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'Sustainable' Poverty: The Real Face of the Leftist Environmental Agenda. Since the seventies, the American left has warned of coming famine, overpopulation, total deforestation, urban sprawl, and overcrowding. The only problem is that none of this has ever happened. The left lied, and freedom died. Now that global warming has fizzled, let's move on to the next crisis. Climate Alarmism Takes Off in a New Direction. NASA has just voiced its concern over the threat that our modern technological society is now facing from "solar storms." Now it's true of course, that our society has become quite dependent on new technology, such as satellite communications and GPS mapping, that is vulnerable to the effects of major solar storms, but NASA seems to be a bit too worried about how big the threat really is. The Atrazine Scare Is Just the Beginning. Recently, I reported here on the environmentalists' trumped-up scare campaign targeting atrazine, a valuable, widely used agricultural herbicide. I quoted a Wall Street Journal editorial that observed, "The environmental lobby also figures that if it can take down atrazine with its long record of clean health, it can get the EPA to prohibit anything." In fact, the attack on atrazine is just part of the total war against man-made chemicals that is waged today by environmentalists inside and outside of government. Government 'Cancer Scare' Report So Bogus Even the New York Times Notices. Hard as it to imagine, a recent government report was so ridiculously hysterical that even the New York Times noticed. The President's Cancer Panel's released a report entitled "Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk" ... The report was a collection of conjecture, unrelated factoids and, more than anything, a shrill call for more: more government, more studies and, of course, more money. ... It's the silliest example so far of Obama's "scientific experts" delivering hysteria where hysteria is wanted, but it's sure to be far from the last. New Global Warming Alarmism from LA Times. We have now reached the apex of "heads I win, tails you lose" global warming-alarmism. In his April 18 op-ed for the LA Times, author Eli Kintisch warned that "the world is running short on air pollution, and if we continue to cut back on smoke pouring forth from industrial smokestacks," global warming consequences could be "profound." Having painted themselves into an environmental conundrum, Kintisch and climate scientists are left debating how they are going to proceed with sulfate aerosols — a natural and anthropogenic air pollutant believed to have cooling properties on the earth's atmosphere. Global warming follies. I use Yahoo as the home page for my internet browser. This exposes me to the daily global warming propaganda Yahoo publishes, with correspondingly outrageous, inflammatory headlines. These types of articles are specifically selected to frighten us into acceding to the pro-warming political forces' demands, including surrendering our freedoms and our prosperity. Shut down the IPCC. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has announced yet another "flaw" in their reports. It's time — once and for all — to be very clear about the obvious. There are serious conclusions to be drawn from the fact that the "flaws" in the UN reports produced bias in only one direction. The latest announcement admits an error that supported Vegan propaganda against the meat industry. Researchers have also admitted that there is no scientifically supportable case for the IPCC's exaggerated worst-case sea-level rise (which by the way has been orders of magnitude lower than Al Gore's), dramatic ice-melts in the Himalayas and elsewhere, danger to the South American rain forest, warming of oceans, etc. etc. etc. EEEEK!, Reports Newsweek. Just in time for Earth Day at your local supermarket newsstand, Newsweek has published "100 Places to Remember Before They Disappear," a shrill, apocalyptic, scaremongering photo album of favorite hot spots the world over that are threatened with destruction by global warming. Science and the Toxic Scare Machine. United States Federal Agency-sponsored research in public health toxicology is as irresponsible and misleading as the IPCC misconduct. ... Well of course we're gonna die, eventually. This scientific misconduct suggesting that we are going to die from the environment is intended to scare the most anxious and comfortable society in history. The research is the result of agency money spent to make the public more anxious and push the idea that government is a savior; regulations and programs must be instituted now to rescue us from Armageddon. Manipulating the Climate Numbers: [Scroll down] We've been given some clear answers that weren't serious, ranging from the famed "hockey stick" diagram, that entirely misrepresented planetary temperature trends; to smaller assertions such as, "all the glaciers in the Himalayas will have melted by the year 2035." This latter we now know was made up from whole cloth, like the polar bear die-off, and a great deal of nonsense about Arctic and Antarctic ice cover. To my survey, there is not a single aspect of the "anthropogenic global warming" hypothesis that has been left standing by recent revelations, and more shoes drop every day. This article is an equal mix of environmental alarmism and anti-gun propaganda: Spent ammo's harm to environment is debated. Lead in paint, gasoline and drinking water is prohibited as dangerous for health and the environment. But the material is scattered in abundance outdoors when it comes to hunting grounds and firing ranges. Tons of lead from ammunition can accumulate on the ground over years and decades. Government hysteria: A dread disease, no known cure. Somewhere betwixt swine and swindle, we've got a flu crisis. Well, maybe not a real crisis, or even a semi-convincing phony crisis, but the government is working on it. What we have, actually, is a crisis of hysteria promoted in certain government precincts. Experts Warn of Impending Phosphorus Crisis. The element phosphorus is essential to human life and the most important ingredient in fertilizer. But experts warn that the world's reserves of phosphate rock are becoming depleted. Build-A-Climate-Scare: Why You Should Boycott Build-A-Bear. [Scroll down] The company also has a website called Build-A-Bearville.com where children can play an interactive video game