying to stop oil and gas drilling by creating the "boogie-man" of "dangerous" hyro-fracking of wells. http://geopetesview.blogspot.com/
The environmental extremists will not give up easily. Their minds are set; their crusade against capitalism, economic health, and freedom is clear. The war is not over, not by half. The following article says it well.
Peter
What Greens Really Believe
Written by Alan Caruba, Warning Signs
April 20 2011
Earth Day was established in 1970 and millions of Americans and others around the world have been steadily brainwashed to embrace the impression that environmentalism is about protecting the Earth, but when Greens talk among themselves, it is a very different story and a frightening one at that.
The massive propaganda program that supports the Green agenda is impressive in its scope. Its locus is the United Nations whose Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was revealed in 2009 to be a complete hoax based on the manipulation of computer models to predict a warming due to excess carbon dioxide. There never was any threat from CO2. It is a gas that is vital to the growth of all vegetation on Earth. It represents a very minor, even minuscule, part of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Nothing, however, deters the Green agenda and, since the first Earth Day, it has penetrated the nation’s schools and, of course, its politics, deliberately deterring and thwarting access to the nation’s vast reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas; the greatest such reserves in the world! It is a drag on business development. It is the ultimate nanny state seeking to alter people's lifestyles through coercion, legislation, and persuasion.
What most people are unaware of is the fascistic hatred of mankind that underlies the philosophic basis of environmentalism.
Kenneth Boulding, originator of the “Spaceship Earth” concept, was quoted by William Tuck in “Progress and Privilege”, 1982, as saying “The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals, but absolutely limited by the state.” Lamont Cole, an ecologist, has said, “To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem."
Stewart Brand, writing in the Whole Earth Catalog, wrote, “We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into the Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion—guilt-free at last!”
I doubt most people are wishing for a disaster and, when they occur such as the earthquakes in Haiti and in Japan, the first instinct of decent people worldwide is to mobilize to help those affected. This is a very human reaction, but it is not a Green one.
Helen Caldicott of the Union of Concerned Scientists characterized capitalism, saying “Free enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process…Capitalism is destroying the earth.”
It is no coincidence that Earth Day is also the birthday of Vladimir Illich Lenin, the founder of the former Soviet Union and devotee of Karl Marx, the creator of Communism. The Communist revolution worldwide led to the murder of an estimated one hundred million throughout the last century.
At the heart of environmentalism, aside from its wish for far fewer humans, is a hatred of capitalism. The failures of communism and socialism everywhere attest to the way state control of all aspects of life is ignored by Greens.
David Foreman, founder of Earth First!, said, “We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects…We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, hold dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wildness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settle land.”
Thus, agriculture, the key to civilization, is decried as harming the Earth and all manner of business and industrial enterprises, dependent on the provision of energy, is regarded as evil.
Major environmental organizations, Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club to name just two, oppose the use of coal, oil, and natural gas to provide energy.
So much of what environmentalism preaches and claims in its propaganda is utterly false, but telling lies is part and parcel of the Green message.
Timothy Wirth, a former U.S. Senator (D-CO) said, “What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Virtually everything being advocated by the Obama administration represents this willingness to take action and tell lies about the nation’s need for energy, with the exception of the worst ways of producing it, wind, solar, and biofuels. Even before gasoline prices climbed to new highs, negatively affecting all aspects of life in America, Dr. Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy, was advocating higher prices.
The few quotes cited here do not begin to illuminate the horrors that environmentalism would visit on mankind or the nihilistic view it holds, but they represent a far greater body of Green writings and statements over the years that indicate the extent of the threat it poses to humanity.
A deluge of environmental propaganda will precede Earth Day, April 22, 2011. It should be seen as a warning to all who believe in the Creator and all who wish to advance a world at peace, one in which humanity benefits from trade, prosperity, and modern technology worldwide.
Friday, June 19, 2009
"Environmentalism Used As A Tool For Political Purposes
Here is just one example of how environmentalism and its often pseudo-science is used for political purposes. These people playing on people's emotions don't care about the real environment; all they care about is power and control. This is especially true when it involves the myth of man-caused global warming which is held up as the reason for nearly every problem in the universe. It is becoming a standing joke.
Peter
A Move to Put the Union Label on Solar Power Plants
Peter
SACRAMENTO — When a company called Ausra filed plans for a big solar power plant in California, it was deluged with demands from a union group that it study the effect on creatures like the short-nosed kangaroo rat and the ferruginous hawk.
By contrast, when a competitor, BrightSource Energy, filed plans for an even bigger solar plant that would affect the imperiled desert tortoise, the same union group, California Unions for Reliable Energy, raised no complaint. Instead, it urged regulators to approve the project as quickly as possible.
One big difference between the projects? Ausra had rejected demands that it use only union workers to build its solar farm, while BrightSource pledged to hire labor-friendly contractors.
As California moves to license dozens of huge solar power plants to meet the state’s renewable energy goals, some developers contend they are being pressured to sign agreements pledging to use union labor. If they refuse, they say, they can count on the union group to demand costly environmental studies and deliver hostile testimony at public hearings.
If they commit at the outset to use union labor, they say, the environmental objections never materialize.
“This does stress the limits of credibility to some extent,” a California energy commissioner, Jeffrey Byron, said at one contentious hearing, “when an attorney representing a labor union is so focused on the potential impact of a solar power plant on birds.”
Union leaders acknowledge that they make aggressive use of the environmental laws, but say they do it out of genuine concern for the sustainability of California’s power industry, not just as a negotiating tactic. And they contend they do not abandon valid environmental objections to a project just because a company signs a labor agreement.
“We’ve been tarred and feathered more than once on this issue,” said Marc Joseph, a lawyer for California Unions for Reliable Energy. “We don’t walk away from environmental issues.”
At proposed fossil-fuel power plants, the union group has long been accused of exploiting environmental laws to force companies into signing labor agreements. The tactic is a subject of perennial discussion in the California legislature, which has considered, but never passed, bills to strip labor of its right to participate in environmental assessments.
What is new is that California Unions for Reliable Energy, a coalition of construction unions, appears to be applying this approach to new-age renewable energy projects, especially solar power plants, which are being fast-tracked to help meet the state’s green power target.
Lawyers for the union both negotiate labor agreements with solar developers and participate in the environmental review of the projects.
California Unions for Reliable Energy insists it is pursuing the long-term interests of its members. If energy projects are held to high environmental standards, the group says, more of them will ultimately get built, and that will mean more union jobs.
Nationwide, as billions of dollars in public and private investment flow to renewable energy projects, the environmental and labor battles being fought in California could prove to be the opening skirmishes of a larger fight over the emerging green economy.
Should Rust Belt factories converted to making solar components and wind turbines be union shops, gateways to the middle-class for a new generation of workers in the green economy? Or will the green economy look more like the service economy, with low-paid employees installing rooftop solar panels and retrofitting buildings?
For the labor movement, green jobs represent an opportunity to regain relevance after years of declining membership.
“Unions are trying to get a foothold in solar, wind and other new green occupations,” said Philip Mattera, research director for Good Jobs First, a labor-oriented research group in Washington.
“We’re at a turning point that will have an impact on the future of the whole economy, and a lot of unions are gearing up.”
But skeptics fear that union control of renewable energy projects will saddle the nascent industry with high costs and undermine its competitiveness.
“These environmental challenges are the unions’ major tactic to maintain their share of industrial construction — we call it greenmail,” said Kevin Dayton, state government affairs director for the Associated Builders and Contractors of California. “The future of solar energy is jeopardized by these unions holding up construction.”
In California, project labor agreements can raise costs on a project by about 20 percent, Mr. Dayton estimated.
The fights of the moment center on solar farms proposed for tens of thousands of acres of desert and agricultural land.
When the utility giant the FPL Group ignored entreaties from California Unions for Reliable Energy to use union labor on a planned 250-megawatt solar farm, it was hit with 144 data requests, demanding details on things like “the engine brand, model, and horsepower rating” of a water pump engine, “the number of man-hours devoted to focused tortoise surveys, by location” and “the role of each individual that participated.”
In filings with the California Energy Commission, Ausra has accused the union group of abusing environmental laws in a bid to extract a labor agreement. FPL’s lawyers accused the group of trying to stall the company’s solar project.
Bob Balgenorth, chairman of the labor group, makes no apologies for pushing hard for union jobs from solar developers while scrutinizing the environmental impact of the projects. “You only have so much land that can accept solar power plants,” said Mr. Balgenorth, who has cultivated strong ties with conservation groups.
“So the question is, should that land be used for low-paid jobs or should that land be used for high-paid jobs?”
Some solar developers say that signing a labor agreement is simply an unavoidable cost of doing business.
“Let’s just say that it is clear to us from experience that if we do not enter into a project labor agreement, the costs and schedule of the project is interminable,” said Douglas Wert, chief executive of Spinnaker Energy, a San Diego company hired to build two solar farms for Portuguese developer Martifer.
After Stirling Energy Systems filed plans with California regulators to install 30,000 solar dishes on 10 square miles of desert land, its executives got a call from Mr. Joseph, the union lawyer. Sean Gallagher, a vice president for Tessera Solar, the development arm for Stirling, said the company declined Mr. Joseph’s request to commit to using union labor.
