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Nature Spills More Oil Than Man — By Far

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A good reader sent the following:

Mighty Oil-Eating Microbes Help Clean Up The Gulf

In response to which, one should also point out what many people still don’t know: namely, that nature alone, apart from man, “spills” far more oil than all the world’s oil companies combined. For example:

Natural Oil Leaks Equal To 8–80 Exxon Valdez Spills

Oil residue in seafloor sediments that comes from natural petroleum seeps off Santa Barbara, Calif., is equivalent to between 8 to 80 Exxon Valdez oil spills, according to a new study by researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Oil content of sediments is highest closest to the seeps and tails off with distance, creating an oil fallout shadow. The amount of oil in the sediments down current from the seeps is the equivalent of approximately 8 to 80 Exxon Valdez oil spills, the study said.

WHOI marine chemist Chris Reddy said Chris Farwell, the lead author of a paper on the subject and at the time an undergraduate working with UCSB’s Dave Valentine, “developed and mapped out our plan for collecting sediment samples from the ocean floor. After conducting the analysis of the samples, we were able to make some spectacular findings.”

There is an oil spill everyday at Coal Oil Point (COP), the natural seeps off Santa Barbara, where 20-25 tons of oil have leaked from the seafloor each day for the last several hundred thousand years.

Earlier research by Reddy and Valentine at the site found microbes were capable of degrading a significant portion of the oil molecules as they traveled from the reservoir to the ocean bottom, and that once the oil floated to sea surface, about 10% of the molecules evaporated within minutes.

“One of the natural questions is: What happens to all of this oil?” Valentine said. “So much oil seeps up and floats on the sea surface. It’s something we’ve long wondered. We know some of it will come ashore as tar balls, but it doesn’t stick around. And then there are the massive slicks. You can see them, sometimes extending 20 miles from the seeps. But what really is the ultimate fate?”

Read the rest of the article here.

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The Truth About Sierra Club

Sierra Club is the oldest environmental group in America. It was founded in 1892 by a Scottish immigrant named John Muir, whose stated goal was “to make the mountains glad.” In many ways, that puerile policy compendiates perfectly the essence of Sierra Club.

Among other things, John Muir was an unapologetic racist, writing in 1894 that the Indians of Yosemite Valley were “mostly ugly, and some of them altogether hideous. [They] seemed to have no right place in the landscape,” and they disturbed his “solemn calm.” Sierra Club has never successfully shed its elitist roots — not, let it be noted, that it really cares to. Accordingly, their website has this resolution:

“State and federal laws should be changed to encourage small families and discourage large families.”

Government bureaucrats, in other words, should tell us how many children we are allowed to have — as they do in Communist China, for instance.

Sierra Club cofounder David Brower advocates eugenics, of a milder sort:

“Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license… All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”

Sierra Club also calls for “a moratorium on the planting of all genetically engineered crops and the release of all genetically engineered organisms (GEOs) into the environment, including those now approved.”

Why?

“All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent,” says Brower.

This is also known as the precautionary principle.

In addition to many other things, the precautionary principle assumes that an elite group of centralized planners are qualified to determine for the rest of us whether something is technologically guilty or innocent. As you would perhaps guess, Sierra is only too happy to assume that elitist role:

“We call for acting in accordance with the precautionary principle … we call for a moratorium on the planting of all genetically engineered crops,” reads Sierra’s official policy on agricultural biotechnology.

Dr. Robert Paarlberg, however, notes that Sierra Club and other environmental groups “argue that powerful new technologies should be kept under wraps until tested for unexpected or unknown risks as well. Never mind that testing for something unknown is logically impossible (the only way to avoid a completely unknown risk is never to do anything for the first time).”

Technophobe and Sierra sympathizer Martin Teitel, former head of Responsible Genetics, puts it this way: “Politically, it’s difficult for me to go around saying that I want to shut this science down, so it’s safer for me to say something like, ‘It needs to be done safely before releasing it.’” He adds, correctly: [”The precautionary principle] means they don’t get to do it. Period.”

The precautionary principle was summed up nicely by Dr. Henry Miller, formerly of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA): “For fear that something harmful may possibly arise, do nothing.”

Technophobia, however, is not Sierra’s only motivation:

In 2002, the Broward Sierra Newsletter spoke of “a vegetarian lifestyle as the way to counter the abuse animals endure to feed a hungry and growing global population.” The newsletter plugged PETA and their message that meat-eating in general, and livestock operations in particular, are a cause of world hunger and animal abuse. Sierra Club chapters in New York and Michigan promote the “Vegetarian Starter Kit” distributed by the misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (a PETA front group), as a way to fight “corporate greed.”
And quoting Sierra Club’s board-of-director executive Lisa Renstrom: “The Club could begin to include animal rights positions in decades to come as members and the American public acknowledge the impact of our high animal protein diet on sustainability. [Sierra Club’s] sustainable consumption committee [issued a report in 2000 that listed] eating less meat as a Priority Action for American Consumers.”

Sierra’s ultimate goal here?

“Stronger ties with vegetarian organizations,” says Sierra Club committee leader Joan Zacharias.

Robert W. Tracinski had Sierra partly in mind when he wrote the following:

Past regulations have been imposed in the same manner that the new, less-restrictive process is being adopted: by executive-branch decree. The result of those decrees over the past three decades has been a vast environmentalist land grab, with millions of acres of land sealed off from logging, mining, grazing and even recreation. This is a basic technique used by the Left to achieve through the regulatory agencies what they could not achieve in an open vote. The technique is to introduce legislation to achieve some vague, positive-sounding generality, such as “worker safety” or “environmental protection” – things no politician will want to go on record voting against…

Consider that federal regulatory agencies make thousands of rulings each year, adding about 80,000 pages annually to the Federal Register. Do you think Congress can exercise “oversight” by debating all 80,000 pages of these regulations? Do you think the president, his advisors and his cabinet officers can consider and personally approve all of these decrees?
Most environmentalists embrace this goal, but few dare to admit it openly – so they peddle a variety of ruses to hide their meaning, ranging from “sustainable development” to “shrinkth,” a term suggested by the editor of Earth Island Journal as a less negative-sounding “antonym for growth.”

Of course, no discussion of Sierra Club would be complete without at least a cursory mention of the spotted owl. Author Bonner Cohen, in The Green Wave, says this: “[The spotted owl campaign] was brilliantly orchestrated and thoroughly dishonest.” He goes on to cite the now-infamous words of an attorney with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund named Andy Stahl:

“The spotted owl is the species of choice to act as a surrogate for old growth protection. And I’ve often thought that thank goodness the spotted owl evolved in the Northwest, for if it hadn’t, we’d have to genetically engineer it.”

The results of this campaign: from 1988 to 1993 timber harvest in the Northwest fell by 80 percent. The Mexican spotted owl in New Mexico and Colorado came next, and President Bill Clinton quickly deemed 4.6 million acres of forest “critical habitat.” Thus, over “three thousand timber-related jobs were lost” (Wall Street Journal, October 2005). In addition to that, the fauna and flora of these wilderness areas were devastated by forest fires that raged because of the lack of logging. There was also, of course, the millions and millions of dollars in human property loss because of these forest fires, but that’s quibbling.

Finally, the leftwing lovefest with Castro’s communist Cuba has for decades continued more or less unabated among elitist in this country, and socialist Sierra Club does nothing to break with this venerable tradition. Says Club president Jennifer Ferenstein:

Faced with challenges, Cubans have proven to be survivors. With a meat shortage in the city, they’ve turned to raising guinea pigs in cramped urban backyards. When rural farms couldn’t provide enough food to Havana due to the lack of refrigerated transport as much as production problems, the government encouraged the cultivation of fruit and vegetable gardens in Havana’s abandoned lots. When pesticides became unavailable following the collapse of the USSR, worm bins and organic gardening were celebrated. I will never forget my trip to Cuba, the beauty of the landscape, the passion of the people for baseball, and above all, the fragility of an island country struggling to improve its quality of life in a sustainable manner.

As if these poor people have any choice concerning which autocratic dictator they live under. As if there have not been untold thousands who have died on innertubes trying make it ninety miles across shark-infested oceans just to get out of that country she finds so romantic, and into the brutal U.S. of A, where she herself lives in complete comfort. As if the millions of innocents murdered and imprisoned under Castro’s bloody hand are no real big deal.

We are not surprised, therefore, to hear this same Sierra Club woman telling, in 2003, Range magazine:

“I’m a big proponent of bio-regionalism. The closer you can live off the land and the products you can use, the better off we all are … Fact is, I think people in Montana can get along without strawberries in December.”

But what of those people who want to actually grow strawberries in December and then sell them to people in Montana?

According to this woman, they shouldn’t be allowed to.

That is just a glimpse of the socialist agenda of Sierra Club.

There’s also, of course, the billions of dollars that Sierra Club has raked in with its bandwagon babble, a partial listing of which runs thus:

In 2002, the Sierra Club reported $23,619,830 in revenues, and disclosed $107,733,974 worth of assets to the IRS. Among its financial supporters are the Bauman Family Foundation; the Beldon Fund; the Compton Foundation; the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; the Ford Foundation; the Scherman Foundation; the Bullitt Foundation, the Energy Foundation, the Foundation for Deep Ecology, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Blue Moon Fund; the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; the J.M. Kaplan Fund, Pew Charitable Trusts, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Turner Foundation, and many more (Discoverthnetworks.org).

Sierra Club, ladies and gentleman, friends of the earth.

But with friends like that, we must obviously ask ourselves: who needs friends?

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Buffaloed

Chief Seattle was an extraordinarily intelligent and charismatic man, a 19th century leader of Puget Sound Indian tribes. In 1884 he purportedly said, among other things, the following:

The earth is our mother. What befalls the earth befalls all the sons and daughters of the earth…. I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairies left by the white man who shot them from a passing train… What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires?

