Fake climate science and scientists

Alarmists game the system to enrich and empower themselves, and hurt everyone else

Paul Driessen

The multi-colored placard in front of a $2-million home in North Center Chicago proudly proclaimed, “In this house we believe: No human is illegal” – and “Science is real” (plus a few other liberal mantras).

I knew right away where the owners stood on climate change, and other hot-button political issues. They would likely tolerate no dissension or debate on “settled” climate science or any of the other topics.

But they have it exactly backward on the science issue. Real science is not belief – or consensus, 97% or otherwise. Real science constantly asks questions, expresses skepticism, reexamines hypotheses and evidence. If debate, skepticism and empirical evidence are prohibited – it’s pseudo-science, at best.

Real science – and real scientists – seek to understand natural phenomena and processes. They pose hypotheses that they think best explain what they have witnessed, then test them against actual evidence, observations and experimental data. If the hypotheses (and predictions based on them) are borne out by their subsequent findings, the hypotheses become theories, rules, laws of nature – at least until someone finds new evidence that pokes holes in their assessments, or devises better explanations.

Real science does not involve simply declaring that you “believe” something, It’s not immutable doctrine. It doesn’t claim “science is real” – or demand that a particular scientific explanation be carved in stone. Earth-centric concepts gave way to a sun-centered solar system. Miasma disease beliefs surrendered to the germ theory. The certainty that continents are locked in place was replaced by plate tectonics (and the realization that you can’t stop continental drift, any more than you stop climate change).

Real scientists often employ computers to analyze data more quickly and accurately, depict or model complex natural systems, or forecast future events or conditions. But they test their models against real-world evidence. If the models, observations and predictions don’t match up, real scientists modify or discard the models, and the hypotheses behind them. They engage in robust discussion and debate.

They don’t let models or hypotheses become substitutes for real-world evidence and observations. They don’t alter or “homogenize” raw or historic data to make it look like the models actually work. They don’t hide their data and computer algorithms (AlGoreRythms?), restrict peer review to closed circles of like-minded colleagues who protect one another’s reputations and funding, claim “the debate is over,” or try to silence anyone who dares to ask inconvenient questions or find fault with their claims and models. They don’t concoct hockey stick temperature graphs that can be replicated by plugging in random numbers.

In the realm contemplated by the Chicago yard sign, we ought to be doing all we can to understand Earth’s highly complex, largely chaotic, frequently changing climate system – all we can to figure out how the sun and other powerful forces interact with each other. Only in that way can we accurately predict future climate changes, prepare for them, and not waste money and resources chasing goblins.

But instead, we have people in white lab coats masquerading as real scientists. They’re doing what I just explained true scientists don’t do. They also ignore fluctuations in solar energy output and numerous other powerful, interconnected natural forces that have driven climate change throughout Earth’s history. They look only (or 97% of the time) at carbon dioxide as the principle or sole driving force behind current and future climate changes – and blame every weather event, fire and walrus death on manmade CO2.

Even worse, they let their biases drive their research and use their pseudo-science to justify demands that we eliminate all fossil fuel use, and all carbon dioxide and methane emissions, by little more than a decade from now. Otherwise, they claim, we will bring unprecedented cataclysms to people and planet.

Not surprisingly, their bad behavior is applauded, funded and employed by politicians, environmentalists, journalists, celebrities, corporate executives, billionaires and others who have their own axes to grind, their own egos to inflate – and their intense desire to profit from climate alarmism and pseudo-science.

Worst of all, while they get rich and famous, their immoral actions impoverish billions and kill millions, by depriving them of the affordable, reliable fossil fuel energy that powers modern societies.

And still these slippery characters endlessly repeat the tired trope that they “believe in science” – and anyone who doesn’t agree to “keep fossil fuels in the ground” to stop climate change is a “science denier.”

When these folks and the yard sign crowd brandish the term “science,” political analyst Robert Tracinski suggests, it is primarily to “provide a badge of tribal identity” – while ironically demonstrating that they have no real understanding of or interest in “the guiding principles of actual science.”

Genuine climate scientist (and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology) Dr. Judith Curry echoes Tracinski. Politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren use “science” as a way of “declaring belief in a proposition which is outside their knowledge and which they do not understand…. The purpose of the trope is to bypass any meaningful discussion of these separate questions, rolling them all into one package deal – and one political party ticket,” she explains.

The ultimate purpose of all this, of course, is to silence the dissenting voices of evidence- and reality-based climate science, block creation of a Presidential Committee on Climate Science, and ensure that the only debate is over which actions to take first to end fossil fuel use … and upend modern economies.

The last thing fake/alarmist climate scientists want is a full-throated debate with real climate scientists – a debate that forces them to defend their doomsday assertions, methodologies, data manipulation … and claims that solar and other powerful natural forces are minuscule or irrelevant compared to manmade carbon dioxide that constitutes less that 0.02% of Earth’s atmosphere (natural CO2 adds another 0.02%).

Thankfully, there are many reasons for hope. For recognizing that we do not face a climate crisis, much less threats to our very existence. For realizing there is no need to subject ourselves to punitive carbon taxes or the misery, poverty, deprivation, disease and death that banning fossil fuels would cause.

Between the peak of the great global cooling scare in 1975 until around 1998, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and temperatures did rise in rough conjunction. But then temperatures mostly flat-lined, while CO2 levels kept climbing. Now actual average global temperatures are already 1 degree F below the Garbage In-Garbage Out computer model predictions. Other alarmist forecasts are also out of touch with reality.

Instead of fearing rising CO2, we should thank it for making crop, forest and grassland plants grow faster and better, benefitting nature and humanity – especially in conjunction with slightly warmer temperatures that extend growing seasons, expand arable land and increase crop production.

The rate of sea level rise has not changed for over a century – and much of what alarmists attribute to climate change and rising seas is actually due to land subsidence and other factors.

