Environmental Alarmism Archives

(Courtesy of Indur Goklany)

Although the SPM has some useful and apt things to say about the need for adaptation, it is flawed by the fact that it:
-- Overstates negative impacts and understates positive impacts of climate change
-- Overstates the level of confidence that should be attached to the impacts on both human systems as well as "natural" systems (because the latter are also affected by human actions)
-- Fails to examine the impacts of climate change in the wider context of other stresses affecting humanity and the rest of nature, which would allow us to gauge the importance of climate change relative to other stresses.
-- Fails to examine the relationship between climate change and sustainable economic development more fully, which could mislead policymakers into opting for policies that would divert scarce resources from dealing with today's urgent problems in favor of policies to pursue longer term, and more uncertain, problems.

Among the several problems regarding the SPM are the following:

(courtesy Indur Goklany)

In a recent column Ellen Goodman says, "I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future." See http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/

In so doing, she reveals that she doesn't comprehend the issues. More important, she trivializes the Holocaust.

First, the Holocaust is a part of history and, notwithstanding Ahmadinejad, can be verified as a fact. Similarly whether the present is warmer than the recent past is also verifiable, and no one, including so-called 'deniers' like Fred Singer or Richard Lindzen, denies that today is not warmer than, say, 150 years ago. What they dispute is the amount of warming, the extent to which humanity is responsible for that warming, and the portion of the human-induced warming that can be ascribed to well-mixed greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane and nitrous oxides as opposed to other anthropogenic factors -- all critical questions if one wants to design effective policies to slow climate change, which presumably Ms. Goodman would also want. Regarding the globally-warmed future, its consequences can be modeled but not verified, except after the fact. The best that can be done is to hazard an educated guess about its impacts. We do this using "models", so-called because they are not reality. And where does Ellen Goodman get the notion that global warming will parallel the Holocaust? Will the toll from global warming rival that of the Holocaust? Is that written in the just-published IPCC summary for policy makers, which only addresses the science, but not the socioeconomic impacts of climate change?

Finally, lest we forget, remember that the Holocaust was enabled in part by the passive acquiescence of a population too cowed by authority to dissent from the orthodoxies of time and place. Perhaps more dissenting voices might have saved more lives from the Holocaust.

More power to the dissenters -- 'deniers' to Ellen Goodman -- of today, who refuse to march lock step with -- and dare dissent from -- today's orthodoxies.

Countless people can thank previous generations of researchers and test groups for vaccines, antibiotics and medical treatments that have saved many of us and our children from polio, infections and once-fatal diseases. Today's researchers are developing new generations of miracle drugs, to prevent or cure acute diarrhea, cancer, heart and liver disease, and a host of other maladies - often by employing biotechnology to produce new drugs in plants.

In this guest post, Paul Driessen argues that we owe it to ourselves, our children and grandchildren, and especially people in poor developing countries, to challenge obstructionist groups and ensure that medical progress continues.

Next time you hear U.S. government physicist James Hansen claim the government is trying to censor him, consider this (paid subscription required) from Environment & Energy Daily (7/21/06):

A chronic illness only partly explains why James Hansen decided to skip the House Government Reform Committee's on global warming in seven years. The embattled NASA scientist also passed on yesterday's event because lawmakers are "still in denial" about the reasons for dramatic changes in the Earth's climate, he said last night in an e-mail.

In the message Hansen sent to reporters to explain his absence from yesterday's hearing, the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies said he had a conflicting doctor appointment to deal with a cold that interacts with his asthma... But he also indicated he would have adjusted his schedule if the witness list did not also include skeptical points of view.

"I would get out of my sickbed to testify to Congress on global warming, if they were ready to deal responsibly with the matter," Hansen wrote. "But obviously they are still in denial, inviting contrarians to 'balance' the science of global warming."

Hansen apparently was objecting to the House panel's late addition of John Christy, a professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In his testimony yesterday, Christy told lawmakers that scientists "cannot reliably project the trajectory of the climate" for large regions of the United States.

Christy also said it would be a "far more difficult task" to predict the effects should the United States adopt a mandatory greenhouse gas policy.

Hansen's e-mail said skeptical points of view cloud the climate debate rather than enlighten it. "The function of the contrarians is to obfuscate what is known, so as to keep the public confused and allow special interests to continue to reap short-term profits, to the detriment of the long-term economic well-being of the nation," he said.

Hansen said Congress should direct the National Academy of Sciences to update its 2001 report to President Bush on the state of the science surrounding global warming. "Until then, it is just a charade," he wrote...