The above words have been cited by Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, in his mind-numbing autobiography; they have been broadcast over the airwaves of at least six foreign countries; and, according to a 1993 Reader’s Digest report, “Chief Seattle’s words” are read as “a matter of curriculum” in elementary public schools all across our great country.

Al Gore, of course, routinely trots out Chief Seattle’s words in his own speeches and articles, most famously in his other propaganda publication Earth in the Balance, which predates his more mendacious Inconvenient Truth by over a decade.

The problem, of course, as you’ve no doubt already guessed, is that Chief Seattle never made any such speech. He was too smart and too articulate for such hackneyed lines, and doubtless the good chief would be appalled to hear that these words are being put in his mouth like so much bad pemmican.

The “thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie,” for example (shot by white men from trains), should tip off all would-be quoters of Chief Seattle that this speech is ersatz: buffalo did not “roam” anywhere near where Chief Seattle lived, nor did trains run through there until years after his speech was supposedly delivered.

Also, the “ripe hills being blotted out by talking wires” doesn’t fit the timeline either.

But since when have actual facts really mattered to the religion of environmentalism?

It turns out that this speech was actually written by a university professor named Ted Perry.

Ted Perry.

He was hired to write a documentary about pollution.

The lie was deliberate, though not on Ted Perry’s part.

You may read all about this story in “What Chief Seattle Said,” by Paul S. Wilson, in “Environmental Law” (vol. 22, p. 1451-1468).

Or, alternatively, on the front page of The New York Times, April 1992.

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Environmentalists Prevent Cleaner Power Plant Construction

More on the inherently statist nature of that pseudo-philosophy known as “environmentalism.”

From journalist Patrick Richardson:

In 2007, Sunflower Electric Power Corporation proposed a state-of-the-art coal-fired power plant in Holcomb, Kansas. This plant represented a $3.5 billion investment in one of the most rural areas of the country, $78 million in annual payroll during the construction phase, and more than 300 permanent jobs and $15 million in payroll once it was completed.

The plant, with two 700-megawatt generators, would have used technology to limit emissions. It would have been a huge economic boon to an area which largely relies on the meatpacking industry, tourism, and agriculture for jobs.

Then a bureaucrat on the other end of the state killed it. “A lot of people would be at work right now if they hadn’t shot it down,” Sunflower spokeswoman Cindy Hertl said.

The first nail in the coffin of the plant was the denial of an air quality permit by Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) Secretary Roderick L. Bremby. KDHE is sort of the EPA and U.S. Health Department all rolled into one. In denying the permit, Bremby said:

“After careful consideration of my responsibility to protect the public health and environment from actual, threatened or potential harm from air pollution, I have decided to deny the Sunflower Electric Power Corporation application for an air quality permit.”

This was, keep in mind, before the U.S. Supreme Court issued that insane ruling that carbon dioxide could be regulated as a pollutant.

So, on the basis there might be a problem, Bremby axed the plant. Four bills and four vetoes later, then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius left office to become secretary of health and human services.

It was so bad the Finney County Democratic Party Chair Lon Wartman left the party and issued a scathing rebuke to Sebelius.

Enter current Gov. Mark Parkinson.

Read the full travesty here.

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Trivia

The United States is not a democracy and was never intended to be. Democracy means majority rule. The rights of each individual, however, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, color, class, or creed, are inalienable in the literal sense (i.e. cannot be transferred, revoked, or be made alien) and are thus never subject to vote or the “whims of the majority.”

Which is why the word “democracy” does not appear one time in either the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence.

The United States is, as Benjamin Franklin said, a Constitutional Republic.

Calvin Coolidge had a pet pygmy hippo, which he kept in the White House.

Whereas Teddy Roosevelt kept a pet hyena.

Ronald Reagan was once given an honorary doctorate in professional football.

The largest scientific study ever conducted on acid rain (National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, Integrated Assessment, External Review Draft) didn’t find any real evidence that acid rain destroys forests.

As a teaching method, the National Wildlife Federation routinely had students dump highly acidic water on plants to, quote, “simulate acid rain.” Thus, when the plants died, the kids naturally assumed that acid rain kills forests in this same manner.

In 1992, a man in Carson City, Nevada, ran in the Democratic primarily as, quote, “God Almighty!” And did not win.

Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) was invented to protect American troops in WWII from insect-borne disease.

Despite numerous studies, DDT has never once been shown to be harmful. On the contrary, it has saved more lives than any other chemical invention in the history of the world, with the possible exception of antibiotics.

One spraying of DDT lasts longer than all other pesticides combined. Which is one of the many reasons mosquitoes are less resistant to it.

Since DDT was banned, more pesticides are now required, because none are as effective as DDT.

Which is one of the biggest reasons malaria has come back with such a vengeance.

During the final rush to get the first shipment of DDT out the door to American Troops, a valve at the bottom of a large vessel of DDT accidentally came open. Chemist Joseph Jacobs, who was standing under the vessel when it opened, was covered with hot DDT. “When it dried,” he says, in his autobiography, The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur, “I had DDT an inch thick all over me. In my hair, in my ears, and in my mouth and nose. I took off my clothes, showered, and scrubbed, but probably ingested more DDT during that one incident than is today considered safe to absorb over many years.”

Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, which singlehandedly succeeded in getting DDT banned, believed that one touch of DDT could kill you.

Chemist Joseph Jacobs lived another sixty years with no adverse health effects whatsoever.

Joseph Jacobs routinely lectured on the utter safety of DDT. In fact, he began each lecture by eating a spoonful of raw DDT at the podium.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his DDT work and was eighty-eight when he died, in 2004.

“In all the previous wars of history,” wrote chemical engineer O.T. Zimmerman, in 1946, “the louse [singular for lice] has killed more men than ever died from bullets, swords, or other weapons.”

The Audubon Society, though sympathetic to Rachel Carson’s claims, has stated publicly that no extinction or significant loss to bird populations came about through the use of DDT: “of the 40 birds Carson said might by now be extinct or nearly so, 19 have stable populations, 14 have increasing populations, and 7 are declining” (Easterbrook, 1995, p. 82). It should be noted furthermore that the 7 listed as “declining” declined only slightly, and not through any demonstrable link with DDT.

After President Bush senior banned broccoli from the White House in 1990, California broccoli growers delivered nine tons of it to Washington DC.

Science is in large part government-funded. Thus, scientists improve their access to research money if they can show politicians that they are “saving the planet.”

Statistically speaking, scientists who don’t propagate the fear-factor receive far less money than those who do, regardless of the actual truth.

Melvin Shapiro, for instance, head of research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Insight Magazine: “If there were no dollars attached to the game, you’d see it played on intellect and integrity. When you say the ozone threat is a scam, you’re not only attacking people’s scientific integrity, you’re going after their pocketbook as well.”

After that interview, Shapiro stopped taking phone calls. Word circulated that his supervisors censored him for fear of hurting their own funding.

Bureaucrats realize this as well: “When the Superfund Law was passed in 1980 … the EPA’s budget went up almost instantly by hundreds of millions of dollars, and ultimately billions…. The EPA administrator actively campaigned for the Superfund Law…. And, in fact, the law that emerged was largely written by members of the agency” (Facts Not Fear, p. 8).

The Superfund Law has achieved next to nothing — apart, that is, from spending billions in taxpayer dollars.

George Washington carried a sundial instead of a watch to tell time.

More timber grows each year than is cut.

“In the time it takes you to read this letter, nine hundred acres of rainforest will have been destroyed forever,” said Russell E. Train, of the World Wildlife Fund & The Conservation Foundation, back in 1992, a complete fiction, we now know.

The famous statement made by biologist Norman Myers, which sent environmentalists everywhere scurrying to their soapboxes, that “2 percent of all tropical forest was being destroyed per year,” and that by “2000 we will have lost a third of the world’s tropical forest” (Myers cited in Goudie 1993:46.), has proved inanely inaccurate.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) puts tropical deforestation in the 1980s at 0.8 percent. In 2001, satellite imagery, which is precise, shows that tropical deforestation had declined to 0.46 percent.

Lack of property rights — i.e. private property — makes tropical deforestation worse.

The snows of Kilimanjaro, one of Al Gore’s pet props, have been receding for a very long time, a well-known fact among scientists, who, additionally, are also quick to note that the temperature on Kilimanjaro has not been going up. Why, then, the recession of Kilimanjaro’s snows? Ice requires cold and moisture. And it’s precisely the latter that’s lacking.

As climate scientist Robert Balling says: “Gore does not acknowledge the two major articles on the subject published in 2004 in the International Journal of Climatology and the Journal of Geophysical Research showing that modern glacier retreat on Kilimanjaro was initiated by a reduction in precipitation at the end of the nineteenth century and not by local or global warming.”

I.e. the local climate shift on Kilimanjaro began a century ago.

About a decade ago, Doctor R.J. Braithwaite wrote an article that appeared in Progress in Physical Geography.

In that article, which was peer-reviewed, Doctor Braithwaite tells us how he analyzed 246 glaciers, sampled from both hemispheres and latitudes, between the years 1946 and 1995. This “mass balance analysis” he conducted found that “some glaciers were melting, while a nearly equal number were growing in size, and still others remained stable.” Doctor Braithwaite’s unequivocal conclusion:

“There is no obvious common or global trend of increasing glacier melt in recent years.”

“By some estimates, 160,000 glaciers exist on Earth. Only 63,000 have been inventoried, and only a few hundred have been studied in the detail described by Braithwaite” (“It Would Be Nice to Know More about Ice,” Jay Lehr).

