. . . from 1983!
Steve Schafersman, now president of Texas Citizens for Science, played the yeoman then:
Description of the program:
Did humans coexist with dinosaurs? The tracks tell the tale. Dr. John R. Cole, Dr. Steven Schafersman, Dr. Laurie Godfrey, Dr. Ronnie Hastings, Lee Mansfield, and other scientists examine the claims and the evidence. Air date: 1983.
Tip of the old scrub brush to the National Center for Science Education.
99 Comments | 
Creationism, Evolution, geology, History, Paleontology, Science, Voodoo science | Tagged: Creationism, Dinosaurs, Evolution, geology, History, National Center for Science Education, Paleontology, Science, Steve Schafersman, Voodoo science | 
Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) Africa Indoor Residual Spraying (AIRS) Project found this warehouse with 119 tons of leftover, surplus and expired DDT in Ethiopia. In total, PMI AIRS Progect found 930 tons of unused DDT in Ethiopia, in 1,600 tons of expired pesticides total. Other nations have other surplus DDT stocks. Africa never suffered a shortage of DDT.
Watch the video, and you can see God trying to stop her from talking, putting that frog in her throat.
Ann McIlhinney was wrong when she made the movie “Not Evil, Just Wrong,” and she’s still spreading false tales. I found her diatribe, interestingly enough at a site called 2012 Doomsday Predictions.
I only respond to the first six minutes or so — you get the idea. McIlhinney leaves no falsehood untold, no crazy charge not leveled at Rachel Carson and “environmentalists.”
Here’s the film clip of McIlhinney misleading the masses:
Here is my quick and dirty response:
1. Environmentalists are not calling for a ban on coal, oil or gas. Fear talk. Why would anyone tell such a whopping lie? How do we know the film lies? Who is this “environmentalist” they fear to name?
2. Rachel Carson was right — DDT kills ecosystems. Carson said we needed to restrict the use of DDT in order to keep it viable as a pesticide. But few listened (not McIlhinney, that’s for sure). Consequently, DDT became ineffective against mosquitoes that carry malaria, scuttling the World Health Organization’s ambitious campaign to eradicate malaria. Had that not happened, and had we eradicated malaria by 1975 as planned, millions of lives could have been saved. McIlhinney is the one with blood on her hands.
3. DDT has never been banned worldwide, was never banned in Africa, and is still used in those places it still works, under a special treaty signed in 2001. McIlhinney hopes you won’t know about that treaty, and fails to mention it herself. What’s she trying to hide?
4. Carson did not say DDT was the sole culprit for the decline of birds — but by 1962, it was the sole culprit preventing their recovery. Bald eagles and brown pelicans have come off the endangered species list, populations recovering in almost lock-step with the decline of DDT in the birds’ flesh — proof that Carson was right.
5. Under U.S. law, no agency could ban a useful pesticide without mountains of evidence that the pesticide was dangerous. Four separate court proceedings looked at DDT, two before the EPA acted, and two appeals after EPA banned DDT use on crops. All four courts found DDT to be dangerous and uncontrollable in the wild. The two appeals of EPA’s labeling change were both decided on summary judgment — the science was so powerfully on Carson’s side. In May 1963 the President’s Science Advisory Council reported on their fact checking of Carson’s book — they said Carson was dead right in everything but one: Carson was too easy on DDT. That panel, with its significant population of Nobel winners, called for quick action against DDT. Why doesn’t McIlhinney give the facts here?
6. The claim that EPA’s ban influenced WHO is pure bullfeathers. WHO had to end its malaria eradication campaign, using DDT, in 1965 — the mosquitoes were immune to the stuff. EPA didn’t act until seven years later, and EPA’s jurisdiction extends only to the borders of the U.S. In fact, EPA’s “ban” left DDT to be manufactured in the U.S. for export to Africa. Can’t McIlhinney read a calendar? The “ban” in 1972 did not travel back through time to stop WHO from using DDT. (For that matter, WHO never completely stopped DDT — wherever it could work, they used it, and still do.)
7. DDT has always been available for any government in Africa to use. What that guy in the film is really saying is racist: He’s claiming Africans were too stupid to use DDT, though it was cheap and available, and though it would save their lives. Don’t listen to him. Africans are not stupid: They’d use DDT were it effective and safe. Shame on McIlhinney for entertaining such a claim.
8. Malaria did not skyrocket after DDT was banned in the U.S. Mosquitoes don’t migrate that far. There was an uptick in malaria 20 years later, when the pharmaceuticals that cure malaria in humans, ceased to be effective.
But today, malaria rates are the lowest they’ve been in recorded history, and malaria death rates are the lowest they’ve been in human history. When the U.S. banned DDT spraying on cotton in 1972, about 2 million people a year died from malaria. Today, the death toll is under 900,000. Don’t be frightened or stampeded by erroneous, large figures.
In the end, we can’t poison Africa to health, and if we could, it would be immoral to do that instead of building health care to fight diseases.
Children die because hard-hearted politicos like Ann McIlhinney frustrate the work of malaria fighters, and mislead policy makers away from solutions that would save children’s lives.
