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Specific environmental "threats" debunked, or at least challenged: Most of the bad news about the environment is wrong. If any of the following things were as hazardous as the environmental alarmists claim, none of us would have survived the 20th century. Keep in mind that risks cannot be completely eliminated, and there are a lot of environmental groups that profit from false alarms.* Safety bureaucracies and consumer activist groups routinely invent or exaggerate dangers to maintain their budgets and inflate their apparent worth.* You may also notice that newspapers and television news outlets thrive on alarming and sensational "news", whether it's valid or not.* One interesting thing about television is that today you may hear, for example, that chocolate is dangerous; but last week you heard the same people say — with equal certainty — that chocolate is essential to your diet. In many of these cases, the TV news "personality" was just reading whatever came up on the teleprompter, and the writer was just repeating the text of a "press release" without checking the facts. Listen carefully and you will notice that you almost never hear the whole truth about anything on television! Newspapers give you more detail, but stories may be arranged and phrased to emphasize the viewpoints of the editors. Read the following articles, and you'll get the idea that almost all the environmental "news" on television (and in your local newspaper) is misleading or simply incorrect. Alar: Alar: The Great Apple Scare. Apple juice and apple sauce were thrown away. Apples were taken out of school lunches, and parents on the border of hysteria called the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about risks of cancer to their children. The publicity campaign was so effective that sales and prices of all apples declined sharply, and 20,000 apple growers in the U.S. suffered substantial financial harm — even the large number who never used Alar. The Alar Scare Ten Years Later: 1989 was the year in which something of a kangaroo court pronounced Alar, a powder used to prevent the pre-harvest rotting of apples, "the most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply." It was the year in which the Natural Resources Defense Council, the TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes, then-talk-show host Phil Donahue, and film star Meryl Streep made "Alar" an almost dirty household word. The Editor asks... Why is an actress's opinion more valuable than anyone else's? Apples and Crossbones: In 1989, costuming oneself as an apple on Halloween would have befitted the times. That was the year of mass hysteria over Alar, a chemical product not otherwise noteworthy except for its usefulness to apple growers and apple consumers. Starbucks protestors spread false fears about safe foods: Anti-biotechnology activists engaged in a week of "direct action" at Starbucks Coffee shops in February [2002] with false and misleading information about food safety, nutrition, and the environment. The same people who brought you a long list of other false health and environmental scares — including the infamous Alar-in-apples scare, the Dow-Corning breast implant campaign, and dozens of other debunked fears — are at it again. Arsenic: Bush a Lot like Clinton, Naturally. Since Bush took office, environmentalist groups have blasted him with wild claims that sound toxic: Bush increased the amount of dangerous mercury that power plants can put out, eased rules on arsenic in drinking water and, according to Robert Kennedy Jr., is "America's worst environmental president." They decry any regulatory reform as "weakening" environmental protections and begin anew their Chicken Little chant. In reality, these charges are no more than Orwellian double-speak; scare tactics designed to destroy the administration. Why the arsenic standard should not be changed: A strange thing happened in the last days of the Clinton administration: The Environmental Protection Agency rushed to set a new arsenic drinking water standard. For the previous eight years of the Clinton administration, and the 30 years of the EPA era, the existing arsenic standard was not deemed in need of change. Suddenly, EPA calculates cancer risks from arsenic as high as 1 in 100. If the risks were real, more Americans would still die from arsenic than from all other regulation chemicals combined. EPA Arsenic Standard May Be Unconstitutional. "The demands of the new standard are absurd," said Sam Kazman, the Competitive Enterprise Institute's general counsel. "The science has failed to find any adverse impacts of arsenic in U.S. drinking water at the 50 parts per billion level, a standard that has been in place more than 50 years." Local Budgets Reel Under Arsenic Mandates. The citizens of Middlefield, Ohio are being hammered by a staggering cost of $7,400 per household after water testing showed the community is very slightly above new, stringent federal standards regarding arsenic in water. … With arsenic measuring 12 parts per billion in community water supplies — just two parts per billion over the new federal standards — Middlefield's 1,000 households must foot the bill for a new $7.4 million water treatment plant. Asbestos: Asbestos of All Possible Worlds? Asbestos litigation has gone on for decades, costing billions of dollars and driving a dozen companies into bankruptcy. Some 60% of all monies have been consumed by the lawyers and assorted parasites. A signal moment was the leakage of a memo from the Texas law firm of Baron & Budd, complete with photos, used by the firm to, ahem, freshen memories of claimants about which products and brands they were exposed to. Asbestos lawsuits have become a mass-production enterprise, with hundreds of thousands of claimants, nobody knowing or caring which ones are really sick. Taming the Asbestos Monster: The nation's courts are being flooded with lawsuits alleging health effects or the possibility of health effects from exposure to asbestos. Real victims of asbestosis (a scarring of the lung similar to "Black Lung" from coal dust), mesotheliona and other asbestos-related cancers are being denied compensation while people who are unlikely to ever experience an asbestos-related disease receive million-dollar awards from confused and misled juries. Asbestos Litigation Is Bankrupting America. What does Bubble-Wrap™, the popular packing material that many kids (and more than a few adults) love to "pop," have to do with asbestos? If you answered "nothing," you are right. If you said the company that produces Bubble-Wrap™ should be liable for up to a billion dollars for alleged injuries caused by a product it never manufactured or used, then you are probably a plaintiffs' lawyer who stands to earn millions of dollars if your lawsuit, implausible though it may seem, is successful. "… the Most Massive Abuse of Science I Have Seen." "My own experience is with asbestos and acid rain and how they relate to human health, both of which subjects I worked on as a U.S. government scientist. We have spent nearly $100 billion to remove asbestos from schools and other buildings, despite warnings by many of us that there was no risk to the health of the building occupants. In 1990, EPA finally agreed with our risk estimate, but the damage had already been done, most of it by EPA." Eco-Freaks. Fire testing organizations such as the National Fire Protection Association have consistently given asbestos materials a zero flame-spread rating, which means it has no ability to spread flame under any circumstances. Before asbestos was widely used, it was not uncommon for a fire in a school or theater to kill, dozens, and sometimes hundreds of people. Acid Rain: Acid Rain: Headline or Hoax? What is referred to as "acid rain" is simply rain that has absorbed airborne particles from both natural and manmade sources. Although some groups continue to try to scare Americans with stories of acid rain, scientific evidence shows that these stories are greatly exaggerated. What, Exactly, Is Acid Rain? Normal rain has a pH of about 5.0. Acid rain typically has a pH of 4.6, and the most acidic rain in North America (found in western Pennsylvania and nearby areas) has an average pH of 4.2. That is similar to the acidity of tomato or apple juice. Acid rain is a hoax! Rain is acidic anyway! Natural rainfall has a pH of ~5.6 (from atmospheric CO2). The Continuing Mythology About Acid Rain: On Tuesday evening, July 25, Ned Potter of ABC News did a three-minute segment purporting to show how acid rain (caused by sulphur dioxide -- SO2 -- emissions from Midwestern utilities) was killing trees in Camel's Hump Mountain in Vermont. Aerial photos showed a pattern of dead or dying tall spruce trees. We were informed acid rain was sterilizing the soil. An environmentalist guided us through the devastation. It was potent TV. It was also a hoax. This Is Going Around On The Net. The big hoax that went on in the 70's and 80's was "Acid Rain". It was just as big a story as global warming is now. Every newspaper and media outlet had it on constantly. Every scientist that tried to tell the truth was ignored by the media. Every scientific paper that came out proving it was a hoax was ignored. Finally 60 Minutes (usually a 100% liberal show) had a segment entitled The Acid Rain Hoax ... POW it was as if the spigot had been turned off. There was essentially never another story about it. Bird Flu: The Bird Flu Pandemic is a Hoax. The Great Bird Flu Hoax: An entire industry has taken flight around the great bird flu fear, with everything from bird flu masks and respirators to guides on how to survive the coming plague being hawked to a terrified public. But there is no coming bird flu pandemic. Bird Flu Hoax Exposed on Lou Dobbs. This avian flu is not a sudden arrival upon the scene. A lot of people think it just appeared in the last couple of years, some people think it appeared in 1997. Virtually nobody knows ... that this strain of avian flu, H5N1, goes back to 1959, in Scottish chickens. Bird Flu Hoax: In recent years I've discovered that getting a flu shot is one of the worst things you can do for your immune system to be able to fight off the flu. It's a scam by the manufacturers of the flu shots. Reviews of "False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear". [Dr. Marc Siegel] advocates replacing fear with courage and worry with faith: "Faith takes the worry away and transfers it to a higher Being who is controlling the world. Any sense of control we have is illusory." His concluding comments effectively sum up his book: "What bothers me most as a physician is that I see my patients being harmed, and there's little I can do to stop it. Fear is infectious, and the fear of bird flu has become particularly virulent. There is a vaccine for this fear: it is called information mixed with perspective." Editor's Note: Because television news has to be dumbed down and converted to one-syllable words, the term "avian influenza" was changed to "bird flu." A total of 161 people have died from avian influenza.* The "bird flu" has only affected dirt-poor people on the other side of the world who have poultry running in and out of their houses day and night. We certainly haven't seen the hundreds of thousands of deaths that were predicted.