How Environmentalism Has Kept Communism Alive – Part One

By Dr. Jay Lehr & Tom Harris November 27th, 2020 @ America Out Loud

It is time to face reality: communism is back. It has reappeared nearly everywhere under the guise of radical environmentalism. This abhorrent cult puts nature well above mankind primarily for the purpose of controlling if not subjugating us all in the name of protecting nature, ecosystems, or ‘Gaia.’ Take your pick; either way it’s about preservation, not conservation. Resource development, therefore, becomes tantamount to high crime in the eyes of radical environmentalists.

In an outstanding new book from The Epoch Times news outlet titled “How the Spector of Communism Is Ruling Our World,” the authors state:

“communist elements have commandeered much of the environmental movement to advance their own political agendas. Communism’s infiltration of environmentalism has been underway virtually since the beginning of the environmental movement”. 

An interesting data point was when former President of the Soviet Union, previously General Secretary of the USSR’s Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev, launched the new environmental organization Green Cross International.

The Epoch Times’ book’s most lucid and penetrating statement, which we hope we can learn to recognize, is: 

“Communism must create or use an enemy that threatens all of humankind and intimidates the public around the world into handing over both individual liberty and state sovereignty. Creating global panic about looming environmental and ecological disasters is a route toward achieving its goal.” 

Read this again and think for a moment. You will notice how closely radical environmentalists follow this exact approach today.

In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels declared that capitalism was an enemy of the environment and perhaps were the first to use the term ‘ecosystem.’ Marx lined up his followers to rail against those who could be accused of despoiling the environment. After Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik Party launched their 1917 coup in Russia, they dictated that all land, forests, water, minerals, animals, and plant resources become the property of the state. This was done to prevent the public from using them without state authorization.

In the 1960s, popular radical books such as Silent Spring and The Population Bomb tried to convince readers that all pesticides should be outlawed and population growth should be controlled by the government. These books contributed to the establishment of the first Earth Day in 1970, followed by the United Nations Conference on The Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972. Soon there was the formation of an alphabet soup of environmental groups stridently demonstrating and propagandizing the damage mankind was supposedly doing to our blue planet.

Before that decade was over, we in the U.S. were addressing our real problems with the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that launched seven pieces of sensible legislation to protect our surface and groundwater and properly handle waste disposal from our mines and agriculture. But the EPA strayed from rational policy formulation after 1980 and little useful legislation was ever passed again. From then on, only stringent rules were created to impede economic progress at great cost with no benefit to the environment or human health. 

The true beginning of the current socialist/communist surge began in 1988 when the World Meteorological Society and the United Nations Environment Program created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It was at this point that the idea of man-caused global warming surfaced as the most important mechanism to defeat capitalism by requiring a one-world government to take the reins of saving the Earth from extinction.

Two years later as the Soviet Union was crumbling, Gorbachev addressed an international conference on the environment in Moscow, where he called for the establishment of an international monitoring system and a covenant to protect unique environmental zones. A majority of the world’s environmentalists accepted his charge. It was the beginning of rule by propaganda and the end of sound policy and scientific research in matters of the environment, with global warming leading the charge. When warming stopped around the turn of the century, radical environmentalists cleverly change the fear to ‘climate change,’ knowing full well that, since the climate is always changing, their crusade would always have its boogieman. 

In 1998, an article titled Green Cross: Gorbachev’s Enviro-Communism, by the late Natalie Grant Wraga who grew up in the Soviet Union said:

“Protection of the environment has become the principal tool for an attack against the West and all it stands for. Protection of the environment may be used as a pretext to adopt a series of measures designed to undermine the industrial base of developed nations. It may also serve to introduce malaise by lowering their standard of living and implanting communist values.”

In Marx and Engle’s manifesto, the authors resolved to:

“build a movement that can replace capitalism with a society in which common ownership of the means of production replaces capitalist ownership, and in which the preservation and restoration of ecosystems will be a fundamental part of all human activity.”

But Marx predicted that capitalism would eventually fail all by itself. It has yet to do so, and thus communist-minded radical environmentalists have had to keep up the war against private business with a battle cry of ecological collapse. This was based on the prevalent but somewhat spurious theory of the relationship between living things and their environment. Indeed, eco-socialism is not now simply a branch of socialism; it is what socialism has become today.

In Part two of this series, we will detail the massive damage the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has wrought upon the world.

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About the Author: Dr. Jay Lehr & Tom Harris

 
Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute. He is an internationally renowned scientist, author and speaker who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on environmental issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the national government, as well as many foreign countries. After graduating from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological Engineering, he went on to receive the nation’s first Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers. Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition, and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute. He has 40 years experience as a mechanical engineer/project manager, science and technology communications professional, technical trainer and S&T advisor to a former Opposition Senior Environment Critic in Canada’s Parliament.

The Great American Outdoors Act

This crown jewel of the Trump Administration’s environmental record will bring many benefits 

Duggan Flanakin 

To the surprise of most Americans, and the consternation of many in the “mainstream” media, Vice President Mike Pence highlighted the Trump Administration’s environmental record during the recent VP debate. Citing the President’s signing of the historic bill, Mr. Pence lauded the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) as “the largest investment in our public lands and public parks in 100 years.”

The Associated Press said the GAOA is the “most significant conservation legislation enacted in nearly half a century.” The National Parks Conservation Association called it “a conservationist’s dream.”

Harvard Business School professor Linda Bilmes agreed, calling the GAOA “the biggest land conservation legislation in a generation.” Bilmes, who served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton Administration, marveled that the Trump Administration won broad bipartisan support in a polarized Congress, after the President reevaluated his own stance on this groundbreaking environmental and conservationist initiative.

Bilmes explained that the new law has two major effects. First, the new National Park and Public Lands Legacy Restoration Fund will provide up to $9 billion over the next five years to address deferred maintenance issues in national parks, wildlife refuges, forests and other federal areas, with $6.5 billion earmarked specifically to the 419 National Park units. Second, the GAOA guarantees the statutory maximum of $900 million per year in perpetuity for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF).