Science is supposed to be about considering all points of view and then rejecting those that cannot be proven valid, not about throwing hissy fits because alternative points of view are under consideration.

Had the House Government Reform Committee taken a page from Dr. Hansen's playbook and refused to invite Dr. Christy solely because of Christy's views, it would have been censorship.

Cross-posted at National Center for Public Policy Research blog

ABC's John Stossel, winner of 19 Emmys, was introduced as a "skeptic's skeptic," who has been willing to take on many widespread beliefs in his reporting. "It makes you feel inferior to come up here after Michael Crichton, who's sold 150 million books, Stossel said. He recalled how he did a story on Crichton's State of Fear, and said he was struck by how few of those who criticized the ABC segment engaged the substance of Crichton's arguments, and instead engaged in ad hominem attacks ("he's a novelist" or "he took oil money").

Iowahawk offers a dead-on list of 10 Things You Can Do to Save the Planet.

Sample: 3. Crush a Third World economic development movement. One of the most pressing threats facing our environment is rising incomes in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Only a generation ago, these proud dark people were happily frolicking in the rain forest, foraging for organic foods amid the wonders of nature. Now, corrupted by wealth, they are demanding environmentally hazardous consumer goods like cars and air conditioning and malaria medicine. You can do your part to stop this dangerous consumer trend by supporting environmentally aware leaders like Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro to foster an economy of sustainable low-impact ecolabor camps.

As the saying goes, read the whole thing, and print it off for your favorite conventional environmentalist. I should be good for at least 10 blood pressure points (for them).

Gregg Easterbrook writes in yesterday's New York Times that "As an environmental commentator, I have a long record of opposing alarmism. But based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert."

This claim seems somewhat disingenuous. While Easterbrook initially (in his 1995 book, One Moment on the Earth) elicited some scepticism about climate change, he certainly isn't a new convert to the cause for the US taking action on global warming: in September 2004, in a Washington Monthly feature he said: "The sooner the United States puts its shoulder against the global warming threat, the better for the world."

Meanwhile, way back in November 26, 2000, in an interview on PBS Easterbrook described carbon trading as a "practical economic tool" that has "a much greater potential for reducing greenhouse gasses in the world." Later in the interview he says, "Carbon trading would have the effect of transferring American capital and technology to the developing world to make energy use more efficient there."

Another angle on the story - Prometheus "welcomes Easterbrook to the NSH Club"

Update (Tuesday 30 May 2006): A response to Easterbrook's article written by AEI scholar Kenneth Green was published in today's NYT (copied below in case the letter goes offline):

Today's Wall Street Journal (public link) nicely features my annual Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. And for true glutton, I have a podcast up at the Ashbrook Center website. It's a wide-ranging conversation, but it opens with environmental topics

Noting that some Christians now are claiming -- literally -- to speak in the name of Jesus Christ ("In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, we urge all who read this declaration to join us in this effort") when they make pronouncements on global warming, I thought I would direct blog readers to this excellent paper by Samuel Casey Carter, "What Scriptures Tell Us About Environmental Stewardship."

Some excerpts:

Now that secular liberalism has all but driven orthodox religion out of public life, it should come as no surprise that heterodox spirituality has become the latest battering ram of the left. In a time when the Bible has been expunged from schoolrooms as an icon of Western bigotry, biblical arguments are now oddly on the comeback, recast as a fashionable means of pushing a leftist agenda. What is not to be expected is the degree to which well-meaning Christians have become the spokesmen of these distortions. Embracing the tenets of radical environmentalism without an eye to the manner in which these teachings are fundamentally hostile to Christian tradition, a new brand of Christian is out to save the earth, but in so doing he may well flip his faith upon its head...

...A number of Evangelical organizations have recently risen to prominence by popularizing what they take to be biblical mandates for their activist brand of environmentalism. With names like the Evangelical Environmental Network, the Christian Environmental Association, and the Christian Society of the Green Cross, a whole swarm of seemingly mainstream Protestant organizations conjures support for their activist programs through specious readings of disconnected biblical texts...

...But regardless of anyone's support for the Endangered Species Act, Superfund, or any of the programs initiated by the Environmental Protection Agency, the specific manipulation of biblical passages in order to achieve certain political goals is an abuse that must be met head on. If the Bible says anything about man's sound management of natural resources, it does so only in the setting of man's relationship with God...