* CNN Team Perplexed by Calm U.S. Public: 'In the Money' co-host admits the media 'fanned the flames' of the bird flu scare, although so far to little effect. ABC Hatches Weeklong Series on Bird Flu: In 2003, ABC questioned government's bioterrorism warnings, but now emphasizes the latest concerns on bird flu. The Fed's Plan is More Scary Than the Bird Flu. Like many Americans, I have been mildly interested, if not amused, watching the parade of warnings — some quite dire — about the possibility of a bird flu pandemic. The feds have spent billions of dollars preparing for a pandemic that most experts predict will not occur. One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Flu fearmongers must be quite depressed these days. Seasonal flu is late. Bird flu — despite all the headlines — hasn't gained much traction among humans. And we haven't had pandemic flu in 36 years. WHO Confirms One Human-to-Human Bird Flu Case. The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed on Thursday [12/27/2007] a single case of human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 bird flu virus in a family in Pakistan but said there was no apparent risk of it spreading wider. Bird flu outbreak under control. A bird flu outbreak in northwest China has been brought under control, state media said Tuesday. There have been no cases of human infection and farmers who had contact with the poultry have been quarantined and have shown no symptoms, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Mad Cow disease: Global warming: Don't look now. For a scare to take flight … it must contain the right mix of uncertainty and scientific plausibility. And it must be talked up by the media and "remedied" by the government, usually at enormous expense to the taxpayer. As a classic case of this, the authors cite the BSE fiasco, which began in 1996 when the health secretary Stephen Dorrell stood up in the Commons to announce the possibility of a connection between Mad Cow Disease and a horrendous new brain disease in humans called new variant CJD. Frightened to death: Why it's the scare stories that are the REAL menace. Do you remember that day in 1996 when a Tory health minister stood up in the House of Commons to announce that there might after all be a link between BSE, "mad cow disease", and what seemed to be a new form of the human brain disease, CJD? … For years to come, we would continue to pay billions of pounds for more than eight million cattle to be sent up in smoke, even though such a drastic step had never been recommended by any scientist. Caffeine: Debate Brews Over Caffeine Addiction. Dr. Astrid Nehlig recently completed a study with laboratory animals, which confirmed that caffeine consumed in moderation contributes to increased alertness and energy but does not bring about dependence at those levels. Carbon dioxide: There is a bunch of material about CO2 on this page. Chlorine: Volcanic activity, forest and grass fires, fungi, algae, ferns and the decomposition of seaweed all release chlorinated organics into the environment. Our own bodies produce hypochlorite to fight infection and hydrochloric acid for proper digestion. And there is, of course, sodium chloride — common table salt — present naturally in mines, lakes and seawater, found in our blood, sweat and tears, and essential to the diets of humans and animals.* The Envirotruth about Chlorine: Greenpeace has long waged a campaign against the chlorine industry claiming that chlorine poses a major threat to human health. Scientists disagree. JunkScience.com Announces Top Ten "Most Embarrassing Moments" of 2004. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials who had halted use of chlorine disinfectant in the Washington, DC drinking water system — due to unfounded cancer fears hyped by the Environmental Protection Agency — replaced this proven germ-fighter with a more corrosive substitute that leached lead from the pipes and caused wide-spread public alarm as lead levels climbed above federal standards. Greenpeace's Efforts to Ban Chlorine are not only Sensational, but Dangerous. Chlorine is the 11th most abundant element in the Earth's crust — more abundant in nature than carbon, and arguably as essential as oxygen. While most people know that chlorine cleans water and disinfects, many people may not know that chlorine is used to make everything from surgical sutures and X-ray film to rocket fuel and football helmets. Or, that in the form of sodium chloride, it is the compound of which table salt is made. The Future of Chlorine. Numerous reports in the media have ascribed possible detrimental health effects to chlorine, dioxin and other chlorinated chemicals, often subjecting the public to exaggerated and misleading information. Greenpeace, a worldwide environmental activist group, has led the attack, pushing for a total ban on chlorine and chlorinated chemicals. Rachel's Folly: The End of Chlorine. Greenpeace, the international environmental advocacy group, launched the first salvo in 1991 with its call to phase out completely "the use, export, and import of all organochlorines, elemental chlorine, and chlorinated oxidizing agents (e.g. chlorine dioxide and sodium hypochlorite)." As Greenpeace's Joe Thornton explains, "There are no uses of chlorine which we regard as safe." Yet chlorination — considered one of the greatest advances ever in public health and hygiene — is almost universally accepted as the method of choice for purifying water supplies. In the United States alone, 98 percent of public water systems are purified by chlorine or chlorine based products. Facts about Chlorine and Dioxins: Chlorine is an element found in abundance in the natural world. It is one of 118 elements that comprise the matter that makes up our universe, and one of the 20 or so that make up 90 percent of our planet. It is found in nature as inorganic salts (common table salt is sodium chloride) and in more than 1,500 organic compounds, including plants, animals, and even human blood and saliva. Anti-chlorine activists hope politics will trump science. Senate Bill 1602 would force industry to abandon chlorine even as science vindicates its safety. Unable to prevail in the laboratory, anti-chemical groups are seeking to prevail in the U.S. Senate. Nothing Cleans Like Chlorine. For nearly 150 years, society has had a powerful weapon against life-threatening infections caused by viruses and bacteria: Chlorine. One of the most effective and economical germ-killers, chlorine destroys and deactivates a wide range of dangerous germs in homes, hospitals, hotels, restaurants and, of course, water. Chlorine-Purified Water Hailed As One of LIFE's Top Achievements of the Millennium. Along with the discovery of gravity, printing the Gutenberg Bible and landing on the moon, the use of chlorine-purified water was recently named one of the millennium's greatest historical events by LIFE magazine. Chlorine: Cornerstone of Modern Medicine. From acetaminophen to antibiotics, X-ray film to blood bags, and AIDS treatments to anti-cancer drugs, the common bond among these miracles of modern medicine is chlorine. The War on Chlorine: Nobody would seek to ban strawberries or blueberries because mistletoe berries are poisonous. But somehow, according to environmentalists, we have to ban the organochlorine used in plastic-making because a different one is used in a pesticide accused of thinning bird eggshells. This thinking also ignores the simple fact that, when discussing potential harm of chemicals, it's necessary to distinguish between levels of exposure. Exploiting Chemical Fears: For over a decade, various extremist environmental groups have tried to banish vital industrial chemicals, especially chlorine, with false and malicious claims about potential harm. Washington Town Finally Gets Chlorinated Water. Lacey, Washington, a town halfway between Olympia and Tacoma, has lost its distinction of being the state's largest town without a chlorinated municipal water system. Why I Left Greenpeace: The breaking point was a Greenpeace decision to support a world-wide ban on chlorine. Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. And the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. Simply put, chlorine is essential for our health. My former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban, forcing my departure. Despite science concluding no known health risks — and ample benefits — from chlorine in drinking water, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have opposed its use for more than 20 years. Coal: Coal is one energy resource this country has in great abundance -- yet the people who oppose the use of coal are the same people who whine about America's dependence on foreign oil. A Lovely Lump Of Coal: According to tradition, if one has been a bad little boy or girl, Santa will leave a lump of coal in your stocking. The Greens targeted coal along with virtually every other source of energy as "dirty" and, frankly, the truth about coal needs to be told lest we forget what a bounty we have in this nation and how well it serves us all. More Energy Sources Imperative, Says Geological Survey. Energy sources such as coal, traditionally taboo to environmental activists, can provide immediate relief. Let's Use Our Coal. [During] the original energy crisis of the 1970s, when we were told that it was urgent for us to develop alternative "renewable" sources of energy because we were running out of fossil fuels any moment now. Today we are told just the opposite - we must develop renewable sources of energy because we aren't running out of fossil fuels fast enough. Texans and coal plants: The most scandalous aspect of the coal-plant controversy is the refusal — yea, the inability — of coal-plant foes to describe just how they'd go about providing for Texas' large and growing energy needs at a time of shrinking natural gas supplies and deep opposition to nuclear power. We hear about "conservation." We hear about wind power, solar power; we sometimes even hear about coal gasification. We never hear coal-plant foes explain how that's going to happen, and what it would mean and cost. Edwards calls for end to coal-fired power plants. America should ban the construction of new coal-fired power plants and charge industry for creating greenhouse gases to generate money for investing in clean technology, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said Saturday. … Edwards said charging polluters could generate up to $40 billion to invest in clean technology to "get us off our addiction to oil." [This means higher taxes and/or higher utility bills, to develop pie-in-the-sky technology that has not yet been invented, in order to solve a problem that doesn't even exist.] In Kansas, No to Coal Plants, Yes to 'More Promising' Energy Sources. In an open letter to the people of Kansas on Thursday [10/25/2007], Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius supported her state's decision to deny air permits for two coal-fired power plants slated for construction in southwestern Kansas. Critics, including the coal industry, call the decision wrong-headed and short-sighted. [That's great, but coal technology is already up and running, whereas the "promising" technologies have yet to be developed.] Group discloses nearly $406,000 in spending on anti-coal ads. An anti-coal group financed by a natural gas company has reported spending nearly $406,000 on its advertising campaign last year, setting a lobbyist spending record. The group, Know Your Power, was required to file a report on what it spent on full-page ads urging readers to call their legislators "and let them know where you stand." After the state ethics commission issued that ruling, the group filed its report. Rejection of Proposal for Coal-Fired Power Plants Defies Kansas Climate Data. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has rejected a request to build two new 700 megawatt coal-fired electricity generating power plants, citing concerns over the proposed plants' carbon dioxide emissions and "the potential harm to our environment and health." In making its October 18 finding, the department ignored all of the known climate history and future climate projections for the state of Kansas. Bipartisan bill would give coal plant another chance. A coal plant expansion in western Kansas could move ahead despite a regulator's objection under a proposed law pitched Wednesday [1/31/2008] by plant supporters. The plant would have to reduce its carbon emissions and pay a tax on any excess carbon it emits. That's meant to address worries that the plant would add to global climate change. The Editor says... Naturally that tax would be passed along to the consumers. And who decides what "excess carbon" means? Greens Will Leave us Cold and Hungry. Earthworks is about to initiate its own "No Dirty Energy" campaign "to alert the public to the climate, ecosystem and community risks associated with mining and burning the world's dirtiest fuel sources?" Labeling coal and oil "dirty" is pure PR and ignores the fact that coal, a cheap and abundant energy sources, provides just over fifty percent of America's electricity, an energy without which the entire nation would cease to function. It ignores the way the Green's campaign against oil has for four decades thwarted the right of American's to access and use its national oil and natural gas reserves yet to be found and extracted from 85% of our coastlines or the well-known fact that billions of barrels of oil remain untapped in ANWR. Coal-Cap Disaster. By pulling the plug on half of our current electricity production, cap-and-trade will risk a massive undermining of the American economy, as well as our future economic and national security. The coal story is so important simply because the U.S. has massively undeveloped coal resources. With 27 percent of the world's coal reserves estimated at 270 billion tons, the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal. And yet cap-and-trade would destroy this critical sector. Gas Prices Too High? Burn Coal. The most logical answer to high gasoline prices has to be coal. We have centuries' worth of coal, and we have clean-burning systems such as fluidized bed combustion. But we've been retiring the old coal-fired power plants, and burning scarcer oil and natural gas in our power plants. That has driven up both gas and gasoline prices. Hybrid cars conserve a little oil, but shifting the power plants to "clean coal" would conserve a lot of it. From Coal to Fuel: As demand for oil began to rise early in the 20th century, scientists became intrigued with the possibility of converting carbon-rich coal into hydrocarbon liquids as a potential replacement for petroleum-derived fuels. Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, two German scientists, accomplished the feat in the 1920s. Dioxin: EPA's Never Ending Dioxin Scare. If ever there was an example of what's wrong with the intersection of government and science, the Environmental Protection Agency's 20-year campaign to scare the public about dioxin is certainly a leading candidate. The EPA slammed into a bureaucratic wall this week when a National Academy of Sciences panel told the agency to take its dioxin report back to the drawing board. Dioxin: Amidst all the eco-terrorist rhetoric comes a sweet taste of reality from an unlikely source: ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's. Two independent laboratories using different methodologies discovered that a single serving of Ben & Jerry's "World's Best Vanilla" ice cream contained about 200 times the level of dioxin EPA says is safe. Nevertheless, the ice cream maker remains in business, and continues to sell its "dioxin-laden" product … offering real-world evidence that the low-levels of dioxin in our food and the environment are not dangerous. Unsafe Levels of Dioxin Found in Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, Study Says. The study authors report that, according to Ben & Jerry's and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards, the level of dioxin measured could cause about 200 "extra" cancers among lifetime consumers of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. "The level of dioxin in a single serving of the Ben & Jerry's World's Best Vanilla Ice Cream tested was almost 200 times greater than the "virtually safe [daily] dose" determined by the EPA, said Michael Gough, lead study author. Top Ten Junk Science Stories of the Past Decade: Some called dioxin, a by-product of natural and industrial combustion processes and the "contaminant of concern" in the Vietnam-era defoliant known as Agent Orange, the most toxic manmade chemical. Billions of dollars have been spent studying and regulating dioxin, but debunking the scare only cost a few thousand dollars. New Research Questions EPA's Dioxin Assumptions. Studies show that at high body levels, humans eliminate from their bodies traces of dioxin three to five times faster than previously thought. Backyard Burning of Trash is Now the #1 Dioxin Source! The US EPA will be issuing a new projection for dioxin emission from land-applied sewage sludge for 2002/2004 based on surveys to begin in Spring, 2001. The US EPA expects that the new projection will be lower than the value previously projected. Viktory Over Alarmism. The "deadly dioxin" legend began with, of all things, guinea pigs. When fed to them in studies, they did fall over like furry tenpins. Yet hamsters could absorb 1,000 times as much dioxin before emitting their last squeals and other animals seemed impervious to the stuff. Further, the animal deaths were from acute poisoning. Yet as a matter of convenience for activists, it not only became accepted that guinea pigs are the best animal model for humans but also that dioxin is a powerful carcinogen. Electromagnetic fields: Covering Up Scientific Data Violates the Public's Right to Know: In June 1999, Robert Liburdy, who had received more than $3.3 million in federal grants for his research, was forced to leave Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory when it was discovered that he had faked data to produce results which indicated that electromagnetic fields caused cancer. None of the 20 studies subsequent to Liburdy's 1992 study have found any causal connection between electromagnetic fields and cellular changes in the body. More Proof That Power Lines Don't Cause Cancer: The latest study, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and reported in the July 3, 1997, New England Journal of Medicine, is one of hundreds which have put the power-lines-cause-cancer theory in the category of junk science. On the other hand... Kill Cell Phones Before They Kill You. [Sue] Anderson and others set about to update themselves on the latest science regarding health effects of microwave radiation emitted by cell towers. "News and science reports from all over the globe seem to show that a cell tower neighborhood is basically a sick neighborhood. We found many media reports about cancer clusters in residential areas close to microwave towers," Anderson says. Freon: Behind the Freon Frenzy: The impending refrigerant ban is based on faulty science. Ozone and Freon Fraud: The major costs of government regulations to the Appliance Industry in the early nineties were related to the elimination of Freon, both from foam insulation and sealed refrigeration systems. The excuse used by the EPA for the ban on Freon was it somehow seeps into the atmosphere and depletes the Ozone in our air. There is no scientific data available, in or out of government, to describe this "claimed" process. Irradiated foods: There's No Meat to Anti-Food Irradiation Claims. Irradiation is the only known method to eliminate completely a potentially deadly strain of E.coli bacteria in raw meat and can also significantly reduce levels of listeria, salmonella and campylobacter bacteria on raw products. Call me insensitive towards our bacterial brethren, but if it's them or us I say: "Kill 'em all!" Food Irradiation: A Healthy Secret. Irradiation of food, which is highly effective in killing harmful organisms, is relatively new and widely misunderstood, and it has been flagrantly misrepresented in the media. … Irradiation kills salmonella on poultry, trichina in pork, hazardous organisms in beef and seafood, and insects and larvae in food. It provides an alternative to certain chemicals and pesticides to reduce spoilage of fruits and vegetables after harvest. In addition, irradiation allows some fruits and vegetables to ripen more fully before harvest, thus enhancing flavor. Irradiation: A Winning Recipe for Wholesome Beef. Irradiation uses gamma rays from either radioactive material or machines to kill bacteria and other organisms. Irradiated food is no more radioactive than your luggage is after it goes through the airport Food Safety Held Hostage: Why have people been allowed to sicken and die? Why has food gone needlessly to rot? The answer is a cautionary tale of what happens when technophobia and crackpot "consumer advocacy" reign over science. Each year, about 9,000 Americans die of food poisoning. Nobody knows exactly how many of these deaths can be prevented with irradiation. But it's safe to say that three of the biggest killers — campylobacter, salmonella and E.coli — are readily destroyed by irradiation. What is safe, what isn't? Although more than 50 years of scientific research has established food irradiation has little or no effect on flavor, and that it is safe and highly effective, the Food and Drug Administation's gradual approval of new irradiation applications has been opposed at every turn by antinuclear activists. Contrary to their claims, irradiated foods contain no byproducts unique to the process, and the process is hazardous neither to workers nor to environs of treatment plants. The safe spinach solution: Nuke it. Authorities have traced the contaminated spinach that has killed as many as three people and sickened at least 173 to a few counties in California's Salinas Valley, but let's don't stop the investigative work too soon. There's a lesson to be learned here, an important one about the dangers of superstitious, leftist twaddle, and the threat it poses to human life. So let's zero in on the anti-corporate, conspiracy-minded, Nader-formed group, Public Citizen, which never quits yelping about the public good while simultaneously betraying it, and let's focus on its opposition to irradiation as an extraordinary means of saving literally tens of thousands of lives lost to food-borne illness over the years. Lead: Tap Dance: If anything, some utility managers conclude that just replacing city owned pipes actually causes lead levels to jump temporarily by shaking debris loose — and probably produces no lasting reduction if water still flows through lead fixtures once it's inside the building. What would electronics be without solder? John Burke, the senior manager of Optichron, an electrical components manufacturer in Fremont, Calif., [says], "There is absolutely no evidence that there is any reason for taking lead out of solder. There was no reason to do it in the first place, the replacement is ecologically more damaging, and, by the way, the replacement is less reliable." Mercury: States Split on Mercury Standards. In May, Minnesota and New Hampshire enacted legislation imposing stricter controls than existing federal proposals to limit the emission of mercury from power plants. Other states, including Delaware, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, are considering such legislation or enacting limits through their respective environmental agencies under orders from their governors. The Editor asks... If states as small as Delaware have their own environmental regulatory agencies, why does the EPA exist? 22 States Say EPA Too Soft on Mercury. Air quality regulators in at least 22 states have concluded that the Bush administration's approach to cutting mercury pollution from coal-burning power plants is too weak and are pursuing tougher measures of their own. … The 22 states listed as having tougher mercury-cutting plans than the federal government are: [AZ CA CT DE GA IL IN ME MD MA MI MN MT NH NJ NY NC OR PA VA WA WI]. 