Bilmes explained that Congress has been stingy with parks funding, despite a doubling of annual park visitors since 1980 (excluding the COVID-marred 2020 season). Thanks to the GAOA, the $12 billion backlog of maintenance to repair roads, trails, campgrounds, monuments, fire safety, utilities and visitor center infrastructure will finally be addressed. Similarly, the LWCF, established in 1964 with an annual maximum authorization level of $900 million, has typically received less than half of that amount.

The flagship LWCF conservation program is paid for with royalty payments from offshore oil and gas production in federal waters. It helps fund the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Land Management. It also provides grants to state and local governments to acquire land for recreation and conservation. Yet many self-described environmental advocates want to shut down offshore oil activities.

An early beneficiary of the GAOA is the state of California, which will benefit from GAOA funding that provides the 50% federal share of a new program aimed at reducing wildfire risks. Both California and the U.S. Forest Service will treat at least half a million acres of forest land per year under a 20-year plan for forest health and vegetation – by reducing the fuel buildups that lead to monstrous conflagrations.

The Agreement for Shared Stewardship of California’s Forest and Rangelands, lauded by President Trump and California Governor Gavin Newsom, is a joint state-federal initiative to reduce wildfire risks, restore watersheds, and protect habitat and biological diversity. Sadly, Congressional bickering delayed its passage such that it came too late to help mitigate this summer’s wildfires, which caused major damage to endangered and threatened species and their habitat in California and other Western states.

The California-federal agreement requires prioritizing public safety, using real science to guide forest management, coordinating land management across jurisdictions, increasing the scale and pace of forest management projects, removing barriers that slow project approvals, and working closely with all stakeholders: local and tribal communities, environmental groups, academics, timber companies and others. Additional activities under the agreement include recycling forest byproducts to avoid burning slash piles, improving sustainable recreation opportunities, and stabilizing rural economies.

Bilmes credited the strong bipartisan support (3 to 1 margins in both houses of Congress) to the political and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. She noted that in normal years park visitor spending contributes about $40 billion to the U.S. economy and supports nearly 350,000 jobs. The GAOA will give a huge shot in the arm to communities struggling due to the loss of tourism-related jobs and income, by creating over 108,000 new jobs for repairing park infrastructure, including lodges, trails, access roads and bridges in the adjacent communities.

Bilmes estimates that the American people value national park land, waters and programs at $92 billion per year – at least 30 times the annual budget they receive from Congress. Yet, like many critics of other Trump land management decisions, she fails to appreciate that reopening small sections of public lands with lower aesthetic value to income producing activities will provide the revenue needed to pay for the increased budgets for these national treasures.

Similarly, cutbacks in offshore oil and gas activities would drastically shrink the very federal revenues needed to pay $900 million per year to the LWCF, to support federal land management programs.

This crown jewel of the Trump Administration’s environmental record will bring many benefits

Duggan Flanakin

Critics of Trump policies also ignore the fact that the United States is reducing carbon dioxide emissions at an annual rate of more than 2% and has lowered emissions of criteria pollutants by 7% since the beginning of 2017, primarily because fracking is producing low-cost natural gas to replace coal in generating electricity, Mr. Pence pointed out during his debate.

Reducing wildfire infernos is another excellent way to reduce CO2 emissions, as well as real pollution like smoke and fine particulates (soot). Emissions from these forest fires are astronomical and can travel hundreds or even thousands of miles from the fires.

Pence also cited a record number of completed Superfund cleanups during the four years he and President Trump have been in office, along with a record number of recovered endangered species.

Reflecting the President’s view that parks are for the people, the Vice President also lauded the Interior Department’s opening of over 4 million acres of Fish and Wildlife Service lands for hunting and fishing, and relocating the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to Grand Junction, CO, much closer to the vast majority of the vast federal lands it administers, nearly all in the western states.

Lastly, Pence cited the Modern Fish Act, signed in January 2019, which for the first time in federal law recognizes the differences between recreational and commercial saltwater fishing. The act also adds more appropriate management tools for policymakers to use in managing diverse federal recreational fisheries.

The popular legislation “provides an opportunity for significant, positive change on behalf of millions of recreational anglers who enjoy fishing in federal waters,” noted Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation president Jeff Crane.

Despite the bipartisan nature of these major accomplishments, and their importance to America and its magnificent natural heritage, media coverage of the GAOA signing made it quite clear that mainstream reporters were loath to give any credit to President Trump. That’s sad but not unexpected.

Whether acquiring more and more federal land is a good thing, in view of the often less than stellar way existing landholdings have been managed in recent years, only time will tell. But these new laws and joint federal-state-local-tribal land management initiatives are a solid step in the right direction.

Duggan Flanakin is Director of Policy Research at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)

EPA Transparency and the Deep State

By Duggan Flanakin

Ballot harvesting, behind-the-curtains ballot counting and other hijinks have made transparency a critical issue this election year.

Meanwhile, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency celebrates its fiftieth birthday, political battles continue to rage over the extent of public, executive and congressional oversight, and access to research files, original data and other information used by the agency in taking legal actions against individuals, institutions and businesses. The latest salvos involve the first-ever “transparency” requirements for EPA guidance documents – requirements likely to be tossed out by a Biden Administration.

In October 2019, President Trump signed an executive order to curb what he called abuses of authority by unaccountable bureaucrats who were “imposing their private agendas” on Americans. “A permanent federal bureaucracy,” he observed, “cannot become a fourth branch of government unanswerable to American voters.” Nor should federal agencies be able to impose multi-billion-dollar regulations, while claiming studies used to justify them are proprietary, confidential or otherwise inaccessible.

This February, the EPA launched a new searchable portal to provide public access to agency guidance documents. When it was finalized in July, the EPA brought over 9,000 guidance documents out of the darkness and made the entire active guidance library available to the public for the first time.