California Unions for Reliable Energy subsequently filed 143 data requests with the company on the final day such requests could be made, and later intervened in a second, 850-megawatt Stirling solar project.
It was a different story after BrightSource Energy pledged to hire union-friendly contractors to build its Mojave Desert solar power plant complex. Despite questions raised by environmental groups about the project’s impact on wildlife, the union group took no action, according to commission documents.
Mr. Joseph said that the labor group wants to mediate between environmentalists and BrightSource, which is based in Oakland, Calif.
“We’re actually hoping that we can help resolve these issues in a way that allows that project to go forward and gives maximum protection to the desert tortoise,” he said.
He said he sees “absolutely no conflict of interest” in seeking labor agreements from solar developers while challenging the environmental effect of the projects. “It is in the interest of construction workers to have good middle class jobs — and to have conventional and renewable power plants that are sustainable,” Mr. Joseph said.
The union group’s strategy drew plaudits from environmentalists when the group was winning agreements from developers to cut pollution from fossil fuel power plants. But as some conservation groups ally themselves with business interests to push for a rapid rollout of renewable energy, strains are showing in the so-called blue-green alliance.
Some environmental groups are worried that the labor tactics will delay green energy projects and cause a backlash, but they are reluctant to go public with criticisms of the labor movement.
Others, like the Natural Resources Defense Council, are trying to steer clear of the controversy.
The council “hasn’t taken a position on whether union labor should or shouldn’t be used in these projects,” said Sheryl Carter, the group’s co-director of energy programs.
And still others defend the labor group’s role.
Carl Zichella, the Sierra Club’s director of western renewable programs, said California Unions for Reliable Energy had been effective at extracting concessions that aid the environment.
“It’s not a warm fuzzy thing they are doing; it’s a very self-interested thing they’re doing,” he said. “But it has a large ancillary public benefit.”
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
More On Global Warming As Religion.....And Why It Is Wrong
This is a very long and rambling article, written by a Professor and Scientist. Mr. Brignell obviously cares very deeply about the importance of science, its history and its future. The concept of environmentalism and its associated MYTH of man-caused global warming and climate change has been called the new religion by others. The similarities are striking. You can do a search of environmentalism and religion here on this blog and find many other references. I think there is a lot of truth here. Non-scientists must make an effort to understand what science is, how it operates, and the dangers of confusing it with blind faith.
Peter
Global Warming as Religion and not Science
By John Brignell
Professor Emeritus (ESD)
John Brignell was educated at Stationers’ Company’s School and began his career as an apprentice at STC. He studied at Northampton Engineering College (which became The City University, London) and took the degrees of BSc(Eng) and PhD of London University. He joined the staff at Northampton and was successively Research Assistant, Research Fellow and Lecturer.
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Blaise Pascal
It was Michael Crichton who first prominently identified environmentalism as a religion. That was in a speech in 2003, but the world has moved on apace since then and adherents of the creed now have a firm grip on the world at large. Global Warming has become the core belief in a new eco-theology. The term is used as shorthand for anthropogenic (or man made) global warming. It is closely related to other modern belief systems, such as political correctness, chemophobia and various other forms of scaremongering, but it represents the vanguard in the assault on scientific man.
The activists now prefer to call it “climate change”. This gives them two advantages: It allows them to seize as “evidence” the inevitable occurrences of unusually cold weather as well as warm ones. The climate is always changing, so they must be right. Only the relatively elderly can remember the cynical haste with which the scaremongers dropped the “coming ice age” and embraced exactly the opposite prediction, but aimed at the same culprit - industry. This was in Britain, which was the cradle of the new belief and was a response to the derision resulting from the searing summer of 1976. The father of the new religion was Sir Crispin Tickell, and because he had the ear of Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was engaged in a battle with the coal miners and the oil sheiks, it was introduced into international politics with the authority of the only major political leader holding a qualification in science. The introduction was timely yet ironic since, in the wake of the world�s political upheavals, a powerful new grouping of left-wing interests was coalescing around environmental issues. The result was a new form of godless religion. The global warming cult has the characteristics of religion and not science for the following reasons.
Faith is a belief held without evidence. The scientific method, a loose collection of procedures of great variety, is based on precisely the opposite concept, as famously declared by Thomas Henry Huxley: The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. The global warmers like to use the name of science, but they do not like its methods. They promote slogans such a “The science is settled” when real scientists know that science is never settled.
They were not, however, always so wise. In 1900, for example, the great Lord Kelvin famously stated, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” Within a few years classical physics was shattered by Einstein and his contemporaries. Since then, in science, the debate is never closed. Read the other reasons and much more of this essay here.
Peter
Global Warming as Religion and not Science
By John Brignell
Professor Emeritus (ESD)
John Brignell was educated at Stationers’ Company’s School and began his career as an apprentice at STC. He studied at Northampton Engineering College (which became The City University, London) and took the degrees of BSc(Eng) and PhD of London University. He joined the staff at Northampton and was successively Research Assistant, Research Fellow and Lecturer.
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Blaise Pascal
It was Michael Crichton who first prominently identified environmentalism as a religion. That was in a speech in 2003, but the world has moved on apace since then and adherents of the creed now have a firm grip on the world at large. Global Warming has become the core belief in a new eco-theology. The term is used as shorthand for anthropogenic (or man made) global warming. It is closely related to other modern belief systems, such as political correctness, chemophobia and various other forms of scaremongering, but it represents the vanguard in the assault on scientific man.
The activists now prefer to call it “climate change”. This gives them two advantages: It allows them to seize as “evidence” the inevitable occurrences of unusually cold weather as well as warm ones. The climate is always changing, so they must be right. Only the relatively elderly can remember the cynical haste with which the scaremongers dropped the “coming ice age” and embraced exactly the opposite prediction, but aimed at the same culprit - industry. This was in Britain, which was the cradle of the new belief and was a response to the derision resulting from the searing summer of 1976. The father of the new religion was Sir Crispin Tickell, and because he had the ear of Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was engaged in a battle with the coal miners and the oil sheiks, it was introduced into international politics with the authority of the only major political leader holding a qualification in science. The introduction was timely yet ironic since, in the wake of the world�s political upheavals, a powerful new grouping of left-wing interests was coalescing around environmental issues. The result was a new form of godless religion. The global warming cult has the characteristics of religion and not science for the following reasons.
Faith is a belief held without evidence. The scientific method, a loose collection of procedures of great variety, is based on precisely the opposite concept, as famously declared by Thomas Henry Huxley: The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. The global warmers like to use the name of science, but they do not like its methods. They promote slogans such a “The science is settled” when real scientists know that science is never settled.
They were not, however, always so wise. In 1900, for example, the great Lord Kelvin famously stated, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” Within a few years classical physics was shattered by Einstein and his contemporaries. Since then, in science, the debate is never closed. Read the other reasons and much more of this essay here.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Environmentalism: The Great Savior Of Mankind?
This is a good essay, clear, concise, perceptive, and I think, correct.
Peter
"For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).
Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.
Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself." --Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 30 May 2008
Peter
"For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).
Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.
Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself." --Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 30 May 2008
A Cold, Hard Look At The Economics Of Controlling Global Warming
The most dangerous aspect of the great debate over global warming and what is now called "climate change", is not the questioning of science or computer models; it is the world-wide economic cost of trying to control "carbon emissions". Putting science, and politics aside, for a moment, we should take a cold hard look at the economics behind the movement to control global warming. The Czech President is an economist, author, and experienced political leader. Here is his educated opinion.
Peter
Climate concern ripped as 'religion'
Czech leader condemns it
David R. Sands THE WASHINGTON TIMES Friday, May 30, 2008
source
Environmentalism, says Czech President Vaclav Klaus, is the new communism, a system of elite command-and-control that kills prosperity and should similarly be condemned to the ash heap of history.
The provocative Mr. Klaus, an economist by training and former prime minister, said in an interview that today's global warming activists are the direct descendants of the old Marxists who trampled on individual freedoms and undermined free markets in pursuit of a greater good.
"I understand that global warming is a religion conceived to suppress human freedom," he told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. "It is used to justify an enormous scope for government intervention vis-a-vis the markets and personal freedom."
The 66-year-old Mr. Klaus was in Washington this week for talks with senior U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, and to tout his new book, "Blue Planet in Green Shackles," about the dangers to life, liberty and prosperity posed by the modern environmental movement. His Washington meetings included discussions on a pact to situate key parts of a U.S. missile defense shield in the Czech Republic. A top Bush administration priority, the system is designed to defend against attacks from rogue states such as Iran.
Mr. Klaus said he expected the Czech parliament to ratify the pact by the end of the year, but acknowledged it "won't be an easy debate." Russia has fiercely opposed the system, something the Czech president said may actually build public support for the plan back home. "The stronger the Russian position opposing the system, the easier it is in the Czech Republic to get support," he said.
Having experienced decades of Soviet domination during the Cold War, Czechs are "extremely sensitive to any patronizing from that part of the world," he said. Mr. Klaus was a leading figure in the first Prague governments after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was prime minister when the former Czechoslovakia broke into two countries in the "Velvet Divorce" of 1993.
He barely won a second five-year term as president in February amid divisions in the rival Social Democratic Party. An admirer of conservative former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he has emerged as a leading voice in Europe for free markets and individual rights.
