Massachusetts Department Of Environmental Protection Bureau Of Resource Protection D: Fill & Download for Free

With the recent confirmation by the U.S. government that the fracking process causes earthquakes, the list of fracking's deadly byproducts is growing longer and more worrisome. And while the process produces jobs and natural gas, the host of environmental, health and safety hazards continues to make fracking a hot-button issue that evenly divides Americans.To help keep track of all the bad stuff, here's a roundup of the various nasty things that could happen when you drill a hole in the surface of the earth, inject toxic chemicals into the hole at a high pressure and then inject the wastewater deep underground.But first, let's take a look at some of the numbers:40,000: gallons of chemicals used for each fracturing site8 million: number of gallons of water used per fracking600: number of chemicals used in the fracking fluid, including known carcinogens and toxins such as lead, benzene, uranium, radium, methanol, mercury, hydrochloric acid, ethylene glycol and formaldehyde10,000: number of feet into the ground that the fracking fluid is injected through a drilled pipeline1.1 million: number of active gas wells in the United States72 trillion: gallons of water needed to run current gas wells360 billion: gallons of chemicals needed to run current gas wells300,000: number of barrel of natural gas produced a day from frackingAnd here are eight of the worst side effects of fracking you don't hear about from those slick TV commercials paid for by the industry.1. Burning the furniture to heat the house.During the fracking process, methane gas and toxic chemicals leach out from the well and contaminate nearby groundwater. The contaminated water is used for drinking water in local communities. There have been over 1,000 documented cases of water contamination near fracking areas as well as cases of sensory, respiratory and neurological damage due to ingested contaminated water.In 2011, the New York Times reported that it obtained thousands of internal documents from the EPA, state regulators and fracking companies, which reveal that "the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle."A single well can produce more than a million gallons of wastewater, which contains radioactive elements like radium and carcinogenic hydrocarbons like benzene. In addition, methane concentrations are 17 times higher in drinking-water wells near fracking sites than in normal wells. Only 30-50 percent of the fracturing fluid is recovered; the rest is left in the ground and is not biodegradable.“We’re burning the furniture to heat the house,” said John H. Quigley, former secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “In shifting away from coal and toward natural gas, we’re trying for cleaner air, but we’re producing massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it’s not clear we have a plan for properly handling this waste."2. Squeezed out.More than 90 percent of the water used in fracking well never returns to the surface. Since that water is permanently removed from the natural water cycle, this is bad news for drought-afflicted or water-stressed states, such as Arkansas, California, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, Texas and Wyoming."We don't want to look up 20 years from now and say, Oops, we used up all our water," said Jason Banes of the Boulder, Colorado-based Western Resource Advocates.The redirection of water supplies to the fracking industry not only causes water price spikes, but also reduces water availability for crop irrigation.There is a new player for water, which is oil and gas," said Kent Peppler, president of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. "And certainly they are in a position to pay a whole lot more than we are."3. Bad for babies.The waste fluid left over from the fracking process is left in open-air pits to evaporate, which releases dangerous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the atmosphere, creating contaminated air, acid rain and ground-level ozone.Exposure to diesel particulate matter, hydrogen sulfide and volatile hydrocarbons can lead to a host of health problems, including asthma, headaches, high blood pressure, anemia, heart attacks and cancer.It can also have a damaging effect on immune and reproductive systems, as well as fetal and child development. A 2014 study conducted by the Colorado Department of Environmental and Occupational Health found that mothers who live near fracking sites are 30 percent more likely to have babies with congenital heart defects.Research from Cornell University indicates an increased prevalence of low birth weight and reduced APGAR scores in infants born to mothers living near fracking sites in Pennsylvania. And in Wyoming's Sublette County, the fracking boom has been linked to dangerous spikes in ozone concentrations. A study led by the state's Department of Health found that these ozone spikes are associated with increased outpatient clinic visits for respiratory problems.4. Killer gas.A recent study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that homes located in suburban and rural areas near fracking sites have an overall radon concentration 39 percent higher than those located in non-fracking urban areas. The study included almost 2 million radon readings taken between 1987 and 2013 done in over 860,000 buildings from every county, mostly homes.A naturally occurring radioactive gas formed by the decay of uranium in rock, soil and water, radon—odorless, tasteless and invisible—moves through the ground and into the air, while some remains dissolved in groundwater where it can appear in water wells. It is the second leading cause of lung cancer worldwide, after smoking. The EPA estimates approximately 21,000 lung cancer deaths in the U.S. are radon-related."Between 2005-2013, 7,469 unconventional wells were drilled in Pennsylvania. Basement radon concentrations fluctuated between 1987-2003, but began an upward trend from 2004-2012 in all county categories," the researchers wrote.That trending period just happens to start when Pennsylvania's fracking boom began: Between Jan. 1, 2005, and March 2, 2012, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection issued 10,232 drilling permits; only 36 requests were denied.5. Shifting sands.In addition to all the water and toxic chemicals, fracking requires the use of fine sand, or frac sand, which has driven a silica sand mining boom in Minnesota and Wisconsin, which together have 164 active frac sand facilities with 20 more proposed. Both states are where most of the stuff is produced and where regulations are lax for air and water pollution monitoring. Northeastern Iowa has also become a primary source."Silica can impede breathing and cause respiratory irritation, cough, airway obstruction and poor lung function," according to Environmental Working Group. "Chronic or long-term exposure can lead to lung inflammation, bronchitis and emphysema and produce a severe lung disease known as silicosis, a form of pulmonary fibrosis. Silica-related lung disease is incurable and can be fatal, killing hundreds of workers in the U.S. each year.""I could feel dust clinging to my face and gritty particles on my teeth,” said Victoria Trinko, a resident of Bloomer, Wisconsin. Within nine months of the construction of frac sand mine, about a half-mile from her home, she developed a sore throat and raspy voice and was eventually diagnosed with environment-caused asthma. She hasn't opened her windows since 2012.Across the 33-county frac sand mining area that spans Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, nearly 60,000 people live less than half a mile from existing or proposed mines. And new danger zones will likely pop up around the nation: Due to the fracking boom, environmentalists and public health advocates warn that frac sand mines could spread to several states with untapped silica deposits, including Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.Bryan Shinn, the chief executive of sand mining company U.S. Silica Holdings said in September that due to the fracking boom, they "see a clear pathway to the volume of sand demand that's out there doubling or tripling in the next four to five years."6. Shake, rattle and roll.On April 20, the U.S. Geological Survey released a long-awaited report that confirmed what many scientists have long speculated: the fracking process causes earthquakes. Specifically, over the last seven years, geologically stable regions of the U.S., including parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas, have experienced movements in faults that have not moved in