Prosecutions Coming for Global Warming Deniers?

[avonjax]

Once the GW nonsense is definitively proven to be wrong, you will not see any apologies from the left.  They will just move onto the next hysterical myth, like DDT or acid rain, to advance their agendas.  It never stops with them.  They use lies and propaganda to advance a hidden agenda which is socialism and a worship of the Earth and its creatures which is both anti-religious and perverse.

Yes you should not worship the earth, but you should protect it. Man was put here to take care of it not destroy it. Quoting from the KJ Version of the Bible it says that God "shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth."
That seems clear to me.....
To share my view of the creatures of the earth, we should not abuse, be cruel or torture animals, and  I respect peta for their desire to protect animals, but I think they go too far. I believe that it is okay to use animals for research if it benefits humans, but I think using cruel and torturous means to do it is equally wrong....
I love our planet and the creatures on it, but I certainly don't worship either and just because other people feel like me doesn't makes us fanatic or wrong....

[Eazy E]

Once the GW nonsense is definitively proven to be wrong, you will not see any apologies from the left.  They will just move onto the next hysterical myth, like DDT or acid rain, to advance their agendas.  It never stops with them.  They use lies and propaganda to advance a hidden agenda which is socialism and a worship of the Earth and its creatures which is both anti-religious and perverse.

Wow, guy, where do you come up with this stuff?
You realize that actual scientists-- real people who actually know what they are talking about-- have, as a massive group, almost ACROSS THE BOARD stated, and shown with studies, that this is a real phenomenon.  Further, actual journalists, not just people posting on message boards, have proven that the very tiny, infinitely small group who disagree with GW as being real are almost all funded by oil companies or other industries whose financial interests very much hinge upon the idea that GW is not real.

How you cannot take this seriously is beyond me. Your idea that some amorphous huge group of people, republicans and democrats alike, as well as people worldwide, would make this up as a means of imposing some socialist agenda are so crazy that I almost think you are some sort of hilarious political satirist. Sadly, I know I am mistaken.

And while you keep your head stuck in a black hole, real people in places across the world are reaping the havoc of GW as it destroys their crops and their lands and forces them to starve.
So, while it's fun for you and Rush to pretend this doesn't exist, and use it for political gains, I would say the disguisting and horrible effects it's having on people across the world are exactly the kind of causes Jesus Christ would champion.

And, while we're on it-- you actually think respecting and caring for our Earth is anti-religious? Because God didn'r create Earth as probably His single greatest achievement?

Overall, I am incredibly saddened that someone would even type the words you did as a serious statement.  This is all made up, just like Katrina caused no oil spills, right?  

[gatorback]

He reads it in Petro Weekly.  He's on the side of big oil.  Lol.  (I don't know this for sure.)

[Eazy E]

Al Gore says global-warming skeptics are a group diminishing almost as rapidly as the mountain glaciers.

Myron Ebell begs to differ.

Hurricanes, heat waves, flooding, and droughtsâ€"sure, they've stirred some fears. And some corporate allies that used to mock global warmingâ€"such as Detroit's Big Three automakers and oil giant Texacoâ€"have, like the glaciers, melted away from the fight. But, for the hardest of the hard core, these are glorious days.

Like holdouts in the Alamo, the last of the skeptics plug away at the thousands of mainstream scientists now arrayed against them. They take potshots at the scores of studies that say global warming is here, aiming for small incongruities. And they bridle when asked if they take money, as nearly all do, from ExxonMobil.

Many of the skeptics are curmudgeons: old, bald, and bitter. But not Myron Ebell. Tall, slim, and youthful at 53, his blond hair swept back from a handsome face set off by serious glasses, Ebell is one of that rare breed, an elegant nerd. On television, facing interrogation by moderators who clearly feel he should be tarred and feathered for his views, he stays cool and fires back with withering zingers. In the recent surprise hit movie Thank You for Smoking, based on Christopher Buckley's novel, actor Aaron Eckhardt played a tobacco lobbyist who jokes about being a merchant of death and gleefully outdebates all comers. Ebell could easily star in the sequel, Thank You for Warming.

