Sunday, May 22, 2016
Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science! Part II
By Rich Kozlovich
(Originally published November 17, 2012)
Silent Spring originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine in a serialized form and was received with such enthusiasm they published the book in late September 1962.
Pest Control Technology came out with their September issue; “Silent Spring Turns 50!” As a result there are comments that I feel needed to be dealt with first. In this issue I will continue to deal with the book, the author and some comments made by contributors.
PCT states:
According to PCT they wanted to know what the impact Silent Spring had on the industry. They wonder; “how many of today’s PMPs had actually read the five-decades-old book that launched the environmental movement, which ultimately led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.” Apparently they were surprised to find that few had read it and a large number had never heard of it. What I am surprised at is they were surprised. Those who know me know I talk to everyone about the green movement in all of its manifestations, including Silent Spring and Rachel Carson. You would be even more amazed at how many people who style themselves as environmentalists have only heard about it, but never read it.
Having read it twice (thirty years apart, which makes a real difference) I can tell you even after knowing all that I know about Carson and the misinformation she published, I found once again her writing ability is so mesmerizing that I almost emotionally drawn right back into her spider’s web. I recommend that everyone read her work. I recommend that everyone read the truth first. Then after reading her book, go back and read the truth again.
You'll need it!
Let’s make no mistake about this - it was Rachel Carson’s amazing writing ability that won through against her critics - not her scientific acumen. Carson even attempted to make comparisons between “radiation” and commonly used herbicides. This is inexcusable since the mode of action for each is totally different.
Yet in spite of the fact that so much of her work has been thoroughly exposed as junk science and deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, her book is required reading in many schools and the impact is still so devastating it is difficult to overcome because Silent Spring has become a religious document. In short it is the primary religious text of the environmental movement; a movement that is now a secular religion, which included Integrated Pest Management and Green structural pest control, neither of which exists. It was never a scientific document. And the environmental movement isn’t a scientific movement. IPM doesn’t exist in structural pest control and green pest control is environmentalist mythology!
Green is a mixture of blue and yellow. That is the only factual definition of green that will stand the test of time. After that; any other definition is a corruption of a perfectly nice color. As a philosophy; green is a religion based on mysticism. The ancient Druids would be very comfortable with today’s green movement. They also willing sacrificed people to their gods of nature.
The featured writer is a Dr. Al Green, an “entomologist and national IPM coordinator for the GSA’s Public Building Service in Washington, D.C. Clearly his views reflect his reality, however, he at least honestly recognizes that the “IPM” community is divided between the “idealists” and the “pragmatists”! As for the IPM idealists he notes; “It is, at its core, a product of the social upheaval and activism of the 1960s that spawned a variety of major, interrelated, ideological campaigns that challenged the status quo: environmental, civil rights, women’s rights, consumer protection and antiwar.” I am inclined to think his views lie somewhere in between the two groups. He does talk about his “economic entomology professor” who “vehemently denounced [Silent Spring] as insidious claptrap.”
He should have listened to him.
He states that he doesn’t understand why structural pest control people get so upset at this book because Carson has only passing references to structural applications. I have to believe he is being disingenuous. In this book Carson says that people died in relatively short time frames after being exposed to DDT.
Ronald Bailey notes; “But hinting at cancer doom decades away was not enough. Carson was convinced that pesticides could wreak their carcinogenic havoc much sooner rather than later. As evidence she cited various anecdotes, including one about a woman "who abhorred spiders" and who sprayed her basement with DDT in mid-August. She died of acute leukemia a couple of months later. In another passage, Carson cites a man embarrassed by his roach-infested office who again sprayed DDT and who "within a short time … began to bruise and bleed." He was within a month of spraying diagnosed with aplastic anemia.”
Anecdotes are stories! Stories require no references, no medical history, and most importantly, no science. I think that alone is enough reason for our industry to get enflamed.
So many of her references were misleading and often in direct opposition to what was actually stated. In short….she lied! In short….she knew she lied! In short......it wasn’t an accident.
Green says of Carson - “methodically building her case through an enormous amount of documentation that ranges from the cellular level to the ecosystem. Despite the inevitable, mostly minor, examples of oversimplification and fact-stretching to make a point for general audiences, “Silent Spring” remains an unusually compelling and persuasive book.”
Is he kiddng? Did he really read her book? Does he really understand what happened there? Unusually compelling and persuasive as her book may have been because it was so well written, the fact remains - it was full of lies. In a court of law once a witness is found lying all of their testimony is considered worthless, irrespective of how well they tell their lies. Why is it different in “science”?
Actually it isn’t - at least it shouldn't be - unless of course those lies benefit the green movement. Then they will be drug out and touted over and over again, and Ph.D. fellow travelers will attempt to show in some way so those lies don’t matter because they support a “greater good” and then “progress” can be made. What progress are they talking about? Adopting Carson’s radical environmental philosophy is not progress.
For now let’s clarify exactly what happened with Carson’s book, which set the pattern for every green scare ever since. Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D. notes that there are seven steps to this process and usually follow this pattern.
(Originally published November 17, 2012)
Silent Spring originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine in a serialized form and was received with such enthusiasm they published the book in late September 1962.
Pest Control Technology came out with their September issue; “Silent Spring Turns 50!” As a result there are comments that I feel needed to be dealt with first. In this issue I will continue to deal with the book, the author and some comments made by contributors.
PCT states:
“Whatever you may think of this woman and her message, her effect on the course of history is undeniable. Designated as one of the 100 “most important people” of the 20th Century by Time magazine, Carson was a posthumous recipient (in 1980) of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the two highest civilian honors in the United States. In 1992, her landmark work was judged to be the most influential book of the past 50 years by a panel of 22 distinguished Americans from across the political spectrum. In 2005 — demonstrating that its ability to polarize remains undiminished — “Silent Spring” was included in a list of the “most harmful books of the 19th and 20th Centuries” (along with such worthy companions as “The Communist Manifesto” and “Mein Kampf”) by the conservative magazine Human Events.”
According to PCT they wanted to know what the impact Silent Spring had on the industry. They wonder; “how many of today’s PMPs had actually read the five-decades-old book that launched the environmental movement, which ultimately led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.” Apparently they were surprised to find that few had read it and a large number had never heard of it. What I am surprised at is they were surprised. Those who know me know I talk to everyone about the green movement in all of its manifestations, including Silent Spring and Rachel Carson. You would be even more amazed at how many people who style themselves as environmentalists have only heard about it, but never read it.
Having read it twice (thirty years apart, which makes a real difference) I can tell you even after knowing all that I know about Carson and the misinformation she published, I found once again her writing ability is so mesmerizing that I almost emotionally drawn right back into her spider’s web. I recommend that everyone read her work. I recommend that everyone read the truth first. Then after reading her book, go back and read the truth again.
You'll need it!
Let’s make no mistake about this - it was Rachel Carson’s amazing writing ability that won through against her critics - not her scientific acumen. Carson even attempted to make comparisons between “radiation” and commonly used herbicides. This is inexcusable since the mode of action for each is totally different.
Yet in spite of the fact that so much of her work has been thoroughly exposed as junk science and deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, her book is required reading in many schools and the impact is still so devastating it is difficult to overcome because Silent Spring has become a religious document. In short it is the primary religious text of the environmental movement; a movement that is now a secular religion, which included Integrated Pest Management and Green structural pest control, neither of which exists. It was never a scientific document. And the environmental movement isn’t a scientific movement. IPM doesn’t exist in structural pest control and green pest control is environmentalist mythology!
Green is a mixture of blue and yellow. That is the only factual definition of green that will stand the test of time. After that; any other definition is a corruption of a perfectly nice color. As a philosophy; green is a religion based on mysticism. The ancient Druids would be very comfortable with today’s green movement. They also willing sacrificed people to their gods of nature.
