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+--- Thread: "Silent Earth" is long on bias, short on science (doomsday games) (/thread-11114.html)
"Silent Earth" is long on bias, short on science (doomsday games) - C C - Oct 12, 2021
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/silent-earth-is-long-on-bias-short-on-science
INTRO: Is it time to ditch the fly swatter and bug spray?
Entomological doomsayer extraordinaire Dave Goulson says so. Goulson is the go-to expert for the New York Times, the Guardian, the Financial Times, et al., on the purported disappearance of the world’s insect populations. And he's out with a new book warning us that we have one last chance to escape ecological Armageddon.
In Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse, Goulson laments mankind's "chemical onslaught on nature." He says it's a crime "akin to genocide." And unless we immediately follow his prescriptive advice — banning modern pesticides but not highly toxic organic pesticides, eating less meat, and generally adopting the radical environmental movement's agenda — we are all doomed.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, but facts and evidence are not Goulson’s strong point. He rose to international prominence a decade ago as one of the loudest voices warning us about collapsing honeybee populations. This was dubbed at the time the "Bee-pocalypse." Goulson also made his name pressing for the European Union’s 2013 ban on the "neonic" pesticides that environmentalists claimed were responsible for the bee genocide.
The Bee-pocalypse was utter fiction. Honeybee populations have been rising in the EU, North America, and every habitable continent on the planet since neonics were first commercialized in the mid-1990s. A year later, we learned that Goulson was a central player in the "BeeGate Scandal," in which activist scientists conspired to precook the conclusions of their studies to create a "stronger scientific basis" for the EU ban.
Subsequently, Goulson has attached himself to one supposed apocalypse after another... (MORE)
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