Global Population Decline

Article 293 of the penal code has been radically restructured to permit doctors, for the first time anywhere in the world, to take innocent human life intentionally, for reasons that depend on personal and subjective claims, which cannot be verified by objective evidence. Despite the fact that some Dutch lawyers have for many years noted the impossibility of such descriptors of suffering as ‘persistent, unbearable and hopeless’ being able to sustain any consistent legal interpretation, the expression is still in common use in regard to the guidelines.

The removal of legal penalties for the intentional killing of their patients by doctors constitutes, in itself, a serious violation of a government’s responsibility to protect the lives of all its innocent citizens, without exception. This law is in violation of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights

At a Washington reception, the conversation turned to the merits of small families. One woman volunteered that she had just read Bill McKibben's environmental tome, Maybe One, on the benefits of single-child families. She claimed to have found it "ethically compelling." I chimed in: "Even one child may put too much stress on our fragile ecosystem. McKibben says 'maybe one.' I say, why not none?" The response was solemn nods of agreement, and even some guilt-ridden whispers between husbands and wives.

McKibben's acclaimed book is a tribute to the theories of British economist Thomas Malthus. Exactly 200 years ago, Malthus - the original dismal scientist - wrote that "the power of population is . . . greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." McKibben's application of this idea was to rush out and have a vasectomy. He urges his fellow greens to do the same - to make single-child families the "cultural norm" in America.

Now, with the United Nations proclaiming that this month we will surpass the demographic milestone of 6 billion people, the environmental movement and the media can be expected to ask: Do we really need so many people? A recent AP headline lamented: "Century's growth leaves Earth crowded - and noisy." Seemingly, Malthus has never had so many apostles.

In a rational world, Malthusianism would not be in a state of intellectual revival, but thorough disrepute. After all, virtually every objective trend is running in precisely the opposite direction of what the widely acclaimed Malthusians of the 1960s - from Lester Brown to Paul Ehrlich to the Club of Rome - predicted. Birth rates around the world are lower today than at any time in recorded history. Global per capita food production is much higher than ever before. The "energy crisis" is now such a distant memory that oil is virtually the cheapest liquid on earth. These facts, collectively, have wrecked the credibility of the population-bomb propagandists.

Yet the population-control movement is gaining steam. It has won the hearts and wallets of some of the most influential leaders inside and outside government today. Malthusianism has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar industry and a political juggernaut.

For half a century, the world has been subjected to a massive campaign of propaganda, aimed at the radical reduction of human infertility. Initiated principally by a small group of wealthy Americans under the banner of 'population crisis', their work has been successful beyond their wildest imagining.

Reflecting their social policy victory, the United Nations Population Division has in recent years several times sharply reduced projections of world population for the 21st century; one plausible scenario now has world numbers peaking at 7.8 billion in 2040, with absolute decline setting in thereafter. Indeed, although the U.N.'s "Cairo Plus Five" Conference held in New York earlier this summer called on the nations of the world to intensify their campaigns of fertility reduction and population control, the real demographic news, and danger, is population decline, around the globe.

The most extreme numbers come from Europe. French demographer Jean-Claude Chesnais describes "the demographic sunset of the west," with numbers tumbling across the old continent. A nation needs a Total Fertility Rate (or TFR: an annual estimate of completed family size per woman) of 2.1 to stand at population stability, where each generation just reproduces itself. Germany now has a figure of 1.3; Italy of 1.25; 'Catholic' Spain of 1.23. The overall figure for the European Union is only 1.5. Absolute declines in numbers have already begun in many nation-states: Germany anticipates a fall in population from 85 million today to only 58 million 2050, with much of that remnant number quite old. Even this figure is buoyed by the high fertility of non-European 'guest workers'. In one recent year, 15 percent of German births came from this source, although the parents represented only six percent of the population. In neighbouring Luxembourg, the equivalent figure for non-native births has reached 43 percent.

More than population counts are at stake. Under this kind of numerical implosion, the whole social framework changes: the very fact of fertility decline drives nations into other changes as well. British demographer David Coleman defines the landscape of this new world social order as "birth rates chronically low, actual or incipient population decline, age-structures where the number of the elderly approach or exceed the number of children, a fragmented family pattern and a small average household size, substantial and growing non-Western minorities." He adds solemnly "this combination has no historical precedent."

