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siberian mosquitoes

malaria was once rampant throughout Europe, the United
States, and into Canada, and that major problems with malaria
existed even into the 20th Century. For example, in the 1940s
in the Russian/Finnish War, malaria in Finland was one of the
major causes of morbidity in troops. Even before then, in the
1920s, there was a massive epidemic of malaria—a devasta-
ting epidemic—in 1922 and 1923—which went right up
through Siberia, and into Archangel on the White Sea, close
to the Arctic Circle. Global Warming Won’t Spread Malaria, PAUL REITER, Ph.D.

Sorry for your experience but it had more to to do with the DDT ban than global warming.

Oh seriously, have you been living under a rock for the past 50 years ?

Rachel Carson and DDT ? http://www.21stcenturysciencet...

Paul Ehrlich and the population bomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
Hows your soylent green today ?

Endless peak oil doom ? http://www.wsj.com/articles/wh...
BTW the first were out of oil doom, dates from the early 1900s

Page 99. Carson vividly describes the death of a bird that she thought may have been poisoned by a pesticide, but nowhere in the book does she describes the deaths of any of the people who were dying of malaria, yellow fever, plague, sleeping sickness, or other diseases that are transmitted by insects. Her propaganda in Silent Spring contributed greatly to the banning of insecticides that were capable of preventing human deaths. Carson shares the responsibility for literally millions of deaths among the poor people in underdeveloped nations. Dr. William Bowers, head of the Entomology Department at the University of Arizona, said in 1986 that DDT is the most significant discovery of all time, and “in malaria control alone it saved almost 3 billion lives.”

Rachel Carson’s lack of concern for human lives endangered by diseases transmitted by insects is revealed on page 187, where she writes: “Only yesterday mankind lived in fear of the scourges of smallpox, cholera and plague that once swept nations before them. Now our major concern is no longer with the disease organisms that once were omnipresent; sanitation, better living conditions, and new drugs have given us a high degree of control over infectious disease. Today we are concerned with a different kind of hazard that lurks in our environment—a hazard we ourselves have introduced into our world as our modern way of life has evolved.”

Surely Carson was aware that the greatest threats to humans are diseases such as malaria, typhus, yellow fever, Chagas’s disease, African sleeping sickness, and a number of types of Leishmaniasis and tick-borne bacterial and rickettsial diseases. She deliberately avoids mentioning any of these, because they could be controlled only by the appropriate use of insecticides, especially DDT. Carson evidently preferred to sacrifice those millions of lives rather than advocate any usage of such chemicals.

SNIP

The dead birds Wallace sent out for subsequent study were analyzed by a method that detected only “total chlorine content” and could not determine what kind of chlorine was present; none was analyzed for mercury contamination). It was obviously highly irresponsible for Wallace and Carson to jump to the conclusion that the Michigan State University robins were being killed by DDT, and especially for Carson to highlight the false theory in her book long after the truth was evident.

In many feeding experiments birds, including robins, were forced to ingest great quantities of DDT (and its breakdown product, DDE). Wallace did not provide any evidence that indicated the Michigan State University robins may have been killed by those chemicals. Researcher Joseph Hickey at the University of Wisconsin had testified before the Environmental Protection Agency hearings on DDT specifically that he could not kill any robins by overdosing them with DDT because the birds simply passed it through their digestive tract and eliminated it in their feces. Many other feeding experiments by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and various university researchers repeatedly showed that DDT and DDE in the diet could not have killed wild birds under field conditions. If Carson had mentioned these pertinent details it would have devastated her major theme, which continued to be the awful threats posed by DDT to all nonhuman creatures on the face of the Earth. Instead of providing the facts that would clarify such conditions, she spent several more pages

Yet, here I sit in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by papers (peer-reviewed, I guess I should add) which conclude:

(1) For the past two decades at least, and possibly for the past seven decades, the Earthâ(TM)s true surface air temperature has likely experienced no net change;

(2) there should have been a sizable CO2-induced increase in atmospheric radiative forcing during that time, but there wasnâ(TM)t. That must mean that a suite of compensatory feedbacks overwhelmed the âoegreenhouseâ impetus for warming; implying, therefore,

(3) that the planet will not warm from any man-produced increases in CO2; indicating

(4) any increases in temperature will likely fit the global trend of +0.048ÂC/decade, that is, about 0.5ÂC this centuryâ" the rate of warming that has existed since the Little Ice Age, centered around 1750 in Europe, South America, and China; suggesting

(5) that the heat storage in the upper ocean takes place in the upper 100 meters, and the magnitude provides a rise in temperature at those depths of 0.5ÂC in the past 50 years (in those parts of the ocean for which we have data);

(6) this global warming (and cooling) of the ocean occurs on biennial, ENSO, decadal and interdecadal period scales; thence,

(7) the ocean thermal changes on centennial-period scales, which appear as the warming trend through the past 50 to 100 years, can be explained by means of intrinsic internal modes of the Earth going through their normal cycle of warming and cooling, independent of both radiative and anthropogenic influences.

