http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32802 I find Ann Coulter to be irritating, to say the least. But I thought this article was interesting. There was such the rush to judgment on global warming...it has been so accepted at face value. And yet, the most comprehensive study ever on global climate produced results that indicated we are clearly not heading for a doomsday scenario. In fact, the Middle Ages rank as the hottest times in history, according to their research. There was not much industry or development during the Middle Ages, if you're keeping score at home. Anyway...here's the article: Global warming: The French connection -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: May 28, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Universal Press Syndicate Inasmuch as June is around the corner and it's still winter, it is time to revisit the issue of "global warming." A sparrow does not a spring make, but in the Druid religion of environmentalism, every warm summer's breeze prompts apocalyptic demands for a ban on aerosol spray and paper bags. So where is global warming when we need it? In 1998, President Clinton denounced Republicans for opposing his environmental policies, citing Florida's inordinately warm weather: "June was the hottest month they had ever had – hotter than any July or August they had ever had." This, after the Senate rejected the Kyoto Treaty by the slender margin of 95-0. In fact, all the world's major industrial powers initially rejected the treaty, including Japan. That's right: Even Kyoto rejected Kyoto. That same year, CNN's Margaret Carlson remarked that when her neighbors experienced temperate weather at Christmas, global warming was the word on everyone's lips. Adding to the world's supply of hot air, she said global warming was the big sleeper issue. Well, this year, Washington, D.C., had the coldest February in a quarter-century. What are the scientific conclusions of Ms. Carlson's neighbors now? In a single day in February, New York got its fourth-deepest snowfall since 1869. Baltimore got more snow in February than in any other month in recorded history. I wish there were global warming. In 1995, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced a computer model purportedly proving "a discernible human influence on global climate." According to the U.N., there was not enough evidence to determine if Saddam Hussein was a threat, but the evidence is in on global warming. The key to the U.N.'s global warming study was man's use of aerosol spray. You have to know the French were involved in a study concluding that Arrid Extra Dry is destroying the Earth. In a world in which everyone smelled, the French would be at no disadvantage. Aerosol spray. How convenient. According to global-warming hysterics, global warming would begin at the poles, melt the ice caps, and then the oceans would rise. On the basis of such fatuous theories, in August 1998, the host of NPR's "Science Friday," Ira Flatow, told his listeners to look out their windows and imagine the ocean in their own back yards. Explaining that receding glaciers in Antarctica would dramatically lift sea levels, he warned that their grandchildren could be "hanging fishing poles out of New York skyscrapers," thus qualifying as the world's all-time greatest "fishing story." Since then, evidence disproving "global warming" has been pouring in. God knows how many trees had to be sacrificed to print new data refuting global warming. In January 2002, the journal Science published the findings of scientists who had been measuring the vast West Antarctic ice sheet. Far from melting, it turns out the ice sheet is growing thicker. The researchers were Dr. Ian R. Joughin, an engineer at the jet propulsion laboratory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Pasadena, Calif., and Dr. Slawek Tulaczyk, a professor of earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. About the same time, the journal Nature published the findings of scientist Peter Doran and his colleagues at the University of Illinois. Rather than using the U.N.'s "computer models," the researchers took actual temperature readings. It turned out temperatures in the Antarctic have been getting slightly colder – not warmer – for the last 30 years. The chief scientist for Environmental Defense, Michael Oppenheimer, responded to the new findings by urging caution and warning that "there is simply not enough data to make a broad statement about all of Antarctica." That's interesting. We didn't have to wait for more data when lunatics curtailed the use of nuclear energy in this country on the basis of the movie "The China Syndrome." That was hard scientific evidence. We didn't wait for more data when DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) was banned on the basis of Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring," which brainwashed children into believing DDT would kill all the birds. American soldiers in World War II were bathed in DDT. Jews rescued from Nazi death camps were doused in DDT. It was a miracle invention: Tiny amounts of DDT kill disease-carrying insects with no harm to humans, protecting them from malaria, dengue and typhus. But in 1972, the U.S. banned one of the greatest inventions in modern history. Now environmentalists are in a panic that African nations will use DDT to save millions of lives. Last year, 80,000 people in Uganda alone died of malaria, half of them children. The United States and Europe have threatened to ban Ugandan imports if they use DDT to stop this scourge. Environmentalists would prefer that millions of Africans die so that white liberals may continue gazing upon rare birds. Liberals don't care about the environment. The core of environmentalism is a hatred for mankind. They want mass infanticide, zero population growth, reduced standards of living and vegetarianism. Most crucially, they want Americans to stop with their infernal deodorant use.
