Insanity from the Eco-Nuts

Nothing to say really. These people are certifiably insane. Of course, fanaticism of any kind is difficult to tell from crazy. This is nature worship in the extreme and like so much religion it is completely bonkers. They wear clothes, but nature didn't provide it. And things died! Nature demands death for life. Everything must eat to survive. Eating kills something. If they weep and wail over trees why not other plants? They can't even be vegetarians. If one truly believed that eating amounts to murder then survival is a crime. The only way to be ethical would be to die.

Nature is actually pretty nasty. Personify it or not, it kills violently, viciously and without remorse. It is cruel. All those species that we think are really, really cute kill. Cute kittens will bat around a mouse and torture it until it dies and they eat it. That sweet puppy would be happy to eat the baby birds you are gazing at. Nature is cruel and needs to be tamed.

Guilt and fried chicken

I picked up some fried chicken at the grocery store and had it on the check out counter waiting for them to finish with the people in line before me. The woman behind was a bit oddly dressed, very odd looking baggy pants, two-toned hair and a piercing of some sort on her face that I didn’t pay much attention to. I would have thought nothing of it until she commented about the chicken.

She asked if that was my chicken on the counter and I said it was. She told me that it smelled so good and told me how much she liked the chicken from this store. And then she said something odd: “But it makes me feel so guilty.”

I assumed she was using guilt in the sense of feeling bad about a diet and was speaking about her health. Otherwise, guilt was an odd word. I certainly understand the concept of guilt, as in hurting someone else. I don’t believe people should feel guilty merely for violating the law. Hell, considering the law guilty ought to be attached to obeying it, not violating it. In the legal sense, guilt is something I attach to violating the rights of others.

The only other form of guilt that I can understand is that attached to religion. Typically this is associated with the pleasures of life. Some guilt is attached to hurting others; in the line of thou shalt not steal. But, in my experience, guilt is too often involved with things such as “thou shalt not feel sexual pleasure,” “thou shalt not enjoy life,” and so forth. This guilt is attached to NOT denying the flesh.

I couldn’t think of a religious reason to feel guilt over fried chicken. Nor was it something that violated the rights of others. So I naturally assumed it had to do with diet, and the impact of fried chicken on weight and other issues. So I responded:

“Nothing to feel guilty about. It’s your body, your business, so you may as well enjoy it.”

But then she started explaining why she felt guilty. She really, really likes fried chicken. But it isn’t “natural.” She talked about hormones and the unnatural way food is processed, etc. It was precisely the kind of lecture I’ve heard from many advocates of “green” living.

Everything she said contrasted things created by humans to the “natural” and assumed the natural was good while human creation was not. Perhaps it was sinful thus explaining the guilt.

I was wrong when I thought she was discussing diet. She didn’t mention calories or any of the items associated with diet. Instead she discussed the bad nature of anthropogenic food versus “natural” items. Chemistry was evil, ignoring the fact that the natural is full of chemicals. It was a faith statement not dissimilar to the belief that there was a perfect garden that humans lost because of their own sinful nature. And that fried chicken was a symbol of the evil side of humanity versus the good that comes from naturally raised chicken, even though it tastes so good. Perhaps, because it tastes so good, the sin is even greater—much the way Puritans implored us to feel guilty about the pleasures of the flesh.

Warming, rain forests and alarmists.

The left-wing British paper The Guardian has reported that trees in rainforests "may be hardier than previously thought." As the Guardian explains it warming won't cause as much "damage" as previously thought.

That is almost close to what the article actually reports. Studies conducted by Carlos Jaramillo, of the Smithsonian Tropical Rearch Institute, investigated the claims of warming "models" which indicate that a small amount of warming will mean that "most of the forest is going to be extinct." What he found "was the opposite of what we were expecting: we didn't find any extinction event [in plants] associated with the increase in temperature, we didn't find that the precipitation decreased."

The Guardian started out saying that "rising temperatures will not do as much damage as feared..." That clearly implies that damage will still be done, but it won't be as much as feared originally. But a couple paragraphs down the article says something entirely contradictory to this:

Contrary to expectations, [Jaramillo] found that forests bloomed with diversity. New species of plants, including those from the passionflower and chocolate families, evolved quicker as others became extinct. The study also shows moisture levels did not decrease significantly during the warm period. "It was totally unexpected," Jaramillo said of the findings.

What is the "complete opposite" of damage? It is not damage, but benefits.

Let us start with who Carlos Jaramillo is, other than a reseacher with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. He was also president of the American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologist. He specializes in the study of tropical biodiversity. Perhaps it isn't the most exciting field but he's a top expert and shouldn't be ignored. Jaramillo's article, along with 28 contribution authors, wrote a piece in the current issue of Science magazine entitled "Effects of Rapid Global Warming at Paleocene-Eocene Boundary on Neotropical Vegentation." (Hey, I told you it wasn't exciting.)

Here is how the article is summarized:

Temperatures in tropical regions are estimated to have increased by 3° to 5°C, compared with Late Paleocene values, during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, 56.3 million years ago) event. We investigated the tropical forest response to this rapid warming by evaluating the palynological record of three stratigraphic sections in eastern Colombia and western Venezuela. We observed a rapid and distinct increase in plant diversity and origination rates, with a set of new taxa, mostly angiosperms, added to the existing stock of low-diversity Paleocene flora. There is no evidence for enhanced aridity in the northern Neotropics. The tropical rainforest was able to persist under elevated temperatures and high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, in contrast to speculations that tropical ecosystems were severely compromised by heat stress.

Less damage? This doesn't sound like less harm, as the Guardian implied, but like thriving instead. The assumption made by the warming alarmists is that warming will destroy the rainforests. The Guardian article noted how the alarmist Hadley Centre previously made claims very much the opposite of these actual studies. They report:

Last year, researchers at the Met Office Hadley Centre reported that a 2C rise above pre-industrial levels, widely considered the best-case scenario, would still see 20-40% of the Amazon die off within 100 years. A 3C rise would see 75% of the forest destroyed by drought in the next century, while a 4C rise would kill 85%.

So the warming theory, based on the models used by the alarmists said that as much as 85% of the rainforests could be destroyed by warming. Jaramillo and his team of researches decided to look at what actually did happen in rainforests in the past during a previous warming period. According to The Scientific American the studies shows that: "In the past, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and higher temperatures actually drove the evolution of far greater numbers of new rainforest plant species than were wiped out."

By studying fossilized pollent from the Palaocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum they were able to study how plants responded to temperatures that were 3-5 degrees warmer than they are today, and when cardon dioxide levels were 2 to 2.5 times higher than now. Jaramillo said, "The diversity of the tropical forest increased really fast over a very short amount of time." Jaramillo admits he is worried that "some people will look at this and saw 'we shouldn't care about global warming,' but this is what the fossil record is telling us."

Just last year well-known alarmist Chris Jones, of the Hadley Center was claiming that a 2C increase in temperatures would mean that "between 20 and 40 per cent of the forest could die." He told the world that the die out had probably already started and that just a 3C increase in temperatures would kill 70% of the rainforest.

Those were what the models told him and the models drive climate policy. The evidence, unfortunately said that under a warmer, more CO2 rich environment plant life actually didn't die out, but thrived.

The sickest environmentalist trash I've ever seen.

