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30 June, 2004

POSSUMS TRUMP PEOPLE

"MELBOURNE'S problem packs of bayside rats have acquired a dangerous new appetite for car cables. Not content emptying seaside cafes of customers and sending families running from beaches, rats in the City of Kingston are now snacking under car bonnets and turning residents' vehicles into death traps. Braeside woman Megan Michelis was horrified to discover rats had gnawed large holes in the wires, accelerator cables, and battery casing in her car. She lives in fear that rat-related damage will lead her to have an accident while driving her daughters around.

"My kids are in the car every day. I'm supposed to check under the bonnet daily to make sure it's safe to drive. But I don't know what I'm looking for," she said. Her husband's car, a new $60,000 Prado, has also been chewed into disrepair by hungry vermin. She is angry that Kingston council refuses to play pied piper to her family's rat problem. "I pay rates and they're not willing to bait. It comes across that the rats have more rights than us," she said. "I told a lady at the council that there was a plague and she said, 'It's not a plague, there's just a large number of rats'."

The City of Kingston council recognises a rise in suburban rat sightings within its borders, but does not regard Ms Michelis's Waterways home near Braeside as a problem area. Ms Michelis said the council told her if bait was laid without an environmental report being concluded, innocent possums could die. But the Waterways resident denies there are any possums near her home. "There's only tiny trees here because it's a new estate. We've never seen a possum," she said. We've had rabbits, foxes and rats, but no possums. And anyway, they're willing to kill people in cars, but not kill a possum?""

More here



AUSTRALIAN ALPS DEFY GLOBAL WARMING?

From the Sydney DAILY TELEGRAPH's "Skiwatch" segment by Arthur Stanley -- of 29 June, 2004

"With a 1m snow base before the end of June and great piles of snow outside alpine lodges, questions are being asked about the scientific models predicting gloom and doom for the Australian ski industry.

Since the first CSIRO warnings about the effects of global warming on the snow line- with a worst case scenario pointing to a snow drought in 2020 - we've had one of the greatest seasons on record (2000), excellent seasons in 2002-03 and one of the biggest Junes in history to kick off 2004.

Australia will always have good and bad seasons but with advances in cloud seeding and snowmaking, including on-mountain snow factories, the Australia alpine industry - literally buried in snow as it is at present- is justifiably arguing it will stay fit and healthy for many years to come.

More snow is on the way this week."

None of this will dissuade Greenies of course. When Ice Ages are blamed on global warming they are for all intents and purposes defending an unfalsifiable hypothesis. So any kind of climatic change can be taken as supporting evidence. As change is only constant in nature they will thus never run out of ammunition.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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29 June, 2004

THE FRAUD THAT GREENIES LOVE

"The Preble's meadow jumping mouse is a timorous nocturnal beast of the highland prairie, protected from human dominion in Colorado and Wyoming since 1998 by the Federal Endangered Species Act. Dr. Rob Roy Ramey II is a scientist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science who will tell anyone who asks, including Congress, that he thinks the trouble with Preble's is that they are not threatened with extinction at all. Not even a proper subspecies, he adds. Dr. Ramey believes that the mouse got on the protected list based on guesswork and outdated science, and that it is genetically identical to its cousin, the Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse, which hops in happy abundance in Montana and South Dakota. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service, spurred in part by his research, which it helped finance, is midway through a Preble's reassessment and is scheduled to make a recommendation about the creature's legal status by early next year.

But the standoff of man and mouse is already turning up a lot of other questions that have little to do with rodent DNA, mouse habitat or the vicissitudes of the scientific method. Environmentalists say, for example, that what's good for a Preble's - clean water to drink and open land on which to jump - is good for other earthborn mortals too, including humans, and that having the mouse on the threatened list has been a powerful lever to safeguard the regional environment in a rapidly developing corner of the West. If the mouse goes, they say, so too will those protections to the land. The mouse's threatened status has compelled communities that are building new water projects to leave areas undisturbed for mouse habitat, park managers to keep hikers and bikers on trails, and ranchers to take extra care in maintaining drainage ditches where the mice can cluster.....

Critics of Preble's protection say that politics have been put ahead of science. "Colorado and Wyoming have spent countless millions to recover a species that never should never have been listed in the first place," said Ryan Lance, the Endangered Species Act policy coordinator for Wyoming, which also helped pay for Dr. Ramey's research and filed a petition late last year to remove the mouse from the threatened list. Mr. Lance said he thought the prospects were good that the Preble's would be turned out to its own resources and thrive, with the protections never missed.....

Dr. Ramey, an avid rock climber who once spent six days suspended on the side of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park doing research on Peregrine falcons, said he believed science must always be willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater, ruthlessly questioning and challenging every past conclusion and assumption because that is how truth is derived. He also believes that some species advance toward protected status less on the basis of science than on political pressure..."

More here

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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28 June, 2004

THAT OLD OIL SCARE AGAIN

That pesky oil:

"Fears about running out of oil have become widespread in America. A slew of books have recently put forward the imminent oil depletion argument: Hubbert's Peak by Kenneth Deffeyes (2001), The Party's Over by Richard Heinberg (2003), and Out of Gas by David Goodstein and The End of Oil by Paul Roberts, both published this year. Like earlier concerns about oil depletion, the current panic has little basis in the geology of oil. The argument that we are about to run out of oil has been around for as long as oil has been produced....

We apparently have both too little oil and too much. The most pessimistic forecasters argue that, not only is industrial civilisation about to collapse as it runs out of oil, but it will be tipped over the edge by global warming as a consequence of past energy use.

On a technical level, the new pessimism about oil draws heavily on the work of two retired petroleum geologists, Colin Campbell and Jean LaherrŠre, and the earlier work of Shell geologist M King Hubbert. But the theoretical basis of the pessimistic predictions is weak; and the empirical track record of their approach has been a failure.....

In his paper 'The New Pessimism about Petroleum Resources', Michael Lynch, president of the consulting firm Strategic Energy and Economic Research, illustrates how Colin Campbell's ongoing predictions of an imminent peak in production have consistently proven wrong while his estimates of total reserves have had to be revised upwards.

Also, in order to create a crisis, the pessimists have to discount so-called 'unconventional' sources of oil, such as tar sands, as too dirty or uneconomic; methane hydrates are apparently too speculative; coal liquefaction would take too long to come on line; and so on. Every alternative is shot down.....

A far more sensible approach would be to see potentially declining oil supplies as simply a practical problem. From this perspective there are reasons not to panic. Headlines suggesting that prices are at record highs are misleading, since they do not take inflation into account. Corrected for inflation, today's prices are around half the high of the early 80s price spike. Also, today's economy is less dependent on energy in the sense that it is much more efficient; we get much more useful work out of the same amount of oil..... As long as we feel guilty about improving our lives, energy will always seem to be a problem. But running out of oil isn't something we need to worry about."



The Campbell/Hubbert scare is also debunked here. Summary:

"Recently, numerous publications have appeared warning that oil production is near an unavoidable, geologically-determined peak that could have consequences up to and including "war, starvation, economic recession, possibly even the extinction of homo sapiens" (Campbell in Ruppert 2002.) The current series of alarmist articles could be said to be merely reincarnations of earlier work which proved fallacious, but the authors insist that they have made significant advances in their analyses, overcoming earlier errors. For a number of reasons, this work has been nearly impenetrable to many observers, which seems to have lent it an added cachet. However, careful examination of the data and methods, as well as extensive perusal of the writings, suggests that the opacity of the work is- at best- obscuring the inconclusive nature of their research".

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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27 June, 2004

THE GREENIES WILL LOVE THIS

Getting back at those horrible people:

The "animal threat": For all of America's vigilance against terrorists, danger does not always come on two legs. The threat posed by beavers, woodchucks, deer, blackbirds and other seemingly benign critters has come under federal investigation. A study ordered by Congress amounts to a compendium of dangers from the feathered, the four-legged and the no-legged:
27,000 injuries a year from rodents.
$1 billion in damage a year from cars hitting deer.
15 deaths a year from snake bites.
6,000 collisions between birds and airplanes in 2000. Starlings are known as ``feathered bullets'' because they can cause so much trouble.
$70 million in annual livestock losses from predators, mainly coyotes.
etc.



HILARIOUS! THE EPA HAS GIVEN UP ON CARS

"A new series of whimsical public service announcements from the Environmental Protection Agency are lampooning the notion that cars can be made more energy efficient while the ads encourage conservation at home.

A top E.P.A. official said the $1 million campaign was developed by a branch of the agency that specializes in energy-saving home appliances and was not intended to send a message about cars.... In a 60-second version of the public service announcement, a woman named Suzanne says she is concerned about pollution and global warming, but laments the homegrown efforts of her husband, Mark, to cut emissions from the family car. Mark - nerdy, pudgy, harried - is shown rigging up their car, first with a sail, then a microwave contraption using huge satellite dishes, and finally a helium tank with a bulbous hose.

"The E.P.A. says the energy we use in our home can cause twice the greenhouse gases of a car," Suzanne says, adding that she has started buying energy-saving household products. Buying a cleaner car, or say, a smaller sport utility vehicle, does not appear to be a viable alternative for reducing emissions. The ad ends with a shot of Mark pushing the car down a hill and Suzanne saying, "He still marches to the beat of a different drum." At one point, the car fills with helium, Mark starts talking like Mickey Mouse and two men in the backseat shake their heads and say "Genius!"

Indeed, as the E.P.A. says, energy use at home can cause twice the emissions of a single car. But most families have more than one car and emit roughly the same amount of global warming gases in their vehicles as in their homes, said David Friedman, senior policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental research and advocacy group. "With a car, you can cut your fuel use in half by using a hybrid," he said. "You're not likely to cut your electricity use in half by using more efficient appliances."

Mr. McLean, the E.P.A.'s director of the Office of Atmospheric Programs, said, "We were just trying to give people a benchmark." -- "If you have two cars," he added, "they would be equal.""

So having two cars means twice the pollution? I guess that shows my limits. I can drive only one car at a time!

More here.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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26 June, 2004

NANOTECHNOLOGY: THE NEW SATAN FOR GREENIES

Nanotechnology - a broad term covering the use of techniques to manipulate matter at an atomic scale - is gradually entering the public consciousness. But what is it, and why is it causing debate and disquiet? Already, there are applications of very fine particles (one of the simplest ways nanotechnology manifests itself) in cosmetics. Carbon nanotubes (rather more complex materials, with unique properties) are being made commercially in the UK. But we know for sure when a new technology is becoming important when environmentalist pressure groups get in on the act, issuing dire warnings about how nanotechnology could be the next major issue after genetically modified (GM) food.....

The potential was highlighted by the American futurologist K Eric Drexler, for whom the holy grail is the development of 'nano-bots' programmed to assemble just about anything. At their ultimate, according to Drexler and his ilk, they could produce complex foodstuffs, furniture or indeed just about anything that is currently produced in a conventional factory......

So nano-assembly is at least as difficult as what goes on in biological systems. The other aspect of the utopian vision is that the assemblers should themselves be self-replicating. In this model, once we have created the nano-bots, programmed to perform certain tasks, they reproduce themselves to save us the problem of renewing them. If this ever came to pass, we would truly enter a new age. Almost anything could be produced by making the right mix of nano-bots, adding them to any material which contained the appropriate mix of elements and letting them work. Individual commodities would have virtually no value except perhaps as a rich source of particular atoms. The world economy would be transformed.

Of course, such a future would almost certainly never come to pass. But the hint that such self-replication may even be possible has seriously worried environmentalists. It's quite right and necessary in a free society that critics should be able to point out potential problems, so that new technologies can be introduced in a better way. The problem is that some powerful lobby groups seem dead set against new technologies just because they are new, and promoted by private industry.

The lead has been taken by the Canadian-based ETC group (the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration), which is 'dedicated to the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights'. In practice, that means it tends to look down on modern industrialised society, is suspicious of new technologies, and regards multinational businesses as the devil incarnate.....

The USA has already been handed the lead in biotechnology, and will increasingly see China rather than Europe as the serious competition. Precaution has reduced the agricultural biotechnology research effort on this side of the Atlantic to a shadow of what it was. If Europe is not to lose another nascent industry, we must ensure that nanotechnology does not, indeed, become 'the next GM'.

More here.



HEARTBURN!

