September 12, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Some of you reading this are farmers, I know.

The farmers amongst you will love to read a common-sense, objective and down-to-earth demolition of the mistaken claim that if we were all to be vegetarians, the Earth could accommodate more people.  All of you farmers must have had to defend against the accusation, at one time or another, I am sure, that by raising animals for slaughter, you violate animal rights.  I had to do that on occasion, but more about that after the introduction excerpted from the following post.

Animal, Vegetable, or E. O. Wilson

Posted at wattsupwiththat.com on September 11, 2010 by Willis Eschenbach

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

Buoyed by the equal parts of derision and support I received for writing in “I am So Tired Of Malthus” about how humans are better fed than at any time in history, I am foolishly but bravely venturing once again into the question of how we feed ourselves.

In a book excerpt in the February 2002 Scientific American entitled “The Bottleneck”, the noted ant entomologist Professor Edward O. Wilson put forward the familiar Malthusian argument that humans are about to run out of food. He said that we are currently getting wedged into a “bottleneck” of population versus resources. He warned of the dangers of “exponential growth” in population, and he averred that we will be squeezed mightily before the population levels off….(Full Story)

Quite a few years ago, when our youngest was attending Grade VI, one of his school buddies spent some time with him after school on our farm.  Later in the evening, his mother came to pick him up and had a cup of coffee with us.  She was properly attired, in Harrowsmith fashion, as it behooves an acreage-owner married to one of the bosses in one of the nearby chemical factories: knee-high leather boots, a nice, expensive woolen sweater  (probably bought but hand-knit), a knee-length lamb-skin coat, with the wool on the inside, and a nice woolen scarf (perhaps hand-knit by herself).

She did not want any cream in her coffee, as that would have interfered with her dietary regimen, which, she proudly exclaimed, strictly excluded all things not vegetarian.

We came to the subject of what we were producing on our farm.  “We produce sheep, more exactly, lambs, but our main crop is hay, the excess of which we sell to other livestock producers, while we use most of the hay for our flock of sheep,” I replied, “After all, we do need rather a lot of hay, given that we must feed our sheep for about 210 days of the year.”

She asked, “You produce the lambs for the wool?”  I explained that wool did not come off the lambs we sold but was taken off our ewes, while the lambs were shipped to the livestock auction as soon as they were the right weight, before they had enough wool worth the shearing.  That was not enough information, because she asked, “What are the lambs used for, breeding?” and I explained that virtually all of them were destined for human consumption, and perhaps only rarely would any have been used for breeding.

She grew visibly cool and somewhat silent.

I did a bit more explaining, after I felt that it was my turn to ask her questions.  “You have nice boots, real leather?”  Yes, they were.  “The sweater and the scarf you wear are real wool?” Yes, they were.  “That is not fake but real lambskin that was used for the making of your warm coat?”  Yes. it was real lambskin, and the coat was indeed comfortably warm.

I told her, “You have no problem with wearing animal products derived from animals that were produced on someone’s farm, produced for slaughter, but you won’t eat animal products, because you wish to save the lives of animals, on account that animals have a right to live.  Is it not a little bit incongruous to find fault with people who raise animals for slaughter and with people who do the slaughtering, skinning and butchering so that the raw material can be produced for the clothing you use to dress yourself with?”

She had no answer to that and changed the subject.  If I remember right, we discussed her dog, a great white Pyrenee, a livestock-guardian dog, traditionally used to protect sheep against predator attacks, sheep she did not have, but she claimed that her dog herded her chickens.

We talked about the problem we had with increasing predation on our sheep by the coyotes in the neighbourhood, and that soon we would have to buy a couple or three guardian dogs to keep our losses down.

She thought that killing coyotes was cruel and unjust, “The coyotes were here first.”  That is the wrong thing to say to a sheep farmer, but I patiently explained to her that our sheep were here a long time before the coyotes began to move in because we had started raising lunch, dinner and supper for them.