Man, she TOTALLY nailed it! I'd love to post more about this, but I've got to leave my smelly hovel right now to go kill some more babies...
i know..that's the kind of crap she does that's so unnecessary. she loves to label a group of people and slap the most extreme viewpoints on them. i thought about deleting that point out...just so there could be some real substantive discussion on the issues presented...but i thought it better to just post the whole thing and let that last comment cast weight on her article.
I want to see Ann Coulter and Maureen Dowd re-enact the Miller Lite/Supermodels in the fountain commercial: "Liberal Trollop!" "Conservative b****!"
Unfortunately it casts a dubious light on her entire piece. While I do agree there are unanswered questions about how we're impacting the environment (because I think the if question has already been answered), I have a hard time taking seriously someone who labels environmentalists as baby killers and claims the long-banned DDT is "one of the greatest inventions in modern history." Since it's hard for me to know what parts of her op-ed pieces are fact and what parts are liberal-baiting hyperbole, I generally ignore them all and throw the baby out with the bathwater (oops! There goes my mass infanticide tendencies again! )
that's the unfortunate consequence of making a point in this manner. we see it here on the boards ALL the time. nearly the exact same tactic over and over again. it does nothing to foster discussion, and it usually kills it.
Global Warming is a sham that is being used as an economic tool against the United States in my opinion. There is no evidence of Global Warming, only cyclical weather changes that are normal for the Earth. Scientists in Europe just completed temperature charts for Europe using core samples dating back to the Middle Ages. I wish I had saved that link, and I will look for the study. Their data disproves the Global Warming Theory convincingly. Having said this though, that doesn't mean humans should stop moving toward the elimination of fossil fuel use and cleaning up our environment. Here is an article from a Libertarian from the Cato Institute about DDT. The inventor of DDT, by the way, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1948 for his work. I am sure that everybody would agree that our pressure on Uganda to not use DDT is terrible considering that thousands of lives could be saved. ____________________________ Thursday, June 20, 2002 By Steven Milloy June 30, 1972 is a date that lives in junk science infamy. That’s when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned the insecticide DDT. The ban survives 30 years later, even as it has helped kill millions of people, mostly children. Widespread DDT use began in the U.S. in 1945 to control mosquitoes and cotton, soybean and peanut pests. DDT’s efficacy and low-cost were - and remain - unsurpassed. Rachel Carson inflamed the public against DDT with her book "Silent Spring." She claimed DDT harmed bird reproduction and caused cancer. But Carson misrepresented the then-existing science on bird reproduction and was dead wrong about DDT causing cancer. Carson wrote "Dr. [James] DeWitt's now classic experiments [show] that exposure to DDT, even when doing no observable harm to the birds, may seriously affect reproduction. Quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding season survived and even produced normal numbers of fertile eggs. But few of the eggs hatched." DeWitt's 1956 article in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry actually yielded a very different conclusion. DeWitt reported no significant difference in egg hatching between birds fed DDT and birds not fed DDT. Carson omitted mentioning DeWitt's report that DDT-fed pheasants hatched about 50 percent more eggs than "control" pheasants. Carson predicted a cancer epidemic that could hit "practically 100 percent" of the human population. This prediction never materialized, no doubt because it was based on a 1961 epidemic of liver cancer in middle-aged rainbow trout - an outbreak later attributed to aflatoxin, a toxic by-product of certain fungi. Activists blamed DDT for the disappearance of great birds such as the bald eagle and peregrine falcon. Supposedly, the insecticide harmed bird reproduction by thinning egg shells. But the bald eagle and peregrine falcon were hunted to near extinction decades before DDT was first used in the U.S. Many human and environmental stressors can contribute to thin egg shells. Laboratory experiments purporting to link DDT with