The Latest Reason Not to Worry About Mercury. Despite their snazzy Internet campaigns, well-publicized investigations, and scary language ("Tuna Roulette!", "The Mercury Menace!"), green-group activists can't change the simple fact that the mercury levels in the fish we typically eat pose zero health risk to consumers. But there's more to the story. Ladies and gentlemen, meet selenium. The Nation Descends into Mercury Madness. At some Maryland high schools, hazmat teams rush in to remove mercury that had gone unnoticed. In Washington D.C., a broken thermometer causes a school to close. And across the nation, environmental groups denounce the Environmental Protection Agency's new proposed rules for reducing mercury emissions from power plants as inadequate to protect children. All this seems rather odd to those of us who played with mercury in science lessons at school. The fact is that the health effects of mercury have been dramatically overblown. Mercury in Fish Overblown. The effect of mercury emissions on human health via fish consumption has been significantly overblown by environmental activists, who are keen to restrict mercury emissions for other reasons. But U.S. power plants emit only a small fraction of annual mercury emissions. That is why a recent joint study from the Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute found that the cost of the proposals vastly outweighed their marginal health benefits. Mercury Decision: Baseless Fish Scares 'Could Have Adverse Health Consequences'. This week we've explored a recent California court decision that may pave the way for common sense among the fish-eating public. Before refusing to allow California's Attorney General to require warning signs everywhere canned tuna is sold, Judge Robert Dondero heard thorough testimony from experts on both sides. Mercury Decision: 'Expert Witness' Misled The Court. Last week's landmark canned-tuna court decision was full of twists and turns. ... Perhaps the oddest development came in the form of an "expert witness" whose testimony the judge dismissed as "misleading" as well as "unreliable" and "biased" -- and who made claims (offered, the judge wrote, "under penalty of perjury") which turned out to be phony. Mercury Decision: 'Virtually All' Mercury In Ocean Fish Is 'From Natural Sources'. On Friday [5/12/2006], when the scales of justice swung in California's landmark mercury-in-tuna court case, they hit some cherished environmental dogma squarely in the face. ... Now, at least in California, the truth has become a matter of law -- that the vast majority of these tiny traces of mercury are as natural as the earth itself. Fever Pitch on Mercury Fears: It's enough to make any parent's heart race: children evacuated from schools as hazmat teams race in to decontaminate the buildings, while national headlines scream, "highly toxic hazardous spill." But when the source of this panic is a few beads of mercury from a broken thermometer, it's time to take a deep breath and seek some sound information. Small mercury spills can be easily cleaned up and don't pose a danger to children or their teachers — but panic-driven responses can cause real harm. Junk Science on Mercury Debunked. House Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-CA) and Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee Chairman Jim Gibbons (R-NV) issued earlier this year a detailed report on the science of mercury and the environment, "Mercury in Perspective: Fact and Fiction About the Debate Over Mercury." The paper is a comprehensive synopsis of the peer-reviewed research regarding the debate over regulating mercury. Clinton's EPA Chief Springs the Mercury Trap She Left for Bush. Although she served as President Clinton's EPA chief for eight years, Carol Browner never imposed a crackdown on power-plant mercury emissions. But between Bush's election and inauguration, she proposed an expensive, technically infeasible mercury plan — for her successor. It was an effort to trap Bush by giving him the choice of imposing a draconian policy — or face condemnation by the left for supposedly being "weak" on the environment. Mercury: Grain of Truth, Gram of Nonsense. You have probably heard or read the oft-repeated statement, "One gram of mercury can contaminate an entire 20-acre lake." It shows up in the environmental advocates' literature as well as in EPA and state agency documents and various fact sheets on mercury. The statement is meant to scare us into believing that mishandling a thermometer or emitting even one gram of mercury would have irreversible negative consequences. [The article debunks this claim.] Senate Barely Squelches Mercury Panic. [In March 2005], the Bush administration issued the first-ever rules regulating emissions of mercury from coal-burning power plants — an event that itself raised doubt about the urgency or need for such regulation. The modern electric utility industry, after all, began burning coal and, thereby, emitting small amounts of mercury into the environment in the 1880s. The Mercury-In-Fish Scare is All Wet. The best science suggests that the mercury levels found in fish have no adverse effects on human health. A study published in the Lancet, an international medical journal, decisively demonstrates that there is nothing to fear from trace levels of mercury in fish. The Lancet study intensively examined women and their children in the Seychelles islands — where they eat fish with the same levels of mercury as the fish consumed in the United States. But they eat about 10 times as much fish as the typical American. Putting U.S. mercury emissions in perspective: While severe regulation of mercury emissions from U.S. power plants may be justified by politics and/or ideology, it is not at all justified by the present science. Mothers, Babies and Mercury: Whether they come from the U.S. FDA or special interest groups, warnings about methylmercury-contaminated fish endangering the health of our babies and children are alarming. But the evidence contrasts greatly from the fearmongering — regardless of the source. Fishy Mercury Warning: The FDA just issued a new warning to pregnant women about mercury in seafood. You can "protect your baby" from developmental harm by following three rules, claims the FDA. But there's no evidence that the rules will protect anyone and they're only likely to foster undue concern about an important part of our food supply. Enviros Exploit Mother's Day With Mercury Scare: U.S. power plants (search) simply aren't a major source of mercury emissions. About 14.3 million pounds of mercury are released into the atmosphere annually, according to figures from the Electric Power Research Institute. Of that amount, about 9.5 million pounds are from natural sources (ocean outgassing and terrestrial flux) and about 4.8 million pounds are manmade emissions. Only about 6 percent of the manmade emissions come from the U.S. EPA Proposes Mercury Limits. More than half the mercury in the environment comes from natural sources. U.S. power plants account for only 1 percent of global environmental mercury, according to the Center for Science and Public Policy. Scientists monitor mercury levels because as mercury settles in oceans and freshwater sources, it is absorbed by fish, and their heightened mercury levels are passed up the food chain to humans. Although environmental activist groups charge that mercury causes neurological damage in humans, recent studies suggest present mercury levels are not harmful. Proposed Utility Mercury Reductions and Interstate Air Quality Rules. According to the EPA, mercury emissions and their presence in the air are strongly trending downward (as are all other pollutants), and are expected to keep falling due to technological change and implementation of current standards, even without new legislation. MoveOn.org — Wrong on Terrorism, Wrong on Mercury. What do al Qaeda and mercury pollution have in common? Clinton appointees who did little about them are now claiming in MoveOn.org political TV ad campaigns that, thanks to George Bush, both threaten your health. Alaska Disputes EPA Mercury Guidelines. Alaskan health officials are telling state residents they can safely exceed federal health advisories for eating fish caught in the state. Four officials of the Epidemiology Section of the Alaska Division of Public Health published an article on the topic in the March 2005 issue of The American Journal of Public Health, claiming the federal government's precautionary approach to mercury may be causing state residents more harm than good. U.S. Senate Squelches Mercury Panic. The EPA study notes, "Human-caused U.S. mercury emissions are estimated to account for roughly 3 percent of the global total, and U.S. coal-fired power plants are estimated to account for only about 1 percent." Importantly, mere exposure to mercury isn't necessarily harmful. Despite much research, opponents of the Bush mercury rules could not identify a single study that credibly links typical exposures to mercury directly to any sort of health effect. Mercury in Fish is Not Dangerous, Study Shows. New data gathered from 700 children who were exposed to nearly unprecedented levels of mercury while in their mothers' wombs show the extremely heightened levels of mercury have caused no medical problems. For the past 15 years, scientists have been following the 700 children on the tiny island nation of Seychelles, Africa, whose mothers ate tremendous amounts of high-mercury fish while pregnant. All the mothers ate high-mercury fish daily, resulting in blood mercury levels six times higher than those of U.S. women. Pelosi's Green House: A 20-watt CFL [compact fluorescent light] emits as much light as a 100-watt incandescent bulb. But, unlike Thomas Edison's creation, each CFL contains about 5 milligrams of mercury. On New Year's Eve, you could have confused the town of Carmel, N.Y., with Chernobyl when a reported 100 firefighters, many in hazmat suits, responded to a 911 call regarding a broken rectal thermometer. Radon: Time To Overthrow the Radonistas: Nobody questions that uranium miners breathing huge amounts of radon suffer extraordinary rates of lung cancer. But we also know that the body has multilayered defenses for throwing off minor assaults. Do You Need to Monitor Your Home for Radon Gas? I've never known or heard of anyone who came down with lung cancer due to radon gas. When non-smokers develop lung cancer, health authorities don't go running down to the deceased person's home to check for radon gas exposure. There is no Radon Link to Cancer. The radon scare, which peaked in 1988-1990, was generated by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimate that 8,000 to 43,000 Americans die from lung cancer each year from exposure in buildings to air polluted by radon. Several prominent scientists took issue with the EPA estimates. Anthony Nero, an expert on indoor air pollution and a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California, reported, "Everything is exaggerated — from the number of homes at risk to the individual's risk from radon. I feel that, in this matter, the public has been led to worry about things of minor concern." The War on Radon: Few Join Up. The EPA has decided that radon is the number one environmental health risk in America: worse than pesticides and worse than hazardous waste. Judging from the panic caused by environmental scares such as Alar on apples and chemicals from hazardous waste sites, one might expect the nation's "number one risk" to incite near hysteria. Yet radon has failed to instill widespread fear in the public mind. Radon and the LNT Fallacy: The National Safety Council is a