Who is "we"?

Yeah, right. So you indirectly cite Levitus as the basis for your argument.

You'll have to do better than that. The raw data does not show this, unless like the Levitus paper you're willing to draw conclusions from localized data and ignore the rest of the world. Which, it must be said, is a technique warmists are rather famous for. It's a form of lying. Like saying the current drought in California is "climate".

This article by some nuclear engineers at NC State is an excellent, fact-based breakdown of what the effects are of the Fukushima accident, with known numbers to date.

Bottom line: Three cancers.

Three cases of cancer that would not otherwise have occurred, and this is using the (very conservative) linear-no-threshold assumption.

Others in this thread have been bleating about how bad nuclear power accidents have been. The following quote from the UN's final report on the Chernobyl accident (a summary can be found here ) doesn't support their claims:

"Apart from the increase in thyroid cancer after childhood exposure, no increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality have been observed that could be attributed to ionizing radiation. The risk of leukemia, one of the main concerns (leukemia is the first cancer to appear after radiation exposure, because of its short latency time of 2 to 10 years), does not appear to be elevated, even among the recovery operation workers. Neither is there any proof of other non-malignant disorders that are related to ionizing radiation. However, there were widespread psychological reactions to the accident, which were due to fear of the radiation, not to actual radiation doses."

People's fear is very real and important. But it's not substantiated by facts.

1) Why would a *biology* journal publish physics work?

The wikipedia entry on Naturwissenschaften says that it's focus is 'interdisciplinary' natural sciences, which include physics and chemistry. Wikipedia does not state that it's a "*biology*" journal.

2) There were some initial failures in replicating the Pons-Fleischmann experiments. Later on there was much success after the reasons for the early failures was worked out:

Independent laboratories have duplicated all of these methods, and the reasons for failure when using commercial palladium metal are now understood. The reason for the failure while using commercial palladium is that the required properties of the palladium are neither uniform, nor easily duplicated. Only rare pieces of palladium, which do not crack when reacted with high concentrations of deuterium, are suitable. Apparently, having very fine particles of a suitable material is another essential condition for this phenomenon to work.

3) The initial failures by some teams to replicate the results did support initial skepticism, but the success of others to replicate the results and the discovery of the reasons for those initial failures has shown that the initial skepticism to be totally unfounded. There is *something* there -- exactly what that is has yet to be worked out.

Your statements that scientists are not pursuing this field is what is being disproven. There is plenty of work in this field yet to be done, but the work is being done.

For which part?
For humans living in the exclusion zone read anything about the area.
There's apparently about 400 people who either refused to leave or moved back later.

For exagerated claims about how the area was going to be an inhospitable wasteland read any current greenpeace article on the matter or read some old newspapers from the late 1980's.

As for the silly claims by the poster I replied to he might be interested to know they're planning to resettle large sections of the exclusion zone.
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2010/Chernobyl_repopulation.pdf

Not trying to be dick, but where is the link to verify what you are saying is in fact true? The only breakthroughs have been with adult stem cell. The following article is one doctor's opinion: http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/winter01/stem_cell.html

Not that I expect somebody who resorts to ad hominem attacks to even care, but I can cite Beck (2007) Figure 5: First Reconstruction of Trends in CO2 Atmospheric concentration based on actual measurement. The figure is transposed against the Antarctic ice core samples. You can see it here. My link is free. I did not read your article. If you will copy and paste the relevant part or present it for me in a free manner, I will be happy to review it.

As you cited an article saying that we are going to experience a longer interglacial (you know, the one I can't even read the abstract on), I'm going to shoot you one that says the opposite. This is why I argue for more research to be done on what exactly is happening here, and I applaud this new orbital observatory. Note that I did not once call for continued pollution, which is insane. I think we need to be prepared for an ice age. The authors of these papers somewhere write to prevent advancing glaciers, lots high temperature nuclear reactors must be deployed with enough energy density to cull back the advancing glaciers if the situation arises. Therefore, this is just one reason that to attempt to abandon nuclear energy is insanity for the survival and prosperity of humanity. Read it here.