The featured writer is a Dr. Al Green, an “entomologist and national IPM coordinator for the GSA’s Public Building Service in Washington, D.C. Clearly his views reflect his reality, however, he at least honestly recognizes that the “IPM” community is divided between the “idealists” and the “pragmatists”! As for the IPM idealists he notes; “It is, at its core, a product of the social upheaval and activism of the 1960s that spawned a variety of major, interrelated, ideological campaigns that challenged the status quo: environmental, civil rights, women’s rights, consumer protection and antiwar.” I am inclined to think his views lie somewhere in between the two groups. He does talk about his “economic entomology professor” who “vehemently denounced [Silent Spring] as insidious claptrap.”
He should have listened to him.
He states that he doesn’t understand why structural pest control people get so upset at this book because Carson has only passing references to structural applications. I have to believe he is being disingenuous. In this book Carson says that people died in relatively short time frames after being exposed to DDT.
Ronald Bailey notes; “But hinting at cancer doom decades away was not enough. Carson was convinced that pesticides could wreak their carcinogenic havoc much sooner rather than later. As evidence she cited various anecdotes, including one about a woman "who abhorred spiders" and who sprayed her basement with DDT in mid-August. She died of acute leukemia a couple of months later. In another passage, Carson cites a man embarrassed by his roach-infested office who again sprayed DDT and who "within a short time … began to bruise and bleed." He was within a month of spraying diagnosed with aplastic anemia.”
Anecdotes are stories! Stories require no references, no medical history, and most importantly, no science. I think that alone is enough reason for our industry to get enflamed.
So many of her references were misleading and often in direct opposition to what was actually stated. In short….she lied! In short….she knew she lied! In short......it wasn’t an accident.
Green says of Carson - “methodically building her case through an enormous amount of documentation that ranges from the cellular level to the ecosystem. Despite the inevitable, mostly minor, examples of oversimplification and fact-stretching to make a point for general audiences, “Silent Spring” remains an unusually compelling and persuasive book.”
Is he kiddng? Did he really read her book? Does he really understand what happened there? Unusually compelling and persuasive as her book may have been because it was so well written, the fact remains - it was full of lies. In a court of law once a witness is found lying all of their testimony is considered worthless, irrespective of how well they tell their lies. Why is it different in “science”?
Actually it isn’t - at least it shouldn't be - unless of course those lies benefit the green movement. Then they will be drug out and touted over and over again, and Ph.D. fellow travelers will attempt to show in some way so those lies don’t matter because they support a “greater good” and then “progress” can be made. What progress are they talking about? Adopting Carson’s radical environmental philosophy is not progress.
For now let’s clarify exactly what happened with Carson’s book, which set the pattern for every green scare ever since. Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D. notes that there are seven steps to this process and usually follow this pattern.
1. Create a "scientific" study that predicts a public health disaster
2. Release the study to the media, before scientists can review it
3. Generate an intense emotional public reaction
4. Develop a government-enforced solution
5. Intimidate Congress into passing it into law
6. Coerce manufacturers to stop making the product
7. Bully users to replace it, or obliterate it
This is the pattern set by Silent Spring, which is no less junk science than the book, “Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival? — A Scientific Detective Story”, based on work out of Tulane University which implicated pesticides and other chemicals as endocrine disruptors, which also turned out to be fraudulent, yet these fraudulent claims are still touted by people like Mark Lame as a justification to use less pesticides and support….guess what ?….IPM.
If here is no alternative there is no problem!
To replace what's now being called traditional pest control with an emphasis on pesticides, an alterntive needed to be found. By claiming there is such a thing as IPM in structural pest control they have an alternative. So with IPM as the alternative - they can now insist there is a problem. But pesticides and traditional pest control isn't the real problem. The real problem is that there is no such thing as IPM or green pest control in structural pest control because neither has a logical foundation. In agriculture it's “threshold limits”. What is the logical foundation in structural pest control? There isn’t any! Neither IPM nor green pest control has foundation or parameters.
Dr. Green talks about “contamination of our food supply was far more serious, and almost no regard was given to the massive wildlife kills and environmental mayhem that resulted from aggressive aerial campaigns.”
That is a bit confusing. Contaminated food? What contamination? Just how bad was it? Where did it take place? When did that take place? Who was sickened? How many were sickened? He doesn't say! Why not? In my world I'm challenged constantly to substantiate everything I say, and I expect it and I provide those references in my articles. Perhaps he became confused with all the food contamination and recalls originating from "organic" farming practices - and if he's unaware - I can provide reference work.
What massive wildlife kills? Where did they happen? What wildlife was impacted? How many were killed? Again, no substantiation! I remember the massive fish kills along Lake Erie, but was that caused by pesticides? Or was it caused industrial pollution, including urban waste? I think that needs some clarification. But it absolutely wasn’t caused by DDT.
All in all, Green did attempt to give the impression of reasonableness. However, I feel this is merely whitewash and this last expression fully clarifies that for me. He says;
2. Release the study to the media, before scientists can review it
3. Generate an intense emotional public reaction
4. Develop a government-enforced solution
5. Intimidate Congress into passing it into law
6. Coerce manufacturers to stop making the product
7. Bully users to replace it, or obliterate it
This is the pattern set by Silent Spring, which is no less junk science than the book, “Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival? — A Scientific Detective Story”, based on work out of Tulane University which implicated pesticides and other chemicals as endocrine disruptors, which also turned out to be fraudulent, yet these fraudulent claims are still touted by people like Mark Lame as a justification to use less pesticides and support….guess what ?….IPM.
If here is no alternative there is no problem!
To replace what's now being called traditional pest control with an emphasis on pesticides, an alterntive needed to be found. By claiming there is such a thing as IPM in structural pest control they have an alternative. So with IPM as the alternative - they can now insist there is a problem. But pesticides and traditional pest control isn't the real problem. The real problem is that there is no such thing as IPM or green pest control in structural pest control because neither has a logical foundation. In agriculture it's “threshold limits”. What is the logical foundation in structural pest control? There isn’t any! Neither IPM nor green pest control has foundation or parameters.
Dr. Green talks about “contamination of our food supply was far more serious, and almost no regard was given to the massive wildlife kills and environmental mayhem that resulted from aggressive aerial campaigns.”
That is a bit confusing. Contaminated food? What contamination? Just how bad was it? Where did it take place? When did that take place? Who was sickened? How many were sickened? He doesn't say! Why not? In my world I'm challenged constantly to substantiate everything I say, and I expect it and I provide those references in my articles. Perhaps he became confused with all the food contamination and recalls originating from "organic" farming practices - and if he's unaware - I can provide reference work.
What massive wildlife kills? Where did they happen? What wildlife was impacted? How many were killed? Again, no substantiation! I remember the massive fish kills along Lake Erie, but was that caused by pesticides? Or was it caused industrial pollution, including urban waste? I think that needs some clarification. But it absolutely wasn’t caused by DDT.
All in all, Green did attempt to give the impression of reasonableness. However, I feel this is merely whitewash and this last expression fully clarifies that for me. He says;
“Unfortunately, there is one, more seriously flawed, part of Carson’s exposition that has received attention through the years all out of proportion to its significance in her overall message. This is her focus on cancer as the primary health risk that the pesticides of her time presented to humans, a hunch that was only tenuously supported by the data available to her. As an accusation that proved to be extraordinarily energizing for IPM activists, it has similarly served as a lightning rod for critics who have treated it as a central defect that somehow discredits everything else she wrote about the collateral damage of broad-spectrum toxins or the folly of over-reliance on chemical fixes to bend nature to our will. Considering the abundance of subsequent research on a host of non-cancerous human pathologies for which the older pesticides are conclusively responsible, invoking Carson’s cancer connection to disparage her is nothing less than a blatant diversion from the main issue.”