...The [Evangelical Environmental Network's Declaration on the Care of Creation] sums up this state of affairs with the odd formulation, "because we have sinned, we have failed in our stewardship of creation." As it turns out, the material world is suffering for man's spiritual deficiencies. Make no mistake about it, this way of talking subordinates religious belief to a materialist view of the world... Throughout the Declaration all of the appeals to scriptural authority are a ruse. All of the pious inflections are a sham. The only concern here is for how the genius of human science will overcome the finite limits of God's creation. Interestingly, one of the chief expressions of that genius are the contraceptive methods necessary to "insure thoughtful procreation."

The reference to extending Christ's healing is particularly telling. In the same way Christ redeemed man, now man has to redeem the Earth. Needless to say, in all of man's saving activity, God is made redundant...

...Earth is not the proper object of man's religious longings. But when a man is taught to care for the Earth with a zeal reserved for the love of God, a few things are sure to be misplaced: God and man, for starters...

...Christian environmentalists have turned the world on its head. In using language reserved for God to show their concern for the Earth, they have only bred contempt for man and made a mockery of real religion. What they have not done is to make the Earth a proper object of worship. It can't be. But more to the point, theirs is not a genuine religious concern. They have simply invoked religious rhetoric to give new urgency to their worldly agenda. Sadly, for those who don't discern this agenda, this manner of speaking will make an idol of the Earth...

...When the Lord God revealed himself to Moses on Mount Sinai, he commanded all of Israel to have no false gods before him. In their fidelity to the Lord God, the people Israel kept the Lord's words in their hearts, on their wrists, before their eyes, and upon their door posts. When later they crossed the Jordan to take possession of the land that the Lord God had given them, they were careful to observe all the statutes and decrees that he had set before them.

Should they ever follow false gods, they would lose the land that the Lord God had given to them for their benefit...

Cross-posted at Amy Ridenour's National Center Blog.

Julian Morris and I recently co-edited an edition of the interdisciplinary journal Energy and Environment, in which we commissioned a series of reviews of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. Several of these reviews have now been posted on the contributors' websites, see my extended entry for links to these papers.

One broad problem with the book is that Diamond distinctly fails to discuss how institutions such as property rights have enabled (and continue to enable) individuals to address the 'tragedy of the commons'. Another problem is that the facts simply do not support many of his claims.

In a Parthian shot at President Bush, soon to be (thankfully) ex-Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, is quoted as saying in a speech to trade unionists, "I can think of a recent disaster that shows what happens when a country neglects its duties of state towards its people... My post as chancellor, which I still hold, does not allow me to name that country but you all know that I am talking about America." Schroeder's remarks were reportedly greeted with laughter and applause (perhaps tinged with Schadenfreude?).

I too "can think of a recent disaster that shows what happens when a country neglects its duties of state towards its people." Specifically, during the 2003 European heat wave, there were 5,250 deaths in Germany.^1,2 These were eminently avoidable, especially if the German government had spent a fraction of the time, resources and energy -- yes, energy -- to help its population cope with the extreme heat as it seems to spend on cheerleading for the ineffective, not to mention wholly wasteful, Kyoto Protocol. [Click here for an analysis of how (in)effective and wasteful the Protocol would be.]³

Over at ScienceGate, Chris Mooney has sparked a debate on the politicization of science. In short, Mooney thinks that the greatest threats to science today come from the political right, largely in the form of attacks on evolution and political manipulation of scientific research. Roger Pielke Jr., among others, thinks Mooney's take is one-sided, and implicitly associates an appreciation of science with liberal political views. I've added my two cents to the debate (reproduced below). One item I forgot to add is the Democrats' attack on CHEERS during the Stephen Johnson confirmation fight, which I discussed here.

The Huffington Post and other sites are buzzing about RFK Jr's "investigation" of a purported link between Thimerosal in vaccines and autism. Respectful Insolence's ORAC, himself a scientist and academic surgeon, is wholly unimpressed (see also here). Given RFK Jr's penchant for exaggeration, distortion, and sloppy research, I know who I'm inclined to believe.

UPDATE: Salon readers weigh in here.

SECOND UPDATE: See also this post by Skeptico, demolishing Kennedy's "completely dishonest" use of evidence, and more from ORAC here. This post on the Huffington Post is also worth a read.

THIRD UPDATE: Overlawyered notes Salon has already posted some corrections to RFK's article. That was fast. [Note, the corrections are linked at the bottom of the original article, but can also be found here and here).

FOURTH UPDATE: The President of the Institute of Medicine responds to RFK.

FIFTH UPDATE: Michael Fumento critiques RFK further on OpinionJournal.

