CFACT Europe

Peace Please

by Einar Du Rietz

Note: This is not an official EU banner, but displayed in the Comission.

As military war is possibly the worst threat to humanity and the environment, alongside with famine caused by socialised economies, the Nobel Peace Price, is indeed one of of top events of the year. And constantly debated. This year, as well as previous.

The usual questions are: Should it really go to an organisation, and not to an heroic individual? Answer is that it’s OK according to Nobel’s will, though most of us probably find heroes more exciting.

Was it the right choice, and, the recurring question, is it really an honor, given the rather questionable choices previous years. Sure, there are some real heroes on the list, but to give it to Obama, not because he stopped any wars and atrocities, but because he had said he hoped to, made even the recipient himself embarrassed. And Gore and IPCC? It’s not customary to take back the prize, but Climategate ought to have been embarrassing for the committee.

The most heard comment about this year’s pick of the EU is that the project it really not that succcesful for the moment. On the other hand, you can hardly deny that it was, and is, a peace project. There are still unsolved conflictcs among members and neighbours, Cyprus, Sudetenland, Northern Balkan, but we will never know how the 20th century would have developed if not for the EEC/EU. READ MORE…

Safety First – But No Terrorism Please

by Einar Du Rietz

Reluctant to write anything nice about Greenpeace, I still feel obliged to extend some compliments for their recent action at two nuclear plants in Sweden.

In order to, apart from being against nuclear, and energy in General, draw attention to the importance of safety, a group, all non Swedes, broke in to the safety area, one of them also managing to overnight before being caught.

They were all arrested, but only the overnighter was fined.

It should be added that they did only go as far as the first security area, not the top security. Good so.

Safety remains an issue, when it comes to nuclear. Not because the power plants in Northern Europe are especially vulnerable (with the exception of Ignalina) – no risk for earth quakes, reasonable precaution measures – but because they are too old. And big. READ MORE…

Hit The Road

by Einar Du Rietz

My esteemed colleague Teresa Küchler at SvD in Brussels, draw my attention to the rather awkward debate in the budget negotiations in the European Parliament, concerning the, apparently, no less awkward Copenhagen based, EU financed, European Environment Agency.

 The EEA, in their own words, have a noble cause: “Our task is to provide sound, independent information on the environment. We are a major information source for those involved in developing, adopting, implementing and evaluating environmental policy, and also the general public.”

What was up for questioning however, from the committee reviewing the budget, was somewhat different.

Anyone on a visit to Copenhagen, might wish to visit the offices, and admire the flower arrangements on the facade. Then again, maybe not. As this rather extravagant arrangement, costing about 300 000 Euro, naturally perished in the Danish climate. READ MORE…

They Still Sing

by Einar Du Rietz

About 50 years ago, the book Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson was published, and triggered an environmental debate that has been going on since then. Lot’s of articles are written about this these days, and, Cato Institute, among others, has published an essay collection.

Carson passed away in 1964, and I do not for a moment doubt her good intentions, but the sad fact is that few books probably have caused as much damage.

On the positive side, we can notice that basically all of her alarms turned out to be false. The world in general, has just gotten better, cleaner and more developed.

At the same time, the impact the book had triggered – together with other doomsayers of the time – a green movement that has consistently fought all of the above.

And most importantly, and sad, is that it triggered the debate on DDT, eventually leading to a ban. This is probably the most disastrous mistake by the greens and politicians globally, not counting the Soviet experiment, have commited. We will never know for certain, but it’s most likely that, without the ban, Malaria would long ago have been exterminated, instead of taking millions and millions of lives.

But the birds still sing in the not so silent spring.

New Concepts – Constructive Ideas

by Einar Du Rietz

Not yet a Tornado

Some years ago, my esteemed colleague and friend Edgar Gärtner coined the concept Eco Nihilism, describing it as the worst threat to common sense in the environmental debate, and consequently to the environment.

I somehow love innovative, conclusive expressions. 

This is a new one Noble Cause Corruption, coined by Anthony Watts. (To noble to take credit however)

Read the article to get the whole picture, but let me give you some highlights:

 ANTHONY WATTS: There’s a term that was used to describe this. It’s called noble cause corruption. And actually I was a victim of that at one time, where you’re so fervent you’re in your belief that you have to do something. You’re saving the planet, you’re making a difference, you’re making things better that you’re so focused on this goal of fixing it or changing it that you kind of forget to look along the path to make sure that you haven’t missed some things. READ MORE…

The Fat Lady Doesn’t Sing – Yet

by Einar Du Rietz

You get Tosca instead. It’s a pity I could not use the brilliant headline from this article: Apocalypse Not, by Matt Ridley, in Wired Science. It sums up a lot.

