Angela Logomasini
Several years ago, the chemical industry joined forces with certain environmental groups to push reform to the federal Toxic Substances Control Act, which passed into law this year. Although it was not unwarranted for safety reasons (as I detailed before), TSCA reform has granted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) greater power to remove chemicals from the market.The drumbeat for chemical bans started quickly after President Obama signed TSCA into law last June. Activist groups have apparently placed asbestos high on their list of chemicals they want banned under the new law, and they’re likely to succeed.
It’s certainly true that asbestos fibers pose cancer and other health risks, particularly fibers of amphibole asbestos, which are relatively long and thin and easily embed in human tissue. The type of asbestos used today in the United States is mostly chrysotile asbestos, which is less dangerous because its fibers are shorter and thicker and don’t embed in tissue as easily. Still, all asbestos fibers pose risks that must be managed. [For more details see the American Council on Science and Health’s helpful paper on asbestos risk.].....To Read More.....
Friday, September 23, 2016
Thursday, September 22, 2016
We Shouldn't Give Away the Internet to Authoritarian Regimes
Sen. Mike Lee / @SenMikeLee @ Daily Signal
If we rush this transition and it is a failure, it will be nearly impossible to get the internet back from the authoritarian regimes that are pushing for more control.
The essence of human freedom, of civilization itself, is cooperation: cooperation between friends and family; businesses and customers; entrepreneurs and employees.
History and human experience teach that humans cooperate best when they do so voluntarily, without government coercion. That is why I fully support the eventual transition of control over the internet from the Department of Commerce and to a private entity.
But I also worry that President Barack Obama is hastily rushing the current transfer of power to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which could make it easier for the United Nations to take over the internet.
Today, the internet is so vast and ubiquitous that it is hard to imagine it existing in any other form.
But for the first few decades of the internet’s existence, the basic roadmap for navigating the internet—the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the system that allocates and records the unique numerical addresses to computers—was managed by just one man on a voluntary basis.
In 1998, the Commerce Department began contracting with ICANN, a California nonprofit corporation, to take over management of IANA and the internet’s domain name system. For the most part, the Commerce Department has allowed ICANN to govern itself, but it has always maintained the authority to pull the nonprofit’s contract, which allowed the federal government to ensure that its contracting partner did not stray from its original mission.
But some governments do not like ICANN’s current hands-off approach to internet regulation. They want more control over how internet traffic is managed and what domain names are allowed to exist.
The United States firmly resisted these calls for more international control over the internet until 2013 when Edward Snowden leaked details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program, which led the Obama administration to believe it could not maintain international support for the current system. So in March 2014, the Commerce Department announced it would be fully transferring the internet’s names and numbers functions to ICANN. In other words, the federal government would relinquish its leverage over ICANN by giving up its ability to renew—or threaten to cancel—ICANN’s contract.
Normally, I would applaud the loss of federal government leverage over a private entity. But in this case, there are some ominous signs that ICANN is not ready for the role it is about to take on.
ICANN is currently involved in litigation over alleged improper interference from governments who objected to how the organization awarded the .africa domain name. And the organization was recently admonished by an independent review panel for making decisions that were “cavalier” and “simply not credible” in relation to an application for domain names.
Also, it is unclear whether the new bylaws ICANN is set to adopt for the transition will be strong enough to prevent Russia and China from exerting more control over internet governance.
For these reasons, I am working closely with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and other senators to delay the final transfer of internet governance to ICANN. There is no reason this transfer has to happen this year. There is no reason not to allow ICANN to work through its new governance structure on a trial basis for two years so we can make sure it will run smoothly and in a truly independent manner.
If we rush this transition and ICANN fails, it will be nearly impossible to get the internet back from the authoritarian regimes that are pushing for more control.
That is simply not a risk we can take.
If we rush this transition and it is a failure, it will be nearly impossible to get the internet back from the authoritarian regimes that are pushing for more control.
The essence of human freedom, of civilization itself, is cooperation: cooperation between friends and family; businesses and customers; entrepreneurs and employees.
History and human experience teach that humans cooperate best when they do so voluntarily, without government coercion. That is why I fully support the eventual transition of control over the internet from the Department of Commerce and to a private entity.
But I also worry that President Barack Obama is hastily rushing the current transfer of power to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which could make it easier for the United Nations to take over the internet.
Today, the internet is so vast and ubiquitous that it is hard to imagine it existing in any other form.
But for the first few decades of the internet’s existence, the basic roadmap for navigating the internet—the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the system that allocates and records the unique numerical addresses to computers—was managed by just one man on a voluntary basis.
In 1998, the Commerce Department began contracting with ICANN, a California nonprofit corporation, to take over management of IANA and the internet’s domain name system. For the most part, the Commerce Department has allowed ICANN to govern itself, but it has always maintained the authority to pull the nonprofit’s contract, which allowed the federal government to ensure that its contracting partner did not stray from its original mission.
But some governments do not like ICANN’s current hands-off approach to internet regulation. They want more control over how internet traffic is managed and what domain names are allowed to exist.
If we rush this transition and ICANN fails, it will be nearly impossible to get the internet back from the authoritarian regimes that are pushing for more control.Just five years after ICANN was created, the United Nations established a Working Group on Internet Governance “to investigate and make proposals for action … on the governance of Internet.” And in 2012 at the World Conference on International Telecommunications, several authoritarian regimes—including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia—called for the “sovereign right” of governments to “establish and implement public policy, including international policy, on matters of Internet governance.”
The United States firmly resisted these calls for more international control over the internet until 2013 when Edward Snowden leaked details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program, which led the Obama administration to believe it could not maintain international support for the current system. So in March 2014, the Commerce Department announced it would be fully transferring the internet’s names and numbers functions to ICANN. In other words, the federal government would relinquish its leverage over ICANN by giving up its ability to renew—or threaten to cancel—ICANN’s contract.
Normally, I would applaud the loss of federal government leverage over a private entity. But in this case, there are some ominous signs that ICANN is not ready for the role it is about to take on.
ICANN is currently involved in litigation over alleged improper interference from governments who objected to how the organization awarded the .africa domain name. And the organization was recently admonished by an independent review panel for making decisions that were “cavalier” and “simply not credible” in relation to an application for domain names.
Also, it is unclear whether the new bylaws ICANN is set to adopt for the transition will be strong enough to prevent Russia and China from exerting more control over internet governance.
For these reasons, I am working closely with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and other senators to delay the final transfer of internet governance to ICANN. There is no reason this transfer has to happen this year. There is no reason not to allow ICANN to work through its new governance structure on a trial basis for two years so we can make sure it will run smoothly and in a truly independent manner.
If we rush this transition and ICANN fails, it will be nearly impossible to get the internet back from the authoritarian regimes that are pushing for more control.
That is simply not a risk we can take.
Freedom fighter Ted Cruz leads charge to save the internet from liberal censors
“The Internet is one of the most revolutionary forces ever unleashed on the world.”
By Chris Pandolfo
In his opening remarks for Wednesday’s Senate subcommittee hearing on protecting internet freedom, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas (A, 97%) gave a rousing defense of internet freedom, warning that transitioning oversight of the internet to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) could put the freedom at risk......
The danger, Sen. Cruz points out, is that by trading the United States government’s “historic guardianship” of the internet to ICANN, First Amendment protections afforded to the Web will be removed, potentially placing censorship power into the hands of a global, multi-national corporation with limited oversight. - To Read More....
By Chris Pandolfo
In his opening remarks for Wednesday’s Senate subcommittee hearing on protecting internet freedom, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas (A, 97%) gave a rousing defense of internet freedom, warning that transitioning oversight of the internet to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) could put the freedom at risk......
