Category: Science

The Bees Are Fine, Thanks to Us

6/7/2015

WE keep hearing the Chicken Little narratives about the environment. Of course, humans, and our activities are always to blame. However, there is one story that hasn't received a lot of attention, where we humans have been beneficial.

WE guess it goes without saying that humans were blamed for the original problem; nothing new here. It could have been our pesticides, our GMO crops, or something else completely natural. Yes, these things happen. WE're talking about colony collapse disorder. As in, honey bee colonies.

A story in National Review, Bee-pocalypse Now? Nope. describes the situation:

You’ve probably heard by now that bees are mysteriously dying. In 2006, commercial beekeepers began to witness unusually high rates of honeybee die-offs over the winter — increasing from an average of 15 percent to more than 30 percent. Everything from genetically modified crops to pesticides (even cell phones) has been blamed. The phenomenon was soon given a name: colony collapse disorder.

The media love to hype the negative, especially as it applies to original sin of the Gaia religion.

Ever since, the media has warned us of a “beemaggedon” or “beepocalypse” posing a “threat to our food supply.” By 2013, NPR declared that bee declines may cause “a crisis point for crops,” and the cover of Time magazine foretold of a “world without bees.” This spring, there was more bad news. Beekeepers reported losing 42.1 percent of their colonies over the last year, prompting more worrisome headlines.

Based on such reports, you might believe that honeybees are nearly gone by now. And because honeybees are such an important pollinator — they reportedly add $15 billion in value to crops and are responsible for pollinating a third of what we eat — the economic consequences must be significant.

Anybody up for another Silent Spring?

And, right on cue, facts not in hand, government comes galloping in to the rescue.

Last year, riding the buzz over dying bees, the Obama administration announced the creation of a pollinator-health task force to develop a “federal strategy” to promote honeybees and other pollinators. Last month the task force unveiled its long-awaited plan, the National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators. The plan aims to reduce honeybee-colony losses to “sustainable” levels and create 7 million acres of pollinator-friendly habitat. It also calls for more than $82 million in federal funding to address pollinator health.

Ah, yes. The habitat. What habitat? Bee keepers love their bees. WE see bee boxes all over the place, and the bees are very well cared for. Pampered even, which brings us to this:

There are more honeybee colonies in the United States today than there were when colony collapse disorder began in 2006. In fact, according to data released in March by the Department of Agriculture, U.S. honeybee-colony numbers are now at a 20-year high. And those colonies are producing plenty of honey. U.S. honey production is also at a 10-year high.

Well, there goes the neighborhood. In fact, one of our contributors told us of a honeybee migration into their front yard a couple of days ago. Millions of bees followed their queen to a juniper bush in the front yard. A call to a local pest control outfit put them in touch with a beekeeper, who enthusiastically responded within minutes. He located the queen, and moved her to a cardboard box. All the other bees dutifully followed her to the box, which the beekeeper set in the passenger seat of his car, and drove away. Honeybees are very docile if you treat them with respect. Those bees will be well cared for.

This is not to deny that beekeeping faces challenges. Today, most experts believe there is no one single culprit for honeybee losses, but rather a multitude of factors. Modern agricultural practices can create stress for honeybees. Commercial beekeepers transport their colonies across the country each year to pollinate a variety of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. This can weaken honeybees and increase their susceptibility to diseases and parasites.

But this is not the first time beekeepers have dealt with bee disease, and they do not stand idly by in the face of such challenges. The Varroa mite, a blood-sucking bee parasite introduced in 1987, has been especially troublesome. Yet beekeepers have proven resilient. Somehow, without a national strategy to help them, beekeepers have maintained their colonies and continued to provide the pollination services our modern agricultural system demands.

Not every problem requires a government solution. We're a resourceful lot. Humans and nature can exist together, for mutually beneficial ends. (Read the entire article...)

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Breakfast Downgraded From "Most Important" Per New Study

8/22/2014

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From time to time WE shares interesting little tales from the mainstream meed-yah. Nags and nanny statists, take note that (drum roll)

Breakfast Downgraded From 'Most Important Meal of the Day' to 'Meal'

MSN News, Aug 22, 2014

"You didn't eat breakfast? Don't you know it's the most important meal of the day?"

In the bitterly divided world of breakfast habits, otherwise reasonable people become evangelists. Why is it acceptable to make people feel guilty about not eating breakfast, but it is not acceptable to slap those people?

This week health columnist Gretchen Reynolds at The New York Times did the slapping with science, reporting on two new nutrition studies. She concluded, "If you like breakfast, fine; but if not, don’t sweat it."

That's reasonable, sure, if apathetic. Nutrition science as a field has in recent years been bisected over the importance of breakfast. The research speaks with more nuance than the lay breakfast pusher. But the new studies land a weight of evidence thoroughly outside the realm of "most important meal."

In one study, 300 people ate or skipped breakfast and showed no subsequent difference in their weight gained or lost. Researcher Emily Dhurandhar said the findings suggest that breakfast "may be just another meal" and admitted to a history Breakfast-Police allegiance, conceding "I guess I won’t nag my husband to eat breakfast anymore."

Another small new study from the University of Bath found that resting metabolic rates, cholesterol levels, and blood-sugar profiles were the same after six weeks of eating or skipping breakfast. Breakfast-skippers ate less over the course of the day than did breakfast-eaters, though they also burned fewer calories.

“I almost never have breakfast,” James Betts, a senior lecturer at University of Bath, told Reynolds. “That was part of my motivation for conducting this research, as everybody was always telling me off and saying I should know better.”

One thing I've learned as a health writer is that a wealth of academic research is the product of personal vendettas, some healthier than others. The crux of the breakfast divide is a phenomenon known among nutrition scientists as "proposed effect of breakfast on obesity," or the PEBO. It's the idea people who don't eat breakfast actually end up eating more and/or worse things over the course of the day because their nightly fast was not properly broken.

Some studies have supported that idea, but a strong meta-analysis of all existing research last year by obesity researchers found that "the belief in the PEBO exceeds the strength of scientific evidence," citing poor research and bias in reporting.