NOTE: The environmentalist group that posted this video has apparently realized that they were being extremely offensive and have made it inaccessible to the public. However, instead of removing it they have made it so that their members can see it but other people can not. Since it is being hidden from the public I will describe the obnoxious short film they produced here. UPDATE: Someone has reposted it so I linked to it again. I will keep the description below in case they manage to delete it yet again. I will also make a copy of it myself so that it can't disappear down the memory hole.

The scene opens with a British school teacher lecturing children about the great sin of the modern world: their carbon "footprint." She is lecturing them about how they have to follow all the current chic demands of the environmentalist lobby and that they must cut their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. She then asks the students who will follow these demands. Of course, virtually all the students are happy to do so—which is rubbish. Two students do not raise their hands. She tells them that's fine, that everyone has their right to their own opinion. She tells them there is no pressure. She then moves some paper aside on her desk and pushes a large red button. The two students, a young girl and a young boy, then explode in their seats splashing blood and body parts on all the students around them. The teach then makes some remark about their homework being due "except for" the students who she murdered, "of course."

This is then repeated in various scenarios where authority figures lecture people about environmentalist BS and then ask for a show of hands as to who will obey the new doctrines from the Green Church. Each time they push a button and the dissenters explode into a bloody pulp. It is akin to what a suicide bomber must look like when they explode. This is jihad, environmentalist style. End of description.


I have long argued that there is a strident, vicious, anti-human streak in radical environmentalism. Rarely do they make their agenda as explicit as this video produced by the 10:10 group, an organization pushing global warming fear. I don't know if they think this is funny but it is morbid and disgusting. But it shows well what they think of the rights of those who disagree with them.

You might remember that I blogged about another sick venture of Green loons, one where they invented a game with children telling them at what age they should die. In that "game" they invented a calculator which tells how long you should live BEFORE you become a "greenhouse pig" and consumer more than your "fair share" of resources—fair as determined by what deity?

In that game every player was a greenhouse pig regardless of what they did. Apparently the only good human is a dead human since lives ones emit greenhouse gases. I wish those Green loons, who "think globally," would "act locally" and off themselves instead of inflicting their nonsense on kids. In that game you are "Greenhouse pig". One pig is the child playing the game. As he finishes the game it informs him at what age he should die and then his pig starts shaking and explodes into a bloody mess.

Given how many disturbing incidents that I have had to report on recently, where young kids did precisely that, and ended their own lives, this sort of campaigning by these vile Greens is absolutely abhorrent.

The homophobic bullies in the schools tell kids they should kill themselves because they are gay. These Greens tell kids they shouldn't live since they consume resources. They "should" die because they have consumed more than their "fair share" of resources.

No, it is not funny to have a teacher killing children because they question the Green agenda. It is not smart to tell children that they ought to die because they consume resources. These sorts of messages are disgusting. Given the spate of suicides among young people I argue it is just not funny, nor is it educational, to spread this sort of message. It is irresponsible. Now ask yourself what sort of sick mind came up with these ideas.

Imagine if some anti-environmentalist group produced a video showing evil industrialists pushing buttons which kill Green advocates. What sort of response do you think the Green Left would give to that? They would shriek hysterically that it was meant to intimidate and threaten them. They would say it reflected the inhuman values held by these evil capitalists. Why are they immune from this criticism?

Genetic engineering and same-sex marraige.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is holding final hearings on approving a genetically-modified salmon as fit for eating. Of course the anti-science Left is in a dither about this, much like the anti-science Right gets when stem cells are mentioned.

A panel of experts from the FDA have said that there is no substantive difference between this salmon and other salmon, other than it reaches maturity faster. The scientists find no evidence of risk because of. So precisely what has these Left-wing "consumer" and "environmental" groups in such a uproar? Precisely what is the risk?

That is a good question. According to news reports no one is being very specific at all about the risk. Bloomberg reports: "But opponents of approval, including many consumer advocates, worry that the fish could pose a threat to both the heal of consumers and the environment." Well, that doesn't say anything other than that these Left-wing groups are worried, but they are always worried about science.

If you have watched any of the panic-driven television commercials put out by the anti-equality, Mormon-front, the National Organization for Marriage, you will hear lots of verbiage about the "threat" of same-sex marriage. What is missing is any precise claim about what that threat might be. They simply raise the spectre of a threat. They warn viewers that this threatens their children. How? They don't say. They say it threatens marriage itself. How? They make up false claims over and over and, in very serious tones, warn this is dangerous. And they never get specific as to what this threat really is supposed to be. Why? Simple: They don't know.

NOM and their Mormon-financiers have absolutely no evidence that same-sex marriage is a threat. And neither do the foes of genetic modification have any substantive evidence that these salmon are a threat either.

The foes of GE foods, when told that there is biological difference between GE modified salmon and regular salmon say that is the problem. "That's what worries consumer advocates, who say that approving the salmon is opening the door to all sorts of genetically engineered animals, such as pigs and other animals." So what? So far, they have not stated any real risk. All they are saying is that if you let same-sex couples marry.... whoops, I mean they are saying that GE salmon might mean GE food products of other kinds. Sorry, it is hard to remember which unproven fear-mongering lobby group I'm talking about -- their tactics are always the same so it is sometimes hard to tell which panic lobby is which.

Wenonah Hauter, the chief fear-monger in this case, is simply a political activists with no credentials whatsoever related to the issue. Her entire history is one of being a left-wing activist and her university degree was in anthropology. In fact Hauter's organization, if you bother to read up on their staff and board members, is made up almost entirely of political activists with no credentials in science at all.

Here are the credentials of the staff members listed on their website. It's a long list but illustrates my point that very few of the activists in the anti-science industry have real scientific credentials.

Wenonah Hauter: lobbyist, activist, studied anthropology.
Darecy Rakestraw: Activists with Worldwatch Institute, political science major, studied with a new age type "nutritional" outfit with no science involved.
Rich Binden: environmental activist, studied communications and rhetoric.
Royelen Lee Boykie: no real credentials listed in any field.
Jennifer Errick: no real credentials listed in any field.
Kate Fried: environmental activist with degree in English.
Anna Ghosh: studied public relations.
Elissar Khalek: studied political science and psychology.
Lauren Wright: studiend graphic design and communications.
Patty Lovera: degree in enviromental studies.
Sarah Borron: appears to actually have some degree in relative field of food from a real university.
Tony Corbo: studied public affairs and industrial and labor relations.
Zach Corrigan: attorney.
Brooks Mountcastle: environmentals, studied environmentalism at university.
Felicia Nestor: attorney.
Tim Schwab: studied journalism.
Tyler Shannon: studied law and computer science, union activist.
Patrick Woodall: activists on "economic justice" issue and studied economics.
Ron Zucker: studied political science, English and philosophy.
Emily Wurth: International Studies and Public Health.
Kathy Dolan: studied health policy.
Sarah Gingold: studiend government and politics.
Mary Grant: opponent of water privatization and studied environmental sciences.
Mitch Jones: studiey history and philosophy.
Marianne Cufone: law degree.
Eileen Flynn: studied environmental policy and management.
Meredith McCarthy: astronomy.
James Mitchell: attorney.
Justine Williams: sociocultural anthropology.
Darcey O'Callaghan: social work and economic policy.
Dave Andrews: theology and law.
Claudia Campero: geography.
Eve Mitchell: English and anthropology.
Marcela Olivera: political activist, no credentials listed otherwise.
Alberto Villareal: sociology.
Anna Witowska-Ritter: sociology.
Gabriella Zanzanaini: social anthropology and sustainable development.
Mark Scholsberg: economics and law.
Jorge Aquilar: trade unionist, communications.
Sarah Alexander: English.
Alex Beauchamp: activist, political science.
Meredith Begin: degree claimed, field unstated.
Julia DeGraw: environmental studies and sociology.
Noelle Ferdon: law.
Denise Hart: political science, counseling, English.
Jon Keesecker: community organizer.
Katy Kiefer: "faith-justice studies" and environmetal science.
Renee Maas: public policy.
Matt Ohloff: political science.
Sam Schabacker: economics.
Adam Scow: political science.
Elanor Starmer: development economics, public policy and agriculture science and policy.
Nisha Swinton: environmental law and policy.
Renee Vogelsang: communications.
Jim Walsh: "dedicated political organizer."
Lane Brooks: broadcast journalism.
Jon Bown: IT work.
Clayretha Gatewood: accounting and information systems.
Kevin Larson: IT.
Caitlin Levesque: American studies and history.
Alex Patton: sociology.
Ben Schumin: public administration.
Michael Surbrook: IT.

