Guest essay by Andy May
The late Dr. Michael Crichton was wonderful writer. In 2003 he presented a wonderful essay in San Francisco equating environmentalism to religion. Nobel prize winning physicist Dr. Ivar Giaver makes the same point in a presentation here. In religion man is meant to be saved from the consequences of his sins. In the environmentalist religion the world was a wonderful, beautiful Eden until man and his technology came along. Man has eaten the apple and lost Eden. Now we must give up our “evil” technology and go back to nature, otherwise all is lost.
As Crichton notes:
“There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?
And what about indigenous peoples, living in a state of harmony with the Eden-like environment? Well, they never did. On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals, and they did this several thousand years before the white man showed up … And what was the condition of life? Loving, peaceful, harmonious? Hardly, the early peoples of the New World lived in a state of constant warfare. … The warlike tribes of this continent are famous: the Comanche, Sioux, Apache, Mohawk, Aztecs, Toltec, Incas. Some of them practiced infanticide, and human sacrifice. And those tribes that were not fiercely warlike were exterminated…”
Environmentalists are horrible at predictions. We haven’t run out of oil, millions haven’t starved due to overpopulation, half of all species have not gone extinct, temperatures have not risen in over 18 years, total Antarctic ice and sea ice are increasing and on and on. But, it’s a religion, facts don’t matter. The bearded idiot on the street doesn’t put down his “end of the world is near” sign just because we pass the date he predicted we would all die. He just changes the date of destruction and carries on.
As Dr. Crichton explains, DDT is not a carcinogen, it did not cause birds to die and the people who banned it knew these facts. But, they banned it anyway and as a result tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, died. This was because of religion, not science.
The “Church of Global Warming” is probably the worst sect. The world has warmed from 288 Kelvin to 288.8 Kelvin in the last 135 years and not at all since 2002 according to the UAH satellite data. This is insignificant and very normal variability. The world is greener, food crops better and larger than ever, fewer people are hungry or in poverty, life expectancy is longer than ever before, and we have more arable land. There is no evidence that global warming is either man-made or dangerous and there is no evidence that carbon dioxide is either the sole cause of the minor warming we have seen or the dominant cause. We can show it is a greenhouse gas like water vapor, but that is about it.
We must get the religion out of environmentalism. We must get it back on a scientific basis. Too many organizations are simply lying, pure and simple. It started with DDT and has only gotten worse since. Science, especially environmental science, is becoming more and more politicized and this could have disastrous consequences.
Note: this post accidentally went up without Andy May’s byline. He is the author, not me. -Anthony Watts
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spot on, good luck with that.
In fact, more than luck is needed. The Warmists are holding all the levers of power. The mainstream media keeps playing the AGW scare. New measures to fight Climate Change are continually being enacted. Skeptics are ignored or ridiculed, left to talk amongst themselves in their little sandbox.
When trying to discuss a skeptical point of view of climate change with friends and relatives, I am almost always dismissed : “It’s so obvious that man-made-climate-change is happening… I saw it on the news, I read it in the paper, I saw it on in internet…”
People don’t want to make the effort of looking for, and evaluating, contrarian point of views. They want the truth fed to them… like a religion.
More fundamentally, similarly to religion, too many people ***want*** to believe in man-made-climate-change. Believing gives them a convenient frame of reference to judge good and bad.
I think religion is being unfairly represented/bashed here, and in the article. Maybe using the word ‘cult’ is more appropriate and suitable to their behavior.
Nigel, “cult” is an old Roman word that means “religion.” It is similar to the n-bomb for black people or similar language for other ethnicities. Here, “religion” means unfalsifiable.
Nigel, the current social science usage of “cult” sums to a religion only a few decades old at most which has “socially deviant” practices and beliefs. Effectively saying that regardless of what you purport to “believe,” if it adheres to social norms, it is not a “cult.” Since all major religions start as “cults” by that definition, and some including Islamic and Christian sects proudly acknowledge their historical heritage of social “deviance,” the distinction is really moot.
The facts will come out – and indeed they are to some extent.
The crazy Green Taliban anti Fracking movement is a classic example of exactly what you say in your article Anthony
Peak Oil Rules! OK
We cannot allow Fracking because it blows what we say out of the water!
And yet I like a few miles from Wytch Farm in Dorset UK –
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/10233955/The-town-where-a-form-of-fracking-is-already-happening.html
And unless you bumped into this place in the dark by accident – you would never know it was there!
Typo – “And yet I live a few miles…….”
You can call enhanced recovery a ‘form of fracking’ if you stretch the definition, or rather distort it – but it is a totally different technique from what is being trialled in the UK in Lancashire etc.
Griff, and your definition of “fracking” is what?
Whether it is oil or gas, the well has to be “fracked” to get the maximum recoverable quantity of fossil fuel or hydrocarbons.
Excerpted comment ……..
“Even though the birth of fracking began in the 1860s, the birth of modern day hydraulic fracturing began in the 1940s. “
Water flooding is in no way a fracking technique. Fracking requires high pressures to actually break the rock to create greater effective permeability and greater production rates in reservoirs that otherwise would not be economically viable. Injection rates during water flooding are by design too low the fracture the rock. Enhanced recovery in the petroleum industry refers to recovery of secondary oil in older oil fields that is not recovered during the initial production phase.
Griff, please have mercy on the language. Just because you see it in use as a synonym for “tested” doesn’t make “trialled” any less grotesque. It is nearly as horrible as “debunked.”
Griff – really rather miss my point. And that point is that the extraction process, after whatever sort of Fracturing took place all those years back, has carried on quietly, with no fuss and no bother to us local residents whatsoever.
You seriously would not know it was there.
@ur momisugly AlexB – and that is why they have to signpost it…………..LOL!!!!
Unless you follow the road signs.
The Global Warming/Climate Change sect of the Environmental religion is too big to fail.
I do agree with you – but with reality steadfastly refusing to follow their doom and gloom predictions – just how long can they stave off “failure”?
Loved “State of Fear” by MC and quote it occasionally. Especially liked his description of Greenies intrusions ruining Yellowstone Park. On my website for years:
Climate and Keplerian Planetary Dynamics
The “Solar Jerk”, The King-Hele Cycle,
and the Challenge to Climate Science
by Rhodes W. Fairbridge
(Published in 21st Century Science and Technology magazine)
A senior Earth scientist divulges some little known
discoveries, and how they may affect Earth’s climate.
