Environment Archives

Nature Bites Nature-Worshipper

By Michael Fumento

Veneration of nature can have painful consequences, as Maryland resident Sam Pettengilll found out the hard way.

The tiny copperhead slithered into: Pettengill's studio apartment at Kunzang Palyul Choling, a Buddhist temple near Poolesville, Maryland where all creatures great and small are venerated. Pettingill simply picked it up by hand and it simply bit him twice on the finger, causing his hand and forearm to swell up and making him woozy before he was taken to the hospital to receive anti-venom treatment.

But what counts is that the snake slithered away and is doing fine. It should have a book-movie package in the works by tomorrow.

Denial of Harm Equals Big Tobacco

By Michael Fumento

Under the subject line of "Hexavaent Chromium" (it's "hexavalent") Nancy [omitted] wrote:

Dear Mr.Fumento,

I am researching the P G & E/Hinkley, California case and have read some of your writings. As long as you short cut and use information provided by P G & E scientists, physicians and their reports to back your 'facts' you will always come out suspect. For years, the tobacco industry claimed through their scientist and doctors that smoking in no way caused cancer, we now know they were wrong. Surveys have been done that have indicated that for enough money there are many doctors and scientists who will 'sell' themselves and print whatever is wanted by those providing the money.

An interested law student

My response:

I didn't use any information from PG & E scientists. Consult my articles on my website. And please, stop with the tobacco comparisons. Just because somebody somewhere says their product isn't as dangerous as others claim it is doesn't make them another BIG TOBACCO. I insist that reading my material won't make you go blind. Does that put me on par with the makers of Camel cigarettes?

Well, maybe you shouldn't answer that.

Also, please learn how to use quotation marks if you are to join the legions of tort lawyers.

It's been a bad hurricane season for Chris Mooney

By Michael Fumento

Chris Mooney is a left-wing writer who specializes in injecting politics into practically any scientific subject you can name. Mooney could make a case that there would be no cavities but for conservatives and the GOP. His latest book is called Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming.

But as Steve McIntyre, the guy who put egg all over the face of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies for overstating U.S. global warming, notes and shows in charts: "At this point, despite a couple of intense hurricanes, 2007 is even quieter thus far than 2006."

Stating that, "Some of you have been noticing a tendency for almost any gust of wind in the Atlantic to now become a named storm," he charts both hurricane days and storm days. Both make his point nicely.

As to Mooney, is it really fair to say a mere two-year stretch undercuts his position? Why not? Despite any statistics he may have to twist, er, offer, the fact is his book is essentially based on just one year, 2005. In fact, but for just two storms - Katrina and Rita - neither his propaganda nor the entire massive push to either blame both recent and future hurricanes on global warming wouldn't exist.

A reader comments on Troll Lambert and gigantic egos

By Michael Fumento

Dear Mr. Fumento:

I just read your article regarding the Lancet article and your comments about Tim Lambert and his web site, Deltoid.

Troll Lambert waiting to pummel somebody smarter than him. He won't have to wait long.

Dr. D. Rutledge Taylor asked me to view the site and comment when they opened a new section dealing with Rachel Carson. I foolishly tried to engage them in an intelligent and mannerly discussion. I have to agree with you wholeheartedly. Any honest-hearted person who "reads and comments on Deltoid is spitting into the wind." Snotty juvenile manners and gigantic egos are the order of the day for Lambert and his acolytes. They clearly filter the comments and I think there is some back door discussion between them before the comments appear. They will take one or two words or one sentence (ignoring the entire context of what is said) and declare everything stated as being debunked in great triumph. What a waste of time. I would love to know what he does for a living. Can anyone that ridiculous do anything that is worth anything?

My response:

Probably not, and in Lambert's case certainly not. He is a computer professor, meaning he may teach as few as nine hours a week. (I know a professor who did, at full pay.) He's also only written a handful of published papers in his lifetime, none on issues that he blogs about. That gives him lots of time to troll the web for people to attack who make him feel insecure by being smarter than he is. (He started a vendetta against when I made him look like a fool, notwithstanding that doing so is easier than "dieting" on chocolate cake.) It's long been said that idle hands are the devil's workshop. Add in blogging software than can be used by a child and you've got a really bad combination. The troll also uses his free time (and perhaps money) to make sure his personal attacks appear in the top ten of a Google search of that person's name and to make sure his Deltoid postings are repeated over and over on blog search engines like Feedster and Technorati. That makes readers have to scroll through several pages to find the original of whatever it is that he and his little but vociferous gang are attacking, and as he knows many readers will not. In other words, he abuses science, he abuses individuals, he abuses search engines, and probably abuses himself as well - though we won't go into that.