The closest we get to real science, out of this bunch, is environmental studies, which is normally heavily infused with political assumptions. There are plenty of sociology, anthropology and English major but no one with a degree in the hard sciences. Is it any wonder that they avoid the science and instead talk about fantasies, assumptions and fears?

Hauter claims, regarding the salmon, that "we don't know if it's safe for humans to eat." Actually we do know, it is no biologically different than other salmon that we eat. There is no evidence that any risk is posed. Nor does Hauter offer any. She merely offers her own fears as reason to ban same-sex marriage, oops, there I go again, I mean to ban GE fish.

Bloomberg says: "Food & Water Watch was joined by 30 other animal welfare, consumer, environmental and fisheries groups, including the Sierra Club, which issued a statement citing concerns that the fish could escape and pose an environmental threat." What threat? None is states. They worry that the fish "could introduce new or unknown allergens into the food supply." Do they offer evidence that any risk is likely? No. They appeal to the potential of an "unknown" allergen. What science couldn't be stopped with that logic?

In fact, what human action couldn't be controlled using exactly the same argument? No, you can go outside because there are unknown risks out there! No, you can't watch television; there could be unknown risks associated with it! No, you can't vote for Obama.... ooops, those risks were known.

And how do these salmon pose a risk to salmon in the sea? They don't. They are sterile so they can't reproduce, they will all be females and have no contact with male salmon as well. And they are raised in land-based tanks not in the ocean.

In the end all we have is imagination to scare us. No substantive reasons for opposing GE foods are offered, no hard science is used. Instead these anthropologists, sociologists, lawyers, English-majors and political activists appeal to the bogeyman theory of science: if they can imagine a problem then one must exist. And if they can imagine a risk it must be banned.

The environmental panic-mongers are really no different than Maggie Gallagher and her anti gay bigots. They drum up imaginary fears to stampede the public, and the political process, in order to stop progress. They hype unknown fears instead of known facts, they both engage in the politics of panic.

Can more regulations solve the problem of failed regulations?

I’ve been highly critical of Big Energy, which is the term I use to refer to what the Left calls Big Oil. But Big Oil stopped being Big Oil, the moment the Left started pushing subsidies for “alternative” energy. Profiting from subsidies is often more lucrative than profiting by actually doing something productive. And, as I have argued, they can use the regulator process to force competitors out of certain areas, and redistribute wealth to themselves. The big example of this was ethanol, which I have covered on this blog many times.

Big Oil, or Big Energy today, has always used its cozy relationship with Big Government to secure for it things it could not have in a depoliticized market. Historically one of the worst offenders has been British Petroleum. Their history of using state power is well known and shocking.

The oil rig blowout in the Gulf is not something easily blogged about, not if one really wants to offer something pertinent and useful. That doesn’t stop a lot of people, but it did stop me. The problem for me is that one has to do some reading of the technical, engineering problems associated with oil rigs. Any “simplistic” response I could give would be rather useless if I don’t know the facts. Of course, that didn’t stop others from giving simplistic advice. Either saying, “let the market take care of it” or saying “there ought to be a regulation” is a simplistic, unthinking response. Most comments I’ve read from the Left and Right suffer from such simplism.

I don’t have a lot I can say with assurance because of the technical issues. But I can make some broad comments that might be helpful. And they are open to adjustment as I broaden my knowledge.

The first thing I can say with some assurance is that the government has limited liabilities to oil companies for damage done by accidents like the one that is causing such devastation in the Gulf. In the quest for progress it is necessary to take risk, but the cost of the risks ought to be fully covered by the risk-taker. Anything else distorts incentives.

But somewhere along the line the politicians, in their infinite wisdom, decided it was a good thing to subsidize risk. Sometimes this is done directly, sometimes indirectly. In the case limiting liability it is an indirect subsidy. It tells risk-takers that they won’t have to cover all the costs of their risk taking, that they can pass it on to others. In this case the politicians decided the risk takers could pass on costs of a disaster to the victims of the disaster. However, the politicians have also decided that the profits from such ventures belong to the risk-takers. They have privatized profits but socialized risk. We see this same, flawed strategy used in field after field. If there are risky credit applicants who want to buy houses the government promises to cover the losses while the banks get the profits. Bad loans are bad by the boatload and when something goes wrong there is a huge wave of defaults creating a crisis that spreads from there. Take away the downside risk, but leave intact the upside profits and you are asking for disaster. I would actually argue that disaster, under those circumstances, is inevitable, it is merely a matter of time.

So off the bat, I knew that the limitation on liabilities that government handed over to Big Oil/Big Energy was a bad thing.

The second thing I realized, that was a problem, is that industries regulated by government tend to capture the regulatory agencies and have undo influence on them. This is, I think, inevitable. Obama actually criticized the cozy relationship between the oil companies and the regulators. The problem is that this can’t be solved by more regulations. At all times the regulators who deal with oil drilling in U.S. waters will be of more interest to oil companies than they will be to us. You aren’t going to lobby them for what you think ought to be done, but the oil companies will. The law of capture means that eventually the regulators will be useful idiots to the companies they regulate and that regulations will be more likely to limit competition, and raise profits, than to do anything useful for the average person. And the politicians won’t say much about it because the same companies donate more to their campaigns than does the average resident of the Gulf region.

At the same time BP very successfully influenced major environmental organizations. BP has been one of the biggest funders of the environmental lobby around. Certainly donations to groups pushing for subsidies for ethanol proved very lucrative to BP. They had environmental groups literally begging politicians to take money from taxpayers and give it to BP. BP didn’t mind that at all.

The third thing I had to wonder about was that oil rigs operate in U.S. waters, which are exclusively and totally under the control of the federal government. No oil drilling takes place without government permits and contracts with the oil companies. When a contract is involved they can pretty much ask for what they want as a condition for using “public” waters to drill for oil. That is, you don’t need to wait for regulations to be passed. Like any landlord you can put stipulations into your agreement as to what must be done, or can’t be done, with the property you control. So, what would legislation add to the process that can’t already be done in the contract stage? Perhaps someone can give me information I don’t have which will tell me why this is not possible. If so, I will have learned something. This part is more a question than a statement, but it is one worth exploring.

In reading some material in the Wall Street Journal it was quite clear to me that BP officials on site took short cuts. The Journal outlined several concerns people had along the way with how BP was acting. If a fraction of what the Journal exposed is true BP deserves to have the pants sued off of them. This is precisely why liabilities must not be limited for risk-taking. It encourages unwarranted risks.

