a fielding day... Dear reader, dear Senator, please pay attention" Gus, esquire. unpublished works. Senator Steve fielding's foray into Global warming: THE organisation which has prompted the Family First senator, Steve Fielding, to question the science of climate change also believes public health campaigns against smoking are based on "junk science". Senator Fielding, who must vote soon on the Government's proposed emissions trading scheme, has returned from Washington sceptical about humanity's contribution to climate change. "I think all of us have just accepted without question that carbon emissions are the problem and we need to address that," he said yesterday. It was necessary to consider an "alternative view" put forward by "credible scientists", he said. Senator Fielding attended a conference on climate change last week hosted by the Heartland Institute of Chicago, which specialises in challenging scientific norms and conventions. Its president, Joseph Bast, also believes the dangers of smoking are exaggerated as an excuse to tax tobacco. Anti-smoking advocates "personally profit by exaggerating the health threats of smoking and winning passage of higher taxes and bans on smoking in public places", the institute's website says. "The public health community's campaign to demonise smokers and all forms of tobacco is based on junk science." http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&add... The Heartland Institute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland_Institute From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Heartland Institute is an American libertarian/conservative free market-oriented public policy think tank based in Chicago, Illinois. It was founded in 1984, and is designated as a 501(c)(3)non-profit by the Internal Revenue Service. -------------------- The institute is a member organization of the Cooler Heads Coalition, "an informal and ad-hoc group focused on dispelling the myths of global warming".[4] Heartland's publications make the following assertions about climate change: * "Most scientists do not believe human activities threaten to disrupt the Earth's climate."[5] * "The most reliable temperature data show no global warming trend."[5] * "A modest amount of global warming, should it occur, would be beneficial to the natural world and to human civilization."[5] * "The best strategy to pursue is one of 'no regrets'."[5] In March 2008, and again in March 2009 the Heartland Institute sponsored a major International conference bringing hundreds of scientests, economists, and policy experts who are global warming skeptics to New York City. Speakers included Dr. Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT; Dr. Roy Spencer, who oversees NASA's satellite temperature record; Dr. S. Fred Singer, who was founding dean of the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences at the University of Miami and founding director of the National Weather Satellite Service; Dr. Harrison Schmitt, a former NASA astronaut and Apollo 17 moonwalker; and Dr. John Theon, whose responsibilities at NASA included overseeing James Hansen. Participants criticized the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore.[6][7] .................... The Institute has been actively involved in debate over tobacco policy, opposing restrictions on smoking and criticizing science which documents the harms of secondhand smoke.[11] Given the close financial and organizational relationship between the tobacco industry and the Heartland Institute, Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights described the Heartland Institute as "an active partner of the tobacco industry".[12] Heartland has been criticized for employing executives from such corporations as ExxonMobil and Philip Morris on its board of directors and in its public relations department.[13][14] The Heartland Institute disputes this criticism, stating that "no one on Heartland's board of directors works for a tobacco company (Roy Marden retired years ago) or for an oil company (Walter Buchholtz was on the board but no longer is) --------------------- Heartland Policy Study Taking Aim at Gun Control http://catb.org/esr/guns/aiming.html "We are now reaping the consequences of 30 years spent talking about guns rather than doing something effective about poverty and hopelessness," writes David Kopel. "If we really want to reduce the disease of violence, it is time for us to start thinking about how to strengthen families and foster individual responsibility, and it is time to abandon the unscientific crusade against guns." Firearms are nowhere near the root of the problem of violence and arguably are almost completely divorced from it. As long as people come in unlike sizes, shapes, ages, and temperament; as long as they diverge in their taste for risk and their willingness and capacity to prey on other people or to defend themselves from predation; and, above all, as long as some people have little or nothing to lose by spending their lives in crime, dispositions to violence will persist--and increasingly strict gun controls will do little if anything to improve matters. ------------------ Gus: I am not suggesting for a minute that there is collusion between the institute and the oil barons and