tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-145574052008-05-03T09:50:55.081-06:00Edmund ContoskiBlogger67125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-28426103209446581572008-04-20T16:18:00.006-06:002008-04-21T13:37:17.785-06:00

In order to get smoking bans passed, it was necessary to create an atmosphere of hatred toward the “enemy,” to work people into a frenzy over a threat to their health, whether the threat was real or not. What mattered was not truth or science but whether the desired result—smoking bans—could be achieved. So truth and science were quickly sacrificed to the-end-justifies-the-means policy of

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-9638840278490863052008-03-31T16:11:00.003-06:002008-04-22T08:36:14.355-06:00

“The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men,” said Samuel Adams, one of the most important figures in the founding of our country. “In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate—look to his character...” --Noah Webster. Recently the public has had another chance to evaluate the character of

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-24542292077924253702008-03-13T15:43:00.007-06:002008-03-15T22:03:35.940-06:00

We keep hearing that the threat of global warming is supported by an overwhelming consensus of scientists. Who are these scientists? The media never tells us. They talk about 2,500 scientists endorsing the warming claims of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) but never mention the fraud in those claims (See http://www.amlibpub.com/liberty_blog/2007/02/

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-19179738150284299402008-02-13T23:48:00.004-06:002008-02-14T00:09:46.836-06:00

President Bush has talked a lot about making the U.S. energy independent. But on Dec. 26, 2007, he signed into law a bill that would prevent development of a U.S. oil resource more than seven times larger than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. This is the U.S.'s 2 trillion barrels of shale oil. The U.S. has the world's largest known reserves of this oil, which is so abundant worldwide it could

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-14192440362247281202008-01-24T08:43:00.000-06:002008-01-24T08:46:07.615-06:00

A major argument for smoking bans is the claim “there is no safe level”—no threshold—below which tobacco smoke is not dangerous. The ban advocates/activists invoke the well-known link of smoking and lung cancer and assert that, therefore, even secondhand smoke must also be carcinogenic. They claim the air from smoking can never be made clean enough to eliminate the health risk and thus smoking

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-13416538091704652612007-12-03T23:09:00.000-06:002007-12-07T19:50:32.562-06:00

Ever since the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, ethanol has been touted as a substitute for gasoline that would reduce our dependence on imports of foreign oil. But ethanol was found to be a net energy loser. It requires more energy to produce than you can get from burning the ethanol. Two studies by panels of the U.S. Dept. of Energy in 1980 and 1981 came to this conclusion. Those studies were

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-37402465829774672672007-11-07T07:55:00.000-06:002007-11-07T09:10:11.351-06:00

Siberia's Lake Baikal is the world's deepest lake. It contains more water than all five of North America's Great Lakes combined. Fed by over 300 rivers and far from the moderating effects of any ocean, it offers a pristine, uninterrupted sedimentary record that permits a highly accurate reconstruction of temperatures over a broad area. Based on this sedimentary record for the last 800,000

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-28474508161629931182007-10-02T13:45:00.000-06:002007-10-02T13:50:59.016-06:00

You would think, with all the media hype about global warming, that the U.N.'s first climate summit of world leaders would have been of great importance to the public and to the news media. To my knowledge, none of the TV news networks even mentioned the two-day summit last week or an important speech there. The speaker was not only a president of a nation but the recipient of nearly 50

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-74758995771359284392007-09-25T20:25:00.005-06:002008-04-22T08:34:35.470-06:00

CBS featured an alarmist message about global warming on its popular “60 Minutes” television program. Reporter Scott Pelley claimed Antarctica shows large climate change, that it's caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases, and is a portent of worldwide environmental and human disasters. He said “glaciers are setting speed records for melting” in Antarctica. Incidentally, all of the computer

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-52602312710636856442007-09-19T21:08:00.000-06:002007-09-20T19:43:32.756-06:00

You might think politicians would have learned something from the catastrophic collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis. You'd be wrong. The bridge disaster focused a lot of public attention on how government transportation funds have been earmarked for pet projects of the politicians, such as nature trails, museums, lighthouses, and flowers for California freeways instead of

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-85432700365208350812007-08-15T13:57:00.000-06:002007-09-03T22:51:37.684-06:00

NASA has just admitted a whopping mistake in its temperature data! 1998 is no longer the warmest year of the past century in the U.S. It falls to #2 with 1934 now being the warmest year. And #3 is now 1921, not 2006. It had been claimed that six of the ten hottest years in U.S. history had occurred since 1995, but now only three of the top ten are from the last ten years (1998, 2006, 1999).

