“Apocalypse Never may be the most important book on the environment ever written.”

— Tom Wigley, climate scientist, University of Adelaide, former senior scientist National Center for Atmospheric Research

Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions.

But in 2019, as some claimed “billions of people are going to die,” contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction.

Despite decades of news media attention, many remain ignorant of basic facts. Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for over a decade. Deaths from extreme weather, even in poor nations, declined 80 percent over the last four decades. And the risk of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas.

Curiously, the people who are the most alarmist about the problems also tend to oppose the obvious solutions. Those who raise the alarm about food shortages oppose the expansion of fertilizer, irrigation, and tractors in poor nations. Those who raise the alarm about deforestation oppose concentrating agriculture. And those who raise the alarm about climate change oppose the two technologies that have most reduced emissions, natural gas and nuclear.

What’s really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power. But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But in preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.

Ram Kaushik from Schneider Electric replied to questions from “Power event analysis in mission critical facilities,” originally broadcast on July 23, 2020.

The Times’ supposition that America was racist at its core follows radical abolitionists rather than thinkers like Frederick Douglass who claimed the Constitution is an anti-slavery document. //

Since The New York Times published The 1619 Project a year ago, an army of scholars, historians, economists, and concerned citizens have criticized its bad history, bad journalism, and bad-faith effort to re-found the country on its original sin of slavery instead of its virtues. Unable to respond with intellectual honesty, the creators of the project have avoided discussion. //

The project’s flagship essay, written by project architect Nikole Hannah-Jones, argues that America’s true founding should be 1619, the year slaves were first brought to Virginia, instead of 1776, the year the 13 colonies declared independence from Great Britain. The reason 1776 is no longer worthy of being our founding date, Hannah-Jones says, is that the writer of the words “all men are created equal” did not mean them for black men and women. She thus claims the words were a lie until black Americans made them true. //

The below responses are strong rebuttals to all of these contentions.

More than any other group in Lebanon, the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah bears responsibility for the conditions that led to the blast. //

According to an extensive report by Politico, the project “amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.”

But allowing Project Cassandra to go forward would jeopardize the Iran deal, so the Obama administration undermined it as a matter of policy. At the same time, it advanced a policy of appeasement toward Hezbollah. Before he became CIA director under Obama, John Brennan advocated for “greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon’s political system,” and later said the administration was seeking to build up “moderate elements” in Hezbollah.

Project Cassandra members say the administration blocked their efforts to go after top Hezbollah operatives, investigate its envoy to Iran, or charge the group’s military wing as an ongoing criminal enterprise under federal racketeering laws. At every turn, the Obama administration protected Hezbollah.

Lebanon today, including the smoldering ruins of Beirut, is a dispiriting portrait of what happens when groups like Hezbollah are allowed to flourish and wield political power—and a powerful reminder that the United States should never encourage it.

Apocalypse Never summarizes the best-available science and debunks the myths repeated by scientists, journalists, and activists.
Some of those activists, scientists, and journalists have now responded to Apocalypse Never to defend those myths, including that humans are causing a sixth mass extinction and that climate change is making natural disasters worse.
Anyone who hopes to seriously evaluate Apocalypse Never for its scientific accuracy must read Apocalypse Never, including its over 1,100 endnotes, which comprise 100 pages of the 400 page book.
No book about the environment in recent memory has been praised by a wider and more prestigious group of scientists than Apocalypse Never. It cannot be dismissed. And yet that is what many of the critics of Apocalypse Never appear to want potential readers to do.
But in their haste to misrepresent the contents of Apocalypse Never, and make personal attacks, critics reveal that they fear people will read the book and discover the truth for themselves. I hope curious people do.

Published: Aug. 15, 2014 at 11:13 a.m. ET
By Diana Furchtgott-Roth

The world is focused on Ebola, but malaria is far deadlier, and a well-known insecticide could change that //

300 million to 600 million people suffer from malaria each year, and that disease kills about 1 million annually, 90% in sub-Saharan Africa.

If the world really cared about Africa, why not reverse the ban on the insecticide DDT to help fight malaria? An African death from malaria, a protistan parasite that has no cure, is equally tragic as a death from Ebola. Now we are debating how we should allocate experimental drugs to treat Ebola. But we have the means to reduce malaria, and we are not using it. //

Under the Global Malaria Eradication Program, which started in 1955, DDT was used to kill the mosquitoes that carried the parasite, and malaria was practically eliminated. Some countries, including Sri Lanka, which started using DDT in the late 1940s, saw profound improvements. Reported cases fell from nearly 3 million a year to just 17 cases in 1963. In Venezuela, cases fell from over 8 million in 1943 to 800 in 1958. India saw a dramatic drop from 75 million cases a year to 75,000 in 1961.

This changed with the publication of Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” which claimed that DDT was hazardous. After lengthy hearings between August 1971 and March 1972, Judge Edmund Sweeney, the Environmental Protection Agency hearing examiner, decided there was insufficient evidence to ban DDT and that its benefits outweighed any adverse effects. Yet two months later, then-EPA Administrator William D. Ruckelshaus overruled him and banned DDT, effective Dec. 31, 1972. That was a big win for the mosquitoes, but a big loss for people who lived in Latin America, Asia and Africa. //

Carson, the writer, claimed that DDT, because it is fat-soluble, accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals and humans as the compound moved through the food chain, causing cancer and other genetic damage. Carson’s concerns and the EPA action halted the program in its tracks, and malaria deaths started to rise again, reaching 600,000 in 1970, 900,000 in 1990 and over 1 million in 1997 — back to pre-DDT levels.