Need something for that cough perhaps?

"Despite a backdrop of meager funding and career-killing derision from mainstream scientists and engineers, cold fusion is anything but a dead field of research. Presenters at the MIT event estimated that 3,000 published studies from scientists around the world have contributed to the growing canon of evidence suggesting that small but promising amounts of energy can be generated using the infamous tabletop apparatus."

"MIT's Peter Hagelstein, on the other hand, said "cold fusion" reactions have yielded surplus energy from as far back as the initial experiments in 1989. Verification of these controversial results is not the problem -- many labs around the world have reproduced parts of the results many times. "

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/08/cold_fusion?currentPage=all#

Navy Discovers Cold Fusion (again):
http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2292

"Last March, scientists at the annual conference of the august American Physical Society heard presentations on cold fusion. Next month, the Second International Conference on Future Energy will be held in Washington, D.C. The vast majority of physicists remains skeptical, but at the Office of Naval Research, six of the nine experiments performed produced an unexplainable amount of excess heat."

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060808/REPOSITORY/608080316&SearchID=73253345954312

"Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a tabletop accelerator that produces nuclear fusion at room temperature, providing confirmation of an earlier experiment conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), while offering substantial improvements over the original design."

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/ny_team_confirms_ucla_tabletop_fusion_10017.html

Science in Neglect
Nobel Laureate Speaks Out For Cold Fusion:

http://newenergytimes.com/news/2005/2005Lietz-ScienceInNeglectJosephson.htm

"The foreword by Dr. Frank Gordon in a [extern] summary report of February 2002 is so far the strongest statement of the Navy about their research:

We do not know if Cold Fusion will be the answer to future energy needs, but we do know the existence of Cold Fusion phenomenon through repeated observations by scientists throughout the world. It is time that this phenomenon be investigated so that we can reap whatever benefits accrue from additional scientific understanding. It is time for government funding organizations to invest in this research. "

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/18/18580/1.html

"First, a dozen techniques have been found to produce anomalous energy and benign nuclear products in certain solids. These are listed in the table (p. 76). Most of these methods have been duplicated at independent laboratories, and several can be made to work by anyone who would take the time to learn how. "

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ01/cold_fusion/cold_fusion.html

Edmund Storms* discusses the methods used to generate low energy nuclear reactions (LENR).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltZhii3g2HY

* Retired from the Los Alamos National Laboratory after thirty-four years of service. His work there involved basic research i

Yes, indeed: Solar Cycles, Not CO2, Determine Climate

Thank you for standing up to the trendy lemmings and their "global warming" hysteria. Facts are that we are actually entering into a long period of global cooling.

In the words of the eminent Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski:

The significance of the fact, immediately grasped by any competent climatologist, is that glacial advance is an early warning sign of Northern Hemisphere chilling of the sort that can bring on an Ice Age. The last Little Ice Age continued from about 1400 to 1850. It was followed by a period of slight warming. There are a growing number of signs that we may be descending into another Little Ice Age, all the mountains of global warming propaganda aside.

Slashdot should have ran the more interesting story pertaining to nuclear decay rates that came up this week, which my nuclear physicist associate (Oliver Manuel) forwarded to me ...

Evidence for Correlations Between Nuclear Decay Rates and Earth-Sun Distance

Seach the Firehose for "decay rate" and you'll find my submission, which was rejected (not complaining actually, just a bit confused).

And it's not even that this result is the first time it's been noticed. Russian researcher Simon Schnoll has performed *thousands* of simple geiger counter isotope decay rate experiments and noticed the same exact thing -- that there is an astrophysical influence to decay rates ...

Russian Discovery Challenges Existence of 'Absolute Time'

The idea that nuclear decay rates might not be random is pretty paradigm-changing. We can doubt the results, but shouldn't we at least be talking about it? It seems to me like a very important finding.

Isn't this even more pertinent to the concept of anthropogenic warming than the absolute dating article Slashdot went with???

