Environmentalists Killed More Europeans Than Islamic Terrorists Did

Wednesday, August 21, 2019 by Daniel Greenfield 10 Comments @ Sultan Knish Blog

"Do Americans Need Air-Conditioning?" a New York Times piece asked in July. Air conditioning, it argued, is bad for the environment and makes us less human. It ran quotes suggesting that, "first world discomfort is a learned behavior", and urging "a certain degree of self-imposed suffering".

If environmentalists ruled the world, air conditioning wouldn’t exist. And there’s a place like that.

90% of American households have air conditioning. As do 86% of South Koreans, 82% of Australians, 60% of Chinese, 16% of Brazilians and Mexicans, 9% of Indonesians and less than 5% of Europeans.

A higher percentage of Indian households have air conditioning than their former British colonial rulers.

Temperatures in Paris hit 108.6 degrees. Desperate Frenchmen dived into the fountains of the City of Lights with their clothes on. Parisian authorities announced that they were deploying heat wave management plan orange, level three, which meant setting up foggers in public parks and distributing heat wave kits. The kits consist of leaflets telling people to go to libraries which have air conditioning.

France24, the country’s state-owned television network, advised people suffering from temperatures rising as high as 110 degrees to take cold showers and stick their feet in saucepans of cold water.

A 2003 heat wave killed 15,000 people in France. And, in response, the authorities have deployed Chalex, a database of vulnerable people who will get a call offering them cooling advice.

The advice consists of taking cold showers and sticking their feet in saucepans of cold water.

Desperate Frenchmen trying to get into any body of water they can have led to a 30% rise in drownings. The dozens of people dead are casualties of the environmentalist hatred of air conditioners.

Only 5% of French households have air conditioning. Even in response to the crisis, the authorities are only deploying temporary air conditioning to kindergartens.

The 2003 heat wave killed 7,000 people in Germany. And, today, only 3% of German households have air conditioning. Germany’s Ministry of the Environment refused to back air conditioning as a response to global warming.

Temperatures in Dusseldorf hit 105 degrees. Officials in Dusseldorf had recently rejected proposals to install air conditioning systems because they’re bad for the environment.

The climate action head at Germany’s Institute for Applied Ecology explained that air conditioning wouldn't work because there's not much wind during heat waves, and the country can't end reliance on coal and run air conditioners at the same time. You can have air conditioners or save the planet.

But not both.

The issue isn’t poverty. in Greece, one of the poorest countries in Europe, 99% of households have air conditioning. What it comes down to is a willingness to choose comfort over environmental dogma.

In Europe, people are dying because they’ve been told that their sacrifices will save the planet.

The 2003 heat wave killed 70,000 people in Europe. That’s more than Islamic terrorists have.

When environmentalists claim that global warming is a greater threat than Islamic terrorism, they’re half-right. Global warming isn’t real, but the measures taken to fight it are killing thousands of people.

And it doesn’t have to be this way.

In 2007, only 2% of Indian households had air conditioning. Those numbers have more than doubled. India is expected to field a billion air conditioning units by 2050.

“I am not rich," an Indian laundryman earning $225 a month, who had just put in air conditioning, told a disapproving Agence France-Presse, but we all aspire to a comfortable life."

Some of us do.

The 2003 heat wave killed 2,000 Brits. The current heat wave has led to London being placed on a Level 3 health watch. But air conditioning in the UK still hovers at 3% of households. And every summer, the local media lectures Brits on the evils of air conditioning.

Every heat wave is treated as a compelling argument for reducing power to save the planet. The heat and its accompanying misery are treated as heralds of a global warming apocalypse. Soon, we are told, it’ll be hot all the time, the waters will rise, the icebergs will melt, and life will perish from the earth.

When a heat wave consumed Europe in 1540, leading to the hottest temperatures on record and the deaths of thousands, the people blamed a higher power. In England, where the River Trent dried up, the megadrought was blamed on Henry VIII’s sacrilegious crackdown on monasteries. Modern Europeans have a simple, rational explanation. Mother Earth is angry because we’re using air conditioners.

Or other people are.

China has 569 million installed air conditioners. More than any other country in the world. South Korea has 59 million air conditioners. That’s more than France, Germany and the UK combined.

Europe’s sacrifice is not only senseless, it’s also meaningless.

Vietnam has become a booming market for air conditioners. 17% of Vietnamese households now have one. Indonesia is leading its own boom in air conditioning. As is much of Asia and the Middle East.