Thirty leading British scientists have condemned The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, for "scare-mongering" and "desperate headline seeking," according to this report in the London Times. (Link via The Corner.)

"Under the editorship of Richard Horton, the publication of badly conducted and poorly refereed scare stories has had devastating consequences for individual and public health, in the UK and abroad, and carried a high economic cost,” read a statement signed by thirty fellows of the Royal Society, including two Nobel Laureates. In recent years The Lancet has published several controversial papers that have had to be retracted or qualified after publication, including studies purporting to show helath risks from the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and GMO potatoes.

Do religious conservatives believe conservation is unimportant because Christ's return is iminent? You could be forgiven for thinking so had you read various articles by Bill Moyers or the folks at Grist (and missed the subsequent corrections).

Many of such tales have been told about Reagan Administration Interior Secretary James Watt. Well, Watt's not happy about it, and defends himself in today's Washington Post. I'm not much of a Watt fan, but his article makes a strong case that Moyers, the National Council of Churches and others spread lies and calumny about Watt and other religious conservatives. Moyers apologized. No word from the NCC.

For more on this story, see the Powerline posts here and here.

Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand is making a startling prediction about the future of environmentalism.

Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbani­zation, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.

Glenn Reynolds adds some thoughts on nuclear power and "going green" here and here. Gristmillers also ponder nuclear power's potential here.

Grist's Dave Roberts has more thoughts on Brand and heresy here and here.

Our friends at Powerlineblog.com wrote several weeks back about how the unctuous Bill Moyers had slandered Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt by recycling the canard that "Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.’"

Watt never said any such thing, and though this urban legend has been knocked down for more than 20 years, as the Moyers article shows it lives on. Moyers had to issue a public apology to Watt, as did the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where Moyers article appeared. (He also made the same charge in a speech at Harvard.) So, too, the environmental website Grist.org issued an apology and retraction (it had been Moyers’ source for the quote): "Grist has been unable to substantiate that Watt made this statement. We would like to extend our sincere apologies to Watt and to our readers for this error."

All of this is prologue for considering what is likely an equally spurious quotation, if not in fact a fabrication, that appears in the pages of Jared Diamond’s new best-seller Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In a particularly frothy passage on page 462 attacking mining companies, Diamond writes: “Civilization as we know it would be impossible without oil, farm food, wood, or books, but oil executives, farmers, loggers, and book publishers nevertheless don’t cling to that quasi-religious fundamentalism of mine executives: ‘God put those metals there for the benefit of mankind, to be mined.’”

The “mine executive” who supposedly said this is not identified, nor the name of her company. (There are no footnotes or source notes for this quote, or any other in the book.) It is not clear from Diamond’s prose whether this is meant to be a verbatim quotation, or a stylized characterization, The doubt about the authenticity of this quote is deepened by the immediate sequel: "

The CEO and most officers of one of the major American mining companies are members of a church that teaches that God will soon arrive on Earth, hence if we can just postpone land reclamation for another 5 or 10 years it will then be irrelevant anyway."

Again, Diamond identifies neither the mining company nor the denomination in question here. These things matter. Precisely because Diamond is a bestselling author of considerable reputation, his distortion or invention of ridiculous quotations threatens to inject them into wider circulation. In fact, it has already started.

Reviewing Collapse in Science magazine, Tim Flannery writes of “the CEO of an American mining company who believes that ‘God will soon arrive on Earth, hence if we can just postpone land reclamation for another 5 or 10 years it will then be irrelevant anyway.’” Suddenly we’ve gone from executives who attend an unidentified congregation that believes this to an unnamed CEO who “believes” this. The next short step will be directly attributing this non-quotation to the unnamed CEO.

It is beyond doubtful that any denomination believes as a matter of doctrine the ridiculous views Diamond describes. To paraphrase Orwell, only a university professor could believe such nonsense. Diamond owes it to his readers, and the mining company executives in question, to come clean with specifics about who supposedly said this and what denomination holds these views, so other journalists can verify the story. Either Diamond was had by some woolly faculty room chatter, or he fabricated another shameful slander reminiscent of the Watt remark.

In the RFK Jr NYT letter that Steve notes below, I love how Kennedy admits "no doubt some use hyperbole" within the environmental movement. Given his own record of exaggeration, this is quite an understatement!

Robert F. Kennedy Jr weighs in today with a letter to the editor of the New York Times about last Saturday's Nick Kristof column, showing his flair for comic writing. The best line is this:

"The leaders and professionals with whom I work, at groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists, are more often conservative to a fault in their scientific and economic pronouncements."