Ebell is a public-policy wonkâ€"not, he hastens to clarify, a lobbyist for the energy industry, as many of his fellow skeptics are, or a scientist whose research is underwritten by the energy industry, or a politician who takes contributions from the energy industry. He lives in a suburb of Washington, D.C., where he and his wife are raising four children, ranging in age from an 11-year-old son to a 21-year-old daughter, all of whom, Ebell says proudly, take a skeptical view of global warming. He goes to work at a think tank on Connecticut Avenue called the Competitive Enterprise Institute (C.E.I.), where his office is modest, but not his influence.

Every day, journalists around the world call C.E.I. for its take on the latest global-warming studies, and Ebell, or one of his colleagues who also deal with the pressâ€"Marlo Lewis, Iain Murray, and Christopher Hornerâ€"happily obliges. The journalists like to air all viewsâ€""on the one hand, on the other"â€"so they plug in Ebell's latest retorts, giving them equal weight with new scientific findings. Gore is right in one sense: almost no scientist doubts that global warming is here, that man-made greenhouse gases are to blame, or that if we don't cut back on those gases fairly soon we'll be in a heap of trouble. But as the "other hand" in all those news stories, Ebell and his quotable cohorts sustain the impression that a scientific debate is still raging. The more studies that confirm global warming, the more ink Ebell gets. Journalist Ross Gelbspan, a longtime skeptic-tracker, says that's how the skeptics operate. With those doubts neatly planted in the press, the public shrugs, politicians push the problem off to another day, and ExxonMobil parries new fossil-fuel regulations, earning more windfall profits in exchange for a pittance to the skeptics and their work.

Like its ideological soulmates, C.E.I. has taken moneyâ€"a considerable amountâ€"from ExxonMobil. Ebell says that's irrelevant. "We're not beholden to our donors, because we don't say, 'If you give us this money, we'll do this project,'" he explains, tilting back nonchalantly in a C.E.I. conference-room chair. "I can't even quite tell you who supports us on global warming." In fact, Ebell could go to the ExxonMobil Web site and see that in 2005 the oil giant gave C.E.I. $270,000, a not inconsiderable portion of the institute's $3.7 million budget, and that between 1998 and 2005 ExxonMobil gave it more than $2 million. He could also ask one of his colleagues and learn that C.E.I. gets money from the American Petroleum Institute, various pharmaceutical companies (Dow Chemical, Eli Lilly), and William A. Dunn of Dunn Capital Management. But he says he's never done that. Since its founding, 23 years ago, by free marketer Fred Smith as an all-purpose bullhorn against government regulations, C.E.I. has simply tinkered with issues it choosesâ€"from higher mileage standards in cars (bad) to the Endangered Species Act (worse)â€"trying to affect public policy and hoping donors come along for the ride.

That may be how C.E.I. sees it. To ExxonMobil, though, C.E.I. has been one of the brightest stars in its constellation of climate skeptics. Other oil companies fund global-warming-skeptic think tanks through the American Petroleum Institute, and various coal interests weigh in, too. But, for the skeptics, ExxonMobil is Big Daddy.

From 1998 to 2005, ExxonMobil spent a reported $16 million funding climate studies at some three dozen institutes. The recipients range from the well-known right-wing clearinghouse American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research ($240,000 from ExxonMobil in 2005) to the obscure Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($90,000 in 2005), bookends to a Who's Who of skeptics. None of these groups has any standing in mainstream climate science. Their fellows and scholars crank out policy papers that purport to disprove the latest findings about global warming and only rarely publish studies in peer-reviewed technical scientific journals. Instead, the institutes publish the papers themselves or get sympathetic newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times to run them as op-ed pieces. From there, the papers are taken up by a handful of lawmakersâ€"such as Oklahoma Republican senator James Inhofe and Texas Republican congressman Joe Barton, who deride global warming as an alarmist hoaxâ€"and get disseminated on the Internet like viral advertising. It's an all too effective approach.