tax-exempt, nongovernmental agency, which describes itself as a consensus-builder. "We do not have the authority to legislate or regulate. However, we can influence public opinions, attitudes, and behavior" — and it does so with tax dollars. Its Environmental Health Center produces the Climate Change Update (heavily slanted toward global warming advocates) under a cooperative agreement with the EPA and does public outreach on air quality issues (such as radon) under an EPA grant. The Radon Scare: When Scientists Oppose Science. Once upon a time scientists, with few exceptions, could be relied upon to help staunch the never-ending flow of scares-of-the-week emanating from the media and advocacy groups. But more and more, they're becoming part of the problem. The pressure to publish a positive link between whatever's being scrutinized and disease has simply become too intense. EPA Refuses to Face the Facts on Radon Risks. The EPA's claim that radon levels in homes are carcinogenic, like so many of their assertions concerning carcinogenicity, are based on what's called a linear, no-threshold extrapolation. This theory says that because a substance […] causes tumors in lab animals at doses hundreds of thousands of times greater than the doses that humans could possibly absorb, that humans are nonetheless at risk of developing tumors from these chemicals. But radon may turn out to provide the best evidence that this assumption, beyond being scientifically unproven, is demonstrably false. Saccharin: Saccharin: In studies rats given very high doses of saccharin developed bladder cancer, so the FDA required saccharin to be labeled as a possible carcinogen. Later research demonstrated that saccharin caused bladder cancer in rats through a mechanism that was not present in human beings. Sweetener Is Safe, Government Panel Says. A Government advisory group has voted to give a clean bill of health to the artificial sweetener saccharin, which, despite its pink-packeted presence on restaurant tables everywhere, has been classified since 1981 as a suspected cause of cancer. Saccharin May Be Delisted From NIH's Carcinogen List. A synthetic compound derived from coal tar, saccharin was discovered in 1879 by a student researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Its tantalizing commercial appeal as a noncaloric sugar substitute — it is 300 times sweeter than sugar — was obvious from the start. Cyclamates: You're probably too young to remember when soft drinks contained cyclamates, but I remember noticing that such products tasted a lot better before cyclamates were banned in the U.S. That happened on October 18, 1969*, for the same reason as saccharin, that is, the development of bladder cancer in rats who were given massive doses of the stuff. But it is still in use in many other seemingly civilized countries, including Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.* Aspartame: Aspartame: Although there is no credible evidence that aspartame (best known by the brand name Nutrasweet) causes health problems, almost from the day it was approved by the FDA there has been a small group of people claiming it causes everything from brain cancer to Gulf War Syndrome. Artificial sweetener cleared of cancer link. A huge federal study in people — not rats — takes the fizz out of arguments that the diet soda sweetener aspartame might raise the risk of cancer. Salmon: Salmon: Health food or pink poison? Like alcohol and chocolate before it, salmon is now the subject of contradictory science. So what is the bewildered, bemused consumer to do, pelted with so many admonitions about what to eat, what not to eat, and how to eat it? Farm salmon fiasco joins history of food scares. We have a rich history of health scares, great trumped-up phony hazards that supposedly lurk in our food and environment. Cancer-causing agents, identified by the thousands, march through the media almost daily. The big ones—from electromagnetic fields to alar to PCBs and trans fats—linger for years in the public mind before they eventually fade. Sometimes whole industries are wiped out or are traumatized. Eco-Extremism, Not Science, Behind Fishy Salmon Scare. Junk science doesn't get too much fishier than last week's scary headlines about farmed salmon being a cancer risk. Farmed salmon is so contaminated with PCBs, dioxins and other "toxic" chemicals, reported the news media, that it shouldn't be consumed more than once per month. It was gullible media alarmism run amok as even the "scientists" whose much-reported study appeared in the Jan. 9 issue of "Science" plainly acknowledged there was no factual basis for concern. Scientists Expose Fishy Warnings about Farmed Salmon. An article in the January 9 issue of Science magazine warned readers against eating more than one serving of farm-raised salmon a month, claiming the fish present a cancer risk. Scientists quickly responded, however, with evidence showing the health benefits of eating farm-raised salmon substantially outweigh any hypothetical health risks. Catch of the Day: Politically Correct Fish. If you read a recent Associated Press article about a seafood distributor called EcoFish, you may have thought a fishmonger that "helps people make meals that reflect their morals" was too good to be true. Look a little closer, however, and you'll find that this New Hampshire company is a perfect example of "black marketing." Stratospheric ozone depletion: Scientists say the ozone layer shows signs of recovery. The ozone layer is showing signs of recovering, thanks to a drop in ozone-depleting chemicals, but it is unlikely to stabilize at pre-1980 levels, researchers said on Wednesday [5/3/2006]. Ozone and Radon: The Real Story. A headline in September 2000 read, "Ozone hole over Antarctica unusually large, U.N. says." The headline was false. Thinning of the ozone layer occurred perhaps one to two weeks earlier than normal, but no measurements had even been taken of the size of the area. Who is held responsible for lying to the public — the United Nations weather agency, the news media, or both? The answer is, nobody is ever held responsible for such lies. … Popular stories about ozone fail to mention the beneficial effect of UV radiation in metabolizing calcium into bone structures of land animals, including humans. The Ozone Hole Is Bigger Than Ever. If you haven't heard anything about the ozone hole over Antarctica lately it isn't because it has gone away. Quite the contrary. Despite the fact that the chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs, that were supposed to be causing it have been banned for many years, the Antarctic ozone hole, whose appearances were largely responsible for the international decision to ban the use of CFCs, is bigger than ever. Should We Worry About Ozone? The theory of large-scale depletion caused by human use of CFCs is not yet supported by solid scientific evidence. It is not clear that stratospheric ozone is being significantly depleted worldwide, or that any depletion that may have occurred is permanent. Stratospheric ozone fluctuates so dramatically that it is almost impossible to define a long-term, statistically significant trend. Ozone Depletion: Although environmental pressure groups have made exaggerated claims that the stratospheric ozone layer is being eaten away by chlorofluorocarbons (most notably Freon) wafting into space, scientists have yet to see any increase of solar ultraviolet radiation at the Earth's surface. Actually, even the worst-case scenario would have resulted in only a minor increase in UV — one you could experience by driving just 60 miles closer to the equator. Nevertheless, the Bush Administration hastily imposed a ban on CFC production, costing U.S. consumers up to $100 billion. Five Scientific Questions on the CFC-Ozone Issue Stratospheric Ozone Depletion: 10 Years After Montreal. The decision to phase out methyl bromide is curious, and seems to be ideologically motivated. About two-thirds of methyl bromide present in the atmosphere is of natural origin. No one has yet observed an increasing trend of bromine in the stratosphere, which would indicate a human influence. In addition, the atmospheric lifetime of methyl bromide is less than one year. If a problem should arise, production can be stopped and anthropogenic methyl bromide will rapidly disappear from the atmosphere. A Critique of the UN Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion. There is no credible evidence for a long-term upward trend of ultraviolet radiation at the earth's surface. A fair evaluation of the recent theory and of stratospheric observations leads to the conclusion that chlorine from CFCs is not the principal factor leading to ozone destruction below 25 km, where most of the ozone is located. Water, in the form of vapor or ice particles, and sulfates in the form of aerosols may play a more important role. The Ozone-CFC Debacle: Hasty Action, Shaky Science. In spite of the hardships caused by the hasty phaseout of CFCs and other suspected ozone-depleting halocarbons, the EPA has never questioned the adequacy of the science that forms the basis for its phaseout policy. The facts are that the scientific underpinnings are quite shaky: the data are suspect; the statistical analyses are faulty; and the theory has not been validated. Antarctic ice threatened by ozone-hole recovery. Recovery of the ozone hole above Antarctica could warm the Antarctic and cause more ice to melt in coming decades, researchers say. As the ozone hole heals, wind patterns that shield the interior of the polar region from warm air may break down, causing warming in the Antarctica as well as warmer and drier conditions in Australia. Those evil gas-guzzling SUV's: Let me refer you to this page about Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. Vinyl and PVC: PVC Toys are Safe. Anti-vinyl Coalition Seeks Ban on Intravenous Medical Supplies. If it's bad for laboratory rats, then it must be bad for humans, the old song goes. The latest environmental group singing that tune is Healthcare Without Harm, a Washington, DC coalition of 140 environmental, health, and activist groups that recently launched a campaign to eliminate the use of vinyl medical products such as intravenous (IV) bags and tubing. Teflon: Teflon accusation doesn't stick. Teflon has recently gone from the frying pan into the fire, thanks to some money-hungry lawyers. They've cooked up a scary story, adding a dollop of hyperbole for good measure. Unfortunately, they left out common sense and science. Claims against Teflon simply don't stick. For anyone who cooks but doesn't like scrubbing, Teflon is a wonder product. Before Teflon, washing a pan or pot was among the most disagreeable of tasks. Cleaning up is a very different task in today's post-Teflon world. There are even some unintended health and safety benefits from Teflon kitchenware. You can cook using less fat, grease, or oil. Doing so is better for your heart. There's also less chance of fire. Nuclear energy: Bunker Mentality Won't Cut Energy Bills. Clearly, we're shooting ourselves in the foot by excluding viable options. Challenges of meeting federal air quality standards in Georgia mean new coal-fired power plants are mission impossible, as clean, cheap and efficient as they have become. Campaigns to add the cleanest and most efficient of energy, nuclear energy, still elicit apocalyptic predictions, despite a near squeaky-clean record in countries such as France, with nearly 80 percent of electricity from nuclear power, and Japan, where nuclear energy is about one-third of the electricity supply. Nuclear Energy in the World Today: One metric ton of nuclear fuel produces the energy equivalent of two to three million tons of fossil fuel. A 1,000-megawatt electric (MWe) coal-fired power plant releases