A Lethal Subsidy
By Roger Bate and Richard Tren
By trying to do too much, the disease-fighting Global Fund has run into problems. It is spending public funds in a way that is perverting the market for malaria drugs and could do more harm than good.
Daily Archives: September 9, 2011
Market distortion causes harm, even with the best of intentions
Posted in Health care, Unintended consequences
Biotech improving nutritional quality of rice
Scientists find way to put iron in rice
Clare Peddie
ADELAIDE scientists have fortified rice so it can meet daily iron needs in a breakthrough that could create a super food for the world’s under-nourished.
The breakthrough promises to provide a solution to the iron and zinc deficiency disorders that affect billions of people throughout the world.
Dr Alex Johnson, from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, says the genetically modified rice has up to four times more iron than conventional rice and twice as much zinc. (The Advertiser)
Posted in Agriculture, Biotech
Henry Payne: It’s the Regulations, Stupid
It’s the Regulations, Stupid
September 8, 2011 12:30 P.M.
By Henry Payne
The canary in the Obamanomics pixie-dust mine has been American industry choking on green. From EPA’s carbon crusade to light bulbs to Obamacare, hyper-regulation has weakened the industrial jobs engine.
Ask jobs creators in Michigan what President Obama should do to resurrect the economy tonight, and the answer is uniform: Take your regulatory boot off our necks.
Posted in Development, Green jobs, Regulation
The idiot attack on useful compounds continues
Editorial: Don’t risk kids’ health, sign AB 1319 into law
Assembly Bill 1319, which bans the toxic chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) from plastic feeding products used by infants and children, is now on the governor’s desk. We urge him to sign it.
Efforts by state Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, to ban the use of BPA in baby bottles, infant feeding containers (sippy cups) and other products have come up short the last three years amid heavy lobbying by the American Chemistry Council. A similar bill fell three votes short last year.
However, thanks to the work of Assemblywoman Betsy Butler, D-Marina del Rey, who authored AB 1319, and co-author Sen. Pavley, the bill passed both the Assembly and Senate this year.
The Star sees AB 1319 as a measured response to the serious potential dangers posed by this plastic additive. (VC Star)
Posted in Activists, BPA, Chemophobia, Rubber room
They got one thing right – the planet couldn’t care less and your “sacrifice” is completely pointless
Going Green but Getting Nowhere
By GERNOT WAGNER
YOU reduce, reuse and recycle. You turn down plastic and paper. You avoid out-of-season grapes. You do all the right things.
Good.
Just know that it won’t save the tuna, protect the rain forest or stop global warming. The changes necessary are so large and profound that they are beyond the reach of individual action.
Posted in Activists, Dioxycarbophobia, Enviros, Green scams, Propaganda
World Wide Font of Nonsense has new president, declared endangered
‘I’m an endangered species’: Prince Charles warns of mass extinctions as he’s appointed UK president of the WWF
By REBECCA ENGLISH
Prince Charles described himself as an ‘endangered species’ yesterday but warned that he would not stop ‘harping on’ about green causes.
He issued his rallying cry during a speech to mark his appointment as UK President of the World Wide Fund for Nature, following in the footsteps of his father, Prince Philip.
He warned that mankind risks extinction if the world fails to take notice of climate change and said environmentalists had to ‘stand up and be counted’ to avoid ‘the sixth great extinction’. (Daily Mail)
Panic in the watermelon press
The world needs to prepare for a climate sceptic defeating Obama
Barack Obama is losing his grip on the White House – and climate sceptic Rick Perry is favourite to succeed him (Guardian)
Posted in Climate change
La niña regresa (the girl child returns)
La Nina gets reborn, will strengthen during winter: CPC
The dreaded La Nina weather anomaly, blamed for both drought and record snowfall in the U.S., has returned and will garner strength during the coming winter, the Climate Prediction Center forecast Thursday.
“While it is not yet clear what the ultimate strength of this La Nina will be, La Nina conditions have returned and are expected to gradually strengthen and continue into the Northern Hemisphere winter (of) 2011-12,” the CPC said in a monthly update.
It said waters in the eastern half of the equatorial Pacific Ocean cooled in August, and the “oceanic and atmospheric patterns reflect the return of La Nina conditions.” (Reuters)
Posted in Climate
Give us lots of money for more stupid ideas
Australia to broach radical global warming solutions
Graham Readfearn
Clouds could be made more reflective and oceans fertilised to increase carbon dioxide absorption under ideas to be discussed at Australia’s first high-level climate engineering conference later this month.
International interest in climate engineering – also known as geoengineering – is increasing as efforts to curb the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases continue to falter.
Scientists said the event was an important step for Australia into the controversial geoengineering debate but expressed grave concerns some proposed technologies could have dangerous and far-reaching side effects.
