China will benefit from warming, at least this century

By Bjorn Lomborg

SINCE the Copenhagen climate summit's failure in December, many politicians and pundits have pointed the finger at China's leaders for blocking a binding, global carbon-mitigation treaty. But the Chinese government's resistance was both understandable and inevitable. Rather than mustering indignation, decision-makers would do well to use this as a wake-up call: it is time to consider a smarter climate policy.

China is unwilling to do anything that might curtail the economic growth that has enabled millions of Chinese to clamber out of poverty. This development can be seen in the ever-expanding Chinese domestic market. In the next six months, one-quarter of young Chinese consumers intend to buy new cars - the main source of urban air pollution - up an astonishing 65 per cent from a year ago.

A poll by China Youth Daily revealed that eight of 10 young Chinese are aware of climate change, but are prepared to support environmental policies only if they can continue to improve their living standards, including acquiring new cars.

The cost of drastic, short-term carbon cuts is too high. The results of all major economic models reveal that the much-discussed goal of keeping temperature increases below 2C would require a global tax of about E71 ($110) per tonne to start (or about E12c per litre of petrol), increasing to about E2800 per tonne (or E6.62 per litre of petrol) by the end of the century. In all, the actual cost to the economy would be a phenomenal E28 trillion a year. According to most mainstream calculations, that is 50 times more expensive than the climate damage it would be likely to prevent.

Trying to cut carbon emissions drastically in the short term would be particularly damaging, because it would not be possible for industry and consumers to replace carbon-burning fossil fuels with cheap, green energy. Renewable energy alternatives are simply far from ready to take over.

Consider the fact that 97 per cent of China's energy comes from fossil fuels and burning waste and biomass. Renewable sources like wind and solar meet just 0.2 per cent of the China's energy needs, according to the most recent International Energy Agency figures. The IEA estimates that on its current path, China will get a mere 1.2 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.

As if these reasons were not enough to explain the Chinese government's opposition to an expensive global carbon deal, economic-impact models show that for at least the rest of this century, China will actually benefit from global warming. Warmer temperatures will boost agricultural production and improve health. While heat-related deaths in summer will increase, this will be more than offset by a significant reduction in cold-related deaths in winter.

In short, China is aggressively protecting the economic growth that is transforming the lives of its citizens, instead of spending a fortune battling a problem that is unlikely to affect it negatively until next century. Little wonder, then, that Ed Miliband, Britain's Secretary for Energy and Climate Change, found "impossible resistance" from China to a global carbon mitigation deal.

Trying to force China into line would be impractical and foolhardy. The inescapable but inconvenient truth is that the response to global warming we have pursued for nearly 20 years - ever since the leaders of rich countries first vowed to cut carbon - is simply not going to work.

It is time to recognise the impracticality of trying to force developing countries to agree to make fossil fuel ever more expensive. Instead, we need to make a greater effort to produce cheaper, more widely used green energy. To do this, we must dramatically increase the amount we spend on research and development.

A global deal in which countries committed to spending 0.2 per cent of gross domestic product to develop non-carbon-emitting energy technologies would increase current spending 50-fold, and it would still be many times cheaper than a global carbon deal. It would also ensure that richer nations pay more, taking much of the political heat out of the debate. Most importantly, such an approach would bring about the technological breakthroughs that are required to make green energy sources cheap and effective enough to fuel a carbon-free future.

We cannot browbeat China and other developing nations into embracing hugely expensive, ineffective global carbon cuts. Rather than hoping that we can overcome their "impossible resistance" with political maneuvering, the leaders of developed countries need to shift their focus to a strategy that is feasible and effective.

SOURCE







Putin worries about 'global cooling'

The Russian energy sector needs to take "global cooling" effects into consideration when addressing national challenges, the Russian prime minister said.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said his country faces a variety of challenges as the world moves toward a greener energy policy in the midst of a brutal European cold snap, Russia's ITAR-Tass reports.

"In addition to the global-warming challenges, we need to address 'global cooling' effects and to do so promptly," the prime minister said.