The Australian news site Crikey.com.au, reports on a survey of opinion about the trustworthiness of various charities: "The five least trusted charities are all essentially political in nature - and three of them deal with matters environmental. Interestingly, while more detailed lists were not published in the mag, the sixth least-trusted charity was yet another green group, Planet Ark. CARE Australia - the group that Malcolm Fraser has been so enamoured with but was audited by the Commonwealth Government back in Keating days when questions arose over its financial management - another political, humanitarian charity, came in at number seven. Indeed, according to this survey, Ronald McDonald House is twice as trusted as Amnesty International and more than twice as trusted as the Australian Conservation Foundation ... The Greenpeaces and ACFs are very good at manipulating the media and setting its agendas. However, it seems that people don't actually think all that much of them."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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25 June, 2004

CHRIST DID NOT TEACH MERE PRESERVATION

Greenies try to pervert theology: "Recent political debates about the environment appropriate language from churches in an attempt to lend moral legitimacy to the urgent and sometimes frenzied conversation. One example is the prevalence of the term "stewardship." Legislation introduced by Senators McCain and Lieberman concerning global warming has become well-known by its popular moniker, The Climate Stewardship Act.....

Jesus tells the story of a man who goes away on a trip, and leaves his servants in charge of varying amounts of wealth. While the owner is away, the first two men double the money entrusted to them through productive activity, as each "put his money to work." The third servant, however, buries the money, so that it could be preserved and saved to be given back to the master upon his return. When the master returns, he praises the productive servants, but rebukes the servant who merely maintained his master's wealth, saying, "You wicked, lazy servant! . You should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest" (Matt. 25:26-27 NIV). Jesus uses this parable in part to illustrate the moral imperative for human beings to be productive stewards with the gifts we are given. This applies to the mandate of the created world no less than to monetary wealth or spiritual gifts....

The preservationist view of stewardship often contains biblical truth as far as it goes, but it stops short of recognizing the full witness of Scripture. Instead, it offers a truncated and inadequate view of stewardship, which can lead to destructive policies. For instance, the preservationist view sees fallen humans primarily as destructive polluters, as menaces to the rest of creation. In this way, preservationists find that environmental degradations "are signs that we are pressing against the finite limits God has set for creation. With continued population growth, these degradations will become more severe." This line of reasoning leads easily into support for various forms of population control.

By contrast, the "productive" view of stewardship does not oppose the fruitfulness and multiplication of human beings (as present in Gen. 1:28) with the interests of the rest of the created world. Only by embracing humankind's role as productive and creative stewards in all matters will we collectively hear the words of Jesus, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!" (Matt. 25:21 NIV)."



MORE ON THE ENVIRONMENTAL FRIENDLINESS OF CARS

A comment from a reader in reply to my post of 23rd

One area of extra 'pollution' often 'overlooked' by the Greenies is the inevitable extra energy costs associated with transporting passengers from their residences to the transport terminal and back, train stations etc, and at their destination as well. The private passenger car itself affords 'door to door' service, which is another reason why goods transport by rail is largely confined to bulk transfer and extremely long haul. The use of rail in itself is severely limited by how many can be transported and by the fixed position of routes -- and the extraordinarily high capital costs of extending its services to more areas. The high capital costs of Traction units and rolling stock demand very long useful life expectations, leaving rail a long way behind technology advances that 'could' render improvements in efficiency. Add to the equation the time wasted in transfers and waiting for connections and the overall difference in efficiency between the private passenger cars versus mass transit starts to look like a gulf. In the aviation sector, the crossover cost starts between a 4hr and 6hr driving time and after that we are starting to look at an exponential rate of difference in costs, especially when considering time.

However, the Greenies can find a positive here: Mass transit does afford pathogens a far greater opportunity to spread themselves around, making hundreds of thousands very unhappy...... spreading misery around equally and perhaps killing a few off.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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24 June, 2004

GREENIE THINKING

No comment needed:

"Step outside the anthropocentric view of life and one possible value of mosquitoes is population control. Mosquitoes have historically kept human populations down worldwide, and still do in much of the third world. The problem is that they do this by facilitating pestilence and death, so this is not going to enhance their status, among human beings at least.

Mosquitoes may also keep some other animal populations down by spreading disease - something we might be able to see the value of. And other creatures - some fish, frogs birds and bats - eat them. It's possible that if we were able to wipe out mosquitoes, some other species might either suffer from lack of food, or explode in numbers because the burden of disease was lifted.

Another value of mosquitoes, perverse to some, obvious to others, is that they "keep out the riffraff," meaning human beings. Concentrations of pests offer protection to wilderness areas. The tsetse fly, which causes livestock disease as well as human sleeping sickness, has kept humans away from some wildlife refuges and has been called "Africa's best conservationist." Of course, this view has been described by others as ecological imperialism."

More here. (Via Matthew Cowie)



A SELF-CORRECTION EFFECT LEFT OUT OF GREENIE CLIMATE CALCULATIONS

But the calculations are mostly guesses anyway so mere facts won't disturb them

"Is nature defenseless against global warming? Maybe not. Preliminary research, released last week by a national team that includes an Old Dominion University scientist, shows the Earth has its own green Band-Aids - phytoplankton that bloom and spread across oceans after hurricanes. " The tiny plants absorb carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, and carry it to the ocean floor when they die.

Scientists already knew that hurricanes are a sort of tiller, churning up deep, stagnant layers of ocean water. The process is called upwelling. Babin's team now think upwelling can turn what scientists call "ocean deserts," where there are few nutrients to support life, into veritable gardens. Babin and his colleagues think that as cooler, nutrient-rich water rises to the ocean surface, it feeds phytoplankton growth. For two to three weeks following almost every storm studied, satellite data showed phytoplankton blooms.

"And there's an implication as to how that will affect the carbon cycle," Wiggert said. The study suggests a global balance of power. Hurricanes thrive on heat - specifically hot oceans. So a world warmed by man's carbon dioxide emissions may have more such cyclones. And bigger ones. They, in turn, could stir up ocean waters, hatching vast blooms of phytoplankton that gorge on the increased carbon dioxide that helped spark the warming in the first place."

More here. (Via Shallow End of the Gene Pool).

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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23 June, 2004

CARS ARE ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY!

"Encouraging travellers to switch from cars and airlines to inter-city trains brings no benefits for the environment, new research has concluded. Challenging assumptions about railways' green superiority, the study finds that the weight and fuel requirements of trains have increased to the point where rail could become the least energy-efficient form of transport.

Engineers at Lancaster University said trains had failed to keep up with the motor and aviation industries in reducing fuel needs. They calculate that expresses between London and Edinburgh consume slightly more fuel per seat (the equivalent of 11.5 litres) than a modern diesel-powered car making the same journey. The car's superiority rises dramatically when compared with trains travelling at up to 215mph....

Roger Ford, of Modern Railways magazine, said one reason for declining energy efficiency was the impact of health and safety and disability access regulations. The introduction of crumple zones, disabled lavatories and seating rules for trains travelling over 100mph had added weight and reduced capacity. "I know this will generate howls of protest, but at present a family of four going by car is about as environmentally friendly as you can get.""

More here



ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF IRRATIONAL GREENIE CAR-HATE

"When his housing project at Marengo Avenue and Del Mar Boulevard was faced with the threat of the downtown construction moratorium, developer Marios Savvides became apoplectic. "They have not been able to prove any kind of emergency,' he fumed. "They are all running on some kind of paranoia. I think the emergency is not having affordable housing. But some schizophrenic paranoid people want to save 30 seconds on driving from their home to the grocery store.'

Savvides was later spared from the moratorium, along with all the other developers. But his point resonates: Is there a traffic crisis? Is this an emergency? Joyce Amerson, the city's transportation director, thinks not. "In some people's minds it is a crisis, and we're doing our best to manage it,' she said. "But do I think it's a crisis? No, I don't think so. I see it differently than they see it ... on 80 to 90 percent of our streets, traffic's fine.'

The environmental review of the new downtown zoning plan backs up Amerson's point: The vast majority of intersections run smoothly and are expected to keep running smoothly for the foreseeable future. However, there are a few intersections on main thoroughfares that do not and are expected to get worse over the next decade or more. Those are the ones where it takes two or three light cycles to make a left turn."

More here

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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22 June, 2004

WINDY POWER -- ANOTHER GREENIE FAD BLOWS ITSELF OUT

Wind power imposes huge costs on everybody and the windmills kill lots of nice creatures so the Greenies are no longer keen.

"On March 10, the Royal Academy of Engineering released a study, "The Cost of Generating Electricity," comparing the costs of generating electricity from a number of energy sources.... After cutting through the hidden taxpayer subsidies and market constraints that frequently mask the true costs of electrical power generation, the Academy concluded, "Our cheapest electricity will come from gas turbines and nuclear stations, costing just 2.3 p/kWh (British pence per kilowatt hour), compared with 3.7 p/kWh for onshore wind and 5.5 p/kWh for offshore wind farms."

Even fossil fuels were found by the Academy to be half as expensive as renewable energy sources--even after the Academy assigned a penalty to fossil fuel sources to take into account the costs of mitigating carbon dioxide emissions to a level required by the Kyoto Protocol, which Britain has pledged to support.

A study titled "Tilting at Windmills," released April 18 by Scottish economist David Simpson of the David Hume Institute, bolstered the Royal Academy's findings. According to Simpson, generating electricity through wind power and other non-nuclear renewables costs twice as much as generating power from conventional sources. Achieving the British government's goal of 20 percent of generation of energy through non-nuclear renewable sources, concluded Simpson, will cost British citizens well more than a billion dollars per year. Additionally, according to the study, "A serious attempt to address the issue of a reduction in CO2 emissions may raise wholesale electricity prices by up to 60 percent in five years."...

An association of renewable energy companies, Scottish Renewables, conceded in a written response published in The Scotsman that the Hume Institute study accurately reflected the annual costs of supplying power through renewable sources. The renewable energy association also conceded, "Because of the cost of providing additional stand-by generating capacity, it is unlikely wind power will ever account for more than 20 percent of electricity generation through the National Grid, and will make no substantial contribution to a reduction in carbon emissions."

Analysts noted economic costs are not the only costs associated with wind power. Many environmentalists oppose wind power because of the substantial number of birds slaughtered by turbine blades every year. In Northern California's Altamont Pass wind fields alone, thousands of birds are killed by wind turbines each year, including roughly 1,000 annual kills of such valued birds of prey as golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, and burrowing owls."

More here



GOOD GREENIE THINKING

Water On The Brain

The city of Aliso Viejo, California, scheduled a city council vote meant to ban the use of any product by the city that is made with or contains water, believing water to be a dangerous and toxic substance. It seems that the esteemed members of the city government were panicked by some spoof Internet website [perhaps http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html) which calls for the banning of DHMO (Dihydrodgen Monoxide) while listing all its dangers. Dihydrodgen Monoxide is the scientific name for water. Dangers listed at the site include:

- Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO [Drowning]

- Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage. [Frostbite]

- Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.

- DHMO is a major component of acid rain.

- Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns. [Steam]

- Contributes to soil erosion.

- Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals. [Rust]

- Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.

- Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.

- Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions. [All cells contain water]

- Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere. [Severe weather]

- Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.

See here

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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21 June, 2004

YOU CAN'T WIN WITH THE GREENIES

Air pollution and skin cancer:

Panic: 'Cancer warning in heatwave' warned the London Evening Standard this week. It follows a warning issued by the Met Office that levels of UV light were very high, with increased risk of sunburn. The rising levels were blamed on a lack of cloud and lower-than-normal levels of air pollution.

There are currently record UV levels because there is not a great deal of pollution around. Wayne Elliot of the Met Office told the Standard: 'Normally our air is brought up through Europe, and has a lot of pollutants in it. But currently the warm spell is coming from the deep tropics and it is unusually clear. This means far more UV gets through the atmosphere than normal.' Not only could this mean more sunburn, but there are warnings that it could increase the risk of skin cancer in later life.

Don't panic: This report came a week after another Standard article suggested that air pollution levels could, in extreme circumstances, knock 10 years of the lives of some Londoners. Now we have a warning of a cancer risk based on too little air pollution.

As we have pointed out before on "Spiked", the link between skin cancer and sunlight is complex, with the most dangerous forms having the weakest association with sunlight. Air pollution has been a major health hazard in the past, but levels are now so low that only those who are already very sensitive to air quality due to pre-existing conditions are affected - and even then, they are generally affected only on days when weather conditions conspire to push pollution levels well above average.

These stories show how the proliferation of health panics means that almost any behaviour can be deemed dangerous. Avoiding one risk opens you up to another. Going by the reports above, we could only avoid risk if we walked around with oxygen masks on, dressed from head to toe in black, and wore factor 50 sunscreen - but we would still need to take vitamin D supplements to make up for our losses due to a lack of sun on our skin. But this would surely be to no avail because someone would then produce a report saying that wearing sunscreen causes cancer.

Oh dear, they already have.



