The Environment

[Shapley]

Read Haggis' post above.

We discussed this a while back, as well. There was an article posted that was praising the return of the Bald Eagle, and citing DDT as one of the causes for their near extenction. Someone (I think it was Haggis) linked an article that pointed out that years of research showed that there was no link between DDT and the Eagle's population decrease, even though that myth is still perpetrated by environmentalists.

[BigJon]

Govt bans -yup, those gov;t encouraged changes never work... no more clean rivers for us...

Once again Piq, you make the unjustified leap. Show me where the dirty rivers needed to be modeled with incredibly complex simulations that were very sensitive to inputs and could not be correlated to current conditions. We saw effects, we found cause, we regulated and cleaned. Today we see effects, we still can't put our finger on cause, but you want us to implement the most wide ranging and economically imposing regulation in the history of man?

[Haggis@wk]

Govt bans one thing, but "lied into banning DDT"?

Um? Defend, explicate, explain?

I don't think I said that. But lies from Audubon were part of the evidence why DDT should have been banned. Those lies resulted in a successful libel lawsuit again Audubon. I did say the scientific hype that led to the banning was flawed at best and criminally negligent at worst.

The truth is simply this; DDT was banned for no scientific reasons.

"Fraud in science is a major problem." So begins "DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud" by the late J. Gordon Edwards, Professor Emeritus of Entomology at San Jose State University in San Jose, California.

The article was published shortly after his death in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Fall, 2004. It is based in part on his 34-page manuscript discussing fraud in acid rain, ozone holes, ultraviolet radiation, carbon dioxide, global warming, and pesticides, particularly DDT.

In a May 22, 1971, speech before the Wisconsin Audubon Society, Ruckelshaus said that EPA procedures had been streamlined so that DDT could be banned. Ruckelshaus was also a member of — and wrote fundraising letters for — the EDF, the organization set up by Audubon explicitly to ban DDT.

The DDT ban solidified Ruckelshaus’ environmental credentials, which he has surfed to great success in business, including stints as CEO of Browning Ferris Industries and as a director of a number of other companies.

The ban was based on purely PC and populist grounds in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

After the ban, the EPA appointed Administrative Law Judge Edmund Sweeney to evaluate DDT. In 1971-2 he conducted a seven-month hearing.

Representatives from the EPA testified against DDT.

Judge Sweeney, after 80 days of testimony from 150 expert scientists, ruled that DDT "is not a carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic hazard to man" and does "not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wild life. There is a present need for the continued use of DDT for the essential uses defined in this case."

ref:Sweeney EM. EPA Hearing Examiner’s recommendations and findings concerning DDT hearings. 25 April 1972 (40 CFR 164.32)

(the referenced document is not online)

The Environmental Defense Fund appealed Sweeney's decision. The appeal should have been passed to an independent jurist, but Ruckelshaus decided to rule on it himself. Not surprisingly, he upheld his own ban "on the grounds that 'DDT poses a carcinogenic risk' to humans." (In 1994, he was to deny that that was the basis for the ban.) He had banned DDT though he had not attended a day of the 80-day hearing nor read a page of the transcript (as he told the Santa Ana Register, July 23, 1972).


Or consider the Malthusians comments made by the opponents of DDT

” The reason for this shift away from DDT towards an emphasis on population control reveals the Malthusian philosophy behind the anti-DDT movement.

"[Any known alternative to DDT] only kills farm workers, and most of them are Mexicans and Negroes. So what? People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them and this is as good a way as any," said Dr. Charles Wurster, chairman of the Environmental Defense Fund's Scientific Advisory Council and a key promoter of the DDT ban.

Another anti-DDT Malthusian is Sierra Club director Michael McCloskey, who said that the "Sierra Club wants a ban on pesticides, even in countries where DDT has kept malaria under control...[because by] using DDT, we reduce mortality rates in underdeveloped countries without the consideration of how to support the increase in populations."

I suspect these are gentleman who Shos would like.

The effects of giving up DDT were immediately felt in the malarial areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Sri Lanka (Ceylon), reacting to Silent Spring, in the 1960s gave up DDT. Its malarial cases had decreased from 2.8 million down to 17. After Sri Lanka gave it up, malaria shot back up to over 2.5 million.

Consider this. Today corporate villains — like WorldCom’s Bernie Ebbers and Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski — were sentenced to prison for crimes against mere property. But what should the punishment be for government wrongdoers like Ruckelshaus who, apparently for the sake of his personal environmental interests, abused his power and affirmatively deprived billions of poor, helpless people of the only practical weapon against malaria?

This ban was a terrible thing and if the people of the U.S. should feel guilty about anything our country has done to the world then this ban should be at the top of the list.

[Shapley]

Haggis,

RE:

I don't think I said that.

You didn't. I did.

V/R
Shapley

[piqaboo]

Govt bans -yup, those gov;t encouraged changes never work... no more clean rivers for us...

