April 28, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Today I heard about a problem with scabies in at least one camp in Fort McMurray.

From what I heard, the workers being housed in the affected camp are asking that the spread of scabies could be halted or controlled if they would not be assigned new quarters after returning to work after an absence.

The operators of the camp claim that scabies is being spread due to workers in Fort McMurray not keeping clean, while the workers claim that scabies is highly contagious, and that the spread of scabies could be halted by having their living quarters not reassigned to others during their absence from work for whatever reasons.

Wikipedia has a good description of the circumstances and treatment of scabies.

Going by that description, it is obvious that it is quite possible that the spread of scabies can take place anywhere and not necessarily only through improperly cleaned living quarters.

Scabies infestations can easily be cured and controlled in livestock and pets.  They can just as easily be cured and controlled if they involve people, even though an effective cure requires perseverance and diligence.

Update 2010 04 29:

Any of the workers in Fort McMurray who find themselves to be afflicted by a scabies infestation could find themselves facing isolation, discrimination, somewhat lengthy medical treatment, and loss of wages. It would be well worth their while to consider the acquisition of a scabies infestation to be a work-related injury.

The media, all in a tiff over the deaths of 1,500 ducks on a tailings pond in Fort McMurray, inexplicably does not seem to deem the outbreak of scabies in Fort McMurray to be worthy of much coverage.  Probably that is for no other reason than that the media successfully dethroned mankind as the crown of creation.  It would not do to draw too much attention to the fact that mankind experiences any suffering.

A search for “scabies Fort McMurray” through Google.com contained 4 entries on the search return list, dating from 24 04 2010 to 27 04 2010.  The search-return list for a comparable search through bing.com contained five entries, also dating from 24 04 2010 to 27 04 2010.

Although the news articles that an Internet search will find assert that the spread of scabies infestations is a result of sharing “contaminated clothes, gloves or bed linens,” according to Dr. Brent Friesen of Alberta Health Services, Dr. Friesen also advises that “This is something people can easily protect themselves against by making sure they’re not sharing clothing, coveralls or gloves. Sometimes, when the weather gets hot, people under their coveralls are not really wearing a lot of other layers of clothing and, in that case, it’s really an opportune time for someone who has got the infection to spread it to someone else.”

Unfortunately, prevention of the spread of infestations is not so simple in the real world. It would seem obvious that Dr. Friesen never worked under the conditions that any of the workers threatened by scabies infestations must endure.  Workers are people, too, people just like Dr. Friesen, but, unlike Dr. Friesen’s speculation, it is extremely unlikely that any workers would share coveralls, no more so than that Dr. Friesen would share his underwear with someone else.

However, contrary to Dr. Friesen’s unwarranted and unproven speculation, other things easily aid the spread of scabies infestations, things that can be prevented through a number of common-sense practices:

Public health and prevention strategies

There is no vaccine available for scabies, nor are there any proven causative risk factors. Therefore, most strategies focus on preventing re-infection. All family and close contacts should be treated at the same time, even if asymptomatic. Cleaning of environment should occur simultaneously, as there is a risk of reinfection. Therefore it is recommended to wash and hot iron all material (such as clothes, bedding, and towels) that has been in contact with scabies infestation.

Cleaning the environment should include:

• Treatment of furniture and bedding.
• Vacuuming floors, carpets, and rugs.
• Disinfecting floor and bathroom surfaces by mopping.
• Cleaning the shower/bath tub after each use.
• Daily washing of recently worn clothes, towels and bedding in hot water, drying in a hot dryer and steam ironing. (Source: Wikipedia)

It is apparent that the much-praised health practices in use in the affected camps most definitely do not measure up to most of the ones contained in the preceding list of required measures.  In the mean time, Dr. Friesen would be well advised to accept that scabies can be spread not only through skin contact and the extremely unlikely “sharing of coveralls” but also through transfer of mites and their eggs from any contaminated item on a list that includes far more than merely the alleged sharing of coveralls.