Shame on her.
7 Comments | DDT, Environmental protection, Malaria, Political Smear, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: DDT, Environmental protection, Malaria, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Continuing comedy/tragedy at Watts Up With That, Anthony Watts’ staunchly anti-global-warming-science blog.
Funny in the denial of the obvious, funny in the dance to get around the science, tragic in that anyone grants much credence to the denials of the obvious and science — Watts steams on.
Watts and his moderators haven’t completely blocked my comments, and I can sneak one in on occasion just slipping under their radar. We are all plagued by a recent spate of pro-DDT publicity, prompted by what I am not sure but encompassing a full-court press from anti-science moguls like Paul Driessen, pro-poison advocates, and a film by a crank (quack?) physician-to-the-stars who appears fearful of revealing his full name, Rutledge Taylor and “3 Billion and Counting.” (Taylor’s film is sort of the “Expelled!” of the Chronically Obsessed with Rachel Carson (COWRC) set, but without the charm and science of Ben Stein’s film, since the scientists refused to sit for an interview with Taylor.) (Taylor’s publicity refers to him as “Dr. Rutledge.” Perhaps he aspires to the heights of academic and science credence granted Dr. Phil.)
Watts gave his pedestal over to an engineer, Indur Goklany, for a diatribe against Bill Gates. In comments, I tried to insert some data into an increasingly shrill and increasingly error-prone howl against Gates. Of Gates I am no great fan (unfairly; I use Windows), but sometimes one needs to stand up for accuracy and fairness, just for the sake of accuracy and fairness.
Watts gave Goklany a platform to go after my two comments. I’m Watts’ target for the day.
Dancing on the edge of science is treacherous, as Watts and Goklany may have discovered. Goklany claims I make many errors in my comments, but he cites no evidence suggesting I err at all. I merely pointed to the decline in death totals from malaria, and to the real work of the Gates Foundation. Nothing in those comments has been tagged as incorrect.
In comments, however, truth breaks out. Franklin’s adage about truth winning in a fair fight holds true, especially on a topic like malaria and DDT, where Watts and Goklany together, even were they the acme of broadcast meteorology and dissident engineering, can’t snuff out factual comments fast enough to keep up the tirade. [You fellows there on the side: Stop your betting about whether Goklany is a creationist! Gambling is not allowed here, especially when the fix is in. He confesses he is “an engineer,” after all.]
I may err; but take a look, Dear Reader, and see if the contrived case against Rachel Carson and for poisoning Africa with DDT doesn’t take a few hits, especially in comments.
Sometime, perhaps this week, I hope to get a substantial comment about the flurry of crank science on DDT, and Rutledge Taylor’s contemptible falsehoods. But I am without time, and without computer most of the day.
Now, if only being Watts’ target would persuade his readers to actually come here to find the facts about DDT, it would be worth it.
_____________
Tim Lambert at Deltoid explains where Goklany runs off the rails of accurate information, and as usual, has more comments than we get in the Bathtub.
29 Comments | DDT, History, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: Climate change, DDT, Global warming, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Should you allow your kids to be vaccinated, or are you worried about autism?
Penn and Teller lay out the facts. Warning: Profanity (well deserved, but profane, all the same):
Tip of the old scrub brush to DrJohnSea.
4 Comments | Accuracy, Communication, Health care, Science, Vaccinations, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: Autism, Health care, Hoaxes, Public health, Vaccinations, Voodoo science, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Vivian Paige pulled together early reports and the actual court documents: A judge in Virginia quashed the subpeona issued by Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to the University of Virginia, in a rather blatant attempt to silence a famous scientist working on global warming, Michael Mann.
Rosalind Helderman explained in the Virginia Politics blog of the Washington Post:
Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. ruled that Cuccinelli can investigate whether fraud has occurred in university grants, as the attorney general had contended, but ruled that Cuccinelli’s subpoena failed to state a “reason to believe” that Mann had committed fraud.
The ruling is a major blow for Cuccinelli, a global warming skeptic who had maintained that he was investigating whether Mann committed fraud in seeking government money for research that showed that the earth has experienced a rapid, recent warming. Mann, now at Penn State University, worked at U-Va. until 2005.
According to Peatross, the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, under which the civil investigative demand was issued, requires that the attorney general include an “objective basis” to believe that fraud has been committed. Peatross indicates that the attorney general must state the reason so that it can be reviewed by a court, which Cuccinelli failed to do.
Peatross set the subpoena aside without prejudice, meaning Cuccinelli could give the subpoena another try by rewriting the civil demand to better explain the conduct he wishes to investigate. But the judge seemed skeptical of Cuccinelli’s underlying claim about Mann, noting that Cuccinelli’s deputy maintained in a court hearing that the nature of Mann’s fraud was described in subsequent court papers in the case.
“The Court has read with care those pages and understands the controversy regarding Dr. Mann’s work on the issue of global warming. However, it is not clear what he did was misleading, false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Peatross wrote.
Also, as suggested earlier here, the judge noted that Cuccinelli’s authority did not extend to four of the five grants questioned, because they were federal grants, not state grants. (See here, too.)