Many say DDT was banned in vain. There remains no compelling evidence that the chemical has produced any ill public health effects. According to an article in the British medical journal The Lancet by professor A.G. Smith of Leicester University:

“The early toxicological information on DDT was reassuring; it seemed that acute risks to health were small. If the huge amounts of DDT used are taken into account, the safety record for human beings is extremely good. In the 1940s, many people were deliberately exposed to high concentrations of DDT thorough dusting programmes or impregnation of clothes, without any apparent ill effect. … In summary, DDT can cause toxicological effects but the effects on human beings at likely exposure are very slight.” //

Carson died in 1964, but the legacy of “Silent Spring” and its recommended ban on DDT live with us today. As we mourn the thousand-plus people who have died of the latest outbreak of Ebola, and we look at the photos in the New York Times of the sad African children, we should remember the millions of people who are suffering from malaria as a result of the DDT ban. They were never given the choice of living with DDT or dying without it. Ruckelshaus made that choice for them in 1972. Before millions more die, we should recognize the benefits of DDT and encourage its use in fighting malaria.

Historical events removed from the timeline of history where they occurred creates propaganda -- whether well-intentioned or not. //

By adopting the storyline in the manner they have, the Yellowstone creative team has corrupted the actual historical timeline of this shameful period of US history, dragging it from 50 years in the past to only 20 years in the past. How many viewers took note of this and simply accepted the representation of such overtly racist government policy as recently at the end of the Clinton Administration?

History is a unique thing. Events happen when they happen. Transplanting a set of events from the era in which they took place to an era in which they did not take place for creative storytelling purposes — rewriting history — is propaganda.

July 14, 2004

The fact that DDT saves lives might account for part of the hostility toward it.

by Walter Williams

Jewish World Review

July 2004

Ever since Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring,” environmental extremists have sought to ban all DDT use. Using phony studies from the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental activist-controlled Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972. The extremists convinced the nation that DDT was not only unsafe for humans but unsafe to birds and other creatures as well. Their arguments have since been scientifically refuted.

While DDT saved crops, forests and livestock, it also saved humans. In 1970, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that DDT saved more than 500 million lives during the time it was widely used. A scientific review board of the EPA showed that DDT is not harmful to the environment and showed it to be a beneficial substance that “should not be banned.” According to the World Health Organization, worldwide malaria infects 300 million people. About 1 million die of malaria each year. Most of the victims are in Africa, and most are children. //

The fact that DDT saves lives might account for part of the hostility toward it. Alexander King, founder of the Malthusian Club of Rome, wrote in a biographical essay in 1990:

“My own doubts came when DDT was introduced. In Guyana, within two years, it had almost eliminated malaria. So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem.”

Dr. Charles Wurster, one of the major opponents of DDT, is reported to have said,

“People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this (referring to malaria deaths) is as good a way as any.”

Spraying a house with small amounts of DDT costs $1.44 per year; alternatives are five to 10 times more, making them unaffordable in poor countries. Rich countries that used DDT themselves threaten reprisals against poor countries if they use DDT.

One really wonders about religious groups, the Congressional Black Caucus, government and non-government organizations, politicians and others who profess concern over the plight of poor people around the world while at the same time accepting or promoting DDT bans and the needless suffering and death that follow. Mosquito-borne malaria not only has devastating health effects but stifles economic growth as well.

Computer keyboards grew out of calculator key assignments, as both are business tools.

The telephone keypad arrangement was derivated in an UI analysis in 1959/60 with 'average' customers - people at the time not really in contact with calculators or even less computers. //

In 1959 Bell did a rather large UI study, published in 1960 as "Human Factors Engineering Studies of the Design and Use of Pushbutton Telephone Sets". Goal was to determinate a layout that would not only work, but as well operate efficient and be enjoyed by users. //

One might speculate that if calculators would have been more wide spread in the 1950 (they were special and expensive business tools at the time) or terminals/computers had already made their way into homes before, the telephone would also work bottom-up ... but that's fooder for alternate history novellas.

Sweden has an intact economy, a citizenry with greater immunity to COVID-19, and a death rate per million lower than Italy's — all with no lockdown.

AG William Barr on Aug. 9 criticized members of the Democratic Party who, during a hearing last month, remained silent on the burning of federal courts. //

Barr claimed that Democrats now believe in “tearing down the system” and pursue absolute victory as “a substitute for religion.”

“I think what’s happened is that the left-wing has really withdrawn and pulled away from the umbrella of classical liberal values that have undergirded our society since our founding,” Barr continued. “And within the family, we’ve had two ways of resolving disputes. One is discussion, the dialectic, the marketplace of ideas, trying to arrive at the truth.”

“We had an idea that there was some truth to arrive at. And then if we couldn’t reach agreement, a vote, and that’s how we operated.”

Barr added that he believes the left has now “essentially withdrawn from this model” and instead represents a “Rousseauian revolutionary party that believes in tearing down the system.”

“They’re interested in complete political victory, they’re not interested in compromise, dialect, exchange of views. It’s a secular religion, it’s a substitute for religion,” Barr added. “They view their political opponents as evil, because we stand in the way of their ‘progressive utopia’ that they’re trying to reach. That’s what gives the intensity to the partisan feeling that people feel today.”

One problem with getting systematically assaulted by extraordinarily unscrupulous foes is that their malevolence provides a lazy way to dispense with any puzzles about their motives.

Bad guys gonna be bad, after all.

So, why bother looking for any pattern that might reveal a single underlying thread that connects and illuminates all the many disparate parts of their criminal conspiracy when you can explain as much of it as you like by appealing to pure malice?