By Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times.
Last week, thirteen members of the House of Representatives introduced a resolution “recognizing the disparate impact of climate change on women.” The resolution implied that man-made climate change was responsible for impacts on global women, stating “food insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health.” But the resolution ignores the real tragedy, the tragedy of misguided policies to combat climate change.
Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate, has guided world governments since 1992.
That year, 41 nations and the European Community signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. The FCCC called for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to prevent dangerous global warming. For 21 years, world leaders have argued about how and when to reduce emissions. Today, 192 of 193 heads of state say they believe in man-made warming and most are pursing policies to try to stop climate change.
But, rather than beneficial, efforts to “fight” man-made climate change actually injure people in developing nations. The ideology of Climatism demands that nations forego the use of fossil fuel, use less energy, and force use of expensive or unreliable wind, solar, or biofuel alternatives. Poverty, lack of jobs, and lack of modern energy foster prostitution in developing nations. Climate change from emissions of carbon dioxide, a trace gas in our atmosphere, is a negligible factor.
The United Nations has long criticized the use of “unsustainable energy.” In a 2010 report on Asia, the UN warned, “Asia-Pacific countries must undergo structural adjustment to make key policy changes needed to switch their development mode…Most member countries have followed the industrial model of developed countries, which is the root cause of climate change. This traditional industrial development model results in an unsustainable energy consumption pattern.” The paper says nations must “pursue a low carbon development path” and skip a “growth path heavily reliant on pollutants.” The report goes on to question whether televisions, computers, and networking through the internet are necessary activities.
Yet, world economies remain overwhelmingly based on hydrocarbons. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2010 hydrocarbons provided 81 percent of the world’s energy, while wind and solar provided less than 1 percent. Denying hydrocarbon energy to developing nations is foolish and destructive policy.
The Equator Principles are ten principles for lending by international banks that work to the detriment of poor nations. Under pressure from environmental groups, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and 76 other banks in 32 countries adopted the Principles. These principles demand that banks lend in an “environmentally and socially responsible manner,” which sounds good. But a top objective of the Equator Principles is “to promote the reduction of emissions that contribute to climate change.” Lending capital is restricted for coal mines, oil refineries, and other hydrocarbon projects desperately needed to build the economies of developing nations.
At the same time, the theory of man-made warming appears increasingly shaky. Hundreds of studies show that Earth was warmer 1,000 years ago than it is today. Water vapor, not carbon dioxide, is Earth’s dominant greenhouse gas. Arctic sea ice recently reached a 30-year low, but Antarctic Sea ice is near a 30-year high. More than double the polar bears roam the Arctic today than in 1960. History shows that droughts, floods, and storms are neither more frequent nor more severe than in past decades. Sea levels are rising at only about 7‒8 inches per century. Global temperatures have not risen for more than ten years, contrary to predictions by the leading climate models.
The tragedy of Climatism is a misuse of resources on a vast scale. Over $250 billion is spent each year in a futile effort to decarbonize―twice global foreign aid. The world spent over $1 trillion in the last ten years and is on track to spend another trillion in the next four years in a fight against a climate change phantom.
At the same time, real life-and-death problems need to be addressed. According to United Nations figures, 25,000 people die from hunger-related issues each day. More than one billion people try to survive on less than $1.25 per day. Two and one-half billion lack adequate sanitation, 1.4 billion lack electricity, and almost one billion lack clean drinking water. Every year, two million die from AIDS. Almost one million die from tuberculosis. Malaria, pneumonia, and diarrheal diseases kill millions more.
Suppose we reallocate the billions spent in the foolish fight against global warming toward solving the real problems of humankind?
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
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NOTE: This book was the subject of a book burning photo-op at San Jose State University
– Anthony
“Over $250 billion is spent each year in a futile effort to decarbonize―twice global foreign aid.”
Wow. Thanks for putting the travesty in such sharp perspective. It truly is madness.
Absolutely brilliant post, lacking only reference to carbon greening of the planet, (Matt Ridley), & human/domestic animals pushing back deserts, (Allan Savory).
Thanks Steve goreham & Anthony.
I never realised how much climatism is a religion till I saw those two PHDs book burning.
These bozos really have a talent for shooting themselves in the foot. 🙂
I’m so sick and tied of the guilt trip laid on by the UN and liberals I want to puke. Maybe if the UN actually confronted the dictators, thugs, and megalomaniacs sitting in its own chambers then their own women in their own countries would have a fighting chance at life. Maybe grow food instead of buying guns and more palaces, expensive toys then you might get somewhere. To even attempt to blame climate for this garbage is utter nonsense. In my opinion NGOs are the world most useless humans ever to have lived. Ancient civilizations had the common sense to try and feed their peoples.
In the UK’s local elections the UKIP anti AGW made biggest advance while Liberals strongly pro AGW got severely battered by voters.
Ergo: the AGW is a turn off.
This really sums it up. Excellent post, Steve. 21 years is way too long for politicians to have bags over their heads. If they don’t wake up soon, they are going to have mob fury to contend with and that won’t be pretty. 21 years is a whole generation where nothing except foolish green policy has caused, and is causing the very destruction the greens claim to fear.
I’ve never known a group to so fight waking up!
I have just checked my 1969 book on deserts on something I long ago read and remember, and sure enough I found the passage:
“Among Bushmen there is no formal marriage ceremony. At the age of eleven or twelve the boys and girls find their partners and settle down like married couples anywhere.”
