I THOUGHT IT WAS PREHISTORIC SUVs: Unlocking Earth’s Deepest Secrets: How Ancient Volcanoes Disrupted Our Climate. “Geoscientists have uncovered that ancient volcanoes emitted carbon dioxide for millions of years beyond their active periods, contributing significantly to historical global warming events.”
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
October 30, 2024
GOOD, MALARIA IS BAD: Noninvasive malaria test could aid in global reduction efforts.
Swiss chemist Paul Müller discovered the insecticidal power of a compound called dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, better known as DDT. Müller was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery, for nothing in the history of insect control had ever worked like DDT. Microscopic amounts could kill mosquitoes for months, long enough to disrupt the cycle of malaria transmission. It lasted twice as long as the next best insecticide, and cost one-fourth as much.
Armed with the twin weapons of chloroquine and DDT, the World Health Organization in 1955 launched the Global Malaria Eradication Programme. The goal was to eliminate the disease within ten years. More than a billion dollars was spent. Tens of thousands of tons of DDT were applied each year to control mosquitoes. India, where malaria had long been a plague, hired 150,000 workers, full-time, to spray homes. Chloroquine was widely distributed. It was probably the most elaborate international health initiative ever undertaken.
The campaign was inspired by early successes in Brazil and the United States. The U.S. had recorded millions of malaria cases during the 1930s, mostly in southern states. Then an intensive antimalaria program was launched. More than three million acres (1.2 million hectares) of wetlands were drained, DDT was sprayed in hundreds of thousands of homes, and in 1946 the Centers for Disease Control was founded in Atlanta specifically to combat malaria.
America’s affluence was a major asset. Almost everyone could get to a doctor; windows could be screened; resources were available to bulldoze mosquito-breeding swamps. There’s also the lucky fact that the country’s two most common species of Anopheles mosquitoes prefer feeding on cattle rather than humans. By 1950, transmission of malaria was halted in the U.S.
The global eradication effort did achieve some notable successes. Malaria was virtually wiped out in much of the Caribbean and South Pacific, from the Balkans, from Taiwan. In Sri Lanka, there were 2.8 million cases of malaria in 1946, and a total of 17 in 1963. In India, malaria deaths plummeted from 800,000 a year to scarcely any. . . .
Soon after the program collapsed, mosquito control lost access to its crucial tool, DDT. The problem was overuse—not by malaria fighters but by farmers, especially cotton growers, trying to protect their crops. The spray was so cheap that many times the necessary doses were sometimes applied. The insecticide accumulated in the soil and tainted watercourses. Though nontoxic to humans, DDT harmed peregrine falcons, sea lions, and salmon. In 1962 Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, documenting this abuse and painting so damning a picture that the chemical was eventually outlawed by most of the world for agricultural use. Exceptions were made for malaria control, but DDT became nearly impossible to procure. “The ban on DDT,” says Gwadz of the National Institutes of Health, “may have killed 20 million children.”
Rachel Carson is a historical criminal.
Related: Nick Kristof: It’s Time to Spray DDT. “Mosquitoes kill 20 times more people each year than the tsunami did, and in the long war between humans and mosquitoes it looks as if mosquitoes are winning. One reason is that the U.S. and other rich countries are siding with the mosquitoes against the world’s poor — by opposing the use of DDT.”
THE QUESTION ON EVERYONE’S LIPS: What’s Going On With Aston Martin?
I HAVE TWO: SIG P226: The OG DA/SA Gun You Really Want.
COVERUP:
Why not mention WHY the victim was shot (because he was Jewish)? Why not mention WHERE the victim was shot (en route to a synagogue)?
Any Mayor who cannot be bothered to acknowledge the antisemitism of a hate crime against a Jewish man heading to a synagogue is unworthy of the… pic.twitter.com/HMP64Ra3oO
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) October 30, 2024
Plus: “I was sent that by someone who said, ‘Something that looked this much like a hate crime against a black person would not be answered with a statement that is equivalent to saying all lives matter.’ . . . And the shooter yelled something — something the police don’t want to say.”
I’D TRUST MOLLIE OVER JAKE ANYDAY: Mollie Hemingway Says Jake Tapper Is ‘Lying’ About CNN’s Key Role in the Russia Hoax, Drops Receipts.