Europe can go on letting its people die for the environment, but it won’t make any difference.

Air conditioning isn’t some American fetish, as European elitists sneer. It’s a worldwide movement. Every country that can manage it is getting air conditioners. Meanwhile people are dying in France.

While the rest of the world is cooling off, Europe is in thrall to a pagan pseudoscientific cult.

Its tenets insist that the planet is a living entity, but fail to understand its true implications. The climate is part of a living entity which changes on a timescale that challenges human understanding. For a thousand years of recorded history, Europe has undergone alternate warming and cooling periods. The Medieval Climate Anomaly was an example of how complicated those cyclical changes could be.

A heat wave isn’t proof that we’ve sinned against Mother Earth by heating and cooling our homes. It’s a reminder that the environment operates on an inescapable scale that is vaster than human beings.

We can cut down forests and build dams. But so can beavers. We cannot change the climate.

The bones of hippos have been found under Trafalgar Square. The Chauvet Cave in France includes pictures of rhinos. The Little Ice Age killed off England’s vineyards in the 14th century. The Thames began to freeze over in the 17th century. The Viking colonization of America collapsed under the wave of cold.

Air conditioning and heating are not how we change the climate. They’re how we cope with it.

Environmentalism has so hopelessly tangled human civilization and the environment that we are no longer able to understand the planet on its own terms, instead of as a luddite eschatology in which the climate is a deity punishing us for our civilizational ingenuity with hot weather and natural disasters.

And that makes it extremely difficult to adapt to the changes in a healthy way.

A century ago, Americans beat the heat by wading in fountains, sleeping on roofs and fire escapes, and escaping the city. Air conditioning has made it possible for us to live and work across the entire country.

In 1896, a heat wave killed thousands of Americans. New York City authorities resorted to the same measures as their modern Parisian counterparts, turning on fire hydrants and handing out ice.

Those temperatures amounted to a mere 90 degrees.

In 1902, Willis Carrier invented the air conditioner in Brooklyn. He imagined a world in which, “The average businessman will rise, pleasantly refreshed, having slept in an air-conditioned room. He will travel in an air-conditioned train, and toil in an air-conditioned office.” We live in that world now.

At the New York World’s Fair, while temperatures outside hit 90 degrees, Carrier debuted an Igloo display. Two giant thermometers contrasted “Nature’s temperature” with “air conditioning”.

It sold itself.

Air conditioning allows New Yorkers to shrug off 90-degree weather and go on living and working.

Today, New York is the home of the Green New Deal which believes in following Europe’s trends. If New York adopts Europe’s environmentalism, it will discover what living in 1896 really felt like.

Environmentalists have killed thousands of Europeans. They can kill thousands of Americans too.


Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.

Thank you for reading.

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.

So You Want to be Green Do You?

Rich Kozlovich

Do you really want to be green? I mean, do you really....really want to be green! I don't hear that said all that often here in Ohio. After all we are true Midwesterners with Midwestern common sense, intelligence and wisdom, and most of the people I talk to are suffering from green fatigue; but we have our enclaves of irrationality too.

There are those who just insist that they are green, or really want to be as green as possible, and there are those who would like to be green but aren’t quite sure what it takes. Quite frankly I don’t care either way if they choose to be green as long as they don’t ask me to join them on their psychedelic journey. I often wonder what green really means to them, because being green seems to mean different things to different people. I have spent years reading and writing about this subject so I think I can outline what it means to be green in a brief summary of twenty five points.