that, on it's [sic] surface, is unlikely to raise suspicion or sound alarms. But when your unsuspecting tot logs on and hops a virtual train to the North Pole... you should know that he or she will be informed — by Santa Claus — that Christmas may be canceled this year due to Global Warming. Update: Christmas Back On! Build-A-Bear Surrenders, Pulls Videos. Yesterday, we brought you the disturbing story of Build-a-Bear's on-line video series warning kids that the North Pole may completely disappear in just a few days, threatening Christmas. (Average December temperature in the North Pole is around minus 40 degrees Farenheit.) Needless to say, the story received a lot of attention and sparked several organized efforts to boycott the company's products. The Editor says... If you paid attention in high school, you know The global carbon footprint scam. I never cease to marvel at the environmental alarmists who create one "crisis" after another using wretchedly bad "science" to support their scams. On Tuesday, November 24, the Global Footprint Network ... "release[d] new data on the Ecological Footprint of 100 nations and humanity as a whole, and the current ledgers are sobering." Well, of course, they're sobering. Everything the Greens announce is sobering because, as you well know, the oceans are rising, the glaciers and polar caps are melting, we're running out of oil, every animal on Earth is endangered, incandescent light bulbs and global warming will destroy all life on Earth, yada, yada, yada. Only 50 days left to save the world? I might listen to the doomsayers if they weren't such ludicrous hypocrites. Not many people understand climate change. But they can recognise hypocrisy when they see it, and are also likely to count their spoons whenever wild-eyed politicians invoke the impending end of the world. On Tuesday [12/15/2009], Prince Charles flew to Copenhagen to attend the climate change summit, where he delivered a keynote speech. He informed his audience that 'the world has only seven years before we lose the levers of control'. Not at all long, then. New Panic Hook: 'Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity'. Prepare for more panic talk about the end of the world as Dr. James Hansen, a leading global warming alarmist whose temperature data has come under question, launches a media tour for his new book out this week... Analysis of Alarmism: Ocean acidification. As public awareness grows that human caused warming is false the extent and degree of attempts to scare the public increases. The scare preference is for remote geographic areas such as the Arctic or Antarctic or complex obscure topics ideally with global implications, which the public knows little about. The latest scare story is ocean acidification, which combines these traits with the advantage of a word with negative connotations and used before in acid rain. Environmental terrorism in South Africa. While the globe was still warming and environmentalist claims were modest, the IPCC's case was impregnable. In these modern times the environmentalists fed the media with scare stories in order to advance their cause. The media in turn had little interest in repeating the same warnings month after month. So, climate alarmists were forced to increase the level of alarmism. Environmental terrorism is the result. Examples are the fraudulent predictions of the destruction of the animals and butterflies of the Kruger National Park, and the imminent loss of our Proteas (South Africa) and Quiver Trees (Namibia) as a result of climate change. Climate Myths and National Security. The President of the United States recently told the United Nations that "global warming" poses a threat to national security and may engender conflicts as populations are displaced by rising sea levels, droughts, floods, storms etc. etc. etc. However, it is now clear that there is no basis for the notion that the barely-detectable human influence on the climate is likely to prove a threat to climate, still less to national security. Science, Politics and Death: Environmental extremism kills. Millions die annually because of restrictions on DDT, and imposing the "Kyoto" regulations would kill many more. The Swine Who Live to Scare You. We live in a world of competing lies, all swirling around us and generated by government and what are now called "non-governmental organizations." ... These are the swine who live to scare you because they know this is the way to benefit from your ignorance, gullibility or because you will not take the time to check out the "facts" they are telling you, using them like cattle prods to make you and others move in the direction they want. The Administration's Flu Fear-Mongering. 'In keeping with the administration's proactive approach" to swine flu, the White House has announced that President Obama has declared the disease "a national emergency." It's the second such declaration, with the first in late April. And in case you didn't know what "proactive" meant before, now you do: "hysterical." Millions of swine flu shots wasted. Germany is stuck with €250 million worth of swine flu vaccine ordered during the height of the flu panic last winter but never used because the mass immunisation campaign was a failure, according to a Friday [5/7/2010] media report. No More Crying 'Spanish Flu'. Flu season has officially ended. We had about 12,000 fatalities, a third the usual number according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. Yet almost all infections were H1N1 swine flu. The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed 18,036 swine flu deaths over the past year, somewhat shy of the 250,000 to 500,000 it estimates die annually of seasonal flu. So it's hard to imagine that a year ago top public health officials and the media were comparing swine flu to the Spanish flu of 1918-19. Global blushing. It's hard to be green when you're red-faced all the time. It's easy to be red-faced when your cause is global warming doomsterism. This week, the doomsters were embarrassed to learn, once again, that the planet was not in grave peril. Antarctica, their greatest candidate for catastrophe, was not melting at an ever-faster rate, according to a report in Geophysical Research Letters, but at the slowest rate in 30 years. Nonsense has me incensed. How many times in our own lifetime have the doomsayers, confusing their own mortality with that of mankind, falsely warned we were at the end of