RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-may-be-the-worst-regulation-ever-11548890635

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has created what may be the most bewildering, least cost-effective regulation ever. In July 2016, Congress passed a law mandating that all food containing genetic material that has been modified with recombinant DNA or “gene-splicing” techniques bear labels clearly identifying it as “bioengineered.” The statute acknowledged that bioengineered food is neither more nor less safe than other food, but the new rule—the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard, or NBFDS—won’t help consumers understand that. It will only leave them confused.

Under the NBFDS, two identical bottles of corn oil on a supermarket shelf could be labeled differently—one as bioengineered, one not—even though both were derived from the same field and are identical in processing and quality. Both labels would comply with the regulation because the new rule doesn’t require a label “if the food does not contain detectable genetically modified material.” The NBFDS allows manufacturers to make voluntary disclosures on such products, but not that they “may contain” bioengineered ingredients.

The word “detectable” poses its own problems. Technologies will evolve and become ever more sensitive, so that a single molecule of “genetically modified material” would make a food bioengineered. This is an invitation to meritless litigation over what is “detectable.”

Under the 2016 statute, labels are mandatory only if the food must also bear labels administered by FDA or USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service. Complying with the rule will require such detailed knowledge of the existing universe of food regulations that food lawyers will end up cross-eyed or wealthy—or both. Consider this gem: “Seafood, except Siluriformes (catfishes), and meats such as venison and rabbit are subject to the [Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act] (but not the Federal Meat Inspection Act). Thus, a multi-ingredient food product that contains one of these as the first ingredient would be subject to the NBFDS. A multi-ingredient product that contained one of these as the second most predominant ingredient or lower, could also require disclosure, unless the product is otherwise exempt (for example, due to the predominance of another ingredient such as chicken or beef).”

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/30/federal-agencies-nutrition-obesity-recommendations-junk-science/

Over the past decade, my colleagues and I have published analyses in top medical and scientific journals showing that no human could survive on the diets the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS) used to create the dietary guidelines for Americans. To be precise, we demonstrated that the methods used by researchers at public health agencies produced data that were physiologically implausible and inadmissible as scientific evidence. We further showed that these pseudo-scientific methods and meaningless data generated a fictional diet-centric discourse on obesity and chronic disease, with significant consequences for public health policy.

Yet despite our rigorous analyses plus scathing critiques from scientists around the world, federal public health agencies repeatedly refused to address contrary evidence and re-examine their demonstrably invalid methods. As a result the USDA, HHS, National Cancer Institute (NCI), and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continue to use meaningless dietary data to tell Americans what to eat and drink while promoting futile “diet-centric” public health policies such as menu-labeling mandates and banning large sodas.

Nevertheless, federal agencies impeding scientific progress is merely the tip of the iceberg. Recent events show that the U.S. research establishment is incompetent and corrupt, existing largely to transfer wealth from hard-working Americans to elite academics.
Taxpayer Funding Is A Substitute For Scientific Rigor

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/01/a-note-on-climate-change-and-bushfires/

Fixing the climate so as to fix the bushfire crisis is particularly popular with the authorities. Being able to blame the climate for unstoppable bushfires is, politically speaking, a beautiful strategy: it absolves governments and agencies of accountability. Plus, what empire-building bureaucrat doesn’t want a budget boost to buy water bombers in bulk lots?

A recent article in the Sunday Telegraph paints a despondent picture: horrible bushfires are “the new normal” because of climate change. The fire season, we learn, now extends to nearly 10 months of the year, and bushfires have become so intense that they cannot be stopped before immense damage is done. According to recently retired NSW fire commissioner Greg Mullins (now a member of the Climate Council): “The price of inaction [on climate change] will increasingly be paid in lives lost and communities shattered”.

This echoes comments made in the wake of the bushfire that destroyed the town of Yarloop in Western Australia in 2016. The conditions were described by authorities as “unprecedented”. And following the 2018 Queensland bushfires, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters “If you want to know what caused those conditions, I’ll give you an answer – it’s called climate change”.