Putin lauded the work of national energy suppliers during the harsh winter gripping Europe, noting they "have been working practically without failures."

He cautioned, however, that there were many problems left unresolved, including breakdowns in national distribution pipelines.

"We need to oversee the process, to promptly react in case of any failure and provide support for municipalities and regions," he said.

Europe is watching developments in the Russian energy sector as it struggles with soaring winter demand. Russia is among the primary suppliers of natural resources to Europe. Moscow, however, is in a deadlock with Minsk over oil export duties, sending jitters through a European community already anxious from 2009 gas disruptions.

SOURCE





Four Decades of Deceit

The publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring launched the modern environmental movement. However, it also marked the beginning of a movement that not just tolerated, but encouraged scientists to misrepresent the facts if it helped to create media attention to promote its agenda.

Rachel Carson was very selective in the facts included in Silent Spring, only those supporting her premise that pesticides were harmful were included. Even her references were tainted, many were not scientific publications at all and many of her scientific references did not actually support her statements. Despite widespread criticism of Silent Spring from true scientists, in 1972 the EPA began hearings to ban the use of DDT based upon her fraudulent science.

One of the misrepresentations that Silent Spring helped to create is that DDT caused the thinning of bird eggs, threatening the entire bird population with extinction. Rachel Carson used an obscure study by Dr. James Dewitt of the US Fish and Wildlife Service to shown that DDT was reducing the number of bird eggs that were hatching. However the actual study showed that despite feeding quail 3000 times the daily human intake of DDT, their eggs did not hatch significantly less than the control group. The same study done with pheasants showed that the survival rate of hatchlings of DDT feed pheasants actually increased. This is exactly the opposite of what Rachel Carson wrote.

Researchers that produced thin shelled quail eggs did so by reducing the calcium intake of the birds. After the study was published in Science magazine, it was exposed as a fraud. The study was then conducted with normal calcium intake. The quail fed DDT treated food did not produce thin shells. However, Science magazine refused to print that study. Its editor later related that they would never print an article supporting the use of DDT.

In the 1972 DDT Hearings, the EPA appointed Edward Sweeney as the Hearing Examiner. After seven months and 9000 pages of testimony, Sweeney concluded that DDT should not be banned. He concluded it did not have a harmful effect on birds, fish, wildlife or man. Several months later the EPA administrator, William Ruckelshaus, overruled Sweeney’s decision by his own admission, for political reasons. When his decision was appealed, Ruckelshaus appointed himself as the appeals judge.

The result of banning DDT was an immediate increase in the number of cases of malaria worldwide. Without DDT spraying, more than 300 million cases of malaria are reported annually worldwide and approximately 2 million children die each year from the deadly disease. Since the 1972 banning of DDT, 60 million people have died needlessly from malaria and other insect borne diseases. This is more than Stalin or Hitler exterminated in their reigns of terror. Even more incredulous is the fact that these people died as the result of decisions made by environmentalists.

The attitude toward scientific fact reporting by environmental scientists may be best summarized by Stanford biology professor, Stephen Schneider’s statement, “We need to get loads of media coverage, so we have to offer up scary scenarios and make dramatic statements. Each of us has to decide on the right balance between effectiveness and honesty”.

In the 45 years since the publication of Silent Spring, it is very obvious that many environmental scientists choose effectiveness in generating media attention over honesty. Today the ability to obtain government funding for environmental studies clouds their judgment even more.

Given the fraudulent origins of the environmental movement is it surprising that climatologists would omit or modify data to support their alarmist views of global warming? Is it surprising that they would conspire to suppress the publication of studies that did not support their assumptions? Is it surprising the Obama science czar, John Holdren would send them emails relating his own attempts to discredit and damage the careers of those that did not support global warming theories while he was at Harvard? When there is vast wealth at stake in determining who gets carbon credits and government subsides, is it surprising that Al Gore can declare that the science is settled, when really only the fraud has not yet been exposed.

The combination of scientists that value media exposure over scientific fact and the opportunity to profit from that exposure is a dangerous combination not only to Americans but to citizens of every country. When administrations become enamored with the fraudulent theories that environmental scientists propose, the results are even more damaging. While Cap and Trade may not kill millions of people the way that the DDT fraud has, the global warming hoax will kill the American industrial economy and thousands of jobs along with it.

