Vol. 22, No. 9 - Access to Energy Newsletter

Access to Energy receives a steady stream of mail describing new ideas about science and technology. The majority of these have commercial application but lack the capital required for a trial in the marketplace. Most of these ideas clearly have some merit. We are not qualified to evaluate them all and lack the capital to help any of them. Moreover, like many technologists, we have our own ideas that we are certain have great merit, but we do not have the resources to implement these ideas either. Competition for resources is, of course, an ordinary characteristic of a free market. Many ideas are not implemented. Today, however, there are greatly reduced total resources.

The American miracle was built by ten generations of productive men and women with millions of ideas about science and technology that were filtered and refined in the free market. The dams, bridges, chemical plants, mines, railroads, farms, power plants, electronics and other technological accomplishments that surround us are the result of that 10 generations of work and of the great human accomplishments that preceded and made that work possible.

It is evident today, however, that this progress is being brought to a halt, and that the fruits of the earlier ten generations of progress are gradually being withdrawn from the American people. Figure 1 showing average real wages in the United States adapted from an ad for the newsletter Strategic Investment available from 824 E. Baltimore St., Balti-more, MD 21202 is only one of hundreds of quantitative measures of this decline. Surely, there are still areas of progress. The computer industry is the most spectacular example. Overall, however, our industries are undercapitalized and many are actually being torn down. In a typical American household, two people now work in a gradually losing effort to maintain a standard of living that was easily available to one-worker families a generation ago.

As resources decline, 250 million people are scrambling to obtain a greater share of a diminishing total - a scramble that takes place primarily in the paper world of office buildings. Our previous generations built bridges, dams, factories, railroads, and even the technological infrastructure for manned exploration of other planets. The remnants of their accomplishments are all around us. What have we added to this? Our most visible accomplishments are the enormous office buildings that have transformed the skylines of our cities -office buildings in which many of our brightest people, including almost a million lawyers, compete for shares of what remains of our country. So distorted has become our outlook that many Americans now believe that "information'' is a substitute for productive work.

Why do we no longer have the resources to maintain our industrial infrastructure and to extend it to the creation of the spectacular world that is now technologically possible? Why do most indicators of our individual economic freedom look like this graph of real wages?

Some might answer that our technology is being crippled primarily through overregulation. The real answer, however, is in the phenomenon that makes this regulation possible - oppressive taxation that entirely exceeds the productive capacity of our nation.

The marginal tax rate for a self-employed, single Oregon resident with over $22,100 taxable income is now 28% (federal income) + 9% (state) + 15% (social security) = 52%. For a head-of-household, this rate starts at $29,600. Then there are property taxes and, in most localities (not in Oregon), sales tax. Alternatively, a comparison of government taxation at all levels and national expenditures for all goods and services shows that government taxes away about 50% of all earnings by all Americans.

Moreover, a substantial part of those "earnings'' are actually being created by the productive legacy of the past. They were actually earned by Americans in previous generations and are not a product of our current efforts. If we allot only 20% of our earnings to that capital legacy, then taxation of new earnings is actually about 70%. The remaining 30% is not enough for us to feed, clothe, and house ourselves and pay our hirelings in the office buildings to try to protect us from further predation. Therefore, we are spending the nation's capital by not replacing and maintaining our industrial base, and we are spending the inheritance of future generations by not implementing many of the industrial and scientific ideas that are technologically feasible for our generation.

The American dream has become a sinking ship as our generation's economic freedom and the legacies of ten previous generations of economic freedom are taxed away by an economic tyranny.

Do our taxes buy anything? Yes, they buy national defense and a justice system. They also buy legions of regulators who increase our misery. Mostly, they buy awards for citizens in recognition of their nonproductivity and for armies of bureaucrats with negative productivity; and they buy the enforcement apparatus necessary to levy fines against all citizens who are productive - with a sliding scale that punishes the more productive with proportionally higher fines.

This cannot be fixed by politicians who debate the merits of cutting taxes by a small amount or by presidential candidates who promise not to raise our taxes. Over half of our taxes should be abolished.

Americans must - peacefully - take their economic freedom back.

"Burying False Assumptions About Radiation Risk'' by Bernard L. Cohen, published in Citizen Outlook, available from P.O. Box 65722, Washington, DC 20035 is a short article summarizing Cohen's finding that radon concentration in homes is negatively correlated with cancer, especially lung cancer, which we have featured several times in Access to Energy. We keep writing about this because Co-hen's experiments have enormous importance.

