BioNuclear Bunnytm

Climategate - it's worse than most people ever suspected

2010-01-23T23:14:00.000-08:00

Amazing...

Perhaps the key point discovered by Smith was that by 1990, NOAA had deleted from its datasets all but 1,500 of the 6,000 thermometers in service around the globe.

Now, 75% represents quite a drop in sampling population, particularly considering that these stations provide the readings used to compile both the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) and United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) datasets. These are the same datasets, incidentally, which serve as primary sources of temperature data not only for climate researchers and universities worldwide, but also for the many international agencies using the data to create analytical temperature anomaly maps and charts.

Yet as disturbing as the number of dropped stations was, it is the nature of NOAA’s “selection bias” that Smith found infinitely more troubling.

It seems that stations placed in historically cooler, rural areas of higher latitude and elevation were scrapped from the data series in favor of more urban locales at lower latitudes and elevations. Consequently, post-1990 readings have been biased to the warm side not only by selective geographic location, but also by the anthropogenic heating influence of a phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI).

...he was deadly serious after comparing current to previous versions of USHCN data and discovering that this “selection bias” creates a +0.6°C warming in U.S. temperature history.

Prior to publication, NOAA effects a number of “adjustments” to the cherry-picked stations’ data, supposedly to eliminate flagrant outliers, adjust for time of day heat variance, and “homogenize” stations with their neighbors in order to compensate for discontinuities. This last one, they state, is accomplished by essentially adjusting each to jive closely with the mean of its five closest “neighbors.” But given the plummeting number of stations, and the likely disregard for the latitude, elevation, or UHI of such neighbors, it’s no surprise that such “homogenizing” seems to always result in warmer readings.

WUWT’s editor, Anthony Watts, has calculated the overall U.S. homogeneity bias to be 0.5°F to the positive, which alone accounts for almost one half of the 1.2°F warming over the last century. Add Smith’s selection bias to the mix and poof – actual warming completely disappears!

The scientists at NASA’s GISS are widely considered to be the world’s leading researchers into atmospheric and climate changes. And their Surface Temperature (GISTemp) analysis system is undoubtedly the premiere source for global surface temperature anomaly reports.

In creating its widely disseminated maps and charts, the program merges station readings collected from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) with GHCN and USHCN data from NOAA.

It then puts the merged data through a few “adjustments” of its own.

Smith attributes up to 3°F (more in some places) of added “warming trend” between NOAA’s data adjustment and GIStemp processing.
That’s over twice last century’s reported warming.

Green vs. Green

2010-01-01T17:38:00.000-08:00

Big solar and even wind projects face a lot of stiff opposition - from other environmentalists:

The construction would come with a cost: Government scientists have concluded that more than 6 square miles of habitat for the federally threatened desert tortoise would be permanently lost.

The Sierra Club and other environmentalists want the complex relocated to preserve what they call a near-pristine home for rare plants and wildlife, including the protected tortoise, the Western burrowing owl and bighorn sheep.
...
In November, federal and state biologists reviewing the plan proposed that the company catch and move the tortoises and preserve 12,000 acres elsewhere, a proposal that could cost BrightSource an estimated $25 million.
...
BrightSource President John Woolard warned in government filings released this month that heavy-handed regulation could kill the proposal. He did not mention the tortoises directly but referred to "unbounded and extreme" requirements being placed on the company.

At a time when the White House is pushing for the rapid development of green power, Woolard predicted the outcome in the California desert would reverberate widely.

Thorium - 21st Century Nuclear Power

2009-12-31T12:20:00.000-08:00

Great article in Wired magazine about the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR):

...thorium could solve the nuclear power industry’s most intractable problems. After it has been used as fuel for power plants, the element leaves behind minuscule amounts of waste. And that waste needs to be stored for only a few hundred years, not a few hundred thousand like other nuclear byproducts. Because it’s so plentiful in nature, it’s virtually inexhaustible. It’s also one of only a few substances that acts as a thermal breeder, in theory creating enough new fuel as it breaks down to sustain a high-temperature chain reaction indefinitely. And it would be virtually impossible for the byproducts of a thorium reactor to be used by terrorists or anyone else to make nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Energy Facts

2009-12-31T12:06:00.000-08:00

Go to page three of the report to get to the lists by topic. Here are some of my favorites:

American nuclear decision-making process
2. Radiation treated as more harmful than other biological hazards, such as chemical or biological threats.
3. “Man-made” radiation declared more dangerous than same radiation from natural sources.
5. Nuclear charged up-front for decommissioning, insurance, financial viability, etc.
6. Unique multimillion-dollar licensing process continues despite 50-year, nearly flawless safety record.

American LWR commercial nuclear power plants
3. American commercial nukes have > 90% availability vs. 20-40% for wind or solar. No radiation deaths.
6. Nuclear power is potentially renewable. Enough fuel and “fertile material” to last for many millennia.
8. Peer-reviewed article in Science concludes American nukes cannot create a radiological catastrophe.
9. Yet NRC requires mass evacuation procedures, involving large numbers of people and organizations.
10. Government officials state: Predicting deaths from low-dose radiation is scientifically indefensible.
11. Yet radiation protection practice claims: There’s no safe radiation level; one gamma ray can kill you.

Wind and Solar Energy for the American electric power grid
Cannot supply power on demand. Electricity that is not dispatchable is hard to sell, and harder to store.
Shut down > 60% of the time, sometimes for long, unpredictable periods, over wide area.
Fossil plants backing wind-farms showing increased degradation from unaccustomed power swings.
Photovoltaic (PV) systems use highly toxic materials. Must be treated like radwaste, but forever.
PV panels on all US south-facing roofs could generate only few % of electrical output from one nuke.
Federal subsidies for wind-power total $23 per megawatt hour, vs. $1.59 for nuclear.
Federal subsidies for solar power total $24 per megawatt hour, vs. $1.59 for nuclear.
These tax-payer subsidies could buy nuclear electricity directly at market cost with money left over.
Windmills have reportedly caused 651 accidents, 61 deaths, from blade and ice-throw, fires, etc

Good news: negative feedback will prevent climate catastrophe

2009-11-30T23:05:00.000-08:00

The notion that the earth's climate is dominated by positive feedbacks is intuitively implausible, and the history of the earth's climate offers some guidance on this matter. About 2.5 billion years ago, the sun was 20%-30% less bright than now (compare this with the 2% perturbation that a doubling of CO2 would produce), and yet the evidence is that the oceans were unfrozen at the time, and that temperatures might not have been very different from today's. Carl Sagan in the 1970s referred to this as the "Early Faint Sun Paradox."

For more than 30 years there have been attempts to resolve the paradox with greenhouse gases. Some have suggested CO2—but the amount needed was thousands of times greater than present levels and incompatible with geological evidence. Methane also proved unlikely. It turns out that increased thin cirrus cloud coverage in the tropics readily resolves the paradox—but only if the clouds constitute a negative feedback. In present terms this means that they would diminish rather than enhance the impact of CO2.

There are quite a few papers in the literature that also point to the absence of positive feedbacks. The implied low sensitivity is entirely compatible with the small warming that has been observed.

Burt Rutan now a skeptic of man-made catastrophic climate change

2009-08-17T16:44:00.000-07:00

One of Mr. Rutan's power point slides from a recent climate change presentation:

The best of intentions

2009-07-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

The following quote is from a review of the book, "Degrees of Disaster: How Nature Reels and Rebounds" by Jeff Wheelwright. It shows how man's attempts to help remediate the damage caused by a man-made disaster can sometimes make things worse.

"In this book I have argued that the ability of science to detect and measure hydrocarbons and their metabolites far exceeded science's ability to know what to make of those measurements," he concludes. "The measurements actually impeded understanding. There was the acute phase of the oil spill, which was soon over in the Sound, and now the chronic phase, whose events were unproved, most likely unprovable and diminishing fast into the background. That was the end of it as far as I was concerned. . . ."

Wheelwright's assertion of nature's resiliency confirms predictions made by federal oil-spill-response experts such as NOAA's Seattle-based Dave Kennedy and Jerry Galt. It borrows heavily from chief government scientist Bob Spies, a controversial figure for his skepticism of long-term damage claims. Some support from ecologists

The author's position gets some support from ecologists such as the University of Washington's Dee Boersma, who tracked spill damage in Alaska's Barren Islands. Boersma doubts claims that the more than 30,000 bird carcasses recovered suggested a total mortality in the hundreds of thousands, or that affected colonies will take decades to recover.

Boersma found a kill of murres in 1989, a 21 percent rebound in numbers in 1990-91, and minor increases thereafter.

"There is no scientific data to support these claims of long-term chronic effects," she said.

Jonathan Houghton, an Edmonds-based consultant for PENTEC who contracted first to Exxon and then NOAA to study the spill, thinks Wheelwright did a good job of laying out the scientific controversies.

As an example of surprises, Houghton said, the pressure-washed beaches he is monitoring are proving the slowest to recover, while the oiliest beach he watches, for unclear reasons, has the highest concentration of steamer clams.

What is the lesson? In the case of Mt. St. Helens, mankind's involvement in the restoration of the forest was remarkably successful in speeding up the recovery of that huge natural disaster. In the case of Prince William Sound, mankind's efforts to reverse the damage of a man-made disaster appear to have been ill-advised, possibly making the situation worse.

The lesson, I think, is that knowledgable restoration efforts, driven by mankind's needs for the products of nature (trees, fish, recreational wilderness, etc.) can help. Misguided efforts prompted by feelings of what seems more "natural" and an overwrought emotional reaction to a man-made disaster caused by an "evil" oil company can cost many millions of dollars and not be very effective - indeed, can even make things worse.

Mother knows best?

2009-07-08T20:34:00.000-07:00

Does Mother Nature always know best? It seems in the case of Mt. St. Helens, mankind was able to speed up the process of reforestation by as much as a century.

Higher fuel standards to cost 2000+ lives a year?

2009-06-30T22:13:00.000-07:00

Back in 2002, the National Academy of Sciences did a study on the effects of CAFE. They found that over the three decades CAFE has been in effect, downsizing of cars and trucks for fuel economy has cost us about 2,000 lives per year.

Less steel framing and smaller size equals more miles per gallon. It also means you’re rolling down the road in a vehicle with much less crashworthiness, making you more vulnerable to every stationary object, to that semi behind you … and to the guy in the normal-sized car.

This death toll figure was arrived at long before President Obama recently upped the CAFE standards by 30% and more. The death toll going forward will be even higher.

I have twice been at the scene of fatal one-car accidents. Once where I knew the crash victim personally, and once where I happened to come upon an accident before the police arrived. Both of these were situations where the person would have lived had they been driving something larger — a Prius in the first case and a Ford Fiesta in the other.

In both cases, they were convinced to value a gallon of gas over their own lives, and paid the price.

GW bill on the brink - your help needed!!!

2009-06-24T22:59:00.000-07:00

May I suggest that you send your congressional representative this story with a request to read it on the floor. And while you are at it, the EPA shenanigans and my surfacestations report. – Anthony

WASHINGTON (CNN) – House Democratic leaders are furiously lobbying their members and moderate Republicans to support a landmark energy bill in the face of resistance from some conservative members of their own party, and staunch opposition from the GOP — roadblocks that are making it difficult to find the 218 votes necessary to pass the measure, according to Democratic leadership aides.

“There is no question that the cap and trade bill will cost millions of jobs and it is pretty evident, I think now, given the word that we are hearing that the other side has 190 votes at this point, far short of that which are needed to pass this bill,” said House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Virginia.

Will Western Civilization commit suicide?

2009-06-20T12:01:00.000-07:00

In April of 1856, a fifteen-year-old girl named Nongqawuse heard a voice telling her that the Xhosa must kill all their cattle, stop cultivating their fields, and destroy their stores of grain and food. The voice insisted that the Xhosa must also get rid of their hoes, cooking pots, and every utensil necessary for the maintenance of life. Once these things were accomplished, a new day would magically dawn. Everything necessary for life would spring spontaneously from the earth. The dead would be resurrected. The blind would see and the old would have their youth restored. New food and livestock would appear in abundance, spontaneously sprouting from the earth.

The resurrection of the dead was predicted to occur on the full moon of June, 1856. Nothing happened. The chief prophet of the cattle-killing movement, Mhlakaza, moved the date to the full moon of August. But again the prophecy was not fulfilled.

The cattle-killing movement now began to enter a final, deadly phase, which its own internal logic dictated as inevitable. The failure of the prophecies was blamed on the fact that the cattle-killing had not been completed. Most believers had retained a few cattle .... Worse yet, there was a minority community of skeptical non-believers who refused to kill their livestock.

The repeated failure of the prophecies could only mean that the Xhosa had failed to fulfill the necessary requirement of killing every last head of cattle. Now, they finally began to complete the killing process. Not only cattle were slaughtered, but also chickens and goats. ...

Serious famine began in late spring of 1857. All the food was gone. ... To the end, true believers never renounced their faith. They simply starved to death, blaming the failure of the prophecy on the doubts of non-believers.

By the end of 1858, the Xhosa population had dropped from 105,000 to 26,000. Forty to fifty-thousand people starved to death, and the rest migrated.

Like the prophet Mhlakaza, Al Gore promises that if we stop using carbon-based energy, new energy technologies will magically appear. The laws of physics and chemistry will be repealed by political will power. We will achieve prosperity by destroying the very means by which prosperity is created.

David Deming is associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma.