That is not a blatant diversion from any “main issue” - it was foundational to her book. This was the prod that drove this beastly book into fame and infamy.
“Carson vilified the use of DDT and other pest controls in agriculture but ignored their role in saving millions of lives worldwide from malaria, typhus, dysentery, among other diseases. Millions of deaths, and much greater human suffering, ultimately resulted from pesticide bans as part of disease-eradication campaigns.” J. Gordon Edwards
Furthermore her book and her philosophy, which was radical in spite of the fact she wasn’t marching in the streets, demonized agricultural technology, clouded the overwhelming evidence before our eyes that modern technology – especially pesticides - created an overwhelming good for human health, and in spite of the amount of pesticides used represent no harm to the environment when used properly.
At least Chris Donaghy got it right. As for me - I was quoted - lending clarity to the subject - but I had expected to be a featured writer for this issue since I contend I'm the pest control industry's foremost expert on the DDT story. But, then again, perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps we can have PCT or the National Pest Management Association arrange a debate with me and some of these people regarding Carson, Silent Spring, IPM, Green pest control, the EPA or the green movement as a whole - or for that matter - any or all of them. And since I'm an autodidact with no advanced education and no formal scientific training I would think those who have those intellectual advantages - and find fault with my observations and claims - would enjoy such an easy challenge.
Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science! Part I
At least Chris Donaghy got it right. As for me - I was quoted - lending clarity to the subject - but I had expected to be a featured writer for this issue since I contend I'm the pest control industry's foremost expert on the DDT story. But, then again, perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps we can have PCT or the National Pest Management Association arrange a debate with me and some of these people regarding Carson, Silent Spring, IPM, Green pest control, the EPA or the green movement as a whole - or for that matter - any or all of them. And since I'm an autodidact with no advanced education and no formal scientific training I would think those who have those intellectual advantages - and find fault with my observations and claims - would enjoy such an easy challenge.
Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science! Part I
Sunday, May 15, 2016
Silent Spring: The Consequences of 50 Years of Junk Science!
By Rich Kozlovich
(Originally published August 18, 2012 updated May 13, 2016)
June 2012 marked the 50 anniversary of the publication of “Silent Spring.” I'm fascinated by how many young people don’t know about this book. I'm also fascinated by how many who are impressed by it while having never read it. It also amazed me at how much Rachel Carson has been lauded publically, and yet how few people know about Norman Borlaug, who saved untold millions, and if you judge greatness by how many lives a person saves - he was probably the greatest man to have lived in the 20th century, and since he died in 2009 - he may end up being he greatest man to have lived in both centuries.
Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) lived her early years in Springdale, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, and graduated from the Pittsburgh Pennsylvania College for Women (Chatham College) in 1929. She later earned a master’s degree in zoology from John Hopkins University. She is the author of “Silent Spring” (her 4th book), published in 1962, and is considered by some to be one of the most damaging books of the 20th century.
Her claims in this book about decreases in mammal and avian wildlife as a result of DDT were simply wrong. One of the many claims by Carson was robins were in danger of extinction as a result of continued use of DDT. The truth was that there were more robins in the DDT era than before. And according to Audubon bird charts, there may have been as many as 47 times more. World renowned Ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson stated that the robin was the most abundant bird in North America around the same time that “Silent Spring” came out.
None of the predictions regarding cancer made by Carson ever came true. She died of breast cancer on April 14, 1964, at the age of 56, two years after her book came out. She did not live long enough to see real scientists using real science shred her claims. Unfortunately, her death gave impetus to her unscientific statements.
Considered the mother of the modern environmental movement, her radical naturalism became the standard for the movement. "She taught that the environment had done all of the shaping and directing on the Earth, and it was an act of arrogance for man to attempt to control nature". She is still lauded in various encyclopedias as a thorough, meticulous, highly qualified scientist. Those that have attacked her are presented as self serving large chemical companies. Although the chemical companies did attack her - rightly so - there were also sincere, dedicated scientists such as J. Gordon Edwards who were just as concerned as Carson about large corporations and their designs on nature, and was thrilled when her book first appeared.
The problem was in the details. Edwards also believed that “environmentalism didn’t need fraud to justify itself.” He realized as he read her book there was a lot of information that simply wasn’t true. He noted “she was playing fast and loose with the facts.” Over the years, research on her work has shown this to be so. In spite of all the evidence showing her work should not have been taken seriously, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.
She claimed that DDT was a serious carcinogenic agent and with continued use would eventually impact almost 100% of the population. That was false! She claimed that DDT was causing egg shell thinning, and, as a result, the bird population was decreasing. That was false! Furthermore, playing fast and loose with the facts she made inappropriate citations.
Edwards noted that her “implication that DDT is horribly deadly is completely false. Human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 milligrams of it a day for nearly two years and suffered no adverse affects.” He went on to say, “Carson’s comparison between ‘radiation’ and common herbicides is despicable, for there is a tremendous difference between their mutagenic potentials.”
She states on pages 50-51 that: “Arsenic, the environmental substance most clearly established as causing cancer in man, is involved in two historic cases in which polluted water supplies caused widespread occurrence of cancer.” According to Edwards, “I have seen no proof that arsenic causes cancer in humans, and it is known to occur naturally in most kinds of shellfish and other marine life. And, if she were really concerned about public health, Carson should have rejoiced to see that relatively harmless insecticides like DDT were capable of replacing arsenicals and other poisonous inorganic materials!”
I was born in 1946, and just like Carson, I grew up in southwest Pennsylvania. I can understand Carson’s fears for the environment. The effects on the local environment from pollution emanating from coal mines, steel mills and coke ovens in those days would make anyone concerned. Believe me when I tell you that you haven’t seen water pollution until you see a sulfur creek, or air pollution until you have see an old time coke oven. This is still no excuse for dishonesty.
What have been the consequences of these five decades of junk science? Her book launched the modern green movement and also marked the toleration and encouragement of scientists to misrepresent the facts. In the book “Ecological Sanity” published in 1972 by Clause and Bolander, they outline how this early this started, promoting a green agenda that not only lingers, but has become a major source of income for the research universities, making the term ‘scientific integrity’ an oxymoron. In the 50 years since “Silent Spring” was first published, it has become obvious that ‘science’ via media attention generates government grant money - clouding their judgment, impugning their integrity beyond repair.
Despite all the efforts to show Carson was misrepresenting the facts, and that her references were tainted and completely unsupportive of her views, this was an issue that was not going away because it was a philosophical issue, not a scientific one. This was demonstrated by the 1972 EPA hearings based on science shown to be fraudulent, including the fraudulent claims that DDT caused egg shell thinning based on an the obscure study by Dr. James Dewitt of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, claiming that DDT caused less eggs to hatch. “However the actual study showed that despite feeding quail 3,000 times the daily human intake of DDT, their eggs did not hatch significantly less than the control group. The same study done with pheasants showed that the survival rate of hatchlings of DDT feed pheasants actually increased. This is exactly the opposite of what Rachel Carson wrote.” The only studies that showed a decrease in egg shell thickness occurred when they withheld calcium from the diet of the birds being tested.
Judge Edward Sweeney was the magistrate appointed by EPA to be the hearing examiner and after 9,000 pages of testimony he determined that DDT should not be banned. This was a decision that was overruled by the first director of the EPA, William Ruckelshaus. When the decision was appealed, he appointed himself as the appeals judge, setting a disreputable pattern of dishonesty that has been apparent ever since.
What has been the result? Between 700,000 and 1 million people, mostly children, die every year from malaria; and this doesn’t include the other insect borne diseases. According to in her article, Promising Finding for Malaria Vaccine , "We here in the United States have been spared the scourge of malaria, as it is a disease mainly endemic in the tropics. According to the World Health Organization, there were 198 million cases of malaria in 2013. Meanwhile, there are 3.4 billion people who are exposed to malaria and 1.2 billion considered at high risk.