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-34737333412148958582007-08-07T21:23:00.000-06:002007-08-15T06:23:53.749-06:00

On Wednesday the Interstate Highway 35W bridge across the Mississippi River collapsed, dumping 88 cars and their occupants into the river. The accident, which occurred just 2 miles from my home in Minneapolis, was one of the greatest structural failures in U.S. history. Naturally, then, it has been the focus of national news media for several days now, and politicians have been rushing to the

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-67977500616851765372007-07-18T16:08:00.000-06:002007-07-19T06:37:19.982-06:00

Last month the automobile website www.edmunds.com ran a comparison of costs, performance, and efficiency of regular gasoline and E85, the fuel that is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. (The common ethanol product is 10 % ethanol and 90 % gasoline.) The test drive consisted of a 667-mile roundtrip from San Diego to Las Vegas, which is a popular trip for residents of southern California

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-79126762169415324762007-06-24T06:59:00.000-06:002007-06-24T07:10:57.957-06:00

A reader asks if the earth is getting closer to the sun. The earth's orbit is always changing, in accordance with several cycles, but these are of very long duration. They cause very long term climate changes but are not the basis of the very slight warming of the earth over the short time spans involved in the current climate change controversy. The large planets Jupiter and Saturn exert a

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-7945797132614923252007-06-18T23:59:00.000-06:002007-06-19T10:40:29.600-06:00

In order to get smoking bans passed, it was necessary to create an atmosphere of hatred toward the “enemy,” to work people into a frenzy over a threat to their health, whether the threat was real or not. What mattered was not truth or science but whether the desired result—smoking bans—could be achieved. So truth and science were quickly sacrificed to the-end-justifies-the-means policy of

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-88573263522026628612007-06-10T14:34:00.000-06:002007-06-10T15:07:23.148-06:00

Recently there have been a number of comments to our December 29, 2006 posting “My Problem with Eagles.” Since many of these raise the same issues, I decided to answer them here collectively rather than publish all the individual comments and my replies in the Comments section of the original posting. Also, while some readers have raised valid questions in their comments, they have also

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-53223503476179599012007-05-30T14:58:00.000-06:002007-05-30T15:15:46.853-06:00

With oil prices near record highs, politicians are accusing the oil industry of “price gouging” and are calling for an investigation. Of course, there is no such crime as “price gouging,” but that hasn't deterred politicians and the haters of capitalism from trying to portray oil companies as villains. Nor has the fact that numerous previous investigations of the oil industry over the years

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-25412576605006380612007-05-08T21:09:00.000-06:002007-05-08T21:14:29.275-06:00

“It is curious that the Coca Cola Company and all other producers of carbonated beverages, from beer to champagne, have not become targets of political action,” say Christopher Essex and Ross McKittrick in their excellent book TAKEN BY STORM: The troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming. “A bottle of soda pop has about two grams of carbon dioxide in it, and that amount will

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-89901967117214346072007-04-21T14:12:00.000-06:002007-04-21T14:31:23.129-06:00

A new study appearing in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology April 18 finds ethanol a health hazard that would likely increase the number of respiratory-related deaths and hospitalizations. Ethanol is touted as a “green” alternative to gasoline, but the author of the study, Mark Jacobson, says, “It's not green in terms of air pollution.” Jacobson is a civil and

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-59849715611436778062007-04-13T23:18:00.000-06:002007-04-29T11:35:22.764-06:00

This week Senator John Kerry and Newt Gingrich engaged in a debate on global warming. It's hard to believe they would both agree to debate a subject about which they are so uninformed and thus broadcast their ignorance to the nation. They showed a lack of not only scientific knowledge but of basic economic principles, as well as an inability to think analytically and make sound judgments. They

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-22057621351254401622007-03-22T16:01:00.000-06:002007-03-22T16:18:10.495-06:00

Everyday I swallow a pill with rat poison. Millions of other people have been doing the same thing. It is a common drug prescribed as a blood thinner for people with a heart condition. Tuesday I made a routine visit to a cardiology clinic; periodic tests are needed to determine if the level of the drug in my blood is appropriate or needs to be adjusted up or down. While waiting my turn for

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-62949630931326285172007-03-15T21:38:00.000-06:002007-03-16T08:23:44.962-06:00

The Toyota Prius has become the darling of the environmentally conscious because of its hybrid technology. It has two engines instead of one. It overcomes the limitations of electric vehicles by having a gasoline engine as well. The gasoline engine powers the vehicle up to 30 mph and when additional thrust is needed at higher speeds. The electric engine powers the car at cruising speeds above

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-69333654042137766402007-03-01T17:38:00.000-06:002007-03-01T17:41:15.653-06:00

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization committed to achieving a freer, more prosperous Tennessee through free market policy solutions, issued the following press release: Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-39717622627349642482007-02-13T14:36:00.000-06:002007-02-19T23:27:13.540-06:00

Last week the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was issued. It was widely trumpeted as the “smoking gun” that proves global warming is occurring and is driven by human activities. But this is smoke without a gun. It is a 14 page “Summary for Policymakers” written by political appointees of the 150 countries in the IPCC; the 1,600

Edmund Contoskitag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14557405.post-44865651592188896432007-01-24T00:25:00.000-06:002007-01-25T07:22:15.193-06:00

In his State of the Union speech, President Bush called for increasing ethanol as a way of reducing petroleum consumption and dependence on foreign oil. It will do just the opposite. Many studies over the years have concluded that it takes more energy for growing the corn (for farm machinery, pesticides, fertilizers) and distilling the alcohol than you can get from burning the ethanol that

Edmund Contoski