1. To understand what it means to be green is to understand what it means to lack honor, courage, intelligence, integrity, and above all, a love for truth.  All the while believing that you will stand at a higher level of social morality than the rest of humanity.
2. In order to be green you will be required to stand up for things which are unproven or un-provable.
3. You must be willing to accept speculation as fact.
4. You must be willing to promote policy based on speculation.
5. You must be willing to support things that aren't true.
6. You must be willing to refute or reject those things which are true!
7. You must refuse to hear any evidence contrary to the green litany.
8. Those in pest control must proclaim our unwavering resolve to support Integrated Pest Management (IPM), Deep IPM, True IPM, Green Pest Control, Organic Pest Control, or whatever is the latest “green” philosophical flavor of the day.
9. You must resolve to support the idea that pesticides cause a whole host of maladies and are destroying the environment.
10. To understand what it means to be green is to be able to swallow to most noxious misanthropic concepts and convince yourself that these vile reasonings are elegant intellectual thoughts.
11. You must ignore the evidence that pesticides have provided for longer, healthier and better fed lives than ever before in human history.
12. You must believe that living longer, healthier lives is bad for the planet.
13. You must believe that capitalism is the world’s greatest enemy because it is causing global warming and gives us better and longer lives.
14. You will have to believe that the billions of cases of sickness or death that has afflicted people as a result of greenie policies are acceptable.
15. Although we can’t predict tomorrow’s weather with any real degree of accuracy, you must believe that not only can we predict climate (which is far more complex) 100 years out, but you must believe that humanity can control it in spite of the fact we can’t control today’s rain.
16. You must believe we have to abandon all modern conveniences and return to nature and become one with the biosphere by living the primitive life.
17. You have to believe that all energy sources are evil.
18. You must accept the idea that the world is over populated and so it is acceptable to impose policies that will rid the world of a minimum of about four billion people.
19. It will not be acceptable for you to turn your nose up to people who believe that it is acceptable for humanity to be eliminated.
20. You will have to believe that humans are no more important than a worm.
21. You must accept fairy tales of people like Rachel Carson, the Mother of Junk Science, and her acolytes and call it science.
22. You must be willing to reject the evidence of history and our own eyes.
23. You must drink the Kool-Aid and breathe the fumes of the fever swamps of environmentalism.
24. You must believe that insanity is now sanity
25. You absolutely must be irrational, misanthropic, morally defective and be prepared to hallow that which is unholy!

There....that is all it takes to be truly green! Have a really good day!

The Unending Quest

By Rich Kozlovich

Over these many years I have noticed a pattern of activity that I find sort of fascinating. Scares will ebb and flow, but never really go away. Even after an issue has been raised and dealt with it's clear activists keep these issues on the back burner for future reference, as if everyone will forget what the facts actually were. And to some extent they're right, because there will always be a new crop of young misinformed and uninformed potential acolytes they can gull into the green movement.  Young people in search of some sense of worth.  Searching for something in which they can believe.  Clearly a failure of religion in America today.

As a result, environmentalism has become today’s secular religion, thus, they are susceptible to the Kyrie Eleison of environmentalism. Drinking the Kool Aid they soon become sickened breathing in the fumes from the fever swamps of that movement.  It fills them with arrogance and a sense of self-righteous indignation at the rest of the world that no amount of valid scientific information or rational observation can cure.

I keep hearing all sorts of claims by activists and government grant chasing “scientists” that chemicals (especially pesticides) cause cancer, autism, low sperm count and a host of other unproven scares. This has been particularly true of DDT. More outrageous claims have been made against DDT than almost any product that has ever been developed, with the possible exception of bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates. Do chemicals really cause a drop in sperm count? Finally we can answer with a resounding NO!

In 2007 the American Council on Science and Health cited a study  that clearly demonstrated that:

 “the 1992 study by a group of Danish researchers that claimed sperm counts declined by 50 percent worldwide from 1938 to 1991”, was wrong! They point out that the study was “heavily criticized for its many flaws, methodological problems, and biases” at the time. “We know that the so-called decline in sperm count is just another myth promulgated by the ‘our stolen future’ crowd who say that environmental chemicals lead to infertility in men,” says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. “But now we have proof that’s simply not true.”

* In Update on Sperm, Data Show No Decline By Gina Kolata June 6, 2011

This leads us to DDT, which was banned by the first administrator of the EPA, Bill Ruckelshaus in 1972. And yes….it was a ban. It is true that there were exceptions written into the ban, and yes, it is true that this ban in the U.S. was not incumbent on other nations, and yes it is true that it was not a worldwide ban…..on paper. However, so much economic pressure was placed on countries that didn’t ban it outright that it became a de facto ban in all but a few nations.

Lower sperm count was one of the claims, and yet the generation of parents who were most heavily exposed to DDT were the parents of the baby boomers. Even if there was a valid study that could show this today (which there isn’t), that study wasn’t available when the ban was imposed.

Most studies are filled with weasel word and phrases. Then there are the “conclusions in search of data” studies, much like the Hungarian studies of Trajan and Kemeny published in 1969. Using only 3 ppm in the food per day this dose was fed to five generations of inbred Balb/c mice. They claimed a higher incidence of leukemia in the test subjects over the control animals. They also claimed they started with a leukemia free strain, yet there were incidents of leukemia in the controls.

So what was disturbing about this study? Other researchers working with comparable dosages with animals of any species or strain showed no incidences of cancer of any type. The skepticism warranted an investigation into this puzzle.

