DDT and the Tobacco Lobby

Mike D. wrote in to shed a little insight on what might have Rush so gung-ho on that DDT use he'll win a Nobel Prize for. From Crooked Timber.

The piles of documents released as a result of litigation against Phillip Morris and Exxon are gifts that keep on giving for those of us interested in the process by which the Republican parallel universe has been constructed. Previous research has shown that the core proponents of global warming delusionism including Stephen Milloy, Fred Singer and Fred Seitz got their start as shills for PM, denying the risks of passive smoking. A string of rightwing thinktanks including Cato, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute helped to promote these hacks and the lies they were paid to peddle.

Now it’s turned out that one of the hardiest of parallel universe beliefs, the claim that Rachel Carson and the US ban on DDT were responsible for millions of deaths in the third world, arises from the same source.


One of the great puzzles of the DDT myth has been that it appeared to arise from pure ideological animus against Carson and the environmental movement – DDT is not patented so there were no profits to be obtained from pushing it. It turns out that the DDT campaign was pitched to the tobacco industry as a diversionary attack on the World Health Organization which was playing a leading role in campaigns against smoking. The leading figure in the exercise was Roger Bate of the American Enterprise Institute and its front organization, Africans Fighting Malaria.

I figured it was just a general distain for the environmental movement, but PM and big tobacco using the right-wing shills to take attention away from the dangers of smoking is more than even I could have imagined.

Yes that is nicotine pictured above. Benign looking molecule isn't it?

Rush Limbaugh for a Nobel Prize

We had heard months ago that Rush Limbaugh was "nominated" for a Nobel Peace Prize along with Vice President Al Gore. We did not realize that people were still taking this seriously until it was brought to our attention again today by Brian Beutler.

First of all, Nobel Prize nominees are kept quite secret, and the leak of Al Gore's name from two members of the Norwegian Parliment was very unusual. Thing is though, they did have the right and ability to actually nominate someone, so we can safely assume that Al Gore is in fact being considered for the Nobel Peace Prize. Then some idiots from "the conservative Landmark Legal Foundation nominated another American political figure for the prize: syndicated radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh." Thing is, they aren't on the Nobel committee as far as we can tell, so they have no more authority to nominate Limbaugh, than if we wrote a letter nominating our pet lizard Millhouse for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

I seem to remember that there was some other right wing-wanker, who was "nominated" for a Nobel Prize last year, but maybe this is just the second year in a row that Rush thinks he is on the super secret ballot. If you remember hit us up in the comments.

And now for why the think tank, and now others piling on believe Rush should receive the Nobel Prize for Peace ...

Get ready for it ...

This issue I’m speaking of is the epidemic of malaria in third-world countries. As you know (or should know), malaria kills more than one million people a year and infects hundreds of millions every year. There is a scientific consensus that the best -- and in many cases the only -- effective way to control the mosquitoes that spread this deadly disease is with the insecticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, otherwise known as DDT. But DDT unfortunately has been vilified by advocacy groups and the popular press based on junk science.

Over the past decade and a half, Mr. Limbaugh has been at times almost a lone media voice correcting misinformation about DDT and also pointing out its life-saving benefits against diseases like malaria. Mr. Gore, by contrast, has continued to spread DDT myths as well as misleading information about the causes of the malaria epidemic.

Before I go further, let me add this caveat. It would be perfectly understandable to me if neither Mr. Gore nor Mr. Limbaugh became the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize recipient. There are many worthy of this honor in America and around the world. But if Mr. Gore is under serious consideration as a Nobel candidate, Mr. Limbaugh should also be considered under the same criteria.

Wow. So they think Rush deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for fighting a war against a straw man! DDT was outlawed for agricultural use because of its enourmously harmful affects on animals high in the foodchain, especially fish eaters, like bald eagles and toher birds of prey. It has also been shown to cause cancer in humans. Thing is, DDT was banned in the US in 1972 and by most countries by the 198o's as an agricultural insecticide, but could still be used for mosquito abatement.

The Stockholm Convention, ratified in 2001 and effective as of May 17, 2004, outlawed several persistent organic pollutants, and restricted the use of DDT to vector control. The Convention was signed by 98 countries and is endorsed by most environmental groups. Recognizing that a total elimination of DDT use in many malaria-prone countries is currently unfeasible because there are few affordable or effective alternatives for controlling malaria, the public health use of DDT was exempted from the ban until such alternatives are developed.

See Rush, "vector control" includes using DDT to fight mosquitos (the vector of malaria)! So much in fact that the Malaria Foundation International had this to say about the agreement: "The outcome of the treaty is arguably better than the status quo going into the negotiations over two years ago. For the first time, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector control only, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes will be slower than before"

Plus DDT is already tied to a Nobel Prize when "The Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller of Geigy Pharmaceutical in Switzerland was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 'for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods.'" We know the Nobel committee does not like to double dip.