First, if the no-threshold hypothesis by which low-dose radiation health risks are currently estimated falls, our technological environment will improve greatly. Remove the fear of low-level radiation from radioactive byproducts of power plants and from the power

plants themselves, and nuclear power will markedly lower our energy costs and thereby improve the prospects of industry and technology. Moreover, the antitechnology hysteria nurtured by pseudoenviron-mentalism and its various mutations is based, in large part, upon the unreasoning fear of radiation. Fear is a very powerful motivater of human beings. Remove this fear, and much of the antitechnology movement is likely to collapse.

Second, as shown in the figure on page 2 of the April 1994 Access to Energy, 21-8 article about the research of Bruce Ames and his coworkers, the incidence of cancer rises so sharply with age that it becomes the ultimate determinant of lifespan for all humans who manage to escape earlier death from heart disease, accidents, or other killers.

No matter how well one manages to avoid the other causes of death, there is an impenetrable wall of rising cancer probability waiting for each person of advanced age. While it is to be hoped that fundamental discoveries in molecular biology may eventually provide a door through that wall, our only current option is to push the wall back as many years as possible by maximization of our defenses and, once cancer strikes, minimization of cancer growth rate. A reasonable guess is that human life span might be increased by 10 to 25% by this means.

Cohen has reported a threshold that discredits the way in which the health risks of radiation are calculated. He has also reported a negative correlation between cancer and radon which has significant implications for the human lifespan.

This is not a newly reported phenomenon. The books by T. D. Luckey, which have been recommended many times in Access to Energy, summarize a very large number of observations that are collectively known as hormesis, the beneficial effect on health of low-level ionizing radiation. Taken together, these many reports constitute what is referred to in science as a "mounting evidence for'' argument. Not common in physics or chemistry, this sort of argument is very common in biology where experimental systems are more complicated and definitive experiments are much more rare.

It is likely, for example, that daily ingestion of 500 to 1000 mg of vitamin C, as has been recommended by health food gurus for over 50 years, is beneficial to the health of some people. This is, however, a likelihood supported entirely by the preponderance of evidence from many nondefinitive experiments. They constitute a "mounting evidence for'' argument. While this kind of argument is sufficient for a current guess about moderate and probably harmless amounts of vitamin C supplements, it is not sufficient to resolve the no-threshold debate. That resolution must be based upon excellent science. Excellent science requires a definitive experiment.

It is for this reason that we have devoted so many articles to Co-hen's work. Radon vs. lung cancer experiments have the necessary ingredients to be definitive - to be unassailably correct. Scientific advance requires only one such experiment regardless of whether or not there are hundreds of nondefinitive experiments to the contrary (which in this case there are not).

Cohen clearly realizes this. He has devoted a very substantial effort to what Feynman would say (see page one, Access to Energy January 1994, 21-5) is his highest obligation as a scientist - to prove himself wrong. Ignoring the many hormesis experiments that might be cited to buttress his case, he has focused on the primary weakness of his own work - that correlation does not prove causality. He has tried to destroy the negative radon and cancer correlation by means of 54 socioeconomic variables, 7 climatic variables, and other parameters that might mediate or cause the correlation. This effort has, so far, failed.

An especially important, possibly confounding variable is cigarette smoking. Cohen has, therefore, corrected his data for this by using cigarette tax and census bureau data as measures of the amount of smoking in the 1601 U.S. counties in the radon study. This is especially important because not only can smoking cause cancer, but also Cohen has found a correlation between radon levels and smoking. Smokers tend to live in houses with lower radon levels. (This may be because smokers tend to prefer better ventilated houses.) In any case, correction for smoking has, in Cohen's work, left the negative radon and cancer correlation intact to the extent of 20 standard deviations.

Now, Cohen is getting some help. Robert Ehrlich (George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030) has submitted a paper to Health Physics entitled "Possible Evidence for a Threshold Exposure in Radon-Induced Lung Cancer.'' Ehrlich is not satisfied with the corrections for smoking that Cohen has made. He corrects the data in a different way and calculates a result from which he suggests two things: 1. There is a threshold below which ionizing radiation does not induce lung cancer - the no-threshold hypothesis is wrong. 2. There is no negative correlation between lung cancer and radon - ionizing radiation does not, in this case, reduce cancer risk. Ehrlich does not think that hormesis is demonstrated by Cohen's experimental results.

