Michael Crichton’s errors worshipped by warming deniers

September 28, 2008

The Millard Fillmore soap-on-a-rope* started spinning in the shower this morning.  I knew some mischief was afoot.

Sure enough, as soon as we turned the gas on to the computer and the screen warmed up, what should pop up but a group claiming to be opposed to junk science and arrogant ignorance, but arrogantly spreading the ignorance of junk science:  Climate Change Fraud, “The Crichtonian Green.”

I caught the site with a news reader that looks for idiocy about DDT.  This is the line the automoton caught:

“DDT is not a carcinogen…the DDT ban has caused the deaths of tens of millions of poor people…”

We’ve washed out the dirt from Crichton’s claims before in the Bathtub, in “Michael Crichton hysterical for DDT.”  Go read his errors there (there’s a YouTube video of his assaulting innocent school children with his hysteric errors, too, in case you think I’m joking).

Among the anti-science crowds, this stuff is holy writ.  Dogma insists that scientists are craven political creatures driven to silly programs that waste money and hurt poor people.  Never mind the facts.  They believe it religiously — and they treat efforts to educate them as assaults on their faith.

DDT is a well-established carcinogen in animals, including mammals, and every cancer-fighting agency on Earth lists DDT as a probable human carcinogen.  The various “bans” on DDT all allow DDT to be used to protect poor people against disease, but DDT’s overuse by its advocates led to rapid evolution of resistance and immunity in insects targeted by DDT — DDT use was stopped when it stopped being effective.  Inaction on the part of DDT advocates, and their unwillingness to use other methods to fight malaria, have been culprits in the too-slow program to reduce malaria among poor people.   Spraying DDT advocates with DDT will do absolutely nothing to get them off their butts to act.

(Go to the search feature on this blog, search for “DDT.”  The truth is out there.)

Oy.  This is how the week starts?

__________

*  No, I never did get a Millard Fillmore soap-on-a-rope; but it makes a good gambit to open a post, don’t you think?

8 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Climate change, DDT, Global warming, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Science, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

John Stossel: Wrong again, on DDT

September 17, 2008

John Stossel’s new book makes a detour to rail against the regulation of DDT and against Rachel Carson and her book, Silent Spring.

I’ve not read the book, but from what I’ve read about it, he’s got it dead wrong.  If the example offered by Grokmedia is their own, and not Stossel’s, shame on them.  (Stossel’s complained about DDT before, though, and gotten the facts as wrong as Grokmedia has them.)  The claims are unbelievable:

Consider the chemical DDT. I’m sure, if you’ve heard anything at all about DDT, it’s that it’s a horrible, deadly chemical, that must be banned to preserve the public’s safety. The truth is, the only thing DDT affects are mosquitos. Not humans. In fact, I’m old enough to remember trucks pulling through our neighborhood and spraying the stuff into the air, like gigantic clouds, bringing death – to the mosquito population. These clouds of DDT harmed no one. There were no great increases in any kind of cancer or other fatal diseases – and certainly none that could be associated with DDT. Enter the book, Silent Spring.

A woman by the name of Rachel Carson wrote a book that vilified DDT, and blamed our love of chemical solutions for her own cancer. (She died of breast cancer two years after the publication of her book.) Silent Spring is almost single-handedly credited with triggering a worldwide ban on DDT. The result of this ban has been, paradoxically enough, millions of deaths in countries like Ethiopia, where malaria kills due to mosquito infestations. U.S. aid policy bans sending money to any country that chooses to spray with DDT.

How did Silent Spring cause this wave of destruction? Marketing. The book was marketed by it’s publishers. The marketing efforts attracted the attention of a mainstream media hungry for stories that scare the populace to death. The unwashed masses Demanded That Something Be Done. Politicians, eager to grandstand (and free of conciences that might give them pause to think about the Law of Unintended Consequences) passed laws, and that was that.

Here’s what I wrote in comments to the post at Grokmedia, which appears to have gone into their own hell for any post that disagrees with their views:

Stossel said that about DDT?  Once again, he’s gone off the rails.

Do you seriously think that a book publisher with its meager PR budget could derail a multi-billion-dollar pesticide manufacturing industry that was led by several of America’s top 100 corporations?  Do you think corporations are really that incompetent at the public relations game?

The truth is that DDT was banned because of its harm to the environment, not due to its dangers to human health (though, to be perfectly accurate we should note that every cancer-fighting agency on Earth says DDT is a probably human carcinogen, and recent research has strengthened the links between cancer in people exposed to DDT in their mother’s breast milk and in utero, and that DDT is now known to be a rather nasty endocrine disruptor in all animals).  More than a thousand studies confirmed the dangers of DDT to birds and other predators higher up in food chains, especially in estuarine waters.