THE MURDEROUS GREENIE "PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE"

Professor Sir Colin Berry says our obsession with the Greenie precautionary principle is making life more dangerous:

'If everything we did had to be absolutely safe, risk-free, proven to have no adverse outcomes for anyone or anything, we'd never get anywhere. Buildings wouldn't go up, planes wouldn't get off the ground, medical breakthrough would come to a standstill, science would be stifled….almost all of the great scientific advancements of the past 200 years have been a process of 'learning as we went along'... He wonders whether, if the precautionary principle had been about for the past 200 years rather than the past 20, breakthroughs such as blood transfusions would ever have been made. 'I certainly don't think we would have radiotherapy or the various applications of x-rays...

in the 1980s, the favoured precautionary measure to guard against the possibility of your baby falling victim to SIDS was to lay her on her side or front. 'We tended to consider babies and young infants as being rather like the unconscious patient', he says, 'where it is not clear that all the reflexes around the nose and mouth, for breathing and swallowing and so on, are finely tuned. So parents were told to put babies on their side or front, as you would do with an unconscious or stroke-troubled patient. It seemed like a reasonable, precautionary measure to take. Now we know that, in fact, it cost lives.'...

In 1991, an epidemic of cholera, which had earlier been eradicated in Peru, claimed around 6,000 lives and caused illness among another 800,000. It spread from Peru to Columbia, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala. Berry describes it as 'one of the major epidemics of the twentieth century', and says precaution played a part in causing it. It has since been discovered that the epidemic was, in part, a result of the Peruvian authorities' decision to stop chlorinating drinking water supplies - and that one reason they stopped doing this was because reports issued by the American Environmental Protection Agency had claimed there was a link between drinking chlorinated water and an increased risk of cancer...

In some third world countries where malaria had been all but eradicated over the past 20 years, there have been epidemics of the disease since DDT was restricted. Currently malaria is on the rise in all the tropical regions of the planet; in 2000, it killed more than one million and made 300million seriously ill. 'Campaigners claimed that DDT was bad for the environment; they said that it caused harm to American birds of prey. I'm sorry, but why should people in the third world at risk from malaria care about American birds of prey? Decisions about these things should be based on local needs and on empirical evidence....

We should not be in a position to restrict the use of GM in the third world. As an African said recently, "You go ahead and ban GM crops, but can we eat first?"' Berry says the restriction of the use of potentially life-saving technologies in the third world is 'a kind of environmental imperialism"

If you didn't realize how much Greenies hate people, you would think they were crazy. They are not. They are evil. "By their fruits shall ye know them"

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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20 June, 2004

A DISHONEST GREENIE! WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT?

"A former Caltech economics instructor and co-creator of one of the Southland's most revolutionary clean-air programs is under arrest on claims she misused the program to defraud an energy company of at least $12.5 million.

Federal authorities Wednesday arrested Anne Sholtz, 39, at her Monrovia gym. The Bradbury resident is accused of falsely entering into a contract with an Exxon Mobil Corp. refinery and using forged documents to lure energy company AG Clean Air to buy pollution credits she never had.

Eleven years ago, Sholtz helped the South Coast Air Quality Management District design the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market. Known as RECLAIM, the pollution-control program allows the state's 350 largest polluters to exchange "pollution credits' among themselves while limiting the total amount of poisonous exhaust they generate from their factories and plants."

More here.



PERCHLORATE: THE LATEST CALIFORNIA FAD

"Public water agencies and private water companies mainly in Southern California are presently involved in an absurd race to erect costly new treatment plants to remove a chemical called perchlorate from drinking water. These new treatment plants are apparently mere modern hi-tech temples erected to the gods of water quality, as it has now been revealed by scientists that low level perchlorate found in drinking water is no more harmful than most substances found in the human diet. While water agencies are scrambling to rid drinking water supplies of tiny amounts of perchlorate, they continue to add disinfectants to water such as chloramines (chlorine and ammonia) that is toxic to goldfish while perchlorate is not. Another absurdity is that water agencies and companies are shutting down local water wells and paying 5 to 10 times the price for imported water supplies from the Colorado River Aqueduct that has the same concentration of perchlorate in it as the so-called contaminated water wells."

More here



E.L.F. WANTS MORE TREES CUT DOWN

Destroying lumber will only cause more to be cut

"A radical environmental group claimed responsibility Thursday for a suburban lumberyard fire that caused $1.5 million in damage. The Earth Liberation Front issued a statement on its Web site Thursday saying that the group considers graffiti left at the scene and an earlier fax to a Salt Lake City radio station as 'a legitimate claim of responsibility.' The ELF, a loosely organized group of militant environmentalists, generally communicates with the media through e-mail. The Associated Press received Thursday's statement via e-mail, the contents of which were later posted on the Web site."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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19 June, 2004

WHY WE HAVE NOT HEARD ABOUT ACID RAIN LATELY

"Acid rain" was once a big Greenie cause. It was said to be killing trees all over Europe and Canada and must be STOPPED!. We have not heard anything about it from them for a while now, however. The article from the year 2002 that I excerpt below is probably why

"British acid rain is good for Norway's trees, says a Norwegian scientific study. It wipes out damage caused by pollution from local industry and has helped the country's forests spread by a quarter in recent decades.

The report, by the state-run Norwegian forestry research institute, says that acid rain has been unfairly demonised. Svein Solberg, of the institute, said: "After 15 years' research, it is now clear to us that, as far as forests are concerned, our fear of acid rain was totally unfounded. "What we have found is that Norwegian forests have had a growth rate of some 25 per cent over the past 15 years and that acid rain is the reason."

The disclosure will severely embarrass the Norwegian environment ministry, which for at least 20 years has not missed an opportunity to take Britain to task over trans-border pollution. Most of the acid rain that falls in Norway, especially in the south, is believed to contain British pollutants because of prevailing winds".

More here



SINFUL SHRIMP

"Today's neo-Puritan activists fear that someone, somewhere, may be enjoying.a plate of shrimp. And, like the puritans of yesteryear, they see grave danger in allowing people this simple pleasure. They claim that much of the $7 billion worth of shrimp produced globally each year hurts the environment, so they want people in America and other developed countries to eat less shrimp to curb the damage.

Persuading people to feel bad about enjoying shrimp won't be easy. For one thing, there is no shortage of this popular food, so claims of shrimp being endangered are a tough sell. In a typical year, Americans consume more than 1 billion pounds of shrimp, according to the American Seafood Distributors Association. About 90 percent of that comes from overseas, often from commercial shrimp farms in developing countries.

Now a coalition of environmental activists wants Americans who like to dine at chain restaurants, such as Long John Silver's, to eat less shrimp from the Third World. This coalition includes veterans of past protest campaigns, such as Greenpeace, Public Citizen, and the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), but even these stalwarts have had trouble getting traction on this issue, though not for lack of trying.

Last year, EJF claimed that Western demand for farmed shrimp was leading to "a range of human rights abuses" in the Third World, including "sexual abuse, rape, child labor, forced labor and murder." Consumers failed to respond to this call to action -- even hard-core green activists must have found this over the top -- so now EJF is trying a different tack. In May, EJF issued a report claiming that shrimp farming causes "a plethora of environmental degradation"."

More here

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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18 June, 2004

MORE COSTLY GREENIE NON-SCIENCE

The US Environmental Protection Agency has cost builders, local governments and landowners an estimated $100 million over the past six years in building restrictions and related regulatory compliance requirements to protect a mouse species that never existed.

The EPA lists a "Preble's meadow jumping mouse" as being endangered. However the mouse is genetically identical to the common "Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse" which is not a protected species.

The determination of the Preble's mouse as a separate species was done using questionable scientific technique and the results were never peer reviewed. However the results were, sadly, apparently good enough for the EPA.

More here.



KEEP PEOPLE OUT OF NATIONAL PARKS!

That's what the people-hating Greenies want

"A standard lie of the environmental extremists is that Yosemite is "over-crowded" and choked with bumper-to-bumper traffic. True to form, the San Francisco Chronicle shows a line of cars and a couple of pedestrians scooting between them. The pedestrians ought to give a clue as to what is wrong with this picture. The cars are not moving along a street or highway. They are stopped and lining up. Cars get stopped at the entrance to the park to pay a fee to get in and they get stopped by road construction delays inside the park.

My wife and I were among those stopped for about 15 minutes at a road repair site. When traffic is stopped dead in its tracks for 15 minutes, you can collect quite a backup almost anywhere. In Yosemite, you can also collect misleading photographs to be used to advance the political agendas of environmental extremists. Once past the construction site, the traffic in Yosemite flowed far more smoothly than it does in San Francisco and parking spaces were far easier to find. For three days in a row, we had lunch at the popular Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite Valley and each time we had our choice of parking spaces in the main parking lot.

Why then the campaign of lies?

Groups like the Sierra Club and other environmental zealots have for years been trying to reduce the number of people visiting our national parks. They seem to think that our national parks are their own private property, and that it would be best if the unwashed masses are kept out as much as possible, leaving the backpackers to enjoy these parks in seclusion. Like other special interest groups, the environmental extremists have a disproportionate influence on government officials, including in this case those who run the National Park Service.

One of their coups has been to get the gas station in Yosemite Valley removed. The next nearest gas station is 13 miles outside the park and it charges more than $3 a gallon. Was the gas station in Yosemite Valley spoiling some natural scenery? Far from it. It was part of a built-up area that included motel buildings, restaurants, and a gigantic parking lot. That parking lot remains, with something like a hundred cars on it and next to it is a very unattractive tent city.

Esthetics had nothing to do with removing the gas station. The environmental zealots know that the automobile is the key to ordinary people having access to the national parks. The more hassles are created for people driving automobiles, the more people will be discouraged from coming, advancing the goal of reserving the national parks for environmentalists and for those who live the lifestyle that the environmentalists approve of.

The essence of bigotry is denying other people the same free choices you have. Many of those who call themselves environmentalists could more accurately be called green bigots."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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17 June, 2004

ORGANIC FOOD IS UNHEALTHY!

What fun!

"A new study on food safety reveals that organic produce may contain a significantly higher risk of fecal contamination than conventionally grown produce. A recent comparative analysis of organic produce versus conventional produce from the University of Minnesota shows that the organically grown produce had 9.7 percent positive samples for the presence of generic E. coli bacteria versus only 1.6 percent for conventional produce on farms in Minnesota.

The study, which was published in May in the Journal of Food Protection, concluded, "the observation that the prevalence of E. coli was significantly higher in organic produce supports the idea that organic produce is more susceptible to fecal contamination." In addition, the study found the food-borne disease pathogen salmonella only on the organic produce samples. There was no evidence found of the deadly strain of bacteria, E. coli O157:H7, in either type of produce tested. The study looked at fruits and vegetables at the "preharvest" stage, not at the retail store level.

The principal investigator of the University of Minnesota study, Francisco Diez-Gonzalez, told CNSNews.com that "organic agriculture was more susceptible to carry fecal indicators." .. "In many ways it is confirming what is believed, indeed, if you are using animal manure for fertilizer, the chances that you are going to get fecal bacteria on the product are greater," Diez-Gonzalez said. The higher incidences of fecal contamination in organic foods were linked to heavy reliance on composted animal manure for fertilizer. While conventionally grown produce may use some manure, it chiefly relies on chemical fertilizers. Past research has shown that Animal manure is the principal source of pathogens such as salmonella, campylobacter, and E. coli"



ANOTHER SCIENTIFIC RESOURCE

There is a huge site here on Greenie issues run by Australian Earth scientist Warwick Hughes that gives you the scientific facts behind a whole host of Greenie lies. I reproduce below an excerpt from his front page to show the subjects he writes on:

Climate change and Greenhouse issues, big issues here leading to massive waste of taxpayers money on bloated and biased science bureaucracies, costly efforts to reduce carbon emissions, silly inefficient windmills. In a nutshell, if you want electricity shortages and more expensive electricity, then voting Green will help you.

In the 90's the Court Government in Western Australia cancelled the building of a coal fired generating unit at Collie. What a great idea, keeps the Greens happy, who can be surprised when peak demand time brings massive power cuts and brown-outs. The present Govt. seems to think that windmills are a solution. Voters should be telling the Govt. to put in a coal fired power station at Collie.

Drought in Australia, rainfall histories presented, unreliable media claims about drought are exposed. Read about solar cycle based based prediction of future ENSO events which indicates La Nina condition later in 2004 which is better news for agriculture than El Nino.

Perth, Western Australia water supply issues including WA Govt plan to build "White Elephant" desalination plant. Read how the water shortage Perth is currently experiencing is simply a product of steadily rising consumption colliding with political neglect of engineering infrastucture and a failure to anticipate normal cyclic dry periods. But who would be in there opposing new engineering works, you guessed it, the Greens.