She goes on to say: Most often, children are disproportionately affected and they account for a majority of the mortality cases. In 2010, of the 1.24 million malaria deaths 714,000 occurred in children less than five years of age.
Carson was an amazing writer, and that is what carried her to the top, not her science; and most certainly not her compassion for humanity. Carson could vividly describe the death of a bird she believed was killed by a pesticide, but nowhere does she describe the “deaths of any of the people who were dying of malaria, yellow fever, plague, sleeping sickness, or other diseases that are transmitted by insects. Her propaganda in Silent Spring contributed greatly to the banning of insecticides that were capable of preventing human deaths.”
Surely, she had to be aware. Surely, she didn’t care.
This book and the ban on DDT are foundational to the very existence of the environmental movement because they never dreamed of the power and money that would come their way as a result of the ban. Currently the environmental movement takes in more money than 60 of the world’s nations. No trade association can stand against them financially.
This started a movement of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) that have accrued untold power with regulators and legislators world over. They have even gotten the major chemical companies to fund them, publically support them on many levels including their fraudulent claims about Global Warming, The Montreal Protocol, and a host of other central planning schemes promoted under the guise of environmental protection.
The effect has been to confuse the leaders of industry, the public and public officials. We in pest control have now been infiltrated and corrupted in our thinking. We have lost sight of who and what we are, what is real, what is fact, what is fiction, and what is right and what is wrong. As I look over the web sites of the other state associations, I am absolutely appalled that they are so hot to go green, and yet have no idea what that really means; nor do they seem to be aware of the fraudulent origins of the green movement; yet proudly promoting it with a stench of self-righteousness.
When we adopt a green agenda in structural pest control it means that we are agreeing that everything we have done over the last 70 years has been wrong, and has been detrimental to the environment and humanity. Yet, we are living longer, healthier lives than ever in human history. The world’s population was two billion people at the end of WWII, and it took thousands of years to get to that number. The world’s population has soared to seven billion in less than 75 years. How did that happen if all the synthetic chemicals we are exposed to are so deadly as the green movement would have everyone believe?
Technology and environmental care go hand in hand. The poor undeveloped and under developed countries can’t afford the costs of the kind of care the developed nations deliver. Yet the green movement stands against development true to the radical ‘back to nature’ paradigm promoted by Rachel Carson.
Norman Borlaug was the creator of the Green Revolution, which increased food productivity to fantastic rates saving untold millions from starvation worldwide. Rachel Carson started a movement that killed untold millions thus far and will continue to kill untold millions into the foreseeable future. Carson is lauded, and her lies are taught in our schools as true environmental science. Norman Borlaug is largely unknown. If Rachel Carson was a great scientist - then Adolph Hitler, Joe Stalin and Mao Tse Tung were misunderstood visionaries.
What has been the result of 50 years of Carson’s junk science? We lost our minds!
Editor’s note: In the coming weeks I will be addressing claims made by Carson. Socialism in the late 1800's and early 1900's didn't play well with Americans because European socialism is atheistic in nature. As a result they became the Progressive Movement and the binding force was religion, believing that socialism was the practical application of Judaic/Christian ethic. After WWII the binding force was psychology. If you didn't accept their views you were crazy...and only those around my age can remember that scam. After the collapse of the Soviet Union - the icon of socialism - they only had one card to really play as trump - Environmentalism!
Environmentalism is the step child of socialism, the spear point of policy and the binding force of the worldwide socialist movement whose goal is a worldwide socialist government under the auspices of the United Nations as is clearly shown by the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. We really do need to get that! Once that is understood everything I will publish regarding the "foundational" things of the green movement can be properly understood.
(Originally published August 18, 2012 updated May 13, 2016)
June 2012 marked the 50 anniversary of the publication of “Silent Spring.” I'm fascinated by how many young people don’t know about this book. I'm also fascinated by how many who are impressed by it while having never read it. It also amazed me at how much Rachel Carson has been lauded publically, and yet how few people know about Norman Borlaug, who saved untold millions, and if you judge greatness by how many lives a person saves - he was probably the greatest man to have lived in the 20th century, and since he died in 2009 - he may end up being he greatest man to have lived in both centuries.
Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) lived her early years in Springdale, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, and graduated from the Pittsburgh Pennsylvania College for Women (Chatham College) in 1929. She later earned a master’s degree in zoology from John Hopkins University. She is the author of “Silent Spring” (her 4th book), published in 1962, and is considered by some to be one of the most damaging books of the 20th century.
Her claims in this book about decreases in mammal and avian wildlife as a result of DDT were simply wrong. One of the many claims by Carson was robins were in danger of extinction as a result of continued use of DDT. The truth was that there were more robins in the DDT era than before. And according to Audubon bird charts, there may have been as many as 47 times more. World renowned Ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson stated that the robin was the most abundant bird in North America around the same time that “Silent Spring” came out.
None of the predictions regarding cancer made by Carson ever came true. She died of breast cancer on April 14, 1964, at the age of 56, two years after her book came out. She did not live long enough to see real scientists using real science shred her claims. Unfortunately, her death gave impetus to her unscientific statements.
Considered the mother of the modern environmental movement, her radical naturalism became the standard for the movement. "She taught that the environment had done all of the shaping and directing on the Earth, and it was an act of arrogance for man to attempt to control nature". She is still lauded in various encyclopedias as a thorough, meticulous, highly qualified scientist. Those that have attacked her are presented as self serving large chemical companies. Although the chemical companies did attack her - rightly so - there were also sincere, dedicated scientists such as J. Gordon Edwards who were just as concerned as Carson about large corporations and their designs on nature, and was thrilled when her book first appeared.
The problem was in the details. Edwards also believed that “environmentalism didn’t need fraud to justify itself.” He realized as he read her book there was a lot of information that simply wasn’t true. He noted “she was playing fast and loose with the facts.” Over the years, research on her work has shown this to be so. In spite of all the evidence showing her work should not have been taken seriously, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.
She claimed that DDT was a serious carcinogenic agent and with continued use would eventually impact almost 100% of the population. That was false! She claimed that DDT was causing egg shell thinning, and, as a result, the bird population was decreasing. That was false! Furthermore, playing fast and loose with the facts she made inappropriate citations.
Edwards noted that her “implication that DDT is horribly deadly is completely false. Human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 milligrams of it a day for nearly two years and suffered no adverse affects.” He went on to say, “Carson’s comparison between ‘radiation’ and common herbicides is despicable, for there is a tremendous difference between their mutagenic potentials.”
She states on pages 50-51 that: “Arsenic, the environmental substance most clearly established as causing cancer in man, is involved in two historic cases in which polluted water supplies caused widespread occurrence of cancer.” According to Edwards, “I have seen no proof that arsenic causes cancer in humans, and it is known to occur naturally in most kinds of shellfish and other marine life. And, if she were really concerned about public health, Carson should have rejoiced to see that relatively harmless insecticides like DDT were capable of replacing arsenicals and other poisonous inorganic materials!”
I was born in 1946, and just like Carson, I grew up in southwest Pennsylvania. I can understand Carson’s fears for the environment. The effects on the local environment from pollution emanating from coal mines, steel mills and coke ovens in those days would make anyone concerned. Believe me when I tell you that you haven’t seen water pollution until you see a sulfur creek, or air pollution until you have see an old time coke oven. This is still no excuse for dishonesty.
What have been the consequences of these five decades of junk science? Her book launched the modern green movement and also marked the toleration and encouragement of scientists to misrepresent the facts. In the book “Ecological Sanity” published in 1972 by Clause and Bolander, they outline how this early this started, promoting a green agenda that not only lingers, but has become a major source of income for the research universities, making the term ‘scientific integrity’ an oxymoron. In the 50 years since “Silent Spring” was first published, it has become obvious that ‘science’ via media attention generates government grant money - clouding their judgment, impugning their integrity beyond repair.