[the missing link]
http://www.crawfordperspectives.com/Fairbridge-ClimateandKeplerianPlanetaryDynamics.htm
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
The mainstream media has played a hugely successful role in corrupting the ‘science’ of global warming, aka climate change, into the fashionable new eco-religion that it has become today.
Add, literally, trillions of government ‘green’ (taxpayer money), a ton of celebrity eco-virtue-signalling, a pinch of data manipulation, and the religion of ‘climate change’ has rapidly morphed into, as Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University California, famously coined in his blistering resignation letter to the APS:
“The greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.”
Hence, we give thanks to “The world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change” – WUWT, led by Pastor Watts, for giving us out daily dose of climate reason and rationalism! Amen 🙏
Nice post Anthony.
Ah, but if you dismantled the Global Warming Industry, what would happen to all those poor unemployable ‘climate scientists’?
Would anyone notice they had gone and what would we do with all the hundreds of billions of dollars we would save?
“Would anyone notice they had gone and what would we do with all the hundreds of billions of dollars we would save?”
Perhaps molten salt nuclear power and a non-polluting technology to burn garbage for cheap power? We could tackle the REAL problems that exist, including protecting the grid from magnetic blasts.
Ah, but if you dismantled the Global Warming Industry, what would happen to all those poor unemployable ‘climate scientists’?
Climb ate Scientists Lives Matter.
For those interested in how scare stories like DDT, unleaded petrol or white asbestos went from bad research, via ignorant politicians and the media, to became global governmental policy at the cost of countless millions of dollars, I thoroughly recommend “Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth” by the British authors Christopher Booker and Richard North.
This 2007 book is fascinating in its entirety but, somewhat presciently, there is a chapter on global warming. Christopher Booker in particular has since gone on to develop his interest in the myth of AGW, writing further books on the subject and regularly writing about the subject, and its impact on the present, simply insane UK government energy policies, in his weekly column for The Sunday Telegraph. Always worth a read!
Booker is simply wrong on that as he is on most things…
If you think asbestos is harmless, sprinkle it on your carpet…
Utter nonsense Griff. Try reading his book before commenting. For the record, nobody disputes the harmfulness of blue/brown asbestos. It’s the (chemically quite different) white asbestos that should never have been lumped in with it in the legislation. Too long to go into here but worth researching given the incredible, and unnecessary, cost this has resulted in.
Christopher Booker is right.
He never said that all asbestos is harmful.
There are two main types: blue and white asbestos.
Blue asbestos is dangerous. But white asbestos is completely harmless and is apparently very similar to baby powder.
.
Booker is right on many things, from climate change to the appalling miscarriages of justice in Britain’s “child protection” system. I suggest you check your facts.
Chris
Griff, there’s a cliff over there. Don’t look, just LEAP! Like you always do.
The original research that goes into Booker’s articles is second to none. About asbestos he distinguished between Blue and White asbestos, something that most journalist and yourself fail to know are different. If I remember the article correctly Booker pointed out that white asbestos is as dangerous as talcum powder yet the legislation was forcing individuals, schools and companies to spend ten of thousands of pounds having it removed by specialist firms. A flagrant waste of everybody’s money, something perhaps you support and think unworthy of bringing to the public’s attention? Perhaps you are wrong on most things?
Griff, you said “if you think asbestos is harmless, sprinkle it on your carpet”. I’ve seen this type of argument before. If you think PCB’s are harmless, drink a cup also comes to mind. It displays an ignorance of what is toxic, because the dose makes the poison. Drink a big glass of vitamin a and you will die. I sprinkle carcinogens on my carpet all the time. It is sand which where I live is predominantly quartz. Some asbestos too no doubt because it is a common mineral in the ultramafic rocks that are common here.
Ian, my father used to go on about asbestos, in the 60s I believe, on its mischaracterization as just as you say, only one form is harmful.
Some forms of asbestos are mildly harmful, others are completely harmless.
Even the harmful ones usually require the presence of other carcinogens, such as heavy smoking, before they have any impact.
The harmfulness of asbestos is similar to that of smoke, or wood, glass, metal, coal or silica dust. All fine particulates are things you really want to avoid breathing on a regular basis. No particulate material is safe to breath chronically (not even wheat flour), which (chronic exposure) is what really killed asbestos workers, coal miners, cigarette smokers and professional makers of gun flints in the 18th century.
There are six legally recognized forms of “asbestos” – lawyers aren’t mineralogists – that are derived from two distinct mineralogical families, amphiboles and serpentines. The only thing that makes the various minerals “asbestos” is the flexible, fibrous crystalline, “asbestiform” habit. The sole reason asbestos received the stupid legal treatment it did is that the industries relying on it resisted admitting a workplace (chronic) exposure hazard that could be dealt with by simple protective equipment. Now, like lead and mercury, the general population is superstitiously afraid of the very idea that there could asbestos around.
Speaking of the UK’s mad energy policy, Hinckley C nuclear plant appears set to get the nod. A snip at £25 billion or so. Only the dearest construction on the entire planet with electricity prices to match. We could’ve had 6 CCGT (gas) plants for £3 billion all in, delivered, installed and operational in the blink of an eye. But nope, that’s waaaaay too simple and not nearly expensive enough for us Brits. Insane.
That is why nuclear needs to move to the Molten Salt Reactor, low pressure, no water cooling/heat transfer, no 150 atmosphere plumbing or Billion in pressure domes. eGeneration.org
Nobody argues that nuke plants are cheap to build, but fuel costs are low (about $.01 per kWh) so that over the lifetime of the plant, nuke power costs about 2/3 that of the current price of natural gas. What will gas be selling for in 30 years? How stable will the market be by then? ref: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx Also note that nuke plants pay into a decommissioning fund that will cover the cost of decommissioning, that is if the politicians let them operate for their lifetime.