The danger, Sen. Cruz points out, is that by trading the United States government’s “historic guardianship” of the internet to ICANN, First Amendment protections afforded to the Web will be removed, potentially placing censorship power into the hands of a global, multi-national corporation with limited oversight. - To Read More....
Bolton on Internet Handover: ‘Within Ten Years, the Internet as We Know It Will End’
by John Hayward
Speaking to Breitbart Editor-in-Chief and SiriusXM host Alex Marlow, Bolton explained that we should be “very concerned” about the transfer from “a national-security perspective.”....... I will predict right here: within 10 years it will come under the control of the United Nations,...........“What we’ve gotten out of the Internet, under the shelter of a private American organization that contracts with the Commerce Department, [is] one of the few cases that I can think of in our history where we’ve had that kind of government involvement without regulation and interference,” said Bolton........Bolton called the Internet handover “a mistake of such colossal proportions that you would have thought we’d have a huge debate about it in this country.”..........To Read More....
Speaking to Breitbart Editor-in-Chief and SiriusXM host Alex Marlow, Bolton explained that we should be “very concerned” about the transfer from “a national-security perspective.”....... I will predict right here: within 10 years it will come under the control of the United Nations,...........“What we’ve gotten out of the Internet, under the shelter of a private American organization that contracts with the Commerce Department, [is] one of the few cases that I can think of in our history where we’ve had that kind of government involvement without regulation and interference,” said Bolton........Bolton called the Internet handover “a mistake of such colossal proportions that you would have thought we’d have a huge debate about it in this country.”..........To Read More....
Reading is Fundamental
Dear Friends,
Those of us who are old enough will remember when the phrase, "Reading is Fundamental", was used extensively to encourage reading among the young....and probably everone else too. I don't see it used any longer and that's disapointing because as a society we seem to read less than ever and understand less than ever while adamantly embracing the conclusions of our ignorance, which constitutes stupid - and stupid can't be fixed because stupid people refuse to learn, and that includes a great many over educated under smart people.
However - ignorance only means we don't know. Ignorance is fixable - all we have to do is be willing to find out what the facts really are. And that starts with a good history lesson - none of which can be found in America's schools or universities.
Over the years I foolishly thought just because I read something or knew something - everyone knew it also - and I didn't understand why they didn't come to my conclusions. Talk about dumb!
That's not the way the universe works. Some people read and some people don't. Some think deeply, some don't. Some people watched Fred Friendly's Ethics in America series and .... well.... most didn't have a clue what I was talking about, and the rest only thought they might have heard about it - and they were a very small minority. And I was stunned!
The fact of the matter is - some people are interested and some people aren't. I hate doing mechanical work - others think that's the greatest thing since New York style cheesecake. But - that's the way it is!
However, that shouldn't mean abandoning the goal of encouraging everyone to read books - articles aren't enough - we need books for depth. Just discussing what you've read is an encouragement, and even if they don't read - at least people will get the knowledge through you.
I don't buy into some of the views in some of the books listed here. As example - Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. He's a loon - a frightening loon - but Hillary, Obama and a great many on the left in powerful positions are deciples of Alinsky. We need to know what the other side says if we're to be able to overcome those views. We need to be in this arena if we're to be worthwhile leaders of our industry.
So, by way of encouragement to those who might be willing to jump into this arena I'm posting the last 50 books I've read over the last few years.
Best wishes,
Rich Kozlovich
Those of us who are old enough will remember when the phrase, "Reading is Fundamental", was used extensively to encourage reading among the young....and probably everone else too. I don't see it used any longer and that's disapointing because as a society we seem to read less than ever and understand less than ever while adamantly embracing the conclusions of our ignorance, which constitutes stupid - and stupid can't be fixed because stupid people refuse to learn, and that includes a great many over educated under smart people.
However - ignorance only means we don't know. Ignorance is fixable - all we have to do is be willing to find out what the facts really are. And that starts with a good history lesson - none of which can be found in America's schools or universities.
Over the years I foolishly thought just because I read something or knew something - everyone knew it also - and I didn't understand why they didn't come to my conclusions. Talk about dumb!
That's not the way the universe works. Some people read and some people don't. Some think deeply, some don't. Some people watched Fred Friendly's Ethics in America series and .... well.... most didn't have a clue what I was talking about, and the rest only thought they might have heard about it - and they were a very small minority. And I was stunned!
The fact of the matter is - some people are interested and some people aren't. I hate doing mechanical work - others think that's the greatest thing since New York style cheesecake. But - that's the way it is!
However, that shouldn't mean abandoning the goal of encouraging everyone to read books - articles aren't enough - we need books for depth. Just discussing what you've read is an encouragement, and even if they don't read - at least people will get the knowledge through you.
I don't buy into some of the views in some of the books listed here. As example - Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. He's a loon - a frightening loon - but Hillary, Obama and a great many on the left in powerful positions are deciples of Alinsky. We need to know what the other side says if we're to be able to overcome those views. We need to be in this arena if we're to be worthwhile leaders of our industry.
So, by way of encouragement to those who might be willing to jump into this arena I'm posting the last 50 books I've read over the last few years.
Best wishes,
Rich Kozlovich
- 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask, Thomas E. Woods Jr.
- America's Way Back, Reclaiming Freedom, Tradition, and Constitution, By Donald J. Devine
- Are Children More Vulnerable to Environmental Chemicals? Scientific and Regulatory Issues in Perspective, American Council on Science and Health
- The Big Ripoff, How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, by Timothy P. Carney
- America's War on “Carcinogens”, Reassessing the Use of Animal Tests To Predict Human Cancer Risk, American Council on Science and Health (Editor's Note: This no longer appears to be available in book form, but the link is to a PDF of the book. This is a must read! RK)
- Eco-Imperialism, Green Power, Black Death, but Paul Driessen
- Eco-Freaks, Environmentalism is Hazardous to Your Health, By John Berlau
- Eco-Tyranny, how the Left's Green Agenda Will Dismantle America, By Brian Sussman
- Ecological Sanity, by Claus and Bolander
- Economic Facts and Fallacies, Tomas Sowell
- The Forgotten Man, A New History of the Great Depression, by Amity Shlaes
- The Excellent Powder, DDT's Political and Scientific History, by Donald Roberts, Rchard Tren with Roger Bate and Jennifer Zambone
- The Fluoride Wars, How a Modest Public Health Measure became American's Longest Running Political Melodrama, by R. Allan Freeze and Jay H. Lehr
- Green Gone Wild, Elevating nature Above Human Rights, by David Stirling
- Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond
- Intellectual morons, how Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas, by Daniel J. Flynn
- Intellectuals and Society, by Thomas Sowell
- Inside the Third Reich, Memoirs of Albert Speer
- Junk Science Judo, Self-Defense Against Health Scares and Scams, by Seven J. Milloy
- A Poverty of Reason, Sustainable Development and Economic Growth, by Wilfred Beckerman (booklet)
- Myths of Rich and Poor, Why We're Better Off Than We Think, by W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm
- A Man of Letters, by Thomas Sowell
- Interpreting the Precautionary Principle, by Tim O'Riordan and James Cameron
- Rules for Radicals, A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, by Saul D. Alinsky
- The Prince of Darkness, 50 Years of Reporting in Washington, by Robert D. Novak
- The Rat Catcher's Child, The History of the Pest Control Industry, by Dr. Robert Snetsinger
- Silent Spring at 50, The False Crisis of Rachel Carson, Edited by Roger Meiners, Peirre Desrochers, and Andrew Morriss
- Stalin's Secret Agents, The Subversion of Roosevelt's Government, by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein
- Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
- Silencing Science, by Steven Milloy and Michael Gouch (Editor's Note: This is a booklet, so I don't know why the price is so high, so explore the "See Buying Options" link.
