Liriodendron Tulipifera

Anything by Chopin, especially his Nocturnes and Waltzes. (You see, I play piano.. )

Green Capitalist, check out this thread if you want a good discussion on pollution. http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.p...04&hl=pollution

'Nothin' Says Lovin' Like Monica from the Oven.' 'Smart. Beautiful. Monica.' 'Gotta Lotta Monica.' (Some of them were actually kind of obscene! Do I sense a Monica Lewinsky factor? )

Technology predates both science and engineering. It is the application of knowledge to meet a specific desire. Technology includes all the objects from pencil and paper to the latest electronic gadget. So, it would include building your own house using whatever tools you have, erecting a chimney, working up your own door hinges from stumps, or making your own backpack to carry a hend-hewn tabletop or a dead caribou that you shot yourself. Not everyone's cup of tea, clearly. But if Proenneke were avoiding technology, he wouldn't have bothered to build a cabin with tools or use a gun to hunt. He would literally have remained unclothed or dug in the soil with bare hands for roots to eat... and starve... and die. Inspector, the main issue here is that you don't value nature aesthetically, you don't need more of it in your life to increase your happiness, and you've decided that anyone else who does is a retard. Right?

No, I don't agree with that premise at all. The fact that he worked for 30 years as an engineer, saved up enough money to retire early and live the lifestyle he wants, the lifestyle that makes him happy, does not makes him evil or retarded. Are you saying he would have NOT been retarded if he'd sat home and watched TV every day or eaten in a local diner every day for the next 30 years? What about Objectivism tells you that you must value other people, a TV, or a microwave? NOTHING. How about the fact that I go camping and don't live with a coffeemaker, a microwave, or any modern conveniences for the week-end? Does that make me retarded? What if I were to do it for a week? A month? A year? How about if I use a tent? Does that make me accepting enough of technology to be a non-retard? What if I just sleep out in a sleeping bag without a tent? Does that make me reject technology just enough to be a retard? See the slippery slope of your argument? Where in between living in the suburbs and living in a cabin in Alaska does one become a retard? Tell us all, please. I enjoy the wind in my hair, the sun on my face, and the different smells up in the mountains, with no noise or other people to distract me from my own thoughts. And I'll be damned if I'm going to just sit here and watch you insult people you don't know or tell me or others what we all need to value. Inspector, exactly how does being smart enough to be that self-sufficient for 30 years make you a retard? As for personal discomfort and hardship, don't we all work to achieve desired ends? Is exercise personal discomfort and hardship? Or is it exhilarating? How about building a house by yourself, and having pride in your abilities to do so? Physically stenuous? Yes. But with a lot of reward in knowing that you did it yourself and you didn't depend on anyone else to do so. This man led an independent and challenging life, just different than the one you would choose for yourself, and that is why you condemn him. If living and thriving for 30 years in a house you made yourself with tools you made yourself eating food you grew or hunted yourself doesn't make you a conquerer of nature, I don't know what does.

Right. And I see value in man-made things that have a totally nonbiological basis, like computers and other equipment. I just don't understand, at a fundamental level, how these items work or are even made. Therefore I don't talk about them much.

My grandfather is actually being treated for lymphoma at the moment with some new type of treatment: monoclonal antibodies. It's some group of antibodies produced in mouse cells - or some other animal cells - that attacks only the cancer cells, and thus avoids all the nasty side effects of chemo and radiation! Lots of cool stuff going on out there.

Good point. I always wished the exercise bikes came with bookstands to hold pages open so my hands could be free! Similar concept.

