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Experience: None necessary
Posted by David Zaruk
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Business & Climate Change, Climate Change, Environment, EU Priorities and Opinion, Science & Research, Sustainable Dev. |
Archives for Environment
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… » read more
Posted by David Zaruk
EU Shale Gas Regulation? Frack it!
February 22, 2013
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.
Posted by David Zaruk
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BioTech, Energy Supply, Environment, Innovation and Growth, Public Affairs, Sustainable Dev. |
Environmental activists are paid to criticise, not to be responsible. A response to Bjørn Lomborg
February 19, 2013
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.
Posted by David Zaruk
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BioTech, Environment, Science & Research , GMOs, Golden Rice, Greenpeace, Lomborg |
The European Commission’s Plan Bee: Attack of the Killer Bureaucrats
February 6, 2013
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?
Posted by David Zaruk
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Environment, Food & Consumers, Innovation and Growth, Science & Research, Sustainable Dev. , CCD, colony collapse disorder, neonicotinoids, Plan Bee, precautionary principle |
Ecological Prostitution: Another reason to not like wind farms
February 1, 2013
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.
Posted by David Zaruk
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Climate Change, Energy Efficiency, Energy Supply, Environment, Sustainable Dev. |
Late Lessons from Early Warnings II: How the EEA is trying to disguise environmental activism as science
January 28, 2013
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.
Posted by David Zaruk
Mark Lynas: An Environmentalist with Integrity
January 7, 2013
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.
Posted by David Zaruk
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BioTech, Environment, Food & Consumers, Science & Research, Sustainable Dev. , anti-GMO, Greenpeace, Mark Lynas, NGOs |
Why we must stop Christmas
December 24, 2012
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.
Posted by David Zaruk
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Climate Change, Energy Efficiency, Environment, Food & Consumers, Sustainable Dev. |
Doha Climate Gateway: How many millions will die?
December 9, 2012
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?
Posted by David Zaruk
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Business & Climate Change, Climate Change, Environment, Sustainable Dev. , aid, climate change, compensation, Doha Climate Gateway, poverty |
Endocrine corruption: Soy’s dirty little secret
November 12, 2012
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.
Posted by David Zaruk
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Environment, Food & Consumers, Health & Lifestyle, Public Affairs, Science & Research , blood tests, endocrine disruptor, natural chemicals, soy, soybeans |
Bloody Risks: Why one-off biomonitoring tests are completely useless
October 30, 2012
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.
Posted by David Zaruk
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Environment, Health & Lifestyle, Public Affairs, Science & Research |
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?
Posted by David Zaruk
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Energy Efficiency, Environment, Innovation and Growth, Science & Research, Sustainable Dev. |
The inherent negativity of risk
September 11, 2012
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!
Posted by David Zaruk
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Environment, Food & Consumers, Health & Lifestyle, Public Affairs, Sustainable Dev. |
The role of trust in risk management
August 31, 2012
Would you take a risk with someone you did not trust? If you don’t trust your doctor, would you readily take the medication prescribed? If you don’t trust your girlfriend, would you marry her? If you don’t trust the food company (supply chain, retailer, restaurant …), would you happily eat the food? If you don’t… » read more
Posted by David Zaruk
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Environment, Health & Lifestyle, Science & Research, Sustainable Dev. |
Why has risk become a four-letter word?
July 10, 2012
The Risk-Monger is preparing a “back to basics summer series” on the nature of risk taking. This first submission looks at the question: Why have we become so risk adverse?
Posted by David Zaruk
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Environment, Food & Consumers, Innovation and Growth, Science & Research |
Rio+20 ended as promised: as a colossal failure. As I tell my Entrepreneurship students, you can learn a lot from your failures … unless, of course, you are the UN, and you believe that failure is part of a process upon which to build your next platform. Fascinating, really. Outside of the UN being our… » read more
Posted by David Zaruk
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Business & Climate Change, Environment, Science & Research, Sustainable Dev. |
Rio+20: Can humans do anything right???
June 18, 2012
The coming Earth Summit in Rio will be planet friendly and humanity hostile. We will be enduring long tirades from bitter idealists about how humans pollute the planet, burn fossil fuels, litter plastics in the oceans, cut down forests indiscriminately and celebrate inequity and social injustice for profits and personal gain. With humanity being portrayed as truly awful, the Risk-Monger needs to ask: Can humans do anything right?
Posted by David Zaruk
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Environment, Health & Lifestyle, Innovation and Growth, Science & Research, Sustainable Dev. |
The precautionary principle is pure poison to evidence-based policymaking and the recent scientific findings on bees (colony collapse disorder or CCD) have highlighted how irresponsible environmental activists who try to use precaution have been and why the EU should impose rules on how this environmentally disastrous principle should be used. A University of Sheffield team,… » read more
Posted by David Zaruk
Why Green Week is no longer Green
May 25, 2012
The Commission gives millions to environmental NGOs so they can participate in stakeholder dialogue and add value to the EU environmental policy debate. If none of them bother to show up for Green Week, shouldn’t we rethink this?
Posted by David Zaruk
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Environment, Public Affairs, Science & Research, Sustainable Dev. |