Another point is that we have no evidence that another regulation would have solved the problem. To say that more regulation is the answer is a faith statement not a rational one. We don’t have evidence that is the case. In fact, the Journal article made it clear that regulators were lax about regulations that were already in place. So existing regulations were ignored. If the law of capture tends to mean regulators will become too cozy with the objects of their regulations then it means that they will themselves tend to ignore certain regulations. That seems to be the case here, at least in part.

Today’s New York Times discusses the failure of certain safety measures that are routinely put in place. One such measure is called the “blind shear ram” which cuts off the supply of oil in a disaster. The ram is supposed to cut off the supply but it repeatedly failed to do so in this case. At this time no one is sure why, and won’t know until they can look at it. But there was too much confidence put into this device and many companies have already taken additional precautions.

Because they assumed that a certain number of these shears fail, sometimes hitting in the wrong spot, for instance, they have gone to installing the device twice, in different locations so if one fails they have a backup. Experts have suggested two such devices are needed. So wouldn’t a regulation forcing it solve the problem? Perhaps, but why wasn’t it done? According to the Times,

The federal agency charged with regulating offshore drilling, the Minerals Management Service, repeatedly declined to act on advice from its own experts on how it could minimize the risk of a blind shear ram failure.

They also said their study showed: “ that the Obama administration failed to grapple with ... the well-known weaknesses of blowout preventers.” Reports were on file showing that there was a problem and the regulatory agencies and the politicians ignored them. Even the company involved here, has been equipping their rigs with double shears as a precaution. This, unfortunately, was not one of those rigs. The Times says that every other rig under lease to BP supposedly has the double shears.

So, it was widely known that double shears were a needed safety precaution, and most rigs already had them installed, the process was on-going to put them into all rigs, and this was one of the unfortunate exceptions. And all this was being done prior to the feds actually mandating it. I fully expect this mandate to be put into place, consistent with my theory that most reforms pushed by government are instituted ONLY after the private sector has already primarily implemented the reforms voluntarily. If the Times is correct, most rigs already have the double shears. And no doubt the politicians will take credit for what has already been done privately, for the most part. Those who cherish regulations for their own sake will no doubt give all the credit to the public sector and ignore the fact that the private sector has already implemented this reform on most new rigs, without a regulation requiring it.

Blowout preventions sometimes fail but government tests of blowout preventers almost always approve them. Out of 90,000 such tests conducted by the government they gave passes to all but 62, which the Times says “raised questions about the effectiveness of these test.” I’m not sure that the regulators would actually do a better job merely by being given more regulations to work with.

The Times notes that MMS did institute a new regulation which said that all companies had to provide test data showing the blind shear ram would work in each well. This was supposed to be a requirement for a drilling permit. Yet the regulator “approved BP’s permit without requiring proof that is blowout prevent could shear pipe and seal a well 5,000 feet down.” The regulator who authorized the permit, in violation of regulations that already existed, said: “When I was in training for this, I was never, as far as I can recall, even told to look for this statement.” So, not even a basic regulation that already existed was being enforced. Would another layer of regulations change that?

In confirmation of my theory that reforms by government take place after the reforms are no longer needed, the Times notes that the federal agency ignored a report about there being two blind shear rams in each rig. “The agency made no such requirement. Indeed, it waited until 2003 to require even one blind shear ram. By then, the industry had already started moving to two blind shear rams....“ By the time the government regulators required one blind shear ram virtually all rigs actually had one and one-third of the rigs had already moved to two. In other words the regulation had almost no impact.

As the Journal noted BP cut corners repeatedly. Rep. Henry Waxman pontificated on this in Congress. But the Times notes that, “Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive repeatedly told Mr. Waxman’s committee last Thursday, many of these decisions were approved by the Minerals Management Service.” In other words, “federal regulators did not see any problems” with the corners that were being cut, even if employees on the rig did see problems and complained. With federal regulators giving BP the go-ahead guess what happened? So why exactly is this only blamed on a failure of private industry? Why isn’t the fact that regulators failed being talked about as much? Surely this is a case of regulatory failure in spades.

Even bad politics got in the way of the clean-up efforts. Wendy McElroy brought to my attention that Voice of America reported that US companies are now using “sweeping arms that attach to a boat and help gather large amounts of oil.” These devices, however were offered to the US by “a Dutch company with years of experiences in such operations, but instead of using the Dutch ships and crews immediately, when The Netherlands offered help in April, the operation was delayed until U.S. crews could be trained.”

The VOA says the Obama administration turned down the offer of help to clean up the mess “partly because of the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from certain activities in U.S. waters.” So federal regulations in one area prevented the clean-up of a mess caused when regulators ignored their own regulations in another area. However, when Katrina hit “the Bush administration waived the Jones Act in order to facilitate some foreign assistance, but such a waiver was not given in this case.”

So the Jones Act, which delayed clean-up measures in this disaster, was left in place even though the Obama administration could have waived the act during the emergency. In addition the Dutch “offered assistance with building sand berms (barriers) along the cost of Louisiana to protect sensitive marshlands, but that offer was also rejected, even though Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal had been requesting such protective barriers.” The Dutch embassy says their offer to help still stands. The White House says there are no delays in accepting such offers even though the White House rejected such offers. And the Dutch say that they can do the job at twice the speed of “as the local companies contracted for the work, if allowed to do so.”

Basically Obama is more worried about unions and “protecting” American jobs than preventing damage from the oil. VOA says: “U.S. policy has favored the use of American companies and employees in dealing with the oil spill, even though that may have caused delays in protecting sensitive shoreline.” But U.S. firms have little experience in these areas, so regulations meant to encourage jobs creation in the U.S. do so by preventing more efficient companies from doing the work. Of course, jobs creation measures often mandate inefficiency by requiring jobs be done by less efficient local employees than by more efficient foreign ones. The politicians, who only have to win local votes, often ignore that. But in this case, the tendency toward labor protectionism means great destruction to fragile Gulf shore areas.

Meanwhile, it appears that even local American workers were being prevented from doing cleanup work by another government agency—the Coast Guard. ABC News reports that barges that vacuum crude oil from water "were sitting idle" because the Coast Guard said they "needed to confirm that that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges." Gov. Jindal has been trying to get the bureaucrats at the Coast Guard to move on the issues but complains: "Every time you talk to someone different at the Coast Guard, you get a different answer." Alabama's governor said there is no one who can give a "yes" or "no" answer. He also said each time the Governors from the area "develop plans with the Coast Guard's command center "things begin to shift when other agencies start weighing in, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service." He described it "like this huge committee down there, and every decision that we try to implement, any one person on that committee has absolute veto power." Welcome to reality of political regulation.

Again, I must wonder, if political control is literally endangering Gulf shore areas, by delaying clean up in order to give U.S. companies a preference, why precisely does anyone think more political control is the solution here?

A private company, used to its cozy relationship with Big Government failed. Laws that limit liability subsidized its failure. It failed because it took short cuts that were approved by regulators. Regulations that were put in place, in order to prevent such problems, were not enforced by the regulators. And the regulations that are in place were only put in place after the safety mechanism had become the typical standard in oil rigs and after many rigs had already imposed a secondary safety mechanism. So regulations followed private safety measures, they didn’t create them. Even now the double mechanisms are becoming common prior to any regulation requiring them. The regulatory system, which is in place already, failed. And no one is explaining why more such regulations will make a difference when the enforcers ignored current regulations. On top of that, cleanup measures have been slowed down significantly because politicians interfered by passing laws meant to protect less-efficient local jobs. Those jobs are being protected,If but the expense of massive damage to the Gulf.