Spot on, Thales, I totally agree with everything you said. My point in many of these "nature" types threads is simply that man, at this stage, cannot separate himself from the biophysical realm. I am just trying to make people a little more aware about the ORIGINAL source of all these great things we value in our life. I don't take those items for granted at all. I think about stuff like this all the time, in fact this is precisely why I want nature preserved, because it's a tremendous source of products and ideas. All the items you listed have a biophysical basis: The toothpaste I use contain diatoms (protist-type microorganisms with lots of silica) and carageenan (a polysaccharide gel from algae that holds it all together). Anti-biotics are harvested from or synthetically modified from secondary metabolites of fungi or filamentous bacteria. While we contantly make new antibiotics and chemical structures not found in nature, those chemicals are based on structures found in nature, and lots of new antibiotics and drugs are actually unmodified and simply harvested from the wild or from cultivated plants or fungi. This is very important. Pharm. companies pay a lot of money for bioprospecting. Paper is acid-washed cellulose from woody plant cells. Pencils contain wood and possibly rubber? (from the Hevea brasiliensis rubber tree in the tropics). I doubt you can use just any old wood for a pencil. I bet it's a specific type, probably a pine that's soft enough to sharpen (just a guess). Dishwashing soap (all soap, really) has a complex chemistry with many different types of oils, but basically what is happening in its production is the formation of a salt from plant or animal oils by mixing with lye. In fact, I'm making batches of soap this week with olive oil, sodium hydroxide, and essential oils, which smell and work great, at about the cost of $1 per bar. They are cheaper and higher quality than I can buy in the grocery store. All of these things came from plants, except possibly NaOH (I don't know how that is produced). Bug spray may contain insecticides like pyrethrin (from Chrysanthemum plants!), or other chemicals modified from naturally occurring ones. We see the warfare going in nature between plants and animals, and we copy it! So my basic point is not "Technology is bad!" I love my computer, it helps me analyze all kinds of cool data I gather from nature. My point is, rather: "Wow, look at all this cool stuff that man has managed to manipulate and control for our own good. Nature is a constant source of ideas and substances for us to use. Let's keep it around!" As for living in the wild, no person in their right mind wants to live without shelter or tools. Even the Native Americans had these things. I think the reason that modern people may want to do so is that they like to be alone or with fewer people, they genuinely enjoy nature aesthetically and feel better around it, and they need a big adventurous challenge that the comforts of modern life have removed. So, Dick Proenneke is the extreme example of someone living as far apart from society as possible. This doesn't make him a hypocrite without examining his motives. Is someone a hypocrite for living in the country rather than the suburbs? The suburbs rather than downtown? Come on, Inspector. Get real. You don't even know the first thing about that guy! How could you possibly evaluate his motives? Even he got mail and presumably used money he earned all those years to pay for stuff. No one can separate themselves from modern society fully. He would only be a hypocrite if he thought he could separate himself FULLY from society and its benefits. Just the same, no one can separate themselves from "nature" fully, either. If you think you can, you are also a hypocrite and completely ignorant of the physical or biological source of everything you eat, wear, breathe, or use.

Well, I would agree. But now let us think about these figures a little more critically. From 1900 to 1940 I am guessing the increase in life expectancy was due mainly to the adoption of plumbing and sewage treatment systems(thus avoiding some common diseases carried by flies and transmitted by drinking human waste-polluted drinking water). Furthermore, life expectancy has increased, since 1968, an average of about 0.13 years per year, for a total of about 5 years, since we're now at an average life expectancy of around 75, in the US, give or take. Clearly, the effect of industry in adding to quantity of life is now leveling off. But I think it would be fun to imagine this "paved Earth" and "hydroponics" scenario! I suppose there are folks who care not for pure maple syrup and all manner of cool vegetable and fruit products that grow on trees. I've never heard of trees being grown hydroponically, but perhaps it's possible! But never mind! We can subsist on lettuce and tomatoes produced hydroponically; that would be an interesting enough diet, I think. And I bet all those cattle we eat could thrive on hydroponically grown grass! But wait, I wonder how hydroponics would work without clean water (which is, of course, filtered by the soil)? I guess we would just dig through the pavement to get that. But wait, the water doesn't get through the pavement! Maybe we could use rainwater! Actually, that might work, provided we had huge swaths of land devoteded solely to its collection in large buckets. I suppose we'd also dig through the pavement to get organic fertilizer (dead plant and animal remains degraded to a useable form by fungi and bacteria that live in soil), since pure water won't make plants grow. Oh, but wait, fungi and bacteria need water and oxygen to do their jobs! So there would be no organic fertilizer. Of course, there are compost bins....but even they need soil to start the decomposition process.... But wait, we can just use inorganic fertilizer in the form of minerals in the earth's crust! We'll just dig through the pavement to get THEM! And we can expend tremendous amounts of energy and money by making ammonia fertilizers by combusting nitrogen and hydrogen gases, instead of letting soil-dwelling bacteria do it for us, for free! Hmmm.... what else would happen if we paved Earth? Of course, this would severely limit the plant species we could grow, but whatever. We can do without oils, drugs, pesticides, and perfumes! We could do without 25% of our prescription drugs, which are derived solely from plant products. And I bet we could do without those drugs vincristine and vinblastine discovered in the 1960s from the rosy periwinkle, native only to Madagascar. We could do without taxol (another cancer drug), Velcro (modeled after seed-dispersal mechanisms in plants like burdock), cotton, flax, wood, hormones from the Mexican yam (the inspiration for the birth control pill), and all manner of other possibilities! Boy, this is starting to sound like one SWEET Earth! That anyone would choose to "pave the Earth" which would result in the loss of habitat for millions of terrestrial species before we ever even learn of their existence, let alone usefulness, is a rather scary prospect. Thankfully we are far from that ever happening, and I would guess there are some pretty smart rich people (individuals and companies) around who never allow it to happen.