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Scientists: genetically modified food is safe

2009-06-18T23:00:00.000-07:00

During its 2008 EU presidency, France, with the support of nine member states, pushed for socioeconomic factors to be taken into account during the risk-assessment process of GMOs, which might push scientific evidence into the background and politicize the whole process even more, said Agriculture Ministry spokesman Petr Vorlíček.

Drawing from field studies of the Biology Center at the Academy of Sciences in České Budějovice as well as the Crop Research Institute, the White Book's authors conclude: "GM crops are more profitable for farmers and more environmentally friendly than comparable technologies."

"Two key advantages of GMOs include the reduced need for insecticides and tolerance of herbicides," said Luboš Babička from the Czech University of Life Sciences.

Štěpán Čížek, head of agricultural co-op ZD Mořina, which has cultivated Bt corn since it became legal in 2005, echoes these findings. "[Bt corn] yields at least 20 percent more," he said of the co-op's 500 hectares of crops in Mořina, south of Prague. "The corn is much healthier, not infested at all by the maize moth, and that's also why it vegetates for longer periods."

From the report's press release:

Many European scientists are disturbed by the fact that political factors and ideology prevent unbiased assessment of the GM technology in some EU countries, with a negative effect on the whole Community. Being aware of the responsibility their country bears during the EU Presidency, Czech scientists working with GM crops prepared a White Book summarizing their experience and analyzing relevant EU legislation.

The report is available here: White Book - Genetically Modified Crops

Correlation is not causation

2009-06-18T21:52:00.000-07:00

During a ten year period, the number of cancers for the population under the age of 25 in the affected county rose at a rate more than three times faster than that for the rest of the state; it rose from 18.5 cases to 23.4 cases per 100,000 people. In the rest of Michigan, the rate rose from 20.2 cases to 21.9 cases per 100,000 people.

Since there are about 50,000 people under the age of 25 living in this particular county, the normal number of cancers in people under 25 is an average of nine ...

The increase in the rate of cancer (18.5 to 24.3 cases per 100,000), as discussed in the health report, is based on three additional cases of cancer. This difference, 9 cancer cases versus 12 cancer cases, is not out of line of what we would expect based upon random variability. We would expect up to 17 in any given year.

Is the global warming debate over?

2009-06-16T23:00:00.001-07:00

The thermostat of the Earth?

2009-06-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

The Thermostat Hypothesis is that tropical clouds and thunderstorms actively regulate the temperature of the earth. This keeps the earth at a equilibrium temperature.

The stability of the earth’s temperature over time has been a long-standing climatological puzzle. The globe has maintained a temperature of ± ~ 3% (including ice ages) for at least the last half a billion years during which we can estimate the temperature. During the Holocene, temperatures have not varied by ±1%. And during the ice ages, the temperature was generally similarly stable as well.

...some scientists have claimed that clouds have a positive feedback. Because of this, the areas where there are more clouds will end up warmer than areas with less clouds. This positive feedback is seen as the reason that clouds and warmth are correlated.

I and others take the opposite view of that correlation. I hold that the clouds are caused by the warmth, not that the warmth is caused by the clouds.

A thunderstorm can do more than just reduce the amount of surface warming. It can actually mechanically cool the surface to below the required initiation temperature. This allows it to actively maintain a fixed temperature in the region surrounding the thunderstorm.

When tropical temperatures are cool, tropical skies clear and the earth rapidly warms. But when the tropics heat up, cumulus and cumulonimbus put a limit on the warming. This system keeps the earth within a fairly narrow band of temperatures.

GMOs save children

2009-06-07T13:30:00.000-07:00

Important report on global warming released by NIPCC

2009-06-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

In “Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC),” coauthors Dr. S. Fred Singer and Dr. Craig Idso and 35 contributors and reviewers present an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress rely for their regulatory proposals.

The scholarship in this book demonstrates overwhelming scientific support for the position that the warming of the twentieth century was moderate and not unprecedented, that its impact on human health and wildlife was positive, and that carbon dioxide probably is not the driving factor behind climate change.

The authors cite thousands of peer-reviewed research papers and books that were ignored by the IPCC, plus additional scientific research that became available after the IPCC’s self-imposed deadline of May 2006.

The World is (NOT) Running Out of Oil

2009-06-04T20:38:00.000-07:00

The important thing is that you feel guilty

2009-06-04T19:50:00.000-07:00

...there is no precedent for today’s media enlistment in the crusade to promote global warming “awareness.” Concerning this, journalism, which fancies itself skeptical and nonconforming, is neither.

The incessant hectoring by the media-political complex’s “consciousness-raising” campaign has provoked a comic riposte in the form of “The Goode Family,” an animated ABC entertainment program ...
Gerald and Helen Goode, their children and dog Che (when supervised, he is a vegan; when unsupervised, squirrels disappear) live in a college town, where T-shirts and other media instruct (”Meat is murder”), admonish (”Don’t kill wood”) and exhort (”Support our troops … and their opponents”). The college, where Gerald works, gives students tenure. And when Gerald says his department needs money to raise the percentage of minority employees, his boss cheerily replies, “Or we could just fire three white guys. Everybody wins!” Helen shops at the One Earth store, where community shaming enforces social responsibility: “Attention One Earth shoppers, the driver of the SUV is in aisle four. He’s wearing the baseball cap.”

The New York Times television critic disapproves. The show “feels aggressively off-kilter with the current mood, as if it had been incubated in the early to mid-’90s, when it was possible to find global-warming skeptics among even the reasonable and informed.”

That is a perfect (because completely complacent) sample of the grating smugness of the planet-savers, delivered by an entertainment writer: Reasonable dissent is impossible.
...when a Goode child apologizes to his parent for driving too much, and the parent responds, “It’s OK … what’s important is that you feel guilty about it,” the program touches upon an important phenomenon: ecology as psychology.
Green consumption became “positional consumption” that identified the consumer as a member of a moral and intellectual elite.
That's some nice writing. Not much I can add, so go feel guilty! It'll make you feel better.

Why the global warming models are wrong - a simple explanation

2009-06-01T22:59:00.000-07:00

A great explanation of why the global warming models used by the IPCC are wrong:

...the most important debate is global warming research today is the same as it was 20 years ago: How will clouds (and to a lesser extent other elements in the climate system) respond to warming, thereby enhancing or reducing the warming? These indirect changes that further influence temperature are called feedbacks, and they determine whether manmade global warming will be catastrophic, or just lost in the noise of natural climate variability.
We analyzed 7.5 years of our latest and best NASA satellite data and discovered that, when the effect of clouds-causing-temperature-change is accounted for, cloud feedbacks in the real climate system are strongly negative. The negative feedback was so strong that it more than cancelled out the positive water vapor feedback we also found. It was also consistent with evidence of negative feedback we found in the tropics and published in 2007.

In fact, the resulting net negative feedback was so strong that, if it exists on the long time scales associated with global warming, it would result in only 0.6 deg. C of warming by late in this century.
Even though they never say so, the IPCC has simply assumed that the average cloud cover of the Earth does not change, century after century. This is a totally arbitrary assumption, and given the chaotic variations that the ocean and atmosphere circulations are capable of, it is probably wrong. Little more than a 1% change in cloud cover up or down, and sustained over many decades, could cause events such as the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age.

As far as I know, the IPCC has never discussed their assumption that global average cloud cover always stays the same.

Oh my, not that!

2009-06-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

Canada is moving closer toward the obvious: using nuclear power to extract oil from the vast fields of oil sand deposits instead of burning tons of natural gas to do the same job.

The nuclear option received a boost last fall from the Canada West Foundation, an economic and public policy research group representing the four Western Canadian provinces, which released an analysis that concluded “the opportunities outweigh the challenges with regard to the expansion/development of nuclear power in Alberta and Saskatchewan.”
However, according to groups-who-oppose-anything-with-the-word-nuclear-or-genetic-in-its-name, Canada had better not even think about it:

...the project may serve to further impair Canada’s international reputation on energy policy. “The first country to use nuclear power to produce fossil fuels will not be highly regarded on the planet.”
Oh no! Maybe the UN will work up a "strongly worded statement of international disapproval," aka, pieces of paper with ink on them that dictators ignore with contempt but which apparently cause some Canadians to shudder in fear.

Environmental Benefits of Oil Drilling

2009-05-24T18:28:00.000-07:00

Estimates of hydrocarbon emission rates from the eleven square mile marine seep field offshore from Coal Oil Point, Santa Barabra, CA:

“The nonmethane hydrocarbon emission rate from the gas seepage is … a large source of air pollution in Santa Barbara County. Our estimate is equal to twice the emission rate from all the on-road vehicle traffic in the county.”
“The decrease in hydrocarbon seepage rate near platform Holly, possibly due to the reduction in subsurface reservoir pressure, suggests that oil production here has resulted in an unexpected benefit to the atmosphere and marine environment. Natural hydrocarbon seepage is frequently found above oil fields throughout the world. If the decrease in natural seepage found near Platform Holly is representative of the effect of oil production on seepage worldwide, then this has the potential to significantly alter global oil and gas seepage in the future. On a local level a reduction in seepage due to oil production can have a profound effect on the air and water quality. For example, if the 50% reduction in natural seepage rate that occurred around Platform Holly also occurred because of future oil production from the oil field beneath the La Goleta seep, this would result in a reduction in nonmethane hydrocarbon emission rates equivalent to removing half of the on-road vehicle traffic from Santa Barbara County. In addition, a 50% reduction in seepage from the La Goleta seep would remove about 25 barrels of oil per day from the sea surface, which in turn would result in a 15% reduction in the amount of tar found on Santa Barbara beaches.”
“The rate of increase in global methane atmospheric concentrations has been decreasing for the past 20 years. A worldwide decrease in natural hydrocarbon seepage related to onshore and offshore oil production may be causing a global reduction in natural methane emission rates.”
Drilling for oil is good for the environment! Funny, I don't remember hearing about any of this. Maybe it'll make the news soon. Oh wait, maybe not - this report is nearly ten years old (published in Journal of Geophysical Research, September, 1999).

Will more people die in car accidents because of the new mileage standards?

2009-05-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

The National Academy of Sciences, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Congressional Budget Office and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have separately concluded in multiple studies dating back about 20 years that fuel-economy standards force automakers to build more small cars, which has led to thousands more deaths in crashes annually. Even though the standards were updated in recent years to reduce the incentive for automakers to sell more small cars by allowing different fuel-economy targets for different vehicles, the fastest way to make cars more fuel-efficient is to make them smaller.
When the rules are finalized, if they "leave the automakers the option of downsizing, clearly we're going to have some safety consequences," Lund says. "Smaller vehicles do not protect their occupants as well as large ones."
Though it'll be expensive, Ford's Cischke says, a lighter car can be made as safe as a heavier car.

Even before the new regulation, Ford Motor was planning on "taking between 250 and 750 pounds from (each of) our vehicles. That's a huge challenge," she says.

"It's all about managing the energy, protecting the crash cage," she says. "There are ways you can design a vehicle to be very strong, to provide the same crash safety as a heavier one."
Is this a good time to be foisting ever-more stringent mileage standards on the car companies? What if people don't want smaller cars? Guess we'll just have to suck it up and buy what "the man" says is best for us.
"When regulations establish requirements on what people buy, not what we make, if people aren't buying those, we have to offer incentives," says Sue Cischke, Ford Motor's vice president for environment and safety. "We can't force people to buy what they don't want to buy."

Jim Lentz, president of Toyota's U.S. sales unit, says he doesn't think that all drivers will be forced into smaller cars but notes that in order to sell the bigger, thirstier ones, he will have to sell more Priuses or other gas-savers. If the gas-savers don't sell, there is the "possibility" that there could be shortages of larger vehicles, he says.
BTW: this external combustion engine looks like an interesting option. Maybe the car companies will start looking into radical designs like this? Or, given the accelerated advent of the new regulations, probably not. And we criticized corporations for having too short of a time horizon on profits? Cyclone Engine

Natural oil seeps release 8 to 80 Exxon Valdez oil spills

2009-05-17T23:00:00.000-07:00

There is an oil spill everyday at Coal Oil Point (COP), the natural seeps off Santa Barbara, California, where 20-25 tons of oil have leaked from the seafloor each day for the last several hundred thousand years.
“One of the natural questions is: What happens to all of this oil?” Valentine said. “So much oil seeps up and floats on the sea surface. It’s something we’ve long wondered. We know some of it will come ashore as tar balls, but it doesn’t stick around. And then there are the massive slicks. You can see them, sometimes extending 20 miles from the seeps. But what really is the ultimate fate?”
“It’s a good bet that it ends up in the sediments because it’s not ending up on land. It’s not dissolving in ocean water, so it’s almost certain that it is ending up in the sediments.”

Superstitious fears

2009-05-10T20:52:00.000-07:00

Remember how people were so afraid of microwave ovens back in the 70s? MRI, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, was originally called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, but the word "nuclear" scared people so they changed the name. People are superstitiously afraid of anything nuclear or anything related to "radiation" (even though no one is afraid of visible light, which is radiation), but put them together and "nuclear radiation" is just off the charts scary to people.

This is too bad because there are many benefits to be had from processes that happen to be described by the words nuclear and radiation. This state of affairs cannot be blamed on ignorance alone, however. Fear of all things nuclear is actively fomented by environmental groups with multi-million-dollar budgets. We must cultivate a deep skepticism of such groups who gain when the public buys into their campaigns of disinformation and fearmongering.