He opposed the first drive for a European Union constitution, which collapsed when French and Dutch voters rejected it. The Czech parliament is expected to ratify an amended EU constitution by the end of the year.
The outspoken Mr. Klaus does not appear to mind being out of step with his government at times. He criticized the Czech Republic's decision last week to recognize the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, over the fierce objections of Belgrade.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus thinks global-warming activists are elitists who threaten freedoms and free markets. Mr. Klaus said his experience with the breakup of Czechoslovakia convinced him that any separation had to come from within and accepted by all parties. "If we had had U.S. or EU commissioners coming into Czechoslovakia telling us how to divide the country, there would have been shooting," he said. "I'm sorry that in [the United States], the substance of this argument was not appreciated."
That formative experience growing up under communism, said Mr. Klaus, has led him to his own strong views on the modern environmental movement, which he charged has failed to do a basic cost-benefit analysis in its drive to force people to obey its dictates. While saying he was not a "total libertarian," Mr. Klaus observed, "For most of my life, I lived under a regime where the public debate was manipulated. That is why I feel so strongly about this."
Former Vice President Al Gore - whom Mr. Klaus has challenged to a public debate - won the Nobel Peace Prize and the Czech Republic ratified the Kyoto climate treaty seven years ago, but Mr. Klaus insisted he had the world's "silent majority" behind him in the green debate.
"I don't feel alone," he insisted.
He rejected the "fashionable" idea of a cap-and-trade pollution control system, endorsed by Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain and his two Democratic rivals, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Under cap-and-trade, the government would set a ceiling under which companies could trade "credits" on how much carbon they produce. "It's a scheme to play the market and I refuse to accept that concept," he said. "Please don't try to play the market."
More practically, he said, government bureaucrats will be so afraid of setting the cap too low - stifling all economic activity - that they will set the ceiling too high, making it "meaningless."
Mr. Klaus pointed to the sharp rise in global energy prices as a sign the market is a far better engine for social change than politicians or bureaucrats.
The recent price increase "is so much more than any government would dare to do," he said. "Can you imagine if the U.S. Congress tried to introduce such a tax to cut consumption? The Congress would disappear tomorrow morning."
Peter
Climate concern ripped as 'religion'
Czech leader condemns it
David R. Sands THE WASHINGTON TIMES Friday, May 30, 2008
source
Environmentalism, says Czech President Vaclav Klaus, is the new communism, a system of elite command-and-control that kills prosperity and should similarly be condemned to the ash heap of history.
The provocative Mr. Klaus, an economist by training and former prime minister, said in an interview that today's global warming activists are the direct descendants of the old Marxists who trampled on individual freedoms and undermined free markets in pursuit of a greater good.
"I understand that global warming is a religion conceived to suppress human freedom," he told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. "It is used to justify an enormous scope for government intervention vis-a-vis the markets and personal freedom."
The 66-year-old Mr. Klaus was in Washington this week for talks with senior U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, and to tout his new book, "Blue Planet in Green Shackles," about the dangers to life, liberty and prosperity posed by the modern environmental movement. His Washington meetings included discussions on a pact to situate key parts of a U.S. missile defense shield in the Czech Republic. A top Bush administration priority, the system is designed to defend against attacks from rogue states such as Iran.
Mr. Klaus said he expected the Czech parliament to ratify the pact by the end of the year, but acknowledged it "won't be an easy debate." Russia has fiercely opposed the system, something the Czech president said may actually build public support for the plan back home. "The stronger the Russian position opposing the system, the easier it is in the Czech Republic to get support," he said.
Having experienced decades of Soviet domination during the Cold War, Czechs are "extremely sensitive to any patronizing from that part of the world," he said. Mr. Klaus was a leading figure in the first Prague governments after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was prime minister when the former Czechoslovakia broke into two countries in the "Velvet Divorce" of 1993.
He barely won a second five-year term as president in February amid divisions in the rival Social Democratic Party. An admirer of conservative former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he has emerged as a leading voice in Europe for free markets and individual rights.
He opposed the first drive for a European Union constitution, which collapsed when French and Dutch voters rejected it. The Czech parliament is expected to ratify an amended EU constitution by the end of the year.
The outspoken Mr. Klaus does not appear to mind being out of step with his government at times. He criticized the Czech Republic's decision last week to recognize the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, over the fierce objections of Belgrade.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus thinks global-warming activists are elitists who threaten freedoms and free markets. Mr. Klaus said his experience with the breakup of Czechoslovakia convinced him that any separation had to come from within and accepted by all parties. "If we had had U.S. or EU commissioners coming into Czechoslovakia telling us how to divide the country, there would have been shooting," he said. "I'm sorry that in [the United States], the substance of this argument was not appreciated."
That formative experience growing up under communism, said Mr. Klaus, has led him to his own strong views on the modern environmental movement, which he charged has failed to do a basic cost-benefit analysis in its drive to force people to obey its dictates. While saying he was not a "total libertarian," Mr. Klaus observed, "For most of my life, I lived under a regime where the public debate was manipulated. That is why I feel so strongly about this."
Former Vice President Al Gore - whom Mr. Klaus has challenged to a public debate - won the Nobel Peace Prize and the Czech Republic ratified the Kyoto climate treaty seven years ago, but Mr. Klaus insisted he had the world's "silent majority" behind him in the green debate.
"I don't feel alone," he insisted.
He rejected the "fashionable" idea of a cap-and-trade pollution control system, endorsed by Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain and his two Democratic rivals, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Under cap-and-trade, the government would set a ceiling under which companies could trade "credits" on how much carbon they produce. "It's a scheme to play the market and I refuse to accept that concept," he said. "Please don't try to play the market."
More practically, he said, government bureaucrats will be so afraid of setting the cap too low - stifling all economic activity - that they will set the ceiling too high, making it "meaningless."
Mr. Klaus pointed to the sharp rise in global energy prices as a sign the market is a far better engine for social change than politicians or bureaucrats.
The recent price increase "is so much more than any government would dare to do," he said. "Can you imagine if the U.S. Congress tried to introduce such a tax to cut consumption? The Congress would disappear tomorrow morning."
Thursday, November 29, 2007
The Pain In Feel-Good Environmentalism; 6.5 Billion Dollars Worth In 2006 Alone!
Six and a half BILLION dollars given to environmental groups in 2006 alone! Wow, that buys a lot of lobbyists and votes and spews out a lot of propaganda. Is it any wonder they have been able to fool so many people about global warming? Is it any wonder why they continue with the scare tactics about climate change catastrophe so they can keep the donations flowing in? It would be humorous if were not so despicable.
Propaganda, aside, there is a downside to some of this activity, besides frivolous cruise ships sinking and polluting the sea off Antarctica, as described below.
Peter
The Pain in Feel-Good Environmentalism
Julie Walsh
September 19, 2007
Over six and a half billion dollars were given to environmental groups in 2006, according to the June 28, 2007 issue of “Chronicle of Philanthropy.” But how many of the good people who donated to these groups know that some of their money is used to thwart mining projects destined to help poverty-stricken people in poverty-stricken nations? The groups don’t publicize this fact.
For example, when you go on the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) website you see lots of pictures of adorable animals and stories of WWF projects to save gorillas and macaws. But they don’t publicize the dirty fact that they are working to bring down a mining project in Madagascar, the world’s third poorest country.
Most U.S. citizens care about the United States’ reputation in the world. Yet we’re turning a blind-eye to the developing world’s increasing resentment towards us caused by First-World environmental groups, who seek to impose their green values on the developing world and bring down much-needed projects. In our arrogance, we use our own land for large office buildings, factories, and shopping malls, but we can’t allow them to use their own land for a desired mining project, consigning the world’s poorer nations to slow—and in some cases no—economic growth.
But as Snezhina Kovacheva states, “(E)nvironmental mitigation is a value-added good. As a country's wealth increases, its citizens recognize that a better environment enhances the quality of life. Accordingly, the population starts investing a larger portion of its greater resources into developing cleaner technologies.” As seen in the area of global warming, the United States was able to reduce its emissions (relative to GDP) further through energy efficiency, than those of the Kyoto-signers.
source:
Propaganda, aside, there is a downside to some of this activity, besides frivolous cruise ships sinking and polluting the sea off Antarctica, as described below.
Peter
The Pain in Feel-Good Environmentalism
Julie Walsh
September 19, 2007
Over six and a half billion dollars were given to environmental groups in 2006, according to the June 28, 2007 issue of “Chronicle of Philanthropy.” But how many of the good people who donated to these groups know that some of their money is used to thwart mining projects destined to help poverty-stricken people in poverty-stricken nations? The groups don’t publicize this fact.
For example, when you go on the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) website you see lots of pictures of adorable animals and stories of WWF projects to save gorillas and macaws. But they don’t publicize the dirty fact that they are working to bring down a mining project in Madagascar, the world’s third poorest country.
Most U.S. citizens care about the United States’ reputation in the world. Yet we’re turning a blind-eye to the developing world’s increasing resentment towards us caused by First-World environmental groups, who seek to impose their green values on the developing world and bring down much-needed projects. In our arrogance, we use our own land for large office buildings, factories, and shopping malls, but we can’t allow them to use their own land for a desired mining project, consigning the world’s poorer nations to slow—and in some cases no—economic growth.
