Category: Environmentalism (General)

Original Earth Day Predictions Revisited

George Noga

 
Predictions by environmentalists during the first Earth Day in 1970 were not only wrong, they were absurd, inane, preposterous, idiotic and harebrained but, most of all, laughable.
Original Earth Day Predictions Revisited
By: George Noga – May 14, 2017
     The 47th anniversary of Earth Day is a good time to review the accuracy of predictions made by leading environmentalists in 1970. We also take this occasion to proffer five of our own prognostications. We have not cherry-picked the most absurd predictions; there were no upbeat predictions made by any environmentalists on the original Earth Day – or on any Earth Day since. Source note: Acknowledgement is due to the American Enterprise Institute and Mark Perry for some of the data herein.
  1. Harvard biologist George Wald: “Civilization will end within 15 or 20 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.“
  2. Paul Erlich: “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supply we make. Between 1980 and 1989, 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, will perish in the great die-off.“
  3. Denis Hayes, the principal organizer for the original Earth Day, wrote in 1970: “It already is too late to avoid mass starvation.” 
  4. Life Magazine reported: “Scientists have evidence to support that within a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution. By 1985 air pollution will have reduced sunlight reaching Earth by one half.“
  5. Ecologist Kenneth Watt: “By the year 2000 if present trends continue, we will use crude oil at such a rate there won’t be any more crude oil.”
  6. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, writing in Scientific American stated that humanity would totally run out of copper soon after 2000 and that lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver would be gone before 1990.
  7. Dr. Dillon Ripley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute: “In 25 years somewhere between 75% and 80% of all species of living animals will be extinct.”
  8. Ecologist Kenneth Watt once again: “The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years. If present trends continue, the world will be 11 degrees cooler in 2000.”
  9. Biologist Barry Commoner in the scholarly journal Environment: “We are in an environmental crisis threatening the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
  10. New York Times editorial: “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from possible extinction.“
     Res ipsa loquitur pro se, i.e. the reality speaks for itself; I can’t make this stuff up. As often noted in this space, every single one of the top 100 metrics of human and environmental well-being is better today than in 1970 and is continuing to get better all the time. Environmental wackos never learn; the predictions they are making today are every bit as absurd as those they made on the first Earth Day 47 years ago.
     Not to be outdone, MLLG proffers five surefire environmental predictions.
  1. All the top 100 measures of human and environmental well-being will improve.
  2. Prices (net of inflation) will continue to fall for all metals and natural resources.
  3. The decade of the 2020s will experience global cooling.
  4. Billions of additional well-fed humans will inhabit the planet and everyone will live longer and healthier lives. Earth will continue to get ever more cleaner and richer.
  5. Apocalyptic prophets of environmental doom will continue to spout spectacularly wrong predictions – all of which will be dutifully reported and hyped by the media.
     WARNING: The only skunk at this garden party is government – which really could destroy life on Earth. Our fears and those of our children are misplaced. It is big and feckless government that truly threatens this planet, not pollution or climate change.
The next post May 21st is about the end of America’s 25 year long party.

Your Home As a Microcosm for Environmentalism

George Noga

 
The environmental movement consists of two symbiotic segments. Its leaders are like a watermelon – green on the outside and red on the inside. Its followers guzzle the Kool-Aid and embrace environmentalism with evangelical fervor but are clueless commie pawns.

