Join The Debate!

A Solution for Global Warming, Part III

DDT has gotten a bad rap. Most of us conservatives already know this, but let me review a few facts:

Despite the alarmism generated over Rachel Carson's 1968 book, "Silent Spring", DDT has NEVER been proven to be deadly, or even particularly harmful to ANY vertebrate animal species. Carson quoted ONE STUDY that proved that DDT, at about a thousand times the concentration at which it appears in the environment, caused a "thinning of eggshells" for one particular species of turtle, but even then did not result in a lower probability of live hatch.

During the 1940s-1960s, DDT single-handedly ELIMINATED the health threat of Malaria in all developed nations on the planet.

Scientists estimate that DDT, if used adequately in developing nations in Africa, would save over a million human lives per year on that continent, lives that will instead be lost to Malaria.

Shortly after the publication of Rachel Carson's book (in which, by the way, she ADMITTED the NECESSITY of using DDT to defeat malaria), developed nations worldwide began banning DDT, beginning with Sweden and Norway in 1970, followed by the US in 1972. Today, it is legal only in un-developed and under-developed nations. Yet even there, where hunger is a bigger problem than malaria, food aid from developed nations comes with strings attached, and one of those strings is a restriction or ban on DDT usage. So, even though the nations themselves technically don't restrict DDT, the result is the same. The nations sacrifice a million lives to save the 20 million that would starve to death without food aid. It's too bad that the wise and generous developed nations that help these underdeveloped nations won't let them save all 21 million!

Even the United Nations, as liberal a body as that is, openly advocates the widespread use of DDT in Africa to eliminate malaria.

Okay, so DDT is, by any rational measure, GOOD for mankind. Yet it has been portrayed by the environmental left, and their enablers in the mainstream media, as evil incarnate. DDT is the poster boy for the chemical rape of the environment. Even today, after having saved so many millions of lives, it could still save over a million lives a year, if it were just ALLOWED to do so.

But here's a new twist. A here-to-fore unmentioned benefit of DDT, that eclipses not only the minor harmful effects it has on the environment, but also the huge positive effects it has had, and can continued to have, for humans. DDT can REVERSE GLOBAL WARMING! In fact, it has already done so, as I will show shortly.

DDT was invented in the 1800s, but its ability to kill insects was not discovered until 1939. Shortly thereafter, it was manufactured in bulk for that purpose, to kill insects. Its first major use was in the Allied military forces of World War II, to kill lice on soldiers. After WW2, its use expanded drastically as 1) an agricultural insecticide, and 2) the cornerstone of nearly worldwide attempts to eliminate malaria by eradicating its carrier, the anopheles mosquito. Huge volumes of DDT were sprayed around the globe throughout the 1950s and 60s.

Then Rachel Carson killed DDT. I do not believe that she intended to do so, because she admitted, in "Silent Spring" that DDT was the best hope for eradicating malaria. But she did, nevertheless, exagerate claims of the harmful effects of DDT. The newborn worldwide environmental whacko movement latched onto this book and USED it to further their extremist agenda, and with the help of a few well-placed friends in government, got DDT banned in all developed nations. For the most part, these bans went into effect between 1970 and 1975 (though the UK held out until 1985). The US ban went into effect in 1973.

Now, It is a proven fact that DDT kills insects. And my first post in this series shows that insects, through respiration, produce nearly twice as much carbon dioxide as human industry. And, according the the AGW alarmists, carbon dioxide is the culprit behind global warming. Does it not stand to reason, scientifically, that the widespread use of DDT could, in fact, slow, stop, or even REVERSE global warming?

In theory, yes! But in fact? Well, let's look at the empirical evidence. Recall my second post in this series, in which I mentioned the period between 1940 and 1975, a period which utterly defies the entire anthropogenic global warming theory. To review, global average temperatures dropped dramatically in the 1940s and remained low throughout the 50s, 60s, and early 70s, then skyrockected beginning in 1975. Given that the burning of fossil fuels did not decrease during the 1940-1975 period, but rapidly INCREASED, AGW alarmists cannot explain this period. But I can.

The adoption of DDT as an insecticide coincides with the beginning of the sharp drop in global average temperatures in the early 1940s. Its expanding use in agriculture and malaria eradication coincides with the continued rapid temperature decline in the late 1940s. The sustained high levels of DDT use in the 50s and 60s coincide with the fluctuating, but relatively LOW temperatures of that same period. And the ban on DDT in the US (the major user of DDT at that time) precedes the current sky-rocketing trend in global temperatures, that began in 1975, by two years, about the time it would take insect populations to recover from massive depletion. And the near-worldwide ban on DDT since 1975 coincides with the most rapidly increasing temperatures ever observed on this planet.

Now, to be perfectly honest, I do not believe that the ban on DDT, in and of itself, is SOLELY to blame for the current rate of global warming. The DDT ban is, in reality, just a SYMBOL of environmental whackoism, a proxy, if you will, for the worldwide movement to ban or restrict the use of pesticides. Rachel Carson opened the floodgates with her book, and DDT, the poster child, was not the ONLY pesticide to have its use banned or restricted. This period, beginning in 1970, saw vastly increased levels of government control, worldwide, over pesticide usage. At the same time, and for the same reason, agricultural scientists began researching pesticides with an eye toward not just protecting crops, but protecting the environment as well. Meanwhile, agricultural economists came up with profit-oriented reasons (such as "economic treatment thresholds") to not spray insecticides at the first sign of a minor insect infestation in crops. I'm not saying that any of these are bad things, but merely that they did, in fact, begin around that same time. And their combined effects, far greater than merely the ban on DDT, caused worldwide insecticide usage to drop by at least an order or magnitude over a period of just 5-10 years. And this period almost exactly coincides with the beginning of the sky-rocketing global average temperatures, a trend which continues to this day.

I do not delude myself into thinking that we can, or even should, eradicate all insects from the face of the planet. Even if we could, there are many species that are beneficial to man, either directly or indirectly, and we need to preserve those species. But we can't ERADICATE all insects anyway, because we can't manufacture enough insecticide to do it, and we can't afford to apply it worldwide, and even if we could, there's the problem of resistance. However, with the carefully-planned and executed application of a variety of insecticides, as well as genetic, mechanical, and natural methods of controlling insect populations, we could easily halve the worldwide insect population. That, along with a conversion to nuclear power, would more than offset the remaining human industry component of carbon dioxide production.

Regards,
Trevor