Comments at Helderman’s article show the fault lines of division on global warming — purely political faultlines.
Since opponents of action against warming so frantically publicized stolen e-mails from researchers late last year, in official proceedings scientists have smacked down skeptics on almost every issue.
Which only means that scientists now sit in the position of Cassandra after Apollo’s curse.
20 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Global warming, Government, Hoaxes, Jurisprudence, Law, Political Smear, Politics, Research, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Global warming, Government, Hoaxes, Jurisprudence, Ken Cuccinelli, Law, Michael Mann, Political Smear, Politics, Research, Science, University of Virginia, Voodoo science, Witch Hunt | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Add this to the Heights of Hoaxiness files: Steve Goddard (go here if you need to catch up) has made an astounding discovery, which he reveals with a .gif and YouTube animation of the Earth at Anthony Watts’s blog, Watts Up With That? (WUWT).
Goddard discovered that, if one ignores warming of small amounts, and counts it as not warming at all, the colors on a color-coded map change a lot, and look a lot cooler.
Shorter Goddard: Hide the increase in temperatures, and it looks like temperatures don’t increase nearly as much.
Steve Goddard's map of a warming Pacific Ocean, hiding the small increases in temperature. (This should be a .gif that changes as you watch; if you see no animation, click on the image)
Steve Goddard's map of a warming Pacific Ocean, hiding the small increases in temperature. (Another version, trying to get the .gif to display.) This should be a .gif that changes as you watch; if you see no animation, click on the image
You couldn’t make up such denialism if you tried. If you submitted this stuff as fiction, it couldn’t get published.
Here’s an object warning about turning angry monkeys loose with graphics software: Goddard’s YouTube:
Key unanswered question: If we ignore rising temperatures, do they stop rising? If we ignore rising temperatures, can glaciers, oceans, plants and animals be convinced to do the same?
How many polar bears read Steve Goddard’s posts at WUWT? Can they be persuaded?
Somebody exhume Benjamin Disraeli. He needs to update his stuff.
22 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Global warming, Hoaxes, Science, Voodoo science | Tagged: Climate change, Global warming, Hoaxes, Steve Goddard, Voodoo Graphics, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Were you writing fiction, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
Another bastion of people misled by the lack of a Hemingway-brand Solid Gold Sh*t Detector™.
Another person proud as heck of her denial of global warming, points to cattle freezing in South America in July as proof that the Earth’s atmosphere is not warming.
At a blog called Frugal Café Blog Zone, “Where it’s chic to be cheap… Conservative social & political commentary, with frugality mixed in,” blogger Vicki McClure Davidson headlined the piece:
Gee, how to break this news to her?
Vickie, sit down. This is something you should have learned in geography in junior high: In the Southern Hemisphere, winter starts on June 21. It’s cold in South America in July, because it’s winter in South America in July.
Cold in winter. They don’t expect it. These warming denialists provide the evidence those crabs need, who wonder whether there shouldn’t be some sort of “common sense test” required to pass before allowing people to vote, or drive, or have children.
Oh, it gets worse:
Another site picked up the post. No, seriously. (Has Anthony Watts seen this yet?)
Earth at northern solstice - Wikimedia image
40 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, Cost of Green, denialism, Geography - Physical, Global warming, Humor, Junk science, literacy, Rampant stupidity, Science, South America, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: Accuracy, Climate change, Cost of Green, denialism, geography, Global warming, Green Politics, Humor, Junk science, literacy, Rampant stupidity, Science, Science Literacy, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
So, God is a platypus?
Appearing to be aware they are losing the battle of the classroom to real science, creationists have taken a sneakier way to undermine science education. P. Z. Myers explains:
A lot of people have been writing to me about this free webgame, CellCraft. In it, you control a cell and build up all these complex organelles in order to gather resources and fight off viruses; it’s cute, it does throw in a lot of useful jargon, but the few minutes I spent trying it were also a bit odd — there was something off about it all.
Where do you get these organelles? A species of intelligent platypus just poofs them into existence for you when you need them. What is the goal? The cells have a lot of room in their genomes, so the platypuses are going to put platypus DNA in there, so they can launch them off to planet E4R1H to colonize it with more platypuses. Uh-oh. These are Intelligent Design creationist superstitions: that organelles didn’t evolve, but were created for a purpose; that ancient cells were ‘front-loaded’ with the information to produced more complex species; and that there must be a purpose to all that excess DNA other than that it is junk.
Suspicions confirmed. Look in the credits.
Also thanks to Dr. Jed Macosko at Wake Forest University and Dr. David Dewitt at Liberty University for providing lots of support and biological guidance.
Those two are notorious creationists and advocates for intelligent design creationism. Yep. It’s a creationist game. It was intelligently designed, and it’s not bad as a game, but as a tool for teaching anyone about biology, it sucks. It is not an educational game, it is a miseducational game. I hope no one is planning on using it in their classroom. (Dang. Too late. I see in their forums that some teachers are enthusiastic about it — they shouldn’t be).
No such thing as a free lunch. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Free software for use in educating kids about biology, sounds too good to be true.