Weather is not becoming more extreme. In fact, Harvey was the first Category 3-5 hurricane to make US landfall in a record 12 years – and the number of violent F3 to F5 tornadoes has fallen from an average of 56 per year from 1950 to 1985 to only 34 per year since then.

Human ingenuity and adaptability have enabled humans to survive and thrive in all sorts of climates, even during our far more primitive past. Allowed to use our brains, fossil fuels and technologies, we will deal just fine with whatever climate changes might confront us in the future. (Of course, another nature-driven Pleistocene-style glacier pulling 400 feet of water out of our oceans and crushing Northern Hemisphere forests and cities under mile-high walls of ice truly would be an existential threat to life as we know it.)  

So if NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio and other egotistical grand-standing politicians and fake climate scientists want to ban fossil fuels, glass-and-steel buildings, cows and even hotdogs – in the name of preventing “dangerous manmade climate change” – let them impose their schemes on themselves and their own families. The rest of us are tired of being made guinea pigs in their fake-science experiments.  

Do We Really Need To Burn Corn So We Can Drive 1/3 Less Miles To The Gallon?

Apr 23, 2019Posted by Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

Biofuels, primarily ethanol in gasoline, provides 5% of our current energy use. Misguided environmental zealots believe it represents an ideal short-term solution for replacing fossil fuels for transportation and on-site energy generation. They argue that, because biofuels come from plants, they are natural, ‘green’ and nonpolluting. They claim that, in contrast to fossil fuels, biofuels are renewable and sustainable because they can be regrown every year.

Once one wakes up to reality, however, all of these arguments fail. The major losers in this current trend controlled by government regulation, which obviously benefits farmers who are suffering very low grain prices, is the public at large. Biofuels raise the price of transportation and our food concurrently. 

 

Here are some of the reasons why biofuels are not the answer to what some see as our energy problems (we drill down on each issue after this list):

 

1 – Numerous studies have proved that biofuels consume more energy than they produce.

2 – Biofuel production is extremely land intensive.

3 – Biofuels cost more than gasoline.

4 – Most cars and trucks can’t function using pure ethanol as fuel.

5 – Biofuel production competes with food production.

6 – Biofuel production and combustion creates more CO₂ emissions than fossil fuels (though that should not matter). 

 

1 – David Pimental, professor emeritus of entomology at Cornell University, documented long ago that biofuels, primarily ethanol, consume more energy in their production than they produce. Pimental and others estimated that corn from an acre of land produces between 330 and 450 gallons of ethanol. As a gallon of ethanol only has 63% of the energy content of gasoline, 400 gallons of ethanol per acre is equivalent to about 250 gallons of gasoline. One has to account for the fossil fuels required to produce the energy needed to run the farm equipment used to plant, tend and harvest the corn, of course.  And, after harvesting, processing steps which include fermentation and distillation also require fossil fuels. The arithmetic shown in the original research articles calculates that 100,000 BTU of energy are required to produce a gallon of ethanol, which in turn will provide only 77,000 BTU. Clearly it makes no economic sense. 

 

2 – It takes a huge amount of our land to produce ethanol. We have about 320 million farmable acres in the conterminous 48 states. While it varies from year to year, we tend to use about 90 million of those acres to produce corn, and 40% of that corn goes to produce ethanol. That works out to about 10% of our farm land to produce an uneconomical fuel.

Replacing all currently used gasoline, 140 billion gallons, and diesel fuel, 143 billion gallons, would require 20 times the amount of ethanol that is being produced today. We would need 720 million acres of land to achieve this. Are you laughing yet?

3 – Biofuels cost more than gasoline, often much more. Ethanol is the cheapest biofuel available, and its disadvantage to gasoline is primarily its feed stock, which is corn. Its processing and transport costs are not dissimilar to that of petroleum. With corn around $4.00 a bushel, the feedstock cost of ethanol is about $1.60 per gallon.  However, it takes 1.5 gallons of ethanol to produce the same energy as a gallon of gasoline, which is to say, the same miles driven. This means that it costs $2.40 to produce an amount of ethanol that would create the same energy as a gallon of gasoline. 

The current cost for a barrel of oil (equal to 42 gallons) is $60 (it can vary by the day) leading to a feedstock cost of about $1.44.  After calculating that the barrel produces 19 gallons of gasoline and 12 gallons of fuel oil, the feedstock price comes to about $1.62, considerably less than that of ethanol. This price does not take into effect the extra costs to taxpayers for the subsidies granted to ethanol production, and in some cases, farm subsidies. Counting these hidden costs, the price of ethanol is easily twice that of gasoline. In either case, what you pay at the pump is usually considerably more due to taxes.

 

If you really want your blood to boil, consider that during the Obama Administration the President decreed that military transportation take advantage of biofuels in ships and airplanes. The early implementation of this order proved an economic as well as practical disaster.

 

4 – Ethanol is added to gasoline to improve performance. Although there is no problem with the current 10% ethanol in gasoline, efforts to increase that amount to 15% is being greeted with great resistance from the Automobile Association of America, which states that such a level will seriously overheat engines and damage many engine components, such as fuel pumps. Most cars and trucks can’t function at all using pure ethanol.

 

5 – Biofuel production competes with food production. Every acre of land now used for biofuel production was formerly used for food production, mainly as feed for livestock and poultry. Over 40% of US corn production has made the switch from food to fuel since 2005. Other crops including oats, barley, sorghum, wheat and hay have seen their acreage decrease as well in order to produce biofuel. This increases the prices of all these grains. Farmers are making these conversions away from food production because government subsidies promote ethanol, and the public pays those subsidies.