A major negative factor has been neglecting to manage forest catchments through thinning forest and clearing scrub and undergrowth, processes which would increase runoff and which the Greens naturally oppose on wildlife grounds. So once again, if you want water shortages and look forward to the prospect of paying more for water, vote Green.

Petrol price issues, how Australian pump prices trend up over three years while world oil price trends down in A$. Not all the Greens fault here but they contribute by pushing for increasing petrol quality which makes it more difficult for independent importers to get competitive supplies. This new petrol quality standard will go national in a year or so and will result in more upward pressure on pump prices; -- if voters do not tell their politicians to shelve the plan.

Air Quality: Read how city air quality has been improving for decades. Yet we still read Green inspired doom and gloom stories in the media saying air quality is a serious problem and that our bad air quality is causing thousands of deaths. And I understood our life expectancy has been increasing for centuries. A question I would like answered by these claiming current air pollution is causing a statistically significant increase in the death rate, "..where were they hiding the bodies in the 1960's and 70's when AQ was a lot worse than it is now..? "

Read critique of weaknesses and omissions in new April 2004 Canberra Govt. report "State of the Air" (SOTA).

Urban and Tropospheric Ozone, a major component of smog, is widely believed to form from pollutant precurssors (such as NOx oxides of nitrogen produced during combustion, (read auto engines and power plants). However the more I examine data the more I am convinced that this is not the whole story and that much tropospheric (lower atmosphere) ozone, which includes urban ozone of course, is in fact natural in origin, the product of peak afternoon temperatures on hot days acting on reactive particles in the air which are very often chemicals given off from vegetation, forests, sea foam and soil, not necessarily in urban areas at all. Air monitoring data are discussed from France, California and Perth, Western Australia which indicate much peak ozone is natural and can not be logically attributed to combustion pollutants.

The road toll: Looks at the history of Australian road fatality statistics, discusses concept of "collision enhancing actions", questions if the huge emphasis put on minor speed infractions is justified, proposes many new actions we could take to reduce the road toll

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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16 June, 2004

MORE CORRUPT SCIENCE

It has long been known that the once-reliable science journal "Nature" has capitulated to Greenie righteousness and is now very selective about the "facts" it reports. See e.g. here. And articles appearing in the "British Medical Journal" have an enormous bias towards political correctness. See here. The extent of the resultant corruption of fact-reporting in the journals concerned has now been revealed, and it is great -- once again showing that you cannot trust anything with a Green/Left political taint:

"SCIENTIFIC and medical journals, with their august panels of peer reviewers and fact checkers, are not the sort of places many mistakes are to be expected. Yet Emili Garcia-Berthou and Carles Alcaraz, two researchers at the University of Girona in Spain, have found that 38% of a sample of papers in Nature, and a quarter of those sampled in the British Medical Journal (BMJ)-two of the world's most respected journals-contained one or more statistical errors. Not all of these errors led to erroneous conclusions, but the authors of the study, which has just been published in BMC Medical Research Methodology, another journal, reckon that 4% of the errors may have caused non-significant findings to be misrepresented as being significant.

Dr Garcia-Berthou and Dr Alcaraz investigated 32 papers from editions of Nature published in 2001, and 12 from the BMJ in the same year. They examined the numbers within each, to see whether the data presented actually led to the statistical conclusion the authors drew, and also whether there was anything fishy about the numbers themselves. Appropriately, they used a statistical technique to do their checking. If a set of data are "unedited", the last digits in the numbers recorded will tend to have the values 0-9 at random, since these digits represent small values, and are thus the ones that are hardest to measure. If those numbers are rounded carelessly, however, 4s and 9s (which tend to get rounded up to the nearest half or whole number) will be rarer than they should be. The two researchers duly discovered that 4s and 9s were, indeed, rarer than chance would predict in many of the papers under scrutiny.

False data, false results....."

More here.



A GREENIE "SUCCESS"

This bit of Greenie-inspired bureaucracy has so many laughs in it that I think I will just post it without comment (Excerpts):

"It's not that easy being green. But it is easy to spend it. Northampton County learned that expensive lesson south of Cape Charles' harbor, where it has spent about $9.1 million over nine years in hopes of creating hundreds of decent jobs for its low-income residents. So far, it's gotten about nine, spending about $1 million per job. Erected five years ago, the solar-powered Building 1 of the Cape Charles Sustainable Technology Industrial Park is still two-thirds vacant. The building's sole tenant, Wako Chemicals USA Inc., employs a handful of workers from May to November to draw blood from horseshoe crabs for various biomedical uses. At least Wako may soon expand and take half the building.

This isn't how it was supposed to work. In 1995, Northampton County's then administrator dubbed the park "the future of the Eastern Shore." Another county official said: "This will be America's prototype industrial park as we enter the 21st century, and its initial phase is projected to create more than 900 jobs."

Today, the 140-acre environmentally friendly business park remains more fantasy than reality.... With the county's support, the Joint Industrial Development Authority of Northampton County and its Incorporated Towns has decided to cut its losses and liquidate. The IDA has neither the resources nor the staff to market and develop the industrial park, said Wehner, an economist and former investment banker, who retired to the Eastern Shore four years ago to establish a vineyard.

Some town politicians still want to see the type of economic development the park originally promised. "We're getting a lot of residential," said Cape Charles Mayor Frank Lewis. "It seems to me like there's going to be a need for things besides residential. Not heavy industrial, but light industry and other businesses."

The Clinton-era President's Council on Sustainable Development selected the proposed Cape Charles Sustainable Technology Industrial Park in 1994 to showcase ecologically sensitive development and business practices. In sum, the project has collected about $3.9 million in federal and state grants. The remaining $5.2 million was paid for by the county, partly through a bond issue that must be repaid from the proceeds of any sale. Plans called for a conference and business development center, plus 800,000 square feet of space for offices, research and manufacturing facilities. The buildings were to be solar-powered, to recycle water and be surrounded by man-made wetlands, lakes and trails. A document was drawn up outlining the covenants, conditions and restrictions to building in and operating in the park to ensure that its use was ecologically sensitive, economically viable and socially just.

"It's social engineering," said Ray Otton, the park's current project manager. To lease in the park, a company cannot create, ship or store hazardous waste and must recycle its manufacturing byproducts. Tenants could reduce their rent by hiring local people, paying more than the county's average income, providing benefits and educational opportunities, or doing community service. They could also get rent breaks by doing research on sustainability, using "alternative'' transportation for employees and producing no pollution. "This thing has won all sorts of awards for being the best sustainable development park in the country," Wehner said. Then, noting the lack of progress, he added: "I guess it must be the only one."

Wehner is far more blunt. "The very thought that we could fill a 140-acre park in a county with 12,000 residents is ludicrous," Wehner said. "This was a good-faith effort by the county to help the community. However, it's not easy to transfer money from one group of citizens to another. This money would have been far better spent in the school system."

Still, Lewis is not ready to give up on the park. "I'd like to see them not give up on the covenants and restrictions and the zoning because I think it still has a chance," he said."

More here. (Via The Shallow End of the Gene Pool)

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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15 June, 2004

HUGE FUN!

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is telling people not to believe EPA statistics! It turns out that even some SUV's get better fuel economy than EPA-favoured "hybrid" cars do. It shows once again that you cannot put your faith in anything touched by Greenies

"So many people have complained about disappointing fuel economy of gas-electric hybrid cars that the federal government is telling automakers to consider putting more realistic mileage labels on their cars or do a better job warning buyers that they won't get the advertised mileage....

Poor fuel economy has been among hybrid owners' top gripes, according to consultant J.D. Power and Associates, as much as three times as high as for other small cars and even surpassing that of owners of gas-thirsty sport-utility vehicles...

Hoping to clarify things for automakers, EPA is taking the unusual step of circulating this statement: "Long-standing EPA policy allows manufacturers to voluntarily use lower fuel-economy label values when they believe that a vehicle may be inappropriately represented by the EPA-calculated label.""

More here.



THAT OIL "SHORTAGE" AGAIN:

"Oil produced the modern world -- its ways of work, warfare and recreation -- and soon, we are told, the end of cheap oil will produce abrupt, wrenching changes in the way we live. Changes, certainly, but not convulsions, because the modern world responds to price signals.

That is why U.S. energy efficiency -- energy consumed to produce a dollar of GDP -- has roughly doubled since the oil shocks of the 1970s. America's less than 5 percent of the world population consumes more than 20 percent of all oil. Surging demand by India and especially China will cause prices to rise. And terrorists, or chaos in Venezuela -- America's fourth-largest supplier, behind Canada, Saudi Arabia and Mexico -- or Nigeria, the fifth-largest, could cause prices to soar.

However, in 1920 the inflation-adjusted price of gasoline was twice today's. To match 1981 prices, a gallon of gasoline today would have to be $3.50. Inexpensive gasoline is one reason why since 1988 the average gas mileage of U.S. passenger vehicles has declined, and why in the 2003 model year, for the first time since the mid-1970s, the average weight of a new car or light truck was more than two tons (4,021 pounds).

In 1977 President Carter said we ``could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.'' But today known reserves are larger than ever. Reserves and production outside the Middle East are larger than they were 31 years ago, when a State Department report was titled ``The Oil Crisis: This Time the Wolf is Here.''..."

More here.



UPDATE

The quote from Andrew Bolt that I put up yesterday mentioned the claimed "rising" sea levels at Tuvalu. Currently over on John Daly's site is a historical chart (scroll a long way down) for sea levels at Tuvalu. It is interesting to note from the chart no overall trend but regular extreme LOW sea levels.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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14 June, 2004

GREENIES ARE JUST FEELIES

Andrew Bolt notes how the very "Green" Peter Garrett thinks. Garrett is a recent high-profile recruit to Australia's major party of the Left and a probable future member of the Australian Federal parliament. Excerpts:

"Garrett the rocker and Australian Conservation Foundation president has rarely had to expose himself to hard questioning of his politics -- certainly not from a usually admiring media.

Lucky him, as we saw two years ago, when 60 Minutes did confront him with Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish statistician who has debunked the scare campaigns of our religious greens with facts, facts and more facts. Here's one exchange, when Lomborg asked doom-preaching Garrett to at least admit fewer people starved now than did 30 years ago.

Garrett: I don't think the statistics actually back you up, Professor Lomborg . . .

Lomborg: You're wrong. The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation have put out figures on starvation since 1970 and shown a dramatic decrease -- from 35 per cent to 18 per cent (of all people), from 947 million, now down to 840 million.

Garrett: Quite clearly whether it's 800 million people or four million kids who are suffering from starvation now it's still a problem for us and we haven't solved it in the world and to argue anything else is a statistical lie. (My emphasis.)

Lomborg: This is the problem I have with this kind of argument: you think you're so right that you can also just deny the numbers that we all understand and we all agree to.

Lomborg is right. Garrett feels his truths, like any post-modernist, and facts will not lightly change his mind. Indeed, they can become a "statistical lie".

Nothing shakes his faith, as a Christian green, that the world faces a biblical apocalypse if we don't take "the metaphysical jump (and) find the time to bond with the earth" and repent our environmental sins. As I said, this is the true sign of a religious fanatic -- having a faith that treats facts as lies. Statistical lies.

And so Garrett declares global warming dooms the islands of Tuvalu, where our "neighbours are in danger of losing their homes forever", when in fact Flinders University researchers can't detect a flicker of a rise in sea levels there.

He demands we scrap our uranium mines because radiation is so lethal that Chernobyl "caused the deaths of more than 30,000 people", when in fact United Nations agencies put the death toll at fewer than 50. But that's just more "statistical lies", I guess.

Likewise, Garrett rages at how Aboriginal elder Yami Lester "was blinded by the tests" at Maralinga and others "suffered terribly", when in fact a royal commission and every medical survey failed to find a single clear case of illness caused by those nuclear blasts.

He demands we spend tens of millions more to "save" the "sick" Murray from "rising salinity trends", when in fact the Murray has not been this fresh for half a century.

But no "statistical lies" will stop Garret from crying: "Repent! For the end of the world is nigh." He demands we ban all genetically modified crops as a menace to humanity, when in fact even the UN's own Food and Agricultural Organisation says they're safe, kind to the environment and "can help the poor" and starving.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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13 June, 2004

IDIOTIC GREENIE BUREAUCRACY

EPA launches costly new smog standard: "On April 15, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched its new plan to tighten the national ambient air quality standard for smog. Policy experts warn the new rule will do significant economic harm but little environmental good, pointing to EPA's own data to support their argument.

EPA Administrator Michael Leavitt acknowledged there would be substantial compliance costs in the 31 states with areas out of compliance with the new standard, but said the rule change was necessary "to achieve cleaner, healthier air."