But as Snezhina Kovacheva states, “(E)nvironmental mitigation is a value-added good. As a country's wealth increases, its citizens recognize that a better environment enhances the quality of life. Accordingly, the population starts investing a larger portion of its greater resources into developing cleaner technologies.” As seen in the area of global warming, the United States was able to reduce its emissions (relative to GDP) further through energy efficiency, than those of the Kyoto-signers.
source:
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Britain Having Second Thoughts About Climate Change Bandwagon?
This article caught my eye, note it is from "grist" the online environmental website. It seems that at least some people in Britain are questioning the logic of focusing completely on the global warming and climate change issue, to the detriment of other more pressing environmental issues. I think maybe people are beginning to see what a big scam the global warming scare-mongers are pulling off. They don't like it, and they are going to like it even less as it continues.
Peter
from: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/8/20/11026/6273?source=weekly
Brit's Eye View: Are we too obsessed with climate change?
Other enviro issues are getting less attention
Posted by Peter Madden at 4:23 AM on 21 Aug 2007
Peter Madden, chief executive of Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe.
Are we too obsessed by climate change? Over here, climate change is coming to completely dominate the sustainability agenda. This is true in politics, business, the media, and civil society.
I was talking to our new secretary of state for the environment, Hilary Benn, the other day, about his department's strategy. He argued that all the other issues -- such as air quality, waste, water, and so on -- could all be dealt with under the climate change umbrella; government action on climate change would deliver for the other issues, and vice versa.
When we talk to companies or public authorities, it is the same. All they want is advice on going low-carbon. And since this is where the money and political attention are going, the NGO activity seems to follow, reinforcing the trend.
Of course, this is a good thing in many ways. Climate change is the major challenge we face. Sir David King, the U.K. Government's chief scientific advisor, was right when he reminded his government colleagues that "climate change is a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism."
For those of us who want to see green thinking integrated into other areas of life, climate change works well. It can't be thought of as peripheral. It will affect everything, including how we run the economy and how we live our lives.
I worry, however, that we risk missing other important stuff too. Twenty-five years ago we hardly knew about climate change, which was then mostly the preserve of a few scientists. Pollution, biodiversity loss, waste, resource use, and protection of special habitats were the things that obsessed us; and they should be still.
Of course, climate change will touch everything. If the earth warms as predicted, we may not have tropical forests or the special habitats we are trying to protect. On this basis, many argue that we should focus solely on climate change. There is some merit in this argument. But I also think that an overemphasis on climate change does bring some risks.
Climate change does not touch people in the heart. It is a very complicated concept to get across. This is fine for people who deal well with graphs, and projections, and abstract concepts. But we all need to relate to real-life experiences, too. Very few of the public are motivated and changed by rational abstractions, or by things that won't happen for decades.
The environment most of us experience is the one we meet when we step outside our front doors. We need to respect and tap into more immediate motivations for people. This is a lesson the green movement in the U.K. learned back in the early 1990s. The major environmental groups were so focused on big, faraway issues that ordinary people switched off. Instead, there was a flowering of local protest groups concerned with their own backyards.
Is there also a danger that policy-makers can use the long-term nature of climate change as an excuse not to take action on other issues today? By talking up targets for 2020 and 2050, we might miss urgent problems that are with us now, such as overfishing, deforestation, and the loss of species.
There certainly are trade-offs between tackling different environmental issues. And with a limited pot of money, other important areas can suffer. Policies can be in conflict, too. Remember the catalytic converter in the 1980s: good for tackling pollution, but bad for fuel efficiency. And bad for biofuels today, which may be good news for tackling climate change; but if poorly sourced, is very bad news for orangutans.
This is a difficult one to call. Climate change is a huge problem, and maybe we should give it priority over everything else. Or maybe we could do a better job of remembering that there are other important environmental issues out there.
Peter
from: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/8/20/11026/6273?source=weekly
Brit's Eye View: Are we too obsessed with climate change?
Other enviro issues are getting less attention
Posted by Peter Madden at 4:23 AM on 21 Aug 2007
Peter Madden, chief executive of Forum for the Future, writes a monthly column for Gristmill on sustainability in the U.K. and Europe.
Are we too obsessed by climate change? Over here, climate change is coming to completely dominate the sustainability agenda. This is true in politics, business, the media, and civil society.
I was talking to our new secretary of state for the environment, Hilary Benn, the other day, about his department's strategy. He argued that all the other issues -- such as air quality, waste, water, and so on -- could all be dealt with under the climate change umbrella; government action on climate change would deliver for the other issues, and vice versa.
When we talk to companies or public authorities, it is the same. All they want is advice on going low-carbon. And since this is where the money and political attention are going, the NGO activity seems to follow, reinforcing the trend.
Of course, this is a good thing in many ways. Climate change is the major challenge we face. Sir David King, the U.K. Government's chief scientific advisor, was right when he reminded his government colleagues that "climate change is a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism."
For those of us who want to see green thinking integrated into other areas of life, climate change works well. It can't be thought of as peripheral. It will affect everything, including how we run the economy and how we live our lives.
I worry, however, that we risk missing other important stuff too. Twenty-five years ago we hardly knew about climate change, which was then mostly the preserve of a few scientists. Pollution, biodiversity loss, waste, resource use, and protection of special habitats were the things that obsessed us; and they should be still.
Of course, climate change will touch everything. If the earth warms as predicted, we may not have tropical forests or the special habitats we are trying to protect. On this basis, many argue that we should focus solely on climate change. There is some merit in this argument. But I also think that an overemphasis on climate change does bring some risks.
Climate change does not touch people in the heart. It is a very complicated concept to get across. This is fine for people who deal well with graphs, and projections, and abstract concepts. But we all need to relate to real-life experiences, too. Very few of the public are motivated and changed by rational abstractions, or by things that won't happen for decades.
The environment most of us experience is the one we meet when we step outside our front doors. We need to respect and tap into more immediate motivations for people. This is a lesson the green movement in the U.K. learned back in the early 1990s. The major environmental groups were so focused on big, faraway issues that ordinary people switched off. Instead, there was a flowering of local protest groups concerned with their own backyards.
Is there also a danger that policy-makers can use the long-term nature of climate change as an excuse not to take action on other issues today? By talking up targets for 2020 and 2050, we might miss urgent problems that are with us now, such as overfishing, deforestation, and the loss of species.
There certainly are trade-offs between tackling different environmental issues. And with a limited pot of money, other important areas can suffer. Policies can be in conflict, too. Remember the catalytic converter in the 1980s: good for tackling pollution, but bad for fuel efficiency. And bad for biofuels today, which may be good news for tackling climate change; but if poorly sourced, is very bad news for orangutans.
This is a difficult one to call. Climate change is a huge problem, and maybe we should give it priority over everything else. Or maybe we could do a better job of remembering that there are other important environmental issues out there.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Michael Crichton Speech: Environmentalism As Religion
I can't post the entire speech here without his permission, but this by Michael Crichton is worth reading and saving and contemplating. He sees environmentalism as becoming religion-like, and science being over-run. Read the entire speech here:
http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speech-environmentalismaseligion.html
He concludes by saying the following:
"Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better. That's not a good future for the human race. That's our past. So it's time to abandon the religion of environmentalism, and return to the science of environmentalism, and base our public policy decisions firmly on that."
http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speech-environmentalismaseligion.html
He concludes by saying the following:
"Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better. That's not a good future for the human race. That's our past. So it's time to abandon the religion of environmentalism, and return to the science of environmentalism, and base our public policy decisions firmly on that."
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Population Control: Is The Answer To Global Warming and Protecting The Environment?
Since over-population of the Earth by human beings is often cited as a cause of global warming and many other supposed environmental disasters, I'm citing the following article to generate some thought and some questions.
Can population control really be achieved? Is it working in China? Is it "ethical" to deny women the "right" to have children? If we can reduce the number of births, is that really a good thing? Would reducing world population really have an effect on global warming? These are just some of the many questions we need to be asking. What do you think?
Peter
from: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200707/INT20070719a.html
Restricting Family Size May Become Unavoidable, Says Environment Group
By Kevin McCandlessCNSNews.com
CorrespondentJuly 19, 2007London (CNSNews.com) -
A British advocacy group is warning that compulsory restrictions on family sizes may become "unavoidable" if the Earth is to be saved from disaster. The Optimum Population Trust, a group that advocates curbing global population growth because of humans' impact on the environment, says that over the next 50 years, the planet will have to deal with the largest generation of adolescents and teenagers in history. Many of these, the organization says, will be unemployed young men who, in their frustration over their situation, may resort to violence. This will add to the already overwhelming burden developing countries are facing as a result of population growth.
In a report released this month, OPT Co-Chairman John Guillebaud said that the United Nations projection of a world population of 9.2 billion in 2050 -- up from 6.7 billion today -- was a "highly optimistic" estimate and that the actual number may be "many more."The population of the 50 poorest countries in the developing world will double in size, a shift that will wipe out gains in agriculture, education and health care faster than they can be made, said Guillebaud, who is a retired professor of family planning and reproductive health at University College in London.