One can only hope Troll Lambert will join "Second Life" (Do they have troll avatars?) and finally get a first life.

Hansen to his critics: You're paid-off "court jesters"

By Michael Fumento

Global warming alarmist since 1988 and head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies James Hansen has answered his critics who 1) pointed out that his agency put out false but significant data on US warming trends, and 2) refused to publicize these figures after changing them. Wrote Hansen:

The real deal is this: the 'royalty' controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil [sic], automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children. The court jesters are their jesters, occasionally paid for services, and more substantively supported by the captains' disinformation campaigns.

This is what we've been getting from environmentalists for decades. If you can't beat 'em on the facts, you smear 'em. It was utterly predictable that Hansen, a very little man with a big title, would go this route.

James Hansen's Hacks and their Global Warming Game

By Michael Fumento

If you follow the global warming debate, one thing you "know" is there is no debate. Questioning man-made global warming puts in the same league as Holocaust deniers and proves you're on the take from Big Carbon. Another is that nine of the ten warmest years recorded in the U.S. lower 48 since 1880 have occurred since 1995, with the very hottest being 1998.

But we now know, thanks to the efforts of Canadian mathematician Stephen McIntyre, who revealed and then publicized glitches in data kept by James Hansen's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, that the hottest year was 1934 and that the real 15 hottest years are spread over seven decades. Eight occurred before the chief "greenhouse gas," atmospheric carbon dioxide, began its sharp rise; seven occurred afterwards.

Does this prove everything about global warming is a hoax, as some have claimed? Or is it worthy of nothing more than a mention on the back of a card in Trivial Pursuit, as Hansen claims? Even if you've read about this controversy elsewhere, my findings in The American Spectator Online may surprise you.

Future weapons against malaria - and the one we have now

By Michael Fumento

O death, where is thy sting? Far too often it comes at the end of a mosquito's proboscis. The worst mosquito-borne disease, malaria, infects about 400 million people worldwide each year (90 percent in sub-Saharan Africa) and kills about 1.3 million of them. Compare that to the histrionics we've suffered over avian flu, which as of 2 April had infected 25 people and killed 12 this year. Or SARS, which killed 774 people worldwide before petering out.

As I write in TCS Daily, biotechnology may eventually come to the rescue. Scientists have announced they've built a better mosquito, one that doesn't become infected with the parasite that causes malaria. Ultimately, it's hoped, these mosquitoes will outbreed natural ones. A biotech malaria vaccine is also in the works. Aye, but there's the rub. A malaria vaccine has been in the works for decades. For now what we need is something that's tried and true and readily available. Yes, that means insecticides and yes that means DDT. Fortunately, pro-DDT activists are finally starting to gain the upper hand over spoiled brat environmentalists who think the deaths of black- and brown-skinned people don't count and know nothing more about DDT than that Rachel Carson made all sorts of horrible claims about it of which none have proved true.

This isn't a gut - it's chemicals!

By Michael Fumento

A massive industry exists to tell us what so many want to hear - it's not overeating and lack of exercise that makes us fat it's . . . well, anything but. Now, as I write in the American Spectator Online, a handful of scientist-advocates, with one in particular, is trying to convince us that it's man-made chemicals and not calories. Never mind the government data showing how much more we're eating than just a few decades ago. Never mind the "look-around-you factor" of food being available everywhere but in public toilets - or are they putting vending machines there, too?

Erin Brockovich on warpath against the environment

By Michael Fumento

As I write in my new article, "Erin Brockovich is full of, um, it," few things are as environmentally sensible as composting sewage, yet the alleged environmental crusader opposes it - or at least if it's being done eight miles away from the town that gave her fame and over $2 million in fortune, Hinkley. Never mind that the compost will have been heavily treated in a four-stage process before it reaches the facility, whereas Hinkley itself hosts a dairy farm that produces fresh batches of smelly, fly-drawing, germ-laden manure. It seems the only industrial process Erin likes is that which produces medical-grade silicone.