Another study published last year researchers at Cornell had people go without breakfast for science, and those who skipped ended up eating less by the end of the day.

In a third study published last year, also in July—breakfast scientists might simply refer to as "the month"—a large study in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation found that eating breakfast was associated with significantly lower risk of heart disease. That remains the most persuasive pro-breakfast case to date.

"I refute the dogma that inevitably creeps into discussions of breakfast. Skipping breakfast can mean many different things," wrote David Katz, director of Yale University's Griffin Prevention Research Center, at the time. Katz introduced additional philosophical dilemmas: "Research about breakfast tends to divide the world into those who skip, and those who don't. But deferring and skipping are not the same. Skipping despite hunger, and deferring for want of it, are not the same. And clearly all breakfasts are not created equal."

For example, as Reynolds proposed, "Preparing a good breakfast can be as quick and easy as splashing some milk over cereal." You're definitely better off with no breakfast than with most cereals, which are primarily sugar, but another study from Harvard Medical School found that people who ate breakfasts of whole-grain cereals had lower rates of diabetes and heart disease compared to skippers.

If you ever visit the Internet's most-read site for health information, you'll see an articlepresumptuously titled "Why Breakfast Is the Most Important Meal of the Day," which mainly focuses on kids and the lore that they do better academically if they have eaten breakfast, but that's overblown and really not a clear conclusion. As Katz put it, "We have little information about adolescents, little information about the benefits of breakfast in well-nourished kids, and little information about how variation in the composition of breakfast figures into the mix."

But shades of grey do not satisfy my bitter-divide hypothesis. Let's still say there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who eat breakfast, and those who don't. If you're a breakfast deferrer who feels cowed by breakfast evangelists, a good way to stand up to them might be to echo Betts:

"More randomized experiments are needed before we can fully understand the impact of breakfast."

Or as a joke, "If you like breakfast so much, why don't you marry it?"

Or, with a very serious face, "Don't tell me how to live my life."

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Bill Whittle is Coming to Mt. Baker Theatre

8/10/2014

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In what might be described as a cross between a TED talk and a civics roundtable, the Northwest Business Club is presenting a speaker event so big it will be held at the Mt. Baker Theatre: "An Evening with Bill Whittle," August 29, 2014. Here's the blurb:

Whittle is a popular champion of what’s best about American liberty and its principles. With incisive wit and inescapable logic Bill examines the links between honest science and progress, and the importance of Common Sense Resistance to illiberal policies that cripple human advancement and creativity. Local notables from the Pacific Northwest will join Bill on-stage for a panel discussion of the major issues in our area.

Here's an example of Bill Whittle at the top of his form:

Yes, he's conservative; maybe even a little bit libertarian. Whittle appears regularly on the internet’s PJTV and BillWhittle.com in “Firewall,” “Afterburner,” and “Trifecta” episodes. His 11-part “Mr. Virtual President: Your Government” series, a collection of signature commentary and political parody, was released in March 2014. Whittle has a very large following from coast-to-coast and internationally with many thousands of subscribers following his work, which has received millions of hits on YouTube, PJTV and BillWhittle.com.

Local notables from the Pacific Northwest will join Bill on-stage for a panel discussion of the major issues in our area. Sort of like a Trifecta:

Visit the nwbclub.org site and BillWhittle.com to learn more. Tickets are on sale at Mt. Baker Theatre. Here’s a link to a full-color flyer that you can download, print and distribute in your neighborhood.

GET YOUR TICKETS ahead to save yourself time standing on line!

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Physicist Hayden on Policy that's Science-blind

5/10/2014

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Bless 'em all: "People will do anything to save the world … except take a course in science”...

Despite the continuing performance failure of IPCC based university "ecology department" models and predictions, WA Governor Inslee keeps truckin' on with his big plan to change the world by dictum. See Executive Order 14-04 dated April 29. It's loaded with a case of frights that sells best the uninformed, with little understanding of how science works. Demagogues thrive on ignorance, acquiring "power and popularity by arousing the emotions of persons and prejudices of the people." The AGW crisis politic and its supporting eco-industry feed on true believers - who behave rather like cargo-cultists and the ouija board set - of which there are many in Whatcom County.

Tu Ne Cede Malis = do not yield to evil

Physicist Howard Hayden’s one-letter disproof of global warming claims

OCTOBER 29, 2009 by STEPHAN KINSELLA

Physicist Howard Hayden, a staunch advocate of sound energy policy, sent me a copy of his letter to the EPA about global warming. The text is also appended below, with permission.

As noted in my post Access to Energy, Hayden helped the late, great Petr Beckmann found the dissident physics journal Galilean Electrodynamics (brochures and further Beckmann info here; further dissident physics links). Hayden later began to publish his own pro-energy newsletter, The Energy Advocate, following in the footsteps of Beckmann’s own journal Access to Energy I love Hayden’s email sign-off, “People will do anything to save the world … except take a course in science.” Here’s the letter:

***

Howard C. Hayden
785 S. McCoy Drive
Pueblo West, CO 81007

October 27, 2009

The Honorable Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20460

Dear Administrator Jackson:

I write in regard to the Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, Proposed Rule, 74 Fed. Reg. 18,886 (Apr. 24, 2009), the so-called “Endangerment Finding.”

It has been often said that the “science is settled” on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false.

The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.

Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive.

We can take this further. Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase. If the science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it.

Let me next address the horror story that we are approaching (or have passed) a “tipping point.” Anybody who has worked with amplifiers knows about tipping points. The output “goes to the rail.” Not only that, butit stays there. That’s the official worry coming from the likes of James Hansen (of NASAÂGISS) and Al Gore.

But therein lies the proof that we are nowhere near a tipping point. The earth, it seems, has seen times when the CO2 concentration was up to 8,000 ppm, and that did not lead to a tipping point. If it did, we would not be here talking about it. In fact, seen on the long scale, the CO2 concentration in the present cycle of glacials (ca. 200 ppm) and interglacials (ca. 300-400 ppm) is lower than it has been for the last 300 million years.