This is a good point, one I'd like to take off on. And I'd also like to touch on a few statements made in PMs and perhaps in this thread. First, I take issue with the constant theme of "industry has been more helpful than harmful." First, we all know what is meant by this and we all agree: overall, industry has profited mankind far more than it has hurt. But let's talk about specifics. WHAT industries? Helpful and harmful to WHOM? To humanity in general? These collectivist statements bug me. As Thales said in a previous post somewhere in this thread, values are not removed from individuals. So, let's consider this question of what a given person might value over living in a "division of labor society." Has any modern human tried abandoning the division of labor in society and succeeding in enjoying him or herself in living alone? There are a few examples, but the best one, as far as I know, is Dick Proenneke, who retired from an engineering career in his 50s to build a log cabin in Alaska in 1968, in which he lived for the next 30 years. The only transportation in and out was a bush plane. He did receive some resources from the "outside world" including clothing, spices, mail and some seeds and industry-made tools, like saws. Everything else came from the land: the food, many of his tools, which were hand-hewn, the logs for his house, etc. He did everything himself, as much as possible, and he actually filmed himself making the cabin. What an amazing person. Now that is an independent life. I wish I was knowledgable enough and physically strong enough to do it myself, because I think for a short time in my life, I would love it. It is quite an amazing story. His story was documented by a friend in a book entitled One Man's Wilderness, An Alaskan Odyssey, which was later turned into a film with his original footage, Alone in the Wilderness.

Um, well for starters, they are telling the French police to use real bullets, not rubber ones. Which means they want even more of a fight than they're getting. Sound familiar? Also, I wouldn't call setting 1000 cars or even PEOPLE on fire delinquency or rabble. !!!!!!!

Yeah i would agree dondigitalia. I don't think the Earth is going to collapse anytime soon. In fact, at my university, which is the College of Env. Science and Forestry, a new seminar is being offered next semester discussing just that viewpoint: that we are not going to run out of resources anytime soon, and maybe never. Interesting! Considering my state, New York, something like 40% of the land was forested at the turn of the century, and now 70-80% of the land is forested, due largely to the shift in agriculture away from NY State. You walk through forests here and see old farm fences. In terms of global warming, I'm not that educated on this issue. I know global CO2 levels are rising, but are not dangerous to human health. I think that level of CO2 is something like 0.3%, and our current level is something like 370 ppm (parts per million). The lowest it's ever been, scientists think, is 275 ppm?? IF global warming is happening, it's probalby not due to CO2. There are more important greenhouse gases like water vapor and methane. But who cares what causes it? In any case, we'll still have to deal with it, if it's happening. Some aspects would be good, some bad. I'm pretty convinced it is happening, due to shifts in grasses geographically. Some grasses do better in hot conditions. They have a specific biochemical pathway that adapts photosynthesis to hot conditions. We're seeing these outcompete grasses now in more northern areas with the classic photosynthetic cycle. HOWEVER, this information is from a textbook, not from a primary source. And I don't necessarily trust textbooks on political issues. Anyway, we shall see. I don't care enough about this issue to go find the primary research articles, although I remember reading something about 5 years ago on it. I acutally don't think the interests of those who want clean air and water is conflicting at all with capitalism. Capitalism is the solution to pollution problems because only in capitalist countries is there incentive to develop pollution control technology. It's the real environmentalists, in the true sense of the word, that value environment over man. They want all progress stopped at all costs. Period. Scientists studying environmental stuff don't particularly care for these Sierra Club Greenpeace types, because they take data produced by real scientists, and twist it into something it doesn't mean. Sierra Club actually has its own "journal", which is really a magazine and no one in science takes seriously. Unfortunately, as Inspector said, they prey on the public, because those people don't know any better.