“Over the five decades since the success of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and the four decades since the success of the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth in 972, prophecies of doom on a colossal scale have become routine. Indeed, we seem to crave ever-more-frightening redictions—we are now, in writer Gary Alexander’s word, apocaholic. The past half century has brought us arnings of population explosions, global famines, plagues, water wars, oil exhaustion, mineral shortages, falling sperm counts, thinning ozone, acidifying rain, nuclear winters, Y2K bugs, mad cow epidemics, killerbees, sex-change fish, cell-phone-induced brain-cancer epidemics, and climate catastrophes.

So far all of these specters have turned out to be exaggerated. True, we have encountered obstacles, public-health emergencies, and even mass tragedies. But the promised Armageddons—the thresholds that cannot be uncrossed, the tipping points that cannot be untipped, the existential threats to Life as We Know It—have consistently failed to materialize.” READ MORE…

Increasing Resources

by Einar Du Rietz

Oil prices might go up and down, and as for the price of petrol, in most of Europe it’s a matter of taxes. When I was a kid, in the 70′s, I was told there was some sort of Oil Cricis, and then with everything happening in the Middle East and today it’s Syria – and still Iran – and the Arctic…Well, those are all problems, but check out this article on the real situation concerning oil.

“As the energy expert Leonardo Maugeri contends in a recent report published by the Belfer Center at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, ‘contrary to what most people believe, oil supply capacity is growing worldwide at such an unprecedented level that it might outpace consumption.’

Mr. Maugeri, a research fellow at the Belfer Center and a former oil industry executive, bases that assertion on a field-by-field analysis of most of the major oil exploration and development projects in the world. He concludes that ‘by 2020, the world’s oil production capacity could be more than 110 million barrels per day, an increase of almost 20 percent.’”

As a colleague likes to point out; Resources Don’t Exist. They are created by humans. Some hundred years ago, petrol was unheard of. Some thousand years ago [fill in what you like] was unheard of. In a hundred years from now, or maybe even ten years, brilliant humans might have found even more ways to turn strange materia into energy. Looking forward to that, but until then, keep that oil flowing, you courageous engineers.

The Summer of Science

by Einar Du Rietz

Where Would You Like To Go

Unlike other summers, this year is rightfully filled with daily news. The EU, Syria, just to mention a few and disregarding the Olympics. No tabloids with reported aliens or slight nudity in the city.

For fans of science, and science fiction, however, we get our fair share.

According to a most ambitious take on Time Travel, this prospect also reveals sociological, and in a way political, patterns.

No, stop it right right there. Regardless of that particle under the Swiss/French alps, No, it’s not possible. The interesting thing is that conservatives/classical liberals tend to be more inclined to travel to the future, than to the past. The same group of people who normally question Malthus (refuted long ago by reality), and Rachel Carson (same thing). READ MORE…

What’s That Buzz

by Einar Du Rietz

You might remember the Back-to-Nature movement of the 70′s. That was a rather harmless way for people, longing for the genuine way of living, to move into the countryside to enjoy the splendor of bad, or no, plumbing.
Fine with me. A general observation is that most of these people eventually moved back to the cities, naturally with the exception of those who really knew the fine art of running a farm, instead of just manhandling animals. A slight, but just slight, generalisation, is also that they started to apply both standards and politics in their new back yards. Most Green parties in Northern Europe have their majority of supporters in fancy city center neighbourhoods.

The thing this year is bee keeping. In the city.

It’s a nice idea for the Hilton to be able to serve fresh honey. Nice idea for anyone, really. Bees, if handled the right way, tend to stay at home. When they wander, no such luck. READ MORE…

Just Stay Cool

by Einar Du Rietz

It was on the evening news. And then in the morning papers. The arctic ices were melting with unprecedented speed.

Turns out it was Greenland and not very unprecedented.

“’Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time,’says Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data.” As quoted here.

Could be added that Greenland is, albeit a large part, not the entire arctic region.

Climate indeed changes, and typically in a cyclical manor. Greenland apparently is hit on a 150 years basis, more global changes tend to have a 500 year span, at least in modern times. Greenland is Danish territory, so I guess the Danes now remember their loss five hundred years ago, when enemy troops could walk across the ice and change the map of Europe.

Today, Greenland is great for research and all forms of arctic exploration, and also a crucial landing point for refueling of smaller aircraft. I would not recommend trying to cross the ice to go there, but the good news is the melting apparently stopped and the ice started growing, only days after the alarm.