Visionar: Here’s a piece of news on progress of a Molten Salt reactor in the US:
http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2016/09/14/terrestrial-energy-advances-imsr-through-doe-process-091402#.V9ne1jV0foQ
To show how stupid politicians are, when we had the misfortune to have Gordon Brown as our PM, he decided to penalise drivers of petrol (gasoline) cars and give tax breaks for those who bought diesel vehicles because CO2 emissions are lower in diesel vehicles and mpg is better. Once again the Law of Unintended Consequences struck as predictably as ever and our cities became more air-polluted, why? Because anyone who has been behind an old/badly maintained diesel vehicle ends up breathing in a cocktail of carcinogenic pm10’s and various oxides of nitrogen. all of which are 1000’s of times more detrimental to health than CO2. We have all sat behind these vehicles, belching out black clouds of pungent emissions. Simple observation and application of common sense would have prevented this problem.
Ian, I agree totally with you about Christopher Booker, his column always talks sense as does Simon Heffer’s which is also in the Comment section of The Sunda Telegraph.
You missed the best part. I would wander through a tank shop in which the air could have the consistency of fog, yet aside from the stench breathing was virtually unaffected. Slide to emissions reduction where heat of formation was increased to reduce particulate emissions…and toxicity went through the roof.
Chris Wright September 14, 2016 at 2:21 am..
Christopher Booker is right.
He never said that all asbestos is harmful.
There are two main types: blue and white asbestos.
Blue asbestos is dangerous. But white asbestos is completely harmless and is apparently very similar to baby powder.
.
Booker is right on many things, from climate change to the appalling miscarriages of justice in Britain’s “child protection” system. I suggest you check your facts.
In this both Chris and Chris are wrong.
While white asbestos is less harmful than blue asbestos [see http://www.asbestosdiseases.org.au/the-wittenoom-tragedy.html%5D it is not completely harmless.
It is not similar to baby powder, produced from the mineral talc. Talc is a mica, a mineral that occurs as sheets or flakes. Chrysotile is often found in nature mixed with talc as both minerals are found in the same rock types.
Chrysotile [white asbestos] has a fibrous form, not platy, and is a danger to human health.
How much ?
There’s dispute but even supporters of the use of white asbestos admit that heavy exposure may be dangerous [http://crisotilabrasil.org.br/site/pesquisas/_pdf/The%20health%20effects%20of%20chrysotile%20.pdf
Breathing in any fibre [ rock wool, glass, polyvinyl] is not good for you, but some fibres are a lot less good than others. So blue asbestos bad…… and white asbestos ?
It should probably be phased out when safer substitutes are found
Asbestos can be harmful not because it is toxic, but because of its shape. Its particles/crystal form are acicular (needle-shape) and have an aspect ratio; I believe that an aspect ratio of 7:1 is close to the potential danger point. Thus particles can be caught ‘cross-wise’ in the ‘breathing apparatus’ and cause an irritation that can turn to cancer .. as far as I know.
Let me fix the start of the last paragraph for you….”We must get the
religionout money of environmentalismbloody wordpress………….
religionmoney out of environmentalism”“As Dr. Crichton explains, DDT is not a carcinogen, it did not cause birds to die and the people who banned it knew these facts. But, they banned it anyway and as a result tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, died”
DDT has never been banned for anti-malarial prevention – it is still used today. And it did kill off bird populations, especially birds of prey, by thinning the shells of their eggs. That’s incontrovertible science.
(I haven’t researched claims on whether its a carcinogen – but hey, he’s certainly wrong on 2 out of 3 points)
Yes it was banned http://www.perc.org/articles/legacy-ddt-ban
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1259
So sayith: Griff
Right you are, ….. Griff, …… DDT never was banned for anti-malarial prevention.
And …… DDT never was banned for anti-measles prevention.
And …… DDT never was banned for anti-Polio prevention.
And …… DDT never was banned for anti-Small Pox prevention.
DUH, those silly Religious minded greenies, enviros and politicians are definitely miseducated, misnurtured, ignorant and stupid acting ….. but they sure aren’t crazy enough to be demanding the banning of a chemical ….. for the specific reason, that if used, it would prevent the deaths of hundreds-of-thousands of people in tropical and sub-tropical climates.
Griff is mostly right on this one.
1. DDT is banned internationally for use in agriculture, but its use in malaria control remains permitted under the regulations of the Stockholm Convention. The production of DDT and its use in malaria control have never been discontinued. (If the ban of DDT for agricultural use had any effect at all, it would have been to slow the emergence of resistance, and thereby to prolong DDT’s useful life for malaria control.)
2. While DDT is cheaper than most other insecticides, cost of manufacture has risen in proportion to that of petroleum, the major required raw material. Moreover, like other insecticides, DDT selects for resistance in the targeted insect vectors. Rising cost and widespread resistance, not regulation, are the key reasons for the limited and declining worldwide use of DDT.
3. Most malaria fatalities occur in Africa. On this continent, no comprehensive effort has ever been made to control or eradicate malaria; instead, all such projects occurred only on a local or regional scale, and many were abandoned after only a few years.
4. In the most severely affected parts of the world, only a small fraction of malaria cases are actually seen by health care workers or recorded by health authorities. Regardless of the tools employed, effective malaria control is impossible with such inadequate levels of organization and preparedness.
5. Malaria remains rampant because control efforts lack resources and political support, not because of the choice of insecticide. Where insect resistance to it is not yet widespread, DDT remains a legitimate weapon against malaria. However, DDT is not a panacea, and the limited restrictions imposed on its use are not a significant factor in the current deplorable state of affairs in malaria morbidity and mortality.
The above is the summary from a longer memo with references that is on my website.
Michael Palmer, Harvard Medical School, the CDC, and many others disagree with many of your points. The references are in the post or in the links. I’ll cite two here: http://www.researchinformation.co.uk/pest/2001/B104731K.PDF and http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/3/3/97-0305_article DDT is quite safe. Most bird populations increased when DDT was sprayed, especially Robins and song birds. A few species may have had thinner shells due to DDT, but this is not proven and very over stated. See here: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-truth-about-ddt-and-silent-spring
It can be done. Last week sri lanka was certified malaria.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/health/sri-lanka-declared-free-of-malaria/
Ten to 15 other countries have done this and another 10 are on track in the next 5-10 years.
http://www.who.int/malaria/areas/elimination/overview/en/
Here is a quote from the well documented CDC paper cited “We have used two regression models to show that as numbers of DDT-sprayed houses declined, malaria incidence increased. The period from 1959 to 1978 can be characterized as a period of insecticide-controlled malaria. The period from 1979 to 1995 can be characterized as a period of decreased use of residual spraying and geometric growth in malaria incidence. Other factors contribute to resurgent malaria, but none would appear to equal the influence of decreases in the house-spray programs.” This is followed by:
“Public health researchers in the United States helped initiate the use of DDT for malaria control in 1943 (19). Today, DDT is still needed for malaria control. If the pressure to abandon this effective insecticide continues, unchanged or declining health budgets, combined with increasingly expensive insecticides and rising operational costs, will result in millions of additional malaria cases worldwide.” Roberts, et al, September 1997, EID.