[Charleston native]

  The response of the Climate Changers is truly hilarious. Eazy, I would love to know what website you found that article on. I notice that you didn't provide a link...probably because the source is some liberal propaganda piece.

You can't possibly tell me that this movement is not socialist driven. Every aspect of it points to socialism. I guess ignorance is bliss; or in this case, ignorance makes you feel significant and relevant as you drive a SmartCar, eat grass, and use CFLs in belief that you're saving the world.

Avonjax, I also would like you to find that specific quote in Scripture...then give me the whole chapter where it comes from so we can see the quote's context.

I guess 31,000 scientists from Oregon and thousands among the APS don't really count. Not to mention the prominent scientists from the International Conference on Climate Change.

Remember, there is a consensus "ACROSS THE BOOOOOOARD"! 

[avonjax]

The response of the Climate Changers is truly hilarious. Eazy, I would love to know what website you found that article on. I notice that you didn't provide a link...probably because the source is some liberal propaganda piece.

You can't possibly tell me that this movement is not socialist driven. Every aspect of it points to socialism. I guess ignorance is bliss; or in this case, ignorance makes you feel significant and relevant as you drive a SmartCar, eat grass, and use CFLs in belief that you're saving the world.

Avonjax, I also would like you to find that specific quote in Scripture...then give me the whole chapter where it comes from so we can see the quote's context.

I guess 31,000 scientists from Oregon and thousands among the APS don't really count. Not to mention the prominent scientists from the International Conference on Climate Change.

Remember, there is a consensus "ACROSS THE BOOOOOOARD"! 

Revelation 11:18
If you don't understand the context I will try to enlighten you....

[BridgeTroll]

I am still in the undecided camp on this issue.  I do not deny that there is some evidence of warming, I am slao aware that the earth was much warmer than it is now or that it is predicted to be.  In fact we are still coming out of the last ice age.  For most of the time life has existed on earth there HAS NOT been ice in the arctic nor the antarctic.  Only since humans came on the scene has there been ice in either place.  In addition there seems to me to be waaay to much info that is infered thru core samples and such that can be open to interpretation.  Humans have really only been making accurate measurements of temperatures and weather for the past hundred years or so and even those measurements were not under uniform conditions that are expected today.

I am all for steps to reduce pollution and carbon emissions and conserve energy and move towards alternatives.  There is no reason that an non GW believer cannot uphold the cleaner planet ideology.  I have seen too many of these "crisis" come and go over time.  I clearly remember "Global cooling"... the rhetoric between the two sides was the same...

$.02

[Charleston native]

...By the way, the idea that there are 31,000 'scientists' in Oregon alone, much less such a vast group of climate change deniers is pretty laughable.

Why not a gazillion?

Did someone build an Institute for the Scientifically Insane in Portland without telling anyone?

Are they counting all the sperms active in the climate changed deniers as potential scientists?

Stephen, please tell me you're joking here. You do know that I meant the 31,000 scientists affiliated with the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine? Just because an institute is located in Oregon doesn't mean all the petition signers are from there. Good grief.

You would think that somebody who agrees with Carlin's statements wouldn't buy into this hoax. This is probably the only issue I agreed with Carlin on, albeit from a different premise source.

[RiversideGator]

Well I certainly agree with you, BT.  But I have to remind you of the immortal words of St. George Carlin.

"Saint" Carlin??  What a joke!

[Charleston native]

Again, no linked sources. How about add that to your articles so we can see them ourselves?

Also, in this day and age, petitions and their signatures can be created via email. I would think the scientific community tried to use technology in the 21st century, last I checked.

[Charleston native]

For some reason, my work computer is blocking the links out. Odd.

[Charleston native]

BTW, that still doesn't completely negate the petition's relevance, though in the eyes of liberals, it must have some sort of "mainstream" seal of approval.

That also doesn't negate the other thousands from APS and ICCC.

The point is that mostly universal consensus on this hoax is BS.

[RiversideGator]

um.  ok.  btw, here is the actual truth on DDT:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddt
and acid rain:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain

Do you ever bother to check up on things in the reality based community before you post this bizarre crap?