On the basis of that logical fallacy known as the fallacy of insufficient evidence, all glacier fears are stopped cold right there.

But in fact that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Keith Echelmeyer, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute, says this:

“To make a case that glaciers are retreating, and that the problem is global warming, is very hard to do… The physics are very complex. There is much more involved than just the climate response.”

Mr. Echelmeyer goes on to tell us that in Alaska there are large glaciers advancing in the very same areas where others are retreating.

Quoting Doctor Martin Beniston of the Institute of Geography at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland:

Numerous climatological details of mountains are overlooked by the climate models, which thus makes it difficult to estimate the exact response of glaciers to global warming, because glacier dynamics are influenced by numerous factors other than climate, even though temperature and cloudiness may be the dominant controlling factors. According to the size, exposure and altitude of glaciers, different response times can be expected for the same climatic forcing.

According to the excellent glacier program at Rice University, those response times run something like this:

Ice sheet: 100,000 to 10,000 years

Large valley glacier: 10,000 to 1,000 years

Small valley glacier: 1,000 to 100 years

“Glaciers are influenced by a variety of local and regional natural phenomena that scientists do not fully comprehend. Besides temperature changes, glaciers also respond to changes in the amount and type of precipitation, changes in sea level and changes in ocean circulation patterns. As a result, glaciers do not necessarily advance during colder weather and retreat during warmer weather” (John Carlisle, National Center for Public Policy).

Grist magazine: There’s a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What’s the right mix?

Al Gore: I think the answer to that depends on where your audience’s head is. In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis. Over time that mix will change. As the country comes to more accept the reality of the crisis, there’s going to be much more receptivity to a full-blown discussion of the solutions. (Source of this astonishing exchange: Grist Magazine[boldface mine].)

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) was a foreign diplomat at age 14.

Teddy Roosevelt once delivered a one-hour speech, despite the fact that he had just been shot by a would-be assassin.

Quondam senator Barry Goldwater recommended peanut butter for shaving cream.

The tenth President of the United States, John Tyler (1790-1862), was unable to get a job after leaving office and so worked at a village pound tending cows and horses.

All the trash produced by the United States for the next one thousand years could fit into a landfill forty-four miles square by 120 feet deep—one tenth of 1 percent of all this country’s entire land area. (“A Consumer’s Guide to Environmental Myths and Realities,” Policy Report #99, National Center for Policy Analysis, Dallas, TX, September 1991, 3, quoting Clark Wiseman of Gonzaga University.)

“It is entirely possible that we may be the last generation of humans to know this wondrous earth as it was meant to be,” said the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, many years ago.

“Nearly every habitat is at risk,” said Time Magazine, almost two decades ago. “Swarms of people are running out of food and space …” Which is another statement that time and the facts have exposed as completely false. Thus:

Every man, woman, and child on the planet could fit shoulder-to-shoulder in a space no bigger than Jacksonville, Florida.

Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution says Congress has only these powers. To borrow money (not the same thing as taxation); regulate commerce with foreign nations; establish rules for naturalization; coin money and fix standards of weights and measures; punish counterfeiting; establish a post office; promote science with patents; establish the lower courts; punish pirates; declare war; raise and support armies, but only for a term of two years; provide a navy; regulate naval and land forces; call forth the militia; and administer capital.

“It would be impossible to construct a logical argument that these powers permit the massive welfare state and regulatory state that exists today in America,” said Doctor Thomas Dilorenzo, in 2006.

“The United States is not a Christian Nation,” said President John Adams, in the Treaty of Tripoli.

“Private property is the guardian of every other right” said James Madison, the father of the Constitution.

“I precisely advocate the abolition of private property,” said Karl Marx.

“Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned,” said Ludwig von Mises.

“The only alternative to private property is government ownership — that is, socialism,” says Doctor Dilorenzo.

Peter Cooper, inventor of a gelatinous dessert called Jell-O, once ran for the Presidency of the United States.

And lost.

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Earth Day

This year rather than celebrating Earth Day by advocating still more government bureaus, which will then determine for the rest of us what we can do with our property, let us instead celebrate the only real way to clean up and beautify the planet: private property rights and private stewardship.

From Chapter 2 of Leave Us Alone:

The right to property is, as James Madison said, “the guardian” of every other right. Freedom and private property are inseparable. Property is freedom: you cannot be free if you are not free to produce, use, and dispose of those things necessary to your life.

“Control the property, control the person,” said Lenin, correctly.

Property, like every other right, is first and foremost the right to act: specifically, it is the right to produce, exchange, and use.

“Property is not only money and other tangible things of value, but also includes any intangible right considered as a source or element of income or wealth…. It is the right to enjoy and to dispose of certain things in the most absolute manner” (Electric Law Library).

Money is property.

The only alternative to private property is government or communal ownership of property, both of which amount to the same thing in the end: a bureau of centralized planners controlling the property.

If you desire to know precisely what someone’s political viewpoint is, all you need do is find out his or her stance on property; for it is through the stance on property that the entire political philosophy is disclosed. You needn’t listen to anything anyone says about “freedom” or “liberty” or any of these other easy platitudes: no one in her or his right mind will go against those things. Instead, simply check the stance on property. If someone doesn’t believe in full private property rights, that person is, to the exact extent he or she denies private property rights, a statist.

Property is the sine-qua-non of human freedom.

To defend freedom, therefore, you must start by defending the unalienable right to property.

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government (James Madison, Federal Papers 10).

Government is instituted no less for protection of the PROPERTY, than of the persons (James Madison, Federalist Paper #54, emphasis in the original).

The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management (Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval).

A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings (Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours).

The political institutions of America, its various soils and climates, opened a certain resource to the unfortunate and to the enterprising of every country and insured to them the acquisition and free possession of property (Thomas Jefferson: Declaration on Taking Up Arms).

The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence (John Adams).

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The Green Jobs Racket Exposed (Again)

Here’s an economic axiom which we’ve discussed here before, but which in this day and age is always worth repeating:

If something is economically tenable, it never ever needs to be subsidized.

The latest concretization of this fact comes from none other than the state-run Associated Press:

After a year of crippling delays, President Barack Obama’s $5 billion program to install weather-tight windows and doors has retrofitted a fraction of homes and created far fewer construction jobs than expected.

In Indiana, state-trained workers flubbed insulation jobs. In Alaska, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, the program has yet to produce a single job or retrofit one home. And in California, a state with nearly 37 million residents, the program at last count had created 84 jobs…

…”This is the beginning of the next industrial revolution with the explosion of clean energy investments,” said assistant U.S. Energy Secretary Cathy Zoi. “These are good jobs that are here to stay.”

But after a year, the stimulus program has retrofitted 30,250 homes — about 5 percent of the overall goal — and fallen well short of the 87,000 jobs that the department planned, according to the latest available figures.

As the Obama administration promotes a second home energy-savings program — a $6 billion rebate plan — some experts are asking whether that will pay off for homeowners or for the planet.

(Link)

For more on the inherently toxic nature of environmentalism, please read this.

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Myths About Markets

There are approximately twenty million myths about markets and market capitalism, one of the most common being this:

Markets don’t work well (or are inefficient) when there are negative or positive “externalities.”

Here’s how Tom Palmer, philosopher and economist, bunks that canard:

The mere existence of an externality is no argument for having the state take over some activity or displace private choices. Fashionable clothes and good grooming generate plenty of positive externalities, as others admire those who are well clothed or groomed, but that’s no reason to turn choice of or provision of clothing and grooming over to the state. Gardening, architecture, and many other activities generate positive externalities on others, but people undertake to beautify their gardens and their building just the same. In all those cases, the benefits to the producers alone — including the approbations of those on whom the positive externalities are showered — are sufficient to induce them to produce the goods. In other cases, such as the provision of television and radio broadcasts, the public good is “tied” to the provision of other goods, such as advertising for firms….

More commonly, however, it is the existence of NEGATIVE externalities that leads people to question the efficacy or justice of market mechanisms. Pollution is the most commonly cited example. If a producer can produce products profitably because he or she imposes the costs of production on others who have not consented to be a part of the production process, say, by throwing huge amounts of smoke into the air or chemicals into a river, he will probably do so. Those who breathe the air or drink the toxic water will bear the costs of producing the product, while the producer will get the benefits from the sale of the product. The problem in such cases, however, is not that markets have failed, but that they are absent. Markets rest on private property and cannot function when property rights are not defined or enforced. Cases of pollution are precisely cases not of market failure but of government failure to define and defend the property rights of others, such as those who breathe polluted air, or drink polluted water (source).

Under true laissez-faire capitalism, in other words, which is the only system that fully protects property and person — thereby forbidding the instigation of force in any form — you are not allowed to poison anyone.

In a socialistic, protectionist society, such as the one we now live in, no such rule of law exists because property is not regarded as private but communal.

The proof is ultimately in the water.

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Are The Fish Really Being Mercury Poisoned?

If you smell something fishy in this latest wave of methyl mercury talk, the reason is that there is something fishy in it — very fishy — and it stinks to high heaven. Don’t be lured in.

The relevant facts are these:

In this country, there hasn’t been a single scientifically documented case of fish-related mercury poisoning.

The only semi-recent medically documented cases come from Japan in the 1950s and 1960s, and that was right after a massive industrial spill of mercury into their fishing waters. Current mercury levels, in fish and in people, do not approach those mid-century Japanese levels. Not remotely.

“The levels of methyl mercury in California fish are much lower than those that occurred in Japan. We are not aware of any cases of overt poisoning in California, nor would we expect them” (Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, 2003, California Office).

