Monthly Archives: May 2008

It’s banning season again.

Posted on by
Reply

Ahh despite so many unfounded assurances that we are all going to fry like bacon due to global warming, we have suffered under one of the most delayed springs in my recollection.

 Spring is now finally here though and along with it are the ravenous mosquitoes who have been delayed in their early feeding season.

 Not only do mosquitos ruin barbeques or long walks in the park, the nasty little fellas are responsible for millions of deaths worldwide. Malaria alone kills an estimated 1 million people per year.

 Back before the enviro-hysteria had DDT banned all over the place due to some rather shaky evidence, it had been found to be incredibly effective in reducing malaria infections in third-world locales. In India, DDT use reduced annual infections from 8 million cases to 50,000 (rather effective I would say). In Sri Lanka between 1934 and 1955 there were 1.5 million reported cases of malaria. When DDT was brought into use in Sri Lanka cases of malaria dropped to a reported 17 in 1963. When DDT use was halted, malaria cases in Sri Lanka rebounded to 600,000.

 Despite the fact that DDT was saving lives in the hundreds of thousands, people living in the comfort of the developed world where malaria is not a problem decided to go on an international rampage about this. 

 The egg thinning theory regarding some pretty birds was the main culprit behind the screeching for bans of this marvelous chemical. Who cares if hundreds of thousands of rather disheveled looking third-world people die? Apparently these people are worthy of sacrifice if we can increase the breeding levels of some carnivorous birds. While the evidence that DDT saves countless people is pretty clear, the evidence of DDT causing harm to birds is not quite so well documented.

 The eco-movement knows a good myth to perpetuate when they see one though. Just as they latch on to fuzzy seals and polar bears as figures to promote (despite neither being threatened), they have found that many donors to the cause are moved by the potential plight majestic birdies.  No sense letting facts get in the way when the contributions are rolling in eh?

If nothing else, the anti-human eco-kooks are good with marketing. I can see them vetting poster and flyer covers in some studio apartment.

Perfect, big eyes and clean and fuzzy. Disney could not have drawn something so cute. Who cares if the babies are no longer hunted, we need to put people out work in Labrador.

 Ahh look at that. It could have been one of the stuffed toys in a child’s bedroom. Who cares if their population is exploding, lets put some Inuit out of work and call them threatened.

 Ahh. majestic and a national symbol for many. We must imply that these birdies are at risk.

 Eeeeek. Too much reality. Get that picture out of there and keep encouraging use of food crops for biofuel. The mosquitoes will take care of those that don’t starve. It takes actual groundwork to help those people anyway, it is much easier to lobby for baseless bannings!

 Most of the myth came from the book “Silent Spring” where some info was erroneously written.

“Rachel Carson sounded the initial alarm against DDT, but represented the science of DDT erroneously in her 1962 book Silent Spring.Carson wrote “Dr. DeWitt’s now classic experiments [on quail and pheasants] have now established the fact that exposure to DDT, even when doing no observable harm to the birds, may seriously affect reproduction. Quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding season survived and even produced normal numbers of fertile eggs. But few of the eggs hatched.” DeWitt’s 1956 article (in Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry) actually yielded a very different conclusion. Quail were fed 200 parts per million of DDT in all of their food throughout the breeding season. DeWitt reports that 80% of their eggs hatched, compared with the “control”” birds which hatched 83.9% of their eggs. Carson also omitted mention of DeWitt’s report that “control” pheasants hatched only 57 percent of their eggs, while those that were fed high levels of DDT in all of their food for an entire year hatched more than 80% of their eggs. “

One rather uglier reason that some supported the ban on DDT is that they were aware that DDT saves lives but were worked up by the cause of the day trumped up in the book “The population time bomb” that predicted a virtual Armageddon due to increasing world population. Now that nearly 40 years have passed, it can pretty much be safely said that the author of the aforementioned book was full of crap. Despite his being full of crap, many people felt that the world could be saved if enough disease ravaged the third-world and held off that nasty population spike. Of course the supporters of such ideas are usually Volvo driving latte-lappers who have no concept of what suffering is actually occurring in undeveloped countries. They just want to feel better about saving the birdies and seals. People are secondary.