I don’t want to pretend this is be-all and end-all on this matter. It isn’t. It is my thinking out loud on a topic about which I am only now familiarizing myself. And it isn’t meant to be anything more than that. One purpose of this blog is to “think out loud” and this is one example of that.

If only the weather were as predictable as the alarmists.

It seems that a group of US warming alarmists have been emailing one another discussing an offensive against those nasty people who question their theory. I was looking at those emails and one of them, apparently from David Schindler says:

"I'd add that Edmonton is near snowless and has been shirtsleeve weather for most of 2010 instead of the usual -40C... but of course there are no major media here, so only the locals know!"

Unlike most global warming theory, which is based on models projecting into the future what the theorists think will happen, given the assumptions they make, this claim is easily verified in the here and now. So I did.

First, I wondered if the "usual" temperature in Edmonton is -40C, as the author claimed.

According to the BBC the average minimum temperature in Edmonton, for January, is -20 and the average high is -9. For February it is -17 and -6 respectively. The record low is -50, so it appears that -40C is not usual at all, but would be highly unusual. I went to the Canadian Weather Office for more official data. They say the daily average in January, in Edmonton, is -11.7, not -40 as Schindler claimed in his email. For February, the weather office says the average is -8.4. They say the January "extreme minimum" was -44.4, set in 1943 and for February the extreme minimum was -46.1, set in 1939.

The record lows for Edmonton are barely colder than what Schindler claimed is the "usual" weather in Edmonton. The official data shows the "usual" weather is nowhere near -40C, either an a daily average, or as the daily low. Temperatures of -40 are not "usual."

What about Edmonton having "shirtsleeve" weather this year? Since Schindler said this was "for most of 2010" and since he wrote the email on February 27th, it is fair to look at average temperatures for January and February in Edmonton. Obviously there is no objective definition of "shirtsleeve weather," so that is more ambiguous than the now-debunked claim that the usual temperature is -40C. But I sincerely doubt anyone reading this would actually define the weather in Edmonton, this year, as shirtsleeve weather. I would dare Prof. Schindler to spend much time outside, in his shirtsleeves, during even the warmest of the days this year in Edmonton. At best there were a few hours that might qualify as "shirtsleeze" weather. A few hours over 58 days is not "most of 2010."

For the last third of January the temperature never got higher than -5.1C (yes that is negative) and the minimum temperature went down t0 -21.5C.

Here is the maximum temperature, per day, for February: 1st, -6.4C; 2nd, -7.4C; 3rd, -4.7C; 4th, -6.6C; 5th, -8.9C; 6th, -6.7C; 7th, -5.9C; 8th, -5.6C; 9th, -2.4C; 1oth, 1.7C; 11th, -1.7C; 12th, -8.6C; 13th, -14.6C; 14th, -6.1C; 15th, 4.8C; 16th, 1C; 17th, 2.3C; 18th, 2; 19th,-2.4C; 20th, -6.3C; 21st, 0.4C; 22nd -5.1C; 23rd, -5.1C; 24th, 4.2C; 25th, 5.5C; 26th, 7.3C; 27th, 0.6. I end with the day of Schindler's email since he was referring to the weather to that date.

Considering that when Schindler made his claim, there had been only 58 days in 2010, it certainly was easy to check how accurate he was. He said that "most of 2010," as of that day, had been shirtsleeve weather. The official data shows the average day to be below freezing. Only a few days crept above freezing and just a handful had highs in the 40s (F). Even defining "shirtsleeve weather" very broadly it is impossible to say that "most of 2010" was "shirtsleeve weather." Mr. Schindler grossly exaggerated the warming.

I have also looked at his other claim, that the "usual" temperature in Edmonton is -40C. I don't know if "usual" is supposed to be the mean temperature or the usual low temperature. Normally I would take his comment as referring to the usual mean temperature. Unfortunately for him, neither would substantiate his claim. The most favorable interpretation would be to say he meant the mean low temperature for those months. But that is still far off the mark since the mean couldn't be that close to the record low. For the record, the mean temperature for Janaury, 2010 in Edmonton was -12; for February it was -8. In addition to exaggerating Edmonton's "warm" weather, Schindler grossly exaggerated it's "usual" cold weather as well. This seems par for the course with the alarmists, hence the designation "alarmist."

Perhaps Mr. Schindler thought he could get away with it because, as he said, "there are no major media here." Unfortunately for him, there is weather data available. Of course, that is before they "adjust" the data with unknown formulas in their climate models. No doubt when they finish that process Edmonton will have had the "warmest" winter in recent memory.

But, doesn't Mr. Schindler's claim—even if it were true—confuse weather with climate? After all, we constantly hear that record colds don't disprove warming theory since the one is weather, and the theory is about climate. Of course, when we have extraordinarily warm days the warming alarmists bleat about it constantly. So apparently the "weather isn't climate" slogan only applies to weather that contradicts their theory, not weather that is alleged to confirm it. As far as I know, all weather, of whatever kind, for however long, is considered proof of warming. I've yet to find out what the alarmists say would falsify their theory.

I also note, with some amusement, that one of the prominent names among the emailers about countering the evil skeptics was Paul Ehrlich. Ehrlich is certainly an alarmist, if ever there was one. His history of unsubstantiated looming disasters are well known. And, again par for the course, his solutions were always massive government control of individuals. His first alarmist work was The Population Bomb, which said: "By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth's population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people." He predicted a massive famine in America with populations plunging to around 2.6 million by 1999. (Yep, still waiting for that one as well.) He predicted the oceans wouldbe destroyed by 1979 and said: "If I were a gambler, I would tekae even money that Engliand will not exist in the year 2000." If anyone deserves the lable "alarmist" it is Ehrlich. I know of no prominent left-wing environmentalist who has been as hysterical, on as broad range of topics as Ehrlich. I should also note that I can't think of anyone in the field of public academia who has been so consistently wrong either.

Given Ehrlich's history of paranoid alarmism I'm not suprised he is now in a warming alarmist. Given his track record, when it comes to being right, I find his presence in the warming camp actually rather assuring.

An interesting fellow

Mike Moore is an interesting fellow. I don't mean the grotesquely loud and obese Mike Moore who fiddles with the facts for his profitable films, while attacking profits. I mean Mike Moore, the former prime minister of New Zealand and was Director-General of the World Trade Organization.

First, some background as to why Moore is so interesting to read. His political life has been spent on the Left. He was a trade unionist and the vice-president of the International Union of Socialist Youth—twice. He was the youngest person ever elected to New Zealand's parliament, in 1972 and remained there until 1999 as a Labour Party MP.

He has a new book coming out in a couple of weeks which is rather interesting, called Saving Globalization. Moore has become a strong advocate of free trade precisely because of the role that free, international markets play in uplifting the poor of the world. Yet it is clear that he still thinks socialism is appropriate for some things at some levels. He also writes a periodic column for the New Zealand Herald, which I try to read whenever it appears. His newest column takes on Green ideology, even though, true to his political leanings, he had previously been a member of GreenPeace. Here are some excerpts from his column:

"I heard a member of the UN Panel on Climate Change say of the findings: 'There can no longer be dissent.'"

"I'm not a climate denier. I feel obliged to point this out to save believers from sharpening their carbon neutral pencils and writing to the beleaguered editor. It's good young people are aware of the issues but some schools command kids to apostolate on environmental issues.

