On Sept. 28, after being introduced by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Al Gore told hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff that cigarette smoking is a “significant contributor to global warming”(!) This is truly laughable. It is mind-boggling that someone who claims to be knowledgeable on this issue is so abysmally ignorant not merely of atmospheric science but of the truly insignificant magnitude of cigarette smoke compared to combustion from factories and automobiles—to say nothing of carbon dioxide production from natural sources. It is hard to believe he would say something so stupid.
Gore subscribes to the dubious theory that increases in carbon dioxide are causing global warming. But in the last 1.6 million years there have been 63 alternations between warm and cold climates and no evidence that any of them were caused by changes in carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas or even the most important one. Water vapor is a FAR more important greenhouse gas, accounting for at least 98 percent—and perhaps more than 99 percent—of any greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide accounts for only about 1 percent, with other gases being the remainder.
Furthermore, of that one percent of greenhouse effect due to carbon dioxide, 97 percent of that is due to nature, not mankind. Scientists have calculated that termites alone produce ten times as much carbon dioxide as all the fossil fuels burned in the whole world in a year. Combining the factors of water vapor and nature's production of carbon dioxide, we see that nature is responsible for 99.9 percent of any greenhouse effect, while mankind contributes only 0.04 percent. So how much effect could regulating that 0.04 percent possibly have on world climate? And how significant can cigarette smoke possibly be in this insignificant human-caused total?
And that's not all. As I point out in my booklet on global warming (available from American Liberty Publishers, $3.95), clouds have a hundred times stronger effect on climate than does carbon dioxide. Even if carbon dioxide doubled, its effect would be canceled out if cloud cover expanded by a mere 1 percent. Yet in just three and one-half years, from 1998 to 1990, cloud cover (measured by satellites) changed by more than 3 percent.
So what causes global warming? It's the sun, through variations in cosmic rays and solar wind. The sun also sets the carbon dioxide level in the earth's atmosphere by the same process. In my booklet I quote British scientist Nigel Calder: “The sun sets the level of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere by the cumulative effect of variations in the galactic cosmic rays reaching the earth, as modulated by the solar wind....My results leave no room for any effect on CO2 levels due to man-made CO2...nothing to do with emissions from factories or cars.” Much less cigarette smoke.
Moreover, the global warming alarmists claim that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide will increase global climate in direct proportion. But the renowned atmospheric physicist Dr. S. Fred Singer writes: “If one assigns all of the observed 0.6 degC temperature increase of the 20th century to an anthropogenic increase in GH [greenhouse] gases (which together have gone about 50% towards a doubling), then the additional forcing from the next 50% will only add a little additional warming. This is so because the calculated temperature increases only as the logarithm of CO2 concentration.”
The global warming alarmists claim that the global temperature increase of 0.6 degree C. (about 1 degree Fahrenheit) of the past century was due to human activity. This assumes the climate would have been perfectly flat without human intervention. But Australian John McClean, who has spent more than 25 years studying global climate, says “No century has ever had such a stable climate, but for the [computer models to show anthropogenic forcing], this assumption must be made. The probability of a flat background natural climate is less than one in a million; hence, the statistical significance of these apparently successful models is also less than 1 in a million.”
Monday, October 30, 2006
Saturday, October 14, 2006
More Fraud, Misconduct at EPA
A recent report issued by the EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) found “hundreds of weaknesses—missing data, no log books, falsified measurements—not noted by EPA. The office had found many of the same problems in 1999, and they were identified again by EPA in 2002,” according to Kate Raiford of Raw Story. But EPA did nothing about them and now tries to downplay the issue.
“Fraud in even just one lab can have a significant impact on several thousands, millions of people,” said a spokesman for the EPA OIG. “We think this is an area vulnerable and susceptible to fraud.” The fraud involves both drinking water and wastewater laboratory testing. It includes manipulating equipment to make it look like the experimental protocol was followed or the correct result was produced. EPA OIG also found evidence of altered signatures on reports, no maintenance records on instruments, and numerous quality control failures.
EPA has a long history of scientific malpractice. Both the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Research Service have been severely critical of EPA's policies and procedures on a variety of issues. EPA has violated its own risk assessment guidelines and debased scientific standards regarding secondhand smoke. It was found guilty of violating six federal statutes for using harassment and intimidation to try to compel employee support for its policy on secondhand smoke. It has fraudulently misrepresented the findings of other scientists in order to make it appear they supported conclusions EPA favored. A dozen career employees of EPA wrote a letter to the Washington Times “risking our careers rather than choosing to remain silent” about “egregious misconduct” at EPA. Internal documents available under the Freedom of Information Act show that EPA exaggerated claims and promulgated unwarranted policies. EPA has gone against the advice of it own Science Advisory Board (see, for example, its history of action on particulates.) EPA fraudulently manufactured fake “scientific” studies in order to support its views on sulfur dioxide (see my book MAKERS AND TAKERS for fuller explanation of this.) EPA has funneled taxpayer money to lobby groups that support political action on policies—even unscientific ones—that EPA wants to promote.
