Article: Peak Oilers Shut Up Forever Please

"Peak oil" was a Malthusian fad, just like the Club of Rome predictions about the stuff we would run out of by 2000, and Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb." [Other failed projections.]

Some people just off on doom, especially doom due to their (or their parents') evil ways.

Princeton University geologist Ken Deffeyes predicted that global oil production would peak on Thanksgiving Day, 2005. In 2005, daily global oil production averaged 85 million barrels per day. Daily petroleum liquids production in July was 96 million barrels per day.

Linked article: OPEC just kicked oil into the $30s

Article: The Colossal Hoax Of Organic Agriculture

Well, yes.

Points made:

• The "organic" pesticides permitted are still toxic. 
• There is a huge premium to buying organic (up to 100%)
• Researchers found that “99.99 percent (by weight) of the pesticides in the American diet are chemicals that plants produce to defend themselves.”
• Food certified organic may contain GMOs. 
• "The organic community... opposes more frequent mandatory testing of organic products for prohibited and excluded substances."
• It is "faith based" because food is certified as organic if the farmer follows the correct process, not if there are low amounts of pesticide residues in the food. 
• It is "faith based" because farmers have an incentive to substitute cheaper non-organic food for more expensive to produce organic food. 
• "Organic agriculture is an unscientific, heavily subsidized marketing gimmick..."

And:

Speaking of trust and faith—or lack thereof–in organic foods, there was the example of holier-than-thou Whole Foods importing large amounts of its supposedly “organic” produce from China, of all places. Those imports even included Whole Foods’ house brand, “California Blend.” (Yes, you read that correctly.)

I began reading the magazine, "Organic Gardening" while in my teens (early 1970's). One aunt and uncle also grew most of their garden organically and I talked with them a lot.

I grow my own garden organically, although I will use the classic herbicides on my lawn and gravel.

For me it is a choice. I police the garden for various types of caterpillars, and I hand weed. I let mildew take the cucumbers and daisies.

However, organic farming, and selling food as "organic" I always thought was a waste of money, with a large amount of "tribal value signalling."  "Look at me! I am virtuous; I buy organic. I support Mother Earth."

Additionally, the idea that organic agriculture should be the way to go instead of "non-organic" farming is an elitist view. People who can afford to pay premium prices should not impose that on others. Poor people benefit from cheap food. Period.

It is an actual example of the story falsely attributed to Marie Antoinette. When told that the bakers of Paris did not have enough bread for the poor, she is supposed to have reply, "Let them eat cake."

Organic methods simply not as productive on a per acre basis. This, by itself, both drives up prices and decreases the food supply.

"Let them organic," is not as resonant, but no less true.

I gave this a "moral panic" tag because of the fear of pesticides.

Article: Hot and Bothered: Air conditioning isn’t bad for you or even (relatively) for the planet.

[T]he case against AC has always been more a moral judgment than a scientific one. Summer cooling is no more damaging to the climate than the heating that we do in winter. In fact, it’s substantially less so, since the United States burns more fuel on radiators than it does on air conditioners. According to the most recent stats available from the federal government (which cover 2010), the average American household puts 40.4 million British thermal units into home heating, and just 9.3 million BTUs into home cooling. As I’ve pointed out before, this explains why the long-term shift in population from our coldest, Northern states into the hot and humid South has in sum reduced the amount of fossil fuel we burn to keep our houses at a comfortable temperature. Simply put: It’s more efficient to air-condition homes in Florida than it is to warm the ones in Minnesota. 

Europeans have trouble understanding the US's fondness for AC. They assume that our climates are like theirs. However, the climates in our midwest and east coast are very different from theirs, being much hotter and more humid during the summer. Only our west coast climates, mostly cool and humid or warm and dry, are similar to theirs.

Science Links - 7/17/15

The theme of today's science links is frauds and lies.

Article: Why are greens so keen to destroy the world’s wildlife?