Once again Piq, you make the unjustified leap. Show me where the dirty rivers needed to be modeled with incredibly complex simulations that were very sensitive to inputs and could not be correlated to current conditions. We saw effects, we found cause, we regulated and cleaned. Today we see effects, we still can't put our finger on cause, but you want us to implement the most wide ranging and economically imposing regulation in the history of man?

Talk about leaping!
I was responding to an assertion that gov't regulations are both expensive and ineffective. I beg to differ on at least the latter.
In fact, in most cases industry becomes more efficient in response, and expenses go down as well, but that's an argument for another day.

[piqaboo]

Multiple posts addressed here.

1) the cost of hiring paperpushes to ensure govt regulations and documentation guidelines are met is significant, and ongoing. I grant that.
(Being in a fairly heavily regulated industry myself, in a county with stricter than usual guidelines on hazard waste etc as well).

2) actually BigJon, no I am not proposing we make changes solely on the possibility of man-induced global warming. Im proposing that where proposed changes are beneficial for other reasons, we make them. Health care costs would go down if the air were cleaner, for example.

3) Its very hard to get a 'big picture' sometimes. People naturally come from their area of expertise. Someone recently did the math on fuel burned to "eat locally" vs buying the centralized from far-&-wide at the grocery. Turns out to be bad for the total fuel burned to try and eat locally unless there's a local central market by local producers (onestop shopping, one stop delivery). Similarly, while organic, small farmer, handraised crops may taste slightly better and possibly be slightly more nutritious, they are not as efficient in using the square footage as factory farms, so more people would go hungry if that became standard instead of gourmet. This puts a new face on certain challenges.


4) Haggis, first I heard of it, re the DDT science. Havent time to read the articles now but hope to google in near future. Doubt most people thought of the tradeoff in lives lost to malaria vs birds. Malaria is not a nice way to go, neither is starvation. Do you suppose the men you quoted were pleased by the advent of AIDS?

This assertion leads to follow up Q: So what WAS thinning the eggshells? Mercury? Research project here for some data-mining grad student.

[BigJon]

2) actually BigJon, no I am not proposing we make changes solely on the possibility of man-induced global warming. I'm proposing that where proposed changes are beneficial for other reasons, we make them. Health care costs would go down if the air were cleaner, for example.

You and I are in something resembling agreement. Poisoning from pollution must be confronted. I agree that efficiency can improve as pollution is reduced. But as in all poisons, the damage is in the dose. We cannot fall into the Precautionary Principle trap, which is what I fear from a Barbra Boxer led Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The public retardedness she displays makes me suspect she really is an intellectual midget. When you need to make public policy decisions based on complex science, I'd prefer if a deep and facile mind was in charge of the the team.

That said, the bane of government is prioritizing. I think if we made cleaning up evidence-based pollution as the top priority, global warming will take care of itself. It always has.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

.... When you need to make public policy decisions based on complex science, I'd prefer if a deep and facile mind was in charge of the the team....

Why, thank you. Piq and I accept the position. She can do deep.

Alas, I fear we both lack the political skills to convince anyone but you, BJ. Can you do the politics?

[dai bread]

... When you need to make public policy decisions based on complex science, I'd prefer if a deep and facile mind was in charge of the the team.

Facile:
#1 Done or achieved with little effort or difficulty; easy. See Synonyms at "easy".

#2 Working, acting, or speaking with effortless ease and fluency.

#3 Arrived at without due care, effort, or examination; superficial: proposed a facile solution to a complex problem.

#4 Readily manifested, together with an aura of insincerity and lack of depth: a facile slogan devised by politicians.

I don't think this is what you meant, BJ, though it's probably what you'll get. (Especially #4)

Would you prefer "agile"?

[BigJon]

1 and 2 were the meanings I was shooting for. I've met people with facile minds. I never had to explain myself twice, and they usually understood my message in 6 words or less.

You are right, 3 and 4 are probably what we will get.

[BigJon]

.... When you need to make public policy decisions based on complex science, I'd prefer if a deep and facile mind was in charge of the the team....

Why, thank you. Piq and I accept the position. She can do deep.

Umm. Selma, I asked for one mind . . . singular. You two going to perform a permanent mind meld? And yes, I do appreciate the facile-ity of your mind and the depth of Piq's. Now, where can I find a Democrat like that, with the best of both your minds, to lead the committee?

Alas, I fear we both lack the political skills to convince anyone but you, BJ. Can you do the politics?

Convince me to of the science of the mind meld, and I am yr hmbl srvnt.

[piqaboo]

The requirement for two minds came when you included politics in the mix.
Deep science requires translation into clear unambiguous language (even ambiguous results need to be presented clearly, so that it is obvious that the ambiguity is in the results, not the presentation).

So, I explain to Selma*, she puts it into words, I vet the words. If she's done it without changing the information (I have great expectations here, being familiar with her work), then we send her words to the politician.

I believe Selma nominated you and you ambiguously accepted, leaving yourself lots of room for plausible deniability, thus clearly demonstrating your suitability for the position


*Selma of course will ask cogent questions, add important info the mix, ensure Im aware of her opinions, and generally make me think harder than I might if left on my own. Science is about that kind of collaboration, despite the competitive nature that humanity cant help but add.

