emeritus
could be a pattern here; retired academics perhaps get a bit bored, lack an audience, perhaps need to boost retirement income, or can just pursue their interests/politics without raised eyebrows of colleagues or chats with the dean. senility?
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see hackademics, hacks
see peter wood natass affirmative action amicus ginni
see also physics; they just get crank-ier?
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Exclusive: Circuit Court Ruling on Biden DOE's Appliance Regulation 'a Win' for Americans
PJ Media
Climate Depot's Marc Morano called the DOE's revoked regulations “a complete bypassing of democracy through the unelected regulatory state” and ...
Exclusive: Circuit Court Ruling on Biden DOE’s Appliance Regulation ‘a Win’ for Americans
CATHERINE SALGADO | 6:52 PM ON JANUARY 09, 2024
The Biden Department of Energy (DOE) just lost a case on its heavy and damaging regulation of laundry and dishwashing machines, and a consumer advocate is celebrating the move as “a win” for Americans’ “consumer choice.”
Fifth Circuit Court judges Clement, Wilson, and Oldham ruled on Jan. 8: “In 2022, the Department of Energy tightened the regulatory regime surrounding America’s dishwashers and laundry machines. Petitioners sued. The Department’s actions were arbitrary and capricious. So we grant the petition and remand to the Department.”
The Biden administration has been attempting to wage a war on appliances on multiple occasions and fronts, partly due to its radical and unscientific climate alarmist agenda.
Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild is one expert who sees the court ruling as a victory. Consumers’ Research is a consumer advocacy organization that says it is “focused on educating consumers on the policies, products, and services of concern to them and to promote the freedom to act on that knowledge and understanding.”
This new ruling against the DOE appears to be pro-freedom and pro-consumer. “This is a fantastic ruling for American consumers,” Hild said in exclusive comments to PJ Media.
Hild explained that the DOE appliance regulations came out of the Biden administration’s Environmental, Social, and Governance goals (ESG, or woke standards poisoning our government and businesses). “These regulations were part of Biden’s ESG agenda, that was more about pushing a radical environmentalist agenda than protecting and serving consumers, and today is a win for consumer choice and our standard of living,” Hild said.
*For Our VIPs:I’m So Glad I Have a Gas Stove Right Now
ref co2 coalition BS “unscientific”
Nobel laureate Dr. John Clauser, a CO2 ~Coalition Board of Directors member, delivered a keynote lecture at Quantum Korea 2023 Seoul on June 26, 2023.
Regarding climate, Dr. Clauser stated “I don’t believe there is a climate crisis” in his keynote address. The speech was reported by several Korean news media.
From *Seoul Economic Daily
“In the era of AI, scientists should play the role of discerning truth from falsehood.”
“The world we live in today is filled with misinformation. It is up to each of you to serve as judges, distinguishing truth from falsehood based on accurate observations of phenomena.”
Renowned quantum physics scholar Dr. John Clauser (81), who received the Nobel Prize in Physics last year for his research in quantum mechanics, emphasized at the opening ceremony of the “Quantum Korea 2023” event, held by the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning with the theme of “Korea’s Quantum Leap,” at Seoul’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) on the 26th. He stated, “Misinformation is being spread by those with political and opportunistic motives.” Furthermore, he remarked, “Even chatbots like ChatGPT can be better at lying than humans,” emphasizing that “distinguishing truth from falsehood is a challenging task for both humans and computers.”
During his keynote speech aimed at young Korean scientists and engineering students, Dr. Clauser urged scientists to fulfill their social role by verifying facts and informing the public, particularly in light of the potential drawbacks of interactive artificial intelligence (AI) systems that generate and provide unverified information to users. He emphasized the importance of scientists in society and called upon them to engage in fact-checking and dissemination of information.