But this decay of the family and concomitant turn toward negative growth is not just a West European problem. Japan now reports a TFR of 1.5, driven by a sharp rise in the number of adult women who are not married. South Korea also records a TFR of 1.5, down from 6.0 in 1960 and "a record for low fertility in a developing country." The number of abortions there now equals the number of births. Iran's TFR has tumbled from 5.0 in 1991 to 3.3 only four years later. Since the fall of Communism, Russia has also gone into a demographic tailspin: infant and adult mortality rates have risen, the real TFR may be 1.1. Births in 1993 totalled 1.4 million, down from 2.5 million in 1987. New data from Eastern Europe also suggests that such depopulation may be "irreversible."

Not only are national identities-even the very existence of nations-at risk. Enormous fiscal problems develop as aging populations seek to maintain social security systems premised on inter-generational solidarity and moderate population growth. Economic stagnation is also likely as the old inherit large parts of the earth. In her fictional account of an early 21st century world gone totally sterile, entitled The Children of Men, English novelist P.D. James describes the weird psychology of a world without children

Nicholas Eberstadt is a researcher at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies

Many analysts do not appreciate just how far low-fertility regimens have already progressed. To understand the current situation, divide the world into three categories: (1) countries where fertility levels are currently believed to be below replacement (2) countries where fertility is above replacement but rapidly declining (3) countries where fertility levels remain high and seemingly immune to secular fertility declines.

1) Sub-replacement Fertility. Table 1 catalogues the countries in this first category. Since the numbers are extrapolations based on recent history, they may exaggerate the dimensions of fertility decline. On the other hand, the population data for most places listed here is both relatively up-to-date and reasonably accurate. So it is equally the numbers understate the trend. Indeed, this list, based on Census Bureau estimates, is more conservative than the UN Population Division's figures.

In all, 79 countries and territories, with 44 percent of the world's population, fit the below-replacement category. And the countries themselves are strikingly diverse in geography, culture and level of economic development.

Virtually every advanced industrial democracy is on the list. In fact, 27 of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's 29 members have total fertility rates of less than 2.1 - more or less the level required for long-term population replacement. The two exceptions, by the way, are Mexico and Turkey, countries at the low end of the OECD as measured by income and education. Within the regular OECD grouping, the highest total fertility rates are the United States (2.07) and Iceland (2.04) - levels just shy of replacement. At the other end, Germany and Spain's current TFRs are just over 1.2 - and Italy's is even lower.

Most OECD members are in Western Europe, which had a collective TFR of 1.4 in 1998. But overall fertility levels appear to be even lower in Eastern Europe - by Census Bureau reckoning, about 1.3. Bulgaria, in fact, has the lowest fertility level ever witnessed in modern nation not at war, with women averaging only 1.14 births in a lifetime. Were that pattern maintained indefinitely, each new generation would be half the size of the one before. In all of Europe, only remote Albania and the tiny outposts of Gibraltar and the Faeroe Islands are thought to be above-replacement enclaves - and in those cases, only barely so.

Report shows 'unequivocal evidence' that media violence has significant negative impact on children

25-Mar-2004

The report reviews the large body of research that has investigated the ways in which violent media influence behavior. Across all media genres, the authors found that the research consistently shows that even short-term exposure "increases the likelihood of physically and verbally aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, and aggressive emotions."

The authors of the report, "The Influence of Media Violence on Youth," are Craig A. Anderson, Iowa State University; Leonard Berkowitz, University of Wisconsin; Edward Donnerstein, University of Arizona; L. Rowell Huesmann, University of Michigan; James D. Johnson, University of North Carolina-Wilmington; Daniel Linz, University of California, Santa Barbara; Neil M. Malamuth, University of California, Los Angeles; and Ellen Wartella, University of Texas at Austin.

In the short-term, media violence can increase aggression by priming aggressive thoughts and decision processes, increasing physiological arousal, and triggering a tendency to imitate observed behaviors. In the long-term, repeated exposure can produce lasting increases in aggressive thought patterns and aggression-supporting beliefs about social behavior, and can reduce individuals' normal negative emotional responses to violence.

The pervasive nature of violent media in society makes it difficult to minimize children's exposure.

The Age - Fairfax - Oct 9/04 - British hospital has won the legal right to allow a seriously ill baby who was born three months premature to die - against the wishes of her parents.