By 2050, OPT projects that the world's population will be using the biological capacity of two Earths. It says this will lead to a massive population crash through a combination of violence, disease and starvation. To prevent this, the report advocates a mix of government policies to prevent women worldwide from having more than an average of two children. Recommendations for developing countries include funding to provide women much greater access to contraception and abortions. Despite the fact that fertility rates in nearly all European countries has dropped below two -- demographers say the generational replacement level is 2.1 -- the trust said fears of "a baby shortage" are misplaced.
Some European governments have started to offer citizens financial incentives to have children. The report criticized the policy, saying it would only postpone the day when there are more retired people than workers. China's communist government enforces a controversial population control policy that, with some exceptions for minorities and rural dwellers, limits couples to one child. Critics say family planning officials use coercive measures, including forced abortion and sterilization, to enforce the policy. The government insists that "only" punitive fines and financial incentives are used.
Guillebaud said the Chinese policy was "counterproductive" but argued that unless voluntary measures are brought in quickly, other countries may be forced to follow China's lead. "No one is in favor of governments dictating family size, but we need to act quickly to prevent it." he said.
Donna Nicholson, a spokeswoman for the Scottish chapter of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said that the problem facing many developing countries is not overpopulation but global inequality. The United States produces enough food annually to feed the entire world, she said. At the same time, the crippling debt facing many African countries drives them to cut back on education and health care. Citing her experience working in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Nicholson said the answer to solving poverty was not population control. "You can't look at a woman in the Third World and say the problem is that she's pregnant," she said.
Josephine Quintavalle, head of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, another British pro-life group, said she found it frightening that the OPT report was getting attention. She said Europe was facing a situation in which in just a few years, more people would be over 60 years of age than under 60. Unless European countries took urgent measures to encourage more people to have babies, she said, the continent could skip an entire generation of children. "One wonders what planet this organization comes from when they come up with these conclusions," Quintavalle said.
Can population control really be achieved? Is it working in China? Is it "ethical" to deny women the "right" to have children? If we can reduce the number of births, is that really a good thing? Would reducing world population really have an effect on global warming? These are just some of the many questions we need to be asking. What do you think?
Peter
from: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200707/INT20070719a.html
Restricting Family Size May Become Unavoidable, Says Environment Group
By Kevin McCandlessCNSNews.com
CorrespondentJuly 19, 2007London (CNSNews.com) -
A British advocacy group is warning that compulsory restrictions on family sizes may become "unavoidable" if the Earth is to be saved from disaster. The Optimum Population Trust, a group that advocates curbing global population growth because of humans' impact on the environment, says that over the next 50 years, the planet will have to deal with the largest generation of adolescents and teenagers in history. Many of these, the organization says, will be unemployed young men who, in their frustration over their situation, may resort to violence. This will add to the already overwhelming burden developing countries are facing as a result of population growth.
In a report released this month, OPT Co-Chairman John Guillebaud said that the United Nations projection of a world population of 9.2 billion in 2050 -- up from 6.7 billion today -- was a "highly optimistic" estimate and that the actual number may be "many more."The population of the 50 poorest countries in the developing world will double in size, a shift that will wipe out gains in agriculture, education and health care faster than they can be made, said Guillebaud, who is a retired professor of family planning and reproductive health at University College in London.
By 2050, OPT projects that the world's population will be using the biological capacity of two Earths. It says this will lead to a massive population crash through a combination of violence, disease and starvation. To prevent this, the report advocates a mix of government policies to prevent women worldwide from having more than an average of two children. Recommendations for developing countries include funding to provide women much greater access to contraception and abortions. Despite the fact that fertility rates in nearly all European countries has dropped below two -- demographers say the generational replacement level is 2.1 -- the trust said fears of "a baby shortage" are misplaced.
Some European governments have started to offer citizens financial incentives to have children. The report criticized the policy, saying it would only postpone the day when there are more retired people than workers. China's communist government enforces a controversial population control policy that, with some exceptions for minorities and rural dwellers, limits couples to one child. Critics say family planning officials use coercive measures, including forced abortion and sterilization, to enforce the policy. The government insists that "only" punitive fines and financial incentives are used.
Guillebaud said the Chinese policy was "counterproductive" but argued that unless voluntary measures are brought in quickly, other countries may be forced to follow China's lead. "No one is in favor of governments dictating family size, but we need to act quickly to prevent it." he said.
Donna Nicholson, a spokeswoman for the Scottish chapter of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said that the problem facing many developing countries is not overpopulation but global inequality. The United States produces enough food annually to feed the entire world, she said. At the same time, the crippling debt facing many African countries drives them to cut back on education and health care. Citing her experience working in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Nicholson said the answer to solving poverty was not population control. "You can't look at a woman in the Third World and say the problem is that she's pregnant," she said.
Josephine Quintavalle, head of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, another British pro-life group, said she found it frightening that the OPT report was getting attention. She said Europe was facing a situation in which in just a few years, more people would be over 60 years of age than under 60. Unless European countries took urgent measures to encourage more people to have babies, she said, the continent could skip an entire generation of children. "One wonders what planet this organization comes from when they come up with these conclusions," Quintavalle said.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Hydro-Electric Project Proposes Amazon River Dams in Brazil
MSNBC message boards>
Climate change
Hydro-Electric Plan Important Energy and Environmental Issue For Brazil, Its Neighbors and the World
1 messages - 1 authors - last updated 06/11/07 02:00 PM
Author
Message
geoPeter
Message #106/11/07 02:00 PM
This is an example of the real-world issues facing us today. Read the article please, it is un-biased, and not political. The point is, Brazil needs energy. They want to dam a large tributary river of the Amazon to produce "clean" hydroelectric energy. In their push for "clean" energy they have already cleared huge portions of the Amazon rainforest to grown sugar cane to produce ethanol for their automobiles.
There are great environmental and economic consequences to all of these actions. They not only affect Brazil, but the entire world. Is global warming occurring? Probably. Is man causing it? No, not to any significant degree. Should we be very careful in what is done in the name of trying to "stop global warming"? Absolutely.
Peter
Both Sides Say Project Is Pivotal Issue for Brazil
Click to view image
Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times
One of the villages on the Madeira River in Rondônia State, Brazil, that would disappear if the Santo Antônio and Jirau dams are built. The dams would be part of an $11 billion hydroelectric project on the river. More Photos >
By LARRY ROHTER
Published: June 11, 2007
PORTO VELHO, Brazil — The eternal tension between Brazil’s need for economic growth and the damage that can cause to the environment are nowhere more visible than here in this corner of the western Amazon region.
The New York Times
More Photos »
More than one-quarter of this rugged frontier state, Rondônia, has been deforested, the highest rate in the Amazon. Over the years, ranchers, miners and loggers have routinely invaded nature reserves and Indian reservations.
Now a proposal to build an $11 billion hydroelectric project here on a river that may have the world’s most diverse fish stocks has set off a new controversy.
How that dispute is resolved, advocates on both sides say, could determine nothing less than Brazil’s vision of its future at a moment when it is simultaneously facing energy and environmental pressures and casting envious glances at faster-growing developing countries, like India and China.
Unhappy with Brazil’s anemic rate of growth, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has made the economy the top priority of his second term, which began in January. Large public works projects, including the dams here on the Madeira River, are envisioned as one of the best ways to stimulate growth.
“Who dumped this catfish in my lap?” was the president’s irate complaint when he learned recently that the government’s environmental agency had refused to license the dam projects, according to Brazilian news reports.
But the proposal is far from dead, and continues to have Mr. da Silva’s support. Additional environmental impact studies are under way, but the dispute now raging in Rondônia appears to have more to do with politics and economics than science and nature.
“My impression is that some environmental groups see the authorization of construction as opening the door to unrestricted entry to the Amazon,” said Antônio Alves da Silva Marrocos, a leader of the Pro-Dam Committee, financed by business groups and the state government.
“But if they are able to block this,” he added, “then every other Amazon hydroelectric energy project is doomed as well.”
Many of the arguments for and against the two dams to be built, Jirau and Santo Antônio, reprise those from previous debates in Brazil and elsewhere. Proponents talk of the thousands of jobs to be created if the dams are built and predict power blackouts if they are not. Opponents warn of damage to the rain forest and say cheaper, more efficient alternatives are available.
But the correlation of political forces is now much different than it had once been. Though Brazil’s environmental movement had a big hand in founding the left-wing Workers’ Party in 1980, it has steadily lost influence under Mr. da Silva, who took power in 2003. He has since courted the business establishment.
As environmentalists see it, the dams, one of which is to be barely 20 miles from Brazil’s border with Bolivia, will not only add to.......
(Continued)
Climate change
Hydro-Electric Plan Important Energy and Environmental Issue For Brazil, Its Neighbors and the World
1 messages - 1 authors - last updated 06/11/07 02:00 PM
Author
Message
geoPeter
Message #106/11/07 02:00 PM
This is an example of the real-world issues facing us today. Read the article please, it is un-biased, and not political. The point is, Brazil needs energy. They want to dam a large tributary river of the Amazon to produce "clean" hydroelectric energy. In their push for "clean" energy they have already cleared huge portions of the Amazon rainforest to grown sugar cane to produce ethanol for their automobiles.
There are great environmental and economic consequences to all of these actions. They not only affect Brazil, but the entire world. Is global warming occurring? Probably. Is man causing it? No, not to any significant degree. Should we be very careful in what is done in the name of trying to "stop global warming"? Absolutely.