There has recently been a renewed global interest in using nuclear energy to address the environmental concerns that accompany our continued combustion of coal, oil, and gas to sustain our standard of living. However, new construction of nuclear plants is impeded by powerful anti-nuclear political activists -- and by media reporters who communicate unwarranted fears about small doses of radiation.

In this publication ["Nuclear Energy and Health, And the Benefits of Low-Dose Radiation Hormesis,"], nuclear engineering expert Jerry M. Cuttler, D.Sc., P.Eng. (past president of the Canadian Nuclear Society) and Myron Pollycove, M.D. (formerly of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission) present important biological realities and scientific explanations that are being ignored. On the thirtieth anniversary of Three Mile Island, end the scare stories about nuclear energy, suggests this report, so that a safe and highly efficient source of energy can be utilized for the benefit of humanity at a time when energy production is a top priority.
Some quotes from the paper:
Expected doses in a nuclear reactor accident would be in the low dose range, where there is no statistically significant evidence of adverse health effects.
From the time of their first appearance, living organisms have been receiving natural radiation over a very broad range of dose rates .... radiation levels in some locations are as much as several hundred times greater than the world average dose rate. Life in those locations has been flourishing. Studies on organisms and human populations living in high dose rate regions have suggested that they are better able to recover from exposure to a much higher dose of radiation than those living in low dose rate regions.

That rarest of exotic beasts: rational public policy

2009-04-22T22:30:00.000-07:00

Rational public policy - an oxymoronic phrase if there ever was one. I am very happy to learn that there exist stout-hearted individuals and organizations who continue to carry the banner for clear-thinking public policies over irrational fear-mongering and nanny-state nagging that does more harm than good.

The conventional wisdom, perpetuated not only by cigarette companies but by otherwise reliable sources, including the U.S. Surgeon General, includes the fallacy that all tobacco products are equally harmful to public health. That is, smokeless tobacco, cigars, cigarettes, and pipe tobacco are, from a public health perspective, the same thing. Scientific studies have proven that they are not, and a rapidly-growing body of evidence confirms that they are not. Any effort to regulate tobacco products must explicitly acknowledge the differences in health risks between types of tobacco.

ACSH* recently reported on a study to gauge the efficacy of a program that encourages smokers to switch to smokeless tobacco products as an alternative both to smoking (which they know is harmful to them) and complete tobacco abstinence (which they have found extremely difficult). The results of the study are extremely positive. The program works. It works so well, in fact, that Sweden now has the lowest smoking-related mortality rates in the world. ... Smokeless tobacco is demonstrably less harmful than cigarettes, while making it much easier for some smokers to quit cigarettes.

*The mission of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) is to promote sound science and to inform policy debates about public health, providing independent scientific evidence and analysis to clarify the scientific record in order to educate the public and assist policy-making.

Other ACSH resources on tobacco-related issues:

The Unintended Consequences of Tobacco Laws (HuffingtonPost.com)

Warning: Overstating the Case Against Secondhand Smoke is Unnecessary—and Harmful to Public Health Policy

Tobacco Harm Reduction: An Alternative Cessation Strategy for Inveterate Smokers (Harm Reduction Journal)

The political obstacles to feeding the world

2009-04-21T23:00:00.000-07:00

Nice report by Douglas Southgate, Ohio State University, on Feeding the World:

Regardless of whether increases in prices were catalyzed by the declining dollar, biofuel development, or something else, they have been aggravated by the economic suppression of agriculture in Argentina, the Ukraine, and many other nations. Since 2007, this suppression took the form of export restrictions, adopted by a large number of countries.

In his June 2008 address, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon rightly criticized these restrictions. He also emphasized that a renewed commitment to agricultural research and development is needed, in Sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world. Without this research and development, which includes the application of agricultural biotechnology and which requires institutional reform as well as the financial investment that Secretary General Ban advocates, the world’s supply of food will not keep up with rising food demand.

"What they're proposing is simply not allowable..."

2009-04-16T23:00:00.000-07:00

The poor of the world were the hardest hit by price spikes in oil the last few years. But according to a scientist from NASA, as quoted by Wired, new technology to make cheap gasoline from coal is verboten: "What they're proposing is simply not allowable..."

Some excerpts from the Wired article:

Scientists have devised a new way to transform coal into gas for your car using far less energy than the current process. ... The new process could cut the energy cost of producing the fuel by 20 percent just by rejiggering the intermediate chemical steps, said co-author Ben Glasser of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

"The bottom line is that there's one fatal flaw in their proposed process from a climate protection standpoint," Pushker Karecha of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies wrote in an e-mail to Wired.com. "It would allow liquid fuel CO2 emissions to continue increasing indefinitely."

It's the very fact that coal-to-liquids could work that make them such a scary idea for people devoted to fighting climate change.

"What they're proposing is simply not allowable if we want to avoid the perils of unconstrained anthropogenic climate change," Karecha said.
Bottom line: The elite technocrats know what is best for us. We are just the ignorant masses who don't know any better and must be saved from ourselves. See the Wired article for all the requisite scary global warming cliches.

For the best information on the global warming debate, see this web site, voted the best Science blog on the Internet: watts up with that

For a much better article on the new, more efficient coal-to-liquids technology, see Researchers Propose New F-T Process for Synfuels.

That article, btw, includes the following quote from the journal Science which reports on the new process: "...the second part of the new process also represents a direct way of using CO2. If H2 is produced via nuclear, wind, or solar energy, this process becomes a method for consuming CO2 and may bypass the difficulties in the direct use of H2 as a fuel."

So nuclear power plants (high temperature fission reactors of various types) could be used to inexpensively split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and the hydrogen could be fed into this new process to create cheap gasoline from coal.

Sounds brilliant to me. Hopefully the NRC can get its act together and come up with a licensing process for the smaller reactors that would work best for such processes. It looks like there is some hope.

Eco-zealots kill Americans with demands for tiny cars?

2009-04-15T23:07:00.000-07:00

Let's learn from Europe

2009-04-14T23:00:00.000-07:00

In the middle of a harsh Eastern European winter, Russia shut off the gas to Ukraine and then the rest of Europe. With 80% of its power supplied by nuclear fission reactors, France was hardly affected by the dispute and nuclear power advocates were vindicated. This was a wake up call to many European countries who are now scrambling to build their own fleet of nuclear reactors.

For those concerned about CO2, France has shown how it can be done without ruining the economy. This in stark constrast to the countries who signed the Kyoto Protocol, most of which will not meet their carbon reduction targets despite massive subsides to wind farms and solar projects that provide expensive, unreliable power.

If we really want good paying, stable green jobs and dependable, safe, and affordable energy, carbon trading and carbon taxes will not achieve what a viable nuclear program can do.

Let's learn from Europe, from her hard-working metal and auto workers who now take to the streets in Brussels to protest the latest round of carbon taxes and ever more restrictive emissions regulations which threaten to send their jobs overseas. They have experienced the myth of green jobs.

Can we learn our lesson from Europe's disasterous carbon policies and France's sucess with nuclear power? Or are we doomed to blindly imitate their folly and ignore the reality of the success of nuclear power?

African countries intimidated by aggressive European lobbying shun life-saving biotechnology

2009-04-08T23:29:00.000-07:00

The hunger and related diseases resulting from food insecurity are a humanitarian tragedy: An estimated 25,000 people per day die of malnutrition-related causes. Hungry children suffer worst, with low survival rates, stunted bodies and impaired cognitive development. Moreover, hunger has profound implications for peace and U.S. national security. Hungry people are desperate, and desperation often sows seeds of conflict and extremism.

The world needs a new green revolution. ... This new revolution won't succeed without new tools, namely biotechnology and genetically modified (GM) seeds, to meet the enormous demands for increased production. But Europeans oppose most GM technology, despite its proven safety and success in cutting pesticide use, raising output and adapting to adverse conditions. African countries in particular have been intimidated by aggressive European lobbying from deploying biotechnology, widely used in many places, including America - GM varieties comprise 80 percent of our corn crop.

Thomas Malthus warned 200 years ago that food production would not keep pace with population growth. He did not foresee how technology and innovation would forestall his dire predictions. Today, we can either succumb to Malthusian pessimism or once again invest in agriculture and embrace technological solutions inspired by the green revolution. It is both a moral and security imperative that we act.

---
Norman Borlaug is a Nobel laureate and father of the green revolution.

As proof of the intransigence of some European countries, which continue to fight for superstious and politically motivated bans on GM crops at the expense of African children...

Austria and Hungary have asserted their right to ban cultivation of a genetically modified (GM) corn, known as MON810. ...it now seems likely that when the council of ministers next meets in June, it will uphold similar bans currently in place in France and Greece. ... Things will deteriorate further if Germany confirms statements released by its ministers of environment and agriculture ... that Berlin is considering a cultivation ban.

"EU Impasse over GM Deepens", Nature Biotechnology 27, 304 (2009)

"What? The little brown children have no food?! Let them eat organic vegetables!"
-Princess Europa

Never mind. Please disperse and go back to whatever you were doing.... nothing to see here... just move along...

Eco-superstition kills little brown children

2009-02-28T22:50:00.000-08:00

Golden rice was developed to provide vitamin A to children in developing countries which get the majority of their calories from rice. Golden rice contains beta-carotene which our bodies convert to Vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency leads to risk of blindness, disease, and death. But unfounded fears (aka, superstition) of genetically modified foods has kept it from reaching those who need it - for years.

Vitamin A deficiency is epidemic among poor people whose diet is comprised largely of rice (which contains neither beta-carotene nor vitamin A) or other carbohydrate-rich, vitamin-poor sources of calories.

In developing countries, 200-300 million children of preschool age are at risk of vitamin A deficiency, which can be devastating and even fatal. It increases susceptibility to common childhood infections such as measles and diarrheal diseases and is the single most important cause of childhood blindness in developing countries. Every year, 500,000 children become blind as a result of vitamin A deficiency and 70% die within a year of losing their sight (see http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/immpact/micronutrient_facts.htm).

Golden Rice ... is able to accumulate beta-carotene in the endosperm, the edible portion of the genetically altered rice grains (see http://www.goldenrice.org/Content2-How/how1_sci.html).

Golden Rice offers the potential to make contributions to human health and welfare as historic as those made by the discovery and distribution of the Salk polio vaccine. With wide use, it could save hundreds of thousands of lives a year and enhance the quality of life for millions more. But one aspect of this shining story is tarnished. Intransigent opposition by anti-science, anti-technology activists - Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and a few other radical groups - has provided already risk-averse regulators political 'cover' to adopt an overly precautionary approach that has stalled approvals.

There is absolutely nothing about Golden Rice that should require endless case-by-case reviews and bureaucratic dithering. As the journal Nature editorialized in 1992, a broad scientific consensus holds that 'the same physical and biological laws govern the response of organisms modified by modern molecular and cellular methods and those produced by classical methods. [Therefore] no conceptual distinction exists between genetic modification of plants and microorganisms by classical methods or by molecular techniques that modify DNA and transfer genes.' [2]

Putting it another way, government regulation of field research with plants should focus on the traits inherent in the host plant and in the introduced genes that might be related to risk-invasiveness, weediness, toxicity and so forth - rather than on whether one or another technique of genetic manipulation was used.

In spite of its vast potential to benefit humanity - and negligible likelihood of harm to human health or the environment - a decade after its creation Golden Rice remains hung up in regulatory red tape with no end in sight (see http://www.goldenrice.org/Content2-How/how4_regul.html).

Regulators and activists are not the only villains of the piece. The media - and even scientific journals (see Ref. [4]) - have been undiscriminating and overly tolerant of the misrepresentations and distortions of anti-biotechnology activists, and politicians have opposed recombinant DNA technology for reasons of trade protectionism.

Judith Rodin, the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced in October 2008 that her organization will provide funding to the International Rice Research Institute to shepherd Golden Rice through national regulatory approval processes in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and the Philippines (see http://www.rockfound.org/about_us/speeches/101708food_prize.shtml).

Although this is presumptive good news, what is really needed is a multi-faceted, aggressive effort to reform regulation so that new genetic constructions will be able to succeed even if they do not enjoy the patronage of a powerful benefactor.

Never mind, you're not a poor brown child in a developing country. Go back to what you were doing.

A Dash of Nanny-state-ism

2009-02-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene wants to force the citizens of New York City to radically lower their intake of salt. They feel that this will lower heart attacks and strokes. The problem is the science doesn't seem to support their radical proposal.

...observational studies do not demonstrate causality. And this kind of research can justify action only when multiple studies produce consistent, robust findings across a wide range of circumstances, as the research on tobacco and lung and cardiovascular health has done.

Nevertheless, the research on salt intake can help identify questions to address in randomized clinical trials, the most rigorous kind of medical research. ...

Only one such rigorous clinical trial on salt intake has been reported so far, and it focused on patients with fairly advanced heart problems. As it turned out, the group that adhered to a lower sodium diet actually suffered significantly more cardiovascular deaths and hospitalizations than did the one assigned to the higher sodium diet.
As per usual, "those who know better" want to force us all to live "better", "healthier" lives. Regardless of the evidence.

Law of unintended consequences, here we come...

What if it's true?

2009-01-04T23:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a common "argument" from the human-caused-global-warming crowd: "Yeah, but what if it's true?" In other words, shouldn't we try to do something about man-made-global-warming even if all the facts say that we didn't cause it and we can't impact global warming appreciably by reducing greenhouse gases?