handshakes with the tobacco companies. But some of the institute's findings are baffling. May I say, from the death of my uncle Roberto to that of my good friend Nick in this lovely country — and plenty more since — many friends/smokers have been taken to an early grave (before the age of 40) by lung cancer, brain tumors and other ailment that one can suspect was related to their habit. Numerous lab tests have shown that prolong (or short, if one is "susceptible") exposure to tar (including that from cigarettes) has a strong chance to lead to cancerous cellular activity. And I would suggest that when my doctor told me I had incurable chronic bronchitis — mostly a "smoker's disease" (I never smoked in my life, except once at christmas), I can relate it to the many times I coughed when I was stuck in the same place as smokers (including Nick). Always irritated by cigarette smoke, even outdoors. And the evolution of this ailment has been somewhat contained, as cars are less polluting and as there are less smokers about. Whenever I see smokers puffing outside offices or pubs, I walk on the other pavements or stop breathing till well clear. The same way as I stay clear of guns .... In the gun lobby words: ... cigarettes don't kill people. People smoking cigarettes can... On the subject of guns and gun laws, I would say that the "gun-ho" mentality — even if "guns are divorced from the violence" inside the US borders — has bled into the United States foreign policy and general non-conservation policies: see a bear, shoot it... See a Saddam, shoot it. See a whatever on the move and the trigger finger is itching... Ah! the power of the line of sight... The dream of blood is fared daily on US teevee shows (about twenty murders are committed weekly on the box, which in truthfulness is far less (10 per cent) than those committed in the streets) .. More could be said here, but I will only mention that around 40,000 people die each year in the US from "small-gun" (not including carbines nor large automatics) shots — and may I add here as well, that about 1.3 per cent of the adult U.S. population is in prison and some who are not in there should be. And the figure of people who've died, shot with small guns, does not include the greater number of injured, purposefully or accidentally, by Cheney. Our venerable Rattus, had a gun removal policy that worked to some extent, after the Port Arthur massacre... But it is impossible to measure the true efficiency of such policy, not even in the study of statistics, because invariably, there is no possibility of setting up a "control" group, such as in the pharmaceutical industry, using placebo... (Imagine the population being split in two groups, one with real guns and the other group with wooden spoons...) Thus the deniers-of-anything-except-god have a field day at saying you can't prove that your policy works... Yet, in the US, not a month that goes by, without a "mass" senseless shooting in this school or this supermarket making a gun sale... On the subject of global warming, science cannot "prove" anything irrefutably It's a THEORY to which the observations on the ground seem to be correct so far ... except the predictions time-line is restrained by a factor of 3. Thus the deniers have their field day and their Fielding day. Their attitude is a bit like pushing someone off the cliff and, each time, those of their study group manage to catch the branch of small tree to save themselves from death. Obviously the only conclusion is: pushing people off the cliff does not kill people... (a sophism) In erring on the side of caution, the global warming scientific models have been too conservative. They have to. And there is no choice at this level than to use statistics and data that sometimes conflict. From slight shifts in wind direction averages, to minute variations in extreme weather conditions — and to humidity in the air, the enormity of the task is huge. And we are looking at incremental change in which there will be some advance and some retreat, and in which the trends are not so obvious on all fronts. And remember climate-wise we are studying a very complex system in flux, over many years with varying decree of precision... This is why I go to the simpler system below: The facts and figures tell us that CO2 is a greenhouse gas (so is water and methane and...) and that we're pumping 30 billions tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere — raising the CO2 by an average 1.5 ppm per annum — (increasing to 2ppm per annum by 2020). if we believe this wont have any effect, we live on planet dreamland... But be reassured: the Heartland Institute tells us: "A modest amount of global warming, should it occur, would be beneficial to the natural world and to human civilization." How would they know that???? For sure?!?!?! What a lot of rot!!! This is the glibbest of all glib argument, this is the gun with which the good people at the institute shot themselves in the foot. Heartless institutionalised... Global warming trend is on, sun spots or no sun spots... ------------------- In the cartoon above, I show Mr Fielding smoking... I have no idea if he smokes or not, but his general position (and I must mention the gutless Liberals) is somewhat as if smoking was good for you...