Brian:

You say that "Nature is not a magazine but a respected scientific journal"
That may be the case, but how can it be worthy of respect when it prints a "news
communication" like this. Things do not happen in a vacuum. Nature and other
such "journals" know that the unsophisticated, popular media will grab stories
like this, create issues and manufacture crises that are picked up by
politicians and others who then make public policy, all based on nothing more
than speculation by people who call themselves scientists. Then we end up with
policies (such as "lead-free" as just one example) that are not based on science
and, ultimately, are detrimental to the environment.

But this article was not about opinion, it was not even about speculation. It's
pure scare mongering. The "scientists" admitted they had no facts ("... lacks
data on tropical forests ..." and "... unidentified or poorly studied plants
..." and "... no one's got around to checking if they qualify ..."). I am not a
scientist, I have never claimed to be, but is it good science to hypothesize
about things over which you have no facts? The only kind of science they seem to
be practicing is "political science".  One would think that scientists who are
speculating about some new idea or hypothesis that is so devoid of facts would
engage in less advocacy and avoid scare tactics. Nowhere in the article does it
say or imply that these scientists are offering up a hypothesis.

You also state "Readers are able to draw their own conclusions ..."
One would like to think so, but the gist of the article draws the conclusion for
the reader. There is not a single fact or data point in the entire article that
a careful reader could use to draw any kind of conclusion or form an opinion.
(Well, I do go too far. There is one fact that is very obvious. These scientists
want taxpayer money to do their research.)

Regarding the "precautionary principle" I am all for the precautionary
principle, I utilize it every day.  When driving when I come to the stop sign I
come to a full stop and make sure that it is safe to proceed before I hit the
accelerator. Before I drink milk directly from the carton I make sure my wife is
not in the room to see me.  I am sure we all employ the precautionary principle
in our daily lives, otherwise few of us would have survived to middle age.

But there needs to be a rational basis to the precautionary principle, otherwise
we would all still be hunter-gatherers, eating our meet uncooked and wearing
animal hides.  If the EU council of ministers existed one million years ago,
when man first learned to control fire, I am sure they would have banned fires
because of the precautionary principle.

Brian also says "If it is later shown that this was overkill, then the worst
that has happened is that we have wasted some money." Unfortunately, it is not
so simple or harmless as that. The illogical and irrational application of the
precautionary principle, in a very real sense, is leading to the suffering and
deaths of millions of people.

This in today's news, from the AP:

GENEVA -  The U.N. food agency is looking for a country to store thousands of
tons of genetically modified corn that has been rejected by the Zambian
government despite the country's deepening hunger crisis, a spokeswoman said
Tuesday.

"The authorities have officially asked us to remove from the country the food we
have stored there which could contain GMOs," or genetically modified organisms,
said Christiane Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the World Food Program.

The crisis, which threatens 14.4 million people in six southern African
countries, was blamed on poor weather and mismanagement in several of the
affected countries. An estimated 2.9 million Zambians, nearly 30 percent of the
population, are in danger of starvation in the coming months, officials say.

Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa has referred to the food as "poison," but the
United States, which donated it, argues that tens of millions of Americans eat
genetically modified corn every day with no ill effects. Several U.N. agencies
have declared the food safe.

*****"

Europe is banning GM fods because of the precautionary prinicple. It's one thing
for the rich nations of Europe to be so picky about what they eat, they have
alternatives. But not everyone is so lucky.

Even more startling is the irrational application of the precautionary principle
to the outright ban of DDT. According to all reports, since the ban on the use
of DDT for all applications the number of cases of malaria and the subsequent
deaths have skyrocketed. Malaria is responsible for about 500 million clinical
cases of disease and about 2.7 million deaths a year, mostly those of children
under five and pregnant women. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, malaria destroys 70%
more years of life than do all cancers in all developed countries combined. See
attached. If more comprehensive data on the impact of the DDT ban on malaria is
needed I can provide it (its a big *.pdf file and I don't want to litter
everyone's mailboxes).