In a landmark case that has gripped the country, the High Court has given doctors at the hospital permission not to resuscitate 11-month-old Charlotte Wyatt, who is deaf, blind and profoundly brain-damaged, next time she stops breathing.

Baby Charlotte has been resuscitated three times since she was born and has failing kidneys and lungs. Doctors say she will not live beyond infancy.

She has never left the hospital and is fed through a tube and kept in an oxygen-rich plastic box. She weighed 450 grams and was 12.7 centimetres long when born at 26 weeks.

The Portsmouth Hospital National Health Service Trust had sought the court's ruling to clarify its decision not to revive Charlotte next time because doctors say she will be in constant pain and have a life of poor quality.

But Charlotte's parents, Darren and Debbie Wyatt, had argued that she should be resuscitated and be given every chance to live.

Agape Press - Feb 16/05 - The Center for the Study of American Values believes that religious involvement in the political process is essential if America is to survive. Center director Don Devine recently pointed out that it takes 2.1 children per married couple in order to maintain the population of this country at current levels; however, he contends that this idea goes against the selfish nature of men. "This is an irrational decision if you're trying to maximize your comfort, your income or whatever," Devine says. But, according to the Center spokesman, that is exactly where religion comes in and why he contends it is integral to national survival. "You need something else that says no, that you've got some kind of obligation to go and multiply," he asserts. Devine contends that if religion declines in the U.S., so will the nation's population; and eventually Americans will find themselves like many other countries today that are so materialistic they cannot even produce enough children to replenish their populations.

Australian bioethicist Peter Singer agrees, arguing that cloned foetuses are acceptable: "You would have to terminate the process before consciousness occurs, at some time in the last third of pregnancy, or somehow prevent the brain from forming while keeping the rest of the organism going. I don't really have a problem with that."

Overhaul of Nature Conservancy Urged

Report by Independent Panel Calls for Greater Openness

An independent panel of experts created by the Nature Conservancy last year to revamp the environmental group's operations has issued a final report calling for sweeping reforms that the group hopes will become a model of ethical standards for nonprofit organizations.

The panel is urging the Conservancy to make its finances more public, to scrutinize tax deductions taken by its donors and to vow to "walk away" from financial transactions that fail to meet the proposed standards.

Conservancy board members and their companies should be barred from selling land to the Conservancy or buying property from the group, the report says, and the Conservancy's conflict of interest policy for board members and executives should be extended to cover major donors of cash or land.

The report also says board members and their companies should not enter into "cause-related marketing" campaigns with the Conservancy, where the group's logo is stamped on products and used in corporate ads.

The panel urges the Arlington-based nonprofit to bar its board members and their companies from claiming federal income tax deductions for giving land to the charity.

Codex Alimentarius / WTO : Guidelines for Vitamins and Minerals - Optional or MANDATORY ?
Read the short analysis - PDF

US : Lawmakers Want to Delay Meat Labeling

WASHINGTON - May 16/05 - AP- Labels telling consumers where their meat comes from must be in place beginning next year, but lawmakers took action Monday that could delay the labels for months.

House members writing a farm spending bill voted to postpone country-of-origin labeling for meat, which is supposed to go into effect in September 2006. Congress initially ordered the labeling into effect in 2004, but the lawmakers, bowing to pressure from meatpackers and food processors, voted to delay it until 2006.

"This just buys a little more time," said Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-Texas, chairman of the agriculture subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

"It would be a nightmare to implement for producers across the country," Bonilla said. "It would also expose retailers to a tremendous amount of liability." [???]

The White House wants to repeal labeling for meat, [???] and the House Agriculture Committee chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., introduced a bill earlier this month that would repeal the mandatory labeling system and replace it with a voluntary one.

The subcommittee voted Monday to prevent the Agriculture Department from spending money this year to put labeling rules in place, a tactic that would postpone the labeling for months. The full committee must approve the bill before sending it to the House floor.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said 35 other countries, including Canada, Mexico and European countries, already require labels for meat.

Full Story Here

Animal Worship Hard times for holy cows

BBC - Sep 30/03 - The sacred cow, one of the enduring symbols of the Indian capital Delhi, is gradually being moved from the streets.

The authorities have decided there are too many of them and they are not just a nuisance but also a menace.

So for the 36,000 cows wandering around Delhi it is time to go.

And it is not just cows - Delhi's monkeys are also finding that life is getting tougher.