 DDT if taken in massive doses can indeed cause trouble to people and critters. Of course, were you to ingest a gallon of the mosquito repellent that you smear on your kids every day, you likely would have some health issues as well. DDT when properly used has far far more benefit than harm.

Aside from malaria, mosquitoes carry and spread all sorts of other nasty bugs. Typhus, St. Louis encephalitis, eastern equine encephalitis, highlands J virus and of course the one that is spreading to us here and now, West Nile virus.

  As usual though, environmentalists are still trying to save the world on the backs of innocent humans. Alderman Brian Pincott in Calgary (predictably) is lobbying for a ban on pesticides in Calgary.

 I doubt that Mr. Pincott and his ilk are willing to come over to my place and swat the mosquitoes off my kids in the yard. I doubt that they will come and pull the masses of dandelions that will sprout in my yard or sweep the ants from my kitchen (they will support the cash cow if I get fined for having my weeds out of control).

 Look folks, there are all sorts of nasty chemicals out there. Those chemicals have profound benefits though when properly applied and idiotic bannings solve nothing (aside from making the coffee shop crowd feel good). I can see reason for studies on specific chemicals and restrictions on specific usages. Blanket bannings however are idiocy and do much much more harm than good. Calling for blanket bannings is simply laziness and people being indifferent to benefits of chemical usages.

 Rest assured, they can ban all they like. I don’t have time to hand-weed my lawn or try to kill ants with soap and water mixes (if even that would be allowed). I will carry on as before though I may have to wait until sundown to do it.

Environmental knee-jerk reactions.

Posted on by
Reply

 Ahh I see that the United States has leaped out and declared polar bears to be a threatened species. This is despite estimated polar bear populations having doubled in the last 40 years.

 I wonder how much the speed of growth must increase before populations are considered stable?

 Now this declaration will have some impacts of that there is no doubt.

 The push to ban aboriginal guided polar bear hunts will now have more strength to it. Sure that industry is only worth a few million a year, but in considering how few people actually live up there this is a strong economic hit to them. But hey, why not put a few more native people on welfare in order for latte-lappers in urban areas to feel better about protecting them cute fuzzy critters eh?

 The next impact will be an increased push against Arctic oil exploration.  Ironically, those opposed to Arctic oil production are often those who are howling about high energy costs. You cant have it both ways guys.

 This is an area where I have some knowledge. I just got back from spending a few months on the Beaufort Sea a little while ago. That was my third winter spent in the Arctic working on oil exploration projects. My company builds maps and measures ice-thicknesses to assure the safety of workers up there.

 I love working in the Arctic. I have had the rare privilege of seeing a wild polar bear among other animals and they are beautiful. I would never want to see these animals threatened with extinction.

 What I am stumped on though is how people think oil exploration is going to harm polar bears? So far in three years up there, the worst incident that I have seen due to our operations has been a ptarmigan that got hit by a truck on an ice-road. No polar bears have even come close to being harmed yet.

 When working on the sea, our prime form of transportation is shown below.

 While those nodwells are pretty handy on the ice, rest assured they do not move quickly enough to run down a polar bear. Anti-freeze is specially contained and we have pans under all vehicles in order to avoid leaving so much as a drip of motor oil on the ice.

 Oh and Paul there who is pictured above will likely end up on welfare as will his kids if the environmentalists have their way. I keep saying the welfare thing simply as it is true. There are not many ways to make a living in the Arctic. The oil and gas industry offers generations worth of prosperity for native populations in the North. While the latte-lappers like to envision noble Eskimos living in igloos in tune with nature, they seem to always forget to ask the aforementioned natives if indeed that is what they want. Rest assured, while most northern aboriginals proudly embrace many traditional aspects of their culture, they are not eager to return to the harsh days of living on the land with a life expectancy under 30 years.