Great points. For those interested here are some links dealing with the many issues surrounding "global warming". http://links.veronicachapman.com/OriginsOfOil.htm http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Glaciers.htm http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.c...9-68c808e8809e http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...n2871211.shtml http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/New...s/Aerosols.pdf http://nasadaacs.eos.nasa.gov/articl...6_highlow.html http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17997788/site/newsweek/?ic http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,269886,00.html http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/20_1-2_CO2_Scandal.pdf http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=438 http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2007/arch07/070507martianwarming.htm http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=8gfbewe7&keywords=global%20warming#dest http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071211101623.htm

If it were shown that careful radiocarbon testing of an item of known age, uniformly contaminated by its surrounding environment, gave one age as a result of repeated testing or testing by several laboratories, then there would be no question regarding the concept of the technique. Let us remember that a jawbone, repeatedly tested, failed to give the same data again and again. What then of a blind test, conducted by several laboratories, of an artifact of known age? This is a crucial experiment!

In fact, the denouement came in 1989, with a blind test, conducted by the British Science and Engineering Research Council (BSERC), at 38 of the world's leading radiocarbon testing laboratories. According to Andy Coghlan, the council commissioned a blind trial that compared the accuracy with which 38 laboratories around the world dated artifacts of known age. An item of known age was divided into 38 parts. One part was sent to each testing laboratory for a full measurement of its age. After careful testing by the 38 laboratories, only seven produced results that the organizers of the trial considered to be satisfactory.(28) At the August, 1990, Symposium of the Canadian Society for Interdisciplinary Studies, Gunnar Heinsohn read from a newspaper account of the BSERC meeting, at which this evidence was disclosed. None of the testing laboratories achieved a correct date, even with plus or minus tolerances, and many were off by thousands of years.

Another interesting part ...

Frank C. Hibben also discussed the process of radiocarbon dating. After outlining several problems associated with using this method, he stated that "[e]ven with these drawbacks and pitfalls...archaeologists and laboratory technicians began to hammer out the exact history of the earliest Americans. The dates badly out of line were disregarded."(13) (Emphasis added.) With what were dates badly out of line? They were out of line with the accepted and established chronology of the history of the American continent. As Robert E. Lee informed us above, this is, apparently, quite common. Regarding this same point, Ron Willis stated that "[t]here are anomalous dates in the series [of dates] which do not fit. This is common in the C-14 process. LIKE ANY GOOD ARCHAEOLOGIST, I WILL IGNORE THE DATES THAT DO NOT FIT."(14) (Emphasis added.) Once again, we are informed that dates that do not fit the accepted chronology are ignored. We are told that finding anomalous radiocarbon dates is a common occurrence and that good archaeologists will ignore anomalous dating evidence.

Not everybody agrees that there is validity to these dates ...

"The radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results," wrote R. E. Lee. "There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are actually selected." - R. E. Lee, "Radiocarbon: Ages in Error," ANTHROPOLOGICAL JOURNAL OF CANADA, 19 (1981), p. 27

I wouldn't believe the dating results for these types of things. There is a big problem with trying to date asteroids, meteorites and such.

Absolute dating assumes that isotopes degrade in a purely statistical manner. There is reason to believe, however, that changes in electromagnetic bombardment of an isotope can affect the decay of those isotopes. Using a simple experimental apparatus, decay rates can be correlated with the phases of the moon, the motions of the Sun and the stars. Go to http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/tim e.html for the details. This is not some crazy idea. Labs already perform corrections on raw carbon dating data due to electromagnetic bombardment into the atmosphere (which affects the amount of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, which are then inhaled by living things).

There is also good reason to believe since the Deep Impact mission to Comet Tempel 1 that comets are merely asteroids on elliptical orbits that have picked up the voltage of deep space and then come into range of the Sun's weak electric field. Rather than being the trail of sublimating ice, the comet's coma and tail are evidence of electric machining. This makes sense because asteroids have occasionally been observed to turn into comets near the gas giant planets. If this is true, then this would mean that asteroids are regularly exposed to potentially large amounts of electromagnetic radiation. For more information, go here: http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pdf .

This process of electric machining would almost surely affect the dating ages of these objects *if* the experiment linked to above is true. It might also explain why some craters don't quite date to the years that we think they should.

This of course causes all sorts of problems for archaeology, geology and astronomy, and this fact alone might induce a lot of scientists to want to look the other way. So, I wouldn't expect a lot of curiosity on these things so long as they pose such a threat to research that has already been done.

Both sites I linked to are not Right Wing, they're actually liberal sites -- classical liberal.

The second article has a link to the normally left wing NY Times: What the World needs now is DDT. Good article.

Here's another link refuting Carson's garbage, not from a right wing site, either.

