Vol. 22, No. 8 - Access to Energy Newsletter

It is generally understood that each civilization must defend itself or it will be forcibly replaced by another civilization. This may not be in accordance with our wishes, but it is a fact of human nature.

The founding fathers of the United States distrusted and feared government. Nevertheless, they built a central government largely because they deemed it necessary for national defense. They understood that government could also become an engine of tyranny within America. For this reason, they inserted strict binding limitations on federal power into the Constitution. Tyranny has been gnawing at those bindings for 200 years. A combined taxation rate of 50%, depreciating fiat money, enslavement to a vast regulatory bureaucracy, and toleration of the murders in Waco and Idaho (they could have happened in any country - but not without punishment for those involved) are indications that federal power has become too great.

Nevertheless, America is a wonderful country. Moreover, it is our country. It is our duty to improve it where we can, to change it where we must, and to defend it always against its enemies.

For the past century, our defense has been based upon our superior science and technology, the productive industries that these and our free-enterprise economy made possible, patriotic scientists and engineers who devoted their lives to defense applications, and our soldiers, sailors, and aviators who risked their lives in combat.

Until about 1950, the possession of advanced industry, science, and technology and maintenance of a core military organization were, in themselves, sufficient. The nature of weapons and warfare was such that, in the event of national peril, there was adequate time to mobilize these assets and apply them to military needs.

After World War II, however, military technology had become so sophisticated and the time required for its use so short that it was necessary to build and maintain a modern war machine for immediate use. Otherwise, our country could have been defeated and its citizens enslaved in less time than was required for military mobilization.

This perpetual state of mobilization, however, weakened us with respect to other dangers. High military expenditures weakened our economy; fear of a continuous external threat made our people more willing to tolerate a vast expansion of federal power; possession of great and immediate military power tempted our leaders to engage in military adventures of little or no relevance to our defense; and an egotism grew within our ruling elite who came to feel that they should dictate the affairs of the people in other sovereign countries and in the whole world. The dangers of these side effects have grown as the inevitable leveling effect of knowledge erodes our superiority.

Moreover, the latter two dangers gradually changed our military preparations until they emphasized offense and de-emphasized defense. While we (and our enemies) built enormous capabilities for killing the citizens of other countries, we built essentially no defensive protections for our own citizens. Our scientists and engineers developed excellent civil defense technology for protection against chemical, biological, and nuclear attack (lifesaving in war, terrorism, or even accidents), but this was never built for the American people. The people of Switzerland have this defense, but we do not.

Later, our scientists and engineers developed excellent and effective technology for strategic defense. Even if we had no safe shelters from nuclear, biological, or chemical attack, we could diminish the effect of that attack - but we have not built a strategic defense either.

Offensive military technologies have always given rise to mitigating defensive technologies. It is very dangerous for a civilization to ignore the need for modern defenses. This danger does not arise solely from the potential actions of a conquering enemy. Terrorism alone could cost us our freedom. If an anthrax attack killed most of the people in New York City - or a small nuclear weapon were detonated on a boat in San Diego harbor - or fuel-air explosions began to level city blocks here and there in America, what would be our national response? It is easy to imagine that our response would spawn so much repression that we would have lost our freedom.

Some say that we should, at least, limit our risks by disengaging from world affairs so that we have fewer enemies. This is very wise, but the world is a small place. We cannot disengage entirely.

Others say that we should manufacture new enemies that cannot fight back and then vent the whole world's aggressive tendencies on these artificial enemies. This is part of the intellectual basis for the world environmental movement. The apocalyptic aspects of environmentalism are, however, not based upon truth and are not sustainable.

Certainly we should build a civil defense and a strategic defense, but so far this has proved politically impossible.

There is probably no single solution to this problem, but there is one possibility that I have long thought has been overlooked.

Every human being has, within his nature, a hope for greatness - a hope that he or a group to which he belongs will be a part of some great thing that transcends the ordinary prospects of life and death. This hope drives not only the leaders of great human enterprises but also the ordinary citizens who follow them. This hope has made possible some of the great accomplishments of human civilizations, but it has also contributed substantially to the popularity of war.

War is enormously popular - especially among those who have no immediate involvement in the death and destruction. During the recent Gulf War, many Americans were literally dancing in the streets in anticipation and celebration. Tyranny sometimes makes war unavoidable, but it is a flaw of human nature to enjoy it. I do not think that this flaw involves an innate desire to kill - I think it is instead a perversion of the human desire for greatness. We cannot change this desire, but we might make better efforts to redirect it.

Consider, for example, an all-out effort for the manned (not robotic) exploration of Mars, the colonization of the moon and Mars, and the complete exploration of the solar system. This is an enterprise that could capture the imagination of literally everyone on earth. It could provide us all with the vicarious experience of being a part of a very great undertaking. It could fill a human need that otherwise might find destructive expression.