GREENIES ARE THE ENEMIES OF THE POOR

""Safeguarding environmental values is essential," Niger Innis, national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, told journalists and others attending an Earth Day discussion April 22 at the National Press Club. "But we must stop trying to protect our planet from every imaginable, exaggerated, or imaginary risk. And we must stop trying to protect it on the backs, and the graves, of the nation's and world's most powerless and impoverished people."

Innis spoke at a briefing about the negative implications of "eco-imperialism"--policies that speaker after speaker said seek to protect the environment, but deny impoverished people the chance for better lives."We intend to make this Earth Day a clarion call for human rights and more responsible environmentalism," Innis said.

Dr. C.S. Prakash, professor of plant genetics at Tuskegee Institute and a native of Bangalore, India, agreed. "We need to put humanity back into the environmental picture and promote policies that demonstrate as much concern about people, as about the environment."

All over the world, nations are trying to emerge from poverty, he said, by generating more electrical energy, increasing their agricultural output, and eradicating the diseases that have plagued them for centuries. But they are often prevented from doing so by developed countries and activist groups that claim such activities might adversely impact wildlife and environmental values.

Environmental pressure groups, wealthy foundations, and even the United Nations and World Health Organization oppose the use of DDT and other pesticides to control malaria. The disease afflicts 300 million people every year, killing 2 million--mostly women and children, and mostly in sub-Saharan Africa--and leaving the region one of the most destitute on Earth.

DDT's critical role in the battle against malaria was conclusively demonstrated by South Africa, which reintroduced the chemical in 2000--and slashed malaria disease and death rates by more than 90 percent in just three years, noted American Enterprise Institute fellow Dr. Roger Bate. "DDT has never harmed a single human being," he emphasized, "and any damage to wildlife occurred when massive amounts were employed in farming, not when small doses were employed for disease control."

Environmental activists deprive poor countries of electricity, denying them lights, refrigeration, better jobs, and modern schools, clinics, and hospitals. As a result, millions die from tuberculosis, dysentery, and other diseases. Opposition to biotechnology perpetuates malnutrition, prevents Third World farmers from replacing crops that have been devastated by disease and drought, and results in extensive erosion and habitat loss.

"Eco-imperialism is clearly a pervasive problem in the United States, too," said John Meredith, a member of Project 21. "It imposes policies that drive up housing prices, prevent the cleanup of polluted brownfields, stifle job creation in minority neighborhoods, and keep poor people impoverished. The policies promote a narrow political agenda and fail to give the poor a voice in these decisions."

More here.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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12 June, 2004

THE TYPICALLY DESTRUCTIVE RED/GREEN ALLIANCE

Red ideas prevent Green results:

"Mother Gaia Earth Mama (or whatever the tattooed homosexual vegetarian campus leftists call it) will not be more pristine if we all go primitive. Research is conclusive that as countries develop economically, they inevitably turn their attention to the environment. Population growth reverses with economic development, too. All this is inevitable with economic development, which itself is founded in secure property rights. And while we property owners keep our property clean, people and countries in poverty, especially individuals who don’t own property, aren’t going to care much about polluting the environment if it means they get something to eat.

I’ve said it before, and I’m not the only one to have said it: The environment will get better if governments stop taking over private property and if they stop interfering in voluntary economic transactions. Wealthy (by world standards) environmentalists who go around the world persuading governments to exercise powers over property and commerce are not only hurting people – witness, for example, millions of needless malaria deaths – but are preventing the environmental cleanliness they claim is their goal".



SOME DIRECT ACCESS TO CLIMATE SCIENCE

Most of what I post on this blog are summaries written for non-scientists. While such summaries are useful and informative, there is the big problem that many scientists with a vested interest in perpetuating the "global warming" and other Greenie myths often make deceptive claims. So this is an area where there is a real need to give the intelligent layman direct access to the science involved. I therefore reproduce below the front page of Douglas Hoyt's site. By logging on to the original site here you can follow up in detail most of the scientific issues involved. Hoyt was the author of the letter in reply to Greenie academic John Holdren that I put up in my postings yesterday.

Douglas V. Hoyt is a solar physicist and climatologist who worked for more than thirty years as a research scientist in the field. He has worked at NOAA, NCAR, Sacramento Peak Observatory, the World Radiation Center, Research and Data Systems, and Raytheon where was a Senior Scientist. He has conducted research on issues related to climate change, changes in solar irradiance on all time scales, and the sun-climate connection. His most recent publication is the book "The Role of the Sun in Climate Change" . He has published nearly 100 scientific papers on solar irradiance variations, the greenhouse effect, atmospheric transmission, aerosols, cloud cover, sunshine, radiative transfer, radiometers, solar activity, sunspot structure, sunspot decay rates, and the history of solar observations. He has received no funding from any fossil fuel entity or government entity. His work is influenced only by the data and the study of the scientific literature.

PROBLEMS WITH THE GREENHOUSE WARMING THEORY

There are several problems with the theoretical underpinnings of the standard IPCC theory of global warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases (AGHG). These problems are listed here with more discussion in the links.

1. The IPCC theory has a roughly 3.5 W/m2 decrease in outgoing thermal radiation from a doubling of carbon dioxide. The number is based upon an instantaneous doubling of carbon dioxide and assumes no change in the continuum radiation. This topic is discussed further here.

2. The sensitivity of climate without any feedbacks is (33 C / 148 W/m2) or 0.22 C/W/m2, so the basic change in climate is 0.22 * 3.5 C or 0.7 C for a doubling of carbon dioxide. Recently Schwartz has deduced empirically that the climate sensitivity is approximately 0.25 C/W/m2, and equilibrium time is 2-3 years (Requirements for empirical determination of Earth's climate sensitivity by S. E. Schwartz at the AAAS Annual Meeting, Denver CO, February 14-18, 2003 http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/abstracts/Empirical.html). Most empirical determinations of climate sensitivity place it somewhere between 0.07 and 0.26 C/W/m2.

In contrast, the IPCC says a doubling of carbon dioxide will cause a warming of 1.5 to 4.5 C and have a climate sensitivity between 0.43 and 1.29 C/W/m2. They get these high numbers by assuming a number of positive feedbacks exist including changes in water vapor, cloud cover, and snow and ice cover. The water vapor feedback is incorrect and is discussed here.

3. The sum total of all feedbacks is assumed to be positive. Recent published work shows they are negative and these results are reviewed here.

4. IPCC economic models overestimate the rate at which carbon dioxide will enter the atmosphere over the next century. It leads to farfetched warming numbers such as 5.8 C. A critique is offered here.

5. Some easily modeled effects such as an increase in depolarization factor of air with more carbon dioxide are totally neglected in the climate models. Further discussion here.

Summary: Based upon the first three points above, the upper limit on warming due to a doubling of carbon dioxide is 0.7 C and it is probably much less. The high numbers used by the IPCC are not supported by measurements.



ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS FOR THE RECENT WARMING

According to the surface measurements, climate has warmed by about 0.18 C/decade since 1979. Many people attribute all this warming to AGHGs, but alternative explanations exist. They are listed below with links to further discussion.

1. The sun may have warmed over the last 25 years and caused most if not all the warming as discussed here.

2. The albedo of the Earth has decreased (the planet is getting darker and absorbing more radiation). This will warm the planet and is discussed here. Land use changes are also discussed here.

3. Contrails have increased in recent years and will lead to a warming on regional and perhaps a global scale as discussed here.

4. Fossil fuel burning releases heat directly to the atmosphere and will cause a warming over the continents. It is discussed here.

5. Urban heat islands (UHI) are substantial (several degrees Celsius in many cases and larger than the predicted AGHG warming). Placing thermometers near cities and downwind of cities may lead to a warming that is falsely attributed to AGHGs. The effect is substantial and is discussed here along with a mention of land use changes.

6. Other explanations for the recent warming include:

a. Decrease in explosive volcanic eruptions in recent years.
b. Increased intensity of El Nino in the last few years.
c. More carbon aerosols (soot) in the atmosphere.
d. Soot on snow.
e. Decreased stratospheric ozone.
f. Internal changes in circulation such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and Arctic Oscillation (AO).

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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11 June, 2004

DAM ENVIRONMENTALLY SAFE BUT NOT GREENIE SAFE

Greenies everywhere hate dams, full stop ... BECAUSE dams use nature constructively. This Australian example shows how irrational they are about it

"Governments and multinational corporations feel increasingly compelled to appease the great green beast in ways that have little relation to the health of the environment. Whether it's oil company donations or "partnerships" with green groups, or banks sending backroom workers to the Amazon for five weeks to work on some environmental project, it is all about buying protection for the organisation and safeguarding the share price from green attack. Of course, no matter how many offerings are laid on its altar, the green beast is never appeased....

Green zealotry has also won when it comes to solving Sydney's water crisis. Carr and his Utilities Minister, Frank Sartor, are determined Sydney will not get a new dam, even though the population is growing by 1000 people a month, and blame "climate change" for water shortages.

In 2002, Carr locked up land that had been set aside for the planned Welcome Reef Dam on the Shoalhaven River to Sydney's south. He created a 6000-hectare (not 600 as I inadvertently wrote last week) nature reserve from land that had been acquired by state governments over almost 40 years. The abandonment of the dam, near Braidwood, was accompanied by a green propaganda campaign, that claimed Welcome Reef was hopelessly dry and that the dam would destroy endangered species and ancient eucalypts, ruin the Shoalhaven gorge and take a decade to fill.

But John Brown, the civil engineer and hydrology specialist who did the original environmental impact study on the Welcome Reef Dam, said yesterday that none of those criticisms were borne out by his study. The study was carried out by the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation for the Metropolitan Water Sewerage and Drainage Board (now Sydney Water) between 1975 and 1979, with the EIS completed in 1980. Brown says although the report is old, little about the landscape has changed.

He said scientists from the CSIRO Division of Wildlife Research and NSW State Fisheries conducted "very detailed field surveys over a 12-month period in which a census of bird species was made at monthly intervals at 17 sites and augmented by monthly counts along a 24-kilometre strip. Mammals, reptiles and frogs were identified in nocturnal and daylight surveys as well as by the use of live traps. Vegetation was identified and classified. It was concluded that none of the species of fauna identified was endangered or relies on habitats unique to the area that would be inundated, and all the plant species identified have a wide distribution outside the same area."

As for "ruining" the Shoalhaven Gorge, Brown says that "after the dam is constructed the same quantity of water, less evaporation losses, would flow through the gorge. There would be a change in its temporal distribution with the flow during dry periods increased and that in high flow periods and floods decreased." Brown also scoffs at claims the dam would take a decade to fill. He found there was only a 10 per cent chance it would not fill to its minimum operating level in four months. The whole point of a dam is to capture and store water during periods of high rainfall to be used during low rainfall.

The most damaging claim - that the site is in hopeless rainshadow - Brown also thumps. Yes, it is in a "bit of a rainshadow" but so is much of Warragamba's catchment area. Welcome Reef still gets 800 to 1000millimetres of rain a year. Of all the possible dam sites he examined, Welcome Reef was by far the best, and the least environmentally sensitive.

Brown worked on the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme, and says it never would have been built today because of opposition from green groups. The irony is that the Snowy scheme provides clean green power, eliminating the need for more coal-power and associated greenhouse gases. The benefit of hydro-power, Brown says, is available at the turn of a tap, unlike coal-burning generators which take time to stoke up.

Welcome Reef deserves more investigation. Brown says there is no reason for dam to be a four-letter word. "From the earliest time, civilisation has been based on the diversion of water into dams. Without it we would still be cavemen." Which is exactly what the green beast wants.

More here



MORE ABOUT DISHONEST GREENIE SCIENCE

A critical movie review in the Boston Globe of the laughable "Day after tomorrow" scare movie evoked a defensive reaction from various Greenies. I posted yesterday Iain Murray's demolition of one of the Greenie responses. Below is a demolition (by a reader of this blog who is a retired climatologist with more than 30 years experience) of Greenie John Holdren's response to the same movie review:

John Holdren should be ashamed of his ad hominem attack on James Taylor. His letter simply debased the debate.

In recent years, alarmism about anthropogenic climate change has grown from a mild concern among a few to near panic among many. This unnecessary alarmism is based upon faulty science as we will briefly explain in this letter.

The IPCC makes the bogus claim that a doubling of carbon dioxide will lead to a warming of between 1.5 and 4.5 C. These numbers correspond to a climate sensitivity between 0.43 and 1.29 C/W/m2. Without any feedbacks, the climate sensitivity is 0.22 C/W/m2 corresponding to a warming of 0.7 C for a doubling of carbon dioxide.

In contrast, about a dozen empirical measurements of climate sensitivity have been made and the values range from 0.07 to 0.26 C/W/m2.

