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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Monday, December 24, 2018

Examining the EU’s contradictory treatment of glyphosate and copper sulfate pesticides

| | December 19, 2018

The politics of the European Union have often left observers baffled. But the decisions—and lack thereof—over how to regulate two popular pesticides have culminated in a series of contortions as member countries, courts and the European Parliament try to combine a strict precautionary principle, support of organic agriculture, and science.

The last category usually has received the shortest shrift.

For both the herbicide glyphosate and the fungicide copper sulfate, the EU granted a five-year license. But there the similarity of how Europe handled them ends.........To Read More.....

My Take - This is what happens with philosophy and reality collide.  We need to get this.  Organic agriculture has never been about health, hazards, risk, science or production.  It has always been about forcing people to live in a way that's approved by a bunch of irrational, misanthropic and morally defective misfits.  Well, time is always on the side of truth, because truth will very patiently wait for us. 

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Energy & Environmental Newsletter: December 17, 2018

By -- December 17, 2018

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.
Some of the more important articles in this issue are:

Medical Director Warns of Turbine Health Consequences
Major Good News: Ontario Scraps the Green Energy Act
Wind Projects and Property Rights
But How do Affected Citizens Think about Wind Energy?
NY Town passes ideal wind ordinance
I Despise The Wind Industry But I’m Not A Sheep
The economic risks related to onshore wind power investment
Solar Panel Waste: A Disposal Problem
Whale Deaths and Offshore Wind Turbines — The Facts That Cannot be Ignored
Upwind wind projects can reduce the energy production of downwind neighbor turbine
Renewables and Climate Policy are on a Collision Course
Good news about Climate Change
Climate Change: Identifying the Problem
Outstanding video re Climate Change (15:30-28:00)
Former Top US Research Oceanographer Sentenced for Accepting a Salary from China
Fact-checking the second volume of the U.S. National Climate Assessment
Editorial: Global CO2 Emissions Spike, Despite Paris Climate Pledges
Rapture Watch (Climate version)
New U.S. Climate Report a ‘Scientific Embarrassment’
Why Won’t Liberals Look at the Evidence On Climate?
How NPR Carries The Dirty Water Of The US Climate Assessment, Ignoring Complex Systems

Greed Energy Economics: French Version:
Short video: What’s Behind the French Riots?
French Riots Show Why U.S. Carbon Tax Should Be A Non-Starter
Climate Interventionists Won’t Stop with a Carbon Tax
France learns the hard way: green taxes carry political risks
The fallout from France’s fuel tax cave
France’s fuel tax retreat dismays COP24 climate talks
France might be ahead of the curve when it comes to climate policy backlash
La Taxe Carbone? Meet les gilets jaunes
Paris Is Burning Over Climate Change Taxes — Is America Next?
Finally! We Can Thank The French For Something!
Those French Fuel Riots and the “Great Wall of Cuomo”
Macron’s Carbon Tax Disaster: There Was A Better Way
France’s Finance Minister Calls Protests a ‘Catastrophe’
Green Taxes and Yellow Vests: Global Awakening amid Climate Fear Mongering
Protesting carbon taxes with the Gilets Jaunes
Was Poland’s COP-24 Climate Change Conference the End?

Greed Energy Economics:
The economic risks related to onshore wind power investment
Wind Projects and Property Rights
Taxpayers Are Being Ripped Off By New ‘Green Energy’ Offshore Wind Project
Canadians clash over Trudeau’s carbon emissions tax
Virginia County Repeals Solar Tax Break

Turbine Health Matters:
Medical Director Warns of Turbine Health Consequences
Infrasound Effects

Renewable Energy Destroying Ecosystems:
Solar Panel Waste: A Disposal Problem
Whale Deaths and Offshore Wind Turbines — The Facts That Cannot be Ignored
Massive Wind Project in Nevada Shot Down due to Environmental Issues
Illinois Wind Project Opposed by Environmentalists
Turbines vs. eagles debate continues amid new science
How does Commitment to Birds, Square with Reliance on Wind Power?
Turbines kill birds and warm the atmosphere
Wind Project Requests Permission to Kill Bats
Short video: How Wind Energy Destroys the Environment (#2)
Wildlife fund set up by US industry
Wind Turbine Work Sparks Wildfire
Americans Have Planted So Much Corn That It’s Changing the Weather
Proposed Virginia Solar Project Sparks Major Debate

Miscellaneous Energy News:
Renewables and Climate Policy are on a Collision Course
Upwind wind projects can reduce the energy production of downwind neighbor turbine
But How do Affected Citizens Think about Wind Energy?
Major Good News: Ontario Scraps the Green Energy Act
I Despise The Wind Industry But I’m Not A Sheep
NY Town passes ideal wind ordinance
IPCC climate confab seeks to stampede the world into adopting destructive energy policies
Wind Energy Solutions Promise Only More Hot Air
Drilling Becomes Standardized While Completions Get Customized
EPA Proposes 111(b) Revisions to Advance Clean Energy Technology
USGS Report Expands US Oil Reserves
Joint Declaration between Solidarity and Heartland
Judge Denies Wind Developers Injunction against Town Wind Ordinance
Court Orders Three Iowa Wind Turbines Dismantled
Activists fail to get even 1% of Harvard students to sign anti-fossil fuel petition
Short video: Who Are Some of the Most Powerful People in America?
IPCC Poland conference presents fictional climate chaos and fake renewable energy salvation
Giant Colorado energy company Xcel goes crazy green
What is Driving the Strategy to Demonize the Most Amazing, Life Sustaining Element?
Lawsuit against federal government regarding East Coast Seismic Surveys
Major Military Facility Cancelling Biomass Energy Project?
Inexhaustible Natural Gas: Why We’ll Never Run Out
Upstate New York: The Unbearable Burden of New York City
NY Town Board sued over wind turbines
A different NY Town Board is sued over wind turbines
NY Town Planning on Rescinding it Wind Legislation
NY Key Senator Pushing Aggressive Energy Plan
Offshore wind power, a fraudulent fiasco
South Carolina offshore turbine possible training threat to the military
First major US offshore wind project in jeopardy of being blocked