Global-warming alarmists tell us that the rising CO2 concentration is (A) anthropogenic and (B) leading to global warming.

(A) CO2 concentration has risen and fallen in the past with no help from mankind. The present rise began in the 1700s, long before humans could have made a meaningful contribution. Alarmists have failed to ask, let alone answer, what the CO2 level would be today if we had never burned any fuels. They simply assume that it would be the “pre-industrial” value.

§ The solubility of CO2 in water decreases as water warms, and increases as water cools. The warming of the earth since the Little Ice Age has thus caused the oceans to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.

(B) The first principle of causality is that the cause has to come before the effect. The historical record shows that climate changes precede CO2 changes. How, then, can one conclude that CO2 is responsible for the current warming?

Nobody doubts that CO2 has some greenhouse effect, and nobody doubts that CO2 concentration is increasing. But what would we have to fear if CO2 and temperature actually increased?

§ A warmer world is a better world. Look at weather-related death rates in winter and in summer, and the case is overwhelming that warmer is better.

§ The higher the CO2 levels, the more vibrant is the biosphere, as numerous experiments in greenhouses have shown. But a quick trip to the museum can make that case in spades. Those huge dinosaurs could not exist anywhere on the earth today because the land is not productive enough. CO2 is plant food, pure and simple.

§ CO2 is not pollution by any reasonable definition.

§ A warmer world begets more precipitation.

§ All computer models predict a smaller temperature gradient between the poles and the equator. Necessarily, this would mean fewer and less violent storms.

§ The melting point of ice is 0 ÂºC in Antarctica, just as it is everywhere else. The highest recorded temperature at the South Pole is -14 ÂºC, and the lowest is -117 ÂºC. How, pray, will a putative few degrees of warming melt all the ice and inundate Florida, as is claimed by the warming alarmists?

Consider the change in vocabulary that has occurred. The term global warming has given way to the term climate change, because the former is not supported by the data. The latter term, climate change, admits of all kinds of illogical attributions. If it warms up, that’s climate change. If it cools down, ditto. Any change whatsoever can be said by alarmists to be proof of climate change.

In a way, we have been here before. Lord Kelvin “proved” that the earth could not possibly be as old as the geologists said. He “proved” it using the conservation of energy. What he didn’t know was that nuclear energy, not gravitation, provides the internal heat of the sun and the earth.

Similarly, the global-warming alarmists have “proved” that CO2 causes global warming.

Except when it doesn’t.

To put it fairly but bluntly, the global-warming alarmists have relied on a pathetic version of science in which computer models take precedence over data, and numerical averages of computer outputs are believed to be able to predict the future climate. It would be a travesty if the EPA were to countenance such nonsense.

Best Regards,

Howard C. Hayden
Professor Emeritus of Physics, UConn

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WE always lean to free, but also toward informed

4/28/2014

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Without question, the Excavator consistently leans toward freedom first in all things: free speech, free markets, free thinking, free choice and above all, WE lean toward liberty (make that Liberty with a capital "L"). And if an adult wants to waste himself or herself on whatever, if the"whatever" doesn't intrude into others' lives okay fine. At the end of the day, a higher power will sort it out. WE don't need the Nanny State on patrol in the grocery store any more than in our bedrooms or dens (or even dens of iniquity), much less peering down on our homes and yards from airplanes and sending out snoop-squads to rat out landscape ordinance violators. [And that is what goes on here, with eco-nazis yanking Whatcom County's chain.]

WE were a little surprised to see this somewhat cautionary (if not critical) piece on the Babbage Science & Technology blog at The Economist which, with its European bent, is far from a "conservative" rag. WE laugh as much at Reefer Madness as everybody else, but found this pretty sobering.

Marijuana:
BAKED BRAINS
April 16, 2014 - The Economist

LATER this month, Washington will hold an unusual lottery: it will select 334 lucky winners of licences to sell recreational marijuana in the Pacific-Northwestern state. If all goes to plan, some of those pot shops will be serving stoners (who in Washington can already possess small recreational quantities of the drug) by early summer. Colorado permitted existing medical-marijuana outlets to start selling recreational pot on January 1st, although brand new recreational retailers will not open until October; so far the state has issued some 194 licences. And even though marijuana is still technically illegal nationwide under the Federal 1970 Controlled Substances Act, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently said he is monitoring Washington’s and Colorado’s experiences, and “would be glad to work with Congress” to re-categorise marijuana as less dangerous on the Controlled Substances List.

Hans Breiter, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Chicago’s Northwestern University, worries that the rush to promote recreational use is reckless, and that not enough thought is being given to the balance between costs and benefits. In a study published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, Dr Breiter and a group of researchers from Northwestern, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School found that the size, shape and structure of parts of the brain are changed in teens and young adults who smoke weed as little as once a week. Earlier studies have focused only on tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, the main psychoactive component of pot) affects the brains of animals or intensive, dependent human users—and found evidence of impaired learning, memory, attention and decision-making. But those studies did not consider the effects of casual use.

Those effects appear to be significant. Dr Breiter and his team used high-resolution MRI scans to examine the brains of 20 young people aged 18 to 25 years old who smoked pot recreationally—but who were not, according to psychiatric testing, addicted to it. Twenty pot-free controls in the same age range were also studied, and all participants were closely matched in terms of age, sex (nine males and 11 females in each group), race and years of education. Each pot user was asked to estimate how much, and how often, they used the drug over a three-month period. And everyone was rated for cigarette and alcohol use—pot smokers drunk more—and the study controlled for these.

Although THC takes its toll on several parts of the brain, animal studies of prolonged exposure to the compound have shown that two regions—the amygdala and nucleus accumbens—are especially likely to be affected. The amygdala helps regulate and process emotions (such as craving) and emotional memories. The nucleus accumbens helps assess what is bad or good (such as a drug-induced “high”) in a person’s environment, and makes decisions based on that. Physiological changes to these regions could therefore mean that an individual’s ability to make pleasure-related decisions—such as deciding to stop smoking pot—may be impaired.