Our national defense should protect against all threats. We must defend ourselves against these threats at all levels - in the air, on the sea, on the land, and, at their origins, in human minds and hearts.

Dr. Robert Zubrin, in his article "A New Martian Frontier: Recapturing the Soul of America'' published in American Civilization, Janu-ary 1995, p 1, 22-23 available from American Civilization, 1250 H Street, N.W., Suite 550, Washington, DC 20005, has written the most perceptive, moving, and well-reasoned discussion of the merits of immediate manned exploration of Mars that I have ever been privileged to read. Combined with the specific Mars exploration engineering proposals developed by Zubrin and his co-workers, this discussion leads to the conclusion that manned settlement of Mars must be one of the highest priorities of our civilization.

Zubrin begins by quoting a statement by Fredrick Jackson Turner in 1893 that summarizes the thesis of his article: "To the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness of strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance that comes from freedom - these are the traits of the frontier, or traits called out of elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier.'' To this, in an extraordinary text, Zubrin himself adds, "Free societies are the exception in human history - they have only existed during the four centuries of frontier expansion of the West. That history is now over. ....... The key is not to let the process stop. If it is allowed to stop for any length of time, society will crystallize into a static form that is inimical to the resumption of progress. ....... Mars will not allow itself to be settled by people from a static society - those people won't have what it takes. We still do. Mars waits today for the children of the old frontier, but Mars will not wait forever.'' I wrote the editorial on page 1 before reading Dr. Zubrin's articles. The general idea is similar, but his is positive rather than negative and is far more elegantly presented. America is stagnating, and her people are turning inward and against science and technology - turning even against truth, reason, freedom, and the great potential of the human spirit. Mars, the solar system, and beyond present themselves as a perpetual frontier that can reverse and prevent this stagnation.

Is this dream science fiction? Is it the $400 billion, 30-year welfare program for a generation of bureaucrats - with a goal of only 30 days on Mars - that has been proposed by NASA? It is neither.

Zubrin proposes a ten-year, $40 billion program with two trips to Mars - each involving a 500-day stay and the exploration of hundreds of thousands of square miles of Martian land. Subsequent yearly expeditions would set up permanent colonies and begin a project to transform the Martian atmosphere and colonize the entire planet. Since both have $40 billion price tags, which do we prefer - three years on Mars or the bailout of the moguls who invested imprudently in Mexico?

Overviews of the proposals by Zubrin and his colleagues are presented in "Mars Direct'' by Lance Frazer in Air and Space, April/May 1994, pp 60-65 and in "Humans to Mars in 1999'' by Robert Zubrin and David Baker in Aerospace America , August 1990, pp 30-32, 41.

These proposals are based upon the use of nuclear power plants to transform the water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and other compounds and elements on Mars into rocket fuel, fertilizer, and other materials necessary for a technological civilization. This minimizes the materials that would need to be imported from Earth. The initial flights use hydrogen imported from Earth and Martian carbon dioxide to manufacture rocket fuel. Each group of men is preceded by an unmanned flight that establishes a nuclear powered base and synthesizes the necessary fuel for their return trip.

This entire proposal is based upon already existing technology. $40 billion is ten days of current U. S. government expenditures. Would it not be better to use private enterprise? Of course it would. Moreover, if Mars is colonized, the job will surely not be done by bureaucrats. The national defense benefits of this project alone, however, easily justify funding the initial flights from the Department of Defense.

Two arguments that have been made against this proposal deserve special mention. Firstly, it is said that the project for the first flights should be drawn out over several decades. Secondly, it is said that unmanned rather than manned flights should be used. Both are proposed as "cost saving'' proposals.

It must be remembered, however, that it is men who must pay the bills for this effort, and it is men whose spirits must be inspired by this outward reach of civilization. There is little inspiration in a project that crawls along for 30 years, and there is little vicarious joy for most nontechnical people in the deployment of robots.

President Kennedy was right about the "New Frontier'' of space. Since 1970, however, America has lost her way to this frontier. Robert Zubrin and others, such as Lowell Wood, who want to go to Mars now may succeed in showing us the way back.

This year's DDP meeting will be cosponsored by Access to Energy and the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and will be held August 4-6 in Grants Pass, Oregon. (Use the nearby airport in Medford, Oregon.) Scientists who have already agreed to speak include:

Sam Cohen - inventor of the neutron bomb.

Peter Duesberg - controversial challenger of the HIV hypothesis.

Martin Kamen - discoverer of carbon 14.

Cresson Kearny - foremost authority on expedient civil defense.