Manmade Global Warming Articles:
Good news about Climate Change
Climate Change: Identifying the Problem
Outstanding video re Climate Change (15:30-28:00)
Former Top US Research Oceanographer Sentenced for Accepting a Salary from China
Fact-checking the second volume of the U.S. National Climate Assessment
Editorial: Global CO2 Emissions Spike, Despite Paris Climate Pledges
Rapture Watch (Climate version)
New U.S. Climate Report a ‘Scientific Embarrassment’
Why Won’t Liberals Look at the Evidence On Climate?
How NPR Carries The Dirty Water Of The US Climate Assessment, Ignoring Complex Systems
Climate Change Alarmism Is the World’s Leading Cause of Hot Gas
The National Climate Assessment’s simple hoax
Scientists Ridicule Latest Round of Federal “Climate Change” Hysteria
Scientists Mock New UN Climate Report Seeking “Unprecedented Changes” to Society
Groundhog Day: U.N. Climate Report Predicts End of the World (Again)
Short video: Tucker takes on Democratic Socialist over climate change
Global Warming is a Hoax
UN should sober up: There is no consensus on the threat of climate catastrophe
IGO (a new organization monitoring the UN, etc.)
Know your NDCs from your LMDCs: A climate diplomacy glossary
COP 24: Climate summit language reveals hidden agenda
Fear Over a Rising Sea is a Ruse
Calif. prepares policy for coastal ‘retreat’
‘Retreat’ Is Not An Option As A California Beach Town Plans For Rising Seas
Global Climate Socialism
Climate-Modeling Illusions Not Based on Reality
IPCC Contradicts ‘Experts’ and Pours Cold Water on Global Drought Hysteria
Paris Agreement plans to reduce greenhouse gases miss the mark
Is the Case for Drastic Climate Policy a Case of Misplaced Expertise?
Ridiculous report claims humans have killed more than half the world’s wildlife in past 48 years
From Clexit to UNexit
Scientist Bullied by University and Students For Voicing Climate Dissent
Archive PPT: A Skeptic’s View of Global Warming “Science”
Socialist Democrat Claims Stopping Climate Change will End Racism
There’s Less Than Meets The Eye
US Interior Secretary Resigns
Document Details the Eye-Popping Amount Attorneys Stand To Make from Climate Crusades
“We are still in” totalitarians flunk basic reality
The Green Farce at Katowice

See Prior AWED Newsletters
 

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Germany's green transition has hit a brick wall

Germany's green transition has hit a brick wall Even worse, its growing problems with wind and solar spell trouble all over the globe

Oddvar Lundseng, Hans Johnsen and Stein Bergsmark

More people are finally beginning to realize that supplying the world with sufficient, stable energy solely from sun and wind power will be impossible. Germany took on that challenge, to show the world how to build a society based entirely on “green, renewable” energy. It has now hit a brick wall. Despite huge investments in wind, solar and biofuel energy production capacity, Germany has not reduced CO2 emissions over the last ten years. However, during the same period, its electricity prices have risen dramatically, significantly impacting factories, employment and poor families.

Germany has installed solar and wind power to such an extent that it should theoretically be able to satisfy the power requirement on any day that provides sufficient sunshine and wind. However, since sun and wind are often lacking – in Germany even more so than in other countries like Italy or Greece – the country only manages to produce around 27% of its annual power needs from these sources.

Equally problematical, when solar and wind production are at their maximum, the wind turbines and solar panels often overproduce – that is, they generate more electricity than Germany needs at that time – creating major problems in equalizing production and consumption. If the electric power system’s frequency is to be kept close to 50Hz (50 cycles per second), it is no longer possible to increase the amount of solar and wind production in Germany without additional, costly measures.

Production is often too high to keep the network frequency stable without disconnecting some solar and wind facilities. This leads to major energy losses and forced power exports to neighboring countries (“load shedding”) at negative electricity prices, below the cost of generating the power.

In 2017 about half of Germany’s wind-based electricity production was exported. Neighboring countries typically do not want this often unexpected power, and the German power companies must therefore pay them to get rid of the excess. German customers have to pick up the bill.

If solar and wind power plants are disconnected from actual need in this manner, wind and solar facility owners are paid as if they had produced 90% of rated output. The bill is also sent to customers.

When wind and solar generation declines, and there is insufficient electricity for everyone who needs it, Germany’s utility companies also have to disconnect large power consumers – who then want to be compensated for having to shut down operations. That bill also goes to customers all over the nation.

Power production from the sun and wind is often quite low and sometimes totally absent. This might take place over periods from one day to ten days, especially during the winter months. Conventional power plants (coal, natural gas and nuclear) must then step in and deliver according to customer needs. Hydroelectric and biofuel power can also help, but they are only able to deliver about 10% of the often very high demand, especially if it is really cold.

Alternatively, Germany may import nuclear power from France, oil-fired power from Austria or coal power from Poland.

