Many years ago, I was listening to a lecture by a Los Angeles policeman concerning civilian survival on the streets of his city. He advised that now it was best to resist muggers rather than to submit as had been sensible in earlier days. Apparently, muggers were now so capriciously violent that one's chance of survival was greater through immediate resistance rather than cooperation. As the policeman finished making this point, a voice from the side of the room said:

"Besides, not to resist would be dishonorable.''

That voice belonged to Jeff Cooper. Even then, in the late 1970s, most of the audience searched their passive memories for the word "dishonorable'' and realized that it was no longer in their active vocabularies. Yet, their freedom and their way of life were substantially dependent upon this precept. The United States was created, preserved, and protected for 200 years primarily by people who understood clearly and valued greatly the principle of personal "honor.''

"Harassment at VMI'' by John McGinnis in The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 1996, p A18, describes Clinton administration efforts to change the Honor Code of the Virginia Military Institute. For 157 years this code has read in full: "A cadet will neither lie, cheat, steal, nor tolerate those who do.'' Now, the retainers of Bill Clinton, whose sexual misconduct is legendary, demand that VMI dilute its Honor Code with a "discussion of sexual harassment.'' Honor codes are not taught in courses. They are taught by the only means that human beings really learn the most important things in life - they are taught by example. As simple as possible in statement, they must become a way of life. Moreover, just as young military officers must be taught a code of honor, so must young scientists.

When I attended the California Institute of Technology (1959-1963), the Institute honor code was even simpler than VMI's. It said in full: "You will not take unfair advantage of your fellow man.'' That is the text to the best of my memory, since I did not see it in written form, and no course or lecture ever mentioned it. It was taught entirely by the example of the faculty and upperclassmen - and it was very strictly enforced.

A board of students, one elected from each student house and presided over by the vice president of the student body, investigated complaints and determined punishment. This board considered knowledge of a violation without reporting it (designated toleration at VMI) to be as serious as the violation itself. The proceedings were confidential and final. I know of one student who was expelled from Caltech after this board verified that he had pretended to be ill so as to have more time to study for an examination. He did not cheat during the exam. He just took a makeup exam later as result of his "illness.'' I once accidentally lost my slide rule on the campus. Weeks later, I found it in the classroom where I had left it. Theft was unthinkable -it was "dishonorable.'' Nor was this code only for students. One tenured and quite famous Caltech faculty member was stripped of most of his privileges and eventually caused to resign by the weight of faculty opinion as a result of dishonorable conduct, even though he had carefully avoided actions that would violate his contract of tenure.

There have, of course, always been soldiers and scientists whose behavior was often dishonorable. Moreover, there probably has never been a soldier or a scientist who did not, at some time in his life, commit at least one dishonorable act. With, however, the principle of personal honor pervasive among one's peers and dishonorable conduct not tolerated by those peers, such actions are rare and usually quickly corrected and punished when they do occur.

Readers of Access to Energy often write that they appreciate the "ammunition'' that it provides them for argument against the ozone and global warming frauds and other dishonest misuses of science that have become so pervasive in our body politic. Such ammunition is useful, but the greater need is for peer pressure against dishonorable conduct - against those who engage in it and those who tolerate it.

Global Warmers Wirth and Schneider, Nuclear Winter Sagan, Resource Depletion Ehrlich, Radiation Demonizer Pauling, the Ozone Depletion Trio, and the gaggles of Chemical Haters and Innovation Repressors at the EPA and FDA have a characteristic in common -they have practiced dishonest and, therefore, dishonorable science.

The greater problem, however, is that their lies and distortions are tolerated by their peers.. By this, I do not mean that they should be prevented from writing or speaking. Free expression is an absolutely essential part of freedom and must not be abridged.

I mean that their dishonorable conduct in self-serving exaggeration and in outright lies about the truths of science should be immediately met with outrage by their peers. The scientific community should not tolerate dishonesty. It should respond vigorously and, by peer pressure, reduce the effects and frequency of fraudulent science.

Unfortunately, during the past 40 years, the American scientific community has gradually lost its intoleration of dishonorable scientific conduct. Where this intoleration remains, it is primarily found among scientists in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s in age.

Personal pragmatism has replaced honor among scientists, especially with the hammers of government funding hanging over the heads of most academic scientists and government regulation over the heads of most industrial scientists. Pragmatism says "get along by going along'' and "do not speak up against fraud when such speech can be avoided.'' The second part of the honor codes of VMI and Caltech are being violated by most scientists. They are tolerating dishonorable conduct. Were this not so, the chorus of voices raised in opposition to the frauds mentioned above would completely cancel the effect of those frauds upon our political process, and peer pressure against such frauds would markedly reduce their frequency.

Science is the study of natural truth. It progresses by a rigorous process of experiments, ideas, hypotheses, and theories. There is room within this process for almost any thoughts and trials. As a trustworthy discipline, science can serve as an anchor of rationality for the great benefit of our civilization. It cannot serve this purpose, however, if dishonorable conduct is common and tolerated within it.

This dishonorable conduct is the greatest problem in science today. It must be eliminated by example - by honorable acts of intoleration by greater numbers of our scientists and scientific institutions.