The greens are going to feel pretty blue today then they read Nicholas Kristof dumping all over them in the New York Times. Some samples:

"The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that environmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they’ve lost credibility with the public. . ."

" I was once an environmental groupie, and I still share the movement’s broad aims, but I’m now skeptical of the movement’s "I Have a Nightmare" speeches. . ."

"This record [of badly mistaken predictions] should teach environmentalists some humility. . . Jared Diamond argues that if we accept false alarms for fires, then why not for the health of our planet? But environmental alarms have been screeching for so long that, like car alarms, they are now just an irritating background noise. . ."

"There are many sensible environmentalists, of course, but overzealous ones have tarred the entire field. . . So it’s critical to have a credible, nuanced, highly respected environmental movement. And right now, I’m afraid we don’t have one.

Read the whole thing.

The National Center for Public Policy Research's Ryan Balis has suggested I recommended this Miami Herald op-ed by Patrick Moore to blog readers.

Moore is a founder of the environmental group Greenpeace.

In the op-ed, Moore explains why he left Greenpeace ("By the mid-1980s, the environmental movement had abandoned science and logic in favor of emotion and sensationalism. I became aware of the emerging concept of sustainable development: balancing environmental, social and economic priorities. Converted to the idea that win-win solutions could be found by bringing all interests together, I made the move from confrontation to consensus.").

He also complains that the present day environmental movement brings us "environmental policies that ignore science and result in increased risk to human health and ecology," and explains. Sample sentences:

On Greenpeace wanting to ban vinyl: "Apart from lowering construction costs and delivering safe drinking water, vinyl's ease of maintenance and its ability to incorporate anti-microbial properties is critical to fighting germs in hospitals."

On nuclear power: "Nuclear energy is the only nongreenhouse gas-emitting power source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand."

On activists who want to stop tree harvesting: "If we want to retain healthy forests, we should be growing more trees and using more wood, not less."

On the campaign against salmon farming: "Salmon farming takes pressure off wild stocks, yet activists tell us to eat only wild fish. Is this how we save them, by eating more?"

I'd like to quote more, but then I would be quoting the whole thing.

Cross-posted on The National Center's blog.

Does anyone know the current state of hair sample testing for mercury? It would appear that Greenpeace is still running its nationwide campaign to encourage people to pay $25 for a mercury hair testing kit.

According to a WebMd story from a few years back, there are serious concerns about how accurate hair sampling is as a testing method. So I am curious whether hair sampling has improved its reputation or whether the interim results from Greenpeace should be considered questionable.

My guess is that $25 might be better spent as part of a mammagram, prostate exam, or even a dentist appointment.

Besides purchasing a kit, Greenpeace recommends that you host a mercury testing house party. Who's in the house!!!?? Merc- merc. Who's in the house? Mercury!!!

Those folks at Greenpeace know how to have a good time, but they fail to leave enough instructions on how to really whoop it up. When I throw my mercury testing parties, I like to make it a theme night, so be sure to have something from one of the Mercury Record labels playing in the background. For instance, Bob Marley or Bon Jovi as artists of Island Records, a Mercury label, really spice things up. Then, I like to serve lots of fish. Finally, everybody takes a shower using Aveda Products, in honor of the company's sponsorship of the Greenpeace hair testing project. If you aren't having fun by that point, well, down a few bottles of Mercury Rising and call me in the morning.

The economist Robert Heilbroner died on January 4. Although he was not known for his environmental views, a comment he made in the New Yorker in 1990 epitomized the intellectual Left's apocalyptic fears and its view of what the government should do to address them.

Famed for making economics attractive to school children with his book "The Worldly Philosophers," Heilbroner deserves credit for explaining the fall of socialism in his New Yorker essay (September 10, 1990). Sympathetic to

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. contends today that voters don't ally themselves with President Bush on the environment, citing to numerous ballot measures during the last election cycle. Somehow I doubt that the ranchers that Kennedy exclaims are unhappy with Bush's public lands policy would be happier with Kennedy's ideas for public lands.

Commons' blogger Jonathan Adler has commented on RFK Jr.'s views of the environment several times here, here, and here to link to just a few.

The Commons Blog's own Iain Murray reviews Michael Crichton's State of Fear. For more Commons commentary on the book, see here and here. The folks at Grist have a less charitable view.

No, this is not about Al Gore.

CNN reported on a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that predicts the extinction of ten percent of all bird species by the year 2100. One of the paper's authors is Paul Ehrlich whose prior attempts at predicting the end of humanity in the 1980s and 1990s proved wrong and wrong again.

