By E. Calvin Beisner
Founder and National Spokesman, Cornwall Alliance
June 29, 2011
In the June 10-12 issue of the online political newsletter Counterpunch, Janette Sherman, a medical doctor, and Joseph Mangano, an epidemiologist and executive director of the non-profit Radiation and Public Health Project, reported that they found a 35% increase in neo-natal deaths in the American northwest. They attributed it to harmful effects of radioactive isotopes released from damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima, Japan. Other media picked up the story, including the English-language website of Al Jazeera.
News of that kind promotes fears that fuel opposition to nuclear energy as unsafe. Such fears lie behind Germany’s recent decision to reduce its dependence on nuclear energy, and ironically enough from a environmentalist point of view, use more coal instead.
Yet the Sherman/Mangano study committed elementary errors in statistical methodology—errors that make their findings utterly useless.
As Michael Moyer pointed out in Scientific American, Sherman and Mangano used neo-natal death data provided by the Centers for Disease Control from only eight cities, though dozens in the region could have been sampled. “Why include Boise but not Tacoma? Or Spokane?” he asked. “Both have about the same size population as Boise, they're closer to Japan, and the CDC includes data from Tacoma and Spokane in the weekly reports.” Further, they compared the post-Fukushima data with pre-Fukushima data stretching back only four weeks.
The result of the two choices combined was a small, statistically unrepresentative sample in which a statistically random fluctuation could appear highly significant. In addition, they offered no plausible causal mechanism by which the isotopes from Fukushima could have contributed to the deaths.
Moyer’s reanalysis of the data for the same eight cities, starting not just four weeks (February 11) but ten weeks (January 1) before the Fukushima disaster, actually showed a slight decline in the death rate.
Rev. Dr. James Tonkowich, Senior Fellow at Cornwall Alliance, compares the fundamentally opposing beliefs of the Christian church and Environmentalists.
Recent Significant Developments
Science & Ecology
Pachauri: No Conflict of Interest Policy for AR5 (Steve McIntyre; Climate Audit)
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, chastised by the Interacademy Council for lack of policies preventing conflict of interest on the part of lead and contributing authors and reviewers of its reports, has decided “that conflict of interest policies would not apply to AR5 authors. IPCC thereby sabotaged recommendations from the Interacademy Council and announced its plans to evade the conflict of interest policies passed at the 33rd IPCC plenary only a month ago.” IPCC might as well have announced in advance: AR5 will not be objective science.
On The Hijacking of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) (Bill Gray; Watts Up With That?)
"The AMS is going to be judged in future years as having foolishly sacrificed its sterling scientific reputation for political and financial expediency. I am sure that hundreds of our older deceased AMS members are rolling in their graves over what has become of their and our great society."
Economics & Energy
UK Renewable Subsidies to Cost £100 Billion by 2030
Subsidies to renewable energy technologies will cost the United Kingdom about £100 billion (about $161 billion) per year by 2030. That’s about £1,613 per person, or 7 percent of gross domestic product per capita—on top of the costs UK citizens already are paying for their energy. Specific numbers will differ for the United States and other countries, but the principle will remain the same: renewable energy will cost everyone more—much more.
G-20 to Press U.S. to End Aid for Biofuels Industry (John Miller; The Wall Street Journal)
“The biofuels industry faces pressure whenever food and commodity prices spike. That happened three years ago, and it is happening again, notably helping to trigger revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. In the West, where people eat more processed foods, final prices aren't tied too much to commodity values. But in the developing world, the correlation is more direct. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization has forecast that cereals prices, when adjusted for inflation, could grow 20% over the next decade compared with the previous decade, meaning the focus on biofuels is unlikely to relent. The biofuels industry is fighting back.” I.e., the Senate vote last week to end the subsidies and tariffs that protect the biofuels industry isn’t the end of the battle; it’s just the beginning.—ECB
Religion & Ethics
Milton's Loophole (Peter Foster; Financial Post)
"Organizations such as ForestEthics, Greenpeace and RAN are not guardians of the planet, they are shakedown artists. They have set themselves up as 'social licensers' of corporations without any licence of their own."