Do you expect the "Left" to apologize to someone because scientists were RIGHT about the dangers of Massive deployment of synthetic chemicals without testing first?

Or maybe hide in shame because of the discovery of Dead Lakes and Acid Rain by Naturalists and Biochemists dating as far back as 1857?

Seriously River.  These little daisy chains of illogical connections and conclusions are troubling to say the least.

Based on that twisted logic, shouldnt Reaganites apologize because by undermining the Soviet Union they empowered and armed the Mujehaddin while it was being led by Osama Bin Laden?

Dont you owe us all a big apology for international terrorism?

Interesting that you would cast yourself as part of the "reality based community".   

In any event, I really dont have time to refute all of your straw man arguments because I have a job but as for DDT its ban, it has been very harmful to people while its use may have caused some problems for wildlife due to overuse (which was a correctable problem).  Estimates are that millions of people in the Third World have died from the ban on DDT.

Soon after the program collapsed, mosquito control lost access to its crucial tool, DDT. The problem was overuseâ€"not by malaria fighters but by farmers, especially cotton growers, trying to protect their crops. The spray was so cheap that many times the necessary doses were sometimes applied. The insecticide accumulated in the soil and tainted watercourses. Though nontoxic to humans, DDT harmed peregrine falcons, sea lions, and salmon. In 1962 Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, documenting this abuse and painting so damning a picture that the chemical was eventually outlawed by most of the world for agricultural use. Exceptions were made for malaria control, but DDT became nearly impossible to procure. "The ban on DDT," says Gwadz of the National Institutes of Health, "may have killed 20 million children."

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0707/feature1/text4.html

[RiversideGator]

I would also note that your wikipedia source has been changed recently as it used to have an extensive explanation of the disputes regarding DDT.  Now it has fallen victim to the enviro-censors who are common on wikipedia.

Here is a nice piece on the DDT issue:

DDT, Fraud, and Tragedy
By Gerald and Natalie Sirkin
Published 2/25/2005 12:08:42 AM

"Fraud in science is a major problem." So begins "DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud" by the late J. Gordon Edwards, Professor Emeritus of Entomology at San Jose State University in San Jose, California.

The article was published shortly after his death last July in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Fall, 2004. It is based in part on his 34-page manuscript discussing fraud in acid rain, ozone holes, ultraviolet radiation, carbon dioxide, global warming, and pesticides, particularly DDT.

His publications distinguish Edwards as the leading authority on the environmental science and politics of DDT.

In World War I, prior to the discovery of the insecticidal potential of DDT, typhus killed more servicemen than bullets. In World War II, typhus was no problem. The world has marveled at the effectiveness of DDT in fighting malaria, yellow fever, dengue, sleeping sickness, plague, encephalitis, West Nile Virus, and other diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, fleas, and lice.

Today, the greatest killer and disabler is malaria, which kills a person every 30 seconds. By the 1960s, DDT had brought malaria near to extinction. "To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable," said the National Academy of Sciences.

But the handwriting was on the wall when William Ruckelshaus, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, in an address to the Audubon Society in Milwaukee in 1971, clearly stated his position:

    As a member of the Audubon Society myself, and knowing the impact of this chlorinated hydrocarbon in certain species of raptorial birds, I was highly suspicious of this compound [DDT], to put it mildly. But I was compelled by the facts to temper my emotions.

    "As you know, many mass uses of DDT have already been prohibited, including all uses around the home. Certainly we'll all feel better when the persistent compounds can be phased out in favor of biological controls. But awaiting this millennium does not permit the luxury of dodging the harsh decisions of today.



Rachel Carson began the countrywide assault on DDT with her 1962 book, Silent Spring. Carson made errors, some designed to scare, about DDT and synthetic pesticides. "For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception to death," she intoned.

"This is nonsense," commented pesticide specialists Bruce N. Ames and Thomas H. Jukes of the University of California at Berkeley. (Ames is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, world renowned. Jukes, who died a few years ago, was a professor of biophysics and a leader in the defense of DDT.) "Every chemical is dangerous if the concentration is too high. Moreover, 99.9 percent of the chemicals humans ingest are natural... produced by plants to kill off predators," Ames and Jukes wrote in Reason in 1993.