Now we're getting into details I don't know about. David? Help? DDT is still used, so it's coming from somewhere. My understanding is that it's banned for ag. use in the US, but not for medical emergencies. In any case, it's being produced somewhere since it's still being used.... But I don't know where! my guess is it is being produced in some western country. i'm also not sure the skyrocketing malarial cases weren't due ot resistance to DDT and not the ban OR both. DDT has been abandoned in so many places for use against malaria anyway. See, the resistance genes don't need time to evolve now, since they're already present in the populations of mosquitoes. They just need to sweep to near fixation by the application of DDT. This doesn't take much time. A few months in areas that are resistant. David, do we know of any tropical countries where DDT is needed where it is banned for use against malaria, specifically? Banned for indoor use? I'm not even sure this is the case. Anyway, gnargtharst, I don't think any of us could find more information than David has presented without a lot of time and effort .... aaaargh. Which is why these topics are frustrating. Sorting fact from fiction becomes very difficult. (Mod note: Removed quote of immediately preceding post)

There's no "collectivist premise." I'm not suggesting regulation is the answer. What I am suggesting is that a total lack of regulation wouldn't have resulted in the wonder scenario being painted. All I'm saying is that you can't eat your cake and have it, too. Here's what I meant by indiscriminate: not discriminating between use to control mosquitoes only vs. agricultural use. More exposure, more opportunities for resistance. The same situation occurs today in this country - the indiscriminant use (not able to discriminate between a proper use of the drug vs. an improper use) of antibiotics by some stupid people that can't bother to educate themselves, think beyond the immediate, or even CARE about the issue, generating resistant bacterial strains which may affect the rest of us. That is, people that insist that their doctors prescribe an antibiotic, even though the doctor knows better. You can't make people accept facts. Crappy situation, but in a free society, no way around it that I see.

LOL, you guys crack me up! Hey Felix, how DID that recent election turn out? Did the conservative woman running for prime minister (or whatever, excuse me for being uninformed about her potential title) get elected?? And in your opinion, was she the best candidate?