Erin Brockovich loses again

By Michael Fumento

As I've written elsewhere, Erin Brockovich has gotten a reputation for being a genius and a winner because one law firm she worked with, in combination with two of the largest law firms in California, had a huge settlement during non-judicial arbitration with a power company. In fact, she and her late boss Ed Masry often lost cases at the jury level and virtually all they did win were overturned on appeal. Alas, poor Brockovich began to believe her own myth and filed suit against 31 hospitals she claimed were making unfair claims against Medicare. Her one-third share of the winnings in 31 cases would have been quite a coup for her pocketbook. But a federal judge has just tossed out five and indicated the others will be thrown out as well. Why? Simple. Brockovich has no standing since she's not a Medicare participant - and at age 46 won't be one for quite awhile. (Disability also qualifies you for Medicare, but the inability to chew gum and walk at the same time is not considered such under Medicare rules.) The cases were dismissed "with prejudice," meaning they cannot be refiled. Lesson? Once again we see that while Brockovich is terrific at stirring up positive publicity, otherwise she's dumb as the proverbial doorknob. When are those 15 minutes going to end?

More from hot air activist Frank O'Donnell

By Michael Fumento

Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, has responded to my Weekly Standard article "More Hot Air from the EPA" and a shorter version I ran in the Washington Times. He wrote that I took his 1997 words saying talk of regulating lawn mowers was "crazed propaganda" that was "completely out of context, declaring that back then: "The Associated Press noted that the industry-funded Citizens for a Sound Economy [now Freedomworks] 'began airing aggressive television and radio ads hammering home another lobbying theme: that new air standards would curtail the lifestyles of Americans with bans on outdoor barbecues, lawnmowers and fireworks, and set limits on the plowing of farm fields. "At the time," he continued, "I referred to these claims as 'crazed propaganda,' and I was right. Last time I looked, we were still barbecuing, enjoying fireworks and mowing our lawns."

Thanks for digging yourself into a deeper hole, Mr. O'Donnell.

Both the alleged AP story and the source of his quote (a Maine newspaper) are from 1997 and not available on the web, but the only CFSE or Freedomworks references I found to bans regarding these items was a response to an EPA official's statement that "it's theoretically possible that a state could restrict activities like barbecuing to comply with the new federal standards."

To this, Citizens pointed out that commercial barbecues are already outlawed in some southern California communities, "and if jurisdictions don't have enough other sources of particulate matter to reduce, then who's to say barbecues won't be on some bureaucrat's list of banned behavior?"

Who, then, is being quoted out of context?

Indeed, as a result of those then-proposed Clean Air Act Amendments that O'Donnell was defending, the EPA established National Ambient Air Quality Standards, or concentration limits, for two sizes of particulate matter. Multiple violations of these standards can lead to a "nonattainment" designation for an area, with penalties if there is no reduction in overall ambient particulate matter. There was no exemption for barbecues, as indeed lawnmowers have never been exempted from ambient air regulations.

We also know that Southern California had ALREADY begun regulating barbecue briquettes and starter fluid for private barbecues, just as the EPA had already proposed tightening restrictions on lawnmowers. Since then, California has also begun regulating the barbecues on the basis of ODOR!

Farm sources of particulates do include plowing; therefore non-attainment areas have the legal right to put limits on them.

Fireworks, which produce fine particles upon combustion, are therefore also covered under the Ambient Air Quality Standards. Some environmental groups and newspapers have called for an outright ban on them, based strictly on their alleged hazard to breathing.

Lest you ever be tempted to believe the least thing Frank O'Donnell or his "Ban first; ask questions later group," remember their emissions of crazed propaganda.

By it's own reckoning, EPA mower regulations are "junk science"

By Michael Fumento

Nine years ago I wrote in my book Polluted Science and in the Weekly Standard an article on new EPA air pollution standards that lawn mowers would one day fall victim to these onerous and unnecessary regulations. This was not really going out on a limb. In 1994, the Clinton EPA administrator Carol Browner had said that "small gasoline engines that Americans use in yard and garden work are a significant source of air pollution." But in sworn testimony to Congress in 1997, she told a different story. The standards are "not about outdoor barbecues and lawn mowers," she testified, smearing such assertions as "junk science" and "scare tactics." Said Browner: "They are fake. They are wrong. They are manipulative." Frank O'Donnell, then-executive director of the Clean Air Trust, called talk of regulating lawn mowers "crazed propaganda."