Although everyone agreed something went wrong in their study they couldn’t definitely point out what went wrong.  However it was shown that there were design problems in the study and there was a possibility of aflatoxin (an absolutely known carcinogen) contaminated food.

Modern studies seem to have much the same problem. Conclusions in search of data! The question I keep asking is this. If DDT was banned for scientific reasons that were obvious, factual and could be replicated; then why have they been studying it since 1972 to prove that it does________(fill in the blank).

Millions have been spent on studies that have been conclusions in search of data. The mere fact that so much has been spent after the ban to prove that the ban was proper is a good indicator that everyone….and I mean everyone, on both sides of this issue, know that the science was weak or invalid, and the decision to ban DDT was a political one.

The real problem with the ban on DDT isn't the fact that we lost DDT. Why? Technically it didn’t matter (at least in the developed world) because we had a large arsenal of products to defend society’s health, food and property.

Philosophically it was devastating because it became the basis for all that has come into being since then. All those tools have come under attack, and as a result we have lost important chemistry. First it was the chlorinated hydrocarbons, then it was the organophosphates and carbamates and now the pyrethroids and rodenticides are under attack. All of this goes back to the ban on DDT. That ban laid the foundation for the financial and legislative power of the environmental movement. The ban on DDT needs to be overturned for that reason alone.

The dark side of Green technology

By Ron Stein February 18th, 2019 Energy|2 Comments

When you consider the push for electrical vehicles (EVs) to replace gas and diesel combustion transports on our roadways, the carbon footprint valuation appears quite attractive. The batteries that power those EV’s are however dependent on exotic minerals to function which exposes the dark side of green technology.

The mere extraction of the exotic minerals cobalt and lithium used in the batteries of EV’s present social challenges, human rights abuse challenges, and environmental challenges. Hazardous working conditions where the workers make such meager wages they live in abject poverty. Moreover, they are regularly exposed to out of control pollution and countless other environmental issues which cannot be ignored.

The key minerals used in today’s batteries are cobalt of which 60% is sourced from one country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and lithium of which more than 50% is sourced from the Lithium Triangle in South America, which covers parts of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. Today 20% of cobalt is mined by hand. Amnesty International has documented children and adults mining cobalt in narrow man-made tunnels, at risk of fatal accidents and serious lung disease...........To Read More.....

The Green New Fascist Deal

To characterize the Green New Deal as fascist is no metaphor.

February 17, 2019 By Mark Musser

The “Green New Deal” is a fascist utopian plan written by environmentalist lawyers that is purportedly designed to tackle the global warming apocalypse which capitalism, particularly of the American kind drunk on fossil fuels, has precipitated through economic recklessness and colonial racism. CO2, a trace gas measured in parts per million, is the primary culprit of a semi-apocalyptic global warming crisis that can only be averted through an all-wise cadre of Democratic green lawyers.

That such utopianism, political legalism, and apocalypticism is presented as hard science demonstrates the general madness of the present time that is largely rooted in the Social Darwinian scientism of the 1800s, wherein German zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was peddling a racist political biology together with strong ecological values that he characterized as Monism -- which speaks of a monistic oneness or holism with nature along totalitarian lines that modern science was supposedly offering the constituents of the Second Reich.

While Haeckel coined the term “ecology” in 1866, he mixed racial eugenics with his environmentalism. Today, environmentalism proffers anti-humanism, population control, ecological totalitarianism, and indigenous multicultural tribal racism that “The New Green Deal” is chock full of....................To Read More

The Green New Dealers want 100 trillion dollars!

By David Wojick| February 12th, 2019 | Economy | 21 Comments

People keep asking what the Green New Deal will cost, but that is the wrong question. The question is how much do they want? It turns out the New Dealers are pretty clear about the answer — around $100 trillion over ten years. They are working to a very big budget. What gets done depends on the money, not vice versa.

Representative Ocasio-Cortez (who has a degree in economics) and her crew have a clear idea of where the money for the Green New Deal is going to come from and roughly how much they want. As with WW2, the Green New Deal will simply consume about half of American GDP. I am not making this up. That WW2 was a time of great sacrifice and hardship, as a direct result of this dramatic mobilization, does not matter to these folks. War is war, right?

Here it is in its clearest form: “The resolution describes the 10-year plan to transform every sector of our economy to remove GHH and pollution. It says it does this through huge investment in renewables at WW2 scale (which was 40-60% GDP investments).” ...........To Read More......

