Each of the three institutions that Access to Energy advocates has become a part of our civilization as a result of enormous amounts of work and sacrifice by many people over the past few centuries. That they are interwoven in our environment in this brief time during which we have been given to live is wonderful indeed. It is a privilege and a duty of each person who benefits from freedom, technology, and science to defend and extend them to the best of his ability.

Of the three, the rise of freedom is the most difficult to explain and yet the easiest to understand. The desire for freedom is fundamental to human nature. Each of us "understands,'' at least viscerally, our great preference to be free, and, regardless of our differences, understands that freedom is morally right - a truth needing no explanation. Each of us carries within his own intuition an appreciation of the reason that many millions of people have given their lives for freedom.

Technology is the result of engineering - the manipulation of the environment in efforts to change the human condition. For thousands of years - all of recorded history - man has struggled to change his environment in order to increase the quality and length of human life and to improve the nature of human life. Unfortunately, throughout that period, some men have also worked to build technology for negative reasons, particularly technology that can be used to enslave others and take away their freedom. In all cases, however, technology can be described as human-controlled environmental change.

We know that our environment changes over time whether or not we cause that change. The earth is a dynamic system - biologically, geologically, and astronomically. We now have the ability - in small ways - to affect that change, but most environmental change is still far beyond the control of man.

Those who have adopted the worship of a static, unchanged environment in the new animal and plant-centered religion that they call "environmentalism'' (and we call pseudoenvironmentalism) have adopted a lost cause. They advocate a world with less technology, but their stated goals could only be fulfilled by technology so advanced that it will probably still remain the province of science fiction for many centuries to come.

To the limits of his ability, however, man has always struggled to improve the environment to his own benefit. The invention of the wheel, the control of fire, crude metallurgy, primitive agriculture, and the many other helpful technologies that engineers developed in the first few recorded millennia greatly improved the microenvironment immediately surrounding human beings. These engineers produced many valuable things. Their accomplishments are especially remarkable in that their work was almost entirely empirical. They had little fundamental understanding of the materials with which they worked. They knew only a little mathematics and essentially no science.

Gradually they built an environment for man sufficiently advanced that he was able to take the next step - the development of science. Science then provided the understanding necessary for a sustained advance in engineering which created our modern civilization.

What, however, is the nature of true science or scientists - of whom there are far fewer than is generally realized? Although there are now many hundreds of thousands of people with educational degrees in science, very few of these people are actually scientists -those whose work and insights truly advance modern science. Most "scientists,'' are, in reality, technicians whose activities have become a profitable business in this era of $33 billion annual tax-financed, non-defense "research'' and government regulations that require huge industrial expenditures for unnecessary procedures.

True scientists are unusual people - not superior people, just people with unusual characteristics. I have been fortunate to know some such people - and leave it to the opinion of others as to whether I should be included as one of them. Their characteristics are these: First, they are literally in love with their research work - the day-to-day work itself - not the cause (such as curing a disease), not the "breakthroughs'' or stunning discoveries they might make, not the awards or fame they might receive, not the money they are paid, and not the personal research empire they might build. They think about their work continuously, 24 hours per day, even when they are asleep.

Second, they are specialists. They tend to know a very large amount about a very small part of the physical world. Most research problems are sufficiently difficult that this specialization is required.

Third, they have learned to think quantitatively, and they frequently make a game of quantitative mental calculations. If two or more of them happen to be talking together at a social function, they often may be heard in friendly competition with one another in calculating all sorts of simple things that would not interest other people.

Fourth, they are scrupulously honest about their work. In the words of Richard Feynman, "A scientist's highest obligation is to prove himself wrong.'' This requires active honesty - a refusal to ignore any experimental result and a continual active search for information bearing on his hypotheses, whether positive or negative.

Fifth, most of the true scientists I have known were quite modest individuals. An honest confrontation with the mysteries of the physical world is a humbling experience. Few individuals can experience this confrontation without a marked tempering of their egos as in the case of Isaac Newton, probably the greatest of all scientists, who said:

"I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.''

Occasionally, a scientist will have a special success in his work. Something he has been trying to do will finally yield to his efforts. That thing may be large or small. It may have great significance or little significance. To him, however, in the tiny, special world that he inhabits, it is an occasion to say "eureka.'' As he remembers his life, the few times that this has occurred stand out as special memories.