[piqaboo]

Doses ..... how much alcohol did your wife drink during her pregnancy?
How many drugs did she take, for whatever medical purposes?
How did she make those decisions?
Does she have firm data on safe doses?

In terms of environmental contamination most of the time the regs assume its safe until science finally gets around to checking. At that time, its usually discovered that the minimum adverse dose is much much smaller than even the original scientific hypothesis. Parts per Billion are reality.

[Shapley]

Piq,

I think you're showing exactly what is wrong with the whole global warming debate. Who can be against clean air and water? I'm not, but I'm against using false pretenses for establishing mandates to achieve it. The EPA was established based on the factual evidence of pollution in the air and in the water, and they were used for the first couple of decades of their existence to combat pollution based on that factual evidence. However, their role has become as polluted as the environment they were set out to clean up. Now they find themselves tools of those who seek power to enact controls on people's lives and labours through false science - 'second-hand smoke' to combat smoking, 'global warming' to combat everything from factory emissions to underarm deodorant, and so forth.

There are those who are against industrialization and against capitalism, and they will use whatever power they can achieve to combat it. The EPA gives them the power to by-pass the populace, to enact regulation without the need to convince the people. Those who oppose the regulation are said to be opposed to a clean environment. This is hardly true. People on this board bemoan the 'lies' of the President and his administration, but turn a blind eye to the lies of the left. As long as the intent is 'honourable', then the methodology used to achieve it doesn't matter. They tell us that President Bush 'gutted the EPA's Arsenic standards'. In fact, he merely rolled back, temporarily, the implementation of new standards to the levels that had been in place until the very end of the previous administration. After a brief review, those standards were implemented, in November of 2001. Even so, we continue to hear the lie that they were 'gutted' by President Bush. There are countless other examples, many of which I've cited here before, of lies told about this President's environmental record. But those lies don't seem to matter, as long as the achieve the goal of cleaner air and water.

I have to ask, however, if they'll lie about the science, isn't it also conceiveable that they'll lie about the goal?

[piqaboo]

false science - 'second-hand smoke' to combat smoking,

excuse me?

[Haggis@wk]

An editorial in today's WSJ (for subscribers only) demonstrates why capitalism is more friendly to the environment than “nanny state” socialism.

From 1990-1995 and 1995-2000, the growth of carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. was significantly greater than in the E.U. Since 2000, however, this has changed, as an illustrated table in the artibelow.

U.S.
1990-1995 6.4%
1995-2000 10.1
2000-2004 2.1%

E.U.
1990-1995 -2.2%
1995-2000 2.2%
2000-2004 4.5%


Consider also that from 2000-2004, the U.S. economy also grew at a much faster rate than did that of Europe, as did the U.S. population.

Clearly, then, the U.S. must be doing something right when compared to the nations of Europe.

Europe is hardly providing a model the U.S. should follow.

[Shapley]

Piq,

In 1993 the EPA cited a study that 'second hand smoke' was responsible for 3,000 deaths a year in the United States. The matter was challenged in court and the study was determined to be flawed and biased to support the EPA's position. The court's decision was overruled, not based on the data, but rather on the basis that the EPA's policy was not subject to review, and that it did not have to justify the basis behind its policy.

V/R
Shapley

[barfle]

Now we are being told by the UN that cows contribute more greenhouse gases than SUVs.

You live in Texas and you don't know that cows smell more than Escalades?

[Haggis@wk]

Piq,

”This assertion leads to follow up Q: So what WAS thinning the eggshells? Mercury? Research project here for some data-mining grad student”

YEARS ahead of ya!

Facts versus fears: DDT

” After many years of carefully controlled feeding experiments, Dr. M. L. Scott and associates of the Department of Poultry Science at Cornell University “found no tremors, no mortality, no thinning of eggshells and no interference with reproduction caused by levels of DDT which were as high as those reported to be present in most of the wild birds where ‘catastrophic’ decreases in shell quality and reproduction have been claimed.”23 In fact, thinning eggshells can have many causes, including season of the year, nutrition (in particular insufficient calcium, phosphorus, vitamin D, and manganese), temperature rise, type of soil, and breeding conditions (e.g., sunlight and crowding).25

So thinning shells are caused by….life.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Thin eggshells: it's true that my Tennessee gramma always crushed up the eggshells and threw them back out to the chickens. I think she also used child labor to crack small bony leftovers up into little bits and threw them to the chickens, too. Claimed she didn't like eggs that crushed too easy. So I'll accept the premise that low dietary calcium can contribute to fragile eggshells.

But I don't see how that applies to wild raptors. Mice still have bones, no? And hunting birds don't lay eggs daily like Granny's chickens, so I'd expect their calcium requirements to be lower.

So, if accumulated pesticides aren't the problem, and if wild eggshells used to be fragile and have now ceased to be fragile, what else changed? I do see more hawks now than I recall seeing as a young adult.

I am in favor of minimum effective use of pesticides, in general. Continual use of a pesticide will only select for tougher pests, which probably accounts for the giant immortal roaches in the building where I work. :yecch: