Posted on 01/20/2008 4:22:53 AM PST by T Ruth
Imagine living in any part of the US one hundred years ago. Your home was likely heated by coal if not wood burned in smoky stoves and furnaces. Factories of every size similarly belched out particulate laden pollution. Yet where was the heart disease then?
When nano particles of calcium and other minerals were found to easily enter the bloodstream was this news? Not hardly. Why? Nobody on the left has any appetite to explore the pollution in the shower caused by low-flow shower heads!
People who had a life expectancy of 35 years didn’t live long enough to show heart disease.
From my observation of family and friends I have come to that conclusion, also. Widely varying lifestyles but similar health, good and bad, in the same gene pool.
“..The study was primarily funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). ...” ~ T Ruth
That’s really all we need to know. bttt
“...One could hope that when a full scientific analysis of an environmental problem is completed the proper course of remediation would be obvious to all concerned.
Experience shows this is not so.
Consider the issue of a diminishing ozone layer in the stratosphere, a problem Wright dealt with. Most likely due to CFCs diffusing into the ozone region from below, the depressed ozone levels might result in a higher ground-level flux of UV(B) radiation and thus a rise in skin cancer rates. In response to this possibility, an international meeting was held in Montreal in 1987. Out of the deliberations, there came the so-called Montreal Protocol. This agreement with subsequent actions led to the decision to stop worldwide production of CFCs at the end of 1995 and require a switch to new refrigerants of uncertain effectiveness and safety.
What went on at Montreal is the subject of a book by Karen T. Litfin entitled Ozone Discourses. http://www.amazon.com/Ozone-Discourse-Karen-T-Litfin/dp/0231081367
She described her initiation into reality as follows:
Superficially, this landmark ozone regime appears to have been the result of a rigorous process of risk analysis and adroit diplomacy with sophisticated atmospheric models serving as the scientific basis of the negotiations.
Like others, I was beguiled by a faith in the ability of science to make politics more rational and cooperative. As I interviewed the participants and read the source documents from the international negotiating process, however, I began to suspect that more complicated dynamics than epistemic cooperation were involved. It became increasingly evident that “knowledge” was not deeply implicated in questions of framing and interpretation and that these were related to perceived interests.
Although the range of uncertainty was narrow, atmospheric science did not provide a body of objective and value-free facts from which international cooperation emerged. Rather, knowledge was framed in light of specific interests and preexisting discourses so that questions of value were rendered as questions of fact, with exogenous factors shaping the political salience of various modes of interpreting that knowledge. In particular the discourse of precautionary action, not itself mandated by atmospheric science, moved from a subordinate to a dominant position.4
Litfin later describes the two main groups making up the U.S. delegation to the Montreal negotiations. Of course, there were the scientists. But ultimately of greater importance were people she calls “a group of ecologically minded knowledge brokers,” mostly employed by the EPA. It was they who were “instrumental both in translating the available knowledge into terms understandable to decision-makers and in pushing forward specific policy proposals. This group was more inclined than were the scientists to employ knowledge on behalf of far-reaching policy recommendations.”5 In fact, says Litfin, almost no scientists “advocated the virtual ban on CFCs that was promoted by the U.S. delegation.”6
What happened in Montreal in relation to ozone provides us with a prototypical scenario for handling alleged or real environmental problems once they reach the hands of political knowledge brokers, people with a “we-must-save-the-earth” mentality.
With such a mind-set, extreme political options will always be the most favored ones. It is clear, then, to use Litfin’s words, that “while [scientific] knowledge [is] indispensable, it [is] always open to interpretation, and it [is] never political” (was changed to is). ...” ~ Edwin A. Olson ~ Emeritus Professor of Geology Whitworth College Spokane, Washington 99251 PSCF, 48 (June 1996): 74-81.
Complete article here: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1996/PSCF6-96Olson.html
More:
Answering Al Gore’s “Earth in the Balance”:
Hoodwinking the Nation by Julian L. Simon http://www.amazon.com/Hoodwinking-Nation-Julian-Simon/dp/1560004347 is the Readers Digest version of Ultimate Resource 2 by Julian L. Simon http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Resource-Julian-Lincoln-Simon/dp/0691003815
The comments alone at the above Amazon links are worth the clicks.
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