So if we can get CO2 back down to safe 1969 levels…
Slowly you may be coming around to my position, Anthony. No words I can speak or type are adequate to describe these vile people. They are killers of innocent children (see DDT) and poor across the world. I would not be me if I did not SPEAK OUT!!!!!!
Excellent article. It’s something alarmists and progressives don’t want to hear, because it reveals the tunnel vision of their elitist perspective. That position denies progress to large populations who desperately need more energy, not less and it takes resources away from research into developing economically viable, less carbon intensive energy . They are hurting people and the chances of long term control over C02 emissions that they claim to be be so concerned about as well.
These people are vile. Women are already turning to “sex work” due to economic poverty right now due to govn’t and corporate corruption, let alone any minute risk due to man-made climate change!
It is a low, low, low blow to exploit women like this. Women rights organizations should complain loudly.
I will say, though, that there are times when it does seem there is indeed a conspiracy, a conspiracy to completely discredit the political “left” by having them commit with insane fervor to the most improbable, ludicrous, and inappropriate causes.
While the UK, Germany et. al. are going into coal in a big new way. This con is aimed at keeping coal and oil out of the hands of the poor and needy so hypocritical rich Western nations can conserve oil and coal for THEIR future use. Greens have just been useful for governments in this regard.
I see Africa on the map with few lights. Deprive them of fossil fuels and they will burn more of the above ground fuel called trees. Even in Germany they have been stealing wood from the forests this past winter because power costs are so high. If rich Germans feel the need to do this then what do you expect Africans to do???? Expect accelerated deforestation and the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Here are some numbers and info for Africa:
PS
Jo Nova takes on AR5’s attempt to hide the embarrassing missing hotspot.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/04/ipcc-plays-hot-spot-hidey-games-in-ar5-denies-28-million-weather-balloons-work-properly/
stan stendera says: May 3, 2013 at 12:55 am
No words I can speak or type are adequate to describe these vile people. They are killers of innocent children (see DDT)
——————
How many times must this garbage be corrected
DDT is not banned
Mosquitos are becoming more DDT resistant.
DDT also causes mosuitos to be come resistant to other attacks.
see:
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/rachel-carsonddt-hoaxing-from-the-ayn-rand-institute/
So global warming causes prostitution? Don’t we refer to prostitution as ” the oldest profession”?
The spectre of CAGW has been the basis for reworking the economies of the developed West into government directed at the state, local, and federal levels coupled to Big Business. In the US because we do have a Constitution that supposedly prevents this kind of collusion, this 21st Century vision is actually being touted as a “new vision for intergovernmental relations in America’s federal system.” Macro Industrial Policy at the federal level and divvying up among cronies at the local is no way to prosper. But it is being pursued in earnest anyway.
Why? Because it is the vision for a political economy of the Left that CAGW supposedly makes necessary. If you are unsure take a look at the new economics institute site or the Living Cities vision just for starters. Or the Center for a Steady State Economy. Just this morning I got a blurb on a presentation by the Dean of Stern Business School at NYU, Peter Blair Henry, touting his book Turnaround and the need for the First World to emulate the pragmatic policies of the developing economies of China, India, and Brazil.
Dirigiste economies with a Corporatist oligarchy. Check out the Campus Initiative at NEI above to see pressure on the Economics departments to teach the New Economics theories.
We are falling into a world where facts are ignored in favor of aspirational theories and models to reorganize society towards a collectivist approach. Because the public sector and the politically connected prefer it that way. Living at our expense instead of having to create a product or service people voluntarily want to buy.
It is so dangerous now to see either Climate Change or education as stand-alone, good faith issues or sectors.
Trillions? Pah! The Powers That Be ensure that huge amounts of the people’s wealth is squandered. all. the. time. Catastrophe this, and bubble that, pretty soon it adds up to real money.
If we plebs were to have that wealth (that we earned) then we would just waste it on ‘stuff’. Not just put it into charities (hit hard since 2008) or spend it on conservation and our environment (which faltered as carbon became demonic, co-incidentally) but also help our fellow man in the second/third world to raise themselves to our levels of comfort.
We absolutely cannot have that old chap – it devalues our superiority complexes/mansions/classic cars/antiques/art collections/offshore bank accounts/land and property and means that ‘they’ would be able to afford champagne and steak for breakfast like what us superior types have. This would not do, so we must turn a blind eye to the political class and the gamblers as they turn treasure into smoke. It suits us and we can always make a few dollars in the confusion.
“Jimbo says:
May 3, 2013 at 3:14 am
I see Africa on the map with few lights. Deprive them of fossil fuels and they will burn more of the above ground fuel called trees.”
Correct. That little splash of light in eastern Africa, near the Horn of Africa is Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A city of about 8 million and growing daily. Many do not have nor can afford the sorts of energy sources we can, such as electricity. Most can barely afford to eat every day. Most rely on charcoal for cooking, which would you believe, is banned by the Govn’t. So people resort to what they can best do, source energy from wood for heating and cooking.
“Suppose we reallocate the billions spent in the foolish fight against global warming toward solving the real problems of humankind?”
What would happen first is that all of the doomsayers, the pseudo-scientists, and the climate apparatchiks in governments around the world would suddenly lose the ability to scam a percentage off all the billions that are being sent their way currently.