The researchers’ MRI scans showed a number of such physiological changes. It found structural abnormalities in the density of grey-matter (which constitutes most of the brain’s neuronal cell bodies), in both the amygdala and nucleus accumbens, along with changes in their volume and shape. In addition, their analysis of marijuana users showed reduced grey-matter density in other regions of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex. Numerous previous studies have shown that dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex is associated with decision-making abnormalities in addiction. And other functional-MRI and magnetic-resonance-spectroscopy studies have confirmed that marijuana use may affect how this region functions.

All this matters because both scientists and policymakers continue to distinguish between “heavy, addictive use” and “recreational use” among the 19m Americans who, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Mental Health, report recent marijuana consumption. A similar distinction is made by other countries too. The new research suggests that this is at least a shaky line to draw, as even modest recreational pot-smoking seems to set the brain on a path to addiction—and perhaps to other types of cognitive impairment found in earlier studies. The same, of course, goes for alcohol and tobacco, but the risks there are widely advertised. Time, perhaps, for a similar marijuana-related educational campaign before more states go to pot.

by P.H. (at the Economist), Washington D.C.

About Babbage
Reports on the intersections between science, technology, culture and policy, in a blog named after Charles Babbage, a Victorian mathematician and engineer
______
Note: WE didn't ever quite take a position pro or con on the marijuana initiative, though we thought folks should question the big-government tax issues and the coming legal and bureaucratic bungle-battles that have played out pretty much as described.

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US Fish & Wildlife - Friend or foe to life?

4/18/2014

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What a crazy world it is when WE humans find ourselves feeling akin to endangered species, victims all of bad science and the constant contradictions brought on by clueless and unaccountable bureaucracies. This tale seems quite similar to what we've seen and suffered for years up here in Whatcom County where, like our little buddies fish and fowl, we find ourselves more endangered by ill conceived programs than what ordinary life throws at us. WE see crazymaking practices year in and year out, cast widely like abandoned river nets, and the slaughter of starlings, geese, beaver, and all manner of critters - by whom, and for what? Rural folks and farmers are being pinned down and put off their land, as a benefit to what? Only the out of touch could believe these agencies are worthy to wield such reckless power.

Gophers, artillery, and US Fish & Wildlife
by Glen Morgan
The Official Blog, Freedom Foundation
April 17, 2014

The Freedom Foundation has written extensively about the Thurston County Mazama Pocket gopher saga. This was another Endangered Species Act (ESA) story about a little rodent that through no fault of its own has become a symbol of the abuse of people by the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) and other government agencies and special interests. On April 9th, the USFWS officially listed the pocket gopher as an endangered species, and the residents of Thurston County, Wash., get to enjoy the restrictions and harm this listing will bring to them.

It could have been worse. The original habitat maps used inThurston County for the Western pocket gopher included about 150,000 acres covering thousands of farms, homes and businesses. The final habitat maps issued in the USFWS are much more limited, and the property restrictions issued by the Federal government appear far less onerous than the bizarre restrictions enthusiastically invented by the Thurston County Commissioners and their Central Planning department. Communities near the delta smelt, sage grouse, or spotted owl have paid a far higher price for ESA-induced regulation.

However, as an example of government incompetence, the disregard of science, squandering of tax dollars, and just plain silliness, the pocket gopher saga shows what is repeatedly occurring throughout the United States. Our tax dollars fund this abuse of the ESA, and the consequent harm to our society.

Let’s start with the little rodent at the center of this controversy. Until recently, the pocket gopher in Thurston County had only two tangible enemies. The first was the usual plethora of predators – weasels, coyotes, owls (when the burrowing rodents are above ground), and feral cats. The second was human. The pocket gopher, true to its nature, likes to feed on the roots of plants and trees – particularly newly planted fir trees in forests. The larger timber operations recognized that to improve their replanting efforts they would need to address the pesky rodent that was killing their trees. The US Forest Service (USFS) was happy to help, and for decades sponsored both trapping and poisoning efforts. It was determined that eradication was very difficult and that gophers are hardy creatures. An interesting point here is that Ken Berg, the current director of the local USFWS appears to have been employed by the USFS during the time it sponsored trapping and poisoning of gophers in Thurston County and elsewhere.

Times change. The Forest Service stopping poisoning and trapping the gopher in the early 1990s, and a movement began to instead list the gopher as a “threatened” species. The initial problem was that nobody really knew how many of the gophers were around or where they lived. Early in the survey process, it was discovered that the largest concentration of pocket gophers lived at the Army’s Fort Lewis. And the gopher didn’t live just anywhere on the base, it preferred the artillery impact range. Since World War I, this is probably the most churned, burned, and impacted piece of land in Washington State, yet the hardy pocket gopher thrived among the fires, explosions, and change. The second largest concentration of gophers was at the Olympia airport in Tumwater, Wash. – hardly an example of pristine wilderness.

Common sense would suggest, based on these findings, that the gophers were doing fine living alongside humans (not to mention artillery and a busy airport). Instead, the regulators decided to “save” pocket gophers from things like tractor tire vibrations, kids on bicycles, cats, dogs, and playground equipment. Inconvenient facts just never seem to bother the self-appointed defenders of nature as they scramble for grant dollars to fund their studies, not to mention their livelihoods. Everyone from the Thurston County Commissioners to the leadership of the local Thurston County Democrat Party were convinced that a burrowing rodent which thrived among exploding artillery shells was bound to go extinct if rural residents were permitted to install big toy play sets in their backyards or move dirt in their fields.

Responding to this nonsense, the Freedom Foundation worked with citizens to launch a local education effort called “Stop Taking Our Property (S.T.O.P.) Thurston County.” We engaged hundreds of people to show up and testify at multiple public hearings, confront elected officials, put up yard signs, and expose the truth. This effort delayed state and local efforts to use the gopher as a regulatory tool and likely prevented some of the most harmful restrictions from becoming law. However, the die was cast years earlier, and neither citizens nor science could dissuade the regulators from their power grab.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) biologists actually raised questions about both local and federal efforts to list the gophers as threatened or endangered. The state’s scientists pointed out the lack of DNA evidence to show that different gopher groups were really “sub species” in need of their own separate listings. These questions and doubts were suppressed, along with any other information that might fail to support a federal USFWS listing under the ESA.

