Let me reach the whoooooole way over here and try and grasp that argument....
Anyway, I won't try to go fully point for point against this guy as his article is fairly long. Suffice to say:
Facts are necessary to me. I use them for every position I hold, environmentally. And the environmentalists I know, and the ones I read are the same way. They do not hold onto beliefs religiously without proof.
Instead of a point to point rebuttal I will tell you what environmentalism is to US, the environmentalists.
The world was never an eden, none of us believe that. Life is vicious and cruel, we all know that. What an environmentalist is, is a humanist. We are not so full of ourselves that we believe we can destroy the planet or destroy all or most life on this planet. Environmentalists know that whatever we can do will be insignificant in the long term. The world will survive us. What an environmentalist tries to do, is keep this world habitable to humans as long as possible. By protecting the earth, in its human stable way, we are protecting humanity. And THAT, is really what environmentalism is all about. I love the bengal tigers, I feel compassion for all animals. I want to see lush forests too. But above all, its to protect the food web, the natural order, so humans continue to thrive.
I will get to a little bit of what he said though.
Quote:
So I can tell you some facts. I know you haven't read any of what I am about to tell you in the newspaper, because newspapers literally don't report them. I can tell you that DDT is not a carcinogen and did not cause birds to die and should never have been banned. I can tell you that the people who banned it knew that it wasn't carcinogenic and banned it anyway. I can tell you that the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people, mostly children, whose deaths are directly attributable to a callous, technologically advanced western society that promoted the new cause of environmentalism by pushing a fantasy about a pesticide, and thus irrevocably harmed the third world. Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America. We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die and didn't give a damn.
I can tell you that second hand smoke is not a health hazard to anyone and never was, and the EPA has always known it. I can tell you that the evidence for global warming is far weaker than its proponents would ever admit. I can tell you the percentage the US land area that is taken by urbanization, including cities and roads, is 5%. I can tell you that the Sahara desert is shrinking, and the total ice of Antarctica is increasing. I can tell you that a blue-ribbon panel in Science magazine concluded that there is no known technology that will enable us to halt the rise of carbon dioxide in the 21st century. Not wind, not solar, not even nuclear. The panel concluded a totally new technology-like nuclear fusion-was necessary, otherwise nothing could be done and in the meantime all efforts would be a waste of time. They said that when the UN IPCC reports stated alternative technologies existed that could control greenhouse gases, the UN was wrong.
I can, with a lot of time, give you the factual basis for these views, and I can cite the appropriate journal articles not in whacko magazines, but in the most prestigious science journals, such as Science and Nature. But such references probably won't impact more than a handful of you, because the beliefs of a religion are not dependant on facts, but rather are matters of faith. Unshakeable belief.
|
DDT, he's right we have no
conclusive proof that DDT is a carcinogen. But he then misdirects us by saying that DDT "does not cause birds to die." Of course not, no environmentalist ever said that. DDT concentrations in a bird deplete the calcium they can put into their egg shells. The shells are passed thin and brittle. The eggs usually break long before the embryo can mature and hatch. So, as you can see, from what he said he is right. But he does a damned good job of misdirecting the actual problem with DDT. It doesn't cause them to die, it causes them to hardly ever/never have any offspring.
There is strong evidence for second hand smoke being a health hazard. Not proven, but there are known carcinogens in the smoke.
It's a good thing for him he doesn't have the space to attack global warming. I suppose his reasoning for the vast majority of scientific bodies and related-field scientists in general who are supportive of global warming... is that they all belong to the "church of the environment."
Percentage of urban land area.. 5%... Ok, first that is true for the nation as a whole. But much of the midwest is farmland, necessarially, and alot of the rest is uninhabitable like mountains and rough and desert terrain. Now let him aggregate the northeast only and see how much different the problem is, in a region. There is also a problem with 'sprawl' which breaks up the natural areas. This becomes a problem when it splits up populations of animals or reduces range.
The sahara is shrinking, but deserts as a whole, planet wide are increasing in range.
I'd like to see his evidence for the antarctic ice increasing.
There is no known tech that can stop green house gas emissions right now. That is why we have to keep researching it.
Solar cells are promising as we are about only 20 years away, at current funding levels from being able to print them on paper using nanotechnology. After we hit this milestone it is only a matter of application to embed solar cells into our roof shingles so that each home creates almost all the power it needs.
Sure he
can quote out of Nature and Science, and find things that support him. But anything he can find in those publications is heavily outweighed by the opposite side.