Green Notes

De Omnibus Dubitandum

Cartoon of the Week
Editor's Note: This appeared in a Twitter post from someone from the
pest control industry.  The only thing I didn't like about it was I didn't do it first.

Observations From the Back Row

  

The Alar Story - The Alar story is a most enlightening account of how abuse of bureaucratic power, scare mongering by the media, and self enrichment by the green activists can create a real mess. If you ask most people who are somewhat familiar with this story how it all got started they will tell you that it was the 60 Minutes broadcast that did it. That is inaccurate; although the 60 Minutes segment set the story on fire, if you dig deeply into the whole Alar story you find that it takes so many twists and turns that it is hard to believe; but this is how the whole thing started. .....

Editor's note:  I published this in 2010, and I also bought Anne Gorsuch Burford's 1986 book, "Are You Tough Enough", demonstrating what a rat's nest government really is as she tried to reduce regulations and the EPA itself, and the consequences she suffered.  The reason I posted this is because Ann Gorsuch Burford is the mother of the current Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, and I doubt he has any love for the EPA.  What's not to like about that?  The left is now attacking Gorsuch's mother, (To Read More....) who has been dead for many years.

Anti-Vaxxers

Like Cuffed Jeans, Mumps Are Back With No Good Reason - I recently returned from spending two weeks on a college campus in upstate New York. While there, I was surprised to see, in every building that I entered, signs posted with health information about mumps. Mumps... the same viral infection that was predicted to be eliminated from the United States by 2010. Before the mumps vaccine was available in 1967, there were an estimated 150,000 - 200,000 cases reported each year. Since then, the number of cases of mumps has decreased by 99% in the United States. That being said, there remains a lot of fluctuation from year to year, easily seen in the graph below. To this point, there is an outbreak of mumps currently in Washington state, with nearly 300 cases reported - a large number compared to the normal ebb and flow of mumps from year to year.....

My Take - The Anti-Vaxxers are part and parcel of the "all natural" movement, which would include the greenies.  Just as millions have suffered and died as a result of "green" anti-pesticide initiatives all over the world, so too will we see an increase of preventable diseases in children whose parents chose to believe MMR vaccinations would cause autism in their children.

I've often wondered how heart broken those parents must be when their children die from a vaccine preventable disease knowing that outcome wasn't necessary. But they chose to believe Hollywood hacks and junk scientists instead or medical professionals whose views are totally substantiated by history....most importantly.....by history.

History is the foundation of truth. Those who promoted this movement have blood on their hands, including now unfrocked Dr. Andrew Jeremy Wakefield, who published the discredited work that started this scare, along with Jenny McCarthy and her Hollywood friends, and Oprah Winfrey for promoting McCarthy on her show.  But the British Medical Journal, The Lancet, must bear a lion's share of the blame for publishing his work, and taking so long to refute it. All Natural and Going Green are sects of a pagan secular All Natural pseudo-religious movement, and in spite of their almost having a monopoly on being wrong - they to continue to embrace it and demand all others "believe. To be green  is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. History shows dystopia follows green like Sancho Panza followed Don Quixote - a madman.

Energy

 

Perry’s testimony undercut by reported budget outline  - Energy Secretary Nominee Rick Perry tried to soften his Climate Change and renewable energy stances during his confirmation hearing. However, a leaked budget outline from the Trump transition team belied that conciliatory tone. The confirmation hearing for Rick Perry, president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Energy, might best be summed up with an exchange he had with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin........Under questioning from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Perry said he now believes Climate Change is equal parts natural and human-made........[however]......  At the DOE, it would roll back funding for nuclear physics and advanced scientific computing research to 2008 levels, eliminate the Office of Electricity, eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and scrap the Office of Fossil Energy, which focuses on technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.Surprisingly, no one appeared to have told Perry of the proposed cuts.........under Perry’s leadership, Texas became one of the country’s leading wind-producing states............

EPA

GOP changes rules to push EPA nomination over Democratic boycott - Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee suspended the rules on Thursday in order to approve President Trump's nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency after Democrats boycotted the meeting. Committee rules required a quorum to be present in order to do any committee business, which required at least one Democrat to be present. But in light of an ongoing Democratic boycott of several committees, Republicans changed the rules, and unanimously confirmed the nominee, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, in an 11-0 vote........

Comment by John Ray - Once again, Democrats are undone by their living in an eternal present, with no thought of yesterday or tomorrow.  (Editor's note: Isn't that what children do?)

What the GOP did here was follow a precedent set by Harry Reid, when he showed that you could bypass important checks and balances through a simple rewriting of the Senate rules.

