DDT, Madoff, Gore

November 25, 2009

My Damascus moment about environmentalism came about before the word came into vogue. All it took was holding a dead infant in Huejutla, Mexico in 1963. His last temperature was 106. His stomach was distended beyond anything I had ever seen. He died from malaria.

Having read Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962 I knew several things.

DDT kills mosquito larvae. Rachel Carson told us that DDT also kills Peregrine falcons. The math was simple. How many dead birds are equal to one dead brown skinned Mexican baby? I say “brown skinned” because, in the end, all the environmental claptrap, and we thought that Lysenko was a horse’s ass, was able to overcome the scientific method and reasoned discourse. The environmental movement was founded and predicated on wealthy White people feeling warm and fuzzy about themselves. The science never counted. More than 2,000,000 sub-Saharan black babies die each year from malaria. Some of the countries, and I use the word – countries – ever so lightly want to buy DDT from the United States. In our rush to save the Peregrine falcon we banned its production in 1971. We even banned its export. We also banned the over the counter sale of Phisohex. Boobs, 2. Science, 0.

Black African babies are worth even less than brown skinned Mexican babies.

The Peregrine falcon is thriving.

White people, people who have never worked at the minimum wage, people who think plastic bags are evil, people whose only knowledge of brown skinned Mexicans is when they kill their crab grass in an environmentally sensitive manner, people for whom last November’s ballot ended in a tumescent rush at the thought of electing a Black man, people who worry about polar bears and baby seals, seals being one of the bears’ favorite meals, people who had parents who thought that not eating lettuce was a moral , people who look around at Western Civilization and say “No Thanks”, people who confuse feelings with ideas, people who know that even the fabled Cuban medical system cannot cure Castro’s 3 year bellyache because Cheney is putting the evil eye on him, people who would not know that the sharp end of the bullet goes in first, people who believe that all it takes to make things better is for good men to want it, these people were scammed by the eco-freaks for decades.

It should have been obvious.

40 years ago we were given 30 years to live. The science was settled. Paul R. Ehrlich, Ph.D. said we would starve to death or freeze to death or both by the end of the century. The date on this morning’s paper tells me it is 2009. We forgot, at our peril, Orwell telling us “The obvious and the true have to be defended”.

30 years ago the science was settled. A new ice age was coming at us like a steroid fueled hurricane. The only thing that could save us was Global Warming. I must confess that I did my part to deplete the ozone layer be squirting some Right Guard out the bathroom window every morning.

20 years ago a new Ned Ludd appeared on the scene. Right after he was the first national figure to tell us about a convicted murderer, a wayward feral Black man named Willie Horton, being furloughed by Governor Dukakis, Senator Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. [I always add Jr. to distinguish him from his father Senator Albert Arnold Gore, Sr. whose main job in life was to be the bagman for Armand Hammer, a close personal friend of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev] adopted his Chicken Little persona. This man, as neddy a dunce who ever was on the national stage, told us that – A – the world was ending and – B- it was our fault and then – C – the only way to salvation was to buy carbon credits from him. Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as he made himself out to be.

In 1996 the President of the United States, Handsome Billy from Hot Springs, and how I miss him, told us in August how hot it was. It being hot was proof that hotness is caused by heat and that as soon as he gets around to it he will ask the Senate to pass the Kyoto Treaty to save us from ourselves. He was distracted by the Oval Office thrill running up his leg and never did get around to it. That was the same year my favorite feminine munchkin, Donna Shalala, then a member of the Cabinet, told us that we would all be dead from AIDS in 10 years. I’ve been holding my breath for 3 years.

Is there a pattern here?

Yes.

Things have rather quiet in the Bermuda Triangle for a while, haven’t they?

A ship carrying cement was lost. 6 planes disappeared. Magnetic compasses sometime go haywire. Strange things happen on the seas. Ask any sailor. I think Nostradamus explained all this, didn’t he?

The basis of all literature on the Bermuda Triangle begins with a 1947 story in Argosy, a man’s magazine before Playboy. When the provenance of all subsequent articles is traced back it arrives at the article in Argosy. Anytime a theory is peer reviewed in Argosy it sure as Hell fills me with certitude. As soon as the National Enquirer confirms it it will be set in stone forever, right? Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter from the New York Times, scotched the lie that Stalin killed 8,000,000 Kulaks in the early ‘30s, didn’t he?

The “fatal conceit” of modern American Liberals is that since they are right they can never be wrong.

The iluminati of the Left gather “in council rooms far apart” to decide what the noble agenda is to be. Once it is decided it is enforced like a Politburo ukase. There is no opposition allowed. And, yes, they will cook the books. And, yes, the did cook the books.

Scientific integrity – methodology, independent replication, open criticism, vigorous debate – is ignored. Argumentum ad hominem is the weapon of choice.

Einstein said he only had to be proved wrong once.

Tomatoes were once thought to be poisonous.

“Let me show you how I have 11 fingers. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, and 5 are 11, right?”

I suggest that correlation is not causation.

We forget post hoc ergo propter hoc at our mortal peril.

The basis for the Global Warming tooth ache of the last 30 years can be explained by using one of the great words in the English language.

BULLSHIT

The only thing that could save us from the soon to be upon us Ice Age in the ‘70s was Global Warming.

The only thing that can save us from the horrors of Global Warming is a quick return of a new Ice Age.

Only an intellectual, a really, really smart one can believe that.

The group is filled with intellectual Bernie Madoffs.

Vice President Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. has become Alpha Gump. About things scientific he is as smart as a box of starch. He has become the Elmer Gantry of pseudo science. His collection plate overflows. Lysenko will be making a comeback as the patron saint of the rhetorical incontinence. Gump, the Ginormous Gasbag of spluttering scientific bunkum, is about to become undone.

“The solid world exists. Stones are hard. Water is wet.
Hold on to that.”

Several good things happen whenever we have a warming trend.

More land becomes arable. People eat more protein. They get smarter. Life gets better. Am I missing something here?

13000 years ago the last Ice Age ended. Men come out of hiding in caves and started something called civilization. If you prefer the company of mastodons and saber tooth tigers you can have my share.

It got warmer in Europe about 1000 years ago. We had the Renaissance. Dante, remember? Michelangelo. Then came Shakespeare. Along came the so far successful experiment in free men ruling themselves. If it gets too hot outside come inside and turn the A/C on.

Melting icebergs, drowning polar bears, disappearing rain forests, the curse of plastic bags, condoms made from organic materials…Who can write fiction?

At least lemmings have an excuse. They’re dumb animals.

We’re not.

The cliff is right ahead of us.

Thank God Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, gave the world 50 days to live in mid-October. I thought all the horses’ asses were on this side of the Atlantic.

In addition to the hard learned lesson about ecological flapdoodle that I got in Mexico I learned how markets work. That’s a different story.

Would not the encouragement of malaria relieve us of the vexing question of abortion? All the Kennedys could get Holy Communion what with all the little brown, black, and yellow buggers being dead. A win/win for the environment.



KS