This is not a rational argument but rather a scare tactic. "Fixing" global warming would be monstrously expensive. We have to have good evidence that it's true before we even begin to decide which of many expensive options to pursue. If it isn't true, why bankrupt ourselves for nothing?

If you buy this argument, I have a lucky rabbit's foot that has protected me from rogue elephant attacks for years - I'll sell it to you cheap: only $500,000.

Here's a better argument: I *know* (notice the lack of uncertainty) that the draconian greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction laws necessary to reduce the U.S.'s GHG emissions to levels that the GW modelers say might actually have an impact on GW would have a *severe* impact on the U.S. economy. We're already in a recession that many say is the worst since the Great Depression of the 30's. Note: hard economic times hurt the poor far more severely than the rich. I thought "progressive" types were "for the poor!" Oh, wait, they're for Unions and Big Gov't because They Know Best, which is somehow supposed to produce a magical world where there are no poor people because they care more. Sorry, forgot.

How 'bout this argument: Let's just say man-made-global-warming is true. So why not support the best possible long term solution to cut our GHG emissions that also happens to be the best answer for our country's ever-rising energy costs and our need for energy security: nuclear power? I know it galls you lefty-types to admit you've been making GW worse for decades by opposing nuclear power plants (hint: instead of nuclear power plants, utilities built lots and lots of coal-burning power plants instead because those darn pesky poor people refuse to live in cold houses), but try to get over it and do the right thing.

That's okay - we'll try not to hold it against you. Just don't blow it this time! (Although I can't say I still won't blame all y'all for the millions of preventable malaria deaths in Africa and South America due to the banning of DDT; but that's just a little personal issue I have with supercilious eco-imperialists that I guess I'll just have to try and get over...).

Record cold is evidence of Global Warming

2008-12-22T23:20:00.000-08:00

Carol Browner and respect for science

2008-12-18T22:47:00.000-08:00

Carol Browner, the latest Clinton administration retread to be tapped by Barack Obama, will serve in the newly created and still undefined role of White House “energy czar.” ...

...her agenda was regulation, regulation, and more regulation -- merely for the sake of regulating. For instance, Browner ordered Virginia to reduce the amount of ambient nitrogen oxide, not because levels were anywhere near dangerous, but because that was the only pollutant that had not declined in the past 25 years.
...
As head of the EPA, Browner had the Justice Department sue Toyota for $58 billion because of an alleged emission-control violation, i.e., the “check engine” light did not come on often enough. Never mind that Toyota had the highest-rated emissions-control systems of any major automaker, and that there was zero evidence that fuel vapors were actually leaking. Browner demanded changes that would increase the number of false-positive alerts. If you’ve ever been inconvenienced by taking your car in for repair because the “check engine" light is illuminated, only to learn that the problem is you did not screw on the gas cap tightly enough, thank Carol Browner.
...
Among Browner’s most absurd rulings at EPA was the proposal to ban chlorine, used as a disinfectant in 98 percent of municipal water treatment, in the absence of any evidence that chlorine leads to cancer or birth defects. Indeed, at the time of Browner’s proposal, Peru was suing the United States for classifying chlorine as a possible carcinogen because then Peru removed chlorine from its water supply, and the resulting cholera epidemic killed thousands. Was that scientific enough for her?

Now why does that sound familiar... let's see... EPA... anti-science... many deaths... Oh yes, now I remember! The EPA began its illustrious career under president Nixon by banning DDT, despite the scientific evidence that it was not harmful to humans, resulting in the deaths of millions of poor Africans and Latin Americans.

Never mind... go back to what you were doing...

Good News on Saturated Fat?

2008-12-02T22:01:00.000-08:00

A quote from the article:

In this particular trial, as in all of them so far, the high-saturated-fat diet (low-carb or Atkins-like) resulted in the best improvement in cholesterol profile — total cholesterol/H.D.L. In this Israeli trial, the high-saturated-fat diet reduced L.D.L. at least as well as the did the A.H.A. relatively low-fat diet, the fundamental purpose of which is to lower L.D.L. by reducing the saturated fat content.

So here’s the simple question and the point: how can saturated fat be bad for us if a high saturated fat diet lowers L.D.L. at least as well as a diet that has 20 to 25 percent less saturated fat?

Offshore drilling in California

2008-11-10T20:44:00.000-08:00

Fox News Reporter William La Jeunesse

Most oil in ocean from natural seepage

2008-11-10T20:42:00.000-08:00

Fox News Reporter William La Jeunesse

More eco-hypocrisy

2008-11-10T20:34:00.000-08:00

Fox News Reporter William La Jeunesse

More oil seeps into ocean in a week from natural seeps than oil platforms and pipelines have spilled in the last forty years

2008-11-10T20:04:00.000-08:00

Fox News Reporter William La Jeunesse

The sands of peace (Financial Post)

2008-09-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

Russia’s energy supplies enabled their aggression, Canada’s supply could be the placating alternative

"When it comes to action over Georgia, Russia has the European Union over a barrel. In fact, 1.2 million barrels. That’s how much Russian crude is pumped westward every day down the Druzhba pipeline to fuel Europe’s economies.”

So began an article in The International Herald Tribune, one of many last week explaining why Europe — and the west — has little choice but to sacrifice parts of Georgia, and maybe a lot more, to Russia’s ambitions.

Alberta’s oil sands represent one of the planet’s largest reservoirs of energy — some 2.5 trillion barrels of crude bitumen from which 300 billion barrels are estimated to be available, an amount that rivals the reserves of Saudi Arabia. They need to be developed properly: cleanly, to protect the environment, and quickly, to promote peace and stability.

If the West doesn't develop its energy supplies such as the oil sands, off shore oil and natural gas, ANWR, the huge Bakken oil formation, and nuclear power, we will be beholden to agressive authoritarian nations such as Russia and Venezuela for our energy supplies. Pie-in-the-sky wishes for alternative energy sources that are forever "only twenty years away if we only put our minds to it" will not solve our energy needs. I wish there was free unlimited energy for everyone without emissions or potentially dangerous fuels, but that isn't reality. We have to work with what we have or go on bended knee to our belicose rivals and beg for energy.

Never mind, go back to what you were doing.

20 year anniversary

2008-06-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

20 years ago James Hansen warned congress about the coming global warming catastophe due to the burning of fossil fuels by mankind. In our folly we were releasing unprecedented amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, ignorant of the consequences for our environment. James Hansen was the prophet sent to tell us of the future apocalypse and warn us to change our ways - or else.

Well, here we are, 20 years later. Where are we today? Considering that climate change hysteria is the new secular religion to which one must pledge belief or risk being mocked at any gathering of descent-minded folk, one would think that the prophecies of the founding prophet must have been amazingly accurate for global warming religion to be so triumphant today. You might want to take a look at this - then again, maybe not. You wouldn't want to be shaken out of your complacent religious beliefs by facts. Just genuflect and move along please.

Number one terrorist threat in America

2008-03-31T23:00:00.000-07:00

For nearly seven years, the nation has turned its terror focus on Al Qaeda and the hunt for Usama bin Laden. But there is a domestic terror threat that federal officials still consider priority No. 1 — eco-terrorism.

The torching of luxury homes in the swank Seattle suburb of Woodinville earlier this month served as a reminder that the decades-long war with militant environmentalists on American soil has not ended.

Military to fight on synthetic fuel

2008-01-28T22:01:00.000-08:00

Today was the day the first C-17 Globemaster flew across the country powered by synthetic fuel.

A Globemaster — its tanks half-filled with standard jet fuel and half with a synthetic, coal-derived fuel — flew Dec. 17 from Washington’s McChord Air Force Base to New Jersey’s McGuire Air Force Base. The B-52 bomber is already certified to use this fuel mix and full certification is expected for the C-17 in coming months.

It’s the latest milestone in an effort to prove all of the Air Force’s fleet can use this domestically produced synthetic fuel by 2011. By 2016, the Air Force wants all of its flights in the continental U.S. powered by the mix, touted as cleaner and less reliant on petroleum piped from foreign soil.

More here: USAF Looks to Alternative Fuels to Cut Costs

For every $10 increase in a barrel of oil, Air Force costs jump $610 million annually, according to assistant Air Force secretary William Anderson.

Last year, the cost of jet fuel jumped from 75 cents a gallon to $2.01. That's a $71,000 increase for just one fill-up of a B-52, which holds 47,000 gallons of fuel.

“Oil is selling for $94 a barrel right now,” the official, who asked not to be named, tells Newsmax. “The cost of synfuel is estimated to be between $45 and $60 a barrel. You do the math.”

With 42 gallons per barrel, that’s an annual savings of up to $3 billion.

Best of all, using synthetic fuel does not require engine modification, according to Air Force officials. In fact, it may perform better than traditional aviation fuel.

Organic Mutated Wheat

2008-01-27T06:00:00.000-08:00

The Rio Red, a popular red grapefruit, was created by exposing grapefruit buds to thermal neutron radiation at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1968. Other notable successes of mutation breeding include Creso, the most popular variety of durum wheat used for making pasta in Italy; Calrose 76, a high-yielding California rice; Golden Promise barley, a fine-quality malt used in specialty beers; and some 200 varieties of bread wheat grown around the world.

In 1956, a sample of a barley variety called Maythorpe was irradiated at Britain's Atomic Energy Research Establishment . The result was a strain with stiffer, shorter straw but the same early harvest and malting qualities, which would eventually reach the market as "Golden Promise".

Today scientists use thermal neutrons, X-rays, or ethyl methane sulphonate, a harsh carcinogenic chemical--anything that will damage DNA--to generate mutant cereals. Virtually every variety of wheat and barley you see growing in the field was produced by this kind of "mutation breeding". No safety tests are done; nobody protests. The irony is that genetic modification (GM) was invented in 1983 as a gentler, safer, more rational and more predictable alternative to mutation breeding--an organic technology, in fact. Instead of random mutations, scientists could now add the traits they wanted.

That organic wheat you just ground up into whole wheat flour so you can make some good wholesome whole wheat bread, and that organic red grapefruit you just had for breakfast - they couldn't be genetically modified organisms - GMOs - because organic groups have ruled from on high that GMOs are not "natural". But they are very likely the result of massively mutating the genetic material of a plant with radiation, a technique called mutation breeding.

In mutation breeding, a lot of bad genetic mutations happen along with the rare one that you want to keep. It takes a lot of back-crossing, which takes a lot of time, to eliminate as much of the bad stuff as possible without losing the one good trait you worked so hard to isolate.

GMOs, on the other hand, are created faster and with more precise knowledge of the genetic changes being made using recombinant DNA techniques. The introduced genetic instructions are known. The goal is to get a small piece of DNA with a known trait successfully introduced into the plant to cause it to express the unique amino acid sequence that it is designed to produce. Compared to mutation breeding, recombinant DNA technology is fast and precise.

Why mutation breeding - much more of a Frankenfood than any GMO - is acceptable to the organic oligarchy but not GMOs is a mystery of the universe. Maybe one day they'll figure out at way to explain it that makes sense.

Then again...

Asthma and pollution

2008-01-26T22:34:00.000-08:00

Asthma is an awful disease - I know, I have it. However, contrary to popular opinion, less pollution does not mean less asthma, even though we hear it confidently stated as fact often enough. While our air in the U.S. is substantially cleaner than it was just a few decades ago, at the same time that our air has been getting cleaner, asthma rates have risen dramatically. In fact, dirtier cities, like Beijing, actually have less asthmatics than cleaner cities like Hong Kong, which has fewer than other, even cleaner cities. Studies, like this one reviewed by author Steve Milloy Smoggy Statistics, that claim a connection between smog and premature deaths are nothing more than a pretext for hyped press releases by the EPA and activists.

As for the smog, I'm all for less smog - who isn't - but not at any cost; it has to be a resonable cost. Draconian laws based on bad science that will not actually accomplish their goal but rather, through the iron-clad law of unintended consequences, make other things worse. That other thing in this case would be the lives of the poor, who would be disproportionately impacted by such energy-restricting policies.

False Eco-Prophets

2008-01-21T20:26:00.001-08:00

Michael Lynch and others with relevant experience in the area of oil production estimation have shown why the Peak Oil doomsayers have been wrong time and time again. Their theories of total recoverable resources are just not accurate. They join a litany of other false eco-prophets such as The Club of Rome (Limits to Growth, 1972), Paul Ehrlich (The End of Affluence, 1976), etc. who have predicted the end of certain finite resources, only to be proven wrong - multiple times (http://www.reason.com/news/show/34758.html).

I recommend the following for your perusal:

Closed Coffin: Ending the Debate on "The End of Cheap Oil" A commentary

The New Pessimism about Petroleum Resources:
Debunking the Hubbert Model (and Hubbert Modelers)

CRYING WOLF: Warnings about oil supply

Oil: Never Cry Wolf--Why the Petroleum Age Is Far from over

Oil, Oil Everywhere

Food shortages coming

2008-01-06T19:24:00.000-08:00

Food prices have been skyrocketing, and we think it's a good idea to subsidize the ethanol industry so we can burn 1/3 of our corn production in our fuel tanks!? Great idea... Not.

"Those who have food are going to have a big edge."

With 54% of the world's corn supply grown in America's mid-west, the U.S. is one of those countries with an edge.