millions of years. Plus, it's difficult or impossible to predict where future fracking-caused earthquakes will occur."They're ancient faults," said USGS geophysicist William Ellsworth. "We don’t always know where they are."Ellsworth led the USGS team that analyzed changes in earthquake occurrence rates in the central and eastern United States since 1970. They found that between 1973–2008, there was an average of 21 earthquakes of at least magnitude three. From 2009-2013, the region experienced 99 M3+ earthquakes per year. And the rate is still rising. In Oklahoma, there were 585 earthquakes in 2014—more than in the last 35 years combined."The increase in seismicity has been found to coincide with the injection of wastewater in deep disposal wells in several locations, including Colorado, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Ohio," the report states. "Much of this wastewater is a byproduct of oil and gas production and is routinely disposed of by injection into wells specifically designed and approved for this purpose."For many years, Oklahoma's government has been reluctant to concede the connection between fracking and earthquakes. In October of last year, during a gubernatorial election debate with state Rep. Joe Dorman, a Democrat, Governor Mary Fallin, a Republican, declined to say whether or not she believed earthquakes were caused by fracking. Fallin was re-elected.But the government has finally come around. The day after the USGS report was released, on April 21, the Oklahoma Geological Survey, a state agency, released a statement saying that is it "very likely that the majority of recent earthquakes, particularly those is central and north-central Oklahoma, are triggered by the injection of produced water in disposal wells."The same day, the state's energy and environment department launched a website that explains the finding along with an earthquake map and what the government is doing about it all. According to the site, "Oklahoma state agencies are not waiting to take action."Now there is a split between the state's governmental branches: Two days after the executive branch admitted that fracking causes earthquakes, the state's lawmakers, evidently unmoved by the trembling ground, passed two bills, backed by the oil and gas industry, that limit the ability of local communities to decide if they want fracking in their backyards.7. The heat is on.Natural gas is mostly methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas that traps 86 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. And because methane leaks during the fracking process, fracking may be worse than burning coal, mooting the claim that natural gas burns more cleanly than coal."When you frack, some of that gas leaks out into the atmosphere," writes 350.org: A global campaign to confront the climate crisis co-founder Bill McKibben. "If enough of it leaks out before you can get it to a power plant and burn it, then it's no better, in climate terms, than burning coal. If enough of it leaks, America's substitution of gas for coal is in fact not slowing global warming."A recent international satellite study on North American fracking production led by the Institute of Environmental Physics at the University of Bremen in Germany found that "fugitive methane emissions" caused by the fracking process "may counter the benefit over coal with respect to climate change" and that "net climate benefit…is unlikely.""Even small leaks in the natural gas production and delivery system can have a large climate impact—enough to gut the entire benefit of switching from coal-fired power to gas," writes Joe Romm, the founding editor of the blog Climate Progress. "The climate will likely be ruined already well past most of our lifespans by the time natural gas has a net climate benefit."8. Quid pro quo?Finally, one of the more insidious side effects of fracking is less about the amount of chemicals flowing into the ground and more about the amount of money flowing into politicians' campaign coffers from the fracking industry.According to a 2013 report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), contributions from fracking trade groups and companies operating fracking wells to congressional candidates representing states and districts where fracking occurs rose by more than 230 percent between the 2004 and 2012 election cycles, from $2.1 million to $6.9 million.That is nearly twice as much as the increase in contributions from the fracking industry to candidates from non-fracking districts during the same period, outpacing contributions from the entire oil and gas industry to all congressional candidates. Republican congressional candidates have received nearly 80 percent of fracking industry contributions."The fracking boom isn’t just good for the industry, but also for congressional candidates in fracking districts," said CREW executive director Melanie Sloan.The candidate who has received the most in contributions from the fracking industry is Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX). Barton received more than $500,000 between the 2004 and 2012 election cycles—over $100,000 more than any other candidate in the nation. It should come as no surprise that Barton sponsored the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which exempted fracking from federal oversight under the Safe Drinking Water Act.On April 21, Colorado and Wyoming filed a lawsuit challenging the new federal fracking regulations issued last month by the Bureau of Land Management for onshore drilling on tribal and public lands, claiming that the rule, which regulates underground injections in the fracking process, "exceeds the agency's statutory jurisdiction.""The debate over hydraulic fracturing is complicated enough without the federal government encroaching on states’ rights," said Colorado Attorney General Cynthia H. Coffman, in a statement. "This lawsuit will demonstrate that BLM exceeds its powers when it invades the states’ regulatory authority in this area."Coffman, a Republican, is married to Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman (CO-8), also a Republican. Coffman and two other GOP representatives from the state, Scott Tipton (CO-3) and Doug Lamborn (CO-5), have sponsored a trio of bills—H.R. 4321, 4382 and 4383 (called the “3 Stooges” bills by environmentalists)—that would fast-track leasing and permitting for drilling and fracking on public lands. These three congressmen, each of whom have received more than $100,000 in contributions from the oil and gas industry, sit on the Natural Resources Committee and naturally oppose federal regulations on fracking.Short-Term ThinkingFracking proponents point to the fact that it produces natural gas and jobs; indeed takes credit for boosting the economy during the recession. But at what cost to public health and the environment? And can the true cost be known when there is a lack of transparency in the fracking industry?With little federal oversight, states have created a non-uniform patchwork of regulation: Illinois requires fracking companies to disclose information about the chemicals they use before they drill and monitor groundwater through the process, while Virginia doesn't require any disclosure."So far, the industry has successfully fended off almost all federal regulation of fracking, in part through key exemptions from federal laws such as the Safe Drinking Water Act, which otherwise would allow the EPA to directly regulate fracking and other aspects of oil and gas production," says CREW.The FRAC Act (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act) would require the energy industry to disclose all chemicals used in fracturing fluid and also repeal fracking's exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act.Of course, everyone wants reliable domestically produced energy that creates jobs and energy independence. But nothing comes for free. And in the case of fracking, still with so many unknowns, the price in the long run may be too great.That's part of the message that Reps. Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) hope the American public gets. On April 22, Earth Day, the two lawmakers introduced the Protect Our Public Lands Act, H.R. 1902. The strongest anti-fracking bill ever introduced into Congress, it seeks to ban fracking on public lands. Today, 90 percent of federally managed lands are open for potential oil and gas leasing; the remaining 10 percent are reserved for conservation, recreation, wildlife and cultural heritage."Our national parks, forests and public lands are some of our most treasured places and need to be protected for future generations,” said Pocan. "It is clear fracking has a detrimental impact on the environment and there are serious safety concerns associated with these type of wells. Until we fully understand the effects, the only way to avoid these risks is to halt fracking entirely. We should not allow short-term economic gain to harm our public lands, damage our communities or endanger workers."Sounds logical enough. But with oil and gas money steering the Republican-controlled Congress, the bill is dead in the radioactive wastewater.Source : GoogleThank you

