Subject: Windbag deflation required
Date: Apr 22 08:27:36 1999
From: denniskrockwell at juno.com - denniskrockwell at juno.com


Good morning all,

Hope your day started better than mine. Our local rag, the "Tri-Cycle
Herald" celebrated Earth Day this morning by publishing a 1,000 word
essay written by a local windbag (a consultant to the nuclear industry
who imagines that that makes him an expert on all subjects science
related) at the top of it's Op-Ed page which was chocked so full of
distortions and outright lies that it set a new standard of wretchedness
even for this area.

Windbag begins his essay with a long attack on Rachel Carson and her book
"Silent Spring". Here I will provide just a few direct quotes which
particularly galled me:

".....Carson's book presents an account, that in the words of the
University of California professor/biochemist Thomas Jukes, is so
dramatically contrary to facts......that its negative impact is difficult
to overstate."

"In her book, Carson decried the loss of birds such as robins and
eagles, saying only silence lay over the fields and woods and marshes.
She blamed this loss on the introduction of the pesticide DDT. She
mentioned an 'evil spell' that brought death everywhere, including to
humans.
Never mind that much of what she said was false, and that DDT had
been aclaimed one of the most beneficial materials for humans ever
discovered.
A review of the bird count data by the Audubon Society showed that
between 1941 and 1960 (years of heavy DDT use) the U.S. Robin population
increased 12-fold. Eagle populations increased by 25 percent, pelicans
tripled, as did the numbers of other bird populations.
Contrary to Carson's account, DDT did not cause the demise of these
birds. Bird-counting data showed the reverse."

Well, that's probably more than enough to give you the gist of this
malarkey laden diatribe. But I'm not writing this just to give everyone
gastric distress. I would very much like to publicly take the wind out
of this clown, but I simply haven't got the time to do the research
necessary to discover the actual data to do the job. Can anyone out
there at least point me in the right direction?


Dennis K Rockwell
Kennewick, Washington
denniskrockwell at juno.com

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