Evaluation of Ehrlich's arguments, regardless of the fact that they are surrounded by equations, calculations, and graphs in his paper, is necessarily somewhat subjective because they rest on preferences concerning imprecise data about smoking. Personally, I prefer Cohen's corrections and result, but my preference is, of course, irrelevant. Also irrelevant is the fact that Cohen's result is more effective ammunition with which to attack the antitechnologists. Attacking one's competition with incorrect arguments is an ultimately losing proposition - a lesson that I fear will be learned the hard way by our friends in the nuclear power industry who are busily promoting global warming because their nuclear power plants produce no carbon dioxide.

No doubt Ehrlich's paper will be seized upon by both his antitech-nology enemies and those of Cohen, who are in real trouble regardless of which smoking correction is used. The sound bites will be something like "radon study discredited by smoking data'' (pun intended).

The current Cohen experiments, even as interpreted by Ehrlich, can serve as ammunition against the anti-nukes, and we intend to use them in this way. It is imperative, however, that these experiments be refined until they are entirely definitive. While this might be partly done by more theoretical work, the final answer can be given by an epidemiological study in which the confounding variables, especially smoking, are recorded for each individual human in the study.

Will this be done correctly? How much confidence do you have in science by government committee? If I were an aging multimillionaire (there are many), I would get these two men in a room, ask them how much money they need to do this job right, and give it to them. The result and simple action based upon the result might add a couple of years to that multimillionaire's personal life (regardless of its implications for the rest of us).

What will actually happen in the absence of such a self-interested benefactor? If these scientists advertise enough, someone will decide that the study should be done - with someone else's money. Tax money is the usual source that comes to such minds, but they might even think of the resources of private foundations or other agencies -all of which share the characteristic that decisions sink to the lowest common denominator of committee nonthought.

After compromising with the committees administering "someone else's money,'' the scientists will do the best they can, but probably not enough. So, years later, we may still get to write articles in Access to Energy "weighing'' the evidence, trying not to pretend that it is definitive, and uncertain as to what actions to base upon it.

My advice to Cohen and Ehrlich is to summarize the problem, its implications, and the cost of solving it in about four paragraphs and send the ad - not to the government, not to large foundations - but to The Wall Street Journal.

In 1976, I had the problem of finding research money for several ideas that were not popular with committees. One evening, around midnight, I became so frustrated that I started writing ads for The Wall Street Journal. I ultimately wrote and published four. These ads were so successful that they and follow-up actions by my wife Laurelee and me funded much of the research. The first ad was entitled "For Sale - One thousand mice with malignant cancer - $138 each'' (delivered after the research). That ad was so popular it was shown full screen on the CBS television evening news. The others were "We are bearish on sugar and bullish on Vitamin C,'' "Wanted - Executives Between the Ages of 75 and 100 years,'' and "We Predict that Urine will break 2,000 before 1980.''

As some of our friends in the nuclear power business are suckered by their own lack of principles into beating the drums for global warm ing (nukes produce no CO 2) and thereby providing aid to their ene mies, experimental evidence accumulates to discredit this scam. The best recent summary of this is "The Global Warming Experiment'' available for $6 from the George C. Marshall Institute, 1730 M Street, N.W., Suite 502, Washington, DC 20036-4505.

There is no dispute as to the existence of the greenhouse effect and the general role of certain substances including carbon dioxide in warming the earth, although the quantitative nature of this phenome non is poorly understood. The greenhouse effect has been blown into lucrative crisis by the enviro industry and its retainers, however, on the basis of erroneous models that predict rapid and extensive warming from the effluents of technology and agriculture. It is now evident, from excellent experimental data, that these models are wrong. This not surprising given the complications of atmospheric chemistry and physics, but it is unpleasant indeed for those who have built careers and fortunes by feeding public fear of global warming.

Figures 2 and 3, reproduced from the Marshall Institute publication, summarize the experiments. In these two figures, actual measurements of global and arctic temperatures by satellite observation are compared to the temperatures predicted by the models used by the global warming industry.

These observations are free from significant error. They take into account all relevant variables because they have been performed on the whole earth as it is and as it has actually reacted to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases during the past decade and a half. During the most recent 15 year build-up of "dangerous'' greenhouse gases, global temperatures have cooled at the rate of - 0.06°C per decade, while arctic temperatures cooled at the rate of - 0.37°C per decade during the 40 years between 1950 and 1990.

The Arizona Legislature has passed and Arizona Governor Fife Symington has signed into law the following House Bill 2236: "Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona: Section 1. Title 49, chapter 3, article 1, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding section 49-409, to read: 49-409, Chlorofluorocarbons: permitted use: retaliation prohibited.