Andy, you apparently didn’t even read what I said. (Good that you got Harvard and the CDC in there though. On this website, we always trust in whatever these lofty institutions have to say.) I did not argue against the use of DDT against malaria; I merely observed that this use is still permitted, but that its effectiveness has declined over time, like that of any other widely used insecticide.
DDT may or may not be harmful for birds when used for crop protection, but any environmental impact of the incomparably smaller quantities that are used indoors is surely negligible. Therefore, whether or not this problem ever was real, it surely no longer exists after the ban of DDT for agricultural use; and this is why was never particularly interested in the truth about the eggs. I find the usefulness and limitations of DDT in malaria to be a much more interesting and relevant problem.
The whole DDT-ban-as-mass-murder saga is as fictitious as the global warming disaster myth. Both myths are convenient for smearing the other side, but neither is based in fact.
Andy, in response to your last comment: you again confirm that DDT is in fact still used for indoor spraying. I agree that any pressure to ban this use should be resisted, but so far that ban hasn’t happened. Somewhat ironically, dieldrin and hexachlorcyclohexane have indeed been banned entirely, but nobody complains about those, even though they are sometimes effective on DDT-resistant mosquito strains.
Note also that in India DDT resistance is almost ubiquitous, and it is also increasing elsewhere. DDT use will continue to decline simply due to this fact. DDT is living on borrowed time. Note that the reference you cited is almost 20 years old. That’s a long time in terms of resistance development. You really should put more care into your homework before aspiring to inform the public.
Michael Palmer, your enumerated statements are factual, no problem there. But, I thought they were incomplete and thus misleading. Your website is likewise factually correct, but incomplete enough to be misleading. DDT is allowed by international law to be sure, but it is banned in 34 countries. Roberts, et al showed conclusively that DDT is very effective against malaria. Some mosquitos are immune to the chemical, but many (most?) of these are still repelled by it. Immunity does lessen its effectiveness, but does not eliminate it. It is also safer to use near humans than other insecticides and longer lasting. I don’t disagree with you, I just wanted to balance what you said. Make the message more clear. Also, you did not make it clear what you agreed with Griff on. His statement that DDT killed off bird populations is clearly incorrect. Most bird populations increased when DDT was used in agricultural areas. A few species declined, none were killed off. Always seeking clarity.
Andy: OK, I don’t support Griff’s position on egg shells, because I don’t know and I don’t care; given that DDT is only used indoors anymore, this question is no longer relevant. Regardless of the egg question, the ban on outdoor use helped to delay the spreading of mosquito resistance. If people truly had cared so much about the poor malaria victims, they would not have allowed the agricultural use of DDT in the first place.
As to your other points: I repeat, DDT remains somewhat useful, but Roberts is 20 years out of date on the resistance (not “immunity” — that is a different concept). As early as 2008, DDT resistance was reported to be essentially ubiquitous in India. In many countries, including India, DDT use became more erratic after initial successes; fatigue, rising costs, and other disasters (famines, epidemics, wars) diverting attention all contributed to this. As a result, effectiveness declined as early as the 1960s. Increasing resistance made it worse.
The WHO itself gave up on the goal of eradication at the same time, before anyone even talked about the ban. What more “misleading” and “unbalanced” evidence do you need to refrain from perpetuating the criminally stupid myth that all it takes to eradicate malarial is a liberal helping of DDT sprayed the world over?
Palmer, you said, said, “On this continent, no comprehensive effort has ever been made to control or eradicate malaria;”
Given that malaria was endemic to the Southeastern U.S. until the 20th century, what do you think eradicated it? Religious rituals? Global warming? Mosquito-killing anthropgenic CO2?
lftpm, reading comprehension. The preceding sentence reads “Most malaria fatalities occur in Africa.” In the context, the phrase “this continent” clearly refers to Africa.
Now get some sleep.
This is from an old article, 2001 before dirt :-), but Dr. Attaran makes some good points pertinent to this discussion: “The examples of this are striking. South Africa had been almost malaria-free since using DDT in the 1940s. But under pressure from environmentalists it switched to other insecticides in 1996. This allowed a particularly aggressive mosquito species (Anopheles funestus) to re-invade South Africa after a 50-year absence, leading to a dramatic resurgence of disease: malaria cases rose from 4117 in 1995 to 27,238 reported cases in 1999 (or possibly as many as 120,000, judging by pharmacy records). Neighbouring Swaziland, which never stopped using DDT, experienced no such resurgence. Faced with this mounting epidemic, South Africa has forced to resume DDT use last year.” Efforts to use DDT to control malaria were made in Africa by individual countries and by WHO. But, environmental pressure stemming from the bans put in place in many wealthy countries, caused these efforts to stop with disastrous consequences. The wealthy countries had already eliminated malaria within their borders using DDT. So, Dr. Palmer, I do not think the efficacy of DDT is as poor as you describe. I’m sure DDT resistance has reduced it, but recent trials have shown it is still effective.
From: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2801202/ (van den Berg, 2009, EHP)
“Resistance does not necessarily result in failure to control disease. Standard testing of DDT resistance focuses on the insecticide’s toxic action. However, the repellent and irritant properties of DDT also have the potential to reduce transmission of disease and relieve the selective pressure for toxic resistance (Grieco et al. 2007; Roberts and Andre 1994). This is an area requiring more research.”
Andy May, instead of continuing to nitpick my comments, you should rather focus on educating yourself, so that in the future you can avoid blunders such as the one you committed in this post.
Please go read the papers cited in my memo on malaria in India. Note how ongoing use of DDT, even when supplemented with other insecticides, has failed to bring the case numbers back down to anywhere near what they were in the 1960s (supposedly – I doubt that in those days cases in remote rural areas were really properly accounted for). DDT resistance is not ubiquitous, but it is a real problem.
