Source:  SPPI  

by Paul Driessen

Anti-pesticide activists falsely blame new pesticides for bee colony problems

Chemophobic anti-pesticide groups are at it again. This time they’re attacking a widely used and safe new insecticide, but their assertions and real agendas are nothing new.

Radical environmentalism rose to ascendancy on opposition to pesticides, specifically DDT. “If the environmentalists win on DDT,” Environmental Defense Fund scientist Charles Wurster told the Seattle Times in 1969, “they will achieve a level of authority they have never had before.” Using Rachel Carson’s often inaccurate book Silent Spring to drive a nasty campaign, they succeeded in getting the Environmental Protection Agency to ban US production and use of DDT in 1972, leading to a de facto global ban even to combat malaria. Read the rest of this entry »

Source:  Washington Post  

By Congressman Lamar Smith,

Lamar Smith, a Republican, represents Texas’s 21st District in the U.S. House and is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Climate change is an issue that needs to be discussed thoughtfully and objectively. Unfortunately, claims that distort the facts hinder the legitimate evaluation of policy options. The rhetoric has driven some policymakers toward costly regulations and policies that will harm hardworking American families and do little to decrease global carbon emissions. The Obama administration’s decision to delay, and possibly deny, the Keystone XL pipeline is a prime example.

The State Department has found that the pipeline will have minimal impact on the surrounding environment and no significant effect on the climate. Recent expert testimony before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology confirms this finding. In fact, even if the pipeline is approved and is used at maximum capacity, the resulting increase in carbon dioxide emissions would be a mere 12 one-thousandths of 1 percent (0.0012 percent). There is scant scientific or environmental justification for refusing to approve the pipeline, a project that the State Department has also found would generate more than 40,000 U.S. jobs. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: Heartland Institute  

by James M. Taylor, J.D.

The “4,000-year hockey stick” scare is over, after a shelf life that did not last a full month. The warmist-fawning media used the 4,000-year hockey stick to create one of the most intense global warming scares in recent memory, but it quickly died with a thud – just like so many asserted global warming scares before it.

A little-known scientist who had only recently completed his Ph.D. published a paper claiming proxy temperature reconstructions showed a 4,000-year decline in global temperatures until the twentieth century. The paper claimed the 4,000-year decline abruptly ended in the twentieth century as recent warmth obliterated the 4,000 years of cooling and placed the Earth at its warmest in the 4,000-year record. Moreover, the asserted rapid temperature spike during the past century appeared to be the sharpest in 11,000 years. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: Bloomberg

Source: Canadian Freepress  

by Tom Harris

Canadians are frustrated by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s non-answer to critical questions about the world-wide climate change agreement his government supports. Those attending his presentation to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on Thursday should ask the Prime Minister why he promotes what is in effect another Kyoto Protocol, even though he condemns the first protocol as worse than useless. Read the rest of this entry »

Source:  Human Events  

by Marc Morano

The level of carbon dioxide, a trace essential gas in the atmosphere that humans exhale from our mouths, has come very close to reaching the “symbolic” 400 parts per million (ppm) threshold in the atmosphere. Former Vice President Al Gore declared the 400 ppm level “A sad milestone. A call to action.”  New York times reporter Justin Gillis compared trace amounts of CO2 to “a tiny bit of arsenic or cobra venom.” The New Yorker Magazine declared “Everything we use that emits carbon dioxide needs to be replaced with something that doesn’t.”  And a UK Guardian editorial declared “Swift political action can avert a carbon dioxide crisis.” Read the rest of this entry »

Source: The Hockey Schtick

By HARRISON H. SCHMITT AND WILLIAM HAPPER

WSJ.COM 5/8/13: Of all of the world’s chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That’s simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: FreedomWorks

Also see:  http://sppiblog.org/news/book-burning

This year’s Banned Books List included a few surprises.

The American Library Association’s annual report highlights those books saddled with censorious complaints from parents, educators and assorted bureaucrats. Mom and Dad understandably would be horrified to find Fifty Shades of Grey in the elementary school stacks, but some administrators objected to Dav Pilkey’s popular Captain Underpants kid-lit series.

It appears some paper-shufflers found the silly superhero too disrespectful of their efforts. “I don’t see these books as encouraging disrespect for authority. Perhaps they demonstrate the value of questioning authority,” Pilkey said. “Some of the authority figures in the Captain Underpants books are villains. They are bullies and they do vicious things.” Read the rest of this entry »

Source:  No Frakking  Consensus

An academic paper funded by two National Science Foundation grants bears no relation to the intended purpose of that money.

In 2009, the US National Science Foundation awarded an “engineering education research” grant of $150,000 to Eric Pappas, a professor at James Madison University.

According to the official record, that money had a purpose. It was supposed to:

• “integrate instruction in sustainability into design courses across three years of the undergraduate engineering curriculum”
• “provide hands-on learning experiences that develop students’ abilities to deal with sustainability”
• and “better prepare students for the practice of engineering through developing their understanding of environmental sustainability” Read the rest of this entry »

Source:  No Frakking Consensus

by Donna Laframboise

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, there are certain milestones that children aged 4 – 5 years can be expected to achieve. Among them:

• counting to 10
• correctly naming “at least four colors”
• speaking in sentences “of more than five words”
• using the “future tense”

In the world inhabited by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), however, a child’s fourth birthday is an opportunity to pay its own bills – to fundraise and then to brag about it. Read the rest of this entry »

Source:  Wash Post

President Obama’s new political group, Organizing for Action, last week released a new video that mocks Republican lawmakers for appearing to play down or dismiss concerns about climate change. Some of the clips are fairly interesting — or amusing, depending on your perspective. It has already been viewed more than 225,000 times on You Tube.

We’ve written before about the growing consensus among climate researchers that climate change is the result of human activity; there’s little debate about that among scientists, though surveys show increasing skepticism among the American public. But we were intrigued by the video’s claim that 240 House lawmakers had declared climate change to be a “hoax.” Read the rest of this entry »

Source: C3 Headlines

Michael Mann’s Scary New Sea Level Predictions Identified As Bogus, Confirms 97% Consensus That He Fibs

Source:  Wattsup?

Source: Mag Reporter  

For the first time since written weather history began in Arkansas (1819), snow has fallen in the month of May. This snow has set records for the latest snowfall and latest measurable snowfall in the state. Read the rest of this entry »

Source:  CNSNews  

How do you top making national news for bigotry? Trying getting people to “Give Up (Eating) Hamburgers to Stop Climate Change.”

For loony lefty syndicated columnist David Sirota, it’s all just another day at the office. Sirota made national news for his bizarre and bigoted hope that the Boston bomber would turn out to be “a white American.”

Fresh off that fiasco, Sirota has turned his sights to changing the climate by changing America’s diet. According to Sirota’s May 2 column, “the fastest way to reduce climate change” simply “requires us all to eat fewer animal products.” Read the rest of this entry »