_____________
In comments, Lars Doucet disavows creationist intent. So the creationist/intelligent design factors were added just to make the game more playable, and not as an attempt to introduce or endorse creationism or intelligent design.
Lots of discussion, much of it rude (some of it delightfully so), at Myers’ joint.
Maybe, if the makers didn’t intend to make a creationist stealth game, they could jigger the thing to make it more accurate?
11 Comments | Biology, Classroom technology, Creationism, Education, Intelligent Design, Voodoo science, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: Classroom technology, Creationism, Intelligent Design, Voodoo science, War on Education, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
“Darwinism” is doomed, Perry Marshall says. The entire theory will crumble in 2013 (like the Berlin Wall — may as well start with an offensive comparison to totalitarianism since everyone knows it will get there eventually), if you just suffer through his lessons, send him some money, suspend all logic and reason, send him some money, forget everything you learned in science, and send him a ltittle money.
Plus, he’s figured out how to reconcile Christianity and science. (Call the Templeton Prize committee.) (No, call James Randi and the FBI fraud squad instead.) You can take his course at Coffeehouse Theology (no Mormons need apply, but hey, they teach evolution at their colleges, so they can’t be real saints, can they?).
According to Perry Marshall, "Perry Marshall's books on Google AdWords are the most popular in the world." No hyperbole, no ego here.
Did I mention he’s an engineer?
Yes, Spunky, that’s your Hemingway solid-gold S–t Detector™ clanging in your holster, if you’re using the handy, lithium-battery-powered version. If the rest of the story didn’t set your device off, the lack of an immediate plea for money should have.
Mr. Marshall asks you to turn off your Hemingway, and your mind, relax and float downstream (apologies to the Beatles). You being a Wise Human, should just reset the device, and go back to ignoring Perry Marshall.
Do you remember when people had to do a lot of dope to get these kinds of hallucinations? People like Marshall do damage to Carlos Casteneda and famous hoakum.
The only mystery to me is, why is Marshall bursting out on the scene now, with on-line ads that run even next to P. Z. Myers’ blog Pharyngula? (That’s where I found him; the elves of the internest may give you different ads.) Marshall appears to be a follower, if not disciple, of Hugh Ross. Perhaps he’s really prospecting for leads for his business.
Ignorance abounds in the world. The cure is knowledge and study, not more ignorance and bovine excrement.
8 Comments | Creationism, Darwin, Evolution, History, Hoaxes, Intelligent Design, Religion, Santayana's ghost, Voodoo science, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: Creationism, Darwin, Hoaxes, Intelligent Design, Perry Marshall, Religion, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
One wishes Rachel Carson were still alive, to sue for slander.
One of the more interesting ways claims like those of Rich Kozlovich can continue to circulate, they are not based on any scientific studies. Had Kozlovich made such claims in a scientific journal, they would have to be retracted. The claims in favor of DDT made at that site are pure hoax, junk science, bogus science, voodoo science (pick your favorite term).
Kids aren’t dying for a lack of pesticides — DDT is still available and cheap in India, China and across Africa. Malaria is a disease, and it can’t be cured in humans by poisoning the environment. Malaria’s spread can’t be stopped until we cure in humans so mosquitoes have no pool of disease to draw from, to spread to the next victim.
More:
1 Comment | DDT, Environmental protection, Hoaxes, Junk science, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo science | Tagged: DDT, Environmental protection, Junk science, Malaria, Pine River Statement, Rachel Carson, Rich Kozlovich, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
So, this Hinderaker guy at Powerline: Does he ever acknowledge his goofs?
Since we last visited the issue, a month after the record was in that his claims of no warming were wrong, he’s talked about the issue at least twice.
Hinderaker didn’t fix his error here, in December.
Hinderaker didn’t fix his error here, in February, and in fact proceeded as if he’d been right instead of wrong.
This is Sith-strength denialism on Hinderaker’s part, don’t you think? It never was about the science at Powerline, but instead has always been about the politics.
How does the moniker “Baghdad Bob John” fit?
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, denialism, Global warming, History, Hoaxes, Journalism, Voodoo science | Tagged: Accuracy, Climate change, denialism, Global warming, History, Politics, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Why would people fail to inoculate their kids against measles, and thereby contribute to deadly epidemics?
There was this guy in Britain, Andrew Wakefield, who published a study suggesting a link between measles vaccines and autism. But it turned out his research didn’t support that claim. Then it turned out he was under contract to produce a paper that made that claim regardless the science, for a lawsuit.
A page from Darryl Cunningham's graphic account of measles vaccine hysteria, "The Facts in the Case of Dr. Andrew Wakefield." TallGuyWrites (Darryl Cunningham)
Darryl Cunningham created a concise, 15-page graphic accounting of the story of how the misdeeds of one physician led to a world-wide, child-killing panic. If you do not know the story, go read it. You should be troubled by the story it tells. Be sure to read it through. Cunningham is thorough in his debunking of the hysteria the anti-vaxxers promote, and you should know it all.
Another page from Darryl Cunningham's graphic story, "The Facts in the Case of Dr. Andrew Wakefield" about the motivations behind the hysteria.