The Delhi authorities on Tuesday began a drive to round up stray cattle.

This is hot and dangerous work.

Under the baking Indian sun I watch eight men struggling with ropes and poles to get one of the stray bovines into the back of a truck.

The cow - a huge, angry animal - does not like the idea and she has got a powerful kick and long sharp horns.

Many of the animals are old - no longer capable of giving milk.

But they are sacred beasts in Hindu religion and no harm must come to them.

BBC - Feb 24/00 - Monkeys are being blamed for the death of a herder in north-east Kenya who died from severe head injuries "inflicted by flying missiles".

The unusual attack is reported to have taken place because a group of herders and their animals were monopolising a watering hole preventing a troop of monkeys from getting near enough to have a drink.

The East African Standard said the incident occurred on Sunday on a mountain in northern Wajir District.

Mohammed Abdi Gosho, a nurse at trading centre just 3km away, told the newspaper that the man died from "severe head injuries".

Full Story Here

BBC - Ap 14/00 - Authorities in the Indian capital Delhi have come under new pressure to bring the city's large population of monkeys under control, after a man was killed by a falling flower-pot apparently thrown or pushed from a roof by a monkey.

There are an estimated 5,000-7,000 wild monkeys roaming the streets of Delhi and all earlier attempts to control them have failed.

Relatives of 48-year-old Arvind Kumar Jha said he was struck by a falling flower-pot after leaving a high-rise apartment building where his family owned a flat.

Witnesses say a monkey on the roof of the building pushed at least two pots over the edge.

One of them hit Mr Jha on the head, killing him instantly.

Full Story Here

Anheuser-Busch Threatens to leave State - Announces Genetically Modified Rice Boycott

WASHINGTON - Ap 13/05 - Anheuser-Busch Cos., the nation's No. 1 buyer of rice as well as its largest brewer, says it won't buy rice from Missouri if genetically modified, drug-making crops are allowed to be grown in the state.

The St. Louis-based beer giant, which says it is concerned about possible contamination, is the latest company to express concern over plans by Ventria Biosciences to grow 200 acres of rice engineered to produce human proteins that can make drugs.

Biotechnology firms have been seeking federal approval for outdoor plantings, often called "biopharming" because the idea is to lower drug-making costs by using plants to grow medications.

Other food companies, environmentalists and farmers have said they fear genetically altered rice could cross-pollinate with other food crops, introducing the foreign genes into the regular food chain.

Last month, Arkansas-based Riceland Foods Inc., the world's largest rice miller and marketer, asked federal regulators to deny a permit for Ventria's project, saying its customers don't want to risk buying genetically modified rice. Anheuser-Busch is believed to be the first major company to threaten a boycott over the issue, according to comments filed last month with the Agriculture Department.

"Given the potential for contamination of commercial rice production in this state, we will not purchase any rice produced or processed in Missouri if Ventria introduces its pharma rice here," Jim Hoffmeister, a vice president at Anheuser-Busch, said Tuesday.

Full Story Here

Ap 4/05 - AP - The California Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the cities of Burbank and Los Angeles cannot use cost as a reason for not meeting federal clean water requirements in treating sewage.

The case stemmed from a dispute between the cities and the state Water Resources Control Board over what can be dumped into the Los Angeles River by three local water treatment plants. Together the plants — two in Los Angeles and one in Burbank — process hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage each day.

The court ruled that regional permits for discharging wastewater "may not consider economic factors to justify imposing pollutant restrictions that are LESS STRINGENT than the applicable federal standards require."

The justices ruled, however, that water boards could consider cost if the pollutant limits were more stringent than the federal standards. The court sent the case back to the lower court to decide whether the limits in this case went beyond the federal restrictions.

David Beckman, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, who argued the case before the court along with the state attorney general's office, called the ruling "a strong victory" for environmentalists.

Savage girls and wild boys

BBC - Feb 8/02 -According to Michael Newton, author of a new book entitled Savage Girls And Wild Boys, the fascination lies in the notion that human beings can be stripped back to their base level.

Speaking to BBC World Service's Everywoman programme, he explained: "I think we are fascinated by the question, 'what makes us a human being?'

Full Story Here

Row over Delhi's errant monkeys

BBC - Feb 4/05 - A plan to shift a batch of 100 captured monkeys from the Indian capital Delhi has come unstuck.
The authorities in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have refused to accept the animals, saying it would create problems for them.