In practice, this means Germany can never shut down the conventional power plants, as planned. These power plants must be ready and able to meet the total power requirements at any time; without them, a stable network frequency is unobtainable. The same is true for French, Austrian and Polish power plants.

Furthermore, if the AC frequency is allowed to drift too high or too low, the risk of extensive blackouts becomes significant. That was clearly demonstrated by South Australia, which also relies heavily on solar and wind power, and suffered extensive blackouts that shut down factories and cost the state billions of dollars.

The dream of supplying Germany with mainly green energy from sunshine and wind turns out to be nothing but a fading illusion. Solar and wind power today covers only 27% of electricity consumption and only 5% of Germany's total energy needs, while impairing reliability and raising electricity prices to among the highest in the world.

However, the Germans are not yet planning to end this quest for utopian energy. They want to change the entire energy system and include electricity, heat and transportation sectors in their plans. This will require a dramatic increase in electrical energy and much more renewable energy, primarily wind.

To fulfill the German target of getting 60% of their total energy consumption from renewables by 2050, they must multiply the current power production from solar and wind by a factor of 15. They must also expand their output from conventional power plants by an equal amount, to balance and backup the intermittent renewable energy. Germany might import some of this balancing power, but even then the scale of this endeavor is enormous.

Perhaps more important, the amount of land, concrete, steel, copper, rare earth metals, lithium, cadmium, hydrocarbon-based composites and other raw materials required to do this is astronomical. None of those materials is renewable, and none can be extracted, processed and manufactured into wind, solar or fossil power plants without fossil fuels. This is simply not sustainable or ecological.

Construction of solar and wind “farms” has already caused massive devastation to Germany’s wildlife habitats, farmlands, ancient forests and historic villages. Even today, the northern part of Germany looks like a single enormous wind farm. Multiplying today's wind power capacity by a factor 10 or 15 means a 200 meter high (650 foot tall) turbine must be installed every 1.5 km (every mile) across the entire country, within cities, on land, on mountains and in water.

In reality, it is virtually impossible to increase production by a factor of 15, as promised by the plans.

The cost of Germany’s “Energiewende” (energy transition) is enormous: some 200 billion euros by 2015 – and yet with minimal reduction in CO2 emission. In fact, coal consumption and CO2 emissions have been stable or risen slightly the last seven to ten years. In the absence of a miracle, Germany will not be able to fulfill its self-imposed climate commitments, not by 2020, nor by 2030.

What applies to Germany also applies to other countries that now produce their electricity primarily with fossil or nuclear power plants. To reach development comparable to Germany’s, such countries will be able to replace only about one quarter of their fossil and nuclear power, because these power plants must remain in operation to ensure frequency regulation, balance and back-up power.

Back-up power plants will have to run idle (on “spinning reserve”) during periods of high output of renewable energy, while still consuming fuel almost like during normal operation. They always have to be able to step up to full power, because over the next few hours or days solar or wind power might fail. So they power up and down many times per day and week.

The prospects for reductions in CO2 emissions are thus nearly non-existent! Indeed, the backup coal or gas plants must operate so inefficiently in this up-and-down mode that they often consume more fuel and emit more (plant-fertilizing) carbon dioxide than if they were simply operating at full power all the time, and there were no wind or solar installations.

There is no indication that world consumption of coal will decline in the next decades. Large countries in Asia and Africa continue to build coal-fired power plants, and more than 1,500 coal-fired power plants are in planning or under construction.

This will provide affordable electricity 24/7/365 to 1.3 billion people who still do not have access to electricity today. Electricity is essential for the improved health, living standards and life spans that these people expect and are entitled to. To tell them fears of climate change are a more pressing matter is a violation of their most basic human rights.

____________

Oddvar Lundseng is a senior engineer with 43 years of experience in the energy business. Hans Konrad Johnsen, PhD is a former R&D manager with Det Norske Oljeselskap ASA. Stein Storlie Bergsmark has a degree in physics and is a former senior energy researcher and former manager of renewable energy education at the University of Agder.

Ideas Spread Faster Due to the Source more than their Quality - So Much for Science's Meritocracy

By Chuck Dinerstein — December 17, 2018

In 1962 Everett Rogers wrote the Diffusion of Innovations trying to explain how good ideas spread through society and culture; nearly sixty years later we still are trying to understand how information diffuses. Some suggest that it is a Darwinian survival of the fittest, good ideas percolate to the top; bad ideas dying from lack of results and support – a meritocracy of thoughts. Others suggest that structural elements in our culture make some ideas more fit - elements that are based more on eminence than evidence. You would anticipate that the scientific method would be a meritocracy, but it is increasingly clear in studies of scientific funding that the rich get richer irrespective of the quality of their work and thoughts. Is Big Science, academic, public science we fund, built best evidence or best eminence – a study takes a look at the issue from an epidemiologic point of view.............


Using an epidemiologic approach, the researchers described the “quality” of a paper on how often it was cited, how infectious were those papers. Ideas from more eminent institutions spread to more institutions and were cited for longer periods than similarly “infectious” quality papers from less eminent institutions. Ideas that were less infectious coming from mid-level program’s stalled and died, while similar mid-quality ideas from the distinguished institutions took far longer to be abandoned if they were at all. The eminence of an idea’s origin provided a structural advantage irrespective of quality. That should be no surprise given that most faculty came from these institutions – you might consider these eminent institutions as a like of intellectual Typhoid Mary........To Read More......

 

Whatever Happened To Science?

