The Government Relies on Flawed Data to Determine Endangered Species

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Americans who live in or near a community built around a lake should be careful about stepping outside to mow the lawn if the temperature isn’t just right and the grass isn’t a certain height.

They should keep pets indoors. They should forget about using weed killer. And they should be prepared to pony up a steep homeowners association fee.

That’s because there may be snakes in the area protected by the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which imposes stiff penalties and fines for violating its rules and restrictions.

Rob Gordon, a senior research fellow with The Heritage Foundation, discovered the situation while researching the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 1999 decision to list the Lake Erie water snake as a “threatened” species.

The Fish and Wildlife Service estimated the population of that particular water snake to be somewhere between 1,530 and 2,030 at the time. But just a few years later, the agency revised it to 5,690.

The government either made a “substantial underestimation” with the initial listing or the water snake had “a truly miraculous population growth rate” in a short time, Gordon observes in a recently published research paper that finds the listing process under the Endangered Species Act to be riddled with “erroneous data.”

Gordon concludes that “essentially half of the species” identified by Fish and Wildlife Service officials as “recovered” never should have been listed in the first place.

The regulatory fallout for developers, homeowners, and business owners who run up against the endangered species law is the same regardless of whether federal officials used sound science or flawed methodology, Gordon told The Daily Signal in an interview.

“Once a species is listed, it is regulated and the way it’s regulated doesn’t vary dependent upon the quality of the data the agency used,” Gordon said. “If one listing is legitimate and another listing is illegitimate based on erroneous data, the practical consequences are the same to the property owner or the business owner. He or she still faces the same restrictions whether or not these restrictions are legitimately based on science.”

After reviewing the Fish and Wildlife Service’s documentation in the case of the Lake Erie water snake, Gordon found the agency worked to impose “surreal regulatory hurdles” against a developer who sought to build seven houses on 15 acres.

The Fish and Wildlife Service called for easements to be placed on over five acres of lakefront property that would be donated to a nonprofit organization. The agency also sought a $50,000 “contribution” from the developer to cover construction of a hibernation habitat for the snakes, and creation of a homeowners association that would impose additional restrictions.

‘Federally Funded Fiction’

The case of the Lake Erie water snake “is a small example of the heavy-handed regulatory process for just one of the nearly 1,700 listed species to which landowners and businesses are repeatedly subject across the nation,” Gordon writes in his paper.

Although the government delisted the snake in 2011, numerous restrictions popped up in the meantime.

Homeowners association restrictions stipulated that residents make sure no snake was within 20 feet when applying weed killer to poison ivy, that they not allow cats outside, and that they abide by seasonal height and temperature guidelines for mowing lawns. Collectively, residents also had to provide up to $18,750 for snake research, and allow researchers to have access to their properties.

“This seems really over the top, doesn’t it?” Gordon asked in the interview with The Daily Signal. “And keep in mind that the snake’s actual population numbers were probably undercounted in the first place.”

Gordon describes the recovery figures that Fish and Wildlife officials cite as “federally funded fiction” that dramatically inflate the number of species that genuinely were endangered and subsequently preserved.

“With all the ESA’s costs and burdens, it should perhaps come as no surprise that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is fabricating success stories to cover up this unsustainable mess and substituting fluff for statutorily required reporting regarding the recovery program,” he writes of the law in his paper.

The errors that result in listing species that are not genuinely endangered stem in large part from the “low bar for scientific data” set by the agency, Gordon concluded.

The Endangered Species Act calls for the “best available scientific and commercial data” to be used in the listing process. But here’s the problem, from Gordon’s point of view: Fish and Wildlife officials interpreted this directive to mean the information underpinning a listing doesn’t need to be complete or accurate.

“The agency has not set a high enough bar and sometimes they are using scant or even nonexistent data to list species,” Gordon told The Daily Signal. “They are using speculation and surmise as opposed to verifiable data, and in some instances they won’t even share the data. It’s no wonder that consequently all sorts of species are erroneously listed. That’s what happens when you have weak data standards.”

How bad is the problem?

Of 1,662 plants and animals listed by the Fish and Wildlife Service as either “endangered” or “threatened” in the past 45 years, the government had removed 68 before Gordon published his paper in April.

Of those 68, 11 were removed from the list because they had gone extinct and 19 were removed because of errors in the original data. That leaves 38 species delisted because they were “recovered.”

Taxpayers on Hook for ‘Deceitful Practices’

Under the Endangered Species Act, the conservation process involves “the use of all methods and procedures which are necessary to bring any endangered species or threatened species to the point at which the measures provided … are no longer necessary.”

Endangered species are considered to be at the brink of extinction, while threatened species are considered likely to be so in the near future.

Gordon initially determined that “almost half” of the 38 species listed as “recovered” were actually “false recoveries” because they were based upon original data error.

However, since his paper was published three more species have been delisted and he has concluded that two—the lesser long-nosed bat and the black-capped vireo—were listed based on erroneous data.

For this reason, he now says “essentially half” of the species the Fish and Wildlife Service identified as recovered are not genuine recoveries.

Gordon says he also found other examples of “recovered” species that are really “mixed bags,” meaning the number of recoveries resting on erroneous data could be much higher.

(The full list of delisted species is available here.)

The Daily Signal sought comment from the Interior Department and the Fish and Wildlife Service on Gordon’s findings and whether Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke might consider his recommended reforms. Officials had not responded as of publication.

Unfortunately, U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill for “deceitful practices that portray mistakes as successes,” Gordon told The Daily Signal.

That’s because each listing sets in motion mandatory actions and government expenditures under federal law, he said.

For instance, according to Gordon’s paper, the Fish and Wildlife Service reported in 2014 that the “median cost for preparing and publishing a 90-day finding is $39,276; for a 12-month finding, $100,690; for a proposed rule with critical habitat, $345,000; and for a final listing rule with critical habitat, $305,000.”