 For our accomodations we stay in barge camps that are towed out in summer and frozen in for the season. We only work winters as transportation is easier and our environmental impact is nil. All waste is trucked out and taken to approved disposal facilities.

 Part of my posting pics is simply to show where I disappear to every winter, the other part is to point out that I do have some idea what the hell I am talking about regarding Arctic issues. The usual (urban dwelling) environmentalist reaction to criticism is that the critic has no knowledge of such issues.

 We have repeatedly dedicated space in our camps to university groups and such who are doing arctic studies and are on limited budgets. Yes those evil oil companies are actually encouraging impartial impact studies. I am happy to announce that a group studying seals who resided briefly with us a few years ago found that seal populations in active oil areas were far higher than they had anticipated. They seemed almost disappointed to discover that we had not been having a negative impact.

 That is the reality. Modern oil development in the Arctic has virtually no negative environmental impact.

 Environmental controls have a role and it is an important one. Blind opposition to development and kneejerk reactions to issues do not help anybody however.

 The world is suffering under high energy prices. There is tremendous amount of oil and gas in Canada’s Arctic. Rest assured if this is ever brought onstream we can see some easing on the cost of living for many Canadians. We also will see the employment of countless Inuit, Dene and Inuvialuit people up there who currently have nothing but dependency to look forward to. So far though, not a drop of Arctic oil or gas has been brought to market as the pipeline application has been mired by environmental challenges for decades.

 The energy companies and their contractors do not want to harm the environment believe it or not.

 Everybody involved will be better off if we keep our environmental concerns based within reality. The listing of polar bears by Americans as threatened was baseless and will have negative impacts on us all.

Tax dollars at work.

Posted on by
4

 I see that Ontario has resumed covering sex-change operations within their healthcare system. I wonder how long it will take before Alberta follows suit?

 Of course in trying to justify this utterly elective procedure, it has been pointed out that the de-bonings will only cost around $20,000 each. That must be comforting to people dying on waiting lists in Canada’s increasingly unsustainable socialized healthcare system. I would hate to be the nurse who has to explain to somebody; “I am sorry sir, we will have to delay your bypass surgery a little longer, the operating room is occupied by a man getting his weiner removed.”

 Well, clearly the push will be on soon for Alberta to cover these procedures. We have a few million people here and doubtless there has to be at least a handful who want to have healthy and functional portions of their bodies removed on the taxpayers backs.

 In anticipation of this, I am offering my surgical services for sex-change operations right now. My procedure will have the same outcome and will only cost $200 per organ. My special offer costs 1% of the Ontario procedure. I have invested in the required materials that are pictured below. 

Anesthetic.

Precision surgical organ removal tool.

Infection prevention.

Covering for the incision so the patient may leave my garage.

 Until the public system in Alberta can create casterati at a price comparable to mine, I would say there is utterly no reason to burden our doctors and hospitals with those excess peckers. I look forward to doing many procedures.

Fivefeetoffury kinda says it well too.

UPDATE

 With more digging I have found that sex changes are already covered in Alberta.

 According to Egale: “The Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan (AHCIP) covers SRS and a variety of related procedures including chest reconstruction and breast augmentation.

SRS is performed in a Montreal clinic while Alberta physicians perform the other procedures.”

 So not only are taxpayers paying for these operations, we are paying to fly people around the country to get them.

 In looking at Alberta medical benefits legislation however I find this: “

Alteration of appearance surgery

8   No benefit is payable with respect to a surgical procedure for the alteration of appearance performed for emotional, psychological or psychiatric reasons unless the Minister gives approval prior to the surgery being performed.” 

 Now would not the statement in the legislation preclude the wishes of these folks seeking to have their jewels cut off? Does the Minister approve every request?

 I must say I am confused (not so confused as to forget my own gender however).

 Hey, if somebody wants to surgically mutilate themselves, I truly could not care less if they are paying their own bill. Our healthcare system is way overtaxed as it is however and there are higher priority things to be done before paying for noodle removals.

 Now what am I going to do with all that stuff I bought for my garage surgery?