about 100 times as much radioactivity into the environment as a comparable nuclear plant, because radioactive material occurs naturally in coal and is emitted as a byproduct of coal-fired electricity generation. Nuclear Power Is the Safest Energy Source, Studies Show. Today's nuclear power technology, by any and every measure, provides the best safety performance and lowest risk of workplace accidents among all commonly utilized power sources. Nuclear power plants are not at risk from terrorist attacks: They do not offer exponential damage opportunities and they are the most fortified installations in the nation. Over Time, Nuclear Power Skeptic Becomes Advocate. Initially a skeptic about radiation and nuclear power, Gwyneth Cravens spent nearly a decade immersing herself in these subjects for her new book, Power to Save the World. After visiting mines, experimental reactor laboratories, power plants, and remote waste sites, she changed her views about nuclear energy. You name it, she investigated it. Top 10 reasons to blame Democrats for soaring gasoline prices: Even the French, who sometimes seem to lack the backbone to stand up for anything other than soft cheese, faced down their environmentalists over the need for nuclear power. France now generates 79% of its electricity from nuclear plants, mitigating the need for imported oil. The French have so much cheap energy that France has become the world's largest exporter of electric power. Strangling the Energy Baby: A pollution-free alternative for new electricity generation is, of course, nuclear fission. While the cost of natural gas and oil will remain volatile, between 1990 and 1999 the cost of nuclear fuel decreased 46 percent. The environmentalists, of course, have little to say about nuclear power plants that these days provide some twenty percent of our electricity needs. Nuclear Power is Making a Worldwide Comeback. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's "Annual Energy Outlook 2004," the demand for electricity in the United States will increase by 50 percent by 2025. At least 350,000 megawatts of new generating capacity — hundreds of new power plants — will be needed before then. Greenpeace is wrong — we must consider nuclear power. Until the past couple of years, the activists, with their zero-tolerance policy on nuclear energy, have succeeded in squelching any mention by the IPCC of using nuclear power to replace fossil fuels for electricity production. Burning fossil fuels for electricity accounts for 9.5 billion tonnes of global carbon dioxide emissions while nuclear power emits next to nothing. It has been apparent to many scientists and policymakers for years that this would be a logical path to follow. Support for Nuclear Power Is Growing. With natural gas prices rising rapidly and the price of crude oil hovering above $70 per gallon, nuclear power is emerging as an increasingly attractive source of energy to both the general public and some influential environmentalists. … According to [a March 2006] Gallup poll, fully 55 percent of Americans support expanding the use of nuclear energy. The embrace of nuclear power transcends political party affiliation, with 62 percent of Republicans and 51 percent of Democrats responding to the Gallup survey voicing their support for more nuclear energy. Dispelling the Myths About Nuclear Power. Nuclear energy is relatively clean, generating far less waste per unit of energy than any other major source and, based on the number of lives lost or people made ill, it is also far safer for human health. The benefits of nuclear energy are real, while the risks are mostly hypothetical. When decisions are made concerning future sources of electric power in the United States, facts, not fear, should be the basis for appraising the nuclear industry's place in the mix. Ten myths about nuclear power: The UK government is expected to announce tomorrow that it will give the green light to the building of new nuclear power stations in the UK — the first since the Sizewell 'B' station was completed in 1995. These are urgently needed to make up the shortfall in power supply as older nuclear stations are closed over the next few years. Yet the decision is bound to be controversial — not helped by widespread misinformation about nuclear power. Nuclear Energy and Environmental Preservation. Nuclear energy has perhaps the lowest impact on the environment — including air, land, water, and wildlife — of any energy source, because it does not emit harmful gases, isolates its waste from the environment, and requires less area to produce the same amount of electricity as other sources. Nuclear Power Wins Endorsement of Engineers. The 120,000-member American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) recently endorsed nuclear power as a safe and efficient source for supplying America's growing energy needs. Nuclear Energy in the World Today (Part Two): It is now completely absurd that anti-capitalist, anti-industry, anti-development, and in fact anti-people socialists have poisoned the minds of so much of the world against the cheapest, most abundant, and safest form of energy on the planet. It is truly amazing what devious minds can achieve in a world so filled with terror-prone people. Myths About Nuclear Energy: Nuclear, coal, gas: they all have the power to destroy. But of these three, one has gotten a bad rap. While it is business as usual for coal and gas, the widespread perception persists that nuclear energy is fraught with unique and terrifying danger. Say "nuclear" out loud, and people tend to think of mushroom clouds, radiation, and nuclear winter. Despite these fears, nuclear energy is clean, reliable, and safe — more so, in fact, than the alternatives, as an examination of the myths about nuclear energy reveals. Get real, environmentalists. In this era of seemingly permanent higher energy prices, environmentalists' blanket anti-fossil fuel, anti-nuclear power dogma must go. … That there were no U.S. nuclear plants built in the past 30 years, while the rest of the world had been rapidly doing so, has little to do with science. It has everything to do with D.C. politics that align interest groups over issues that are not their core concern. Environmentalists oppose every form of energy production. Strangling the Energy Baby: Let's start by understanding there are now three hundred million Americans. More people increase the need for more electricity. America currently must generate 15.43 trillion kilowatts of electricity and is in immediate need of more. This is why, following every winter storm, the very first piece of news reported is how many people are without electricity. Nuclear power is cleaner and safer: report. A return flight from Sydney to London and back will bring the same level of radiation exposure as living next to a nuclear power plant for 50 years. Contrary to common fears around the use of nuclear power, the Switkowski report into nuclear power points to a series of environmental benefits coming from modern nuclear reactors. Lessons from Chernobyl: In the "ghost town" of Pripyat, the external gamma dose rate measured by a Polish team in 2001 was 0.9 mSv per year, the same as in Warsaw and five times lower than in Grand Central Station in New York. The incidence of all cancers appears to be lower than expected in a similar, nonirradiated population. ... Three of the original thirteen Russian plutonium-production reactors continued to operate at the end of 2000 because, without them, one quarter of a million people would be without adequate heat during the Siberian winter. The Enemies of Nuclear Power: Nuclear power provides a cheap alternative to fossil-fuel-based sources of electricity. With comparable capital and operating costs, and a mere fraction of the fuel costs, it can provide electricity at 50 to 80 percent of the price of traditional sources. It is extremely reliable, and is by far the cleanest of any viable energy source currently known. Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste. The waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, fly ash -- a by-product from burning coal for power -- contains up to 100 times more radiation than nuclear waste. At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels. U.N. Revises Chernobyl Assessment. As of mid-2005, fewer than 50 deaths have been directly attributed to radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, with almost all the deaths being among highly exposed rescue workers, according to a new United Nations report. Blue-Ribbon Government Panel Lauds Nuclear Energy. The panel noted nuclear power has played a major role in electric power supply in the United States for 30 years. The U.S. has 103 nuclear power plants, more than any other country in the world. Those plants have supplied 20 percent of the nation's power over the past three decades — even as the country's energy demands have grown, and despite the fact no new plants have been ordered or built since 1973. Dispelling the Myths About Nuclear Power. Nuclear energy is relatively clean, generating far less waste per unit of energy than any other major source and, based on the number of lives lost or people made ill, it is also far safer for human health. The benefits of nuclear energy are real, while the risks are mostly hypothetical. Nuclear Power Is Safest Energy Source, Studies Show. Today's nuclear power technology, by any and every measure, provides the best safety performance and lowest risk of workplace accidents among all commonly utilized power sources. Nuclear power plants are not at risk from terrorist attacks: They do not offer exponential damage opportunities and they are the most fortified installations in the nation. It is safe to say neither the general public nor government officials understand many or any of these facts. Their lack of understanding is primarily the result of an extremely successful fear campaign waged by anti-nuclear activists 30 years ago. In addition, the news media has inaccurately reported accidents and mishaps at nuclear power plants. The Importance of Nuclear Energy to U.S. Energy Security: Nuclear energy provides reliable, low-cost baseload electricity to satisfy the increasing electricity demands of a digital economy, as well as peak demands caused by extreme weather conditions in winter and summer. Nuclear energy is a stabilizing factor in deregulated electricity markets because it is not affected by the price volatility experienced by other major energy sources, such as oil and natural gas. Exorcising the Demons of Chernobyl: Why would an energy-craving nation (the U.S.) that also demands a pristine environment put the kibosh on a limitless form of power (nuclear energy) that produces no air pollution and no emissions environmentalists claim cause global warming? Twenty Years After Chernobyl. April 26 marks the 20th anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Anti-nuclear activists are still trying to turn Chernobyl into a bigger disaster than it really was. Texas Will Host the First New U.S. Nuclear Plants Since the 1970s. Not a single nuclear power plant has been commissioned in the United States since 1978, but that is about to change as General Electric and Hitachi have announced a joint venture to build two nuclear power plants in Texas. The Texas project, announced in June with plants scheduled to begin operations in 2014, is expected to be the first in a new wave of economical and emissions-free nuclear power plants. Poll Shows the Public Favors Nuclear Power 2-to-1. Twice as many Americans support nuclear power as oppose it, according to a new poll by Bloomberg and the Los Angeles Times. ... The poll continues a trend of ever-increasing public support for nuclear power as a clean, economical, and environmentally friendly power source. Global