These critical needs have bred a new, superior form of human life. Perhaps there were a few of these specimens in our gene pool all along or, perhaps, we have just been fortunate that they arose in our midst by spontaneous mutation when they were needed. In any case, they are here. They are human beings who speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.

They speak for the children, for the downtrodden and poor, for the sick and helpless, for the animals, for the plants - for the whole earth. Their tears are shed in substitute for those that are not shed by avaricious, unfeeling, and evil people (most Americans). Their tears wash away such minor questions as morality, ethics, and justice. Theirs are the golden tears that make everything right - and nothing wrong - as long as it conforms to their agenda.

Those who shed these tears have become an elite in our society -they do not need to work. They only need to cry. They have built an enormous industry populated by bureaucrats and welfare recipients. They have built that industry upon the backs of the American people whose property they have plundered. It is true that a small portion of their loot makes its way to truly worthy causes. These causes serve as an excuse for their continued thievery.

In the river of irrelevant scientific publications that flows today from government subsidies, there are certainly islands of success. Valuable discoveries have been made with government funds. Are these scientists to be congratulated?

The few who manage to make progress while accepting tax subsidies do so at the expense of the greater progress that would be made in a free economy. They provide propaganda for those with the golden tears. They are the modern alchemists. They have succeeded in turning tears into gold - at the expense of American freedom.

This problem seems to arise from a negative aspect of human nature. Even in private charity - which is the honorable way to provide for those who are truly in need - this can occur. As charity continues, the providers sometimes begin to feel superior to the recipients, and the recipients begin to resent the providers. In private charity, however, all is voluntary and the participants are usually in close contact with one another, so these difficulties are manageable.

For this reason, the global environmental scams must be presented as crises requiring immediate emergency action. It is not the direct claimed danger from ozone destruction or global warming that requires emergency action; it is the danger that, given a little time, scientific facts may arise that discredit these hypotheses altogether.

In this context, the global warming crowd recently suffered a very severe setback. After extensive squabbling in which referees modified the paper and tried to suppress it, "Economic and Environmental Choices in the Stabilization of Atmospheric CO 2 Concentrations'' by T. M. L. Wigley, R. Richels, and J. A. Edmonds in Nature 379, pp 240-243, was published. Figures 1 and 2 are adapted from this paper.

Wigley, et al, subscribe to the entire global warming scenario in which computer models that fail to predict past weather and contain only the most rudimentary guesses as to the actual effects of atmospheric release of carbon dioxide from human activity are used to pretend to predict the future with breathtaking precision. Wigley, himself, is one of the lead authors of the recent report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that has been enthusiastically publicized throughout the media in recent months as the most authoritative verification of the looming global warming catastrophe.

Alas, Wigley asked one question too many. Assuming that the entire global computer model is correct (nonsense as shown in AtE 23-06 - but it is this nonsense upon which the global warming facade rests), Wigley calculated the effects of waiting another 10, 20, or 30 years without any control of CO2 emissions at all before taking action. His calculation assumes the worst case scenario adopted by the UN for uncontrolled emissions. The calculation was carried out for ultimate atmospheric CO2 levels of 350 parts per million through 750 ppm.

Figure 1 shows the predicted atmospheric CO2 levels assuming immediate crisis reductions (IPCC) or assuming a wait of 20 years before any reductions (WRE). Figure 2 shows the total amount of CO2 emissions from human activity under the two assumptions. (The line labeled IS92a is the IPCC assumption for CO2 emissions if no action is ever taken. Planners love this sort of apocalyptic scenario.) For a 30-year wait and his recommended level of 550 ppm, Wigley finds that the end result for the global environment is unchanged. Along the way to that UN-created nirvana 300 years from now, there is a difference - of less than 2 inches in sea level and about 0.2° C in temperature. In other words, as Wigley et al conclude, the effect of waiting 30 more years before controlling CO2 emissions, even when one assumes that the entire global warming scenario is correct (which it is not), is so slight as to be not worth significant economic disruption.

From the Wigley, Richels, Edmonds (WRE) calculation there is no honest escape. From here on, the crisis teams at the UN and the welfare receiving scientists and other unprincipled participants in the multibil-lion dollar global warming crisis business will have to fly on hope. Their fuel tanks are empty. They just must hope that no one notices.

Even though world population has continued to grow, the area of farmland planted to grain has been decreasing since about 1980. It is approximately the same as in 1960, as is shown in Figure 4. This has been possible because of technological improvements in farming that have increased the yield of grain per acre as shown in Figure 3. The "spared'' line in Figure 4 shows the amount of farmland that would have been needed had this increase in productivity not taken place. The "spared'' line assumes that productivity per acre remained at 1960 levels.

Irish wheat and American corn now yield an average of 8 tons per hectare. He calculates that, if average world productivity rises to just 5 tons per hectare (for reference, see figure 3), the entire 10 billion people can eat an American (6,000 calorie) diet, and one-fourth of current world farmland - an area the size of Alaska - can be taken out of production. An 8 ton per hectare average idles an area of farmland the size of Australia. The curves in Figure 3 indicate that this is reasonable.

This is a wonderful effect of the advance of science and technology - but the elite "environmentalist'' leadership does not agree. They are doing everything possible to diminish technology - including the technology that increases farm yields. Why? Surely they support the reversion of vast tracts of cultivated land to the "natural'' state. The answer is that environmentalism is, to them, only a tool with which to accumulate wealth and power and to reduce the world population in accordance with their enormous estimates of their own self-importance.

Whether or not the issue is nuclear power, chemicals for farm fertilizer and pest control, chlorine and bromine compounds for refrigeration, or the use of coal, oil, and natural gas for power, lubrication and chemical production, underlying assumptions about life divide most scientists and technologists irreconcilably from their enemies. Why can the enviros not see the wonderful benefits of the advance of science and technology in a free-enterprise economy? They cannot see these benefits because, in their world view, these are not benefits at all.