Despite all the efforts to show Carson was misrepresenting the facts, and that her references were tainted and completely unsupportive of her views, this was an issue that was not going away because it was a philosophical issue, not a scientific one. This was demonstrated by the 1972 EPA hearings based on science shown to be fraudulent, including the fraudulent claims that DDT caused egg shell thinning based on an the obscure study by Dr. James Dewitt of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, claiming that DDT caused less eggs to hatch. “However the actual study showed that despite feeding quail 3,000 times the daily human intake of DDT, their eggs did not hatch significantly less than the control group. The same study done with pheasants showed that the survival rate of hatchlings of DDT feed pheasants actually increased. This is exactly the opposite of what Rachel Carson wrote.” The only studies that showed a decrease in egg shell thickness occurred when they withheld calcium from the diet of the birds being tested.
Judge Edward Sweeney was the magistrate appointed by EPA to be the hearing examiner and after 9,000 pages of testimony he determined that DDT should not be banned. This was a decision that was overruled by the first director of the EPA, William Ruckelshaus. When the decision was appealed, he appointed himself as the appeals judge, setting a disreputable pattern of dishonesty that has been apparent ever since.
What has been the result? Between 700,000 and 1 million people, mostly children, die every year from malaria; and this doesn’t include the other insect borne diseases. According to in her article, Promising Finding for Malaria Vaccine , "We here in the United States have been spared the scourge of malaria, as it is a disease mainly endemic in the tropics. According to the World Health Organization, there were 198 million cases of malaria in 2013. Meanwhile, there are 3.4 billion people who are exposed to malaria and 1.2 billion considered at high risk.
She goes on to say: Most often, children are disproportionately affected and they account for a majority of the mortality cases. In 2010, of the 1.24 million malaria deaths 714,000 occurred in children less than five years of age.
Carson was an amazing writer, and that is what carried her to the top, not her science; and most certainly not her compassion for humanity. Carson could vividly describe the death of a bird she believed was killed by a pesticide, but nowhere does she describe the “deaths of any of the people who were dying of malaria, yellow fever, plague, sleeping sickness, or other diseases that are transmitted by insects. Her propaganda in Silent Spring contributed greatly to the banning of insecticides that were capable of preventing human deaths.”
Surely, she had to be aware. Surely, she didn’t care.
This book and the ban on DDT are foundational to the very existence of the environmental movement because they never dreamed of the power and money that would come their way as a result of the ban. Currently the environmental movement takes in more money than 60 of the world’s nations. No trade association can stand against them financially.
This started a movement of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) that have accrued untold power with regulators and legislators world over. They have even gotten the major chemical companies to fund them, publically support them on many levels including their fraudulent claims about Global Warming, The Montreal Protocol, and a host of other central planning schemes promoted under the guise of environmental protection.
The effect has been to confuse the leaders of industry, the public and public officials. We in pest control have now been infiltrated and corrupted in our thinking. We have lost sight of who and what we are, what is real, what is fact, what is fiction, and what is right and what is wrong. As I look over the web sites of the other state associations, I am absolutely appalled that they are so hot to go green, and yet have no idea what that really means; nor do they seem to be aware of the fraudulent origins of the green movement; yet proudly promoting it with a stench of self-righteousness.
When we adopt a green agenda in structural pest control it means that we are agreeing that everything we have done over the last 70 years has been wrong, and has been detrimental to the environment and humanity. Yet, we are living longer, healthier lives than ever in human history. The world’s population was two billion people at the end of WWII, and it took thousands of years to get to that number. The world’s population has soared to seven billion in less than 75 years. How did that happen if all the synthetic chemicals we are exposed to are so deadly as the green movement would have everyone believe?
Technology and environmental care go hand in hand. The poor undeveloped and under developed countries can’t afford the costs of the kind of care the developed nations deliver. Yet the green movement stands against development true to the radical ‘back to nature’ paradigm promoted by Rachel Carson.
Norman Borlaug was the creator of the Green Revolution, which increased food productivity to fantastic rates saving untold millions from starvation worldwide. Rachel Carson started a movement that killed untold millions thus far and will continue to kill untold millions into the foreseeable future. Carson is lauded, and her lies are taught in our schools as true environmental science. Norman Borlaug is largely unknown. If Rachel Carson was a great scientist - then Adolph Hitler, Joe Stalin and Mao Tse Tung were misunderstood visionaries.
What has been the result of 50 years of Carson’s junk science? We lost our minds!
Editor’s note: In the coming weeks I will be addressing claims made by Carson. Socialism in the late 1800's and early 1900's didn't play well with Americans because European socialism is atheistic in nature. As a result they became the Progressive Movement and the binding force was religion, believing that socialism was the practical application of Judaic/Christian ethic. After WWII the binding force was psychology. If you didn't accept their views you were crazy...and only those around my age can remember that scam. After the collapse of the Soviet Union - the icon of socialism - they only had one card to really play as trump - Environmentalism!
Environmentalism is the step child of socialism, the spear point of policy and the binding force of the worldwide socialist movement whose goal is a worldwide socialist government under the auspices of the United Nations as is clearly shown by the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. We really do need to get that! Once that is understood everything I will publish regarding the "foundational" things of the green movement can be properly understood.
Thursday, May 12, 2016
A Chemical Reaction That Will Give You Nightmares
May 7, 2016
@ American Council on Science and Health
Chemical reactions can do all sorts of things. They can blow up, change color, make nasty smells, and give off gasses that will make your eyes tear like someone (OK, women, really) who just saw “Beaches.” Chemistry — love it or hate it — has one thing going for it: It’s never icky. Scientists who like to handle icky things become biologists. There you get to play with chicken heads or things with guts. Icky.
Or, so I thought, until I made the mistake of watching a video that was going around the chemistry world several years ago. For reasons that no one I know can explain, this one goes far beyond icky. More like, vile and disgusting. Never saw anything like it.
There is a chemical called mercury isothiocyanate. It is an obscure substance (I don’t know anyone who has ever used it), and looks like nothing special — a white powder. But, if you light it on fire, it does not blow up; it turns into something from a bad nightmare. If you have to turn your head away from the screen while watching “Alien,” you might want to skip this.
Can anyone explain what the hell is going on here?
Sweet dreams.
Chemical reactions can do all sorts of things. They can blow up, change color, make nasty smells, and give off gasses that will make your eyes tear like someone (OK, women, really) who just saw “Beaches.” Chemistry — love it or hate it — has one thing going for it: It’s never icky. Scientists who like to handle icky things become biologists. There you get to play with chicken heads or things with guts. Icky.
Or, so I thought, until I made the mistake of watching a video that was going around the chemistry world several years ago. For reasons that no one I know can explain, this one goes far beyond icky. More like, vile and disgusting. Never saw anything like it.
There is a chemical called mercury isothiocyanate. It is an obscure substance (I don’t know anyone who has ever used it), and looks like nothing special — a white powder. But, if you light it on fire, it does not blow up; it turns into something from a bad nightmare. If you have to turn your head away from the screen while watching “Alien,” you might want to skip this.
Can anyone explain what the hell is going on here?
Sweet dreams.
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Problem: EPA Is Out of Control! Answer: Time to Abolish EPA!
By Rich Kozlovich
(Originally published August 24, 2013 updated May 10, 2016.)
This isn’t a new thought, but it is becoming more acceptable to far more people now than even just five years ago. We recently saw an article titled, “Former EPA official charged with stealing nearly $900K”, published on August 23, 2013 stating that; “John C. Beale, a former deputy assistant administrator in the Office of Air and Radiation, is accused of stealing a total of $886,186 between 2000 and April of this year…” and he accomplished this “by collecting bonuses and extra salary.” And who was his boss? Gina McCarthy!