But Mr. Coxe warned U.S. corn exports were in danger of seizing up in about three years if the country continues to subsidize ethanol production. Biofuels are expected to eat up about a third of America's grain harvest in 2007.

Mr. Coxe said crop yields around the world need to increase to something close to what is achieved in the state of Illinois, which produces over 200 corn bushes an acre compared with an average 30 bushes an acre in the rest of the world.

"That will be done with more fertilizer, with genetically modified seeds, and with advanced machinery and technology," he said.

Global warming, pesticides, and deformed frogs

2008-01-06T17:51:00.000-08:00

Worried that global warming and pesticides are causing frog deformities or decimating frog populations (maybe you're a fan of frog legs)? Fear not. Follow the basic principal that the media is not telling you something important in order to make a storey seem scary and you'll be right more often than not. Scary stories sell papers.

Here's just one example (there are others - follow the link to the full article):

Yellow-legged frogs of the High Sierra

Disappearance was blamed on:

The frog’s seemingly inexplicable demise has provoked much speculation in the media and among scientists, with parasites, ultra-violet radiation, fungal disease, and especially pesticides blamed for the frog’s troubles.

The real cause:

Folks had been stocking the lakes, rivers, and streams in the West with all types of fish, starting as early as the 1880s. As part of this action, trout were introduced into the glacial lakes of the Sierra Nevada and by 1924 wildlife biologists noted that mountain yellow-bellied tadpoles and trout were rarely seen in the same lakes. This continued with thousands of fingerlings being dropped by aircraft in high altitude lakes where there had been lots of frogs but not fish at all. (4) Guess what happened? The frog populations decreased.

Vance Vredenburg of the University of California at Berkeley began removing trout from five separate High Sierra lakes in the late 1990s. He saw frog population explosions.

Good news for nuclear in the U.K.

2008-01-06T17:46:00.000-08:00

BRITAIN is expected to give the go-ahead to a new generation of nuclear power stations next week, sparking a frenzy of deal-making by nuclear firms as well as a fresh challenge from environmental campaigners.

Nuclear station operators say they could have new UK plants running by 2017, helping Britain to meet its ambitious 2020 goals for combating climate change.

2017!? Must be all the red tape. Too bad, I think they'll be wanting them sooner.

Lunatics or corrupt - which is it?

2008-01-06T11:18:00.000-08:00

Once again we find the global warming true believers immune to reality. Luboš Motl Pilsen of the Czech Republic, a self-described conservative physicist, shows on his blog, The Reference Frame, how predictions that 2007 would be the hottest on record were very far off the mark.

In January 2007, we were informed that 2007 was either likely or certain to surpass 1998 and become the world's warmest year on record by most media...They justified this statement by referring to scientists who have combined greenhouse gases with the observed El Nino. Many sources, such as the New York Sun, even gave you the probability that 2007 would be the hottest year as 60 percent. They immediately added that this should "add momentum for the next phase of the Kyoto protocol", a comment that clarifies what is the actual goal of many of the people who study these questions professionally.

In the middle of the year when it started to be clear that the prediction was bogus, Phil Jones (Reuters) changed his mind only infinitesimally. It would be the second hottest year, he said. These big-shot agenda-driven scientists never have the courage to say that they were simply wrong.

However, the greenhouse gases are not too important and El Nino was replaced by La Nina. As a consequence, RSS MSU data for the lower troposphere (graph, more graphs) show that 2007 was the coldest year in this century so far.

Check out his post for the details - and there are some great details, so I highly recommend that you read the whole thing for yourself.

Can we expect the global warming alarmists to admit how badly they screwed up? Not likely.

Do you expect the media listed above to apologize for the misinformation they have printed? Do you think they will tell their readers and audiences that they have made a mistake and reported scientifically unreliable and unlikely propaganda created by political activists and hacks such as Phil Jones? Do you think that they will promise us that they will be more careful in the future and avoid this kind of hype? If you do, you haven't understood what religious bigotry and special interests really mean. Most of these people are either lunatics who pay no attention whatsoever to reality, the actual data, or serious science, or corrupt people who greatly benefit from this big-scale misinformation and propaganda.

I am beginning to formulate a theory about the life cycle of nations based on this kind of agenda-driven disregard for the truth which we see so clearly demonstrated by the global warming fundamentalists. Knowledge is the cumulative effort and duty of all the knowledge professionals in a society, from the scientists to the journalists, lawyers, and teachers. When a significant segment of a society's knowledge guardians become willing to disregard the truth for an ideology, the knowledge base of that society begins to crumble and weaken. Nations are always competing against one another, and the nations that accept reality as they find it, not as they want it to be, will have an advantage over those that do not. Resources are always scarce, and when we don't have a good understanding of reality, we will misallocate resources as a nation, just as economies do when they experience a speculative bubble such as the dot-com bubble of the late 90's. Our very civilization is at risk when we refuse to give reality its due. We must choose either our cherished ideology, or reality. Reality will win in the end - but it may be our children who suffer for it much more than we will. And we will.

Never mind, it's just the very foundation of our civilization that is at stake. It's not that important. Go back to whatever you were doing.

Throwing away perfectly good fuel

2007-12-31T23:58:00.000-08:00

I couldn't believe it when I found out some time ago, but it's true - most of the nuclear "waste" from nuclear power plants is actually unburned fuel! Check this out:

To create power, reactor fuel must contain 3-5 percent burnable uranium. Once the burnable uranium falls below that level, the fuel must be replaced. But this “spent” fuel generally retains about 95 percent of the uranium it started with, and that uranium can be recycled.

Over the past four decades, America’s reactors have produced about 56,000 tons of used fuel. That “waste” contains roughly enough energy to power every U.S. household for 12 years. And it’s just sitting there, piling up at power plant storage facilities. Talk about waste!

The sad thing is, the United States developed the technology to recapture that energy decades ago, then barred its commercial use in 1977. We have practiced a virtual moratorium ever since.

Other countries have not taken such a backward approach to nuclear power. France, whose 59 reactors generate 80 percent of its electricity, has safely recycled nuclear fuel for decades. They turned to nuclear power in the 1970s to limit their dependence on foreign energy. And, from the beginning, they made recycling used fuel central to their program.

Anti-nuclear fear mongering has proved baseless. The French have recycled fuel like this for 30 years without incident: no terrorist attack, no bad guys stealing uranium, no contribution toward nuclear weapons proliferaton, and no accidental explosions.

France meets all of its recycling needs with one facility. Indeed, domestic French reprocessing only takes about half of La Hague’s capacity. The other half is used to recycle other countries’ spent nuclear fuel.

Since beginning operations, France’s La Hague plant has safely processed over 23,000 tones of used fuel—enough to power France for fourteen years.

Fred Singer - a voice of rationality on global warming

2007-10-28T20:43:00.000-07:00

Q: When you say global warming is natural, what is your chief culprit?

A: The sun. The sun. Definitely. The evidence we have shows an extremely strong correlation with solar activity. The (Earth’s) temperature follows the solar activity and the correlation is very strong. The mechanism itself is still under some dispute, but we think in some way the sun influences cosmic rays, which in turn influences cloudiness.

Q: That doesn’t even count the heat output of the sun, which changes over time, doesn’t it?

A: Those are very small and are not enough to account for all the climate changes that we see. What is causing it is not just the heat of the sun, but emissions from the sun that we don’t see -- except with satellites and spacecraft -- the so-called solar winds and magnetic fields.

Q: Do you have any explanation why the Al Gore camp has won the global warming argument in the mainstream media?

A: That’s not really my field. I’m not sure they’ve won the argument in the media. I’m sure there are still many people in the media who are skeptical of Al Gore’s arguments -- and they should be.

Q: Should they be skeptical of your arguments as well?

A: Some are skeptical of my arguments, yes, of course. That’s because they haven’t looked into it. In other words, I’m very convinced that when I talk to somebody one-on-one and show them the evidence, they will agree with me.

Q: As you’ve watched this global-warming debate evolve, are you optimistic that good science, honest science, will trump politics?

A: Yes, I’m optimistic because eventually it must do that. The problem is the word “eventually.” In the meantime, a great deal of damage can be done to our economy as various schemes are being put forward to control CO2 emissions -- essentially to control the use of energy.

Biofuels "crime against humanity"

2007-10-27T23:46:00.000-07:00

''The effect of transforming hundreds and hundreds of thousands of tons of maize, of wheat, of beans, of palm oil, into agricultural fuel is absolutely catastrophic for the hungry people.''

The world price of wheat doubled in one year and the price of corn quadrupled, leaving poor countries, especially in Africa, unable to pay for the imported food needed to feed their people, he said. And poor people in those countries are unable to pay the soaring prices for the food that does come in, he added.

''So it's a crime against humanity'' to devote agricultural land to biofuel production, Ziegler said a news conference. ''What has to be stopped is ... the growing catastrophe of the massacre (by) hunger in the world,'' he said.

As an example, he said, it takes 510 pounds of corn to produce 13 gallons of ethanol. That much corn could feed a child in Zambia or Mexico for a year, he said.

Enemies of the poor

2007-09-30T22:48:00.000-07:00

This is a surprise? Environmental Activists Are Enemies of the Poor

People there live in abject poverty, along dirt roads, in shacks with dirt floors, barely able to afford food on their $1,000-a-year average income. There is little electricity and no indoor plumbing. The area's rainforest has been destroyed for firewood and slash-and-burn agriculture. People barely eke out a living.

But Fenn claims the mine will change the "quaint" village and harm the environment. He says he feels "like a resident," his children "were born and raised" there, and the locals "don't consider education to be important" and would just spend their money on parties, jeans, and stereos.

Actually, Fenn lives 300 miles away and sends his children to school in South Africa. And the locals hardly conform to his insulting stereotypes. "If I had money, I would open a grocery store," said one. "Send my children to school," start a business, become a midwife, build a new house, said others.

Hypocritcal activists continue to tell others how it would be better for them to stay in poverty while they live a life of wealth and privilege.

Never mind. Go back to whatever it was you were doing.

Take action - ask the CEO of Caterpillar to withdraw his company from the U.S. Climate Action Partnership

2007-08-04T19:44:00.000-07:00

From Cooler Heads Coalition member, the National Center for Public Policy Research:

We hope you will consider signing the coalition letter below asking the CEO of Caterpillar to withdraw his company from the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP). USCAP is lobbying for "national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions" and a cap-and-trade system. USCAP is comprised of various companies and environmental groups, including: the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense, the National Wildlife Federation and The Nature Conservancy.

If you wish to sign on, please email your name, title and organization to pknight@nationalcenter.org . If you prefer fax, the number is: 202-543-5975. If you have any questions, please call 202-543-4110.

Feel free to help by circulating this letter to others who might be interested in signing.

--Peyton Knight

Mr. James W. Owens
Chief Executive Officer
Caterpillar, Inc.
100 North East Adams Street
Peoria , IL 61629

Dear Mr. Owens,

You recently acknowledged that excessive regulations harm Caterpillar's bottom line, noting in your 2006 Annual Report to Stakeholders that Caterpillar¹s on-highway truck engine business would drop significantly in 2007 due to new emissions regulations. That's why we were astonished to see that Caterpillar had joined the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), which seeks to establish a cap and trade system for carbon emissions. If such a system is established, many of the industries upon which Caterpillar depends would be harmed.

As you may know, the Congressional Budget Office reported in April that the oil, gas and coal industries upon which Caterpillar depends for sales would be particularly hard hit by the establishment of a cap-and-trade system. For example, a cap designed to reduce emissions by 23% would result in a 54% devaluation of coal stock value and a 40% decline in coal production. Do you think a 40% reduction in coal production is likely to boost or reduce your sales to this industry?

Other Caterpillar customers will be affected, too. How many sales will you be making to farmers if they can make more money from sequestration than from harvesting crops?

Let¹s be clear about the objectives of some of your coalition partners. The Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation, and Environmental Defense have a long history of opposing the very industries that are Caterpillar¹s best customers, often through expensive litigation. Rather than help deliver your loyal customers to the legal sharks of the environmental movement, Caterpillar should help its customers fight the onslaught of unnecessary emissions caps and regulations that would harm them.

We ask that you immediately withdraw from the United States Climate Action Partnership. The undersigned represent a diverse group grassroots property rights organizations, think tanks, taxpayer action groups, farmers, ranchers and miners some of which are current Caterpillar customers.

If Caterpillar can't be loyal to its customers and consumers, perhaps there's no reason to be loyal to Caterpillar.

Michael Crichton on the unproven dangers of second-hand smoke

2007-07-31T23:47:00.000-07:00

Bush big-ag welfare policies devastate third world poor

2007-06-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

Our subsidies for corn-based ethanol production are pushing the poorest of the poor from mere subsistence to outright starvation and destabilizing third world countries. So how are these policies good for anyone but the big-ag companies that grow fat on their political spoils?

According to some estimates, ethanol plants will burn up to half of U.S. domestic corn supplies within a few years. Ethanol demand will bring 2007 inventories of corn to their lowest levels since 1995 (a drought year), even though 2006 yielded the third-largest corn crop on record. Iowa may soon become a net corn importer.

The enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system. (The United States accounts for some 40 percent of the world's total corn production and over half of all corn exports.) In March 2007, corn futures rose to over $4.38 a bushel, the highest level in ten years. Wheat and rice prices have also surged to decade highs, because even as those grains are increasingly being used as substitutes for corn, farmers are planting more acres with corn and fewer acres with other crops.