I wish I would then already have heard the story about the livestock-predation seminar and what had happened there, but I did not know it then, or I would have told it to her.

At the livestock-predation seminar, a woman from Greenpeace in the back row stood up and commented, “You farmers!  All you can think of is better methods for luring, trapping, snaring, poisoning and shooting coyotes.  Surely you could device and employ more humane methods for controlling their population, such as neutering them!”

A man stood up in the front row and responded, “Lady, you must understand.  We are worried about that the coyotes kill our sheep, not that the coyotes breed them.”

Posted in Wildlife, Propaganda debunked, Alarmist Insanity | Print | No Comments »

September 10, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Those Deadly, Green Solar Panels

August 21, 2010—Not only does solar energy cost more to produce than
it gives back, but rooftop solar panels are dangerous to your health and
hearth. In Germany, Australia, and the U.S.A. fire departments are
warning of the deadly threat of fighting blazes associated with solar
panels….(Full Story)

That story is referenced in the article accessible through the following link.

Larouche Political Action Committee
Solar Cells versus Plant Cells: In Defense of Chlorophyll
September 8, 2010 • 10:30 AM
by Oyang Teng and Sky Shields

Posted in Propaganda debunked, Alarmist Insanity, Electric Energy Prices, Energy Issues, Explosions & Fires | Print | No Comments »

August 27, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Thanks to wattsupwiththat.com:

In other news:

The EPA is considering banning lead weights used to balance automobile tires:

http://www.greencarreports.com/blog/1021157_green-groups-ask-epa-to-ban-lead-wheel-weights

Thank the Sierra Club who unbelievably puts this in their press release: (PDF)

“1.6 million pounds of lead from wheel weights is left falling off of cars each year where anyone can find and possibly ingest it,” said Jeff Gearhart, Research Director for the Ecology Center.

Yeah, those people sitting by the side of the road looking for lead weights to eat is a real problem, yesssiree. Too late for California though, a ban is already in effect. Full disclosure: I’m a scofflaw. I have lead wheel weights on my car.

Next I think we should ban dirt. Really, it’s full of nasty stuff just sitting around where anyone can find and possibly ingest it.

From the CDC:

How dangerous is eating dirt? My mother was pretty certain about this—damn dangerous. Soils contaminated by industrial or human pollutants pose considerable threat to anyone who eats them. Reports abound of lead poisoning and other toxicities in children eating contaminated soils. Similarly, we do not have to look farther than the last refugee camp or the slums of Calcutta or Tijuana or Basra to find the dangers of soils contaminated with untreated human waste. But the inherent biologic danger of soil is difficult to assess. Soil unaffected by the pressures of overpopulation, industry, and agriculture may be vastly different from the soil most of us encounter routinely.

Yeah ban dirt, that’s the ticket.

__________
The quote, above, is part of posting about the news that the US EPA refuses to ban lead in hunting ammunition.

It is worth your while to look up the posting at that link and to make sure that you read the comments.  There you will find gems like this one:

co2insanity says:

August 27, 2010 at 3:56 pm

The insanity of this is that the green types like wind turbines that slice and dice birds but don’t like lead shot.

Walter

Posted in Wildlife, Alarmist Insanity | Print | No Comments »

August 9, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

The following shows excerpts from two research efforts that explain why CO2 contents of the atmosphere are not worth worrying about.

theresilientearth.com

Why Carbon Sequestration Won’t Work
By Doug L. Hoffman, 2010 08 08

For those who believe in anthropogenic global warming, carbon dioxide is public enemy number one. They warn that CO2 must be avoided at all costs or Earth will heat up uncontrollably causing all sorts of ecological havoc. One proposal for avoiding global warming is the sequestration of CO2 by trapping it at combustion sites or extracting it directly from the air. Supposedly, such sequestration could help avoid a large rise in atmospheric CO2 from the use of fossil fuels, avoiding the hellish fate that surely awaits mankind otherwise. Referred to as carbon capture and storage (CCS), the coal industry has seized on sequestration as a way to get greens off their backs and stay in business. However, it is not clear how effective different types of sequestration and associated leakage are in the long term, or what their consequences might be. A recent paper takes a critical look at the sequestration option….