Yes. Tjaart Lemmer is right that the Paris agreement is a fraud misusing the climate as ram rod to change the world economy. Here are references proving as much from the founders and current leaders.Maurice Strong founder of UN environment and climate change work.Or, as U.N. climate chief Christina Figueres pointedly remarked, the true aim of the U.N.’s 2014 Paris climate conference was “to change the [capitalist] economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.” As Endenhofer admits the environment is second fiddle as the helps us understand the alarmists willingness to go along with fudged data and ‘phony science.’Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come toknow what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCCJapanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physicalchemist.“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe ofscientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” – U.S GovernmentAtmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division ofNOAA.“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” – Nobel Prize Winner forPhysics, Ivar Giaever.PARIS Accord Based on FraudBy Brendan GodwinWeather Observer and General MeteorologyBureau of Meteorology Mawson Antarctic 1974The Paris Accord is based on fraud. Carbon Dioxide or CO2 is essential for all life on earth. Without it we are all extinct.There is nothing unusual happing with the globe’s temperatures. No unusual warming.Our interglacial warm period peaked 8,000 years ago and we are cooling. We’ve come to the end of this interglacial and are about to enter the next ice age. Humans can do nothing to stop that.The globe has no temperature control knob, it is impossible for humans to control the globe’s temperature.CO2 does not produce warming. There’s not enough of it to do anything.It is warming that produces CO2. It is impossible for the cause to be the effect.CO2 has lagged temperature by 1,000 years for the past 1 mil years and it has never stopped the earth from entering an ice age, even when it was 4,000 ppm.CO2 is the gas of life. We need more not less of it and we should be regulating for more not less emissions. It is needed to grow our food crops.Paris is based on IPCC reports. The IPCC rely on their GCM models. None of the models rely on past climate history but rather a mathematical theory based on refuted, negated, fake and fraudulent science. They all incorporate:A “human fingerprint” or THS (Tropical Hot Spot) on the earth’s climate that doesn’t exist. IPCC’s AR2 report was fraudulently altered to remove scientific reports that were negative of their GHE definition;Lewis Fry Richardson’s flawed atmospheric model equation;Michael Mann’s fraudulent hockey stick graph in AR3;Arrhenius’ flawed hypothesis of the greenhouse effect; Arrhenius invented heat from nothing.The multiplier effect of water vapor feedback. The flawed CO2 increases water vapor hypothesis based on Arrhenius and the Charney report; From observations, water vapor is decreasing.A corrupted peer review process.Then back all this up by fraudulently altering the data to support the failed models that can’t even predict the last 30 years of hindsight.The money wasted on Paris will do absolutely nothing to the globe’s temperatures and is a waste. Paris is economic vandalism disguised as environmentalism. It is the political agenda of the communist movement. A wealth redistribution scheme to get rich countries to give away money to poor countries with the end goal to destroy capitalism.The problem with Turnbull is that he only listens to one side of the science, the side that suits him. There are 32,000 real scientists in the NIPCC who dissent from the IPCC.Politicians need to listen to the real science, not the fraudulent science.During the last ice age CO2 levels dropped to 180 ppm. Plants don’t grow with CO2 at 150 ppm or less. That’s our food crops. If we lower CO2 will face human extinction.It is the interglacial warm period that is causing CO2 to be released from the oceans.Only 3% of annual emissions are from humans. We need more not less to starve off human extinction in the next ice age that is about to hit us.Brendan GodwinWeather Observer and General MeteorologyBureau of Meteorologyhttps://climatism.blog/2018/07/1...OPINION COMMENTARYObama’s Climate Policy Is a Hot MessThe president hails the Paris Agreement again—even though it will solve nothing and cost trillions.By BJORN LOMBORGJune 30, 2016 7:06 p.m. ET[if ! lte IE 8]Obama’s Climate Policy Is a Hot MessWhen President Obama flew to Ottawa, Canada, on Wednesday to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, promoting their climate-change policies was near the top of the agenda. “The Paris Agreement was a turning point for our planet,” the leaders’ joint statement said, referring to the climate pact signed with fanfare in April by nearly 200 nations. “North America has the capacity, resources and the moral imperative to show strong leadership building on the Paris Agreement and promoting its early entry into force.”Attracting rather less attention than the Ottawa meeting was a June 22 hearing on Capitol Hill. Testifying before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy extolled the Paris Agreement as an “incredible achievement.” But when repeatedly asked, she wouldn’t explain exactly how much this treaty would actually cut global temperatures.The Paris Agreement will cost a fortune but do little to reduce global warming. In a peer-reviewed article published in Global Policy this year, I looked at the widely hailed major policies that Paris Agreement signatories pledged to undertake and found that they will have a negligible temperature impact. I used the same climate-prediction model that the United Nations uses.First, consider the Obama administration’s signature climate policy, the Clean Power Plan. The U.N.’s model shows that it will accomplish almost nothing. Even if the policy withstands current legal challenges and its cuts are totally implemented—not for the 14 years that the Paris agreement lasts, but for the rest of the century—the Clean Power Plan would reduce temperatures by 0.023 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.RELATED ARTICLESHistory of a Climate ConThe Myth of the Climate Change ‘97%’Two Can Play at Climate ‘Fraud’President Obama has made grander promises of future carbon cuts, beyond the plan’s sweeping restrictions on the power industry, but these are only vaguely outlined now. In the unlikely event that all of these extra cuts also happen, and are adhered to throughout the rest of the century, the combined reduction in temperatures would be 0.057 degrees. In other words, if the U.S. delivers for the whole century on the very ambitious Obama rhetoric, it would postpone global warming by about eight months at the end of the century.Or consider the Paris Agreement promises from the entire world using the reduction estimate from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the organization responsible for the Paris summit. The U.N.’s model reveals a temperature reduction by the end of the century of only 0.08 degrees Fahrenheit. If we generously assume that the promised cuts for 2030 are not only met (which itself would be a U.N. first), but sustained throughout the rest of the century, temperatures in 2100 would drop by 0.3 degrees—the equivalent of postponing warming by less than four years at the end of the century. A cut of 0.3 degrees matches the finding of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis of the Paris Agreement last year.The costs of the Paris climate pact are likely to run to $1 trillion to $2 trillion annually throughout the rest of the century, using the best estimates from the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum and the Asia Modeling Exercise. Spending more than $100 trillion for such a feeble temperature reduction by the end of the century does not make sense.Some Paris Agreement supporters defend it by claiming that its real impact on temperatures will be much more significant than the U.N. model predicts. This requires some mental gymnastics and heroic assumptions. The group doing climate modeling for the U.S. State