UPDATE (From Ed): Vetcon 1 Alert! As Ace of Spades noted on Monday:
And here’s Tapper today:
FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: Medical schools politicizing health care, putting lives ‘on the line’: watchdog.
ALL THE BEST PEOPLE TOLD ME THIS SORT OF THING NEVER HAPPENS: Missing Mail-In Ballots Spark Voter Anger in Crucial Pennsylvania County.
GARBAGE:
“Pretty good October Surprise right?” pic.twitter.com/ZEAbNJEMzs
— Mostly Peaceful Memes (@MostlyPeacefull) October 30, 2024
DON SURBER: End income tax, starve the beast: It is your money, not the government’s. “The tax code is used to punish earners, reward the workless through tax credits and pay back political donors through an endless stream of tax loopholes. It is your money, not the government’s. If Americans keeping $2 trillion of the money they earn causes problems for the government, that is the government’s problem and not ours. We elect these geniuses to Congress. Let them figure out what to cut because they were the ones who pumped the air into the balloon we call the federal government.”
LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY:
Breaking: I can exclusively report that a handwritten note declaring “ALL DROP BOXES WILL BURN. FREE GAZA" was discovered in a Clark County, WA ballot drop box shortly after hundreds of ballots were burned in WA & OR through the use of incendiary devices. https://t.co/5upwn3G5ot
— Andy Ngo 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 30, 2024
THE ONLY ENEMIES ARE DOMESTIC POLITICAL ENEMIES: Uh, Oh, Again: Homeland Security Role in Bizarre Election Day “Tabletop Exercise” Denied: Organizers of a Election Day cyber exercise suddenly repudiate their own announcement of Homeland Security involvement. What gives? Plus, a peek at new DHS FOIA material.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, has been the subject of multiple Racket stories in recent years. A year ago, we followed up a House Weaponization of Government Committee report with Twitter Files documents detailing the Homeland Security agency’s help forming the Election Integrity Partnership at Stanford, which mass-flagged social media content in the last presidential election.
Now, a week before another presidential vote, the agency again stepped in it, in a seeming effort to quell conspiracy theories that are almost certain to achieve the opposite.
CISA went unintentionally viral in recent weeks when its participation in a “large scale” cybersecurity exercise on Election Day in Atlanta was announced by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA). When Kentucky Senator Rand Paul sent DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas a WTF letter, CISA said the event was canceled. Now, despite both DHS and CISA being listed as “pivotal organizations” at the event, with the Election Day exercise scheduled to be led by a CISA official named Klint Walker, the organizers, i.e. the people who wrote the brochure below, are reportedly telling reporters DHS/CISA had “no involvement” with the event.
CISA, meanwhile, has just sent a letter to Paul’s office. “While conference organizers invited Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) officials to attend this year,” Director Jen Easterly writes, “no CISA employees will be attending either the conference or preconference exercise.”
Surprised staff in Paul’s office are responding to media queries by sending out copies of original documents showing scheduled DHS/CISA participation. You can expect new denials to hit large news organizations as soon as tonight, with the result that a tale once destined to be a footnote to Election Day may now blow up into something larger and weirder.
Trump supporters need to be ready to defend democracy, I guess.
October 29, 2024
OPEN THEAD: This is where the magic happens.
I THOUGHT BLACK-BAG JOBS WENT OUT WITH HOOVER: Report: Whistleblower Claims There Was an Off-Book FBI Investigation Into Trump Ordered by Comey. “The existence of this investigation, which preceded Crossfire Hurricane, was never entered into any FBI system and was later hidden from Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz.”
There is a Deep State, and it was violently opposed to Trump from thet beginning. Democrats used to pretend both ideas were conspiracy theory, now they just praise them.
CLIMATE CHANGE: ‘Exceptional’: Intense Rainfall Has Transformed The Sahara Desert. I’m sure this is awful for some reason, though the Sahara has been wet before.
IT’S THE PARTY’S HISTORY:
Look at all those democrats
— Sara Rose 🇺🇸🌹 (@saras76) October 29, 2024
Democrats started the Racist KKK.
This photo was taken at the
1924 Democratic National Convention.It was known as the “KLANBAKE”.
(just in case you want to google it) pic.twitter.com/jvWmlxQQL6— Rose Renner (@RoseRenner50) October 24, 2024
THE CLIMATE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: New Study Reveals Oceans Absorb More CO2 Than Previously Thought.