“These are just the paperwork costs and the bureaucratic costs of listing species whether they were legitimately listed or if they were listed based on erroneous data,” he told The Daily Signal. “But they are a drop in the bucket compared to the costs borne by private parties such as companies, farmers, and ranchers who have to comply with all kinds of mandates and have to absorb the loss in the value of their land because of their inability to use it and other significant opportunity costs.”

Special Interest Groups Drive Litigation

Gordon points to restrictions the Fish and Wildlife officials sought to impose to protect the Lake Erie water snake as an example of excessively burdensome costs.

Gordon’s paper was the subject of a panel discussion April 25 at The Heritage Foundation where he was joined by Rob Roy Ramey, a wildlife biologist based in Denver, and Jonathan Wood, a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation who specializes in environmental and constitutional law.

Ramey called for greater openness and transparency on the part of federal officials and suggested that all the data Fish and Wildlife officials use in their decisions to list species should be made public.

“That way we have a common currency of accountability available to the entire nation,” Ramey said at the Heritage event. Without access to the data, he said, “there’s no opportunity for reproducibility,” which means listing and delisting decisions may not be based on the best scientific information.

Ramey cited several examples of responses from government officials who resisted information requests. His personal favorite came from a “rogue recovery team member” who said:

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service data was deliberately provided in a format that would not facilitate detailed analysis by those unfamiliar with the manner in which the data was collected.

Other examples included “the data you requested are proprietary,” “we are still using this data,” and “those data may no longer exist.”

Ramey warned that Fish and Wildlife officials who have “cherry-picked” and “fabricated” data to list species as endangered or threatened drew resources away from creatures in genuine need of protection, such as blue whales, California condors, rhinoceroses, and gorillas.

Wood, the lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit headquartered in Sacramento, California, credited Gordon with research that shows how often examples of species recovery touted as successes for the Endangered Species Act “are little more than fake news.”

Special interest groups play a role in the listing process, Wood said at the Heritage event.

“What really drives the Endangered Species Act is litigation,” he said. “The reality is that the listing process is fundamentally broken, it is completely litigation driven, and it is a problem for administrations regardless of party.”

The Obama administration sought to develop a work plan to “seize some control back” over the listing process, Wood told the audience, so that key factors such as a species’ actual vulnerability would be considered and a listing would not be the result of “which special interest group is yelling the loudest.”

Potential Reforms for Interior Department

In his research, Gordon highlighted examples of listings where the initial count of a species population was dramatically off based on flawed methodology. He cited the Monito gecko during his talk at Heritage.

This lizard resides on Monito Island off the coast of Puerto Rico, which spans about 40 acres surrounded by 217-foot cliffs. The initial search Fish and Wildlife officials used as the basis to list the species in 1982 was organized during the day, when 18 lizards were found.

“The problem here is that the lizard is nocturnal,” Gordon told The Daily Signal. “So, if you are walking around during the middle of the day, you are not going to find it. The creature burrows down into rocks. In 2016, they finally did a proper survey during the evening and they came up with an estimate of about 5,000 to 10,000 geckos. That’s what you call a big difference.”

Gordon spelled out several potential reforms that the Trump administration’s Interior Department could embrace under Zinke’s leadership.

For starters, Zinke could issue an order directing the Fish and Wildlife Service “to accurately identify the data that forms the bases for removing or downlisting species,” Gordon writes in his report.

He also recommends that the agency correct the record and acknowledge instances where a species was wrongly declared to have “recovered.”

“Right now, the Fish and Wildlife Service asserts that the listings are driven by science, but in truth the listings are often driven by litigation and the scientific standards are so weak that they are often listing species as endangered when they should never have been listed,” Gordon said, adding:

The first step in correcting the problem is to admit that it exists. What needs to be done now is to go back and look at species that were claimed as recovered and to put your foot down and acknowledge that many of them were not really recoveries and they were based on erroneous data. Then, going forward, they need to make sure future listings are not based on speculation.

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Kevin Mooney

Kevin Mooney

Kevin Mooney is an investigative reporter for The Daily Signal. Send an email to Kevin. Twitter: @KevinMooneyDC.

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of U.S Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Meg Marriott, left, trudging with intern Amy Newman to a trapping site for the salt marsh harvest mouse near California’s Napa-Sonoma Marshes Wildlife Area in this 2011 photo. The mouse was first listed as an endangered species in 1970. (Photo: Aric Crabb/Oakland Tribune/MCT/Newscom)

More fossil fuels, a cleaner environment

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It is certainly true that fossil fuel use can cause significant harm to environmental quality, but as you can see from this chart, as fossil fuel use has gone up in the US, concentrations of air pollutants have gone down, which contradicts the catastrophic pollution narrative.

image

We can use more fossil fuels and have a cleaner environment. What’s behind this? The cause is technology plus laws. Let’s start with the technology.

Technology vs. pollution

Here’s a question. What industry invented recycling? The oil industry invented recycling. In the 1800s the oil industry was refining crude oil into kerosene but they had a lot of waste material because you might get only 50% kerosene from the crude. The rest of it was unusable and sometimes would just be dumped into a river.

But thanks to human ingenuity, we not only stopped dumping the waste into rivers; we started transforming what had been waste into wealth. For example, the industry began generating waxes and lubricants and all kinds of other useful materials from oil.

Then in the 20th century, they developed processes to break down the crude oil and its hydrocarbons into petrochemicals, which as we’ve seen have created countless different products. That’s a way in which something that can be a negative can be turned into a positive.

You can also use technology to dramatically reduce emissions sometimes to the point where they are completely benign. North Dakota, for instance, has coal power and also some of the world’s cleanest air. How does that happen?