My response is up at A Better Earth today. It explains the difficulties inherent in much of today's scientific modeling. Climate change models aren't the only models that suffer from problems.

There is rarely enough information to say anything reliable about wildlife populations, so most scientists cut a lot of corners and build inferences upon inferences to arrive at their predictions. They then call the predictions conservative by simply taking the most conservative number from the range that results from their study. But conservative estimates based on faulty assumptions are not conservative estimates. Despite this fact, the modelers seem unbothered by adding a coat of paint to their Pinto and calling it a Rolls Royce.

Gristmill and the Washington Post both report on a "kerfuffle" sparked by a recent Worldwatch magazine article attacking some of the big heavies in the environmental movement.

Michael Crichton's new techno-thriller, State of Fear, warns of a terrible threat. This time, however, it's not a horrible new technology. There's no deadly virus, genetically engineered monster, or nanotech horror invented by a well-intentioned, yet hubristic and short-sighted, modern-day Dr. Frankenstein. No, according to press reports the threat in State of Fear is apocalyptic enviornmentalists who are diabolically scheming to perpetuate the myth of apocalyptic global warming. Somehow, I don't think all of the environmentalists who praised the anti-technology theme of Crichton's prior works, such as Jurassic Park and Prey, will celebrate this one.

Those stuck for what to buy friends and loved ones this Christmas could do worse than purchase Michael Crichton’s new blockbuster novel, State of Fear (HarperCollins, $16.77 on Amazon - buy it now by using the link below!).

The book revolves around the uncovering of a global environmental conspiracy. We won’t spoil your enjoyment by giving further details, but suffice it to say that global warming alarmism plays a major part and even the Competitive Enterprise Institute is mentioned. There is also a valuable essay by the author on the dangers of politicized science and a very useful bibilography of scholarly articles on science, fear and global warming.

UPDATE: In response to demand, spoilers follow in the Extended Entry

One of the most extraordinary statements from a green lobbyist I've seen in a long time comes in this BBC story about HSBC bank going "carbon neutral". Greenpeace UK's Chief Scientist says:

"But planting trees is of questionable benefit: what if there is a forest fire?"

Woodchippers: your environmentally friendly alternative.

Walter Olson, of Manhattan Institute, Overlawyered.com and Pointoflaw.com fame, reviews RFK Jr's book for the NY Post, and he's not all that impressed.

For those with even a passing interest in public policy, the book affords the fun of a pratfall on every page, most of them occasioned by Kennedy's epic self-righteousness and astounding disregard for conventional accuracy.

Thus we learn that air pollution is a cause of Down's Syndrome, that "study after study" shows small family farmers to be "far more efficient" than battery raisers of chicken, eggs and pork and that "automakers already have the technology" to make SUVs and minivans get the mileage of passenger cars, but don't do it because, well, because they're mean.

. . . . .

The man's lack of ironic self-awareness is a marvel. In his media-criticism chapter, he has the nerve to blast the press for its absorption with celebrity culture. Yet this book, like Kennedy's entire career, is nothing if not an artifact of that culture. It would never have been acquired by a major publisher, or sent out in quantity to bookstores or reviewed in this newspaper today, if its author's name were Robert F. Snicklethwaite, Jr.

I review RFK Jr's Crimes Against Nature in the new issue of National Review. It's available here.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is speaking tonight at Case Western Reserve University. Herewith is some running commentary on his talk.

The hall is packed, but is everyone here to see RFK? Leonardo DiCaprio is up first to deliver introductory remarks and Kennedy's introduction -- and he receives howls of glee from manyin the audience. Among other things, he notes the "wake up call" delivered by the infamous 1969 Cuyahoga river fire (well, kinda. I exploded that myth here and here). Now, Leonardo says, the Cuyahoga is burning again due to corporate lobbyists and the Bush Administration. Thankfully, he says, his friend Bobby Kennedy is spreading the word.

This morning NRO posted my thoughts on RFK Jr's latest attacks on the President's environmental record (during our debate on NPR). In short, Kennedy's claims are only getting more outlandish as time goes on. There's plenty to criticize in the Bush environmental record, but some of Kennedy's claims are just preposterous. (See also here.)