- The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor, by David S. Landes
- The World is Flat, A brief History of The Twenty-First Century, by Thomas L. Friedman
- Whores, Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment, by Larry Klayman
DDT: UN Cover Up?
By Rich Kozlovich (Originally published Friday, February 3, 2012, updated 6/16/16)
Steve Milloy recently posted this article, "Appalling: UN severely underestimates malaria deaths, says study" on February 2, 2012. Steve goes on to say; "Has the World Health Organization been covering up genocide? According to a new study in The Lancet, the WHO has underestimated malaria deaths in children (aged 5 and under) by 475% and total deaths by 89%." As bemoaned in The Lancet‘s editorial.
Steve Milloy recently posted this article, "Appalling: UN severely underestimates malaria deaths, says study" on February 2, 2012. Steve goes on to say; "Has the World Health Organization been covering up genocide? According to a new study in The Lancet, the WHO has underestimated malaria deaths in children (aged 5 and under) by 475% and total deaths by 89%." As bemoaned in The Lancet‘s editorial.
This week we publish surprising and, on the face of it, disturbing findings. According to Christopher Murray and colleagues at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in Seattle, there were 1.24 million deaths (95% uncertainty interval 0.93–1.69 million) from malaria worldwide in 2010—around twice the figure of 655000 estimated by WHO for the same year. How should the malaria community interpret this finding? Before we answer that question, we need to look beneath the surface of this striking overall mortality figure....... Click for the Lancet study. Click for the Lancet editorial.
Should we think that the most corrupt organization the world has ever known; an organization that is filled with influential green NGO's; would lie? I certainly do. For the last few years we keep hearing the greenie fellow travelers declaring that bed nets are doing the job. Everything is OK. We don't need DDT to save people. Especially since DDT kills birds and it causes________! Well, just keep filling in that blank until your fingers get numb, because according to the green misanthropes there is no end to the dangers DDT represents, while failing to tell the world the truth about the very real danger malaria represents.
Malaria has killed more people over the centuries than all other diseases combined. Why is that so hard to get? I can answer that! Because those who should be telling the world the truth, such as the U.N., the media, those activists who claim to be concerned about people’s health and all the leaders of every institution in the world are simply not doing so. It happened because as Viv Forbes says; “The public has been misled by an unholy alliance of environmental scaremongers, funds-seeking academics, sensation-seeking media, vote-seeking politicians and profit-seeking vested interests.”
Malaria has killed more people over the centuries than all other diseases combined. Why is that so hard to get? I can answer that! Because those who should be telling the world the truth, such as the U.N., the media, those activists who claim to be concerned about people’s health and all the leaders of every institution in the world are simply not doing so. It happened because as Viv Forbes says; “The public has been misled by an unholy alliance of environmental scaremongers, funds-seeking academics, sensation-seeking media, vote-seeking politicians and profit-seeking vested interests.”
Why?
The answer is the green movement is so rich and so influential no trade organization or politician can stand against them. How did that happen? Their success came in the banning of DDT in the United States. This gave them money and influence that they never had before. The ban is foundational to everything they stand for and everything they have. The death of millions and the suffering and misery of billions is meaningless to them. Lies about malaria sufferers and the very real value that DDT represents in alleviating their suffering are repeated unendingly. No matter how many times the truth is told it is impossible to overcome the daily drumbeat from people who pound out greenie propaganda from so many public sources.
We know that malaria is still a major disaster in many parts of the world. We know that DDT plays a major role in reducing the impact of that human disaster. We know the greenies will do everything in their power to stop DDT from being used. We know from their own statements they are irrational and misanthropic. We know one of their goals is to seriously reduce the world's population. We know they don't really care about the children because the children of the world suffer most from their policies. When the greenies say that we need to adopt their programs because "it's for the children" we need to stop and look very closely because most of what they have done has been "to the children". Now we know there is more to this story than has been told, and the UN has once again been found wanting in integrity. That's history, and that history is incontestable!
So why do we listen to them?
The answer is the green movement is so rich and so influential no trade organization or politician can stand against them. How did that happen? Their success came in the banning of DDT in the United States. This gave them money and influence that they never had before. The ban is foundational to everything they stand for and everything they have. The death of millions and the suffering and misery of billions is meaningless to them. Lies about malaria sufferers and the very real value that DDT represents in alleviating their suffering are repeated unendingly. No matter how many times the truth is told it is impossible to overcome the daily drumbeat from people who pound out greenie propaganda from so many public sources.
We know that malaria is still a major disaster in many parts of the world. We know that DDT plays a major role in reducing the impact of that human disaster. We know the greenies will do everything in their power to stop DDT from being used. We know from their own statements they are irrational and misanthropic. We know one of their goals is to seriously reduce the world's population. We know they don't really care about the children because the children of the world suffer most from their policies. When the greenies say that we need to adopt their programs because "it's for the children" we need to stop and look very closely because most of what they have done has been "to the children". Now we know there is more to this story than has been told, and the UN has once again been found wanting in integrity. That's history, and that history is incontestable!
So why do we listen to them?
Trump opposes plan for U.S. to cede internet oversight
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump opposes a long-planned transition of oversight of the internet's technical management from the U.S. government to a global community of stakeholders, his campaign said in a statement on Wednesday.
Congress should block the handover, scheduled to occur on Oct. 1, "or internet freedom will be lost for good, since there will be no way to make it great again once it is lost," Stephen Miller, national policy director for the Trump campaign, said in a statement. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a former presidential primary foe of Trump's who has refused to endorse the real estate developer, has led a movement in congress to block the transition, arguing it could cede control of the internet itself to authoritarian regimes like Russia and China and threaten online freedom......To Read More....
My Take - Quoted are "technical experts" who claim these are baseless scares, and efforts by Cruz will be "undermining U.S. credibility in future international negotiations over internet standards and security." What nonsense! We're supposed to be worried that liars, murders, tyrants and communists won't take us seriously? They've got to be kidding....right? Orwellian!
Let's ask - Is the system we're using now broken? Everyone say it isn't. If it's not broke what are we wanting to fix? If it isn't broken why would we want to turn it over the the most incompetent, corrupt repressive people in the planet....and I include the U.N. which will most certainly take it over, corrupt it and charge fees for using it. Provided you're acceptable to them of course.
This is a threat far larger than anything I can imagine because no matter how badly things are going in every other endeavor, having access to the truth is far more important. Because truth lends definition to every issue and that's what gives us the clarity to make good decisions....and the see through the fog of Orwellian clabber being spewed out by anarchists, leftists, and tyrants.
Do we really believe these tyrants want to control the internet to keep it free? Yes, actually - free of anything they don't like. This blog is now being blocked by China and Russia, and now I'm seem to be blocked by Ukraine. If those countries were still hitting this blog as they were at their peak numbers I would have almost twice as many hits as I'm getting now on a daily basis. If these people take it over this will be standard practice all over the world. And yet the business community, including the media are virtually silent on this. Why?
We've lost our minds!
Saturday, September 10, 2016
October 1, 2016: Another Day That Will Live in Infamy
By Rich Kozlovich
I've been amazed at the lack of coverage of an event that will take place on this on October first of this year. I didn't expect anything from the mainstream media since they're part of the conspiracy.....and yes.....I said conspiracy. It's always been an amazement to me how many people snicker at the idea of a conspiracy, unless of course it's a vast right wing conspiracy, then it's perfectly intelligent and rational to self-righteously nod in agreement.
However, for many of us who've been reading history books for all of our lives - and I've been doing that for most of my 70 years - we've learned - everything really is a conspiracy!
