Make a Difference

Day: February 19, 2011

Green Power, Black Death

It has been estimated that 160 people die every minute from malaria or its complications. Malaria is a disease we could eradicate.

Paul Driessen writes:

Many chemotherapy drugs for treating cancer have highly unpleasant side effects – hair loss, vomiting, intense joint pain, liver damage and fetal defects, to name just a few. But anyone trying to ban the drugs would be tarred, feathered and run out of town. And rightly so.

The drugs’ benefits vastly outweigh their risks. They save lives. We need to use chemo drugs carefully, but we need to use them.

The same commonsense reasoning should apply to the Third World equivalent of chemotherapy drugs: DDT and other insecticides to combat malaria. Up to half a billion people are infected annually by this vicious disease, nearly a million die, countless survivors are left with permanent brain damage, and 90% of this carnage is in sub-Saharan Africa, the most impoverished region on Earth.

These chemicals don’t cure malaria – they prevent it. Used properly, they are effective, and safe. DDT is particularly important. Sprayed once or twice a year on the inside walls of homes, DDT keeps 80% of mosquitoes from entering, irritates those that do enter, so they leave without biting, and kills any that land. No other chemical, at any price, can do this.

Even better, DDT has few adverse side effects – except minor, speculative and imaginary “risks” that are trumpeted on anti-pesticide websites …

Anti-DDT fanaticism built the environmental movement, and gave it funding, power and stature it never had before. No matter how many people get sick and die because health agencies are pressured not to use DDT, or it is totally banned, Environmental Defense, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Pesticide Action Network, US Environmental Protection Agency and allied activist groups are unlikely to reform or recant.

Worse, they have now been joined by the United Nations Environment Program, Global Environment Facility and even World Health Organization Environmental Division – all of whom share the avowed goal of ending all DDT production by 2017, and banning all use of DDT in disease control by 2020.

More people have died as a result of the fraudulent research leading to bans on the use of DDT than were killed by Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot combined. Yet the UN, governments and environmental organisations continue to support this monstrous policy, and the lies that feed it. And millions of people die as a result.

Still Getting Cooler

Cold and wet again this weekend on Kangaroo Island. So wet the race club’s major meet for the year had to be cancelled. I guess this proves global warming.

Strange, after all the predictions of drought and heat, you’d think the climate alarmists would at least have the deceny to say ‘Oops. Got that wrong. Sorry. Maybe we ought to look at those figures again.’

But no, Al Gore pops up and says ‘No, really, that’s what we’ve been saying all along.’

Right Al. Right Tim. Sure David.

Then, as if on cue, a study is published in Nature demonstrating a connection between use of fossil fuels and global increases in rain, snow and ice. Based on modelling of selected data. With the assumption that what cannot be explained by what we think we know about natural variation must be caused by us. Roger Pielke Jr has more on why the Nature articles don’t demonstrate any connection between AGW and a purported increase in natural disasters.

But what is really happening? And why?

Mexican geo-physicist Víctor Manuel Velasco has been saying for years that there is no correlation between human activity and global climate change. Based on observations of solar activity, and records of past correlation between solar activity and climate, Dr Velasco says the change we need to be preparing for is an extended period of cold.

Piers Corbyn says the same thing. And his predictions have been uncannily accurate. Predictions from Al Gore/Tim Flannery/David Suzuki and the whole global warming cabal have not.

That is not a small point. Science advances step by step by saying ‘On the basis of the evidence, if this theory is true, then this should happen.’ Then checking to see if it does happen.

If the prediction is not accurate, the scientist looks at the evidence again, and considers whether it matches the theory, and if not, whether the theory might be wrong.

Evidence, facts, observation, trump theory every time. If the theory doesn’t fit reality, it isn’t reality that is wrong.

That is not the way of the alarmists. Their response is to do more computer modelling, to pretend they said something else, to state their views ever more stridently, and if all else fails (and it has) to discredit, abuse and belittle anyone who disagrees with them.

James Delingpole has a few choice examples.

Billions of dollars have been wasted on the global warming scam, and the Australian government is still determined to introduce a carbon tax. A tax designed to slow down the economy, to reduce farming and maufacturing output, to increase the cost of transport. A tax that will increase the cost of every basic commodity.

My school motto was ‘Truth will prevail.’ Even as a teen I thought that was probably wishful thinking.

But in science, truth does prevail. Eventually. Because societies that prefer ideology to science cannot compete in the real world. The USSR discovered this (after immense cost to its people) with Lysenkoism.

The similarities between warming alarmism and Lysenkoism have previously been noted by Australian geologist and paleo-climatologist Bob Carter.

Lysenko, incidentally, denounced real biologists as ‘wreckers’ and ‘people haters.’  He would have called them denialists if he’d thought of it.

Piers Corbyn can have the last word:

Costello’s Silliness

Wins a bit of attention for The Age.

Former Treasurer Peter Costello wrote in his column in The Age on Wednesday:

Footballers are not chosen for their moral principles. They do not go into a national draft for budding philanthropists. They can run and catch and kick a ball. What are the clubs thinking when they send them to schools to give guidance on life skills? Any right-thinking parent would quake with fear to hear that footballers were coming to their daughter’s school to give a little bit of inspiration.

Costello refers to a story about a young woman who claims to have had sex with two St Kilda players she met at a school skills clinic, got pregnant, and posted naked pictures of the footballers on the internet to prove it. Except there’s no evidence she was pregnant, and the photos were stolen.

The real story there was the eagerness with which the legacy media take up and publish anything which belittles high profile people or organisations, and the lack of fact checking that takes place before publication. But I guess that’s not news to anyone.

It makes as much sense to say the moral of the St Kilda story is that footballers ought to quake with fear any time they are required to have anything to do with teenage girls as to say that parents should be worried about footballers running a life skills clinic.

Costello says that footballers are not chosen for their moral principles. Well, no. Neither are politicians. If a few sports stars misuse their standing for sexual or financial rewards, that is no reason to suggest that the lot of them are hooligans with nothing useful to say, just as the fact that a few pollies do the same thing is no reason to make assumptions about the morals or effectiveness of the rest.

Star footballers, or people who have reached the top in any field of endeavour, are indeed likely to have useful life skills to teach:

Talent alone will not guarantee success, hard work counts, you make your own luck, teamwork is important, you reach your goals when you have priorities and stick to them, you have to sacrifice some things you might like in order to achieve others.

However, Costello is right about most of this, from the same column:

Whatever else you think of Warne, he ranks as one of the greatest cricketers of all time. Judged as a sportsman, he is simply the best of his generation. But if he aspires to be more than that, he has a problem.

It is common these days for successful sports people to establish philanthropic foundations. Ricky Ponting has one, as does Steve Waugh. And, of course, there is the Shane Warne Foundation “which raises funds to enrich the lives of seriously ill and underprivileged children”. Helping underprivileged children is admirable, but I can’t help thinking that one of those clever publicists has convinced cricketers that charity work will enhance their image and their brand.

When a person takes naming rights on a charity, they are putting their character forward to the public as a reason to make a donation. They are asking people to trust them on the basis of their reputation. They cannot complain if people decide to carefully scrutinise that reputation.

That last paragraph is spot on. But even sleazy blighters can have genuine concern for people in need. Cynicism about good works done by others just makes the cynic look ungenerous.

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