The USFWS regularly rejects, ignores, or tries to avoid science. A recent example from Eastern Washington was the recent attempt to list the White Bluffs Bladderpod. In that case, USFWS squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars on unnecessary studies while pleading poverty to avoid conducting a DNA test. When a private agricultural group paid the $25,000 themselves, the DNA test confirmed there was nothing to distinguish this plant from others just like it spread all over the Western United States.

Most of the time, USFWS just lists the animal absent any serious science or technical review. It does this in collusion with organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) in a practice called “Sue and Settle.” The scam goes like this: First, CBD identifies or invents hundreds of critters that it claims are scarce. CBD then sues USFWS because these animals, bugs, or plants are not yet listed as endangered. USFWS initiates the listing process and negotiates in a kind of legal kabuki theatre to make it look like a real lawsuit and to run up CBD’s soon to be reimbursed legal costs. Then USFWS throws up its hands and "surrenders," listing the species as endangered regardless of science, truth, or harm to people. The bureaucrats get more power, the environmentalists get their way and taxpayers pay everybody’s legal bills.

Public pressure does sometimes make a difference, even with the USFWS. In public hearings the USFWS held last year about the pocket gopher listing, there were big, pretty signs claiming the USFWS “supported agriculture.” The actual USFWS proposal, however, was that no crops could be harvested, no fields tilled, no tractors driven anywhere near suspected gopher populations except between the months of November and February. Farmers and agricultural folk openly ridiculed the USFWS for proposing to only allow farming in the winter. It was loud, funny, and anyone with even elementary education about agriculture knew the farmers were obviously correct.

The ridicule and embarrassment was enough that even USFWS modified their final restrictions to exempt normal agricultural practices. This is great for the farmers who were boisterous and engaged, but if you happen to be a residential property owner or non-farm business in the affected locations, you will be burdened by the ESA gopher listing. No more sheds, barns, or outbuildings without federal approval (and additional fees, of course). Most landowners don’t even know this has happened to them, but they will learn soon enough.

Some have already experienced a similar process thanks to theThurston C ounty Commissioners’ gopher-based property restrictions (see Pocket Gopher Deed-2014 as a “deed” restriction called a “gopher deed”).

Of course, it isn’t about the gopher. It is about control and restricting the land use of rural residents. Most bureaucrats involved in the process know this. If any of these government agencies actually wanted the gopher to explode in population, they would pay farmers to raise the rodents and we would have gophers by the millions. Such an effort would direct both the money and the power away from government and to regular people, it would solve "the problem," and it would be successful. Of course, there is no goal to solve any of these "problems." Why? Like so many other things in life, finding the answer is as easy as following the money. And even with the ESA listing bringing federal involvement, it is unlikely Thurston County will back off since they gain both power and revenues from these regulations.

A lot of money has been passed around between government agencies and special interests over just this one kind of gopher. There are grants for the county, the state, and even some nonprofits to “study” the animal. There are tens of millions of dollars for “mitigation” and “habitat” purchases. There is money to be made for consultants, planners, and other courtiers. All this money is taken from the people and used to grind down the local citizenry in a process that is designed to punish regular people not on the grant money train.

If you don’t think this matters to you, you probably won’t have to wait long before you get to experience something similar. “You might not be interested in government, but government is interested in you,” as the saying goes. Unless you live in an urban core, there is most likely a critter, insect, or plant near you being considered for listing by the USFWS. If it isn’t the gopher, a butterfly, a bird, or a plant, it might be a slug. The USFWS is currently paying people to count slugs all over Western Washington. Inevitably some of them are in your yard. Of course, John Davis, former editor of Earth First! was famously quoted as saying “…Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs…” I’m sure the Center for Biological Diversity would agree with that statement. In fact, it appears that slugs, like pocket gophers may have far more value to these folk than people. We live in a relatively free country where they can believe this nonsense, however, we should not have to support it with tax payer dollars. Defunding and dissolving USFWS would be a good start towards stopping the insanity.

Until then, the pocket gophers will continue to thrive alongside exploding artillery, and the USFWS will continue to destroy people’s lives and communities, ignoring science and helping to pay off their special interest friends.

For those who want to see how local elected officials sell this type of scam to those who actually believe them, read their editorial in the local paper here.

If you want to listen to how a local Representative - Republican JT Wilcox thinks of this type of legislation, you can listen to my interview here.

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"Earth Hour" ... Did it blink by you?

3/31/2014

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Comrades of Bellingrad, those of you who missed "Earth Hour" from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. "local" Saturday night, March 29th - it's not too late to sit in the dark for an hour of your choosing to contemplate your sins - that is, the environmental impacts of your merely being. WE missed this! It came and went under our radar. Our bad and boo-hoo (bah humbug!). [Get out the nets.]

Night Falls on Civilization
Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog
March 29, 2014

The World's Fair to Earth Hour marks the journey of a civilization across the sky from light into darkness. In our new post-civilizational time, we no longer celebrate human accomplishment by seeing a vision of the future, instead we turn off the bright lights of civilization and sit in the dark for an hour to atone for our electrical sins.

Earth Hour stigmatizes human accomplishment as the root of all evils and treats the lack of accomplishment as an accomplishment. For all the pretense of activism, environmentalism celebrates inaction.

Don't build, don't create and don't do-- are its mandates. Turn off the lights and feel good about how much you aren't doing right now.

Humanity is what is wrong with the world. It began with fire, then the wheelbarrow, the lever and the ax, the mason, the carpenter, the scientist, the visionary. It can end with you.

Just turn out the lights.