In the ocean storage option, CO2  is injected at depths between 2,500 and 3,500 m ( 8,000 to 11,500 ft), in the low–mid latitude reaches of the ocean. Total dissolution of the CO2 into the water column was assumed. Quite unsurprisingly, not all of the carbon injected stayed sequestered, and their were some rather draconian side effects as well.

The study found that deep-ocean carbon storage leads to extreme acidification and CO2 concentrations in the deep ocean, together with a return to the adverse conditions of a business-as-usual projection with no sequestration over several thousand years. In other words, it won’t work in the long run and it will mess up the oceans. Bad idea….

…unsurprisingly, the model simulations found that all three of the leaky geological storage scenarios didn’t eliminate global warming, they just postponed it….

Depending on the storage mechanism, side effects include damaged underground aquifers and expansion of ocean “dead zones.” Moreover, once started down the sequestration route, mankind would be committed to a continuous effort for a length of time longer than all of human history past. What a deal….(Full Story)

By co-incidence, climaterealists.com shows an article, “Mean Free Path of Photons through the Troposphere and Time of Crossing Path of Photons,” by Dr. Nasif S. Nahle, Scientific Research Director at Biology Cabinet, 2010 08 09.

That article states that,

The CO2 is diluted in the atmosphere in a concentration of 0.038%, and it has been proposed by the IPCC as a main driver of the climate on Earth. Contrary to what the IPCC proposes, the physics of the thermal energy transfer indicates smashingly that the CO2 is not capable of changing the temperature of the atmosphere in a significant way….

The cited study report states that,

The water vapor in the atmosphere, at an average density, allows the photons go into the troposphere towards the outer layer of the tropopause in 0.024 s. Compared the water vapor ability to avoid the escape of photons from the atmosphere with the capacity of the atmospheric CO2 to avoid the photons escape to the outer space (0.0042 s), we can assure with 100% of certainty that the CO2 is irrelevant on warming the atmosphere or the surface. (p. 12, second-last par.)….

If we consider also that the carbon dioxide has a total absorptivity and total emissivity by far lower than those of the water vapor, we can fairly conclude that the carbon dioxide is not a driver of the climate on the Earth. The whole climate is driven by the hydrological cycle, and the main retainers of the solar thermal energy are the oceans, the land, the subsurface materials and the water vapor….(p. 13, 4th par., Full Report)

There it is, carbon capture and sequestration is a wild goose chase, a cure for a non-existing problem, but a lot of people will be employed to earn revenues — and even far more will be forced to pay for all of that — so that a few parties hyping up that particular, unfounded climate-change scare can make hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars in profits.

For those who argue that the science on all of that is settled, no, it isn’t!  The only thing that is settled is that there is an enormous profit incentive, and that there will be an enormous amount of profit that can be made for as long as those who need to pay for it all are willing to have the wool pulled over their eyes.

Posted in Propaganda debunked, Alarmist Insanity, Climate Change, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

August 3, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

From U.S. Senator Inhofe EPW Press Blog, August 2, 2010

Posted by Matt Dempsey Matt_Dempsey@epw.senate.gov

News9.com OKC  

EPA to Crack Down on Farm Dust

August 01, 2010

By Jacqueline Sit

Watch: Farmers Call Possible EPA Crack Down on Farm Dust ‘Ridiculous’

Link to Article

Comment on the Story on Inhofe Facebook Page

Posted in Alarmist Insanity, Climate Change, Community & Industry | Print | No Comments »

July 12, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Mankind certainly lost a lot in value ever since we became enlightened.  Not so long ago man was celebrated as the crown of creation.  Now it’s a question of whether it is better to burn bodies or to dump them into the sewer.  Consider….