When Professor David MacKay stepp ed down as chief scientific adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) last year, he produced a report comparing the environmental impact of a fracking site to that of wind farms. Over 25 years, he calculated, a single “shale gas pad” covering five acres, with a drilling rig 85ft high (only needed for less than a year), would produce as much energy as 87 giant wind turbines, covering 5.6 square miles and visible up to 20 miles away. Yet, to the greenies, the first of these, capable of producing energy whenever needed, without a penny of subsidy, is anathema; while the second, producing electricity very unreliably in return for millions of pounds in subsidies, fills them with rapture

Additional antienvironment environmentalism

1) windmills destroying birds and bats
2) biomass to biomass fuels causing deforestation
3) hydroelectric power plants in the Amazon destroying rain forests.

Article: The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science

A history of the take over of climate science, greens/environmentalists, the media, and bureaucrats by catastrophic anthropogenic global warming activists

The organisations that did the most exaggeration trousered the most money.

Garth Paltridge, distinguished Australian climate scientist:

We have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem—or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem—in its effort to promote the cause. It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis for society’s respect for scientific endeavour.

Long and well worth the read.

Article: Nature Rebounds – the world is getting better, not worse

References a deep, and long, study by one of the founders of the IPCC. I did not read the study.

Article: Study claims 1 in 4 cancer research papers contains faked data

Scientists, desperate for grant money, puffs up research.

Scams: Cholesterol and Global Warming (with a note about salt)

Article: RIP: The great cholesterol scam (1955 – 2015)

Article: The 8 Stages of Scam

The first article has the original list about cholesterol, while the second on expands it to include global warming.

Note: I would add that dietary salt is following the same trajectory

I am just going to quote the entire second article, with one comment from the post:

What I have to say here reflects upon the course of this great fallacy. The cholesterol scam bears a strong relationship to the anthropogenic global warming scam. 

1) it is propagated by scientists on a non-scientific mission. 

2) it is believed because it plausibly explains an observation (increasing global temperature [for a time], increasing heart attacks from smoking in the 1950s and 60s). It taps into large anxieties about too much wealth, too much happiness, in western societies. There must be sin somewhere, and the public is ready to flog itself in the cause of a secularized idea of God, uh, I mean Good. 

3) the causal relationship is weaker than first supposed; the research is found to be sloppy, the facts have been fudged, subsequent studies do not fully support the original claims, nevertheless the orthodoxy is promulgated all the more harshly for being doubted.

4) by now, powerful economic and ideological interests have taken hold. They supply an ongoing source of funds and opinion to ensure the perpetuation of the alarm: in the case of cholesterol, the margarine industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the medical establishment, and in the case of AGW, the tribe of bureaucrats and leftists who seek to control markets, whose god of Marxism had failed, and who needed a new god (Gaia) to justify their rule. 

5) The skeptics who have patiently argued on the basis of facts that the science of each phenomenon was weak, are ostracized by the opinion establishments of medicine and global warming. Cranks, but the cranks are right and the orthodox priests and Levites are wrong. 

6) Eventually, after fifty or sixty years, the subject of discussion just changes. In the case of cholesterol, the evidence gets weaker and weaker, and the problems caused by too much sugar consumption (obesity, diabetes), caused in part by people not eating enough fats and meats, reaches a stage where it can no longer be ignored. 

7) the retreat of the orthodoxy is covered by a smokescreen of fresh concerns for some other catastrophe. No admissions of error or apologies for wrecked careers and following bad science are ever issued. Time flows on, bringing neither knowledge nor greater understanding of the role of folly in human affairs. 

8) stages 6 and 7 have been reached in the cholesterol cycle; they are beginning in the anthropogenic global warming scam. Fifty years from now, there will still be clanking windmills in the North Sea, but whether they will be still linked to a power grid is less likely, and whether anyone will pay attention is doubtful. The lobbies that keep them there, however, will still exist.

Posted by: chasmatic at June 28, 2015 6:46 PM

from Nobel Laureate Irving Langmuir in 1952: 

Symptoms of Pathological Science:
1. The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
2. The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; or, many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
3. Claims of great accuracy.
4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience.
5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.
6. Ratio of supporters to critics rises up to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion. 

retrieved from http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ken/Langmuir/langmuir.htm

Science Links: The Pope and the Climate

Article: What Pope Francis should do to really help the poor: Bjorn Lomborg

Takeaway: Global warming will effect the poor most. However, the advocated policies to stop global warming will further impoverish the poor "first and foremost."