By Michael Shaw — December 13, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health
 
For the Baby Boomers, born under the halo of victory in World War II, and into the 1950s, one of the key themes was the promise of Science. Electrical power—courtesy of splitting the atom—would be so plentiful that consumers would simply pay a flat monthly fee, and the discovery of the structure of DNA meant (somehow, although this was never fully explained) that a cure for cancer was just beyond the horizon. The successful rollout of the Salk/Sabin polio vaccines would further demonstrate the great humanitarian power of Science, and its unblemished search for Truth.

However, as the 1960s played out and the public’s respect for all manner of once-cherished institutions began to crumble, Science too was put under scrutiny. Its great promise and past accomplishments now forgotten the accounting was done, and on the bottom line were frightful weapons systems, nuclear waste, and napalm. Notably, confidence in Science continues to erode, even though more money than ever is being spent on it.

So, what went wrong?

A succinct answer would be to quote St. Paul: “For the love of money is the root of all evils, and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.” (1 Timothy 6:10)

Under the rubrics of LBJ’s Great Society, federal spending started to increase…dramatically. Not left out of this seemingly endless fountain of money was scientific research. Colleges—public and private—were re-christened “research universities,” and the quest for federal dollars was on. Science would soon be transformed from the search for truth to the search for funding.

The besieged granting agencies needed some means to work through all the requests, and human nature being what it is, tended to favor projects that were timely, or as researchers would put it—”sexy.” Thus, it should come as no surprise that in the mid-1980s UCLA would obtain one of the biggest grants it ever received for the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS). Bear in mind that as frightening and tragic as AIDS may be, it was never even remotely a leading cause of death in the US.

Given the sheer amount of research being performed, more scholarly journals would arise to publish the findings. Before long, the overall quality of work would diminish—and the “publish or perish” dynamic would reverse itself. Instead of nervous academics calling the journals to see if their submitted works will be accepted for publication, the journals were now calling the researchers desperately looking for articles to publish!

Meanwhile, science editors of popular media, acting as if the world of big-time science had not changed, were still dutifully summarizing the latest findings published in the peer-reviewed literature, apparently believing that these so-called “peers” were unaffected by how the entire process had been corrupted. More than that, over-hyping of these results—well beyond the findings of the cited papers—would become far too common. Sadly, the over-hyping would spill back into the technical journals themselves, whereby conclusions would be drawn that were not supported by the data presented. This is a working definition of “junk science.”

No doubt, this unholy alliance between the popular media and scholarly publications spawned the never-ending flow of sensationalistic results, especially those pertaining to human health effects. As such, a bizarre codependency was created between greedy researchers, technical journals, the popular media, and all sorts of fear entrepreneurial fund-raising groups.

Now, all that was needed was a method to produce “sexy” results without having to engage in actual empirical science—you know, the kind that requires real experiments with real observations, and real measurements. In college, we used to call this “dry-labbing” but now the academic scientists call it “modeling.” In modeling, you start off with a few measurements and then extrapolate these into some sort of (usually) sensationalistic finding. Full marks if you figured out that the model can easily be tweaked to produce the results you desire.

Climate change polemics, of course, are derived from such “science,” as are all sorts of health scares such as the famous “15,000 people die each year because of secondhand smoke.”

You’d think that some true scientist, somewhere would speak out about this abuse. And they will…just as soon as they finish their next grant application.

Reposted with permission for the author. The original post can be found here.

Let Me Tell You About the African Tortoise Effect

By Rich Kozlovich

Recently the American Council on Science and Health posted two articles everyone needs to read, at least if you're concerned about scientific integrity. My friend Mike Shaw of Shaw's Ecologic published this article, "Whatever Happened To Science?", which he originally posted  HealthNewsDigest.Com, saying:
A succinct answer would be to quote St. Paul: “For the love of money is the root of all evils, and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.” (1 Timothy 6:10)  
Under the rubrics of LBJ’s Great Society, federal spending started to increase…dramatically. Not left out of this seemingly endless fountain of money was scientific research. Colleges—public and private—were re-christened “research universities,” and the quest for federal dollars was on. Science would soon be transformed from the search for truth to the search for funding.
Often I've said that grant money has made Scientific Integrity an oxymoron, and time and again that's proving to be true.

The second article I would like to draw your attention to is by Chuck Dinerstein,entitled, "Ideas Spread Faster Due to the Source more than their Quality - So Much for Science's Meritocracy". He notes:
The researchers found based upon subsequent publications that roughly a third of an institutions “new thinking” came from its new hires. And eminent institutions produced more faculty than a lesser program, spreading 88% of their graduates and ideas to more secondary programs. As a result, 81% of the new thoughts could be traced back to only a few higher eminence institutions. This indeed suggested that ideas spread by their merit.
Using an epidemiologic approach, the researchers described the “quality” of a paper on how often it was cited, how infectious were those papers. Ideas from more eminent institutions spread to more institutions and were cited for longer periods than similarly “infectious” quality papers from less eminent institutions.
Low quality, high quality, what's it all really mean? Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems to me the bottom line conclusion of this article is that the quality of any scientific paper is decided by popularity and politics rather than observable, provable and repeatable fact finding.