Let’s assume for the moment that this is all correct. Put aside the views of most bushfire experts that the basic problem is failure to prepare the potential fire grounds in the expectation of fire. For the sake of argument, let’s accept that, thanks to climate change, the bushfire threat in Australia is now completely out of hand and deteriorating by the day. So what is to be done?

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/01/catastrophisms-gold-plated-non-solutions/

According to the IPCC, all 190-odd Paris signatories will need to at least double their current commitments and then actually achieve them. In other words, stopping global warming is a pipe dream, despite the vast sums that effort consumes and which might be better spent on more realistic environmental goals.

The Paris Climate Change Agreement is an initiative of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body. This is more than just background information. The UN is one of the most corrupt organisations on Earth. It began with good intentions but has been subsumed by a totalitarian Green/Left agenda that is underpinned by a persistent and insistent anti-West, anti-capitalism rhetoric. The Paris Agreement is no exception to this extreme Green/Left agenda.

What follows does not seek to debate on the hypothesis of catastrophic global warming being caused by man’s use of fossil fuels. But, just to set the scene, let me start with a little ‘climate change’ history. You may accept all that you read or hear about imminent climate catastrophe and that it is all the fault of human CO2 emissions. What you don’t often hear is that climate scientists themselves are in disagreement about how much of a problem global warming is. In the era of recorded history we have had three climatic periods which were arguably as warm or warmer than today. These are the Minoan, Roman and Medieval Warming Periods. During the Medieval Warm Period, Vikings were able to colonize, graze cattle and grow crops in Greenland. Human remains dating from that time have been found below today’s permafrost, meaning the ground wasn’t frozen when they were buried. Greenland today is less hospitable than it was then. So what we are now seeing is not unprecedented.

Following the MWP we entered what is known as the Little Ice Age (LIA), when the Thames regularly froze over. At some point in the 1600s we began to emerge from the LIA by virtue of a long, slow warming process which continues to this day. Climate scientists argue that this natural warming has been magnified by our CO2 emissions since about the 1850s. What they don’t know is how much of the observed warming since the 1850s is natural and how much is man-made. I don’t want to debate climate change as such. It is such a complex area. Suffice to note that observed warming this century is less than half of what the average of 100-odd climate scientists’ computer models predicted.

http://catallaxyfiles.com/2019/01/16/david-bidstrup-if-one-problem

Back in the 1970’s the big climate scare was the “impending ice age”. Temperatures had fallen since the 1930’s and Arctic sea ice was in abundance. All the “scientists” and the “scientific bodies” agreed that we would freeze. There was “concensus”.

The main problem with global cooling was it could not be attributed to anything “anthropogenic”. Carbon dioxide was supposed to heat us up and the Milankovitch cycles and sunspot activity were outside mans “control”. There was nothing we could do except to prepare to become extinct as agriculture failed and mass starvation culled us from the earth.

Fortunately temperatures began to rise and by 1988 the climate problem became how to stop us all from frying. This was a better problem because the fanciful notion that carbon dioxide, with its magical property of “trapping heat” and “radiating it back towards us”. The magical “greenhouse effect”,( that is nothing like a real greenhouse), became the culprit and that gave them a means of “control”. They could “stop climate change” if only we gave up having cheap reliable electricity and glass in the windows. I wonder when they will work out how to control volcano’s – that’s a hard one so they will probably let it go through to the keeper.

There was also a moral dimension to the story. All of the “advanced counties” who had benefited from the dreaded CO2 and advanced their standard of living had done so by “causing climate change” that would affect outer bong-bong land. We were guilty of eco-terrorism and had to atone.

For some reason that is beyond rationality, the task of co-ordinating the “science” and sorting out the method to make reparations for our sins was given to the United Nations, one of the most ineffectual organisations in the world. In the best bureaucratic tradition the IPCC became the 300 kg Gorilla that sat wherever it wanted to. Meetings were held in exotic places and attended by thousands of “dignitaries”, “scientists” and hangers on. Our recently departed Premier attended one of them with a film crew in tow so that his virtue was captured for posterity. While all this happened the state electricity supply was trashed and the state debt increased.

https://spectator.org/fact-free-politics-from-climate-change-to-trickle-down/
Empty catchwords reveal a mind that’s unwilling to analyze and debate.