All of my friends used to laugh at me when I would say this, but that's pretty much stopped. Why? Because they know I believe it and I have more than enough information to justify that statement.
Remember - there's a difference between a conspiracy theorist and someone who believes in conspiracies. A conspiracy theorist needs conspiracies to explain things they don't understand. A person who believes in conspiracies understand how conspiracies bring things into reality.
So what is so important about October 1, 2016? The internet will no longer be under the control of the United States.
Since reading is fundamental, I would like to encourage everyone to buy and read the following books
I've been amazed at the lack of coverage of an event that will take place on this on October first of this year. I didn't expect anything from the mainstream media since they're part of the conspiracy.....and yes.....I said conspiracy. It's always been an amazement to me how many people snicker at the idea of a conspiracy, unless of course it's a vast right wing conspiracy, then it's perfectly intelligent and rational to self-righteously nod in agreement.
However, for many of us who've been reading history books for all of our lives - and I've been doing that for most of my 70 years - we've learned - everything really is a conspiracy!
All of my friends used to laugh at me when I would say this, but that's pretty much stopped. Why? Because they know I believe it and I have more than enough information to justify that statement.
Remember - there's a difference between a conspiracy theorist and someone who believes in conspiracies. A conspiracy theorist needs conspiracies to explain things they don't understand. A person who believes in conspiracies understand how conspiracies bring things into reality.
So what is so important about October 1, 2016? The internet will no longer be under the control of the United States.
- Obama’s Radical Proposal Could Result in Censorship Online
- On October 1st the USA Will Hand Over Control of the Internet, Endangering Free Speech – Call Congress Now!
Since reading is fundamental, I would like to encourage everyone to buy and read the following books
- American Betrayal, The Secret Assult on Our Nation's Character, By Diana West
- Stalin's Secret Agents, The Subversion of the Roosevelt Government, by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein
- Hoodwinked, How intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culure, by Jack Cashill
- Gun, Germs, and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond
- The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, Why Some Are So Rich And Some So Poor, By David S. Landes
- The Big Ripoff, How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, By Timothy P. Carney
Monday, July 25, 2016
TSCA Supported by The American Council on Science and Health
June 22, 2016
My Take - For as long as this has been in the works I've been opposed to it, especially when the American Chemistry Council is in support - or in in support of anything else for that matter. However, there must have been some tough negotiations over this in support of sound science for the American Council on Science and Health to sign on. Now it would appear there's going to be a basis for lawsuits against the EPA - or anyone else in government attempting to impose regulations that are not science based.
However - let's keep in mind we have a law that already requires that very thing. It called the Information Quality Act passed in 2001, which required government agencies to use the best science available in promulgating regulations - and it's not done one darn thing to stop any of the depredations of the EPA, the Wildlife Service, the Army Corp of Engineers or any other overreaching governmental agency.
The American Council on Science and Health petitioned the EPA in 2005 to stop declaring chemicals carcinogenic based on rodent testing alone as this is no longer considered the best science available. ACSH noted that the law permits EPA “to adopt policies that err on the side of caution when faced with genuinely equivocal evidence regarding a substance's carcinogenicity, but the IQA does not permit EPA to distort the scientific evidence in furtherance of such policies.”
The petition argues that EPA ”distorts scientific evidence through its Guidelines' use of "default options," its purported right -- based not on scientific evidence but its regulatory mission to protect human health -- to assume that tumors in lab rodents indicate that much smaller doses can cause cancer in humans. Erring on the "safe side" in regulatory decisions does not, argues the petition, permit EPA to falsely claim that such regulated substances truly are "likely to be carcinogenic to humans." To do so, argues ACSH, is a distortion of both science and law. “
Finally after months of delays the EPA formally responded saying “that their Risk Assessment Guidelines are not statements of scientific fact -- and thus not covered by the IQA -- but merely statements of EPA policy.” My question was then and is now. If EPA policies aren’t based on scientific fact, what are they based on?
It's clear these agencies could care less about any law that restricts their activism. Will this be any different? Petitions don't work-----lawsuits with penalties do! Who will do it when the time comes - and that time will come - make no mistake about that.
My Take - For as long as this has been in the works I've been opposed to it, especially when the American Chemistry Council is in support - or in in support of anything else for that matter. However, there must have been some tough negotiations over this in support of sound science for the American Council on Science and Health to sign on. Now it would appear there's going to be a basis for lawsuits against the EPA - or anyone else in government attempting to impose regulations that are not science based.
However - let's keep in mind we have a law that already requires that very thing. It called the Information Quality Act passed in 2001, which required government agencies to use the best science available in promulgating regulations - and it's not done one darn thing to stop any of the depredations of the EPA, the Wildlife Service, the Army Corp of Engineers or any other overreaching governmental agency.
The American Council on Science and Health petitioned the EPA in 2005 to stop declaring chemicals carcinogenic based on rodent testing alone as this is no longer considered the best science available. ACSH noted that the law permits EPA “to adopt policies that err on the side of caution when faced with genuinely equivocal evidence regarding a substance's carcinogenicity, but the IQA does not permit EPA to distort the scientific evidence in furtherance of such policies.”
The petition argues that EPA ”distorts scientific evidence through its Guidelines' use of "default options," its purported right -- based not on scientific evidence but its regulatory mission to protect human health -- to assume that tumors in lab rodents indicate that much smaller doses can cause cancer in humans. Erring on the "safe side" in regulatory decisions does not, argues the petition, permit EPA to falsely claim that such regulated substances truly are "likely to be carcinogenic to humans." To do so, argues ACSH, is a distortion of both science and law. “
Finally after months of delays the EPA formally responded saying “that their Risk Assessment Guidelines are not statements of scientific fact -- and thus not covered by the IQA -- but merely statements of EPA policy.” My question was then and is now. If EPA policies aren’t based on scientific fact, what are they based on?
It's clear these agencies could care less about any law that restricts their activism. Will this be any different? Petitions don't work-----lawsuits with penalties do! Who will do it when the time comes - and that time will come - make no mistake about that.
Science or advocacy?
Students are learning energy and climate change advocacy, not climate science
David R. Legates
For almost thirty years, I have taught climate science at three different universities. What I have observed is that students are increasingly being fed climate change advocacy as a surrogate for becoming climate science literate. This makes them easy targets for the climate alarmism that pervades America today.
Earth’s climate probably is the most complicated non-living system one can study, because it naturally integrates astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, geology, hydrology, oceanography and cryology, and also includes human behavior by both responding to and affecting human activities. Current concerns over climate change have further pushed climate science to the forefront of scientific inquiry.
What should we be teaching college students?
At the very least, a student should be able to identify and describe the basic processes that cause Earth’s climate to vary from poles to equator, from coasts to the center of continents, from the Dead Sea or Death Valley depression to the top of Mount Everest or Denali. A still more literate student would understand how the oceans, biosphere, cryosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere – driven by energy from the sun – all work in constantly changing combinations to produce our very complicated climate.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s definition of climate science literacy raises the question of whether climatology is even a science. It defines climate science literacy as “an understanding of your influence on climate and climate’s influence on you and society.”
How can students understand and put into perspective their influence on the Earth’s climate if they don’t understand the myriad of processes that affect our climate? If they don’t understand the complexity of climate itself? If they are told only human aspects matter? And if they don’t understand these processes, how can they possibly comprehend how climate influences them and society in general?
Worse still, many of our colleges are working against scientific literacy for students.
At the University of Delaware, the Maryland and Delaware Climate Change Education Assessment and Research (MADE CLEAR) defines the distinction between weather and climate by stating that “climate is measured over hundreds or thousands of years,” and defining climate as “average weather.” That presupposes that climate is static, or should be, and that climate change is unordinary in our lifetime and, by implication, undesirable.