Carson, not very scrupulous, implied that the renowned Albert Schweitzer agreed with her on DDT by dedicating Silent Spring "to Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who said 'Man has lost the capacity to foresee and forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.'" Professor Edwards doubted the implication. He got a copy of Schweitzer's autobiography. Dr. Schweitzer was referring to atomic warfare. Professor Edwards found on page 262, "How much labor and waste of time these wicked insects do cause, but a ray of hope, in the use of DDT, is now held out to us."

But Miss Carson's skillful writing was enough to direct a new-born environmental industry looking for a hot issue into a feverish campaign against DDT. "Rachel Carson set the style for environmentalism. Exaggeration and omission of pertinent contradictory evidence are acceptable for the holy cause," wrote Professors Ames and Jukes.


THE FIRST CHARGE AGAINST DDT was that it causes cancer. No search has ever turned up any evidence, despite massive use of DDT in agriculture in the 1950s and 1960s. Wayland Hayes, U.S. Public Health Service scientist, for 18 months, fed to human volunteers, daily, three times the quantity of DDT that the average American was ingesting annually. None experienced any adverse effect, then or six to ten years later.

Workers without wearing protective clothing, with nine to 19 years of continuous exposure to DDT in the Montrose Chemical Company which manufactured DDT, never developed a single case of cancer. DDT caused no illness in the 130,000 men who sprayed it on the interior walls of mud and thatched huts, nor the millions of people who lived in them. Professor Edwards in his classroom occasionally ate a tablespoon of DDT to illustrate to his students that it is not harmful. Indeed, DDT is so safe that canned baby food was permitted to contain five parts per million.

"There has never been any convincing evidence that DDT (or pesticide residues in food) has ever caused cancer in man," concluded Ames and Jukes.

In fact, DDT prevents cancer. "DDT in the diet has repeatedly been shown to enhance the production of hepatic enzymes in mammals and birds. Those enzymes inhibit tumors and cancers in humans as well as wildlife," wrote Professor Edwards in 1992.

Unable to find harm to human health, DDT opponents turned to bird health, alleging a decline of bald eagles and other birds of prey, which they associated with heavy DDT usage. Rachel Carson led the accusation. It has been repeated so often and so passionately that the public is still convinced of it.

The charge is that DDT thinned the shells of eggs. When nesting parent birds sat on the eggs, the shells cracked and no babies hatched. Carson charged that DDT was bringing bald eagles and robins to the "verge of extinction" -- while noted ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson was reporting that the robin was the most abundant bird in North America.

Bald eagles between 1941 and 1960 migrating over Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania, doubled during the first six years of DDT-use. Their numbers increased from 9,291 in 1946 -- before much DDT was used -- to 16,163 in 1963 and 19,765 in 1968.

Professor Edwards reviews how bald eagles died of non-DDT causes. In Alaska, 128,000 were shot for bounty payments between 1917 and 1956. Between 1960 and 1965, 76 bald eagles found dead were autopsied: 46 had been shot or trapped; 7 had died of impact injuries from flying into buildings or towers. Between 1965 and 1980, shootings, trappings, electrocutions, and impact injuries chiefly accounted for their deaths.

Although some birds declined before DDT, they became much more abundant during the years of greatest DDT-use. But facts have not impeded the endless repetition of Carson's bird myth.

Scientists tested the popular shell-thinning hypothesis. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists fed birds for 112 days on a diet with 100 times as much DDT as they were getting from the environment. No thinning of egg shells was found. The DDT had no effect on the birds.

One experimenter, to demonstrate eggshell-thinning, fed quail a diet with DDT but containing only one-fifth of the normal amount of calcium. His experiment succeeded in producing thinner eggshells, but his deception was exposed.


IN 1969, THE ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND (then, three guys with a clipboard; now "Environmental Defense"), Sierra Club, and National Audubon Society petitioned the Secretary of Agriculture to ban DDT, claiming it is carcinogenic to humans. He agreed to partially phase it out by December 31, 1970, which did not satisfy the environmentalists.