Understand that motivation and you can understand why the entire climatist elite is *desperate* to make sure that all of this money keeps flowing through them. If the money stops, they’ll lose their piece of the action, This is the key to climatism – it is legalized fraud, with a veneer of faux do-gooder morality that allows the thieves to pretend that they are wonderful, wonderful, people. But they’re not – they’re just liars and thieves who’s lives depend on keeping the scam going.
Although they really shouldn’t be so worried; I’m sure people with their qualifications would have no trouble at all finding a top flight job in either the food service or housekeeping industries..
A.D. Everard says:
May 3, 2013 at 12:46 am
This really sums it up. Excellent post, Steve. 21 years is way too long for politicians to have bags over their heads. If they don’t wake up soon, they are going to have mob fury to contend with and that won’t be pretty. 21 years is a whole generation where nothing except foolish green policy has caused, and is causing the very destruction the greens claim to fear.
I’ve never known a group to so fight waking up!
You are making a mistake if you believe that the politicians have bags over their heads – they are using this to gain and retain power over people who have no energy resources; and that includes western countries which have like the US and the UK started decommissioning old working power plants to be replaced by nothing but wind.
It is not environmentalists doing this. Subsidy farming using windmills kills large numbers of birds and bats and is also an extremely inefficient supply of energy. The subsidy driven market in biofuels has resulted in thousands of square miles of virgin rain forest being destroyed (all those pictures of endangered orangutans) for palm oil plantations and the price of corn rising and shortages – the US is importing corn from Brazil.
Companies and Joe public are persuaded by tax breaks to purchase electric vehicles and the costs of power and fuels increased by surcharges, regulations and taxes persuading the use of small underpowered vehicles and reduce long distance travel.
All the items emphasized in bold in the paragraphs above are imposts by politicians. Imposts that allow the politicians to increase their hold on the governance of countries and increase dependency by reduction of the capability of populations and entire countries to become independent wealth creators.
“If they don’t wake up soon, they are going to have mob fury to contend with and that won’t be pretty.”
The politicians know this too. So we see The Second Amendment being threatened and the Department of Homeland Security buying two billion hollow point rounds
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-for-homeland-security-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/.
http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2013/02/20/why-do-cops-use-hollow-point-bullets
It is not the politicians who have bags over their heads
Have we declared war upon our selves? Consider this quote in the context of the climate fraud. It speaks volumes.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953
34th president of US 1953-1961 (1890 – 1969)
“Transactional sex” due to climate change is called….
“Turning Warm-ageddon Tricks”
CO2 is also constantly expanding the lexicon….
Whenever a quacking politician says things like “save the planet”, “save the children”, “save the women”, or “save the grandchildren”, the correct translation is that the politician has no vision of the TRUTH, nor the ability to address and correct real problems.
Indeed. Climatism (a word I like, and will probably use from now on, replacing Warmism or Alarmism) is responsible for many of the very same things it tries to pin on “manmade climate change”, and has likely been responsible for lower living standards and millions of deaths worldwide. It is both supremely ironic and a moral outrage.
And the tragedy just goes on elsewhere:
“Meet The Millionaires And Billionaires Suddenly Buying Tons Of Land In Africa”
Oakland Institute just completed the most thorough investigative report on who’s buying land in Africa we’ve seen yet: “Hedge Funds Grabbing Land in Africa,” as BBC called it.
As commodities prices rise and inflation picks up, the OI made the report public, they say, because the number of investors buying up land in Africa concerns them.
For obvious reasons, there isn’t much out there about who’s buying what and how much in Africa. But what OI has discovered is a small number of investors paying sometimes nothing for large plots of land in some African countries.
The lease deals are arranged between seemingly corrupt African leaders, reportedly without disclosing the details to the members of the communities that will be displaced because of the land development, and investors such as hedge fund managers.
The end result — beating villagers, digging up their cemeteries, and taking over land that villagers have lived on for centuries — looks a lot like a less cruel version of what history tells us colonizing Americans did when they ousted the Indians, according to this one report anyway.
http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-millionaires-and-billionaires-buying-land-in-africa-2011-6?op=1%23ixzz24qi5ZL7W
But this landgrab by the rich is in no way restricted to Africa only:
“Slideshow: Who’s behind the landgrabs?”
Every day there are new stories of companies buying up farmlands. Malaysian palm oil giants buying up lands for plantations in West Africa. Wall Street bankers taking over cattle ranches in Brazil. Saudi businessmen signing land deals in the Philippines. The latest dataset on land grabs claims that 10 million hectares of land have been grabbed by foreign companies on average every year since 2007.
The result is that a small number of people are taking over more and more of the world’s farmlands, and the water that goes with it, leaving everyone else with less, or none at all. As the world plunges deeper into a food crisis, these new farmland lords will hold sway over who gets to eat and who doesn’t and who profits and who perishes within the food system.
The global farmland grab is only happening because people are pursuing it. The number of land grabbers is small, in contrast with the high number of people displaced by their actions. They are mostly men, often with experience working with agribusiness companies or banks. Some of them sit at high-levels of government and intergovernmental agencies, and sometimes at the highest levels. They operate out of the big financial centres of the world and often get together at farmland investor meetings, whether in Singapore, Zanzibar or New York City.