In September, the EPA finalized a rule that significantly increases the transparency of guidance practices and amends the agency’s process for managing guidance documents. The rule establishes the first formal public petition process for asking the EPA to modify, withdraw or reinstate a guidance document.

You would think “transparency” would be universally practiced and praised. However, the Deep State, science establishment, activist and pressure groups, and Democratic Party politicians have been horrified. Some claimed the rule reveals and distorts EPA’s decision-making processes. Others said it risks exposing private medical data and other confidential information. Still others carped that the rule is a bad-faith ploy to hamstring the agency’s ability to regulate industries and individuals.

Indeed, last October, an unsigned article in Wired magazine (we can’t even have author transparency) claimed the regulation was a Zombie-like attempt to resurrect the Secret Science Reform Act. Horrors!

The proposed legislation merely attempted to end the EPA’s widespread practice of basing regulations and guidance on research whose details remain hidden behind confidentiality agreements and are not publicly accessible, and whose research data cannot be replicated or independently verified.

During Congressional hearings on the proposal, critics claimed transparency would force the EPA to exclude important studies to protect confidentiality agreements. FactCheck.org found that private data sometimes cannot be redacted. But it also acknowledged that the rule allows the EPA administrator to exempt regulations if releasing study data publicly (rarely) does conflict with protecting privacy. It also allows for alternatives to complete public release if the data actually include confidential information.

One of the most scandalous cases of regulatory secrecy (and presidential secrecy) involved the acid rain provisions of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. President Bush and the EPA suppressed the findings of the 10-year, $537 million National Acid Rain Assessment Program (NAPAP), which had been authorized by President Carter.

To gain public support for the legislation, EPA scientists conjured up scary scenarios, claiming that sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants combined with water in the air to form acid rain that polluted streams, lakes and rivers and damaged trees, wildlife and buildings. The NAPAP found that the acidity of a lake is determined as much (or more) by the acidity of local soil and vegetation as it is by acidic rain. The frightening scenarios were wildly exaggerated, to justify closing power plants.

Moreover, many of these lakes were historically acidic and fishless until around 1900, when logging removed the acid vegetation and made the soil slightly alkaline. After logging slowed to a halt (around 1915), the naturally acidic decaying vegetation built up again, and the lakes became acidic again. In many cases forests were also debilitated due to insects or drought – not acid rain.

Curiously, a 1991 paper by environmental law scholar Richard Lazarus argued that Congress should let EPA be more independent, while admitting that legislators and regulators alike “have rarely known the best way to respond to an environmental pollution problem at the time a statute was passed.” Lazarus further claimed, “Statutory prescription therefore is an especially risky endeavor [that] can lead to wasteful expenditures for pollution control and … to more, rather than less, environmental degradation.”

These realities, Lazarus argued, make congressional oversight problematical, especially because the scientific options proposed by regulators for solving pollution often conflict with the political interests of lawmakers. True. But what if the legislators’ science is corrupted by “dark money” and the perpetual quest for more agency funding? Or if the regulators’ science is corrupted or weaponized by White House or Deep State biases, agendas, censoring of certain views, or manipulation or fabrication of data?

(In a republic, at least theoretically, the political leadership is informed by a citizenry that has all the needed facts, and ultimately has the authority to decide whether or not to follow the particular scientific pathways favored by regulators. In a pure democracy, minority views can be deemed or made irrelevant.)

A 2018 CFACT report assessed the extent of the public information problem, noting that EPA regulations have the force of law and constitute 25% of all federal regulations. Congress often grants regulatory bodies immense power over how people and businesses may operate, without giving targeted entities even the same level of due process that the law affords to criminal defendants. We should expect that EPA expands these overly broad mandates even further.

Indeed, the CFACT report contends, federal bureaucrats, and EPA administrators in particular, determine “who gets a permit to operate, and who does not; what technologies a business must use; what lightbulbs are available for your homes; what gas we can buy; what chemicals can be used; where companies can mine; what local land use decisions will survive; and even where a pond can be built on private property.”

It concluded: “While the President has massive powers over war and peace, and sets the operating philosophy of federal agencies, the EPA Administrator has direct power over the business operations … and thus the economy … of the entire nation.”

In creating the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau in 2010, the Democrat-controlled Congress gave its director broad powers and virtual immunity from political scrutiny – with more power than the President. The Supreme Court only narrowly recognized this as an unconstitutional grant of power to an unelected official. The EPA Administrator’s powers should be equally restrained.

In a second October 2019 executive order, President Trump required that agencies inform individuals of regulatory cases against them, acknowledge their responses, and educate businesses about new regulatory impacts. This order too should be non-controversial, but could well be axed by a President Biden.

Under current law, those whose livelihoods are assaulted by regulatory bodies can challenge an agency in court only after the agency has sullied their reputations and prosecuted their alleged noncompliance. Even then, the environmental defendant typically loses, because courts have mostly upheld the agencies if their decisions are “rational,” even if (absent long-sought transparency) the agency has concealed any or all of its “public” (but secret) data and records that do not support its “reasoning.”

Ultimately, the future of EPA transparency (and openness in all government) rides on the final outcome of the 2020 Presidential election. It’s fascinating how entities that set arbitrary and ever-changing standards for “acceptable” speech, favor crude protests over peaceful assemblies, and seek to curtail entire industries – also see no reason to inform the public of the rationale behind their politicized “scientific” decisions on issues from climate change to COVID to all manner of environmental regulation.

Via email

 

Preventing future forest infernos

Getting past the climate scapegoat, and taking steps that could actually make a difference 

By Paul Driessen

 The 2020 fire season is nearing its end. But monstrous wildfires continue to rage across America’s western states, devastating towns and habitats, and killing hundreds of people and millions of animals. Politicians and environmentalists continue to rage that climate change is the primary factor, allowing few responsible, commonsense forest management actions that could actually reduce the risks.