Chuck Dolci




*User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-GB; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823
Netscape/7.0
*X-Accept-Language: en-gb, en
*MIME-Version: 1.0
*Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
*From: Brian Ellis <[log in to unmask]>
*Subject: Re: [EN] Nature Magazine
*X-To: Charles Dolci <[log in to unmask]>
*X-cc: [log in to unmask]
*To: [log in to unmask]
*
*Chuck
*
*I don't back you up either on your attack on this article or on the
*medium carrying it.
*
*First of all, Nature is not a magazine but a respected scientific
*journal. The whole process of establishing a scientific finding usually
*starts with a hypothesis. For example, Molina and Rowlands published -
*in this same journal, Nature - their startling theory that CFCs could
*cause ozone-depletion in 1974, long before there was any scientific
*observation to back up their hypothesis. Nevertheless, it did prove
*true, scientifically confirmed by both modelling and empirical
*observations. Notwithstanding, it was wisely acted upon by the
*precautionary principle; even the Vienna Convention and the Montreal
*Protocol were signed before we had the science. When the science did
*arrive, it showed the situation was far worse than had been foreseen and
*the Montreal Protocol had to be seriously tightened with a faster and
*more draconian phase-out schedule.
*
*Secondly, this is a short news communication and has not been published
*as a peer-reviewed paper. Notwithstanding, the conditional tense abounds
*and it clearly demonstrates its hypothetical nature. Readers are able to
*draw their own conclusions; you have drawn yours as a naysayer, while
*others, like myself as ayesayers, may be alarmed. You are entitled to
*your opinion, just as much as I am, but it certainly does not serve your
*cause to be so vituperative against both the substance and the form of
*the article.
*
*Thirdly, in this day and age, in cases like this, where there may be a
*risk of irreversible damage, it has become usual to apply the
*precautionary principle. That is to assume, if there are reasonable
*grounds, the worst and to take strong measures to combat the supposed
*"evil". If it is later shown that this was overkill, then the worst that
*has happened is that we have wasted some money. OTOH, if the situation
*is as bad, or worse, than has been painted, then that plant that may
*save thousands from a painful and premature death (including perhaps
*yourself), may have been saved from extinction, to put it on an
*emotional note. The problem is also that a single plant type is not an
*isolated item, but a part of a biotope. Other species, such as fungi and
*insects, may depend on it and these may be part of a much more important
*food chain. Every single species that we lose, through the inconsiderate
*action of man, whether deliberately or inadvertently, is a loss for the
*whole world. I have personally witnessed how this island has been raped
*over the last 50 years. It is estimated that about 40% of plant species
*have disappeared, or nearly so, and probably as many animal species
*(more, if you count insects). In some cases, the niche has become
*occupied by more harmful species. Control of this necessitates the use
*of more herbicides and insecticides that kill good and bad
*indiscriminately and pollute our ecosystems.
*
*In other words, the terms of our short tenancy on our planet should
*include "thou shalt not cause harm to living things that may thus be
*endangered and thou shalt do everything in thy power to ensure that they
*survive".
*
*That having been said, humans are not responsible for all extinctions
*and I have little doubt that species die off from natural causes every
*day. After all, you can hardly blame us for the dinosaurs! It is
*probable that natural genetic mutations generate new species every day,
*as well. Nature is a melting pot in constant movement. Humans do not
*have the right to add or remove species from that pot or play at
*sorcerers' apprentices.
*
*Best regards,
*
*Brian
*
*Charles Dolci wrote:
*> I had always thought that Nature was a "Science magazine", but I guess I was
*> wrong. Or maybe their definition of "science" is different than mine.
