As the Occupy Wall Street movement starts to sputter and annoy people, a recent announcement by New York University pretty much sums it up.
Biology
President Obama Speaking at Solyndra
Congressman Tim Bishop has not been able to keep from spending, no matter what. The Postal Service has an $8.5 billion deficit, and Tim Bishop is out there fighting to keep an unneeded post office open. We are trillions of dollars in debt and he comes out blasting the Tea Party, because they want Congress to not waste anymore money on green boondoggles like Solyndra.
The 26th annual Martin Luther King, Jr. National Holiday celebration sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) held at the New York Sheraton last night was a remarkable event in the midst of all the babble about discourse and civility. Of course it was civil; it would not be any other way, but considering the venom that has flowed in the past year with charges from racism during the health care debate to causing the Tucson shootings it struck a very different and positive tone.
2010 was a tumultuous year. The Tea Party really found its voice and let it be heard. A huge shift in power in Congress came on Election night, but Pelosi, Reid and company tried to do in four weeks what they couldn’t do in two years. But that shouldn’t be surprising; they didn’t respect the will of the people when the people rose up against ObamaCare, why should they respect the voice of the people on Election Day?
On October 17, 2010 members of TeaParty365 and Media Matters gathered in front of the New York Times headquarters and later in the day at the headquarters of NBC to protest the liberal distortions of those and other main stream media outlets.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fCL_o-WhFo&hd=1
It is interesting to note the tea party members who can be seen (Chinese, black, young white female) are not what the main stream media keep telling us make up the tea parties, while the liberal who stops to curse at the protest is an old white guy. The mainstream media did come to see what was going on and interviewed the organizers of the event as well as this correspondent, but seemed bored and disappointed that some self fulfillling controversy didn’t break out. Attempts to find any footage of their filming after the fact were fruitless.
In 1962 Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring, about which some have credited the beginning of the environmental movement. It also led to the subsequent ban of DDT in 1972. DDT was accused of causing cancer and in damaging wildlife, particularly birds by causing eggshells to thin.
Prior to this DDT was believed to be a miracle, and the scientist who discovered it, Dr. Paul Muller, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1948. During WWII, GIs would cover themselves liberally with the substance before heading into the jungles for protection against malaria. It is also believed that its use eradicated malaria in the U.S. and other developed countries.
Flawed Science
A 1969 study found a higher incidence of tumors in mice that were fed DDT. Let’s think about that. A single study found an increase in cancer in mice fed DDT. However over 20 years of widespread use among humans did not show any increase in the cancer rate among those populations that used them. Upon closer examination of the study they found that both the subject and control groups had increased levels of tumors. Oops. It appears that both groups were fed moldy food that contained a carcinogen. When the test was repeated, neither group had any tumors.
The studies of birds whose eggshells were thin, were also given closer scrutiny. It was determined that the cause was due to a calcium deficiency, not DDT. Actually during the period of greatest DDT use in the U.S. many of the bird species under study grew in numbers rather than fell.
Don’t Let Science Stand in the Way of Politics
In 1971, authority for pesticides was transferred from the Department of Agriculture to the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency. What better way to kick off a new government bureaucracy than some bold action:
“In April 1972, after seven months of testimony, Judge Edmund Sweeney stated that ‘DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man. . . . The uses of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife. . . . The evidence in this proceeding supports the conclusion that there is a present need for the essential uses of DDT.’” — Sweeney EM. EPA Hearing Examiner’s recommendations and findings concerning DDT hearings. 25 April 1972 (40 CFR 164.32)
However, two months later, the new head of the EPA, William Ruckleshaus, instituted the ban on DDT. This was done without him attending a single hearing on the matter as it was discussed over a seven month period or reading the transcripts.
The Tragic Results
In Ceylon, modern day Sri Lanka, widespread use of DDT cut the number of malaria cases from 2.8 million in 1948 to 17, that’s right, seventeen in 1963. Spraying was stopped in 1964 and by 1969 the number of cases had risen again to 2.5 million.
It is estimated that in the last ten years alone the number of deaths worldwide from malaria is over 27 million.
There is an aggressive program today to raise money to buy bed nets to protect children in Africa and other parts of the world where malaria is still rampant. Billions of dollars are estimated to be needed to buy and deliver these nets. One of the positive factors about DDT was that it was inexpensive, around seventeen cents per pound.
If only had cooler heads prevailed, and the “science” looked at with a reasonable dose of skepticism, tens of millions of lives would have been saved and malaria, perhaps eradicated. But when some in the environmental movement latch onto a position it soon moves into the realm of settled or consensus science.
The Next Blunder
So before we drive the world over the next environmental cliff, perhaps it’s time to tune out Al Gore, take a cleansing breath, and take a closer look at the science with clear eyes. What the global warming, er, global climate change crowd is proposing would cost in the trillions. Let’s ask if what some scientists are saying that global temperature peaked about ten years ago, why is the earth cooling if we continue to pour more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Why are we calling carbon dioxide, which is essential to life…we exhale it, trees take it in and give off oxygen…a pollutant? What if we eradicate the pollutant, carbon dioxide like we did DDT?
Will there be anyone around to count the damage?
Do you like to breath? I do. Do you like trees and enjoy their beauty? I do. So what’s the problem? The problem is that Obama’s EPA is considering a ruling that would declare Carbon Dioxide a “dangerous pollutant“. So what do you do with a dangerous pollutant? Well, you stop it, ban it, eliminate it so that it no longer harms us or the environment. No?
Carbon Dioxide as a Pollutant
The problem is that every time you exhale, part of what you are exhaling is carbon dioxide. So with every breath you are dangerously polluting the earth. You must be stopped. Your breathing must be banned. You must be eliminated.
What about all those dangerous trees and plants?
“When the sun is shining, plants perform photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, releasing oxygen in the process.”
Trees and plants absorb carbon dioxide and convert it into oxygen. So if we eliminate this dangerous pollutant, wouldn’t it stand to reason that plants would die? If plants die, they don’t produce oxygen and people and other oxygen breathing life would die. What a great idea! Let’s ban a dangerous pollutant and in doing so, kill all life on earth as we know it. Why didn’t I think of that?
Global Warming, I mean, Global Climate Change
Since we have been seeing record cold temperatures across the country and it seems to snow everywhere Al Gore goes to speak (is GOD playing with him?), we hear less and less about global warming. Now it’s called global climate change, which in my observation happens every day, season, year for as long as I can remember and I expect that it will continue to do so.
The problem is that those who advocate the declaration of carbon dioxide as a pollutant are the same people that say it is settled science that the increase in temperatures, or as it is now called climate change, are man made. The truth is that there is significant evidence to the contrary that increases in carbon dioxide are not the cause of temperature increases, but the result of temperature increases caused by solar activity (see previous post).
Let Cooler Heads Prevail
I have no problem in working toward reducing the amount of anything that is a byproduct into the atmosphere. Recycling is good. Cutting back on energy waste is good. Renewable energy helps us get off foreign oil from despotic dictators which is good. But we have to avoid going around the bend and taking extreme positions that the very act of breathing results in a dangerous pollutant. Once you give that power to the government, more of you liberty vanishes and there is no telling how far they will go with it.