We think it might help the debate over land grabs to pull back the curtain a little on who these people are. So we’ve pieced together a slide show that tells about some of those who have been actively pursuing or supporting farmland grabs. It’s an emblematic set of land grabbers, not a comprehensive one. Knowing who’s invovled can also help us in pressuring the land grabbers to stop. Each landgrabber profile indicates who his or her friends are and provides resources for those who want further information or to pursue actions.
Download the slideshow in PDF (5.6 MB) or a text version in PDF (713 KB).
http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4576-slideshow-who-s-behind-the-land-grabs
There appears to be a direct co-relation between energy consumption per head and standard of living, the green delusion that a high standard of living can be maintained with a decreasing energy consumption is no more than religious dogma. With the exception of Nuclear solar and hydro which produced 9% of the worlds energy, all the rest comes subject to the immutable laws of chemistry and physics. A secondary co-relation of a measure of standard of living is directly related to the cost of the energy used. Every move so far to force more production to solar wind etc has seen a rapid increase the cost of energy from those sources.
check, just wondering what magic word I said to get kicked into moderation.
I read stan’s comment and I am having great difficulty finding the words “ban” “band” or “banned”. sergeiMK, please note that the UN and environmentalists appear to be trying to ban DDT. You talk also of resistance. The following addresses both the attempted ban and resistance.
Articles supporting DDT use from JunkScience
http://junkscience.com/ddt/
Correction:
I meant “bans”
It is precisely because of this massive misuse of resources that Al Gore, James Hansen, Michael Mann and all the other AGW hoaxsters should be tried for crimes against humanity.
SergieMK is correct when he says that DDT is not ‘banned’. He is also correct when he says that mosquitoes can develop a resistance to it. The first statement is simply a matter of semantics. The second is irrelevant.
The system is set up so that the use of DDT is ‘strongly discouraged’, but it is not banned. Poor countries are given the choice to make a living in the global food market or use DDT to fight malaria. They are not allowed to do both as wealthy nations have refused to ;purchase agricultural imports from countries that use DDT, even if they only use it for mosquito control. The net effect of this policy is almost identical to a ‘ban’. It is somewhat disgusting to be quibbling over the use of such a word when we are talking about the unnecessary suffering and deaths of millions of people.
The argument about resistance is just stupid. Mosquitoes will build resistance to any chemical method that is used to kill or repel them. Does that mean we should not even try? Bacteria builds resistance to antibiotics in humans. Does that mean we should never have used antibiotics to save countless lives in Western nations? Have you ever taken antibiotics to cure an infection Sergie?
re SergieMK and DDT,
Building on the excellent summation by Jim Clarke, it is worth adding the personal responsibility and ethics to Jim’s “system” and “strongly discouraged”
Environmental campaigners dedicated years of their lives to minimizing the use of DDT world-wide. Those campaigns included calls for, demands for, bans on DDT in various national and supra-national fora (such as the UN). In the event, they fell short by inches; the best they could achieve were “Principles” parallel to the “Principles” referenced in the head post with respect to bank lending for energy development, and project scoring/rating systems in national foreign aid funding decision processes. All of which was, quoting Jim, a “net effect … almost equivalent to a ban”.
As with all campaigns, the strategy was to bulldoze through change ahead of good science, or in most cases simply ahead of dissemination of good science to decision-makers. CAGW comes to mind.
To now read those same campaigners, those same activist organizations, repeat as a mantra “there is no ban”, to say it bluntly, makes me ill. They tried, they tried their hardest, they just barely fell short, but they sure caused an immense amount of harm along the way – and now with a straight face they can absolve themselves of responsibility for millions of unnecessary deaths by saying “there was no ban”?
Temperatures have not declined in a decade, however, in direct contradiction to the many predictions made at this site — and confirming the claims of scientists who study climate.
Can someone explain how imposing carbon taxes, turning food into ethanol, and driving up the price of food and energy is going to help all those poor “global women” who are suffering from the effects of global warming?
The primary goal of the UN is to keep the peasants as peasants.
The secondary goal of the UN is to keep the peasants quiet.
For those who have travelled and lived in Africa and specifically Addis Ababa where my company had an office (amongst others), power was often off several hours per day – which also meant no water. All over Africa you will see water storage tanks on the roofs of buildings. They get filled when the power and water are on, and you use the water from the storage tanks sparingly when the water and power was off. Try working in an environment where the power must be conditioned so your computers don’t blow up and you can only depend on power for 4 hours a day. When ever I came back to Canada, my clothes went straight to the washing machine to try to get the smell of smoke out of them. Addis Ababa has a permanent smoke pall hanging over it, and every day you see donkeys, children and women hauling huge loads of branches into the city for cooking. Pop up to Eritrea and watch the tankers carrying oil to western countries while they have no reliable power or water. And how can you have anything but human or donkey powered industry when you have little water and power? I am amazed at how well they do under the circumstances. Coke bottle solar is an appropriate technology but not likely Wind or large scale solar so hydrocarbons along with low power demand devices (like LED lighting) will be part of the solution for Africa.
I quote:
“Most member countries have followed the industrial model of developed countries, which is the root cause of climate change.”
