The Democratic takeover of Congress isn’t in place until next month, but its historically destructive agendas are poised for renewal. 

History of Mischief

We know that the Environmental Protection Agency’s 1972 DDT ban has led to over 30,000,000 deaths globally from malaria, yellow fever, and other diseases, and likely many more. (http://tinyurl.com/vmyoa). This ban was led by many environmental groups, the EPA, with wide media support and coverage. 

We know that environmentalists along with competitive corporate interests such as the coal, railroad, wind, solar, and biomass industries, exaggerate the risks of nuclear energy for their own purposes.  As a consequence a number of nations can now build nuclear power plants for 1/3 of the costs and construction durations. These countries don’t have to deal with hostile US state and federal regulators, a hostile media, and well-heeled lobbyists.

The Lawyers

Joining in with the environmental thuggery has been the legal profession. With careful legalistic manipulations of the risk data, and the usual suppression of important information, many plaintiffs prevailed who were never demonstrably harmed.  Costs escalated.

Science should never be conducted this way. The risks of asbestos, for example, have been exaggerated as well, with many asbestos companies bankrupted and thousands put out of work.  Worse the legal profession through many manipulations of the legal system has made billions from the asbestos litigation (http://tinyurl.com/y3l99d).

Seventy asbestos companies have been bankrupted by the legal profession (http://tinyurl.com/yfuvet).  In a number of examples the asbestos ban has led to higher cost, less effective substitutes.  The evidence sustaining asbestos plaintiffs was often very tenuous.  The legal profession established many trusts with funds from these companies, and led to the enrichment of many law firms, who often set themselves up to disburse these funds!!  Most, but not all, of this destruction has been ongoing for decades thanks to exaggeration, debates skills, and courtroom treachery. 

Little of this is permissible in sound science. Among honest and decent scientists the appeal is not to authority but only to evidence, including adverse evidence.  In contrast, in legal proceedings a great deal of valid information can be legally suppressed or found inadmissible. If truth is the goal this is a dangerous game.  If crippling the US energy production is likely, it is very destructive.

Senator Boxer

And talk about thuggery, the recent announcement by Senator Barbara Boxer unilaterally threatens to impose heavier and much more costly environmental laws and regulations upon the American economy (http://tinyurl.com/yj3pkk).  She seems to be unaware of the exorbitant costs of regulation on the American economy that are now estimated to be more than 1.13 trillion per year—and growing (http://tinyurl.com/ssuv3). 

One surely is entitled to question Senator Boxer’s motives to increase these enormous burdens.  The costs of regulatory compliance are a huge hidden tax on our economy equivalent to about half of the total annual government expenditures (http://tinyurl.com/ssuv3).  We need to be revisiting these costly regulations in the hopes of reducing these regulatory burdens, not increasing them, and making them more defensible through science and common sense. 

Senators Snowe and Rockefeller

The recent letter from Senators Olympia Snowe and Jay Rockefeller to Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson (http://tinyurl.com/y8sy6c) is another example which doesn’t bode well for the American economy.  In that letter the Senators asked Exxon to terminate their financial support of global warming skeptics. In a brazen example of thuggery the Senators requested that Exxon “end its dangerous support of the [global warming] 'deniers.’” Not only that, the company "should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history." And in extra penance for being "one of the world's largest carbon emitters," Exxon should spend that money on "global remediation efforts."  This is tyranny. One can only surmise that the Senators would have destroyed Galileo for his heresies, too, had they lived then.  We would do well to recall these words of Thomas Jefferson: "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Tyranny of the Senate is looming.

Certainly we can say that government arrogance is still alive today after all of those centuries, after all of the enlightenment, after all of our vaunted education.  We deserve and must demand better leadership.

Gore on the Oprah Show

As if these examples of thuggishness weren’t enough, Vice President Al Gore appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show on Dec. 5th, 2006. We must acknowledge that Oprah has done a lot of good for people including guest authors of new books.  Gore knows this. She is ill equipped to challenge junkscience when it appears on her show, even if she didn’t regard Gore as a new Noah.

He was pushing his discredited book and video “An Inconvenient Truth”. (http://tinyurl.com/yxhvzl).  The author of a detailed critical analysis of Gore’s book, Marlo Lewis, was shown by tape during the show, stating (correctly) that the Antarctic Ice Sheet was in fact growing in mass.  This fact is contrary to what Gore has been saying and writing. 

Gore’s response was not to refute this fact, or even to discuss it.  He immediately launched into a personal attack in an irrelevant attempt to discredit Lewis. This is not science, but advocacy, two very different activities.  Gore appeals to authority. Science appeals to evidence.  They too, are very different concepts.  With Gore’s advocacy, Oprah’s fawning, and the audience’s applause for it all, the scene was a perfect storm of scientific illiteracy.  This is positively frightening to observe for those who worry about declining scientific literacy in the United States.

Senate Hearing

On Thursday December 6 The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) held a hearing on media biases of Global Warming (http://tinyurl.com/yb29gh).  It also described some of the exaggerations and skullduggery of global warming advocates themselves.  The testimony of Dr. David Deming of the University of Oklahoma was withering (http://tinyurl.com/yf9q8t).   He stated in part:

“In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.

I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."

The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the High Middle Ages.

The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."

There is little wonder that the American public is so poorly informed.  The returning thugs and their media lapdogs are major contributors to the exaggerations and are threats to our economy.

Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., is the science and energy reporter for Hawaii Reporter. A resident of Kaneohe, he has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level. His interest in the communications of science has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows. He is also the Director Center for Science, Climate and Environment for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. He can be reached via email at mailto:mfox@grassrootinstitute.org

Originally published on HawaiiReporter.com December 8, 2006.