some of my research:
In the past there have been scares, and misinformation. And sometimes, the well-meaning actions of the environmental activists may have lead to the deaths of millions in the developing world..
After a lengthy hearing, the British High Court has found The Oscar-winning documentary âAn Inconvenient Truthâ, is scientifically flawed and has nine significant exaggerations and factual errors.
John Day is the lawyer for a parent who sued the Ministry of Education, after they decided to show the film to every British schoolchild. What the judge decided in this case was that. First and foremost he found it was scientifically inaccurate and that those inaccuracies exacerbated the one-sidedness of the film. The judge identified nine aspects of âAn Inconvenient Truthâ. Nine core areas where Al Gore either misstated the IPCC or prodigiously exaggerated what they had found. For example, in relation, first and foremost, to sea level rises. Which is perhaps the starkest error in Al Goreâs Film. arguably. Al Gore gives the impression that the sea level is going to rise by 20 feet in the very near future. The IPCC talks about 20 feet sea level rises over milennia, over thousands and thousands of years. That is a very disturbing misstatement of the science.
Lord Lawson Economics Committee, House of Lords
âThe people who are calling for massive carbon dioxide reductions, the Al Gores of this world, are in fact the enemies of poverty reduction in the developing world.â
Melting Ice Caps
Environmentalists claim, and children believe, that melting glaciers and polar ice will cause catastrophic sea level rise, They blame man-made global warming. But experts disagree. Syun Ichi Akasofu is a professor of physics and the founding director of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska. He is one of hundreds of scientists whose research contradicts the alarmist beliefs of environmentalists. Professor Akasofu devoted the last 50 years to studying the arctic climate, and his research proves that the receding of ice sheets is due to natural forces and is not caused by humans.
"it has been receding. But again, this receding began around 1850. Not just the last 50 years. This is happening all the time as a natural phenomenon. So. itâs very difficult to simply associate all the changes in the ice to carbon dioxide."
In 1970s one of those who believed the earth was facing an ice age caused by humans was Professor Stephen Schneider of Stanford University. However, Professor Schneider is now one of the leading scientists claiming the earth is heating up because of man-made global warming. close adviser to former VP Al Gore. in 1970âs Professor Schneider was a the leading voice warning of an imminent Ice Age. Today, he gives frequent interviews warning the complete opposite. Schneider published papers and praised books which warned of the devastating consequences of the forthcoming man-made ice age. Within 10 years, Professor Schneider and the scientific consensus was claiming the earth was experiencing global warming.
Despite this dramatic reversal of the scientific consensus, Professor Schneider, Al Gore, and their supporters, are now urging governments to increase taxes and ban oil, coal, and gas. The fossil fuels that are the main source of the worldâs cheap energy.
Patrick Moore - Founding Member of Greenpeace
has a PhD in ecology, left Greenpeace in mid 1980s feeling they had become an extremist group which followed an anti-human and anti-science agenda.
âThe idea that Al Gore has posed that we can stop using fossil fuels in 10 years is completely reckless. Itâs simply not possible. 85% of global energy is fossil fuel today, and we depend on it for our survival in so many ways.â
âthe fact that the Arctic ice is not disappearing the way that weâve been told. As a matter of fact, it came back even larger last year and this year looks like itâll be even more extensive. but that doesnât get reported in many media.â
âAs a matter of fact weâre in an Ice Age right now. It may be an interglacial period, but itâs only 14.2 degrees Celsius average temperature on the earth today. At the height of the Ice Age it was about 2.2 degrees cooler, at around 12 degrees. Through much of the earthâs history itâs been at 22 degrees Celsius. When there was no ice at either pole and all the land was tropical and subtropical. In fact, ice is the enemy of life. When you pass through tropical to subtropical to winter and frost regions, biodiversity plummets by about 90%. I donât think it would be a bad thing for this earth to warm up.â
Polar Bears
Another area of An Inconvenient Truth that was found to be inaccurate was the issue of polar bears.
Polar bears is an example of a very clever piece of manipulation by Mr Gore. Heâs a career politician. heâs an expert in persuasion and polar bears is a particular example of that. Itâs something which children can very readily associate with, it has a very heart-rendering impact on children. Itâs something which sticks in their minds; itâs something that will resonate with them and something that will cause them huge concern. For that reason itâs particularly insidious to use that type of manipulation in the classroom.
Patrick Moore - Founding Member of Greenpeace
âActually, the number of polar bears are increasing in quite a few of the areas of their range. There is no evidence whatsoever that the polar bear population is declining and the main threat to polar bears is hunting by human beings, not climate change.â
âSettled Scienceâ
Many campaigning environmentalists have stated that the science is settled and that thereâs no need for further debate.
Bret Stephens - Wall Street Journal, Editorial Board.
âOne of the disturbing facets of the global warming debate is the suggestion that the science is settled and there is something wrong with revisiting what we claim to know.â in 1975 Newsweek Magazine had an interesting story entitled The Cooling World. it says âTo scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the worldâs weather. The central fact is that after three-quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions the earthâs climate seems to be cooling down. Now, 1975 isnât pre-history. Some of the same scientists who are telling now that weâre warming were active back then.â
In my lifetime alone Iâve lived through. I donât know, a half dozen scares in which prominent scientists were predicting cataclysmic events unless drastic action were taken. And the one I remember well because I covered it as a journalist was the mad cow disease scare, the BSE scare in Britain and then in the rest of Europe.â âYou had scientists in Britain predicting 500,000 deaths per year on account of infected beef.â âDoes anyone talk about mad cow disease now? Mad cow disease in its human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, ended up killing about 200 people. Now, I donât want to trivialise the death of 200 people but, 200 people is a very far cry from 500,000 people being killed every single year. Itâs worth asking if we are not kind of reliving precisely that kind of scenario - alarming science. possibility of catastrophic consequences. millions dead. further millions displaced and so on. People tend to have very short memories when it comes to this.â
5 European nations banned British beef imports.
Origins
The environmentalist movement has its origins in a campaign that began five decades ago.