warming fears have swayed many former opponents to support nuclear power. Greens 'aid destruction of planet'. Environmental groups are setting back the fight against global warming with misguided and irrational objections to nuclear power, according to Britain's leading thinker about the future. … While the anti-nuclear campaign is well-intentioned, it fundamentally misunderstands the safety of the latest generation of reactors and threatens to hold back a technology that could be critical to the world's future, [James Martin] said. Democrat Group Calls for More Nuclear Power. Nuclear power offers a safe and economical way to meet anticipated growth in American energy demand, according to an October 2006 report by the Progressive Policy Institute, a policy arm of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The report, "A Progressive Energy Platform," praises nuclear power as a key weapon against asserted global climate change and air quality concerns. "Nuclear power holds great potential to be an integral part of a diversified energy portfolio for America," the report states. "It produces no greenhouse gas emissions, so it can help clean up the air and combat climate change." Al-Mighty Preacher Running Out of Power. [Al Gore] knows as well as anyone that the only form of energy that has no effect whatever on greenhouse gases is nuclear energy. And yet here the Prophet of Doom was bizarrely tentative. ... Since many companies don't even bother to try to build nuclear plants because of community opposition, why would he not embark upon an educational effort to explain to the American people the environmental benefit to be gained from a major program to build nuclear power plants? Why? I'll tell you why. Nuclear power is an ancient bugbear for the environmentalist left, and Gore is now their leader and sovereign. Nuclear Power Plant Withstands Major Earthquake. In a real-world test of nuclear power plant safety, the world's largest nuclear power plant, at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, Japan, took the brunt of a major earthquake on July 16, 2007 and passed the test admirably. Kentucky Bills Would End Moratorium on Nuclear Power Plant Construction. Though the idea is still controversial, many environmental groups are starting to believe nuclear power is a viable option for replacing or supplementing coal- and gas-powered energy plants. In a state like Kentucky, where 90 percent of electricity is generated from coal, environmental groups are especially receptive to nuclear power. Environmental Foolishness Has Made Nuclear Energy Radioactive. Nuclear power is the only available technology that is adequate, affordable, reliable, safe, and environmentally clean. If the nation wants to limit CO2 emissions, then it must turn to nuclear power. Though nuclear energy is expensive … those who criticize nuclear energy based solely on costs do not fully appreciate the broader context of energy policy, energy inflation, and rising construction costs in general. Low-level radiation: Radiation and Human Health: Scientists have studied the effects of radiation for more than 100 years and know how to detect, monitor and control even the smallest amounts. In fact, more is known about the health effects of radiation than most other physical or chemical agents. Low-dose radiation fears are unfounded. A major aspect of the anti-nuclear policies that are espoused by our own government based on totally fraudulent fears. Our energy policy is based upon a half-century of deceit by U. S. advisory committees, such as the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation Committee and the National Council on Radiation Protection. Congress, EPA, and state officials use their advice to make policy, laws, and rules of operation. These committee members believe the myth that all ionizing radiation is harmful. It is not! They ignore abundant human and experimental animal data showing large and small doses of ionizing radiation (as most agents) produce opposite responses. Low-dose irradiation activates the immune system and has many health benefits. Trillion-Dollar Radiation Mistake? No one disputes that exposures to very high levels of radiation can cause health problems — data indicate, for example, that the Japanese atomic bomb survivors experienced slightly higher rates of cancer over the 50-plus years that they've been studied so far — but it's not clear at all that more typical, low-level radiation exposures pose any risk at all. Radiation 'hazards' found at U.S. Capitol, Library of Congress buildings. Radiation levels up to 65 times higher than U.S. Environmental Protection Agency safety standards were measured at the U.S. Capitol building and Library of Congress, reports a new study published by JunkScience.com. The researchers measured gamma radiation dose rates in a Capitol building hallway and outside the Thomas Jefferson Building as high as 30 microrems per hour. Highly exposed individuals could receive anywhere from 60 millirems to 260 millirems of gamma radiation per year depending on the exposure scenario. … The measured radiation dose rate is up to 550 percent higher than the dose rate from a nuclear power plant; [and] about 13,000 times higher than the average annual radiation dose from worldwide nuclear energy production. Afraid-iation? In July 2005, a National Academy of Sciences research panel ominously announced that there is no safe exposure to radiation. While this may sound intuitively plausible, the panel ignored a host of facts, including that 82 percent of the average person's exposure to ionizing radiation is natural and unavoidable — coming at low levels from the universe and the ground — and that, other than slightly higher cancer rates among the Japanese atomic bomb survivors, there are no data to support the idea that typical exposures are dangerous. See also the section on Irradiated foods. Good old oil and natural gas: The Environmental Benefits of Offshore Drilling: Louisiana produces almost 30 percent of America's commercial fisheries. Only Alaska (ten times the size of the Bayou state) produces slightly more. So obviously, Louisiana's coastal waters are immensely rich and prolific in seafood. These same coastal waters contain 3,200 of the roughly 3,700 offshore production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. From these, Louisiana also produces 25 percent of America's domestic oil, and no major oil spill has ever soiled its coast. So for those interested in evidence over hysterics, by simply looking bayou-ward, a lesson in the "environmental perils" of offshore oil drilling presents itself very clearly. The Natural Gas Crisis: Greens Engineer Another Disaster. Most Americans don't know it, but the price of natural gas has increased as much as 700% in the last three years. … It's not that there aren't huge amounts of natural gas. The problem is that access to it has been effectively blocked. "We're not running out of natural gas, and we're not running out of places to look for natural gas," says Keith Rattie, president of Questar, an energy developer. "However, we are running out of places we are allowed to look for gas." Why do you think that is? Montana Voters Favor Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Recovery. A majority of Montana voters favor increased production of oil and natural gas in the Rocky Mountains, according to a December [2003] poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. The poll results may suggest a growing consensus among Western voters that energy production is not necessarily at odds with environmental concerns. The future of oil: Oil over $40 a barrel accelerates exploration for new fields, and development of known but technologically inaccessible fields, including some fields four miles below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, where there may be at least 25 billion barrels. Discovering oil: 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. Environmentalists Still Can't Get It Right. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. How much oil lies beneath the Earth's crust? In the 1970s, the consensus turned grim again: oil production would peak in the mid-1980s and then drop precipitously. A famous CIA report predicted the "rapid exhaustion" of accessible fields, while President Jimmy Carter warned that oil wells were "drying up all over the world." … Now doomsday forecasts are back, predicting the end of oil in this decade or the next. Are We Out of Gas? Let's get a little historical perspective. In 1914, the U.S. Bureau of Mines predicted American oil reserves would last merely a decade. In both 1939 and 1951, the Interior Department estimated oil supply at only 13 years. "We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade," declared President Jimmy Carter gloomily in 1977. In fact, the earliest claim that we were running out of oil dates back to 1855 — four years before the first well was drilled! An oil 'crisis'?: part II. Soaring oil prices have revived the old bogeyman that the world is running out of oil. … This has been a worldwide phenomenon. At the end of the 20th century, the known reserves of petroleum in the world were more than ten times what they were in the middle of the 20th century — despite an ever-growing use of oil. Redesigning trucks in Washington: Since 58 percent of the oil we use is imported, while only 40 percent goes into cars, SUVs, vans and pickups, it follows that we would still be importing millions of barrels a day even if there were no passenger cars or trucks. Arctic oil: Facts versus Fiction. The truth is that the latest U.S. Geological Survey estimates are that the entire "1002 Area" contains up to 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil. If found, this oil could replace all of our imports from Saudi Arabia for more than 30 years! The reserve could prevent our dependence on foreign oil from getting any worse for decades. Rather than being 56 percent dependent like we are now, it could cut our dependence to around 50 percent, according to the Energy Information Agency. Much more about ANWR is on this page. Oil spills: Oil Is Not the Problem. John Robinson is the sort of man whose views on matters scientific and environmental must be taken seriously. His conclusions on oil spills, based on long experience, do not comport with environmentalist orthodoxy, to say the least. Second-hand Smoke: Debate Rages Over Second-Hand Smoke: Looking for a surer method of being ripped apart than entering a lion's den covered with catnip? Conduct the most exhaustive, longest-running study on second-hand smoke and death. Find no connection. And then, rather than being politically correct and hiding your data in a vast warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant, publish it in one of the world's most respected medical journals. Minn., Calif. tests prove secondhand smoke not a health hazard. Air quality tests performed in Minnesota and California in smoke-filled bars and restaurants show that secondhand smoke may not be the major health hazard that some claim it is. The Environmental Health Department in St. Louis Park, Minn., tested for trace levels of nicotine and found results between 1 and 33 micrograms of nicotine per cubic meter of air. ... This means not only is it not going to kill you to smell smoke once in a while, it isn't even going to have much of an effect on you. Passive Smoke: It is preposterous that those "scientists" who promote junk science studies such as this one are not exposed for the charlatans they really are. Instead, they pass as if they were "scholars" dedicated to saving humanity, and they get big dollars and media credence! The devastating part is that this incredible distortion is not an isolated case, but today it is almost the standard used for the