*>
*> Refer to an article at http://www.nature.com/nsu/021028/021028-11.html
*> entitled "Dying plants double"
*>
*> New calculation of threatened species gives startling result.
*> 1 November 2002
*>
*> HELEN PEARSON
*>
*> Nearly half of the world's plants could be close to extinction, scientists
have
*> warned.  The calculation triples previous estimates.
*>
*>>>>    "... could be close to extinction ..." THEN IT IS EQUALLY PLAUSIBLE
THAT
*>>>
*> THEY COULD BE "FAR FROM EXTINCTION".
*>
*> The number of plants on the standard Red List of threatened plant species is
a
*> massive underestimate, say the botanists, because it lacks data on tropical
*> forests.  When estimates from here are taken into account, the fraction of
*> species under threat spirals from 13% to between 22% and 47%1.
*>
*>
*>>>>    WHAT KIND OF PRECISION IS THIS ".. between 22% and 47%."?  MAYBE IT IS
*>>>
*> THE BEST THEY CAN DO GIVEN THEY "lack data on tropical forests" WELL, IF THEY
*> LACK DATA ON TROPICAL FORESTS THEN HOW DO THEY KNOW THOSE FORESTS HAVE
*> THREATENED PLANT SPECIES? IS IT NOT EQUALLY PLAUSIBLE THAT THE LIST OF
*> THREATENED SPECIES IS MASSIVELY OVERESTIMATED?  AFTER ALL, THEY LACK DATA.
*>
*> Monitoring the environments most at risk would cost only US$100 per species
per
*> year - $12.1 million in total - says Nigel Pitman of Duke University in
Durham,
*> North Carolina, one of the report's authors.
*>
*> "We may be on the edge of a mass extinction of plants," says Pitman.  "We'd
like
*> to see a major investment for the world's threatened flora."
*>
*>
*>>>>    THEN AGAIN WE MAY NOT BE. WHY DON'T THEY WAIT FOR SOME DATA BEFORE THEY
*>>>
*> PROCLAIM THE RAIN FORESTS DEAD.
*>
*> The figures are startling, and probably in the right ballpark, says botanist
*> Michael Nee of the New York Botanical Garden.  Razing tropical forests for
*> farming is thought to be a prime cause of species annihilation.  "There are
too
*> many people raping the landscape," says Nee.
*>
*>
*>>>>    "... proabably in the right ballpark ..." AND "... thought to be a
prime
*>>>
*> cause ..."  THIS PASSES FOR SCIENCE?
*>
*> Red or dead
*>
*> Species get put on the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List when they are
*> formally identified as being close to extinction.  But this excludes
*> unidentified or poorly studied plants.
*>
*>
*>>>>    WELL, ONE WOULD HOPE SO, PARTICULARLY IF THEY ARE "unidentified".
*>>>
*>
*> "There are thousands of plants in the tropics that deserve red-listing but no
*> one's got around to checking if they qualify," says Pitman.
*>
*>
*>>>>    WELL THEN HOW THE HELL DOES THIS ..... KNOW THEY DESERVE TO BE
*>>>
*> RED-LISTED? AFTER ALL, NO ONE CHECKED TO SEE IF THEY QUALIFY. AND THIS PASSES
*> FOR SCIENCE?
*>
*> Working in tropical countries, Pitman and his colleague Peter Jorgensen found
*> that the number of species unique to each country is a rough guide to the
number
*> that is threatened.
*>
*> Ecuador, for example, has 4,000 species that are found nowhere else.  Nearly
*> 3,500 are under threat, because they often grow in small regions, where a
*> landslide or fire can wipe them out.
*>
*>
*>>>>    HMMMM. SINCE LANDSLIDES AND FIRES HAVE BEEN AROUND FOR MILLIONS OF
*>>>
*> YEARS, WITHOUT INTERVENTION FROM MAN, WHAT IS THE POINT? DO THEY WANT TO ADD
*> THEM TO THE LIST BECAUSE A LANDSLIDE OR FIRE MIGHT SOMEDAY OCCUR? WHY DON'T
THEY
*> ADD ALL PLANT SPECIES TO THEIR LIST, AFTER ALL, IF A LARGE METEOR COLLIDED
WITH
*> EARTH THERE COULD BE MASSIVE PLANT EXTINCTIONS.
*>
*> To find the global proportion of plants under threat, Pitman and Jorgensen
*> pooled the numbers of species unique to each country.  The exact number is
hard
*> to pin down because estimates of the number of plant species range between
*> 310,000 and 422,000.
*>
*> "It's an interesting attempt to connect the dots of our picture of global
plant
*> extinctions," comments ecologist Hal Mooney of Stanford University in
*> California.  "The numbers they calculate should add to growing concern about
*> irreversible species loss."
*>
*>
*>>>>    THE ONLY THING THAT SEEMS TO BE IRREVERSIBLY LOST IS HEALTHY SCIENTIFIC
*>>>
*> SKEPTICISM.
*>
*> AND THIS PASSES FOR SCIENCE??
*>
*> Chuck Dolci
*>
*>
*>