In this era when there has been more information available to more people than at any time in the past, it is also true that there has been more misinformation from more different sources than ever. We are not talking about differences of opinion or inadequate verification, but about statements and catchwords in utter defiance of facts.

Among the most popular current catchwords are “climate change deniers.” Stop and think. Have you ever — even once in your entire life — seen, heard or read even one human being who denied that climates change?

It is hard even to imagine how any minimally knowledgeable person could deny that climates change, when there are fossils of marine creatures in the Sahara Desert. Obviously there has been quite a climate change there.

The next time someone talks about “climate change deniers,” ask them to name one — and tell you just where specifically you can find their words, declaring that climates do not change. You can bet the rent money that they cannot tell you.

Why all this talk about these mythical creatures called “climate change deniers”? Because there are some meteorologists and other scientists who refuse to join the stampede toward drastic economic changes to prevent what others say will be catastrophic levels of “global warming.”

There are scientists on both sides of that issue. Presumably the issue could be debated on the basis of evidence and analysis. But this has become a political crusade, and political issues tend to be settled by political means, of which demonizing the opposition with catchwords is one.

It is much the same story on economic issues. Any proposal to reduce income tax rates is sure to bring out claims that these are “tax cuts for the rich,” based on the “trickle-down theory” that reducing the taxes collected from the rich will cause some of their wealth to “trickle down” to people with lower incomes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/green-new-deal-renewable-energy-cannot-meet-needs/

Vast stretches of land would be needed for an all-renewable scenario. Which is why landowners are fighting solar and wind companies.

The energetic chatter of the moment is dominated by talk about the Green New Deal — a collection of proposals that would require running the entire American economy on renewable electricity within a decade or so.

The Green New Deal has been endorsed by scads of liberal politicians including New York governor Andrew Cuomo, former California state senator Kevin de León, media darling and newly sworn-in Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and anti-hydrocarbon activist Josh Fox. The goals of the Green New Deal are nothing short of radical. As the website for the left-wing think tank Data for Progress explains, the Green New Deal aims to “transform the economy and the environment in ways that achieve sustainability, equity, justice, freedom, and happiness.” Achieving happiness has never been easy. Even harder will be the Green New Deal’s aim of completely eliminating the use of coal, oil, and natural gas by 2050.

How all this happiness and energy legerdemain will be achieved is anyone’s guess. Supporters are particularly vague about how they would find the hundreds of billions — or even trillions — of dollars needed to attempt such a plan. Nevertheless, there is one unassailable fact about the Green New Deal: It is not green. Indeed, the entire notion of an all-renewable-energy system is the antithesis of environmental protection and scenic conservation.

The backers of the Green New Deal — along with their allies at big environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and others that tout all-renewable schemes — refuse to acknowledge the simple truth that deploying renewable energy at the scale required to fuel the U.S. economy would require covering state-sized territories with nothing but wind turbines and solar panels. It would also require stringing tens of thousands of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dont-let-anti-gmo-fanatics-thwart-improved-photosynthesis-crops/

I have never understood the implacable opposition by some — primarily on the Left — to the creation of GMO crops that would improve plant nutrition and increase crop yields. It is flat-out unreasoning — and in my view, anti-human, because it would allow millions to remain hungry unnecessarily by imposing a crippling “precautionary principle” approach to agricultural science and idealize the genetic purity of plants.

Thus, the totally benign “yellow rice”– which could prevent vitamin A deficiency in the developing world by genetically engineering rice to produce beta-carotene — remains opposed adamantly by anti-GMO activists. A Swiss experimental wheat field intended to develop a plant that is resistant to fungal infection was trampled asunder by activists.

I assume these radicals will also fight against the genetic altering of plants to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis — now successfully accomplished experimentally with tobacco plants — that opens the potential to dramatically increase rates of growth. From the NPR story:

They experimented with tobacco plants, just because tobacco is easy to work with. They inserted some new genes into these plants, which shut down the existing detoxification assembly line and set up a new one that’s way more efficient. And they created super tobacco plants. “They grew faster, and they grew up to 40 percent bigger” than normal tobacco plants, Cavanagh says. These measurements were done both in greenhouses and open-air field plots. CONTINUE AT SITE