Why are the theoretical sensitivities roughly 5 times greater than the measured climate sensitivities? The simple answer is that the climate models assume (without any evidence) that the climate feedbacks are positive. Fortunately, the climate data allows scientists to test whether the feedbacks are positive or negative, and two recent independent studies by Karner (2002) and by Douglass et al. (2004) have established that the feedbacks, in toto, are negative. Consequently, there are major problems with how the climate models treat feedbacks. For example, Minschwaner and Dessler (2004) recently showed that the water vapor feedback is overestimated by about a factor of ten. This error in the models arises from simplified guesses about how this feedback operates. The climate models ignore portions of the physics in their computational codes. So far, no climate model has been developed that gives answers in accord with observations.

There are good theoretical reasons to believe that the sum total of all climate feedbacks must be negative for the predicted forcing by greenhouse gases. Simply put, if the feedbacks were positive, they would imply a thermodynamic system exists that absorbs radiation more efficiently than a blackbody which is already the most efficient absorber that can possibly exist. It is extremely unlikely that such a thermodynamic system could exist for any length of time, let alone thousands of years. Put another way, the climate modelers are arguing that the Earth as a heat engine has an efficiency greater than 100%, which essentially makes it a perpetual motion machine.

In summary, the climate models have serious deficiencies, omit physics, and disagree with numerous observations. The evidence is overwhelming that the climate is insensitive to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations and the alarm over future climate changes represents poor judgment.

References:

Douglass, David H., Eric G. Blackman, and Robert S. Knox, 2004. Temperature response of Earth to the Annual Solar Irradiance Cycle. Physics Letters A Vol. 323, No 3-4, pp. 315-322.

Karner, O., 2002: On non-stationarity and anti-persistency in global temperature series. J. Geophys. Res. 107, D20, 1-11.

Minschwaner, K., and A. E. Dessler, 2004. Water vapor feedback in the tropical upper troposphere: Model results and observations. Journal of Climate, 17, 1272-1282.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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10 June, 2004

OIL SHORTAGE THEORIES CRUMBLING

Bruce Bartlett (excerpts): "Predictably, the recent rise in oil prices has the usual doom-and-gloom crowd, which has consistently been wrong for 30 years, out saying once again that this proves we are running out of oil and that severe curbs on gasoline consumption must be imposed to preserve what little is left for future generations. They need not worry. There is growing evidence that oil is far more plentiful than we have been led to believe.... in the 1950s, Russian and Ukrainian scientists developed a new theory about petroleum's origins called the abiotic or abiogenic theory. According to this view, oil is fundamentally inorganic and has no relationship to dead plant or animal life. Rather, oil originates deep in the Earth's crust from inorganic material that is part of the planet's origin.

In the words of geologist Vladimir Porfir'yev: "The overwhelming preponderance of geological evidence compels the conclusion that crude oil and natural gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the Earth. They are primordial materials which have erupted from great depths." For more than 50 years, Russian and Ukrainian scientists have successfully used the abiotic theory to find oil and natural gas. For example, the Dnieper-Donets Basin has yielded a significant amount of oil and natural gas even though it is an area that conventional biological theories reject as unpromising. A recent technical paper found that the results "confirm the scientific conclusions that the oil and natural gas found in … the Dnieper-Donets Basin are of deep, and abiotic, origin."

The leading supporter of the abiotic theory in the U.S. is Prof. Thomas Gold of Cornell. His 1999 book, The Deep Hot Biosphere (Springer-Verlag) is a thorough discussion of the issues. It is based in part on research financed by the U.S. Geological Survey. Among prominent scientists whose work supports the abiotic theory are Jean Whelan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Mahlon Kennicutt of Texas A&M University, and J.F Kenny of the Gas Resources Corporation.

Interestingly, economic research also implicitly supports abiotic theory. A leading researcher in this regard is Michael C. Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research and formerly chief energy economist for DRI-WEFA.

In a new paper, Lynch debunks a common theory called the Hubbert Curve, which postulates that the yield of oil fields is inherently limited. The problem, as Lynch points out, is that actual experience in many instances contradicts the Hubbert theory. Its primary flaw is that it views geology as the sole factor in oil discovery, recovery and depletion. In fact, oil prices, government policy and technology play critical roles. But the evidence he presents of oil fields that yielded far more than the Hubbert Curve predicts is consistent with the abiotic theory, which says that oil fields can be refilled from sources well below those in which production now takes place."



SCIENTIFIC DISHONESTY

The Greenie cult seems to corrupt the honesty of all it touches -- even scientists -- though many scientists also have self-interest to motivate them towards defending the faith. Iain Murray explains:

"George Woodwell's attack in the letters page of the Boston Globe on James Taylor's article on The Day After Tomorrow is a textbook example of how the scientific establishment builds political mountains out of scientific molehills whenever anyone questions the vast sums paid out of taxpayers' pockets to keep the global warming industry going. Woodwell's critique of Taylor's article omits important information the voter needs to help him decide whether global warming should be a priority when she needs to choose between, for example, education spending, climate change research funding and lower taxes.

Woodwell says the Earth has warmed rapidly over the last century. True (although "rapidly" is an overstatement), but as even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits, much of that warming happened in the first half of the century and man's activities were not responsible. The planet cooled between the 1950s and 1970s. It is only in the past 30 years that scientists say the Earth has warmed owing at least in part to mankind's contribution. The public needs to know that.

Woodwell says glacial ice is melting globally. Yes, glaciers all over the world are melting. Most of them have been melting for hundreds of years. The glaciers atop Kilimanjaro have been receding even though the temperature there has been falling. Other glaciers, however, like those in Scandinavia, are advancing. There are glaciers in Alaska advancing while others a short distance away are receding. The public needs to know that.

Woodwell says that sea level is rising. Yes over the past century, but again, sea level has been rising for a long time. Satellite altimeters indicate virtually no change in sea level globally over the past decade. On-the-ground research in the Maldives, one of the low-lying island chains often claimed to be at risk from the flooding Woodwell alleges, demonstrates that the sea level there has fallen significantly over the past 30 years. The public needs to know that.

Woodwell alleges that recent droughts in North America are "warming-induced." The historical record indicates that North America has seen thirteen major droughts over the past 500 years, the worst of them by far in the Sixteenth century. We have seen nothing in recent years to rival this drought or that of the dust-bowl years. The public needs to know that.

Finally, Woodwell claims that anomalies such as tornadoes are becoming more common. True again, but intense tornadoes - the ones that do the damage - and deaths resulting from them have decreased . It's probably that we see more tornadoes now simply because our monitoring systems are better at detecting small tornadoes than they were a few years ago.

The public needs to know all of this. Overall, the billions of dollars we spend on researching climate change reveal that the world is getting slightly warmer as a result of man's activities. Whether this is anything to worry about is something voters and their representatives have to decide on the basis of full information. We should bear in mind that much of these scientists' funding is dependent on voters being scared."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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9 June, 2004

GLOBAL WARMING ACTIVISM A HUGE WASTE OF SCARCE RESOURCES

There are much greater benefits to people from spending the money on other things

Bjorn Lomborg has recently organized a conference of distinguished economists and others in Copenhagen:

"The organising idea was that resources are scarce and difficult choices among good ideas therefore have to be made. How should a limited amount of new money for development initiatives, say an extra $50 billion, be spent? Would it be possible to reach agreement on what should be done first?...

This panel of eight included three Nobel prize-winners-Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago, Douglass North of Washington University in St Louis, and Vernon Smith of George Mason University. And the other five, who may collect a few more Nobels in due course, are also eminent in their respective fields-Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University, Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich, Justin Yifu Lin of Beijing University, Thomas Schelling of the University of Maryland, and Nancy Stokey of the University of Chicago....

Results:

The top of this list was not the problem. Ranked first was a package of measures aimed at controlling HIV/AIDS. Next came a set of interventions aimed at fighting malnutrition. The third-ranked policy did raise a few eyebrows, among economists and NGO sceptics alike: "multilateral and unilateral action to reduce trade barriers and eliminate agricultural subsidies." ("Why so low?" ask economists. "How come so high?" reply the NGOS.) In fourth place, also unlikely to arouse much protest, were new measures to control malaria.

The panel rated all four of those proposals "very good", as measured by the ratio of social benefit to cost. In fact, by the ordinary standards of project appraisal, they are not just very good but extraordinarily good, with benefits exceeding costs by a factor of ten or more, and sometimes much more. That proposals this good should fail to be adopted for lack of finance is a scandal, especially when you reflect on some of the projects that governments are currently financing.

The bottom of the list, however, aroused more in the way of hostile comment. Rated "bad", meaning that costs were thought to exceed benefits, were all three of the schemes put before the panel for mitigating climate change, including the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse-gas emissions. (The panel rated only one other policy bad: guest-worker programmes to promote immigration, which were frowned upon because they make it harder for migrants to assimilate.) This gave rise to suspicion in some quarters that the whole exercise had been rigged. Mr Lomborg is well-known, and widely reviled, for his opposition to Kyoto.

These suspicions are in fact unfounded, as your correspondent (who sat in on the otherwise private discussions) can confirm. A less biddable group would be difficult to imagine. The challenge-paper on climate change was written by William Cline of the Centre for Global Development; Mr Cline is pro-Kyoto, and in fact favours even stronger measures to abate carbon emissions than the protocol requires. But the panel insisted on making their own minds up on the issue. Right or wrong, there was no dissent among any of the eight.

Interestingly, an invited gathering of young people from around the world attending a "youth forum" run in parallel with the main event, and hearing the same submissions from challenge-paper authors and their discussants, ranked climate change only ninth out of the ten global challenges. So much for the view that age blinded the expert panel to the long-term dangers of global warming ("they won't be around to suffer the consequences"). Perhaps this should give pause to governments dedicated, or claiming to be dedicated, to Kyoto's implementation.



BUT THEY NEVER GIVE UP

(It's their religion)

Global warmers adopt new tactics: "The global warming treaty known as the Kyoto protocol is politically dead in the U.S. But the treaty's left-leaning environmental extremist supporters haven't given up their fantasy of creating a socialist global economy through controls on energy use. Rather, they've merely switched tactics to achieve that dubious aim -- and I'm not referring to making dopey movies like 'The Day After Tomorrow.' The new tactic is to pressure publicly owned corporations into taking steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions -- essentially committing to private Kyoto protocols on a corporation-by-corporation basis. The sort of pressure employed by the global warming activists is not the usual one of forcing corporate managements to cave-in under the threat of bad publicity. Instead, the activists are becoming shareholders of publicly owned companies, attempting to steer corporate policy under the guise of being owners of the corporations."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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8 June, 2004

NO ROOM WITH A VIEW FOR YOU SONNY BOY!

A huge expanse of beautiful coastline has been "saved" from "development" -- meaning that people will not be able to live on any part of it: The usual anti-people Greenie thinking. Any kind of compromise about use of the land was not of course considered. And the good old taxpayer foots the bill!

"California agreed Friday to buy a parcel of coastal property near Hearst Castle in a tentative deal that would bar housing development on nearly 82,000 acres that many consider among the most beautiful and threatened land in California.

The agreement calls for the Hearst Corp. to sell 1,500 oceanfront acres, as well as a conservation easement that would bar housing and commercial development on about 80,000 additional acres, an area twice the size of San Francisco, said Sam Schuchat, executive officer for the California Coastal Conservancy.

The deal will cost the state $95 million, including $80 million in cash and $15 million in tax incentives, according to Hearst Corp. Vice President Stephen Hearst....

Lyon said the deal will include agricultural restrictions, but declined to provide specifics.

Funding will come from bond measures already approved by California voters along with $23 million in federal transportation money.

The company began looking into selling the land and development rights in 1998 after the California Coastal Commission shot down a proposal to build an 18-hole golf course and 650-room resort on some of the ranch property".

More here



GREENIE PREDICTIONS BOMB AGAIN

What's 7 billion (yes billion) people between friends?

In less than 40 years, according to the latest UN projections, the world's fertility rate will have fallen to below replacement levels. World population is expected to stabilise at 9 billion, not the 16 billion projected only 14 years ago.

And even China's low fertility means its labour force will start shrinking by 2020, and its over-60s population will burgeon. In its big cities, the birthrate has fallen to 0.7 per woman, prompting the expectation that it will soon drop its one-child policy.

Phillip Longman, writing in the latest Foreign Affairs journal, says: "Germany could easily lose the equivalent of the current population of what was once East Germany over the next half-century. Russia's population is already contracting by 750,000 a year. Japan's population, meanwhile, is expected to peak as early as 2005, and then to fall by as much as a third over the next 50 years - a decline equivalent to that experienced by medieval Europe during the plague."...