Climatists simply deny reality. It may be demonstrated that the industrial model of developed countries is not the root cause of climate change. Their connection to the industrial model is made through the enhanced greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide, allegedly caused by industrial activity. This greenhouse effect supposedly warms the atmosphere and thereby causes that “anthropogenic” global warming that will be “dangerous” if not mitigated. All that is complete nonsense of course.How can you possibly postulate greenhouse warming if there is no warming now and there has not been any since the beginning of this century? Hansen did not have as much data on warming in 1988 as we now have on lack of warming, and yet Hansen came out and proclaimed that the warming had started. It is a fact that carbon dioxide today is higher than ever before and more is added every day. It is also a fact that this does not cause any warming whatsoever. Obviously carbon dioxide is not doing its stuff that is alleged to warm the world. Did it ever? The answer is no. In 2010 Ferenc Miskolczi used NOAA weather balloon database that goes back to 1948 to study absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere. He found that absorption had been constant for 61 years while carbon dioxide at the same time went up by 21.6 percent. This additional carbon dioxide had no effect on absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. That should be the end of greenhouse effect and anthropogenic global warming dogma but unfortunately no one wants to know. Nobody wants to listen to science when pseudoscience reinforces the fantasies of consensus thinking, and that is exactly what we have today. They either don’t care about observations that contradiction their theory or are too stupid to understand that no absorption means no global warming, period. This fact makes all those “mitigation” projects a worthless waste of resources. But they just know that they are on the right side and denialists must not be allowed to confuse them. Science means nothing to them because they don’t know what it is. They are just saving the world and what could be more important than that?
Here’s an example of the futility and concomitant wasstefulness of measures to control CO2.
Denmark’s government boasts(!) (not laments?) that it has caused energy costs to quadruple in Denmark, and claims that the country is on the point of getting 50% of its energy from wind. There is no way that any country can get 50% of its power from a source that is only operable 20% of the time, at best. You don’t have to understand second-order differential equations to see this. The Danish people are being sold a bill of goods by some accomplished liars in their government.
And here in California our electric rates are already double the national average because of “renewable” mandates. They’re also just as artificially higher in other states with a lot of wind generation. And don’t forget wind’s four dirty little secrets: millions of dead birds and bats, habitat disruption (15,000 times as much land required to produce the same juice as a 500-megawatt fossil fuel power plant, not to mention the despoiled landscapes), the inefficient types of fossil fuel generation that must be used to “firm” the power when the wind stops, since more efficient types of generation cannot respond quickly enough to maintain the energy balance on the grid (resulting in a substantial net increase, not decrease, in emissions) and some very nasty chemical pollution leaking from the machines as they run.
Wind power is an environmental as well as an economic disaster. Wind power costs 40 cents a kilowatt-hour for a good reason: land cost, equipment cost, depreciation and maintenance. It is anything but free,. It costs in land, equipment, additional grid infrastructure to connect it, and maintenance labor. It will never compete with fossil fuel power unless the taxpayers subsidize most of the cost of it. And since the whole idea that fossil fuel burning is warming the globe is now so thoroughly proven to be bullfeces, it’s insane and mean-spirited to force these high costs on consumers, especially poor people who desperately need cheap energy.
The only reason wind has any prospect at all is because big fat-cat investors in it like Gore, Immelt, Soros and Buffett are steering their toady in the White House, with their whoop-de-do “campaign contributions,” to promulgate policies that raise fossil energy prices high enough for wind to compete with them – making goo-goo gobs of money for them, while shafting the middle class and poor people. I seriously doubt that any of them, even the toady, really believe in AGW – my guess is that all they think about is gratifying their urge for their power and their self-enrichment, and that they couldn’t enunciate the first argument for global warming without a teleprompter.
Sergei, your defense of science and Rachel Carson is good. I hope some here will pay attention.
It might be useful to note that, today, malaria deaths and incidence of disease are at the lowest they’ve been in recorded human history. From peak DDT use years, when a half-billion people a year got malaria, and 4 million died, incidence of the disease has been slashed by 50%, to fewer than 250,000 infections a year. Even more dramatic, in 2010 fewer than 700,000 people died from malaria, worldwide — a reduction of more than 75% in the death toll since peak DDT use years, circa 1959-61.
Most of that reduction was achieve without DDT; especially since 2000, deaths have been cut by a third, almost wholly without DDT.
But you’re right: There is no effective ban on DDT. Under the Stockholm Convention, the Persistant Organic Pollutants Treaty (POPs), any nation can use DDT legally simply by notifying the World Health Organization of intent to do so (WHO has no power to deny such actions).
But we should pay attention: India is the world’s greatest manufacturer and user of DDT today. India makes and uses more DDT than all other nations combined. Were DDT effective against malaria, the nation should be malaria free by now. Instead, India faces increasing incidence of the disease, and increasing deaths. That the big DDT user is also the big malaria loser should be a warning claxon to anyone who thinks all we need to do is poison the hell out of Africa and Asia to beat malaria.
sergeiMK says:
May 3, 2013 at 3:15 am
How many times must this garbage be corrected DDT is not banned
=========
you were evidently not yet born when it was banned. those of us that were recognize the mistake that was made.
as soon as the first world had rid itself of malaria and yellow fever it became concerned with pesticides. all sorts of alarm stories were circulated in the press. backed by scientific research DDT was banned and much more harmful, expensive and less effective pesticides were used in its place. the great advantage of DDDT is that it is dirt cheap and only needs one application every 6 months.
the third world was held hostage as government and NGO grants were tied to the limited DDT use that was permitted under UN treaty, effectively denying DDT for the third world. Malaria returned with a vengeance along with Dengue. Bedbugs are [now] epidemic in many cities in the first world due to the DDT ban.
we see the same parallels today. the industrialized first world is fearful of the pollution that will result if the third world industrializes, so they are trying to ban the use of coal in the third world using carbon taxes or carbon cap and trade to make it too expensive for anyone except the first world.
note: having lived for 20 years in the tropics I will attest these diseases are no joke. they are killers. it is worth noting that Slim’s disease was listed by WHO (world health org) for years as carried by mosquito’s and bedbugs until it was recognized that this was political dynamite. Slim’s disease is what we now call HIV/AIDS.
so remember, when you find bedbugs in that hotel room you are sleeping in, you might just have caught something from the people that slept there the night before.
