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Is Dennis Avery a legitimate skeptic, or a corporate shill? Well, considering these press releases always specifically target Al Gore and not address the facts he presents that represent an entire scientific community, one can only surmise that it is the latter and not the former. Al Gore Faces New Debate Challenge Expert
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Al Gore Faces New Debate Challenge Expert
Battle of best-selling authors
CHICAGO, Aug. 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Best-selling author Dennis Avery is the next prominent figure to challenge the facts Al Gore is promoting in his global warming crusade. Mr. Avery is co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years. Both Al Gore and Dennis Avery have New York Times best-selling books on global warming, but with opposite conclusions.
The list of Al Gore detractors continues to grow as his extreme rhetoric and conclusions get dissected by scientists, economists, and researchers. Avery joins Lord Christopher Monckton (former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher advisor), Bjorn Lomborg (Danish economist), author Michael Crichton, Prof. S. Fred Singer (former director of the U.S. National Weather Service), Tim Ball, Ph.D. (historical climatologist),Prof. Ian Clark (University of Ottawa), and Prof. Richard Lindzen (MIT)among others.
Gore claims recent climate change is the result of human activities,and society must give up most of its energy supply to prevent global catastrophe. Conversely, Avery amassed physical evidence of past warming/cooling cycles and experimental evidence demonstrating variations in solar activity affect Earth's constantly varying temperatures.
"My book says our warming is natural, unstoppable-and not very dangerous anyway," stated Avery.
"These books represent the two leading explanations for the Earth's recent temperature changes-and they conflict. If global warming truly is the most important public policy issue of our day, then it is high time the public got to hear the arguments from both sides matched up against each other," continued Avery.
end of excerpt.
SOURCE The Heartland Institute Ok, let's start here: SourceWatch: Dennis Avery From the site:
Dennis Avery is the director of the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, where he edits Global Food Quarterly. <strong>Avery crusades against organic agriculture claiming that modern industrial agriculture and biotechnology will save the world from starvation and disaster. Avery also disputes the scientific consensus on global warming. </strong>
He is the originator of a misleading claim that organic foods are more dangerous than foods sprayed with chemical pesticides.
Avery served as a senior agricultural analyst for the US Department of State for between 1980 and 1988 under the Reagan administration , "where he was responsible for assessing the foreign-policy implications of food and farming developments worldwide". <1>
"As a staff member of the President's National Advisory Commission on Food and Fiber, he wrote the Commission's landmark report, "Food and Fiber for the Future," his biographical note states.
"Avery studied agricultural economics at Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin ... At Hudson, Avery continues to monitor developments in world food production, farm product demand, the safety and security of food supplies, and the sustainability of world agriculture," his biographical note states.
snip
Avery is also a member of the scientific policy advsiory panel for the corporate-funded American Council on Science and Health.<2> About that misleading claim: Bogus Research of Dennis Avery
E coli risks of organic food - pure propaganda
TITLE: CDC has never compared E. coli risks of organic, traditional food
SOURCE: College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, North Carolina State University, USA by Nancy Creamer, Extension Specialist
http://ipmwww.ncsu.edu/vegetables/veginews/veginw14.htm
DATE: February 1999
CDC has never compared E. coli risks of organic, traditional food
Contrary to a well-circulated article written by Dennis T. Avery, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has never conducted a study that compares the risk of contracting E.coli bacteria in both conventional and organically grown food. Avery is the Director of Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, which is "a research organization dedicated to thinking about the future from a contrarian point of view," according to its literature.
Avery published an article entitled "The Hidden Dangers in Organic Food" in the Fall, 1998, issue of American Outlook, a quarterly publication published by the Hudson Institute. Avery's article began, "According to recent data compiled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), people who eat organic and natural' foods are eight times as likely as the rest of the population to be attacked by a deadly new strain of E. coli bacteria (0157:H7)."
A statement from Dr. Mitchell Cohen of the CDC last month states that: "Since 1982, most of the outbreaks of Escherichia coli 0157:H7 have been associated with foods of bovine origin (e.g. - ground beef). In recent years, a wider spectrum of foods, including produce, have been recognized as causes of outbreaks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not conducted any study that compares or quantitates the specific risk for infection with Escherichia coli 0157:H7 and eating either conventionally grown or organic/natural foods. CDC
recommends that growers practice safe and hygienic methods for producing food products, and that consumers, likewise, practice food safety within their homes (e.g., thoroughly washing fruits and vegetables). These recommendations apply to both conventionally grown and organic foods."