Environmentalism has degenerated from valuing how much the skies and the oceans, the butterfly and the beaver, the still lake and the blade of grass, enrich our humanity into a conviction that all human activity is destructive because the species of man is the greatest threat to the planet. Each death, each act of undoing and unmaking, each darkness that is brought about by the cessation of humanity becomes a profoundly environmentalist activity.

Kill yourself and save the planet. Put out the lights, tear down the city and let the earth revert to some imaginary primeval paradise free of all pollution; whether it is the carbon breath of men, dogs and cows or the light pollution of their cities.

Embrace the darkness.

While we take electric light for granted, being able to read and write after dark is a technological achievement that transformed our civilization. Animals are governed by day and night cycles. Artificial light made it possible for us to work independently of the day and night cycle. And that made our literature and our sciences, our civilization, possible.

Like all environmental gimmicks, Earth Hour is self-defeating as anything other than an assertion of identity and faith. Far more energy is consumed promoting it, than is saved by practicing it.

Websites switch to black, even though displaying black on television sets or monitors consumes more energy. Turning off electricity to entire buildings after working hours and then turning it on costs more than letting it run. And getting 90 million people across the country to turn their power on and off at a scheduled time is an energy savings disaster. And since power companies draw down on their more expensive 'green' generators first, Earth Hour actually shuts down 'green' power.

But its sponsors don't claim that Earth Hour saves energy or prevents us from polluting the globe. Like every environmentalist stunt from flying rock stars around the world on jet planes to carving thousands of statues made of ice and then leaving them to melt in a public square, Earth Hour is described as spreading "awareness".

Spreading awareness is the sole purpose of most environmental activism. Awareness spreading doesn't improve anything, but spreads the ideology that humanity is evil to make people feel guilty, outraged, hopeful or some combination of the appropriate political sentiments in the face of an imminent armageddon that can only be fought by convincing everyone to be deeply concerned by it and disdainful of everyone who stands outside their Chicken Little consensus.

It is a religious ritual for a secular religion that has no god, but whose devil is the gear and the microchip, the milk cow and the imported banana, the skyscraper and the lathe.

The WWF, Earth Hour's godmother, has learned that shrill attention seeking is a reliable fundraising method. One of the WWF's more memorable fundraising methods was an ad showing hundreds of planes headed toward the World Trade Center, to highlight just how much more important their work is than fighting terrorism. Franny Armstrong of Age of Stupid, which was promoted by the WWF, ran a 10:10 campaign in the UK, whose ads featured environmentalists murdering dissenters, including a group of schoolchildren. The ads are just ads, but London's leftist former mayor, Ken Livingstone had said of Age of Stupid, "Every single person in the country should be forcibly sat down on a chair and made to watch this film."

That is the dark side of environmentalism. The most active non-Muslim domestic terrorist group is environmental. The undercurrent of violence finds easy purchase in environmentalism's creed that the only real problem with the world is people.

No amount of turning off the lights is enough. Eventually you come around to having to turn off the people.

The Nazis were among the most enthusiastic environmentalists of their day, even the term 'Ecology' was coined by Ernst Haeckel, whose racial views served as precursors to Nazi eugenics. But while Nazi environmentalist believed that we were all animals, they insisted that some animals were better than others. Modern environmentalists believe that we are all worse than animals. In their view we are both natural and unnatural. Natural because we come from the ape and unnatural because we are intelligent. We live on the planet, but our intelligence excludes us from ever belonging to it.

Tools are our crime against nature. We make things. And we make things better. Earth Hour is our reminder to drop our tools and stop. Stop thinking. Stop doing. Just stop.

The incompatibility of productive man with the natural world is a fundamental tenet of the environmental movement. Everything we do is destructive because of what we are. We are tool builders, inventors and producers. And the environmentalist movement is aimed at convincing us to stop being these things. To turn off the lights, make do with less and march back to the caves with a few clever ad campaigns and a catchy tune.

Not only mankind must go, but all the animals that man has domesticated and bred-- cows, dogs and cats. That is why PETA kills thousands of dogs and cats a year, promotes the euthanasia of wild cats and pet spaying and its staffers have even been known to kidnap animals and then kill them. It is why the Global Warming crowd has made cow emissions into their whipping bovine.

It's not enough to kill man, tear down his cities and put out his lights. His cats and dogs and his cows and sheep must die along with him.

Environmentalism is not motivated by a love for all creatures, but by the fanatical belief in the purification of the earth from all traces of human civilization. The political leftist romanticizes the noble savage over the civilized man and its environmentalist arm romanticizes the jungle over the thousand acre farm. It prefers the the swamp to the garden, the wolf to the dog, and the tiger to the house cat.

This preference is not scientific, it is emotional, rooted in an antipathy to industrialization and human development. It wraps itself in the cloak of science, but it is a reactionary longing for a romanticized nomadic past that never existed. A way back to the lost eden of noble savages free from morality and guilt.

In the environmental bible-- man is the source of all evil. The transition from the nomadic to the domestic, the village to the city, and the craftsman to the factory, is its version of original sin.

The environmentalist began with a distaste for human civilization and the fetishization of the rural farm life of the peasant. The champions of this "naturalism" were invariably urban artists and writers from the upper classes who were enthusiastic about being in touch with nature. After them came the "Nature Fakers" crafting myths about the high moral standards of wild animals. Domestic animals in such stories were always wicked and dumb, while wild animals lived deep and spiritual lives out in the woods. And so the animal kingdom was subdivided into the noble savage and the uncle tom.

The world was divided into two polar opposites, the green and the gray, in an apocalyptic struggle. Either man would drown the world in industry, or he would return to a natural way of life through a lethal virus (Mary Shelley, The Last Man, 1826), a devastating war (H.G. Wells), oppressive social policies (Edward Bellamy) or eco-terrorism (The Monkey Wrench Gang). The more civilization grew, the more apocalyptic the scenarios became culminating in the two great environmental myths; nuclear winter and global warming. These apocalyptic myths have served the same purpose for environmentalists as apocalypses do for all religions. They predict a time when the sinful order is overturned and the earth is renewed to make way for the faithful.