Manmade climate change is a convenient scapegoat, but it cannot be separated from natural climate fluctuations and effects. Moreover, even assuming fossil fuel emissions play a dominant role in the human portion of this equation – and even if the Pacific Northwest or entire USA eliminated coal, oil and natural gas – China, India and scores of other nations will not do so anytime soon.

And they will certainly be using fossil fuels to manufacture the wind turbines, solar panels and batteries envisioned by Green New Dealers – and to mine and process the raw materials those technologies require.

The key ingredient in these monstrous, devastating forest fires is fuel. A century of Smokey the Bear fire suppression, coupled with half-century bans on timber harvesting, tree thinning and even insect control has filled western forests with dense concentrations of brush, fallen branches, needles and leaves, skinny young trees and huge older trees – many of them dead or dying – ready to be turned into conflagrations under hot, dry summer and autumn conditions that prevail most years in California and other western states.

It’s a recipe for disasters like the 1871 Peshtigo Fire, 20 miles north of where I grew up in northeastern Wisconsin, on the very same day as the Great Chicago Fire. Blistering flames a mile high moved south at 100 mph, creating “fire tornados” that threw houses and rail cars into the air. Over a million acres of forest were obliterated in two days; up to 2,500 people died, many of them cremated into little piles of ash.

I also recall how American and British bombers deliberately turned Hamburg, Germany into an inferno in July 1943. The first waves of planes dropped “blockbuster” bombs that leveled arms factories and parts of the city known to have mostly wooden structures. They were followed in subsequent days by attacks with incendiary bombs, which turned the wood debris into a firestorm, with tornado winds up to 150 mph, and temperatures of nearly 1500 F. Operation Gomorrah killed over 40,000 people.

A few days ago, I picked up my latest issue of Wired magazine. Daniel Duane’s 12-page article “The fires next time” made a couple now-obligatory references to climate change, but was one of the most detailed and insightful articles I’ve read on the causes and nature of these horrific wildfires. He vividly explains why we are witnessing a “trend toward fires dramatically more catastrophic” than in the past.

Above all, the reason is fuel buildup. CalFire, he notes, has some 75 aircraft and 700 fire engines, and is very good at extinguishing thousands of wild-land fires annually. But CalFire has virtually no fuel-management authority and must simply watch the trees and other fuel get “more and more dense,” creating prime conditions for ever-worsening crown fires that US Forest Service scientist Mark Finney says are big because landscapes are full of tinder and long-burning, heavy fuels. Ditto in other states.

More trees of course generate more roots competing for the same water, further drying everything out. In California alone, this and the 2011-2016 drought and pine bark beetles killed 150 million trees!

Another key ingredient, Duane writes, is the simultaneous burning of many small fires (caused by multiple lightning strikes, eg) that combine light and heavy fuels over a large area, amid mild ambient winds. “As that broad area continues to burn with glowing and smoldering embers over many hours, the separate convective columns of all those many little fires begin to join into a single, giant plume.”

As hot air in the plume rises, air at its base is replaced by air “sucked in from all directions. This can create a 360-degree field of wind howling directly into the blaze ... oxygenating the fire and pushing temperatures high enough to flip even ... giant construction timbers and mature trees into full-blown flaming combustion. Those heavy fuels then pump still more heat into the convective column.... [which] rises ever faster and sucks in more wind, as if the fire has found a way to stoke itself.” The timbers, branches and entire trees become “firebrands” that can be carried high into the air, a mile or more from the primary fire, then dropped into timber stands and homes, igniting still more firestorms.

Smaller blazes can be controlled, even extinguished. But massive firestorms can be impossible to suppress, saving homes equally hopeless. The primary order of business with mass fires is getting people out of harm’s way, before escape routes are clogged, cars run out of gas, and walls of flame close in.

That means building more escape roads from communities through forests to safety, even in the face of environmentalist opposition and lawsuits. Roads are far less intrusive or harmful than conflagrations. Yet radical greens battle these roads, while praising these unnatural conflagrations as “nature’s way.”

People lived in these areas long before pressure groups, politicians and courts made conflagration conditions this horrific. Actions need to be taken now to prevent more deadly fire cataclysms. That has to begin with removal of diseased, dead and excessive trees and brush. It will take years, decades even, and a lot of effort and money. But failure to halt and reverse the buildup of fuel in our forests is undeniably irresponsible – and deadly. Apache Indian forestry programs prove sound management saves forests.

Blaming climate change is useless and irresponsible. It means waiting 30-50 years or more, just to see if China and India finally replace fossil fuels, perhaps with nuclear power – in the hope that reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide actually reduces climate change, droughts, extreme weather and infernos.

Policymakers, land management agencies and regulators, Native tribes, community associations, industry groups and less obdurate environmental groups should seek collaboration and cooperation, especially on forest management and tree thinning. This is already happening but needs to be expanded greatly.

Educational programs should teach homeowners how to harden and fireproof houses and other buildings against small to midsized fires – and teach judges and politicians the hard realities of modern fires. Above all, those with ultimately life-or-death decision-making authority must understand that the price of bans on timber harvesting and responsible forest management is too often measured in homes and habitats obliterated, wildlife and humans killed, soil organisms incinerated, soils washed away by rainstorms and snowmelts, and millions of acres denuded and desolate for decades.

Tougher building codes for new construction in these areas would save homes, heirlooms and lives. Roofs especially should be made of fireproof or fire-resistant materials. Special financing and low-interest loans would make such new homes and hardened existing homes and buildings more affordable.

Local, state and federal budgets are already stretched to their limits. Funding will have to be redirected from other programs. Another approach could require forestry work for welfare checks. Besides saving habitats and lives, that would build skills, self-esteem and strong work ethics, improve physical fitness, replace a sense of entitlement with a sense of accomplishment, and create connections and opportunities

Another source of funds could be billionaires like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who recently gave $791 million to climate activist groups, as part of his commitment to his $10-billion Earth Fund. Certainly, helping to stop these deadly fires – and the incalculable air pollution, soil erosion, and habitat and wildlife destruction they cause – would be one of the boldest and most effective actions anyone could take to protect Earth’s future, including the majestic at-risk forests in his own backyard.

