MORE ON GREENIE CRAZINESS

I thought I had covered the ozone story before but cannot see where I did -- so: In 1991, the Greenies got everyone to ban CFC chemicals. CFCs were the normal gases that has always been used to make refrigerators and air conditioners work. CFCs even used to put the puff in all our aerosol cans. The ban was because CFCs supposedly destroyed earth's ozone layer and caused the ozone "hole" over Antarctica. So the hole has of course shrunk by now, right? Wrong! As this U.N. report shows, the hole is as big as ever! Another Greenie scare proved wrong.

Ozone is of course a common industrial "pollutant". We actually send tons of the stuff into atmosphere all the time. So even if CFCs do destroy some of it we replace it too. The theorists discount that, of course, but seeing that the rest of their theory hasn't worked out, I think the theorists are the ones who should be discounted.

Now some scientists are saying Soot is the big new climate threat Ho-hum! As if they'd know. I guess Europe must have roasted during the industrial revolution with all those coal-burning steam engines and domestic fireplaces churning out soot by the tons!

Neil Hrab at TechCentral Station says: "History shows that those who persecute heretics beget more heretics. The ...clumsy attempt to silence Bjorn Lomborg is sure to inspire more skeptical environmentalists. " He also criticises the track record of the "Union of Concerned Scientists". Based on the figures he outlines maybe they should rename it the "Union of Confused Scientists"

Science behind the times? "Everyone who reads Science -- the journal of the lobbying organization the American Association for the Advancement of Science - - knows it only accepts one side of the global warming story in its 'Compass' and 'Perspectives' sections, and in its more opinionated, mainline articles. Anyone who writes otherwise for those sections gets a quick rejection. That's understandable because global warming is scheduled to pay U.S. scientists about $4.2 billion next year, and the AAAS is just doing its job keeping the customers happy. But sometimes they go a little overboard in their one-sided zeal .... People who assumed increases in per capita carbon dioxide were wrong 25 years ago, and they are wrong now. But this is precisely what is input into every general circulation climate model"

PID has a big post on TWO recent speeches by Michael Crichton on the way science tends to get corrupted by politics. I and many others have mentioned Crichton before but this is a good excerpt: "Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths."

An amusing article here on the way climate scientists themselves are big contributors to "greenhouse" gas emissions.

The Red/Green alliance show that "Progressives" are not progressive "Europeans often talk about the Red-Green coalition, the coming together of socialists and environmentalists to save the world and its people from the rapacity of capitalists. Many conservative commentators dismiss the alliance as an illusion, arguing that the reds are green and vice versa. Yet it is a mistake to interpret the current close alliance as a congruity of interests. In the end, those who characterize themselves as progressives need to ask themselves whether they should be allies of those who oppose the idea of progress."

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