Card is now an environmental pessimist - that's really depressing news:

"Think of the warning we've been given, over and over, about depletion of oil. The original doomsayers made the gross mistake of naming a year when we would run out of easily extracted oil. When that year came and went and there was still plenty of gasoline at the pumps, a surprising number of highly educated fools talked as if this proved that free market forces could deal with the oil problem.
But the doomsayers were absolutely right: We did run out of oil that was cheaply extractable by then-known methods, from known reserves. What the doomsayer could not predict was (1) improvements in extraction technology and (2) discovery of new reserves that could now be extracted.
So I read statements that are put forward in all seriousness that "free markets will solve the oil problem" simply because free market forces served to make new extraction technologies cheap enough to stave off the oil collapse for another generation.
But the jeremiahs were right: There is a finite amount of oil in the world and the free market (which, by the way, creates nothing -- people do that) cannot create any more oil. Yes, other energy sources will certainly be invented to make up for the missing oil -- but there will be a horrible dislocation beforehand with an almost certain collapse of the global economy and the resulting deaths and misery. All of which could be avoided by energy-replacement efforts as intense as, say, the space program of the 1960s."

My copy of National Geographic just arrived with a cover story on"Global Warming: Bulletins from a Warmer World" and a cover shot of a forest fire (maybe it is warming things up?). You can see it here. You can take the alarming interactive quiz to test your climate IQ.

In a particularly sanctimonious editorial, the editor says he's expecting a lot of letters in response to the 74 pages of stories on global climate change but "these three stories cover subjects that are too important to ignore. From Antartica (above) to Alaska to Bangladesh, a global warming trend is altering habitats, with devastating ecological and economic effects." Bill Allen, the editor, bravely says that "I can live with some canceled memberships. I'd have a harder time looking at myself in the mirror if I didn't bring you the biggest story in geography today."

I haven't had time to read the entire 74 pages, but just flipping through it I see that not one of the large type quotes expresses any skepticism and plenty promote alarmism. I remember when National Geographic could be relied on for stories of a quality that matched the quality of its photography. It is sad to see a once thoughtful journal descend to eco-alarmism.

Jonathan is too modest to post his own successes, so I will do it for him. Those who heard him demolish RFK, Jr. on NPR's "Science Friday" (despite the host's attempts to prop up RFK, Jr.) got a treat. Most interesting was RFK, Jr.'s claim that we need higher gasoline prices and that his many friends in the Democratic party support that. Since the current JFK has been slamming the Bush Administration for not lowering gas prices, this is an issue worth exploring.

The greatest living Malthusian, Paul Ehrlich, does not come out well from the New York Times' investigation of the 'demographic time bomb.' The Times correctly points out all the ways that mankind's technological and societal progress over the past thirty years have confounded population alarmism:

AIDS and abortion are drops in the demographic bucket. The real missing billions are the babies who were simply never conceived. They weren't conceived because their would-be elder brothers and sisters survived, or because women's lives improved. In the rich West, Mom went to college and decided that putting three children through graduate school would be unaffordable. In the poor Eastern or Southern parts of the globe, Mom found a sweatshop job and didn't need a fourth or fifth child to fetch firewood.

"On a farm, children help with the pigs or chickens," explained Joseph Chamie, director of the United Nations population division. Nearly half the world's people live in cities now, he said, "and when you move to a city, children are not as helpful."

Beyond that, simple public health measures like dams for clean water, vitamins for pregnant women, hand-washing for midwives, oral rehydration salts for babies, vaccines for youngsters and antibiotics for all helped double world life expectancy in the 20th century, to 60 years from 30.

More surviving children means less incentive to give birth as often. As late as 1970, the world's median fertility level was 5.4 births per woman; in 2000, it was 2.9. Barring war, famine, epidemic or disaster, a country needs a birthrate of 2.1 children per woman to hold steady.

"I have severe doubts that we can support even two billion if they all live like citizens of the U.S.," he said. "The world can support a lot more vegetarian saints than Hummer-driving idiots."

The man truly is a genius.

Reaction to an EPA announcement on mercury and river fish yesterday, exemplified by USA Today's lead story today, Warnings on river, lake fish jump (note that the print headline is different from the more circumspect web headline), could reasonably be described as alarmist. Take the first paragraph in the USA Today story, for example:

One third of the nation's lake waters and one-quarter of its riverways are contaminated with mercury and other pollutants that could cause health problems for children and pregnant women who eat too much fish, the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday

Moreover, as the story intimates, the "jump" in the headline is probably an artifact of increased reporting in two states. The EPA fact sheet (PDF link) says quite clearly (p.4):

In 2003, the geographic extent of the states under advisory for mercury was 13,068,990 lake acres and 766,872 river miles. The increase in acres and river miles under advisory is a result of the issuance of statewide mercury advisories by Montana and Washington in 2003 and the addition of rivers to Wisconsin’s statewide advisory.