Then send a copy to Jenny McCarthy, or anyone else who carries the torch of ignorance-based hysteria against vaccines and in favor of disease.
Dr. Wakefield’s original paper was retracted by the publisher — it’s no longer considered valid science. It’s a hoax. No subsequent research confirmed any links to autism. Serious, large-scale follow-up studies revealed no connection whatsoever between measles vaccine and autism.
Measles is a nasty disease, tough to eradicate, and working hard to come back and get your children and grandchildren. Don’t be suckered.
Andrew Wakefield created a hoax. Those who rely on his study rely on bogus science, voodoo science. History tells us that, if we stop the fight against measles, people will die.
Would you contribute to publishing this comic for distribution in pediatrician’s waiting rooms?
More:
Leave a Comment » | Books, children, Disease, Health care, History, Hoaxes, Public health, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Andrew Wakefield, Autism, bogus science, children, Graphic Novel, Hoaxes, Measles, Science, Vaccines, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I don’t subscribe to the Wall Street Journal — their discounts to educators are lousy.
So I missed this editorial when it ran on April 24, 2010 (page A12), “DDT and population control – malaria still kills one million every year.”
Nominally, that should be good news. At the peak of DDT use in the early 1960s, malaria killed about 3 million people annually. By the time we banned DDT use on cotton crops in the U.S., the death toll was still about 2 million people annually. From the heyday of DDT, we’ve decreased malaria’s death toll, to less than half what it was.
Editorial writers at the Journal don’t let facts get in their way when they go off on a misdirected political jihad or crusade. Gross error Number 1: They mislead readers about the facts.
They are claiming that a million is too many (it is), but they claim that the total would be significantly less if only Americans would attack Africa with poison. We have trouble enough with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it seems to me. There is no indication that we could reduce malaria rates with a lot of extra poison. Malaria is a parasite in human blood. To defeat the disease we have to defeat the infections in humans. Mosquitoes just spread the disease from one human to another. DDT does not cure malaria in humans; it is one preventive device of limited effectiveness.
What are they on about?
The Journal’s editorial writers said:
Environmental activists this week marked the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, which happened to fall three days before World Malaria Day. Insofar as Earth Day politics have contributed to today’s malaria epidemic, the two events are related.
You could see this one coming. The reactionaries at the editorial seek out opportunities to criticize environmentalists, whose cause they see as anti-business. The Journal’s editorial page usually carries an op-ed piece by Hoover Institute maven Henry I. Miller about once a year (see here, for example), claiming we need DDT to fight West Nile virus. We don’t, of course. West Nile virus-carrying mosquitoes are best fought with other pesticides, when pesticides are used. They need to be hit before adulthood, while they are still larva, in the water. DDT is exactly wrong for such applications. But Miller’s piece comes around almost every year, as soon as the first West Nile virus infections in humans are noted.
So, since they so soundly disregard science on that diatribe, why not here, too? DDT offers a great target for Tea Baggers, Know-Nothings, and truth bashers. Most of the history of DDT was written before the internet, so it’s easier to spread falsehoods without contradiction.
Disinformation. Propaganda. Shame on the Wall Street Journal.
Earth Day and World Malaria Day are related in this way: Environmentalists warned us that doing the wrong stuff in the environment would make it harder to fight malaria, and they were right. People who resist clean air and clean water legislation also resist legislation to stop poisoning our planet. Those people rarely do anything to fight malaria, either. Human comfort, human health, human survival, is not what they are concerned about.
Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, was a leading opponent of the insecticide DDT, which remains the cheapest and most effective way to combat malarial mosquitoes.
Gaylord Nelson, the father of Earth Day, was governor of Wisconsin when the University of Wisconsin did the first studies showing that songbirds and raptors in Wisconsin were being wiped out by DDT. We should expect him to be an opponent of indiscriminate use of the stuff. His state was on the road to ruin, and long before the federal government acted against DDT, Wisconsin had laws and regulations to limit its use. Wisconsin’s wild populations recovered a bit more quickly because Wisconsin had acted.
Gaylord Nelson at the Apostle Islands, Photograph by Frank Wallick, 1967.
Nelson also knew that, in the U.S., malaria was conquered by 1939 (according to the Centers for Disease Control). DDT came along in 1946, seven years later. While DDT was used to control mosquitoes in the U.S., it was for no disease control reasons — that was why so many people opposed the rather pointless use of the stuff. And I suspect Nelson was savvy enough to know that DDT has not been the cheapest means of controlling mosquitoes for several years. One application of DDT in Africa costs about $12.00, for the professional who must apply it, and the testing to determine whether DDT will even work. One application lasts about six months. So, for a year’s protection, DDT costs about $24.00 per house, per year.
Bednets cost about $10.00, and last about five years. That works out to $2.00 year. For $24.00, you could provide a dozen different nets in a home, though most homes would use them only to protect children.
Moreover, recent test runs in Africa show DDT about 25% to 50% effective in reducing malaria incidence, while bednets are about 50% to 85% effective. Nets are cheaper and more effective.
