Oil At $90.00 A Barrel

Comment in USA Today:
This is a result of deregulation of the industry in the 70's, which was supposed to lower gasoline prices. When you don't regulate crooks, you get crooked results.

http//realtexasfreedom.blogspot.com/

Sam Nettles - mailto:samnett@msn.com
Real Texas Freedom - http://www.realtexasfreedom.net
RTF Blog - http://realtexasfreedom.blogspot.com/

Electric Cars

I haven't had time to watch but about half of the electric car video but I remember California's efforts well.

I'm all for development of the electric car, have been since I watched battery powered fork lifts operate in the 50's, when middle class Americans bought new cars every two years. Gas was only 17 or 18 cents a gallon and new cars were a couple thousand dollars. Manufacturers bought up the rights to all money saving inventions. One guy in England used gas made from manure from his flock of chickens. Even then, people were concerned about money and companies were fighting new money saving inventions.

My main concern has always been for the production of a small, cheap vehicle that can run me around town, without concern about clean air, smog or other concerns. I'd like to see the reintroduction of the Model A Ford. The Model T would be better but you have to crank it. All you needed to work on them was some wire and a pair of pliers. I think the elimination of leaded gasoline was a mistake. Not enough oil in the world to damage the atmosphere but I know the world is against me!!!! I did use an electric scooter to run to the store with my flight bag a few years ago in Ft. Worth. Only cost around a hundred dollars.

I guess now that hydrogen power is next and the status quo can be maintained till the cost comes down. Then it will probably go to sound waves from Rap Music creating energy, which will maintain the status quo even longer.

Whatever, the 1955 chevy I bought with my dad's signature, right after I graduated High School, was the best car ever made

Sam



----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Murawski
To: sam nettles
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 9:32 AM
Subject: Re: Global Warming - USA Today
Thanks for responding . . . I agree with you, Sam.

It certainly appears to me that the political hacks -- whomever they may be -- have found three issues to undermine our freedoms here in America. The three groups are the "environmentalists" (and now Gore is leading the way), those who believe that all second hand smoke causes all of the cancers in the world; and the "animal activists" (such as PETA and the ASPCA) who line their pockets with using carriage horses as their "poster children".

As a person who is more than likely the most staunch defender of the environment, if people would only wake up and take the bull by the horns, I believe the reliance on non-renewable resources would be greatly decreased. For example . . .

Who Killed the Electric Car is a movie about the electric car industry that was effectively shut down in California by this administration. You can watch it at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5977085690337730430&q=who+killed+the+electric+car&total=292&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

So now what is the push? Hybrids! How wonderful that they are using the food of the poor to fuel the bellies of the rich?

And don't get me started about the smoking bans . . . . ;))))


Sincerely,

Bill

Al Gore

No, I haven't seen the movie. Regardless of the good that might come out of it, if any, I just have a gut feeling about the guy. Anybody that would single handedly break the tie in the senate to tax Social Security and state in news coverage that second hand tobacco smoke contributes to global warming, has got to be goofy.

My personal opinion about global warming is that it does exist but is part of nature. Not that we shouldn't do something about it, if possible, but, so far, scientists have not proven that human activity has anything to do with it. Until it's proven, I don't think governments should take any kind of action to disrupt related human activity.

Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize - My Comment in USA Today

I had to change "crap" to "garbage" before USA Today would publish, even though the national TV news reporters use the word regularly. The newspapers are behind the times!!!

COMMENT:


I recently wrote a friend of mine about Global Warming: Tom, I've been watching National Geographic and the scientific worries about the rising sea level has me puzzled. I thought maybe you could help me since you are now interested in global warming and may have come across something on the subject.Now, I wasn't a good chemistry student but I remember something about volume displacement and the formulas involved. I can't remember once when a drink overflowed as the ice melted. Of course, the scientists say the sea level MIGHT rise and destroy our coastlines but they aren't sure. Ocean surges might create some problems but what happens to the void when the glaciers break off and float to the ocean? If you keep adding too much ice to your drink, it'll overflow, but if you could immediately freeze the overflow and add it to your ice bucket, the supply of constant water would allow you to drink till you passed out without spilling a drop. The same is true if you used the overflow to pour into the ice bucket. You'd probably pass out before the ice melted but maybe you get my point. I know the scientists can't calculate for sure what might happen, but what do you think?Tom wrote back that it was all hysteria, a bunch of garbage. It seems that the Nobel Prize bunch is turning against us along with most of the rest of the world. Water increases volume with freezing and returns to size when melted. The consequences of melting glaciers can't affect shore lines that much. Also, not one scientist testifying before congress, even though they believed human activity contributes to global warming, stated that there was scientific proof that such is the case.Gore has said in news reports that second hand tobacco smoke contributes to global warming. It's hard to believe that Gore now has backing for a run for the presidency!!!!!!http://realtexasfreedom.blogspot.com/
Sam Nettles - mailto:samnett@msn.com
Real Texas Freedom - http://www.realtexasfreedom.net
RTF Blog - http://realtexasfreedom.blogspot.com/

STIRRING THE COW MANURE

American pioneers learned that dried cow pies make good fire wood but stirring the manure creates a stench worth avoiding. Congress, the Bush Administration and the media seem to think the stench makes the real issues unnoticeable.

