Following are links to some interesting opinion pieces:
1. Lessons From the Lavender Boys
Denis Avery’s Hudson Institute
Thursday October 26, 2006
Researchers have finally found the first confirmed gender-bending consumer products: natural lavender oil, natural tea tree oil, and natural soybeans. The findings strongly say consumers should stop worrying over insignificant traces of man-made chemicals and be more wary of unregulated natural products.
Read the complete article: http://www.cgfi.org/cgficommentary/lessons-from-the-lavender-boys
2. The heroes and villains in the Great Climate Debate
Monika Sarder
Thursday October 26, 2006
More than any other documentary in the last decade, An Inconvenient Truth featuring Al Gore’s slide show purporting to put forward the unadulterated facts on climate change, has galvanised mainstream political interest. Actors, British moguls and undergraduates have all jumped on the bandwagon, with the most recent development being a court challenge to a Hunter Valley coal mine development by a Newcastle student.
The documentary highlights the problems that emerge when a scientific issue is hijacked by political interests. Increasingly high profile public figures are strongly weighing in and proposing purely political solutions with limited reference to the changing state of science. Public discussion of the science is critical if we are to formulate consensus and a national response to the issue. However it is important that the evidence is not presented in a distorted way. Read the complete article: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5066
3. Anti-DDT Movement Killing African Babies
Fiona Kobusingye-Boynes
Tuesday October 17, 2006
At long last, the World Health Organization and Uganda’s Health Ministry are again emphasizing DDT and other insecticides to control a disease that kills 110,000 Ugandans every year.
But instead of applauding the decision, anti-pesticide activists are attacking it with scare stories and lies. Every day that Paul Saoke, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Pesticide Action Network, and their allies keep our health officials from ending malaria, another 300 babies and mothers go to their graves. It’s like sending a jetliner filled with children and mothers crashing into the Rwenzori Mountains every day. Read the complete article: http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=24388
And Pinxi had the following advice when she sent in the link to the following article: “No matter what you post they'll end up debating climate science anyway - sumo wrestlers circling each other. It would be interesting if the usual commenters discussed AGW without arguing the finer details of the science in a futile quest for a certain position. Science flags an issue as potentially significant and science should continue to inform policy, but the policy-making process on an issue such as AGW has many considerations, of which science is only one. Now that AGW concerns are leading to a host of actions to mitigate and adapt, and now that AGW impacts are being bound up with other issues such as energy supply, water, food security, economic opportunities and international relations, we should be discussing those potential actions and their impacts, not just the narrow science.”
4. Unholy trinity set to drag us into the abyss
Ian Dunlop
Monday October 16, 2006
We are about to experience the convergence of three of the great issues confronting humanity. Climate change, the peaking of oil supply and water shortage are coming together in a manner which will profoundly alter our way of life, our institutions and our ability to prosper on this planet. Each is a major issue, but their convergence has received minimal attention. Read the complete article: http://www.smh.com.au/news/scorchedearth/unholy-trinity-set-to-drag-us-into-the-abyss/2006/10/15/1160850808623.html
5. Black and white lies
William J. Lines
Saturday October 14, 2006
AT a rainforest symposium in Cairns in 1987, Ian Lowe, head of science policy at Griffith University, argued that "there are general principles of resource management [that hunter-gatherer] societies embody, and from which we can learn if we have the perceptiveness and the humility to do so".
Read the complete article: http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20575396-28737,00.html
And brace yourself for this next week:
6. Tackle climate change or face deep recession, world's leaders warned
James Randerson,
Thursday October 26, 2006
Climate change could tilt the world's economy into the worst global recession in recent history, a report will warn next week. Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist with the World Bank, will warn that governments need to tackle the problem head-on by cutting emissions or face economic ruin. The findings, due to be released on Monday, Read the complete article here:
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1931542,00.html
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Most of the above links were sent in from readers of this blog, if you keep sending them I might try and make this a regular Friday thing.
This article says nothing about bald eagles and their conclusions? It only talks about oil and hair products!
Crusty curmudgeon !
Well Luke,
it is my impression that you are a frumious bandersnatch. Which, as you will notice, is as scholarly and incisive an observation as yours.
Sophist !
Luke,
Lovely diatribe. And your fundamental point is the same as mine: that Greenies do, in fact, value birds and insects more highly than humans, and that Greenies, in fact, quickly stoop to convoluted proclamations about North Americans and "cross resistance mechanisms" in order to mask the loathsome moral decrepitude that lurks behind the mask of genteel benignity.
I am content to describe my point, while you illustrate it to perfection.
Schiller.
Schiller - not at all - your argument gets the Dodo Bird award for 2006.
I think you are neither a strategist nor a tactician. You are certainly an eccentric crackpot. You don't really care about the plight of Africans. What you care about a stupid far right agenda with recommending that we "adore" a 1940s agricultural chemical simply because the green movement has linked it with environmental bioaccuumlation, food chain concentration and rampant insect resistance. We have already said above that we accept its ue as a repellant for malarial control.
However DDT can all sorts of cross resistance mechanisms that lead to resistance in synthetic pyrethroids, organophosphates and carbamates. If you want to worry about killing people then cause insect resistance in all sorts of side insect species which have either medical or agricultural implications. So if industry can come up with better compounds that don't bioaccumulate then we should do so. What about syngerists? But insecticides are very expensive to now produce and market - treat them like gold and use them very wisely.
North American farmers have a dreadful track record as the worst Integrated Pest Managers in the world. Your use of chemicals at home if profligate and in the third world it's reckless. Why - the almight dollar - you don't give a rats arse about Africans Schiller.
I think you comment is both duplicitous and stupid. You're just an old sophist for the far right.
yep sure, cornered by furphies and inaccuracies, wedged firmly between a fake foam rock and a bag of fairyfloss.