Peter
Both Sides Say Project Is Pivotal Issue for Brazil
Click to view image
Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times
One of the villages on the Madeira River in Rondônia State, Brazil, that would disappear if the Santo Antônio and Jirau dams are built. The dams would be part of an $11 billion hydroelectric project on the river. More Photos >
By LARRY ROHTER
Published: June 11, 2007
PORTO VELHO, Brazil — The eternal tension between Brazil’s need for economic growth and the damage that can cause to the environment are nowhere more visible than here in this corner of the western Amazon region.
The New York Times
More Photos »
More than one-quarter of this rugged frontier state, Rondônia, has been deforested, the highest rate in the Amazon. Over the years, ranchers, miners and loggers have routinely invaded nature reserves and Indian reservations.
Now a proposal to build an $11 billion hydroelectric project here on a river that may have the world’s most diverse fish stocks has set off a new controversy.
How that dispute is resolved, advocates on both sides say, could determine nothing less than Brazil’s vision of its future at a moment when it is simultaneously facing energy and environmental pressures and casting envious glances at faster-growing developing countries, like India and China.
Unhappy with Brazil’s anemic rate of growth, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has made the economy the top priority of his second term, which began in January. Large public works projects, including the dams here on the Madeira River, are envisioned as one of the best ways to stimulate growth.
“Who dumped this catfish in my lap?” was the president’s irate complaint when he learned recently that the government’s environmental agency had refused to license the dam projects, according to Brazilian news reports.
But the proposal is far from dead, and continues to have Mr. da Silva’s support. Additional environmental impact studies are under way, but the dispute now raging in Rondônia appears to have more to do with politics and economics than science and nature.
“My impression is that some environmental groups see the authorization of construction as opening the door to unrestricted entry to the Amazon,” said Antônio Alves da Silva Marrocos, a leader of the Pro-Dam Committee, financed by business groups and the state government.
“But if they are able to block this,” he added, “then every other Amazon hydroelectric energy project is doomed as well.”
Many of the arguments for and against the two dams to be built, Jirau and Santo Antônio, reprise those from previous debates in Brazil and elsewhere. Proponents talk of the thousands of jobs to be created if the dams are built and predict power blackouts if they are not. Opponents warn of damage to the rain forest and say cheaper, more efficient alternatives are available.
But the correlation of political forces is now much different than it had once been. Though Brazil’s environmental movement had a big hand in founding the left-wing Workers’ Party in 1980, it has steadily lost influence under Mr. da Silva, who took power in 2003. He has since courted the business establishment.
As environmentalists see it, the dams, one of which is to be barely 20 miles from Brazil’s border with Bolivia, will not only add to.......
(Continued)
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Rachel Carson - Silent Spring - Fateful Voice of a Generation Still Drowns Out Real Science - New York Times
Rachel Carson - Silent Spring - Fateful Voice of a Generation Still Drowns Out Real Science - New York Times
This article is and should be very sobering for environmentalists and people of all colors and persuasions. It should also serve as a wake up call for everyone beating the drum over man-made carbon dioxide emissions, the "desperate" need to contain them, and the innumerable predicted crises over global warming and climate change.
This article vividly illustrates how nearly all of us have been misled about the dangers in our environment from "man-made" chemicals. I think most of us will be stunned if we grasp what we read here. I'm also sure there will be some disagreement.
It is very easy for the public to be influenced by emotionally evocative writing and now "documentary" film-making. This is particularly dangerous when "science", which many people blindly "trust", is used in areas which have great impact on our health and well-being. This is the sad legacy of Rachel Carson; she was a wonderful writer, but played loose and irresponsibly with science. Let this lesson be all the more reason why we must be cautious about what we are hearing now about the dire dangers of global warming.
Peter
Here is the article:
Findings
Fateful Voice of a Generation Still Drowns Out Real Science
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: June 5, 2007
For Rachel Carson admirers, it has not been a silent spring. They’ve been celebrating the centennial of her birthday with paeans to her saintliness. A new generation is reading her book in school — and mostly learning the wrong lesson from it.
If students are going to read “Silent Spring” in science classes, I wish it were paired with another work from that same year, 1962, titled “Chemicals and Pests.” It was a review of “Silent Spring” in the journal Science written by I. L. Baldwin, a professor of agricultural bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin.
He didn’t have Ms. Carson’s literary flair, but his science has held up much better. He didn’t make Ms. Carson’s fundamental mistake, which is evident in the opening sentence of her book:
“There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings,” she wrote, extolling the peace that had reigned “since the first settlers raised their houses.” Lately, though, a “strange blight” had cast an “evil spell” that killed the flora and fauna, sickened humans and “silenced the rebirth of new life.”
This “Fable for Tomorrow,” as she called it, set the tone for the hodgepodge of science and junk science in the rest of the book. Nature was good; traditional agriculture was all right; modern pesticides were an unprecedented evil. It was a Disneyfied version of Eden.
Ms. Carson used dubious statistics and anecdotes (like the improbable story of a woman who instantly developed cancer after spraying her basement with DDT) to warn of a cancer epidemic that never came to pass. She rightly noted threats to some birds, like eagles and other raptors, but she wildly imagined a mass “biocide.” She warned that one of the most common American birds, the robin, was “on the verge of extinction” — an especially odd claim given the large numbers of robins recorded in Audubon bird counts before her book.
Ms. Carson’s many defenders, ecologists as well as other scientists, often excuse her errors by pointing to the primitive state of environmental and cancer research in her day. They argue that she got the big picture right: without her passion and pioneering work, people wouldn’t have recognized the perils of pesticides. But those arguments are hard to square with Dr. Baldwin’s review.
Dr. Baldwin led a committee at the National Academy of Sciences studying the impact of pesticides on wildlife. (Yes, scientists were worrying about pesticide dangers long before “Silent Spring.”) In his review, he praised Ms. Carsons’s literary skills and her desire to protect nature. But, he wrote, “Mankind has been engaged in the process of upsetting the balance of nature since the dawn of civilization.”
While Ms. Carson imagined life in harmony before DDT, Dr. Baldwin saw that civilization depended on farmers and doctors fighting “an unrelenting war” against insects, parasites and disease. He complained that “Silent Spring” was not a scientific balancing of costs and benefits but rather a “prosecuting attorney’s impassioned plea for action.”
Ms. Carson presented DDT as a dangerous human carcinogen, but Dr. Baldwin said the question was open and noted that most scientists “feel that the danger of damage is slight.” He acknowledged that pesticides were sometimes badly misused, but he also quoted an adage: “There are no harmless chemicals, only harmless use of chemicals.”
Ms. Carson, though, considered new chemicals to be inherently different. “For the first time in the history of the world,” she wrote, “every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.”
She briefly acknowledged that nature manufactured its own carcinogens, but she said they were “few in number and they belong to that ancient array of forces to which life has been accustomed from the beginning.” The new pesticides, by contrast, were “elixirs of death,” dangerous even in tiny quantities because humans had evolved “no protection” against them and there was “no ‘safe’ dose.”
She cited scary figures showing a recent rise in deaths from cancer, but she didn’t consider one of the chief causes: fewer people were dying at young ages from other diseases (including the malaria that persisted in the American South until DDT). When that longevity factor as well as the impact of smoking are removed, the cancer death rate was falling in the decade before “Silent Spring,” and it kept falling in the rest of the century.
Why weren’t all of the new poisons killing people? An important clue emerged in the 1980s when the biochemist Bruce Ames tested thousands of chemicals and found that natural compounds were as likely to be carcinogenic as synthetic ones. Dr. Ames found that 99.99 percent of the carcinogens in our diet were natural, which doesn’t mean that we are being poisoned by the natural pesticides in spinach and lettuce. We ingest most carcinogens, natural or synthetic, in such small quantities that they don’t hurt us. Dosage matters, not whether a chemical is natural, just as Dr. Baldwin realized.
But scientists like him were no match for Ms. Carson’s rhetoric. DDT became taboo even though there wasn’t evidence that it was carcinogenic (and subsequent studies repeatedly failed to prove harm to humans).
It’s often asserted that the severe restrictions on DDT and other pesticides were justified in rich countries like America simply to protect wildlife. But even that is debatable (see www.tierneylab.com), and in any case, the chemophobia inspired by Ms. Carson’s book has been harmful in various ways. The obsession with eliminating minute risks from synthetic chemicals has wasted vast sums of money: environmental experts complain that the billions spent cleaning up Superfund sites would be better spent on more serious dangers.
The human costs have been horrific in the poor countries where malaria returned after DDT spraying was abandoned. Malariologists have made a little headway recently in restoring this weapon against the disease, but they’ve had to fight against Ms. Carson’s disciples who still divide the world into good and bad chemicals, with DDT in their fearsome “dirty dozen.”
Ms. Carson didn’t urge an outright ban on DDT, but she tried to downplay its effectiveness against malaria and refused to acknowledge what it had accomplished. As Dr. Baldwin wrote, “No estimates are made of the countless lives that have been saved because of the destruction of insect vectors of disease.” He predicted correctly that people in poor countries would suffer from hunger and disease if they were denied the pesticides that had enabled wealthy nations to increase food production and eliminate scourges.