Sharon Hoskins of the CDC told Alternative Agriculture News that the CDC did not have any such research currently in the works, nor was it planning to conduct any in the future because such research was "not warranted." "We are not planning any research on organic and natural foods," she said. She also said, "We have tried to contact the magazine and have never been able to speak with anyone at American Outlook, including the editor. There has been no response."
Avery's article has been excerpted in several other publications, including The Wall Street Journal, whose excerpt included these sentences from the American Outlook article: "Consumers of organic foods are also more likely to be attacked by a relatively new, more virulent strain of the infamous salmonella bacteria. Salmonella was America's biggest food borne death risk until the new E. coli 0157 came along. Organic food is more dangerous than conventionally grown produce because organic farmers use manure as the major source of fertilizer for their food crops. Animal manure is the biggest reservoir of these nasty bacteria that are afflicting and killing so many people. Organic farmers compound the contamination problem through their reluctance to use antimicrobial preservatives, chemical washes, pasteurization, or even chlorinated water to rid their products of dangerous bacteria."
No documented research sources were given to support these assertions. The Organic Trade Association has also disputed Avery's article, reporting that, "According to Robert Tauxe, M.D., chief of the food borne and diarrheal diseases branch of the CDC, there is no such data on organic food production in existence at their centers....Let the record show that manure use is a common agricultural practice for conventional and organic food production....Any organic grower that uses the certified organic label must abide by safe food production standards, and, as with all food producers, must be in compliance with their local and state health standards." </blockquote>
Organic Consumers Association/Counterpoint/Dennis Avery
From GM Watch:
Dennis Avery is a Senior fellow of the Hudson Institute and Director of its Center for Global Food Issues, where his son Alex Avery also works. He is also an Advisor to the American Council on Science and Health, and author of 'Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic' and of a nationally syndicated weekly column for the financial newswire Bridge News.
Avery is a fervent supporter of biotechnology, pesticides, irradiation, factory farming and free trade.
Avery claims organic farming takes up too much land and thus destroys wildlife habitat. He argues that if it were widely adopted it would cause an 'environmental catastrophe' not to mention 'mass starvation'. Alternatively, says Avery, it would lead to measures for population control - possibly forced abortions. He has suggested its promotion may be part of a deliberate strategy to achieve such goals.
snip
The Hudson Institute is funded by many firms whose products are excluded from organic agriculture: eg, AgrEvo, Dow AgroSciences, Monsanto, Novartis Crop Protection, Zeneca, Du Pont, DowElanco, ConAgra, and Cargill.
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These articles just show you how long these misleaders and corporate shills have been out here trying to squelch the truth about global warming as human induced. And yet, NONE of them ever have any real scientific backing for what they say to the contrary except their corporate benefactor talking points. Here is a transcript of Avery and Fred Singer on the FOX propaganda show, Hannity and Colmes. If anyone needed any other proof of where these people really stand this is it. And read the transcript, because it presents as usual NO FACTS based in science or even reality and shows just how ignorant they are in regards to what this is all about, because to them it is all about money... which I will get to after this:
Hannity and Colmes
Now,
American Council on Science and Health
Another organization that takes money from oil companies (EXXON), tobacco companies (Philip Morris), and companies such as Archer Daniels Midland that is the largest grain company in the world and involved with GMO foods and ethanol(hence in my view Avery's "disdain" for organic food.)
These people are using everything in their arsenal to keep others from exposing their lies and exposing them for what they truly are: People who only use a scientific "credential" to push a partisan political and ideological agenda for profit at the expense of life. They are the epitome of a snake oil salesman and they need to be exposed because their agenda is deterimental to the continued sustainability of this planet for human beings and other species.
That is why Al Gore's work on this is so important now. This is why The Alliance for Climate Protection is an organization that is now seen as a threat as is Al Gore... because they speak truth. So I think it is time they be put under the microscope to defend why they claim to be from organizations that believe in health and science, when their words and actions represent anything but that. |
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