Letting people die in vast numbers in poor countries is part of the progressive solution.
A very good article. These are the REAL issues that face the world of humanity. How this could come about, how could what can only be called now an actively murderous program be maintained, must be core to future questionings and demands for accountability.
Those who claim a moral imperative in AGW supposed mitigation, and a superior moral positioning for themselves, must be made to face this, which destroys any such illusion, conceit, or calculated strategic occupancy of morality, and forces them in themselves to see what they are, and allows the world to make that judgement also.
So much of this issue – and virtually all issues of real weight – is addressed as though “pointing things out”, on the assumption of normal human responses prevailing, should be adequate in having realities addressed.
The “conversation”. Within a civilized format of exchange.
This just doesn’t work.
It doesn’t work because those behind this are indifferent – at best. They know exactly what their priorities are and human welfare is not one of them.
This is entirely consistent with the negligence in attention that is endemic in society, where if there is no obvious negative impact of an action on the particular person, they do not care.
This reaches absolutes not in the “average” person and their dealings with their responsibilities and people touched by them, but in classes of people where the implications of their actions are remote, the basic justification for their position is obscure or theoretical, and the associations they have are with others of similar attenuation from the “everyday”.
The “outs” are easy. They are now pro-forma.
For example, when needed, there is reference to “unintended consequences”, which has now assumed the position of Pavlovian response to anything “inconvenient” that occurs, and has something of the status of philosophical reflection, when in fact it is just used to excuse and evade responsibility. And if no-one is responsible, things “just happen”, so there is little point taking any notice of them when it is advantageous not to.
The people behind “Global Warming” have, as your figures show, directly or indirectly killed millions. Slaughtered them.
Predictable. Inevitable. And for some of them at least, desirable.
They will not be reached, nor will they be properly seen, by framing realities such as you describe as commentary which will be acknowledged.
The only thing that can work is to face the reality and to be accusatory.
Without ambiguity. With no room for concession or mitigation. To treat what is stark as exactly that and make judgement on fundamental human values.
This requires a change in expectations attitude and tone. For example, your wording:
“The tragedy of Climatism …”
In using “tragedy” in this way, it suggests something inadvertent, unforeseeable, and an occurrence that lies within the realm of human experience and expectations.
But that is not what has given rise to this.
What you describe, resource misuse, has not come from nothing, and is in no way mysterious. It is and always has been blindingly obvious that pursing a “global warming” agenda must inevitably kill millions of people, not just through “neglect” but directly as is illustrated by your reference to “the Equator Principles”, which by denial of energy must lead to a retardation or negation of those things energy can provide. Which is the difference between life or death.
This has been a deliberate choice, in full awareness of the direct consequences, to undertake a course of action that will kill millions.
A more accurate substitute for “The tragedy of Climatism” might be:
“The aims of Primaevalism.”
Oh yes, as I remember Progressives like genocide.
Yet, how else have we (traditionally) freed ourselves from tyrants? Methinks one must weigh the circumstances before this phrase, before this line of thinking is applied carte blanche (‘unthinkingly’, as in “zero tolerance policies” and the like.)
We are of no use to anyone if we ourselves are shackled, whether by internal or external factors or forces.
From the ‘conclusion’ section of the United States “Declaration of Independence”:
“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. …”
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Curious … first try got spam binned …
Yet, how else have we (traditionally) freed ourselves from t yrants? Methinks one must weigh the circumstances before this phrase, before this line of thinking is applied carte blanche (‘unthinkingly’, as in “zero tolerance policies” and the like.)
We are of no use to anyone if we ourselves are shackled, whether by internal or external factors or forces.
From the ‘conclusion’ section of the United States “Declaration of Independence”:
“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are A bsolved from all A llegiance to the B ritish C rown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy W a r , conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. …”
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Mr. Berple may wish to consult some actual history on DDT. He said:
Concern over DDT started in 1945; by 1958, because DDT killed off fish with such great abandon, the Department of Agriculture stopped its use of DDT on any National Forest lands.
See here, for concerns from USFWS in 1945; and here, in The Forest Service: Fighting for public lands.
In the U.S., malaria had been largely eliminated by 1939, according to the official histories of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which was established specifically to fight malaria. You noted that date is seven years before DDT was available to fight malaria to civilians. DDT was used in mop-up operations in the U.S. — but the U.S. showed (again) that the way to eliminate malaria is to prevent bites (we used better housing, with screened windows, mostly) and beef up malaria diagnostic and treating capabilities in the local health care community (we established a malaria fighting Public Health Service unit in every affected county). DDT can aid in that strategy, but DDT is not a substitute for better bite prevention and better medical care.
Concern over DDT had nothing to do with 1st world/3rd world competition. Use of DDT had been suspended in the malaria eradication campaign a full seven years before the U.S. banned it. EPA’s jurisdiction does not extend to Africa.