Department assumes that without the Paris Agreement emissions would be much higher than under any realistic scenario. With such an unrealistically pessimistic baseline, they can then magically show that the agreement will cut temperatures by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit—with about 1.5 degrees of the drop coming from a reduction of these fantasy carbon emissions.The Climate Action Tracker, widely cited by Paris Agreement fans, predicts a temperature reduction of 1.6 degrees by the end of the century. But that model is based heavily on the assumption that even stronger climate policies will be adopted in the future—98% of the assumed reductions come after the current Paris Agreement promises to expire in 2030.Even this wishful thinking won’t achieve anything close to the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) reduction that has become the arbitrary but widely adopted benchmark for what will be essential to avoid the worst effects of global warming.The Paris Agreement is the wrong solution to a real problem. We should focus more on green-energy research and development, like that promoted by Bill Gates and the Breakthrough Coalition. Mr. Gates has announced that private investors are committing $7 billion for clean energy R&D, while the White House will double its annual $5 billion green innovation fund. Sadly, this sorely needed investment is a fraction of the cost of the same administration’s misguided carbon-cut policies.Instead of rhetoric and ever-larger subsidies of today’s inefficient green technologies, those who want to combat climate change should focus on dramatically boosting innovation to drive down the cost of future green energy.The U.S. has already shown the way. With its relentless pursuit of fracking driving down the cost of natural gas, America has made a momentous switch from coal to gas that has done more to drive down carbon-dioxide emissions than any recent climate policy. Turns out that those who gathered in Paris, France, could learn a little from Paris, Texas.Mr. Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, is the author of “Cool It” (Knopf, 2007) and “Smartest Targets for the World” (Copenhagen Consensus, 2015).JAMES MATKINYes, a cost-benefit analysis highlights the climate alarmists debacle. This is important to head off government mania for new carbon taxes. Australians killed their carbon tax after seeing the gross waste of resources with no impact on the environment. The tax harms export industries subject to world pricing. The tax does not prevent “carbon leakage” when “emissions simply rise overseas” beyond the control of Australia.http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/IER_AustraliaCarbonTaxStudy.pdfFurther, the whole mission of reducing C02 to save the planet is foolish. Dr. Patrick Moore explains - “CO2 is a pollutant only to politicians and bureaucrats.... By itself, it is incapable of warming the climate by more than a fraction of a degree. CO2 is an essential gas, without which there would be no life on earth. CO2 is plant food.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-biuanF5eYTRUMP -Exiting the Mad Hatter’s climate tea partyGuest BloggerTrump was 100% right (not just 97%) to show real leadership and walk away from ParisPresident Trump has rejected and exited the Paris climate treaty – walked America away from the Mad Hatter tea party that was the entire multi-decade, often hysterical and always computer model-driven UN climate process. My article this week explains why this bold move was the 100% right, ethical, moral and scientific thing to do: for the economic security of American workers and families … and the betterment of all mankind.Guest essay by Paul DriessenI can guess why a raven is like a writing-desk, Alice said. “Do you mean you think you can find out the answer?” said the March Hare. “Exactly so,” said Alice. “Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on. “I do,” Alice replied. “At least I mean what I say. That’s the same thing, you know.”“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say, ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!” “You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse, ‘I breathe when I sleep’ is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!” “It IS the same thing with you,” said the Hatter.Can you imagine stumbling upon the Mad Hatter’s tea party, watching as the discussions become increasingly absurd – and yet wanting a permanent seat at the table? Could Lewis Carroll have been having nightmares about the Paris climate treaty when he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?President Trump was 100% correct (not just 97%) when he showed true leadership this week – and walked America away from the madness laid out before him and us on the Paris climate table.From suggestions that Earth’s climate was balmy and stable until the modern industrial era, to assertions that humans can prevent climate change and extreme weather events by controlling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels – to claims that withdrawing from Paris would “imperil our planet’s very survival” – the entire process has been driven by computer models and hysteria that have no basis in empirical science.There is no convincing real-world evidence that plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide has replaced the powerful natural forces that have driven Earth’s climate from time immemorial. Moreover, even if the United States totally eliminated its fossil fuels, atmospheric CO2 levels would continue to climb. China and India are building new coal-fired power plants at a feverish clip. So is Germany. And China is financing or building dozens of additional coal-burning electricity generators in Africa, Asia and elsewhere.Plus, even if alarmists are right about CO2, and every nation met its commitments under Paris, average planetary temperatures in 2100 would be just 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.3 F) lower than if we did nothing.But “our closest allies” wanted Trump to abide by Obama’s commitment. Some did, because they want America to shackle its economy and drive energy prices into the stratosphere the same way they have. Others dearly want to follow a real leader, and walk awayfrom the mad Paris tea party themselves.But even poor countries signed the Paris treaty. Yes, they did – because they are under no obligation to reduce their coal, oil or natural gas use or their CO2 emissions. And because they were promised $100 billion a year in cash, plus free state-of-the-art energy technologies, from developed nations that would have become FMCs (formerly rich countries) as they slashed their energy use and de-industrialized.But the Paris climate treaty was voluntary; the United States wouldn’t have to do all this. Right. Just like it’s voluntary for you to pay your taxes. China, India and poor developing countries don’t have to do anything. But the USA would have been obligated to slash its oil, gas and coal use and carbon dioxide emissions. It could impose tougher restrictions, but it could not weaken them. And make no mistake: our laws, Constitution, legal system, the Treaty on Treaties and endless lawsuits by environmentalist pressure groups before friendly judges would have ensured compliance and ever more punishing restrictions.But hundreds of companies say we should have remained in Paris. Of course they do. Follow the money.If we are to avoid a climate cataclysm, “leading experts” say, the world must impose a $4-trillion-per-year global carbon tax, and spend $6.5 trillion a year until 2030 to switch every nation on Earth from fossil fuels to renewable energy. That’s a lot of loot for bankers, bureaucrats and crony corporatists.But, they assure us, this transition and spending would bring unimaginable job creation and prosperity. If you believe that, you’d feel right at home in Alice’s Wonderland and Looking Glass world.Who do you suppose would pay those princely sums? Whose jobs would be secure, and whose would be expendable: sacrificed on the altar of climate alarmism? Here’s the Planet Earth reality.Right now, fossil fuels provide 80% of all the energy consumed in the USA – reliably and affordably, from relatively small land areas. Wind and solar account for 2% of overall energy needs, expensively and intermittently, from facilities across millions of acres. Biofuels provide 3% – mostly from corn grown on nearly 40 million acres. About 3% comes from hydroelectric, 3% from wood and trash, 9% from nuclear.Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and other states that generate electricity with our abundant coal and natural gas pay 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. California, Connecticut, New York and other states that impose wind, solar and anti-fossil fuel mandates pay 15 to 18 cents. Families in closely allied ultra-green Euro countries pay an average of 26 US cents per kWh, but 36 cents in Germany, 37 cents in Denmark.EU manufacturers are already warning that these prices could send companies, factories, jobs and CO2 emissions to China and other non-Euro countries. EU electricity prices have skyrocketed 55% since 2005; 40% of UK households are cutting back on food and other essentials, to pay for electricity; a tenth of all EU families now live in green energy poverty. Elderly people are dying because they can’t afford heat!The Paris treaty would have done the same to the United States, and worse.The Heritage Foundation says Paris restrictions would cost average US families $30,000 in cumulative higher electricity prices over the next decade. How much of their rent, mortgage, medical, food, clothing, college and retirement budgets would they cut? Paris would eliminate 400,000 high-pay manufacturing, construction and other jobs – and shrink the US economy by $2.5 trillion by 2027. Other analysts put the costs of remaining in Paris much higher than this – again for no climate or environmental benefits.Big hospitals like Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Comprehensive Cancer Center in Winston-Salem, NC and Inova Fairfax Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Northern Virginia pay about $1.5 million per year at 9 cents/kWh – but $3 million annually at 18 cents … $5 million at 30 cents … and nearly $7 million at 40 cents. How many jobs and medical services would those rate hikes wipe out?Malls, factories and entire energy-intensive industries would be eliminated. Like families and small businesses, they would also face the new reality of having pricey electricity when it happens to be available, off and on all day, all week, when the wind blows or sun shines, instead of when it’s needed. Drilling and fracking, gasoline and diesel prices, trucking and travel, would also have been hard hit.Americans are largely prohibited from mining iron, gold, copper, rare earth and other metals in the USA. Paris treaty energy prices and disruptions would have ensured that American workers could not turn metals from anywhere into anything – not even wind turbines, solar panels or ethanol distillation plants.Most of the “bountiful” renewable energy utopia jobs would have been transporting, installing and maintaining wind turbines and solar panels made in China. Even growing corn and converting it to ethanol would have been made cost-prohibitive. But there would have been jobs for bureaucrats who write and enforce the anti-energy rules – and process millions of new unemployment and welfare checks.Simply put, the Paris climate treaty was a terrible deal for the United States: all pain, no gain, no jobs, no future for the vast majority of Americans – with benefits flowing only to politicians, bureaucrats and crony capitalists. President Trump refused to ignore the realities of this economic suicide pact, this attempted global government control of American lives, livelihoods and living standards.That is why he formally declared that the United States is withdrawing from the treaty. He could now submit it for advice, consent – and rejection – by the Senate. He could also withdraw the United States from the underlying UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or negotiate that reflects empirical science and is fair to America and its families and workers. But what is really important now is this:We are out of Paris! President Trump is leading the world back from the climate insanity precipice.Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.Exiting the Mad Hatter's climate tea partyThe Paris climate fund is starting to bite!Global Green Climate Fund demands $400m, fastClimate finance is a key issue if the rules governing the Paris Agreement are to be finalised at a meeting in Poland in December. Picture: ThinkstockAustralia has been called to immediately commit a further $400 million to replenish a Green Climate Fund to help developing countries cope with the impacts of climate change.This could increase to billions of dollars each year as the nation’s “fair share” contribution to a promised $US100 billion-a-year in global climate finance that was considered crucial to delivering the Paris Agreement.The GCF was set up by the 194 countries party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2010 and had a key role in the Paris Agreement.A new funding template published by World Resources Institute said Australia should be the sixth-biggest donor to the GCF despite being responsible for only 1.8 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.The formula was developed by former GCF board member Jacob Waslander, who said replenishment of the fund should be based on “objective criteria”.The formula uses national income, share of cumulative greenhouse gas emissions between 1850 and 1990 and the present level of emissions per capita.According to this calculation, Australia should contribute 4.25 per cent of funds to the GCF, behind the US, Britain, Japan, Germany and Canada.Australia’s share of funding should be bigger than those of France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. New Zealand should be responsible for 1.08 per cent.Climate finance is a key issue if the rules governing the Paris Agreement are to be finalised at a meeting in Poland in December.The GCF has been in turmoil with a breakdown in decision-making and the resignation of the chief executive, Australian Howard Bamsley, in June.The US, which has been ranked as responsible for 45 per cent of funding under the WRI model, has delivered only $US1 billion ($1.4bn) of its initial $US3bn pledge. Donald Trump says the US will make no more contributions.Mr Waslander said three ­issues needed to be resolved for the GCF to work effectively.They were confidence that promised money would arrive, the effectiveness of the GCF board, and the way in which board members were selected and to whom they should report.The WRI formula indicates Australia’s liability for $US100bn a year of climate funding to developing countries could be as much as $4bn a year.But not all of the $US100bn a year would be delivered through the GCF and other countries were being pressured to contribute, possibly reducing Australia’s share. These would include major emitters such as China, G20 member nations and Middle Eastern nations such as Qatar.Contributions from these countries would be voluntary.According to DFAT, Australia had invested more than half of a commitment made in 2015 to spend $1bn over five years to support developing countries build climate resilience and reduce emissions. This included $300m over four years for climate action in the Pacific.

Dr. Leon Eisenberg, “Father” of ADHD To an increasing degree, people are having prescription drug issues. Nationwide, prescription drug use kills more people than heroin and cocaine combined, so there is a rising need for people outside the medical community to rise up and question the tactics of those within it.For far too many, M.D. has stopped meaning medical doctor, and has started to stand for “My Dealer.”So how do we get ahead of it? We focus on its youngest victims. “Victims,” for, unlike adults, children have no power over the drugs they take, so we will focus on children and what they’re being prescribed the most.For this article, we decided to investigate ADHD.For decades doctors have been prescribing Ritalin and Adderall for ADHD fully knowing that these drugs are, chemically, almost indistinguishable from methamphetamine.Obviously, the gloves are off when it comes to the powers that be over-medicating its population, so we feel it is time we start to question everything they tell us, starting with the question that affects the most prescriptions given to children in America: Is ADHD Real?What is ADHD?The question seems simple enough, but honestly, it depends on who you ask. In general, American physicians (not all worldwide… but we’ll get to that) agree that ADHD is a disease, possibly biologically based, that causes someone to be easily distracted, have trouble managing their time, sitting still, and focusing, among other symptoms. It is a disease that is more common in males than females, and it can, according to many in the medical community, be devastating to one’s personal, academic, and professional life.What Causes ADHD?From our research, it depends, again, on who you ask. A leading publication in the ADHD community, ADDitude magazine, says it is “a brain-based biological