No one passed a law banning DDT.  If the action was popular, that was beside the point.  In 1962, in response to the half-million-dollar slander campaign against Carson by the pesticide manufacturers (don’t take my word for it — look it up), President Kennedy asked his Science Advisory Council to scrutinize the book.  In May 1963 they reported back that Carson was correct on all counts but one — they said Carson went too easy on the dangers of DDT, and that action needed to be taken right away to stop its use.  Kennedy dallied, however, and did little before he died.

The “ban” on DDT came nearly a decade later, in 1972.  It was not due to any “junk science” law (an interesting claim since it is based on junk science itself).  Two federal courts had ordered EPA to speed up its analysis of the registration of the pesticide, in lieu of simply ordering the stuff off the market after two entirely different lawsuits.  Pesticide manufacturers had been defendants in both lawsuits, and they put up a more than vigorous fight — but they lost on the science.

EPA dragged its feet, but finally acted against DDT in 1972, effectively banning the broadcast spraying of DDT on crops, but leaving it available for things like malaria control.  Of course the ruling was challenged in court, since under U.S. law, had the ruling been only popular, and not based on considerable evidence, the courts would have been obligated to nullify the ruling.  In two separate challenges, the courts ruled that EPA’s action was solidly based on the scientific evidence, and therefore would stand.

That’s quite a bit different from the picture Stossel paints, I gather.  Is this, perhaps, his first foray into fiction?

And, did you catch the contradictions?  The author claims mosquito abatement in Ethiopia is hampered by a lack of U.S. aid, as a result of Rachel Carson’s book in 1962.  Do they know that George Bush is president?  Do they really think Bush and Cheney are tools of Rachel Carson?  Do they know that bed nets have cut malaria rates by half where they were used in Ethiopia?

Looks like another example of DDT poisoning to me.

4 Comments | Africa, DDT, Junk science, Malaria, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Hope is the things with feathers

September 11, 2008

The Singing Cricket noticed that, with DDT use in decline, a lot of birds can be seen that we didn’t see for a long time. She takes hope at that thought.

Nice photos, too.

Apologies to Emily Dickinson, of course.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | DDT, Environmental protection, Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Creationist success: Thermodynamicophobia strikes climate change denialists

August 17, 2008

Every once in a while we get a glimpse of what the future would be like if the creationists ruled education and could teach some of the fantastic things they believe to be true as fact.

For example, creationists have for years complained that the basic chemistry of life somehow violates what chemists and physicists know as the “laws” of thermodynamics. Patient explanations of what we know about how photosynthesis works, and how animals use energy, and what the laws of thermodynamics actually are, all fall on deafened ears.

Comes Jennifer Marohasy, an Australian blogger at The Politics and Environment Blog, with this fantastic explanation about how the well-established notion of radiative equilibrium, simply doesn’t work.

“For the Earth to neither warm or cool, the incoming radiation must balance the outgoing.”

Not really.

No, really. Go read the post. And see these critiques, at Tugboat Potemkin, where problems with the rules of the principle of Conservation of Energy are noted, and Deltoid, where LOLCats makes a debut in explaining physics to the warming denialists.

Then go back and read the comments at Marohasy’s blog.

It’s not just the confusion of terms, like treating watts as units of heat. There’s an astonishing lack of regard for cause and effect in history, too:

Conservation of energy: it’s not just a phrase. The theory of radiative equilibrium arose early in the 19th century, before the laws of thermodynamics were understood.

Probably didn’t mention it here before, but Marohasy is also one of those bloggers who suffers from DDT poisoning. Among other things, she and Aynsley Kellow (whose book she recommends) use an astounding confabulation of history to claim DDT wasn’t harming birds at all, completely ignoring more than 1,000 research studies to the contrary (and not one in support of their claim).

Suggestion for research: Is the denialism virus that affects creationists, DDT advocates, and climate denialists, the same one, or are there slight variations? A virus seems the most charitable explanation, unless one wishes to blame prions.

Creationist physics, denialism in meteorology, physics, chemistry, and history. It makes a trifecta winner look like he’s not trying.

See also:

1 Comment | Accuracy, Climate change, Creationism, denialism, Education, Global warming, History, Physics, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

An account of bioaccumulation of pesticides — dangers of DDT explained

August 14, 2008

Even short-time readers know of the problems of DDT advocates, denialists who seen to think we can poison our way to health — or worse, that we can poison others, in Africa, to health.