The bottom line is so simple we shouldn’t even have to state it.

If we don’t act, nature will. We have created this massive fuel-for-fires problem. We can and must fix it. Either we thin out trees, or nature will – with devastating consequences. For people who claim to care deeply about saving our forests for Bambi, spotted owls and other beloved creatures, guaranteeing horrific infernos is quite literally a hellish way to demonstrate our love for Mother Earth.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.

99.99% of Pesticides We Eat Are Produced by Plants Themselves

By Alex Berezow, PhD — June 13, 2017 @ American Council on Science and Health

The word pesticide is misunderstood, nearly to the same extent as the word chemical. People have been led to believe, largely by the organic food industry and environmental activists, that pesticides are unnatural, dangerous, and do not belong in the food supply. But this defies a basic understanding of biology.

A pesticide is any chemical, natural or human-made, that is designed to kill another organism.

Using that broad definition, there are probably hundreds of thousands of pesticides in the natural environment. As it turns out, biological warfare was invented and perfected by Mother Nature.

For example, some bacteria and fungi produce antibiotics to kill other microbes. We don’t call these antibiotics “pesticides,” but that’s exactly what they are. To a bacterial cell, a microbe of a different species is often nothing more than a competitive pest that should die. So, it produces chemicals with the intention of killing it. That’s a pesticide.

Plants do the same thing. From a plant’s point of view, many insects are nothing more than dangerous, leaf-eating parasites that should die. So plants produce insecticides, like caffeine and nicotine, to keep those obnoxious, six-legged vegetarians away. (They also produce pesticides to keep the furry, four-legged vegetarians away, too.)

And guess what? When we eat plants, we’re eating those pesticides, too. A paper co-authored in 1990 by the venerable Bruce Ames found that 99.99% of the pesticides we consume in our diet are produced by the plants themselves. Given the popularity of organic food and the unscientific mythology underlying it, his findings are more relevant now than ever.

The Natural Pesticides in Your Food

According to Dr. Ames’s team, every plant produces roughly a few dozen toxins, some of which (at a high enough dose) would be toxic to humans. Cabbage produces at least 49 known pesticides. Given the ubiquity of natural pesticides, Dr. Ames estimates that “Americans eat about 1.5 g of natural pesticides per person per day, which is about 10,000 times more than they eat of synthetic pesticide residues.”

Furthermore, Dr. Ames estimates that we consume 5,000 to 10,000 different natural pesticides every day, many of which cause cancer when tested in lab animals. Dr. Ames then pens quite possibly the best paragraph ever written in the scientific literature:

"[R]odent carcinogens are present in the following foods: anise, apple, apricot, banana, basil, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cantaloupe, caraway, carrot, cauliflower, celery, cherries, cinnamon, cloves, cocoa, coffee, collard greens, comfrey herb tea, currants, dill, eggplant, endive, fennel, grapefruit juice, grapes, guava, honey, honeydew melon, horseradish, kale, lentils, lettuce, mango, mushrooms, mustard, nutmeg, orange juice, parsley, parsnip, peach, pear, peas, black pepper, pineapple, plum, potato, radish, raspberries, rosemary, sesame seeds, tarragon, tea, tomato, and turnip. Thus, it is probable that almost every fruit and vegetable in the supermarket contains natural plant pesticides that are rodent carcinogens. The levels of these... rodent carcinogens in the above plants are commonly thousands of times higher than the levels of synthetic pesticides." [Emphasis added]

Do you cook your food? That produces cancer-causing toxins, too. Do you like coffee? That’s a boiling hot cup of rodent carcinogens. It must be kept in mind that for every scary synthetic pesticide man has created, Mother Nature has created something worse. And you probably eat it regularly.

However, if you still insist on eliminating all pesticides from your diet, there is one thing you can do: Stop eating.

Source: Bruce Ames, Margie Profet, Lois Gold. “Dietary pesticides (99.99% all natural).” PNAS 87: 7777-81. Published: October 1990.

Tags: carcinogens, cancer, Pesticides, toxins, animal testing, animal research

 

COVID-19 Quick Takes—Part One

COVID-19 Quick Takes—Part One

By Michael D. Shaw November 16, 2020  @ HealthNewsDigest

1.     Masks—A study—originally published on October 23—touting the efficacy of masks has been withdrawn. In the original findings, hospitalizations for COVID-19 decreased in 1,083 US counties after lawmakers passed mask mandates. “The authors have withdrawn this manuscript because there are increased rates of SARS-CoV-2 cases in the areas that we originally analyzed in this study.”

As it is, with infections and hospitalizations on the upswing in the US, despite near universal mask-wearing, many are starting to wonder about such policies. According to Sweden’s top infectious disease expert Anders Tegnell, “We are worried that it [mask mandates] would diminish social distancing, which is definitely the most important part. The studies so far have not shown a dramatic effect, countries such as France and others, which have obligatory mask-wearing in place, have still experienced a big spread of the disease.”

And then there is the matter of cloth versus paper masks. Everyone has seen those blue and white paper masks. Yet, virtually all official guidance speaks of washable cloth masks preferably, even if paper masks are included in the same discussion. It seems that the “gaiter” style face coverings get lower marks.

2.     The Pfizer/BioNTech Vaccine—We’ve been hearing a lot about this novel vaccine for a novel coronavirus. But, welcome to a classical “good news/bad news” situation. Surely, it is an elegant idea to base the vaccine on messenger RNA (mRNA). The usual vaccine methodology employs either living but weakened microbes, dead microbes, or pieces of microbes (such as proteins). This brute force approach is cumbersome since the virus in question must be cultured in a cell.

mRNA can be synthesized outside the cell, and a vaccine dose can be prepared. The mRNA enters your bloodstream, and causes your own cells to create the foreign nasty protein, typical of SARS-CoV-2, that will then elicit a vigorous immune response. Since a targeted response is based on a specific protein being created, mRNA vaccines should, in theory, be safer than conventional vaccines. However, unlike its close relative DNA, RNA is notoriously unstable, and this vaccine must be stored at extremely low temperatures: minus 70 degrees Celsius (-94 F) or below.