Climate, however, is not static. It is highly variable, on timescales from years to millennia – for reasons that include, but certainly are not limited to, human activity.
This Delaware-Maryland program identifies rising concentrations of greenhouse gases – most notably carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – as the only reason why temperatures have risen about 0.6°C (1.1º F) over the last century and will supposedly continue to rise over the next century. Students are then instructed to save energy, calculate their carbon footprint, and reduce, reuse, recycle. Mastering these concepts, they are told, leads to “climate science literacy.” It does not.
In the past, I have been invited to speak at three different universities during their semester-long and college-wide focus on climate science literacy. At all three, two movies were required viewing by all students, to assist them in becoming climate science literate: Al Gore’s biased version of climate science, An Inconvenient Truth, and the 2004 climate science fiction disaster film, The Day After Tomorrow.
This past spring, the University of Delaware sponsored an Environmental Film Festival featuring six films. Among them only An Inconvenient Truth touched at all on the science behind climate change, albeit in such a highly flawed way that in Britain, students must be warned about its bias.
The other films were activist-oriented and included movies that are admittedly science fiction or focus on “climate change solutions.”
For these films, university faculty members were selected to moderate discussions. We have a large College of Earth, Ocean and the Environment, from which agreeable, scientifically knowledgeable faculty could have been chosen. Instead, discussion of An Inconvenient Truth was led by a professor of philosophy, and one movie – a documentary on climate change “solutions” that argues solutions are pertinent irrespective of the science – was moderated by a civil engineer.
Discussion of the remaining four films was led by faculty from history, English and journalism. Clearly, there was little interest in the substance of the science.
Many fundamentals of climate science are absent from university efforts to promote climate science literacy. For example, students seldom learn that the most important chemical compound with respect to the Earth’s climate is not carbon dioxide, but water. Water influences almost every aspect of the Earth’s energy balance, because it is so prevalent, because it appears in solid, liquid and gas form in substantial quantities, and because energy is transferred by the water’s mobility and when it changes its physical state. Since precipitation varies considerably from year to year, changes in water availability substantially affect our climate every year.
Hearing about water, however, doesn’t set off alarms like carbon dioxide does.
Contributing to the increased focus on climate change advocacy is the pressure placed on faculty members who do not sign on to the advocacy bandwagon. The University of Delaware has played the role of activist and used FOIA requests to attempt to intimidate me because I have spoken out about climate change alarmism. In my article published in Academic Questions, “ The University vs. Academic Freedom,” I discuss the university’s willingness to go along with Greenpeace in its quest for my documents and emails pertaining to my research.
Much grant money and fame, power and influence, are to be had for those who follow the advocates’ game plan. By contrast, the penalties for not going along with alarmist positions are quite severe.
For example, one of the films shown at the University of Delaware’s film festival presents those who disagree with climate change extremism as pundits for hire who misrepresent themselves as a scientific authority. Young faculty members are sent a very pointed message: adopt the advocacy position – or else.
Making matters worse, consider Senate Bill 3074. Introduced into the U.S. Senate on June 16 of this year, it authorizes the establishment of a national climate change education program. Once again, the emphasis is on teaching energy and climate advocacy, rather than teaching science and increasing scientific knowledge and comprehension.
The director of the National Center for Science Education commented that the bill was designed to “[equip] students with the knowledge and knowhow required for them to flourish in a warming world.” Unfortunately, it will do little to educate them regarding climate science.
I fear that our climate science curriculum has been co-opted, to satisfy the climate change fear-mongering agenda that pervades our society today. Instead of teaching the science behind Earth’s climate, advocates have taken the initiative to convert it to a social agenda of environmental activism.
Climatology, unfortunately, has been transformed into a social and political science. There is nothing wrong with either of those “sciences,” of course. But the flaws underpinning climate science advocacy are masked by “concern for the environment,” when climate is no longer treated as a physical science.
Climate science must return to being a real science and not simply a vehicle to promote advocacy talking points. When that happens, students will find that scientific facts are the real “inconvenient truths.”
David R. Legates
For almost thirty years, I have taught climate science at three different universities. What I have observed is that students are increasingly being fed climate change advocacy as a surrogate for becoming climate science literate. This makes them easy targets for the climate alarmism that pervades America today.
Earth’s climate probably is the most complicated non-living system one can study, because it naturally integrates astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, geology, hydrology, oceanography and cryology, and also includes human behavior by both responding to and affecting human activities. Current concerns over climate change have further pushed climate science to the forefront of scientific inquiry.
What should we be teaching college students?
At the very least, a student should be able to identify and describe the basic processes that cause Earth’s climate to vary from poles to equator, from coasts to the center of continents, from the Dead Sea or Death Valley depression to the top of Mount Everest or Denali. A still more literate student would understand how the oceans, biosphere, cryosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere – driven by energy from the sun – all work in constantly changing combinations to produce our very complicated climate.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s definition of climate science literacy raises the question of whether climatology is even a science. It defines climate science literacy as “an understanding of your influence on climate and climate’s influence on you and society.”
How can students understand and put into perspective their influence on the Earth’s climate if they don’t understand the myriad of processes that affect our climate? If they don’t understand the complexity of climate itself? If they are told only human aspects matter? And if they don’t understand these processes, how can they possibly comprehend how climate influences them and society in general?
Worse still, many of our colleges are working against scientific literacy for students.
At the University of Delaware, the Maryland and Delaware Climate Change Education Assessment and Research (MADE CLEAR) defines the distinction between weather and climate by stating that “climate is measured over hundreds or thousands of years,” and defining climate as “average weather.” That presupposes that climate is static, or should be, and that climate change is unordinary in our lifetime and, by implication, undesirable.
Climate, however, is not static. It is highly variable, on timescales from years to millennia – for reasons that include, but certainly are not limited to, human activity.
This Delaware-Maryland program identifies rising concentrations of greenhouse gases – most notably carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – as the only reason why temperatures have risen about 0.6°C (1.1º F) over the last century and will supposedly continue to rise over the next century. Students are then instructed to save energy, calculate their carbon footprint, and reduce, reuse, recycle. Mastering these concepts, they are told, leads to “climate science literacy.” It does not.
In the past, I have been invited to speak at three different universities during their semester-long and college-wide focus on climate science literacy. At all three, two movies were required viewing by all students, to assist them in becoming climate science literate: Al Gore’s biased version of climate science, An Inconvenient Truth, and the 2004 climate science fiction disaster film, The Day After Tomorrow.
This past spring, the University of Delaware sponsored an Environmental Film Festival featuring six films. Among them only An Inconvenient Truth touched at all on the science behind climate change, albeit in such a highly flawed way that in Britain, students must be warned about its bias.
The other films were activist-oriented and included movies that are admittedly science fiction or focus on “climate change solutions.”
For these films, university faculty members were selected to moderate discussions. We have a large College of Earth, Ocean and the Environment, from which agreeable, scientifically knowledgeable faculty could have been chosen. Instead, discussion of An Inconvenient Truth was led by a professor of philosophy, and one movie – a documentary on climate change “solutions” that argues solutions are pertinent irrespective of the science – was moderated by a civil engineer.
Discussion of the remaining four films was led by faculty from history, English and journalism. Clearly, there was little interest in the substance of the science.
Many fundamentals of climate science are absent from university efforts to promote climate science literacy. For example, students seldom learn that the most important chemical compound with respect to the Earth’s climate is not carbon dioxide, but water. Water influences almost every aspect of the Earth’s energy balance, because it is so prevalent, because it appears in solid, liquid and gas form in substantial quantities, and because energy is transferred by the water’s mobility and when it changes its physical state. Since precipitation varies considerably from year to year, changes in water availability substantially affect our climate every year.
