Last month President Bill Clinton went to Russia, where citizens were making a
run on the banks, and spoke on the perils of global warming. He went to a
September 10 Democrat Party fundraiser in Florida, where Democrats are in deep
trouble, and spoke on the perils of global warming. With such insight into
human concerns, perhaps it's no surprise that September is now shaping up as
the hottest month on record, at least for Bill Clinton.
Vice President Al Gore, of course, made HIS regular announcement about the
"hottest month on record" last week. This time it's August. Mr. Gore must be
having a hard time peddling global warming. We've noticed that in recent
months his office has been issuing these announcements through U.S.
Newswire, a
Washington-based commercial service that hires professional journalists to
write up press releases as news stories, which it then puts out over the
wire.
The aim is for newspaper editors to pick up these canned stories and to print
them, spin and all.
Mr. Gore has good reason to be anxious about controlling the message.
Associated Press reporter Randolph Schmid did his own write-up of Gore's
"August was the hottest ever" announcement and characterized it as a broken
record. Schmid then tagged Gore as the "prime proponent" of man-made global
warming and noted there was "disagreement on this theory in the scientific
community." Worse, Schmid added some facts that the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration prudently included in it's official press
release on
August temperatures, but which Mr. Gore left out--that the "wettest" January
through August in the United States was in 1979; the "warmest" was in 1934.
More trouble in paradise. The Gas Research Institute sees the Kyoto Protocol,
if implemented, boosting prices for natural gas by putting demand out ahead of
supply. GRI analysts expect to nail down an exact figure over the next few
months. New Scientist columnist Rob Edwards is already warning not to look to
nuclear power for any backup. Nuclear is too expensive, he claims, and
many of
the processes that produce nuclear fuel use energy and thus create
greenhouse-gas emissions. Edwards fails to note similar problems with
so-called "renewable" energy, which he recommends.
British Professor of biogeography Philip Stott, of the University of
London, is
becoming a regular in the "Letters" section of U.S. newspapers. Responding
last week to a Los Angeles Times editorial lamenting the Kyoto Protocol's "faded
dream," Stott makes an important point: "The desire to criminalize human
beings as the root cause of change, which is patently ridiculous in the light of the
millions of factors controlling climate, is ultimately dangerous and deflects
us from the ever-present need for humans to be ready to adapt to change,
whatever direction it takes, warmer, cooler, wetter, drier."
Too true. International bureaucrats forget that humankind survived the last
major Ice Age with little more in the way of resources than fire, spears, and
animal hides. Today, the resources for adapting to climate are far greater,
but nearly all of them--whether heating or air-conditioning systems--require
energy, the use of which would be curtailed under Kyoto. Well, we could
always
go back to spears, but animal-rights activists would get after us on the
hides. And no fire, of course. Releases CO2.
In other issues, the controversy over silicone gel breast implants--like the
Alar scare, orchestrated by the activist PR firm Fenton Communications--has
taken another hit. A prestigious panel of British physicians and scientists,
formed last year to review all of the research on the issue, recently
concluded
that "risks to patients associated with the use of silicone gel breast
implants
are no greater than for other implants." Former U.S. Food and Drug
Administrator David Kessler, now dean of the Yale University Medical School,
concedes his ban may have been an overreaction.
Actually we remember the FDA press briefing on this issue, and the real thrust
of it was that American women shouldn't "want" breast implants, which, it
seems, is the government's stance on a number of other issues as well.
Americans shouldn't "want" to smoke, drink, drive, eat junk/fatty foods, etc.,
so let's fund a study that supports a tax or, in this case, a ban. Although a
bit late on the breast-implant issue, at least the science is now being
considered more carefully.
Speaking of science considered more carefully, the science supporting
secondhand smoke regulation has been panned again--this time in the
September 8
issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal by two physicians with the
London Health Sciences Centre, Chest Diseases Unit. "We loathe and detest
tobacco companies for their evasion, lies, and attempts to trick adolescents
and others into taking up smoking," Drs. Dildar Ahmad and W. Keith Morgan
write. "However, the rejection of truth and the acceptance of unproven
hypotheses to further one's concept of ethics or social justice is wrong too.
Many studies involving secondhand smoke are not convincing, and answers about
whether it causes lung cancer are far from established. Unfortunately, it has
become customary to torture the data until they confess. We need more
science,
less hyperbole, and less enthusiasm for unproven points of view."
Yet another blow to bureaucrats: New research announced last week indicates
that simply switching beef cattle from corn to hay a few days before they are
slaughtered virtually eliminates the risk of E. coli bacteria being
transmitted
to humans who eat ground beef. Imagine that. We can improve food safety
without creating another regulatory agency.
Finally, a United Nations study released September 6 says that a bumper
crop of
twenty-somethings could lead to high birth rates, producing water shortages,
famines, pollution, terrorism, and generally dooming the environment. This
prompted CNN founder and Green activist Ted Turner, father of five and
owner of
several large estates, to intone that couples should limit themselves to one
child to keep from overcrowding the planet.
Why is it that those who profess to be terribly concerned about overpopulation
never seem to hold themselves responsible, either for the problem or the
solution?
Someone should fund research on this. Until next week...
TW2 is compiled by SEPP Policy Research Associate Candace Crandall. See The
Science & Environmental Policy Project web site (www.sepp.org) for more reports and updates, including a new
report on how the global warming debate is playing out in the U.S. press.
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