Here’s a voice from the other side, an Australian anti-pesticide, go-back-to-nature site, that tells a dramatic story from California:  The Permaculture Institute, “Pesticides, and You.” Clear Lake offered a dramatic example of the dangers of bioaccumulating chemicals, especially pesticides like DDT.

Without endorsing everything this group urges, I will say the clear, simple explanation of the events at Clear Lake is accurate, worth reading, and worth remembering.  It’s what Rachel Carson sounded the alarm to warn us about, and but for the movement spurred partly by her book, Silent Spring, it’s what we would have faced at countless other locations.

Update 2014, California grebes: Mating grebes engage in the “weed dance,” where they present each other with nest-building materials. Photo: madesonphotography.com, via BayNature.org

Update 2014, California grebes: Mating grebes engage in the “weed dance,” where they present each other with nest-building materials. Photo: madesonphotography.com, via BayNature.org

Leave a Comment » | DDT, Environmental protection, History, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

African nations back off of limited DDT use

August 7, 2008

Anti-DDT business interests appear triumphant, if only temporarily,  in their efforts to stop the use of DDT in the fight against malaria.

ProtectAfrica.com reports use of DDT has been stopped in northern Uganda.  Nine corporations sued to stop the spraying.  New Visions reports a shift to a chemical named ICON for use in Indoor Residual Spraying, designed to protect people against mosquitoes in their homes.

I have links to stories saying Rwanda has abandoned DDT in the past few weeks, but none of the links work.

Meanwhile, from The East African in Nairobi, Kenya, comes the report that Tanzania became the first East African nation in recent years to use DDT for limited, indoor spraying. [But be wary of this source; the article also claims many nations outlawed DDT after 1972; not accurate in Africa, nor most other places.]

There is high irony in businesses opposing the use of DDT when environmental organizations in other nations do not oppose it.

6 Comments | Africa, Agriculture, Business, Business Ethics, DDT, Environmental protection, Health care, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

DDT poisoning spreads: Critics Kling to their favorite untruths

August 4, 2008

No, I’m not talking about actual poisoning by the chemical, an organochloride insecticide. I’m talking again about people driven to madness by false claims that DDT will cure malaria, that DDT is banned for use against malaria, and that some few super powerful people, all of them evil environmentalists, are forcing governments, all health workers, and the world’s tobacco companies to stop the use of DDT — ergo, they say, everyone who has died from malaria since [some point in the past that is surely the fault of environmentalists] died due to lack of DDT.

Which makes those people worse murderers than Stalin at least, so the crazies claim.

Here’s the latest fuse that set me off. I’ll analyze it below the fold, after the lecture.

Is it a virus that spreads in late summer? I’ve noted here earlier the tendency of the pro-DDT wackoes to surge out of the woodwork in summer to claim, against the facts, that West Nile virus would be no problem if there were DDT. Mosquitoes that carry West Nile are best killed in as larva, living in water; DDT is not as efficient as other larvacides, particularly when weighed against DDT’s tendency to kill everything that comes in contact with the water and the plants and animals living in and around it.

But watch: Any mention of malaria in the news, and they drop letters to the editors of every weekly newspaper in America, blaming unnamed environmentalists for killing millions in Africa, or Asia, or both. In the Bizarro™ World of DDT advocates, all insect-borne diseases were on the run until Rachel Carson personally padlocked every DDT manufacturer in the world. I have news browsers set to pick up mentions of DDT, and except for the recent surge in news about the band DDT from Russia, every day brings another internet mention of how DDT could have saved the world, if only.

Dear Reader, Dear God, there are several inaccuracies there. It’s curious that some people can get ideas so exactly contrary to the facts, contrary to reality, so often.

Arnold Kling, economist blogging at the Freedom Fund's Library of Economics and Liberty -- in this case, misblogging against science and medicine.

Arnold Kling, economist blogging at the Freedom Fund’s Library of Economics and Liberty — in this case, misblogging against science and medicine.

Wait. What’s this? There’s a trail of misinformation and disinformation we can follow. This livejournal poster links to this Wikipedia article on “seasteading,” and from there to this blog on the value of seasteading, which bases the pie-in-the-sea philosophy on the common, occasionally-but-randomly correct rant against government, based on Arnold Kling’s rant at EconLog.

Have we seen this before? Yes, Dear Reader, we have — and if you look in the comments to Kling’s rant, you’ll see Tim Lambert fiercely shoveling facts to try to put out the fires of ignorance. I even posted there — back in April. The facts, the links, the arguments, are all there, for anyone with half a brain and half a desire to do the right thing and get the facts right.