The small eurekas and the large eurekas are additive and gradually build the body of scientific knowledge. Upon that knowledge stand the formidable engineering accomplishments of modern man.

As I write this, a friend of mine is near death a few miles from here. Over the past three years, Mike and his insurers have paid $450,000 for medical treatments for leukemia. Hospitalized seven times, months on kidney dialysis, 41 blood transfusions, and a river of drugs - some for his illness and some to counteract the side effects of treatment, Mike has undergone a regime of medical procedures that would have killed many healthy men even if they did not have leukemia. Finally, he decided to quit all treatment. Remarkably, as soon as he did this, almost all of the symptoms of his illness disappeared. Still, he is so weak from the disease and medicine that he may not survive. What could have been done to spare him this suffering?

One preventive measure that might have saved Mike is ionizing radiation. Mike lived his entire Me in the Illinois Valley near Cave Junction, Oregon. Natural background radioactivity in this area is quite low. EM&e had lived in a region of the United States with twice as much background radiation, his chances of contracting leukemia would have been reduced by about 50%.

Mike was also in the wrong occupation. Had he been a nuclear worker with a high radiation expose job, his chance of contmcting leukemia might have been reduced by as much as 90%. A high mdon home could have helped, too. Radon is especially effective in prevent- ing lung cancer and is probably of some value in preventing leukemia

"The Evidence for Radiation Hormesis" by T. D. Luckey in 21st Century Science and Technology, available from 2 1 st Century Science Associates, 60 Sycolin Road, Suite 203, Leesburg, VA 20 175, summarizes some of the growing research literature confirming the existence of radiation hormesis, the beneficial health effects of low-level ionizing radiation. Figures 1 to 3 and the Table are adapted from this article.

Nuclear News 39, No. 12, November 1996, pp 39-40, published by the American Nuclear Society, 555 N. Kensington Ave., La Grange Park, IL 60526 reports that four speakers at the 2 1st annual symposium of the Uranium Institute in London in September addressed this issue.

John Graham, immediate past president of the American Nuclear Society, spoke directly on behalf of radiation hormesis as opposed to the now discredited linear no-threshold hypothesis upon which nuclear regulatory policies are based. Morris Rosen, coordinator for environ- mental affairs of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Stan Frost, vice president for environment and safety at Catneco Corpora- tion spoke about the economic damage caused by current regulatory policies that set erroneously low acceptable radiation levels. Roger Clarke, chairman of the International Commission for Radiological Protection, still held to the no-threshold hypothesis, but his arguments were effectively rebutted by Graham.

As is evident in the figures and table, there are strong inverse correlations between radiation exposure and death from leukemia and lung cancer.

The higher the radiation level, the lower the cancer death rate (except,of course, at very high levels). References to the scientific literature for these figures and table are given in the Luckey article. He gives 35 research references to these and other similar results. The leukemia studies were carried out on nuclear workers in the United States and Britain.

The lung cancer work was carried out by Bernard Cohen using radon levels and cancer data from throughout the United States. There is so much of this data now that the existence of radiation hormesis is no longer in doubt. The only question is how long this new knowledge can be ignored by bureaucratic regulators and the popular press. When the public is finally told this truth about low level radia- tion, the entire edifice of fear surrounding atomic energy will collapse.

 

That collapse will also destroy the credibility of much of the pseudoenvironmental movement which, thinking that nuclear power had been successfully destroyed, has gone on to bigger and better myths such as global warming and ozone holes. From myths about nuclear waste disposal to unreasoning fear of nuclear power plants and food irradiation, the work of two generations of antitechnology propagandists is going to die as radiation hormesis re- search data is accepted. It could not happen to more deserving people.

The Montrose Morning Sun, August 21, 1996, p 5, published in Montrose, Colorado, carried the following story written by Marilyn Cox.: "Where are the Hot&kiss boys when we need them?"

"After reading about a mountain lion being sighted so close to Montrose recently, I was reminded of the story about Uriah Hot&kiss and his son George capturing a huge mountain lion near Colona..