Using technology, you can mitigate threats–and you can even turn them into benefits.

EDITORS NOTE: University of Maryland economist Julian Simon noted in his 1981 book that the human brain is the “ultimate resource.” Humans can innovate themselves out of scarcity by becoming more efficient, increasing supply, and developing substitutes. Hammond presents the following facts:

New technologies and improved farming methods have led humanity to use less land, while producing more food, which is then sold at a cheaper price. In 2013, the world used 26 million fewer hectares of farmland than it did at the turn of the millennium. To take cereals as an example: A hectare today produces on average 118 percent more yield than it would have 50 years ago. If all farmers could reach the productivity of an average U.S. farmer, the world could return a land mass the size of India back to nature.

As for the finite resource that our modern world depends upon, consider fossil fuels. Thanks to improved detection and drilling technology, there are now far more oil and gas reserves than ever before. Since 1980, proven oil reserves have increased by over 151 percent; for gas this figure was 163 percent. To put these data into perspective, in 2015 we used 34 billion barrels of crude oil, while we discovered another 53.2 billion barrels each year between 2010 and 2015.

We’re solving the problems of hunger, poverty, illiteracy, disease, infant mortality, food production and much more at an unprecedented rate. And instead of becoming more scarce, natural resources are actually declining in price.

NY Times Bites off More than It Can Skew

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Fake news is alive and well — and thriving on the pages of America’s biggest newspapers. No wonder more people are tuning out the media. They don’t trust it. And outlets like the New York Times aren’t giving them any reason to try.At some point, the Times’s editorial board must have gotten together and decided to reprint every lie ever told about abstinence education. The result was Saturday’s work of fiction, a breathtakingly dishonest, 602-word crime scene of journalism that justifies America’s growing distrust of the press. About the only thing that was accurate about the column was its placement: on the opinion page, where it can’t be passed off as legitimate news.

Still, the editors’ agenda was obvious – discrediting a sex-ed approach that’s popular, effective, and grossly underfunded. They barely got the byline in before the absurdities began, starting with the Times’s insistence that HHS is somehow “advancing an anti-science, ideological agenda” by trying to level the funding field for abstinence. “The department last year prematurely ended grants to some teen pregnancy prevention programs, claiming weak evidence of success. More recently, it set new funding rules that favor an abstinence-only approach,” they complain.

If anyone’s ignoring science, it’s the Times. Barack Obama’s own HHS admitted outright that his contraception-first strategy was a billion-dollar failure. More than 80 percent of the students in his programs fared either worse or no better than their peers. Hardly the stuff of “weak evidence.” According to the last administration, Obama’s approach was a disaster — resulting in more pregnancies, more sexual initiation, and more oral sex1.

Not surprisingly, the Trump administration doesn’t think programs that encourage pregnancy are the wisest use of federal funds. So it rewrote the rules, shifting a very modest amount of money (10 cents of every sex-ed dollar) to the strategy the CDC agrees is working. But even now, HHS’s investment in abstinence isn’t close to what the Times’s preferred programs are getting. Liberal sex-ed still rakes in about $980 million, compared to $100 million for sexual risk avoidance (SRA). Even with the president’s changes, that’s still about a 10:1 ratio in favor of programs that taxpayers don’t want – and more importantly, don’t work!

The editors claim that “The administration’s approach defies all common sense. There is no good evidence that abstinence-only education prevents or delays young people from having sex, leads them to have fewer sexual partners, or reduces rates of teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections.” Did the Times fire all of its fact-checkers? The CDC blew that myth to bits in 2016, explaining that not only does the abstinence message work — it positively affects every area of kids’ lives. “High school students who are virgins rate significantly and consistently better in nearly all health-related behaviors and measures than their sexually active peers.” That includes everything from “bike helmet and seat belt use to substance abuse, diet, doctor’s visits, exercise, and even tanning bed use.” Abstinence education is like one-stop shopping for healthier behavior.

Unfortunately, the Left is too beholden to its culture of permissiveness to listen. For some of them, it’s self-indulgence at all costs — so much so that they’re willing to help kids off a cliff that leads to teen pregnancy and everything that comes with it: financial hardship, school failure, and depression. They refuse to treat sex like every other risk behavior and discourage it. And ironically, that’s what teenagers want.

In a survey of 18- and 19-year-olds, the Barna Group found that what kids care about is learning how to “understand healthy and unhealthy relationships (65 percent), avoiding sexual assault (64 percent), how alcohol impairs judgment (61 percent), and how to say ‘no’ to sex without losing a relationship (57 percent).” They’re relationship-driven, not sex obsessed. Most of them agree that today’s curriculum pressures them too much to have sex. And those who’ve given in regret it. They don’t think lessons on sexual pleasuring (26 percent) are nearly as important as having the skills to say “no” (63 percent).

That’s another thing the editors misjudge: teenagers’ desire to wait. “[G]iven that almost all Americans engage in premarital sex,” they argue, “this vision of an abstinent-outside-of-marriage world simply at odds with reality.” That’s ridiculous. All Americans don’t engage in premarital sex – and certainly all teenagers don’t. Even the Washington Post points out just how sharply teen sex is declining. Would you believe that about 60 percent of teens haven’t had sex? Most Americans are surprised to hear it – thanks in part to the misinformation campaigns of newspapers like this one. Once they know, Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between agree: it’s time to teach abstinence.

And the Trump administration is listening. They’re pursuing a bipartisan, evidence-based approach — which is more than I can say for the New York Times.

REFERENCE:

[1] Office of Adolescent Health (2016), Summary of Findings from the TPP Program Grantees (FY2010-2014). Washington, D.C.: HHS. Special issue of American Journal of Public Health, September 2016. 106 (S1):29-S15.