"We received the last batch in June last year. We got a lot of criticism for this in the state at that time too," the state's chief forest conservator, PC Shukla, told the BBC.

"Now, Delhi wants to send another lot but we are not interested. This is their problem they should be able to tackle it."

Delhi suffers from a serious monkey menace, with scores of animals seen across the city, particularly near top government offices.

Full Story Here

BBC - Oct 14/04 - The sheer scale of China's economic transformation is matched only by the size of the new challenges and dangers it has created.

None is bigger than the threat to the environment.

Feeding a fifth of the world's people on 7% of its arable land was never easy - and that land is now shrinking at a rate of 1m hectares a year.

"If you travel out of town you don't find any countryside at all anymore," complains one resident of Shanghai. "Just more cities".

The endless grey factories and tower blocks of China's development zones are soaking up the biggest rural migration in human history.

The plan is to move as many as 400 million people to the cities in the next 25 years, people who will need new roads, housing and other infrastructure on a truly massive scale.

Such is China's economic frenzy that a country which was once almost self-sufficient now imports not only grain but also huge quantities of other resources. It is the world's largest consumer of copper, aluminium and cement and the second biggest importer of oil.

While this appetite sparks fears about the long-term effects on the world's raw materials, China's own natural resources - its air, land and water - are already suffering badly.

China has already become the world's second biggest generator of carbon dioxide emissions

BBC - Nov 9/04 - China's breakneck economic growth and soaring energy demand are becoming key factors in global energy use.

Just behind their compound is a coke plant, which belches out noxious fumes day and night.

The residents are convinced it is poisoning them, causing respiratory disorders, heart disease and cancer.

They are the victims of China's thirst for any energy it can lay its hands on - with air pollution one of several resulting problems ranging from acid rain to greenhouse gas emissions.

"Most people who die in this area die from cancer," Mr Liu says, reeling off the names of four residents who died of cancer in one month alone.

"Many young people have leukaemia. Many old people have lung cancer or bowel cancer. The by-products from the factory include benzene and phenol. All are toxic and bad for humans."

Skin disease

Mr Liu rolls up his heavy blue workers' trousers to uncover his legs.

They are purple, covered with an itchy rash which he has suffered for years. The doctors have told him it is incurable.

BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Dec 8/04 - Burning of the Amazon and other forests accounts for three quarters of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions and has made the country one of the world's leading polluters, a long-delayed government report showed on Wednesday.

The report is the first official recognition by Brazil of the vast scale of burning of the Amazon, the world's largest tropical forest and home to up to 30 percent of the planet's animal and plant species.

Environmentalists said the findings in the report would probably make Brazil the world's sixth largest polluter. They said it could give impetus to rich countries' calls for leading developing nations to share in the burden of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global warming.

The report, or inventory greenhouse gas emissions, showed Brazil produced 1.03 billion tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent in 1994, up from 979 million tons in 1990.

"That figure represents about three percent of total global emissions," Science and Technology Minister Eduardo Campos said, adding that the responsibility of slowing global warming "substantially" falls on rich countries.

"It is now clear that Brazil's quickest way to reduce its contribution to global warming is fundamentally to change the process of occupation and land use in the Amazon," Greenpeace said in a statement.

Brazil had to produce the inventory as a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites) to curb greenhouse gasses, but as a developing country it does not need to cut emissions under the treaty.

GREAT TRACTS UP IN SMOKE

Still, the report is likely to ratchet up the pressure on Brazilian authorities to find ways to curb destruction of the Amazon that has reached alarming new levels in the past few years. Initial data shows that this year alone, an area the size of the U.S. state of New Jersey was destroyed.

Environment Minister Marina Silva said Brazil would not "escape from its responsibilities" to protect the environment. "The effort by the government to fight deforestation has to be significant to hit illegal activities," she said.

Failed Global Warming Policy Returns to Congress
House Sponsors of McCain Bill Want Higher Gas Prices

Washington , D.C. , March 30, 2004 —Today in the U.S. House of Representatives a version of the Senate’s Lieberman-McCain Climate Stewardship Act is being introduced that would create restrictions on the emission of carbon dioxide and other gases in the name of combating global warming. If made law, these restrictions would amount to a stealth tax on consumers. Progressively steeper restrictions on emission levels, as planned by backers of the proposal, would create a system of energy rationing that would raise prices through all sectors of the economy.