"Oh but what about all the waste from the batteries"... I hate that typical response to your opinion/suggestion. Duh, recycle them into *gasp* new batteries. I just wanted to chip in that my current ideal world (until we have those transporter thingies) would be absolutely covered with maglev train routes and hubs for them. Soon as we make them go 500mph or so we get rid of the planes. The government is just sitting on its ass. Fun and interesting linkages: http://www.evworld.com/images/US_highspeed_railcor ridors.jpg http://www.nlr.net/images/NLR-Map-large.jpg http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/mag netrain.html

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/Spr ing03/Antikythera.html

What were engineers doing over 2k years ago? How about building the Antikythera Mechanism (web copy of a June 1959 Scientific American article, p60-7)

An amazingly complex, intricate, and accurate mechanical astronomical calculation device from 80 BC. Found in a shipwreck in 1900, and not fully reverse engineered until 1973, there are no other examples of this level technology in the ancient world.

"It is hard to exaggerate the singularity of this device, or its importance in forcing a complete re-evaluation of what had been believed about technology in the ancient world. For this box contained some 32 [brass] gears, assembled into a mechanism that accurately reproduced the motion of the sun and the moon against the background of fixed stars, with a differential [gear] giving their relative position and hence the phases of the moon."

You can see a reconstructed version of the Antikythera Mechanism here. Another article detailing the probable creation date of the device based on the construction of the gears can be found here"

..it was more sophisticated than anything like it until the Eighteenth Century, nearly two thousand years later!"

Another article makes the conjecture that ancient navigators could have used the Antikythera Mechanism to determine longitude via the position of the moon (1800 years before longitude calculation was perfected in England)

Actually, there's a really good article called Who Killed Nuclear Power? on the demise of the US Nuclear power industry. It turns out to be a complex mix of economics and politics, surrounding the both the Three Mile Island incident and the end of the 1970s oil crisis - it was believed that the planned power plants were not going to be needed and would no longer be economical.

Check out the article, it's really interesting.

Now, do you have any reasons for opposing fetal stem-cell research?

I'm fully in favour of stem-cell research - just not using fetal cells. Consider the alternative.

Chernobyl is a wasteland

No it's not. (Complete with actual pictures, too.)

This is why I don't put much stock in your rather popular argument; it's based on misinformation and often flat-out lies about the dangers of fission, based on 1950s horror movies and decades of public ignorance.

It's just radiation, you know, a natural thing we're all exposed to all the time, not a malicious, intelligent, life-destroying golem. It's time we outgrew our childish fears and starting examing the actual, you know, facts.

Mercury: Overplayed or Overstated?
DDT: Controls Malaria which kills over a million people per year. and is a major killer of children under 5.
Dioxin: A baddie, But was it truly necessary to evacuate people?
Asbestos: Only things I saw was people complaining about others getting money for 'exposure' while showing no detrimental health effects.

Alar on apples. Bogus

Silicon Breast Implants Bogus

DDT Mostly Bogus

Somewhere along the way we lost our ability to actually use science and facts to evaluate things and have fallen back on a faith based consensus pseudo-science.

Remember, None of us are getting out of here alive. Life - A sexually transmitted terminal disease. Always fatal.

article on von Neumann

Yesterday news also hit of bioethicist Dan Brock advocating mandatory abortion for disabled people such as blind and mentally ill.

This is not a new concept, but is one that is growing in feasability and global support.

What does this have to do with cloning and stem cell research? Well they all have the same amoral drive: creating a "better" human race through science without any moral guidelines. As we see on this board, many people ridicule those of us with moral presuppositions as "non-scientific", "ignorant", etc. Above, though, we see an extreme example of this.

Fast-forward now 10 or 20 years. Science has guaranteed a "perfect" child to anybody who can afford one. A minority of rich people get smarter, stronger, better-looking, and richer, in contrast to those who still suffer with gross things like blindness and the worst- mental inferiority. It wasn't enough to genetically engineer perfect children. The question now is "Why hold on to that last moral presupposition that we shouldn't kill scientifically inferior people?" You may think me an extremist, but it's happened before.

That is the question that should be answered today. If you truely believe in removing morals from science, be logically consistent with it: advocate a super-human race and the death of all inferior people. If you believe in moral presuppositions, though, realize what unchecked research in cloning, embryionic stem cells, and science in general will lead to. Either way, the question is: what criteria do you use to value human life? You may have about a year to decide.

There are alternatives, such as adult stem cells, which have potential as well and sidestep ethical concerns.