disorder.” And who can blame them for thinking this way? Everyone who brings their child to a doctor for an ADHD medication prescription (note: not a diagnosis… this is usually a foregone conclusion by the time the doctor steps in) has heard that the disease is biological. There is nothing the parent could have done differently. It’s just a brain defect. In fact, the same publication asserts that “brain metabolism in children with ADHD is lower in areas of the brain that control attention, social judgment, and movement.” It continues, “Overall brain size is generally 5% smaller in affected children than children without ADHD.”So who can blame people for thinking ADHD is a biological disease? Obviously this is something the medical community agrees on, and as one contributor to ADDitude put it when instructing people on how to silence the skeptics of ADHD, “Gosh, it must be nice to be smarter than thousands of doctors, scientists, and psychologists.” (Answer: No… while we disagree with them based on evidence brought forth by other equally qualified, equally intelligent doctors, scientists, and psychologists… trust us… none of this is nice… none of this is enjoyable… and we’d much rather live in a world where none of this was necessary.)So what’s the truth?The truth is the medical community has no idea what causes ADHD. Don’t believe us? Check out what ADDitude (the same publication that tells us “The debate about attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD) is over. O-V-E-R.”) says: “The precise cause is still unknown.” And it’s not that it’s just unknown, the medical community isn’t even certain whether the cause is biological or environmental (or if ADHD exists in the first place, but we’ll get there).Here’s a shortened list of the possible causes of ADHD according to world-renowned ADHD expert Dr. Ned Hallowell:Poor visionPoor hearingHypoactive thyroidHyperactive thyroidChild neglectAbuseToo much time with electronicsNot enough family timeDrug abuseInternet abuseCaffeine abuseLack of human connectionToxic human connectionsGeneticsHead injuryLead poisoningLack of oxygen at birthDepressionAnxiety disorderHeartache of romance (yes… the cause of ADHD may be your ex)And that’s not an exhaustive list. According to a study in the US Journal of International Business and Cultural Studies, there are even more factors that can influence whether or not a child has ADHD. These include:Low socio-economic statusSingle parent familiesFamilies where both parents workBehavioral management stylesNature of classroom tasksThe problem is this: If ADHD is, as many believe, “a brain-based biological disorder,” then how could being poor, or the child of divorced parents, of the types of tasks you’re required to do in school, have any impact on the physical makeup of your brain? The fact is, it couldn’t. Your brain would not be 5% smaller if your parents got divorced or you were bored at school. Your brain metabolism wouldn’t decrease. If you were bored at school, whether that’s because issues at home have made school unimportant to you, or you just found school boring, you’d just get bored. You might not know how to handle that boredom. You might “act out” to get attention from one or both of your divorced parents. You might stop caring about the boring things you’re asked to do in school because your parents work all hours and don’t have the time or energy required to properly help you with schooling.But you would not get http://ADHD.So maybe the debate isn’t O-V-E-R.Maybe A-D-H-D is B-S.Results vs Causes of ADHDIf you look at the available research, it’s easy to see that the idea that ADHD even exists is not a foregone conclusion. By and large, it’s not something the medical community is willing to say (and we’ll get to why), but even in their own literature it’s clear no one is really sure what causes ADHD, whether it’s truly genetic or biological in any way, or even whether certain symptoms are the cause or the result of ADHD.Speaking of causes vs. results, let’s look at television and video games and their effect on a child’s http://mind.In a very balanced, objective article in the New York Times Perri Klass, M.D. notes that many of the parents who come to see her about their child’s inattention and/or hyperactivity do so believing their child cannot possiblyhave ADHD. They believe this because their child can concentrate for long periods of time staring at a television screen or playing video games. While this conclusion, Klass admits, is logical, she argues that “Screen time may also cause ADHD because children who spend more time in front of the screen are more likely to develop ADHD.”However, she goes on to say, “Researchers don’t know if screen time is a cause or an effect of ADHD.”Therefore, her previous sentence would have been more accurate like this: “Screen time may also cause ADHD because children who spend more time in front of the screen are more likely to develop ADHD, but that also means it could be an effect, because we’ve seen most kids with ADHD watch a lot of television.Of course, it would be difficult to determine if excessive video game playing is a cause or effect, in part because it’s difficult to separate the supposed effects of ADHD with the effects of good old-fashioned boredom. As Klass says in the same article, “A child may get used to the fast pace and high levels of alertness needed to do well in a video game and find reality understimulating.” And what do we outside the medical community call it when we find the world understimulating? BOREDOM… not a disease. Video games are more realistic and prolific than ever, and with the rise of affordable virtual reality, that is not likely to change, so be on the lookout for ever-increasing ADHD diagnoses as children are allowed to run amok in virtual reality, a recreational activity even the youngest of parents have no experience handling responsibly.We hope we’re wrong… but we’re fairly certain this conversation will take place in the near future:“All my kid does all day is live in a virtual world where he is adored and all of his experiences are carefully catered to as he indulges every fantastical whim he can imagine and now he has no interest in algebra. Don’t let him do it? But then he’ll yell. He probably just has ADHD… like I do.” With kids being raised by a generation raised on ADHD medications, accepting reality and moderating the accessibility of fantasy may be the great challenge of the coming generation, and an inability to moderate (or even recognize) fantasy will lead to boredom, which leads to ADHD medication, which leads to an ever-increasing percentage of children deemed chronically, incurably, ill.True or False: ADHD Causes Increased Television WatchingKeeping in this vein of questioning everything… let’s look at whether or not it’s even true that kids with ADHD watch more television than kids without http://it.In 2007, a study in Media Psychology(which Klass mentions in her article) explored exactly this question. As it turned out, while there were differences in the amount of television watched between children with and without ADHD, the differences had little (if anything) to do with ADHD. The children in this study were more likely to watch more television due to environmental factors rather than the presence or absence of ADHD. Not surprisingly, if a kid has a television in his room, he’ll watch more television than a kid who does not.The problem is, not knowing whether something is a cause or a result of a mental condition is not uncommon. However, what is uncommon (though not unheard of) is not knowing whether something is a cause or result of a physical condition, which is what is meant by “a brain-based biologicaldisorder.” According to ADHD proponents, ADHD is not only the result of the brain behaving differently for those with ADHD, but is also the result of an on average 5% smaller brain. At the end of the day, the reason we don’t know if excessive television watching, angry outbursts, academic struggles, etc, cause ADHD or are the effects of ADHD, is because we’re not entirely sure ADHD is a disease or a set of disparate symptoms caused either by an entirely different set of issues, like depression or mania, or by the environment, like a television in the bedroom, or the behavioral management styles of parents and teachers.The Problems with ADHDThe problems with ADHD are present from beginning to (a lack of an) end. We cannot agree on how to diagnose it, yet we diagnose it at higher and higher rates, diagnosing 11% of our youth with a disease we can’t agree exists. And that’s really only half the story. 