 

6 – While it should not matter (since man-made carbon dioxide (CO₂) is almost certainly not a significant contributor to climate change), biofuel production and subsequent combustion has been shown to produce more CO₂ emissions than gasoline alone. Biofuels are hydrocarbons, similar to the molecules found in gasoline which produce CO₂ upon combustion. However, before getting to the ethanol stage, the sugars and starches in corn have to be fermented, which produces additional CO₂. 

We should all appreciate our farmers for providing us with the most inexpensive and healthiest foods on our planet. The vagaries of weather and world grain production provide them with a roller coaster of good and bad years. We should all want to see them provided with a safety net to keep them going under the worst circumstances.  But having a safety net involving a nonsensical plan to make fuel from corn is clearly not the answer.

 

NOTE: Portions of this article have been excerpted with permission of the publisher and author of the 2018 book ‘The Mythology of Global Warming’ by Bruce Bunker PhD, published by Moonshine Cove. The authors recommend this book as an excellent source of information on the climate change debate.

Earth Day predictions of 1970. The reason you shouldn’t believe Earth Day predictions of 2009

By Editor on April 22, 2009 @ I Hate the Media
For the next 24 hours, the media will assault us with tales of imminent disaster that always accompany the annual Earth Day Doom & Gloom Extravaganza. Ignore them. They’ll be wrong. We’re confident in saying that because they’ve always been wrong. And always will be.

Need proof? Here are some of the hilarious,

spectacularly wrong predictions made on the occasion of

Earth Day 1970.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”* Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”* George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”* Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”* New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”* Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”* Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”* Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”* Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”* Life Magazine, January 1970

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”* Kenneth Watt, Ecologist



Stanford's Paul Ehrlich

 announces that the

sky is falling.

“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” * Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”* Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'”* Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”* Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
* Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Keep these predictions in mind when you hear the same predictions made today. They’ve been making the same predictions for 39 years. And they’re going to continue making them until…well…forever.

Here we are, 39 years later and the economy sucks, but the ecology’s fine. In fact this planet is doing a lot better than the planet on which those green lunatics live.

This Appeared Here

CDC: Blood-sucking 'Kissing Bug' Confirmed in Delaware

By Aristos Georgiou 4/24/19

Public health officials have confirmed the presence of the so-called “kissing bug” in Delaware for the first time in the state's history.  The insect—Triatoma sanguisuga—is a blood-sucking creature that feeds on animals and humans, and has a particular fondness for biting faces. While the bites themselves are not necessarily dangerous, the bugs can transmit a parasite that causes Chagas disease—a potentially serious illness.  According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a family from Kent County Delaware contacted local health authorities in July 2018 after an insect had bitten their child’s face while she was watching television..........To Read More....

My Take - With the current illegal insanity we should expect a lot more if this, and I also include diseases we've mostly eliminated in this country. 
  

Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow': Here Are Some Of The Worst Global Warming Predictions Pushed By...The Experts

Matt Vespa  Apr 23, 2019

So, yesterday was Earth Day. No, this won’t be a post celebrating it. I’m a pro-fossil fuel kind-of-guy. I don’t like driving SUVs or Ford pickup trucks, but this is America; buy what you want and when you want it. We’re the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have solid natural gas reserves.

Drill, baby, drill!.....

This green warrior nonsense makes me want to buy all the aerosolized products at my local Walmart and just spray it intentionally into the air. Call me nuts, but I still think the jury is out. In 2007, the experts said the Arctic ice cap would be gone by 2013. It ended up growing by 533,000 square miles.

In 2013, we had the calmest hurricane season in thirty years and the quietest tornado season in six decades. It seems like, I don’t know, that there’s a natural cycle to this. It gets hot in the summer. Hurricanes form during…hurricane season; the same with tornados, and the seasons’ intensity varies. It’s not because of global warming. Oh, and the EPA buries this, but we’re at our most industrialized state ever; air quality couldn’t be better..............

he day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”...........

Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.............

Yeah, we still have crude oil, 65 million Americans didn’t die, let alone 4 billion people, and 15-30 years have passed. We’re still here............To Read More.....

Green Dreams

John Stossel Apr 24, 2019

The Green New Deal's goal is to move America to zero carbon emissions in 10 years.  "That's a goal you could only imagine possible if you have no idea how energy is produced," James Meigs, former editor of Popular Mechanics magazine, says in my latest video.

"Renewable is so inconsistent," he adds. "You can't just put in wind turbines and solar panels. You have to build all this infrastructure to connect them with energy consumers." Because wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine, "renewable" energy requires many more transmission lines, and bigger batteries.

Unfortunately, says Meigs: "You have to mine materials for batteries. Those mines are environmentally hazardous. Disposing of batteries is hazardous."..............If a Green New Deal is ever implemented, says Mills, it would rob the poor by raising energy costs, while "giving money to wealthy people in the form of subsidies to buy $100,000 cars, to put expensive solar arrays on their roofs or to be investors in wind farms.".........To Read More....

Cooling Down the Hysteria About Global Warming

Guest essay by Rich Enthoven
April 21, 2019
Recently, NASA released its annual report on global temperatures and reported that 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record, surpassed only by three recent years. This claim was accompanied by dire predictions of climate change and for immediate action to dramatically curtail CO2 emissions around the globe. Like every concerned citizen read this report with interest. I also read it as an informed and trained climate analyst – and I can tell that there are some serious problems with the report and its conclusions.

For starters, I can assure my readers that I am not a climate change “denier.” No one doubts the climate changed when it experienced the Ice Age that ended 12,000 years ago. I have read enough scientific literature to believe the well documented view that the planet experienced the Medieval Warm Period (950 – 1250 AD) and Little Ice Age (1550 – 1850 AD) when global temperatures changed materially. I have also read enough scientific literature to understand that solar and ocean cycles affect global climate.