Doesn’t the Wall Street Journal have fact checkers? Or do they just not care about the facts?
Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” misleadingly linked pesticides to cancer and is generally credited with popularizing environmental awareness.
Wrong on three fronts. Carson noted that the family of chemicals from which DDT comes might have links to cancer, but she did not make the claim that DDT is carcinogenic. DDT was banned because it’s a long-term, deadly poison that destroys ecosystems. Cancer in humans was not a part of the equation.
However, DDT is now known to be a weak human carcinogen. Every cancer-fighting agency on Earth lists it as a “probable human carcinogen” (it is confirmed to cause cancer in other mammals). Can’t the Wall Street Journal find the phone number of the American Cancer Society?
DDT earned its ban because of 20 years of research data by 1972, showing that DDT kills virtually everything it comes in contact with that is smaller than a large man, and it destroys ecosystems. Talking about DDT’s carcinogenicity is a red herring. Carson didn’t claim DDT was a significant cause of cancer, nor was DDT banned from agricultural use because anyone thought it was a significant cause of cancer. Yes, DDT is a weak human carcinogen, contrary to the Journal’s implication; but no, that’s not why it was banned.
Carson’s book certainly ignited concerns about human activities affecting environment other than land development. But “environmental awareness” is as old as our nation, at least. A hundred years prior to Rachel Carson’s book, the U.S. set aside the world’s first National Park, Yellowstone. 60 years earlier, Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot led the drive to conserve the nation’s forests. The Soil Conservation Service, a New Deal program, worked to save soil on farms and unimproved areas, a good 30 years before Carson’s book. Environmental awareness is an almost-congenital trait in Americans. Rachel Carson sounded alarms about new reactive chemical combinations. Americans were already alert to the need to save soil, water, air and wild spaces.
We banned DDT to save our crops and to save our wildlife. Those are good reasons to keep the ban today.
But other leading greens of the period, including Nelson, biologist Paul Ehrlich and ecologist Garrett Hardin, were also animated by a belief that growth in human populations was harming the environment.
Nelson thought the U.S. needed to slow immigration (see more below). Ehrlich feared a massive round of starvation, which was staved off only with the Green Revolution and billions of dollars of foreign aid money, the good luck of our having Norman Borlaug and the Rockefeller Foundation, and major economic change in nation’s like India and China. Hardin pointed out that even the best intentioned people needed a structure to encourage them to conserve, else conservation would not take place.
They all recognized that while any human could minimize her impact on the natural world, no one person could ameliorate all the effects of billions of people.
“The same powerful forces which create the crisis of air pollution also are threatening our freshwater resources, our woods, our wildlife,” said Nelson. “These forces are the rapid increase in population, industrialization, urbanization and scientific technology.”
Notice, please, that Sen. Nelson did not suggest humans should do anything to cause or encourage massive human death (nor did the Journal do the courtesy of noting where they quoted him from). He merely notes that air pollution and water pollution, and a lack of freshwater, are created by human populations, industry, urban sprawl and technology. All of these things threaten human health. Nelson is concerned that we not add to human illness and misery. That’s not what the Journal’s editorial wants you to think, however. It will suggest instead that Nelson urged more human suffering and death.
How craven must an editorial board be to accuse good people, falsely, of such sins?
In his book “The Population Bomb,” Mr. Ehrlich criticized DDT for being too effective in reducing death rates and thus contributing to “overpopulation.”
I doubt it. I can’t find anything quite to that description in my copy of the book. It’s a common internet legend (one level dumber than urban legend) — but shouldn’t the Wall Street Journal have higher standards than to use for documentation, “my cousin Clem heard a story about a person his aunt once knew?”
Hardin opposed spraying pesticides in the Third World because “every life saved this year in a poor country diminishes the quality of life for subsequent generations.”
Now the Journal is making things up. In the essay from which the Journal quotes him, Hardin wrote about the dangers of uncontrolled immigration and population growth — almost sounding like an angry Arizona Tea Partier at times — but never did he get close to suggesting that we should not suppress malaria, for any reason. (Wise readers may wish to see what Hardin actually said, where he really went awry if he did, and how his words resonate today, at his essay, “Living on a Lifeboat.” Writers at the Journal should be ashamed of savaging the reputation of a guy who is so much in tune with what they usually write. Notice Hardin does not mention DDT, use of pesticides in foreign nations, malaria, nor any other disease. He rails at starvation, however.) When the Wall Street Journal engages in fiction, shouldn’t they let us know?
For these activists, malaria was nature’s way of controlling population growth, and DDT got in the way.
Gee, in context, that’s all fiction. Never did Sen. Gaylord Nelson claim malaria was a good population control tactic, nor that we should stop using DDT to allow more people to die. Those are whole cloth lies. Never did Garrett Hardin say either of those things. Never did Paul Ehrlich say those things.
Cover of 2003 Science Magazine special on Garrett Hardin’s essay, “Tragedy of the Commons”
For anti-science activists, like the writers at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, falsehoods have become coin of the realm, and DDT is just one more sciency thing to try to use as whip against political opponents. The serious question is, why is the Wall Street Journal opposed to clean air and clean water? Why are they trying to politicize things at all?
