And now for something completely different
This was posted on something called ChronWatch
"Global Warming, DDT, and Other Phony Enviro Issues"
Posted by the ChronWatch Founder, Jim Sparkman
Friday, May 30, 2003
Ann Coulter, writing on the WorldNetDaily website, comments on the phony science behind many of the environmentalists' "hot button" issues.
This is a fairly typical start of an ignorant rant, the unquestioning posting of an article from another source, with claims about "phony science".
In 1998, President Clinton denounced Republicans for opposing his environmental policies, citing Florida's inordinately warm weather: "June was the hottest month they had ever had – hotter than any July or August they had ever had." This, after the Senate rejected the Kyoto Treaty by the slender margin of 95 - 0 rejected the treaty, including Japan. That's right: Even Kyoto rejected Kyoto.
The Senate has never voted on the Kyoto Treaty, so I don't know how they could have rejected it. And there is no senator named either Japan or Kyoto; something must have been left out.
That same year, CNN's Margaret Carlson remarked that when her neighbors experienced temperate weather at Christmas, global warming was the word on everyone's lips. Adding to the world's supply of hot air, she said global warming was the big sleeper issue.
Well, this year, Washington, D.C., had the coldest February in a quarter-century. What are the scientific conclusions of Ms. Carlson's neighbors now? In a single day in February, New York got its fourth-deepest snowfall since 1869. Baltimore got more snow in February than in any other month in recorded history. I wish there were global warming.
I didn't know that CNN was part of the environmental movement, or that Carlson is a climatologist. Also note that high snowfalls occur during relatively warm periods, not during the coldest days. Because colder air can hold less moisture, it really can be too cold to snow. In any case, scientists look at the full picture, not just isolated events.
In 1995, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced a computer model purportedly proving "a discernible human influence on global climate." According to the U.N., there was not enough evidence to determine if Saddam Hussein was a threat, but the evidence is in on global warming.
The conclusion was based on "the preponderance of the evidence", which included far more than a computer model. And we are still waiting for evidence of weapons of mass destruction, or a connection with Al Qaeda.
The key to the U.N.'s global warming study was man's use of aerosol spray. According to global-warming hysterics, global warming would begin at the poles, melt the ice caps, and then the oceans would rise. On the basis of such fatuous theories, in August 1998, the host of NPR's "Science Friday," Ira Flatow, told his listeners to look out their windows and imagine the ocean in their own back yards. Explaining that receding glaciers in Antarctica would dramatically lift sea levels, he warned that their grandchildren could be "hanging fishing poles out of New York skyscrapers," thus qualifying as the world's all-time greatest "fishing story."
Don't know what the comment about aerosol spray is all about. Aerosols, most of which come from pollution and natural events, counter the effects of increased greenhouse gasses. Scientists, and most environmentalists, have long abandoned the idea that the ice caps will melt any time soon. On the other hand, high altitude glaciers have been disappearing.
Since then, evidence disproving "global warming" has been pouring in.
This is the same thing they said about ozone depletion, and some people continue to claim about evolution. Most of the anti-environmentalists have simply stopped criticising ozone depletion, and moved on to disputing global warming, without ever admitting that they were wrong. As we shall see, Coulter's "evidence" simply doesn't hold up.
In January 2002, the journal Science published the findings of scientists who had been measuring the vast West Antarctic ice sheet. Far from melting, it turns out the ice sheet is growing thicker. The researchers were Dr. Ian R. Joughin, an engineer at the jet propulsion laboratory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Pasadena, Calif., and Dr. Slawek Tulaczyk, a professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Again, growing thicker, the result of more snowfall, may be a sign of warmer temperatures.
About the same time, the journal Nature published the findings of scientist Peter Doran and his colleagues at the University of Illinois. Rather than using the U.N.'s "computer models," the researchers took actual temperature readings. It turned out temperatures in the Antarctic have been getting slightly colder – not warmer – for the last 30 years.
The chief scientist for Environmental Defense, Michael Oppenheimer, responded to the new findings by urging caution and warning that "there is simply not enough data to make a broad statement about all of Antarctica." That's interesting.
Actually, the scientists looked at a comparatively small part of Antarctica. And scientists have used numerous methods of determining the temperature record, again the preponderance of the evidence points to human caused global warming.
We didn't wait for more data when DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) was banned on the basis of Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring," which brainwashed children into believing DDT would kill all the birds. American soldiers in World War II were bathed in DDT. Jews rescued from Nazi death camps were doused in DDT. It was a miracle invention: Tiny amounts of DDT kill disease-carrying insects with no harm to humans, protecting them from malaria, dengue and typhus. But in 1972, the U.S. banned one of the greatest inventions in modern history.
Carson wrote about the indiscriminate use of DDT and other pesticides in agriculture, to protect suburban trees , to control nuisance insects and for other non-medical uses. She never stated that pesticides should not be used against disease carrying insects. When the US banned DDT there was no malaria, dengue and typhus in this country. And the ban included exceptions for health emergencies, or where no other control measures were effective.
Now environmentalists are in a panic that African nations will use DDT to save millions of lives. Last year, 80,000 people in Uganda alone died of malaria, half of them children. The United States and Europe have threatened to ban Ugandan imports if they use DDT to stop this scourge. Environmentalists would prefer that millions of Africans die so that white liberals may continue gazing upon rare birds.
This is ridiculous. In modern malaria control pesticides are used on bed nets or the inside walls of houses. This use poses no risk to wildlife. The concern about DDT is that it is a POP (persistent organic pollutant) and that material intended for malaria control will be diverted to agricultural use.
Liberals don't care about the environment. The core of environmentalism is a hatred for mankind. They want mass infanticide, zero population growth, reduced standards of living and vegetarianism.
Here, in the last paragraph, you would expect a summary and conclusion. Instead we get something completely different, a series of non sequiturs (conclusions not supported by the evidence presented). Let's look at them one at a time:
"Liberals don't care about the environment." Like much of the "brownlash" literature, Coulter is using an attack on environmentalists as a way to attack liberals. (Coulter has made a career out of bashing liberals. In a recent column (April 9, 2003) she claimed that "Liberals are no longer a threat to the nation." This would imply that at one time liberals were a threat to the nation.) Apparently she equates liberalism with environmentalism, but many conservatives also support protecting the environment. Also note her choices of targets. Only one, Michael Oppenheimer, come from what I would call the environmental movement. The others include a Democratic President, the "liberal" media, and most of all the dreaded United Nations.
"The core of environmentalism is a hatred for mankind." This is patently false, and Coulter presented no evidence to support this claim.
"They want mass infanticide, zero population growth, reduced standards of living and vegetarianism." I don't no of anyone who wants "mass infanticide." Some environmentalists have supported zero population growth, but I doubt that it is the majority. Some have chosen lower standards of living (voluntary simplicity) and vegetarianism for themselves, but I don't know of anyone who wants to force these changes on other people. Like most of the anti-environmental writers Coulter has chosen to present a distorted image of the environmental movement.
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Related links
Ann Coulter: The Jargon Vanguard by Brendan Nyhan
Liberally Lying About Liberals
What are persistent organic pollutants? from Greenpeace
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Written by Jim Norton
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