The real questio is why is Rush Limbaugh, so concerned with increasing the use of DDT. Is it because he genuinly has a huge heart and wants to help Africans and Indonesians and his is ill-informed? Or is he being paid to shill for the pesticide lobby? Or does he just want to piss off "envronmentalists." My guess would be with one of the latter two.

Now is Al Gore deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize ... probably, but I am sure there are others that are even more deserving. Heck, Bill Richardson is probably more deserving. But Rush Limbaugh ... what a joke.

Please people, the Stupid it Burns!

Carbon Emissions Latin America Style

Two Latin American countries take somewhat divergent paths in regards to carbon emission reductions. Interestingly both rely somewhat heavily on eco-tourism to sustain their economies. Costa Rica has announced that they plan on being carbon neutral by 2030. Ecuador on the other hand is hoping to be paid $350 million a year not to open up their massive oil fields (I'll link to Brian Beutler instead of Planet Gore, since Planet Gore did not bother to link to the original article. Wankers). In regards to Costa Rica, Brian comments on the massive amount of carbon emissions the tourism industry uses to arrive in/depart from Costa Rica in order to enjoy the Pura Vida at an expensive eco-lodge.

It should be pointed out that Costa Rica does have a major tourism industry. I wonder if these numbers take into account that, for being so lovely, Costa Rica attracts thousands and thousands of people from other countries who burn through plenty of carbon en route to vacation. Seems like San Jose bears at least some of the responsibility for those small additional emissions, but if I had to guess, I'd say the sinister tourism lobby has squelched that information altogether. I smell conspiracy!

Costa Rica "generates 78 percent of its energy with hydroelectric power and another 18 percent by wind or geothermally." Now we are all for cutting carbon emissions, but 78% hydroelectric power seems very high. Will it be necessary to damn more of Costa Rica's rivers? I am sure that damn and hydroelectric power aren't dirty words in Costa Rica like they are here in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, due to dams' devastating effect salmon and steelhead trout fisheries. Maybe the environmental impact of hydroelectric power in Costa Rica in quite small, I don't know, but something to ponder.

And on the other hand, what is it worth to pay Ecuador not to develop its oil reserves? Maybe this is something the Right and Left can agree on. The forward thinking, environmentally conscience lefties would like to see more alternative energy and less oil development and the Righties might not like to see another "socialist", oil heavy nation in the mold of Venezuela come to power in South America. Maybe a little international diplomacy is in order here.

Parthenogenesis

A shark in a Nebraska aquarium was proven to give birth through parthenogenesis through new DNA studies. I saw this a few days ago and meant to post on it and had forgotten until I saw a post by Brian Beutler which pointed out that it was oddly blogged with little comment by Jonah Goldberg in the Daily Corner, as Beutler postulated on consequences for a literal interpretation of the bible. I cannot say what Goldberg's intention was in bringing this up, but it is the first pop- science related post I have ever seen Goldberg make.

Anyways the whole thing got me reading a bit and I am now able to answer my own question as to why the Komodo Dragon produced a clutch of male lizards as opposed to an entire clutch of females.

I had originally asked ...

If anyone can shed some light on why parthenogenesis always results in all male clutches please do share as I do not understand why this is neccessarily true. If parthenogenesis were to happen in humans, the offspring would have to be female. I know that varanids lack a X-chromosome like most mammals, but why all males? It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, but the cell biology is confusing.

I had assumed that the offspring would all be females as they contain only the genetic material of the mother, but was stuck on mammalian biology. New Mexico whiptail lizards which reproduce entirely by parthenogenesis are all female, as would be required if that this is the sole method of reproduction, so I assumed that Varanids would be the same in the reptile world. Turns out the answer is that instead of an XX (female) XY (male) sex determination like whiptails, Varanids have a WZ (female) ZZ (male) WW (non-viable) sex determination. I do not know if temperature plays a role in sex determination in either of these genus like it was shown in Pagona vitticeps.

Image used under creative commons license: sponng

White Shark Update

The latest on the last White Shark from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Member Newsletter.

The electronic tag recovered from the young white shark we returned to the wild in January recorded travels to the southern tip of Baja California - a 90-day journey that covered more than 2,200 miles, took him up to 700 miles offshore and to depths more than 1,000 feet below the surface.
The young shark spent 137 days at the Aquarium prior to his release. During that time he grew considerably from an initial length of 5-foot-8 and 103 pounds when he arrived on August 31, 2006, to 6-foot-5 and 171 pounds at the time of his release. The shark was healthy and feeding when released.

On April 15, the electronic tag popped free on schedule and began transmitting data. It was then radio-tracked and netted out of the water off Mazatlán. Information gathered by the tag revealed that the shark spent his days near the surface making an occasional deep dive to around 660 feet, while at night he swam at an average depth of 250 feet. The white shark's last known position was at the entrance of the Sea of Cortez - the southern end of a known range for juvenile sharks. Visit our web site for more information on the shark's journey. You may also view brief animations of his track at the Tagging of Pacific Predators blog.

A month

Not posting for a whole month ... not the way to get regular blog readership. So I promise to at least post some pretty pictures every once in a while.

Yosemite Falls from the Valley floor.