Man is the environmentalist's devil. He must be beaten, broken and subjugated. Even the animals he has bred, who are the spark of his genius, must be taken out and killed. Take away his food and his power. Blame him for the natural cycles of the planet and the inevitable extinction of species that goes on whether he is there or not. Take away his technology and his inventions. Tell him that the humblest bacteria is better than him for it is dumb and follows its natural instincts while he insists on using his mind. Take away his primacy and his learning. And then leave him in the dark.

The environmental movement is tenacious, fanatical and deceptive. Its creed is the undoing of all human progress.

There is money to be made from that, as there is in all revolutions, but beneath the inconveniences of living under an environmental regime, from dirty clothes to high taxes, while being forced to listen to the hypocrisies and false pieties of the Gorean clergy of environmentalist activists heating their mansions while the poor freeze in energy poverty, is the darker reality that environmentalism is an anti-human movement with a vicious hostility toward man and the civilization he has built.

Whatever he has built, it must destroy.

FOOTNOTE: Alternatives for penance are, however, available. For the pittance of a couple of hundred thousand dollars a share, environmental sinners can belly up to a local mitigation bank and buy an indulgence. Or, perhaps trade-off "development rights" for eternity - imposing conditions on the use of the land - through a TDR (transfer of development rights). Better still, pick up some quick cash through a PDR (purchase of development rights) program, or from the publicly subsidized land trust at the expense of your neighbors. Ka-ching! The priests and priestesses of planning have their money-changing tables out, ready to do business at the temple, bless the local politicians...

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CAPR Skagit Education Outreach: Their RULES or Your RIGHTS

3/23/2014

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WE just wanted to give you a heads-up about a science and rights-based discussion series being presented by Citizens Alliance for Property Rights (CAPR) down in Skagit County:

Special guest Speaker:
Don Easterbrook, Ph.D., Professor (Emeritus) Geology, Western Washington University will present Impacts of Global Warming, Sea Level Rise, and Envision 2060 in Skagit County, April 4, 2014 FRIDAY 7:00 PM.

Panel:
Zach Barborinas, Mike Newman, John Roozen will discuss Skagit County Property Owners: Citizens or Subjects? Skagit Water Rights. People, the Law, the Rulings, May 9, 2014 FRIDAY 6:00 PM

Special guest Speaker:
Tim Ball, Ph.D. Professor (Ret) Geology, University of Winnipeg will present The Climate. Science Based on Evidence, May 30, 2014 FRIDAY 7:00 PM.

Meetings Open to All. FREE Admission, at SKAGIT PUD, AQUA ROOM 1415 Freeway Dr. Mt. Vernon.

Click here for more information.

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In the wee small hours - In Olympia, such a deal

2/18/2014

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Such a deal, for scams and sinners

In the dark of night, while most folks were sleeping - oblivious - a piece of legislation that only had its "first reading" in Olympia twelve days ago passed by a vote of 93-5. This little slip of a bill, a mere three pages, will kick the principles of justice and liberty as we know them closer to the proverbial cliff.

That sounds mighty dramatic, maybe over the top. What's this bill about?

Waal... HB 2454 is a bill that paves the way for "water quality trading" in Washington State. Painted as accommodating and innovative, and dressed-up as so many bills are nowadays in predictable, wolf in sheep's clothing buzzwords like "voluntary" and "market-based," the legislature is setting up tables in the temple of environmental justice for the sale of Get Out Of Jail Free cards. Instead of nabbing those who pollute, and correcting real problems appropriately, this bill says:

Trading programs allow facilities facing higher pollution control costs to meet their regulatory obligations by purchasing environmentally equivalent or superior pollution reductions from another source at a lower cost.

(and later...)

Specifically, the state conservation commission should examine watersheds in which total maximum daily loads have been produced, and assess whether there are potential buyers, or permit holders, and sellers of credit to support a water quality trading program consistent with the water quality trading framework developed by the department of ecology.

How convenient. Instead of confronting and solving water quality problems (and let's call a spade a spade here, bad water quality means POLLUTION, are WE right?) the Conservation Commission and Washington Ecology will be tasked with exploring ways to trade these sins away. HUH? Figure it out. Dense places that pollute the most can buy their way out of trouble by locking down large expanses of clean land, agriculture, or better still pay for trendy recreation and renovation projects whether they're useful or not. That would suit a lot of city obsessives, particularly the growth management lobby. The "restoration" industry will go for it, along with the land trusts, water trusts, and mitigation banks like this new one - all so anxious make sales. Lock-down land, grow bureaucracy, pick-up big contracts, and accommodate deep pocket polluters through perpetual extortion - what a deal!! Is that not what the EPA and 17 states have been selling? It looks good in booklets, but it is what it is - typically out of proportion and not solving much.

Whether we need it or not, "environmental protection" is one whale of a lucrative business around here. The potential for corruption and exaggerated "environmental needs assessment" is real; that's obvious. WE ask - how much does this kind of thing achieve in making Whatcom County or Washington State a better place? A cleaner place? More productive, healthier? And, how can greed be kept out of these institutionalized staff-driven goldmines? WA Commerce has been promoting regional TDR's (transfers of development rights) between counties to help grow cities that don't keep their own acts clean.

As things are already, good and decent stewards of healthy rural land find themselves thanklessly hobbled like lambs tied to stakes - cautioned not to turn a shovel of dirt, or farm without a plan. It's the devil being spied on and watched over, having to obtain say-so first from the lairds and keepers. Is there no end to the scope and scale of this state's "environmental" lock-downs and the institutional coveting of ever-more private property? Water quality - uh - pollution trades... What a load of hypocrisy.

WE have reported on quite a few stories just like this in the last couple of years, like the abysmally vague and scientifically vacant "natural resources marketplace," the greedy interests that underpinned and promoted the DNR reconveyance, and how local watershed planning has been hijacked by a greedy local monopoly and the Puget Sound Partnership. There's little question that the growing web spun by bureaucrats and bankers (and the barking left) have no intention of giving up. The road back has got to be guided by common sense.