I actually would agree with that claim. This makes perfect sense from my knowledge of northeastern forests, which generally accumulate biomass very quickly for about 80 years, and then gradually level off so that there is still net O2 production (which is negligible), but never net respiration. Rainforests tend to grow on very poor soils, where any available litter is rapidly decomposed and taken up by plants. Because of these unique soil characteristics, agriculture doesn't really work very well on these soils. They are very different soils to what we have in the northern hemisphere, which enables us to be incredibly productive with our land in terms of agriculture and forestry. Still, there are issues with agriculture and monoculture forestry up here (introduced diseases and high disease rates, constant need to apply fertilizer because of nutrient loss), and a great deal of scientists devote a lot of work to figuring out the best way to harvest plants (whatever types - crops or trees) for profit while maintaining the integrity of the system to last for many generations. Most of our crop plants are very much genetically modified to deal with continually decreasing soil fertility in the midwest. We have a good handle on the genetics of corn, rice, and wheat. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the entire rice genome has now been sequenced. There are very good examples of forested habitats in the United States which have not been managed properly for long-term profit, and are now just old fields. If forestry had been done properly on those sites, ensuring tree regeneration, the situation would be much better for the landowner. For example, a friend of mine had a neighbor who cut down a lot of sugar maple trees on his land. Unfortunately, he did so in a year which there wasn't a very big mast of sugar maple seed and hadn't been for several years. So there were no seedlings there before removing the overstory. Furthermore, the land was angled at about a 30% slope, and instead of the skid trails being laid out parallel to the slope (as they should be on any land greater than 5% slope), they were laid out perpendicular, so that a lot of soil was lost down the slope after the tree harvest. Bad management techniques. So while he has every right to do what he did with his own land, he actually could have made a lot more profit in the long run by waiting a couple of years by listening to me, and my friend, to ensure adequate regeneration of sugar maple saplings so that, years from now, he could again harvest those same types of trees. What's now growing there is a bunch of junk trees, weeds, and shrubs that will grow into a forest that will never be of use, economically, recreationally, or otherwise. So if he doesn't care, or if he needed the money right away, or wants to use the land for some other purpose (I can't imagine what!), that's fine. But he doesn't have a right to complain that 10 years from now, there's no sugar maple! This is like the people that took Vioxx for arthritis and then decided to sue because they didn't bother to inform themselves about the drug, or the possible side effects. All I'm saying is that there are an awful lot of people who fail to think beyond the immediate or inform themselves on things that SHOULD be important to them, when it comes to land useage. You can't eat your cake and have it, too. We lose probably hundreds of tons of soil down the Mississippi each year, and I don't worry too much about it because the prairie soils of the Midwest had about two meters of organic matter available when we started farming them a few hundred years ago. But the soils in the tropics don't hold organic matter like ours do, because the rates of decomposition are so fast. That's all I'm saying, really, that nutrients are leached through the soil and disappear from the watershed faster. The tropical forests are not very resilient systems. Such things happen on northeastern soils, too, only at a much slower rate. (They've studied this at Hubbard Brook in New Hampshire.) So when a field is abandoned here in the northern US, it can turn into an old field, which can then be reclaimed by trees, which can be cut down 80 years later or so for agriculture or a tree plantation, if a landowner so desires. It doesn't work that way in the tropics. Within a few years, the farmers or ranchers move on to the next plot of forested land (slash and burn agriculture), leaving the old one behind, which is pretty much useless. I don't know of plots of land in the tropics on which traditional forestry or agriculture is taking place that actually last more than a few harvest periods. I get bothered when people just speculate that we can cut down rainforests and plant whatever trees we like,a definite implication in the article by Dr. Stott listed by Thales. While I believe that tropical forests SHOULD be managed for forest products (wood, rubber, medicine, etc.), tourism, and biotechnology, I haven't seen any evidence that we can use the same types of management techniques we use here in the US. It's not a matter of not knowing what to do down there! It's a matter of it (selective harvest!) not being done! Again, a failure to think beyond the immediate. It's the people in those countries who live there, and the companies here in the US that could be benefitting financially, and us, who could be buying those products, who will be the losers if the people down there don't smarten up. I'm sure this has a lot to do with the political economic systems in these countries, but I wouldn't know enough about that to speculate, so I will leave those comments to someone who knows better.

It's unbelievable that they have such a lack of will to stem this tide of insanity. I was watching the news last night, and some official from the French govt. was asked whether it was suitable to send in the army. He said, "Well, at some point, it might be suitable." Nearly 300 towns in turmoil, violence spreading across Europe, and at SOME point it might be suitable? Exactly what point would that be?

Yes, I am saying that plants give off net O2 IF they are growing. Plants also respire but if they are growing, they have net O2 production, not consumption. The most recent evidence suggests that the sink for CO2 is the boreal forest, based on slight depressions in CO2 concentration up there. It's an assumption on your part, that the reason I am concerned with deforestation in the tropics is because of a loss of O2. Anyway, the phrase "forests decompose" means nothing to me. Of course they do. Everything decomposes, in every ecosystem. There's decomposition going on in the ocean, too. Decomposition of those little algae you talked about that are busy photosynthesizing. Is the following sentence what you really mean? That net respiration exceeds photosynthesis in the rainforest? If so, where are the data to back this claim? I already know that net O2 production is going on in oceans. But on the rainforests being a net producer of CO2, I'd like to see data, please, because i have never heard this before. Anyone can claim anything and write a book about it. It wouldn't make me an expert on the issue. In fact, I nearly have my PhD in biology. Does that make me an expert on environmental issues? Does the fact that Rachel Carson wrote a book on DDT make her an expert on DDT? Does designing a website and labeling it "Junk Science" mean that everything on it is junk science? Primary sources are best, not books or articles for the general public filled with hyperbole, spreading whatever ideology. People that present graphs, charts, raw data, from experiments THEY have conducted. Even this does not guarantee the integrity of the research, but it's the best we have. We don't disagree on this point. So while forests may "come and go" on a landscape, those plants must have been existing ELSEWHERE, because species don't evolve that fast. So what is he saying? That the total area occupied by rainforest was smaller than it is now? How much smaller? he conveniently avoids this issue. I'd like to know. By avoiding that point, he is misleading folks into thinking that the rainforest ecosystem is some recent arrival on much of the Earth. It can "come and go" so to speak. Finally, that he dismisses the fact that there are genetic resources there for us to store, read, and use tells me just about all I need to know.

And where, in this entire thread, I daresay in any of my posts in this forum, have I ever disagreed with that statement?? WHY on Earth would I be posting on an Objectivist forum if I hadn't already accepted the validity of free markets to "do their thing?"

"What do lungs do? Take a deep breath - they gulp in oxygen and give out carbon dioxide! If the rain forests are indeed 'the lungs of the world', they should surely be cut down as quickly as possible!" The quote above from the infamous Dr. Stott quoted by Thales.... ROFLMAO. He takes this phrase straight out of context, assuming that referring to rainforests as "lungs" means they must be emitting carbon dioxide. So while it's a stupid phrase, he doesn't need to add to the stupidity by taking it out of context. Plants grow by fixing carbon dioxide into useable form: first glucose, then they make structural molecules like cellulose out of it. So the only way that plants can grow larger is by a net fixation of carbon dioxide, larger than their output in respiration!! The Earth has gone through plenty of temperature changes before, but Dr. Stott misleads people by thinking that just because what was once grassland savanna 12,000-18,000 years ago (a charge I will accept only for the sake of argument), that means that all the tropical species that are in the tropics now somehow magically appeared recently. I don't even need to investigate this statement to know that this is bullcrap. THIS GUY is the one spreading propoganda. I can't even think of a species that evolves that fast (maybe, MAYBE cichlid fishes!), let alone thousands of them. And there are certainly thousands of tropical plants. Such a feat of evolution would be published far and wide and I'm sure I would have heard about it. As for the soil question in the tropics, we have enough problems repleneshing our own GOOD quality soils in the Midwest.... sheesh. Most of the solutions in agriculture lie in genetically engineering plants that can deal with crappy soils, not in improving the soils. Soils scientists already know what improves soils: an intact, functioning ecosystem. Well, at least we agree on one thingj!

Right, David. And if a total lack of regulation on DDT usage existed, we could expect indiscriminant use leading to even more resistance in mosquito populations. Thus, if it had never been banned for ag. use, we wouldn't even be discussing it as a viable way of fighting malaria today. It would have been abandoned long ago.

softwarenerd, I think you should read my recent posts in the Bill Gates Malaria thread, and you should also google "Aral Sea Uzbekistan."