Now I write in the Weekly Standard that the EPA is indeed set to impose tough regulations on lawnmowers and the primary environmentalist supporting the agency is -- surprise! -- Frank O'Donnell. Read about how the EPA couldn't care less about science or smog, but only sees another opportunity to wrap its tentacles around something new.

"Scientists OK Gore's Movie for Accuracy" NOT

By Michael Fumento

"Scientists OK Gore's Movie for Accuracy," declares the title of an AP story run by the Washington Post and countless other newspapers and news websites. The film, "An Incovenient Truth," tries to document both the actuality of man-made global warming and the incredible harm it will cause in the near future.

Yet you hardly have to read between the lines to find that the assertion is false. "The AP contacted more than 100 top climate researchers by e-mail and phone for their opinion. Among those contacted were vocal skeptics of climate change theory," said the writer. Problem is, only 19 responded; 81 of the scientists (that means 81%, AP), apparently weren't eager to comment. I wonder why not? I wonder why AP didn't wonder? Which again brings up the question: If man-made global warming is so very real and so very terrible, why do its proponents have to keep lying about it?

Study says global warming may cause bear cannibalism

By Michael Fumento

According to CNN, "Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found." Um, excuse me but isn't cannibalism merely a lifestyle choice? And aren't we all in favor of that, especially "alternative lifestyles," which would certainly describe cannibalism. Thank you!

Windmills cause global warming!

By Michael Fumento

Well, at least that's what Chris Cheronis says in an open letter he sent to me. "My thesis infers that windmills are the principal [sic] manmade cause of global warming through slowing the long established pre-windmill flow of surface air. Slower winds over oceans retard evaporation, ergo warmer surace water temperatures."

I can't say I buy it, but I do appreciate the sentiment. And it's just as sensible as a lot of the hot air coming from the global warming crowd. I also like how he concludes:

"P.S.: In short, take down the contraptions."

Non-nuclear fuels continue to kill

By Michael Fumento

In my recent piece on Chernobyl and the disaster that wasn't, I noted that no American has ever been harmed by nuclear energy but "that accidents caused by natural gas, petroleum products, and accidents and black lung disease from coal take a steady toll of lives each year." That was brought home rather horrifically when a bus evacuating nursing home patients from Hurricane Rita exploded, killing 24 persons aboard. It's only human to discount those things which commonly afflict us and exaggerate those which pose little or no threat. (Remember the panic when SARS came along and killed exactly zero Americans.) But it's still not a good basis for public policy.

Was I wrong about global warming and hurricane intensity?

By Michael Fumento

You might think so from all the high-fives in the media over a new study in Science magazine that claims, as one headline put it, "Study Links Hurricanes to Global Warming." But people who actually read the Science paper, like Dr. Patrick Michaels, research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, beg to differ. Mostly what the Science authors showed was how to play games with numbers: And the games weren't particularly sophisticated. The biggest trick was to begin counting hurricanes at 1970 instead of using data going all the way back to 1900 as my piece did. In most scientific circles, more data are considered better than less; longer timelines are considered superior to shorter ones. But when you're practicing advocacy science, the opposite applies.

Attack of the Killer Gators! (And the reason)

By Michael Fumento

As a National Geographic headline puts it: "Human-Alligators Encounters Rising In Southeast." At this rate, becoming gatorbait will soon be a part of any travel plan to Florida. National Geographic gives the simplistic, paid-for explanation that this is because both humand and alligator populations are growing dramatically in these areas. But we in the know realize the real awful truth: It's global warming!

Hurricane Bush? Or Hurricane Clinton? Or neither?

By Michael Fumento

This interesting tidbit from today's Washington Post:
"But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects."

On greenhouse gases, "Do as I say, not as I do."

By Michael Fumento

Economist Robert Samuelson has an excellent column (does he write any other kind?) on the hypocrisy of the European nations who signed the Kyoto Accord agreeing to cut emissions allegedly contributing to global warming and that lashed out bitterly at the U.S. for not doing so. Turns out that, "From 1990 (Kyoto's base year for measuring changes) to 2002, global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, increased 16.4 percent" overall. The U.S. increase was 16.7 percent, while in Greece it was 28.2 percent; Ireland, 40.3 percent; Spain, 46.9 percent; and Portugal, 59 percent. I would add that the situation is all the worse when you consider all the hot air European politicians and NGOs are sending into the atmosphere.