AOC would make a great poster child for Russia

By Ron Stein | February 13th, 2019 | Energy | 1 Comment

Is the new Cold War about energy control rather than information and weapons control? Could U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) be an unwitting dupe or a Putin plant? Evidence suggests the answer to the first is yes. The second question may not be answerable, but the facts suggest the answer is a definite maybe.

Let’s examine them, and the state of the world today post WWII.

The United States has established itself as the greatest oil producer in the world ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia. There is a power dynamic from being oil independent that cannot be ignored. Putin knows this. The Saudis know this. The 184 countries that signed the Paris Accord know this and are aware they need to align themselves with an energy giant. Traditionally that giant was the U.S., but the gild is coming off the lily. Russia has traditionally been painted as the bad guy.

Prosperity around the world from deep earth minerals/fuels is now being weaponized against the West since the oil, natural gas and particularly coal prosperity has led to reduced infant mortality, extended lifespans, and allowed the movement of goods and people anywhere in the world via the diesel engine and jet turbine. Both have done more for the cause of globalization than anything else; and both get their fuels from oil. Without transportation – there is no commerce – since globalized road and air travel dominate most people’s lives in industrialized countries and emerging markets.

Putin knows this. Bin Saud knows this, Xi knows this and our leaders know this. The information war has no clear sides. It’s a fool’s errand to try and win at that game. The guy who was hacking for you yesterday could be hacking for your adversary tomorrow............To Read More.....

Dems scream after Mitch McConnell schedules a vote on their own Green New Deal

February 13, 2019 By Monica Showalter

There's nothing quite like handing Democrats What They Want.

So to accommodate them, wily old Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has scheduled a vote on freshman socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her sidekick Sen. Ed Markey's much-vaunted "Green New Deal," just to help them out.

But wait. The Senate lefties are not happy about it.

All that methane-filled and benzene ring-infused hot air about cutting cow farts, getting rid of cars, ending jet travel, and retrofitting every building in America to 'go green' -- the plan which was so quickly signed onto by nearly all major Democratic presidential candidates, and then pulled from the website -- suddenly isn't quite what Democrats want to go on the record about these days.

So we see headlines like this:

McConnell Trolls Democrats By Pledging A Vote....... To Read More

The Green New Deal

February 14, 2019 By Norman Rogers

Apparently, the inmates have taken over the asylum, led by the former barmaid Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, now a member of Congress. The Green New Deal is a bizarre plan to create a cultural revolution in the United States. The role of Mao’s little red book is replaced by the musings of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). After the green revolution, happiness will reign throughout the land.

Ms. Ocasio can’t even make a credible threat to our economic well-being. According to the Green New Deal, if we don’t prevent global warming, we will lose $500 billion of annual economic output by 2100. The current GDP of the U.S. is $20 trillion. Assuming modest real growth of one percent per year, GDP will be $44 trillion (in current dollars) by 2100. Losing $500 billion or 1.1 percent of 2100 economic output is clearly minor and would be made up by 2101. The Green New Deal advocates instantly destroy their own argument with their own numbers. ...........The reports of the IPCC and of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) are political documents masquerading as scientific studies...............The Green New Deal mostly has nothing to do with climate change. The program has a strong resemblance to the Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens found in the 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union (the “Stalin” constitution)............

Although we live in a golden age of prosperity and opportunity, we also live in an age of ignorance. Ms. Ocasio has a college degree in economics but is apparently a sucker for socialistic ideas that were already thoroughly discredited by 1950. Think of George Orwell’s books 1984 and Animal Farm, and the seminal critique of socialism The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek.  Somehow socialism always turns cruel and brutal. There is no better recounting than the Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. But facts and history are less important than the feeling of being ignored suffered by so many intellectuals and academics. Those intellectuals and academics fill the void in their lives with leftist religion.....................Read more

Green New Deal Is Little More Than Socialism Masked as Environmental Policy

By Jarrett Stepman | February 11, 2019

Democrats unveiled their latest version of the Green New Deal last Thursday, but despite some concessions to reality, this version is still little more than socialism masked as environmental policy.
It’s a modern rehash of the original New Deal of the 1930s, which, despite its success in increasing the size of government and distending the Constitution, had its excesses contained by the Supreme Court.

President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal also failed to turn the economy around.........To Read More...

