Re: The sky is falling

"Ever since Rachel Carson's 1962 book 'Silent Spring', environmental extremists have sought to ban all DDT use. Using phony studies from the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental activist-controlled Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972. The extremists convinced the nation that DDT was not only unsafe for humans but unsafe to birds and other creatures as well. Their arguments have since been scientifically refuted.

"While DDT saved crops, forests and livestock, it also saved humans. In

"In Sri Lanka, in 1948, there were 2.8 million malaria cases and 7,300 malaria deaths. With widespread DDT use, malaria cases fell to 17 and no deaths in 1963. After DDT use was discontinued, Sri Lankan malaria cases rose to 2.5 million in the years 1968 and 1969, and the disease remains a killer in Sri Lanka today. More than 100,000 people died during malaria epidemics in Swaziland and Madagascar in the mid-1980s, following the suspension of DDT house spraying. After South Africa stopped using DDT in 1996, the number of malaria cases in KwaZulu-Natal province skyrocketed from 8,000 to 42,000. By 2000, there had been an approximate 400 percent increase in malaria deaths. Now that DDT is being used again, the number of deaths from malaria in the region has dropped from 340 in 2000 to none at the last reporting in February 2003.

"In South America, where malaria is endemic, malaria rates soared in countries that halted house spraying with DDT after 1993 -- Guyana, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela. In Ecuador, DDT spraying was increased after 1993, and the malaria rate of infection was reduced by 60 percent. In a 2001 study published by the London-based Institute for Economic Affairs, "Malaria and the DDT Story," Richard Tren and Roger Bate say that "Malaria is a human tragedy," adding, "Over

"The fact that DDT saves lives might account for part of the hostility toward it. Alexander King, founder of the Malthusian Club of Rome, wrote in a biographical essay in 1990:

"'My own doubts came when DDT was introduced. In Guyana, within two years, it had almost eliminated malaria. So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem.'

"Dr. Charles Wurster, one of the major opponents of DDT, is reported to have said,

"'People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this (referring to malaria deaths) is as good a way as any.'

"Spraying a house with small amounts of DDT costs $1.44 per year; alternatives are five to 10 times more, making them unaffordable in poor countries. Rich countries that used DDT themselves threaten reprisals against poor countries if they use DDT.

"One really wonders about religious groups, the Congressional Black Caucus, government and non-government organizations, politicians and others who profess concern over the plight of poor people around the world while at the same time accepting or promoting DDT bans and the needless suffering and death that follow. Mosquito-borne malaria not only has devastating health effects but stifles economic growth as well."

Your "science" (and politics) kills people, Lloyd.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Good post.

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge" - Daniel Boorstin, 1984 Librarian of Congress

A quote also easily applicable to Mr. Gore and his dupes.

Bill Putney wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net:

I love these science-political smash mouth, no holes barred discussions by people who are convinced they are right and everyone else is pushing snake oil or faked science. When the answer is in I doubt if any of us will be around to debate it but I would point to a much smaller and more recent environmental issue which has been proven in the last 50 years. It involves the issue of smog which was choking many cities 30 or 40 years ago. The science was somewhat different but the arguments were the same. Many claimed that automobiles were not the main causes of smog and made arguments against smog laws and everyone hated the smog garbage that was added to automobiles and California was criticized for leading the communist type government interference into free market which would destroy the economy and world. I doubt if any of those people who made those arguments would admit it today but man does have the ability to alter the environment world wide like he never had in the past. I find it both foolish and unrealistic to make comparisons to what happened before the last 200 years when mankind certainly didn't have the ability to alter the earths environment and the continued increases in use by man of chemicals and technology which we sometimes only in hindsight realize is dangerous to something never imagined. I don't claim to have the answer but neither do I think some automotive fleet manager who claims expertise on every subject as Mike Who does has any answers either. Denying that mankind of today is capable of influencing the environment is truly baffling to me irregardless of one's occupation or education.