Someone commented on the article saying:
Is this the same phenomenon viewed from a different angle? The African Tortoise Effect.
I looked up the link and here's what the author states:
Shortly after the Second World War, the famous naturalist, Gerald Durrell was collecting animals in Cameroon. While he generally got on well with the locals wherever he went, one frustration he encountered was that villagers might again and again offer him the same tortoise, despite his emphatic protestations that he did not want it. But they would reply "You didn't want it from that man, but maybe you want it from me."
I chuckled out loud at that since over and over again I see the same clabber about Anthropogenic Climate Change, vaccinations, pesticides, alternative energy, fossil fuels, chemicals in general, and a host of other issues touted over and over again, but by different people.  It's as they believe having someone else touting clabber would change reality.
  • Anthropogenic Climate Change is the single most flagrant fraud and corruption of Scientific Integrity ever perpetrated on humanity.
  • Pesticides are not weapons of mass destruction, they're weapons of mass survival.
  • Vaccinations do not cause autism and save untold millions of lives every year.
  • We're not running out of fossil fuels.
  • Chemicals make life easier and better.
  • Alternative energy is a scam.
Having someone different spouting out provable nonsense doesn't make nonsense more real. Using celebrities to do it makes it even less real.

Time is history, and history is the great leveler of truth, and the truth is that all these scares, whether they're environmental or health scares touted by eco-scare mongers, are almost invariably doom and gloom nonsense.

Going green is irrational, misanthropic and morally defective, and I Don't Want That Stinking Tortoise!!!

Sunday, December 16, 2018

Farm Subsidy Follies: From Your Table to Their Farm

Rich farmers get richer, small farmers poorer, and you can forget about the deficit ever getting smaller

Debra J. Saunders December 16, 2018

Forget all the tongue clucking about Washington being so divided and nasty that Democrats and Republicans cannot work together. As the Senate and House proved this week in passing the $867 billion farm bill, when it comes to spending money they don’t have, party leaders really can reach across the aisle.

With the national federal debt approaching $22 trillion, President Donald Trump has praised the bill, which provides food stamps for the poor, but also hands out subsidies to American farmers, even though it does not include needed reforms or even modest spending cuts.

Conservative think tanks dismiss the farm subsidies as corporate welfare. On the left, environmentalist groups have opposed them as well. Fiscal hawks are appalled at the failure of Congress to do anything to ease the deficit.

And yet the farm bill lives............. To Read More...

Another 'Scientific Consensus' Bites the Dust

January 3, 2016 By Jonathan F. Keiler

The favorite cudgel of leftist climate change fear mongers is the appeal to authority, as in that there is “a scientific consensus” that the earth is warming and that changes over the last century are due to human activity. The problem with appeals to authority on extremely broad scientific topics is that they are not subject to easy proof by experimentation, and are quite often wrong.

Here’s a list of ten popular theories ultimately proven false, and it omits some major howlers, like therapeutically bleeding people or the geocentric theory of the solar system. Now we can add to that list the “scientific consensus” that diets rich in processed foods and fats lead to heart disease.  This idea, which has dominated medical thinking for at least the last half-century, and led to all manner of government policy making, regulation and just plain tsuris over finishing the brisket, is now in doubt........

I am not a climate scientist, but I am a historian, and one thing that is certain is that the earth’s climate has obviously undergone dramatic change in both historic and prehistoric time frames. In historic time (that is in the last 5000 years or so) there has been massive desiccation in northern Africa and the Middle East (probably due to long term warming)interspersed with mini-ice ages (countervailing periods of cooling especially in northern latitudes.)  On balance, at least for people in the northern hemisphere (which is where most of the human population resides) warming has been a good thing, while cooling (with associated famines) a bad thing........Read more:

Monday, December 10, 2018

Exposure to pesticides a risk factor for Parkinson s? Not so fast!

ASCH Staff @ American Council on Science and Health

A new study published in the journal Neurology tries to suggest that there may be an association between exposure to pesticides and solvents and Parkinson s disease. Even the study authors are blatantly aware of the shortcomings of their study when they say, the evidence is limited, or at least inconclusive, because of lack of definitive agreement between cohort and case-control studies. Yet that didn t stop them from publishing it. This meta-analysis was based on 89 prospective and case-control studies considering a range of chemicals pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides, solvents, organophosphates, paraquat, and DDT, among others and their relation to Parkinson s. After analysis, researchers concluded that risk of developing Parkinson s was increased by 33 percent to 80 percent due to exposure to these chemicals.

The analysis was a first-rate mess. Conclusions from the included studies were not in agreement the majority of the time, and even higher quality studies showed statistically significant associations for solvents, paraquat, and well-water drinking but they also found reductions in Parkinson s for exposure to insecticides, farming and well-water drinking.

How can something well-water drinking both increase risk of Parkinson s and also decrease risk? The answer: garbage science. As if to prove this point, the case-control studies differed in terms of study quality and size and in the prospective studies, estimates of exposure were not determined in the same way. And secondary causes of Parkinson s were completely ignored by the authors.

ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross says, This is a prime example of a bad study; it could be used as an illustration in a college text on how not to do epidemiology. First of all, there was so much variation between studies, a point even the authors are aware of, that definitive conclusions cannot be made. And results were clearly contradictory as pointed out in the well-water example previously. The one good point made by study authors was that no association was found between DDT and Parkinson s.

ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom points out that the entire premise is biologically implausible. He says, There is no way that you can lump these substances together and draw any type of valid conclusion. They are all chemically different, work by different mechanisms, and each one is processed in the body in a different way. This is like saying since a cannon ball is round and kills people, all other round objects are dangerous. He continues, According to this logic, perhaps the Department of Homeland Security ought to think about banning Nerf Balls.

Publish and perish: Scientific fraud on the rise

No TIME for Accuracy, Posting Shameful Milk-Parkinson's Story 

A researcher whose work was supported by the Federal government, among others, has agreed to retract two of her papers published in 2009 in the pages of Environmental Health Perspectives and the Journal of Biological Chemistry, respectively.

