I have noticed a common trait among educators with their own personal environmental agendas. They like to use small school kids who do not even understand the issues to write letters to government representatives to promote their own often misguided views. Quit abusing and brainwashing our kids to promote your own views or get out of our schools! You are free to debate the issues yourself but when you use small kids that get their views from you to promote your own environmental social agenda you are contemptible.

Henry I. Miller on DDT & Schools on National Review Online

It’s springtime, and political correctness is blooming in Iowa. It takes the form of new Core Curriculum “standards” proposed by the Iowa Department of Education which misinform and manipulate kids.

Application B on the same page, which instructs students to use what they’ve been taught “and other research, [to] write a letter to your legislator arguing against the sale of DDT to Third World countries when it is banned in the U.S.”

This requirement is both stupid and cruel.

Malaria, which is transmitted by the bite of mosquitoes, is one of the worst scourges on the planet, particularly for the inhabitants of poor tropical countries. Forty-one percent of the world’s population live in areas where malaria is transmitted (e.g., parts of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Central and South America, Hispaniola, and Oceania), and each year 350–500 million cases of malaria occur worldwide. More than a million people die, most of them young children in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2002, malaria caused 10.7 percent of all children’s deaths in developing countries. Those who survive are often terribly debilitated.

n 1972, on the basis of data on toxicity to fish and migrating birds (but not to humans), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned virtually all uses of the pesticide DDT, an inexpensive and effective pesticide once widely deployed to kill disease-carrying insects. Not only did government regulators underplay scientific evidence of the effectiveness and relative safety of DDT, but they also failed to appreciate the distinction between its large-scale use in agriculture and more limited application for controlling carriers of human disease. Although DDT is a (modestly) toxic substance, there is a world of difference between applying large amounts of it in the environment — as farmers did before it was banned — and using it carefully and sparingly to fight mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects. A basic principle of toxicology is that the dose makes the poison.

Since the banning of DDT, insect-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue have been on the rise. Even the United States has not been immune: In 2007, there were 3,623 cases and 124 deaths from mosquito-borne West Nile virus infections, including 30 cases and 3 deaths in Iowa.

The huge toll of diseases spread by mosquitos has caused some bureaucrats to rethink DDT’s use. In 2005, the United States Agency for International Development endorsed DDT for malaria control, following the lead of the World Health Organization.

There is much good information from this Science & Public Policy Institute website and Lord Christopher Monckton. This is the fellow in Britian that sued Al Gore in court, won the lawsuit and forced schools in Britain to also give an opposing view to Al Gore’s global warming propaganda film. We need this to happen in the U.S. because hot air is filling empty heads and the consequences of letting them pass Cap and Trade laws or carbon taxes will bring an economic disaster and achieve no climate result.

What is found on this website is about all anyone needs to know about global warming to know that we should not be going forward with CO2 cap and trade or carbon taxes. After reading the information tell your congressional representatives your opinion because they are taking up this issue next month.

Global Warming Science and Public Policy - The Cost and Futility of Trading Hot Air

For decades environmental activists have insisted that capitalism is not a “sustainable” (sufficient to “save the planet”) economic system. We now hear brazen declarations that democracy is no longer a “sustainable” political process. Al Gore lends a popular, philosophical/theological underpinning to collectivist impulses by casting the root of all environmental evils – real and imagined – in the scientific and industrial/technological revolutions. Put differently, for Gore and the EDF, the planetary environment, not human life, appears the supreme standard of value. Therefore, everything, most importantly Science and Economics, must be pried away from the benefit of man and pressed into total service of the State.

Given just a decade or two of such “sustainable” policies, bolstered by Gore’s religion, the world will be well on its way to a new Dark Ages, and the human misery it breeds.

The American people who owe their long, comfortable and healthy lives to the accomplishments of modern industry, technology, medicine and affordable fossil energy ought to be outraged by activists’ claims and policies. They should come to grasp the terrible costs and futility of the left’s policies; they must understand that life lived as the left envision it for them and their children is baneful; life lived in submission to the hard natural forces of climate and disease, increasingly lived without labor-saving technology, without the fruits of sophisticated agricultural techniques, and without modern medicine, sanitation, electrification and transportation systems is, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Hobbes, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Economic growth requires energy growth, and restricting energy growth through self-interested international agreements such as Kyoto or domestic policies such as carbon taxes or cap-and-trade schemes is a recipe for global poverty and human deaths.