SOURCE






Global warming is a falling doctrine

By: Cal Thomas

A familiar philosophical question goes like this: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Here's another: If a doctrine falls, will enough believers admit they were wrong and withdraw support for policies associated with it?

The "doctrine" of global warming, now euphemistically called "climate change," suffered a severe blow last week as much of Europe was buried in record amounts of snow and subfreezing temperatures. "Experts" who believe in global warming, uh climate change, went on television where they bravely tried to make a distinction between weather, which they said was about what happens today, and climate, which is long term. Most of it fell on deaf -- and cold -- ears as growing numbers disbelieve the "experts," relying more on their own "lying eyes."

Writing Sunday in London's Daily Mail, columnist David Rose analyzed recent scientific data amassed by eminent climate scientists. Rose says that far from a warming planet, "the bitter weather afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years."

Rose cites data from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, which found that, "Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 percent, since 2007." This, he says, challenges "some of the global warming orthodoxy's most deeply cherished beliefs, such as their claim that the North Pole will be free of ice by the summer of 2013."

During last month's climate summit in Copenhagen, more than 150 scientists with backgrounds in climate science wrote an open letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a global warming believer. The letter begins, "climate change science is in a period of 'negative discovery' - the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly the science is not settled."

The scientists challenge 10 of the main claims of the global warming-climate change true believers and write, "... there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change beyond that resulting from natural causes.

"Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth's orbital parameters and other natural phenomena."

That seems more than reasonable, but politicians in Europe and America want to rush through additional restrictions on how we live in order to seize more power. This is the major reason for their panic attack.

As new scientific evidence adds to the body of information, history and common sense, the power grab by the politicians is in peril. The hurry-up offense, to employ a football term, is being used to rush through legislation before the defense can devise an effective response. But the defense is now on the offense, and the offense is being forced to poorly play defense.

Should we do nothing about our consumption of petroleum? No, we should use this window of opportunity to decrease our reliance on petroleum; not because of "climate change," but to deprive the oil-producing nations of money too many of them use to underwrite terrorism.

This should satisfy both the global warming disciples and deniers and make America and Europe less dependent on nations that wish to destroy our liberty. But threats to liberty are not limited to some oil-producing nations; they can also be found in the British Parliament and in the American Congress.

The falling doctrines now make so much noise that only those without hearing fail to notice.

SOURCE






GREENIE ROUNDUP FROM AUSTRALIA

Three current articles below:

Green/Left rips off blacks: Leftist "concern" for blacks and black rights is empty talk

Article below by moderate black activist Noel Pearson.

NEXT time you bump into a koala conservationist begging for money in the street, ask what it thinks of Noel Pearson and his opposition to the Queensland government's wild rivers laws. The koala will tell you that I am a rapacious developer who wants to mine, clear-fell, pollute and pillage the unique environment of Cape York Peninsula. The koala will tell you that I do not speak for Aboriginal people from the region, and that the laws are strongly supported by them.

The Wilderness Society has an army of teenagers out on the streets saying that about those of us resisting its attack on the land rights of Aboriginal people in the cape. As in all propaganda campaigns, its main currency is to push its side of the story.

It spent years laying down the groundwork before Premier Anna Bligh announced three wild river declarations after the state election last March. The first step was to cause great alarm about the threats facing Cape York. From Indooroopilly to Surry Hills it distributed pamphlets and held public meetings in the suburbs talking up the threats to Cape York. Threats can be the lifeblood of campaigns such as those routinely run by the Wilderness Society.

It helps when citizens on the southeastern seaboard of the country - not the least those in the marginal seats of Brisbane - are saturated with images of the Gunns Paper Mill in Tasmania and the disaster of the Murray-Darling. Not to mention global warming.

For an environmentally anxious public, the Wilderness Society conflated Cape York Peninsula with clear-felling of old-growth forests in southern Australia and the Murray-Darling, and it had a winner.