In the United States and other large economies, the ethanol industry is artificially buoyed by government subsidies, minimum production levels, and tax credits. High oil prices over the past few years have made ethanol naturally competitive, but the U.S. government continues to heavily subsidize corn farmers and ethanol producers. Direct corn subsidies equaled $8.9 billion in 2005. Although these payments will fall in 2006 and 2007 because of high corn prices, they may soon be dwarfed by the panoply of tax credits, grants, and government loans included in energy legislation passed in 2005 and in a pending farm bill designed to support ethanol producers. The federal government already grants ethanol blenders a tax allowance of 51 cents per gallon of ethanol they make, and many states pay out additional subsidies.

In the United States, the growth of the biofuel industry has triggered increases not only in the prices of corn, oilseeds, and other grains but also in the prices of seemingly unrelated crops and products. The use of land to grow corn to feed the ethanol maw is reducing the acreage devoted to other crops. Food processors who use crops such as peas and sweet corn have been forced to pay higher prices to keep their supplies secure -- costs that will eventually be passed on to consumers. Rising feed prices are also hitting the livestock and poultry industries.

In late 2006, the price of tortilla flour in Mexico, which gets 80 percent of its corn imports from the United States, doubled thanks partly to a rise in U.S. corn prices from $2.80 to $4.20 a bushel over the previous several months. (Prices rose even though tortillas are made mainly from Mexican-grown white corn because industrial users of the imported yellow corn, which is used for animal feed and processed foods, started buying the cheaper white variety.) The price surge was exacerbated by speculation and hoarding. With about half of Mexico's 107 million people living in poverty and relying on tortillas as a main source of calories, the public outcry was fierce. In January 2007, Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderón, was forced to cap the prices of corn products.

In a study of global food security we conducted in 2003, we projected that given the rates of economic and population growth, the number of hungry people throughout the world would decline by 23 percent, to about 625 million, by 2025, so long as agricultural productivity improved enough to keep the relative price of food constant. But if, all other things being equal, the prices of staple foods increased because of demand for biofuels, as the IFPRI projections suggest they will, the number of food-insecure people in the world would rise by over 16 million for every percentage increase in the real prices of staple foods. That means that 1.2 billion people could be chronically hungry by 2025 -- 600 million more than previously predicted.

The world's poorest people already spend 50 to 80 percent of their total household income on food. For the many among them who are landless laborers or rural subsistence farmers, large increases in the prices of staple foods will mean malnutrition and hunger. Some of them will tumble over the edge of subsistence into outright starvation, and many more will die from a multitude of hunger-related diseases.

Although it is important to think of ways to develop renewable energy, one should also carefully examine the eager claims that biofuels are "green." Ethanol and biodiesel are often viewed as environmentally friendly because they are plant-based rather than petroleum-based. In fact, even if the entire corn crop in the United States were used to make ethanol, that fuel would replace only 12 percent of current U.S. gasoline use. Thinking of ethanol as a green alternative to fossil fuels reinforces the chimera of energy independence and of decoupling the interests of the United States from an increasingly troubled Middle East.

Never mind. Go back to what you were doing.

Fuel economy or reduced emissions - pick one

2007-06-16T11:17:00.000-07:00

Reality. It's what surprises you when you're dreaming.

Everyone wants both better fuel economy and reduced emissions from ICEs - Internal Combustion Engines. But to get dramatic improvements in one you often have to make sacrifices in the other. That's just reality.
NOx emissions are a tremendous thorn for Mitsubishi Motors America Inc. and its innovative gasoline direct-injection (GDI) engine, which the company says "will form the cornerstone of the next generation of high-efficiency engines."

But Hiromitsu Ando, Mitsubishi's deputy general manager-engine research department and one of the principal engineers on the GDI program, says those looming NOx standards will make fitting the GDI in U.S.-market vehicles a difficult chore.

The new engine -- already in Japanese and European production cars -- can be used in Europe, as Mr. Ando explains, because the GDI can meet current European Phase II emissions regulations.

"The U.S. has repeatedly stated its energy policy is to decrease reliance on imported oil. In Japan, our pressure to do so is even greater. That is why we develop engines like (the GDI). If we want better fuel economy, we know we may have to accept a bit more emissions. The real differences (in total emissions output) between an engine that achieves 40% better fuel economy yet emits perhaps 50% more NOx are minuscule. Bureaucrats must realize this."
Those who face the hard choices of reality will make incredible advancements.

But never mind, just go on dreaming.

Vegans kill infant

2007-05-22T22:21:00.000-07:00

WHEN Crown Shakur died of starvation, he was 6 weeks old and weighed 3.5 pounds. His vegan parents, who fed him mainly soy milk and apple juice, were convicted in Atlanta recently of murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty.

I was once a vegan. But well before I became pregnant, I concluded that a vegan pregnancy was irresponsible. You cannot create and nourish a robust baby merely on foods from plants.

Indigenous cuisines offer clues about what humans, naturally omnivorous, need to survive, reproduce and grow: traditional vegetarian diets, as in India, invariably include dairy and eggs for complete protein, essential fats and vitamins. There are no vegan societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the long run.
One of the big reasons poverty is so difficult to overcome in devoping countries is simple - proper nutrition early in a child's life requires animal protein, which is expensive relative to the starchy staples of all societies. Without it children are malnourished and do not develop to their full potential. This is why it is dangerous when eco-fundamentalist zealots try to force on developing countries their moral viewpoint that eating animals is wrong and a waste of resources. Children are malnourished and die because of this kind of activism.

Never mind. Go back to what you were doing.

Blood for oil

2007-05-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

Many on the left accuse GW Bush of sacrificing the blood of our young men and women for oil - "no blood for oil!" they shout, followed by a stream of profanity. However, as Steve Milloy points out, it is the left that wants blood for oil - your blood and the blood of your spouse, children, and parents. They refuse to allow drilling in the oil-rich off-shore continental shelf of America so we can get more of the oil we need domestically, then use the ruse of "energy security" to demand stricter mileage laws, laws that endanger all of us.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has estimated that since CAFE was implemented, more than 46,000 traffic deaths would have been avoided if people had been driving heavier cars. Many tens of thousands more, of course, have been needlessly injured.

The NHTSA concluded in an October 2003 report that CAFE standards are even deadlier than the agency previously thought.

Every 100-pound reduction in the weight of small cars (those weighing 2,950 pounds or less), for example, increased annual traffic fatalities by as much as 715, according to NHTSA. For larger cars and light trucks, the agency estimated that each 100-pound reduction in weight would increase annual traffic fatalities by as much as 303 and 296, respectively.

Improving wheat with biotech- Pt. 1

2007-05-18T08:08:00.000-07:00

Back-crossing is a plant breeding process to remove unwanted genes, but it is a time consuming process of raising successive generations of the progeny. The release of an improved variety usually takes 10 to 12 years.

With modern biotechnology, plant scientists can choose a specific trait and move only the genes for that trait into the target variety. The unwanted or detrimental genes are not transferred and the time until release of the improved variety is reduced to the period required for yield trials.

Clean chemicals better than poo'd on food - duh!

2007-05-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

Who wants nasty chemicals in their food?
Uh, food is made of chemicals.
Oh yeah, right... um I mean organic is better, right?
Well, all food is organic - as in living.
Oh yeah... but isn't it better to spread poo on our food than... okay, maybe that's not such a good idea...
Uh, no.

The following is from Toppling the organic house of cards, a book review of "The Truth About Organic Foods," by Alex Avery. The review was published in Nature Biotechnology May 5th 2007.
Avery challenges the common claims in chapter after chapter. Is organic food more nutritious? Is organic healthier? Is organic safer? Does organic means pesticide free? Are approved organic pesticides benign? Does organic food taste better? Does buying organic support local family farmers? Is organic farming better for the environment? Avery documents (and cites comprehensively) the independent scientific studies addressing these questions and concludes there is no scientifically credible evidence to support organic foods or farms being categorically superior to conventional in any respect. Organic does not mean 'no pesticides', because organic farming does allow certain 'natural' pesticides. And 'natural' does not mean 'healthy' or even 'benign', as those natural organic pesticides can be very hazardous, even more so than the proscribed synthetic chemicals. Even if one discounts Avery due to his personal bias, it is hard not to accept the apparent consensus of the scientific studies showing, for example, no categorical or meaningful nutritional differences between organic and regular foods.

According to Avery, those few reports claiming an advantage for organic have almost invariably been paid for or conducted by those with a vested financial interest in selling organic products. Consequently, few such studies are published in peer-reviewed journals. He then critiques these organic-friendly reports, exposing the logical or technical problems explaining why the flawed studies remain unpublished. Avery is not alone in disparaging the organic industry. When Sir John Krebs, then head of the UK Food Safety Authority, announced that no scientific evidence supported the claims of organic superiority, he was met with dismissive rhetoric from the organic industry followed by ad hominem attacks on his ethical integrity.

The source of evil in eco-fundamentalist religion

2007-05-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

The Eco-Radicals' Real Motives
The driving force behind the eco-radicals’ fierce efforts to strangle the free market with environmental regulations is their virulent hatred for a free, prosperous economy. Yet behind this hatred is an even deeper one. To understand why they try to wreck our economy, you have to grasp the shocking fact that many eco-radicals hate the human race and Western civilization. They hate the fact that you, your family, your friends, and millions of other human beings live and prosper on this planet.

Most of us are naive about the environmental movement. We believe that when eco-radicals say we should “protect the environment,” they mean we should protect it for people. What they really mean is that we should protect the environment against people. People are the enemy. Rats, swamps, and old-growth forests must be protected against you, your family, and the rest of the human race.

Environmentalism as a religion

2007-04-29T23:00:00.000-07:00

Speaking of witch hunting eco-puritans, here is State of Fear author, Michael Crichton explaining why he called environmentalism a religion:

Extreme weather and superstition in the little ice age

2007-04-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

I love the Internet. Check out this presentation on extreme weather and superstition during the "little ice age". It's a pretty simple formula really: sacrifice a few weird old ladies to ensure good weather.

The Eco-witch hunters of today have much in common with their forebears: they would have us sacrifice our safest cars and the best jobs that provide for our families' needs to ensure good weather. It'll just hurt poor families. You and your family will be fine if you just do as they say - don't question. It's been decided by your betters. There is a consensus.

Never mind. Go back to what you were doing.

African Malaria Day

2007-04-27T01:06:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was African Malaria Day. AFRICAN Malaria Day. That's because they still have MALARIA in AFRICA. We used to have it in Europe and North America. But we eradicated it. Decades ago. With DDT. But Africans can't have DDT. They can just keep dieing, I guess.

The reason it is called Africa Malaria Day is because in the developed West malaria no longer poses much of a problem. Southern Mediterranean countries, such as Italy, where hot and humid conditions would normally be a fertile breeding ground for malarial mosquitoes, have been malaria-free for more than 60 years. Yet the tool that rooted out malaria in the developed world – the mosquito-bashing pesticide DDT – is not considered fit for Africa today.

There is a reason why the West is no longer infested with malarial insects and why deaths from malaria are virtually zero. It’s because over half a century ago we sprayed everything down with DDT. DDT is not very popular nowadays; it has become an anathema to environmentalists. In the Sixties and Seventies, various environmentalists raised concerns about the impact of DDT on wildlife. In her 1962 book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson claimed that DDT harmed birds of prey and their eggs. Following intense lobbying, DDT was banned in America in 1972 by the Environment Protection Agency and its use was severely restricted in Europe. This had a big impact on its use in countries in Latin America and Africa. And all of this happened despite the fact that, as the campaign group Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM) points out, where heavy use of DDT in agricultural settings did occasionally cause harm to birds of prey, that harm subsequently ‘proved reversible’, and ‘after 50 years of study there is not one replicated study that shows any harm to humans at all’.

Indeed, last year the World Health Organisation (WHO) ‘reversed a 30-year policy by endorsing the use of DDT for malaria control’. WHO explained that there is no health risk for humans from DDT. Dennis Avery of AFM estimates that, ‘The absence of DDT has led to the needless deaths of at least 30million people from malaria and yellow fever in the tropics’.
Never mind. Go back to what you were doing.

Thanks to Junk Science for the link.

The Great Global Warming Swindle Website

2007-04-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

The Great Global Warming Swindle video now has its own Website.

The response to the film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, has been overwhelming, and overwhelmingly positive. As Channel Four reported in Broadcast magazine, they were inundated with phone calls following the first transmission. They calculated that the calls were 6 to 1 in favour of the film. It would be nice to claim that this was due to the film itself, but in fact the explosion of interest happened before the film went out.

The coverage of the theory of man made global warming, on TV, radio and in the press, has been, broadly speaking, fawning and uncritical. In Britain, hours and hours of programmes have been broadcast by the BBC on the subject. All of it uncritical, much of it scientifically absurd. The very fact that a serious documentary dared to challenge the orthodoxy was itself news.

Why? Why have journalists been so craven or biased? How has a theory which lacks really solid supporting evidence become an undisputable fact? What of the impressive, much talked about scientific ‘consensus’ which is meant to forestall any awkward questions?

The film made a humble stab at suggesting some lines of enquiry. When the theory of man made global warming finally dies, as we believe it will, there are many important questions to be asked. About the relationship between science, the media and the rest of us. But also about scientists and science. The scare over man made global warming may prove to be the first great example in the modern Western world, when science was betrayed by scientists themselves.
We had not intended to establish an ‘official’ web-site for the film. But such is the demand for more information that we have no alternative.