"A. Notwithstanding any other law, a person may possess, use, manufacture, purchase, install, transport or sell chlorofluorocarbons.

"B. The possession, use, manufacture, purchase, installation, transportation or sale of chlorofluorocarbons does not subject any person, this state or any political subdivision of this state to any penalty, fine, retaliatory action or other punitive measure.'' Governor Symington is quoted on page one of the April 14, 1995 issue of the Tucson Citizen as having said in reference to the federal chlorofluorocarbon ban and House Bill 2236, "Just because it's a law doesn't mean it's sacred and that it shouldn't be challenged . . . . Where would we be today if Americans hadn't stood up and said, 'We've had enough, your tea is going in the harbor'?''

The August 4-6 Grants Pass, Oregon meeting of DDP co-sponsored by Access to Energy and the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine now includes some additional speakers.

Sallie Baliunas is staff astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Deputy Director of the Mount Wilson Institute. She is also Chairman of the Science Advisory Board of the George Marshall Institute, one of the foremost groups of scientists working in opposition to the misuse of science in human affairs.

Jane Orient is Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and a practicing physician. See "A Medicare Prescription'' by Jane Orient, the lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal for April 24, 1995 (p A12), for an example of why Dr. Orient is America's most effective physician opponent of socialized medicine.

Lowell Wood, 1995 recipient of the Edward Teller award to be presented by Dr. Teller at the meeting, is the principal scientist in charge of development of the Brilliant Pebble strategic defense system and originator of a low-cost program for manned exploration of Mars.

Conrad Chester was the last Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory civil defense research program and is an internationally recognized authority on the use of explosive, chemical, and biological weapons in terrorism and war.

Ed York began as chief photographer for the Manhattan Project and became America's foremost authority on the design of blast protective structures for military and civilian defense.

These are in addition to those already announced:

Sam Cohen - inventor of the neutron bomb.

Peter Duesberg - challenger of the AIDS and HIV hypothesis.

Martin Kamen - discoverer of carbon 14.

Cresson Kearny - foremost authority on expedient civil defense.

Bruce Merrifield - Nobel Laureate for first synthesis of an enzyme.

Edward Teller - father of American nuclear defense.

Robert Zubrin - originator of the Mars Direct exploration plan.

Attendance, including two days of lectures, two lunches, and the awards banquet at the Riverside Inn in Grants Pass (near Medford, Oregon) costs a total of $95. If you wish to attend, send a check for $95 payable to DDP, Access to Energy, or the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine to P.O. Box 1250, Cave Junction, OR 97523.

"The Incredible Shrinking Laboratory'' by Robert F. Service in Science 268 , pp 26-27 (1995) summarizes recent developments in efforts to carry out analytical chemistry using miniaturized apparatus engraved on silicon chips. The initial primitive devices look like tiny versions of the centrifugal analyzers pioneered by Robert Melville and his colleagues for the clinical laboratory two decades ago. Developers are thinking of them as improved technology for the "analytical laboratory.'' Conceptually better combinations of this miniature technology are possible and will undoubtedly be produced.

Most people, however, are missing the greater point. Just as miniaturized computer technology has made the capabilities of the old large computer centers available to any office or home, so the miniaturization of analytical technology will bring this capability to any individual with a personal computer and a desk. We now have decentralization of information. We are going to have decentralization of analytical physics and chemistry. Consider just one application.

Suppose you could buy a device about the size and cost of a laser printer that would carry out daily analysis of a few hundred chemical components in your breath and urine. (Blood, too, if you don't mind the pin pricks.) Daily monitoring of your personal chemistry and that of the other members of your family coupled with interpretive software that can already easily be produced could allow your personal health care to be reduced largely to fighting the probability of disease rather than disease itself. Years, perhaps even a decade or more, might be added to your individual lifespan, and your overall quality of life would be increased substantially. Such devices even have potential to quantitatively measure the rate of aging. Would you like immediate feedback from your computer about the personal biological cost of each action you take such as changes in diet, exercise, or other daily habits?

I can provide no reference because I have not heard this or seen it written. I predict, however, (20% off your 2005 subscription to Access to Energy if I'm wrong) that within ten years you will be able to buy such a device as an ordinary peripheral for your personal computer.

They should have just pulverized or solublized it and then dispersed it in the deep ocean where it would be so diluted as to be completely harmless and almost undetectable, but our government is determined that all radioactive waste will be stored in one large pile where it can remain dangerous for as long as possible.