NASA is now reporting significant changes to the global temperature. According to NASA (and others) the entire globe experienced a persistent warming trend in the early part of the 20^th century (1911 – 1940). Then, this trend reversed, and the globe cooled until the 1970’s.[1] Now, NASA is reporting that the global temperature increased .31° C in the last 10 years and that this trend is different than the .31° C increase NASA reports for the 1930’s[2]. But, a closer look at the data and methods used by NASA should make any reader skeptical of their results.....To Read More....

The Surprising Reason Zebras Have Stripes

By putting black-and-white coats on horses, a new study shows that the pattern discourages biting flies from landing.

Ed Yong Feb 20, 2019

For Tim Caro, it was surprisingly easy to dress horses like zebras. Several vendors were already selling coats with black-and-white stripes, often as fun gimmicks. But, as Caro learned, such coverings have an unexpectedly serious effect. “There are enormous benefits to having a striped coat for a horse,” he told me. .............

Scientists have been puzzling over the role of zebra stripes for more than 150 years. But, one by one, the most commonly proposed explanations have all been refuted.............

The team found the same trend when they put striped coats on the horses. Cloaked in stripes, the very same animals suddenly became more resistant to flies, except on their uncovered heads. And uniformly colored coats had no effect; the stripes, specifically, befuddled the flies............

“When we looked at the videos, we found that the flies simply aren’t decelerating when they come in to the stripes,” Caro said. Either they miss and overshoot the zebras, or they bump into the hides and bounce off. Something’s clearly throwing them off, but the details are still a mystery.......To Read More....

The Green Swastika – Environmentalism in the Third Reich

Environmentalism is Fascism

Nazi Germany was the greenest regime the world has ever seen. To an unprecedented degree Third Reich officials enthusiastically promoted: organic farming, reforestation, eco-forestry, endangered species preservation, extirpated species re-introduction, invasive species eradication, wilderness conservation, naturalism, neo-paganism, pantheism, sun-worship, Religion of Nature, holistic science and medicine, herbalism, animal rights, bio-centrism, wind power, bio-fuels, hysterical anti-pollutionism, back-to-the-land anti-urbanism, limits-to-growth and overpopulation propaganda, and apocalyptic anti-industrialism.

 

Such ecological sentiments were not merely the quirks of eccentric Nazis, nor were they held only by a fringe green faction within the Nazi Party, nor were they disposable propaganda motifs. Most Nazis, and most certainly the Party leadership itself, sincerely embraced ecological values. Ecological messaging played a crucial role in the Nazis’ rise to power and in their wielding of power.

 

Nature-worship was neither a peripheral nor an ephemeral phenomenon in the Third Reich. The Nazi intellectual vanguard disparaged humanity vis-à-vis Nature and mocked human efforts to master Nature. The trope of “Nature’s precarious balance” abounds in Nazi literature. Naturalist metaphors and parallels were standard features of Nazi rhetoric.

 

The naturalist-ecological mindset manifested in a wide spectrum of Nazi institutions and practices. Nazi forest and wetland conservation policies were extensive and extraordinary. An idolatrous nurturing of soil was basic to Nazism. Ecological ideas played significant roles in Nazi policies in conquered territories. Even the Third Reich’s modernizing tendencies exhibited pronounced ecological components.

 

Nazi propagandists deployed the overlapping credos of Social Darwinism, Political Biology, and Human Ecology to justify policies of racial supremacy, international war, social hierarchy, authoritarian governance, and corporatist economics. Aristocratic political structures were deemed expressions of Natural Law. Ecological arguments justified the Lebensraum doctrine. Social Darwinist arguments provided a pseudo-scientific rationale for the Holocaust. Nazis murdered in the name of Nature. (1)

 

At the taproot of Nazi environmentalism lay a German aristocracy, besieged by progress and struggling both to re-monopolize state policy-making and to comprehensively cartelize land markets. A resurgent aristocracy formed the nucleus of both German conservationism and German fascism. These were not two separate movements at a distance but rather a single, indivisible bloc................To Read More...

On April 15, 'Extinction Rebellion' Broke Windows to Save Earth

By Alex Berezow — April 15, 2019

 

Credit: David Holt/Wikipedia

For Americans, April 15 is Tax Day. For some others around the world, April 15 is a day to block traffic and commit crimes. It’s for the environment, you see.

Extinction Rebellion, which formed in the United Kingdom in 2018, is a group dedicated to fighting against (what they incorrectly perceive to be) humanity's imminent risk of extinction. And, according to CNN, they believe the best way to accomplish that is through "non-violent" acts of civil disobedience, such as by preventing people from going to work, spraying graffiti, smashing glass doors, protesting naked, and gluing themselves to street furniture. If that doesn't save the world, what will?

The group's Facebook page declares the "bonds of the social contract to be null and void," and therefore they stand in righteous rebellion against the government. Lucky for them, they made this bold declaration in 2019 when the Queen isn't inclined to chop off their heads.

The Rebellion has a website, too, complete with vague demands:

It's worth discussing these demands in more detail.

1) We demand governments tell the truth about the ecological crisis. It's extremely easy to find information about the environment. (Whether that information is reliable is another question entirely.) But assuming that Extinction Rebellion only wants to read data that is aligned with their hysterical, hair-on-fire approach to policy, they can find it just about anywhere -- scientific journals, think tanks, government websites. Nobody is hiding anything.

Besides, the fact that just about every country on Earth signed the Paris Agreement undermines their claim that governments are guilty of "criminal inaction." It's also worth noting that Germany already tried to implement a major green overhaul of its energy infrastructure called Energiewende. Spoiler it: It failed spectacularly, and Germany is nowhere close to meeting its carbon emissions target.

2) We demand zero emissions and drawdown by 2025. Good luck with that. The only realistic way to put a major dent in carbon emissions is to embrace nuclear power, but environmentalists (like those in Germany) are almost unanimously opposed to it. Apparently, the best idea they have to offer is the Green New Deal, the brainchild of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which reads like a 4th grader's wish-list to Santa Claus. And though Ocasio-Cortez tried to deny it, an accompanying memo from her office really did propose to ban airplanes and cows:

"We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast..."