Bossy little people tell you not to eat meat or fly. It's getting a bit like kids having to turn in their parents under fascism. No, it's more like the Inquisition when you had to prove your innocence, and if you were innocent and died under torture that was OK because you were guaranteed a place in heaven.

If you believe the end of the world is nigh, you can rationalise that facts can be embellished and others' rights and opinions can be snuffed out in this crusade."

"If you challenge uber-environmentalists, you are a denier. End of story. Even that is a loaded charge, linking scepticism of this righteous belief to Holocaust-denying."

"What was silly is becoming sinister. Green ideology is becoming a theology that rejects the lessons of the Enlightenment, which was about freeing man so he could reason and choose. This new religion has many apostles, especially in the non-profit sector and the soft media.

It's right and proper that politicians and business people face a sceptical media who scrutinise them, hold them to account, expose their flaws and contradictions. The green agenda is too often accepted at face value because they claim to have the planet's interests at heart, unlike grubby politicians and greedy businesspeople."

"There needs to be scepticism, everywhere, much more of it. Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect and should not be surrendered easily.

Scepticism is desirable, necessary; cynicism is death by instalment. After a long life in public affairs I now have a new rule of measurement. It's the sacred law of humour. If someone can't see the absurdities of life, then I get nervous.

The enemies of reason throughout history, convinced that there is just one way, usually end up burning books, killing sparrows and building furnaces. Even worse, they don't laugh or blush."

You can read his full column here.

World should mourn the loss of the world's greatest man.

In this writer's opinion, it is no exaggeration to say that the world has just lost one of the greatest human beings who has ever lived, perhaps the greatest. We often judge the nature of evil by the number of human lives that were extinguished. Names that come to mind, of such cruel killers include Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Che, and Castro. In the name of some "greater good" these individuals extinguished the lives of others.

Conversely I would argue that saving lives is a sign of human good. And I can not think of anyone responsible for saving more lives than Normal Borlaug. Borlaug died at the age of 95, while still working on saving lives.

Borlaug spent his life trying to figure out how to increase food production. Through his research on plant breeding and crop management Borlaug expanded the world's food supply faster than the populations grew. The LA Times notes:

In 1960, the world produced 692 million tons of grain for 2.2 billion people. By 1992, largely as a result of Borlaug's pioneering techniques, it was producing 1.9 billion tons for 5.6 billion people -- using only 1% more land.

On the occasion of Borlaug's 90th birthday, former President Jimmy Carter said that he "has been demonstrating practical ways to give people of the entire world a higher quality of life. . . . He is a true humanitarian."

Added former Sen. George McGovern (D-S.D.), Borlaug's "scientific leadership not only saved people from starvation, but the high-yield seeds he bred saved millions of square miles of wildlife from being plowed down. He is one of the great men of our age."

Borlaug received support from the large foundation. But with the rise of the environmental movement pressure was put on the foundations to stop funding Borlaug's work. Gregg Easterbrook wrote:

The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the World Bank, once sponsors of his work, have recently given Borlaug the cold shoulder. Funding institutions have also cut support for the International Maize and Wheat Center -- located in Mexico and known by its Spanish acronym, CIMMYT -- where Borlaug helped to develop the high-yield, low-pesticide dwarf wheat upon which a substantial portion of the world's population now depends for sustenance. And though Borlaug's achievements are arguably the greatest that Ford or Rockefeller has ever funded, both foundations have retreated from the last effort of Borlaug's long life: the attempt to bring high-yield agriculture to Africa.

The African continent is the main place where food production has not kept pace with population growth: its potential for a Malthusian catastrophe is great. Borlaug's initial efforts in a few African nations have yielded the same rapid increases in food production as did his initial efforts on the Indian subcontinent in the 1960s. Nevertheless, Western environmental groups have campaigned against introducing high-yield farming techniques to Africa, and have persuaded image-sensitive organizations such as the Ford Foundation and the World Bank to steer clear of Borlaug. So far the only prominent support for Borlaug's Africa project has come from former President Jimmy Carter, a humanist and himself a farmer, and from the late mediagenic multimillionaire Japanese industrialist Ryoichi Sasakawa.

The great enemy of Borlaug turned out to be government bureaucracies which often stood in the way of his work. The Times wrote that when scientists, using Borlaug's techniques produced a new variety of rice, corn and wheat they went to India and Pakistan with the information. But in both nations the seed distribution was under the control of the governments. The Times says the scientists were "unable to convince the state-owned seed companies to adopt" the new seeds. By the mid 60s both India and Pakistan were facing famine and finally decided to accept the new seed. Borlaug "organized a shipment of 35 truckloads of dwarf wheat seeds." But the seeds, produced in Mexico ran into problsm with Customs and "couldn't be shipped from Mexico" so Borlaug sent them to Los Angeles instead for shipping. That wasn't the end of government bungling however:

U.S. customs officials held them up at the border before finally permitting them to cross. Then National Guard troops detoured them from Los Angeles because of the Watts riots. Finally, the $100,000 check drawn on the Pakistani ministry bounced because of three misspelled words on its face.

Ultimately, the cargo ship set sail for Karachi and Bombay and Borlaug went to bed relieved, only to wake the next morning to word that India and Pakistan had gone to war.

Because of the delays, the team had no time for germination studies and planting was started immediately, often in sight of artillery flashes. "We did a lot of praying," he later recalled.

Despite the problems, the new crop was 98% bigger than the previous year's and the Asian subcontinent was placed on a new path. India ordered 18,000 tons of seed from Mexico and the harvest was so big that there was a shortage of labor to harvest it, too few bullock carts to haul it to the threshing floor, and an insufficiency of jute bags, trucks, rail cars and torage facilities.

By 1968, Pakistan was self-sufficient in food production. India joined it in 1974.

It is no exaggeration to say that Norman Borlaug saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people, perhaps billions. And the saving of lives will go on for generations to come. I suggest that future efforts to expand his work will meet the same two enemies: state bureaucracy and the environmental movement.

Witness how both those groups have stripped the third world of needed food, in order to produce fuel in wealthy nations that no one wants, which is unprofitable to produce, and which is more damaging than the fuel it replaces. Borlaug himself had warned, decades ago: "One of the greatest threats to mankind today is that the world may be choked by an explosively pervading but well camouflaged bureaucracy." Attacks by environmentalist doomsayer Paul Ehrlich, Borlaug said, probably effected his funding. He said foundations would "hear his criticisms, and I'm sure there were some people at Rockefeller saying, 'Maybe we shouldn't fund that program anymore.' It always has adverse effects on budgeting."

Borlaug warned that the Green elites tended to be wealthy, urban individuals who saw the "wilderness" as a place to vacation, but wouldn't want to live there. "Our elites live in big cities and are far removed from the fields. Whether it's [Lester] Brown, or [Paul] Ehrlich or the head of the Sierra Club or the head of Greenpeace, they've never been hungry." Borlaug warned that the urban elites in the West "are easily swayed by these scare stories that we are on the verge of being poisoned out of existence by farm chemicals."

Environmentalists have long championed coercive measures "to make the world a better place." Normal Borlaug actually did make the world a better place. His only crime was that he wasn't saving insects, but the lives of people in Asia, Africa, and Central America. And in the Green hierarchy of values humans come last. Save the snail, the tree frog or some bug but let the people die. So, in the end, I tend to see these Browns and Ehrlich's of the world in the same category as people like Castro and Che. Che's methods were more brutal but the environmental movement has been far more deadly -- just their lobbying against DDT to stop malaria alone resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people. When South Africa followed the advice of environmentalists and banned DDT use to control mosquitoes the death rate from malaria jumped 400%. In KwaZulu Natal, when DDT was reintroduced the deaths per year dropped to zero from 340 previously. When it comes to Borlaug he is the perfect antithesis of Mao, Stalin or Hitler. Where they killed people by the millions, Borlaug saved the lives of people by the millions.