My foolish belief is that the earth is somewhat capable of staying in equilibrium if the industrial evolution had not modified much of the earth's natural environment from de-forestation, huge increases in burning of fossil fuel, mining in area's where man never went before, developing modern chemicals, splitting the atom and introducing the nuclear age, all of which gave man the ability to drastically change nature wherever he goes.

On one hand:

Then there's this about the effects of solar activity (or lack thereof during any given period) overwhelmingly swamping out anything we might do:

"Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical 'consensus.' Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV ? the sun.

"Related Topics: Global Warming

"Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

"To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better 'eyes' with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.

"And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.

"Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.

"Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.

"Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.

"This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until

"Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.

"Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he calls a 'stethoscope for the sun.' But he and his colleagues need better equipment.

"In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more rapidly and accurately.

"As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.

"For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.

"R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that 'CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.'

"Rather, he says, 'I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet.'

"Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: 'Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth.'

"'Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again,' Patterson says. 'If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had.'

"In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves ? and not a few enemies in the global warming 'community' ? by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by 'dramatic changes' in temperatures.

"A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.

"'The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100,' according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.

"The study says that 'try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures.'

"The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, 'there would not be much effect on temperatures.'

"But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun, not the Earth, that's hanging in the balance."

Only kooks believe quoting kooks proves their argument.

I see. You couldn't tell or even recognize the truth if your life depended on it.

So you don't care to discuss or argue the FACTS do you Lloyd. Your solution is to simply label someone who posts facts as a kook, and that's proof of your argument.

FACTS such as "In Sri Lanka, in 1948, there were 2.8 million malaria cases and 7,300 malaria deaths. With widespread DDT use, malaria cases fell to 17 and no deaths in 1963. After DDT use was discontinued, Sri Lankan malaria cases rose to 2.5 million in the years 1968 and 1969, and the disease remains a killer in Sri Lanka today. More than 100,000 people died during malaria epidemics in Swaziland and Madagascar in the mid-1980s, following the suspension of DDT house spraying. After South Africa stopped using DDT in 1996, the number of malaria cases in KwaZulu-Natal province skyrocketed from 8,000 to 42,000. By 2000, there had been an approximate 400 percent increase in malaria deaths. Now that DDT is being used again, the number of deaths from malaria in the region has dropped from 340 in 2000 to none at the last reporting in February

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Bill Putney wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net:

Bill, I don't think I will try to match you references which prove very little as to whether we should be concerned with global warming or cooling. We can only control human activities which may contribute to problems which are perceived to possibly be a threat. If the sun burns out or the earth start spinning at a terrific rate and throws mankind and all surface objects off I don't think that has any bearing as that is beyond our control. What is within our control is to use common sense and try to minimize mans actions which may well cause problems.

You list two legitimate scientific institutions, but then you list the Hoover Institution, a political think tank/lobby group. You accuse the left of politicizing science, but you're guilty of it yourself.

This will illustrate the problem:

This man is a writer of Broadway musicals, a "trained physicist and inventor".

People that the left wouild say have all kinds of "scientific" credentials buy into utter crap nonsense. The public may or may not believe in the Loch Ness monster, but they would believe in a second that a 1°C rise in 100 years would kill an animal. The same public that would bankrupt us in a minute if they were convinced that it would fix the "problem". That's the problem.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

I didn't "list" anything. I was quoting an article. So here's your logic:

(1) Two "legitimate scientific institutions" - your words - say something based on their research.

(2) But an article reporting what the legitimate scientific institutions said also says another organization (that you do not respect as a "legitimate scientific institution") came to a similar conclusion.

(3) THEREFORE, the otherwise valid conclusion and research that the otherwise "legitimate scientific institutions" produced is invalid.

Could your logic be any more faulty? Could you be any more dishonest?

And BTW - thanks for illustrating the exact tactics and substituting-politics-for-science idiocy that I'm talking about. That should have opened some eyes on the dishonesty of those who are trying to convince the rest of us of global warming.