Add a good brand name - Wild River - and there you have it: the perfect product to sell to an environmentally troubled public. The name corners the market on motherhood and apple pie, and whatever protests affected landowners in remote regions may make, they have no chance in the propaganda war because they are by the very definition of speaking against Wild Rivers, environmental vandals.

The Wilderness Society spent years campaigning about the threats facing Cape York. But when you examine what possible source of threat it is talking about, you find very little.

Take clear-felling of forests for paper mills and the like. None. Never has been. Never will be.

Take timber. There is only one small sawmill in the entire region the size of Victoria that cuts a single species, Darwin Stringybark, a dry forest timber abundant across northern Australia.

Take mining. There are only two operating mines in the entire region, both of which have been in existence for 50 years, the Mitsubishi silica mine at Cape Flattery and the Comalco bauxite mine at Weipa.

There are two new bauxite mines proposed. One is to be developed by Chinese company Chalco, which was awarded the opportunity by the Queensland government. The Chalco mining area, on the northern side of the Archer River, was excluded from the Wild River declarations announced by Bligh, but on the southern side the Aurukun community lands were included.

The Chalco mining area is an example of hypocrisy for two reasons. First, the Queensland government says mining can be consistent with the use of Wild River areas. Therefore why exclude the Chalco mining area from the Wild River declaration?

Second, the Wilderness Society has never expressed its position on the Chalco mine. Why has it not insisted the Chalco mining area be included in the Wild River areas?

The second bauxite mine is proposed by a start-up company called Cape Alumina on a pastoral property purchased by the federal government for the owners of Australia Zoo. Terry Irwin has been campaigning against this mine. This area has not been excluded from a proposed Wild River declaration of the Wenlock River, and, therefore, Irwin and the Wilderness Society have been arguing that this mine is a grave threat to the environment of what Australia Zoo promotes as Steve's Place.

The Wilderness Society is campaigning vigorously against "strip mining" by the Cape Alumina mob, but seem silent on the Chinese proposal. Why?

It is because this was the terms of the deal the Wilderness Society cut with former Queensland premier Peter Beattie. Beattie insisted the Wilderness Society could get blanket Wild Rivers over the blackfellas' land - without providing anything to the blackfellas other than a few make-work ranger jobs - provided the Chalco mining area was excluded.

This is why the Wilderness Society is silent on Chalco and screaming loud on the other mine.

Like moving pieces in a massive game of chess, the leaders of the Wilderness Society sit down with Labor Party principals in front of a map of Queensland and they make deals about what they want and what they're prepared to give away. You give us the Traveston dam, we give you Cape York. You can fight Cape Alumina, but don't fight the Chinese.

This is how you get the Greens party in Queensland not opposing the Traveston dam at state election time. The charade of participatory democracy can be seen in every region of the state where there are networks of "catchment management groups" and "natural resource management groups". Farmers, local communities, indigenous representatives and shire councils sit down with state government bureaucrats and representatives of green groups and supposedly work out consensus solutions to land use and environmental management. But what the mug stakeholders from these communities do not realise is these processes are tokenism.

The real decisions are made in Brisbane. The people who actually live in these regions and who strive to make a livelihood out of the land, are reduced to being bit-part "stakeholders", while the real players are those cutting the deals in Brisbane.

Griffith University academics James Whelan and Kristen Lyons, in a 2004 paper examining the methods successfully employed by environment groups in getting tree-clearing bans in Queensland, report that one of the principals of the Wilderness Society, Lyndon Schneiders, called community consultation processes under legislation for land-clearing management "an exercise in futility" and "a long suicide note".

The organisations funded by the state and commonwealth to facilitate these stakeholder processes are controlled by the purse-strings of government. Their employees end up compromised because jobs and funding programs are dependent on everybody toeing the line that the governments and environment groups insist on.

From the far north to western Queensland you can see what is happening. The poor buggers who live in these places are no match for the corporatist power of organisations such as the Wilderness Society and the wealthy US outfit, the Pew Foundation, who bankroll these campaigns.