AOC’s Green New Deal Is Trojan Horse for Socialism

By Jarrett Stepman | January 7, 2019

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is ready to tax the rich to make her Green New Deal a reality.
“People are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes,” the recently elected New York Democrat told TV show “60 Minutes” in an interview set to air Sunday.  Speaking of prior decades’ taxation rates in the country, Ocasio-Cortez added, “Once you get to the tippy tops, on your 10 millionth dollar, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent.”..........To Read More

Who Is Behind the “Green New Deal”?

A look at the Sunrise Movement and its socialist dreams.

February 11, 2019 Discover The Networks 

The Sunrise Movement (SM) is a 501(c)(4) environmental advocacy organization that, while denying that it is loyal to either “the right or left” side of the political spectrum, in fact throws its full support behind left-wing Democratic Party candidates and agendas. Most notably, SM endorses the enactment of a “Green New Deal,” environmental legislation whose multifaceted mission is to eliminate all fossil-fuel use from the U.S. economy (in favor of renewables like wind and solar energy) by the year 2030; create a “basic income program” and a federal jobs guarantee that would provide a “living wage” to every person who wants one; implement a government-run, single-payer health care system; and “transform our economy and society” in a manner that will restore its ecological and moral integrity.

Rooted in the premise that the greenhouse gas emissions associated with human industrial activity are a major cause of potentially catastrophic “climate change,” SM is composed chiefly of what it terms “an army of young people” who aim to take “immediate and decisive action to transform our energy system” and thereby address the “climate crisis” that threatens to consign humanity to “a future ravaged by wildfires, heatwaves, and hurricanes.” In pursuit of this objective, SM vows to “end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics.” That “handful of wealthy oil and gas executives,” says the organization, “will stop at nothing to squeeze the last bit of money out of the earth” – no matter how many “children must breathe toxic air,” or how many “parents must choose between a dangerous and polluting job, and no job at all.”............To Read More....

Green Is the New Red

Stephen Moore Feb 12, 2019

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, has released her Green New Deal plan to the nation -- and to great applause from the Democratic Party.  This multitrillion-dollar manifesto isn't just about saving the planet from climate change -- though that is the centerpiece. It also includes a whole social justice agenda that includes everything from "Medicare-for-all," to a guaranteed job for all Americans, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, and even regulations on how often you will be able to drive your car and fly in an airplane............To Read More.....

Getting Easier To Be 'Green'

Cal Thomas Feb 12, 2019

Kermit the Frog was wrong. It is now easy to be "green." The evidence is the "Green New Deal," which CNN describes as a "...10-year 'economic mobilization' that would phase out fossil fuel use and overhaul the nation's infrastructure while building whole new layers into the existing social safety net." The 14-page resolution was proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA)...........It is helpful to remember how what once seemed extreme has now become accepted. Think of abortion, which most of the country opposed in the late 19th century. Now our elected officials advocate for it. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently wrote a scathing op-ed in The New York Times supporting late-term abortions in his state...........To Read More....

Environmentalist politicians hope to deconstruct civilization

January 15, 2019  By Anna L. Stark

The New Green Deal is a proposal created by rabid environmentalists; glommed onto by the Green Party; and hijacked by the democratic socialists, many newly elected to Congress. What I'm certain of is that not one of these socialist utopian dreamers has researched, much less carefully considered the catastrophic consequences of fully implementing the New Green Deal.

According to the website Green Party US, the four New Green Deal pillars are part of the Green Party platform. Without a doubt, the pillars are based on extremist, socialist theories, which include pillar II – "The Green Transition." Specifically, the Green Transition goal is to abandon the use of petroleum, coal, and natural gas. More importantly, this lofty goal must be accomplished in eleven years from today. To put a fine point on it, the real deal is to deconstruct civilization by eliminating the energy sources that fuel all modern-day transportation, which provide energy to light, heat, and cool almost every single building on the planet, in addition to a myriad of other things – from the manufacture of plastic to the transport of food not only in the United States, but across continents as well.................... Read more

Demagoguery Beats Data

By Rich Kozlovich

“What is more frightening than any particular policy or ideology is the widespread habit of disregarding facts. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey put it this way; "Demagoguery beats data." Thomas Sowell

The pest control industry seems to be faced with the same problem. We're constantly told how we have to restrict pesticide use. We are told we must find alternatives to what we're using. We're told we must adopt “least toxic” (whatever that means) pest control programs.

Why?

Because they claim that pesticides may affect our health and the environment adversely.  This isn’t only from the environmental activists outside of government.  It's also the constant refrain from those environmental activists within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

It costs about three hundred million dollars to bring a pesticide to market - are we to assume that we don’t know what all the potential effects these products may have on people and the environment? Actually - yes! We aren’t allowed to test people, so we don’t really know what any product will do, whether it's pesticides or automobiles, until it is in common use. With pesticides ultimately the final testing ground will be agriculture.