“The only clinical reports of mercury poisoning from fish consumption are those from Japan in the 1950s and 1960s. Although a National Academy of Sciences committee reported that 60,000 children in the United States were at risk as a result of prenatal exposure, they failed to provide any justification or explanation for that conclusion” (Doctor Thomas Clarkson, Doctor Gary Myers, and Doctor Laszlo Magos, quoted in the New England Journal of Medicine).

“The general population does not face a significant health risk from methyl mercury” (The World Health Organization).

“There is some junk science at work here. They can say whatever they want [about mercury]; we’ve reviewed the basis for their findings and there isn’t a lot of substance to it” (Dr. Charles Lockwood, chairman of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, discussing the federal government’s mercury-in-fish warnings, 2002).

“The mercury content level of most seafood is low and is not a level to cause harm to the health of individuals, even if they [sic] are pregnant” (Health advisory issued by the Japanese Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry, 2003).

The truth about this whole non-issue is that our government’s so-called mercury-in-fish recommendations are based exclusively on a single study. This was a study in which participants were eating whale meat, not fish meat. Whale meat, as you may or may not know, is not like fish: it’s notoriously contaminated, for one thing, and I’m not just talking about with mercury. Thus, isolating mercury as the culprit has proved virtually impossible. Which is exactly why it was never proven.

A recently wrapped-up 12-year study in the Seychelles Islands concluded that there are “no negative health effects from exposure to mercury through heavy fish consumption.” The Seychelle people eat on average 12 fish meals per week, which is a lot more than the majority of Americans. Mercury levels measure significantly higher among the island natives than they do among Americans. And yet after 12 years — the length of the study — these folks showed no negative health effects; on the contrary, there were measurable health benefits from eating so much fish. Quote:

“In the Seychelles, where the women in our study ate large quantities of fish each week while they were pregnant, the children are healthy. These are the same fish that end up on the dinner table in the United States and around the world” (pediatric neurologist Doctor Gary Myers, quoted in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet).

“From all the reports we had seen about mercury and its impact on development, we thought we would be able to show how bad it was for children. But we didn’t find it at all. Children whose mothers had the highest levels of mercury, did significantly better than children whose moms had low mercury levels” (Professor Dr. Philip Davidson, speaking in 2006 to The Medical Post about his landmark study of heavy fish-eaters in the Seychelles Islands).

In February of 2007, The Lancet also published research showing “a clear health benefit to children whose mothers ate large amounts of fish.”

“Existing evidence suggests that methyl mercury exposure from fish consumption during pregnancy, of the level seen in most parts of the world, does not have measurable cognitive or behavioural [sic] effects in later childhood. For now, there is no reason for pregnant women to reduce fish consumption below current levels, which are probably safe” (Doctor Constantine Lyketsos, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, quoted in the The Lancet, 2003).

In October of 2006, research conducted at Harvard University and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) stated in no uncertain terms the following:

“Health benefits from eating fish [in this country] greatly outweigh the risks, including those from trace amounts of mercury.”

“Mercury is in the ocean. So in theory there is risk associated with fish consumption. But the types of risk are not the frank poisoning events one might picture associated with mercury. We are talking about subtle effects not detectable at the level of the individual. That is because the amount of mercury people are exposed to in the U.S. is not very great” (Doctor Joshua Cohen, Harvard School of Public Health, 2005. Please see also the Time Magazine article).

“People overreact to these things, so you have to be careful. You don’t want large numbers giving up the benefits of fish while you damage the whole fishing sector for no good reason” (Doctor Sandrine Blanchemanche, of the French National Institute for Agronomic Studies, quoted in the Los Angeles Times).

Perhaps most significantly of all: there’s simply no good evidence to suggest the mercury levels in our fish have risen at all. Just the opposite, in fact: recent research from Princeton University, Duke University, and the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum have compared ocean fish preserved between 25 and 120 years ago with present-day samplings of these same fish. The unequivocal conclusion:

“Mercury levels in fish either remained the same or declined.”

“Eating lots of ocean fish isn’t much of a hazard compared to missing out on the benefits from not eating fish. A slew of scientific reports have shown that eating fish helps protect against cardiovascular disease and enhances brain development before and after birth. Overstating the almost negligible risk of mercury could adversely affect millions of people who face the risk of heart disease” (Doctor Thomas Clarkson, University of Rochester, Environmental Medicine).

The main thing for you to remember about this current wave of environmental zealotry and all this food quackery is that it’s no new kettle of fish — not at all.

In their own words: “We simply want capitalism to come to an end” (Jonathen Kabat, one of the founders of the so-called Union of Concerned Scientists, a Marxist eco-group).

And:

“There are many organizations out there that value credibility, but I want Greenpeace first and foremost to be a credible threat” (Greenpeace Executive Director John Passacantando, quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).

And:

“The political and economic system that destroys the Earth is the same system that exploits workers” — i.e. capitalism (Sierra Club’s book, Call to Action, Handbook for Ecology, Peace and Justice).

And:

“Nothing less than a change in the political and social system, including revision of the Constitution, is necessary to save the country from destroying the natural environment. Capitalism is the earth’s number one enemy” (Barry Commoner, the Green Party’s first Presidential candidate).

And:

“We reject the idea of private property” (Peter Berle, past-president of the National Audubon Society).

And:

“Free enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process. Capitalism is destroying the earth” (Helen Caldicott of the Union of Concerned Scientists).

Please note that this ocean-sized campaign entirely ignores present-day life expectancies, which have never been higher, as well as present-day infant mortality rates, which have never been lower. Note also that it ignores about a million other things besides — things which only the industrial society can bring: clean drinking water, for instance; clean, inexpensive, and abundant food at the drop of a hat; plentiful clothing; heat and air-conditioning; homes and shelter; state-of-the-art bicycles, skateboards, snowboards and skis, motorcycles, cars; inexpensive alcohol, coffee, music, movies, books, art; new medicine, and so much more.

Furthermore, from the comfort of all this, environmentalism, a parasite of capitalism, denounces it all while simultaneously reaping its rewards and ignoring the one thing that brought it all about: freedom and free trade.

But when I tell you that these environmental claims are all, without exception, absurdly exaggerated, you need not listen to me; listen, rather, to an esteemed Nobel laureate you’ve perhaps heard of:

“Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen.”

Albert Gore, ladies and gentleman, quoted in Grist Magazine.

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McDonald’s And The Clam Shell

Speaking of clams without shells, it was in the late 1980’s that McDonald’s was bullied by burgeoning environmental groups (who were concerned about “how many trees it takes to make paper” ) into switching from paper packaging to Styrofoam containers. These containers are what McDonald’s soon came to call (apparently without irony) “clam shells.”

Clam shells were not McDonald’s first choice. But Styrofoam is an exceptionally good insulator and so McDonald’s acquiesced to this environmental strong-arming.

Shortly thereafter, near the end of the 1980’s, environmentalists came along again and attacked McDonald’s use of polystyrene (the technical name for Styrofoam), because in order to make polystyrene, chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) are required, which chlorofluorocarbons purportedly poke holes in the ozone. So out of the goodness of their hearts, the suppliers of McDonald’s clam shell stopped using CFC’s in their manufacturing process.

This wasn’t good enough, however. The clam shell came under fire again, this time for other things:

It doesn’t “biodegrade” in landfills, environmental groups said — though, in fact, next to nothing, no matter how “organic,” biodegrades in landfills, because biodegrading requires oxygen, which compressed trash does not have.

Another reason they gave: plastic and polystyrene “take up a great deal of space.” (Untrue.)

Yet throughout this whole fiasco, McDonald’s was completely compliant.

They even embarked upon the suggested polystyrene recycling program.

Pressed, however, by the Environmental Defense Fund, McDonald’s, in the autumn of 1990, abandoned the clam shell altogether and supplanted it with a so-called quilt-wrap, which is paper coated in a thin layer of plastic.

So it was back to paper after all, back where it began.

McDonald’s received public acclaim for this change (this was before it had become quite so vogue to anathematize corporations) and the story even made the cover of The New York Times (November 2, 1990).

It soon transpired, as you would perhaps suspect, that, according to environmentalists, the quilt-wrap was “too difficult to recycle,” whereas polystyrene was not. Also, polystyrene accounted for only four percent of all McDonald’s solid waste in the past, which was much less than with the quilt-wrap.

So McDonald’s was yet again asked to switch.

And so it goes….

You may read all about this ongoing saga in Doctor William Rathje’s excellent book Rubbish! The Archeology of Garbage, — a must see for anyone wanting to understand the true nature of rubbish, as opposed to the trash-heaps of environmental propaganda that surrounds the subject. And you may listen to an excerpt of Dr. Rathje’s book here.

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Are Organic Foods Worth The Price?

In February of 2007, the Los Angeles Times ran an article that said, among other things, the following:

Since 1989, when organic-food activists raised a [bunked] nationwide scare over the pesticide alar in apples, many scientists have seethed quietly at what they perceive as a campaign of scare tactics, innuendo and shoddy science perpetrated by organic food producers and their allies.

Indeed, organic food activists are increasingly open about their fraudulent agenda. Organic Valley Marketing Director Theresa Marquez, for instance, laid out, in no uncertain terms, her strategy of falsifying data to dupe the masses into thinking organics are worth their premium price:

“We think it’s important that people pay more for food,” she said. “The question is: ‘Will consumers pay more for that?’ and ‘How can we convince them to do that?’”

And yet: “Organic food has no higher nutritional value compared to conventional food,” says Nutrition and Diet Professor Tom Sanders, of Kings College London.

Which is hardly news, however.

In fact, Professor Sanders is merely echoing what science has been saying for years.

The only people who really disagree are environmental groups and animal rights activists, with all their agendas and quackery — in response to which quackery, food science professor Joseph Rosen, of Rutgers University, says this: “Most [of their studies] are not designed, conducted or published according to accepted scientific standards, and many were done by groups that openly promote organic foods.”