Bruce Merrifield - first man to chemically synthesize an enzyme.

Edward Teller - father of the hydrogen bomb.

Robert Zubrin - whose Mars Direct proposal is discussed above.

These and other speakers will emphasize the remarkable prospects and problems in our technological future.

For those wishing to estimate the probable length of their own individual future, we reproduce Figure 1 taken from "Temperament for Longevity'' by Constance Holden in Science 267, p 1269 (1995). The 74-year study upon which this figure is based defined "conscientious'' males and females as high IQ high school students who were rated as "prudent, conscientious, truthful, and free from vanity.'' For example, the age at which 50% will be dead for currently 53-year-old conscientious males is that where the curve crosses 0.1 + (1.0 - 0.1)/2 = 0.55 or 83 years. This is a 50% life expectancy of 30 years. The calculated value corrects for deaths that have already been avoided by those who have reached 53. Parental divorce, here used as a measure of social stability, reduces the life expectancy by 4 years.

Figure 2 below is a diagram of a liquid metal fast breeder reactor taken from "The Breeder Reactor - Affordable Energy Forever'' by Bernard L. Cohen in 21st Century, Spring 1995, available from P. O. Box 16285, Washington, DC 20041. This reactor produces more fuel than it uses. It converts uranium 238 into plutonium 239 while it is generating heat to produce electricity. This article also contains an excellent section demolishing the myth of unacceptable plutonium toxicity. In every imaginable use, large and small, there should be a lot of these reactors in our future.

Meanwhile, in "U. S. Oil Fields Double in Size,'' R. A. Kerr, Science 267, p 1090 (1995), reports that United States estimated oil reserves increased from 75 billion barrels to 110 billion barrels, and gas reserves increased from 500 trillion cubic feet to over 1000 trillion cubic feet between 1989 and 1995.

One difficulty with the enviroscience feeding frenzy for more tax money is that, in spite of the best efforts of the lowest common denominators in government committees, some data does accumulate. When that data does not support the mythology of enviroscience, the self interests of all sorts of people are put at risk. This could not happen to a nicer group of people.

Figure 3 from World Climate Review, 3-1, p 15 (1994), discussing the work of J. W. Krzyscin, summarizes ozone values between 1958 and 1991 at about 30 stations located between latitudes 30° and 60° (over the Northern Hemisphere) . Figure 4 is from Science 267, p 612 (1995) by R. A. Kerr. This includes global temperature data from balloon measurements between 1958 and 1994 and satellite measurements between 1979 and 1994.

This record shows a substantial variability over these short time intervals. A longer record would doubtless show an even wider range.

Within this observed time, however, there is virtually no net change. Ozone was about - 3% in 1958, rose as high as + 3.5%, drifted over a 7% range, and then declined to about - 3%. (Figure 3 is normalized to 0 and plotted as total percentage change.) Temperature was 0° C in 1958, drifted over a 1.5° C range, and was about 0° C in 1994. (Figure 4 is normalized to 0° C and plotted as degrees centigrade. The range in degrees Fahrenheit is about 3 degrees.) Where does this data leave the people who have obtained large grants of tax money on the basis that ozone reduction in the Northern Hemisphere is already wiping out animal species (see, for example, "Fried Frog's Eggs'' in Access to Energy 21-9, p 4) or that global warming is already upon us? It leaves them publishing nonscience by press release and hoping that the taxpayers will not notice the truth.

When Linus Pauling died, the world lost an excellent chemist. Moreover, as John Donne wrote, "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.'' Pauling was also one of the world's great beneficiaries of the hypothesis that cancer risk at high doses can be extrapolated smoothly to zero with no negative values - the no-threshold hypothesis. Pauling parlayed this hypothesis into a Nobel Prize for Peace and also a Lenin Prize, which he told me was his favorite of the two.

Pauling successfully fought the men who were building American nuclear weapons with the argument that they were causing great numbers of cancer deaths. Building on his example, a whole generation of agitators has used this hypothesis to cripple the American nuclear power industry and to mount an increasingly irrational attack upon technology in general. Never, however, did Pauling or anyone else have data to support this hypothesis.

Now there is data. The no-threshold hypothesis is clearly wrong. Figure 5 shows this hypothesis as currently purveyed by the International Atomic Energy Agency in IAEA Bulletin 36-4, p 42 (1994).

Note that this figure correctly portrays actual data only at high radiation doses. Until recently, there was no reliable data at low doses -the doses potentially deliverable by most radioactive waste and most ordinary exposures to environmental levels of radiation.

Figure 6 shows experimental data from "Test of the Linear-No Threshold Theory of Radiation Carcinogenesis for Inhaled Radon Decay Products'' by B. L. Cohen, Health Physics 68, pp 157-174 (1995).