For Africa, the problem wasn’t a ban. All U.S. DDT production was dedicated to export after 1971 — and that multiplied the amount of DDT available to fight malaria, and made it cheaper. The problem in Africa was that DDT campaigns couldn’t work without great improvements in medical care that nations in revolution couldn’t mount; and the DDT campaigns couldn’t work in nations where there simply was not the government discipline to be able to mount a campaign that could guarantee 80% of all households would be sprayed, and then that a very high percentage of people with malaria would be cured before the mosquitoes came roaring back.
Actually, alarm stories were stifled. Fish kills, bird kills, and other problems with DDT were kept out of the newspapers for at least 17 years. When Rachel Carson, EDF and Audubon Society first broke through the smokescreen, DDT manufacturers attempted a $500,000 smear campaign against Carson, and called everyone else irresponsible alarmists.
You’re right, that scientific research prompted the ban on DDT use in agriculture. But from 1945, it took 27 years before the scientific evidence had any effect in restricting DDT use outside of federal agencies. By 1970, there had been many huge fish kills, including in Oklahoma and a huge one that nearly shut down the Colorado River through Austin, Texas. It wasn’t that there was a bit of scientific evidence to back scare stories. Science was way ahead of the popular press; there was no evidence to counter the clear evidence of damage. By the time EPA held hearings (as required under a 1958 law — the court ruling ordering EPA to hold the hearings is pretty interesting), even the DDT manufacturers agreed DDT should not be used outdoors, in the wild. The major point of contention at the administrative hearings was whether changing the label instructions would be enough to stop massive, outdoor usage of DDT. EPA decided no, and issued a formal ban instead.
That rule was challenged by the DDT manufacturers as not having sufficience evidence; and by environmentalists and ornithologists and being too tame based on the evidence. The appellate courts ruled that EPA’s action was clearly supported by the evidence in the extensive hearing record.
In short, the science record was quite clear, and DDT was banned from agricultural use in the U.S. because, in the wild, it kills entire ecosystems. Not politics, not hysteria, but solid, slow science.
DDT used to be cheaper than almost everything else — but no longer. Bednets are cheaper, and more effective in preventing malaria.
In 2005 it cost about $12 to spray one house with DDT; if DDT was the right stuff to use, if the local mosquitoes were not yet highly resistant to it, that spraying lasted about 6 months. So, two sprayings a year, in 80% of all homes in the area — $24/year.
In contrast, bednets cost about $10 (that’s high), and they last five years. That’s $2/year.
Bednets used about 80% of the time prevent between 50% and 85% of malaria cases in households with the nets; DDT alone prevents about 35% to 50% of the malaria infections.
Bednets are more effective, and cheaper. Bednets protect the people who use them, and those people don’t have to depend on their neighbors to have effective barriers against malaria.
The object is to prevent mosquitoes from biting infected people, and to prevent infected mosquitoes from biting other people after the parasite has matured in the mosquito. Bednets do that better and less expensively than DDT.
I keep hearing that, but I can’t find any documentation to verify it. WHO never stopped using DDT, and has never had a policy against using DDT where it would work (even now, with the POPs Treaty). USAID has never had a policy of stopping nations from using DDT if they wanted to; USAID has preferred to put U.S. money in programs that have proven effectiveness, however. DDT in many areas doesn’t meet that criterion. But there has never been any U.S. policy against DDT use in foreign nations. In fact, the 1972 EPA regulation required that all U.S. DDT manufactured be sold overseas, and the Commerce Department actively pushed U.S. chemical sales in foreign nations.
The only UN treaty that applies became effective only in 2001 — and it has a special careve out to allow DDT.
So I’d like to see some documentation on NGO grants and other agencies not using DDT. Historically, legally, that is not the case. I have never found a single case where any request for DDT was not fulfilled. As you said, it was cheap, and there was a lot it available. No nation in Africa was prevented from DDT use by a shortage of DDT, nor by its expense.
Malaria never “returned with a vengeance.” Malaria infections and malaria deaths have continued to drop since the EPA’s ban on DDT use on cotton. As a pragmatic matter, mosquitoes not sprayed with DDT in Arkansas do not migrate to Africa. Neither did EPA’s ban in 1972 prevent use of DDT in Africa in 1965.
In every year since 1972, malaria incidence and deaths have declined, or flatlined. The great progress since 2000, cutting malaria deaths by a third, was achieved with disciplined public health and education, careful use of pharmaceuticals, and ambitious bednet and education campaigns — almost completely without DDT.
Dengue? It’s declining, too.
Bedbugs? They became immune to DDT in the 1950s. They were essentially wiped out of the first world using other pesticides, after 1960. Professional exterminators stopped using DDT on bedbugs by 1958.
That’s a bovine excrement statement, too.
The problem with slim disease was that no African nation, nor Asian nation, had the great resources of the National Institutes of Health to track it down. WHO didn’t know how it was transmitted, nor did anyone else. If you’ve got evidence WHO claimed they knew it was carried by bedbugs and mosquitoes, I’d like to see it. In all of my conversations with UN officials, they were clear they did not know how the disease was transmitted — nor did anyone until sometime after it was clear that it was an HIV variety, and more research was done on how the virus is passed.
As soon as researchers in the U.S. and France identifed the virus, that was broadcast around the world. As soon as it was understood how the virus was transmitted, that was broadcast around the world. There was no skullduggery by the UN to hide it. The problem has always been how to stop transmission since we don’t yet have a reliable cure.