Where, then, is all the proof that organic food is better and better for you?

“The short answer, food safety and nutrition scientists say, is that such proof does not exist” (Los Angeles Times, February, 2007).

Indeed, the very word “organic” has been commandeered by phonies, so that the term, which was once legitimate, has now become a conceptual void. Quoting, at length, the erudite R.I. Throckmorton, Dean of Kansas State College:

This cult has sought to appropriate a good word “organic,” and has twisted its meaning to cover a whole crazy doctrine. The facts are that organic matter in its true sense is an important component of the soil — but soil fertility and the kind of crops you grow on a soil are not determined by humus alone.

Soil fertility is determined by the amount of active organic matter, the amount of available mineral nutrients, the activities of soil organisms, chemical activities in the soil solution and the physical condition of the soil. Ever since we have had soil scientists, they have recognized the values of organic matter. The loss of soil humus through cultivation has long been a matter of concern. So the faddists have nothing new to offer on that score.

Organic matter is often called “the life of the soil” because it supplies most of the food needs of the soil organisms which aid in changing nonavailable plant food materials into forms-that are available to the plants, and contains small quantities of practically all plant nutrients….

The antichemical-fertilizer doctrine makes a great point of the fact that plant food in organic matter is in a “natural” form, while in chemical form fertilizer it is “unnatural” and thus supposedly is harmful, if not downright poisonous. The logic of this escapes me. Science completely disproved the conclusion. The facts are that any plant foods, whether from organic matter, or from a bag of commercial fertilizer, necessarily came from Nature in the first place. Why is one more “natural” than another?

A Plant takes in a given nutrient in the same chemical form whether it came from organic matter, or from a bag of commercial fertilizer. The facts are that practically all plant-food elements carried by organic matter are not used in their organic form; they are changed by microorganisms to the simple chemical forms which the plants can use — the same form in which these elements become available to plants when applied as chemical fertilizers. For example, it is foolish to say that nitrogen in commercial fertilizer is “poisonous” while nitrogen from organic matter is beneficial. The basic nitrogen is the same in either case (“The Organic Farming Myths,” R.I. Throckmorton).

Muck soil, as it’s called, holds as much as 50 percent organic matter — “organic” in the real sense of the word — and yet, according to organic pseudoscience, “You could do little to improve such soils.”

But in fact all that these soils need is fertilizer, as Doctor J.F. Davis, of Michigan State University, discovered:

The yield of wheat on unfertilized muck soils was 5.7 bushels an acre, while the yield on plots receiving the chemical phosphorus and potash was 29.2 bushels per acre. The yield of potatoes was increased from 97 bushels an acre with no treatment, to 697 with commercial fertilizer carrying phosphorus and potash. Cabbage yields were boosted by the same means from 1/2 ton to 27 tons.

And if you believe, as many people do, that “inorganic” food contains more cancer-causing pesticides, think again:

It’s a well-known fact that so-called organic farmers routinely spray pesticides on crops — albeit naturally occurring pesticides — one of which, pyrethrum, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified as a “likely human carcinogen.”

This, along with a number of other findings, calls into question the very philosophy behind “organic farming.” Beware the scare-mongering, I beg. Read this exceptionally well-written article, from an exceptionally well-informed lady.

For a long time now, environmentalists have alleged that organic food is healthier. In addition to this, environmentalists have told us over and over that organic farming is better for the environment because our laid-back green farmers use no “synthetic” pesticides.

What they don’t tell you, however, is that these same laid-back organic farmers are permitted to use (”permitted” in the sense that they can spray with it and still qualify as “organic”) a number of so-called natural chemicals to kill pests, which natural chemicals are neither as expedient nor as purely benign as you might think. For instance, it was discovered almost a decade ago, in the year 1999, that rotenone, a natural insecticide squeezed from roots of tropical plants, causes symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in rats. That discovery came in addition to the previously mentioned pyrethrum data. It is true that in tests, these pesticides are administered in extraordinarily high doses, but so too is the dosage for synthetic pesticides. The fact is, neither are what you could legitimately call dangerous.

From the New York Post:

The EPA’s Cancer Assessment Review Committee based its 1999 decision on the same high-dose rat tests long used by eco-activists to condemn synthetic pesticides. Because no one knows just how pyrethrum causes tumors, the committee also recommended assuming that even the tiniest dose can be deadly. (The same logic is used to brand hundreds of other chemicals as carcinogens.) Charles Benbrook, a long-time organic activist, notes that pyrethrum is applied to crops at low rates and that pyrethrum degrades relatively rapidly, minimizing consumer exposure. He’s right, but all this is true of today’s non-persistent synthetic pesticides as well. Pyrethrum and modern synthetic pesticides break down so rapidly that consumers are rarely exposed to any at all. Two-thirds of all fruits and vegetables tested as they leave the farm in the U.S. have no detectable pesticide residues — despite our being able to detect chemicals at parts per trillion levels.

Pyrethrum is extracted from a type of chrysanthemum grown mainly in Africa. It is literally a nerve poison that these plants evolved to fight off munching insects. The dried, ground-up flowers were used in the early 19th century to control body lice.In fact, many of the widely used synthetic pesticides are based on natural plant-defense chemicals. Synthetic versions of pyrethrum (known as pyrethroids) make it possible to protect a crop with one or two sprays instead of spraying natural pyrethrum five to seven times at higher volumes. Organic activists hold to the twisted logic that if a toxic chemical can be squeezed from a plant or mined from the earth, it’s OK — but a safer chemical synthesized in a lab is unacceptable. It is possible to farm without pesticides, as demonstrated by a farm family recently highlighted in Organic Gardening magazine. They use a Shop-Vac and a portable generator in a wheelbarrow to daily suck insects off crops. And even that won’t fight fungal or bacterial diseases, or insects that eat crops from the inside out. Organic coffee growers in Guatemala spray coffee trees with fermented urine as a primitive fungicide. Bruce Ames, noted cancer expert and recent winner of the National Medal of Science, notes that more than half of the natural food chemicals he tests come up carcinogenic — the same proportion as synthetic chemicals. These natural chemicals are collectively present in large amounts in the very fruits and vegetables that are our biggest defense against cancer (June, 2001).

The main thing for you to remember is this:

It’s not that which goes into a human that defiles her, but only that which comes out — for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Our lives consist of more than the vegetables and meat.

The food snobbery of the vegetarian, the vegan, or the organic-only nut is every bit as beastly as the food snobbery of the gourmand — and ultimately every bit as dangerous.

It’s all a form of gourmandizing.

“And gourmandizing,” as Karl Shapiro once sagely said, “is a sure sign of stupidity.”

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Environmentalism: Cult Of Death


The following is excerpted from Chapter 10 of my book.

Environmentalism, with its attendant army of politicos all armed to the teeth with environmental laws, is, let us make no mistake, the highroad to hell.

Before going all the way green, I urge you to take a longer look into exactly what horse you’re backing here: it may well turn out to be a horse of an entirely different color than you think.

Environmentalism is a philosophy that upholds a profound hatred of humankind:

“Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs” (John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal).

“Mankind is a cancer; we’re the biggest blight on the face of the earth” (president of PETA and environmental activist Ingrid Newkirk).

“If you haven’t given voluntary human extinction much thought before, the idea of a world with no people in it may seem strange. But, if you give it a chance, I think you might agree that the extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species…. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental” (Ibid).

Quoting Richard Conniff, in the pages of Audubon magazine (September, 1990): “Among environmentalists sharing two or three beers, the notion is quite common that if only some calamity could wipe out the entire human race, other species might once again have a chance.”

Environmental theorist Christopher Manes (writing under the nom-de-guerre Miss Ann Thropy): “If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human population back to ecological sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS.”

Environmental guru “Reverend” Thomas Berry, proclaims that “humans are an affliction of the world, its demonic presence. We are the violators of Earth’s most sacred aspects.”

A speaker at one of Earth First!’s little cult gatherings: “Optimal human population: zero.”

“Ours is an ecological perspective that views Earth as a community and recognizes such apparent enemies as ‘disease’ (e.g., malaria) and ‘pests’ (e.g., mosquitoes) not as manifestations of evil to be overcome but rather as vital and necessary components of a complex and vibrant biosphere … [We have] an antipathy to ‘progress’ and ‘technology.’ We can accept the pejoratives of ‘Luddite’ and ‘Neanderthal’ with pride…. There is no hope for reform of industrial empire…. We humans have become a disease: the Humanpox” (Dave Foreman, past head of Earth First!)

“Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet. I know social scientists who remind me that people are part of nature, but it isn’t true. Somewhere along the line we … became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth…. Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” (Biologist David Graber, “Mother Nature as a Hothouse Flower” Los Angles Times Book Review).

“The ending of the human epoch on Earth would most likely be greeted with a hearty ‘Good riddance!'”(Paul Taylor, “Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics”).

“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don’t think it is possible under capitalism” (Judi Bari, of Earth First!).

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” (Maurice Strong, Earth Summit 91).

David Brower, former head of the Sierra Club and founder of Friends of the Earth, calls for developers to be “shot with tranquilizer guns.”

Why?

“Human suffering is much less important than the suffering of the planet,” he explains.

Also from the socialist Sierra Club: “The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature’s proper steward and society’s only hope.”

Quoting the Green Party’s first Presidential candidate Barry Commoner:

“Nothing less than a change in the political and social system, including revision of the Constitution, is necessary to save the country from destroying the natural environment…. Capitalism is the earth’s number one enemy.”

From Barry Commoner again:

“Environmental pollution is a sign of major incompatibility between our system of production and the environmental system that supports it. [The socialist way is better because] the theory of socialist economics does not appear to require that growth should continue indefinitely.”

