Paul Driessen, CFACT: Hybrid and electric vehicles are not so “green” and “eco-friendly,” after all. Ditto for cell phones, laptops, wind turbines, solar panels, and technologies that utilize batteries, magnets and other components which require cobalt, lithium, rare-earths, and other metals. Many of those technologies trace their ancestry to mines, mining and processing methods, and countries that don’t come close to meeting modern standards for environmental protection, child labor, or “corporate social responsibility.
Bobby Scott, scientist emeritus at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, Albuquerque, NM: Findings reported here point out the lack of any solid evidence for cancer induction by low radiation doses (< 100 mGy) such as are received from single or several applications of CT or chest X-rays. Particularly disturbing is the application of the Linear No-Threshold model. The notion that multiple uses of diagnostic imaging, when separated by weeks or months or longer, is cumulative with respect to damage induction, is not supported by the fact that lifetime exposure to ionizing radiation in regions of elevated background radiation does not increase cancer risk. The claims of harm from such exposures are based mainly on seriously flawed epidemiological studies that usually rely on the unscientific and forced LNT default model.
Adelino de Santi Junior, biologist with Nuclear Industries of Braazil: Discusses alternatives to controlling mosquitoes that transmit the Zika virus. There are three ways: a) producing genetically modified mosquitoes, b) producing sterile male mosquitoes, c) using chemicals to kill mosquitoes and other beneficial insects, etc. The first two ways could solve many mosquito problems eventually. The third way has many environmental side effects.
Paul Driessen, CFACT: How can it be that – after countless millennia of malnutrition, disease, wretched poverty and early death – so many mostly western nations became healthy and prosperous in just 200 years? Matt Ridley says “ideas started having sex.” Deidre McCloskey opines that equality of social dignity and before the law emboldened people to invest, invent and take risks. Both are absolutely true.