“The cold chain is going to be one of the most challenging aspects of delivery of this vaccination,” said Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “This will be a challenge in all settings because hospitals even in big cities do not have storage facilities for a vaccine at that ultra-low temperature.” And, uh, cold comfort that no less than the Mayo Clinic sees this as a big problem.

“We’re talking about a vaccine that needs storage at minus 70 or 80. That’s a tremendous logistical issue not only in the U.S. but outside the Western world,” said Dr. Gregory Poland, a virologist and vaccine researcher with the Mayo Clinic. “We’re a major medical center and we don’t have storage capacity like this. That will be true for everybody. This is a logistical obstacle.”

Moderna’s candidate vaccine uses a similar technology, but does not require such low temperatures. For a deep dive into the technology of mRNA vaccines, consult this article.

3.     The Vitamin D Connection—Researchers in a Belgian hospital have found a “clear” link between vitamin D deficiency and serious cases of COVID-19.

The confirming study will be published in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology on November 20. The authors show that nearly half of the 16,274 COVID patients considered were vitamin D deficient—especially the male subjects. The idea of vitamin D supplementation for protection against the ravages of COVID-19 had been advanced earlier.

4.     Could Melatonin Be A Therapy For COVID-19?-—Results from a study done at the Cleveland Clinic indicate that OTC sleep-aid melatonin could become a treatment option for this disease. These results were obtained using an artificial intelligence program developed by the Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute. The AI was being used to identify drugs that might be repurposed for COVID-19 therapy.

Analysis of patient data from Cleveland Clinic’s COVID-19 registry revealed that melatonin usage was associated with a nearly 30 percent reduced likelihood of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 after adjusting for age, race, smoking history, and various disease comorbidities.

Stay tuned for more quick hitters.

 

 

Moral Fashions and the Corruption of Science

Author:  John A.  Posted by Rich Kozlovich   

Editor's Note:  Originally published July 26, 2009 @ Paradigms and Demographics, I asked John A. for his last name in order to properly credit this commentary, but he commented that he keeps his “surname off the Internet."  John apparently is a history buff and categorizes himself as a “classical liberal”. 

Those among us who are history buffs will find that statement insightful. For those who aren’t, I have linked the history of “Classical Liberalism” in the article. It isn’t what you think. I have also linked a number of names and events that may not be commonly known to most people in order to give everyone the true flavor of what John is saying. 

I would also like to thank him for allowing me to reprint what originally was an e-mail that appeared in the blog Greenie Watch. 

I didn't recheck all the links, so I hope they all still work. RK

The history of science is rife with examples of political, social and moral fashions which not simply influence, but pervert the scientific method and corrupt the conduct of scientists. Einstein faced off the political and moral fashions of Nazism and eugenics but plenty of his colleagues happily incorporated those twin systems into their own research. Eugenics also laid the foundations for the moral crusade against alcohol in early 20th Century America which was again a supposedly scientific assessment delivered as a moral panic which must be addressed immediately lest America fall into a deep pit of moral degeneration.

The example of Trofim Lysenko and the political outlawing of Mendelian genetics in Stalinist Russia is a particularly scary example of a political fashion given to be a moral and political imperative by a dangerously unstable man who became President of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The parallels with the modern global warming scare are obvious.

Another example would be neo-Malthusianism as popularized in the 20th Century repeatedly by Paul Erlich first in the 1960s and more recently by the scarily named "Optimum Population Trust" (and here)which includes such luminaries as Sir David Attenborough calling for mandatory limits on family size to prevent near future overpopulation and mass starvation. Once again, a supposed scientific analysis is communicated as a moral imperative.  John Holdren, now President Obama's Climate Czar, co-wrote several books with Paul Erlich in the 1970s at least one of which argued for forced abortions, forced adoptions of illegitimate children or from mothers "who contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children" and the introduction of chemicals into water and food that rendered people sterile. All of this to forestall a crisis of overpopulation by the year 2000!

Carl Sagan, Erlich and others began and propagated the Nuclear Winter story of the 1980s, together with scary scenarios about likely darkening of the skies due to dust from burning cities rising into the stratosphere and blocking out the Sun. All with the aid of computer models with extremely rubbery parameters and dubious simplifications. A moral imperative against nuclear weapons? You betcha. Even Richard Feynman, iconoclast as he was, while averring that the underlying theory was nonsense, could not raise his voice too loud lest people think he was in favour of nuclear proliferation. Moral panics do that to the best of scientists.

There are lots more examples, but you get the idea. These scientific fashions all in their own time held great sway in academia and mainstream media. They divided scientists into those who were credible and those who were so morally and intellectually corrupt as to actually oppose these ideas.

Modern environmentalism has most, if not all of the above ideas incorporated into the unholy fusion of science and Marxist political theory now called "ecology", but is really a manifestation of what David Henderson memorably called "Global Salvationism".

The most interesting thing about all of this is that I, as a classical liberal, can find common cause with people from a wide spectrum of political and philosophical beliefs that the lessons of history are that moral fashions in science are endemic, cyclical and a constant menace to the real business of scientists to understand how the Universe works.

Scientists don't live in a fashion-free vacuum. They dress themselves in the fashions of the day, read the latest scare stories of the day, follow the latest celebrity soap operas of the day and most of all abide by rules to not upset the funding apple-cart from which their work is done, whatever their personal and moral qualms, at least until retirement.