MailOnline

Belgium’s plan to wash its dead down the drain: Bodies would be dissolved in caustic solution… and flushed into the sewer

By Allan Hall
July 8th, 2010

It could hardly be said to be the most dignified of send-offs.

Undertakers in Belgium plan to eschew traditional burials and cremations and start dissolving corpses instead.

The move is intended to tackle a lack of burial space and environmental concerns as 573lbs of carbon dioxide are released by each cremated corpse….(Full Story)

Mind you, if the amount of CO2 saved is truly at the heart of it, would it not be better yet to prevent people from being born or at least to kill them off as soon as possible after having been born?  Sure it is.

The average human exhales about 2.2lb or 1kg of CO2 a day.  That means that a human exhales in about 260 days as much CO2 as will be produced by his cremation.  It follows, therefore, that Gaea would be much better off if we were not to let any human live for long and then to flush him down the sewer.

Is anything wrong with that reasoning?

Posted in Alarmist Insanity | Print | No Comments »

July 3, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

LAWRENCE SOLOMON

Catastrophism collapses by Lawrence Solomon

Saturday, July 3rd 2010, 6:20 AM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

G20 leaders in Toronto tried to avoid the fate of colleagues felled by warming advocacy

(Full Story)

Posted in Alarmist Insanity, Alternative Energy Sources, Climate Change | Print | No Comments »

June 29, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

I had to set up a new category: Alarmist Insanity, under which to collect extreme, totally insane and often very expensive proposals or projects intended to counteract alleged injuries to climate trends, the environment (collectively, injuries to Mother Earth, a.k.a. Gaea)

The items identified under this category do not constitute a complete list.  Some of the items have already been under implementation for years, but what they all have in common is that they require extraordinary amounts of money while being futile and providing dubious, if not outright damaging returns on investment.

An example of large-scale damage over the long run for absolutely no discernible returns is the concept of carbon (CO2, that is) capture and sequestration (CCS), the only obviously discernible consequence of which will be increased taxation and vastly increased fuel and electricity prices.

The fact that CO2 generated by human activities constitutes no more than 3 percent of the CO2 contained in the atmosphere and all atmospheric CO2 is naturally sequestered in a very short time through very effective biological and geological processes is never  mentioned by the proponents of man-made CCS.  That is due to a number of factors and motivations, of whom the most important one may well be politicians’ and government bureaucrats’ visions of vastly increased tax revenues through putting taxes on the air we breathe.

Another fact, that CO2 is essential to sustain all life on Earth is also hardly ever mentioned, nor that without CO2 all life would cease to exists, or that increases in atmospheric CO2 cause the biosphere to thrive and agricultural production to experience enormous increases.

Furthermore, have the proponents of CCS ever mentioned that when they sequester CO2, they remove not only life-giving carbon from the atmosphere but also essential oxygen?  How does anyone justify that the sequestering of substantial amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere will cause the loss of a substantial amount of oxygen?

Some of the insane aspects of alarmist insanity in relation to man-made or government-imposed CCS schemes have already been covered in articles identified on this blog.  Links to the category “Alarmist Insanity” for those articles will be installed as time progresses. New articles that fall into the “Alarmist Insanity” category will have those links assigned as they are being posted.

Today I came across a couple of items of absolute insanity that spawned various ideas for combating global warming.  For Heaven’s sake, why do we pursue such insane ideas?  Have we not left the superstitions of the dark ages a long time ago, and are we truly now leaving the age of enlightenment?

Inventor paints mountains white to combat climate change
An inventor has set out to paint the peaks of the Andes white in an attempt to combat the effects of climate change. 

That little jaunt is funded by the World Bank, to the tune of £135,000 (Can$212,625), but why worry about that.  In 40 years from now it will all be over.  I know, the title of the congress.com alert at the following link states: “within 50 years,” but congress.com obviously became confused by their own hype.  Given that we are now in the year 2010, the year 2050, by which year the extinction they predict could have happened, will leave only another forty, not fifty years for Gaea to be purged of all human presence.