McCarthy was the administrator of the office of Air and Radiation and Beale was the deputy assistant administrator in that office; one of her top aides. He wasn’t just another one of EPA’s faceless myrmidons, he was a close associate of a woman that never noticed anything was wrong and was rewarded by being made EPA administrator.
An administrator that might be even more radical than Lisa Jackson or Carol Browner and now wants to take on “climate change”, believing she can bypass Congress via EPA’s rule making process regarding CO2 emissions based on a ruling by the Supreme Court regarding the Clear Air Act in “Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007 that gave the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gases". All this in spite of the fact that "it is obvious that when Congress amended the Clean Air Act in 1970, 1977 and 1990, it did not intend to provide the agency with authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
However, there hasn’t been any warming going on for over eighteen years, and CO2 emissions have skyrocketed, all of which is in direct opposition to predictions made by the computer models they've developed. Computer modeling has its place in science, but not a place of determining policy. That's supposed to be done by collecting real evidence through direct observations allowing scientists to understand the mechanisms of cause and effect. Can we consider computer modeling anything more than Game Boy science? It does what it’s told to do….garbage in, garbage out.
So, if CO2 emissions are sky rocketing, and no warming is taking place - clearly we must believe CO2 doesn’t cause warming! This is clear cut unbiased scientific evidence - evidence that’s in harmony with history, and in harmony with what we see going on in reality. That’s why the green left changed the terminology from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change”. That allows them to make proclamations over every hurricane, tornado, freezing rain, blizzards, extended cold periods, etc. In other words the green left will then be able to claim every unpleasant thing that occurs in the world is being caused by mankind via CO2 emissions. If you doubt that just take a minute and read the views of a man who almost became President of the United States - Al Gore - who clearly must have become mentally unhinged by his loss.
McCarthy is now going after power plants with a massive unacceptable expansion of federal power over greenhouse gas regulations, and clean water regulations, thereby shutting down power plants, and mining operations of all kind, some even critical to their pet project - wind power! We in the pest control industry know there will be even more regulations involving pesticides. Not much science, but a lot of regulations. Are we really happy with that?
Senator Vitter stated, “The EPA will play a pivotal role in the implementation of the president’s recently announced climate action plan,” “With this edict from the president, EPA is further emboldened and will strengthen its grip on the country’s economy.” Is that what the Congress really intended for what is supposed to be a mere agency, supposedly under the control of the Interior Department? That may have been what Richard Nixon envisioned when he created EPA by Presidential decree, but is that what the writers of U.S. Constitution envisioned for the nation?
On Thursday, March 29, 2012 I posted an article titled, Holding the EPA to Account by John Dunn and Steve Milloy. The article went on to say, “Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton asked for EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's attention in his opening statement at a Feb. 28 House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, berated her and held her to account.” The article went on to list EPA failures;
Dunn and Milloy correctly state; “Congressman Barton's dressing down of EPA and its administrator was a first step in the right direction. But now Congressman Barton and his colleagues need to follow through by implementing real solutions that will stop the EPA's regulatory excesses.” So has any of that been done?
Since it is clear that McCarthy is a radical environmentalist, and it is clear conservatives didn’t want her confirmed as the EPA Administrator; how did a person who, as Senator Sessions noted, “has refused to disavow the aggressive bureaucratic power grabs that have come to define this administration’s use of EPA”, who “serves at the pleasure of the president….and he has no intention of constricting the expansion of EPA power”, get this job?
Mitch McConnell didn’t have the guts to stand up to Harry Reid and his threat of using the “nuclear option” thereby agreeing to an up or down vote on Presidential appointments conservatives despised. By throwing away their right to filibuster they were guaranteeing the confirmation of radical leftists in every position.
Of course they did receive something in return; a promise that McConnell and his brand of heroes might be allowed to filibuster appointments in the future. Wow! Now that’s tough negotiating! How about this as a better analysis; no guts, no glory and maybe no more “Senator” Mitch McConnell after 2014. Shocking isn't it - he's still there until 2018!
On Thursday, August 15, 2013 I posted this article by my friend Dr. Jay Lehr titled, “It’s time to restore EPA’s original purpose”, where-in he notes that; “In 1968, when I was serving as the head of a groundwater professional society, it became obvious to some of my colleagues and me that the United States did not have any serious focus on potential problems with its air quality, drinking water quality, surface water quality, waste disposal problems, and contamination that could occur from mining and agriculture. I held the nation’s first Ph.D. in groundwater hydrology, which gave me unparalleled insight into many of these potential problems.”
Jay goes on to say;
(Originally published August 24, 2013 updated May 10, 2016.)
This isn’t a new thought, but it is becoming more acceptable to far more people now than even just five years ago. We recently saw an article titled, “Former EPA official charged with stealing nearly $900K”, published on August 23, 2013 stating that; “John C. Beale, a former deputy assistant administrator in the Office of Air and Radiation, is accused of stealing a total of $886,186 between 2000 and April of this year…” and he accomplished this “by collecting bonuses and extra salary.” And who was his boss? Gina McCarthy!
McCarthy was the administrator of the office of Air and Radiation and Beale was the deputy assistant administrator in that office; one of her top aides. He wasn’t just another one of EPA’s faceless myrmidons, he was a close associate of a woman that never noticed anything was wrong and was rewarded by being made EPA administrator.
An administrator that might be even more radical than Lisa Jackson or Carol Browner and now wants to take on “climate change”, believing she can bypass Congress via EPA’s rule making process regarding CO2 emissions based on a ruling by the Supreme Court regarding the Clear Air Act in “Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007 that gave the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gases". All this in spite of the fact that "it is obvious that when Congress amended the Clean Air Act in 1970, 1977 and 1990, it did not intend to provide the agency with authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
However, there hasn’t been any warming going on for over eighteen years, and CO2 emissions have skyrocketed, all of which is in direct opposition to predictions made by the computer models they've developed. Computer modeling has its place in science, but not a place of determining policy. That's supposed to be done by collecting real evidence through direct observations allowing scientists to understand the mechanisms of cause and effect. Can we consider computer modeling anything more than Game Boy science? It does what it’s told to do….garbage in, garbage out.
So, if CO2 emissions are sky rocketing, and no warming is taking place - clearly we must believe CO2 doesn’t cause warming! This is clear cut unbiased scientific evidence - evidence that’s in harmony with history, and in harmony with what we see going on in reality. That’s why the green left changed the terminology from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change”. That allows them to make proclamations over every hurricane, tornado, freezing rain, blizzards, extended cold periods, etc. In other words the green left will then be able to claim every unpleasant thing that occurs in the world is being caused by mankind via CO2 emissions. If you doubt that just take a minute and read the views of a man who almost became President of the United States - Al Gore - who clearly must have become mentally unhinged by his loss.
McCarthy is now going after power plants with a massive unacceptable expansion of federal power over greenhouse gas regulations, and clean water regulations, thereby shutting down power plants, and mining operations of all kind, some even critical to their pet project - wind power! We in the pest control industry know there will be even more regulations involving pesticides. Not much science, but a lot of regulations. Are we really happy with that?
Senator Vitter stated, “The EPA will play a pivotal role in the implementation of the president’s recently announced climate action plan,” “With this edict from the president, EPA is further emboldened and will strengthen its grip on the country’s economy.” Is that what the Congress really intended for what is supposed to be a mere agency, supposedly under the control of the Interior Department? That may have been what Richard Nixon envisioned when he created EPA by Presidential decree, but is that what the writers of U.S. Constitution envisioned for the nation?