Bedbugs don’t transmit diseases as a rule — in fact, I challenge you to provide any research showing any disease is spread by them.
If you think DDT is a great panacea against any disease or insect pest, you’re under-informed. If you think there is a plot to keep the third world down despite a hundred years of data showing economic development in the third world makes great markets for first world countries, I have a bridge at Tacoma Narrows I can let you have for a song.
Are we erecting a strawman argument here Ed? My understanding is that they have held constant for at least that period … what indice do you cite to claim otherwise?
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Perhaps Mr. Darrell would like to become ‘better informed’ as well (a little different perspective follows).
Then again, perhaps not.
Concern over DDT was expressed (you have cited one and only memo/presser to support your assertion) in 1945; let’s not build a bridge too far.
The opening line and following paragraph from that press release says:
DDT is already an important weapon in the continuous fight against insect pests, but unless it is used with caution it is capable of considerable damage to wildlife, beneficial insects, and indirectly to crops,
… “Caution in its use is essential because of our incomplete knowledge of its action on many living things, both harmful and beneficial”
To which I think many of us would respond: Doh! (Roughly translated: “Ya think?”)
Do you have direct cites for studies to support this statement? I don’t have time to phish -er- fish through the blog post referenced earlier.
Why does the first link (alluding to “a long history of trouble with DDT”) to the FWS website (Archives of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)) begin with report dated November 1, 1973?
Viewing further up the screen I don’t find any reports back to 1945 even that might support a statement that says: “DDT killed off fish with such great abandon”.
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Seriously? The lead post in this thread takes the opposite stance, that DDT is harmless, and that it was banned by overactive, hysterical liberals, and that Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, which said directly that DDT is an important weapon fighting insect pests but unless used with caution would cause incredible damage, was wrong.
No, I don’t think the anti-science types would think that. I don’t think the anti-regulation, “no global warming here” group would think that. I think they’d defend mischaracterizations of the science. I think they’d cheer fools and charlatans like Christopher Monckton who claim, completely without cause, that Rachel Carson was a mass murderer.
You may be sane, but you’re running with a posse of insane clowns.
No, we’re providing a direct refutation to the absurd claim that warming is over because temperatures have not risen dramatically in a decade, but instead stayed at an insanely high level reached about 2000, despite repeated claims here that global cooling began about 1995 (or 1996, or whenever the particular writer wished to claim it had begun).
Ed Darrell,
Wise up. Planet Earth is falsifying your nonsense.
Dear Ed Darrell, Please note, in the last century the rise in global temperatures has been less than 1.0c. Sorry to disappoint you, but current temperatures are not at an insanely high level.
Ed Darrell says:
May 5, 2013 at 3:28 pm
????
“Insanely high level” in 2000?
Less than 1/2 of one degree higher in 2000-2001-2002 is “insanely high’ On what planet do you dwell?
What exactly is the harm in a rise in temperature of less than 1/2 of one degree rise in temperature ?
Of a rise in temperature of 1/10 of one degree from 1970’s “baseline” through this month? Nearly 45 years of “catastrophic global warming” an all you can point to 1/10 of 1 degree measured temperature rise? (I hope the Antarctic sea ice gets no higher than last year’s record high: At the latitude of its edge, the more Antarctic sea ice there is, the more solar energy is reflected, the colder the world gets.)
On the other hand, the less Arctic sea ice there is at 80 north, the more evaporation losses there are, the greater the radiation losses there into the night sky, the cooler the world gets.
Ed Darrell says:
May 5, 2013 at 3:17 pm
Count the millions in third world countries who have died BECAUSE of her ideas, her claims, her exaggerations and propaganda against DDT. Yes, she and her followers are callas, anti-human, deliberate murderers.
Hi Steve, I shared this article with some friends here in Manila who discussed about the renewables in facebook. They like it. Cheers.
Carson’s ideas have saved 39 million lives since 2,000, 56 million lives between 1972 and 2000.
95 million lives saved — that’s a -95 million who died.
I’ve counted them carefully. You should, too.
More like lions of preventive medicine, but if you wish to call them lilies, or even the genus calla, perhaps I shouldn’t complain.
(Apologies; it’s an innocent typo, I know. It made me smile, and I hope you can smile about it, too.)
Ed Darrell says:
May 5, 2013 at 7:10 pm
Who counted them? Support your claim – and get your numbers from someone/from a group who is NOT supporting her deadly-enviro agenda.
I see no refutation, rather further unsubstantiated assertions (IOW, “Where’s your evidence, man?”).
BTW, who is this ‘we’ you now speak of?
Still waiting to see how you’re going to handle another unsubstantiated assertion, to wit your previous whopper: “DDT killed off fish with such great abandon” claim.
I’m not holding my breathe, either, awaiting a non-forthcoming reply, but perhaps an artful dodge coupled with a lame weave, still remaining non-response to a cite or a basis for the hyped claim.
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It would be nice to see more people doing their homework instead of holding their breath. You’re partway there.
Go back to the links I offered earlier. You complained one started in 1972, when its timeline and its links went back to 1945. I think you could do well to study the issue to be sure you’re not demanding information already presented.
[snip – Ed I’m not interested in your off topic DDT thread bombing crusade here, should have shut it down sooner. You have you own blog, discuss it there. – Anthony]