Hearing about water, however, doesn’t set off alarms like carbon dioxide does.
Contributing to the increased focus on climate change advocacy is the pressure placed on faculty members who do not sign on to the advocacy bandwagon. The University of Delaware has played the role of activist and used FOIA requests to attempt to intimidate me because I have spoken out about climate change alarmism. In my article published in Academic Questions, “ The University vs. Academic Freedom,” I discuss the university’s willingness to go along with Greenpeace in its quest for my documents and emails pertaining to my research.
Much grant money and fame, power and influence, are to be had for those who follow the advocates’ game plan. By contrast, the penalties for not going along with alarmist positions are quite severe.
For example, one of the films shown at the University of Delaware’s film festival presents those who disagree with climate change extremism as pundits for hire who misrepresent themselves as a scientific authority. Young faculty members are sent a very pointed message: adopt the advocacy position – or else.
Making matters worse, consider Senate Bill 3074. Introduced into the U.S. Senate on June 16 of this year, it authorizes the establishment of a national climate change education program. Once again, the emphasis is on teaching energy and climate advocacy, rather than teaching science and increasing scientific knowledge and comprehension.
The director of the National Center for Science Education commented that the bill was designed to “[equip] students with the knowledge and knowhow required for them to flourish in a warming world.” Unfortunately, it will do little to educate them regarding climate science.
I fear that our climate science curriculum has been co-opted, to satisfy the climate change fear-mongering agenda that pervades our society today. Instead of teaching the science behind Earth’s climate, advocates have taken the initiative to convert it to a social agenda of environmental activism.
Climatology, unfortunately, has been transformed into a social and political science. There is nothing wrong with either of those “sciences,” of course. But the flaws underpinning climate science advocacy are masked by “concern for the environment,” when climate is no longer treated as a physical science.
Climate science must return to being a real science and not simply a vehicle to promote advocacy talking points. When that happens, students will find that scientific facts are the real “inconvenient truths.”
David R. Legates, PhD, CCM, is a Professor of Climatology at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware. A version of this article appeared on the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy website.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
DDT - Drinking the Kool-Aid
By Rich Kozlovich (Originally published Wednesday, June 9, 2010 updated June 23, 2016)
Those in prominent positions who defend Rachel Carson and her acolytes are thoughtless elites who have drunk deeply of the Green Kool-Aid while living in the fever swamps of environmentalism.
Elitists whose minds are ablaze with enlightenment!
An enlightenment that only they can fully understand. They revel in “rhetoric filled with unending deposits of spite, hyperbole, lies and odium” as if they were listening to a symphonic orchestra playing music that is filled with a grandeur and beauty that completely mesmerizes and inspires those who are capable of hearing it.
The reality is this rhetoric, with the aid of government bureaucrats and a false media, is a symphony of discordant notes filling the ears, minds and emotions of the uninformed and misinformed, making it impossible for them to think clearly. Just as with bureaucracies and all their regulations, this discordant symphony constantly expands itself into issues such as animal rights, global warming, genetically modified foods, pesticides, private land ownership and hatred of the rich. Destroying practical age-old traditional values, while promoting every form of radicalism as a new enlightenment. Unfortunately this is done without any penalty or consequence - for them - if they are wrong, because it's the rest of the world who pay the penalty for their "enlightened" rule making.
This façade of intellectual and moral superiority is actually nothing more than aesthetic snobbery that carries with it a corresponding lack of concern for the poor who suffer needlessly so their egos can be stroked and feel good about themselves, creating fervor and excitement that can only be described as religious in nature. This symphony of environmental rhetoric is their Kyrie Eleison, and these elites are the clergy and high priests of the secular neo-pagan religion known as environmentalism. It's roots may be solidly pagan in orgin, but in it's modern form - it got it's real start with the ban on DDT and Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring.
We have come through 60 plus years where marching, breaking windows, burning buildings, shouting insults and chanting slogans are considered intellectual debate. We have come to accept defamation of character as an intellectual argument and any science out of harmony with the “Green Litany” is the work of corrupted sycophants of big business. Unfortunately - as in the Middle Ages - anyone from business, government or science who disagrees with them is a heretic who must be purged by an inquisition of condemnatory public humiliation through their acolytes in government and the main stream media. It is clear that “some things are so stupid that only an intellectual can believe them”.
How will history judge the moralistic ravings of these intellectual elites? Hopefully they will be judged by how many lives will have they've destroyed?
"There has never been a replicated study published in a peer-reviewed journal showing harm to human health from DDT" after six decades of human exposure, Amir Attaran of the Royal Institute of International Affairs has said.
So why is DDT banned in the U.S.? Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring," was published in 1962 attempting to make a case against man-made chemicals. She made the argument, which has since been discredited, that DDT ingestion caused reproduction problems in birds and caused cancer.
The EPA still lauds her as an environmental saint, in spite of all the studies that have clearly discredited almost everything she stated or claimed or predicted. EPA’s web site states:
Elitists whose minds are ablaze with enlightenment!
An enlightenment that only they can fully understand. They revel in “rhetoric filled with unending deposits of spite, hyperbole, lies and odium” as if they were listening to a symphonic orchestra playing music that is filled with a grandeur and beauty that completely mesmerizes and inspires those who are capable of hearing it.
The reality is this rhetoric, with the aid of government bureaucrats and a false media, is a symphony of discordant notes filling the ears, minds and emotions of the uninformed and misinformed, making it impossible for them to think clearly. Just as with bureaucracies and all their regulations, this discordant symphony constantly expands itself into issues such as animal rights, global warming, genetically modified foods, pesticides, private land ownership and hatred of the rich. Destroying practical age-old traditional values, while promoting every form of radicalism as a new enlightenment. Unfortunately this is done without any penalty or consequence - for them - if they are wrong, because it's the rest of the world who pay the penalty for their "enlightened" rule making.
This façade of intellectual and moral superiority is actually nothing more than aesthetic snobbery that carries with it a corresponding lack of concern for the poor who suffer needlessly so their egos can be stroked and feel good about themselves, creating fervor and excitement that can only be described as religious in nature. This symphony of environmental rhetoric is their Kyrie Eleison, and these elites are the clergy and high priests of the secular neo-pagan religion known as environmentalism. It's roots may be solidly pagan in orgin, but in it's modern form - it got it's real start with the ban on DDT and Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring.
We have come through 60 plus years where marching, breaking windows, burning buildings, shouting insults and chanting slogans are considered intellectual debate. We have come to accept defamation of character as an intellectual argument and any science out of harmony with the “Green Litany” is the work of corrupted sycophants of big business. Unfortunately - as in the Middle Ages - anyone from business, government or science who disagrees with them is a heretic who must be purged by an inquisition of condemnatory public humiliation through their acolytes in government and the main stream media. It is clear that “some things are so stupid that only an intellectual can believe them”.
How will history judge the moralistic ravings of these intellectual elites? Hopefully they will be judged by how many lives will have they've destroyed?
"There has never been a replicated study published in a peer-reviewed journal showing harm to human health from DDT" after six decades of human exposure, Amir Attaran of the Royal Institute of International Affairs has said.
So why is DDT banned in the U.S.? Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring," was published in 1962 attempting to make a case against man-made chemicals. She made the argument, which has since been discredited, that DDT ingestion caused reproduction problems in birds and caused cancer.
The EPA still lauds her as an environmental saint, in spite of all the studies that have clearly discredited almost everything she stated or claimed or predicted. EPA’s web site states:
Silent Spring played in the history of environmentalism roughly the same role that Uncle Tom’s Cabin played in the abolitionist movement. In fact, EPA today may be said without exaggeration to the extend4ed shadow of Rachel Carson. The influence of her book has brought together over 14,000 scientists, lawyers, managers, and other employees across the country to fight the good fight for “environmental protections.”