egg shell thinning involved massive doses of the chemical, far in excess of what occurred in the wild. Moreover, bald eagle and falcon populations were already rebounding during the peak years of DDT use - thanks to laws limiting their hunting. Still, anti-DDT activism led to hearings before an EPA administrative law judge during 1971-72. After seven months and 9,000 pages of testimony, the judge concluded "DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man... DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man... The use of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife." Despite the exculpatory ruling, then-EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus banned DDT anyway. Ruckelshaus never attended the hearings, didn’t read the transcript and refused to release the materials used to make his decision. He even rebuffed a U.S. Department of Agriculture effort to obtain those materials through the Freedom of Information Act, claiming they were just "internal memos." This wasn’t surprising given Ruckleshaus’ bias. Ruckleshaus belonged to the Environmental Defense Fund, an activist group formed by the National Audubon Society to lobby for its agenda without endangering the Society’s tax-exempt status. That agenda included lobbying against DDT. After the ban, Ruckelshaus solicited donations for EDF on personal stationery that read, "EDF's scientists blew the whistle on DDT by showing it to be a cancer hazard, and three years later, when the dust had cleared, EDF had won." Another telling part of the DDT saga was unveiled during a lawsuit by scientists claiming the National Audubon Society and the New York Times defamed them as "paid liars" about DDT. Depositions revealed EDF and National Audubon Society leaders plotted to "silence" and discredit scientists who defended DDT. DDT use has virtually disappeared. Many countries blindly followed the U.S. ban or succumbed to activist pressure. Activists recently succeeded in pushing a virtual world-wide ban in the form of a United Nations’ treaty signed by the Bush administration, but not yet ratified by the Senate. The Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) treaty would permit DDT use only through expensive bureaucratic processes designed to dissuade rather than encourage use. The activists have done nothing, however, about malaria-causing mosquitoes. U.S. Government malaria experts wrote recently in the journal Emerging and Infectious Diseases, "Today, DDT is still needed for malaria control. If the pressure to abandon this effective insecticide continues,... millions of additional malaria cases worldwide [will result].... We are now facing the unprecedented event of eliminating, without meaningful debate, the most cost-effective chemical we have for the prevention of malaria. The health of hundreds of millions of persons in malaria-endemic countries should be given greater consideration before proceeding further with the present course of action." Rachel Carson has been canonized by environmental activists. Ruckleshaus has had a successful business career and advised presidential candidate George W. Bush. The EDF and National Audubon Society raise millions of dollars annually. They built their "success" on junk science and the bodies of third world children. They are what’s infamous, not DDT. Steven Milloy is the publisher of JunkScience.com, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the author of Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato Institute, 2001).
Ann is such an Ice Princess!! As repulsive as I find her demagoguery--she is oddly attractive. Have you seen her on Dennis Miller's HBO program? She actully cuts loose and is kinda funny....What am I saying?!! I mean...I HATE her!...I'm a Liberal! what is happening to me??!!
<b>Mrs.JB</b>: How come you can use sarcasm and hyperbole but Ann Coulter can't? I agree it hurts her credibility. Is it inappropriate for op-ed pieces or just a tactic to engender discourse?
I guess I'm just better at it. I don't claim Coulter's use of sarcasm is inappropriate. However if she's trying to sway anyone, it is highly ineffective. She's already regarded as something of a conservative circus sideshow, and most mainstream media outlets won't carry her column. I assume the main reason she gets any play on television is because she is an attractive female with outlandish political soundbites. That's fine if you're preaching to the choir, but as Max already pointed out, Coulter's brand of extremism only serves to alienate people and squelch rational discourse.