Reid had no respect for precedent and now the GOP have followed suit.  Reid quite amazingly abolished the filibuster for all but approval of SCOTUS judges.  That insouciance has now come back hard to bite the Donks on the butt.  They set a dangerous precedent for temporary gain and now are virtually disarmed in resisting Trump appointees

This is of course not the end of Senate scrutiny for the appointees but it clears away a roadblock.  And final approval should now follow easily

Elections have consequences… even with EPA’s illegal human experiments -The election of Donald Trump seems to have sent some sort of shock wave through EPA’s Office of Inspector General in the saga over EPA’s illegal human experiments.  More than four-and-one-half years ago I wrote to the EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) requesting an investigation into EPA’s illegal human experiments.  Despite Congressional inquiry leading to an OIG investigation and report; a federal lawsuit; much media and an (ongoing) National Academy of Sciences investigation, the OIG never contacted me for more or supporting information.

Then Donald Trump was elected President.......

Global Warming

 

Columbia University's Climate: A Visit to an Alternate Universe - The subway stop at 116th Street in Manhattan is for Columbia University.  Is this subway stop a wormhole to an alternate universe, where people look like everyone else but are possessed by strange ideas and incomprehensible ways of thinking? My journey to 116th Street was to attend a lecture titled "What Would it Mean to Understand Climate Change?" It is hard to understand the title of this lecture, and the official description of the lecture increases the confusion:....... Naomi Oreskes is a bizarre conspiracy theorist.  According to Oreskes, the oil companies are running a scam to confuse everyone about global warming by spreading misinformation.  If they are doing this, their methods are strange.  If you look at oil company websites, most oil companies show themselves to be believers in global warming and assert that they are trying hard to reduce CO2 emissions.........

 

My Take - Everything about "climate change" claims are bizarre.  The Hockey stick graph - proven wrong and seemingly fraudulent.  The East Anglia e-mails showing the corruption and collusion between these "scientists".  The failure of all the computer models they're using, and the subsequent failures in their predictions.  If we listened to them ten years ago we would have already passed the "tipping point" to doom....just ask England's loony Prince Charlie.  The refusal to turn over their entire research for peer review, including Mann's "dirty laundry" - his term.  The failure to recognize the Roman and Medieval Warming periods, both of which were warmer than we are today, and that's just the tip of the ice berg.  The evidence that humans have nothing to do with climate change is overwhelming, and yet they cling to this scare like drowing passengers from a sinking ship cling to life savers.

 

But clarity will soon emerge - Trump is going to end the government grant money gravy train.  A gravy train that's made scientific integrity an oxymoron.  What I would really like to see is government grant money that's intended to prove mankind isn't responsible for climate change, and then watch these academic grant chasers do an about face so fast they would look like the color guard in a military parade.

 

Parasites

 

Scabies Outbreak and Things That Go Itch in the Night  - Let’s be honest. It is the rare few of us who don’t start empathetic itching when we even read stories about skin mite infestations or head lice, for example, let alone experience them first hand.  According to the Dayton Daily News, things got all too real for 86 hospital employees at Kettering Hospital when spokesperson, Elizabeth Long, confirmed an outbreak of scabies among the staff. The hospital representative maintains the spread can be traced to a patient and the proper precautions are in place to prevent further issues—maintaining no other patients have been affected.

What better time to clarify some misperceptions about scabies and a few other causes of more acute intense itching than the present?! Especially ones that are readily treatable. To read about causes of chronic itching that could signify more substantial underlying disease, read When Itching is a Bigger Deal........

Logical Fallacy of the Week

 

Argument from ignorance (appeal to ignorance, argumentum ad ignorantiam) also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proved false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that: there may have been an insufficient investigation, and therefore there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four,

1. true
2. false
3. unknown between true or false
4. being unknowable (among the first three).^[1]

In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used in an attempt to shift the burden of proof.

Science Under Attack

How to win without science: argumentum ad hominem - The “argumentum ad hominem” is a method to address an argument by attacking one’s adversary’s character. It used to be a fallacy – now it seems to be how anti-industry environmental activists score points when their science, evidence and data is worth very little, or as is often the case, when the activists do not understand the science (but understand the consequences).

Over the last few days, environmental NGOs and anti-industry anarchists on both sides of the Atlantic have been busily refuting scientific findings by showing how some researchers involved have, or many years ago, had ties to industry. Somehow these intellectual neophytes feel that when the evil wand of industry touches a scientist, he or she becomes incapable of a clear scientific observation. The antis surround themselves with others who think the same, retweet them, join in their character assassinations, but as far as I can see, have never actually met any industry scientists.

 

We don’t want your facts or evidence!.........Where is the science in any of this? That is the point – there is none. Argumentum ad hominem is the tool you use when you have no science on your side.......Burn them at the stake......I learned a lot about how these malcontents attack the person with their pitchforks, taunts and bile.........If we all run and hide, where will the science be?.........

TRUTH IS THE SUBLIME CONVERGENCE OF HISTORY AND REALITY