Peter McDonald, professor of demo-graphy at ANU, adds that having enough young workers is critical to a country's international competitiveness: "In every generation it is young workers who assimilate new technology and implement it," he says.

For some countries the threat of an ageing and declining population is acute. But Australians have less reason for panic. The birth rate has fallen from a high point of 3.5 children per woman in 1961 - the year the birth-control pill arrived here - to its current 1.7.

That is a better position to be in than a host of other countries - including Austria, Greece, Portugal, Germany, Japan, Spain, Italy, Singapore and Korea - with birthrates of 1.2 to 1.5.

More here

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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7 June, 2004

WATER FASCISM

This shows that Greenies are all about control, not solving problems

"Householders will be restricted in their use of rainwater and backyard bores under a State Government plan to reduce water use. From July 1, anyone caught watering gardens or washing cars with rainwater or bore water from 10am-5pm will face a maximum $5000 fine. The exception will be for those using a handheld hose, bucket or watering can.

SA Water inspectors will police the new measures, expected to be approved by State Cabinet tomorrow. Environment Minister John Hill said yesterday the move was necessary to extend current water restrictions from SA Water customers to "all water users". "Whether you get water from the ground or a rainwater tank, ultimately it comes from one source - it falls from the sky. It shouldn't be wasted. "We're not saying you can't use rainwater (altogether) and the idea somehow individual rights are being interferred with . . . I find repugnant."

While conservation groups have welcomed the move, the Opposition, some councils and golf clubs have described it as "over the top" and "bizarre".

"We should be trying to give people incentives to collect their own water - this will just create a disincentive," Opposition leader Rob Kerin said. Unley Mayor Michael Keenan said: "It's bizarre. If you catch your own water in your own rainwater tank you should be able to use it on your own backyard when you wish.""



A GREENIE FRUITCAKE

Or a dedicated self-publicist, more likely

"Ten years ago, at the age of 38, Dr Tim Flannery changed Australia's national conversation with the publication of The Future Eaters, which argued that the arrival of humans had a profound and invidious impact, leading to rapid or "blitzkrieg" mass extinction of species, and a subsequent drying out of much of the continent. The book is still selling - well over 100,000 copies so far - and remains on the reading lists of numerous university courses....

He's a likeable bloke, a good talker, and the media loves his ability to generate stories. On May 19, he made the front page again when he warned the Sydney Futures forum that Australia was about to see devastating environmental change and possibly ghost cities.

There are, however, plenty in the academic community loudly unwilling to participate in the beatification of St Timothy. "Just because a guy is well known does not mean he knows what he is talking about," Dr Stephen Wroe, a palaeontologist at the University of Sydney, says. "I've got a fairly cynical view of Tim. He's an opportunist. He knows climate change is a buzzword, but a few months' work does not make him an expert."

Dr Judith Field, an archaeologist at the University of Sydney, doesn't hold back, either: "Tim doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good story. He does a lot of broadbrush stuff, with broad consequences, and some of it is just plain wrong."

And another archaeologist, Jim Allen, of La Trobe University, made the observation a while ago: "I wish I could be as sure of anything as Tim is of everything"....

Last month he received another blast of academic grapeshot, and another front-page story, with the publication of a paper by Wroe and two other scientists in the Proceedings of the Royal Society entitled, "On the rarity of big, fierce carnivores . . .", which attacked the underpinning of The Future Eaters. Wroe summarised the attack: "A generation of Australians have been misinformed. Australians should no longer be taught that theirs is a biologically stunted land that produced diminished fauna."

Wroe was more brutal in conversation: "Our research effectively undermines the whole thesis that The Future Eaters is built on . . . He's saying his thesis is still standing, but it's not."....

[Flannery] dismisses Wroe's claim that his main theory in The Future Eaters has fallen over, saying Wroe's paper looked only at a small part of his hypothesis. He cited a recent paper by Barry Brook and David Bowman, "The uncertain blitzkrieg of Pleistocene megafauna", which concluded: "In sum, human colonisation in the late Pleistocene [period] almost certainly triggered a 'blitzkrieg' of the 'megafauna', but the operational details remain elusive".

This prompted a blitzkrieg of a different kind, from Wroe: "I think the Brook-Bowman paper is a lot of baloney. It is a computer simulation. I could throw in a few variables and get a different outcome . . . Blitzkrieg theory is a hotly contested area. I do not believe in it."

Field, who has been contesting Flannery's theories for years, adds another whack: "Most of our hypotheses are tested with facts, and that underlies the work we do. But most of what Tim does is conceptually driven, and not based on data. And he has been selective in his use of data.""

More here.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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6 June, 2004

BEARS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HUMAN LIFE

Wait for the punchline

"In an attempt to get a free meal, what was described as a "very large" bear broke into the rural homestead of a BC college student, who was home on vacation at the time. The student, who would only give his name as Ryan, says, "I had just grilled out some salmon and walked back into the dining room to eat. Just as I had just sat down, it sounded at though someone was trying to break down my door." As Ryan went to investigate, the door burst open and the gaping maw of a northern Kodiak bear appeared inside his living room.

As the bear forced it's way into the dining room area, the beast found the grilled salmon it had smelled from what authorities estimated was over a mile away, where they found the bear's tracks around a small cave. Ryan tried shouting at the bear to get it to leave, but the bear seemed to be intent on the salmon it was feasting on. Ryan then proceeded to throw various kitchen utensils at the bear to get it's attention. "I wasn't sure what I was going to do," he said. "After I hit the bear in the head with a wooden spoon, the bear started coming after me!" The would-be bear snack ran to the other side of the kitchen counter as the bear raised up on it's hind legs and tried swatting at him.

"The bear was blocking my way to my room where I actually have a gun, so I found the only thing I had that I did not throw at him, my frying pan." he relates. "I picked up the frying pan and shouted, bring it on, bring it on!" Ryan jumped over the counter and started swinging the frying pan. The animal, estimated at six feet tall on all fours and over eight hundred pounds, got back on all fours and started to charge the young man. When the bear was about 1 foot away from him, Ryan swung the cast iron frying pan and hit the bear on the right side of its head. "The bear appeared to be dazed, so I just kept pounding him with the frying pan."

"After I hit the bear about fifteen times, the bear fell to the floor, but I dared not let up. I hit him for about another five minutes until he was not moving at all," Ryan says. Only then did he take the time to call for local law enforcement. "When the police showed up, they could not believed what they saw."

"It was the craziest thing I've ever seen," said Officer F. Barnes, of the Victoria crime scene investigation unit. "He actually killed a bear with a frying pan." The local wildlife officer showed up and took measurements of the bear, one of the largest involved in a home invasion incident in recent memory.

There is no word on what became of the animal's body, but local animal rights activists are filing to take possession of the bear's remains, claiming it was an immoral act of killing, and Ryan should not be allowed to make a bearskin rug out of it. Darcy Morris, president of the local chapter of Animal Rights Abuse Watch (ARAW), says, "This young man should be prosecuted, not praised. The bear was simply following his natural instincts, and had this Ryan criminal left it alone, no harm would have been done. It's disgusting, and he can expect to hear from our lawyers.""

With incredible heroism, a man kills a huge bear that is attacking him and the Greenies condemn him for it! It sure shows what people-haters they are. It sounds like an urban myth. I only believe it because I know what people-haters Greenies are. I was sent a news link for this story as follows: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/5/prweb128904.htm but it seems to have been taken down. It is however also reported here, where there are some good comments also.



A GREENIE TELLS THE TRUTH!

"We don't have an answer. We have concern". Find something common and then generating "concern" about it is a pretty good description of the Greenie method

"When you hit a key on your computer or wipe your monitor, you may be picking up toxic dust.

A study to be released today reports that dust on computers contains a flame retardant with a toxic chemical known to pose reproductive and neurological hazard in animals. The report was published by advocacy groups that included the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

The report, along with other recent studies, suggests that people are exposed daily to such chemicals in the office and at home. Right now, though, scientists can't predict what, if any, harm these chemicals -- known as PBDEs -- have on humans.

``It all goes into consumer products -- plastics, TV consoles, computer consoles, hair dryers,'' said Kim Hooper, a state research scientist at the Hazardous Materials Lab of Cal/EPA. ``How safe is it? I don't think we have an answer. We have concern.''

More here

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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5 June, 2004

THE SCIENCE OF HOT AIR

Australian economist Alan Wood comments on a bad movie and the support for "Kyoto" by Mark Latham, leader of Australia's Left. Excerpts:

"THE consequences of global warming portrayed in The Day After Tomorrow are so absurd that even the hysterics in the US green movement reportedly feared audiences would laugh it out of the cinema. However, the scientific proponents (and massive financial beneficiaries) of the greenhouse effect are more hopeful.

The general line from climate scientists in the US, the UK and Australia has been that while the science is bad, the film could be helpful in raising awareness of the consequences of climate change. It is revealing that they apparently don't see anything wrong with using bad science to push their case.

It will certainly frighten university students and schoolchildren. After all, they have been assiduously prepared to be frightened. According to Mark Latham last week, one of the three issues always raised with him in high schools and universities is the Kyoto protocol. As Latham said, they have grown up with the issue. It would be more accurate to say they have grown up with teachers pumping ever-so-politically-correct propaganda on Kyoto and climate change down their throats......

Latham will presumably find The Day After Tomorrow a powerful call to action, since he doesn't mind a bit of climate scaremongering himself. He warns that rising global temperatures would have a profound effect on Australia - drying out our dams and rivers, making our bushfire season a nightmare every year, threatening our beaches, destroying the Great Barrier Reef and flooding Kakadu with salt water.

These claims are presumably based on work by the CSIRO, which in turn depends on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's projections on climate change. This is a shaky foundation, as former Australian statistician Ian Castles, who enjoys a high international reputation, points out in a comment on a recent Senate report on ratifying Kyoto.

"The general impression conveyed by the report is that it has been established that human-induced climate change poses an extremely serious problem which demands urgent countervailing action in the form of negotiated emissions reductions, either under the Kyoto protocol or some successor instrument," he says. "But this is far from being the case. To begin with, the IPCC's third assessment report, which the Senate committee report describes as 'the most recent generally accepted authoritative statement on climate change', produced 'projections' - not 'predictions' - of future greenhouse gas concentrations and global temperatures.

"The distinction is crucial. John Zillman, Australia's principle delegate to the panel since 1993, made clear in an address in March 2003 that the projections in the IPCC's report are 'nothing more than what if? assessments', and are 'not, in any sense, to be regarded as predictions of actual future climate'. In the same address, Zillman said the question of how global greenhouse warming will manifest itself at the national, regional and local level 'is, at present, completely unanswerable'."....

If Latham cares about Australian jobs, he should reconsider his simple-minded support of ratification of Kyoto..."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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4 June, 2004

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHY GREENIE NONSENSE MATTERS

Australia's largest city is running out of water because of Greenie opposition to new dams

"Frank Sartor is relishing his role as The Punisher this week, imposing new water restrictions on the first day of winter, which require Sydneysiders to risk frostbite by watering our gardens in the dark.

The NSW Utilities Minister might prefer we accept the inevitable and simply let our gardens die, bulldoze our swimming pools, stop flushing our toilets, turn our underpants inside out and perhaps flagellate ourselves with the branches of our dead rose bushes.

In the middle of a drought, with Warragamba Dam more than half empty, the State Government is playing on the guilt of Sydneysiders. But we have already been very good. In the first three months of the year, Sydney households cut their water use by an average 29 per cent.

In the North Shore garden suburbs, much-maligned for their "big homes, European-style gardens and swimming pools", people were even more virtuous, reducing water consumption by more than 40 per cent.

But it is never enough. This week Sartor attacked local councils for not imposing more $220 fines on their ratepayers. Level-two water restrictions imposed this week restrict watering of gardens to three days of the week, and only before 9am and after 5pm, prompting complaints from pensioners, the most avid gardeners, that they will catch pneumonia.

But the State Government's increasingly punitive, intrusive approach to water does little to solve the real problems. For one thing, household use makes up just 8 per cent of Australia's consumption of water, so a land of dead gardens, empty swimming pools and frost-bitten pensioners would be little more than a gesture.

And with 1000 extra people settling in Sydney each week, it stands to reason that no matter how well we conserve water, at some point it will run out. The water infrastructure our forebears put in place is in desperate need of upgrading, and yet the Government is doing little but punish its citizens with fines, restrictions and looming price hikes.

Talk to engineers and they will tell you, off the record, that Sydney will eventually need a new dam, and plans should be under way now. But inevitable green opposition makes the prospect difficult and the Premier, Bob Carr, has ruled out any possibility that a dam could be built now or ever, if he has his way.