If ever a man deserved all the honors that the world could heap, in unmeasurable proportions, that man would be Norman Borlaug.

The heresies of Stewart Brand

For the most part Brand's new heresies are pretty good. His fear about global warming, in our humble opinion, is wrong. But his support for nuclear power is not. His understanding of the dynamics of informal cities and markets is spot on. His notice of the plethora of private schools in the slums of the world is important. His support for genetic modification is good. Brand seems to be channeling Hernando deSoto, James Tooley, Petr Beckman and Ron Bailey. About 17 minutes. Mr. Brand will, no doubt, be viciously attacked for speaking the truth.

The rise of the light bulb fascist.

Apparently the European Union, and the bureaucratic thugs that run it, have inadvertently discovered a method of stimulating one area of the economy: prohibition.


Having learned nothing about drug and alcohol prohibition the EU has decided to ban the production and importation of conventional light bulbs. As a ritual sacrifice to the Goddess Gaia the EU technocrats have decided to phase out the conventional light bulb, in favor of the “eco friendly” but vision-unfriendly compact fluorescent bulb.

I know those bulbs are supposed to save us money, which I favor, but they don’t. I have one bulb in my room that is CFL, which is fine for watching television. But if I want to read I have to turn on the overhead light with three regular bulbs instead. In the lounge the three table lamps are CFLs as well, but all three have to be one to give any acceptable lighting in the room. I had one CFL on the back patio but dumped it entirely—dinners on the patio were impossible with the light it emitted. It was far too dark. So I’m no fan of these vision-destroying bulbs either.


But the technocrats in the EU want to “save the planet,” which usually means an assault on the property rights or freedom of individuals. And, in their wisdom they are phasing out conventional light bulbs. Der Spiegel reports on the results of the upcoming ban in Germany.

Hardware stores and home-improvement chains in Germany are seeing massive increases in the sales of the traditional bulbs. Obi reports a 27 percent growth in sales over the same period a year ago. Hornbach has seen its frosted-glass light bulb sales increase by 40-112 percent. When it comes to 100-watt bulbs, Max Bahr has seen an 80 percent jump in sales, while the figure has been 150 percent for its competitor Praktiker.
"It's unbelievable what is happening," says Werner Wiesner, the head of Megaman, a manufacturer of energy-saving bulbs. Wiesner recounts a story of how one of his field representatives recently saw a man in a hardware store with a shopping cart full of light bulbs of all types worth more than €200 ($285). "That's enough for the next 20 years."

It should be noted that Weiser favors EU action to ban his competition. No surprise there. Most large businesses are run by greedy individuals who prefer political redistribution of wealth to having to earn it in a competitive market. The problem, as they see it, with competitive markets is that consumers can’t be trusted to buy what you’re selling. Weisner thought the best way to force consumers to buy his product would be to impose a $7 tax on each regular light bulb sold in the market.

One marketing company reports that between January and April sales of regular light bulbs have jumped 20 percent. Sales of the “earth-saving” CFL bulbs shrank by 2 percent.

Spiegel notes that the normal bulbs are despised by the Greens because they give off most their energy in heat. True, that was one aspect of them I liked—at least when I was living in Berlin. Much of the year the weather is a bit cool and not only did the light bulbs allowed me to see well, but they helped heat up my apartment. (It was small enough that a few bulbs could do that.) The heat was a fringe benefit. When it was summer the benefit was less (though the last summer I spent in Berlin was rather chilly) but summer light is longer so I used the bulbs less anyway.

Bascially the EU bureaucrats have ignored the consumers completely. And the consumers are fighting back by stocking up on the bulbs. Spiegel notes that large numbers of people complain about the so-called “eco friendly” bulbs saying that the light “is colder and weaker and the high frequency flickering can cause headaches. Others have complained that the new bulbs are sold with fraudulent promises. The environmentalists promise these bulbs “las much longer than traditional bulbs” but Spiegel reports that tests found that half the bulbs “gave up the ghost after 6,000 hours of use—or much earlier than the manufacturers had promised.” (That corresponds with my experience of the CFLs I used, until now I just assumed I had a bad batch.)


Spiegel quotes lighting designer Ingo Maurer telling his custoers: “We recommend protests against the ban, civil disobedience and the timely hoarding of lighting implements.” One prominent art gallery, Hamburger Kuntshalle, has purchased 600 traditional bulbs so they can light their exhibits properly.

One MP, from my favored German political party, the Free Democrats, called the ban “light bulb socialism.” I would disagree. Socialism is state-ownership of the means of production. What many people confuse with socialism today is nothing more than raw fascism. Just ask Obama, he should know.

I suggest that when the ban is completed there will be a whole new industry created as a result: light bulb smuggling. Apparently politicians are just too damn stupid to ever learn from history, so they repeat it, over and over.

EU "green" policies uproot poor Africans.

Wealthy European nations are uprooting poor Africans from their homes in order to take the land to grow biofuels. In the name of the “saving the planet” they are once again attacking the poorest of the poor.

Joint deals between African governments and European governments are pushing farmers off their land so that it may be confiscated for biofuel projects. As typical of such arrangement the governments are giving the major biofuel corporations sweetheart deals.

For instance, in Tanzania the government has give the British corporation Sun Biofuels, 22,230 acres of farmland for the next 99 years. In exchange the company is supposed to invest $20 million in local infrastructure. If you are interested that means the “rent” for the land amounts to $9.08 per year per acre!

Der Spiegel reports:

Sun Biofuels is not alone. In fact, half a dozen other companies from the Netherlands, the United States, Sweden, Japan, Canada and Germany have already sent their scouts to Tanzania. Prokon, a German company known primarily for its wind turbines, has already begun growing jatropha curcas on a large scale. It expects to have 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) -- an area about the size of Luxembourg -- under cultivation throughout Tanzania soon.

A gold rush mentality has taken hold -- not just in East Africa but across the entire continent. In Ghana, the Norwegian firm Biofuel Africa has secured farming rights for 38,000 hectares (93,860 acres), and Sun Biofuels is also doing business in Ethiopia and Mozambique.

Kavango BioEnergy, a British company, plans to invest millions of euros in northern Namibia. Western companies are turning up in Malawi and Zambia, where they plan to produce diesel fuel and ethanol from jatropha curcas, palm oil or sugar cane. Foreign investors have their eye on 11 million hectares (27 million acres) in Mozambique -- more than one-seventh of the country's total area -- for growing energy plants. The government in Ethiopia has even made 24 million hectares (59 million acres) available.

All this is to produce fuels which are so cost-ineffective that they require subsidies to exist. Governments in the West are taking the hard-earned income of working people in order to transfer it to wealthy corporate interests who are working with “enviro friendly” politicians. Those corporations then use a small amount of that subsidize to steal the land of poor people in Africa in order to grow more crops for bio fuels.

This alliance of corporate interests, Western politicians and corrupt African governments pay no attention to what their policies to do poor people. Der Spiegel says: “In none of these places are the needs of local residents taken into account.” In one rural area of Tanzania “thousands of residents are being forced to move to make way for the Swedish company Sekab’s plans to grow sugarcane, a highly water-intensive crop, on at least 9,000 hectares (22,230 acres) and then distill it into ethanol.” According to the report the residents have received no compensation and were told they will “get what you are entitled to” but no information is available. I suggest, based on my experiences living in Africa, that the residents will get nothing.