Dr. Mona Thiruchelvam, a former assistant professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry, New Jersey (UMDNJ), committed research misconduct by fabricating data, according to an investigation by the university and the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Research Integrity (ORI). The ORI, which announced its findings on Thursday (June 28), determined that she falsified cell count data supporting her thesis that certain now-rarely-used pesticides might have increased the risk of Parkinson s Disease among exposed workers.

All too often, says Dr. Ross, it seems that researchers in fields focused on finding toxic effects of chemicals including pesticides are willing to play fast and loose with the scientific method in order to support their tenuous theories. This case, of course, is unusually appalling, given the exposure of the misconduct. And unfortunately, I d bet that this researcher s fraudulent studies will continue to be cited long into the future as supportive evidence for a link between pesticides and various diseases, despite the revelations of falsified data.

ACSH s Dr. Ruth Kava notes, too, that this kind of misconduct is doubly perturbing because of the wasted money and time other researchers will have spent trying to duplicate or further expand upon the fraudulent data.

The World’s Most Depressing Tweet

December 7, 2018 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I periodically will make use of “most depressing” in the title of a column when sharing bad news.
 
And new data from the Census Bureau definitely qualifies as bad news. It confirms what I’ve written about how the Washington region has become the richest part of America.
 
But the D.C. area didn’t become wealthy by producing value. Instead, it’s rolling in money because of overpaid bureaucrats, fat-cat lobbyists, sleazy politicians, beltway-bandit contractors, and other grifters who have figured out how to hitch a ride on the federal gravy train.
 
Anyhow, here’s a tweet with the bad news (at least if you’re a serf elsewhere in America who is paying taxes to keep Washington fat and happy).
Most of my friends who work for the federal government privately will admit that they are very fortunate.
 
But when I run into someone who denies that bureaucrats get above-market compensation, I simply share this data from the Labor Department. That usually shuts them up.
 
By the way, there’s strong evidence from the European Central Bank that overpaid bureaucrats have a negative impact on macroeconomic performance.
 
And the World Bank has produced a study showing how bureaucrats manipulate the political process.
…public sector workers are not just simply implementers of policies designed by the politicians in charge of supervising them — so called agents and principals, respectively. Public sector workers can have the power to influence whether politicians are elected, thereby influencing whether policies to improve service delivery are adopted and how they are implemented, if at all. This has implications for the quality of public services: if the main purpose of the relationship between politicians and public servants is not to deliver quality public services, but rather to share rents accruing from public office, then service delivery outcomes are likely to be poor.
Here’s my video explaining how bureaucrats are overpaid. It was filmed in 2010, so many of the numbers are now out-dated, but the arguments are just as strong today as they were back then.
 

 
But keep in mind that the bureaucracy is only one piece of the puzzle.
 
The D.C. metropolitan region is unjustly rich because of everyone else who has figured out how to divert taxpayer money into their pockets. That includes disgusting examples of Democrat sleaze and Republican sleaze.
 
Simply stated, Washington is riddled with rampant corruption as insiders get rich at our expense. No wonder many of them object to my license plate!
 
P.S. Here’s some data comparing the size and cost of bureaucracy in various nations.

Friday, December 7, 2018

Environmentalism, Pantheism, Statism and Pessimism

David Limbaugh  Dec 07, 2018

Meaning no disrespect to climate alarmists of the past half-century, who have been quite formidable in their doomsday warnings, the modern era has ushered in a new wave of scaremongers who threaten to eclipse their predecessors.

This shouldn't discourage the original enviro-wackos of the 1970s, who hadn't accumulated sufficient empirical data to support their burgeoning secular religion. Give those people a break; how were they to know they'd have egg on their faces for predicting apocalyptic global cooling? We're much more advanced now, so it's not fair to judge them.

Admit it. A full week doesn't pass without some cataclysmic news about climate change. The meteorological activists are brilliantly adept at shoehorning any weather event or natural disaster into their ominous narrative.

If world temperatures are cooling -- or warming -- they attribute it to overall warming. If there's a severe hurricane, it's because of evil capitalist carbon emissions. If California forest fires are caused or exacerbated by their asinine environmental policies, they blame them, too, on the "deniers," because one thing is certain about global warming blowhards: Their supposedly having good intentions means never having to apologize for their consistently failed prophecies. Al Gore, after all, is still an icon of this movement despite his embarrassing record and his unconscionably stratospheric personal carbon footprint............It's worth noting, for example, that the 10 worst famines of the 20th century were caused not by the excesses of capitalism or by environmental disasters but by collectivists trying to control human nature............To Read More.....
 

Cold Hard Facts for Climate Change Alarmists: Civilization Isn’t Ending – Not in 1985 and Not in 2100

By Ed Feulner December 6, 2018

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”  Sounds dire. A reaction to the National Climate Assessment published the day after Thanksgiving? No. Harvard biologist George Wald made that claim in 1970.   So if Wald had been correct, just about everything would have crumbled to ruin sometime between 1985 and 2000.

Wald, however, wasn’t alone. He and others came up with some incredibly over-the-top predictions as the 1960s came to a close.  “Earth Day” founder Denis Hayes, for example, didn’t hedge his bets: “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.” Or take Paul Ehrlich (please). The author of 1968’s “The Population Bomb” was another gloom-and-doom prophet who made so many failed predictions over the years that it’s almost hard to keep count.  “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” he said in a 1970 interview. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years."............To Read More.........

