Posted on 11/10/2003 11:58:55 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Every 10 years, "scientist" Paul Ehrlich writes a book predicting that in the next 10 years there will not be enough food to feed a burgeoning population. Mass starvation will follow and the world will revert to savagery. Every 10 years, his prior doomsaying is forgotten and the media and its pundits give his latest prediction space and serious consideration.
This is junk science at its most ridiculous and on a par with fright-wig stories about this food or that product. Take the campaign against DDT, which led Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency to ban a great scientific advance. DDT had about eliminated one of the great scourges of nature: malaria and the anopheles mosquito, carrier of the disease. Whole regions of the world had been the victims of malaria. In India, for example, one of its most-fertile regions produced nothing because its people were struck down year after year by the dread disease.
The "environmentalists" who propagandized against DDT claimed that it was a poison - that the chemical was killing cattle and wildlife. Of course they were lying. Not a single death has yet to be attributed to DDT. Sprayed on crops and ingested by birds such as the eagle, DDT caused a softening of their egg shells. But this could be avoided by proper application, effectively destroying the anopheles mosquito. DDT was banned to the loud huzzahs of the enviros. The result: Literally millions of people in Asia, Africa and other mosquito-infested regions since have died, but the junk scientists and the media have kept the widespread return of malaria very quiet. That's junk science and enviro propaganda for you.
Some years ago, the junk scientists were yammering that America's children were malnourished. And so they were, not because of poverty but because they were stuffing themselves with the wrong foods. Studies show that this malnourishment was more prevalent among the middle classes than among the poor. Without missing a beat, the junk scientists now are yammering that America is obese, and it's all the fault of McDonald's because it serves what the cash customers want.
The "global-warming" scam, however, is the most shameless of all junk-science campaigns, and deliberately so. The fact is that many of those pushing for the Kyoto Protocol treaty - which by drastically curtailing essential energy use would be an economic disaster - must know what a fraud it is, unless they are suffering from Alzheimer's.
Hardly two decades ago, the same global-warming propagandists were warning all and sundry that the Earth was moving into a new ice age that would bring Arctic temperatures to the tropics, destroy vegetation and bring civilization to a standstill. And what was the cause of this imminent catastrophe? Man-made hydrocarbons. Today, the same enviros are beating their gums and stirring up their comrades in the media by predicting that global warming is what will do us in - melting the polar ice caps, causing catastrophic flooding in low-lying coastal areas, etc., etc. And what is causing this "global warming"? The same man-made hydrocarbons that were blamed for the allegedly coming ice age.
The media proclaim that 2,000 scientists support the claims of the global-warming cabal. But the press, print and electronic, is very silent about the 17,000 scientists who have signed a petition in opposition to the Kyoto treaty. The junk scientists cite "statistics" - remember that there are lies, damn lies and statistics - that in the last 20 years the Earth's temperature has increased by (shudder) one degree. But satellites and weather balloons show no atmospheric temperature rise. It is true that there has been a minuscule trend in temperature increase during the last 300 years, but that began long before present-day industrialization. And man-made hydrocarbons had nothing to do with it, as every important study shows.
One of the many "solutions" proposed by the enviros and the junk scientists demonstrates the paucity of sanity in their programs. For instance, Arthur Robinson, editor of Access to Energy, and Noah Robinson, both of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, have shown that the proposal by California's South Coast Air Management District to require all public vehicles to be powered by electricity, natural gas or other presumably clean-burning fuels will use "more hydrocarbon fuels than less." And, they add: "The energy delivered to an electric car requires more hydrocarbon fuel per mile than does the direct use of hydrocarbon fuel."
How often do you read that an emphasis on the increased use of truly clean nuclear and hydroelectric power would rid the environment of those hydrocarbons which so panic the enviros? But such reports would be politically incorrect. And has the New York Times editorialized on the fact that most of France's electric power is nuclear-produced, with no harmful effect on the population?
The Senate made its feelings clear on the Kyoto treaty (which Bill Clinton had signed but did not dare to submit) by a vote of 98-2. But just the other day Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) attempted to sneak it through the back door by introducing the grandly named Climate Stewardship Act, which would impose the terms of the treaty without its ratification. It was defeated soundly on a bipartisan vote, 55-43.
What has made junkmen of two otherwise-sane senators is a logical question, particularly since one of them is running for the presidency.
I though he was dead, neo-malthusian scum.
Scams, Scalawags, and an all-too-gullible Public...famous frauds sold to America
That one isn't true either.
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Does anyone know what study I am referring to, or perhaps have a link? (O-Kay -- I admit that I plan to use this in my on-going "discussions" with my daughter who has a masters in environmental science)
That one isn't true either. -Carry_Okie
Interesing. I've often heard the "soft egg shell" and DDT connection mentioned by the scientific community. Especially here in California in relation to the California Condor. Has this now been proven as untrue?
Paul Ehrlich is truly a phenomenon. He has never been right about anything in his life (or at least in his "scientific" predictions), but yet his following goes on and on. It never ceases to amaze me.
I have a "friend" (the kind that drives a clapped out 10 year old Mazda with save the whales bumper stickers) who stopped talking to me two years ago because I commented to him, "who would be a big enough idiot to keep believing Paul Ehrlich?" Apparently he is one. However, he hates business, somehow blaming "corporations" for the fact that he lived his life as a sort of second rate academic and now in his 60's can't afford anything except clapped out mazdas - Ehrlich's prophecies of doom fit his wordview. It is a combination of envy and religious socialsm I suppose.
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