"5 ways evironmental friendliness is messing up the planet?" Is any of this true?

http://www.spike.com/blog/five-ways/85281

What do you guys think? It could be propaganda, but the guy cites some pretty respectable sources...

The rest are crap.

DDT is very bad - and there is an environmental disaster waiting to happen. Tons of it was dumped off Los Angeles where it rests on the ocean floor.

Pelicans were nearly killed out by DDT. They recovered after it was banned.

Are you the blog owner?

On the right track, but not burning fossil fuels has its merits, too.

What I find amusing about this argument is the incredible inconsistent when we consider the unbelievable waste of energy due to our insatiable appetite for meat.

There is a bit of something to Nos. 5 and 4, but it drops off sharply from there....

Here's my take on it, all these are just my opinions.

He's right about ethanol.
Organic food is a toss-up.
He's utterly wrong about wind power and birds.
Recycling is expensive but IMO a good thing because it introduces notions of environmental responsibility to Joe and Josephine Average.

The interesting one for me is DDT. He may be right on that one. My father spent his entire career following a Harvard PhD in biochemistry as a bench research scientist focused on the action of pesticides inside the cell. He has maintained from the git-go that the ban on DDT was a political act that was not underpinned by good science. His position is that the damage done to humanity by the ban (in terms of diseases like malaria) far outweighed the potential damage to the non-human world, which he believes would have ranged from very low to virtually zero. Since I know his deep sense of ethics and uncompromising scientific integrity first hand, I'm inclined to believe him, but that horse has left the barn.

On the whole this reads like a commissioned, agenda-driven hit piece.

Assuming DDT was less dangerous than assumed, what was the deal with the bird eggs? Was it just not happening? Was it exaggerated? Was there some other cause that got lost in the shuffle?

it's far too political.

Anyone that comes out with a non-DDT answer will be denounced as a shill for the pesticides industry and hating the environment.

This is why science should file a mass restraining order against politicians and lobbyists.

farm and in the 60-70s there was definitely a shortage of birds. Went down for a visit this week and they are back. Also the wind mills used to kill birds until they slowed them down. As to taking a lot of room - in Iowa the farmers are farming right up to the edges.

They're now one of the most abundant coastal birds.

Whatever the problem was, it seems to have gone away.

cold blooded take on DDT, humans are the major cause of pollution. Banning DDT lead to a reduction in humans (a million or so a year in preventable deaths since the ban in the 60s, factor in their children and grandchildren as well . . ), therefore it was a net gain for the environment, just not for humanity.

One of the interesting things about development is that there are genetic and biochemical pathways active during development that are inoperative after the organism finishes developing.

So, I can imagine somebody demonstrating that DDT is of insignificant danger to an adult organism, but missing the effects on the developing bird egg because the effect was on a transitory developmental path.

Pelicans use their highly vascular feet to incubate their eggs, but their eggshells were paper-thin and the eggs were crushed under the weight of the adults. In 1969, 750 nests were found, but only 4 chicks were born. The scientists found high concentrations of DDT in the Brown Pelicans' blood. DDT had moved up the food chain, a process called bio magnification, and the animals highest on the chain, received the highest concentration of DDT.

DDT wasn’t banned until a brave woman named Rachel Carson, wrote Silent Spring, which was published in 1962 and quickly rocketed to the New York Times best-seller list. Two years later, Rachel Carson died of breast cancer, but the fervor generated by her meticulously written book, in which she labeled pesticides "elixirs of death," would lead to a nationwide ban on DDT in 1972. Because DDT can take up to 15 years to break down in the environment, its effects remained well into the next decade.

The population of brown pelican colonies off Southern California shrank by more than 90 percent during the late 1960s. In 1970, there were 550 nests and only one chick survived; the California Brown Pelican was put on the federal Endangered Species list.

It was later discovered that from 1947 to 1983, the Montrose Chemical Corporation plant in Los Angeles had discharged DDT laden wastewater into the city’s sewers, which emptied into the ocean. There it was absorbed and stored in the tissues of anchovies and other fish eaten by pelicans.

Life was not easy and since the California Brown Pelican was put on the State’s endangered list in 1971, it has only recovered to an estimated population of 8,000 breeding pairs.

http://www.ibrrc.org/pelican_history.html

I've seen estimates of 100 million preventable deaths from malaria since DDT was banned. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Deep Ecologist with a very strong belief in the intrinsic rights of all living things. But a hundred million people seems like an awful lot of preventable suffering and death. Perhaps selective bans with effective enforcement, or just exemptions for use in high-malaria areas would have been a more balanced response.