Now I will tell you something that will throw you for a curve, or at least it did me when I first learned about it. You know what that is?
If we were really serious about controlling malaria, we could do it without drugs and without insecticides, by drainage and other means of environmental management alone. The methods were developed and proven effective 100 years ago, by a British colonial medical officer (Malcolm Watson). He developed and put them into practice in Malaya, but later on applied them successfully in several copper mining towns in what is now Zambia, smack dab in the middle of some of the worst endemic areas in the world. With the advent of DDT, those successful and “sustainable” but more laborious and exacting methods — Watson emphasizes how each Anopheles species has to be addressed in its own proper way, as some love shadow, others sun; some breed in flowing water, others in stagnant pools; some bite indoors, others outdoors — were largely forgotten.
Watson’s books make for fascinating reading, and they help us better understand what really matters in the fight against malaria, and infectious diseases in general: an educated society and dedicated experts, supported by an able and efficient administration. Where these are given, infectious diseases are conquered; where they are lacking, infectious diseases run rampant.
It just so happens that tonight I have finished converting one of them to an online version. Maybe take a look.
Griff, I see no one is trying to refute your point about birds of prey being affected by DDT. Good. In the USA and Canada, I believe that was a major consideration in the banning of its widespread use. And as a result, many populations of raptors like bald eagles and peregrine falcons have recovered from alarming declines in population they had experienced. DDT has valid reasons to be used, but if it was to be once again used as a widespread, broadcast insecticide, impacts on birds and other wildlife would be measurable, and not in a good way.
Wildlife, if I may~ What is your view on raptors now being wiped out by wind turbines, and the fact that the government is giving wind facilities the green light to wipe them out right and left?
The decline of birds of prey was mostly due to people shooting them. When millions of people kept chickens outdoors, these raptors were viewed as a threat. Everyone moved to the cities and modern chicken farms are mostly within sheds. As well, education about the birds kicked in. Shooting them went down and they recovered. The stuff about eggshells was simply bad science and never happened.
Wild: In every case, raptor populations started recovering years, even decades prior to the banning of DDT.
It was the banning of hunting that resulted in their recovery.
Hundreds of millions dead. Billions by some count. Measurable. Not in a good way.
As a result of not shooting them, many bird populations have recovered.
I haven’t seen any credible evidence that egg shell thinning was caused by DDT as Carson claimed. The trial birds were given another product in their feed that was know to cause thinning. Haven’t got time to hunt down the reference but will try later.
The only manner in which DDT harmed eagles was through the ingestion of DDT-poisoned fish. When carefully used in a manner which avoids run-off into rivers and streams, DDT is no threat to eagles.
https://www.fws.gov/midwest/eagle/recovery/biologue.html
Precisely, one of the trials fed the test birds with a diet deficient in calcium. That was what caused the thinning. For a few species DDT may thin their shells but the experimental results are in dispute and the evidence is inconclusive anyway. Most species thrive in a DDT sprayed environment because it reduces parasites. This is true of animals and birds, dogs live longer because it reduces “worms.”
The birds were fed a diet deficient in calcium and kept in a hot and noisy environment.
Any one of those three, in isolation is know to cause shell thinning.
Oh, and by the way, populations of raptors like bald eagles and peregrine falcons had started to recover well before DDT use was banned.
The so called science that DDT thinned the egg shells of birds was thoruoughly refuted as bad science even before the book came out.
As always, Griff believes the propaganda he’s paid to believe.
DDT and it’s impact on birds like bald eagles is irrefutable; aerially applied over fields, It does get into water, it does accumulate in fish, it does get to raptors. Regardless if you believe that or not, spraying insecticides like it sometimes is is not something that’s anywhere near desirable (I once hunted on a farm in Saskatchewan where the farmer told me he had sprayed 23 times for ‘hoppers’ that year) . There are better pesticides today, and better farming practices in general, that suggest it would not be a good thing to start spraying DDT willy nilly once again.
And in response to ClimateOtter’s question as to what do I think of windmills and their place in society – I think they stink. I have nothing, nothing at all good to say about windmills as a way to produce energy. As an aside, a bald eagle researcher I know has wondered how all those windmills, harvesting the wind, might be impacting on energy flow dynamics. It’s not something anyone, to my knowledge, is paying any attention to.
Wildlifeperspectives, ….. if the farmer told you that, …… then why in hell did you bother to go hunting on his land?
That year and all the past years of that farmer spraying that DEADLY DDT …… then there couldn’t possibly be any wildlife left on his farm for you to be hunting for.
Well I agree with all this except DDT anything that accumulates in fatty tissue and cannot be eliminated, makes me nervous.
I’m afraid that it’s impossible to get the religion out of environmentalism. You can only do that by killing environmentalism (and its proponents) off.
How did the Aztec religion disappear? Not by itself or through internal reform. When the Spanish were confronted by its excesses, the human sacrifice, they ware genuinely appalled. Which is interesting because they ware no lovey-doveys themselves. But the reaction was to slaughter lock stock and barrel the priest class. That had the effect that suddenly the populace was a) without “spiritual” leadership, and b) realised that what the priests had preached was a load of cobblers and that their gods were false ones; this probably explains whey they adopted Christianity so quickly.
How did the Baal religion disappear? Some conqueror slaughtered the priests. And so a few more.
I’m afraid that the high priests of environmentalism are too well established to suffer such a fate. Until it may be too late for mankind to survive the consequences of their idiocy.
“ Until it may be too late for mankind to survive the consequences of their idiocy.”
If Hillary Clinton gets elected POTUS …… then I’m sure it is “dun to late” to reverse the swing of the Social Pendulum.
Original Sin = CO2.
The moment you are born you become guilty.
Only if you are European, American, Canadian, Australian, or New Zealand.
Correct, and a traveler from a distant land would see the punishment with carbon taxes and wealth redistribution and budget patch efforts with carbon tax revenue as a strange local religious custom like dietary restrictions and veils. Historians have done a half way job at describing indulgences to the Vatican. We need to see the books that show how the money was actually used.
“We can show it [CO2] is a greenhouse gas like water vapor”
It would help a great deal if you would show the greenhouse gas property of CO2 currently functioning on Mars where the atmosphere is 95% CO2.