On Thursday, March 29, 2012 I posted an article titled, Holding the EPA to Account by John Dunn and Steve Milloy. The article went on to say, “Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton asked for EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's attention in his opening statement at a Feb. 28 House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, berated her and held her to account.” The article went on to list EPA failures;
1. Failure to comply with Obama Executive Order 13563 requiring regulations that promote economic growth, innovation, competitiveness and jobs with the least burdensome tools for achieving regulatory ends, taking "into account benefits and costs, both quantitative and qualitative" (quoting from the Executive order);
2. Promulgation of power plant regulations that have driven energy costs higher without reasonable justification;
3. Failure to Congressional criticism of regulatory actions, including requests for public health and economic research data and justifications of policy decisions;
4. Disregard of blatant conflicts of interest among its science advisers who receive tens of millions of dollars in research grants from the agency while also posturing as independent reviewers of agency science;
5. Failure to require that its sponsored researchers follow established rules of public health research with respect to toxicology and epidemiology;
6. Inappropriate reliance on the precautionary principle;
7. Circumvention of Congressional oversight; and
8. Grant-giving to advocacy groups that then enter into collusive lawsuits and aggressive regulatory requests that promote the agency's agenda and expand its regulatory and political power.
2. Promulgation of power plant regulations that have driven energy costs higher without reasonable justification;
3. Failure to Congressional criticism of regulatory actions, including requests for public health and economic research data and justifications of policy decisions;
4. Disregard of blatant conflicts of interest among its science advisers who receive tens of millions of dollars in research grants from the agency while also posturing as independent reviewers of agency science;
5. Failure to require that its sponsored researchers follow established rules of public health research with respect to toxicology and epidemiology;
6. Inappropriate reliance on the precautionary principle;
7. Circumvention of Congressional oversight; and
8. Grant-giving to advocacy groups that then enter into collusive lawsuits and aggressive regulatory requests that promote the agency's agenda and expand its regulatory and political power.
Dunn and Milloy then list what needs to be done to attempt to fix EPA.
1. Shrink EPA. Most environmental protection is done at the state-level. Most environmental regulatory work is done by the states. The Federal agency has too much time and money and that results in overreach and aggressive policy making.
2. End inherent conflict of interest. Research and regulation need to be separated into independent agencies. At a minimum, EPA science reviewers should not be grantee researchers or affiliated with grantee institutions.
3. Risk assessment (RA) and cost benefit analysis (CBA). All rules must be subject to the two. RA and CBA should be judicially reviewable. This could be done through a super mandate that modifies review criteria for all agency activities.
4. Judicial review. Aggrieved parties should have easier opportunities to challenge the agency in court. The "arbitrary and capricious" standard in the Administrative Procedures Act needs to be replaced with a standard that allows proper challenges, such as the standard of review for workplace rules administered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. This could be done with a "super mandate" that overrides all existing statutory law.
5. Impose stricter scientific standards. Obligate the Agency to research that is subject to objective, non conflicted peer review and appropriate evaluation of data and methods. Require that taxpayer funded research be reviewable for data and methods and that research comply with the scientific standards from authoritative resources such as the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, written by truly independent experts to provide federal judges with guidance on what constitutes reliable scientific evidence in federal courts. If the Reference Manual is good enough for courts, it ought to be good enough for the EPA.
2. End inherent conflict of interest. Research and regulation need to be separated into independent agencies. At a minimum, EPA science reviewers should not be grantee researchers or affiliated with grantee institutions.
3. Risk assessment (RA) and cost benefit analysis (CBA). All rules must be subject to the two. RA and CBA should be judicially reviewable. This could be done through a super mandate that modifies review criteria for all agency activities.
4. Judicial review. Aggrieved parties should have easier opportunities to challenge the agency in court. The "arbitrary and capricious" standard in the Administrative Procedures Act needs to be replaced with a standard that allows proper challenges, such as the standard of review for workplace rules administered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. This could be done with a "super mandate" that overrides all existing statutory law.
5. Impose stricter scientific standards. Obligate the Agency to research that is subject to objective, non conflicted peer review and appropriate evaluation of data and methods. Require that taxpayer funded research be reviewable for data and methods and that research comply with the scientific standards from authoritative resources such as the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, written by truly independent experts to provide federal judges with guidance on what constitutes reliable scientific evidence in federal courts. If the Reference Manual is good enough for courts, it ought to be good enough for the EPA.
Dunn and Milloy correctly state; “Congressman Barton's dressing down of EPA and its administrator was a first step in the right direction. But now Congressman Barton and his colleagues need to follow through by implementing real solutions that will stop the EPA's regulatory excesses.” So has any of that been done?
Since it is clear that McCarthy is a radical environmentalist, and it is clear conservatives didn’t want her confirmed as the EPA Administrator; how did a person who, as Senator Sessions noted, “has refused to disavow the aggressive bureaucratic power grabs that have come to define this administration’s use of EPA”, who “serves at the pleasure of the president….and he has no intention of constricting the expansion of EPA power”, get this job?
Mitch McConnell didn’t have the guts to stand up to Harry Reid and his threat of using the “nuclear option” thereby agreeing to an up or down vote on Presidential appointments conservatives despised. By throwing away their right to filibuster they were guaranteeing the confirmation of radical leftists in every position.
Of course they did receive something in return; a promise that McConnell and his brand of heroes might be allowed to filibuster appointments in the future. Wow! Now that’s tough negotiating! How about this as a better analysis; no guts, no glory and maybe no more “Senator” Mitch McConnell after 2014. Shocking isn't it - he's still there until 2018!
On Thursday, August 15, 2013 I posted this article by my friend Dr. Jay Lehr titled, “It’s time to restore EPA’s original purpose”, where-in he notes that; “In 1968, when I was serving as the head of a groundwater professional society, it became obvious to some of my colleagues and me that the United States did not have any serious focus on potential problems with its air quality, drinking water quality, surface water quality, waste disposal problems, and contamination that could occur from mining and agriculture. I held the nation’s first Ph.D. in groundwater hydrology, which gave me unparalleled insight into many of these potential problems.”
Jay goes on to say;
“We spoke before dozens of congressional committees, calling attention to mounting environmental pollution problems. We called for the establishment of a federal Environmental Protection Agency, and in 1971 we succeeded. I was appointed to a variety of the new agency’s advisory councils, and over the next 10 years we helped write a variety of legislative bills to make up a true safety net for our environment. These included, among others, the Water Pollution Control Act (later renamed the Clean Water Act); the Safe Drinking Water Act; the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act; the Clean Air Act; the Federal Insecticide, Rodenticide, and Fungicide Act; and the Comprehensive Environmental Reclamation, Compensation, and Liability Act.”
Most of us can agree that there were real environmental issues that needed to be addressed and something needed to be done, so what went wrong?
“A turning point occurred roughly a decade after the creation of EPA. Activist groups realized the agency could be used to alter our government by coming down heavily on all human activities regardless of their impact on the environment. From approximately 1981 onward, EPA rules and regulations became less about science-based environmental protection and more about advancing extraneous ideological agendas.”
Jay states that;
“It is my very strong belief that most EPA jurisdiction and functions can and should be replaced by a committee of the whole of the 50 state environmental protection agencies. Each of the individual states have its own environmental protection department, and these are much better at assessing and crafting solutions to local and regional environmental issues than the federal EPA. At the national level, a committee of the whole would do a much better job directing environmental stewardship than the money-hungry and power-hungry federal EPA.?
He goes on to say;
“The 50 state agencies are ready to assume full management of our environmental issues. The state agencies already do so, with many states enacting and enforcing environmental rules more stringent than those crafted by EPA. Only the EPA research laboratories should be left in place to answer scientific questions, no longer under the heavy hand of Washington politics.”
