What is killing risk management research?

The Risk-Monger’s Inbox overflows with invitations to next month’s Risk Summit in Dublin. The main reason he is giving this event a miss is that much risk research today has become tired, predictable and ineffective.

The Commonality Policy Crisis, Part 2: Chemicals

Posted by The Risk Monger on 15/05/13
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Commonality, the technique of manufacturing a perception that we all agree on something, allows activists to design evidence light, communications rich campaigns. Some recent victories by anti-chemicals activists show that you don’t need facts or evidence to change policies in Brussels.

Reflections on World Malaria Day 2013: Who Actually Cares?

Posted by The Risk Monger on 26/04/13
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World Malaria Day 2013 came and went … and nobody cared. Greenpeace did not accept responsibility for the tens of millions of needless deaths, choosing rather to celebrate Cute Penguin Day instead. The Risk-Monger is ready to give up on evidence-based policy making.

Brussels: A town where nobody works

Posted by The Risk Monger on 17/04/13

One would expect European policy to promote jobs and competitiveness. But when most of the people influencing policy in Brussels have never worked in a company that makes things or provides services (and considers corporations as vulgar and immoral), should we be surprised that regulators are unable to push balanced job-growth policies?

The Commonality Policy Crisis, Part 1: Climate Change

We have been told, repeatedly, for two decades that climate change is happening, it is man-made and if we don’t change soon, consequences will be catastrophic (if it hasn’t already started). Evidence though shows 16 years of flat global mean temperature, and a failure in climate models whose predictions were deemed 95% certain. Still authorities are certain. The Risk-Monger begins a series of blogs on the commonality policy crisis with a simple question: How stupid are we?

Job offer: Students wanted to be IPCC climate change reviewers

Salary: None
Experience: None necessary

Late Lessons 2 and the Great Precaution False Positive Pooh-Pooh

It is time for the European Environment Agency (EEA) to get serious and not let their activist dogma guide their publicly funded “research”. In their second version of Late Lessons from Early Warnings (Chapter 2), the EEA pretended to address the issue of precautionary false positives – where decisions taken for precautionary reasons have led [...]

EU Shale Gas Regulation? Frack it!

Posted by The Risk Monger on 22/02/13

The Risk-Monger attended an event in Brussels on proposals for EU shale gas regulation. He was expecting to sit back and enjoy some serious stakeholder mud wrestling. But it seemed like nobody really cared except for the small anti-shale environmental groups. This lobbyist vacuum frightened the Risk-Monger.

Environmental activists are paid to criticise, not to be responsible. A response to Bjørn Lomborg

Posted by The Risk Monger on 19/02/13
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Bjørn Lomborg shows how environmental activist groups like Greenpeace have held up trials on Golden Rice for twelve years for no good reason, arguing they should be held in part responsible for the loss of around eight million lives in that time from vitamin A deficiency. The Risk-Monger has a problem with a basic premise underlying Lomborg’s conclusion: that to blame NGO activists, you would have to assume that these campaigners are in some way responsible for their actions.

The European Commission’s Plan Bee: Attack of the Killer Bureaucrats

The European Commission is proposing to ban certain pesticides under the precautionary principle without adequate consideration of available science or concern for the potential catastrophic consequences of their actions. Why would they do such a thing?

Ecological Prostitution: Another reason to not like wind farms

Posted by The Risk Monger on 01/02/13
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The Risk-Monger tries to show how wind turbines are profane and vulgar, encouraging ecological exploitation in much the same way as a prostitute on a street corner affects our assessment of worth. Warning: Reading this blog might influence how you look at wind turbines in future.

Late Lessons from Early Warnings II: How the EEA is trying to disguise environmental activism as science

The European Environment Agency released the second tomb of Late Lessons from Early Warnings last week. It appears that this EU Agency is continuing its campaigning and activism for the precautionary principle as a means to attack European research and industry. What makes these relentless activists even more troubling is that, in Late Lessons II, they are pretending to be scientists.

Mark Lynas: An Environmentalist with Integrity

Posted by The Risk Monger on 07/01/13
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Mark Lynas, one of the principal strategists and drivers behind the environmental activism against GMOs, admitted that the anti-GMO campaigns he had led were not science-based, often anecdotal, and counter-productive. His recognition of the facts on GMOs, his regret for the anti-science tactics NGOs had used and his sincere apology exhibit an integrity rarely seen today.

Why we must stop Christmas

Posted by The Risk Monger on 24/12/12

In the time of peace on earth and good will to man, the Risk Monger ponders the sadistic senselessness of Christmas, and why it must be stopped if we ever want to truly be sustainable.

Doha Climate Gateway: How many millions will die?

The decision passed at the UN COP-18 climate conference in Doha requiring developed nations to compensate developing countries for losses due to climate change has been hailed as a significant achievement. The Risk-Monger asks: How many millions will die from this ignorant decision?

Endocrine corruption: Soy’s dirty little secret

The Risk-Monger recently went through a series of blood tests and the results showed he was suffering from a high exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals. The source of this exposure appears to be his vegetarian lifestyle.

Bloody Risks: Why one-off biomonitoring tests are completely useless

Posted by The Risk Monger on 30/10/12
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Biomonitoring (the biological monitoring of environmental exposures of chemicals in our blood, urine, tissue …) has become a politically tool so manipulated by anti-chemicals campaigners that it has rendered the scientific value of such research completely useless.

Manslaughter in L’Aquila: How to kill scientific advice

Posted by The Risk Monger on 26/10/12
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Like many, I am still in shock that Italian courts have handed out six-year prison sentences to the six seismologists and one official for giving inadequate advice to the residents of L’Aquila days prior to the 6.3 magnitude earthquake that killed 309 people on 6 April 2009. The Italian courts stated that the scientific committee [...]

Electric Cars: Ignore the facts so we can feel good about ourselves

Posted by The Risk Monger on 08/10/12
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A new Norwegian university environmental life-cycle assessment confirms the Risk-Monger’s view that electric cars are worse for the environment than diesel cars. How hard will it be for us to ignore this reality and continue to pretend that electric cars are green?

The inherent negativity of risk

Posted by The Risk Monger on 11/09/12
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In this third and last part of the summer back-to-basics risk blogs, the Risk-Monger examines why risks are perceived as negative and how reactionary risk management (post event, post-precautionary) contaminates the risk management process. He also denies that he beats his wife!

The Risk-Monger rss

David believes that hunger, AIDS and diseases like malaria are the real threats to humanity – not plastics, GMOs or pesticides. Sadly while these debates get sillier and more scarce resources get diverted into building green temples, more people die of real diseases. more.



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