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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Avengers ‘Infinity War’: Teaching children that mass slaughter is okay for all the wrong reasons

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I used to be a fan of Marvel comics. Not anymore. The reason is the latest edition of 18 films in Marvel studios Avengers series titled “Infinity War.” After watching the film I was very disturbed by the message. Here is a key exchange between Thanos, the alien invader/protagonist, and Dr. Strange, one of the Avengers:

Thanos: When we faced extinction I offered a solution

Dr. Stephen Strange: Genocide?

Thanos: But random, dispassion is fair for rich and poor a like. They called me a mad man. What I predict came unannounced.

Dr. Stephen Strange: Congratulations, you’re a prophet

Thanos: I’m a survivor

Dr. Stephen Strange: Who wants to murder trillions

Thanos: With all the six stones I can simply snap my fingers, they will all cease to exist. I call that… mercy.

Dr. Stephen Strange: Then what?

Thanos: [I] finally rest, watch the sunrise on an ungrateful universe. The hardest choices require the strongest will.

In the end Thanos wins and trillions of people in the universe are slaughtered. The final scene is of Thanos in a green pasture admiring his work.

The most disturbing part is that during the film Dr. Strange looks at millions of options/outcomes and determines that Thanos winning is the only way. Dr. Strange, while getting erased from the universe, says to Tony Stark, “Tony, There was no other way.” This leads to fratricide, with half of his fellow Avengers dying. Fratricide is defined as:

[O]ne that murders or kills his or her own brother or sister or an individual (such as a countryman) having a relationship like that of a brother or sister.

Hollywood has made killing one’s brothers and sisters a noble, good and merciful thing. Why?

Alexander C. R. Hammond, research assistant for HumanProgress.org published an article titled “The Avengers, Thanos and Overpopulation.” Hammond wrote:

Thanos believes that there are finite resources in the universe—an appropriately illiterate idea, considering that the universe is infinite. Thus, if population growth is left unchecked, rising demand for resources will inevitably bring ruin to everyone. Halving the population of the universe is, in Thanos’ mind, “not suffering, but salvation,” for it is intended to avoid famine and poverty. The premise is misguided, but it’s striking how many people here on Earth share it.

Thanos’ concerns are identical to those of Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich, whose influential 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb predicted that rapid population growth would result in demand on Earth’s finite resources outstripping supply, resulting in the breakdown of society. To this day Ehrlich continues to make doomsday predictions, and to this day reality continues to prove him wrong.

Population control is not new

Centralized government population control has been tried before. Hammond notes:

Less amusing are the horrific real-life policies that have been implemented because of Ehrlich’s doomsaying. To be sure, no policy has yet been on par with Thanos’ plan to directly kill half of the population, but as Chelsea Follett has noted, “Ehrlich’s jeremiad led to human rights abuses around the world, including millions of forced sterilizations in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India—as well as China’s draconian ‘one child’ policy. In 1975, officials sterilized 8 million men and women in India alone…To put that in perspective, Hitler’s Germany forcibly sterilized 300,000 to 400,000 people.”

Since Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, the world’s population has more than doubled, from 3.5 billion to 7.5 billion. Since 1968, famines have all but disappeared outside of war zones, and daily per capita calorie consumption has increased by more than 30 percent. In Asia, the region that consumed the fewest calories and had the fastest-growing population in 1968, caloric intake has increased by 40 percent, faster than the global average. Since 1990, the overall number of hungry people in the world has decreased by 216 million, despite the fact that the population grew by more than 1.9 billion.

The Human Brain is the Ultimate Resource

University of Maryland economist Julian Simon noted in his 1981 book that the human brain is the “ultimate resource.” Humans can innovate themselves out of scarcity by becoming more efficient, increasing supply, and developing substitutes.

Hammond presents the following facts:

New technologies and improved farming methods have led humanity to use less land, while producing more food, which is then sold at a cheaper price. In 2013, the world used 26 million fewer hectares of farmland than it did at the turn of the millennium. To take cereals as an example: A hectare today produces on average 118 percent more yield than it would have 50 years ago. If all farmers could reach the productivity of an average U.S. farmer, the world could return a land mass the size of India back to nature.

As for the finite resource that our modern world depends upon, consider fossil fuels. Thanks to improved detection and drilling technology, there are now far more oil and gas reserves than ever before. Since 1980, proven oil reserves have increased by over 151 percent; for gas this figure was 163 percent. To put these data into perspective, in 2015 we used 34 billion barrels of crude oil, while we discovered another 53.2 billion barrels each year between 2010 and 2015.

We’re solving the problems of hunger, poverty, illiteracy, disease, infant mortality, food production and much more at an unprecedented rate. And instead of becoming more scarce, natural resources are actually declining in price.

Billions Have Suffered due to the Overpopulation Myth

Chelsea Follet a researcher at the Cato Institute and Managing Editor of HumanProgress.org. in an article titled “Billions Have Suffered ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ in Reverse Thanks to Overpopulation Myths” writes:

Bowdoin College’s Sarah Conly published a book claiming it is “morally permissible” for the government to limit family sizes through force.

Back at home, many prominent American environmentalists—from Johns Hopkins University bioethicist Travis Rieder to entertainer Bill Nye “The Science Guy”—support tax penalties or other state-imposed punishments for having “too many” children.

Bowdoin College’s Sarah Conly published a book in 2016 through the Oxford University Press advocating a “one-child” policy, claiming it is “morally permissible” for the government to limit family sizes through force.

Their views are chilling.

Infinity Stone is chilling indeed. Children and adults are globally being indoctrinated into believe the culling the human population is necessary to save the planet earth. Thanos is the consummate environmental protagonist.

As Eleanore Roosevelt wrote:

“One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.”

Hollywood’s philosophy of mass slaughter is being expressed in its films, its choices are wrong. It is ultimately up to us to choose correctly to reject this one world order view that promote human genocide on a galactic scale.