THATCHER’S RULE, “You have to get the big ones right”, applies with the greatest force to those fields of policy where wrong decisions could kill millions. The international community too often gets the big ones wrong, and kills tens of millions, and does not care much.

When the same lobbies that now demand action on climate change did so on DDT 35 years ago, they got the science as wrong then as now. Instead of restricting DDT to interior spraying of dwellings, they had it banned outright. Result: 30-50 million (and counting) needlessly dead of malaria. Dr. Arata Kochi of the WHO, announcing the end of the ban in 2006, said that too often politics predominated: now it was (and is) necessary for the science and the data to prevail.

With climate change, politics regrettably predominates. This time, there is a dangerous complication: politicized science. The surprisingly small group of scientists who started and still stir the “global warming” scare have undesirably close financial links with politicians and corporations. Yet the notion that “global warming” is so severe a threat that it demands major increases in taxation and regulation, coupled with deep, strategic cuts in the Western economies, would only be defensible if all of the following propositions were true –

1. “The scientists, politicians, and news media behind ‘global warming’ are honest”: They are not;
2. “The debate is over and all credible climate scientists are agreed”: It is not; they are not;
3. “Temperature today has risen exceptionally fast and above natural variability”: It has not;
4. “Changes in solar activity do not significantly impact today’s global warming”: They do;
5. “Greenhouse-gas increases are the main reason why it is getting warmer”: They are not;
6. “The fingerprint of anthropogenic greenhouse warming is clearly present”: It is absent;
7. “Computer models are accurate enough to predict the climate reliably”: They cannot be;
8. “Global warming is to blame for present and future climate disasters”: It is not;
9. “Mitigating climate change will be cost-effective”: It will not;
10. “Taking precautions, just in case, would be the responsible course”: It would not be.

Each of these ten conformist propositions, every one of which must be shown true before substantial policy changes can be considered advisable, is demonstrated to be questionable at best, false at worst.

There has been serious, serial scientific dishonesty, misrepresentation, and exaggeration. Increasing numbers of peer-reviewed papers are expressing open doubts about all of the main points of “global warming” theory. Today’s temperature is well within natural climate variability.

I have been saying that Al Gore is the most dangerous man alive. Read the article and you will find out the deadly kool-aid that this Gaia guru dispenses all over the world. While I am on the subject, I do not know why world leaders let Al Gore get away with the irresponsible lies that he continually makes. With only the last lie being that the storm in Myanmar was a result of man caused global warming. Al Gore continually lies and twists facts for his own end and people just drink the arsenic laced Kool_aid and help spread his dangerous concoctions.

If you are promoting what Al Gore has been saying you might want to check your own thought processes and the cult leader resister that should have been hardwired into your brain. If it is missing find help.

Arthur Robinson — Nobel Prize for Death

This current food shortage is only the beginning.

We have been down this road before. Unprincipled opportunists — falsely claiming that DDT is dangerous to the environment — managed to engineer a world-wide ban of DDT. DDT had eradicated malaria from the developed world and was well on its way to eradicating it from the less developed countries at the time this ban of DDT was instituted. The initiation of DDT use against malaria was rewarded by a Nobel Prize, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated that DDT had saved hundreds of millions of lives.

One of the principal political figures who worked to ban DDT was none other than Al Gore.

As a result of the DDT ban, more than 30 million children in Africa and Asia have died from DDT-preventable malaria, and an estimated 500 million adults are today chronically ill from this disease. The ban of DDT was the worst act of technological genocide in human history.

Now, Mr. Gore is the recognized leader of an effort to ban at least 90% of world use of hydrocarbon fuels. Once again, his claims are based upon bogus science and are motivated by personal financial and political self interest.

Liberals love to blame the oil companies for the high gas prices but this article tells you the demented people you should really blame and the mindset that inspires them.

Put The Blame Where It Belongs - HUMAN EVENTS

If you are really sick and tired of $4.00 gasoline, really sick of being dependent on foreign oil, and equally as sick of seeing your food bills go up, the conventional wisdom would lead you to blame the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. But that’s a waste of time, as is blaming George Bush or the oil companies.

None of them make environmental policy. That policy is set by three individuals two who are located in New York City. If you want to drill in Alaska or the Gulf of Mexico or in the continental U.S. — where billions of gallons of petroleum are just waiting to be tapped — or build refineries, these three people stand in your way.

One more thing. I wrote earlier that the environmental extremists hate humanity, they think there are too many of us, and they won’t be happy until an awful lot of us are gone.