April to August (misdated September). The nutty DDT advocates are working on a four month cycle. Repeat the falsehoods every four months, three times a year (intentionally or not; some viral marketing works better if it’s not intentional, like the innocent carriers of typhoid who are unaffected by it, don’t mean to spread it around, but breath the pathogen out with every breath).

Blather, don’t bother to rinse, repeat.

It’s time someone wrote a new book on propaganda, warning of its evils.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Accuracy, DDT, Politics, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Uganda and malaria, from the inside

July 30, 2008

This is probably as close to we can come to know what’s going on inside Uganda, especially with regard to malaria and efforts to fight it there.  Go see Mars and Aesculapius, “World Malaria Day.”

As you can see, simply pumping DDT into the countryside is unlikely to solve the problems.

2 Comments | Africa, DDT, Health care, History, Malaria, Science, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Rachel Carson: Nice lady scientist, no mass murderer

July 26, 2008

Aaron Swartz has the summary.  Start with the introduction here, and see the full text with links here.

He goes easy on the hoaxers, those who cast stones at Ms. Carson, but you still get the idea if you read the article.

3 Comments | Accuracy, Africa, DDT, Environmental protection, Health care, Hoaxes, Junk science, Malaria, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Wordless Wednesday: DDT, Santa Monica, 1940s

July 16, 2008

From This Isn’t Happiness: A photograph captioned only “Spraying DDT / Santa Monica, 1940s”:

Spraying DDT in Santa Monica, California, c. 1940s (UCLA; LA Times?)

Spraying DDT in Santa Monica, California, c. 1940s (UCLA; LA Times?)

See also, “5,700 Vintage Los Angeles Photos Now Online,” at MetBlogs.

1 Comment | DDT, Environmental protection, History, History images, Science | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

News from Uganda? DDT, cotton, misreporting

July 13, 2008

In continuing efforts to slam environmentalists and Rachel Carson, Instapundit and RWDB complain (whine?) about the European Union’s efforts to block the importation of cotton from Uganda on fears of DDT contamination.

Meanwhile, back in Kampala, the news is that the EU has done the opposite, and is encouraging the use of DDT officially, not blocking its use at all. If DDT is used to fight malaria and not in uncontrolled agricultural use simply to keep products blemish-free, in carefully-controlled sprayings, EU has no complaints.

Is there any western news agency with a stringer in Kampala who could chase this story down? Beck and Reynolds still offer no evidence to back their odd claims, but the story could sure benefit from a solid chunk of reporting from BBC, or Reuters, or Agence France Presse, or someone who could talk with the EU and Uganda officials.

Other resources:

Full text of report, below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Africa, Business, Business Ethics, DDT, Environmental protection, Health care, Hoaxes, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Instapundit screws up again (Uganda, cotton, DDT)

July 5, 2008

Instapundit loves to roil waters, but he’s low on content, and everytime I see it, low on accuracy, too.

This is the entirety of Glenn Beck’sReynolds’s post linking to the rabidly anti-Rachel Carson, RWDB with a rant about DDT that lacks several key points of accuracy:

THE HIGH COST OF fighting malaria.

Six words and he’s wrong already. That’s quite a skill to be dead wrong in six words.

Our friend, Mr. Beck, at RWDB, has a news report from Uganda, and rather than note it and check for accuracy, he uses it as a tee for numerous shots and mulligans against science, scientists, environmentalists, health care workers, the EU, and anyone else who inhabited his latest delerium.

The story out of Africa is that a buyer of organic cotton refused to buy Ugandan cotton due to DDT contamination. True to the line of recent events, it’s not environmentalists who do anything , though the news story finds a way to blame them in the last paragraph. Instead, it’s a businessman.

But here are problems with the story:

  • There is no indication EU has anything to do with this failed purchase.
  • There is no indication that any environmentalist ever played a role — this is a Dutch purchasing company, shopping for organic cotton.
  • There is no indication that Uganda farmers can’t sell their cotton to other buyers.
  • There is no reason to presume that the cotton must be sold as “organic.”
  • There appears to be no indication of any DDT contamination.
  • It’s illegal to spray DDT on cotton in Uganda, as I understand it — if this cotton is contaminated, the problem is that DDT was diverted from malaria control. That’s not a problem for environmentalists — and, according to the PAN story cited above, farmers have incentives to keep it from happening.

Are we to believe that marauding anti-insect people roam Uganda, forcing farmers to steal DDT from health authorities and spray it on their cotton instead, against the farmer’s better interests?

