OPINION/COMMENTARY

A Tragic Reminder

The coal mine explosion in Tallmansville, West Virginia, killing 12 miners, is a tragic reminder of the means by which America has been condemned to produce more than half its electrical energy. To be exact, 53 percent of the electricity generated in the United States comes from coal-fired plants. Studies at Ohio State University, conducted by Gordon J. Aubrecht, Department of Physics, determined that the amount of coal burned annually to produce electricity in America releases nearly 1,500 tons of cancer-causing uranium and over 3,500 tons of cancer-causing thorium, resulting in 50 fatalities, 120,000 cases of respiratory ailments, tens of millions of dollars in property damage, plus the emission of nitrous oxide equivalent to 40,000 cars per year. Coal unquestionably is the highest producer of pollutants and greenhouse gases of all fossil energy resources. The most powerful nation in the world kneels at the feet of a vociferous minority that has dominated its energy policies for the past 30-plus years. This vociferous minority uses the major media, print and broadcast, of the nation to promote its destructive agenda. In turn, the media, through its blackouts of important segments of the news, its distortions and in some cases outright prevarications, has misled and confused the American public to such an extent that actual science and truth are not recognized when presented. The use of atomic energy to produce America's electricity is a good example....

WOW, IT’S SUCCESSFUL!

For more than ten years now wolves have been forcibly increased and spread throughout the northern Rocky Mountain States, the desert southwest, and the Great Lakes States. The mongrel (wolf/coyote/dog) hybrids called red wolves have been introduced into North Carolina and some pups just had their picture taken in the caring arms of the ubiquitous young female uniformed government employee on Saint Vincent Island National Wildlife Refuge in the Florida panhandle where they are now being raised. Why a judge has even told the Federal government to get busy and force timber wolves into the New England States. One is forced to ask, “How is it going?” State fish and wildlife agencies (with one exception where they still work for the Governor) have lined up behind Federal mandates for wolf futures. What was always heretofore been a state matter was Federalized by the Endangered Species Act. Only a few disgruntled rural bumpkins are known to still reject the government-ordered Brave New World that wolves are helping to create. Most newspapers report immediately any warm and fuzzy or beneficial wolf-related tidbit while assiduously avoiding or ridiculing those who question or object to what is happening. The former Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service when it stole millions of dollars from the State fish and wildlife agencies and the hunters and fishermen now directs the Defenders of Wildlife. The Defenders of Wildlife (an anti-hunting/trapping organization) was given a primary “partnership” role in the wolf program during that Director’s tenure. It is the Defenders of Wildlife that allegedly “compensates” cattle and sheep owners for stock lost to wolves, but that is a lie that is never questioned when newspapers parrot US Fish and Wildlife Service/Defenders news releases. Elk and deer populations are decreasing steadily where the wolves are spreading. Guard dogs, hunting dogs, and pet dogs are dying at steep but unreported rates where wolves now occur. Centuries-old reports (churches, papers, archives, writings, etc.) of high rates of human life loss to wolves in Europe, Asia, and North America are ignored, demeaned, and rejected by bureaucrat biologists and all their “partners” in Universities and the media....

Media Jump On Study Showing Frogs Dying Off From Climate Change

It may be January, but it seems it’s never too cold for the media to re-heat hype on global warming. ABC and The Washington Post did just that in their reports on one study in the science journal Nature. Both stories, however, left out any criticism of the study. “Disease is the bullet killing frogs, but climate change is pulling the trigger,” the Post quoted study author J. Alan Pounds. But while there are climate experts who say that Pounds’s conclusions are half-baked, neither the Post’s Eilperin nor ABC’s Blakemore feature any dissenting experts. One such critic is Pat Michaels, of the University of Virginia, who pointed out some flaws in the study on his WorldClimateReport.com Web site. “The title of the manuscript, ‘Widespread Amphibian Extinctions from Epidemic Disease Driven by Global Warming,’” wrote Michaels, “implies that the authors have proven a pervasive link between a large number of toad and frog extinctions and warming climate. They have done nothing of the sort.” Michaels cast doubt on the connection by pointing to a 2003 Diversity and Distribution journal article. That article showed the disease afflicting the harlequin frog was caused by chytrid fungus, which “was most likely introduced by humans, possibly by ecotourists and/or field researchers.”....

Plants Bad for the Environment? Celebrities Causing Frogs to Croak?

Could it be that celebrities are planting the forests that are causing the global warming that is growing the bacteria that are wiping out the frogs? Global warming alarmists may be compelled to consider that chain of causation this week thanks to two new studies just published in the Jan. 12 issue of the journal Nature. In the first study, Max Planck Institute researchers reported their discovery that living plants emit into the atmosphere methane (natural gas), the third most important greenhouse gas behind water vapor and carbon dioxide. Until this discovery, scientists thought the methane in the atmosphere was largely produced by bacterial processes not involving oxygen. But the Max Planck researchers report that living plants -- two-thirds of which are in tropical rainforest regions -- produce 10 to 30 percent of annual global methane production. The implications of this study are stunning. Previously, it was thought that the net effect of growing plants was to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and, therefore, to reduce global warming. But in the words of New Zealand climate researcher David Lowe, “We now have the specter that new forests might increase greenhouse warming through methane emissions rather than decrease it by being sinks for carbon dioxide.” The discovery also implies that deforestation -- that is, cutting down trees -- slows methane accumulation in the atmosphere and, as a consequence, reduces global warming....

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science

Throw out your textbooks and forget everything you have learned about science. They didn’t teach you this stuff in college. The media generally follows the “if it bleeds, it leads” philosophy: Stories detailing devastation garner front-page status while stories lacking prophetic dramatic climax wind up on page B-17. As Tom Bethell writes in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, this can be universally applied to science. Such an understanding has been grasped by high-powered special interest groups who use the media to further their causes by predicting the most ominous disasters that man will ever see. Many entities, from the media to politicians, are all too willing to help these special interests along in their causes—the media by promoting the panic, and the government by funding it. As a result, declarations of destruction caused by supposed man-made global warming dominate headlines while opposing viewpoints, though equal in number, are left without the megaphone of major newspapers, scientific journals, nightly newscasts, and congressional hearings....

Interview: Endangered species

Charley Dewberry, author of Saving Science: A Critique of Science and its Role in Salmon Recovery (2004), is the academic dean of Gutenberg College in Eugene, Ore. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon but ranges far beyond academic walls: He is one of the most experienced field workers in the Pacific Northwest and has for many years examined problems of salmon restoration. That may seem like a narrow topic, but Mr. Dewberry's analysis of salmon research shows why there's something fishy in much of science these days. He shows how scientists examining issues involving fish catches or endangered species typically look at statistics developed by other scientists but don't interview fishermen or use historical methods to get a better sense of change over time. He questions whether scientists who spend little time in the field really understand their subject. Mr. Dewberry praises physicists who know the specific physical laws necessary for riding a bicycle, and then asks: "What if a particular physicist who can articulate these laws cannot ride a bicycle? Does this physicist have a greater understanding of bicycle riding than the boy who, with personal knowledge, just rides the bike?" He's not impressed by scientists who venture into the field only to instruct technicians or to put on "dog-and-pony shows" for the benefit of journalists and financial backers....