3) We demand participatory democracy. It's interesting how environmental activists of all stripes seem to share this feature in common: They demand democracy, by which they mean, "Vote for our policies, or we'll break your stuff." That's not democracy; that's tyrannical mob rule.

As is so often the case, Extinction Rebellion consists of anarchists and other rebels-without-a-cause incapable of expressing a coherent thought, let alone sensible policy proposals. Like the Occupy movement that preceded it, Extinction Rebellion will make some noise then rightly fade into irrelevance.

Shakedown Artists: How Activists, Lawyers Collude to Threaten Science

By Special to ACSH — April 11, 2019  @ The American Council on Science and Health

 California is a trendsetter.

It’s home to world-class wine, championship basketball teams, beautiful weather, and legendary cities like San Francisco. But my home state, sadly, is also a trendsetter when it comes to wrongheaded public health policy. There’s no better example of this than Proposition 65, a law that has cost California businesses close to $300 million as of 2016.

Originally approved by voters in 1986, the law empowers the state government to regulate the use of chemicals, over 800 and counting, that it deems toxic to human health and the environment. Scientific shortcomings aside, the language of Prop. 65 has exposed California’s businesses to an unending onslaught of legal trouble, because anybody can “enforce” the law by filing suit against an allegedly offending business.

The problem, though, isn’t just a handful of kooky anti-science groups and “bounty hunter” environmental lawyers. Instead, Prop. 65 has created a self-perpetuating industrial complex of attorneys, consultants, and activists on both sides of the debate who profit at the expense of California businesses and consumers.

The Activist-Legal Complex

The demand for legal and compliance services around the law is so extensive that Prop. 65 Clearinghouse hosts an annual conference at which “stakeholders” keep current on California’s ever-evolving chemical regulations and strategize for the coming year. It’s like an industry trade show for ambulance chasers.

A quick glance at the conference’s list of sponsors confirms this accusation: an odd mix of powerful defense law firms, trade associations, and a nonprofit group that files Prop. 65 lawsuits as a means of fundraising. You may wonder why firms that defend businesses in Prop. 65 lawsuits are co-sponsoring events with an organization that files those lawsuits in the first place. Well, it’s all part of the arrangement.

Businesses sued under Prop. 65 have very few options when mounting a defense. They can fight the lawsuit if they have attorneys, but the associated legal fees are usually unmanageable. The penalty for violating Prop. 65 is $2,500 for every day the business is out of compliance. Then, of course, the company has to pay their attorneys, as well as the plaintiff’s attorneys if they lose. Add to that the wasted time and lost productivity of a protracted legal battle, and many businesses conclude that fighting back isn’t a realistic option.

As a result, companies often choose a different strategy. They join a trade group in which their entire industry is represented by a large defense firm that specializes in Prop. 65 lawsuits, like the ones sponsoring the conference mentioned above. These “opt-in defendants” pay a retainer to the defense firm and a smaller, negotiated penalty for violating Prop. 65, and the settlement remains open to other businesses in the industry who may be sued under Prop. 65 in the future.

Basically, it’s an insurance racket.

As one law firm says, “Defense attorneys get hired, recruit a lot of other defendants, settle the case and collect fees from everyone involved.” In regard to the opt-in settlements, the firm notes, “Defense counsel and plaintiff's counsel effectively teamed up against the interests of any new defendant.” Others, including a former California Attorney General, have caught on to this pattern of collusion in Prop. 65 lawsuits.

The Anti-Chemical Crusaders

None of this would be possible without the help of a radical environmentalist community that provides a “science” foundation for this activist-legal complex. The mission of the Center for Environmental Health (CEH), a nonprofit with a pleasant sounding name, is to “protect people from toxic chemicals … and to demand and support business practices that are safe for human health and the environment.” That’s a lovely sentiment, but in practice, it means that CEH sues any California business that it can get away with.

The group’s “legal action” webpage lists just a few examples of the anti-science quackery it promotes in court. CEH opposes the use of electronic cigarettes, fracking, and so-called endocrine disrupting chemicals like BPA. Not only is there no science to justify the group’s zealous legal crusades, the research we do have tells us that the technologies CEH attacks have benefited all of us.

Electronic cigarettes, for example, are 95 percent safer than tobacco, according to the best evidence available. On a similar note, the EPA says that fracking has minimal environmental impacts, and the natural gas it yields is a relatively clean source of energy since it releases less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than other fossil fuels. BPA, too, has an impressive track record. It is used in the production of vitally important medical devices, food storage containers, eyeglasses, and even DVDs. When used appropriately, research shows that it has no detrimental effect on human health.

California’s legal system is a toxic mess. It was designed this way in order for activists and lawyers to scare consumers and extract money from businesses. If scientists and pro-science activists don’t speak up, activists and lawyers will hijack science in California. That’s a trend the rest of the country can do without.

Cameron J. English is Senior Agricultural Genetics and Special Projects Editor at the Genetic Literacy Project.

 

Earth Hour based on Propaganda

Apr 9, 2019 Posted by Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris@ America Out Loud

In promoting Earth Hour, held across the world on March 30, activists told us we should turn off our lights to show support for the crusade to stop climate change. The Earth Hour Australia webpage, “Choose your climate future,” started:

“Global warming, caused by carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels…”

This is propaganda, pure and simple. Besides the fact that the amount of global warming caused by fossil fuel combustion is likely very small (or none at all—see later in this article), they are really taking about the benign gas carbon dioxide (CO2), not carbon (which is a solid).

The person arguably most responsible for this deception is former Vice President Al Gore. From the day that Gore released his 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, the general population was told that carbon emissions were going to destroy our planet. Gore, more or less, coined the term “carbon footprint,” always hiding the enormity of his own footprint, that is.