"It was February, 19 13. Uriah Hot&kiss, a rancher and sheepman, had heard the day before about a mammoth mountain lion being spot- ted about six miles east of Colona and was determined that he would capture 'the beast' which could be so destructive to stock at that time of year. He started out on horseback, accompanied by his son George and a friend Roy Humphrey with his pack of hunting dogs.

"It was not long before the dogs struck the trail of the lion in the snow and forced him up a tree about 30 feet high. Uriah considered him such a fine specimen that he wanted to capture him alive, so with rope in hand, he climbed the tree after the lion. When Hotchkiss got close to the lion, the animal started down the tree after him. Fortunately, Uriah could slide down the pinion faster than the huge animal. This went on several times, the two 'whipsawing' up and down the tree challenging each other. George Hotchkiss stood off a short distance, Winchester in hand, holding a bead on the lion in case he got the best of his father.

"Finally the lion decided not to waste his strength in trying to catch Uriah by following him down the tree, so he remained at the top. Uriah gradually worked up closer to him until he was within three feet. The lion sat there ready to spring, but Uriah must have charmed him. With just one toss of the rope, Uriah had it around the lion's neck!

"With the two boys on the ground at the other end of the rope, they tried to pull the lion down, but he was too strong for them. They did get him down far enough for Uriah to get around behind him where he managed to grab the lion's tail and twist it. This dislodged him from the tree and landed him on the ground, where he chased the boys around for some time before they were able to get another rope over his head and hogtie him.

"Believe it or not, Uriah threw the lion onto the saddle with his feet over the saddle horn and rode behind him back into Colona. The lion reaped some revenge when he was being untied, as he took a swipe at Uriah and left a nasty gash in his hand." The 200 pound lion was then put on display. No doubt the Hot&kiss boys would be subject to a heavy fine by the envirobureaucrats were they to repeat this exploit today. We would however, greatly enjoy watching the enviros trying to collect.

As the enviros lurch from one doomsday scenario to another, we often lose track of the many fearsome myths that they have created and then abandoned in the past. One of the most infamous was the hydro- carbon fuel crisis of the 1970s. With one voice, academic doomsayers and professional enviros informed the world that it was running out of hydrocarbon fuels. We would all, it seemed, soon freeze in the dark.

One of the delightful companions to that crisis was a series of editorials in  The Wall Street Journal which told the truth about world resrves of hydrocarbons. My favorite of these editorials was entitled "A Thousand Years of Natural Gas."

Now "The Mother Lode of Natural Gas" by R. Monastersky, Science News 150, No. 19, pp 298-299, November 9,1996, reports about reserves of methane hydrates, compounds of methane and water that exist at high pressures and low temperatures deep under the oceans.

It is believed that the methane hydrates are the largest reserve of carbon now known oh earth. Current estimates put this reserve at 10,000 gigatons or 10 tons of carbon, which is double the known reserves of coal, oil, and conventional natuml gas combined.

Meanwhile, "Clinton's Stealth BTU Tax" by Jonathan H. Alder, CEI Update 9, No. 10, pp 1-9, available from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, 1001 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 1250, Washing- ton, DC 20036, reminds us that naturaI resource shortages are actually made in Washington.

Currently, Clinton Undersecretary of State Tim Wirth is negotiating "verifiable and binding" reductions in the use of hydrocarbon fuels to be enforced by international treaty. This is the same Tim Wirth who, in 1988, said, "What we've got to do in energy conservation is to try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy." How much weight do the many research papers showing that global warming is wrong have with this "policy maker?" None at all.

Nor is Wirth's real interest energy conservation, either. As is abundantly clear, the earth's resources of hydrocarbon and nuclear fuels are so great that they can easily sustain all possible human development for many, many centuries and probably for several millennia. Long before the exhaustion of these resources becomes a significant problem, technological developments should provide new sources of energy.

The "energy conservers" like the "DDT banners" and the "environment conservers" have in common one central goal They wish to deliberately lower the human population ofthe earth by whatever form of legal genocide that they have at their disposal.

Meanwhile "What the Starvation Lobby Eschews. . ." by Julian L. Simon in the Wall Street Journal, p A12, November 18,1996 reports that world per capita food production has risen by 50% over the last 45 years and is still trending steadily upward. Simon compares this fact with Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book,  The Population Bomb which warned, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich is still writing this sort of nonsense.