11% of our kids are taking medication for ADHD, but that doesn’t include kids who aren’t taking medication for it. All told, 19% of high school boys have been diagnosed with ADHD. The problems persist through diagnosis and into treatment. The most common medical treatment for ADHD is a stimulant like Adderall or Ritalin, stimulants which carry their own set of issues. Let’s look at diagnosis and treatment separately.ADHD Diagnosis: ReliabilityAs a result of the indefinable nature of ADHD, a reliable diagnosis is difficult to come by. This is for a few reasons.First, according to an article by Leonard Sax, M.D., PhD and Kathleen J. Kautz, RN, BSN, titled Who First Suggests the Diagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder?“Teachers and other school personnel are often the first to suggest the diagnosis of ADHD in children…” and according to their study it is more likely that parents will have heard the diagnosis from other parents, primary care physicians, and other school personnel, before they’ll hear it from the person qualified to give it… a child psychologist or the parents themselves. But so what if teachers are the first to diagnose a child, right? Surely they have the child’s best interests at heart. Ilina Singh, in an article titled ADHD, Culture and Educationpublished in the April, 2008 issue of Early Child Development and Care, answered this contention better than we could.” … since 1991, ADHD has been an eligible condition under the USIndividuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), which provides children with ADHD theright to special educational services (Hart et al. 2006). While these resources primarilybenefit children, when they come in the form of special teaching assistants or tutoringthat takes place outside the classroom, the educational services provided by the IDEAmay well benefit the child and an over-taxed teacher.”To be clear, no one is saying teachers by their nature are more likely to do this than anyone in any other profession. What is being said, however, is that leaving this option open to the less scrupulous people in any profession seems not only unnecessary, but dangerous.Another reason a reliable diagnosis is difficult to come by is, for a multitude of reasons (some of which we will cover), doctors are over-prescribing medication for ADHD at an alarming rate. Once someone has suggested to the parents of a child that the child might have ADHD, and that the child can receive additional academic help paid for by the school or, by extension, the government, there is a direct incentive for the parent to prepare their child for an ADHD examination by a primary care physician who lacks the resources needed to properly examine the child. To help doctors expedite the examination process, the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual, called the DSM (now in its fifth edition), provides the doctor with a checklist of 18 symptoms a child with ADHD might exhibit, including:Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes…Often has trouble holding attention on tasks or play activities.Often avoids dislikes…Is often easily distractedOften unable to play or take part in pleasure activities quietlyIs often “on the go” acting as if “driven by a motor”Of course, the problem with this list is it seems to describe almost every child ever, regardless of affliction.The diagnostic procedure in America is that the doctor (but usually a teacher) checks off the behaviors she sees and the parent or caregiver of the child does the same. In many cases, if just one of these two parties checks off five or more of these symptoms, the child is diagnosed with ADHD.ADHD Diagnosis: Cultural DifferencesThe problem with diagnosis is also that a child exhibiting the same symptoms in two countries is more likely to be medicated in the United States than any other country. Let’s take, for instance, the US and the UK. According to a study from the University of Exeter, in the UK, if a child were to see a doctor in the US and a doctor in the UK for an ADHD diagnosis, that child is more than four times as likely to receive that diagnosis from the US doctor than the UK one. According to one study, there was another investigation into how different cultures diagnose ADHD. This investigation took a sample size of 53 English students, 10-11 years old, and discovered that, under the American diagnostic criteria for what ADHD looks like, 5% of those students would have been diagnosed with ADHD. If you took the samekids, exhibiting the same symptoms, and had them see a doctor in the UK, less than 1% of them would have been diagnosed with ADHD.With that in mind, it is obvious that American youth is diagnosed with ADHD at such drastically higher rates than other countries because the diagnostic procedure is entirely lacking in thoroughness and austerity.ADHD Treatment: ADHD Medication vs MethamphetamineNo one who has seen a child diagnosed with ADHD can honestly say Ritalin or Adderall has not helped that child concentrate. It is a fact that ADHD medications do exactly that, so why should you care that it’s being over-prescribed? A generation of kids prescribed stimulants simply means a generation of very focused kids, right?Allow us to introduce you to Dr. Carl Hart, Neuropsychopharmacologist at Columbia University. Here’s some of what he has to say about ADHD medications and their resemblance to something you probably do not want your kids using.Here are a few quotes from Dr. Hart:“The effects of methamphetamine and Adderall are indistinguishable from one another.”“The effects produced by methamphetamine are identical to those produced by d-amphetamine [the primary ingredient in Adderall]”“Adderall and meth are the same drug.”It may be a difficult concept to believe, but ADHD medication and meth are, chemically, almost identical. Don’t believe us? Here they are, side-by-side from our infographic on ADHD over-medication:“The only difference is that when you look at the basic amphetamine structure, there’s a methyl group added for methamphetamine … that methyl group, it has been said, to cause the drug to be more potent … but when we’ve done the studies and other people have done the studies, they are the same drug.” – Dr. Carl HartIt may not seem possible, but we are medicating our kids, about 11% of them and rising, with meth. Every. Single. Day.Of course, we are not saying that meth is a good or bad drug and that everyone should use it. We’re not saying drugs are good or bad at all. Drugs are just substances. Substances we choose or do not choose to use. What we are saying is that meth is prescribed in one form or another by doctors to children every day. And it’s not just us sounding the alarm. According to Dr. Richard Saul, the body develops a tolerance to ADHD medications.Most importantly, Saul notes there is an agenda for medicating youth with meth and other substances, and it isn’t to create a docile or subordinate population, but something much simpler, money. “I worry that a generation of American won’t be able to concentrate without this medication; Beg Pharma is understandably not as concerned.” And why should they be? Despite the dangers, prescriptions for ADHD medications continue to be filled at ever-increasing rates, with sales topping $9 billion in 2012.ADHD Treatment: ADHD Medication AddictionBefore we jump to any more conclusions, let’s get to the bottom of whether or not using small doses of methamphetamine or d-amphetamine to treat ADHD plays a role in people making the decision to use greater doses or to begin using meth. Unsurprisingly, researching this seems to be a matter of sorting through agendas as much as data. Take, for instance, what the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has to say about the long-term effects of meth. “Methamphetamine can be prescribed by a doctor to treat hyperactivity disorder … although it is rarely used medically, and only at doses much lower than those typically abused.” Knowing, as we do, that meth and most ADHD medications are chemically almost identical, and that, according to Dr. Hart, “the effects of methamphetamine and Adderall are indistinguishable from one another,” we can throw out the contention that meth is not “rarely used medically.” Meth is used medically every single time a doctor prescribes Adderall and similar drugs.Therefore, let’s take on the contention that it is prescribed at doses much lower than those typically abused, and that this somehow makes it safe. This seems to make sense, but NIDA also says, “As is the case with many drugs, tolerance to methamphetamine’s pleasurable effects develops when it is taken repeatedly. Abusers often need to take higher doses of the drug, take it more frequently, or change how they take it in an effort to get