I thought everybody does serious reading in the bathtub, no?
- Scott Paeth, a serious theologian at DePaul University, talks about actually working to reduce the number of abortions, in comments after President Obama’s speech at the University of Notre Dame. Sometimes that would require doing things like sex education seriously, abandoning the failed “just say no” philosophy of misinforming kids about sex and babies. One of the great tragedies of Christianity: Paeth, a serious thinker on Christianity and ethics, gets far less readership than totalitarians like Neil Simpson. Sword over thought, war over peace, loud braying at the street corner over quiet work for God. Will it be so always?
- Jay Ambrose offered to come back to defend his odd, contrary-to-history-and-science views on DDT way back in 2007, but never did. Now Ambrose is repeating his errors of history and science on DDT, and expanding the errors to include climate change. Don’t these Scripps News outlets have fact checkers? Did the Society of Professional Journalists drop its ethics code?
- The Pima Air and Space Museum offers tours of the Boneyard!
The Pima Air & Space Museum offers exclusive bus tours of the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARG), also known as the “Boneyard.” The facility is located adjacent to the Museum at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Seats are avaliable on a “first come first serve” basis.
See the photo at the bottom — when I lived and taught in Tucson, this was a constant source of fascination, and frankly, to us aviation fans, it still is.
- Explicit acknowledgment that the National Guard is a key component in our domestic response to emergencies.
- Honors to “Dr. Regina Rabinovich, director of infectious diseases development in the Global Health Program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, [as] the recipient of the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine’s distinguished alumni award for 2009.” Real malaria fighters get real recognition on occasion. Jay Ambrose, you could do a feature on her work, yes?
- Big earthquakes in the Saudi deserts, did you hear? Neat photo, at Eruptions.
- Jeremy Grantham makes a grand case in economics that markets are not rational after all.
- Tim Jones at remote central discusses the bone with the mammoth carved on it (the Vero Beach Ice Age Engraving), considering how to tell whether it’s a hoax or not.
The Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona; the Pima Air & Space Museum now offers bus tours of the 309th Maintenance and Regeneration Group's collection of scrapped and very historic airplanes
Can’t soak all day.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Is Jay Ambrose still talking non-science on DDT and climate change, or did he retire for good?
Wish we could have persuaded him to talk real science instead of just harping the hoaxsters’ lines.
LikeLike
Mr. Ambrose said:
Done and done. The facts are contrary to what you insinuate. The U.S. specifically did not ban the use of DDT, nor seriously lobby against it much. Think about it Jay — where did all those Superfund sites come from? Have you ever looked at how many of the DDT plants in the U.S. didn’t close down until 1984, or why?
You said you have documentation. I’d like to see it.
WHO stopped using DDT in gross amounts in the mid-1960s when abuse of the stuff frustrated their attempt to eradicate malaria. If anyone else wanted to use it, fine. There was no serious policy change in 2006, just a press conference clarifying what its policy had been all along.
What it says is that you weren’t following the science or the policy at the time, and you’ve been suckered in by the campaign against Rachel Carson. Check your facts. Didn’t you offer to provide some documentation?
No spraying of DDT in Europe. Can you document anything more? I can’t.
You suggested that environmental groups don’t care about dying children, but instead want only political victories. I thought you were too harsh, and I gather now you do, too.
If you can document anywhere that DDT could be the most effective tool against malaria, please do so. No study I have found from the last 40 years suggests support for such a claim. DDT can be one of several pesticides, but its value was compromised by overuse. DDT is relatively ineffective, and it is no panacea, anywhere.
Got any documentation to the contrary?
They aren’t fighting back much against the calumny. Environmental groups continue to do what they do, protect people and the environment. This campaign of calumny is almost completely a right-wing wacko thing — and environmental groups don’t read that stuff. They’re sitting ducks for such an erroneous, sneak attack.
Blaming them for millions of deaths would be false. Why would you even think of doing such a thing?
A study last year showed that DDT would probably kill as many as it would save, just a few years later. Indoor spraying with DDT is a last resort because, as the National Academy of Sciences noted in 1980, DDT is a deadly, dangerous chemical which should be used as little as possible, and for which replacements should always be considered.
Got a source to back that claim? South Africa’s malaria rates rose because of immigration of people and mosquitoes from neighboring nations. No expert claims that the stopping of the use of DDT caused the increase, only that, as a last resort, they went back to DDT to stop the malaria immigration.
Check the facts. I thought you offered to provide documentation? I’ve offered several links which rebut your claims here — surely you didn’t have time to read them all, but still, those who argue without information, or contrary to the science, are the ones who should not have a leg to stand on.