days? Wasn't humanity supposed to have already been cut down by nuclear war? Global pandemics? The "population bomb"? The hole in the ozone layer? A new ice age? Acid rain? Genetically modified food? Toxic waste? A catastrophic extinction caused by pollution and pesticides? Pick your poison. None of it happened. Arctic temperatures hit 2,000-year high. The 1990s were the Arctic's warmest decade in the past 2,000 years, says a study released in Friday's edition of Science. ... Scientists used "natural" thermometers — such as glacial ice cores, tree rings and sediments from lakes — to calculate the temperatures of the Arctic over the past two millennia. Instruments have been used to measure the actual temperature of the Arctic since the late 1800s. The Editor says... Hmmm... where to begin? One or two "instruments" in the late 1800s would not be enough to perform accurate measurements of the Arctic Circle. Before that, nobody kept records, so the "report" relies on tree rings, tea leaves and wild guesses. But even if the current Arctic temperature is the highest in a long time, so what? It is still plenty chilly at the north pole. More about polar ice. Figuring How to Terrify Us Over Swine Flu. "U.S. health officials say swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as many as several hundred thousand could die." So declares an Associated Press article, the writer of which you can picture trying to catch his breath as he pounds away at the keyboard. The Price Of A Porcine Panic. There's panic in the streets over a flu outbreak. "Projections are that this virus will kill 1 million Americans," the nation's top health official has warned. The virus is swine flu. But the date is 1976. And the projection, it turns out, is off by 999,999 deaths. Direct ones, that is. The hastily developed vaccine killed or crippled hundreds. Make way for Obama the Bogeyman. The World Health Organization (WHO) — helping the Obama administration stir the pot on panicking the public into believing a deadly viral pandemic is headed our way this Fall — is getting a big leg up from the Discovery Channel. It's been a summer of Internet warnings "the pandemic is coming", and now the Discovery Channel will telecast the definitive Viral Pandemic Survival Show. News of the coming scare show is available courtesy of Kurt Nimmo at Infowars, those folk challenged by mainstream media as "conspiracy theory advocates". A pandemic of panic — are we dead yet? We were all supposed to be in the graveyard by now, done in by AIDS, SARS, bird flu, poisoned peanut butter, Hong Kong flu, killer tomatoes, global warming and strangulation by kudzu. But here we are, proof that there really is life after death. Swine-flu Hysteria: Who Dunnit. Now that the H1N1 swine-flu outbreak appears to be waning, it's time to draw important lessons from what happened. First, the pronouncements from the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency, were disappointing. Most flu and public-health experts consider the WHO's decision last week to raise the pandemic flu threat to Level 5, "Pandemic Imminent," to have been alarmist and unwarranted. The Politics of Global Warming. One of the first issues to be celebrated as a crisis by these reformers was over-population. That fad peaked in the '60s and early '70s. ... But the best parallel to the current crusade, the real precursor to the current "panic du jour," was the computer model-based alarmism of the "Club of Rome." The Great Liberal Pandemonium Machine. The Mexican swine flu pandemic? Oh, that's soooo yesterday. Global Warming? All those confident "scientific" predictions are falling apart around the world, even as greedy politicians still try to squeeze the last little drops of power and money out of them. Human flesh-eating bacteria? SARS? Ozone holes? Mad Cow? The Curse of the Killer Tomatoes? Water torture? CO2? Bee Colony Collapse? It never ends. As long as scare stories sell, as long as millions of indoctrinated suckers fall for them they will never end. After salmonella, bird flu, the Millennium Bug... should we actually be scared this time? Don't we have the sense that we have seen this kind of panic before, which eventually turned out to have gone way over the top? The moment which more than any might have set off a severe attack of deja vu came when the BBC Today programme wheeled on an expert from the World Health Organisation to tell us that '40 percent' of us in Britain may catch swine flu — while another unnamed expert was quoted predicting that '1.2 million' Britons could die. Earth Day predictions from 1970. The environmentalists were wrong then, and they are wrong today. Save Capitalism. Every year Steven Hayward, a scholar at the Pacific Research Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, compiles his Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. And every year, his findings contradict the alarmists' warnings that the world is on the edge of environmental cataclysm. From evidence "that tropical rain forests may now be expanding faster than they are being cut down" to the improving health of U.S. ocean fisheries to better outdoor air quality in American cities with the worst air pollution, Hayward shows there's more to be optimistic about than there is to be troubled about. Pre-industrial CO2 levels were about the same as today. Why we are told otherwise? Proponents of human induced warming and climate change told us that an increase in CO2 precedes and causes temperature increases. They were wrong. They told us the late 20th century was the warmest on record. They were wrong. They told us, using the infamous "hockey stick" graph, the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) did not exist. They were wrong. They told us global temperatures would increase through 2008 as CO2 increased. They were wrong. They told us Arctic ice would continue to decrease in area through 2008. They were wrong. They told us October 2008 was the second warmest on record. They were wrong. Real Scientists vs. Media Darlings: Samuel Epstein alleged a prominent herbicide caused cancer and industrial pollution was creating an epidemic of cancer. These allegations were rejected by real science, but in the interim they made Epstein very famous. Irving Selikoff, whose opinions served as a basis for Environmental Protection Agency standards on asbestos, predicted 40,000 deaths per year from asbestos from 1967 to 1977. The actual number was 522 worldwide. In 1976 Stephen