The people killeis are in a quandary There is an essentially unlim- ited supply of energy, the food supply keeps increasing at a rate far faster than population growth, and science and technology provide continuous upgrades in the quality and length of human life. Moreover, population growth is beginning to limit itself as people prefer fewer children when their society becomes more technologically advanced.

The killer's last hope is in outright lies about environmental science within a forced atmosphere of political correctness and media spin. In the midst of this come the technologists to put personal computers in every home which completely shatter the information control neces- sary to propagate these lies. The pseudoenviros are going to lose! The prospects for the future of mankind are bright indeed.

Word has cached Science Nays 150, No,16, p 244, October 19, 1996, that contrary to hopeful predictions by the ozone hole industry, ozone levels over Antarctica in 1996 were higher than in 1995. This is happeningtoo soon. It is politically necessary for the ozone hole (there is, of course, no hole - only a region of reduced ozone concentration that forms in the very cold air over Antarctica in the fall of each year) to keep getting worse until the bans on CFCs have been in place long enough to be credited with the "recovery." If natural fluctuations drift the wrong way too soon, this wonderful charade of pretend global en- gineering will be exposed as sham science.

Meanwhile, tetrafluoromethane, a new candidate for demon of the year as a greenhousegas, tums out to be only half a demon. "Effect of Natural Tetrafluoromethane" by J. Ham&h, R. Borchers, P. Fabian H. W. Gaggeler, and U. Schotterer inNature 384, p32,7 November 1996 mports that about half of theCF4 in the atmosphere has accumulated naturally, probably from radiochemical processes.

Regardless of the facts, however, the ozone pogrom continues apace. A minus 90' C freezer in our laboratory here recently needed repair. The closest repair depot with government approved facilities for handling the "dangerous" special freon involved is in Portland - six hour's drive away. So, we were required to haul the freezer to Portland. Previously, any local retigeration repairman could have done the job.

The classic book on public manias is Extraordinary Poplar Delusions and the Ikdkss ofcrowds by Charles Mackay, originally pub- lished in 1841 and reprinted by Bonanza Books, New York (1980). There always seem to be one or more manias at large, but usually we can avoid individual harm by nonparticipation. Occasionally, however, a popular mania poses a risk even to nonparticipants.

Many manias involve animals. In 1890 it was short-homed cattle; thirty years ago, chinchillas; more recently, Suffolk sheep, then llamas, and now emus. A mania in Dorset sheep has also arisen.

From the famous tulip mania in Holland to the current United States stock market, these fads usually have one common characteristic - the prices being paid for the objects of the mania become discon- nected from the fundamental intrinsic values of the objects. In fact, sometimes the mania itself will actually reduce those intrinsic values.

The special Dorset sheep now selling for thousands of dollars each have been bred for a particular shape that is popular in the show ring. This shape includes a narrow body cavity that so reduces the food processing machinery of the ewes that they cannot raise their lambs successfully in a field of grass. They must be fed high-priced grain.

Stock market prices have now risen so high that the meager earn- ings and dividends of most of these investments no longer justify their prices. Popular opinion holds, however, that this does not matter, since capital gains from rising share prices provide a very handsome return. As long as there is a plentiful supply of greater fools who are willing to pay higher marginal prices, this investing for "capital gains" leads to profits. The capital gains are, unfortunately, artificial, since the earnings of most of the companies whose shares are being traded show that the intrinsic worth of their capital is far below current prices.

The price of a share of stock is set on the margin. Adjusted slightly by the mechanisms of the market, it is the price current buyers are willing to pay for the marginal shares of stock that sellers are willing to sell. Even in a rising market, there are not enough buyers at the marginal price to purchase all of the i.ssued shares. The more shares offered for sale, the lower the marginal price.

While tens of millions of investors regularly compute the value of their ' potiolios' by means of current prices, this value is an illusion. Only a very few of these investors could actually sell their shares for the current marginal price. Therefore, when the mania ends, most in- vestors will receive only a fraction of their calculated "worth." Those who have invested on margin - an increasing group as the mania continues - may receive nothing or even less than nothing and end in owing their broker additional money to close their accounts

A second common characteristic of manias is that, given the volatility and irrationality of crowds, it is almost impossible to predict how large the mania will grow. The higher it goes, the more traumatic and spectacular the fall when the mania ends. In an ordinary market, any decline is softened by the underlying intrinsic values. With these val- ues far below current prices, however, this softening effect is not effective until prices have fallen quite far.

