Yearly Archives: 2010

3 BILLION & COUNTING: THE COST OF BANNING DDT, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY

3Billion and Counting is a new documentary film on the awful human cost of banning DDT. The film’s producer, medical doctor Rutledge Taylor, circled the tropical world, finding that malaria has claimed some three billion human lives throughout history—and the toll of needless deaths is continuing to mount by perhaps 1.5 million per year. Moreover, it permanently debilitates millions more. Taylor says malaria treatment is a “tangle of red tape, misguided prevention policies and treatment that is ineffective in the face of continual re-infection.” Above all, he found “willful deafness to the pleas of local populations to help them eradicate the mosquitoes that deliver the deadly cargo.” Continue reading

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HIGHER YIELDS: THE ONLY FARMING ANSWER, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY

Is the Green Movement finally ready to face the global need to triple crop yields over the next 40 years—and drop its dedication to land-selfish organic farming? Maybe yes, and none too soon. The planet’s wild biodiversity is at stake. Continue reading

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“EXTREME WEATHER”? NOT YET!, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY

The death toll from recent “extreme weather events” has been sharply declining since the 1920s, as my valued colleague Indur Goklany has valorously pointed out. Air conditioning, flood control, earthquake proofing and better weather forecasting have all helped. Despite vast media coverage, extreme weather now causes only a half-percent of global deaths. A large part of the gains came through crop production increases using fossil-fueled industrial fertilizers and irrigation pumps. This meant the world had fossil-fueled food to share with countries suddenly caught by devastating (but short- term) drought or flood. Continue reading

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TAXES, DUST, AND OYSTERS: FEDS BUSY BUT WRONG, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY

The President is demanding hefty energy taxes to “save the planet.” Unfortunately the proposed reductions in U.S. greenhouse emissions would have virtually no impact on he earth’s temperatures—even if CO2 is the culprit that it doesn’t seem to be. A 22 percent correlation between CO2 and our thermometer record isn’t very strong evidence on which to rake away an annual $900 billion in extra “energy taxes.” Continue reading

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PROBABLY NOT THE “HOTTEST YEAR”, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY

James Hansen of NASA, an ardent believer in man-made warming, announced recently that “The 12-month running mean global temperature in the Goddard Space Institute analysis has reached a new record in 2010 . . . NASA, June 3, 2010. The main factor is our estimated temperature change for the Arctic region.” The GISS figures show that recent temperatures in the Arctic have been up to four degrees C warmer than the long-term mean. Continue reading

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The Strange Case of Dr. Tyrone Hayes

Warning: Some of the emails quoted in this post from Dr. Tyrone Hayes are obscene.
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CALIFORNIA SNOWFALL UNCHANGED OVER PAST CENTURY, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY

California’s southern Sierra snowfall has not changed over the past century, according to John Christy, a native Californian and atmospheric researcher who’s now in charge of the global temperature-measuring satellites. Christy reconstructed snowfall records at Huntington Lake, CA, from 1916–2009. The station’s data since 1972 had been missing, but Christy found two nearby stations had very high correlations with Huntington Lake. That allowed him to assess southern Sierra snowfall over nearly the past century. Continue reading

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CONFINED LIVESTOCK BETTER FOR THE PLANET, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY

Stanford University recently startled the world with its conclusion that conventional high-yield farming is far better for the planet than low-yield farming. And this includes the First World’s current icon, organic farming. We know that high-yield farms need less land to produce the same amount of food, protecting the huge amounts of soil carbon that would be gassed off if we plowed more land for low-yield crops. However, the Stanford study says that high-yield farming may have saved 600 billion tons of CO2 emissions. That’s equal to one-third of the greenhouses gasses emitted from the whole industrial revolution since 1850! Continue reading

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MAKING GOOD SCIENCE DECISIONS, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY

I can’t help but praise Michael Specter’s new book: Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. Specter warns that we live in a world where the leaders of African nations prefer to let their citizens starve to death rather than import genetically-modified food grains. Childhood vaccines have proven to be the most effective public health measure in history, yet people march on Washington to protest their use. Fifty years ago pharmaceutical companies were regarded as vital supports for our good health and lengthening life spans; now they are seen as callous corporate enemies of health and the environment. Continue reading

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EPA Exposes Tyrone Hayes—Again!

The press can’t get enough of Tyrone Hayes, the Berkeley researcher who claims that his studies show that the common herbicide atrazine causes abnormalities in frogs (and by implication, in people as well). Hayes is all over the press while he tours the state legislatures of the Midwest, selling his scare stories. Continue reading

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