Schneider supported the view that the Earth was entering a little ice age. Now he is a leading proponent of the theory of global warming. Happy Earth Day. More than 30 years ago political scientist Anthony Downs discerned what he called the "issue-attention cycle," a five-stage process by which the public and especially the news media grow alarmed over an issue, agitate for action, generate piles of scary headlines, and then begin to draw back as we come to recognize that the problem has been exaggerated or misconceived, and the price tag for action comes in. Zealotry over global warming could damage our Earth far more than climate change. Over the past half-century, we have become used to planetary scares. In the late Sixties, we were told of a population explosion that would lead to global starvation. Then, a little later, we were warned the world was running out of natural resources. By the Seventies, when global temperatures began to dip, many eminent scientists warned us that we faced a new Ice Age. But the latest scare, global warming, has engaged the political and opinion-forming classes to a greater extent than any of these. When Will We Tire of the Fear Mongers? I have noticed throughout my life that there barely has been a day the news media was not trumpeting a foreboding event, an impending environmental danger, or some risky food or technological hazard clearly intended to generate fear. … Come to think of it, I cannot think of a single environmental or public health "crisis" that has ever proven to be true. They just fade away as time and reality wear them thin. Eventually they fall into the shadow of the next "fear du jour." The Omniphobia Epidemic. We're afraid of ozone and CO2. We're afraid of smog and cigarette smoke. We're afraid of Republicans because they are warmongers, and of Democrats because they are in utter denial of the real world. We're afraid the earth is warming — or freezing. Our bee populations are now collapsing. A new kind of voracious ant is invading. Only 20,000 polar bears are left in Alaska, way down, from, oh, about 20,000 previously. Flesh-eating bacteria are attacking people in Africa, again. … We're afraid of drilling for too much oil. But we're also afraid of pumping too little oil. Studies Gone Wild: Death by Shower Curtain? [Scroll down] In short, it is a piece of shower curtain research that some experts said just doesn't hold water. "It's a great example of how quickly a sound bite can become dangerous and contagious," said ABC News medical contributor Dr. Marie Savard. "The idea that people should be tossing out their shower curtains based on a study that more or less focuses on a single shower curtain is absurd. This is scare science at its best, or worst, depending on how you look at it." Report busts the myths on cancer risks. Breast implants, deodorant and coffee are extremely unlikely to cause cancer, says a new risk report designed to allay panic that everything can be carcinogenic. The risk assessment developed by an Australian cancer specialist puts in perspective the chance of getting the disease from a range of agents, including dental fillings, marijuana and cured meats. Mice, Men, and Carcinogens: When environmentalists and government agencies label chemicals as carcinogens, they often point to rodent tests. However, the tests have proven to be seriously flawed. They entail administering massive amounts of chemicals to rodents bred to be highly susceptible to cancer. Then researchers extrapolate the possible effects of such chemicals on humans who may be exposed to small amounts of the same chemical over their lifetimes. The Politically Correct Horror Picture Show. Occasionally, I view the History Channel, and Sunday evening I tuned into a two-hour horror show. Viewers were treated to frightening scenarios for three-plus disasters, some natural, some of our own making, that are bound to destroy the world and everybody in it, or something just short of that. … This is yet more evidence that those who paint the most horrific pictures of our future are determined that we get one consistent with their jaundiced view of mankind's capacity for self government. Who Are The Merchants of Fear? Manmade global warming theory is fed by pseudo quantitative prediction from climate-careerists working primarily off the big, mega-computer General Circulation Models, which include the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Department of Commerce's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab. These are multi-billion dollar scientific weather bureaucracies as intent on self-preservation and budgetary enhancement as cognate nuclear bureaucracies at Oakridge and Los Alamos. Heartland President Debunks Global Warming Myths. The popular press features possible crises on their front pages all the time, because bad news sells and they are in the business of selling copies of their publications and generating ad revenue, not reporting the truth about complicated subjects. As they say in the business, "if it bleeds, it leads." These are the same guys who told us Alar, saccharin, Red Dye #2, dioxin, a hole in the ozone layer, electric power lines, and cell phones were all causing cancer epidemics, and that Y2K would shut down the nation's electric grid and banks. Food dyes may protect against cancer. Synthetic food dyes — long blamed for causing hyperactivity in children — may have a good side: some of them may protect against cancer. Gayle Orner at Oregon State University in Corvallis added the carcinogens dibenzopyrene (DBP) or aflatoxin to the feed of trout for one month, with or without the food dyes Red 40 — one of six recently linked to hyperactivity in children — or Blue 2. Nine months later, trout that had been fed either of the dyes in combination with aflatoxin had 50 percent fewer liver tumours, compared with those that had been exposed to aflatoxin alone. The Editor says... Hmmm... I'm no psychologist, but maybe the hyperactive kids' problem is overexposure to television, or fatherlessness, or a diet with too much sugar. Or maybe it's because Mom is constantly on the phone. Current Exaggeration: An item in the September 18 issue [of Business Week] discussing the possibility of ocean currents "switching off" and catastrophically affecting the global climate was interesting but incredibly useless. The Fear Industrial Complex: Do vaccines cause autism? Almost certainly not. Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia told me, "It's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical about anything you put into your body, including vaccines. And vaccines do have side effects. But vaccines don't cause autism." … Then why are so many kids diagnosed as autistic today? Because kids we once said had other conditions now are being called autistic. The Gore Who Stole Christmas. If climate alarmists are to be believed, Americans must cut their electricity use substantially, and soon, to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions associated with fossil-fuel combustion. Celebratory holiday lighting — what doomsayer Paul Ehrlich once called "garish commercial Christmas displays" — would surely be the first to go, coming before indoor lighting, cooking, heating, and air conditioning. Good News About the Environment: After over 30 years of steady progress and improvement, the media still chooses to emphasize the negative and largely ignore the positive with their coverage of Earth Day events. Top Ten Junk Science Moments for 2006. Bill Clinton and Julia Roberts stumped for California's Proposition 87 which would tax oil to fund alternative energy research. Mr. Clinton and Ms. Roberts claimed that California's air is the "worst in the nation" and that it was linked with more asthma, bronchitis, lung cancer, heart disease, lung disease and premature death. But data (as opposed to political rhetoric) indicate that California's public health is generally better than that of states which fully meet federal air quality standards. Maybe that's one reason why voters rejected Proposition 87. The Media Likes Scaring Us, and We Like It. Listening to us [in the news media], you'd think our growing exposure to pesticides, food additives, and other mysterious chemicals has created America's "cancer epidemic." But in truth there is no cancer epidemic — cancer incidence is flat, and death rates have been falling for years. But such good news doesn't get much play. No interest groups benefit from it. Environmental Disasters: The Rest of the Story. Crying "fire!" in a crowded theater is irresponsible, perhaps illegal. But spreading terror among citizens by claiming Alar will cause cancer in children, by claiming drinking water is unsafe, and by claiming pesticide residues in food are hazardous to your health is not even a misdemeanor. Perpetrators of environmental and food safety scares, and even outright hoaxes, are never held accountable for the personal tragedies that result from business failures and the unwarranted fear and alarm they spread. They are, in fact, often praised by the news media as consumer advocates and protectors. Global Warming Hurricane Crisis Fails to Materialize. Throwing further cold water on the asserted link between global warming and the past few hurricane seasons is a study published in the July 28 issue of Science, which concluded modern technology is enabling us to locate and measure the full strength of hurricanes that would have escaped detection prior to advanced satellite and radar technology. The study noted hurricane seasons in the past were likely much more eventful and ferocious than had been documented, and that the past few hurricane seasons have not been as remarkable as global warming alarmists claim. Atlantic hurricane forecasts missed by a big margin. The noted hurricane forecasting team led by Dr. William Gray at Colorado State University has not missed by this much in a long time. Before the Atlantic 2006 hurricane season started, Gray and his protege Philip Klotzbach predicted it would be well above average. Instead, it has been slightly below average as the November 30 end of the season draws near. I'm No Climatologist. I'm sure Al Gore will find some way to spin the spectacular lack of serious tropical storms this year into more proof of human caused climate damage. He is probably just waiting for the right moment. The Environmental Disaster That Wasn't. Of all the energy-related bad news brought on by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, one piece of good news has gone largely unnoticed. The two powerful storms did not cause any major offshore oil spills despite dealing a knockout punch to America's biggest oil producing region. Science Without Sense: Unscientific public health research costs U.S. consumers billions of dollars each year but does nothing to improve the well being of Americans. Science Without Sense is a humorous, tongue-in-cheek guide to getting ahead in the field without wasting time on real science. Climate of Fear: How can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes? The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science — whether for AIDS, or space, or climate — where there is nothing really alarming? Mindless environmentalism threatens to undermine the electronics industry. Get the lead out: What would electronics be without solder? Manufacturers worldwide, including many in the United States, are pumping billions of dollars into testing new materials and converting assembly lines on a whim of ecological alarmism. The inclusion of lead among the banned substances renders the EU directive especially broad: Global use of tin-lead solder in electronics totals close to 200 million pounds per year. WTC death-link doubted. The city's top health official doubts that the death of NYPD Detective James Zadroga can be conclusively linked to toxins at Ground Zero — even though an autopsy found his fatal illness was "directly related" to his work at the disaster site. City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said he would be "surprised" if the cause of Zadroga's death can be traced directly to the smoldering World Trade Center wreckage. Some people say... Meat is murder on the environment. A kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home. This is among the conclusions of a study by Akifumi Ogino of the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Tsukuba, Japan, and colleagues, which has assessed the effects of beef production on global warming, water acidification and eutrophication, and energy consumption. Hollywood Targets Nuclear Storage Facility. Opponents of the Goshute Indians' plans to build a state-of-the-art nuclear storage facility on their Utah desert reservation flew a small group of activist celebrities to Washington, DC on July 25 to lobby members of Congress to block the Native Americans' project. Study: Ships' Diesel Fumes Kill 60,000 Each Year. Ships