Fear is a stronger emotion than greed, so markets tend to fall much more rapidly than they rise. We have no opinion on how high the stock market will go or how long this current mania will endure. As the ma- nia continues, however, the danger to everyone - investors and noninvestors - from its inevitable end is increasingly great.

• The American Sentinel 589, p5, available from Radio Center, Suite 2E, 3229 South Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28209, reports about one of the people killed as a result of laws banning the hunting of mountain lions. Barbara Schoener was mauled to death by a cougar. Friends and neighbors raised $9,000 to help Mrs. Schoener's two orphaned children while "professional environmentalists" raised $21,000 for the cougar's cubs. Animal worship and human sacrifices have afflicted mankind for thousands of years.
  
  
• The headline in USA Today for November 18,1996 read "Russia Mars Probe Crashes: Plutonium was concern as debris falls in Pacific." The Russian Mars lander carried two small plutonium electric power generators about the size of a 35mm film case with a pencil- eraser sized pellet of plutonium. Each generator produced 6 watts of power. Yet, the alleged "danger" from these batteries rated a headline and was given greater priority in the article than was the unfortunate loss of this space vehicle.
  
  
• "The Nuclear Fleecing of America" by Harold M. Agnew, Science 273, p 1475 (1996), reports that the Clinton Administration bias against nuclear power plants is causing rejection of the option of using a nuclear reactor to produce tritium necessary for maintenance of the nation's nuclear weapons. The reactor would pay for its own construction and operation by sale of the electricity that it would produce. Instead of a reactor, the Administration wants to use a particle accelerator that will require the equivalent of a nuclear reactor just to supply it with power for operation.

• "'Global Warming': A Lysenko-Like Challenge to the World Scientific Community" by Dwight D. Murphey in Conservative Review 7, No. 4, July/August 1996, available from 1307 Dolley Madison Blvd., Room 203, McLean, VA 22 10 1. Lysenko was the Soviet "scientist" whose false theory that an organism passes environmentally- acquired properties genetically to the next generation was endorsed by Stalin because it aided Communist dogma. The forced acceptance of politically correct Lysenkoism set back Soviet research in the biological sciences for generations. The similarity to today's wrong but politically correct theory of global warming is very close.
  
  
• "Life After Television" by George Gilder in the Gilder Technology Report 1, No. 4, p 4, November 1996, available from Monument Mills, P. 0. Box 660, Housatonic, MA 01236. Gilder reports that 42% of American homes now have personal computers and that 1996 will probably be the year that PCs surpass TVs in number of units sold.
  
  
• Crats by William E. Adams published by Old Drum Publishing, Box 401, Portersville, PA 1605 1. This is pure fiction but great entertainment for those who think that "bureaucrat" is a four-letter word.
  
  
• "Scientific Grace Under Pressure" by David M. Kiefer in Today's Chemist at Work, pp 55-60, September 1996, published by the American Chemical Society. This is about the life and trials of Martin D. Kamen on the occasion of his receiving the Enrico Fermi Award in 1996. See alsoAccess to Energy 23, No. 5, pl, January 1996.
  
  
• Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn't Tell You, published by the American Council on Science and Health, 1995 Broadway, Second Floor, New York, NY 10023-5860. With an 8-year decrease in life expectancy per pack per day. cigarette smoking is very foolish.
  
  
• Inventing the AIDS Virus by Peter H. Duesberg from Regnery Publishing, 422 First Street SE, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20003. Regardless of the final verdict on the cause of AIDS, which is still not determined, Duesberg's trials are important reading for anyone who seeks to understand the current illness of big-time tax-financed science.
  
  
• "Translating, Elucidating and Explaining the Mathematics of Newton'sPrincipia" by Alan E. Shapiro,Physics Today, pp 8 l-82, November 1996. This is a review of four books which take different approaches to understanding the work of Isaac Newton and the physi- cal problems that were the subject of Principia Mathematics, the most important scientific publication ever written.