The two-day science symposium, starting in Canberra on September 26, is being hosted by the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. (Brisbane Times)
Posted in Climate change, Rubber room
General Ban tries to keep the scam going
U.N. Chief Ban urges world to redouble efforts on climate talks
The world needs to redouble efforts to fight climate change ahead of global talks in Durban, with time running out to save millions of lives in countries to be hit hardest, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday.
Ban, winding up a visit to Australia and small Pacific nations including several likely to be swamped by rising sea levels, said critics of climate change science were wrong.
“The facts are clear. Global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. Millions of people are suffering today from climate impacts. Climate change is very real,” Ban said in a speech at Sydney University.
“Environmental migrants are starting to reshape the human geography of the planet. This will only increase as sea-levels rise and deserts advance. We cannot burn our way to the future,” he said. (Reuters)
Posted in Climate change, Green scams, IPCC, Propaganda, UN
Uh-oh… Asia dumping large quantities of black carbon into the atmosphere
Not that this is a surprise but worrying about black carbon doesn’t provide a vehicle for attacking Western industry and/or capitalism, so shhhh!
Aircraft measurements show surprisingly high levels of black carbon particles in the global atmosphere – Asia blamed
Anthony Watts
From NCAR/UCAR:
First global portrait of greenhouse gases emerges from pole-to-pole flights
BOULDER—A three-year series of research flights from the Arctic to the Antarctic has successfully produced an unprecedented portrait of greenhouse gases and particles in the atmosphere, scientists announced today. The far-reaching field project, known as HIPPO, is enabling researchers to generate the first detailed mapping of the global distribution of gases and particles that affect Earth’s climate.
The series of flights, which come to an end next week, mark an important milestone as scientists work toward targeting both the sources of greenhouse gases and the natural processes that draw the gases back out of the atmosphere. (WUWT)
Posted in Climate change, Research
Interesting but still basically guesswork and PlayStation® climatology
800,000 years of abrupt climate variability
An international team of scientists, led by Dr Stephen Barker of Cardiff University, has produced a prediction of what climate records from Greenland might look like over the last 800,000 years.
Drill cores taken from Greenland’s vast ice sheets provided the first clue that Earth’s climate is capable of very rapid transitions and have led to vigorous scientific investigation into the possible causes of abrupt climate change.
Such evidence comes from the accumulation of layers of ancient snow, which compact to form the ice-sheets we see today. Each layer of ice can reveal past temperatures and even evidence for the timing and magnitude of distant storms or volcanic eruptions. By drilling cores in the ice scientists have reconstructed an incredible record of past climates. Until now such temperature records from Greenland have covered only the last 100,000 years or so.
The team’s reconstruction is based on the much longer ice core temperature record retrieved from Antarctica and uses a mathematical formulation to extend the Greenland record beyond its current limit.
Dr Barker, Cardiff School of Earth and Ocean Sciences said: “Our approach is based on an earlier suggestion that the record of Antarctic temperature variability could be derived from the Greenland record.
“However, we turned this idea on its head to derive a much longer record for Greenland using the available records from Antarctica.”
The research published in the journal Science (8 September) demonstrates that abrupt climate change has been a systemic feature of Earth’s climate for hundreds of thousands of years and may play an active role in longer term climate variability through its influence on ice age terminations. (EurekAlert)
Posted in Climate, PlayStation® climatology
Climate propaganda from Nature
Climate and weather: Extreme measures
Can violent hurricanes, floods and droughts be pinned on climate change? Scientists are beginning to say yes. (Quirin Schiermeier, Nature News)
Severe storms make the public think of climate change. Scientists must work to evaluate the link. (Nature 477, 131–132 (08 September 2011) doi:10.1038/477131b
Published online 07 September 2011)
Posted in Climate change, Propaganda
Ambrose: A pipeline to better times
Ambrose: A pipeline to better times
JAY AMBROS
James Hansen, global alarming scientist with NASA, was arrested recently, and my first reaction was that it’s about time, although, on second thought, let him yap. He himself has suggested warming-skeptical CEOs be tried for crimes against humanity, but I am in favor of free speech. May the best arguments win.
When he and other civilly disobedient, drama-seeking protesters were carrying on outside the White House, the Hansen argument was that global warming will spell our end if we let a Canadian company build an oil pipeline to Texas refineries.
Nope. Not really. The other day, I happened on a rebuttal that was more than a rebuttal. Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute grabbed hold of the case against the Keystone XL project and stripped it naked to reveal the bare truth. (Scripps Howard News Service)
Posted in Development, Energy
Energy saboteurs remarkably successful
20 Drilling Rigs in Jeopardy of Leaving Gulf Over Permit Delays, Report Warns
Lachlan Markay
If the pace of Gulf oil drilling permit awards does not increase, as many as 20 drilling rigs could soon leave the Gulf, a major investment bank announced. BER Capital Investments called the current rate of permitting unsustainable in a report released Wednesday.
Posted in Activists, Development, Energy, Regulation