Gore and his cohorts were never actually talking about carbon, of course. They were talking about CO2, but they understood that most people recognize that they exhale CO2 and plants absorb it in order to live. Not a dark thought. So, in an unfortunately all too successful attempt to scare the populace, they seized on using the term carbon as a synonym for CO2, knowing it would conjure up visions of soot, lamp black, and coal dust, none of which are warm and fuzzy. Aside from the fact that CO2 contains a single atom of carbon, it bears no resemblance to elemental carbon. It has about as much in common with carbon as lightning does with a lightning bug.

Climate change campaigners do not seem to understand that commercial greenhouse operators routinely run their internal atmospheres at up to 1,500 parts per million (ppm) CO2 concentration for a good reason. Plants inside grow far more efficiently than at the 410 ppm in the outside atmosphere. Yet there is no hint of any consequent temperature rise.

Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts, a report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change , cites over 1,000 peer-reviewed studies that document rising productivity of forests and grasslands as CO2 levels have increased, not just in recent decades, but in past centuries.

And increasing CO2 levels pose no direct hazard to human health. CO2 concentrations in submarines can reach levels above 10,000 ppm, 25 times current atmospheric levels, with no harmful effects on the crew.



Screen capture from “Four Climate Scientists Destroy Climate Change Alarmism,” YouTube video published by The Heartland Institute

We are actually near the lowest level of CO2 in Earth’s history. About 450-million years ago, CO2 was over 1000% of today’s level while Earth was in one of the coldest periods in the record. This is just one of many findings that indicate that the climate models’ assumption that temperature is driven by CO2 is wrong.

Activists say that there will be important pollution reduction co-benefits to CO2 emission control. Yet US Environmental Protection Agency state on their Website,

“Between 1980 and 2017,… total emissions of the six principal air pollutants dropped by 67 percent…between 1980 and 2016, CO2 emissions increased by 12 percent.”

Using climate regulations to reduce pollution would obviously be an expensive mistake.

The degree to which language of the climate debate has become distorted was well illustrated in “4 Major California cities commit to carbon-free buildings by 2050,” an August 23, 2018 press release from Sierra Club. Therein, they cited Robert M. Gould, MD, President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, who referenced “the decarbonization of our planet that is imperative for human survival.” A decarbonized Earth would be a dead world, a world devoid of all life including ours. Surely that is not the doctor’s goal.

The public has unwittingly accepted the ‘carbon’ sleight of hand without realizing they were being manipulated toward negative thoughts about plant food. It is possibly the best example of subliminal brain washing ever.

Fears that CO2 increases will cause runaway temperature-rises should be scuttled as well. In “The Evidence Proves That CO₂ is Not a Greenhouse Gas,”  his September 13, 2018 article in Technocracy News & Trends (Mesa, Arizona), historical climatologist and former climatology professor (and ICSC Chief Science Advisor) Dr. Tim Ball writes:

“The most important assumption behind the AGW theory is that an increase in global atmospheric CO2 will cause an increase in the average annual global temperature. The problem is that in every record of temperature and CO2, the temperature changes first. Think about what I am saying. The basic assumption on which the entire theory that human activity is causing global warming or climate change is wrong.”

For many, the real goal of these deceptions is summed up well by journalist H. L. Mencken, the sage of Baltimore, who once said,

“the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Global warming has been among their very best hobgoblins.

Misuse of the word carbon is not a laughing matter, however. This unsubstantiated fear is depriving the less fortunate among us of sorely needed inexpensive energy by eliminating life giving fossil fuels and the miracle molecule of life, CO2. In so doing, society is subjected to further government control, thereby reducing individual freedom, moving our country closer to socialism and away from capitalism.

In the coming days and weeks, take note of how often you read the word carbon when CO2 is in fact the real subject. Capture the picture in your mind when you read it. Go back and reread it as CO2 and capture your thought again. This is not like the difference between describing a flower as pretty or beautiful. It is an intentional distortion aimed at provoking fear. We must call them on it every time. 

“Clean” energy isn’t so clean

By Ronald Stein, Mark Mathis March 31st, 2019 |Energy |7 Comments

Energy consumers everywhere, we need to clean up our act! Anti-fossil fuel activists are no doubt nodding their heads in agreement. Except, we’re thinking about something a little different than what they’re thinking. Let’s talk.

 

What we’re referring to is the commonly over-used phrase, “clean energy.” All of us, even those who understand that oil, natural gas, and coal run the world, often refer to wind and solar as “clean” without even questioning it. It’s time to do some questioning.

 

What is it that makes wind and solar so clean and fossil fuels so dirty? Perception and hype. With wind and solar you don’t see anything getting burned (perception) like you do with oil, natural gas, and coal. And it’s the burning that creates pollution (hype). But let’s take a closer look at that.

 

Air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels in the United States has been in steep decline since 1970. And that dramatic drop across all six pollutants the EPA classifies as dangerous took place at the same time Americans increased their fossil fuel use by 40 percent. From 1988 to 2015 our vehicle miles traveled have more than doubled! So, as America has grown, we’ve used more fossil energy, traveled a lot more and yet the air we breathe has continued to get cleaner. That’s amazing. Check “pollutants” off the list.

 

And, for those who are worried about energy-related CO2 emissions, they’ve also been in decline for more than a decade.............To Read More....

 

Do you really understand how shale gas companies drill horizontally?

By Dr. Jay Lehr April 3rd, 2019 |Energy| 25 Comments @ CFACT

Admit it, you have no clue.

Of course we have all seen the diagrams of Shale Gas Wells

with the pipe going vertically down into the ground and then turning a right angle to proceed horizontally where the well will be hydraulically fractured (not Fracked). How is that possible? Can you think of any mechanism underground where pipe could turn ninety degrees and keep the end of the pipe, where the drill bit is spinning 360 degrees, to continue penetrating the rock encountered? Of course you can’t, because it cannot be done. Yet amazingly, surely 90 percent of all folks even remotely interested in the topic of shale gas development do not question the possibility of this impossibility. So read on, this well kept secret will be unveiled.