So much for your unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Indeed:

“Individual rights will have to take a back seat to the collective” (Harvey Ruvin, International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, Dade County Florida).

Sierra Club cofounder David Brower, pushing for his own brand of eugenics:

“Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”

That, if you don’t know, is limited government environmentalist style.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write history” (Sierra Club board member Paul Watson).

Again from Paul Watson, writing in that propaganda rag Earth First! Journal: “Right now we’re in the early stages of World War III…. It’s the war to save the planet. The environmental movement doesn’t have many deserters and has a high level of recruitment. Eventually there will be open war.”

And:

“By every means necessary we will bring this and every other empire down! Mutiny and sabotage in defense of Mother Earth!”

Lisa Force, another Sierra Club board member and quondam coordinator of the Center for Biological Diversity, advocates “prying ranchers and their livestock from federal lands. In 2000 and 2003, [Sierra] sued the U.S. Department of the Interior to force ranching families out of the Mojave National Preserve. These ranchers actually owned grazing rights to the preserve; some families had been raising cattle there for over a century. No matter. Using the Endangered Species Act and citing the supposed loss of ‘endangered tortoise habitat,’ the Club was able to force the ranchers out” (quoted from Navigator magazine).

It is a sad fact for environmentalists that in free societies, humans are allowed to trade freely.

Among other things, the right to private property means: that which you produce is yours by right.

Private property is the crux of freedom: you cannot, in any meaningful sense, be said to be free if you are not allowed to use the things that you own, including those things necessary to sustain your life. Everything you need to know about a political ideology is contained in its attitude toward property.

It comes as no surprise therefore to learn that “private property,” in the words of one environmental group, “is just a sacred cow” (Greater Yellowstone Report, Greater Yellowstone Coalition.)

That is also known as socialism.

In 1990, a man named Benjamin Cone Jr. inherited 7,200 acres of land in Pender County, North Carolina. He proceeded to plant chuffa and rye for wild turkeys; he conducted controlled burns on his property to improve the habitat for deer and quail. And he succeeded: in no time, that habitat flourished. Inadvertently, however, he attracted a number of red-cockaded woodpeckers, a species listed as endangered. He was warned by a certain governmental agency that, on threat of imprisonment or stiff fines, he was not allowed to disturb any of these trees, which were all on his property. This put 1,560 acres of his own land off-limits to him, the owner. In response, Benjamin Cone Jr. began clear-cutting the rest of his land, saying: “I cannot afford to let those woodpeckers take over the rest of my property. I’m going to start massive clear-cutting.” (Richard L. Stroup, Eco-nomics p. 56-57.)

Socialist Eric Schlosser, author of the embarrassing Fast Food Nation, makes no secret of his statist agenda. As Doctor Thomas DiLorenzo points out, Schlosser lauds the “scientific socialists” (a generic term coined by comrade V.I. Lenin) and everything they stand for: government intervention and bureaucracy, public works, job-destroying minimum wage laws, OSHA regulations, food regulations, regulatory agencies to control ranching, farming, and supermarkets, bans on advertising and much more. Only then, he says, will that great day come when restaurants exclusively sell “free-range, organic, grass-fed hamburgers” (Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal).

All of which is simply by way of saying that individual consumers should not be allowed to choose what we want to eat, and that the supply of free-range hamburgers should not be determined by demand. Rather, by law, government bureaucrats must do this for us, regardless of whether we personally want to eat organic, grass-fed beef.

Colorado congressman Scott McInnis confessed that four firefighters burned to death in Washington state because bureaucrats took 10 hours to approve a water drop. The reason: using local river water is prohibited by the Endangered Species Act, on the grounds that it may threaten a certain kind of trout.

Further proof of the Sierra’s hatred of humanity can be found in their 1995 attempt to block an Animas River water diversion project, which project was designed to bring water to Durango and the nearby Ute Indian Reservation.

Dams and irrigation are often life-and-death matters in the arid west, a fact of which Sierra is well aware. Thus, after successfully getting the project slashed by more than 70 percent, thereby depriving the Ute Reservation of much-needed water, the Sierra Club lawyers went for the jugular: they demanded the project be cut still more.

Fortunately for the rest of us, they overplayed their hand.

Their shady methods and motives prompted the following quote from Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell:

“The enviros have never been interested in a compromise. They just simply want to stop development and growth. And the way you do that in the West is to stop water.”

From a chairwoman of the Ute Indian tribe: “The environmentalists don’t seem to care how we live.”

Greenpeace is worldwide the largest and wealthiest environmental group. Of their co-founder Dave McTaggart, fellow co-founder Paul Watson said this:

“The secret to David McTaggart’s success is the secret to Greenpeace’s success: It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true. You are what the media define you to be. Greenpeace became a myth, and a myth-generating machine.”

And since rather than addressing the actual data, environmentalists believe that citing the source of funding is the only argument one ever needs to refute a counterargument, environmentalists should be extraordinarily persuaded by this very partial list of Greenpeace’s funding.

Most people have no inkling that throughout Greenpeace’s tireless campaign against “Frakenfood” (i.e. biotech food – “Frakenfood” is a word coined by Greenpeace campaign director Charles Margulisto, who hates technology), the Third World has steadily perished from malnutrition and famine, as a direct result thereof.

Quoting Tanzania’s Doctor Michael Mbwille (of the non-profit Food Security Network):

“Greenpeace prints and circulates lies faster than the Code Red virus infected the world’s computers. If we were to apply Greenpeace’s scientifically illiterate standards [for soybeans] universally, there would be nothing left on our tables.”

(For an example of how to successfully expose Greenpeace’s lies, please read this relevant article.)

Candidly, I haven’t even begun.

And yet from this small sampling, you can probably get an idea of what an exceptionally gracious and non-politically motivated folk these environmentalists and environmental leaders are. Indeed, environmentalism is a benevolent and life-affirming philosophy, and the people who populate it are a kind, non-violent people, whose reasoning is sound and scrupulous, and who believe unreservedly in the individual’s inalienable right to life and property.

There is of course only one real problem with all that: these people are hypocrites, and environmentalism worships at the shrine of death.

The entire movement, replete, as it is, with its politicos and environmental politics, is not simply “wrong.” That would be too easy.

The environmental movement is criminal.

Reader, if you have even a vestigial love of freedom within you, you must denounce environmentalism with all your heart. You must see it for what it actually is: a statist philosophy of human-hatred and enslavement.

Environmentalism is neo-Marxism at its blackest.

More here on the toxicity of environmentalism.

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The Melting Glaciers

About a decade ago, Doctor R.J. Braithwaite wrote an article that appeared in Progress in Physical Geography.

In that article, which was peer-reviewed, Doctor Braithwaite tells us how he analyzed 246 glaciers, sampled from both hemispheres and latitudes, between the years 1946 and 1995. This “mass balance analysis” he conducted found that “some glaciers were melting, while a nearly equal number were growing in size, and still others remained stable.” Doctor Braithwaite’s unequivocal conclusion:

“There is no obvious common or global trend of increasing glacier melt in recent years.”

“By some estimates, 160,000 glaciers exist on Earth. Only 63,000 have been inventoried, and only a few hundred have been studied in the detail described by Braithwaite” (“It Would Be Nice to Know More about Ice,” Jay Lehr).

On the basis of that logical fallacy known as the fallacy of insufficient evidence, all glacier fears are stopped cold right there.

But in fact that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Keith Echelmeyer, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute, says this:

“To make a case that glaciers are retreating, and that the problem is global warming, is very hard to do… The physics are very complex. There is much more involved than just the climate response.”

Mr. Echelmeyer goes on to tell us that in Alaska there are large glaciers advancing in the very same areas where others are retreating.

Quoting Doctor Martin Beniston of the Institute of Geography at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland:

Numerous climatological details of mountains are overlooked by the climate models, which thus makes it difficult to estimate the exact response of glaciers to global warming, because glacier dynamics are influenced by numerous factors other than climate, even though temperature and cloudiness may be the dominant controlling factors. According to the size, exposure and altitude of glaciers, different response times can be expected for the same climatic forcing.

Of course, as Doctor Beniston intimates, the paramount thing to consider in any discussion of glacial melt is the sheer size of these suckers, which because of their size do not respond to heat and cold like the snow in your backyard. According to the excellent glacier program at Rice University, those response times run something like this:

Ice sheet: 100,000 to 10,000 years

Large valley glacier: 10,000 to 1,000 years

Small valley glacier: 1,000 to 100 years

Glaciers are influenced by a variety of local and regional natural phenomena that scientists do not fully comprehend. Besides temperature changes, glaciers also respond to changes in the amount and type of precipitation, changes in sea level and changes in ocean circulation patterns. As a result, glaciers do not necessarily advance during colder weather and retreat during warmer weather (John Carlisle, National Center for Public Policy).

Glaciers Are In World-Wide Retreat — read one New York Times headline recently.

Well, they were anyway, starting decades before industrialization (i.e. increased CO2 output). As IPCC AR4 reports:

Most mountain glaciers and ice caps have been shrinking, with the retreat probably having started about 1850 [NB: the end of the ‘little ice age’]. Although many Northern Hemisphere glaciers had a few years of near balance around 1970, this was followed by increased shrinkage.

Research published by the National Academy of Sciences indicates that the much-touted Peruvian glacier (on p. 53-53) disappeared a few thousand years ago.

There are, moreover, glaciers forming across the globe, in both hemispheres. Here’s a very partial list:

In Norway: Alfotbreen Glacier, Briksdalsbreen Glacier, Nigardsbreen Glacier, Hardangerjøkulen Glacier, Hansebreen Glacier, Jostefonn Glacier, Engabreen Glacier, Helm Glacier, Place Glacier. Indeed, a great number of Scandinavia’s glaciers are exploding.