Your Home As a Microcosm for Environmentalism

By: George Noga – April 30, 2017
       Like most movements of our era, environmentalism began in response to legitimate concerns. People of good will joined together to enact laws to remedy the problems. Moderates then abandoned the movement believing their mission accomplished. Meanwhile, the Berlin Wall fell and communism collapsed. Die-hard Marxists were homeless and hijacked the environmental movement, bringing with them neo-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-globalization agendas which they cloaked in green language.
      Today, the movement is led by watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside) commies and the hard left to whom the environment is merely a lever to achieve their workers’ paradise – they will get it right next time. They are joined by useful idiots, mainly big government types, professors, teachers, movie stars, feel-good progressives and unfortunately, many of our children. Ironically, these are the very same leftists who created an environmental Armageddon in the former Soviet Union and its satellites.
Environmentalism From a Micro Perspective
      Sometimes it helps to look at things differently; assume your home is a metaphor for radical environmentalism. Many years ago, quite frankly, your house was dirty and your family often became ill. You were doing okay financially and wanted to clean it up. You installed a new HVAC system, water filtration and cleaned house more often. Your house was now 90% cleaner than before and family illnesses declined markedly.
      Fast forward several years. You now are affluent and want your home super clean. You have a cleaning crew come once a week and pest control monthly. You buy top-of-the-line air and water filtration systems. You have every surface disinfected. Your budget begins to strain and you must make some compromises about spending. Nevertheless, your home is now 99% cleaner than before, which is great. Right?
      Fast forward again. You now want even more; after all, it’s impossible to be too clean. Right? You bring in the cleaning crew and exterminators daily. Not even one bug survives. You change all filters every day. Your home is now 99.99% cleaner than before. Your costs rose exponentially to achieve infinitesimal incremental benefits. That final 1% cost you $100,000; but it was worth it. Wasn’t it? You must drastically cut spending and you replace your health insurance policy with a much cheaper one.
      Your child falls ill at the neighbor’s, whose home is dirtier – as is the neighborhood. Because of your cheap insurance, you wait to take your child to the doctor; after all, these things usually are not serious. Right? The story has a tragic ending. Yet, despite this tragedy, you want your home 99.9999% cleaner, even if that final one-thousandth of one percent will bankrupt you. After all, your home never can be too clean. Right? Source note: This story was inspired by an internet article by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
 
     This story is a fair representation of environmentalism today. The perfect has become the enemy of the good. Every one of the top 100 measures of environmental and human well-being is better than it was 50 years ago and is getting better all the time. (Source: It’s Getting Better All The Time by Julian Simon and Stephen Moore)
      It is imperative we get this message to our children!
Our next post is on May 6th (Derby Day) and honors the Kentucky Derby.

Understanding the Environmental Religion

George Noga

 
This posting is renewable, biodegradable, conflict-free, green, natural, sustainable, fair traded, non-GMO, pesticide-free, recycled, organic and bio-diverse. Whew!
Understanding the Environmental Religion
By: George Noga – April 22, 2017
     Happy Earth Day 2017! The key to understanding environmentalism is to grasp that it is the religion of progressive urban atheists with eerie parallels to Judaism and Christianity. Its pantheon of gods includes everything listed above in the preheader. There is a Garden of Eden where man once existed in unity with nature. Humans then fell from grace by eating from the tree of knowledge and polluting. We all are energy sinners and judgment day is coming unless we earn salvation through sustainability.Â
     The environmental religion has angels (windmills, bio-fuel) and demons (CO2, coal, pesticides). Its dogma is renewability, biodiversity and green energy. It has its sacraments such as Eucharist consisting of non-GMO organic foods. Its chief ritual is recycling, which acolytes view as a morally redemptive exercise. It persecutes apostates, labeling them deniers and seeks to silence or to imprison them. It is the religion for all the right people with the right beliefs and the right intentions.
The Five Biggest Myths About Recycling
      We can’t deal with environmentalism in just two posts, so we must be selective. This post debunks recycling. Businesses voluntarily and profitably recycle, inter alia, steel, aluminum, tires, copper, batteries, clothing, glass and newsprint. Only when validated by markets does recycling make sense economically or environmentally. Government mandated (coerced) recycling is fatuous. The top five myths follow.
1. Recycling is good for the environment. Much recycled waste goes into the same landfills as all other waste and requires additional trucks, crews and fuel. A true cost/benefit accounting would be devastating for recycling. The Office of Technology Assessment reports recycling changes the nature of pollution – and often for the worse.
2. There is a shortage of landfills. If every U.S. county devoted one square mile to landfills, it would be sufficient for 4,000 years. In the past few years, private companies have opened huge new landfills and costs are plummeting. There are a few areas, limited to the northeast U.S., where landfill capacity is scarce – but that is entirely due to  progressive politics. Those few dysfunctional places are able to ship their garbage economically to locales that aggressively compete for their business.Â
3. Packaging is a problem. Far from being a demon, packaging is a blessing for the environment, resulting in less breakage and waste. Less advanced economies, without modern packaging, generate more waste. Mexico has fewer packaged goods but generates 33% more waste than a comparable U.S. household. McDonald’s produces less than two ounces of waste per customer, less than eating at home. Egad.
4. Paper must be conserved to save forests. This is perhaps the biggest green whopper of all time. Trees are a farmed product grown expressly for paper. To conserve paper to save trees makes no more sense than to conserve cloth to save cotton. Paper is natural, organic, biodegradable, renewable and sustainable. Working forests employ millions, provide clean air and water, wildlife habitat and carbon storage. More trees are planted each year than are consumed and there are more trees today than 100 years ago.Â
5. Plastic is evil. Plastic doesn’t decay – but neither do many other things in a landfill. Plastic is so lightweight, it uses less landfill space and is constantly getting stronger, thinner and lighter. Plastic packaging reduces waste and thereby is eco-friendly. Ersatz environmentalists favor cloth shopping bags manufactured in Asia and teeming with bacteria. They smugly and self righteously shun plastic bags while simultaneously quaffing water from a plastic bottle with over 100 times the weight of a plastic bag.Â
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     Please feel free to print this email and to make copies. In a very real sense, your reluctance to print will discourage commercial tree farming and thereby inexorably hasten the conversion of our forests into parking lots and strip malls. By printing, you can take great satisfaction in knowing that you are doing your part to help the environment and to save our American forests. Thank you for printing.