Mars has, despite the 95% of CO2, a similar ammount of total CO2 in its atmosphere than Earth, given that its atmosphere is so thin. I remember reading that air pressure was around 3000 times lower than on Earth. So you would expect the same warming from CO2 than we have here. However, it doesn’t have the huge ammount of water vapour that we do, anong many other things. Nor a efficient way to distribute heat nor oceans to store it. This all means less uniform temperature, greater extremes. And this means lower average temperature.
No, there is 20 times more CO2 per surface on Mars.
That’s right, the atmosphere of Mars is much thinner than Earth’s. However if there is a physical property of CO2 such that it can be described as a “Greenhouse Gas”, and this property can be shown to exist here on Earth, I want to see evidence of this same property on Mars. If there were such a property, I would expect that the Mars atmosphere would not actually trap much/any heat, but the CO2 must be reflecting the Long Wave radiation as described within this theory. And the formula(s) should resolve to something. A miniscule amount of heat for a minuscule amount of time.
Why isn’t the Mars’ Rover measuring it? I would think proponents would relish the opportunity to prove out their theory of CO2 in near isolation. If we can’t “show” this property exists on Mars, why should we accept that it exists here on Earth?
I believe the surface pressure on Mars is closer to 3% that of the Earth.
“I remember reading that air pressure was around 3000 times lower than on Earth.”
That may have been the calculation of the climate modeler who gave Al Gore the talking point that the earth’s core temperature was millions of degrees.
Thomas, CO2 absorbs IR radiant energy and puts kinetic energy into the atmosphere by collision with other atmospheric gases — on Earth that’s oxygen and nitrogen.
On Mars, the atmosphere is so thin that collisions among gas molecules are rather rare compared to Earth. That makes the atmosphere on Mars more like the stratosphere on Earth, where CO2 deactivation occurs by re-radiation rather than by collision.
Likely, re-radiation dominates on Mars, too. There CO2 absorbs IR energy, and the vibrationally excited state, CO2*, has a long enough lifetime, through no collisions, to just re-radiate the energy. The result is no kinetic energy transfer.
On Earth, it appears that the fast response of the hydrosphere adjusts out any effect of the atmospheric kinetic energy imported by CO2.
Martian atmospheric pressure is .6% of Earth’s mean sea level pressure.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Max Plank
“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” -John Cage, composer (5 Sep 1912-1992)
“When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.”-Robert M. Pirsig, author and philosopher (b. 6 Sep 1928)
I think doomsday cult explains it better. The members genuinely believe the priests, such as James Hansen, when the priests tell them they must change their sinning ways or the world will end. As with such cults, failure of the prophesy only strengthens their resolve and belief. The seventh day Adventists are still going strong more than a hundred years after their end of the world deadline. You cannot get religion out of environmentalism because without the belief in doom, there is no environmentalism. As was pointed out in this story, truth and facts have no impact on the true believers. Another common theme of cults and religions is the exceptionalism of man. Environmentalism assumes that man is not natural. That the natural environment is that which is untouched by man. Man is special because he can change the environment so man and his works are not part of the natural environment. If man is just another animal on this planet, then what man does is natural and New York City is as much a part of nature as Yosemite Park. We have all been programmed, so very few humans now accept that we are natural. Evidence that changes to nature by man are beneficial to man is systematically repressed and ignored. If you don’t ignore it you are a bad person. A sinner.
In the foreword of “State of Fear,” Crichton wrote that his initial plan for his novel was to raise the alarm about global warming, but that, as he did his research, he came to the conclusion that the data did not support the claims, and that he consequently wrote the book as an anti-global-warming warning. (He also included data in the appendix.)
“The late Dr. Michael Crichton”
It’s always been my hope that he’s still with us, having used his wealth to pull a fade like the character in State of Fear.
I found his early stuff at the library last summer, good brain candy.
Hi Anthony — I like WUWT a lot and read it faithfully. But it is mildly frustrating to read your submission rules, find out that one of the ‘banned’ topics is religion, and then read this. As both a person of faith and a reasonably accomplished scientist, it does strike me as odd when scientists (both professional and amateur) come forward with less than a third grade level knowledge of religious thought and writing, including propagating many tired myths of science and religion. For those willing to put some time into it, please read works like that of Alvin Plantinga (https://www.amazon.com/Where-Conflict-Really-Lies-Naturalism/dp/0199812098/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473855216&sr=1-1&keywords=where+the+conflict+really+lies). By the way, I have nothing but admiration for (the late) Michael Crichton — he recognized political and social dogma (from whatever source) as what it was. In the history arena, and for a much more complete account of the Copernican revolution, see Arthur Koestler’s book ‘The Sleepwalkers’ https://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Modern-Classics-Sleepwalkers-Changing/dp/0141394536/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473855456&sr=1-1&keywords=9780141394534
Firstly, the topic of the essay is not “religion;” it is environmentalism. Andy’s analogy is drawn from the fact that both are faith-based systems. I don’t think there’s anything controversial about describing religion as a faith-based system. The point of discussion is the nature of environmentalism as a faith-based system.
Secondly, the policy refers to comments and article submissions…
If this essay was about religion, it would have not been accepted or would have been deleted.
The policy does not ban references or analogies to religion… https://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=religion
“religion, discussions of barycentrism, astrology, aliens, bigfoot, chemtrails, 911 Truthers, Obama’s Birth Certificate, HAARP, UFO’s, Electric Universe, mysticism, pressure gradient predicts all planetary atmospheric temperature, and Principia/Slaying the Sky Dragon aka “MAGIC GAS””
Dang, all the good ones.
The topic was environmentalism. The COMPARISON was religion.
Crighton is of course right about Eden never having existed. However, the high mortality numbers he cites are to some degree related to population density. Does anyone know what the infant mortality is among great apes? I should think that at least the mortality due to infectious diseases is lower than the figure 80% he cites, and early humans were likely better at keeping their young safe from other dangers than the apes are. Maybe some collective memory of such friendlier times influenced the myth of Eden.
Another circumstance that might have contributed to the legend is the Holocene optimum, with its greener, lusher environment around the Mediterranean sea (where all of our handed-down mythology arose).
Dr. Creighton’s belief that the Garden of Eden never existed is, of course, a blind, non-scientific, religious belief. Any belief based on the absence of evidence is not science, just opinion.
OK. We can’t be sure whether or not the story is true. Let’s just say it is implausible, and it is only supported by an old book of unknown authorship and with many other implausible tales in it.