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How we create fossil fuel resources

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Resources are things you can use. But despite the popular expression “natural resources,” nature gives us very little in the way of usable resources. It gives us raw materials but we need to use human ingenuity to transform those raw materials into resources.

Human beings are not resource depleters, we are resource creators.

That’s the issue I want to discuss here, focusing on energy resources.

We have more fossil fuel resources than ever before

The catastrophic depletion argument says we are depleting energy resources by using fossil fuels, which will be disastrous to us and to future generations because we have made ourselves dependent on these resources. In reality we have more resources now, including more fossil fuel resources, than people had 300 years ago, before we started producing fossil fuels.

Look at this chart.

image

The line on the bottom shows the world’s consumption of oil over time. Notice how the line slopes slightly up, which means every year on average we’re consuming a little bit more oil. Then the line on top represents our oil reserves.

Think about this for a second. We use more oil every year but we have more oil every year.

How we create fossil fuel resources

How is this possible? What’s going on is that fossil fuel resources are created, not taken. We’re taught to think of oil reserves as a fixed amount that nature gives us that we’re constantly using up. That’s not how it works. What happens instead is that people find progressively better ways to find, extract, refine, and use oil.

For example, in the 1800s people discovered something called “skunk oil.” It was unusable because it had a lot of sulfur in it and smelled like rotten eggs. Then people figured out how to refine it so this previously unusable product became oil. They used ingenuity to expand the supply of usable oil. The popular term “oil reserves” just refers to the amount that’s currently in inventory: basically, the amount it makes sense to develop given our current technology and economics.

As we evolve, as we figure out new ways to turn non-resources into resources, we can take more and more unusable hydrocarbon and make it usable. With any given fossil fuel there’s likely at least ten times more of it than we’ve used in the entire history of civilization.

That’s one reason we shouldn’t be worried about running out of fossil fuels. The other reason not to be concerned is that we have the unlimited ability to create other energy resources as well.

image

This doesn’t mean we can just ban some form of energy today without severe consequences. What it does mean is that over time we could potentially transform anything in the world into energy. Just the potential of nuclear technology alone shows that we don’t have to worry about running out of energy.

The key to abundant energy resources is to leave people free so that overtime they can continue to evolve new and better ways to get energy.

If people are free, then even if you would run out of fossil fuels in 200 years, you would gradually transition to something else. If fossil fuels became more scarce relative to demand, the price of fossil fuels would go up and then that would incentivize other people to compete.

I call this “evolving energy.” We’ll never run out of energy as long as we are always free to produce and use the most cost effective energy at any given time. The challenge we face isn’t using up a fixed amount of energy. There’s just an ongoing challenge of figuring out new ways to create the best form of energy under freedom.

VIDEO: Debunking Communism from ‘The School of Life’ — A Rebuttal of Karl Marx

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Steven Crowder presents a rebuttal to the ever-popular School of Life’s defense of Communism and Karl Marx.

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Facebook ‘enabling illegal activities’ including the sale of ‘highly addictive’ illegal drugs

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Pathfinders Recovery Center in an article titled “Mark Zuckerberg Faces Questions About Opioid Sales on Social Media” reported the following:

Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of the social networking giant, Facebook, appeared in front of Congress on April, 11. He faced questions about the sale of illegal opioids on both Facebook and Instagram. Republican Rep. David McKinney from West Virginia, was especially vocal when questioning Zuckerberg about why Facebook has not been more proactive about taking down posts from opioid dealers.

McKinney told Zuckerberg,

“Your platform is still being used to circumvent the law and allow people to buy highly addictive drugs without a prescription…. Facebook is actually enabling an illegal activity…”

Drugs On the Internet

The problem of illegal drug sales through the internet is not a new one. In 2011 the search engine giant, Google, paid $500 million to the United States Department of Justice for allowing prescription drug ads from Canadian online pharmacies to internet users in the United States. The ads were stopped in 2009 when Google executives became aware of the U.S. Attorney’s investigation into the matter.

Opioid sellers still find creative ways to post about drug sales on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Critics like McKinney have accused the social media sites of only reacting to the posts by taking them down, not being proactive in finding ways to stop the illegal sales, to begin with. Critics believe that opioid addictions are encouraged by these posts. Removing questionable content from social media platforms has been relatively hit or miss in the past. Facebook executives have been asked to no longer allow mentions of Oxycontin and other drug-related terms from Facebook or Instagram, a photo sharing social media platform owned by Facebook.

Zuckerberg answered the accusations by stating that his company needs to create more artificial intelligence to police the social media platforms. Right now the company has security and content reviewers who remove questionable posts when they are flagged by users. Zuckerberg continued by saying there will be 20,000 workers in those positions by the end of 2018. However, he admits that even that number of people can not police every posting on Facebook and Instagram. He went on to state, “…we need…more A.I. tools that can proactively find that content.” They have to A.I. capability to remove almost one hundred percent of ISIS content before it is even available to be viewed, but the technology is lacking when it comes to identifying illegal drug sale posts. Zuckerberg could not comment on a timeline for these tools to be available to help remove drug-related posts.

Posts that Rep. McKinley himself flagged have since been removed. He still believes however that the “internal controls” of these sites are lacking and these posts should have been removed long ago. McKinley states that he has been waiting months to talk to Facebook about the issue.

FDA Commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, has been outspoken about opioid sales on platforms like Facebook and Instagram as well. He feels they are not taking the necessary steps to identify and take down these posts. Zuckerberg claimed not to be aware of the exact nature of Gottlieb’s comments but said he would have someone at any meeting held that included tech representatives.

Getting Help in Addiction

Overdose deaths from prescription pill addiction doubled from 21,089 deaths in 2010 to 42,249 deaths in 2016. There is help available for people who are struggling with opioid addictions. This help comes in the form of rehabilitation.