In this blog on March 13, 2006, I explained EPA's role in producing the largest groundwater pollution in U.S. history—the MTBE affair—and called for the abolition of EPA on the basis of this and other examples harmful to the environment and human health as well as violative of science and even basic honesty.
And don't forget EPA's decision to ban DDT. Since EPA banned it in 1972, 50 million people have died from malaria. Dr. Robert White-Stevens has called it “Authorized Genocide.” In my book, I state: “Several times as many human beings die every year because of bans on DDT and other pesticides as were killed by Hitler's holocaust, by both sides in all the years of the Viet Nam war, and by the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.” At EPA's hearing on DDT some 300 technical documents were introduced and 150 scientists testified, all in favor of DDT. The world's major scientific organizations testified on behalf of DDT. The judge declared: “The uses of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect of freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife.” But EPA administrator Ruckelshaus—who never attended any of the hearings—nevertheless decided to ban DDT. He later admitted he made a political decision rather than a scientific one.
In MAKERS AND TAKERS, I also explain that Third World countries simply follow the lead of the U.S., not only because they lack the resources to do their own investigations but because they are under financial pressure to do so. They were told, for example, that continuing to use DDT would result in a loss of U.S. financial aid. And DDT isn't the only example. I point out that 300,000 Peruvians contracted cholera—and at least 3,156 died—when local authorities stopped chlorinating drinking water because EPA said chlorine might cause a slight increase in cancer.
Furthermore, banning DDT led to the substitution of far more dangerous chemicals, such as parathion. At the EPA hearing, no evidence was ever presented of even a single person ever dying from DDT. But, according to British entomologist Kenneth Mellanby, “hundreds of human deaths” resulted from the substitution of more dangerous chemicals that replaced DDT.
“Fraud in even just one lab can have a significant impact on several thousands, millions of people,” said a spokesman for the EPA OIG. “We think this is an area vulnerable and susceptible to fraud.” The fraud involves both drinking water and wastewater laboratory testing. It includes manipulating equipment to make it look like the experimental protocol was followed or the correct result was produced. EPA OIG also found evidence of altered signatures on reports, no maintenance records on instruments, and numerous quality control failures.
EPA has a long history of scientific malpractice. Both the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Research Service have been severely critical of EPA's policies and procedures on a variety of issues. EPA has violated its own risk assessment guidelines and debased scientific standards regarding secondhand smoke. It was found guilty of violating six federal statutes for using harassment and intimidation to try to compel employee support for its policy on secondhand smoke. It has fraudulently misrepresented the findings of other scientists in order to make it appear they supported conclusions EPA favored. A dozen career employees of EPA wrote a letter to the Washington Times “risking our careers rather than choosing to remain silent” about “egregious misconduct” at EPA. Internal documents available under the Freedom of Information Act show that EPA exaggerated claims and promulgated unwarranted policies. EPA has gone against the advice of it own Science Advisory Board (see, for example, its history of action on particulates.) EPA fraudulently manufactured fake “scientific” studies in order to support its views on sulfur dioxide (see my book MAKERS AND TAKERS for fuller explanation of this.) EPA has funneled taxpayer money to lobby groups that support political action on policies—even unscientific ones—that EPA wants to promote.
In this blog on March 13, 2006, I explained EPA's role in producing the largest groundwater pollution in U.S. history—the MTBE affair—and called for the abolition of EPA on the basis of this and other examples harmful to the environment and human health as well as violative of science and even basic honesty.
And don't forget EPA's decision to ban DDT. Since EPA banned it in 1972, 50 million people have died from malaria. Dr. Robert White-Stevens has called it “Authorized Genocide.” In my book, I state: “Several times as many human beings die every year because of bans on DDT and other pesticides as were killed by Hitler's holocaust, by both sides in all the years of the Viet Nam war, and by the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.” At EPA's hearing on DDT some 300 technical documents were introduced and 150 scientists testified, all in favor of DDT. The world's major scientific organizations testified on behalf of DDT. The judge declared: “The uses of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect of freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife.” But EPA administrator Ruckelshaus—who never attended any of the hearings—nevertheless decided to ban DDT. He later admitted he made a political decision rather than a scientific one.
In MAKERS AND TAKERS, I also explain that Third World countries simply follow the lead of the U.S., not only because they lack the resources to do their own investigations but because they are under financial pressure to do so. They were told, for example, that continuing to use DDT would result in a loss of U.S. financial aid. And DDT isn't the only example. I point out that 300,000 Peruvians contracted cholera—and at least 3,156 died—when local authorities stopped chlorinating drinking water because EPA said chlorine might cause a slight increase in cancer.
Furthermore, banning DDT led to the substitution of far more dangerous chemicals, such as parathion. At the EPA hearing, no evidence was ever presented of even a single person ever dying from DDT. But, according to British entomologist Kenneth Mellanby, “hundreds of human deaths” resulted from the substitution of more dangerous chemicals that replaced DDT.
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