He delved into the controversial subject of quantum mechanics and used his past research experience to illustrate his point, stating, “True truth can be found through the observation of natural phenomena.” He continued, “Scientists have obtained information through careful observation and experimentation, and they have prevented the spread of misinformation through papers and peer reviews.” He added, “In an era of rapid advancement in AI technology, the role of scientists as judges is necessary.”
Dr. Clauser, known for his stance against climate change, diagnosed the current situation as not being a climate crisis and criticized the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for spreading misinformation. He stated, “I don’t believe there is a climate crisis” and expressed his belief that “key processes are exaggerated and misunderstood by approximately 200 times.” Dr. Clauser, who is recognized as a climate change skeptic, also became a member of the board of directors of the CO2 Coalition last month, an organization that argues that carbon dioxide emissions are beneficial to life on Earth.
Dr. Clauser received the Nobel Prize in Physics for experimentally elucidating the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, which forms the theoretical basis for quantum cryptography. He majored in physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and worked as a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley campus. As a keynote speaker at Quantum Korea 2023, he delivered a keynote lecture on the topic of quantum entanglement and also personally awarded prizes to students who won quantum-related competitions, expressing his enthusiasm.
*Photo credit Yonhap News. Dr. John Clauser, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics last year, delivered a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of “Quantum Korea 2023,” the largest international event on quantum technology held in Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul’s Jung-gu district on the 26th.
Note: Special thanks to Seok Soon Park for providing the *Seoul Economic Daily article (https://www.sedaily.com), as well as the English translation.
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Consumer Confidential: A former corn-syrup lobbyist is drafting new federal dietary rules (seriously)
Valley News
Consumer Confidential: A former corn-syrup lobbyist is drafting new federal dietary rules (seriously)
A former lobbyist for the Corn Refiners Assn. is helping oversee nutrition guidelines intended to address the obesity epidemic. An advisory panel of experts, meanwhile, has close ties to food and beverage companies.(Dreamstime)
By DAVID LAZARUS
Los Angeles Times
Friday, May 10, 2019
The swamp isn’t just getting deeper. It’s being ladled out for supper.
Federal dietary rules are required by law to be updated every five years. Under previous administrations, this task was performed mainly by nutritional experts focused on improving public health.
Under President Trump, the process is being overseen to a large extent by a former lobbyist for the Corn Refiners Association — the high-fructose corn syrup industry.
Yes, that would be the same sweetener commonly found in soda, candy, breakfast cereal, canned fruit, condiments, and other processed foods and drinks frequently linked with the obesity crisis and increasing rates of diabetes and heart disease.
Meanwhile, a blue-ribbon committee of “nationally recognized health and nutrition experts” advising on the new guidelines contains a number of academics with significant ties to food and beverage companies.
This latest iteration of nutritional guidance “can be expected to be as industry-friendly as possible,” said Marion Nestle, a professor emeritus of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University who helped set dietary guidelines under President Clinton.
“We were instructed to review the research and give the American public the best possible interpretation of the meaning of that research in dietary guidelines that we ourselves wrote,” she told me. “That process has now changed.”
This is important stuff.
Dietary guidelines for the American people serve as “the cornerstone of federal nutrition programs and policies, providing food-based recommendations to help prevent diet-related chronic diseases and promote overall health,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The next guidelines, to be issued in 2020, are especially noteworthy because for the first time they’ll address not just things like school lunches but also dietary needs of pregnant women, infants and small children.
They also will be our latest response to an obesity epidemic that’s costing the country about $175 billion in annual health care and as much as $7.6 billion in lost productivity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
With all that in mind, it’s not unreasonable to think the government needs to take a strong stand on upping America’s nutritional game.
There’s certainly enough scientific evidence to make good decisions — and most experts agree on what has to be done.
Less sugar. Less salt. Fewer calories. Smaller portions. Easy on the red and processed meats.
What’s unclear, however, is whether this administration has any interest in pursuing such goals, which would run contrary to the interests of some of the country’s largest and most powerful industries.