In years gone by the structural pest control industry used far more liquid pesticides than we do now, and we were only using 4% of all the pesticides manufactured, liquids only being a part of that percentage. Four percent doesn’t make much money when the cost of testing is so high. Therefore any pesticide manufactured must be manufactured for use on corn, tobacco, cotton, rice, wheat, soybeans, etc. or it isn’t manufactured. We've changed what we're using in structural pest control dramatically over the last thirty years, we did so because of efficacy. We shifted to a higher reliance to baits for cockroaches and ants because of their effectiveness.  However we must understand - if a pesticide is used in structural pest control it is because it has been used profitably elsewhere and for some time. We get it last.

New technology in structural pest control is usually old technology everywhere else where pesticides are needed and used. So what must we conclude from that? If these products have been used extensively, and for some time, then the effect on people and the environment must absolutely be known to EPA.

So what then must we conclude from that?  Logically we can only conclude they don’t care what the facts are. They've apparently made up their minds to advocate the same view as the environmental activists and are not going to let facts stand in the way.  These "Sue and Settle" lawsuits, which is nothing short of illegal collusion between environmentalists  and government bureaucrats, gives clear evidence of that.   Between regulators, activists, universities, researchers, self serving politicians, and a compliant media,  they have managed to keep the public ignorant and frightened through “filtered facts” which has now given the completely opposite view of what is actually occurring.

Their answer to any criticism is that we must adopt IPM or "green" pest control, which cannot be truly defined. Name one thing you know for sure about IPM! Everybody has their own perception as to what it means, what products can be used, what techniques should be used, where and when they should be used if ever. This will always be debated because IPM is an “ideology, not a methodology” and "green" is nothing short of neo-pagan mysticism.

If these products are so dangerous and EPA has the authority to remove products that are harmful from the market, and they have traced the results of use of these products over the years - why don’t they do it? They clearly have the power and they certainly have the desire -  why don’t they do it? It is quite simple - the facts must not support such an action.

Why are they promoting IPM to the tune of thousands of dollars a year in the form of grant money? Is it because there are no facts to support the elimination of these products and no matter how many times they change the rules (Food Quality Protection Act is one example along with re-registration requirements) to make it impossible to use pesticides they still can’t find the science to support the ban of pesticides, so they attempt to do it through a back door called IPM, organic or green pest control.  And why IPM or green pest control?  Because if there's no alternative there's no problem.  IPM and Green Pest Control are their representatives of an alternative.

The public is constantly told by the media that pesticides cause every conceivable malady.  When it is discovered they're wrong or the facts were deliberately perverted - as in the Alar case - it's passed off as journalism. The activists jump up and down swearing it was good journalism. The media jumps up and down defending their right to say what they want no matter what the real truth is and no matter who is hurt, and as in the Alar case, refusing to publicly acknowledge their misconduct.

What are the facts regarding pesticides? There is no evidence that pesticides have adversely effected the general health of the population! In fact, if you compared the world before modern pesticides and today we find that we are better fed and healthier than ever in this nation’s history or any other nation that has adopted extensive pesticide use. Only the countries who are unable or unwilling to adopt modern practices suffer the consequences of dystopia; poverty, misery, disease, squalor, hunger, starvation and early death.

There has been a great deal of talk regarding trace amounts of chemicals in our waters and land, and even trace amounts of over 200 manmade chemicals in our bodies. So what? This must be a good thing since the advent of these products people are living longer and healthier lives. The appearance of chemicals has nothing to do with toxicity. It's the dose makes the poison, not it's presence, and there are toxic chemicals necessary for good health which appear in detectable trace amounts in our bodies.

Still we have educated individuals teaching (and being taught) in our schools and universities that manmade chemicals are the great evil and we need to go "green" or “all-natural” or “organic”. Whatever those terms mean!  I love the claim that things are "chemical free".  Let's get our heads on right about chemicals.   The universe - including you - is made up of chemicals - if it's chemical free it doesn't exist. 

Most people have been misled into thinking that "organic" foods are healthier, and "organic" food is pesticide free.  That's blatantly false!  As far as the claim they taste better - taste is subjective and in point of fact nothing could be further from the truth.

Note the following information by Dr. Bruce Ames.