Rachel Carson.
an American marine biologist.
Claimed that the pesticide DDT was a danger to animal and ultimately human life. This very effective campaign led to a near world-wide ban on DDT, which had disastrous consequences.
Silent Spring. Rachel Carsonâs 1962 best-selling book, demonised the pesticide DDT,which had previously been considered a life-saving invention.
This occurred largely because of speculation not really documented by good scientific evidence and it became a movement. It became an enormous movement.
Silent Spring credited by many, including Vice President Gore, as the book that really set the stage for the modern environmental movement.
Dr. San Zaramba Ministry of Health - Uganda
âon an average we are talking about⦠about a .. ..three hundred and seventy children dyingâ¦every day.â
So, weâre looking at hundreds of thousands every year and we believe that even those who die of HIV AIDS most of them die. at the end of the day. die because of malaria."
Roy Innis chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality
CORE is one of the oldest American civil rights organizations. CORE was at the forefront of the march on Selma, the infamous Mississippi burning voter drive and Martin Luther Kingâs historic march on Washington. With the end of segregation and overt racism in America, Roy Innis is now fighting what he sees as another major human rights issue for black people. He is campaigning to overturn the ban on DDT, which he says has led to the deaths of 30 million people in the developing world. Most of the victims are children.
âIt is a human rights issue. Human rights and civil rights are intertwined. Things that affect peopleâs development and things that tend to retard peopleâs development is a human right and a civil rights question.
Shelly Grivette - Director CHM Uganda
As an environmentalist, she is also an ardent opponent of using DDT to fight malaria.
âWe have adults that donât know how to think. They donât know what to base their faith on, they donât know how to choose a spouse. they donât know how to run a business. they donât know how to handle money. they donât know how to tell the truth! These people need an opportunity to learn how to think and to have an imagination, to have a talent.â
âItâs beautiful here. itâs warm. the ground is fertile. You just put anything in the ground and it grows. And I think to myself âIs this so bad?â
âDo we really want to bring in DDT? People wonât be dying of malaria but theyâll be dying of cancer. Theyâll be dying of low birth weight and poisoned motherâs milk. We probably canât say that, can we?â
âYesterday I talked to a lady whose name is Fiona and she is a proponent of the use of this DDT, to go into everybodyâs house and spray the walls with DDT.â
Fiona, a mother who lost a son to malaria. During speech - âUSA used DDT and saved their lives and they no longer die of malaria. Why canât Uganda use DDT?"
Shelly: âIâm telling you Americans have died of cancer.
Fiona âNo, not from DDT.â
Shelly âOur children⦠Yesâ
Shelly âYes. caused from DDT use. and millions, millionsâ¦
Accomplice âWhat Iâm saying is giving everyone the impression that DDT has eradicated malaria in the States is wrong information. Itâs simply wrong. we never used DDT for malaria eradication.â
Fiona âYou know what we should do? I think we should get the time, sit and talk. I can give you my card.â
Shelly âIâm just asking you to get more information.â
Shelly âWe never had malaria in the United States so we didnât use DDT for malaria. We never had malariaâ
Don Roberts - Professor of Tropical Public Health
Taught at DOD Medical School
had a career doing medical research in Medical Zoology specifically on malaria and malaria vectors and some on malaria epidemiology.
âThe number of people infected with malaria in the world is just a guessing game. The estimates vary from 300 million to 500 million upwards to 800 million. This is a terrible⦠burden of disease on poor people in poor countries. It is a serious public health problem⦠and the people who are saying that we do not need DDT I would have to assume have an agenda that is separate from the agenda of controlling malaria. reducing death and reducing disease in vulnerable populations. "
âThe reason there is no longer malaria in the United States is because of the use of DDT in the â40s from the mid â40s up into the early â50s to stop transmission. Many, many studies were conducted to confirm that relationship DDT caused breast cancer. The end result was that association was disproven. Disproven, but was a powerful motivating force throughout many years."
Patrick Moore - Founding Member of Greenpeace
âit began with the notion that DDT was single-handedly responsible for the decline of predatory birds like owls and eagles and hawks. at the time the story was believed by everyone.â
âOf course, the banning of DDT on a world-wide basis caused organizations, like the World Health Organization and US Aid.. humanitarian organizations, to stop using DDT for the control of mosquitoes which cause malaria. That clearly resulted over the last 40 or 50 years in millions of people dying because DDT was no longer being used. Malaria had been eradicated from large parts of the world and still is, thankfully. but other parts of the world particularly Africa, continue to have the malaria-bearing mosquito and after the use of DDT was ended malaria sky-rocketed in countries like Uganda and Mozambique and South Africa. â
Al Gore
âIt is really for all of our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren that we fight to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink. and itâs for them that we also fight to honour the legacy of Rachel Carson.[/i]
that took awhile.