The main real issue is forcing the wealthy to pay their fair share, like they did during WW ll and afterwards, in order to direct proper resources toward solving the many problems our country faces. There was a 90% tax bracket for the extremely wealthy. There's more wealth now than then.

The manure should be burned, not stirred.

Sam Nettles

Secondhand data on secondhand smoke

Secondhand data on secondhand smoke

10/8/2006

HELVETIA, W.Va.--The fed- eral government's 30-year anti-smoking crusade has been so successful that there are now more ex-smokers than smokers in the United States. But about a quarter of the population continues to smoke cigarettes, and over the past decade a new health hazard has been fabricated and publicized.

The news media have parroted the idea that secondhand smoke is harmful, and a recent survey finds that more than 80 percent of adults now believe this. But the secondhand-smoke scare is based largely on speculation reminiscent of superstitions from the Middle Ages, before the discovery of the scientific method.

The 2006 surgeon general's 709-page report "The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke" further promotes this sham. The report claims that even brief exposure to secondhand smoke can cause immediate harm and cites reports that estimate secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths and tens of thousands of heart disease deaths among nonsmokers each year.

It concludes that there is no risk-free level of exposure, and recommends "smoke-free policies" to eliminate all indoor smoking. Surgeon General Richard Carmona himself stated at a June 27, 2006, press conference, "The science is clear: [secondhand smoke] is a serious health hazard that causes premature death and disease in children and non-smoking adults."

The Environmental Protection Agency, American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, and American Cancer Society all concur. The California Air Pollution Authority has labeled secondhand smoke a toxin and the EPA has initiated a "Smoke-Free Home Pledge Campaign."

Marriott has announced that its 2,300 hotels will become totally smoke-free by October 15 of this year. In June, a California state Senate committee approved a bill to ban smoking in private cars with children.

But the science is not "clear." In fact, there is no credible scientific evidence to support any of this. Whereas the association of cigarette smoking with heart disease and lung cancer in epidemiologic studies is strong--an increase of 100 to 300 percent and 900 percent respectively--the association found between secondhand-smoke exposure and heart disease and lung cancer in the studies cited by the surgeon general is very weak, an increase of about 30 percent for each.

In addition, the report cherry-picks studies that support its claims and ignores other important ones that do not. For example, it cites a 1993 EPA meta-analysis of 30 studies, that has since been discredited, and ignores an excellent 1998 World Health Organization large single study that showed a reduced association for children of smokers and no association for spouses and co-workers.

The largest single study of all, a 39-year analysis of over 35,000 Californians published in 2003 in the British Medical Journal, found no connection between passive smoking and mortality. It was not cited.

Epidemiology is the study of disease in populations. Epidemiologists collect data using poorly controlled observational studies and evaluate it by using statistical methods.

These methods are not adequate to test the hypotheses required by the scientific method, so epidemiology can never prove or disprove anything. It uses "relative risk" to report its findings of association. An RR of 1.0 is average, while an RR of 3.0 or more--a 300 percent increase--is required to suggest causation.

The epidemiologic studies cited by the surgeon general's report cannot determine causation largely because they are unable to control for inherent systematic errors. These include measurement errors, confounding factors, and at least 56 different biases, including "recall bias."

In the studies cited by the surgeon general, not only do the researchers have no control over the exposures to secondhand smoke, they don't even know what the data are.

A weak association is a fortuitous finding. Converting it into a causal link bypasses the scientific method, and has been termed "statistical malpractice" in the literature.

This unethical application of statistics to the imperatives of health policy is a common occurrence in politically motivated science.

The report claims that the weak statistical associations found in the studies "were not determinant" in making causal inferences, but instead, "judgments were based on an array of considerations." What these considerations were, and why they were more important than the results of the studies cited, is not apparent.

Finally, a basic principle of toxicology is that "the dose makes the poison." The surgeon general's report admits that secondhand smoke "is rapidly diluted as it travels away from the burning cigarette," and that it cannot be defined or measured.

It takes many years of persistent exposure for cigarette smoking to cause disease. For example, a patient's smoking one pack of cigarettes (22 cigarettes) a day for 10 years alerts a physician to search for lung disease. But even in the smokiest of smoke-filled rooms, nonsmokers inhale only a fraction of one cigarette a day.

To be beneficial, public policy must be based on good science. Bad science inevitably leads to bad public policy.

All government bureaucracies have one hidden agenda--to increase their funding and power. This leads to misrepresentations like the secondhand-smoke scare.

The 2006 surgeon general's report reminds us that one ongoing peril for citizens is being misled by government bureaucrats seeking to expand their power.

We need to shape our policies on the basis of good science, instead of shaping the science to fit the policies.

Read: http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2006/102006/10082006/227373/index_html?page=1