Posted in Health issues, Community & Industry | Print | No Comments »

April 25, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

telegraph.co.uk

The closure of our airspace casts a highly disturbing light on the way we are governed, says Christopher Booker.

By Christopher Booker
Published: 6:51PM BST 24 Apr 2010

Last week, for the second time in a decade, a major crisis erupted out of the blue that cast a highly disturbing light on the peculiarly contorted way in which we are now governed. The Icelandic volcano shambles had striking parallels with the foot-and-mouth crisis of 2001.

Both episodes involved a massive system failure in a complex new structure of supranational governance which was being put to the test for the first time, Both were made much worse by over-reliance on an inadequate computer model, which ended up causing unnecessary chaos and misery for hundreds of thousands of people and costing not millions but billions of pounds.

What turned that shower of abrasive volcanic dust from a drama into a crisis was the central flaw in a new international system for responding to such incidents, which was put in place only last September. As everyone now recognises, the emptying of the skies which plunged Europe’s airlines into chaos was a grotesque overreaction to the reality of the risks involved….(Full Story)

Posted in Climate Change, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

April 23, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

The Examiner

4/1/2010 11:25:00 AM

Shelter in place

Calabrian Chemical sulfur dioxide leak March 18 in Port Neches [Texas] showed strengths, weaknesses of emergency planning

James Shannon
Mid & South County Editor

When a pipeline on the second level of a truck-loading platform at Calabrian Chemical Company on Highway 366 in Port Neches sprung a leak, spewing sulfur dioxide gas into the air last week, the response by emergency personnel - both inside the plant and from the first responders from Port Neches and Groves - was prompt and effective.

Initial reports indicate the incident was resolved without injuries to persons in the area and no further damage to property. But a review by The Examiner uncovered holes in the safety net that could prove problematic if a more serious incident should occur. Public safety officials in both cities said they were aware of those gaps and were already working to close them at the time of the Calabrian incident….(Full Story)

Posted in Emission Incidents & Issues, Sulphur-Dioxide | Print | No Comments »

April 19, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

The current air flight ban in Europe is not necessarily a panic reaction of the masses, even though it is caused by “great terror without any visible ground or foundation.”  After all, although the ban affected a good portion of the masses, namely a few million of stranded passengers, the cause of that inconvenience was largely an overreaction by the European air control authorities at Eurocontrol.

The problem with central control is that the larger the number of people controlled by it, the greater will be the impact of its diktats — regardless of whether those diktats reflect right or wrong decisions.

It will be some time before things in European airspace will return to normal.  However, without a doubt, eventually common sense will prevail. The first signs of that are emerging:

• Cowardly Europe has lost its nerve over volcano ash and this absurd air travel ban
• Volcanic ash cloud restrictions ‘embarrassing’, say airlines

As those two articles indicate, some airlines conducted test flights this weekend, something that should have been done far sooner rather than relying on predictions by computer models.  The test flights showed no adverse effects on the airplanes used.

We now know what is the right thing to do.  All that remains is to do it: “Let the people go.”

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Update 24 04 2010: Posted in Explosions & Fires, Pollution: Health Issues, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

April 18, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

GISS & METAR – dial “M” for missing minus signs: it’s worse than we thought
By Anthony Watts

17 04 2010

Here’s a story about how one missing letter, an M, can wreck a whole month’s worth of climate data. It is one of the longest posts ever made on WUWT [wattsupwiththat.com], I spent almost my entire Saturday on it. I think it might also be one of the most important because it demonstrates a serious weakness in surface data reporting….(Full Story)
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The report by Anthony Watts is about serious and copious errors in the surface temperature-reporting data for the whole world.

One may think that those errors do not matter all that much, but that would be wrong. The errors all cause false reporting of substantially higher temperatures at high latitudes and are quite possibly the reason why global warming alarmists are consistently led to report excessive warming of the Arctic and of the Antarctic, while in reality much lower temperatures were actually measured in each case of false reporting.

That is very bad and seriously damages the accuracy and credibility of global temperature reporting.  It is much worse yet that it may well be impossible to correct the numerous and serious errors that occurred.