Global Warming could make Humans EXTINCT within 50 years

The publisher of that article, congress.org, apparently a U.S. government organization (although they don’t say so directly) claims to be “a nonpartisan news and information Web site devoted to encouraging civic participation. Our mission is to provide information about public policy issues of the day and tips on effective advocacy so that citizens can make their voices heard.”

Nonpartisan?  News? Perhaps so in relation to impartiality in regard to one party of the other, but definitely not impartial on issues of objectivity and the truth versus being biased towards untruth, lies and alarmism.  There is no other way to look at their climate alert, and news it definitely is not, but hysterical, alarmist propaganda it most definitely is. It is not just the title of the alert.  Consider the introductory paragraph:

Global Warming could make the human race EXTINCT. The #1 kill mechanism is famine. See “The Long Summer” by Brian Fagan and “Collapse” by Jared Diamond. Shifting winds and warmer oceans have already created a weird moving checkerboard of drought and flood that has interfered with agriculture here and elsewhere.

The alert gets worse, much worse, and contains nothing but unsubstantiated opinions that transmit alarmist hype and hysteria to the mind of anyone eager, willing and dumb enough to revert to the superstitions of the dark ages.  With all of the reading I have done on the subject of climate change, I never yet found that any climate scientist ever made so many exaggerated claims. Even Al Gore has not ever made so many extreme and bizarre assertions in so few words as congress.com have made in their alert.

It appears that congress.com is not intent, as they assert,

“to provide information about public policy issues of the day and tips on effective advocacy so that citizens can make their voices heard…. [with] software [that] assures that your letter will be delivered directly to the decision-makers whose opinions you hope to influence,”

but that they primarily wish to inundate as many people as possible with outrageous propaganda.

I never noticed that anyone reported that Barack Obama has a sign on his desk that states, “The buck stops here.”  Furthermore, given that the congress.com climate alert is not dated, is cannot be discerned whether the alert was published during Barack Obama’s term of office.  One thing is certain, though.  Barack Obama is responsible for that article.  Sign or no sign, the buck stops with him.  He owes Americans an apology and a correction.

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November 10, 2009 by Walter Schneider.

Applied Information Systems

The Climate Industrial Complex

[last update: 2009/11/09]

In his 1961 farewell address to the nation, President Eisenhower stated:

“there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties”

and:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”

We now face the Climate Industrial Complex, where all powers involved want to impose their own version of a costly action as a solution to the misrepresentation of global warming….(Full Story)

Posted in Propaganda debunked, Alarmist Insanity, Climate Change | Print | No Comments »

October 20, 2009 by Walter Schneider.

The case of the U.S.:

Right Side News

Glenn Beck Interviews Lord Monckton - Reveals Inconvenient Truth About Copenhagen Treaty

by Kirsten E. Lombard

Tuesday, October 20th 2009, 5:32 AM EDT

 Take That, Al Baby! Monckton Makes It to the Glenn Beck Radio Program…and Beyond

Glenn Beck’s third hour of radio this morning delivered a significant blow to the international treaty President Obama is expected to sign in Copenhagen in early December. Mr. Beck spoke for approximately fifteen minutes with Lord Christoper Monckton. A former advisor on science policy to Lady Margaret Thatcher, Monckton has become known around the world as the “Anti Al Gore.”

Those who read my previous article, or who have now seen the video of Lord Monckton’s October 14th lecture at Bethel University, will already know that his message now extends beyond the global warming lie itself. Rather his Lordship is busily sounding an alarm about where that lie will shortly take us if we do not act quickly to stop it.

Beck and Monckton clearly have an easy conversational rapport. The two have spoken in the past, and both possess an excellent sense of humor. A few humorous moments aside, though, the seriousness of the subject before them was clearly driving the discussion part 1, discussion part 2 ….

….Monckton made no bones as to his assessment. The Copenhagen treaty, he asserts, goes much further than any previous document. It amounts to [the creation of] a fledgling communist world government….

(Full Story)

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