Pathfinders Recovery Centers in Arizona and Colorado provide prescription drug addiction treatment can help people overcome their potentially deadly habit.

The 3 Concerns About Fossil Fuels

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As we learned last time, the three alleged unique risks of fossil fuels are:

  1. catastrophic resource depletion
  2. catastrophic pollution
  3. catastrophic climate change

In this column I want to briefly elaborate on each of those potential risks.

The catastrophic resource depletion argument

This argument claims that because fossil fuels are nonrenewable, because they don’t replenish automatically in the way that the sun or the wind do, we will inevitably deplete them and that will cause a disaster because we depend on them.

You can think of what I just said as the three Ds. We depend on them, deplete them, causing a disaster.

The catastrophic pollution argument

This argument claims that, because producing and using fossil fuels involve emissions and other wastes such as coal dust from coal mining or fluid from fracking, over time our air and water will continuously get dirtier and deadlier.

The catastrophic climate change argument

This argument claims that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are creating a progressively unlivable climate. While this argument often goes by “climate change,” I think that’s way too vague and it also assumes that CO2 has a certain effect without proving it. Instead, I like to start by talking about the issue in terms of CO2 or “the CO2 issue.”

As we’ll see, it’s a clearer way of thinking about the issue to start with the fact that burning fossil fuels releases CO2 and then to investigate the claim that a side effect of this process is catastrophic climate change.

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The basic claim here is that CO2 emissions have a warming influence and that if we have enough of those emissions from using fossil fuels, it will lead to catastrophic climate change. We’ll go in-depth into the mechanics of the warming influence of CO2 but that’s the high-level idea.

The positive impact of energy

Those are the three potential unique risks of fossil fuels. Now, you might think that this covers everything, but there’s one more issue that we have to cover in order to assess the full context.

There’s an underlying assumption that when we talk about energy and environment that the impact of energy is either neutral or negative. A source of energy is either dirty or not dirty.

This is wrong in two ways.

One way is that every source of energy is dirty in the sense that everything has a byproduct in one form or another: in every energy process there is some degree of negative impact. A black-and-white view of “dirty versus clean energy” is counterproductive and leads to wrong decisions.

The other way the negative view of energy and our environment is wrong is that it only takes into account potential negative impacts of energy on our environment, including our climate. To understand the environmental impact of fossil fuels or any other form of energy, and to assess the risks, we need to learn about impacts that are almost never discussed: positive environmental impacts.

16 Blockchain Disruptions [Infographic]

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Blockchain technology is probably one of the most impactful discoveries in the recent history. After all, it has a massive potential to change how we handle online transactions. Despite some skeptics, the majority of experts agree that blockchain has the potential to disrupt the banking and financial industry, and many other ones!

But what is this technology exactly? We at BitFortune.net will try to explain that in Layman’s terms, as well as provide you with insights into how different industries can benefit from blockchain.

To put it simply, blockchain enables decentralized transactions across a P2P network. There is no need for a middleman, resulting in almost instantaneous operations and most importantly, low fees. Plus, transactions carried out through a blockchain are much more secure, transparent, and private.

As mentioned earlier, different industries will have different benefits from implementing blockchain technology, and that is what this infographic is all about. For example, the banking sector will get faster transactions, lower costs, improved security, and better record keeping. Also, the blockchain technology can improve electronic voting systems. With this technology integrated into a voting system, governments won’t be able to tamper with votes because blockchain creates publicly viewable and singed transaction that can’t be changed or rewritten.

This infographic will help you understand how the blockchain technology can and will improve 16 different industries, from music to government. So, read on and find out what their future will look like.

CDC Kept Quiet on Data Showing Americans Regularly Use Firearms for Self-Defense

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The year is 1996. The Right to Carry movement is building momentum across the United States after violent crime peaked in the early 1990s. Criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz just published a study estimating that 2.5 million Americans used a firearm to defend themselves against another person in 1993. Gun-control advocates scoff at the number, though Kleck refutes the criticisms levied at his work.

The surest way to confirm, cast doubt upon or refute any research is replication. The CDC had recently entered the “gun violence research” field, publishing a flawed study clearly designed to advocate for gun control in 1993.

Shortly after Kleck and Gertz published their research, the CDC began collecting data that could have been provided evidence in the debate over how often the public utilize a firearm in self-defense.  You wouldn’t know it, but the CDC actually collected data on defensive gun use for three years (in 1996, 1997, and 1998) in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) surveys. This data collection was not discovered until Kleck came across it looking for data on another topic. He is analyzing that data and comparing it to his own, but…something is amiss.

For 20 years, this data went unnoticed. Like some buried treasure, Kleck stumbled across this data. He wasn’t looking for it because, like the rest of the world outside of the CDC offices, he had no idea it existed. It was not discovered until 20 years after the fact.  Given how often questions about defensive gun usage come up and the wide range of estimates (from around 116,000 per year to millions, depending on the source) as well as the CDC’s clear interest on the topic, one may wonder why this data was never acknowledged.

Perhaps it was simply forgotten…by however many people worked on the BRFSS over the span of three years writing the survey, collecting the data, formatting the data, analyzing the data, and presumably presenting it to someone at CDC. Maybe it was misplaced. Maybe it was lost in a flood.

Maybe. Or perhaps the CDC didn’t report the data because the findings weren’t convenient.  It is hard to advocate banning firearms when the evidence shows a sizeable number of Americans using firearms to defend themselves every year in the United States. Is that more or less likely than a team of researchers forgetting they collected data on a hot-button topic?

Our assumptions about the CDC may be colored by their history with gun control advocacy. The motives or circumstances driving their silence may never be uncovered. Maybe in another 20 years someone will find a long-lost memo that details why the CDC kept quiet. Maybe not.