AGRA, India (AFP) - Dec 8/04 - A cloud of pollution which has been identified in the skies across Asia travels long distances across the Indian ocean and is now threatening to make the entire planet a drier place, experts warned.

"There is a nexus between local air pollution and global climate change," Mylvakanam Iyngararasan, senior programme specialist for the United Nations (news - web sites) Environment Programme, told the annual "Better Air Quality" conference at a meeting in the home of the Taj Mahal.

"Research suggests that there will be a large drying-out effect from the air pollution we see now. Harmful chemicals, aerosols and other pollutants impact cloud formation. India has experienced severe droughts in the last few years.

"Pollution from China can be blown in days to India or in a matter of weeks travel to Europe so pollution really is a trans-border problem," he added.

Jitendra Shah, senior environment engineer with the World Bank (news - web sites) in Washington, said Asian countries needed "to do their bit to keep the neighbourhood clean."

"No country can build a giant air filter on its borders so all countries have a responsibility to clean their own house in order to keep the neighbourhood clean," said Shah.

Experts also noted there were ample studies which showed there was a blanket of chemicals and dust from cars, aerosols and industrial smokestacks in South Asia.

In 1998, Indian-born US scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan used planes, ships, satellites and a team of 250 scientists from 15 countries to track a cloud of pollution dubbed the "Asian Brown Cloud" that hung over the Indian Ocean.

The cloud has injected intense rancour between the United States and developing countries over the cause of global warming.

An icy wind drives gusts of snow across the frozen river Dvina in Archangel.

It is only around -15C on the thermometer but out in the open the wind is piercing.

In a climate as harsh as this it is hardly surprising that locals like Nikolai welcome any sign of global warming.

"The winters are definitely getting warmer these days," he smiles. "That's much better for my garden - and it costs less to heat my house."

Nikolai confesses he has little clue about the Kyoto protocol, but the factories in this far northern town have cottoned on early to its potential.

At Archangel Pulp and Paper mill, they call themselves Russia's pioneers of the protocol.

Under Kyoto, more developed countries could invest directly in places like this, cleaning-up Russian industry in return for clean-air credits. Vadim argues even modest investment here would produce significant improvement.

"It's no secret that we see Kyoto as cheap money to help us modernise," he confesses, shouting through the hiss of the giant boilers. "There's huge scope for that across Russia. But if we relied on Moscow alone for funds, it would take decades."

Archangel is keen to lead the way on Kyoto, certain the opportunities are enormous. They are impatient to see the basic rules of the game drawn-up in Moscow.

The accord requires countries to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Some 141 countries, accounting for 55% of greenhouse gas emissions, have ratified the treaty, which pledges to cut these emissions by 5.2% by 2012.

But the world's top polluter [FALSE STATEMENT] - the US - has not signed up to the treaty.

The US says the changes would be too costly to introduce and that the agreement is flawed.

Large developing countries including India, China and Brazil are not required to meet specific targets for now.

The senior senator from Arizona has of late been eager to prove the UCS thesis. He called a hearing in January 2003, prior to Congress even convening, to trot out Sen. "Kyoto Joe" Lieberman as an expert witness. Lieberman is McCain's climate Doppelganger who co-authored their legislation implementing the (unratified) global warming treaty. At that hearing, the Connecticut Yankee did not disappoint, helpfully informing the Senate that 2002 was the second-warmest year on record, and would've been warmer but that there was a manufacturing slowdown (we can't make this stuff up)." (Christopher C. Horner, NRO)

as ever more data continue to accumulate, and as more correct procedures are employed to analyze them, the world's true temperature history is becoming ever more clear; and what's beginning to take shape will ultimately spell the end of the IPCC's ill-conceived rush to judgment on identifying both the nature and the cause of the post-Little Ice Age climatic amelioration.

Generators warn of power shortages from CO2 targets

David Gow
Wednesday March 31, 2004

The Guardian

Britain will suffer a 10% shortfall in electricity output from next year under the government's current plans for carbon dioxide emissions trading, executives at Drax, the country's biggest coal-fired power station, warned yesterday.

ministers that the overall power market could be "short" of 35m-40m megawatt/hours out of a UK total of 340m MWh because of a squeeze on generators.