If you accept that Cape York Peninsula is not threatened by wholesale commercial or industrial development, and that the best prospect will be small-scale sustainable developments that preserve the region's environment, you are then left with the tragic conclusion that the entire argument about Wild Rivers is misconstrued.

Bligh has consistently rejected that Wild Rivers was all about election deals. But that wasn't always the community perception. Whelan and Lyons reported on the land-management campaign: "Interviewees considered TWS [the Wilderness Society] had demonstrably influenced the outcome of recent Queensland elections. The Labor Party's environmental commitments had been rewarded by TWS campaigns in marginal electorates, which boosted Labor candidates, notably [in 2004] by reducing the vote of a popular Green candidate who might otherwise have won the party's first parliamentary position."

This should be the last thing consuming the attention of Aboriginal people in Cape York. We should be devoting our political and organisational energies into the abject problems of health, education, housing, child protection and criminal justice afflicting our communities. Instead we have to fight a rearguard action to preserve our rights to sustainable development against a bunch of people from the Wilderness Society who desperately want their names listed on the pantheon of environmental heroes who saved Cape York Peninsula. But saved it from what?

IN the week before Christmas, The Weekend Australian featured a story on Eddie Woibo, from Hopevale in Cape York. Eddie is a hard-working indigenous man who set up a small-scale passionfruit farm on his native land. Woibo and his family developed the land for 25 years, building a home and putting in miles of fencing, planted pasture and irrigation infrastructure, waiting for formal land title from successive Queensland governments. His land and home is a dead asset. Because he does not have title to his lands, he has never been able to leverage any further capital investment into his property through loans from banks. More than 80 other indigenous families are in the same position.

Eddie was struck by a heart condition and was hospitalised in December. While he was in recovery a bushfire gutted his property, wiping out his enterprise and ruining most of his infrastructure. Normally, Woibo would have had insurance for his passionfruit business. But he could not insure his property because he did not have title. Woibo has been waiting 25 years for title to his land, and he's still waiting.

SOURCE

Rudd's taxing climate policy is a liability

IN the lead-up to the December climate change conference in Copenhagen the Rudd government was full of bravado as it threatened to reintroduce, next month, its legislation for an emissions trading scheme which the Liberals had just defeated in the Senate. This was clearly designed to unsettle the opposition, and its new leader, Tony Abbott, by holding out the prospect of a double dissolution election if the legislation was again rejected. The Prime Minister may have believed he was on solid ground because Malcolm Turnbull, who Abbott displaced, was clearly spooked at the consequences for the Liberal party if such an election was fought over this legislation.

But the political sands have shifted significantly since then, and far from being intimidated by the reintroduction of this legislation the opposition should be daring Rudd to bring it on.

For a start the Copenhagen conference, where Rudd the climate change warrior took centre stage, proved an embarrassing waste of time and taxpayers' money. Rudd and his caravan of advisers and hangers-on were left desperately trying to squeeze some policy credibility out of this gabfest. If anything, Copenhagen undermined Rudd's fundamental premise that the cap and trade system, which forms the basis of his government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, is the only satisfactory way to address global warming through reducing green house gas emissions.

While the conference failed to reach any constructive agreement for a global response to the effects of climate change it did throw the spotlight on the complexities and uncertainties that surround the cap and trade system. In the wake of the Senate's defeat of the CPRS legislation in early December, Rudd rejected a challenge by Abbott to debate the issue of climate change. He advised the new Opposition Leader to calm down and develop a policy on this.

Reintroducing the legislation not only provides the opportunity for the opposition to debate the government's policy but for it to drive a wedge between the flawed, tax-based, ETS and the broader issue of climate change.

Political polling has been in hibernation over the holiday season but will be back in full swing in coming weeks, particularly as this is a federal election year. The Liberals believe that while there is community support for action to ameliorate the effects of climate change, this is overshadowed by concerns the ETS is nothing more than a tax that will drive up the cost of living.

They expect this to be reflected in opinion polling before the CPRS legislation is reintroduced, if in fact it is.

This will significantly influence Abbott's "direct action" alternative to the government's climate change policy which he will develop in a series of public speeches which began with an address to the Sydney Institute last night.