most disparate issues, from pesticides, to plastic toys, to passive smoke, to food. Stoking the Rigged Terror of Secondhand Smoke. By any sensible account, the anachronism of the tobacco culture should be slated for extinction in an advancing civilization. Why must it happen under the tyranny of deception, when intelligent and transparent ways are available? The mild and pleasurable addictivity of nicotine and a lurking black market have continued to frustrate the abolitionist crusade, and abolition will not work in the long run. Genetically modified crops and biotech foods: GM Crops Saving Farm Economy from Drought. An August 11 [2006] federal government crop report shows biotechnology is saving the Midwestern farm economy from devastation in the wake of this summer's prolonged drought. They're trying to scare you. The campaigners warning us we might end up with two heads after eating GM foods are ignoring the science that says it's good for you. Let me prove how dead to reason are the state politicians now screaming that genetically modified crops could kill us. Frankenstein food beats starvation. As we eat our chips, hamburgers and milkshakes for lunch today, let's put the debate about genetically modified food into perspective. We eat food laden in fats and preservatives largely without debate or complaint. Yet the prospect of producing GM foods that could be drought resistant, grown without being heavily treated with pesticide and made more nutritious has caused a huge outcry. GM Tomato Tastes Better. Shoppers who miss the taste of farm-grown tomatoes may find solace in a new technology that puts back what generations of breeding for hardiness and shelf life have taken out. A new variety of tomato has been genetically modified (GM) to produce geraniol, a rose-smelling compound found in fruits and flowers. In a blind taste test, 60 percent of 37 testers preferred the flavor of the GM tomato, according to a study published online this week in Nature Biotechnology. Beyond Jeremy Rifkin: Crops made with gene-splicing techniques are currently grown by 8.5 million farmers in 21 countries on more than 100 million acres annually. Americans have consumed more than a trillion servings of foods that contain gene-spliced ingredients. Throughout all this experience, there is not a single documented case of injury to a person or disruption of an ecosystem. Zambia Allows Its People To Eat. Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa has finally ordered agricultural officials to allow GM corn into the country, greatly expanding the amount of food that will reach his country's under-nourished population. Environmentalists Say: Let My People Go … Hungry. No environmentalist can point to a single person who's been killed or even injured by a genetically modified food. Yet the entire world knows Africans die in large numbers due to starvation from famine, despotic governments and other preventable complications. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 34% of the population — 194 million people — reportedly goes hungry every day. Biotech Advances Are Making Foods Healthier. Most people know fish is one of the healthiest foods on the market. Omega-3 fatty acids, abundant in fish and in little else, are proven to improve heart health, alleviate hypertension, ease arthritis, and lower cholesterol. However, many people dislike the taste of fish … it generally does not lend itself to fast and easy cooking [and] fish can be relatively expensive for people on a limited budget. … Researchers at the University of Maryland announced in April that they have discovered a way to genetically modify soybeans to produce omega-3 fatty acids. Activists Threaten World Food Supply. When Kenyan biologist Florence Wambugu developed a virus-resistant sweet potato that promised to feed millions, the Earth Liberation Front destroyed her lab and her crops. In another blow to scientific progress, eco-fanatics bombed a Minnesota plant genetics center to keep it from producing life-saving agricultural research. When activists don't approve, poor people don't eat. Biotechnology Beat the Drought in 2005. After this past summer's drought in major corn-producing states, such as Indiana and Illinois, the U.S. corn harvest may establish 2005 as a hallmark year in the genetic modification of plants, industry experts said on September 29. The federal government is predicting corn production this year will be the second-highest in U.S. history, despite the droughts. California County Rejects Biotech Ban. Sonoma County, California voters on November 8 soundly rejected a measure that would have banned cultivation in the county of genetically enhanced crops. The defeat, 56 percent to 44 percent, was devastating to anti-biotech activists, whose best chances for biotechnology bans are in counties such as Sonoma, where genetically enhanced crops are virtually nonexistent. California Fruits and Nuts Against Agriculture: California's referendum process frequently leads to incredibly dumb issues appearing on the ballot — and to some preposterous outcomes. Among the most egregious examples this year is Measure M, a Sonoma County anti-biotechnology proposal that would prohibit the cultivation of plants or seeds improved with state-of-the-art techniques. Bugs Not Building Resistance to Biotech Crops. The superbugs aren't showing up. In a major disappointment for environmental activists, insects are not building up resistance to the genetically-engineered Bt corn and cotton that have been planted on millions of acres around the world since 1995. Founder of "Green Revolution" Lauds GM Crops: Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for launching the "Green Revolution" in agriculture that helped curb world hunger, appeared on National Public Radio March 26 to laud genetic modification in agriculture and caution against the organic farming movement. Monsanto Caves to Activists on Biotech Wheat. Is it better to feed the poor and make money, or appease Greenpeace and do neither? Review of "The Frankenfood Myth". In The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution, food safety experts Henry Miller and Gregory Conko have written a brilliant account of how self-interest, bad science, and excessive government regulation have profoundly compromised the potential of the new biotechnology. This book is a call to action for policymakers to resist a destructive political process that is currently denying enormous potential benefits to consumers throughout the world. Planting the seeds of misinformation: In Europe, the public has become obsessed with the idea that genetically engineered foods are too risky for general consumption. This uncertainty has been fueled by the distortion and misinformation spread by anti-biotechnology activists. It is easy to mislead the public on the subject of genetic engineering, because most people are unsure of what genetic engineering is and why scientists consider it so important. Greenpeace and Poverty: Greenpeace activist Farida Akthen recently blasted the Bangladesh agricultural ministry for approving research on one of the most promising of all biotech miracles: golden rice. By adding a daffodil gene to ordinary rice, researchers gave it a golden color and enriched it with beta-carotene, which people can convert to vitamin A. Simply by eating a few ounces of golden rice a day, malnourished children can ward off a vitamin deficiency that causes half a million kids to go blind every year and leaves hundreds of millions (including many thousands in Bangladesh) susceptible to disease, intellectual impairment and death. Why Mandatory Biotech Food Labeling is Unnecessary: Bioengineering and recombinant DNA techniques have been used to develop crops with traits that increase yields and allow farmers to reduce their use of synthetic pesticides and herbicides. The technology has made substantial contributions to the production of safe, inexpensive, and healthy foods. The next generation of products promises to provide even greater benefits to consumers, such as enhanced nutritional value and even foods that act as medicines. Unfortunately, opponents of this safe and important technology have convinced many consumers that mandatory labeling of bioengineered foods is necessary to give them a choice when making purchasing decisions. Mandatory biotechnology labeling … is not warranted scientifically, economically, or legally. It could actually serve to mislead consumers, not provide them with important information. Dr. Strangelunch — Why we should learn to stop worrying and love GM food. Plant breeders using biotechnology have accomplished a great deal in only a few years. For example, they have created a class of highly successful insect-resistant crops by incorporating toxin genes from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. Farmers have sprayed B.t. spores on crops as an effective insecticide for decades. Now, thanks to some clever biotechnology, breeders have produced varieties of corn, cotton, and potatoes that make their own insecticide. B.t. is toxic largely to destructive caterpillars such as the European corn borer and the cotton bollworm; it is not harmful to birds, fish, mammals, or people. EPA and sound science validate biotech corn benefits. Sound science has debunked yet another purported biotech scare, as the EPA on October 16 [2001] declared biotech corn perfectly safe for monarch butterfly consumption. A 1999 study reported in the journal Nature claimed a high death rate among monarch caterpillar larvae fed milkweed leaves dusted with high doses of pollen from genetically modified corn. The story was quickly trumpeted by the anti-technology lobby and the mainstream media as a stark warning against animal and human consumption of "Frankenfoods." Editor's Note: If your family is hungry, do you care about caterpillars? When some leftist, tree-hugging, earth-worshipping hippie tells you that biotech corn endangers butterflies, the correct response is, "So what?" There is no shortage of butterflies! Spud growers face a decision. Willing or not, U.S. potato growers are about to be joining corn, cotton, soybean and dairy producers in the biotech fray. They have thus far avoided the fight only because they have refused to use the pest-resistant and high-starch GM varieties that have been available since 1999. Processors, unwilling to subject their fast food customers to the "frankenfood" fruitcakes, refused to buy them. New technology fights old pests, feeds more people. When I started farming 30 years ago, I never dreamed of how technological progress would revolutionize agriculture. We still can't control the weather. Yet recent innovations in biotechnology have improved agriculture beyond anything I ever thought was possible. We may even be on the verge of making another eternal scourge of farmers permanently obsolete. I'm talking about pests. GM Corn Protest Based on Bio-Fraud: Environmental and consumer groups staged protests and held news conferences across the country in April [2002] to call attention to their claim, as one news release put it, that "the genetic contamination of Mexican native corn varieties threatens not only the genetic integrity of corn, one of the world's most important basic crops, but the food security for millions in the Americas." The statement is false …and even its author knew it was false at the time it was written. It is an example of bio-fraud, an all-too-common tactic of radical environmental groups. U.S. Blames "Green Groups" for Food Shortage. Environmental groups and biotech companies are accusing each other of exploiting starvation in much of southern Africa for political gain as countries in the region try to determine whether it is safe to use genetically engineered crops to relieve famine. As the world begins to starve |