RELATED ARTICLES:

ALERT ! YETI Adds Insult to Injury

Dick’s Sporting Goods/Field & Stream to Destroy Firearms Inventory

Minnesota: Two Anti-Gun Amendments to be Introduced and Considered Tomorrow

VIDEO: Move over Rachel Carson! – Politically Incorrect Climate Book outselling ‘Silent Spring’ at Earth Day

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During the days following Earth Day, Rachel Carson’s venerable environmental book ‘Silent Spring’ is currently being outsold and deposed during the time of Earth Day by Marc Morano’s new best-selling book,  “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” from Regnery Books. Morano also presented the book to EPA chief Scott Pruitt and was featured in an 18-minutes interview on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson.

“The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” is currently ranked an Amazon “best seller” and continues to be ranked number one in Climatology, Environment and Nature, Earth Sciences on Amazon. The book had been sold out for weeks at Amazon, Walmart, Target, Barnes & Noble. (See:Sold out! Politically Incorrect Climate Book sells out at Amazon, Target & Walmart! )

The book is now back in stock and on its third printing. The book continues to rank in top 100 on all book sales at Amazon.

As the book’s success continues unabated, Morano has been subjected to increasing hostility for his skeptical stance. See:DEATH WISH: ‘People like you should just die, motherf*cker’ — ‘Go to Hell’ – Skeptical climate book author Morano’s hate mail of the day

This week, book author Morano presented the book to EPA chief Scott Pruitt at EPA headquarters.

Blogger Marc Morano presents his book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt yesterday. Photo credit: Marc Morano/Twitter

Marc Morano presented his book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” to EPA chief Scott Pruitt. (4-24-18) Morano/Twitter

Morano on EPA Chief Scott Pruitt: Begins at 31:27: ‘You see the attacks Trump’s under with all the daily attacks on his EPA chief Scott Pruitt. Pruitt has committed heresy in Washington. He’s done what no other Republican EPA chief has done and I’ll repeat that Scott Pruitt,  Donald Trump’s EPA chief — has done what no other Republican EPA chief had done. He’s stood up to the climate change establishment. George W. Bush appointees didn’t do it. George H.W. Bush’s appointees did not do it.  Pruitt had done it and they are going after him. They are trying to get rid of Pruitt because he had the audacity to try to actually fulfill Donald Trump’s campaign promises on climate which they cannot fathom in Washington.’

Sold out! Politically Incorrect Climate Book sells out at Amazon, Target & Walmart! Ranked as ‘Best Seller’

Order Your Book Copy Now! ‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change’ By Marc Morano

Related Links: 

Sold out! Politically Incorrect Climate Book sells out at Amazon, Target & Walmart! Ranked as ‘Best Seller’

Order Your Book Copy Now! ‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change’ By Marc Morano

E&E News Features Pic of Morano presenting ‘Politically Incorrect’ climate book to EPA Chief Pruitt at EPA HQ

Marc Morano presented his book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” to EPA chief Scott Pruitt yesterday. (4-24-18) Morano/Twitter

Read: Bonus chapter: Intimidating the ‘Deniers’ to Enforce the ‘Consensus’ – Climate ‘deniers’ threatened with being ‘thrown in jail’

Update: Morano’s new book shoots to #1 at Amazon in 4 Categories! Climatology, Earth Sciences, Env. Science & Nature & Ecology

New Book: ‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change’ – by the ‘evil planet killer Marc Morano’ – ‘Like a bullet, it is now the #1 New Release in Environmental Science books

The book has been endorsed by Nobel Prize Winning scientist Dr. Ivar Giaever. (see below) The new book also comes out just in time to greet the upcoming UN IPCC climate report already making the media rounds: See: Leaked UN IPCC Draft Report calls for ‘a radical transformation of society’ – Predicts 1.5°C Warming By 2043

This book is the ultimate reference guide to climate change and no parent should be without a copy as their kids under climate education at school from elementary through college!

Orange County Squeezes out Parents with LGBT Class

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It’s every parent’s worst nightmare: someone exposes your kids to something harmful — and you can’t stop them. That’s exactly the situation in Orange County, California, where the school district has decided that LGBT lessons are too important to let families opt out.

In a story that almost has to be read to be believed, Fox News’s Todd Starnes reprints the policy in black and white. “Parents who disagree with the instructional materials related to gender, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation may not excuse their children from this instruction,” the memo from the Orange County Board of Education warns.

Todd couldn’t believe his eyes, so he called a district spokesman who confirmed that kids would be forced to attend the schools’ LGBT indoctrination sessions. Then, in what was supposed to offer some reassurance, he went on to say that while parents may have no authority over what their kids learn in class, they had the district’s approval to rebut the materials at home. “Parents are free to advise their children that they disagree with some or all of the information presented in the instructional program and express their views on these subjects to their children.” You mean you’ll let us make the decisions when our kids are home? How thoughtful.

“The Orange County Department of Education feels it is their right to GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO DISAGREE WITH THEM. These are our children! They do not belong to the schools,” mom Heidi St. John fumed online. Unfortunately, this is all part of the state’s Healthy Youth Act from 2015, whose controversial provisions are just starting to hit home. Apart from LGBT propaganda, the law points out that students will also be told about the “effectiveness and safety of all FDA-approve contraceptive devices,” along with discussions about “abortion.”

District officials try to head-off any controversy by including this gem in the same memo: “The courts have held that parents do not have the constitutional rights to override the determinations of the state legislature or the school district as to what information their children will be provided in the public school classroom.” In other words, thanks for supplying the kids — we’ll handle the brainwashing.