Most won’t say it, but here’s what two of them are quoted as saying in Johah Goldberg’s book “Liberal Fascism.” “When Charles Wurster, chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund was told that banning DDT would probably result in millions of deaths he replied ‘This is as good a way to get rid of them as any.” And a million did die.

Finnish environmental guru Pentti Linkola “argues that the earth is a sinking ship, and a chosen remnant must head for the lifeboats. Said Linkola, ‘Those who hate life try to pull more people on board and drown everybody. Those who love and respect life use axes to chops off extra hands hanging on the gunwale.’”

Beware of environmentalists bearing axes.

Every time you go to the gas pump or pay your heating bills or food bills you can thank the environmental extremists and all the politicians that kowtow to them for the higher prices that you will now pay.
Also notice the hypocritical actions of the “environmentalists” outlined in this article.

Blame Clinton, greens for high gas prices

Environmental extremists prefer to mandate the expanded use of ethanol, rather than using abundant oil supplies. This alternative produces less energy per gallon of fuel than gasoline, while driving the price of food upward, causing riots and forcing the cultivation of more land where wildlife can no longer flourish.

Environmental extremists wring their hands and cry crocodile tears at the thought of “ruining” the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge by using only 2,000 of the 18 million acres for oil production. But they seem to have no problems with the idea of covering millions of acres in the southwest with solar panels.

Environmental extremists celebrate their victory in banning DDT to save birds. But they have no problem with miles and miles of wind turbines that slaughter millions of birds every year. Nor do they seem to have any sympathy for the millions of people who have died from malaria as a direct result of the ban on DDT.

Big oil is not to blame for the high price of gasoline; the blame must fall squarely in the lap of the environmental extremists who use propaganda and fear-mongering to block the increases in the production of readily available fossil fuels. There are sufficient reserves of coal to last about 200 years. Despite Jimmy Carter’s 1970s declaration that the world would be out of oil by 2000, and considering the anticipated increase in demand, there are enough known oil reserves to last at least 60 years. This energy should be available now.

Every time a person fills up at the pump, he should visualize the billions of barrels of oil that are waiting in Alaska, and the billions of barrels of oil that are waiting in the Dakotas and Montana, and the billions of barrels of oil that are waiting just off shore – and curse the environmental extremists who are forcing him to pay far more for his transportation than is necessary.

Hysteria is rampant and the people have become delusional. There should be a war against progressive mental illness from the halls of Time Magazine to the shores of Massachusetts and California.

From fighting evil to fighting carbon emissions

The Time cover is cheap heroism. It is a liberal attempt to depict as equally heroic those who fight carbon emissions and those who fought Japanese fascists and Nazis.

Second, for much of the left, the cover reflects the primacy of environmental concerns over moral concerns. For example, the left seemed never to care about the millions of Africans who continued to die from malaria largely because of the environmentalists’ worldwide ban on the use of DDT as pesticide. The same holds true for another left-wing environmentalist fantasy. Changing corn into biofuels is causing a surge in food prices throughout the world. The European Union continues this policy despite warnings even from some environmentalists that food shortages, starvation and food riots are imminent. But human suffering is not as significant as environmental degradation.

Third, the left is far more internationalist – global, if you will – in its orientation than national. As the Time article states, “Going green: What could be redder, whiter and bluer than that?” Whereas, for most Americans patriotism remains red, white and blue, for much of the left it is green.

Fourth, the further left you go, the more inclined you are to hysteria. From the threat of DDT to the threat of heterosexual AIDS in America to that mass killer secondhand smoke, the left believes and spreads threats that, unlike the threat of Islamic terror, really are “scare tactics.”

The plastic seas are a real environmental problem caused by man that should concern us.

clipped from www.independent.co.uk plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food. Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic, Dr Eriksen said the slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles – the raw materials for the plastic industry – are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. “What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It’s that simple,” said Dr Eriksen.

FOXNews.com - Junk Science: DDT Backlash Continues - Opinion: “Ever since the World Health Organization reversed the environmentalist-promoted ban on DDT in 2006, eco-activists have scrambled to devise new ways to malign the life-saving insecticide in order to salvage their badly marred reputation.”