Climate Change Alarmism Is the World's Leading Cause of Hot Gas

David Harsanyi Dec 07, 2018

Even as anti-gas tax riots raged in France this week, naturalist David Attenborough warned a crowd at a United Nations climate change summit in Poland that "the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon." U.N. General Assembly President Maria Espinosa told the media that "mankind" is "in danger of disappearing" if climate change is allowed to progress at its current rate.

Speakers, who flew in to swap doomsday stories, advocated radical changes to avoid this imminent environmental apocalypse. These days, "the point of no return" is almost always in view yet always just out of reach.

Sorry, but by now, this rhetoric is familiar. You can go back to 1970, when Harvard biologist George Wald, riding a wave of popular environmental panic during the decade, estimated, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.".........To Read More.....

Climate-Modeling Illusions Not Based on Reality

Mutant Time Bomb - or - Weasel Words, Junk Science and Scare Mongering

By Rich Kozlovich

On December 6th, 2018 Jon Lockett posted the article, MUTANT TIME BOMB, all in caps I might add, and I can only assume that was for effect.  He starts out with two statements;
  1. Chernobyl wolves infected with radiation feared to be spreading mutant genes across Europe"
  2. A scientific study raises the possibility the packs could spread radiation-caused mutations to other wolf populations
He then goes on to lay foundation saying:
"Scientists fear wolves living in Chernobyl's radioactive forbidden zone may be spreading mutant genes across Europe. The European grey wolf population has boomed at the site since the human population moved out and it became a virtual wildlife preserve."  
"The wolf population inside Chernobyl's exclusion zone is booming since the disaster. Research now reveals some of the wolves - potentially affected by damaging radiation - have been crossing Ukraine's borders into Russia and Belarus. The news has sparked concerns among some in the scientific community that the animals may mate and spread mutant genes to other packs. The site became off limits to humans after the nuclear power plant disaster on 26 April 1986, due to concerns about the high levels of radiation."
 Okay, so we're supposed to believe this "fear" scientists have will cause a disaster by this "booming" wolf population breeding with wolves outside their area.  I think that bodes well this question:  If this area of radiation is so bad, and the potential for mutation is so dangerous - why did this population boom?  What evidence is there?  Let's continue!

He goes on to say
"Wolves were tracked leaving the exclusion zone and one even crossed into Russia (stock) Scientists believe the mutant gene theory is worth looking into The researchers found while the adult wolves stayed within the zone, the juvenile roamed far beyond its boundaries." .........."This raised questions about the effect of wolves potentially affected by radiation carrying mutant genes to pass onto other wolf communities."
He continues with:
"Studies of other animals -mostly smaller ones like birds, rodents, and insects -show that Chernobyl radiation can cause mutations and ill health. And work done in creatures such as barn swallows and voles suggests these mutations may be transferred to the next generation."......... wildlife ecologist Michael Byrne told Live Science he believes the mutant gene theory is something worth looking into.
I give the author credit for this small attempt to be unbiased by including this point by "the University of Missouri animal movement and ecology expert:"
 "We have no evidence to support that this is happening. "No wolves there were glowing - they all have four legs, two eyes and one tail."
So to help pump the scare mongering well to the fullest he goes on to say:
"The Chernobyl exclusion zone is also home to other species including moose, horses, bison, boars and red badgers. Last year, we told how radioactive boars were running wild in the Czech Republic after eating mushrooms contaminated after the Chernobyl disaster."
But what do we find?  They're all still alive, they all still have legs, eyes, tails, no obvious signs of mutation and they're all still having babies, who are also capable of having babies.  So all these concerns are supported by what?  Speculation and extrapolation, fear mongering, weasel words and media hype. 

Let's get the facts of the matter.  Intense doses of radiation are deadly and can seriously impact health.  But we need to get rid of this idea that radiation at every level is dangerous.  That's a false assumption and bad science based on what's called the Linear No Threshold toxicity model that has now been shown to not only to be junk science, but was in point of fact fraudulent. 

On November 9th 2018 I published an article by two friends of mine, Dr Jay Lehr and Paul Driessen entitled, Fraudulent science behind radiation regulations, saying:
"world-renowned toxicology expert Dr. Edward Calabrese has now discovered and documented fraud behind the award of the 1946 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The prize was given to Hermann Muller for his claimed discovery that even small or infinitesimal amounts of radiation can cause cancer. It is the ridiculous assertion that there is no threshold below which any kind of radiation is safe."
The article goes on to show:
  1. The fraud Muller perpetrated.
  2. The unwillingness of others to expose that fraud.
  3. How the world accepted scientific fraud that was blatantly and provably false.
  4. How the fraud was known by scientists who deliberately remained silent.
  5. And how the fraud "resulted in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences adopting the LNT in 1956 for all regulatory programs relating to radiation. This convention was subsequently adopted worldwide."
You may wish to view this video interview with Dr. Edward Calabrese entitled, Is Fear of Radiation Bad For Your Health. 

Well, at this point I don't see a Mutant Time Bomb.  What I see are weasel words, junk science and the typical scare mongering the media feeds to the public. 

Thursday, December 6, 2018

The clever ruse of rising sea levels

Alarmists try to frighten people, and stampede them into terrible energy decisions 
 
Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

For the past 50 years, scientists have been studying climate change and the possibility of related sea level changes resulting from melting ice and warming oceans. Despite the common belief that increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere could result in catastrophic sea level rise, there is no evidence to support this fear. Tax monies spent trying to solve this non-existent problem are a complete waste.