Even this pile, sufficiently secured underground, will be quite safe, but creating it seems to be beyond bureaucratic abilities. Over $10 billion has been collected in energy taxes under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 for this purpose, and half of this has already been spent. The legislation requires that the Yucca Mountain depository begin to receive waste by 1998. Now our government says it will not be ready until 2010 (far enough in the future for this crowd to retire and leave the next delay to another gaggle of "decision makers''). Now they are getting help from their friends in the press who are publicizing an erroneous suggestion that the whole depository could self-destruct in a nuclear explosion. This is not possible, but fear is their stock in trade.

Fred Upton (R-Michigan) and Edolphus Towns (D-New York) have recently introduced legislation to force the Department of Energy to provide nuclear storage and disposal facilities starting in 1998. Let DOE provide temporary storage until permanent storage is available, rather than requiring this of a nuclear industry that has already paid the special taxes required for this purpose.

This ongoing debacle has been described in numerous industry publications. A good five-page summary is in the March 1995 issue of Nuclear Energy Insight available from the Nuclear Energy Institute, 1776 I Street, N.W., Suite 400, Washington, DC 20006-3708.

Even the government is mad at the government. The Department of Defense has no place to dispose of spent fuel from nuclear submarines.

Citizen Outlook for March 1995 available from P. O. Box 65722, Washington, DC 20035 reports that Maurice Strong, internationalist super-enviro who presided over the Rio Earth Summit, calls his home "The Valley of the Refuge of World Truths'' and is a founding members of a group that calls itself the "New Age Planetary Citizens.'' Strong also has a ranch in Colorado complete with Vedic earth goddess worship and a Temple to the Sun God.

"Liberal Greens, Mainstream Camouflage'' by S. R. Lichter in The Wall Street Journal, April 21, 1995 p A12 describes the new national strategy of the enviros to paint themselves as "mainstream'' as opposed to the "extremists'' who now control Congress. Polls of the views of the senior staffers and directors of the large enviro organizations reveal their mainstream views: 75% favor increased taxes; 59% favor saving all species regardless of cost; 80% favor confiscation of private property without compensation; and 93% voted for Clinton. "Mad'' perhaps, but only "Stark Raving Mad'' because they think they can promote these views as majority American values.

"The PC Assault on Science'' by Wray Herbert in U. S. News and World Report, February 20, 1995 pp 64-65 describes "science criticism'' and "cultural studies'' courses that have become popular in the humanities departments of many major universities in the United States. These courses teach that science is a "sexist, racist, classist, capitalist plot'' and that science is "simply meaningless.'' They teach that "the fundamental assertions of science . . . . are a mass delusion or a deliberate deception concocted by a power-hungry priesthood.'' We should have compassion for these people. Now that pseudoscientists of the enviro industry have seized the limelight of socialism, what else can frustrated activist humanities professors do to get attention?

Very good reading is the AAPS (1601 N. Tucson Blvd., Ste 9, Tucson, AZ 85716) reprint of the Foundation of Economic Education 1949 publication of Leonard Read's essay "On that Day Began Lies.'' This is the clearest explanation I have seen of the reasons that committees, organizations, governments and other group bodies act in ways that most of their individual members would consider immoral, dishonest, or imprudent as personal action.
"The Endangered Species Act: Making Innocent Species the Enemy'' by Richard L. Stroup, PERC Policy Series, edited by Jane S. Shaw, Issue PS-3, April 1995, 22 pages, available from PERC, 502 South 19th Avenue, Suite 211, Bozeman, MT 59715 for $3 each. Since it creates an adversarial relationship of people vs. animals and plants, the actual effects of this Act are counterproductive.
"Asbestos Risk - Fact or Fiction'' by Ted Eyde in The Torch, 4-2, pp 1,4-7, April 1995 available from 4060 E. 4th St., Tucson, AZ 85711. This is a good historical summary of the tragedy of the asbestos industry, which has been largely destroyed by ignorance and lies. It is estimated that compliance with the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Act will cost over $150 billion.
Articles on pages 3, 4, 14, 18, and 32 of Atom, Issue 437 available from AEA Technology, 329 Harwell, Oxfordshire OX11 0RA, Eng-land (or a good library) about nuclear power progress in Iran, Russia, and China as compared with the United States and predicting increased world wide demand for uranium. The advance of nuclear power is unstoppable. The only question is who will lead it.