Turning Tar Sands into Clean Natural Gas with Bacteria: [02/01/08 ] Scientists said recently in the journal Nature they can radically speed up the underground bacterial fermentation that turns Canada’s tar-like Athabasca sands into natural gas at far less cost and with far less environmental pollution. This is huge global news because the world has about six trillion barrels of such heavy oil, more than 20 times the proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. They’re focused in Canada’s Athabasca, in Venezuela’s Orinoco tar belt, and in the oil shale of the U.S. Rocky Mountains. All may be economically recoverable with bacterial refining.

Inner City Children’s Asthma Linked to Roundworms [01/17/08 ] Do inner city children get more asthma than suburban and country kids? Or do they suffer instead from roundworm infestations that give asthma-like symptoms? Dr. Peter Hotez, a tropical disease specialist at George Washington University, says that up to 23 percent of urban black children may be infested with Toxocara roundworms—a “neglected tropical disease” that dogs and cats can pass to people through their feces. The roundworms cause a lung disease that resembles asthma, as well as liver and brain diseases.

What about the Poles? [11/15/07 ] The global warming alarmists are at it again, shrieking about “ice melt at the Poles.”

“The relentless grip of the Arctic Ocean that defied man for centuries is melting away,” warned Doug Struck in the Washington Post. “The sea ice reaches only half as far as it did 50 years ago. In the summer of 2006, it shrank to a record low. This summer, the ice pulled back even more, by an area nearly the size of Alaska.”

Diminishing the Nobel Peace Prize [10/18/07 ] In 1964, Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize for leading the non-violent crusade against racism and slavery—bettering not only America but the entire world.

Global Warming and the Chesapeake Bay [10/04/07 ] I was invited to testify before the Senate environment committee Sept. 26, on “The Impact of Global Warming on the Chesapeake Bay.” I told the committee there was no man-made global warming impact on the Bay. The Bay has been warmer than now several times because the moderate 1,500-year climate cycles have warmed it at least five times since the Bay was created 12,000 years ago. At least two of those cycles, and perhaps all of them, were warmer than today.

Illusions of Sustainability: Organic Believers Speak Out [09/21/07 ] “I read a piece by Dennis Avery in today’s Minneapolis Star. Dennis expressed concern that ‘organic farms may have concentrated themselves on steep hilly land that is prone to mudslides.’ I have visited many farmers in the Upper Midwest and I can say without reservation that this assertion is incorrect. Their losses are not due to mudslides but to an incredible amount of rain that caused flash flooding over the entire region.”

Organic Farms Suffering Mudslides [09/06/07 ] A new danger has beset the nation’s struggling organic farms—too much rain. Hundreds of organic farms in southwestern Wisconsin and southeast Minnesota were drenched by a foot of rain in late August. The heavy downpour washed out plantings, eroded soil, and damaged fences and buildings. The owner of Wisconsin’s Harmony Valley Farm estimated his damages at $300,000.

Testing Produce Won’t Stop the Deadly E. Coli [08/23/07 ] Mr. Will Daniels oversees food safety at Earthbound Farm in Salinas, CA—the company that last year grew and packaged the bagged spinach that killed three people, including a 2-year-old boy, due to contamination with E. coli 0157 bacteria. The spinach also sickened at least 200 other people, many with serious kidney failure.

Water Experts Find Earth’s Warming, Rainfall Linked to Sun [07/25/07 ] A team of water experts says the pattern of droughts and floods in South Africa shows our global warming was triggered by the variability of the sun’s irradiance rather than by human-emitted CO2. They say variations in South African rainfall patterns are keyed to periodic reversals of the sun’s magnetic field—and to the constantly changing distance between the sun and the earth as both move through space.

What Excuse for the New Farm Bill? [07/17/07 ] The Congress is trying urgently to write a new farm bill—but it can’t think of an excuse for passing it. The cold reality, of course, is simply that half of the U.S. Senate is elected in states where the farm vote is significant, and neither party wants to lose an election because of a few unhappy farmers.

China Bars Corn Ethanol Due to High Food Costs [06/21/07 ] China has just banned further expansion of its corn ethanol industry, after a radical 43-percent increase in pork prices over the past year. Xu Dingming of the Chinese National Energy Leading Group told a recent seminar that “Food-based ethanol fuel will not be the direction for China.” The Chinese turnabout comes as President Bush is cheerleading a massive corn ethanol expansion, supposedly to help the U.S. achieve “energy independence.”

Climate Alarmists Lose Another Piece of Evidence [06/14/07 ] Don’t look now, but another big chunk of the “evidence” for man-made global warming suddenly disappeared. Poof! Researchers just reported that the world’s most recent case of “abrupt climate change”—which occurred a mere 12,000 years ago—was probably due to a comet strike, not to “climate sensitivity.”

Eight Months to Save the Planet? [05/24/07 ] The UN Climate change panel says we have eight months to save the planet from massive overheating, huge sea level increases, and millions of lost species. How is the world taking this dire news?

Saving Lives the Greenpeace Way [05/11/07 ] The media this week is full of dire warnings about man-made global warming. Greenpeace and the UN say Americans must move quickly to give up 80–90 percent of their current energy use to prevent millions of potential human deaths from an over-heated planet. The haste to destroy the world’s economy is strange considering: 1) there has been no significant global warming for the past nine years; 2) most of our currant modest warming took place before 1940; and, 3) much of the scientific evidence gathered the last twenty years points directly to the sun as the source of our cyclical warmings and coolings over the last million years.

The New Math on Global Warming [04/25/07 ] The UN climate change panel told us in 2001 that human-emitted CO2 might drive the planet’s average temperature upward by 5.8 degrees C—a bigger average warming than the world has had in the past 100,000 years. The UN’s 2007 report scales the possible overheating back a bit, to a maximum of 4.5 degrees—still a very large warming.

Rachel Carson and the Malaria Tragedy [04/13/07 ] If Rachel Carson were still alive, April 12 would have been her 100th birthday. All over the Western World well-meaning, but misguided, souls marked that day with choruses of praise for the woman who almost singly-handed created the modern environmental movement. Her book, Silent Spring, warned us that man-made pesticides would kill our kids with cancer and eliminate our wild birds.

Deadly Organic Spinach [03/14/07 ] Organic food activists are being served a heaping platter of organic crow now that we finally learn last fall’s outbreak of deadly E. coli O157:H7 was caused by organically grown spinach. On Tuesday (February 27th), California food regulators admitted under direct questioning at a state senate hearing that the tainted spinach that ultimately killed 3 and sickened over 200 was traced to a 50-acre organic field – contrary to the repeated denials of organic activists.

Should We Believe the Latest UN Climate Report? [02/07/07 ] The UN Climate Change panel is asserting—again—that humans are overheating the planet. Again, they have no evidence to support their claim—but they want the U.S. to cut its energy use by perhaps 80 percent just in case. Stabilizing greenhouse gases means no personal cars, no air-conditioning, no vacation travel. Nancy Pelosi says one-third of the Senate want this too.

A New Year’s Resolution: Protect Your Family From Foodborne Bacteria [01/05/07 ] Here’s a New Year’s Resolution to add to your list: “I resolve to protect my family more effectively from dangerous bacteria in their food.”

A New Year’s Resolution: Protect Your Family From Foodborne Bacteria [01/05/07 ] Here’s a New Year’s Resolution to add to your list: “I resolve to protect my family more effectively from dangerous bacteria in their food.”