the desired effect.” Basically, the more you take meth, the more you need for it to have an effect, even according to an organization that espouses the benefits of ADHD medication. So it’s no surprise that the amount of ADHD medication increases with age, as people develop a biological tolerance to meth’s effects.The story is an old one even by NIDA’s admission. Boy takes substance. Boy gets desired effect. Boy takes more and more to keep getting desired effect. Boy overdoses and dies. The only difference in this case is that doctors tell us the first two steps of this tragic process are completely fine. It’s fine for a young person to take an meth. It’s fine if he develops a tolerance to it, we’ll just give him more. At a certain point, though, the doctors say, it’s not fine. At that point, we have an “addict,” and since there is absolutely no way we created that addict by feeding him meth since the age of 5, it must mean people with ADHD are simply more susceptible to addiction. It must be biological. Let’s pay NIDA millions in taxpayer money to study how the biology of children diagnosed with ADHD leads them to be addicted to illegal substances, because again, it certainly has nothing to do with the fact that we’ve been forcing them to pop addictive substances like so many Skittles.Taking small doses of meth and other substances can lead to taking larger doses of those substances to get the desired effect… something NIDA knows as well as anyone.Why Do We Keep Prescribing ADHD Medication to Our Kids?The Fear EpidemicEver notice that we hear all the time that America is in the midst of an obesity epidemic? A heroin epidemic? Yet we don’thear that we’re in the midst of an ADHD epidemic? Why not? If you believe ADHD is a disease, we are definitely in the midst of an epidemic. The aforementioned Ilina Singh rightly points out that “Americans consume 80% of the world’s methylphenidate.” ADHD diagnoses have risen 41% in ten years. If people the medical community truly believed ADHD was “a brain-based biological disorder,” there would be mayhem.The reason we don’t need anyone to tell us to be afraid of our children using ADHD medication (meth) is because we’ve become terrified of what will happen if our child doesn’tuse it. It’s Marketing 101. “Don’t ask yourself if you can afford it. With how great it is, ask yourself if you can afford not to have it.” Fear is the new epidemic, and it leads to more prescriptions of Adderall and Ritalin than “legitimate” ADHD cases ever could.Consider what William Dodson, a psychiatrist who, conveniently enough, is paid by Shire Richwood, the company that produces Adderall, to “educate other physicians about the drug’s efficacy” had to say to reticent parents who might not want to give their children meth:“I would ask those people to prepare themselves for that day 15 or 20 years from now when their child comes to them and says the following, ‘Now, let me get this straight. You saw that I was failing in school. You saw that I couldn’t fall asleep at night. You saw that I was having trouble with my interpersonal relationships. You knew it was ADHD. You knew that it had a good safe treatment. And you didn’t even let me try? Explain that to me.'”The fear that your child will hate you when they become an adult not enough for you? How about the fear that your child will become a social outcast and academic failure if you don’t put them on meth? Here’s what Harold Koplewicz, Vice chairman of psychiatry at New York University, had to say:“… you start to recognize that without treatment these children lose out on a normal life. They can’t get the joy of getting decent grades. They can’t get the joy of being picked on a team. They get very demoralized.”Perhaps you’ve asked yourself, as you sit in abject terror at the thought of failing your child, “Where were all the ADHD kids when I was growing up? Maybe this is something that can be taken care of without medication… I mean… those kids wound up fine.” Not so fast! Did they? Not according to Russell Barkley, professor of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester:“They were the class clowns. They were the juvenile delinquents. They were the school dropouts. They were the kids who quit school at 14 or 15 because they weren’t doing well.”Answering the Fear EpidemicAnswering the epidemic is not an easy thing, but let’s take a couple of the above assertions to task. They sound scary, but do they hold water?Do ADHD Kids Lose Out On A Normal Life?First, let’s look at Harold Koplewicz’s idea that children with ADHD “lose out on a normal life. They can’t get the joy of getting decent grades. They can’t get the joy of being picked on a team.” We can do this very quickly. Here’s a list of people who had or have ADHD but managed to get good grades, have been picked for a team or two, and have done a little something with their lives.Now that we realize people with ADHD can do anything regardless of treatment (we can safely assume Einstein was not medicated for ADHD), let’s move on to the next ridiculousstatement, professor Barkley’s assertion that kids with ADHD did exist years ago, it’s just that, ” They were the class clowns. They were the juvenile delinquents. They were the school dropouts. They were the kids who quit school at 14 or 15 because they weren’t doing well.”Of course, we have no way of quantifying class clowns, but let’s look at juvenile delinquency. By Barkley’s account, kids with ADHD were often juvenile delinquents. Well, since we’ve medicated and “cured” those kids (or at least relieved them of their symptoms) for the past few decades, let’s look at how this has impacted the juvenile arrest rates since 1980.According to the US Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, in an article in the September 2011 issue of Patterns & Trendstitled Arrest in the United States, 1980-2009, “Between 1980 and 2009 … the juvenile arrest rate increased 33%. Similarly … the increase in the arrest rate for drug sale or manufacture … was 31%.”So, despite medicating juveniles with ADHD to an ever-increasing extent for the past 30 years, juvenile arrests records have gone up considerably in that time.What about dropout rates? A little more complicated, but just as illuminating. Dropout rates decreased in the past 30 years for a variety of reasons in all demographics, however, when talking about blacks and Hispanics, the report notes, “… the long-term decline is at least in part related to increased incarceration rates among young black and Hispanic males (disproportionately affecting dropouts, which more than doubled between 1980 and 1999, removing them from the population base (non-institutionalized civilians) used for these estimates.So, why did the dropout rates go down in the past 30 years for minorities? Because the criteria for “dropout” at the Bureau of Justice Statistics does not include incarcerated juveniles, which, as we just showed, has risen 30% in that time!The Future: Protecting Our KidsThere is no ADHD epidemic. There is no ADHD.There’s a fear epidemic. Fear is real. It has consequences as important as those that arise from questioning what other people say is right for your kid.When it comes down to it, there’s no such thing as a perfect parent. We mess up, and will again and again. The only guarantee you can make to your child is that you’ll do your best to face the world with the compassion, strength, and bravery it takes to protect them from those who see them only as a means to an end.If you’re brave enough to hold a light up to the fear-mongers trying to convince you that meth is what’s best for your kid, they disappear, having been entirely without substance in the first place. And you have to be brave enough, because the truth is, by over-diagnosing a generation of young people… we are creating a generation of young adults who believe they are diseased and broken when they are not. They learn differently, are a challenge in the classroom and at home and find a confined world difficult to work within. Many will be movers and shakers of the world if we let them fall down and get back up, and if we let them learn how to focus on what they love to do. If they find that drive, watch out; we might have the next Einstein, the next John F. Kennedy, the next Sir Richard Branson. We must first let go of this disease mythology and misinformation first if we wish to see the most from these people.In a perfect world, there would be no need for programs to help people with drug use issues. Saint Jude Retreats exists because we live in an imperfect world, but we are committed to creating a better one. Tomorrow, we don’t want to be receiving calls from children diagnosed with ADHD today.64 Views