However, a bad piece of news often has a good side to it.  The good side of the news in this case is that the existence of the errors proves that quality control measures for global climate data are not only absent but need to be implemented.

The recognition of a problem cause is a vital and first major step for the successful elimination of the problem cause.

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April 17, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Science & Public Policy Institute

Avoiding Carbon Myopia: 3 Considerations for Policy Makers Concerning Man-Made Carbon Dioxide

Written by Willie Soon & David Legates
Tuesday, 06 April 2010 12:26

In December 2009, lawmakers and representatives from around the world, along with scientists, numerous journalists, and various celebrities flew to Copenhagen, Denmark. For the most part, their goal was to promote a regulatory scheme aimed at controlling human carbon emissions by declaring the element a tradable commodity and establishing laws and regulations to govern the trade.

The proposed regulations were premised on the flawed notion, articulated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),1 that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations will change climate dramatically and thereby cause major ecological and economic damage….(Full Report in PDF form)

See also:

PowerPoint slides from Dr. Willie Soon’s Congressional staff briefing held in DC on April 13, 2010

Written by Dr. Willie Soon
Friday, 16 April 2010 09:35

For the Full Report [slide show] in PDF Form, please click here.

The paper upon which the briefing was based can be found here:  http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/carbon_myopia.html

Abstract:

In 2007 the Supreme Court commented that “greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act’s capacious definition of air pollutant.” In this presentation, Dr. Soon will discuss why atmospheric CO2 is not an “air pollutant”. Three points of discussion will be:

1. CO2 is not an air pollutant,
2. Ocean acidification claims are exaggerated,
3. The magical CO2 control knob idea “to save the world” is essentially dead.

Posted in Climate Change | Print | No Comments »

April 16, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

National Post

Climategate whitewash

Posted: April 15, 2010, 7:24 PM by NP Editor

CRU scientists who removed caveats from IPCC reports are praised for warning of uncertainties in their published work

By Peter Foster

Climategate scientists cleared of wrongdoing” read the headline in yesterday’s Post. Who expected anything else? The two self-inquiries launched by the University of East Anglia into its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were always destined to produce whitewashes, as did a recent UK parliamentary inquiry, and as will an “independent” review by the UN….(Full Story)

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April 10, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

The SPPI Blog

Friday, April 9th, 2010

From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Bonn

There are not many empty seats in the dismal, echoing conference chamber in the ghastly concrete box that is the Hotel Maritim here in Bonn, where the UN’s latest attempt to maneuver the 194 States Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change gets underway today.

The “international community”, as it is now called, is here in full force, in the shape of expensively-suited, shiny-shod bureaucrats with an urbane manner and absolutely no knowledge of climate science whatsoever.

However, one empty chair is a pointer of things to come. The Holy See – a tiny nation in its own right, with a billion citizens around the world – has left its chair empty. And that is significant. If “global warming” still mattered, the Vatican would make sure that its representatives were present throughout this gloomy gathering of world-government wannabes….(Full Story)

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April 8, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Thanks to climaterealists.com

EDITORIAL: Global warming’s unscientific method, Washington Times
Thursday, April 8th 2010, 5:41 AM EDT

Science is undermined by scaremongers’ abuse of peer-review process

The prophets of global warming continue to lament as their carefully crafted yarn unravels before their eyes. Ross McKitrick, an intrepid economics professor from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, has tugged apart the thin mathematical threads that once held together the story of climate change. (Full Story)

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The reference article summarizes Dr. Ross McKitrick’s long-standing attempts to get a discussion paper published that refuted the IPCC’s false assertion that alleged rising temperature trends in the latter half of the 20th Century are not contaminated by urban-heat-island effects.

Here is a link to Dr. Ross McKitrick’s full account of the history and context of his attempts to get his discussion paper published.

Circling the Bandwagons: My Adventures Correcting the IPCC
By Ross McKitrick

From reading that account, it is quite obvious that “peer review” of discussion papers in climate research is nothing of the sort but much rather a process of deliberate censorship of inconvenient truths.

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