belching toxic fumes from diesel fuel contribute to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Europe, Asia and the United States each year, claims a U.S. report released this week. As many as 60,000 people living in coastal communities along major shipping routes died from lung and heart complaints as a result of high sulfate emissions from ships in 2002, according to the study released Wednesday [11/7/2007] by the American Chemical Society. The Editor says... Nonsense! If that were true, people would be sick wherever there are ships, especially the people who live and work aboard ships for months at a time. And if that were true, people who live in big cities would die from exposure to diesel fumes from dump trucks, locomotives and buses -- starting with the homeless bums who generally aren't in good health anyway. In Man versus Microbe, Germs Will Lose. The number of writers forecasting humanity's downfall before an onslaught of "supergerms" is countless. Most notorious is Newsday's Laurie Garrett, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for her hysterical writing on Ebola virus — which kills fewer people yearly than malaria kills every two hours and tuberculosis kills each hour. Lost and found: Reports of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker's demise were greatly exaggerated. Himalayan Glacier Alarms: Are activist groups and their media allies reporting the truth about global warming, or is truth being trampled in the rush to coerce public opinion? You be the judge. Science in the Media Sausage Grinder: Recent weeks have offered a rich harvest of new "health" threats with splashy headlines warning us about the supposed dangers from processed meats, hair dyes, and tanning parlors. While all of these stories are all a little odd, perhaps the oddest is the one about how meat increases the risk of stomach cancer. The Green Scare. In recent years politicians have gotten good mileage with a Green Scare campaign. Vice President Al Gore wrote Earth in the Balance, a book filled with green scares, most of dubious merit, far overblown, or simply false, but all requiring central control of property and the economy. Environmental horror stories are so widely accepted that political opponents are chary of sneering about them. It's worth reviewing the facts about some famous Green Scare stories, most of which are still repeated as gospel. Environmental Groups are Using Misinformation to Scare Californians. A comprehensive new study by top air quality and climate experts discredits recent claims that global warming will lead to more bad air days in California and other states. The analysis shows that the air quality throughout the nation has dramatically improved over the last 30 years despite generally increasing urban temperatures. Regulation of greenhouse gas emissions will have no effect on air quality. UT professor says death is imminent. A University of Texas professor says the Earth would be better off with 90 percent of the human population dead. "Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine," Eric Pianka cautioned students and guests at St. Edward's University on Friday [3/31/2006]. Pianka's words are part of what he calls his "doomsday talk" — a 45-minute presentation outlining humanity's ecological misdeeds and Pianka's predictions about how nature, or perhaps humans themselves, will exterminate all but a fraction of civilization. UTA Scientist wants 90% of you to die horribly. Have you ever heard of Dr. Eric Pianka? No? Well you might want to learn a bit more about him. Why? Because he reportedly wants you to die. Specifically he wants you to die of Ebola virus. You might also be interested to know that he is the Denton Cooley Centennial Professor of Zoology at the University of Texas at Arlington. Oil 'doesn't hurt fish'. A new report from classification society Det Norske Veritas concludes that Norway's booming oil industry doesn't hurt fish, the country's other major export. … Marine biologist Egil Dragsund of DNV told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) on Friday [2/17/2006] that small amounts of toxic substances found in some fish don't stem from the oil industry. Scientists Denounce Scaremongering Activists. As London's Observer newspaper reported yesterday [9/19/2005], "Britain's leading poison experts united last week to denounce pressure groups for mounting a 'hysterical, scaremongering' campaign about dangerous chemicals in the environment." Uninterrupted Gloom and Doom. You will not want to buy State of the World 2005 unless you are worried that you have an overly optimistic personality and believe you need a bit of gloom and doom to bring you down. Or perhaps you are a statistics junkie and like plenty of numbers, regardless of whether they are accurate or relevant. The Environmentalists Are Wrong. Why does the developed world worry so much about sustainability? Because we constantly hear a litany of how the environment is in poor shape. Natural resources are running out. Population is growing, leaving less and less to eat. Species are becoming extinct in vast numbers. Forests are disappearing. The planet's air and water are getting ever more polluted. Human activity is, in short, defiling the earth — and as it does so, humanity may end up killing itself. There is, however, one problem: this litany is not supported by the evidence. Report: Forests Are Expanding Worldwide. Forests are expanding throughout much of the world, according to a study reported November 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, "Returning Forests Analyzed with the Forest Identity," documents that in many parts of the world, there are more trees today than 100 years ago. The net growth of forests has been particularly strong in developed countries. JunkScience.com Announces Top Ten "Most Embarrassing Moments" of 2004. This list spotlights dubious achievements and irresponsible claims made by health and environmental scientists. Americans Still Cool On Warming. How do Americans' global warming fears compare to other environmental concerns? Consistent with previous years' results, the public ranks global warming almost last — 8 out of 10 different environmental concerns. The percent of those who "worry a great deal" about specific environmental concerns was greatest for pollution of drinking water, toxic waste contamination, pollution of fresh water bodies, and fresh water for household needs. Global warming came