Tag Archives: Science / Environment

Climate ‘denial’ is now a mental disorder

Old (2009) but still relevant: open quoteHow odd that, last Monday, none of our media global warming groupies should have bothered to report what was billed to be “the largest ever demonstration for civil disobedience over climate change”. There was talk of hundreds of thousands of protestors converging on Washington to hear Jim Hansen, the scientist who talks of coal-fired power stations as “factories of death”, call yet again for all coal plants to be closed. Perhaps the lack of coverage was due to the fact that, before Hansen arrived to address a forlorn group of several hundred hippies, Washington was blanketed in nearly a foot of snow.

It was generally another bad week for the warmists. The Met Office, which has been one of the chief pushers of the global warming scare for 20 years, had to admit that this has been “Britain’s coldest winter for 13 years”, despite its prediction last September that the winter would be “milder than average”. This didn’t of course stop it predicting that 2009 will be one of “the top-five warmest years on record”.

. . . .

Even Drayson is outbid, however, by the groupies in The Guardian, who now suggest that people like Christopher Booker should no longer be compared to “Holocaust deniers” but consigned to even more outer darkness by branding them as climate “Creationists”, the dirtiest word they know. Meanwhile at the University of the West of England in Bristol this weekend, a conference of “eco-psychologists”, led by a professor, are solemnly exploring the notion that “climate change denial” should be classified as a form of “mental disorder”.

I myself am off this weekend to New York, to join all the top “deniers”, “creationists” and victims of psychic disorder at a conference organised by the Heartland Institute. It is an honour to be asked to speak alongside such luminaries as Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT, Dr Fred Singer, founder of the US satellite weather forecasting service, and the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus (not to mention those two revered climate bloggers, Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit and Anthony Watts). I shall report on this historic event next week.close quote

What Motivates a Climate Skeptic?

I continue to be alarmed by seemingly intelligent friends who seem to consider libertarian political dissent to be something close to a disease.

Here is a recent article one friend posted on facebook.

Now that social scientists have begun to apply themselves to public fights over the hard sciences, I find that they have a great deal to offer. The latest exhibit: The work of Andrew J. Hoffman, Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan.

Hoffman is an “organizational theorist.” As such, he believes that “failing to attend to the deeper social and cultural forces within the climate conflict, and in particular the counter-movements that resist the dominant logic,” is a big mistake.

“Drapetomania” was the name of psychological condition given to the minority of slaves in the United States who for some unknown reason ran away from their masters.

The Soviet Union put people who didn’t recognize the obvious benefits of central planning in psychiatric hospitals.

I wonder if there’s a term for mentally diseased people such as myself who don’t believe humans are making the Earth warmer.

Earth Friendly and People Hostile

open quoteDear Sirs: There should be a special place in Purgatory for the environmentalists and the politicians who pander to them. Both camps oppose the extraction of oil from Mother Earth on Alaska’s North Slope (just one example) and provide tax breaks, subsidies, and mandates for using food in its place, with the result that millions will starve. This is just one example of the blindness and callousness of the environmental activists to the consequences of their actions. Every economic intervention means that people are prevented from using their own resources to meet those needs most urgently desired. The free market with money prices is the road to prosperity, which includes both food and fuel. Any and all interventions which disrupt the free market will result in lower prosperity and, as this article so aptly illustrates, occasionally disaster. Patrick Barron close quote (Read more from patrickbarron.blogspot.com)

Government Under Fire as Radiation Is Found in Milk, Rain

open quoteRadiation from Japan rained on Berkeley during recent storms at levels that exceeded drinking water standards by 181 times and has been detected in multiple milk samples, but the U.S. government has still not published any official data on nuclear fallout here from the Fukushima disaster.

Dangers from radiation that is wafting over the United States from the Fukushima power plant disaster and falling with rain have been downplayed by government officials and others, who say its impacts are so fleeting and minor as to be negligible.