There is another widely held misconception: that all the oceans of the world are at the same level.  In reality, sea level measurements around the world vary considerably, typically by several inches. Prevailing winds and continental instability are among the variables that make measurements difficult, but the varying results of rising sea levels are extremely accurate.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States updated its coastal sea level tide gauge data in 2016 at the request of the previous administration. These measurements continue to show no evidence of accelerating sea level rise.   The measurements include tide gauge data at coastal locations along the West Coast, East Coast, Gulf Coast, Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, as well as seven Pacific Island groups and six Atlantic Island groups, comprising more than 200 measurement stations.

The longest running NOAA tide gauge record of coastal sea level in the U.S. is in New York City at Battery Park. Its 160-year record shows a steady sea level rise of 11 inches per century. A few miles away at Kings Point, New York is a station whose 80-year record shows about the same.

Both locations show a steady, unchanging sea level rise rate whether temperature has been rising or falling (see below figures). Indeed, The Battery measurements showed the same rate of sea level rise well before the existence of coal power plants and SUVs as today.



The 2016 updated NOAA tide gauge record included data for California coastal locations at San Diego, La Jolla, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The measured rates of sea level rise at these locations vary between four inches and nine inches per century. NOAA data provide assessments with a 95% confidence level at all measured locations.
In contrast to these steady but modest real-world rising sea level rates, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that sea levels all over the world will almost immediately begin rising far faster than before. Not only do NOAA records contradict such claims for U.S. and selected island coasts; this pattern of steady but modest sea level rise is being observed all across the world, despite rising CO2 and fluctuating average global temperatures.
The IPCC and its supporters are not able to provide convincing evidence to support their concerns about dangerous warming-driven sea level rise, as rising temperatures have rarely pushed sea level rise beyond one foot per century. Current sea level rise trends have stayed essentially constant over the past 90 years, despite the rise of atmospheric CO2 levels from less than 300 parts per million (ppm) as the Little Ice Age ended and modern industrial era began, to today’s 410 ppm.
Dire predictions made decades ago of dramatically accelerating polar ice loss, and an ice-free Arctic Ocean, have simply not come to pass. Dr. Steven E. Koonin, former Undersecretary for Science in the Obama administration, noted in The Wall Street Journal on September 19, 2014: “Even though the human influence on climate was much smaller in the past, the models do not account for the fact that the rate of global sea-level rise 70 years ago was as large as what we observe today.”

We can test the rising-seas hypothesis with real data collected from ten widely-distributed coastal cities with long and reliable sea level records in addition to those listed above. Those cities are indicated on the map below.
 
 
 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_map, modified.

Each of these cities has well-documented, long-term sea level rise data, from which linear extrapolations can be made for the next 100 years. Here are three samples of the data available on the NOAA web site:

 The Ceuta, Spain data show a nearly flat trend. Most notably, the data show no correlation between CO2 concentration and sea-level rise. If the current trend continues for the next century, the sea level in Ceuta will rise only three inches. This is in sharp contrast to the 10-foot global rise in sea levels recently projected by former NASA scientist James Hansen.





Like some other regions, Hawaii can see significant year-to-year fluctuations in sea level because of global oceanic currents or local plate tectonic movements. However, Honolulu has seen an average sea-level rise of only 5.6 inches since 1900. The sea level around Honolulu is projected to rise a mere 5.6 inches in the next 100 years, once again with no correlation to CO2 levels.

 



In contrast to these other locations, the sea level trend in Sitka, Alaska has been downward, not upward. If the rate of change continues, sea level will fall nine inches over the next 100 years. Note that Sitka is only about 100 miles from Glacier Bay and 200 miles from the Hubbard Glacier on Disenchantment Bay. If melting glaciers were causing sea levels to rise, one would expect to see it in Alaska.

Of course, the Sitka anomaly could be due to rising land masses, as is the case in other parts of the world. Still other locations – such as the Norfolk, Virginia area – are prone to land subsidence, the result of groundwater withdrawals from subsurface rock formations and/or to isostatic changes in nearby areas that cause some land masses to rise while others fall in elevation.

Here is the forecast sea level rise over the next century for the remaining seven cities on the map:

Atlantic City, New Jersey - 16 inches
Port Isabel, Texas - 15.4 inches
St. Petersburg, Florida - 10.7 inches
Fernandina Beach, Florida - 8.3 inches
Mumbai/Bombay, India - 3.12 inches
Sydney, Australia - 2.7 inches
Slipshavn, Denmark - 3.6 inches.

The observational data and projected sea level trends for these ten coastal cities lead to three obvious conclusions:
  1. There has been no dramatic sea level rise in the past century, and evidence-based projections show no significant or dangerous rise is likely to occur in the coming century.
  2. There is no evidence to indicate that the rate of sea level rise (or fall) in any of these areas will be substantially different than has been the case over the past decades or even century.
  3. There is no correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and sea level rise. The steady but modest rise in sea level pre-dated coal power plants and SUVs, and has continued at the same pace even as atmospheric CO2 concentrations rose from 280 parts per million to 410 parts per million.
Claims about dangerously rising sea levels, and island nations being submerged by them – as a result of human fossil fuel use and manmade global warming – are nothing more than a clever ruse, designed to frighten people into demanding or accepting terrible energy policies.

Those policies would cause nations the world over to give up abundant, reliable, affordable coal, oil and natural gas … and replace these fuels with unreliable, weather-dependant, expensive wind, solar and biofuel energy. The results would be devastating – for economies, jobs, manufacturing, food production, poor families and the environment.

Dr. Jay Lehr is the Science Director of The Heartland Institute which is based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition and is also a policy advisor to Heartland.