“The potential for conflicts of interest are a concern,” said Angela Amico, a senior policy associate with the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “Look at the waiver.”
The waiver she’s referring to is an ethical get-out-of-jail-free card handed out by former White House counsel Donald McGahn to Kailee Tkacz (pronounced “T’Kash”), whose past as an industry lobbyist raises questions about whether she’s focused first and foremost on the public’s well-being.
Before Tkacz was paid by the Corn Refiners Association to influence federal policy in favor of soda pop, she lobbied on behalf of SNAC International, a trade group representing manufacturers of potato chips and other junk foods.
Normally a person with her background wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the drafting of dietary guidelines. However, McGahn waived ethical requirements, ruling that “it is in the public interest” for Tkacz to help draft the 2020 document.
He said Tkacz’s past lobbying efforts on behalf of food and beverage companies “make her uniquely qualified” to help guide official policy.
I’m honestly not making that up.
When Tkacz was hired by the Trump administration in July 2017, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue praised her for having “extensive knowledge of the food industry supply chain, from farm to folk.”
He also welcomed the hiring of Maggie Lyons, who before joining the Agriculture Department was a lobbyist for the National Grocers Association, which has fought providing consumers with calorie counts on product labels. Tkacz worked for the association as well earlier in her career.
I reached out to the department for comment. No one got back to me.
When the 20 members of the dietary-guidelines advisory committee were announced in February, the administration depicted them as the best and the brightest in the fields of nutrition and public health. Each committee member was identified solely by his or her academic affiliation.
For example, the committee’s chairwoman, Barbara Schneeman, was identified as being from UC Davis, where she’s listed on the university’s website as a professor emeritus in the department of nutrition.
Left unsaid in the announcement was that, according to her LinkedIn page, Schneeman is a former president of the Dannon Institute, a nonprofit foundation backed by the dairy-focused food and beverage company of the same name.
She also has served as a trustee of the International Life Sciences Institute, which, according to SourceWatch, “was first established in 1978 by Coca-Cola, Heinz, Kraft, General Foods and Procter & Gamble.”
Schneeman couldn’t be reached for comment.
Sarah Reinhardt, a food systems and health analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said most of the researchers on this year’s advisory committee “have been funded by industry at one time or another.”
However, she cautioned against reading too much into food experts’ industry ties.
“You’d be hard-pressed to find any food scientists who didn’t have ties to industry funding,” Reinhardt said, noting that food and beverage companies pay for a significant amount of research in the field.
Nevertheless, she acknowledged that it’s fair to wonder if such experts bring entirely unbiased views to the table (so to speak). They may not want to jeopardize funding for future projects.
“These are valid concerns and we share them,” Reinhardt said.
Cary Kreutzer, a professor and dietitian at USC who focuses on nutrition, said the long arm of industry makes it even more important for the government to find experts who can approach the task of drawing up nutritional guidelines in an objective manner.
“There are still researchers that do not have conflicts,” she said.
And could we please stop willfully overlooking the ethical conflicts that former industry insiders bring to public policy?
Under Trump, former industry lobbyists are now in charge of the Interior Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services. A former Boeing executive is running the Defense Department.
It’s possible the next set of dietary guidelines will have the best interests of the American people at heart. Just in case, though, do yourself a favor.
Less sugar. Less salt. Fewer calories. Smaller portions. Easy on the red and processed meats.
And my only conflict, which I freely admit, is an occasional hankering for In-N-Out Burger.
David Lazarus, a Los Angeles Times columnist, writes on consumer issues. He can be reached at david.lazarus@latimes.com.
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bs tim ball:
What Lord Lawson is, however, is chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a think-tank that has no quarrel with the idea of global warming. Its aim is to appeal to reason, and to engage in mature argument rather than hysteria. Lord Lawson is advised by scientists who until recently included LennartBengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading. Professor Bengtsson was hounded off the GWPF board by his fellow scientists.
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alan carlin?
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lancaster singer ?
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