in [next], followed by species extinction and acid rain. Even ozone depletion, although almost absent from the news since sometime last century, ranked above global warming. Is Liquefied Natural Gas a disaster waiting to happen? Consider its history. In the last 60 years in the United States, only one person has died in an LNG-related accident. Countries like Japan use LNG accident-free to get nearly all of their natural gas. In 1995, LNG facilities in Kobe, Japan, went undamaged in an earthquake that registered 6.8 on the Richter scale! Contrary to environmentalist propaganda, LNG is not an especially volatile, hazardous material — it is far less hazardous than many commonly used substances, such as propane, since it can become explosive and flammable only under rare conditions. The tyranny of visions: part III. Many dangerous impurities can be removed from water or air at costs that virtually everyone will agree are worth it. But there is no such thing as "pure water" or "pure air," so the only real question is how far you want to go in removing impurities – and at what cost. Impurities that are deadly at high concentrations can become harmless at sufficiently low concentrations. In extremely minute traces, even arsenic has been found to have beneficial effects. The asthma attack. Name your pollutant, it's been dropping: particulate matter, ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, lead, whatever. Cleaner air — the result of regulation and improved technologies — should be hailed by environmentalists as one of their signature accomplishments. Instead, they pretend it doesn't exist. The Next Environmental Battleground: Indoor Air. Are we at great risk? Probably not. Human beings have always been exposed to carcinogens that occur naturally in the air we breathe and the food we eat. If small quantities of carcinogens could kill us, the human race would have been extinct long ago. The War on Meat: For far too many years, we have been told that meat is bad for us. But there is something buried in the human psyche that knows better. America Is Not Facing an Unavoidable Energy Shortage. The federal Energy Information Administration recently released a preliminary version of its Annual Energy Outlook 2005, and it paints a surprisingly optimistic picture for the decades ahead. Legislation Produced In Response To Fear And Panic: Increasingly, regulation of chemicals is being governed by political responses to public fear and hysteria rather than by careful, objective evaluations of the actual risks and benefits posed by the chemicals and their use. Global Warming and Little Green Monsters: Like Lenin, whose birthday is celebrated on Earth Day, modern environmentalists want power. Green on the outside and red within, they'll do anything to get it, including burning buildings they don't like, planting lynx hair to get control of other people's land, and using junk science to close down legitimate businesses. We haven't run out of food or raw materials as they predicted in the 1970s, or forests and space to put garbage as they predicted in the 1980s. The Greens are lying again! Anyone who reads green propaganda for more than a week or two will discover that the common denominator throughout the literature is misinformation — deliberate, and often outrageous, misinformation. The Environmentalists Are Wrong: We constantly hear a litany of how the environment is in poor shape. Natural resources are running out. Population is growing, leaving less and less to eat. Species are becoming extinct in vast numbers. Forests are disappearing. The planet's air and water are getting ever more polluted. Human activity is, in short, defiling the earth - and as it does so, humanity may end up killing itself. There is, however, one problem: this litany is not supported by the evidence. The following synopsis came from this page. Doom And Gloom Won't Sell Space. Amongst the forecasts from the '70s were that the world would face massive drought from global cooling, the world ran out of enriched uranium 20 years ago, and out of oil 10 years ago, and by today, democracy and free economic markets have collapsed, as Germany and Japan have taken on superpower duties, running the world. What crackpot published all these bad forecasts? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The often-predicted peak that never happens... Report: 'World at peak oil output'. The world has reached the point of maximum oil output and production levels will halve by 2030 — a situation that will eventually lead to war and disaster, a report claims. … "It's a very serious result," said Hans-Josef Fell, a German lawmaker from the environmentalist Green Party who commissioned the report. Wells 'will start running dry in 10 years'. There is a "significant risk" global oil production could begin to decline in the next decade, researchers have warned. The UK Energy Research Council (UKERC) said production of conventional oil could "peak" and go into terminal decline before 2020 — and warned the government was not facing up to the risk. Finding Cancer Just About Everywhere: New guidelines proposed last April [1996] by the Environmental Protection Agency would enable the agency to label virtually anything it wants as cancer-causing — regardless of what the science says, according to agency-watchers. Critics say that while science has never been EPA's strong suit, past EPA cancer risk assessments were at least rooted in science by its traditional guidelines. Cleaner Air Brings Dirtier Tricks. Since 1970, the total national emissions of the six principal pollutants the EPA tracks have been cut 48 percent, even as energy consumption increased 42 percent and the population increased 38 percent. Fine particle emissions, technically known as PM2.5 (because it refers to particulate matter 2.5 micrometers or smaller in size, about 1/30 the width of a human hair) have only been tracked since 1993, but by 2002 had fallen 17 percent. In terms of air quality, they have only been measured since 1998 but by 2003 had dropped eight percent. The Economic Value of Clean Air Compliance at Nuclear Power Plants. Nuclear energy is a reliable, low-cost, emission-free energy source. Nuclear energy provides affordable electricity for consumers. Nuclear energy is also a source of reliable, low-cost electricity that attracts and supports business and industry, creating jobs. And, nuclear energy is emission-free. These facts represents real economic value for states and regions that have nuclear power plants. The nation's nuclear power plants provide emission-free electricity to one out of every five homes and businesses. The "Cancer Epidemic" that Never Was. The culprit list is endless: pesticides, power lines, cell phones, drinking water, food additives, plastic IV bags and rubber duckies, soap and shampoo, cosmetic products, even crayons. You name it: "Man-made" means "malignancy." 