Skeptics then and now have accused Carson of shallow science, but her literary genius carried all before it.”
So it was her literary genius and not her scientific genius that did it! At least EPA got that right.
Blame, as well, Richard Nixon and William Ruckelshaus. When judge Sweeney ruled against those wanting to ban DDT he stated that DDT wasn’t a carcinogenic, mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man and did not have a deleterious effect of wildlife. President Richard Nixon was furious and stated that he was going to do everything he could to overturn that decision. Ruckelshaus, as the first head of the Environmental Protection Agency appointed by Nixon, banned DDT even though the judge who sat through a scientific hearing on DDT — a hearing that Ruckelshaus did not attend — ruled that it should remain in use.”
Those who still defend Carson and the EPA’s decision are legion and desperate. Studies abound to prove that which is un-provable i.e., that DDT and DDE, a metabolite of DDT, is toxic to people and wildlife and causes all sorts of afflictions. One recently released study called the Pine River Statement was published in the Environmental Health Perspectives entitled, “The Pine River Statement: Human Health Consequences of DDT Use”. Fifteen scientists reviewed almost 500 papers to prove that DDT or DDE caused “cancer, diabetes, fetal underdevelopment, shortened duration of lactation, reduced child growth, reproductive problems and neurodevelopmental problems.
The case they came up with “was weak” and “in order to prove a cause and effect relationship between DDT and human health harm, certain core criteria should be met, such as strength of association, biologic credibility, and consistency with other investigations. Two other important, although sometimes considered weaker, criteria are time sequence (cause must precede effect) and a proportional dose-response relationship. None of the studies presented in the Pine River Statement satisfy these criteria. The studies are un-replicated, contradictory, or statistically insignificant.” Yet the authors conclude that the evidence they present proves that DDT “may” pose a risk to human health.
I find it amazing that they feel compelled to continue spending millions to prove DDT is so terrible. If that was actually so it would have been clear to everyone and this would have been absolutely settled by now; yet they continue.
Why?
Because everything they have said or written about DDT is a lie and they desperately need to find a way of discrediting this banned product even now.
Why?
Because their cause against DDT gave them power, influence and money they had never dreamed of before. If their DDT claims are lies then all the claims about all the other pesticides can reasonably considered lies. and a valid case would be made that the rest of their scares are invlaid also.
Nixon wanted to get rid of DDT but he couldn’t because pesticides fell under the legislative authority of the USDA, and they didn’t agree with the idea that DDT should be eliminated. In order to strip that legislative authority from the USDA he created the EPA and appointed an underground greenie to be in charge. EPA was founded in corruption and has operated from the very beginning behind a curtain of lies, and nothing has changed.
Blame, as well, Richard Nixon and William Ruckelshaus. When judge Sweeney ruled against those wanting to ban DDT he stated that DDT wasn’t a carcinogenic, mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man and did not have a deleterious effect of wildlife. President Richard Nixon was furious and stated that he was going to do everything he could to overturn that decision. Ruckelshaus, as the first head of the Environmental Protection Agency appointed by Nixon, banned DDT even though the judge who sat through a scientific hearing on DDT — a hearing that Ruckelshaus did not attend — ruled that it should remain in use.”
Those who still defend Carson and the EPA’s decision are legion and desperate. Studies abound to prove that which is un-provable i.e., that DDT and DDE, a metabolite of DDT, is toxic to people and wildlife and causes all sorts of afflictions. One recently released study called the Pine River Statement was published in the Environmental Health Perspectives entitled, “The Pine River Statement: Human Health Consequences of DDT Use”. Fifteen scientists reviewed almost 500 papers to prove that DDT or DDE caused “cancer, diabetes, fetal underdevelopment, shortened duration of lactation, reduced child growth, reproductive problems and neurodevelopmental problems.
The case they came up with “was weak” and “in order to prove a cause and effect relationship between DDT and human health harm, certain core criteria should be met, such as strength of association, biologic credibility, and consistency with other investigations. Two other important, although sometimes considered weaker, criteria are time sequence (cause must precede effect) and a proportional dose-response relationship. None of the studies presented in the Pine River Statement satisfy these criteria. The studies are un-replicated, contradictory, or statistically insignificant.” Yet the authors conclude that the evidence they present proves that DDT “may” pose a risk to human health.
I find it amazing that they feel compelled to continue spending millions to prove DDT is so terrible. If that was actually so it would have been clear to everyone and this would have been absolutely settled by now; yet they continue.
Why?
Because everything they have said or written about DDT is a lie and they desperately need to find a way of discrediting this banned product even now.
Why?
Because their cause against DDT gave them power, influence and money they had never dreamed of before. If their DDT claims are lies then all the claims about all the other pesticides can reasonably considered lies. and a valid case would be made that the rest of their scares are invlaid also.
Nixon wanted to get rid of DDT but he couldn’t because pesticides fell under the legislative authority of the USDA, and they didn’t agree with the idea that DDT should be eliminated. In order to strip that legislative authority from the USDA he created the EPA and appointed an underground greenie to be in charge. EPA was founded in corruption and has operated from the very beginning behind a curtain of lies, and nothing has changed.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
DDT and The Magic Study Machine!
By Rich Kozlovich (Originally published Saturday, February 15, 2014)
In December 2011 I wrote an article entitled, DDT - Lets Have Another 10,000 Studies!, saying;
In December 2011 I wrote an article entitled, DDT - Lets Have Another 10,000 Studies!, saying;
“There have been thousands of studies regarding the effects of DDT on the environment, people and wildlife, and most of them were junk science….. conclusions in search of data. A number of years ago…..Dr. Rutledge Taylor...produced a film documentary about DDT called 3 Billion and Counting. …..At one point he had received almost 100 studies from one of the anti-DDT groups claiming all sorts of things. He sent them to me and asked me to look them over…..
As I went through the first ten, very carefully outlining and taking notes on what was clearly wrong with those studies, I found out that they were filled with claptrap; speculation, weasel words, logical fallacies and weak associations. I went through the next ten just as carefully, without taking notes this time, and found the exact same pattern in all of them. I skipped to every fifth study only to find the same pattern over and over again. In short, these studies were nothing more than “academic welfare”!
You know what welfare is; pay without work; work being the operative word for producing something of value. And in these cases the ‘academic welfare’ produced preconceived conclusions. Conclusions in search of data! And everyone one of these studies was produced after DDT was banned! Why?”
Well, there is one thing we know for sure. Anti-DDT ‘studies’ will generate grant money, and the holy grail of science is grant money, and that’s what makes them ‘magic’. They’re magic because anti-DDT studies produce gold out of nothing. This kind of reminds me of that old Grimm brother’s fairy tale about Rumpelstiltskin and spinning straw into gold, and spinning is the operative word, because they're still desperately attempting to prove the ban really has some scientific basis instead of the political decision it really was.
One of of my readers sent me a link to this study, entitled, Elevated Serum Pesticide Levels and Risk for Alzheimer Disease, which claimed there ‘may’ be a link between Alzheimer’s and DDT, or in this case DDE the metabolite, or breakdown product, of DDT, finally concluding;
“Elevated serum DDE levels are associated with an increased risk for AD and carriers of an APOE4 ε4 allele may be more susceptible to the effects of DDE. Both DDT and DDE increase amyloid precursor protein levels, providing mechanistic plausibility for the association of DDE exposure with AD. Identifying people who have elevated levels of DDE and carry an APOE ε4 allele may lead to early identification of some cases of AD.”