In case leaders in California missed it, Americans aren’t taking radical sex at face value anymore. On Monday, 16 cities in four countries joined the Sex Ed Sit Out to protest programs as fanatical as this one. RedState’s Kira Davis says that if Orange County didn’t get the message, moms and dads should send them another one.

“Make noise. Lots and lots and lots of noise. When constituents get cranky, [lawmakers] pay attention… and so few people actually call and write anymore that just a few hundred voices go a very long way to making your representative and governor think twice about proceeding with something that seems unpopular.” If you have family or friends in Orange County, ask them to call the district at (714) 966-4012 and demand an opt-out from LGBT sex ed for students! Find your school board member here.

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

RELATED ARTICLES:

A True State’s Man: Pompeo Wins DOS Post

The Inclusion Act: Defending Kids, Faith, and Freedom

Parents Stand Up for Children in ‘Sex Ed Sit Out’

VIDEO: What’s a Greater Leap of Faith God or the Multiverse?

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What’s a greater leap of faith: God or the Multiverse? What’s the multiverse? Brian Keating, Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego, explains in this video.

EDITORS NOTE: Brian Keating’s new book, Losing the Nobel Prize, is available here.

Apple’s “100% renewable” lie

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A few years ago tech giant Apple announced that it was using 100% renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind for many of its power needs, including its data centers, and that 87% of its global operations were run on “renewables.”

Now Apple says it that it is “globally powered by 100 percent renewable energy.”

As part of its commitment to combat climate change and create a healthier environment, Apple today announced its global facilities are powered with 100 percent clean energy. This achievement includes retail stores, offices, data centers and co-located facilities in 43 countries—including the United States, the United Kingdom, China and India.

It’s not true. As I explained in a 2016 Forbes column, Apple is cooking its energy books to sell us on the lie that it runs on solar and wind.

Apple, like nearly every other international technology company in the world, gets the overwhelming percentage of its power from cheap, plentiful, reliable coal and almost none from expensive, unreliable solar and wind.

Like any other large tech company, Apple requires a lot of energy for its operations–and this energy needs to be cheap and reliable. But today’s politically correct sources of energy, above all solar and wind, are neither reliable nor affordable. To call them “renewables” is a misnomer, because “renewables” advocates generally refuse to support the only cost-effective “renewable” option, large-scale hydroelectric power: building a dam, they say, is not sufficiently “green.” Solar and wind should be called “unreliables” because the intermittent nature of sunlight and wind have made them useless as scalable, reliable sources of energy that can meaningfully substitute for hydro, nuclear, let alone fossil fuel power. These unreliables require subsidies and government mandates to exist.

So how can Apple claim to be between 87-100% renewable yet actually be a coal-powered company?

By committing two types of energy accounting sleight-of-hand:

  1. Paying off other companies and consumers to give Apple “green credits” for its coal electricity usage.
  2. Concealing that the vast majority of computer energy use comes from coal-powered manufacturing and the coal-powered Internet.

You can read the whole thing here.

Unfortunately, Apple isn’t the only company dishonestly portraying itself as “100% renewable.” Everyone from Intel to LEGO to Whole Foods to Google is trying to ride the green bandwagon by lying about their energy usage. (One news story describing Apple’s recent announcement had to append this note: “Clarified that Apple, like Google, is not actually 100 percent powered by clean energy, but it uses the term to signal that it buys enough green energy to offset its global power consumption.”)

It is bad enough that these companies are making false claims to build up their image, but they are using their unearned status to promote policies that would deprive others—especially poorer Americans who can’t afford to live in San Francisco mansions—of energy. That is shameful.

Tim Cook and the other “100% renewable” CEOs owe the public—including members of the fossil fuel industry—an apology. They should tell the truth about their energy usage, and thank the men and women who provide the reliable energy that allows them to flourish.

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Thank you for presenting in Ferndale, WA on March 29th at the Silver Reef. I enjoyed your balanced view of the role of energy and how to frame the conversation in a positive way. Unfortunately, the discussion is biased, sloppy, and anti-human just as you described. Framing the issue with the goal of human flourishing versus unchanged nature is the way to have a productive conversation.

Thanks for your perspective, it’s refreshing. -Jason J.

1. Change a mind by sharing my Google talk. Do you have someone you know who needs to learn pro-human thinking about energy issues? A great place to start is by sharing my talk at Google, which is designed to persuade even those immersed in the biased, sloppy, and anti-human energy thinking in our culture. Click the button below and I’ll send you the link to the talk.

Access Google Talk

2. Empower a friend by inviting them to this newsletter. If you know someone who wants to increase their clarity and influence on energy issues, click the button below to invite them to this newsletter.

Invite to Newsletter

3. Bring me to speak at your next event. If you have an upcoming board meeting, employee town hall, or association meeting, I have some new and updated speeches about the moral case for fossil fuels, winning hearts and minds, and communications strategy in the new political climate. If you’d like to consider me for your event, click the button below and I’ll send you the info.

Send Speaking Engagement Details

4. Recommend me for a high-level speaking event (and get an I Love Fossil Fuels t-shirt). One way to influence a high-level audience is to have me speak to them. If you are connected to any high-level events at companies, associations, and conferences, your recommendation could make a huge difference. A simple way to do this is to send an email to your event contact, CC’ing me, with: 1. That you’ve seen me speak. 2. Why you liked it. 3. Why I might be a good fit for their event. For every introduction you make I’ll send you an “I Love Fossil Fuels” t-shirt or a signed copy of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.

Overcoming Bias in Energy Conversations

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Last week I gave a 5-hour workshop on How to Have Constructive Conversations about Energy. Here’s a clip where I discuss the biased thinking behind opposition to fossil fuels–and a simple but deeply powerful technique for framing a conversation to minimize bias.

Please share the video. And if you’re interested in having me host a Constructive Conversation Workshop or speak on some other topic click the below link.

Send Speaking Engagement Details