As land is gobbled up by the corporate/government alliances of the West less land will be available for the production of food for local consumption. This means the poor in Africa are getting shafted by Western politicians twice. First, the entire subsidy program on biofuels has forced up food prices dramatically. The World Bank says this subsidy program “to save the planet” is responsible for 75% of the increase in food costs in recent years. So the subsidies are forcing up food prices everywhere, including Africa. Secondly, the subsidies are being used to steal land from peasant farmers in Africa thus depriving them of their ability to feed themselves.

So the poor in Africa get hit first with higher food prices on the world market and then they get hit again as their own farming land is stolen to be given to wealthy, politically-connected Western corporations.

Please note that Left-wing parties are supportive of these programs. Once again the Left-wing agenda is easily subverted to serve the bottom line of corporate interests. The Left just never learns that state power is rarely used for the poor but almost always ends up in the hands of the rich and powerful. The expansion of state powers is precisely what corporations need -- not laissez faire markets. If the Left wanted to strip corporations of their ability to do harm, such as what is now being down in Africa, then they should cut the regulations, cut the subsidies and put the corporations in a competitive marketplace.

In a competitive marketplace these wealth “ethanol” corporations are unlikely to exist. They are politically created monsters and, while they hurt everyone, they harm the poorest, most vulnerable people the most. And they do so with the complicit assistance of the political Left. Historically the Left has to realize that by relying on state power to accomplish worthy goals they far too often end up stealing from the poor in order to give to the rich.

Save the planet and keep America white at the same time!

One of the major reasons that some people are so anti-immigration is that they don’t want poor people from the rest of the world moving here “stealing our jobs” while “living off our welfare.” And certainly, one of the prime motivations for immigration has been to improve one’s economic conditions. In fact, people immigrate to make their lives better.

In some cases that may mean seeking out more freedom. In some cases it means avoiding armed conflict. But I think it fair to say that most people today immigrate to the U.S. because they are seeking to improve their material existence. They are poor and they don’t want to be.

Now the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies, founded by anti-immigration activists, has remarketed their views. They don’t like immigrants. And their founder and main funder, John Tanton, has basically argued that they should use any argument, and any tactic, to stop immigration.

Basically Tanton wants to use every big government measure possible to keep out those damn poor people. He wants to “get the IRS on our side”. He says that CIS should actively recruit government employees who deal with immigration as members so that they can see the light and start denying legal immigration to the country. And he especially advocates that CIS do everything possible to prevent any immigration reform until they can get their policies imposed instead.

In one memo Tanton sent out he said: “The demographic picture in South Africa now is startlingly similar to what we’ll see in California in 2030” where “a White minority owns the property, has the best jobs and education, has the political power and speaks one language. A non-White majority has poor education, jobs and income, owns little property, is on its way to political power and speaks a different language.”

By the way Tanton apparently knows nothing about South Africa. The “White minority” never spoke one language, as he claims. About 60% spoke Afrikaans while 40% were primarily English speaking. Tanton sneers at South Africa being bilingual but said that was because “Blacks are taught in Zulu and related tongues.” He seems unaware that white South Africans were bilingual and that a huge percentage of black South Africans spoke Afrikaans or English in addition to their own language. The country was never bilingual but multi-lingual and has 11 official languages -- a nightmare for the White supremacist types.

Later he said that whites in California will own farms “but will not be able to speak to the Hispanic field workers. They will need bilingual foreman. Does this sound like social peace? Or like South Africa?” Again, the man is uneducated about South Africa. Most black farm workers in South Africa spoke Afrikaans as most farmers were Afrikaners. And many farm owners spoke one or more of the indigenous languages. Often these farms were small holdings with just a few employees -- they didn’t have a foreman standing between the farmer and his employees. Larger farms would have such foremen due to size, not due to language issues. Tanton clearly is willing to clutch at any straw.

Tanton’s obsession with race and immigration actually began because he was in a panic about the environment. The Southern Poverty Law Center says he “started out as a passionate environmentalist. In the 1960s and early 1970s, he was a leader in the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, and other mainstream environmental groups.” That was step one toward his obsession with race.

Tanton soon became fixated on population control, seeing environmental degradation as the inevitable result of overpopulation.

When the indigenous birth rate fell below replacement level in the United States, his preoccupation turned to immigration. And this soon led him to race.

Tanton had something akin to a conversion when he came across The Camp of the Saints, a lurid, racist novel written by Frenchman Jean Raspail that depicts an invasion of the white, Western world by a fleet of starving, dark-skinned refugees.
Tanton helped get the novel published in English and soon was promoting what he considered the book's prophetic argument.

"Their [Third World] 'huddled masses' cast longing eyes on the apparent riches of the industrial west," Tanton wrote in 1975. "The developed countries lie directly in the path of a great storm."

And so he began to develop a counter-force. After 1979, when he co-founded FAIR, Tanton launched "a whole array of organizations that serve the overall ideological and political battle plan to halt immigration — even if those groups have somewhat differing politics," explained Rick Swartz, the pro-immigration activist who founded the National Immigration Forum in 1982.

So Tanton’s CIS has come full circle. They are now latching onto the global warming issue to justify their anti-immigration stands. Whether some well-intentioned advocates of the anthropogenic global warming theory wish it to be, the reality is that global warming is being used in the same way that “terrorism” is being used: as a catch-all excuse for a massive increase in state control of individuals.

CIS wants a massive increase in state control of individuals. In fact, they want total state control of all people wishing to immigrate to the U.S. and want that stopped. So, of course, they found their new mantra: immigration causes global warming.

Their newest report claims that “Immigration to the United States significantly increased world-wide CO2 emissions because it transfers population from lower-polluting parts of the world to the United States, which is a higher-polluting country. On average immigrants increase their emissions four-fold by coming to America.” All this “may trigger far-reaching, long-term effects on the Earth’s climate and biosphere, and consequently, on human civilization.” Yep, that’s it, immigration may end human civilization.

One thing this report does do, which was not intended, is show the connection between our so-called “carbon footprint” and economic prosperity. Where CIS previously had focused on the impact of letting those non-white, poor folks into America they are now talking about their small carbon footprint being enlarged by immigration. What they mean is that poor people are better able to feed their families, have better homes, etc.

While the concern of CIS is mainly to rile up resentment and hatred for immigrants they are doing us a service. They are unintentionally showing that one of the most effective ways to reduce “carbon footprints” is to plunge nations into poverty.

Tanton started out as a fearful environmentalist who saw humans as the problem. That pushed him toward wanting to limit populations. And that pushed him toward wanting to restrict immigration. Once he was in anti-immigration activism he, and his outfits, found themselves allied with racists, white supremacists and other such outfits. And now they are using their environmentalism to try and sell their anti-immigration agenda to those terrified by global warming.

Note: Some years ago I read the “lurid, racist novel” The Camp of the Saints. It was at a time when I was researching population issues heavily. And it was apparent that the whole thesis of the book was based on the false assumptions regarding demographics that was the foundation of the fear-mongering of such people as Paul Erhlich and other’s in the population control movement. The fallacies built into that book were numerous and the racism it espoused was the result. Also note that when I refer to the population control movement I am not speaking about voluntary population control but those who advocate various forms of state intervention to control populations.