The Audubon Society and the Natural Resources Defense Council, to stop exports of DDT to third-world countries, instituted a number of lawsuits, ultimately gaining the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1977.

EPA appointed Administrative Law Judge Edmund Sweeney to evaluate DDT. In 1971-2 he conducted a seven-month hearing. EPA actually participated, testifying against DDT!

Judge Sweeney, after 80 days of testimony from 150 expert scientists, ruled that DDT "is not a carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic hazard to man" and does "not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wild life. There is a present need for the continued use of DDT for the essential uses defined in this case."

The Environmental Defense Fund appealed Sweeney's decision. The appeal should have been passed to an independent jurist, according to Ruckelshaus's general counsel, John Quarles, but Ruckelshaus decided to rule on it himself. Not surprisingly, he upheld his own ban "on the grounds that 'DDT poses a carcinogenic risk' to humans." (In 1994, he was to deny that that was the basis for the ban.) He had banned DDT though he had not attended a day of the 80-day hearing nor read a page of the transcript (as he told the Santa Ana Register, July 23, 1972).

In 1979, on April 26, Ruckelshaus wrote the American Farm Bureau Federation that his ban was imposed for political, not scientific, reasons: "Science, along with other disciplines such as economics, has a role to play, but the ultimate judgment remains political," he wrote. But in 1994 he wrote in a letter to the Wall Street Journal, "The scientific basis for the ban was solid then and still stands. DDT is a highly persistent chemical that moves up the food chain, and it accumulates in the fatty tissue of humans." However, according to Professor Edwards, it does no harm. Professor Edwards says that "DDT residues do not 'build up' in animal food-chains, because they are metabolized and excreted by fish, birds and mammals."

In his March 24, 1994 Wall Street Journal letter, Ruckelshaus wrote that the direct ecological effect, and the basis for his decision, "was its proven impact on the thickness of egg shells of raptors, birds such as the brown pelican and the peregrine falcon. The decision was not based on any claim of human carcinogenicity." But in 1972, he had overridden Judge Sweeney on the ground that DDT does pose a carcinogenic risk to humans.


THE BROWN PELICAN AND the peregrine falcon did suffer declines in population, but not because of DDT, according to Professor Edwards's article, "DDT Effects on Bird Abundance and Reproduction."

Brown pelicans suffered, not from fish they ate but from their catastrophic reproductive failure caused by the great Santa Barbara oil spill surrounding their nesting colonies on the island of Anacapa. Federal and California officials ignored the oil spill and attributed pelican difficulties "solely to DDT in the environment."

In Texas, peregrine falcons declined from 5,000 in 1918 to 200 in 1941, three years before DDT. Around the Gulf of Mexico, they declined from 1918 to 1934 by 82 percent, but the 1935 survey was done 15 years before any DDT appeared.

Likewise, in the East, peregrine falcons declined long before there was any DDT present there, because of egg-collectors and falconers. Falconers "raided every nest they could find" and shot falcons on sight.

Ruckelshaus, besides ruling on the appeal to uphold his own reversal of Sweeney's decision, refused Freedom-of-Information-Act demands for papers relating to the case -- he called them "internal memos" -- effectively preventing scientists from refuting his Opinion. He also refused to file an Environmental Impact Statement on the effects of his DDT ban.

In 1970, in a brief supporting the Secretary of Agriculture in the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Ruckelshaus praised DDT: "DDT is not endangering the public health and has an amazing and exemplary record of safe use. DDT, when properly used at recommended concentrations, does not cause a toxic response in man or other mammals and is not harmful. The carcinogenic claims regarding DDT are unproved speculation."

Subsequently, Ruckelshaus, alleging adverse effects of DDT, signed fund-raising letters on behalf of the Environmental Defense Fund. On his personal stationery, he wrote, "EDF's scientists blew the whistle on DDT by showing it to be a cancer hazard, and three years later, when the dust had cleared, EDF had won."