A Cold Playground

by Einar Du Rietz

Still Sailing in the Battle Against a Decent Future

Ask me about a Doom Sayer or Dr Killjoy, and I’ll direct you to Greenpeace.

First, the problem was that the poles were melting (they are not, in any lasting way) and that the polar beers faced extinction (the population is increasing). Then, the prospect of drilling for gas and oil in the Arctics, possible partly because of technological innovation, and partly by some more accessible areas, became the problem.

For the green activists (if I used a more proper word, I guess they would sue me), fidning targets seems to be the overall priority.

Greenpeace is trying to kick out prospectors from the area. Some are advocating applying a similar UN protection, to the one on Antarctica. There are lots of differences here. One of them being people living there. Antarctica is penguins and scientists, both admirable if different ways. The arctics is about indigenous populations in need of all sorts of energy and prosperity.

Drilling, regardless of which company (and I might add that I’m totally against expropriation, regardless of cause), could be a blessing for the people, and the countries there.

So please tread carefully as Green tourists, and please be gentle to the polar beers.

I'm OK

C’est en Septembre

by Einar Du Rietz

A Great Comedy for a Rainy Day

Al Gore for less than a Euro. Fine with me. It’s been a while since someone mentioned that movie. Incidentally, yesterday, I friend told me that when her daughter had to watch it in class, she gave her a list with the ten worst fallacies in the movie. To her surprise, the public school teacher copied it and distributed for the following discussion.

Those are the sorts of things that can brighten a rainy summer day. The other thing is to take the time to read all the newspapers, even though really interesting news normally are scarce this time of year. The global warming hysteria really seems to have slowed down and the IPCC people seem busy trying to find their own explanations to the lack of warming the past decade. Still people, especially in the media – on all sides – still hastily interpret any change in the ever changing weather as either a sign that they were right. And then about the weather forecasts not being reliable. They never have been.

One thing that is fairly predictable, and sometimes devastating – in Russia this year, tragic – is flooding. Right now an emergency in many parts of Northern Europe. Local flooding is fairly possible to predict, and risk areas ought to be rather easy to identify by now. As every year, take precautions, and think twice before building that dream house on that extraordinarily cheap piece of land on the river bank. READ MORE…

Honor as Due

by Einar Du Rietz

Not Creating Prosperity

“Welcome to the United Nations. It’s your world”, reads the top banner.

Thank you very much, but I’ll stick to the part that belongs to me, while – also – doing my modest share in trying to persuade other people to please not make a mess of the rest of the world.

This is an important reflection to make when noticing the – indeed faboulus – neews that many parts of the so called Millennium Goals, set in the year 2000, aiming at some sort of deadline three years from now, have been accomplished in the past years. The overall poverty and starvation levels in the world have decreased by approximately 50 percent.

Hooray to that, and good luck with the remaining 50 percent. READ MORE…

Beware of Atlas – He Might Shrug

by Einar Du Rietz

The Rio circus is over. For now. And everyone agree that nothing really came out of it. Apart from hefty hotel bills and an even costlier wish list (more reports on cfact.org).

Media is however doing its best to sell the shaky message from the UN.

One report that made the headlines all over the world was the report from UNISDR, which somehow got interpreted as stating that man made, weather changes were the increasing cause of disasters during the past 20 years.

Says UNISDR head, Margareta Wahlström (my translation): “About 90 percent of all nature catastrophes over the past twenty years have been weather related. The increase can be connected to climate change. Heavy urbanisation and bad preparedness have contributed.”

Underline that last sentence and discuss it in class. When you are done, also try to draw the logic line from a nature catastrophe, over weahter to climate change, and further to anthropogenic climate change. Because that’s what’s implicit in – if not the report – most of the reporting.  READ MORE…

CFACT Europe Author Updates Bestseller

CFACT Europe’s long time friend, writer and intellectual contributor, Dr Edgar L. Gärtner, has up-dated and republished his famous book Öko-Nihilismus (Eco Nihilism).

A must read if you read German, and if you are interested in translations and publication outside the German speaking sphere, get in touch.

These are the bibliographical details:

Edgar L. Gärtner: Öko-Nihilismus 2012. Selbstmord in Grün. TvR
 Medienverlag
 (www.tvrmedienverlag.de), Jena 2012. 316  Seiten. € 19,90. ISBN
 978-3-94031-31-8.

Naturally, you may also visit Edgars’s web site, to order the book or find other intersting things.

Congratulations Edgar!