Neither Glenn BeckReynolds at Instapundit nor the other Beck at RWDB bothered to check the facts, nor even to see whether the first face story passes the smell test. Where would DDT contamination come from? Why would a buyer refuse cotton if there’s no DDT contaminant? Why wouldn’t there be tests? Where are the test results? If EU is so down on DDT on cotton, where is the document that says so?

The company in the news story, ineptly named as it is, Bo-Weevil, does exist, it appears, either there or in the Netherlands. That surely is not the only cotton buyer for the EU. The first BoWeevil isn’t an EU company, since it’s headquartered in Tennessee. From their website:

Welcome to Bo-Weevil Eco Sportswear Mfg. LLC., nestled in the hills of Tazewell, Tennessee.

Producers of the most earth friendly clothing on the planet.

Bo-Weevil Eco started manufacturing and supplying clothing with one main vision: “Provide our customers with the highest quality clothing that integrates current fashions with timeless style, to create lifestyle clothing that brings awareness to care what you wear.”

We are a company that practices to restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony. Doing so by being at the forefront of U.S.A. factories producing a line of women’s, men’s, kids and k-9 apparel made by pre-consumer recycled fibres. We are working to create change in the textile industry; to offer one step on the path to more sensible and sustainable use of resources in the production of basic commodities.

So, how does the EU get into this story at all? The second company, I can find listed only through a post at Pesticide Action Network, a source that is not always reliable on such issues.

Smell test: Does this sound accurate to you? When was the last time you saw anyone at Wal-Mart demand organic cotton?

The use of DDT has now affected cotton prices in the region. Patrick Oryang from Lango Cooperative told All Africa, “We are buying cotton at sh500 per kilogram instead of sh750. The country will lose about US$20 million because EUREP-GAP, an EU exporters body, has suspended buying products from the region because the consumers in Europe and America want purely organic products.”

What’s the real story?

Neither Beck nor Reynolds seems to care. They get a dig at environmentalists, so what if Ugandans get malaria?

Update, sorta: News from Uganda, in New Vision, seems to indicate that the EU has okayed the wise use of DDT in Uganda, contrary to claims of an EU ban (July 10 story). You can’t help but wish there were some good, clear reporting of this issue, from BBC or Reuters, or someone in Kampala besides these few, shallow news dailies.

12 Comments | Africa, Business, Business Ethics, DDT, Environmental protection, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

USAID allows DDT use in Africa

June 25, 2008

Africa Science News Service reports that USAID signed a contract that allows U.S. money to be used to purchase DDT for Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) against malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

If so, this is one of the final barriers to use of U.S. funds for DDT use. Oddly, the news report offers no details on when or where the contract was made.

DDT use in Uganda was halted pending a suit by Uganda agricultural businesses to stop the spraying. The contract discussed would allow purchase of other insecticides to be used in place of DDT for IRS.

It’s important to note that no environmental organizations have expressed opposition to the limited use of DDT in IRS applications. It may be significant to note that the programs involving indoor spraying fall into the category of integrated pest management, which is what Rachel Carson urged in her 1962 book, Silent Spring.

2 Comments | Africa, DDT, Environmental protection, Malaria, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Symposium in a book: Rachel Carson’s legacy

June 25, 2008

Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn released his hold, Rep. Jason Altmire’s bill moved, and three weeks ago the post office in Springdale, Pennyslvania, was named in Rachel Carson’s honor. On the internet, yahoos still try to blame her deaths from malaria, claiming that her message of stewardship was misplaced, and led to a “ban” on DDT that allows malaria to run wild.

Off the internet, serious scholars still work. SUNY Press published a compilation of lectures at Oregon State Univesrity commemorating the 40th anniversary of Carson’s most famous book, Silent Spring. The new book, Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge is edited by Lisa Sideris and Kathleen Dean Moore.

The press release from the University of Indiana is below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Books, DDT, Environmental protection, Ethics, History, Rachel Carson, Religion, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Mosquitoes eat DDT, and here’s how

June 18, 2008

University of Illinois researchers found the protein that allows mosquitoes to metabolize DDT.

It’s good news in mosquito research, and may someday provide some insight into how to kill mosquitoes that seem to be resistant to DDT.

But, for all those DDT advocates out there, isn’t this rather embarrassing? Here these researchers have discovered the molecular level mechanisms for a process that the DDT apologists claim doesn’t happen. Oops. Rachel Carson proven right, once again.

There they are, caught red- and bumpy-handed.

Press release text from the University of Illinois below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | DDT, Evolution, Health care, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Research, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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