In a January 12, 2005, letter to the editor of the New York Times, Ruckelshaus rose to the plight of the poor by urging more spending. "If the world were to invest on an annual basis even a small percentage of the funds pledged to tsunami relief toward improving health care systems, transportation, infrastructure and communications systems, we would improve the quality of life for millions of poor people around the world . . ." He said nothing about how his ban on DDT was causing the death of millions from malaria.


FOLLOWING RUCKELSHAUS'S BAN, the USAID, prodded by a lawsuit by the Audubon Society and the Natural Resources Defense Council, undertook to discourage other countries from using DDT by threatening to stop foreign aid to any country using it. Its threat spread Ruckelshaus's ban worldwide.

The effects of giving up DDT were immediately felt in the malarial areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Sri Lanka (Ceylon), reacting to Silent Spring, in the 1960s gave up DDT. Its malarial cases had decreased from 2.8 million down to 17. After Sri Lanka gave it up, malaria shot back up to over 2.5 million.

South American countries gave up DDT and suffered the customary rise in malaria. Ecuador, which manufactures DDT, resumed using it in 1993. By 1995, Ecuador had reduced its malarial cases by 61 percent.

Spraying the inside walls of huts with DDT once or twice a year stops the spread of malaria by repelling mosquitoes from huts. USAID agreed, but it determined that insecticide-treated bed nets are "more cost-effective."

The search for an effective substitute for DDT continues to fail 30 years after the Ruckelshaus ban. The search for a treatment for malaria continues to fail; the mutations of the malaria virus soon make a drug ineffective. The search for a malaria-vaccine continues to fail.

The environmentalists' ideological opposition to pesticides has no basis in science. It is a death sentence to millions.

Gerald and Natalie Sirkin write the "Natalie's Corner" column for Citizen News, a weekly in New Fairfield and Sherman, Connecticut.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7812

[BridgeTroll]

http://science.jrank.org/pages/5371/Polar-Ice-Caps-Polar-ice-caps-geologic-history.html

Polar ice caps and geologic history
Although the polar ice caps have been in existence for millions of years, scientists disagree over exactly how long they have survived in their present form. It is generally agreed that the polar cap north of the Arctic Circle, which covers the Arctic Ocean, has undergone contraction and expansion through some 26 different glaciations in just the past few million years. Parts of the Arctic have been covered by the polar ice cap for at least the last five million years, with estimates ranging up to 15 million. The Antarctic ice cap is more controversial; although many scientists believe extensive ice has existed there for 15 million years, others suggest that volcanic activity on the western half of the continent it covers causes the ice to decay, and the current south polar ice cap is therefore no more than about three million years old.

At least five times since the formation of the earth, because of changes in global climate, the polar ice has expanded north and south toward the equator and has stayed there for at least a million years. The earliest of these known ice ages was some two billion years ago, during the Huronian epoch of the Precambrian era. The most recent ice age began about 1.7 million years in the Pleistocene epoch. It was characterized by a number of fluctuations in North polar ice, some of which expanded over much of modern North America and Europe, covered up to half of the existing continents, and measured as much as 1.8 mi (3 km) deep in some places. These glacial expansions locked up even more water, dropping sea levels worldwide by more than 300 ft (100 m). Animal species that had adapted to cold weather, like the mammoth, thrived in the polar conditions of the Pleistocene glaciations, and their ranges stretched south into what is now the southern United States.

The glaciers completed their retreat and settled in their present positions about 10â€"12,000 years ago. There have been other fluctuations in global temperatures on a smaller scale, however, that have sometimes been known popularly as ice ages. The 400 year period between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries is sometimes called the Little Ice Age. Contemporaries noted that the Baltic Sea froze over twice in the first decade of the 1300s. Temperatures in Europe fell enough to shorten the growing season, and the production of grain in Scandinavia dropped precipitously as a result. The Norse communities in Greenland could no longer be maintained and were abandoned by the end of the fifteenth century. Scientists argue that data indicate that we are currently in an interglacial period, and that North polar ice will again move south some time in the next 23,000 years.