But Dr. Baldwin did make one mistake. After expressing the hope “that someone with Rachel Carson’s ability will write a companion volume dramatizing the improvements in human health and welfare derived from the use of pesticides,” he predicted that “such a story would be far more dramatic than the one told by Miss Carson in ‘Silent Spring.’ ”
That never happened, and I can’t imagine any writer turning such good news into a story more dramatic than Ms. Carson’s apocalypse in Eden. A best-seller titled “Happy Spring”? I don’t think so.
This article is and should be very sobering for environmentalists and people of all colors and persuasions. It should also serve as a wake up call for everyone beating the drum over man-made carbon dioxide emissions, the "desperate" need to contain them, and the innumerable predicted crises over global warming and climate change.
This article vividly illustrates how nearly all of us have been misled about the dangers in our environment from "man-made" chemicals. I think most of us will be stunned if we grasp what we read here. I'm also sure there will be some disagreement.
It is very easy for the public to be influenced by emotionally evocative writing and now "documentary" film-making. This is particularly dangerous when "science", which many people blindly "trust", is used in areas which have great impact on our health and well-being. This is the sad legacy of Rachel Carson; she was a wonderful writer, but played loose and irresponsibly with science. Let this lesson be all the more reason why we must be cautious about what we are hearing now about the dire dangers of global warming.
Peter
Here is the article:
Findings
Fateful Voice of a Generation Still Drowns Out Real Science
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: June 5, 2007
For Rachel Carson admirers, it has not been a silent spring. They’ve been celebrating the centennial of her birthday with paeans to her saintliness. A new generation is reading her book in school — and mostly learning the wrong lesson from it.
If students are going to read “Silent Spring” in science classes, I wish it were paired with another work from that same year, 1962, titled “Chemicals and Pests.” It was a review of “Silent Spring” in the journal Science written by I. L. Baldwin, a professor of agricultural bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin.
He didn’t have Ms. Carson’s literary flair, but his science has held up much better. He didn’t make Ms. Carson’s fundamental mistake, which is evident in the opening sentence of her book:
“There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings,” she wrote, extolling the peace that had reigned “since the first settlers raised their houses.” Lately, though, a “strange blight” had cast an “evil spell” that killed the flora and fauna, sickened humans and “silenced the rebirth of new life.”
This “Fable for Tomorrow,” as she called it, set the tone for the hodgepodge of science and junk science in the rest of the book. Nature was good; traditional agriculture was all right; modern pesticides were an unprecedented evil. It was a Disneyfied version of Eden.
Ms. Carson used dubious statistics and anecdotes (like the improbable story of a woman who instantly developed cancer after spraying her basement with DDT) to warn of a cancer epidemic that never came to pass. She rightly noted threats to some birds, like eagles and other raptors, but she wildly imagined a mass “biocide.” She warned that one of the most common American birds, the robin, was “on the verge of extinction” — an especially odd claim given the large numbers of robins recorded in Audubon bird counts before her book.
Ms. Carson’s many defenders, ecologists as well as other scientists, often excuse her errors by pointing to the primitive state of environmental and cancer research in her day. They argue that she got the big picture right: without her passion and pioneering work, people wouldn’t have recognized the perils of pesticides. But those arguments are hard to square with Dr. Baldwin’s review.
Dr. Baldwin led a committee at the National Academy of Sciences studying the impact of pesticides on wildlife. (Yes, scientists were worrying about pesticide dangers long before “Silent Spring.”) In his review, he praised Ms. Carsons’s literary skills and her desire to protect nature. But, he wrote, “Mankind has been engaged in the process of upsetting the balance of nature since the dawn of civilization.”
While Ms. Carson imagined life in harmony before DDT, Dr. Baldwin saw that civilization depended on farmers and doctors fighting “an unrelenting war” against insects, parasites and disease. He complained that “Silent Spring” was not a scientific balancing of costs and benefits but rather a “prosecuting attorney’s impassioned plea for action.”
Ms. Carson presented DDT as a dangerous human carcinogen, but Dr. Baldwin said the question was open and noted that most scientists “feel that the danger of damage is slight.” He acknowledged that pesticides were sometimes badly misused, but he also quoted an adage: “There are no harmless chemicals, only harmless use of chemicals.”
Ms. Carson, though, considered new chemicals to be inherently different. “For the first time in the history of the world,” she wrote, “every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.”
She briefly acknowledged that nature manufactured its own carcinogens, but she said they were “few in number and they belong to that ancient array of forces to which life has been accustomed from the beginning.” The new pesticides, by contrast, were “elixirs of death,” dangerous even in tiny quantities because humans had evolved “no protection” against them and there was “no ‘safe’ dose.”
She cited scary figures showing a recent rise in deaths from cancer, but she didn’t consider one of the chief causes: fewer people were dying at young ages from other diseases (including the malaria that persisted in the American South until DDT). When that longevity factor as well as the impact of smoking are removed, the cancer death rate was falling in the decade before “Silent Spring,” and it kept falling in the rest of the century.
Why weren’t all of the new poisons killing people? An important clue emerged in the 1980s when the biochemist Bruce Ames tested thousands of chemicals and found that natural compounds were as likely to be carcinogenic as synthetic ones. Dr. Ames found that 99.99 percent of the carcinogens in our diet were natural, which doesn’t mean that we are being poisoned by the natural pesticides in spinach and lettuce. We ingest most carcinogens, natural or synthetic, in such small quantities that they don’t hurt us. Dosage matters, not whether a chemical is natural, just as Dr. Baldwin realized.
But scientists like him were no match for Ms. Carson’s rhetoric. DDT became taboo even though there wasn’t evidence that it was carcinogenic (and subsequent studies repeatedly failed to prove harm to humans).
It’s often asserted that the severe restrictions on DDT and other pesticides were justified in rich countries like America simply to protect wildlife. But even that is debatable (see www.tierneylab.com), and in any case, the chemophobia inspired by Ms. Carson’s book has been harmful in various ways. The obsession with eliminating minute risks from synthetic chemicals has wasted vast sums of money: environmental experts complain that the billions spent cleaning up Superfund sites would be better spent on more serious dangers.
The human costs have been horrific in the poor countries where malaria returned after DDT spraying was abandoned. Malariologists have made a little headway recently in restoring this weapon against the disease, but they’ve had to fight against Ms. Carson’s disciples who still divide the world into good and bad chemicals, with DDT in their fearsome “dirty dozen.”
Ms. Carson didn’t urge an outright ban on DDT, but she tried to downplay its effectiveness against malaria and refused to acknowledge what it had accomplished. As Dr. Baldwin wrote, “No estimates are made of the countless lives that have been saved because of the destruction of insect vectors of disease.” He predicted correctly that people in poor countries would suffer from hunger and disease if they were denied the pesticides that had enabled wealthy nations to increase food production and eliminate scourges.
But Dr. Baldwin did make one mistake. After expressing the hope “that someone with Rachel Carson’s ability will write a companion volume dramatizing the improvements in human health and welfare derived from the use of pesticides,” he predicted that “such a story would be far more dramatic than the one told by Miss Carson in ‘Silent Spring.’ ”
That never happened, and I can’t imagine any writer turning such good news into a story more dramatic than Ms. Carson’s apocalypse in Eden. A best-seller titled “Happy Spring”? I don’t think so.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Rachel Carson Quotations On The Environment
Read these quotes by Rachel Carson about her perception and motherly feel for the Earth and it's environment. Note how she is long on emotionally evocative poetic prose, and short on facts. It is easy to make a connection from this to the modern environmentalist movement, and now what we call "being green".
We conveniently ignore the facts and reality of the world and we go with our "feelings". People "feel" the climate is warming. They "feel" sure it is causing the worst extremes of weather, and they "feel" certain "The End" is near unless we take drastic action soon. Listen to the words and phrases used by environmentalists. They all express a longing to protect, and be protected by a caring, loving Mother Earth. It is as if they all want to return to the safety of the womb rather than face the sometimes harsh realities of the real world.
Feelings don't make good laws; facts, good science, and cool-headed thinking do.
Peter
Rachel Carson Quotes
From Jone Johnson Lewis,Your Guide to Women's History.FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!
Rachel Carson (1907-1964)
Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring documenting the impacts of pesticides on ecology. Because of this book, Rachel Carson is often credited with reviving the environmentalist movement.
Selected Rachel Carson Quotations
• If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.
• For all at last returns to the sea -- to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the everflowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.
• Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.
• If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.
• If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.
• It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.
• Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.
• Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
We conveniently ignore the facts and reality of the world and we go with our "feelings". People "feel" the climate is warming. They "feel" sure it is causing the worst extremes of weather, and they "feel" certain "The End" is near unless we take drastic action soon. Listen to the words and phrases used by environmentalists. They all express a longing to protect, and be protected by a caring, loving Mother Earth. It is as if they all want to return to the safety of the womb rather than face the sometimes harsh realities of the real world.
Feelings don't make good laws; facts, good science, and cool-headed thinking do.
Peter
Rachel Carson Quotes
From Jone Johnson Lewis,Your Guide to Women's History.FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!
Rachel Carson (1907-1964)
Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring documenting the impacts of pesticides on ecology. Because of this book, Rachel Carson is often credited with reviving the environmentalist movement.
Selected Rachel Carson Quotations
• If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.
• For all at last returns to the sea -- to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the everflowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.
• Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.