Last year Carr locked up land that had been set aside for almost four decades for the proposed Welcome Reef Dam on the Shoalhaven River to Sydney's south, which was intended to supplement Sydney's water supply in dry times.

He placed 600 hectares of that land into yet another nature reserve, thus killing off any chance of a new dam there. Despite claims the location wasn't ideal, including that it was in a rain shadow, permanently shelving it without identifying an alternative was arrogant and short-sighted.

For fear of green protests, no one will even talk seriously about the dam that will have to be built one day".

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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3 June, 2004

OVERPOPULATION?

DEAN ESMAY puts into perspective the Greenie claim that the world either is overpopulated or shortly will become so

"Now, the United States encompasses about 3,717,142 square miles. The world population is currently estimated at well over 6 billion and is projected to reach 7 billion in 2010. Depending on whose estimates you believe, the population will either peak around 2050 and then begin to decline or, according to more aggressive estimates, may go as high as 11 billion some time after the year 2100. This is depending on whether you believe people around the world will continue to grow wealthier and more prosperous, which they have been throughout most of the world (except in totalitarian regimes) for the last 100 years, because a documented fact is that the more prosperous and healthy people become, the fewer children they tend to have.

Okay, so current estimates have the world population hitting 7 billion in about 6 years. Let's go with that figure. And like I just said above, the current land space in the United States is 3,717,142 square miles (a bit over 9,600,000 square kilometers). This means that if you took the entire world population in 2010 and forcibly relocated every man, woman and child to the United States, we would have a population density in this country of (drum roll, please):

1,883 people per square mile.

This would be about twice the population density of Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin (813 people per square mile), or about two thirds of the population density of New Albin, Iowa (2,635 people per square mile).

In other words, it would be about average for a small rural farming community.

Now, remember where we started this little journey? Oh yes: Alberta. The Canadian province of Alberta, that great nation's 4th largest province, encompasses approximately 260,000 square miles.

Which means that if you took the entire world population in 2010 and forcibly relocated every single one of them to Alberta (we plan to make everyone Canadian, eh!), Alberta would have a population density of 26,923 people per square mile.

In other words, roughly the population density of New York City or Moscow, and considerably less crowded than cities like Paris, the famed City of Lights".

The comments on Dean's blog cover a fair range of "Yes, buts" too. It is true that to use all the earth's available space we would needs lots more energy -- but nuclear energy is both clean, safe and as abundant as we permit it to be, so that is only a Greenie-created problem. And with plenty of nuclear power, we could even desalinate the oceans for whatever amount of water we wanted, keep Alaska, Antarctica, Siberia and Northern Candada as heated up as we wanted and even live under the sea if we wanted.

As population shrinkage is is the real challenge we face, however, (due to shockingly low birthrates in most developed countries), the whole overpopulation "problem" is just the usual Greenie nonsense



THE REAL POPULATION PROBLEM: SHRINKAGE

Possible solutions -- from an Australian economist

"The antidote is for all of us to realise and think about a surprising fact: those countries with higher participation in the workforce by married women also tend to have higher fertility rates, whereas countries with low female participation tend to have low fertility rates. That's about the opposite of what you'd expect, which is why we need to do a lot more thinking about the relationship between women, paid work and babies - not to mention husbands. (These insights come from the research of Peter McDonald, professor of demography at the Australian National University, and are confirmed by the research of Patricia Apps, professor of economics at Sydney University.)

All the developed countries are experiencing rapid ageing of their populations, but most are a lot further down that road than we are. By the early 1980s, most European countries' fertility rates had fallen to about where ours is now.

Some of those countries - Sweden, Norway, Denmark and France, for instance - responded to concerns about falling fertility by taking steps to make work more family friendly. Others - Italy, Germany and Spain, for instance - didn't bother. Guess what? Those countries that have continued making life hard for working women have suffered both low rates of female participation and a continued fall in fertility, whereas the more enlightened countries have enjoyed higher female participation and no further decline in fertility.

The key to this conundrum is to understand the implications of what may be the single most significant socio-economic development of our times: the revolution in women's levels of educational attainment. In the space of just a few decades we've got to the point where girls are being more highly educated than boys. The year 12 retention rate, for instance, is 81 per cent for girls and 70 per cent for boys. Females account for 55 per cent of all students in higher education. And looking at the whole population of working age, women now account for 47 per cent of all those with post-school qualifications - up from 43 per cent a decade earlier.

When women devote so much time, effort and forgone income to acquiring an advanced education, is it any wonder so many of them want to enjoy the fruits of that education in terms of income and job satisfaction? When, by the things they do or don't do, governments make it hard for women to have a career and a family, is it any wonder we end up with an inadequate degree of workforce participation and declining fertility - not to mention a generation of mothers who aren't enjoying life as much as they should?..."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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2 June, 2004

PUTIN AND "KYOTO"

I have cribbed this summary of reactions to President Putin's deal with the EU from an article in the "Editor" section of "The Australian" newspaper of May 29, 2004. It does not appear to be online elsewhere

"Despite President Vladimir Putin's promise to accelerate the process of ratifying the protocol in return for European concessions on entry to the World Trade Organisation, not everyone was convinced of Moscow's wisdom or sincerity.

The Wall Street Journal was particularly scathing, accusing Putin of being shortsighted. If Russia, which produces 17 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases, signs. it would mean that countries producing 55 percent had ratified the pact thereby activating an "ill-considered" treaty dreamed up in a "UN hothouse". The cost. according to the Journal. would be "hundreds of billions of dollars per year across the world economy. in addition to the opportunities foregone for real economic development".

The Australian Financial Review took a similarly cynical view on why Putin agreed to the WTO-Kyoto deal. "The more you look at this deal, the less it actually has to do with cutting greenhouse emissions." Russia needs the WTO in order to move to the next stage of economic development, while the West weeds Russia inside the global trading system as soon as possible but "not at any price".

Peter Foster, writing in Canada's Financial Post, also wondered why the EU was willing to barter WTO entry against "an agreement that was hatched by environmental alarmists and their bureaucratic handmaidens, who all think that free markets are a bad idea [but endless UN conferences are a good one]".

But did Putin's commitment to ratify Kyoto amount to a promise or a ploy? The Moscow Times's Greg Walters noted that "Putin stopped just short of offering his unequivocal support and that he had carefully fashioned an escape hatch for himself by saying that the real responsibility for ratification lies with the State Duma".

But as Vladimir Kovalev in Transitions Online wrote, the Duma is stacked with Putin's supporters so getting approval was not an issue. Moreover, Russia would not have to cut emissions at all. The pact requires Russia in 2012 to be producing 1990 levels of greenhouse gasses. Thanks to the demise of so many Soviet-era enterprises, Russia's current output was between a half and one-third of 1990. Russia also gained from the Kyoto/WTO agreement by not having to raise domestic gas prices as quickly as Europe had initially insisted, pointed out Anthony Latta in The Moscow News.

Not everyone, however, was breaking out the caviar and vodka. Putin still has to convince his powerful economic adviser Andrei Illarionov, who made his displeasure about Kyoto clear to Amity Shlaes in The St Petersburg Times. "It looks like it is very nice, similar to the way in which communism and socialism looked very nice," he said. Despite Kyoto's talk of market-friendly mechanisms, its potential to become a supranational monster was, according to Illarionov, "a fact of life".

Tech Central Station's Iain Murray also noted that Putin's apparent pledge on Kyoto came just one week after the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences issued a report that disputed the scientific basis of Kyoto. The report noted the "absence of scientific substantiation of the Kyoto Protocol and its low effectiveness for reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, as is envisaged by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change" and stated, "the requirements of the Kyoto protocol are of a discriminatory character. and its mechanisms involve economic risks for Russia"."

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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1 June, 2004

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHY GREENIE LIES MATTER

They attempt to deny us electricity by panicing us into allowing only the most impractical proposals. An Australian example of a recent Greenie newspaper article:

"The State Government's decision to build the Kogan Creek coal-fired power station adds fuel to a fire that is torching Queensland's future. Its five million additional tonnes of annual greenhouse gas pollution will add to global warming that is bleaching the Barrier Reef, sucking moisture from drought-stricken Queensland farms, and making it easier for dengue fever to spread.

Earlier this year, Premier Peter Beattie announced a historic end to broad-scale land clearing, and lauded Queenslanders as global warming warriors. Stopping the bulldozers will save millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere. Burning coal to make electricity at Kogan Creek will make at least part of these savings futile. The biggest greenhouse polluters in Australia are stationary energy sources, like coal-fired power stations, followed by the agricultural sector and transport....

The only way we can reduce the threat of global warming to Queensland's economy and environment is to make large cuts in emissions across the board. Building coal power stations in a warming world is like trying to put out a fire with petrol.... "



A FISKING OF SOME GREENHOUSE PROPAGANDA

(Excerpts: The original of this appeared on the website of the ABC -- Australia's major public broadcaster)

"About 100 years ago (1896) a Swedish scientist made the first calculation of global warming that could be expected due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As our understanding of climate expanded through the decades of the 20th century, it became clear that a number of other gases in a planet's atmosphere act to trap radiation. Since a planet's temperature is determined by the balance between incoming solar and out-going planetary radiation, the overall effect of gases that trap radiation near the surface of a planet will be to elevate the surface temperature to a level above that which would otherwise be the case.

[ This conveniently ignores convectional cooling. The natural greenhouse effect is actually overwhelmed by convectional cooling. Alone, the natural greenhouse effect would heat the earth's surface to 75oC. Convectional cooling actually reduces it to the existing 15oC. That is, most of the heat transfered back to space gets there via updrafts in the atmosphere, not by radiation from the surface - the greenhouse effect is purely a radiation effect. ]

Somebody coined this process the 'greenhouse effect,' erroneously likening the effect of these radiation-trapping gases to the effect of a glasshouse on a sunny day. By careful observation on planet earth, it also became clear that the comfortable temperature of the planet - averaging about 15oC - is largely due to the effect of these greenhouse gases. In the case of the earth the major naturally-occurring greenhouse gases are: water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone where it occurs near the earth's surface.

[ Here we go with your distorting of facts. Convectional cooling dominates the earth's temperature and water vapour dominates the relatively minor greenhouse gas effect . Water Vapour causes almost all the greenhouse effect - 98% of it !! Methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone are pathetically, totally insignificant.]

This mechanism - the greenhouse effect - is well understood and its operation is accepted by even the most hardened critics of climate change.

[ And CO2 can only be a very minor and insignificant part of it. ]

The late 1950s saw a remarkable international scientific effort to understand the physical characteristics of the home of Homo sapiens. This international effort reached its zenith during 1957, the International Geophysical Year. It was during this year that high on a volcano in Hawaii, Dr Dave Keeling started continuous measurement of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory. The idea behind the observatory was to situate it far away from sources of city pollution, so that scientists could determine the composition of 'unpolluted' or baseline air. Even at that time scientists thought that perhaps rapid industrialisation, the burning of fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) and deforestation might be changing the composition of the atmosphere. The ability to make such measurements required major advances in analytical technologies, because the greenhouse gases are present only in trace quantities in the atmosphere. Air contains about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, with the most abundant trace greenhouse gas being carbon dioxide at 0.035%.

[ FALSE the most abundant trace greenhouse gas is water vapour it causes 98% of the greenhouse effect, (which in turn is smothered by convectional cooling), and it can be up to 4% of the air ]

In parallel with these developments, scientists realised that it is possible to recover and analyze air from bubbles trapped in polar ice. Ice core measurements have enabled us to place recent changes in the atmosphere in an historic context. Very precise records are available for the last thousand years, with other records reaching back 400,000 years.

[ If the one or two ice core experiments yet conducted are correct then the increase could simply be a natural variation. IF the ice cores coincide with industrialization it is just that - coincidence. There are other causes affecting the concentration in CO2 over the centuries and the millenia. ]

This body of research has shown, without doubt, that major greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane)

[ FALSE the major greenhouse gas is water vapour - it causes 98% of the greenhouse effect - which in turn is smothered by convectional cooling. ]

have been, and are, continuing to increase in the global atmosphere. During this century a number of artificial compounds: chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and perfluorocarbons (PFCs), which are also powerful greenhouse gases have been introduced into the atmosphere.

[ These gases are so small in concentration that it is insulting to include them in greenhouse discussion. They cannot possibly affect it. ]

Furthermore, scientific analysis clearly shows that the combustion of fossil fuels and large-scale deforestation have driven the increase in carbon dioxide.

[ This is a plain, simple, lie. There is no science that shows that the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation is proven responsible for increased CO2, alleged to have been found in ice in polar regions. It is simple coincidence at best. The level of CO2 has always been variable in the Earth's atmosphere over the millennia. There are many other factors in play. ]

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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