The next post on April 30th is the final half of our 2017 Earth Day blogging.

Fake Solutions to Fake Problems

George Noga

America is facing economic stagnation, failed schools, a nuclear Iran and is fighting global Islamic terrorism. Progressives are fighting for men to use the ladies’ restroom.
Fake Solutions to Fake Problems
By: George Noga – October 2, 2016

      As we approach the election, we are bombarded from the progressive side with a panoply of phony issues to which they proffer equally phony solutions. They don’t have real solutions to real problems; all they can offer is maskirovka and rope-a-dope.

     The most serious issues America faces are: weak economic growth with income stagnation, radical Islamic terrorism, Iran as a nuclear threshold state, chronic debt and deficits approaching critical mass, and failed government schools. Progressives don’t want to discuss any of these issues; instead, they talk of climate change, gun control, a war on women, transgender restrooms, and environmentalism – all phantom issues.

     Climate change is fake because it is man-made in only an inconsequential way, if at all, as well documented in prior posts. It is a classic Baptists-bootleggers political coalition of true believers (environmentalists) and their fellow travelers (government) who stand to benefit. The latest fake solution is the climate deal signed earlier this year in Paris where politicians from 175 countries agreed to keep doing whatever they intended to do anyway and with no consequences for non compliance. In an ultimate irony, the fake climate deal to fight a fake enemy was signed in the same city where just a short while earlier a real enemy, Islamic terrorism, slaughtered 130 real people.

     Gun control is progressives’ go-to issue. We published a series, Guns in America, available at http:\\www.mllg.us which proves to any scient person there is no positive correlation between guns and crime and there likely is a negative correlation, i.e. more guns equals less crime. We followed that up with a Harvard study showing social, cultural and economic factors (and not guns) are the determinants of violent crime.

     Gun control is a phony issue for which progressives have proposed a long train of phony solutions. Not one proposed measure would have prevented any mass gun violence in America. Their most recent phony solution is the “no fly, no buy”  proposal to ban gun sales to anyone on the no-fly watch list. This is a small and notoriously inaccurate list that excludes all recent terrorists; it would have no effect on terrorism.

     A war on women and the campus rape culture likewise are imaginary issues. Duke, UVA and Harvard (The Hunting Ground) have been debunked. College campuses actually are safer for women than elsewhere. Women’s pay is equal to or higher than men’s when making proper adjustments for education, experience, danger, etc. Liberal solutions also are imaginary such as constant ongoing affirmative consent for sex. Progressives refuse to criticize the real war on women in Moslem countries, replete with, inter alia, genital mutilation, no driving, burkas and Sharia law. Go figure!

     Transgenders constitute .00006 of the population, making this issue a tempest in a teapot. Progressives insist anyone who self identifies as any gender can use any public facility at anytime. They demand young girls accept showering with men and that they simply get over any discomfort. Yet, they dictate transgenders not be required to use facilities conforming to their biological gender because it may cause them discomfort.

     Environmentalism is a totally ersatz issue. Every metric (100 of them) shows both human and environmental well being to be the best they have been in the past 50-75 years and getting better all the time. Their fake solution is to spend ever more and more money to eke out ever less and less imperceptible benefit and to elevate a tiny fish (delta smelt) over the well being of hundreds of thousands of real human beings.