His comments came as the government missed today's deadline for submitting its national allocation plan to Brussels for combating greenhouse gases under a new EU trading scheme. This comes into effect on January 1.

Industry has warned ministers that their plans to cut CO2 emissions by 16.3%, far beyond the Kyoto targets adopted by other EU countries, will damage competitiveness.

The 4,000MW Drax station, in Yorkshire, accounting for 7% of UK power needs, is Britain's biggest emitter of CO2. But Dr Burdett warns that, even as the most efficient coal-fired plant, it could be "short" of 7.6m MWh a year.

Coal accounts for a third of UK generation but Drax has told ministers that it is "inequitable" for the sector as a whole to be singled out for all the planned cut-backs in CO2 - 5.5m tonnes.

"The proposed allocation process assumes that the industry will restructure and buy any allowances necessary to deliver around the same number of output hours as it now does," he has written to environment department officials.

Ministers, he adds, assume that generators will purchase CO2 allowances under the EU scheme but Drax will only generate more if power prices rise enough to cover the extra cost of carbon. The government assumes this will initially trade at €10 (£6.60) a tonne, but analysts point to higher prices.

March 26, 2004 · NPR's Robert Siegel talks with biologist Norman Borlaug, who turned 90 years old this week, about the "Green Revolution" in agriculture his research helped to spark. Borlaug promoted inorganic fertilizers to create higher yields crops -- and for his efforts at curbing world hunger, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. But today, many environmentalists are challenging the "Green Revolution" and urge a shift back to organic fertilizers. Borlaug says the theories of who he calls "extreme greenies" would be inadequate to feed the world.

Greenland’s Secret

Here’s some hot news: Temperatures in Greenland have been rising like a rocket during the past decade or so, only to restore them to what they were in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s! Yet that bit of climate history — that temperatures were as warm or warmer in Greenland fifty years ago than they are today — appears to be lost on the global warming crowd. Instead, they point their fingers at and cluck their tongues over conditions in Greenland as they have changed during the past decade, claiming them to be a clear sign of anthropogenic global warming.

An article in the March 11, 2004, edition of Nature is somewhat typical of the genre, but goes so far as to suggest that Greenland may be on a path of warming and ice loss from which it never can recover. Apparently Nature writer Quinn Schiermeier is ignorant of the fact that, seventy years ago, a similar temperature rise in Greenland was followed by six decades of cooling. Greenland seems to have recovered from that bit of warming just fine!

The relationship between CAFTA and the Global Corporations is that it is THEIR Legislation, FOR them and AGAINST the MIDDLE CLASS. Its hard to have both 1. slave wages AND 2. a Middle Class

Indeed, the growth of the middle class-one of the underpinnings of democracy in this country-has been reversed. By government action.

We don't care about labels. We care about truth and facts, and believe that many sides have many pieces of the political truth about what is happening in the world. We are against large Multinational corporations that harm the people, impovrish countries, and destroy the middle classes. Our point of view is in believing in the Average American, and in the Integrity of the American Worker. We support the Middle Class, and government that stays out of the way of the People, and that will stop expanding and expanding and expanding its power, and its reach and its goals. We cannot be in favor of multinational and globalist agreements that are designed either to hurt America or the American Worker or the Family (meaning Dad, Mom and the kids) - or that are designed to continue to harm and erode American Sovereignty because the politicians find the will of the people to be something which is "inconvenient".

There is no "one piece" of legislation that can be opposed. Most of them have to be opposed and to be opposed continuously. It is a long process. But liberty - a small amount of it - is all that remains with which to fight. If we do not use it to stand up, there will soon be no liberty left, and no country either.

Microsoft has programmed Windows XP to contact other computers and transfer information from the user's computer to the other computers:

a) If you have only three DVDs that your children watch sometimes on your home machine that is always connected to the Internet (through a broadband connection), you may not care that Microsoft knows when they watch them. If you seldom use the Windows XP help facility, you may not care that Microsoft is able to know the level of expertise of the people who use your computer.

However, if you are using Windows XP in a large corporation or a government, the fact that another organization believes that it can gather data from you may be completely unacceptable.

The Microsoft article tells how to disable the hidden downloading. However, the disabling is very time-consuming. Also, Microsoft has a history of using defect fixes and security fixes to change the operating system settings. This means that all the settings would need to be checked after every defect fix or security vulnerability fix.

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