Just over a decade ago, America’s energy out look was revolutionized by technological advances in hydraulic fracturing which has been turned into the slang word Fracking, purposely and cleverly by those who wish to eliminate it from the tool box of US energy development. Hydraulic fracturing is fairly self-explanatory. It accurately conveys the idea that a fluid under pressure is used to break or fracture rock. Most people are familiar with the concepts of hydraulics used to do all kinds of work in cars and machinery. I split wood to heat my house with pressure applied to a blade by hydraulic hoses.

The word Fracking effectively conjures up negative thoughts. It sounds ugly, even a slur on a swear word, maybe even a chain saw massacre movie. If you are inclined to ever talk about the subject, help us fight back by using the words “hydraulic fracturing” and explaining to people who use the term fracking, what they are really talking about. But let’s continue on to how we drill horizontally.

Hydraulic fracturing involves the injection of high-pressure water, to create fractures, along with sand to keep the fractures open, and chemicals to eliminate biological growth that might clog the fractures. All of this then allows natural gas and oil in the rock to be released into the horizontal drill hole and travel under natural pressure up to the surface of the ground where it is collected. It has been done in vertical wells since 1947.

Hydraulically fracturing vertical wells, however, was limited in its value to increase flow of oil and gas by the fact that the vertical thickness of most layers of rock containing oil and gas are only a few hundred feet thick. In 1998, the engineer and businessman George Mitchell recognized that steel pipe could be guided from a vertical plane to a horizontal plane using a flexible drill bit controlled by an internal Global Positioning System.

Those who abhor our use of fossil fuel rest part of their objection to horizontal drilling on their claim that it will pollute our ground water. This would require leakage of the oil and gas through the rock and soil overlying the horizontal pipes harvesting the oil and gas. Here is where the reality defeats the false diagrams of a drilled shale gas well turning at a right angle at any depth the driller might choose. As previously stated, this is impossible.

What they, and likely you, fail to understand is that optimal horizontal fracturing, can only be carried out at great depths. A steel drill pipe will only bend about three degrees per hundred feet of length. It therefore takes thirty 100 ft lengths to bend 90 degrees, bringing the drill bit to a minimum of 3000 below ground before the drilling is actually done horizontally and hydraulic fracturing can begin. From there the well can extend outward for thousands of feet, often reaching out as far as two miles (10,560 feet). Now where hydraulically fracturing a vertical well yielded gas and oil from only a few hundred feet of rock, now the shale gas wells can tap the source formation over more than 100 times a greater length.

Thus the risk of oil and natural gas escaping thousands of feet up to groundwater drinking water sources is infinitesimal. Additionally the vertical portion of the hole that ultimately brings the fossil fuel to the surface commonly has as many as seven layers of telescoping casing.

Now as Paul Harvey used to say, “you know the rest of the story.”

Yankees’ UN climate plan a big swing and a miss

By Adam Houser| April 4th, 2019 |Climate| 5 Comments

 

“It is high, it is far, it is…GONE!”

For any New York Yankees baseball fan, that iconic home run line from broadcaster John Sterling will bring back years of memories from World Series and playoff runs past.

Unfortunately, Sterling’s famous call fits more than just the Bronx Bombers’ knack for slugging home runs. It also is a great description for the Yankees’ lousy idea to sign on to the “UN Sports for Climate Action Framework.”

The Framework’s goals are high, far, and very well gone from anything close to logic or reality, and will only further hurt impoverished communities around the world.

According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, “The Yankees are the first major North American sports team to sign on to the Framework, the aim of which is to bring greenhouse emissions in line with the Paris Climate Change Agreement and inspire others to take ambitious climate action.”........To Read More.....

EPA’s Chemical Risk Assessments Rely on Flawed Science, Study Finds

March 26, 2019 By Linnea Lueken

A new study concludes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), a program assessing the toxicity of chemicals and any risk from exposure to them, often produces assessments based on flawed research.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), a program assessing the toxicity of chemicals and any risk from exposure to them, often produces assessments based on sloppy or flawed research, a new study concludes...........“EPA risk assessments, by and large, focus on preventing worst-case scenarios—even absurd ones—and ignore more plausible scenarios, while ignoring more serious risks created by the EPA’s own regulations,”

 

EPA identifies four steps necessary for an accurate risk assessment.............

Proponents tout IRIS as the most comprehensive, accurate chemical risk assessment, but it is not, says Logomasini.

 

“IRIS’s supporters say it sets the ‘gold standard’ for risk assessment, when the opposite is true,” Logomasini told Environment & Climate News. “The program has failed to develop rational, useful risk assessments, opting to select absurd risk values that create unwarranted public health scares, harming the public.”.............EPA uses toxicology poorly to make people believe substances they may be exposed to are more dangerous than they really are, says Dr. John Dale Dunn, an emergency physician, researcher, and policy advisor to The Heartland Institute, which publishes Environment & Climate News..................To Read More....

Sidelined Because She Rejects Radical Green Agendas?

Paul Driessen Apr 06, 2019

 Aurelia Skipwith has a BS in biology from Howard University, a Master’s in molecular genetics from Purdue and a law degree from Kentucky. She has worked as a molecular analyst and sustainable agriculture partnership manager. She was also co-founder and general counsel for AVC Global, a Washington, D.C.-based agricultural supply chain development company that helps small farmers link up with multinational buyers and with agronomy, business, financial and other service providers.

For two years, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Interior Department, where she performed her duties so well that last October President Trump nominated her to become the next Director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) at Interior. She is an ideal candidate for the post.