The L.A. Times quotes and states;
"Over 80% of us have measurable levels of DDE in our blood, that is a reality," Richardson told The Times. "We get it from legacy contamination or food that comes from countries using DDT. None of the people in the study had DDE levels that were way beyond what is found in the general population. "The levels we observed were not outside what you find in the top 5% of people in the United States," he said.
He added that some of the participants who had high DDE levels did not have Alzheimer's. "We need to do a lot more work to understand this association," he said."It may not be as simple as different levels of exposure.
With all those caveats, why was this study even published?
Let me tell you about weasel words and phrases, which has now been updated. When you start to look at these “studies” touted by the activists you find there is one common thread. They are full of weasel words and phrases. This gives them a great deal of wiggle room because they never come out and definitively state that things are factual, they’re always ‘maybes’, and always scary ‘maybes’.
Did it ever occur to anyone this is nothing more than unfounded printed accusations, or even professional guess work? When this stuff makes it into print the media consistently fails to give the impression this may not be viewed as real science from the rest of the scientific community.
The American Council on Science and Health published an article on January 28, 2014 dealing with this entitled, “New study tries to link Alzheimer’s disease and DDT; media thinks it succeeded”.
“A small biomonitoring study of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients’ exposure to DDT, as compared to those of non-AD patients, came up with some statistically significant associations of otherwise no clinical significance. But that didn’t stop the news media from blaring the findings hither and yon, without giving a moment’s thought to the underlying mechanisms or significance. As usual.”
The article goes on to say;
“among 86 AD and 79 control patients [Editor's note; way too small a number to mean anything]. These levels were measured in serum. [DDT] is persistent (meaning it does not break down rapidly in the environment), as is DDE. But the levels measured in the study subjects were in the nanogram per milligram of cholesterol range: where a nanogram is one-millionth of a milligram! Simply put, the levels of DDE were somewhat akin to a drop of water in an olympic-sized swimming pool or less.
The problem with so many of these studies is in how they’re conducted, and what the media fails to tell everyone, and probably doesn’t understand anyway. The article went on to say;
The results, such as they are, indicated that the measured levels of DDE were 3.8 fold higher in the AD patients than the controls. Does this mean that the DDT/DDE caused AD in those higher-exposed? Not at all. In fact, the 2 study groups were assembled in 2 different locations, and each group’s numbers failed to show any effect. The authors took care of that inconvenient problem by pooling both groups, and voila! the statistics came back to them as they hoped.
But while that teeny-tiny amount may make this whole endeavor ridiculous, even more so is this simple fact: while the amount of DDT/DDE in the environment has clearly declined since it was banned and its manufacture nearly disappeared forty-plus years ago, the incidence of AD has climbed, indeed accelerated over that same period. That’s tough to explain using the “DDT linked to Alzheimer’s” scare story. Isn’t it? Also, can you postulate the likely biological hypothesis for how these chemicals infiltrate one’s brain and interfere with memory on a progressive basis? No? Neither can I.
The author of the study is quoted as saying;
“That is exactly why this study was done: to try to discover some–any– remediable factor to try to prevent AD. Otherwise, we just feel helpless and at the mercy of fate.
ACSH’s Dr. Gil Ross notes;
“ that’s a poor excuse for twisting yourself into a pretzel to come up with some bizarre linkage such as this study. And then there’s this insinuation that all pesticides are alike, which is utter nonsense.”
Of course groundwork must be laid for future grant chasing. “We have submitted grants to follow this up in much larger groups of people,” ….“That is the most important step — to replicate this and to have it in a much larger sample.” And so it goes, "The Magic Study Machine" is kept humming - filling the world with hype that's promoted by scientifically illiterate journalists.
But this is just the latest study generated by the Magic Study Machine over DDT. In January 2012 it was declared that DDT was now “linked” [another weasel word] to Vitamin D deficiency. Why didn’t the problem appear 40 years ago? And its really hard to believe whatever is left of DDT could have this kind of impact on anyone.
Again, as Steve Milloy notes;
“DDT hasn’t been used in developing countries for decades. Now it causes lung infections? Here’s the study. The statistical associations are weak and insignificant, the data self-reported and a credible biological explanation for how DDE could possibly cause respiratory tract infections is non-existent —and, of course, respiratory tract infections in infants are so common thath it is absurd to even attempt to attribute them to trace levels of a ubiquitous metabolite of a long-banned insecticide. “
Then there was the May 2011 claim that, DDT causes diabetes, breast cancer and infant deaths. Steve Milloy states;
I traced the diabetes claim to a study published in the July 2009 Environmental Health Perspectives. Aside from the usual fatal flaws of weak association epidemiology, this study’s assertion that DDT metabolite DDE was associated with incident diabetes is laughable since the average body mass index (BMI) of the study subjects was 33.2 — e.g., meaning that the average study subject was likely to be obese (check out this chart to see what height/weight combos make for a BMI of 33+). Moreover, no significant associations were reported for study subjects with a BMI less than 29. I don’t know whether obesity leads to diabetes or diabetes leads to obesity, but there’s no evidence that DDT is involved. As to the breast cancer risk claim, I last addressed this issue in an October 11, 2007 FOXNews.com column, responding to an October 2007 Environmental Health Perspectives study.
What about infant deaths?
“The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences study referred to by the New York Times doesn’t even try to associate DDT with nonmalarial infant death. It instead only estimates nonmalarial deaths that may be associated with DDT spraying, the alleged “association” being based on three studie“suggesting” that DDT exposure may increase pre-term delivery and small-for-gestational-age births, and shorten the duration of lactation. “
Here’s Steve’s quick take on those three studies:
§ Association between maternal serum concentration of the DDT metabolite DDE and preterm and small-for-gestational-age babies at birth is an effort to retrospectively blame DDT for premies and underweight births 35 years after the births. But this can’t be credibly done with biased data and weak/inconsistent statistical associations.
§ DDE and Shortened Duration of Lactation in a Northern Mexican Town reports statistically insignificant results.
§ Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) and Dichlorodiphenyl Dichloroethene (DDE) in Human Milk: Effects on Growth, Morbidity,and Duration of Lactation confounding risk factors were not considered in a multivariate regression model (i.e., all at the same time), so its hard to blame DDT on even a statistical basis.
“So contrary to the New York Times‘ assertion, there is no credible evidence that DDT has anything to do with diabetes, heart disease or infant deaths. Moreover, given that one million children under the age of five die every year from malaria, even if DDT did increase the risk of diabetes, breast cancer and infant death, those risks would be better than the alternative. While the Times misinforms millions are dying needlessly.”
One thing will become clear for those of you who really want to understand what’s going on with these studies. So often these “Magic Studies” are conclusions in search of data. They involve data dredging for associations and associations are not proof of causation, and invariably they are incapable of demonstrating the biological mechanism that supposedly make these things happen.
As for the Alzheimer study - you have to wonder if it ever occurred to these people the reason this problem is becoming so pronounced is because more people are living longer and the real cause is “multiple birthday syndrome”? Did it ever occur to these ‘scientists’ that these people might not have been able to experience “multiple birthday syndrome” without the advent of DDT?
For those of you who could care less about the facts you can take solace in one reader’s caustic remark; “That settles it…DDT is now on double-secret probation!”
And the Magic Study Machine will soon crank out another crank study proving that DDT does ________, (just fill in the blank). Who knows, you may be able to get a grant to study “something”, or even 'anything', just so long as 'something' or 'anything' is caused by DDT.
And the Magic Study Machine will soon crank out another crank study proving that DDT does ________, (just fill in the blank). Who knows, you may be able to get a grant to study “something”, or even 'anything', just so long as 'something' or 'anything' is caused by DDT.
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