State of Fear video

2007-04-19T01:31:00.001-07:00

Just a teaster for the full video, but interesting nonetheless...

Ethanol-burning cars emit toxic ozone gas

2007-04-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

A new study out of Stanford says pollution from ethanol could end up creating a worse health hazard than gasoline, especially for people with asthma and other respiratory diseases.

He found that ethanol-burning cars could boost levels of toxic ozone gas in urban areas, but that Los Angeles residents would be by far the hardest hit because of the city's reliance on the automobile and environmental factors that tend to concentrate smog there.

Pollution from ethanol would be riskier than pollution from gasoline because when ethanol breaks down in the atmosphere, it generates considerably more ozone. Ozone is a highly corrosive gas that damages the delicate tissues of the lungs. In fact, it's so corrosive that it can crack rubber and wear away statues, Jacobson told The Chronicle.

Future domestic fuel - available today!?

2007-04-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

In the H2CAR [hybrid hydrogen-carbon process] concept, hydrogen would be harvested by splitting water molecules, possibly with a well-known method called electrolysis. Then the hydrogen would be added during the gasification step, making the process more efficient by suppressing the formation of carbon dioxide and converting all of the carbon atoms to fuel.

When conventional methods are used to convert biomass or coal to liquid fuels, 60 percent to 70 percent of the carbon atoms in the starting materials are lost in the process as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, whereas no carbon atoms would be lost using H2CAR, Agrawal said.

"This waste is due to the fact that you are using energy contained in the biomass to drive the entire process," he said. "I'm saying, treat biomass predominantly as a supplier of carbon atoms, not as an energy source."

Power for the electrolysis would be provided by carbon-free energy sources, such as solar, wind or nuclear power. And, unlike conventional methods of producing liquid fuels from plant matter and coal, H2CAR would not emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

"The goal is to accomplish the complete transformation of every carbon atom in the feedstock to liquid fuel by supplementing the conversion process with hydrogen from a carbon-free energy source," Agrawal said.

Put aside all the mumbo-jumbo about biomass and solar piddle-power and just look at the most promising combination: nuclear and coal.

But these are both verboten, saith the ruling eco-fundamentalist religious leaders, so forget about it. Don't even think about it. You should feel bad that you even want it.

Your penance is to go vegan for a month and give money to that eco-televangelist, Al Gore so he can pay someone not to emit carbon for a few minutes on your behalf.

New foam catalyst produces synthetic gas quickly and easily

2007-04-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

Droplets of oil and sugar taken from biomass are sprayed into a small chamber containing a foam catalyst of rhodium and cerium. As the droplets hit the foam, volatile compounds within them oxidise (combust) to produce heat. This breaks down larger non-volatile compounds into a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide – a synthesis gas, or "syngas".

Syngas can then either be used to make fuels like gasoline, or its hydrogen can be separated in order to power fuel cells. The biomass required can come from anything from cooking oil to glucose-rich cornstalks, Schmidt says.

Clean diesel from dirty coal

2007-04-14T21:43:00.000-07:00

This year Waste Management and Processors, Inc. (WMPI), will break ground for the first U.S. coal-to-diesel production facility, in Gilberton, Pa. The plant will process 1.4 million tons of waste coal a year to generate approximately 5,000 barrels a day of diesel fuel.

The initial cost of the fuel is expected to be about $54 a barrel.

Considering the vast coal reserves in China, which is also considering the technology, coal-derived diesel seems likely to play a bigger role in helping to liberate some countries from dependence on oil imports.

Natural gas alternative - cheaper than dirt?

2007-04-14T21:26:00.000-07:00

"The U.S. has more coal than any other country in the world. It's actually about as cheap as dirt," said Perlman, co-founder and CEO of Greatpoint Energy, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company.

GreatPoint Energy is refining a process called catalytic gasification to convert coal into methane or substitute natural gas.

GreatPoint says the key to its new technology is the catalyst it uses. Perlman says it's a combination of readily available metals, but so far, the ingredients are secret.

Because of that catalyst, GreatPoint's process works at a lower temperature than other technologies, which makes the process much cheaper.

Rachel Carson's birthday

2007-04-14T02:29:00.001-07:00

April 12th was Rachel Carson's birthday. Let's not forget what she did.

Rachel Carson’s major impact on the planet has been to discourage the use of a safe, cheap pesticide called DDT to suppress disease-bearing mosquitoes. North America and Europe used DDT to eradicate malaria. After our children were safe, we told the Third World not to use it because it might harm their bird populations.

The absence of DDT has led to the needless deaths of at least 30 million people from malaria and yellow fever in the tropics. (Five times as many as Hitler killed in his concentrations death camps, albeit inadvertently). Most of them were helpless African children. In addition, malaria has been allowed to blight the lives of perhaps 1 billion chronic malaria sufferers, who are too often unable to work and further erode economic resources by requiring family nursing care. The millions of malaria cases in the tropics may, just by themselves, explain half of the poverty and human degradation on the planet today.

It’s not widely known that Ms. Carson originally had a co-author for Silent Spring. His name was Edwin Diamond, and he had been Science Editor of Newsweek. Early in the drafting of the book, he resigned from the project. He declared later that Silent Spring was an “emotional, alarmist book seeking to cause Americans to mistakenly believe their world is being poisoned.”

For more details, see this article:

That Silent Spring is deemed one of the best non-fiction works of the century is not supportable by examination of its allegations. It's a compendium of nonsense. Nevertheless, the book was a major contributing factor in the DDT ban of 1972, and established the potent role of exaggeration and dishonesty in the many environmental debates that have followed to this day.

To many scientists familiar with the technologies of agronomy, ornithology, entomology, botany, etc. the book was not well received. Dr Thomas Jukes, University of California professor/biochemist wrote that it "is so dramatically contrary to facts, so eloquently and persuasively, and so permanently influential that its negative impact is difficult to overstate."

Never mind. Go back to what you were doing.

Safest form of nuclear power?

2007-04-13T22:34:00.000-07:00

A WHITE powder, thorium oxide, could be the answer to many concerns about nuclear power.
Reactors that use thorium, rather than uranium, produce radioactive waste that needs to be stored for only 500 years. They can also incinerate the much longer-lived radioactive products from conventional nuclear plants, including plutonium.
"And in these reactors, a meltdown like the Chernobyl disaster is virtually impossible," says a Sydney scientist, Reza Hashemi-Nezhad.

Research stiffled by religious zealots

2007-04-13T21:40:00.000-07:00

An international team of researchers has discovered that two types of plant proteins are at work in the transport of an important growth hormone, a finding that could have applications in creating plants with specific characteristics.

However, eco-zealots -- religious earth-worshiping fundamentalists -- have created a hostile political environment for crop varieties created using recombinant DNA technology, even though they are the quickest, most reliable and safest way to produce a plant with specific traits.

The team's findings could have applications in food crops, but Murphy said he hasn't pursued such work due to some concerns over eating genetically modified foods. "We're focusing on biofuels and ornamentals because everybody loves to drive their car, and people don't eat their flowers," he said.

They're wrong, of course. Eco-zealots don't care what the plant is used for because to them, all plant varieties produced using modern recombinant DNA technology are taboo, an insult to the purity of their goddess, Gaia, whose followers use lies and fear of the unknown to force their religious prohibitions and morality on others through oppressive laws that strip men of their freedoms and stand in the way of scientific progress that can save children from life-threatening symptoms that kill thousands every year.

"Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."

-- H L Mencken

Never mind. Go back to what you were doing.

Join the coalition for Clean and Safe Energy!

2007-04-12T00:12:00.000-07:00

The CASEnergy Coalition is a large grassroots coalition that united unlikely allies across the business, environmental, academic, consumer and labor community to support nuclear energy. We believe that nuclear energy can improve energy security, ensure clean air quality, and enhance the quality of life and economic well-being of all Americans.

Indian Farmers Benefit From BT Cotton

2007-04-11T23:14:00.000-07:00

Dr. Laveesh BhandariIndian farmers have grown GM crops since 2002 and now represent the most rapid adopters of plant biotechnology in the world. Indian economist Laveesh Bhandari discusses how GM cotton has positively impacted families and communities through increased income, greater access to healthcare services and better education.

Video here.

Virginia Cobia Farm to harvest first crop of cobia fish

2007-04-11T22:30:00.000-07:00

In a previous post on aquaculuture I mentioned a company, Virginia Cobia Farms, a joint-venture of Blue Ridge Aquaculture,Inc. and MariCal to raise Cobia in Virginia. They will be harvesting their first Cobia next month.

BOSTON, March 20, 2007 — A Virginia company using patented technology to produce a fastgrowing, high yielding marine fish some 300 miles from the nearest ocean made its debut at the International Boston Seafood Show, turning heads and luring hundreds of inquiries from potential buyers.

“We believe that freshwater raised cobia is the next chicken of the sea — one that will fill growing consumer demand for marine fish high in Omega 3 fatty acids without burdening the ocean’s already depleted fish stocks,” says Bill Martin, chairman Virginia Cobia Farms, LLC, Saltville.
Established last October, Virginia Cobia Farms will harvest its first crop of cobia this May. “We’ll have about 100,000 pounds of fish, but I wish we had three times that much,” Thomas says, adding that demand for the white fish, which has been compared to Mahi Mahi or halibut in taste and texture, is already far exceeding supply.

Think for yourself

2007-03-23T22:45:00.000-07:00

The spray-painted words on the wall of the parking garage urged me to "Think for yourself." I wonder of that warning applies to global warming. Probably not.

Think for yourself, we are told -- except when you disagree with the government/environmentalist/higher-education/major-media "chattering class" establishment.

Are Europeans killing people?

2007-03-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

According to this author at GMOAfrica, Europeans are killing poor people in developing countries, especially Africans, with their overly restrictive regulations on biotech agricultural products.

That's all. Go back to what you were doing.

“Europe's current anti-GMOs policies hurt farmers in developing countries more than it does its own. As the manifesto notes, the EU strictly prohibits agricultural imports containing minutest of GMOs. What this means is that most developing countries won't dare touch GMOs for fear of losing lucrative European markets for their agricultural products. By default, the EU has barred them from growing genetically modified crops.
This is unfair, to say the least. The EU accords member countries flexibility to grow or not to grow genetically modified crops. They're even free to trade their biotech agricultural products within the EU block unhindered. And the EU won't object if they donate, as relief aid, some of their surplus biotech food to developing countries. In fact, the European Commission (EC), the EU's executive organ, itself, hauls tones and tones of food, some of it biotech, to poor countries, "to feed the hungry and malnourished."
So, it seems that it's alright for developing countries to be recipients of biotech food originating from EU countries, but it's unacceptable for them to grow their own biotech crops. This is hypocrisy and demonstrates how the EU is least interested in promoting sustainable development programs in poor countries.
It's every farmer's solemn right, whether in Europe, Africa, Asia, or America, to experiment on new agricultural technologies such as biotechnology. Unfair laws, such as the ones being maintained by the EU, should never be allowed to stifle such endeavors.”

The price of silence

2007-02-15T23:00:00.000-08:00

When they persecuted those rumored to be sympathetic to Intelligent Design,
I remained silent;
I was not a proponent of Intelligent Design.

When they refused tenure to those concerned with the morality of embryonic stem cell research,
I remained silent;
I was not concerned with the morality of embryonic stem cell research.

When they stripped of their titles those who did not believe that current global warming is unprecedented and primarily caused by human activity,
I did not speak out;
I was not a skeptic of human-caused, catastrophic global warming.

When they prohibited the use of a safe, effective man-made chemical to combat the spread of malaria,
I did not speak out;
I was not in danger of becoming infected with malaria.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

New radiothermal battery will provide town's power for decades

2007-02-12T21:22:00.000-08:00

Radiothermal battery. That's my term. Toshiba calls it a Nuclear battery, or a 4S sodium cooled reactor (4S = Super Safe, Small, and Simple).

Toshiba wants to build one for Galena Alaska. It will supply power for the town for up to 30 years at a much reduced cost compared to the diesel-generated power they currently have - which costs them three times as much as the national average.

The 4S is a very small molten sodium-cooled reactor designed by Toshiba. The reactor presently being considered is 10 MWe though larger and smaller versions exist. The 4S is intended for use in remote locations and to operate without refueling during its 30-year life. The 4S has been compared with a nuclear “battery” because it does not require refueling. The lack of refueling would mean that the reactor’s fuel supply would be a capital cost rather than an operating cost. It has been suggested that the fuel might be relatively low cost, reprocessed spent fuels originating from more conventional power reactors.

More here.

Nuclear Power - and hydrogen too!

2007-02-04T00:28:00.000-08:00

The process involves a new kind of nuclear reactor that can run electricity through water at a very high temperature, and use a ceramic sieve to separate the oxygen from the hydrogen. Such a reactor could not only produce electricity for the grid, but also enough hydrogen to equal two and a half gallons of gasoline per second.

Hockey Stick Antics

2007-02-04T00:15:00.000-08:00

According to the World Climate report, new evidence from Antarctica, published by a prestigious international team of scientists further challenges the infamous hockey stick. Their report focuses on elephant seals which are rarely seen in Antarctica today due to the extreme cold, but were apparently abundant in the area over the last few thousand years...

Click here for the mp3 audio version.

The "infamous hockey stick" graph purporting to show catastrophic global warming in recent decades appeared in the 2001 IPCC "Assessment Report." It is debunked thoroughly here.