But critics say an absence of federal data on the issue is hampering efforts to develop strategies for preventing radioactive isotopes from accumulating in the nation’s food and water supplies.close quote (Read more from baycitizen.org)

We should stop being surprised when the government fails miserably at keeping us safe. Happy upcoming Tax Day everybody!

Nuclear energy runs on government subsidy

open quoteThe true costs of nuclear power are another subject carefully fudged and obscured by nuclear power advocates. From its inception in federally funded labs, nuclear power has been highly subsidized. A recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that “more than 30 subsidies have supported every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining to long-term waste storage. Added together, these subsidies have often exceeded the average market price for the power produced.” When it comes to producing electricity, these subsidies are so extensive, the report concludes, that “in some cases it would have cost taxpayers less to simply buy the kilowatts on the open market and give them away.”

If the nuclear club in Congress, led by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, gets its way, billions more in subsidies will be forthcoming, including massive federal loan guarantees to build the next generation of nuclear plants. These are particularly important to the industry, since bankers won’t otherwise touch projects that are notorious for mammoth cost overruns, lengthy delays, and abrupt cancellations.

The Obama administration has already proposed an additional $36 billion in such guarantees to underwrite new plant construction. That includes $4 billion for the construction of two new nuclear reactors on the Gulf Coast that are to be operated in partnership with Tokyo Electric Power Company — that’s right, the very outfit that runs the Fukushima complex. Yet when I debate nuclear advocates, they always claim that, in cost terms, nuclear power outcompetes alternative sources of energy like wind and solar.

That government gravy train doesn’t just stop at new power plants either. The feds have long assumed the epic costs of waste management and storage. If another multi-billion dollar project like the now-abandoned Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada is built, it will be with dollars from taxpayers and captive ratepayers (the free market be damned). Industry spokesmen insist that subsidizing such projects will be well worth it, since they will create thousands of new jobs.close quote (Read more from tomdispatch.com)

The Ozone Scare

open quoteRemember when the thinning of the ozone layer was going to cause us all to die of malignant melanoma, just a few years ago? The ozone scare seems to have dropped off the radar entirely.

As you might remember, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were the evil du jour, playing the same role carbon dioxide (CO2) plays today in the global-warming scare. Environmentalists claimed that CFCs would somehow travel 40 miles up above the surface of the earth, despite the fact that CFCs are about five times heavier than air. A common case of floating bricks, no doubt.

By banning CFCs in 1989, the 196 countries who signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer lost a cheap, safe, nontoxic, chemically inert, noncorrosive, and nonflammable source of refrigerants, propellants, and fire-control-system components.

As with most regulations, the CFC ban hit the poor with a vengeance. Millions of perfectly functioning refrigerators could no longer be recharged with Freon, so everyone was forced to purchase new CFC-free appliances. This, of course, was especially difficult for those with low incomes.

Another group that still suffers greatly are asthma patients. The substitutes for CFC inhalers are the HFA (hydro-fluoroalkane) inhalers, which many doctors report to be of marginal effectiveness compared to the CFC version, which provided faster and longer-lasting relief from the agony of suffocation. Many patients have found that, whereas one puff used to be sufficient to reopen the airways, the new product requires two or even three puffs to work. This raises the cost of the medication due to the increased dosage. And to add insult to injury, because of their recent introduction, HFA inhalers are protected by patent law, whereas CFC inhalers were already generic. Prices per inhaler have increased from the $5–$25 range to the $30–$60 range in the United States.

Needless to say, taxpayers are still funding research into this bogus field, and the CFC ban is still alive and well. As always, regulations and funding are very easily put in place — especially when the public is manipulated with scare tactics — but they are very hard to roll back; in fact, regulations are hardly ever repealed, and the institutions in charge of enforcing them are only occasionally dismantled.

It is important to recognize the behavioral pattern of governments, NGOs, and scientists by looking at similar scares, such as acid rain, Y2K, mad-cow disease, H1N1, and now climate change and terrorism. Fear and guilt are the usual tools used to rob citizens of their liberty and money.close quote (Read more from mises.org)