The Purposeful Flooding of America's Heartland (Joe Herring; American Thinker)
The devastating floods along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers this spring and summer have been caused not just by the melt of heavy winter snows and the fall of heavy spring rains, but also by an intentional policy by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to put environmentalist dreams of a “natural state” for the rivers ahead of the need for flood control—the original purpose for the Corps. The Green policy rests on the assumption that “natural” is best—best for humanity, best for wildlife habitat. That assumption contradicts the Biblical doctrines of Fall and Curse, according to which nothing in nature is “normal.” Ironically, regularly spaced dam-held reservoirs, opposed by environmentalists who revere nature untouched by human hands, not only can prevent or mitigate flooding and its damage to human homes, farms, and industries, but also can provide a greater variety of aquatic habitats, thus facilitating greater biological diversity.
Law, Regulation, & Litigation
Scientific Critique of EPA's Proposed New Mercury (& Other) Emission Regulations (Willie Soon; Affordable Power Alliance)
Among many findings of this major study, a key one for the debate over whether to strengthen mercury emission regulations on coal-burning power plants is this: “The good news for American public health is that the high-end 95th percentile levels of blood mercury measured for both women and children have undergone systematic decreasing tendencies from 1999 through 2008, and the 2007-2008 values are significantly below the already exaggerated [Reference Dose] ‘safe’ level established by EPA [which is itself at least ten times lower than necessary]. This reality raises the puzzling question: who or which group in particular are EPA’s … proposed rules supposed to protect, when available … monitoring efforts clearly demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of Americans are already safe from any risk attributable to MeHg exposure through fish consumption?”
Supreme Court Ruling Hints that EPA's CO2 "Endangerment Finding" Could Be Overruled (Ken Haapala; Science & Environmental Policy Project)
"The Supreme Court released its decision on the lawsuit brought by various states, and others, against public utilities for emissions of carbon dioxide under the concept that carbon dioxide is a public nuisance. ... At this time, it is impossible to state what the effect will be on the litigation appealing EPA's ruling that GHG, particularly carbon dioxide, endanger public health and the environment. No doubt, the new court ruling will increase the pressure on the Appeals Court that is now considering the litigation. ... [There are] several footnotes in the new ruling indicating the uncertainty of the science. Among other revelations is a footnote in the ruling referencing a cover story in the New York Times Magazine about Freeman Dyson, who is very skeptical that GHG emissions are causing unprecedented and dangerous global warming. The referenced article ran before Climategate. Clearly, the Court realizes that the science is not as well established as the alarmists, including the New York Times, have proclaimed. Further, the court stated: 'The Court, we caution, endorses no particular view of the complicated issues related to carbon dioxide emissions and climate change.' This statement is significantly different than the 2007 decision in which the Court ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, based upon, in part, claims that it was causing dangerous global warming, in turn, it was causing sea levels to rise."
Politics & Debate
With Climate Change, Life Imitates Art (Kenneth Green; The American)
All-or-nothing approaches usually aren’t realistic, whether in science, economics, or politics. Cornwall’s position all along has been “rainbow,” in the terms used in this article: climate changes (mostly naturally), human influence is probable but also probably comparatively minor, costs of mitigation probably outweigh benefits, improving technology and increasing wealth enable adaptation, and demonizing opponents is a bad idea regardless which side does it.
Obama is Packing the Government with Big Green Ideologues (Ron Arnold; The Washington Examiner)
“President Obama has packed his Cabinet agencies with left-wing ideologues, just like President Roosevelt tried with his 1937 ‘Supreme Court packing bill.’ Roosevelt failed, but Obama is still at it. Now it's Rebecca Wodder, former Wilderness Society official and current chief executive officer of Big Green's dam-killing, water-grabbing, natural gas enemy, American Rivers Inc. ($12.1 million 2010 revenue), who is Obama's nominee for assistant secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks for the Department of the Interior.”
Help Wanted: For an 'Aggressive Program to Go After ... Deniers' of Climate Change (Michael Chapman; CNSNews.com)
Former Sen. Tim Wirth (D-CO) says, “[W]e have to … undertake an aggressive program to go after those who are among the deniers, who are putting out these mistruths, and really call them for what they’re doing and make a battle out of it. They’ve had pretty much of a free ride so far, and that time has got to stop.” Uh, Senator, have you ever heard of something called the First Amendment?
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