The writers at the Journal continue:
Today, malaria still claims about one million lives every year—mostly women and children in sub-Saharan Africa. There’s no evidence that spraying the chemical inside homes in the amounts needed to combat the disease harms humans, animals or the environment. Yet DDT remains severely underutilized in the fight against malaria because the intellectual descendants of Senator Nelson continue to hold sway at the World Health Organization and other United Nations agencies.
Full disclosure would be good here. Malaria death rates are at the lowest point in history, at least since 1900. Yes, too many die — but it’s not the fault of “not enough DDT.” No nation that uses DDT has ever succeeded in eradicating malaria with pesticides alone. Only those nations that assaulted malaria from the human side, treating malaria in human victims, have been successful in eradicating the disease. DDT use was essentially suspended in Africa by the World Health Organization in about 1965, because overuse of DDT in agriculture had bred mosquitoes that are resistant and immune to the stuff. No amount of DDT spraying, anywhere, can reverse that. Spraying DDT where mosquitoes are unaffected by it, is stupid.
Plus, studies indicate a correlation between DDT use, even in those small amounts, and premature deaths to children in the households sprayed. DDT is not harmless. DDT is not benign.
DDT has never been banned in Africa, and even under the 2001 Persistent Organic Pesticides Treaty (POPs) DDT has a special carve out to keep it available to fight malaria, despite its being a destroyer of worlds. So implicit in the Journal’s screed here is that Africans are too stupid or lazy to use a substance that would save their children and themselves from malaria, though it’s available relatively cheaply.
Is DDT “underutilized?” Again we should ask, why would anyone use DDT where it is not effective? Then we should ask, who would use DDT in fighting disease in Africa, and do they use it? It turns out that DDT is not completely superfluous to all mosquito populations. But testing is required to be sure DDT will work — were an organization to use ineffective pesticides, thousands could die, and the testing is therefore a preservation of human life. And, because of past incidents in Africa, for example when DDT killed off the fish local populations depend on for their food, DDT use is extremely limited, to indoor applications only, and only by trained professionals who limit its spread.
WHO has been using DDT in Africa for indoor residual spraying (IRS) since the 1950s. Use was slowed when DDT’s effectiveness was compromised. In recent years WHO held a press conference on DDT to encourage locals who fear DDT poisoning to go along, and since 2005 DDT’s effectiveness appears to be dropping. But DDT is available for use wherever it is needed to fight malaria in Africa.
Is the Wall Street Journal calling for mass poisoning of Africa? What else could they be talking about? Why would they call for such a thing?
The Journal claims WHO and other UN agencies are “under the sway” of Sen. Nelson, and that’s bad? Let’s be clear: Nelson didn’t oppose use of DDT in Africa to fight malaria. UN’s WHO is the leading continent-wide advocate of proper use of DDT to fight malaria. If the Journal claims that current, appropriate use of DDT is too little, what is the Journal advocating?
The good news is that the Obama Administration has continued the Bush policy of supporting DDT spraying in Zambia, Mozambique and other countries where the locals want it used. “Groups like the Pesticide Action Network have lobbied the U.S. Agency for International Development to stop spraying DDT, and Obama is ignoring them so far,” says Richard Tren of Africa Fighting Malaria, an advocacy group. “They’re prioritizing what makes sense from a science and public health point of view.”
Let’s be clear: The Bush administration refused to allow U.S. money to be used to purchase DDT, or to use DDT, until about 2005. Environmental Defense, the organization that first sued to stop DDT use in the U.S., argued for years that DDT should be allowed in the limited use WHO proposed, but Bush’s people stood firmly opposed, though never explaining why. In any African nation where local people want DDT, it’s freely available with other money, of course. So U.S. opposition, bizarre as it was, was not and is not a barrier to DDT use.
Most environmental groups favor beating malaria, and if a bit of DDT carefully controlled will help do the trick, so much the better. While business lobbyists have falsely impugned environmentalists for years on this point, actual opposition to DDT use has come, in Uganda for example, from business groups. Tobacco growers claim they fear some DDT will somehow get on tobacco leaves, and that will make the stuff unsaleable in the European Union. Cotton growers fear any faint traces of DDT will ruin sales of organic cotton to the EU. These business groups sued to stop DDT use against malaria in Uganda.
But environmental organizations, like ED, the Sierra Club, and others, have been fighting malaria for 40 years.
Which is more than we can say for Richard Tren. Tren is one of two or three of the leading false propagandists for poisoning Africa in the world. He tells false tales about Rachel Carson, false tales about DDT’s harms and effectiveness, and as best I can tell he has never lifted one finger or written one check to fight malaria himself, while taking tens of thousands of dollars to spread his false tales.
There are dozens of noble malaria fighters out there whose opinions we should seek — Socrates Litsios, the late Fred Soper, to mention two. Why does the formerly august Wall Street Journal use Richard Tren as a source, when there are authoritative people handy to talk?