In France, the Mount Blanc Glacier.

In Ecuador, Antizana 15 Alpha Glacier.

In Argentine, Perito Moreno Glacier, the largest in all of Patagonia, was recently observed to be advancing at about 6 feet per day.

Chile’s Pio XI Glacier, the largest in the southern hemisphere, is also growing.

In Switzerland, Silvretta Glacier.

In Kirghiztan, Abramov Glacier.

In Russian, Malli Glacier is growing and surging.

In New Zealand, as of 2003, all 48 glaciers in the Southern Alps were observed to have grown.

In the United States: Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier, Mount Shuksan, Mount Shasta, Mount McKinley, Mount Hubbard, and Rocky Mountain National Park have all shown recent glacier growth.

“There is evidence that the McGinnis Glacier, a little-known tongue of ice in the central Alaska Range, has surged,” said assistant Professor of Physics Martin Truffer. He recently noticed the lower portion of the glacier was covered in cracks, crevasses, and pinnacles of ice – all telltale signs that the glacier has recently slid forward at higher than normal rates.

There’s also this article from the Associated Press, which I quote only in part:

Geologists exploring Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Park say that they discovered more than 100 additional glaciers here in a single summer, said Mark Verrengia.

Officials previously believed the park, which is 60 miles northwest of Denver, included 20 permanent ice and snow features, including six named glaciers. The new survey, conducted by geologist Jonathan Achuff, shows there are as many as 120 features.

“Comparisons with historical photos suggest that at least some of the glaciers are expanding,” say park officials. “Subtle climate changes may be helping the formation of glaciers or at least reducing their retreat.”

“We’re not running quite in sync with global warming here,” park spokeswoman Judy Visty said.

Not, of course, that it really matters much either way, since the entire climate change issue is predicated upon a stupendously fraudulent premise: a corrupt epistemology.

To say nothing of the fact that, as has been demonstrated repeatedly, the free market is far better equipped to deal with environmental issues than proposed socialist policies — for the simple reason that free markets generate astronomically more capital with which to deal with such issues.

The wealthier the country, the healthier the country.

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Natural Resource and Goods Theory

Carl Menger, Founder of the Austrian School of Economics

The two essential claims of the environmentalists, which I take for granted are already well known to everyone, are (1) that continued economic progress is impossible, because of the impending exhaustion of natural resources (it is from this notion that the slogan “reduce, reuse, recycle” comes), and (2) that continued economic progress, indeed, much of the economic progress that we have had up to now, is destructive of the environment and is therefore dangerous.

The essential policy prescription of the environmentalists is the prohibition of self-interested individual action insofar as the byproduct of such action when performed on a mass basis is alleged damage to the environment. The leading concrete example of this policy prescription is the attempt now underway to force individuals to give up such things as their automobiles and air conditioners on the grounds that the byproduct of hundreds of millions or billions of people operating such devices is to cause global warming. And this same example, of course, is presently the leading example of the alleged dangers of economic progress (source).

In his groundbreaking Principles of Economics, Carl Menger (1840-1921), the founder of the Austrian School of Economics, developed what he came to call the Theory of Goods.

This theory has direct and immediate relevance regarding, for example, global warming, ozone depletion, resource scarcity, and so on. Indeed, its relevance cannot be overstated.

Menger’s Goods Theory begins by pointing out that there is a crucial distinction between objects in and of themselves and “goods” proper.

The object alone — for example, any resource before it actually becomes a resource — does not possess value intrinsically. Rather, it is in relation to human use that the thing becomes valuable. It is precisely this, then, that makes it a good.

Or put another way: a thing becomes a good when it is able to satisfy some human need or want.

Menger lists the following four criteria that need to be simultaneously met to reach what he calls the “goods-character.”

* A human need.

* Such properties as render the thing capable of being brought into a causal connection with the satisfaction of this need.

* Human knowledge of this causal connection.

* Command of the thing sufficient to direct it to the satisfaction of the need (Principles of Economics, page 52).

It is important to note that these last two things are man-made.

It is equally important to realize that the last one is for the most part achieved by means of labor and the capital that that labor produces.

This implies – to quote Dr. Reisman – that the resources provided by nature, such as iron, aluminum, coal, petroleum and so on, are by no means automatically goods. Their goods-character must be created by man, by discovering knowledge of their respective properties that enable them to satisfy human needs and then by establishing command over them sufficient to direct them to the satisfaction of human needs.

For example, iron, which has been present in the earth since the formation of the planet and throughout the entire presence of man on earth, did not become a good until well after the Stone Age had ended. Petroleum, which has been present in the ground for millions of years, did not become a good until the middle of the nineteenth century, when uses for it were discovered. Aluminum, radium, and uranium also became goods only within the last century or century and a half.

The upshot of all this is that nature — or, if you prefer, the environment — is not some relatively limited pool of resources that man merely plucks, exploits, depletes, and then moves on from. On the contrary, as Menger makes incontrovertibly clear, mother nature gives us only the barest material — “the physical properties of the deposits in mines and wells” — but she does not provide the goods-character. We provide that.

“Indeed, there was a time when none of them were goods” (Ibid).

Nature, contrary to what the environmental philosophy would have you believe, does not possess intrinsic value.

That — and nothing else — is the fundamental argument against all of environmentalism.

The earth is a plenum: it’s a solid sphere packed full of chemicals. Those chemical elements are indestructible. They can change properties and forms, but they cannot cease to exist.

That mass of teeming chemicals are all potential resources.

As humans evolve — as we make new discoveries and develop newer and ever newer technologies — we find new resources; we find things we cannot conceive of even months before. We find new uses for things that were once useless, like oil, which is barely 100 years old as a resource (a “goods character”); and we find new ways of using old. We move on from whale oil and wood, to kerosene, to coal, to hydro, to nuclear….

Most of what people think they know about energy is so very wrong that their convictions, heartfelt though they may be, lie beyond logical contradiction or refutation….What most of us think about energy supply is wrong. Energy supplies are unlimited; it is energetic order that’s scarce, and the order in energy that’s expensive….Supplies do not ultimately depend on the addition of reserves, the development of new fuels, or the husbanding of known resources. Energy begets more energy; tomorrow’s supply is determined by today’s consumption. The more energy we seize and use, the more adept we become at finding and seizing still more. What most of us think about energy demand is even more wrong. Our main use of energy isn’t lighting, locomotion, or cooling; what we use energy for, mainly, is to extract, refine, process, and purify energy itself. And the more efficient we become at refining energy in this way, the more we want to use the final product. Thus, more efficient engines, motors, lights, and cars lead to more energy consumption, not less (Peter Huber and Mark Mills, The Bottomless Well).

The earth, far from being “raped and nearly depleted,” has barely been touched.

This mass hysteria regarding CO2 and chlorofluorocarbons and so on is a waste of time and energy.

Human freedom breeds human progress. And progress by definition is not static. The economist Joseph Schumpeter called it creative destruction.

Today’s consumption determines tomorrow’s technology. The more we use, the more we innovate — provided, that is, we are left free to innovate.

Politically and economically free.

The profit motive, as its very name implies, motivates and incentives; for humans have a limitless desire to better their lives.

Wealth not only builds progress; wealth is progress.

If there is a demand for something to replace, for instance, freon, the untrammeled freedom to innovate will meet that demand by far the fastest.

Thus, if it is the environment you’re concerned about, then it is pure, unadulterated laissez-faire capitalism you should be fighting for tooth and nail. It is this, and not centralized power, or the establishment of worldwide central-planning committees to regulate CFCs and CO2 — this is what brings cleaner environments.

To think anything less is to commit a grave logical fallacy.

Real, positive knowledge of the profit motive and the price system, of saving and capital accumulation, of money, economic competition, and economic inequality, and of the harmony of interests among men that results from the joint operation of these leading features of capitalism — all this knowledge is almost entirely lacking on the part of the great majority of today’s intellectuals. To obtain such knowledge, it would be necessary for them to read and study von Mises, who is far and away the most important source of such knowledge. But they have not done this.

Ignorance of the ideas of von Mises — the willful evasion of his ideas — has enabled the last three generations of intellectuals to go on with the delusion that capitalism is an “anarchy of production,” a system of rampant evil, utter madness, and continuous strife and conflict, while socialism is a system of rational planning and order, of morality and justice, and the ultimate universal harmony of all mankind. For perhaps a century and a half, the intellectuals have seen socialism as the system of reason and science and as the ultimate goal of all social progress. On the basis of all that they believe, and think that they know, the great majority of intellectuals even now cannot help but believe that socialism should succeed and capitalism fail (George Reisman, “Environmentalism Refuted”).

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Dr. William Gray and Dr. Kevin Trenberth Debate Global Warming — Part 2

Editor’s Note: this is Part 2 of a two-part debate. Read Part 1 here.

Part 2 — The Debate Rages On:

Dr. William Gray
We Are Not In Climate Crisis

Dr. Gray’s rebuttal to Dr. Trenberth:

Kevin Trenberth has given the standard response that human-induced global warming advocates always give to their critics. He cites the large number of people and the broad effort involved in the last 15 years of IPCC reports, which have shown little variation in their expectations of large amounts of human-induced temperature rise during the rest of the 21st century. He also cites the recognition of the IPCC warming advocates’ views through their award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize Award is a political judgment award and is thus different from the traditional Nobel scientific awards. The Peace Award is not based on the usual verifiable scientific standards of the Nobel awards for chemistry, physics, medicine, etc.

I will respond to 10 statements which Trenberth has made in his rebuttal to my initial comments.His statements are given in quotations and my response.