Serendipitous Salivary Glands

 October 26, 2020 By Michael D. Shaw @ Home News Digest

You may have heard of Herophilus (ca. 325-255 BC), a physician from ancient Alexandria, who is considered the father of anatomy. Herophilus was the first to perform dissection of cadavers, and indeed the word “anatomy” is derived from the Greek ana- (up) and tomia (cutting). Herophilus and a colleague would be the only two physicians to engage in this practice until it was restored by Italian doctor Mondino de Luzzi in 1315 in Bologna. The science of anatomy developed significantly during the Renaissance.

Several well-known artists of the period, including Antonio Pollainolo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo Buanorotti performed dissections to investigate and understand the human body, to improve their artistic portrayals of it. One would think that by the time the first edition of Gray’s Anatomy was published in 1858, and through its many revisions, most of what we understand as gross anatomy (features visible to the naked eye) had been worked out.

So, what are the chances that 162 years later, in 2020, a set of salivary glands apparently well-hidden inside the human head would be discovered? According to this recent article, that is exactly what has happened!

As with several scientific discoveries, this one was serendipitous, and that puts it in good company. Consider Penicillin (1928), the microwave oven (1945), Velcro (1941), and Teflon (1938).

In this case, radiation oncologist Wouter Vogel and oral/maxillofacial surgeon Matthijs Valstar—both affiliated with the Netherlands Cancer Institute—were examining prostate cancer patients, using a scan methodology called “PSMA PET/CT.” (Prostate-Specific Membrane Antigen Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography). Lo and behold, way in the back of the nasopharynx, two areas lit up, and they looked like a pair of salivary glands.

“People have three sets of large salivary glands, but not there,” Vogel explained. “As far as we knew, the only salivary or mucous glands in the nasopharynx are microscopically small, and up to one thousand are evenly spread out throughout the mucosa. So, imagine our surprise when we found these.”

The researchers referred to these structures as “tubarial glands,” and they were also seen on the PSMA PET/CT scans of all one hundred patients examined in the study. Physical investigations of two cadavers—one male and one female—also showed them, revealing macroscopically visible draining duct openings towards the nasopharyngeal wall. As to the function of these glands, it was hypothesized that they could contain a large number of seromucous acini, with a physiological role for nasopharynx/oropharynx lubrication and swallowing.

How could the glands have avoided identification for all this time? Perhaps, the structures are situated at a poorly accessible anatomical location under the skull base, making them hard to view with a typical endoscope. The researchers add that the duct openings could have been noticed, but might not have appreciated for what they are—being part of a larger gland system. And, they contend that only PSMA-PET/CT would see the structures as salivary glands—compared to the weaker visualization capabilities of ultrasound, conventional computerized tomography, and MRI.

Certainly, more work will have to be done to confirm the validity of these findings, but in the meantime, these structures should be protected during cancer radiation therapy. Preliminary data—based on a retrospective analysis of 723 patients who underwent radiation treatment—suggest that radiation delivered to the tubarial glands region results in greater complications for these patients.

I wonder what Henry Gray (of Gray’s Anatomy fame) would think?

Waging war against invasive species

 By Duggan Flanakin   |November 6th, 2020 |Environment 6 Comments  @ CFACT

Invasive species, impact water supplies, impair hunting and fishing opportunities, interfere with energy production, exacerbate wildfires, damage America’s agriculture, and drive native species to extinction. In Fiscal Year 2020, the U.S. Department of the Interior alone is investing an estimated $143 million to manage invasive species.

In response to federal legislation, the Trump Administration in August released a draft strategic plan that provides a coordinated approach to combat this $120 billion assault on American prosperity that seeks to further align existing programs and policies across the Interior Department and to leverage additional public and private resources.

A recent report from the History channel notes that, “The history of invasive species is usually one of unforeseen consequences. When an animal, fish, insect, or plant is taken out of its original ecosystem and introduced to a new one – whether by accident or on purpose – it is less likely to have any natural predators.”

The report lists seven invasive species that continue to wreak havoc across the United States, including gypsy moths and nutria. There are many others. Nationwide, more than 6,500 foreign species have moved into the U.S., collectively causing more damage to the environment, economy, and human health than all natural disasters combined, reports the U.S. Geological Society.

Just one species – feral swine (Sus scrofa) – causes upward of $1.5 billion in damages annually to all manner of agriculture, including rice, corn, and grains, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. An estimated 6 million of these dangerous creatures roam the countryside in 35 states, notably Texas. Their incessant rooting and voracious eating destroy crops, erode soil, and uproot tree seedlings, causing deforestation. They also carry diseases, notably pseudo-rabies and swine brucellosis.

In Hawaii — far from its natural homeland of Puerto Rico (where it is cherished) — up to 20,000 coqui (a tiny tree frog with a big voice) an acre disturb the quiet, devour enough insects that native birds go hungry, and damage the ecosystem.

According to the National Park Service, the 212-square-mile island of Guam is plagued by up to 15,000 brown snakes per square mile (outnumbering humans 10 to 1) that short out electrical systems and have wiped out 10 of the 12 island’s native bird species. Over just the past four years, Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs has provided more than $12 million for the Brown Tree Snake Control program.

The NPS, however, says that rats are the worst of all invasive predators. Running free on islands, rats have devoured whole seabird colonies—even whole species. In fact, rats have caused between 40 to 60 percent of all recorded bird and reptile extinctions in the last four centuries.

Responding to what has been described as an all-out assault on the nation’s biodiversity, the Trump plan was designed to meet requirements of the John D. Dingell, Jr., Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act of 2019, and in consultation with states, Tribes, and other stakeholders. The idea is to incorporate ongoing work by the Interior Department and its partners and to respond to emerging issues driven by the priorities of state governors.

This comprehensive approach is designed to promote partnerships to bolster mutual priorities, raise awareness to motivate action, strengthen prevention practices to avoid invasive species introductions and spread, improve the coordination of early detection and rapid response efforts across jurisdictions, leverage opportunities for targeted control and eradication, and improve data collection and data management to facilitate more effective decisionmaking.