This article does little but spoonfeed a political agenda. When we're talking about this issue we shouldn't involve politics. Anyone recall the Antarctican ice-shelf that that collapsed last year around January and February? The northern section of the Larsen B ice-shelf, that had cosisted of an area between 1,200 - 1,300 square miles? This thing disintegrated in a period of 35 days. I wish Mrs. Coulter were capable of rationalizing this as a liberal misinformation campaign but this goes beyond politics. Between March 98' and March 99' 1,000 square miled Larson B and Wilkins ice shelves collapsed after an estimated 400 years of stability. I could go on and on about the very real situation in Antarctica. The north pole is melting at a rate that some scientists have projected that it could be totally gone by 2020. BBC.com As a result of the melting of the poles species of penguins such as the, adelie penguin, have had their populations shrunken by more than 1/4 their population. Anyways, I don't want to sound like a nut that lives in a tee-pee but there definately is a climatic change occuring. Perhaps its a cycle that the earth goes through. A natural pole shift perhaps? There is evidence that it is getting colder; not wamer in northeast asia and europe.
I agree with everything you said ... including that you are better at it! She is just too strident and self-serving for my taste. She wouldn't move me to buy Bud Light that's for sure. Actually part of my question was professional. Is the use of sarcasem and hyperbole verboten for op-ed pieces. Aren't they usually more academic and less extreme? She can do whatever she wants in her books. I doubt I'll buy one.
From Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote "The Skeptical Environmentalist"- "The Kyoto Protocol will do very little good—it will postpone warming for six years in 2100. Yet the cost will be $150 billion to $350 billion annually. Because global warming will primarily hurt Third World countries, we have to ask if Kyoto is the best way to help them. The answer is no. For the cost of Kyoto in just 2010, we could once and for all solve the single biggest problem on earth: We could give clean drinking water and sanitation to every single human being on the planet. This would save two million lives and avoid half a billion severe illnesses every year. And for every following year we could then do something equally good. " CASE CLOSED.
I think it really depends on the intended audience. Coulter has a definite crowd that she plays to -- and her bombastic, emotionally charged style works well in that narrow niche. But to reach a broader (and possibly more intellectually savvy) crowd, op-ed writers usually tone down the extreme partisan rhetoric and rely more on intellectual arguments (ie...William Safire) to prove their point.
Is this the best you can do? Bjorn Lomborg a.) is a statistician, not an expert on any field of biology or meterology, yet writes a book about biology and meterology b.) was shown to lie through use of selective data c.) has never submitted any work to peer review ( as scientist are wont to do for publication ) However, his book was reviewed by many scientists who specialize in the fields he dabbled in for his book ( besides the Scientific American, Science, and Nature rebuttals ) http://www.gristmagazine.com/books/lomborg121201.asp It's exactly the same crap Rush Limbaugh spouts on the radio, stuff based in some part on fact, which after investigation, turns out to be half-truths, you can actually check the footnotes on Al Franken's book but you can't on what Rush or Bjorn claim.
A couple of problems with her science. Ice sheets expand because global warming makes it warmer than usual on the poles, raising the temperatures enough to create more snowfall. Normally it is too cold for mass snowfall. Hence when it gets wamer ice sheets get thicker. Most warming theorists conclude that warming will precipitate mini-Ice Ages as the ice sheets expand (you know, big glaciers expanding). The main proponents don't say its going to get hot everywhere at once. The first indications are radical weather changes. A good example of this might be the extreme cold temperatures not normally experienced in Baltimore of wherever, which are explained by the theory of global warming, not proof against it. The main problem with global warming action advocates is that their models are not comprehensive, so they have overestimated the speed at which the problems are showing themselves. The problem is not that they've misdiagnosed the phenomenon.
Lord, what a steaming pile of crap. I'm sure the last sentence was meant to be funny, but it's frightening how many people believe this garbage... and/or what they hear on Rush. I'm not including you, Max, but there is minority of people in this country with a herd mentality buying into just this sort of BS. For crying out loud, it's pathetic. Tossing in something like that at the end of the column is gratuitous pandering to a fringe element of the conservatives in this country. I suppose the author thought it was amusing. She ruins any credibility that might have been buried in her piece by doing so, in my opinion, but I'm sure she could care less. Hell, it'll probably get her mentioned on Limbaugh. Joy!
So what do you do with the study done recently out of Europe that says that we are not signficantly warmer than any period in history, on the whole....that, in fact, the Middle Ages is the warmest era by far.