• If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.
• If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.
• It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.
• Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.
• Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
Rachel Carson: Mother of Environmentalism
Rachel Carson: The Mother of Environmentalism
GeoPete
Message #1 - 05/25/07 01:38 AM
The marine biologist and author Rachel Carson has been called "The Mother of Environmentalism". She is most known for her book "Silent Spring". She died of cancer in 1964. There was a move in Congress to honor what would be her 100th birthday. The move was blocked by a Congressman who blames her for helping ban DDT, a pesticide that was very effective at killing mosquitoes which transmit the deadly disease malaria. Malaria is a scourge of underdeveloped countries and kills millions of people every year.
I don't know a lot about DDT, pesticides, mosquitoes, and malaria. Is it fair to lay the blame of millions of deaths on Rachel Carson? Is this another case of science gone haywire with disastrous results? Is it comparable to what I call the scam and hysteria over global warming?
Rachel Carson is also credited (discredited) with fostering the widespread belief, (misbelief) that most cancers are caused by environmental "pollutants". Apparently many, many scientists disagree, unknown to most of the public.
Any comments people?
Peter
See this article:
DDT debate halts Rachel Carson honor
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- A senator has delayed submitting a resolution to honor pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson on the 100th anniversary of her birth after a colleague signaled he would block it because of her aggressive fight against pesticides.
Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring" revealed the harmful effects of DDT and other pesticides and helped launch the environmental movement. The longtime resident of Silver Spring, Md., died in 1964. She would have turned 100 this Sunday.
Sen. Benjamin Cardin's resolution had intended to honor Carson for her "legacy of scientific rigor coupled with poetic sensibility." But Susan Sullam, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Democrat, said he delayed the bill because Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., signaled he would use Senate rules to halt it.
In a statement on his Web site Tuesday, Coburn confirmed that he is holding up the bill. He blamed Carson for using "junk science" to turn the public against chemicals such as DDT that could prevent the spread of insect-borne diseases such as malaria.
Coburn, a doctor specializing in family medicine, obstetrics and allergies, said in the statement that 1 million to 2 million people die of malaria every year.
Since Carson's death from cancer, she has been celebrated as a hero by the environmental movement and as the inspiration for aggressive advocacy for nature.
Under Senate rules, any senator may hold up legislation that is scheduled as a "unanimous consent" measure for quicker-than-usual passage.
GeoPete
Message #1 - 05/25/07 01:38 AM
The marine biologist and author Rachel Carson has been called "The Mother of Environmentalism". She is most known for her book "Silent Spring". She died of cancer in 1964. There was a move in Congress to honor what would be her 100th birthday. The move was blocked by a Congressman who blames her for helping ban DDT, a pesticide that was very effective at killing mosquitoes which transmit the deadly disease malaria. Malaria is a scourge of underdeveloped countries and kills millions of people every year.
I don't know a lot about DDT, pesticides, mosquitoes, and malaria. Is it fair to lay the blame of millions of deaths on Rachel Carson? Is this another case of science gone haywire with disastrous results? Is it comparable to what I call the scam and hysteria over global warming?
Rachel Carson is also credited (discredited) with fostering the widespread belief, (misbelief) that most cancers are caused by environmental "pollutants". Apparently many, many scientists disagree, unknown to most of the public.
Any comments people?
Peter
See this article:
DDT debate halts Rachel Carson honor
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- A senator has delayed submitting a resolution to honor pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson on the 100th anniversary of her birth after a colleague signaled he would block it because of her aggressive fight against pesticides.
Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring" revealed the harmful effects of DDT and other pesticides and helped launch the environmental movement. The longtime resident of Silver Spring, Md., died in 1964. She would have turned 100 this Sunday.
Sen. Benjamin Cardin's resolution had intended to honor Carson for her "legacy of scientific rigor coupled with poetic sensibility." But Susan Sullam, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Democrat, said he delayed the bill because Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., signaled he would use Senate rules to halt it.
In a statement on his Web site Tuesday, Coburn confirmed that he is holding up the bill. He blamed Carson for using "junk science" to turn the public against chemicals such as DDT that could prevent the spread of insect-borne diseases such as malaria.
Coburn, a doctor specializing in family medicine, obstetrics and allergies, said in the statement that 1 million to 2 million people die of malaria every year.
Since Carson's death from cancer, she has been celebrated as a hero by the environmental movement and as the inspiration for aggressive advocacy for nature.
Under Senate rules, any senator may hold up legislation that is scheduled as a "unanimous consent" measure for quicker-than-usual passage.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Michael Crichton: Our Environmental Future
I wish I could post this entire speech, but I can only quote parts of it and encourage you to read it all here: http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/npc-speech.html
In the speech given January 25, 2005 before The Press Club, in Washington, D.C., Mr. Crichton talks about our environmental history, our perception of the present state of the climate, global warming, and the future. His insight, understanding, and interpretation are profound. It is unfortunate he is dismissed in some sectors as a "just" a fiction writer.
Peter
After his introduction, he says this about global warming:
"Okay. With this as a preparation, let’s turn to the evidence, both graphic and verbal, for global warming. As most of you have heard many times, the consensus of climate scientists believes in global warming. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. "
"Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. "
"So we must remember the immortal words of Mark Twain, who said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
He summarizes by saying:
"The idea of spending trillions on the future is only sensible if you totally lack any historical sense, and any imagination about the future. "
"If we should not spend our money on Kyoto, what should we do instead?"
and........
"Second, and most important—we can’t predict the future, but we can understand the present. In the time we have been talking, 2,000 people have died in the Third World. A child is orphaned by AIDS every 7 seconds. Fifty people die of waterborne disease every minute. This does not have to happen. We allow it. "
and finally,
"What is wrong with us that we ignore this human misery and focus on events a hundred years from now? What must we do to awaken our phenomenally rich, spoiled and self-centered society to the issues of the wider world? The global crisis is not 100 years from now—it is right now. We should be addressing it. But we are not. Instead, we cling to the reactionary and anti-human doctrines of outdated environmentalism and turn our backs to the cries of the dying and the starving and the diseased of our shared world."
"And if we are going to remain too self-involved to care about the third world, can we at least care about our own? We live in a country where 40% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. Where schoolchildren pass through metal detectors on the way to class. Where one child in four says they have seen a murdered person. Where millions of our fellow citizens have no health care, no decent education, no prospects for the future. If we really have trillions of dollars to spend, let us spend it on our fellow human beings. And let us spend it now. And not on our impossible fantasies of what may happen one hundred years from now."
In the speech given January 25, 2005 before The Press Club, in Washington, D.C., Mr. Crichton talks about our environmental history, our perception of the present state of the climate, global warming, and the future. His insight, understanding, and interpretation are profound. It is unfortunate he is dismissed in some sectors as a "just" a fiction writer.
Peter
After his introduction, he says this about global warming:
"Okay. With this as a preparation, let’s turn to the evidence, both graphic and verbal, for global warming. As most of you have heard many times, the consensus of climate scientists believes in global warming. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. "
"Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. "
"So we must remember the immortal words of Mark Twain, who said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
He summarizes by saying:
"The idea of spending trillions on the future is only sensible if you totally lack any historical sense, and any imagination about the future. "
"If we should not spend our money on Kyoto, what should we do instead?"
and........
"Second, and most important—we can’t predict the future, but we can understand the present. In the time we have been talking, 2,000 people have died in the Third World. A child is orphaned by AIDS every 7 seconds. Fifty people die of waterborne disease every minute. This does not have to happen. We allow it. "
and finally,
"What is wrong with us that we ignore this human misery and focus on events a hundred years from now? What must we do to awaken our phenomenally rich, spoiled and self-centered society to the issues of the wider world? The global crisis is not 100 years from now—it is right now. We should be addressing it. But we are not. Instead, we cling to the reactionary and anti-human doctrines of outdated environmentalism and turn our backs to the cries of the dying and the starving and the diseased of our shared world."
"And if we are going to remain too self-involved to care about the third world, can we at least care about our own? We live in a country where 40% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. Where schoolchildren pass through metal detectors on the way to class. Where one child in four says they have seen a murdered person. Where millions of our fellow citizens have no health care, no decent education, no prospects for the future. If we really have trillions of dollars to spend, let us spend it on our fellow human beings. And let us spend it now. And not on our impossible fantasies of what may happen one hundred years from now."
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Environmentalism The New Communism?
Oh this is beautiful. I hope it opens up a hornets nest. Here is someone (the President of the Czech Republic) equating envrironmentalism with communism. I would agree that only someone who has lived under the tyranny of communism can fully appreciate how valuable "freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity" is.
Now I'm not calling Al Gore a communist, heaven forbid. He is just "a green capitalist" cashing in on this hysteria over global warming. After all, what is more "American" than scamming people and getting rich off it? The real danger to the world goes way beyond sad-sack Al Gore. Read this and think about it and let's talk about it.
Peter
Czech prez: Environmentalism is new communism.... (the) Biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity'.... the Czech leader said: "It becomes evident that while discussing climate we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment, but a clash of views about human freedom." "As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants," said Klaus,responding to questions posed by the two lawmakers."Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism." http://globalwarminghoax.wordpress.com/2007/03/20/czech-prez-environmentalism-is-new-communism/ ____________________________________________________________________________________Never
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