     Take the real issues identified in this post and contrast them with the phantom issues and solutions put forth by progressives. They use misdirection, smoke, mirrors, and rope-a-dope for emotional appeals to low information voters. They never address serious issues with serious solutions. They choose instead to fight for transgenders against young girls but not for all Americans against radical Islam and a nuclear Iran.

The next post in our 2016 election series addresses political correctness.

Environmentalism’s Siren Song

George Noga

By: George Noga – Updated February 22, 2014

    Nothing matches the environmental movement for effrontery. Everything about it is fraudulent; yet it has captured the hearts, minds and souls of our children. Try explaining to your kids that every measure of human and environmental well-being is better today than at any time in the past 100 years and continues to improve; they will not believe you. And it just isn’t our kids; too many of us buy into environmental myths.

      Everyone supports reasonable laws for clean air, water and energy, biodiversity, saving rain forests and right on down the line. So what’s the difference between us and those who usurp the mantle of environmentalism? There are three main differences: (1) we are for capitalism, free trade and limited government; (2) our beliefs are based on empiricism and science; and (3) we make rational, economic tradeoffs when human well-being is at stake.

The Environmental Movement is Led by Marxists with Other Agendas

   Like most movements of our era, environmentalism began in response to legitimate concerns. All people of good will supported laws to address the concerns. Then things began to diverge. Moderates left the movement believing their mission accomplished. Extremists took over and pushed for more and costlier laws to eke out smaller and more dubious improvements. Then the Berlin Wall fell; communism collapsed; and the most diehard Marxists found themselves homeless. Patrick Moore, a founding member of Greenpeace, stated it well.

   “Following the collapse of world communism . . . many of its members moved into the environmental movement, bringing with them their neo-Marxist, far-left agendas. The environmental movement was hijacked by political activists using green language to cloak agendas more about anti-capitalism and anti-globalization than with science or ecology.”

      Today the environmental movement is run by former Reds and the hard left. They have morphed into Greens for maskirovka but they are like watermelons, i.e. green on the outside and red on the inside. Its acolytes today are limited to big government types, professors, teachers, movie stars, a smattering of unthinking camp followers – and many of our children.

   The ultimate irony is that for a country to improve the environment, it must be wealthy. The only way for nations to become wealthy is via capitalism and free trade. That is why America, Japan and western Europe are able to spend lavishly on the environment. The worst environmental tragedy in human history was the Soviet Union and its satellites. The same leftists who created an environmental Armageddon in the USSR and who advocate a return to its disasterous ideology are the very ones leading the environmental movement in the USA.

Science and Empiricism Versus Failed Political Dogma

     We differ from the extremists in another important respect; our views are based on science and not failed dogma. Following are but a few examples to ponder.

  1. As well documented by economists Julian Simon and Steven Moore in their book It’s getting Better All the Time, the 100 greatest human and environmental trends of the past 100 years are the best they ever have been and continue to improve.
  2. Environmentalists oppose the Keystone Pipeline, US drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico (new wells), ANWR and the Atlantic continental shelf. Yet Cuba, Venezuela and many South American countries, with far worse safety records, drill in the gulf and on the continental shelf. Logically, it would be more eco-friendly for the US to drill.
  3. Extremists push for ever more costly laws to achieve insignificant marginal benefits while ignoring the 800-pound gorillas in the world such as coal mine fires in China and India that create more pollution than all the fuel burned by cars in a year in the USA.
  4. Organic food in scientific taste tests cannot be distinguished from conventionally grown food; it harms the environment as it requires 40% more land for production.
  5. Extremists insist we spend trillions in the years ahead to combat alleged warming and all to lower global temperature by an imperceptible .1 degree Fahrenheit by 2100. The same amount of money could be better spent fighting TB and malaria, ad infinitum.

Conflicts Between the Environment and Human Well-Being

  When inevitable conflicts arise between environmental and human well-being, extremists totally disregard economics and human suffering. There arise situations when harm to the environment is uncertain or minimal while the cost and suffering to humans is astronomical. In such situations, like the snail darter and delta smelt, my calculus favors humans.      

    We are losing our children’s hearts and minds to eco-extremists who seduce them like the Sirens of Greek  mythology. The Sirens were seductresses who lured sailors with enchanting music to shipwreck on the rocky shoals of their island. Today’s environmental Sirens similarly are beguiling our kids with enchanting thoughts but with the same pernicious intent.