On edit: It does seem as though DDT has been re-introduced in many malaria-prone countries in Africa: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ddt-use-to-combat-malaria

Minimizes the general environmental exposure, but kills mosquitoes where humans are living.

Was DDT banned worldwide?

There are other more effective and cheaper ways - mosquito nets. I used them as a child in Africa.

From the Wikipedia article on DDT:


The banning of DDT in African nations resulted in skyrocketing malaria rates. From the SciAm article:


Mosquito nets aren't as effective.

Ethanol: absolutely, this is an expensive and ineffective approach, we should abandone it now. But apparently people from the midwest are good at two things: growing corn and lobbying for more subsidies to grow corn.

DDT: maybe, maybe not. I haven't done the research but it looks like neither has anyone else. Put that as maybe.


Organic: maybe better for the world, but worse for people. Of course people aren't usually content to starve to death quietly, so as more farms here are converted to organic (reducing overall yields) that increases the need for more farmland elsewhere, which usually comes from cleared forests. Not the best thing for the planet in the long run. I'll give them that one.

Windfarms: I would think the no emissions things would make up for killing birds. Pollution isn't exactly good for them either. And if they're positioned correctly that could be reduced.

Recycling: for aluminum and some other materials it is a good thing, for paper it is a net loss for the enviroment because the energy required (lumber is a renewable, solar powered industry afterall). So mixed.

that it makes some observations along the lines of "hey not every environment-driven solution works out as perfectly as advertised" and then pushes a theme that environmental concern is all baloney. As pointed out above, the actual truth of these observations varies too.

Sort of analogous to arguments like "hey we all pay a lot of money in taxes, and sometimes your tax dollars pay for stuff you don't like, so clearly the solution is to elect Ron Paul and abolish the IRS."

For example, in way # 3 on organic farming, the link goes to a Reason online article, not the Research Institute for Organic Agriculture and therein lies the interpretational problem of one of the statistics allegedly from the institute's study:

From the Spike link:



Not exactly. From a link at the institute's webpage:

They don't even do TV very well. I guess they should just keep appealing to teenage boys, instead, eh?

The key to all of it is assessing whether something is truly sustainable. Ethanol, no - because of the reasons they cited. The methods used to create it are not sustainable. They seem to be implying that we should just stick with regular gas, though - which is also not sustainable. The solution is reduction of energy needs. Merely switching energy sources isn't a magic cure, sticking with the same unsustainable energy sources isn't a magic cure.

I think they are full of crap on DDT. Yes, if you kill off an entire part of the ecosystem, any problems that one part was causing will be reduced/eliminated. But they are not addressing the unintended consequences of killing off that part of the ecosystem at all. When in doubt, use the common sense test regarding chemicals designed to be poisons - if it builds up in fatty tissue of mammals (this does, affecting the ability to breast feed, affecting premature births, etc), if it screws up an ecosystem (this does), if it builds up in our own food supply (this does), it's a bad thing.

Their organic farming portion again is half truths. Yes, if you deplete a range of nutrients from the soil and only replace some of those nutrients, the soil will lack the unreplaced nutrients. The same is true with chemical fertilizers - if you only replace some of the nutrients with chemical alternatives, the soil will lack those nutrients. That's not a problem unique to organic farming, it's a problem with unsustainable practices in general (specifically with composting methods that don't return all the required nutrients to the soil). Chemical farming, on the other hand, affects the eco system in other ways which they conveniently do not address. Local chains of consumption is the solution, not chemicals. If you grow an entire state of primarily corn and then ship that away, and the animals which consume it are in a different region of the country, the waste that would return those minerals to the soil has been removed from the system. Meanwhile, it builds up excess minerals in dangerous ways in the waterways and soil of mass factory animal factories. There's your problem.