In the article Jay outlined a rational phase out plan for EPA and says;
“We could eliminate 80 percent of EPA’s bloated $8 billion budget and return the money to the people. The remaining 20 percent could be used to fund EPA’s research labs and pull together a committee of the 50 state environmental protection departments to take over EPA’s other responsibilities.”
His final point is simple yet profound;
“The easy path is the path of least resistance. The easy path is to continue funding and granting increasing power to an out-of-control federal EPA. A wiser path is to recognize that the individual states are ready and willing to provide more commonsense environmental protection.”
Let’s face it. The overall history of the EPA has been disastrous for humanity. I keep hearing about all the good things they accomplished by cleaning up the air and water, and those actions cannot be denied or derided. Yet, that doesn’t give EPA a pass of the rest of life. Starting with the ban on DDT. And yes….it was a ban. It's true there were exceptions written into the ban, and yes, it is true that this ban in the U.S. was not incumbent on other nations, and yes it is true that it was not a worldwide ban…..on paper. However, so much economic pressure was placed on countries that didn’t ban it outright, it became a de facto ban in all but a few nations.
It is estimated that there are up to one million deaths from malaria each year. But that is the tip of the iceberg. Each year approximately 500 million people (some believe this number is underestimated by WHO) are infected each year with up to “365 million cases of malaria in Africa alone in 2002”. As a result the cost in diminished lives has been far reaching.
Children, who are impacted by malaria the most, will have serious development problems that will affect them for the rest of their lives, the lives of their family members and their societies as a whole. This is an economic burden that is not easily overcome when the numbers are so high. In many areas of the world there isn’t a family that hasn’t lost loved ones to malaria. Let’s hope that the EPA stops doing things “for the children”, because much of what they have done hasn’t been so much “for the children” as it has been “to the children”, because it has been the children who have suffered the most.
History has shown the EPA is corrupt, irrational, misanthropic, and morally defective. It has become so infested with green/leftist radicals, along with the Wildlife Service and the Interior Department as a whole, there is only one fix. Abolish it and start over again by implementing all the suggestions listed by Dunn, Milloy and Lehr. Then there won’t be prominent administrators stealing almost $900,000 from the taxpayers. But what is to prevent the same kind of activists, and maybe even the same activists, taking over again? What is needed is 'the big fix'! An overhaul of the federal government!
The biggest fix of all would be implementation of Levine's Liberty Amendments - as outlined in his book, The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic, because “the balance of power between the three branches of the federal government, the states, and the American people has been distorted beyond the ability of conventional politics to repair. After all, if the power of the legislature has been diminished relative to the executive, the executive has dispersed its disproportionate power into unelected bureaucracies”
“One of the Liberty Amendments “sunsets” all federal departments and agencies, unless Congress reauthorizes them every three years by majority vote. Every big-ticket Executive Branch regulation would be subjected to review by a joint congressional committee. This amendment would pull the plug on the unstoppable federal bureaucracy, forcing every department to perpetually justify its existence, and terminating President Obama’s beloved practice of circumventing Congress to legislate by decree.”
Why is it prominent members of industry fail to see the need for such actions?
"Another Liberty Amendment likewise reins in the judicial branch, setting term limits for Supreme Court justices”. Clearly that is crucial. If one takes a hard look at the legislative authority granted to the EPA by Congress is becomes clear they had no intention of granting any agency this kind of power. So how did they accumulate it? It was granted to them by the judiciary via lawsuits. Lawsuits the EPA was amenable to in order to gain the power they desired through a secret practice by the EPA known as 'Sue And Settle' Collusion With Environmental Organizations”. What I have wanted to know for some time is why no on has gone to jail for this clearly corrupt practice. I don't even think anyone has been fired over this. Why? Because this is who they are and what they're all about.
There are two other amendments he proposes that I have touted for years. An amendment for term limits, “as Levin astutely points out..... Jurassic representatives-for-life distort the distribution of power in Congress”, and the repeal of the Seventeenth amendment, which is how senators are chosen. Originally Senators were chosen by their state to represent the views of state governments. These Senators were the states Ambassadors to the federal government, which maintained a balance of power between the states and the federal government. With that destroyed the accumulation of power by a central government and their bureaucratic myrmidons was inevitable.
Can any of this be done? Absolutely! One prominent member of my industry laughed at me when I told him my goal was the elimination of the EPA saying "well, that's not going to happen!" Well, no one believed the USSR would disappear overnight either, and eliminating the EPA won't be nearly as difficult a task. All it takes is guts.
No guts, no glory!
It is estimated that there are up to one million deaths from malaria each year. But that is the tip of the iceberg. Each year approximately 500 million people (some believe this number is underestimated by WHO) are infected each year with up to “365 million cases of malaria in Africa alone in 2002”. As a result the cost in diminished lives has been far reaching.
Children, who are impacted by malaria the most, will have serious development problems that will affect them for the rest of their lives, the lives of their family members and their societies as a whole. This is an economic burden that is not easily overcome when the numbers are so high. In many areas of the world there isn’t a family that hasn’t lost loved ones to malaria. Let’s hope that the EPA stops doing things “for the children”, because much of what they have done hasn’t been so much “for the children” as it has been “to the children”, because it has been the children who have suffered the most.
History has shown the EPA is corrupt, irrational, misanthropic, and morally defective. It has become so infested with green/leftist radicals, along with the Wildlife Service and the Interior Department as a whole, there is only one fix. Abolish it and start over again by implementing all the suggestions listed by Dunn, Milloy and Lehr. Then there won’t be prominent administrators stealing almost $900,000 from the taxpayers. But what is to prevent the same kind of activists, and maybe even the same activists, taking over again? What is needed is 'the big fix'! An overhaul of the federal government!
The biggest fix of all would be implementation of Levine's Liberty Amendments - as outlined in his book, The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic, because “the balance of power between the three branches of the federal government, the states, and the American people has been distorted beyond the ability of conventional politics to repair. After all, if the power of the legislature has been diminished relative to the executive, the executive has dispersed its disproportionate power into unelected bureaucracies”
“One of the Liberty Amendments “sunsets” all federal departments and agencies, unless Congress reauthorizes them every three years by majority vote. Every big-ticket Executive Branch regulation would be subjected to review by a joint congressional committee. This amendment would pull the plug on the unstoppable federal bureaucracy, forcing every department to perpetually justify its existence, and terminating President Obama’s beloved practice of circumventing Congress to legislate by decree.”
Why is it prominent members of industry fail to see the need for such actions?
"Another Liberty Amendment likewise reins in the judicial branch, setting term limits for Supreme Court justices”. Clearly that is crucial. If one takes a hard look at the legislative authority granted to the EPA by Congress is becomes clear they had no intention of granting any agency this kind of power. So how did they accumulate it? It was granted to them by the judiciary via lawsuits. Lawsuits the EPA was amenable to in order to gain the power they desired through a secret practice by the EPA known as 'Sue And Settle' Collusion With Environmental Organizations”. What I have wanted to know for some time is why no on has gone to jail for this clearly corrupt practice. I don't even think anyone has been fired over this. Why? Because this is who they are and what they're all about.
There are two other amendments he proposes that I have touted for years. An amendment for term limits, “as Levin astutely points out..... Jurassic representatives-for-life distort the distribution of power in Congress”, and the repeal of the Seventeenth amendment, which is how senators are chosen. Originally Senators were chosen by their state to represent the views of state governments. These Senators were the states Ambassadors to the federal government, which maintained a balance of power between the states and the federal government. With that destroyed the accumulation of power by a central government and their bureaucratic myrmidons was inevitable.
Can any of this be done? Absolutely! One prominent member of my industry laughed at me when I told him my goal was the elimination of the EPA saying "well, that's not going to happen!" Well, no one believed the USSR would disappear overnight either, and eliminating the EPA won't be nearly as difficult a task. All it takes is guts.
No guts, no glory!
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