2001's green lies: One of the great benefits of a free press is that it affords everyone an opportunity to access the news about the events of our times, but one of its great drawbacks is that it permits groups with hidden agendas to mask their goals by manipulating public opinion and policy. With freedom comes the responsibility to be not merely informed, but to be able to discern truth from propaganda. Honest Al He Isn't: Don't Trust Al Gore on the Environment. Vice President Gore is a fine one to talk about "deliberate attempts to mislead the public," as Gore himself is notorious for making inaccurate statements on environmental issues. Lies, lies and more lies: Chicken Little's "the sky is falling" story taught a generation of children not to make up stories that are untrue. Unfortunately, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and many other environmental organizations failed to learn the lesson. French fries kill? Almost no week goes by without a report on some food or environmental danger that can kill us. It is quite remarkable that any of us are alive given our exposure to secondhand smoke, asbestos, lead in paint, cellular phones and seesaws; our ingesting alcohol, sugar, fat and arsenic-laden water; and our inhaling polluted air. An antidote to chemophobia: Understand the truth about chemicals, and you'll come away optimistic about food, nature, technology, and the future, says Dr. Alan Sweeney in his new book, Happy & Healthy in a Chemical World (1stBooks, 2001). The nearly 200-page book is a must-read and handy reference for persons confronted with anti-technology double-speak. Scientists Dump Cold Water on Environmental, Health Scares. It's been a difficult couple of months for purveyors of junk science and others actively spreading scientific misinformation on environmental issues. The unraveling began late last October when the New England Journal of Medicine reported on a meticulous study, conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, which found no evidence that exposure to the chemicals DDT and PCBs is linked to breast cancer. Misconceptions About the Causes of Cancer: In standard cancer tests, rodents are given chronic, near-toxic doses. Evidence is accumulating that cell division caused by the high dose itself, rather than the chemical per se, is increasing the carcinogenic effects and, therefore, the positivity rate. A Morass of Wetlands Myths: As with the alleged crises concerning global warming, ozone depletion, acid rain, deforestation, biodiversity, and virtually every other supposed calamity the environmental lobby uses to foment public hysteria, the wetlands issue is mired in lies, fallacies, and myths. Three Things to Know About Wetlands: (#3) Wetlands regulations are expansive and onerous. 111.5 million acres of land in the U.S is currently covered by federal wetland regulations. This is equivalent to a landmass larger than the state of California. Under current federal law, landowners are not compensated when they lose the right to use their property due to wetlands regulations. Wetlands a ticking 'carbon bomb'. Northern wetlands, where permanently frozen soil locks up billions of tonnes of carbon, are at risk from climate change because warming is forecast to be more extreme at high latitudes, said Eugene Turner of Louisiana State University, a participant in the conference. The melting of wetland permafrost in the Arctic and the resulting release of carbon into the atmosphere may be "unstoppable" in the next 20 years, but wetlands closer to the equator, like those in Louisiana, can be restored, he said. Olympian Task to Bury Urban Myth on Asthma. An urban myth has grown and continues to be passed on, in spite of warnings that ignorance and uncertainty about its foundation made it more ghost than genuine. Book Debunks Synthetic Chemical, Pesticide Fears: Cancer scares raised by the Environmental Protection Agency and environmental activist groups frequently focus on dangers posed by man-made chemicals. A new book from the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute says that focus is wrong, because synthetic chemicals have little to do with human cancer. Chemical toxicity: A matter of massive miscalculation. No matter how large the experiment or how great the margin of safety, one can never prove that a chemical — or any other factor in the environment, for that matter — is totally harmless. We can only offer probabilities that there will, in fact, be no harm. Absolute safety is the complete absence of harm … and it's a goal we can never achieve. Rainforests are NOT the Lungs of the Planet. There are many good and scientifically sound reasons for saving rainforest, but the fact that they are the "lungs of the planet" is not one of them. In spite of their lush vegetation rainforests developed on very poor soils and most of their nutrients are located in the plants themselves or in the decomposing layer on top of the soil. Only8% is located in the soil itself. Envirobambaloozed: Are the environmentalist lying and deliberately frightening us? That's part of their strategy. Dubious: DuPont in deep water over Teflon's hidden dangers. Teflon has been hugely successful for DuPont, which over the last half-century has made the material almost ubiquitous, putting it not just on frying pans but also on carpets, fast-food packaging, clothing, eye-glasses and electrical wires — even the fabric roofs covering football stadiums. Now DuPont has to worry that Teflon and the materials used to make it have perhaps become a bit too ubiquitous. Teflon constituents have found their way into rivers, soil, wild animals and humans, according to company, government environmental officials and others. Evidence suggests that some of the materials, known to cause cancer and other problems in animals, may be making people sick. Simply insane: Some people believe that Microwaving Your Food Isn't Safe. Back to the Environmental Issues Page Back to the Home page 
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