Article: Leaked Laudato Lamented

Catholic magazine discussing the Pope's stance on global warming.

Takeaway: The encyclical is great on the theology. Lousy on the science.

Article: Who Pays For Climate Regulation?

Hat tip to Wattsupwiththat: Stanford research finds climate change regulation burden heaviest on poor

Takeaway: the two titles say it all.

Article:  Thoughts on the papal encyclical on environment

Takeaway: Well balanced looked at the Encyclical, based on the actual document, rather than "reports." The encyclical still invokes the long-discredited "consensus."

However, it places the enviroment in a moral context that both skeptics and believers in global warming would do well to ponder.

Article: Is The Catholic Church Burned By The Sun Again?

Takeaway: a point-by-point rebuttal of the "climate science" of the Pope's encyclical.

My take on all of this. When the Pope speaks on moral and theological issues, he speaks clearly. And what he says should challenge everyone. However, he muddies the waters of that clarity with the "mud" of bad science.

It is also not as "anti-business" and "anti-capitalist" as some "reports" have made it out to be. However, it is obvious that the Pope is more knowledgable about Marxist and Fascist critiques of free-market economies than he is about free-market economies.

Article: The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion

The original New York Times article ripping Paul Ehrlich to shreds (with video!)

Hat tip: Paul Ehrlich: Even Worse than the New York Times Says He Is

Yet another moral panic [overpopulation is going to kill us all!].

The Great Campus Rape Hoax [Updated]

Article: The great campus rape hoax

Americans have been living through an enormously sensationalized college rape hoax, but as the evidence accumulates it's becoming clear that the entire thing was just a bunch of media hype and political opportunism.

Claimed: A female college student runs a 1 in 5 chance, or 20% of being raped during her 4 years at college. (And even the researchers who came up with that number say it should not be used as it has been.)

Reality #1: the rate of rape and sexual assault for college students is 6.1 per 1,000, or 0.6%.

Reality #2: the rate of rape and sexual assault for non-students is 7.6 per 1,000.

Reality #3: the rate of rape and sexual assault has been dropping, both on campus and off, for decades.

While the Left, with its SJW allies, are using this bogus statistic, it needs to be mentioned that America is subject to periodic moral panics: demon rum, cocaine (in the early 1900's and again in the 1970's), dope fiends (1930's and 1960's), satanism at day care centers, the Catholic Church pedophile scandals (overlooking the public school pedophile scandals), and now "rape culture."

This does not even include such panics as DDT, alar, the uninsured, GMOs (and other organic food related panics), the anti-vaxxers, and the Christian Proctor and Gamble hysteria of the 1980's.

Update: More College Rape Hype — This Time from the Washington Post

Article: Fears, Not Facts, Support G.M.O.-Free Food

Despite myriad assurances from scientists that foods containing genetically modified ingredients are safe to eat, consumers are likely to see more and more products labeled “G.M.O.-free” in the not-too-distant future. As happened with the explosion of gluten-free products, food companies are quick to cash in on what they believe consumers want regardless of whether it is scientifically justified.

The entire article is worth reading for the take-down of the anti-GMO hysteria.

One reads a lot about how the Right is "anti-science:" Christians because of evolution and conservatives because of skepticism about catastrophic, anthropenic global warming.

However, the Left has its areas of "anti-science" as well, and the blind fear of GMOs is certainly one of them.

[A] review of the pros and cons of G.M.O.s strongly suggests that the issue reflects a poor public understanding of the science behind them... 

[snip] 

Let’s start with the facts. Humans have been genetically modifying food and feed plants and animals for millenniums, until recently only by repeatedly crossing existing ones with relatives that have more desirable characteristics. It can take many years, even decades, to achieve a commercially viable product this way...

The techniques of making a GMO are actually imitations of nature's own show-cuts. Viruses can move genes from one bacteria to another or from one higher organism (plants, animals, etc.) to another. The human genome is full of DNA from viruses. Some of the DNA is active, some is "junk DNA."

As the ariticle points out, we share a lot of genes with dogs (about 84%). We also share many genes with plants, fungi, and bacteria.