The lines in Figure 6 labeled "theory'' correspond to the line labeled "ideally fitted linear relationship'' and, with slope properly reduced, also correspond to the line labeled "linear term'' in Figure 5.

Cohen's figures use radon data from hundreds of thousands of homes in 1,601 counties of the United States. His paper describes detailed examination of the possibility that this epidemiological data could be biased by smoking (shown in the figures) or by any one of 53 other potentially confusing variables.

Cohen demonstrates that, at the levels found in most American homes, increased radon levels correlate with decreased lung cancer mortality. If the Pauling-Teller debates were held today, it is Teller who could take the moral high ground by calculating the number of children who would die if Pauling's view prevailed.

Figure 7, from "Russian Chaos Breeds Diphtheria Outbreak'' by J. Maurice, Science 267, pp 1416-1417 (1995), illustrates one of the effects of technological breakdown and diminished wealth in Russia. A diphtheria epidemic has affected 80,000 people and killed 2,000.

Maurice states that Russian officials are "anxious to get the diphtheria epidemic out of the way so they can get on with the other problems of daily life, such as cholera, dysentery, tuberculosis, AIDS, and even malaria.'' They lack, however, resources to vaccinate the Russian people. Perhaps, as an act of charity, we should send Russia some of the money that America is wasting on the enviro craze - but without the enviros. Sending the enviros would be an act of aggression.

The average loss of life from loss of wealth and of the technology that creates wealth is difficult to determine. A credible effort has been made by R. L. Keeney (see Access to Energy 21-5, pp 1-2), who estimated one fatality per $5 million. The Russians are now determining this value by experimental measurement.

Mike, from Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, called the Rush Limbaugh program of March 17, 1995, to express his concern about his second-grade child's public school Outcome Based Education classes. Mike became concerned when his child reported the great news that all of the children in the class made the honor roll. Then Mike learned about the grading system which uses a scale of "M, S, or N.'' An "M'' grade on a recent spelling test required seven or fewer wrong answers. "M'' stands for "most of the time;'' "S'' stands for "some of the time;'' and "N'' stands for "not yet.''
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is a book about the contamination of a monkey colony near Washington, DC, with a rare virus that is sometimes fatal for humans. In this case there were no human fatalities, but epidemics are always a danger. Preston offers this explanation for the existence of dangerous viruses: "In a sense, the earth is mounting an immune response against the human species. It is beginning to react to the human parasite, the flooding infection of people, the dead spots of concrete all over the planet, the cancerous rot-outs in Europe, Japan, and the United States, thick with replicating primates .'' Preston describes the human race as "a very large quantity of meat.''
The "World Resources Institute'' in its February 1995 Issues and Ideas has launched an attack on all fully fluorinated compounds (FFCs). Say good-by to Teflon and all its lower molecular weight cousins. These are described as having approximately 10,000 times more global warming potential than carbon dioxide and atmospheric lifetimes of thousands of years. Maybe we should roll with this and trade them the FFC's for plutonium, carbon dioxide, and CFCs.

"The Education of Thomas Edison'' by J. Powell, The Freeman, February 1995, pp 73-76. Edison was home schooled by self-teaching from well-chosen, high-quality books. He had been withdrawn by his mother from school - where the teacher classified him as "addled.'' Edison's method was the same in its essential characteristics as the method we advocate as a replacement for public schools.
"Work is the Main Thing'' by L. E. Lehrman, Wall Street Journal, February 10, 1995, p A8. This describes the views of Abraham Lincoln - opposed to direct federal taxation except in war; favoring equality of opportunity, but not forced equality; favoring a cooperative relationship between labor and capital; and believing that intelligence and labor should be allowed to lead to savings and entrepreneurship.
"AZT Falls Short for Kids with HIV'' in Science News 147, p 100 (1995). A study of 839 children at 62 medical centers was stopped because those receiving AZT were deteriorating the most rapidly.
"How to Fight Terrorism and Win!'' by Si Frumkin in Graffiti for Intellectuals, March 3, 1995, p 1, available from P. O. Box 1542, Studio City, CA 91614-0542. This is an excellent monthly newsletter.
"Wasted Energy'' in The Wall Street Journal of March 16, 1995, p A20. The Department of Energy has already spent $4.5 billion of a $10.5 billion fund created from a special tax on nuclear generated electricity to provide for waste disposal. None has been provided. One gem - all of the radioactive waste from American nuclear power plants for the last 30 years would cover just one football field three yards deep.
"Right to Read Report'' of December 1994, from 3220 N. St. NW, Suite 174, Washington, DC 20007, in defense of phonics against efforts to substitute other methods that do not work.