“The Trump Administration has been focused on addressing the considerable, negative impacts of invasive species by working across jurisdictional boundaries with our partners,” said Scott Cameron, Interior’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget. “The draft plan sets out a vision for effectively managing invasive species through collaborative conservation to protect our nation’s biodiversity and economy.”

But governments alone will not win this war.

In localities across America (and worldwide), people have been banding together to fight back against zebra mussels, Asian carp, Burmese pythons, and other often deadly, definitely costly invasive species. In Geneva Lake, Wisconsin, volunteers dive underwater to pull out starry stonewort by its roots in an effort to stop the invasive weed from destroying fishing and boating and overrunning native aquatic life.

Sometimes the best way to target an invasive species is to turn a negative into a positive. The lionfish, native to the Pacific and Indian Oceans, has exploded in Florida and the Caribbean. This venomous predator, with one of the highest breeding rates in the world, has gradually taken over reefs from Venezuela to New York.

The lionfish not only feasts on smaller prey fish, leaving little food for commercially valuable fish, such as snapper and tuna. It also feeds on “grazer” and “cleaner” fish which maintain the health of the reefs that provide habitat for other species – reducing native marine life by 80 to 90 percent in just five weeks in some cases. The $2.1 billion Caribbean diving industry, along with fishing and tourism, is under assault, impacting the lives of 42 million people.

The market response to the lionfish invasion has been to make its tasty white meat a popular item in restaurants and high-end grocery stores. The fly in the ointment is the fish’s poisonous spine, which requires cleaning by hand. Another problem is that, for now, the most efficient way to catch lionfish is slow, labor-intensive spearfishing that requires SCUBA gear.

PERC reports that marketing campaigns are spurring demand for lionfish fillets. The Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF) published a lionfish cookbook, while Whole Foods hosted “Take a Bite Out of Lionfish,” replete with live filleting and cooking demos and lionfish recipe videos. Others are investigating making jewelry out of lionfish spines or incorporating carcass scraps in fertilizers.

Not disparaging federal and state efforts, PERC’s Jonathan Wood beams that, “With every seafood dinner, necklace, spear-fishing derby, and trap, we are one step closer to overcoming the lionfish invasion ourselves.”

Of course, not everyone is on board with government or private efforts to eradicate the harm done by invasive species. Veteran ecologist Ken Thompson, a senior research fellow in thete Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield (United Kingdom), thinks there is good evidence to suggest that the plants and animals we often vilify as invasive species only rarely threaten ecosystems.

Thompson argues that efforts to control or eliminate invasive species can be tremendously expensive, are rarely successful, and often have damaging unintended consequences [yet introducing invasive species itself often results in unintended damages]. Using the wrong herbicides to kill invasive species, for example, can damage vulnerable native species.

But Thompson says the chief culprit is not the animals, fish, insects, or plants but rather the humans who traverse the world and bring them along. In his words, “We’ve chopped down forests, built dams, and turned the whole world into a giant cattle pasture, and then we’re surprised that some species quite like what we’ve done. We shouldn’t be surprised.”

And there you have it. Humans bought Burmese pythons as “pets,” then dumped them when they grew too big – and they grew bigger, found partners, and reproduced. Humans also brought rats and zebra mussels and other species largely because they did not take the time to rid their ships of these unwanted creatures.

And now it is time to pay the piper for bringing these invaders into our nation and letting them roam free, often creating havoc for local ecosystems.  It is going to take a unified nationwide effort to get the job done.

Author

• Duggan Flanakin

  Duggan Flanakin is the Director of Policy Research at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas. A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, "Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout."

View Larger Image Tortoise thought to be extinct found on Galapagos Island

 By CFACT | November 6th, 2020| Environment |12 Comments @ CFACT

An expedition to the island of Fernandina of the Galapagos Islands has found a female of the species Chelonoidis phantasticus, or the Fernandina giant tortoise. The tortoise was orginally thought to be extinct, as a member of the species had not been seen since 1906.  In even better news, the team that found the Fernandina giant tortoise believes there are more alive on the island, based off of droppings and tracks.

TheScientist reports:

“‘The photos from the team clearly show a moderately saddle-backed, old female about half to two-thirds the size of the known male. Pending genetic confirmation, this is almost undoubtedly the lost Fernandina Giant Tortoise,’ says Anders Rhodin from the Turtle Conservancy and International Union for Conservation of Nature, in the statement.

“The team members suspect more tortoises may live on Fernandina because of scat and tracks they observed there. The expedition included members from the Galapagos National Park, the Galapagos Conservancy, and Animal Planet, which funded the search and will feature it on an episode of the show ‘Extinct or Alive.’”

The end goal is to of course breed more of the species, if their suspicions that additional tortoises are alive proves true. Females can store sperm for a long period of time, according to Duke University professor of conservation ecology Stuart Pimm.  This gives hope for the species, and biodiversity of the Galapagos!

To read the story in TheScientist, click here.

Unanimous Supremes limit Endangered Species Act in Dusky Gopher Frog decision

By CFACT Ed November 4th, 202 0| Environment, Regulation |0 Comments @CFACT 

The Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that the Endangered Species Act cannot be used to control land in Louisiana to protect the Dusty Gopher Frog, which currently only lives in Mississippi.

Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the court held that, “according to the ordinary understanding of how adjectives work, ‘critical habitat’ must also be ‘habitat… Only the ‘habitat’ of the endangered species is eligible for designation as critical habitat.”

This is a significant reform.  The ESA has become the favorite vehicle of activists seeking to control people’s use of their private land.  That the endangered species should actually be present on the land in question might seem a no-brainer, but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t get it.  Today’s Supreme Court Decision reverses the Fifth Circuit.

Is the ESA no longer a blank check for eco-gadflies?

Read the full Supreme Court decision Weyerhaeuser Company v. United States Fish and Wildlife Service at CFACT.org.