1. “The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to show that specific global and regional changes resulting from global warming are already upon us. The future projections are for much more warming, but with rates of change perhaps a hundred times as fast as those experienced in nature over the past 10,000 years.” It is by no means clear that the global warming we have experienced over the last 30 and last 100 years is due primarily to human-induced CO2 rises. The globe experienced many natural temperature changes before the Industrial Revolution. How do we know the recent warming is not due to one or a combination of many natural changes that were experienced in the past? There is no way Dr. Trenberth or anybody else can, with any degree of confidence, say that future global warming may be a hundred times faster than anything we have seen in the past. This is pure conjecture.

2. “I don’t know anyone who has so profited” (from the warming scare) Millions of dollars in federal grants and private money have been spent on the study of global warming. It is in the interest of thousands of committed warming advocates that the global warming threat be made credible and be continued.

3. “Open discussion based on sound science is widely encouraged.” Discussion with global warming skeptics has not at all been encouraged. Most skeptics have been ignored and/or denigrated as tools of the fossil-fuel industry. Dr. Trenberth himself has said that I myself am no longer a credible scientist because I doubt the human-induced warming hypothesis. I know of no conferences that have encouraged an open and honest debate between warming advocates and warming skeptics. It has been difficult for warming skeptics to obtain federal research grant support. The warming advocates define “sound science” as science that agrees with them, and they restrict it to only this.

4. “But they (GCMs) are by far the best tool we have for examining the enormously complex weather and climate system, and to replace model results by someone’s belief that has no physical basis does not cut it.” Being the best tool we have does not mean we should necessarily believe the GCMs. I and many of my warming skeptic colleagues do not put much stock in the GCMs. These models have a number of basic flaws. To wit: important sub-grid scale processes such as individual thunderstorm activity are parameterized. I have previously noted that the GCMs don’t issue public forecasts of global temperature one or two-five years in the future because they know they do not have skill at these shorter range time scales. They would lose credibility if they publicly made forecasts that could be verified. Yet the models want us all to believe their forecasts 50-100 years in the future!

5. “I have found that the only scientists who disagree with the IPCC report are those who have not read it and are poorly informed.” This is simply untrue. Thousands of scientists from around the globe who have closely followed the IPCC statements believe that they have grossly exaggerated the influence of CO2 rises on global warming. The IPCC has largely ignored the potential natural processes of global-temperature change, such as the deep ocean current changes. The IPCC continues to assume a positive rain-enhanced water vapor feedback loop when the observations indicate it is slightly negative. There has recently been a coming together of 400 prominent climate scientists from around the globe who have written an open letter to the Secretary General of the UN which voices strong disagreement with the IPCC’s warming conclusions.

6. “The IPCC process is very open.” Not true. The IPCC has not been open. Known warming skeptics have not been invited to participate. Despite my 50-plus years of meteorology experience and 25 years of making seasonal hurricane forecasts I was never approached by the IPCC. This also applies to many of my older experienced meteorology colleagues who tell me they have never been contacted by the IPCC. In general, any climate or meteorological colleague who had previously tipped his hand concerning skepticism about human-induced global warming was not invited to participate in the IPCC process.

7. “The strength of the IPCC report is that it is a consensus report. Far from being a ‘gross exaggeration’ as claimed by Gray, the IPCC report is really solid and conservative.” Kevin Trenberth has been a long-term major player in the IPCC process, and it is to be expected that he views his and his many IPCC colleagues efforts in this way. But there are thousands of experienced climate and meteorology experts who, for very solid reasons, see it otherwise. In science, the majority or the consensus can be and is often wrong. In addition to which, much of the uncertainty included in the actual IPCC report is removed in the Summary for Policymakers (SPMs). Very few individuals (and especially politicians) ever read material beyond the SPM.

8. “As Americans, we should be outraged that the Chinese are dumping huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.” Why should we Americans, with our elevated standard of living, be outraged at the Chinese for trying to elevate their standard of living from the poverty they have had to endure for so long?

9. “And we should be outraged that our politicians have not represented us well in that way. By the same token, the Chinese ought to be just as outraged that Americans are putting about as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.” This statement shows how Trenberth (and the warming advocates in general) have isolated themselves from the economic reality of the global economy. Being “outraged” in Dr. Trenberth’s context means that you believe rising levels of CO2 have been the primary cause of global temperature rise, and that this will continue in the future. I and many of my colleagues do not believe this to be true. We owe our industrial society and elevated standard of living to fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have won out over other energy sources because they are the most economic and the most efficient form of energy. We need to maintain a vibrant growing economy so that we can afford a large commitment to research alternate energy sources. This will entail emitting higher amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. To cut fossil-fuel use so drastically would cause a global upheaval beyond anything Dr. Trenberth imagines. It would also create extreme economic hardship and, at the same time, do virtually nothing to alter global temperatures, as no less than global-warming alarmist Dr. Jim Hansen recently admitted in a court of law. It would keep the non-developed and developing world in a state of grinding poverty. In addition, studies have shown that full adoption of, for example, the proposed Kyoto Protocol would reduce warming only six percent by 2100 compared to “business-as-usual.”

10. “If done in the right way, benefits to the climate through reduced emissions save energy and promote the\ economy, while increasing sustainability.” This is a pie-in-the-sky pipedream. “Done the right way”? How so, precisely? By subverting the most fundamental economic laws, like cost effectiveness, and supply and demand? If the globe were to reduce current CO2 amounts by 20 percent by 2020, and by 80 percent by 2050, as has been proposed, we would see a massive slowdown in global economic development, and the condition of humanity would immediately be made worse. Additionally, there would no longer be the capital – i.e. venture capital – in the economy with which to explore and develop new forms of energy. Technology and progress require money. If something is economically viable, government doesn’t need to subsidize it, or make its use compulsory: the market will naturally provide for it because it is cost-effective. The idea that society would prosper from cutting fossil fuel emissions is an utter illusion. Alternate energy sources are more costly right now, and their compulsory use will only lead to a lower standard of human living – to say nothing of the fact that this sort of governmental coercion is Constitutionally prohibited.

[End]

Global Warming: Coming Ready Or Not

Dr. Kevin Trenberth
Dr. Trenberth’s rebuttal to Dr. Gray’s response:
I will let the Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC stand on its own merits. Responses to Bill Gray’s other comments follow by number.

1. Natural variability does not happen by magic. The energy for warming has to come from somewhere. Ice Ages come and go but have causes associated with changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun, proving that such natural variability has a cause. El Niño is an example of natural variability associated with rearranging heat by ocean currents and we can track where the heat in the warm regions has come from. Similarly, surface ocean warming might occur if the deep ocean cools as currents redistribute heat. Instead we know that the whole ocean is warming and sea level is rising at unprecedented rates. The pattern of observed warming is unlike any natural variation and the rates of change are faster. Hence we can prove that the observed warming is not natural and we can point to the cause: observed increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that trap infrared radiation from escaping to space.

2. Grants to scientists to understand climate are not synonymous with studying global warming. Moreover studying how and why our planet is warming is actually important – or we could not answer silly beliefs that claim otherwise. A grant is to carry out prescribed work and is very different than a gift to an individual to do what one likes with.

3. Conferences and discussions about warming, climate models, and what, if anything, to do about it occur all the time. However, a scientific approach takes evidence into account. Beliefs that are not consistent with evidence discredit the person who continues with them, and such a person is less likely to be invited to participate in the events.

4. It has been said that “all models are wrong, some are useful.” We think it is better to use models demonstrated to have skill. Today’s best climate models are now able to reproduce the observed major climate changes of the past century. When the models are run without human changes in the atmosphere, the natural forcings and intrinsic natural variability fail to capture the increase in global surface temperature over the past 35 years or so. But when the anthropogenic effects are included, the models simulate the observed global temperature record with impressive fidelity. Observed changes in storms and precipitation are also replicated only by models with human changes in atmospheric composition.

5. I stand by my comment. It is not correct that IPCC assumes anything of the sort claimed. Whether the 400 scientists have any climate credentials or are prominent I leave to others. I wonder if they have collectively published as many climate papers as I have?

6. Open invitations to review the IPCC drafts are widely broadcast. I am sorry Bill was not personally invited. He would obviously be very surprised if I named all the skeptics who have participated in IPCC.

7. Language in the Summary for Policy Makers is not technical by design but calibrated language expressing confidence and likelihoods is included. The IPCC reports are widely used as reference works and have thousands of citations.

8. I agree that an increased standard of living is a fine goal. However, acceptable ways to achieve that goal do not include short-term gains at the expense of long-term disaster.

9. Fossil fuels have won out in part because much of their true cost is not borne by the user, but rather the air pollution and environmental damage is borne by all. We need a sustainable economy that serves the people, not one that continues to grow for its own sake and which damages the environment. The right way refers especially to the timetable over which changes are implemented along with appropriate incentives and penalties. The average life of a car is 12 years in the United States and so a fleet of cars can be changed on that timeframe. Changing coal-fired power stations takes the order of their typical lifetime: 35 to 40 years. How is it that, unlike other states, California since 1973 has continued to grow without increasing energy use per capita? Conservation and reducing waste through very practical measures works, as is demonstrated by differences among states and countries with similar standards of living but very different per capita energy use.

[End]

Dr. Gray’s Closing Comments:

I greatly commend Kevin Trenberth for agreeing to debate me on this global warming issue. Many global warming advocates will not engage is such open and opposite dialogs. I think it is in the public’s interest that such back and forth debates continue and expand with other scientists of opposite persuasions on the warming topic. I also commend Ray Harvey for suggesting and moderating this exchange between myself and Kevin Trenberth.

This was Part 2 of a 2-part debate. Read Part 1 here.