She’s also only the third woman ever nominated for this position – and the first African American. Her impeccable scientific, legal, agricultural and conservationist background would ensure fairness, balance, integrity, solid science and multidisciplinary thinking in FWS decision making.

And yet, Ms. Skipwith lingers in confirmation limbo, along with hundreds of others whose nominations have been stalled for many months to well over a year. Too many Democratic senators appear determined to prevent the president from having people onboard who would implement his policies.

In fact, the US Senate has already been forced to hold cloture votes – ending drawn-out debates – on 128 Trump nominees! In glaring contrast, the Senate had a grand total of only 24 such cloture votes for all six previous presidents combined: Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush II and Obama! That’s 32 times more nominees by this president sidelined by Congress than during all ten previous presidential terms.

 

Why is Ms. Skipwith being treated this way? It appears to be simple ideological politics. Senate Democrats seem to be acquiescing to the demands of Deep Green environmentalists and Deep State career bureaucrats who do not like having their views and policies challenged.

Her molecular analysis and sustainable agriculture work were with Monsanto, the ultimate Evil Corporation to many of her opponents, because it manufactures both Roundup weedkiller and genetically engineered (GE) crops like Bt corn and Roundup-Ready soybeans. As Deputy Assistant Secretary, Ms. Skipwith supported reversing Obama era bans on planting such crops and using advanced-technology neonicotinoid pesticides in wildlife refuges administered by Fish & Wildlife.

The 2014 bans resulted from collusive sue-and-settle lawsuits between environmentalist groups and Obama DOI officials. They were reversed in August 2018, following a careful review process. As I have noted in many articles (here, here and here, for example), GE crops, glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) and neonics are safe for humans and the environment. They also enable farmers to produce more food from less land, using less water and fewer pesticides, and with greater resistance to droughts, floods, insects and climate change, than is possible with conventional or organic crops.

 

Genetically engineered crops promote sustainable agriculture and help the world feed billions who otherwise face prolonged malnutrition and starvation. And yet, radical greens oppose them. They even attack Golden Rice, which prevents blindness and death in malnourished children and parents, by incorporating genes that produce Vitamin A precursors, vastly expanding nutritional values in rice.

 

Americans alone have consumed more than four trillion servings of foods with at least one GE ingredient – without a single documented example of harm to a person or the environment.

Regarding glyphosate, only one agency, the International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC), says the chemical is “probably carcinogenic” to humans – and its analysis is tainted by fraud and blatant conflicts of interest. Studies by the European Food Safety Authority, Food and Agriculture Organization, Germany’s Institute for Risk Assessment, Australia’s Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, and other respected organizations worldwide have concluded that glyphosate is safe and non-carcinogenic.

 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists conducted a “comprehensive systematic review of studies submitted to the agency and available in the open literature,” and concluded that the chemical “is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans.” Health Canada conducted a similarly extensive review of global studies, found no likely cancer risk, and noted that “no pesticide regulatory authority in the world” believes glyphosate is a cancer risk to humans “at the levels at which humans are currently exposed.”

As cancer researcher Arthur Lambert noted recently, “exposure to carcinogens influences the risk of developing cancer, which is a function of many factors, including the dose and duration of the exposure” – to glyphosate for example. But other factors also play integral roles, including inherited genes and genetic mutations, how well one’s immune system can find and eliminate mutated cells before they develop into cancer, personal lifestyle choices, and exposure to additional carcinogens over the years. Separating all those factors is virtually impossible.

 

Risks associated with glyphosate fall “somewhere between the small hazard that comes from eating a considerable amount of bacon (for colorectal cancer) and consuming very hot tea (for esophageal cancer),” Lambert notes. In fact, IARC lumps bacon, sunlight and plutonium together in its “definitely carcinogenic” category and lists as “possible” carcinogens pickled vegetables, caffeic acid found in many fruits and vegetables, and even drinking hot beverages or working the night shift.

If glyphosate poses few risks of cancer in humans, its threats to ducks, geese, turkeys and other animals in wildlife refuges are likely infinitesimal. The same is true for GE crops and neonicotinoid pesticides.

Most neonics are used as seed coatings, which get absorbed into plant tissues as crops grow. They protect plants against insect damage by targeting only pests that actually feed on the crops – and are largely gone by the time mature plants flower, which means they are barely detectable in pollen.

As to claims that neonics harm bees and thus should be banned from wildlife refuges, a 2015 international study of wild bees found that most wild bees never even come into contact with crops or the neonics that supposedly threaten them. The same study also determined that the 2% of wild bees that do visit crops – and so would be most exposed to these pesticides – are among the healthiest bee species on Earth.

The eight senators who recently expressed concern that chlorpyrifos and other pesticides threaten multiple protected species should applaud Interior’s reversal of bans on modern agricultural technologies (which reduce the use of such pesticides). Ducks Unlimited and the National Wild Turkey Federation certainly did.

The bans “were clearly not based on science,” they said, adding that the reversal restored GE crop use as an “essential tool” for waterfowl and wildlife management in national wildlife refuges. Many refuges were established along migratory bird flyways to provide food for waterfowl. But some can provide sufficient food only through cooperative agreements that let local farmers plant crops on refuge lands in exchange for leaving some of their crops unharvested, to supplement natural food on the refuge.

Genetically modified crops maximize crop yields, the FWS has explained, and “a blanket denial” of their use limits the latitude that refuge managers need to fulfill the purposes of each refuge. The ban on neonics was equally problematical because they are often used with GE crops and Roundup.

Aurelia Skipwith’s actions reflect the best in science-based government decision making. Her broad expertise enables her to separate fact from fiction, and reality from ideological agendas. She is the right person for this job – and indeed may turn out to be one of the best FWS directors ever. The Senate should confirm her forthwith.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of many articles on the environment. He has degrees in geology, ecology and environmental law.