Please - spout some more.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Bill Putney wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net:

Bill you always come up with this contradictions defense to dispute any possibility of Global Warming. You put too much emphasis on the more bullshit you shovel the better your argument. You quote any argument which supports your claim and and dispute opposing views while claiming you have proven the facts. LOL I seem to have heard this before, yes I remember now, it was fuzzy math and those Democrat's spending is out of control. We all know how that argument worked out don't we Bill? I have heard the same old arguments about chemical pollution in rivers and waterways, smog, and many other things, and all of these arguments had one thing in common and that common factor was huge corporations and special interests who would not modify their behavior even if knew they were wrong. This applies to both pro and anti environmental arguments. Many things we believe are later proven to be somewhat different than originally thought. You remind me of a guy who answers a yes and no question with a 10 page response.

Yes - I have generally found in life when people fake data about something, what they were claiming as their conclusion was a lie. But then there are those that will tell a lie when telling the truth will serve just as well - IOW - they can't help lieing even if the truth would make their point. But I suspect that they're just plain FOS - in general and on the particular subject at hand..

Your making this up. It's you who are shoveling.

LOL my ass. You are FOS. Where did I say I proved anything - go ahead

- quote it where I said that.

And therefore what...?

Not that I do that, but I'm just like someone who does that? I engage with honest discussion, and you want to criticize me because I respond. Sorry - I know the tactics. I'm pretty much immune to them. Yours is to try to come across as someone who is reasonable, and then, after a response, denigrate the person - so it's a "reasonable" person doing the attack. You're as FOS as the next guy.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

You're splitting hairs. You listed the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research, the Ottowa-Carleton Geoscience Center, both scientific institutions, and the Hoover Institute, a political body.

You're completely illogical because rarely is there 100% agreement, even among communities of legitimate experts in regards to the least controversial scientific matters. If I was unfair, I'd reject your two scientific organizations for their minority viewpoints on global warming

You're arguing like somebody who doesn't have the facts on his side and so tries to win arguments through emotional and political means, Rush Limbaugh style. That's to be expected of people who believe in pseudoscience, like chiropractic.

Nice diversion tactic. Get the reader's mind off of the subject at hand, which was whether the sun's output affects our running average temperatures. But of course you won't discuss it on its own merits.

How much intelligence does someone have to have to argue that solar activity does not have an overwhelming effect and call that a "minority viewpoint on global warming".

Again, you won't discuss the original issue. You're just going to denigrate the messenger (because you know you would look foolish to argue against the sun actually having an overwhelmming effect on the earth's temperature). One man's Rush Limbaugh is another man's George Soros/Jesse Jackson/Hillary Clinton/Al Gore/Barbara Streisand. Again - rather than discuss, you'll divert and make ad hominem attacks rather than admit that the claim is true and obvious because it interferes with your politics. Fits the mold.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

I tell you what. Make a deal with you: Since you have decreed that anyone who believes that chiropractic has some validity is incapable of good scientific judgement, let's find out if more than a few of the people who participated in the IPCC report get chiropractic treatment. If we find that to be the case, then we would have to declare the report's conclusions as scientifically invalid. Sound fair?

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

Chiropractic does evidence to support that chiropractic care is useful in helping people with upper and lower back pain, similar to what physical therapy does.

Most of chiropractic is garbage, however.

Jeff

Well - what I use is obviously not garbage. Actually certain herbs have helped also. larry moe 'n curly is painting it all with the same broad brush. He has picked an appropriate name for himself.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')

That site seems to be primarily in the context of Canadian health care system in which, as in all socialized medicine, services have to be rationed. People are having to decide where to put the scarce tax dollars, so it gets highly political and territorial (i.e., traditional medicine vs. alternaitves). IOW - choice is being eliminated. The ultimate conclusion of the Canadian system. I'm not in that context. One has to know who to trust. I've gotten the results, but again, I actually credit the herbs as much or more than chiro.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')