The windmill excerpt shows flaws in their disjointed logic. Yes, we want bats in the ecosystem, as they rightfully state. But go back a couple sections where they want to wipe out mosquitos with DDT. What happens to the bats when they do that? Turns out bats are especially susceptible to DDT, and in fact it's used specifically for bat control because they are so sensitive to it. http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/mammals/housebat/battox.htm

Their recycling portion again is some truths, some conveniently left-out facts, and once again a failure to identify the real problem. They compare manufacturing costs of a styrofoam cup to a ceramic mug. They incorporate the dishwashing costs of the mug. The study they link to does not, however, bring in the costs of shipping styrofoam cups again and again across country or the gas costs of going to the store to buy more disposable cups. Nor does it take into account that most people already own a mug, and the styrofoam cups are being manufactured and bought in addition to the manufacture and purchase of the reusable ones, not instead of. They also included several incorrect statements about styrofoam in landfills. "It will be sitting there. Nature doesn't mind. It's just another rock as far as she's concerned." Here's what really happens to it in a landfill: "Styrofoam captures water from seeping into the soil and therefore allows water to soak garbage until it’s almost a soup-like mixture. When heavy rains come, this soup escapes the Styrofoam barrier onto the landfill lining (if there is one) or more likely off into our soil and groundwater." bss.sfsu.edu/raquelrp/projects/Styrofoam.ppt

Regarding the big picture, they fail to note that upcycling is the real solution. The solution isn't putting more styrofoam cups into landfills because recycling gives off toxic fumes. Nobody needs to buy new mugs or reusable cups, because most of us already buy (and discard) spaghetti sauce jars, mayo jars, or could get used mugs or mason jars through freecycling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

Propaganda which is true leaves opponents saying, "Yes, that's true, but…"

"We aren't necessarily saying that DDT doesn't cause environmental issues. We're just saying there isn't really any solid evidence that it does."

And to support his claim, he referenced junkscience.com. :eyes:


There are nearly zero facts in this discussion. Cow manure is loaded with phoshporus -- this is a downside of excessive application of manures to soils. It has potassium, too. As to the Swiss study: less nutrients in soils is probably a good thing. A whole lot of farmers tend to over-apply nutrients. Lower nutrients in an organic versus non-organic farm is probably a reflection of good management.

I challenge this nitwit to find an organic farm that is becoming "increasingly barren."



Good point, but welcome to 2009. That problem was solved with a simple change in design of the blades. The problem has been reduced by more than 10-fold.

5) Burning down the rainforest to grow ethanol is definitely a bad idea! It's better to make biofuel from algae, which gives something like 1,000 times as much fuel per acre per year as ethanol, and can be done without cutting down the rainforest.

4) The U.S. didn't ban DDT until after we had already used it to eliminate malaria. Poor countries should be allowed to use DDT for indoor spraying in small quantities a few times per year to protect people from this deadly disease, which is very different than the overspraying for agricultural reasons that happened in the U.S. which ended up hurting birds. It's hypocritical for us to tell people in poor countries that they aren't allowed to benefit from the same technology that we benefited from.

3) If organic food requires us to throw away 20% of our food, that's a bad thing. And if we need chemical fertilizers to supply phosphorus and potassium, then we should use those. However, we should be careful not to go overboard with these chemical fertilizers.

2) Wind power is better than coal power, but nuclear power is even better than wind power.

1) Recycling is a good idea, but only when it saves more resources than it uses. Recycling large chunks of metal makes sense - recyclers have always offered money for the scrap metal in junked cars. Manufacturers have always recycled paper, glass, and plastic at the pre-consumer stage. However, recycling paper, glass, and plastic at the post-consumer stage almost always uses up more resources than it saves, which is why businesses don't offer people money for these things. I see commercials on TV offering you cash for your old gold, but I've never seen any commercials offering you cash for your old paper, glass, and plastic. Someday in the future, landfills will be mined by giant machines, and the materials in the landfills will be recycled efficiently. Landfills are not a permanent storage place - they are a temporary storage place until this efficient recycling technology gets invented in the future. Meanwhile, having people separate tiny little bits of trash by hand is silly, and it would be better if all that trash was taken to a landfill until this new recycling technology gets invented.

In 2003, Santa Clarita, California was paying $28 per ton for landfill space. Then the city adopted a mandatory diaper recycling program that cost $1,800 per ton. Source: http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/000001.html How can anyone say that using $1,800 of resources to save $28 of resources causes a net savings of resources?

40% of the garbage that New York City residents separate for recycling ends up in landfills. Source: http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/38735 Why should people waste their time separating their trash by hand, when even the agencies that claim to support recycling aren't doing it?