LikeLike
You think this country was not opposed to sending DDT to other countries? Check out the history of the agency known as AIDS, and not just under Bush (the leftist opbsession with this man teeters o insanity), who changed its policy, but under Clinton, etc. What about the United Nations? What was its policy before 2006 and why did it change and what did the head of WHO at the time say about the neglect of science on this issue? What about the European Union? What had its policb been until a few years ago, and what groups caused it to adopt that policy?
I never as much as insinuated that environmental groups did not talk about ways to attack malaria, only that they opposed the use of DDT to do it and that in some places, DDT can be the most effective weapon to fight the disease. In the face of overwhelming evidence and the chance of being blamed for millions of deaths, they began fighting back, but look at their stances even today. Check out what the Sierra Club says about DDT spraying on its Web site, for instance. The myth hangs on that indoor spraying of DDT is oh, so unfortunate. As for rates going up and down with DDT use, check out what happened in South Africa. No one who writes about this has a moral leg to stand on if he he does not know about that experience.
LikeLike
Dear Friend!
I have a new blog for modern and contemporary world history – “Nikolaykotev’s Blog” with URL: http://nikolaykotev.wordpress.com/ .If you want, you can see it on this adress!
Best wishes
Nikolay Kotev
NEWS: approximately 1300 photos from the Second World War
LikeLike
Good science in science journals works well. Your offer was:
What I had said? Here’s the entry, about your column on environmentalists being the darlings of the media, and persuading the UN to stop using DDT against the UN’s better wishes and testimony of hundreds, etc., etc.:
https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2007/08/04/accuracy-a-good-bias-ddt-again/
One of the chief errors was your claim that environmental groups were stupidly and stubbornly opposing the use of DDT in indoor residual spraying (IRS). I still can’t find evidence of that. Environmental Defense had been urging the Bush administration to allow U.S. funds to be used for IRS — contrary to your statements that green groups opposed it, and contrary to your statement that the U.S. government was in favor of it (don’t ask me to explain why Bush plays your environmental group bad guy in this drama; but Bush is no environmental group).
You wrote:
I asked for the names of the environmental groups that were unbending.
Your numbers are off, I think. Do you have numbers that show a great rise in malaria rates, and deaths, in the past 20 years or so? You said they’re higher than two decades ago — can you back that?
The UN never discouraged IRS so far as I can find, and officially they never opposed DDT use, that I can find, except to say that it would be ineffective where mosquitoes were resistant or immune to it. You suggest otherwise — I’d love some documentation if there is any.
Can you show that environmental groups spent decades lobbying the UN to stop using DDT in any foreign nation? Can you show that environmental groups turned a blind eye to malaria, instead of urging significant campaigns to fight the diseases?
Can you support any of the claims about DDT, or environmental groups, or malaria, that you made in that column, from good, hard sources — especially any source other than corporate lobbyists, corporate-sponsored p.r. campaigns, or Roger Bate?
It’s very popular to condemn environmentalists — as you did. You argue the opposite, but in doing so you tend to refute your own claims. I see no evidence that Al Gore nor any other environmentalist gets a pass in criticism in any mass medium.
What would really work for my journalistically trained, be-fair-and-accurate mind would be this: You could tell the true story of malaria in Africa and Asia, the true story of DDT’s rise and fall, and the true story of the advocacy of environmental groups. That wouldn’t be the harangue you published in 2007, nor would it be the harangue you put out this week.
So, expecting you will persist in missing the facts — history has a way of predicting what will happen in these affairs, and a sad way of repeating error — if you could point the way to the sources you think verify your points, we can ask you to review them to see if you think they are accurate in the light of events of the past months. If you follow my blog — and of course you don’t — you’ll know that DDT use hasn’t proved to be of much help anywhere; you’ll know that bed nets, urged by those dreaded environmental groups, Christians and the NBA, work better. You’ll know that opposition to DDT spraying comes from an odd coalition of tobacco companies and cotton traders, and not from environmental organizations.
And you’ll know that DDT is no panacea against malaria. Beating malaria will take more than poisoning Africa with cheap DDT, and much more than wisely using DDT in IRS. You’ll find solutions that someone like you, with a column that can get into a score of newspapers easily, could promote to help save some kids.
How many bed nets has your writing delivered to Africa? Why not, if you’re concerned about beating malaria, and not really just concerned about kicking Al Gore and other environmentalists?
This story, from NPR, is much more balanced, names names and gets the facts straight.
And Bug Girl’s post here is just loaded with sources; but one really cannot begin to understand the situation without this information.
LikeLike
I tend to forget bad jokes. Sorry. I should have gotten back to you. So which of your fictions have I failed to repeat? What documentation would you like? What works for minds like yours?
LikeLike