DDT helped to eradicate malaria in the U.S. and Europe after World War II, and the U.S. is right to take the lead in reforming public health insecticide policy and putting the lives of the world’s poor above green ideology.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A12
According to the history of malaria at the CDC, malaria was essentially wiped out in the U.S. by 1939. DDT was not available for use for another seven years. Malaria was gone from northern Europe by World War II. DDT was a tool in the final eradication of the disease in Italy and Greece. But the main campaign against malaria was in curing the disease in humans, before the mosquito populations could rise up.
Among the nasty facts of science the Journal either does not know, or refuses to say, DDT can’t eradicate mosquitoes. In anti-malaria campaigns, DDT is used to knock down the mosquito populations temporarily, so that the disease can be cured in humans. Mosquito populations will quickly rise again, and in even greater numbers — but if there is no human reservoir of malaria parasites for mosquitoes to draw from, they cannot spread the disease. Malaria parasites must spend part of their life cycle in humans, and part in mosquitoes.
Curing malaria in humans is the tough part. It requires money to improve medical care, for accurate and speedy diagnoses, and for prompt and complete treatment of the disease in each patient. Preventing malaria is aided greatly by better-built homes with screens on windows, the sort of stuff that requires people to have more than subsistence incomes. So beating malaria generally requires economic development, too.
How much easier is it to bash environmentalists than to confront the real causes of malaria. Bashing environmentalists won’t do anything to relieve human suffering nor eliminate the disease, so we can bash environmentalists again next World Malaria Day, and next Earth Day — all at no cost to us, safe in our Wall Street Journal offices in Manhattan, New York, U.S.A. The Journal has fallen victim to bold purveyors of junk and voodoo science, and bogus and voodoo history. Shame on the Journal.
Curing the disease in humans means the mosquitoes are mere nuisances, and no longer vectors of disease. Killing the mosquitoes with poison means the disease will be back with a vengeance in a few weeks or months. Curing humans is more difficult, and more costly — but it saves lives and can save Africa. We cannot poison Africa to health.
It’s curious, though: How did they get so poisoned by DDT, up in that office building?
More:
Help stop the poisoning of discussion: Share this post:
1 Comment | Africa, DDT, Disease, Environmental protection, History, Journalism, Junk science, Malaria, medicine, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Africa, DDT, Disease, Environmental protection, Garrett Hardin, Gaylord Nelson, Journalism, Malaria, Paul Ehrlich, Richard Tren, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, Wall Street Journal | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Stupid is as stupid does.
Climate denialists trumpeted a hearing scheduled for Thursday before a select committee of the U.S. House of Representatives at which the madcap, veracity-challenged Christopher Monckton will carry the banner for denialism:
Also testifying to the panel will be another Briton, Lord Christopher Monckton, a hereditary peer in the House of Lords and prominent critic of the scientific consensus supporting anthropogenic climate change.
Of course, Monckton is not a hereditary peer of the House of Lords. He has a peerage, but in Britain, they won’t let him near the levers of government. No one has a hereditary peerage any more, and Monckton has never sat in Lords or Commons.
If Monckton can lie about stuff like that, what won’t he lie about? If the denialists can be suckered so easily, what makes anyone think they are skeptics, and not gullibles? Bogus history, voodoo history, and voodoo science from the Republican end of the Select Committee. Astonishing.
At the hearing a letter from 250 scientists, members of the National Academy of Sciences, called on Congress to act wisely and soon to fight human-caused global warming.
Incredibly, Monckton was the sole witness from the Republican side. Remember the title of Chris Mooney’s book, The Republican War on Science? It’s still a valid title, it appears.
Monckton squirms among the scientists: From left, Dr. James Hurrell, Dr. James McCarthy, Lord Christopher Monckton, Dr. Chris Field, Dr. Lisa Graumlich; photo from the Select Committee
The hearing was before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, chaired by Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.
Written statements from the May 6 hearing:
Statements are in .pdf format.
- OPENING STATEMENT: Chairman Edward J. Markey
- Dr. Lisa Graumlich, Director, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, and member of the “Oxburgh Inquiry” panel
- Dr. Chris Field, Director, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and co-chair of “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” portion of new IPCC report due in 2014
- Dr. James McCarthy, Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University, past President and Chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, co-chair of “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” portion of IPCC report published in 2001
- Dr. James Hurrell, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, contributor to IPCC reports
- Lord Christopher Monckton, Chief Policy Adviser, Science and Public Policy Institute
The hearing got precious little press, but it’s interesting to see the blogs that lead the denialism charge try to ignore most of the hearing.
13 Comments | Bogus history, Climate change, climate_change, Global warming, Green Politics, History, Politics, U.S. House of Representatives, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Bogus history, Chris Field, Christopher Monckton, Climate change, Climate Science, denialism, Global warming, Green Politics, James Hurrell, James McCarthy, Lisa Graumlich, Oxburgh Inquiry, Politics, Rep. Edward J. Markey, Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Here’s the Dilbert cartoon Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli should have viewed before he went fishing:
3 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Climate change, Global warming, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Research, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: Accuracy, Bogus history, Climate change, Global warming, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Ken Cucinelli, Michael Mann, Research, Science, Virginia, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 