Today the Environmental Protection Agency announced in its 2003 National Listing of Fish and Wildlife Advisories that 766,872 miles of America's rivers and 13,068,990 lake acres are contaminated with so much poisonous mercury that the fish aren't safe to eat -- that is a more than 60 percent increase for river miles and an eight percent increase for lake acres since the 2002 report.

This increase is astounding considering that the technology exists right now that would put us on the road to cleaning up 90 percent of toxic mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 2008. As America's waters get more contaminated, the Bush administration continues dragging its feet, even endorsing a plan that would delay cleaning up mercury emissions from power plants for at least a decade and setting targets so weak that the industry will be allowed to emit three times more mercury after 2018.

Moreover, the EPA's health warnings themselves are based on studies from the Faroe Islands which inadequately controlled for the Islanders' diet, which contained a fair proportion of whale meat. A useful discussion of the science underlying EPA's guidelines on mercury and health is available here (PDF link).

The actual basis for the alarmist reaction is flimsy, to say the least.

UPDATE: Environmentalist blogger JLowe agrees that the Sierra Club reaction is inappropriate.

* Corrected from earlier numbers.

Reactionary environmentalist George Monbiot has declared that industrial civilization is over. Growth is no longer possible, so the Age of Entropy is here.

Actually, it sounds more like the Age of Aquarius; Monbiot urges us all to live like some hippies he's befriended who live in a pre-industrial revolution state in Somerset, England. No word on what happens when the hippies fall ill; if they treat themselves with 18th century medicine I'll be impressed by their devotion to their cause, if nothing else.

I wonder if George will now give up his computer and hand-write all his essays with quill pen before sending them to the Guardian by pigeon-post? I'm not holding my breath.

In the meantime, the rest of us can get on with working out ways to extract the massive remaining reserves of oil in a cost/effective manner while developing new energy technologies without being told which ones are best by government.

On a day when the Union of Concerned Scientists makes headlines with a study on Emissions pathways, climate change, and impacts on California that predicts harm to the California wine industry, the Hoover Institute's Henry Miller points out a much more direct threat to the wine industry there: execessive regulation.

An infestation of Pierce's disease threatens severe damage to the state's vines:

"Counting only grapes, the disease now threatens a crop production value of $3.2 billion and associated economic activity in excess of $33 billion. Other crop and ornamental plant resources such as almonds ($897 million) and susceptible species of citrus ($1.07 billion), stone fruits ($905 million), and shade trees are also at risk."

The EPA discriminates against gene-spliced varieties, by regulating even more stringently than chemical pesticides any plant that has been modified with gene-splicing techniques to enhance its pest- or disease-resistance. This policy, which has been attacked repeatedly by the scientific community as unscientific and irrational, has badly damaged agricultural research and development. It flouts the widespread scientific consensus that gene-splicing is more precise, circumscribed and predictable than other techniques. New gene-spliced varieties can not only increase yields, make better use of existing farmland and conserve water, but -- especially for grains and nuts -- are a potential boon to public health, because the harvest will have lower levels of contamination with toxic fungi and insect parts than conventional varieties. Moreover, by reducing the need for spraying crops with chemical pesticides, they are environmentally and occupationally friendly.

Agbiotech's potential is proven. A decade ago, an epidemic of papaya ringspot virus had virtually destroyed Hawaii's $64 million a year papaya crop, but by 1998 biotech researchers provided virus-resistant varieties that have preserved the industry.

Yet, the EPA holds gene-spliced plants to an inappropriate, extraordinary standard, requiring hugely expensive testing as though these plants were highly toxic chemicals. In effect, these policies impose a hugely punitive tax on a superior, and badly needed, technology.

The media watchdog STATS takes a good hard look at the reality behind the hype surrounding the supposed threat to Europe and the East Coast from the collapse of part of one of the Canary Islands. This formed one of the threats referred to in the article Jonathan Adler commented on below.

As STATS found, referencing one of the world's leading tsunami experts, fears of Deep Impact-style tidal waves are irresponsible exaggerations:

Specifically, the shorter period and wave amplitudes in his model, result in significant wave height attenuation with distance - to less than one-third of the shallow water amplitudes. The upper limit of his modeling study shows that the East Coast of the U.S. and the Caribbean would receive waves less than 3 meters high. The European and African coasts would have waves less than 10 meters high. However, full Navier-Stokes modeling of the same La Palma failure, brings the maximum expected tsunami wave amplitude off the U.S. east coast to about one meter.