Belief in the Garden of Eden, as literally portrayed in Genesis, is entirely based on faith. As such, it is no different from the belief that a new environmental regulation will avert “x” cases of asthma.
Crichton is talking about the Garden of Eden not in the Biblical sense but in the sense that it is assumed that primitive people lived an idyllic life. Like Rousseau’s Noble Savage.
That’s true… But it works in both contexts.
Yes, Eden DID exist. Websearch “Gobekli Tepe.” Fascinating. This does not contradict the realities of Evolution. It’s just history. Genesis has many levels, the most valuable of which are spiritual meanings that we won’t discuss here. Gobekli Tepe was at the very beginning of agriculture. One memory of that which is preserved in the Bible is the statement that Eve’s pain in childbearing “increased.” This points to evolution as a Biblical fact, for the “literal” interpretation–meaning the stupidest possible interpretation–has no children before the expulsion from Eden. Today, “primal” or “Paleo” or “caveman” diets are popular, and many improvements in health have been noted from them. As we explore these things, we are also developing a regenerative agriculture that is truly restoring some part of Eden in very real ways.
It reminds me of this great cartoon: “Something’s just not right…”
Roy Spencer has a good cartoon too…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/dhm1353035/Spencer_ECI_zps16948f96.png
The high child mortality did not mean “nobody lives past thirty”. Most of them who got past five lived past thirty.
But…
Another way to see this based on averages is:
First four children died, then one survived, then at the sixth childbirth the mother died. You really have to wonder how there was any population growth.
Point taken anyway. Environmentalism is a religion.
There was in fact for most of history very little population growth. Populations grew when people discovered unoccupied lands or there was a breakthrough in agriculture or technology.
Most women were constantly pregnant, from the age of 13 or 14 till their death.
Regarding religion and post-1980’s environmental regulations, both are almost entirely faith-based. It’s logically impossible to not draw the analogy. Pretty well all new environmental regulations since the early 1980’s are faith-based. They are almost entirely predicated on “x number of deaths and/or illnesses will be prevented.” This metric is entirely mythical, unverifiable and 100% faith-based.
40-60 years ago, air and water pollution were very serious problems in the U.S. Effective environmental regulations enacted in the 1960’s and 1970’s were instrumental in cleaning up the environment. The problem with more regulations is two-fold: 1) Most real pollutants are at or near irreducible levels and 2) The cost-benefit is a diminishing returns (production) function. The pollution abatement is linear while the cost per unit of pollution is geometric. Since, the EPA can’t produce any real cost-benefit numbers, they gin up faith-based benefits (x number of asthma diagnosis prevented). It’s impossible to prove that something will be prevented. It’s also impossible to prove that something that didn’t happen was prevented.
Most pollutants are already at or near irreducible levels and almost all are well below the national standard; yet the EPA continues to ratchet down the standards, exponentially increasing compliance costs.
NO2 and SO2 were already well below the national standard and declining *before * Obama sent the EPA on an Enviromarxist jihad against American industry…
https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/nitrogen-dioxide-trends
https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/sulfur-dioxide-trends
PM2.5 (fine particulate matter) was already below the national standard and falling before Obama’s war on productivity…
https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/particulate-matter-pm25-trends
PM10 (coarse particulate matter) was way below the national standard and falling before Obama’s dictatorship of the proletariat-bureaucracy …
https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/particulate-matter-pm10-trends
CO has been below the National Standard since the early 1980’s and has been at an essentially irreducible level since the early 2000’s.
https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/carbon-monoxide-trends
O3 has been essentially at an irreducible level since the early 1980’s and the National Standard is ridiculously low.
https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/ozone-trends
The National Standard for surface level ozone (O3) is ~0.075 parts per million. Ozone isn’t a problem until it gets above 0.2 ppm…
The EPA wants to lower the National Standard to 0.06 ppm…
The annual cost to lower O3 to 65-70 ppb is estimated to be $3.9 to 15 billion…
Other estimates put the cost much higher, with the annual cost peaking at $270 billion.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/dhm1353017/P20141127054648_zps5459063c.png
With a cumulative cost of more than $2 trillion and a loss of 101 GW of electricity generation capacity by 2040…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/dhm1353017/P20141127054630_zpse14d970a.png
If reducing ground level O3 reduces the incidence of asthma, why did the incidence of asthma double or triple while ground level O3 was being reduced by more than 30%?
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/dhm1353017/P20141127055436_zps27ceebfb.png
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/dhm1353017/P20141127055458_zps54559e68.png
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/dhm1353017/P20141127055521_zpsea70b6e7.png
http://www.atsjournals.org/doi/full/10.1164/ajrccm.157.4.9704140
Pb is perhaps the QED in the proof that environmentalism is now a religion. Lead (Pb) is generally considered to be one of the most toxic pollutants. Lead pollution dates back at least to Roman times. It appears that lead pollution peaked in the mid-20th century and have been dropping like a lead weight since the 1960’s, totally ignoring the population “explosion” and the EPA (which did not commence its mischief until 1970). Lead levels are currently about where they were before the industrial revolution.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Pb1_zps66e073c3.png
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Pb2_zps3d1bc6ea.png
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Pb3_zps5d886f50.png
Annual compliance costs are in millions of 2006 dollars.
Pollution abatement follows a production (AKA diminishing returns) function. Each dollar spent removes less pollution than the previous dollar. The cost of compliance with the Clean Air Act is rising exponentially while the return in pollution abatement is asymptotically approaching zero…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Pb4_zps8f9b30dd.png
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Pb5_zps55bb2b3d.png
The gov’t routinely exaggerates the supposed benefits of regulations, usually relying on unverifiable claims, such as, “Regulation X prevented 1,500 premature deaths.” There is no way to test or verify a claim that things would have been worse if gov’t didn’t impose these real costs on your business. And the costs are very real.
The EPA routinely uses asthma as a justification for new reg’s. They claim the reg’s will reduce the incidence of asthma. The EPA’s own data show that atmospheric concentrations of SO2 and NO2 have been declining, while the CDC says that asthma diagnoses have been increasing over the last few decades.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/Asthma_SO2_NO2.png
If the pollution abatement was reducing the incidence of asthma, why is the percentage of children being diagnosed with asthma rising?
