A Topic for the Close-Minded

Over in my blog roll you'll see Long Time Gone. It's your typical expat blog located in Korea. He works for the US military and he has similar thoughts about politics and economics as I do. One of his hobby horses is the global warming / climate change crowd. He was in a back-and-forth with another blogger, ROK Sojourn (now defunct) about the legitimacy and reality of this environmental debate. I was able to read ROK's beliefs and his rebuttals to LTG, and it more or less came to this: If you don't believe what I believe, even though I can't provide reputable, scientific evidence, or counter the opposing claims, then you need to shut the hell up because you're just a dummy.

That is a classic case of close-mindedness. Science is never settled as much as The Messiah claims it is. We used to think the world was flat or there were four elements, but we had to change our perceptions as the evidence became clear. There's nothing wrong with finding out your beliefs are wrong, it's forgivable. What is wrong is staying the course in the face of evidence; that's just being stubborn. If the global warming community's scientific evidence was solid, it would blow away any doubts and they wouldn't have to resort to playground tactics. So weak.

So, good reader, I present to you another topic for you consideration...

Should we get rid of the restrictions placed on DDT?

For some reason, I recall very clearly the television episode of 60 Minutes back in the late 70's or early 80's about bald eagles and their egg shells being very thin. The cause of this was, supposedly, DDT. DDT was building up in the food chain  and the bald eagles were consuming large quantities through their food. This was the reasoning, but recently I found out that chickens were not affected by this. The problem came when DDT was it was given over to public use instead of restricted use. Overuse of any chemical leads to biological resistance and environmental build-up. Another benefit, besides increased agricultural output, is it's mosquito repellent properties. Tens of thousands of deaths that have occurred in areas that once used DDT but stopped due to the 2004 Stockholm convention.

If you've been in Korea for more than a few years, you'll remember the motorcycles and trucks that go through the neighborhoods with a fogger. That fog is DDT. Kids run behind that truck, the cloud goes into your house and people breathe it in, yet nothing happens. There aren't kids with three arms, but what there is noticeably less of is mosquitoes (mogi).

I still have to roll this one around in my head a little bit longer, but if you had asked me a couple of weeks ago if DDT should be allowed, I would have said no, but in light of evidence and the benefits, it's becoming increasingly difficult.