The assumption that all of these lives could have been saved using DDT is just false. The assumption here is that insects do not develop resistance to DDT. In fact, insects began developing resistance very quickly after DDT was first used. The first DDT-resistant mosquitoes were noted in India as early at 1959. The genetic mechanisms of resistance are now very well understood and can be found by googling or searching in a biological sciences database, such as Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, at your local university library. It is an unfortunate fact that malaria has been impossible to eradicate due to 1) resistance of insects to DDT and 2) resistance of the malarial protozoan to the drugs used to treat it. Part of the lack of success in eradicating any disease is the lack of a multi-pronged and aggressive approach, making the mistake of relying on one factor only for control, which was unfortunately done in this case back in the 60s, relying on DDT as some sort of "wonder insecticide". Imagine trying to eradicate staph infections by using penicillin. 80% of staph strains these days are resistant to penicillin because of its widespread and indiscriminant use. In most places where DDT was used in the past, this type of resistance is now widespread. There are still pockets of areas where DDT resistance has not developed among Anopheles. Only in these areas would it even be worthwhile to bother spraying. Even the Malaria Foundation International does not advise the widespread or singular use of DDT anymore, for this reason. it can also create cross-resistance to other insecticides! DDT becomes ineffective very quickly now because DDT-resistance genes passed down from mosquitoes of the 50s and 60s still exist at low frequency in the population. As far as I know, there are at least two loci for resistance, and neither have fitness disadvantages. So, when a population is now sprayed, a strong force of selection in favor of the resistant mosquitoes is immediately created, since those genotypes have remained in the population over time. This why WHO advocates the use of DDT only for indoor spraying, not for agricultural use, and it was its indiscriminant use in agriculture to control crop pests which has lead to such a strong selection pressure for resistance. DDT is only banned in the US and other developed countries for agricultural purposes. There are still many countries where DDT is still used to control mosquitoes, but is not allowed for agriculture. This is analagous to the situation where doctors refuse to prescribe antibiotics if you don't have a bacterial infection! If we don't have malarial mosquitoes, let's save the DDT for the really important use so we don't create resistant strains as fast! This is an area of research where much misinformation abounds and emotions run high. There have been literally thousands of primary research articles on DDT in the past few decades. The information is dense and difficult to wade through. It is highly technical and one cannot possibly hope to be adequately informed on this issue without in-depth research or relying on a trusted source. Bill Gates is investing millions of dollars into this line of work, which is probably biotechnological and undoubtedly the smartest way to combat this disease. Genetic engineering has been the latest approach. While I don't doubt that DDT still should play a role in malarial eradication, especially in very poor countries or where pockets of resistance does not exist in mosquito populations, the fact is that it will never be the entire answer now and never could have been in the first place, for solely biological reasons. To invest any serious amount of money or energy in this strategy as the main mechanism for fighting malaria would be silly. It would be much better to invest $$ in developing another cheap insecticide and/or malarial drug. Both could be used in concert in a massive and aggressive strategy to eliminate the disease altogether. Useful website for what World Health Organization thinks about the use of DDT: http://www.who.int/malaria/docs/ecr20_annex1.htm Useful website about a potentially far more effective use of money in using the MOSQUITO to control the protozoan parasite: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1588449,00.html While I am not aware of any conclusive studies that link DDT to cancer, I believe that there is some evidence that DDT causes neurological problems and may cause birth defects. Again, this is a very broad area of research, with many different sources of funding, thus making the differentiation of fact from fiction difficult. In any case the harmfulness or harmlessness of DDT in a health sense is really pointless to discuss.

i was responding to softwarenerd's questions. I think my definitions are now quite clear to anyone who will accept them, distinguishing between environmentalist, rational environmentalist, and non-environmentalist. Conveniently, you avoided using the term rational environmentalist because you are not willing to accept it. As for industrial activity causing more harm than good, just because net benefit has accrued that there hasn't been some level of harm in many cases. It was just outweighed by benefit. IN many cases, the net benefit is small or nearly negligible. For example, the deforestation going on in Brazil. The land is used for cattle ranching but unfortunately only viable for a number of years due to the poor soil conditions, which forces landowners to then move on to the next plot of land, rendering the old land useless not only for cattle ranching but also for reforestation. Thankfully, we don't have these problems in north temperate areas because our soils are totally different. There are plenty of non-environmentalists around, including, I would guess, many people here who probably wish not to reveal themselves ("Cut all the forests down, the only purpose they serve is wood!" type of attitude). You've never met someone like this? Someone who is not only totally uninformed and uneducated about the complexity of biological systems, but when confronted with an overwhelming amount of evidence that can't be denied, stilll denies, claiming that they "just don't believe it"? Of course, what they really mean is, they just don't care. I don't need specific examples of these people, as we don't need specific examples of environmentalists or religionists to know that they exist.