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Burden of Proof, Science and Libel

2/17/2014

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Mann v. Steyn. Have you heard of it? It's a defamation lawsuit that some are calling the Trial of the Century. Given the classic wisdom, "The best defense against libel is the truth," who will prevail? This is a fascinating story on numerous levels.

Mark Steyn - Author, commentator; questions the quality of this science

Michael E Mann - Penn State prof, famous for "Hockey Stick"

Background:

According to Wikipedia, "In 1998 Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes developed new statistical techniques to produce Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1998 (MBH98), the first eigenvector-based climate field reconstruction (CFR). This showed global patterns of annual surface temperature, and included a graph of average hemispheric temperatures back to 1400.[4] In Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1999 (MBH99) the methodology was extended back to 1000.[5][6] The term hockey stick was coined by the climatologist Jerry Mahlman, to describe the pattern this showed, envisaging a graph that is relatively flat to 1900 as forming an Ice hockey stick's "shaft", followed by a sharp increase corresponding to the "blade".[7][8] A version of this graph was featured prominently in the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), along with four other reconstructions supporting the same conclusion.[6]The graph was publicised, and became a focus of dispute for those opposed to the strengthening scientific consensus that late 20th century warmth was exceptional.[9]"

(WE should emphasize that to the best of our knowledge, Michael Mann is no relation to Whatcom County Councilman Ken Mann.)

This controversy has risen to the surface once again, because Michael Mann is suing Mark Steyn, opinion contributor for National Review along with the Competitive Enterprise Institute for questioning the veracity of Mann's claims. This is significant because throughout history, at least since the Age of Enlightenment, science has always been a process of discovery in which formulators and promoters of hypotheses have the burden of proof, and skeptics and critics are necessary to question any aspect of it. The proof involves the development of reproducible experiments which can be run by other scientists to either confirm or discredit the hypothesis. When the science has evidence of corruption, falsification of data, or any agenda apart from discovering nature's own truth, then it is the responsibility of all of us to question the purity and quality of the work.

Much has been made of the fact that the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming has been peer reviewed, and the consensus is that the hypothesis is valid and therefore, real. However, science doesn't work that way. The hypothesis must agree with nature, and not necessarily with other scientists. This can only be done through reliably repeatable experiments. (Note: computer models are not experiments!) Peer review can merely verify that the experiments were of a valid design, and conducted according to accepted procedures, and accounting for errors where they're detected. This can be a decades-long process. As technology improves, errors can be discovered that could completely invalidate a hypothesis, or render it incomplete. This happened in the late 1800s when Newton's laws of motion began showing discrepancies, and Einstein finally explained ca. 1905 what some of the problems were, with his special and general theories of relativity. Einstein's theories are still being refined and extended. In each case, ongoing skepticism, experiment and peer review gets us closer to nature's truth.

This process of critical review has been corrupted by politics in the climate sciences. There's too much money and power at stake, and honest scientists find it very difficult do honest research, at the risk of losing their government grants or their jobs researching politically correct theories at universities, should they start publishing unpopular results. And since climate scientists have shown evidence that they won't do their jobs honestly (cf., Climategate), a few (very few) editorial writers who are still watchdogs and not lapdogs, have written critical reviews on the subject. Some scientists don't like this. They feel it is libelous. They fear for their jobs, or their reputations. And they want to sue these critics for having the temerity to question the integrity of the process and the profession.

Robert Tracinski at Real Clear Politics opines,

The global warming hysteria is disastrous enough in its intended goal, which is to ban the use of our cheapest and most abundant fuels and force us to limp along on "alternative energy" sources that are insufficient to support an industrial civilization. But along the way, the global warming campaign is already wrecking our science and politics by seeking to establish a dogma that cannot legally be questioned.

The critical point in this campaign is a defamation lawsuit by global warming promoter Michael Mann against Mark Steyn, National Review, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

When the "Climategate" e-mails were leaked five years ago, a lot of us speculated that it could all end up in the courts, given the evidence that climate scientists were pocketing large sums of government money on the basis of a scientific consensus they were manipulating behind the scenes. But it's typical of our upside-down political and cultural environment that when this issue does reach the courts, it will be in the form of a lawsuit against the climate skeptics.

Tracinski continues,

Steyn and the others are being sued for criticizing Mann's scientific arguments. In the case of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, for example, they're being sued for Rand Simberg's complaint that Mann "has molested and tortured data." (See a summary of the case here.) Frankly, I'm not sure how I escaped this lawsuit myself. I shall have to review what I have written and see if my language was not sufficiently inflammatory. Perhaps I don't have pockets deep enough to be worth looting. Or perhaps I'm not a big enough target to be worth intimidating and bankrupting. Note the glee with which the left slavers at the prospect of taking out a prominent voice on the right, with one leftist gloating that "it's doubtful that National Review could survive" losing the case.

But wait! There's more!

Here is the point at which we need a little primer on libel laws, which hinge on the differentiation between facts and opinion. It is libel to maliciously fabricate facts about someone. (It is not libel to erroneously report a false fact, so long as you did so with good faith reason to believe that it was true, though you are required to issue a correction.) But you are free to give whatever evaluation of the facts you like, including a negative evaluation of another person's ideas, thinking method, and character. It is legal for me, for example, to say that Michael Mann is a liar, if I don't believe that his erroneous scientific conclusions are the product of honest error. It is also legal for me to say that he is a coward and a liar, for hiding behind libel laws in an attempt to suppress criticism.

(Continue reading Mann vs. Steyn: The Trial of the Century at Real Clear Politics...)

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The Bees Are Fine, Thanks to Us

Breakfast Downgraded From "Most Important" Per New Study

Bill Whittle is Coming to Mt. Baker Theatre

Physicist Hayden on Policy that's Science-blind

WE always lean to free, but also toward informed

US Fish & Wildlife - Friend or foe to life?

"Earth Hour" ... Did it blink by you?

CAPR Skagit Education Outreach: Their RULES or Your RIGHTS

In the wee small hours - In Olympia, such a deal

Burden of Proof, Science and Libel

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