The only difference between religion and environmentalism is the fact that the environmentalists’ “god” can be empirically disproved.
Regarding DDT, there was a need to modify how it was used, not a need to ban it. Banning DDT probably killed over 20 million people, mostly children in Third World countries. DDT is currently saving lives in the African countries in which it was re-introduced…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1677073.stm
Regarding DDT and birds, this is a myth. There is no evidence that DDT directly harmed eagles or other birds. DDT, when sprayed carelessly over water bodies, did kill fish and this did affect eagles by reducing their available food supply and eagles occasionally were sickened after eating DDT-poisoned fish…
https://www.fws.gov/midwest/eagle/recovery/biologue.html
The solution was to take greater care in DDT application – not ban it. The odds are that Rachel Carson killed as many people as Adolph Hitler.
Great post, David. It all starts with public education, which now teaches conclusions; not how to arrive at one. Back when I worked for an aircraft manufacturer, we built a new paint hangar with state of the art scrubbers to eliminate the release of 98% of the paint fumes. After only 18 months of operation the EPA was back to issuing fines for the paint fumes. Our new hangar wasn’t good enough. And people wonder why companies move production to China.
David, excellent analysis. I recently retired from working with air quality data for over 40 years and I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of air quality regulations and their impact. The US is well beyond the point of greatly diminishing return on investment with air quality regulations, to the point that the return is inconsequential on a massively wasteful present and future expenditure. This problem also includes “carbon pollution”, which is such a misused term that is now applied to CO2 in error. CO2 is NOT air pollution, even at peak levels seen on earth over the last several hundred millions of years that were much higher than present.
Found the reference to the study that fed a calcium deficient diet and DDT to birds and found an erroneous link: “Still, the researchers just had a correlation between DDT and eggshell thinning. So they did what good scientists should do—they experimented. Joel Bitman at the U.S. Department of Agriculture fed Japanese quail a diet laced with DDT. His study, “DDT Induces a Decrease in Eggshell Calcium,” published in Nature on October 4, 1969, found that the quail dosed with DDT had eggshells that were about 10 percent thinner than those of undosed quail. However, Bitman’s findings were eventually overturned because he had also fed his quail a low-calcium diet. When the quail were fed normal amounts of calcium, the thinning effect disappeared. Studies published in Poultry Science found chicken eggs almost completely unaffected by high dosages of DDT.” Here: http://reason.com/archives/2004/01/07/ddt-eggshells-and-me Some raptor species (eagles, falcons, ospreys, pelicans) are a little sensitive to DDE (a metabolic product of DDT). But, if you don’t spray DDT on water where they feed it is not a problem for them. Other birds are totally unaffected or actually helped by ingesting DDT. Thanks David, great comment.
Actually lead was an addictive to it was simply required to stop adding it.
Atmospheric lead was declining prior to the unleaded fuels mandate.
Tetraethyllead was an additive. It reduced valve wear, eliminated engine knock and boosted both power and fuel economy. For the better part of 50 years, cars were designed to run on leaded gasoline.
Removing it as an additive was a good thing; but it wasn’t easy or inexpensive. There was a tangible benefit. Recent efforts to further lower the National Standard for lead will be far more expensive and yield no tangible benefits.
“If the pollution abatement was reducing the incidence of asthma, why is the percentage of children being diagnosed with asthma rising?” If messing with childrens’ immune systems is so safe, how is it known to be the case since there is no prior use of simultaneous childhood universal vaccination of a laundry list of diseases. Such a question does not depend on thermosil/mercury or adjuvent investigation but on the supposition that a technique generated in the lab to ameliorate risks for heightened single disease exposure in adults is fine as a scattergun approach in kids. What effects would you look for except immune system hypersensitivity and malfunction ?
I’ve been saying this for so many years, how disgusting this entire GW thing is. It has become a sickening religion for millions, all based on no more than a lie.
Actually the Church of Warming is just one sect of the government created religion of Secular Socialism. The faith is the belief in A Supreme Central Collective with the eternal reward of a socialist utopia on Earth. Its other sects are the Churches of Racism, Feminism, War, Gender,Labor, etc. Any disagreement with their dogma is blasphemy and gets one branded a heretic. Current terms for “heretic” are denier, homophobe,racist, misogynist, Nazi, anti-troop and now the new term to cover all “deplorables”. These churches have clergy in the form of over educated intellectuals who are reminiscent of the priests of the monarchies that espoused the right of the kings to rule by divine right. The main difference between the SS and the deist religions is that they seldom attack each other like Shiites versus Sunnis or Baptists versus Catholics. The Church of Labor does not attack the EPA over shutting down coal mines and the Feminists didn’t attack one of their priests for sexually exploiting young interns in the Whitehouse. One would have a better chance of arguing the virgin birth with a evangelical than any difference of opinion with any of these church’s beliefs.
Borrowed mainly from a Bishop Hill post some time ago …
Note the structural and behavioral similarities:
► Monk ==> Scientist – They provide the articles of the faith
► Priest ==> Journalist – They spread the faith and convert the faithful
► Sin ==> Carbon Emissions – How an individual’s acts hurt the community
► Salvation ==> Energy Reduction – How individuals can redeem themselves
► Indulgences ==> Carbon Credits – Buying forgiveness
► Church ==> IPCC – Organisation in charge of the faith
► Bible ==> IPCC Reports – Official guidebook to the faith
► Evangelists ==> Activists – Aggressive promoters of the faith
► God ==> Gaia – The “superhuman” who will “judge” us
► Lovelock ==> Judas – The betrayer of the faith, the apostate
► Hell ==> 2 degree temperature rise – Hot/cold/dry/wet whatever is bad will be worse
► Signs from God ==> Any Storm or Drought
► Tithes ==> Carbon Taxes – Every religion needs money
► Garden of Eden ==> Pre-industrial world
► The Serpent ==> Fossil fuel companies
► The Apple ==> A fire
► Rituals ==> Erecting wind farms, ‘burning’ deniers, ‘stoning’ apostates.
► Unbelievers ==> Deniers – to be detested and cast into darkness
► The Devil ==> The Koch’s
► Demons ==> Sceptics, in the pay of Big Oil, vital to cast them out.
► Evil Spirit ==> Greenhouse Gas – it cannot be seen or touched, but is everywhere.
This is enlightening. Thanks
“Amen” Thanks!