It’s Time to Silence Silent Spring - The Ayn Rand Institute - Sep 03, 07: “This September marks the 45th anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s anti-pesticide manifesto credited with inspiring the environmentalist movement. But this anniversary is no cause for celebration. The legacy of Silent Spring includes more than a million deaths a year from the mosquito-borne disease malaria. Though nearly eradicated decades ago, malaria has resurged with a vengeance because DDT, the most effective agent of mosquito control, has been essentially discarded–discarded based not on scientific concerns about its safety, but on environmental dogma.”

WorldNetDaily: The deadly cost of environmentalism: “In one long-term study, volunteers ate 32 ounces of DDT for a year and a half, and 16 years later, they suffered no increased risk of adverse health effects. Despite evidence that, properly used, DDT is neither harmful to humans nor animals, environmental extremists fight for a continued ban. This has led to millions of illnesses and deaths from malaria, especially in Africa. After WWII, DDT saved millions upon millions of lives in India, Southeast Asia and South America. In some cases, malaria deaths fell to near zero. With bans on DDT, malaria deaths and illnesses have skyrocketed. Environmental extremists see DDT in a different light. Alexander King, co-founder of the Club of Rome, said, ‘In Guyana, within almost two years, it had almost eliminated malaria, but at the same time, the birth rate had doubled. So my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it greatly added to the population problem.’ Jeff Hoffman, environmental attorney, wrote on grist.org, ‘Malaria was actually a natural population control, and DDT has caused a massive population explosion in some places where it has eradicated malaria. More fundamentally, why should humans get priority over other forms of life? . .”

Al Gore, Green revolution, evironmental policy, ethanol, corn, fuel alternatives, energy policy, watershed, midwest, inconvenient truth - HUMAN EVENTS: “All in all, it takes 1.597 gallons of diesel and gasoline used in the corn crop growth, harvesting, shipping of corn to ethanol production, and distribution of ethanol to the consumer for every 1 gallon of ethanol that is produced. And, again, that 1 gallon of ethanol is going to be 20-30% less efficient than the gallon of gasoline it is replacing.
Most of the new ethanol production plants (called dry mill operations) are now being built to use coal as their primary source of power, mostly because the natural gas that was initially used has become so expensive. The coal-fired plants produce twice the emissions and essentially cancel out the global warming benefits of the use of ethanol fuel in vehicles. Putting more E85 vehicles on the road will actually increase greenhouse gases, smog, respiratory ailments, etc.

And, it is the sharp increase in nutrient runoff which is magnifying the green “Dead Zone” in the Gulf.

Al Gore, I apologize for all of these facts. Just look at them as another “Inconvenient Truth.””

As you pointed out there are many reasons why corn based ethanol is not the answer. You missed one big point. Ethanol is driving up the cost of corn and the cost of everything that contains and eats corn. Americans have to pay that cost every time we go to the store. For the poor of the world like in Mexico this is a tremendous hardship.

The problem with environmentalists is that their legislations and their solutions are sometimes founded on junk science or a knee-jerk reactions to their radicals. Therefore, we have the DDT ban that resulted in the death of million of people caused by Malaria to save eagles, and DDT was not the issue. We have fuel additives taken away and substituted with worse additives that polluted much of the ground water in the US. They are now pushing Ethanol which does not save energy, costs more and does much more environment and human damage then gas. Oversight of the know-it-alls that force this stuff on us has been lacking because politicians are afraid to take any stance that does not appear green. Therefore, the radicals drive the political action and the consequences is radically predictable. If we allow this with the CO2 reduction hysteria we will rue the day.

American Thinker: Al Gore’s Live Earth: Has Global Warming Hysteria ‘Jumped the Shark’: “And environmentalists have rejected solutions to the problems they say global warming will worsen. Indeed, as I show in my book Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health, environmentalists have created their own public health crises with many of their ’solutions.’ It was not global warming but the banning of the pesticide DDT — inspired by the hysterics of Gore’s heroine Rachel Carson — that has led to millions dying of malaria in the Third World.

And there is even a question about how seriously environmentalists take the global warming ‘threat.’ After all most eco-groups are opposed to nuclear power, which involves no pollution and carbon dioxide emissions. And they want to shut down the non-polluting dams that provide electricity in the Pacific Northwest, which would result in a sharp increase of the dreaded coal and oil to provide power. These are even bigger hypocrisies than a fuel-burning concert, and provide even more evidence that global warming hysteria is jumping the shark.”

That is why some environmentalists see the only solution to the problem is to get rid of about 4 or 5 billion people. When you mix environmentalists with “new age” religion you get many with this mindset. Why? Because they have no faith in the Creator to provide for the people He created.