Pebble Power

2007-02-04T00:09:00.000-08:00

"The PBMR is a revolutionary small reactor, about 10% the size of a conventional nuclear plant, and is gas-cooled and can be sited anywhere. The reactor is ideally suited for developing countries, being inexpensive and easy to operate. It is also ideal for the developed world too."

Click here for the mp3 audio version.

DDT use reduces AIDS?

2007-02-04T00:04:00.000-08:00

A major new study published in Science magazine suggests that the DDT ban also helped increase fatal cases of AIDS around the world.

Click here for mp3 audio version.

Nuclear power to extract oil from Canadian Oil Sands

2007-02-03T21:03:00.000-08:00

One method of extracting the tar-like bitumen from the oil sands is to inject steam into the ground to make it flow more easily. Currently, industry burns relatively clean natural gas to make the steam needed to get the gooey crude.

This is a process one oil economist has likened to using gold to make lead, using up supplies that can be used in the chemical industry or for heating homes, and in any case emitting greenhouse gases.

Light-powered cars

2007-02-01T01:53:00.000-08:00

The research is applying new materials, new technologies and new ideas to radically improve an old concept -- thermophotovoltaic (TPV) conversion of light into electricity. Rather than using the engine to turn a generator or alternator in a car, for example, the new TPV system would burn a little fuel to create super-bright light. Efficient photo diodes (which are similar to solar cells) would then harvest the energy and send the electricity off to run the various lighting, electrical and electronic systems in the car.

Nuclear without the waste

2007-02-01T01:20:00.000-08:00

This PhD research showed that it is possible to obtain a closed nuclear fuel cycle with a GFR. It also revealed that the GFR could use the waste materials of other light water reactors (LWR). The Gas-cooled Fast Reactor can therefore serve as an 'incinerator' of nuclear waste.

Coal-to-diesel Breakthrough Could Drastically Cut Oil Imports

2007-02-01T01:11:00.000-08:00

"With our new catalysts, one can generate productive, clean burning fuels with Fischer-Tropsch, economically and at unsurpassed levels of efficiency."

Is Bush Policy an Impending Humanitarian Disaster?

2007-01-28T09:58:00.001-08:00

In his State of the Union speech, President Bush announced one of the largest increases in corporate welfare in this country's history. With the goal of reducing our consumption of gasoline by 20% in the next ten years, President Bush called on Congress to increase the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) from its current level of 7.5 billion gallons to 35 billion gallons over the next decade. President Bush's proposal will result in an unprecedented explosion of government welfare to big business and potentially spark a humanitarian disaster in Latin American.

The current RFS has already caused the price of corn to skyrocket, which is having a devastating impact on other users of corn products. The livestock industry, for instance. But a much worse "unintended consequence" of the massive increase in the RFS may be a humanitarian disaster in the making in Mexico, where the cost of corn has soared:

Facing public outrage over the soaring price of tortillas, President Felipe Calderón abandoned his free-trade principles on Thursday and forced producers to sign an agreement fixing prices for corn products.

Skyrocketing prices for corn on the world market have pushed up the price of the humble tortilla, the mainstay of the Mexican diet, by nearly a third in the past three weeks, to 35 cents a pound in Mexico City and even higher in other parts of the country.Half of the country’s 107 million people live on $4 a day or less, and many of them survive largely on tortillas and beans.

The price increases have riled the public to such an extent that it has created a political storm that threatens to swamp Mr. Calderón’s fresh presidency.

How far will this unrest in Mexico go if the President's proposed new standards are implemented? The industry claims it can keep up with demand, but that may just be wishful thinking. Even if they can, it will take time - and land. Land will be diverted either from the production of other human or animal feed crops, which will cause a general increase in the price of food, or it will be converted from fallow land or marginal wilderness that normally wouldn't be used for growing crops because it is not very good farmland.

Whatever the course pursued to increase the amount of corn needed for the new RFS, including long-term genetic research aimed at increasing the yield and producing plants that can more easily be converted to ethanol, the short-term impact is devastating the poor in Mexico. And I don't doubt that other Latin American countries that also rely on the world market to supplement their local corn production will also be impacted.

With their fragile hold on democratic government already slipping in many Latin American countries, and their historical tendency to turn to despotic tyranny in desperate times, this policy could have disastrous effects on the stability of a region with whom we share a common, mostly unguarded boarder.

This policy is all the more ironic since ethanol actually increases the amount of hydrocarbons emitted by automobiles -- a major factor in the formation of smog.

So what is the solution to high oil prices and our depency on unstable oil-rich countries? Get the Federal government out of the way and let domestic oil companies drill wherever the oil is:

His best ideas were to urge Congress to cut the red tape involved in building new refineries and expanding old ones (he pointed out that a new refinery hasn't been built here in 30 years) and to call for fewer boutique fuel mixtures (condemning an "uncoordinated and overly complex set of fuel rules") and for a slowdown in the timetable for mixing ethanol with gasoline, again to meet government mandates. It's clear that shortages and price spikes are the result of an inability to move ethanol, whose production is still a cottage industry, around the country.

Bush also made a forthright plea to open up a small part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for exploration, pointing out that, if such a move had been made 10 years ago, we'd be producing a million extra barrels a day (the U.S. uses about 16 million, of which roughly two-thirds is imported), and he said that "we can find crude oil in our own country in environmentally friendly ways."

But these ideas were mainly rhetoric. The right approach would have been to end the boutique fuels and ethanol nonsense once and for all. He should have pinned the blame where it belonged -- on Congress, for refusing to take steps to encourage drilling on the Continental Shelf and for pandering to the ethanol (that is, corn) lobby by forcing drivers to use a pricey fuel with little environmental value.

Global Warming Hysteria

2007-01-27T22:48:00.000-08:00

A Reuters story about the recent American Meteorological Society's annual meeting in San Antonio, leaves you with the impression that almost no professional Meterologists "deny" that global warming is man-made:

"I think there's virtually no doubt that humans are a major player in warming the globe," said Robert Henson, author of the recently published "The Rough Guide to Climate Change."

"There are still people out there who will contradict that, but they are not part of the scientific mainstream," he said.

However, James Spann has had a very different experience:

I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them. Here are the basic facts you need to know:

*Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. ...

*The climate of this planet has been changing since God put the planet here. It will always change, and the warming in the last 10 years is not much difference than the warming we saw in the 1930s and other decades.

Hat Tip: Junk Science

There's no place like home

2007-01-24T22:43:00.000-08:00

Just like Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ, after years of chasing after alternative energy fantasies, we should finally realize that the answer was with us all along... "There's no place like home... (for plentiful, inexpensive sources of energy)... there's no place like home... there's no place like home..."

The more we look for oil and natural gas in the United States, the more we find. A new Department of the Interior (DOI) report concluded that there are substantial onshore deposits of energy on federal lands. A companion study of offshore energy reserves released earlier this year reached the same conclusion. But in both reports, DOI found that much of this energy is either explicitly off-limits or hampered by regulatory constraints that effectively make it so. At least part of the solution to high oil and natural gas prices lies right under our feet, but Congress has thus far failed to change the laws and regulations that keep this domestic energy locked up.

Maybe we should start a campaign - to send our representatives in congress a pair of (rhinestone) "ruby" slippers to remind them, "There's no place like home to get the energy our country needs to stay strong economically, reduce our dependence on dangerous, unstable foreign governments, and create long-term, good-paying jobs for Americans."

Fish Farming Myths

2007-01-23T23:24:00.000-08:00

Greenspirit's Patrick Moore debunks some of the common Fish Farming Myths

"Salmon farms are polluting the ocean with fish waste"

"Farmed salmon may escape and pollute the wild salmon and even take over from the wild fish"

"Salmon are fed large amounts of antibiotics that spread into the sea"

"Salmon farms spread disease to wild fish"

"Salmon farms are spreading sea lice to wild fish, causing their populations to plummet"

"The feed for farmed salmon contains fishmeal and oil from wild fish. This results in a "net loss" of protein for a hungry world because it takes 2-3 pounds of wild fish to make a pound of farmed salmon"

"Salmon are fed artificial chemical dyes to make them look pink like wild salmon"

"Farmed salmon contain high levels of cancer-causing PCBs and dioxins"

"In order to save the wild salmon we should boycott farmed salmon and only eat wild salmon"

I'll let you read Mr. Moore's piece to get his responses to these various myths, but I wanted to share this exciting little tidbit in the document linked to above about the future of fish farming:

While fish farm production can still increase considerably in sheltered inshore waters with the available feed supply there are three ways in which production could become much larger.

First, aquaculture operations can move offshore where the pens will be suspended below the surface to avoid the destructive power of storms. A float at the surface will be tethered to a submerged feeding tube that is pulled to the surface by a ship that could service tens of such cages along the continental shelves. The activists are so anti-fish farming that they have set themselves preemptively against open ocean fish farms, where all of the above claimed environmental harms have even less validity. In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has proposed greatly expanding fish farming in the internationally recognized Exclusive Economic Zones that extend 200 miles from each nation's shoreline. The US wants to create privatized zones and sell multi-year leases to aquaculturists on a percentage of their sales. In these open waters, wastes from the fish are greatly diluted and wash away with the currents. Off-shore fish farms miles from shore have raised halibut, cod, red snapper, and tuna. The response from the environmentalist community has been predictable wailing over the "industrializing" of the seas by greedy big business. Anne Mosness with the anti-biotech, anti-development Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that the US's open ocean proposal is "the equivalent of having a hog farm in a city park flushing its wastes into the street." Pure nonsense.

Speaking of off-shore pens, look at what this company is doing to help things along: OceanSpar

Check this out... awesome!!!

Here's a recent Popular Science article on offshore fish farms

ABC World News Tonight December 2006 report (video) on offshore fish farming

(Here's an ABCNews.com article based on the video above, and here's the company, Snapperfarms, that was featured in the video.)

In addition to the really cool gigantic offshore fish pens, here's a company that has developed technology to successfully farm-raise millions of pounds of fish - on land! Check out the YouTube video presentation about their unique technology and company:

Another presentation about Virginia Cobia Farms

And finally, A list of articles on fish farming

Organics - worth the money?

2007-01-22T20:28:00.000-08:00

Note: you'll have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the article, Organics? It's Not Worth The Money

Alex Avery's new book, The Truth About Organic Foods, exposes the lie that organics are better for you - they're not. And this insidious lie is threatening the health of many who simply cannot afford very many fresh fruits and vegetables when they pay the premium prices for organic produce. Why pay more? It's not worth it!

Organic food is neither more nutritious or safer than conventionally-grown products, a leading scientist claims in a new book. And the more expensive food grown without man-made chemicals and fertilises could even be more harmful, says biologist Alex Avery.

His book, The Truth About Organic Foods, has been backed by British experts. Last night Professor Anthony Trewavas, a plant expert at Edinburgh University, said: "People are being conned. It's not worth spending all that extra money on organic produce"

Starbucks perpetuates myth

2007-01-22T19:44:00.000-08:00

Note: you'll have to scroll down to the bottom of the page that comes up to see the WSJ article.

Starbucks is switching to milk free of artificial growth hormones (rBGH). Which is a mis-nomer, actually, since milk from cows given rBGH is indistinguishable from milk that came from cows who did not recieve rBGH. Myths about cancer and early puberty from drinking milk from cows that received rBGH - spread by the organic industry and misinformed eco-puritans - only serve to line the pockets of "organic" dairy farmers and eco-shakedown groups like Center for Science in the Public Interest (a doubly ironic oxymoron since it neither promotes science nor cares about the public interest). Convincing those who have little enough money as it is to spend what little they have on "better" milk that is indistinguishable from cheaper milk is the crassest form of charlatantism.

From the WSJ article:

The affluent in America can afford to pay higher grocery bills and buy $3 coffee every morning as they wage war against biotechnology. But they do so at the expense of the world's poor, who benefit most from cheap, more abundant food. "There are often fatal consequences to these groups' Luddite philosophy," notes Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

As for Starbucks, its spokesman Brandon Borrman told us "we are only responding to the desires of our customers." It's hard to see how Starbucks can absorb the higher costs of hormone-free milk without off-loading them onto their customers' lattes. And maybe there's a kind of justice in that. As to "social responsibility," it's hard to see where the responsibility lies in promoting a scientifically discredited fear.

Some good information can also be found here: The Milk Myth

Feds Freeze Out Antidote, Costing Billions

2007-01-21T00:23:00.000-08:00

Once again, opposition to a benign and highly beneficial application of genetic engineering costs all of us - a lot. It was a very cold winter here in CA - I froze my tail off! - so it came as no surprise to find out the unusually cold weather (somehow due to Global Warming, no doubt) damaged BILLIONS of dollars worth of crops. That's a lot of oranges! Dr. Henry Miller informs us of a wonderful solution to this problem - one which our all-wise overlords have seen fit to quash with their unique, all-powerful weapon: Byzantine over-regulation.

Although the ice-minus bacteria proved safe and effective at preventing frost damage in field trials, further research was discouraged by the combination of onerous government regulation, the inflated expense of doing the experiments and the prospect of huge downstream costs of pesticide registration. As a result, the product was never commercialized, and plants cultivated for food and fiber throughout much of the nation remain vulnerable to frost damage. We have the EPA to thank for farmers' livelihood in jeopardy, jobs lost, and inflated produce prices for consumers.

When will the EPA re-think its policies? Probably not before hell freezes over.