In attacking government rhetoric supporting its climate change policy, Abbott claims that this, in fact, is a smokescreen for its general environmental neglect particularly in the areas of land and water management.

The Nationals, Abbott's Coalition partners, argue that by placing all these programs under one agency - Caring for Our Country - the government has drastically reduced access to funding for farmers who have maintained a sustainable balance in land use.

Meanwhile, the government has tried to justify passage of its CPRS legislation on the basis that it is essential in the fight against global warming, which is primarily the fault of mankind. But the reality is that this legislation will create a highly intrusive, big brother organisation within the Climate Change department which will have powers of intervention and enforcement rivaling those of the Australian Taxation Office.

And it is here that the opposition should be focusing its attack on the government because this is the area of greatest community concern and uncertainty about the consequences of Labor's policy lies.

Householders have been told to brace themselves for higher prices ranging from energy to food in the ETS-based battle against carbon pollution. Not surprisingly, few can understand how this comes about through a system of trading emissions permits. And the Climate Change department's enviro-babble explanation of how this system works in terms of provisional, make good, excess surrender emissions numbers and credits doesn't help. But what is clear is that businesses and power plants are free to emit whatever level of carbon dioxide they choose as long as they surrender an "eligible emissions unit" for each tonne of pollution.

As with the tax office, the Climate Change Regulatory Authority will have powers to monitor, audit and impose penalties where necessary to enforce compliance with this system, all of which will require a growing taxpayer-funded bureaucracy.

Australians do care about the environment. What they don't care for are more taxes.

SOURCE

Ban protest vessels from using Australia's ports

The Australian Government has been far too even-handed in its statements about the reckless actions of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in attempting to prevent Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean.

By not condemning the harassment of Japanese ships by the anti-whaling activists, Australia is in effect acquiescing in militant tactics that come very close to piracy on the high seas.

Harassment will not change Japan's position on whaling. And not condemning these actions directed against a vessel going about its lawful business is counterproductive for Australia trying to broker a diplomatic compromise with Japan through the International Whaling Commission.

Japan could legitimately demand that Australia condemn the actions of the Sea Shepherd group before it even considers discussing any shift in its whaling policy at the next meeting of the commission in Morocco in June.

Given the public interest in these matters, the Australian Government has sensibly asked the Australian Maritime Safety Authority to examine the recent events in the Southern Ocean. But it is hard to see how, on any reading of the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, the Sea Shepherd captain, Paul Watson, could argue his actions were in compliance with it.

Given the relatively small size of the Sea Shepherd's protest boat Ady Gil, and the Japanese ship's restricted ability to manoeuvre, the speedboat was clearly placed in harm's way of the whaling vessel. It neglected the most basic precautions required by the ordinary practice of seamen to avoid a close-quarters situation from developing. Watson can't use the basic rules of the maritime road as his shield.

The Sea Shepherd group's other vessels, the Bob Barker and the Steve Irwin, visit Hobart for refuelling, as it is the closest port to where confrontations with the Japanese take place. Sea Shepherd's ships dock in Melbourne each year to prepare for the Japanese whaling season over summer. Last year the Steve Irwin also docked in Brisbane, Sydney and Fremantle as part of a tour of Australian ports.

To demonstrate that Australia does not support the activities of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society against Japanese whalers, the Australian Government should ban the entry of its vessels into Australian ports.

In deciding whether to grant consent to vessels to enter its ports, a state is free to impose conditions as it wishes - access to a port of a state is a privilege, not a right. Australia banned port access to Japanese fishing vessels in 1998 when Japan would not agree on a total allowable catch for southern bluefin tuna in the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna. The port access ban was lifted in mid-2001. It is an offence under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act for a whaling vessel to call at an Australian port unless the master has written permission from the environment minister to bring it into the port.

If the Federal Government is serious about ending whaling and shifting the Japanese Government's position - one that has hardened in response

to harassment by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society - it should completely distance itself from this group's dangerous tactics in the Southern Ocean by banning its protest vessels from Australian ports.

SOURCE

***************************************

For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here

*****************************************