Dr. Bruce Ames (a biochemistry professor at the University of California) pointed out in 1987 that we ingest in our diet about 1.5 grams per day of {natural} pesticides. Those foods contain 10,000 times more, by weight, of {natural} pesticides than of man-made pesticide residues. More than 90% of the pesticides in plants are produced {naturally} by the plants, which help protect them from insects, mites, nematodes, bacteria, and fungi. Those natural pesticides may make up 5% to 10% of a plant's dry weight, and nearly half of them that were tested on experimental animals were carcinogenic. Americans should therefore feel unconcerned about the harmless, infinitesimal traces of synthetic chemicals to which they may be exposed. The highly publicized traces of synthetic pesticides on fruits and vegetables worried some people so much that they began to favor ``organically produced'' foods, thinking that they would not contain any pesticides. Most people are not aware that organic gardeners can legally use a great many pesticides, so long as they are not man-made. They can use nicotine sulfate, rotenone, and pyrethrum (derived from plants), or any poisons that occur naturally, such as lime, sulfur, borax, cyanide, arsenic, and fluorine.

This apparently is OK because its “natural”. Chemicals are chemicals and guess what - they all have chemical names. If I presented you the following menu would you eat it? By the way, these foods are known carcinogens.

Cream of Mushroom Soup, Carrots, Cherry Tomatoes, Celery, Mixed Roasted Nuts, Tossed Lettuce and Arugula with Basil-Mustard Vinaigrette, Roast Turkey, Bread Stuffing (with onions, celery, black pepper & mushrooms), Cranberry Sauce, Prime Rib of Beef with Parsley Sauce, Broccoli Spears, Baked Potato, Sweet Potato, Pumpkin Pie, Apple Pie, Fresh Apples, Grapes, Mangos, Pears, Pineapple, Red Wine, White Wine, Coffee, Tea., Jasmine Tea. (Source: American Council on Science and Health)

Here are the chemicals that make up this natural meal.

Hydrazines, aniline, caffeic acid, benzaldehyde, caffeic acid, hydrogen peroxide, quercetin glycosides, caffeic acid, furan derivatives, psoralens, aflatoxin, furfural, allyl isothiocyanate, caffeic acid, estragole, methyl eugenol, heterocyclic amines, acrylamide, ethyl alcohol, benzo(a)pyrene, ethyl carbamate, furan derivatives, furfural, dihydrazines, d-limonene, psoralens, quercetin glycosides, safrole,furan derivatives ,benzene, heterocyclic amines, psoralens,allyl isothiocyanate,ethyl alcohol, caffeic acid,ethyl alcohol, furfural,acetaldehyde, benzene, ethyl alcohol, benzo(a)pyrene, ethyl carbamate, furan derivatives, furfural,benzo(a)pyrene, coumarin, methyl eugenol, safrole,acetaldehyde, caffeic acid, coumarin, estragole, ethyl alcohol, methyl eugenol, quercetin glycosides, safrole,acetaldehyde, benzaldehyde, caffeic acid, d-limonene, estragole, ethyl acrylate, quercetin glycosides,ethyl alcohol, ethyl carbamate,benzo(a)pyrene, benzaldehyde, benzene, benzofuran, caffeic acid, catechol, 1,2,5,6-dibenz(a)anthracene, ethyl benzene, furan, furfural, hydrogen peroxide, hydroquinone, d-limonene, 4-methylcatechol,benzo(a)pyrene, quercetin

For those that read the chemicals listed above you will notice that some of them are repeated a number of times. I deliberately left the list in that way because you are getting a multiple dose in the above Thanksgiving meal.

Does that sound so bad now? It is unfortunate that so many in positions of authority and responsibility continue to allow filtered facts to become the conventional wisdom. More importantly it is impossible for any society to make intelligent long term decisions when preconceived notions are allowed to dictate what “facts” will be allowed to be presented. Then again, facts are confusing and that certainly is the last thing the public needs, after all it is the last thing the environmentalists and their minions want. It might interfere with all those scares they are constantly presenting as eminent disasters. That in turn would foul up contributions and then the greatest disaster of them all would occur. They would have to go out and get real jobs.

All of this is disturbing, but what I find most disturbing is the unwillingness of our industry's information deliverers - the trade journals and trade associations -  to stand up to these people and publish the truth. When we fail to stand up and be counted we're appeasers and enablers.  Eventually that will turn us into traitors to our own industry.

Editor's Note:  I ran this some years back but it's as noteworthy now as it was then, and as I read this I decided to run this every year at this time.  Best wishes to all!   RK