As even young grade school children know, thanks to the propaganda organs of the National Education Association and its retainers, the greatest environmental worry on planet Earth today is that the human release of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases'' is warming the atmosphere. This "global warming'' is depicted as so potentially catastrophic that the Clinton Administration is on the verge of participation in international treaties to sharply reduce the use of hydrocarbon fuels which release carbon dioxide when burned. The propagandists use "is warming'' rather than "may be warming,'' since they claim that a consensus of world scientists agrees that this is so and that, even if there is doubt, the terrible consequences of global warming morally justify error on the side of certainty.

Whatever the consequences of the hypothetical construct called "global warming'' may be, it is clear that the consequences of political acceptance of this construct are likely to be dire indeed. Loss of hydrocarbon fuel use, especially in economically poorer regions, will cause enormous losses of human life and increases in human suffering. Even in well-developed countries, resulting dislocations will be severe.

Unfortunately, global warming has a powerful political constituency. Never before has there been such a colorably "well-intentioned reason'' for the extension of global political tyranny. World government, national governments, and the politicians and bureaucrats who control them will have an opportunity to tighten a vise-like grip around all citizens in order to enforce the proposed draconian hydrocarbon controls. This is not freon and ozone. Loss of refrigeration is bad, but loss of access to energy is much worse.

A similar scam was tried once before in the form of alleged "looming shortages of hydrocarbons and the energy crisis,'' but plentiful, undiminishing supplies of hydrocarbons spoiled the game. Global warming is different because it alleges a future catastrophe that is more difficult for untrained individuals to understand Some people who are in the business of "science'' have been quick to realize that the politicians and bureaucrats who are gaining power and wealth from this scare are willing to pay almost any price to increase the scientific credibility of "global warming.'' Essentially unlimited cash in the form of tax-financed research grants, expense-paid trips to world conferences, notoriety in the public media, and appointments to perk-enhanced positions are easy to obtain by simply adding one's dishonorable voice to the "correct'' side of this issue.

The public is, however, becoming a little surly at the prospect of losing its hydrocarbons, so a game called "detection of the first signs of global warming'' has become popular. As chronicled in many past issues of Access to Energy , this game is consistently being lost by the global warmers. Their response has been to simply declare themselves winners anyway. An international cacophony of "it is'' - "no, it isn't'' - "it is'' - "no, it isn't'' with accompanying name-calling is about all that leaks through to the man on the street.

Has modern science really lost the ability to measure temperature and agree upon the results? No. The problem is that, as every child also knows, temperatures fluctuate. So, when they go up, the global warmers cheer, and when they go down, they change the subject to mythical "ozone holes'' and other "concerns.'' The absurdity of all of this is well illustrated by Figure 1 which is adapted from "The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea'' by Lloyd D. Keigwin, Science 274, pp 1504-1508, 29 November (1996).

It turns out that there is an isotope effect whereby cold-blooded organisms incorporate different amounts of the stable isotope oxygen 18 into their tissues as a function of the temperature of their environment. By measuring oxygen 18 in the remains of tiny marine organisms (living on the surface and sinking to the bottom when they die) in the sediment of a rise in the Sargasso Sea (a region in the Atlantic Ocean) and dating the sediment by means of carbon 14, the graph in Figure 1 of temperature vs. time over the last 3,000 years was constructed. The sedimentary cores represented in Figure 1 were about 20 inches long -7 inches per 1,000 years.

(Carbon 14 is continually produced by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere, but it is unstable and decays with a half-life of 5,700 years. The exact amount relative to carbon 12 in the atmosphere as a function of time during recent millennia can be checked by reference to tree rings in very old trees and by other means. Therefore, the carbon 14 vs. carbon 12 ratio can be used to determine the time during which dead organisms in samples of unknown age were alive.) There is an effect of changing salinity on oxygen 18 values which reduces the variability shown in Figure 1, but it is also known from direct measurements that sea surface temperatures at this location vary less than the average of other locations. To a first approximation, these two opposite effects may be assumed to cancel. This is also verified by comparison of these measured temperatures with comparable tree-ring, glacier, and other studies at different locations, which confirm the shape and magnitude of the graph (see Keigwin paper for references).

In Figure 1, the direct temperature measurements since 1954 are also plotted as highlighted by the arrow labeled "Station 'S'.'' Note the gradual rise during the past three centuries as the temperature fluctuated back from the lows of "The Little Ice Age.'' The warmer period during the Middle Ages about 1,000 years ago when global climate was milder and more ideal than today is also evident. The range during the past 40 years provides a measure of short term variability, while the overall graph shows long term averages during the last three millennia.

Is the planet warming up? Yes. It is currently in an upward fluctuation from an unusually cold period with today's temperatures still substantially colder than the median of the last 3,000 years. Further perspective on the "global warming'' debate is provided by the fact that the global warmers are currently spending oodles of your tax dollars claiming (without good reason) that they may have detected a dangerous man-made increase in temperature of about 0.2 °C. This is about 5% of the natural fluctuation during the past 3 millennia. Clearly, this claim is ridiculous. Moreover, their current scenarios for future temperature levels without emission controls are within the range in Figure 1 (see Access to Energy 24, No 2, p 3 (1996)).

Among his many many accomplishments, Thomas Jefferson was one of America's early scientists and engineers. Visitors to his home today can view many of his inventions and one of his errors - a clock that was not correctly designed. Jefferson had to cut a hole in the floor to permit its function. Especially interesting is his copying machine which consists of mechanically-linked quill pens that created a duplicate while he was writing.

His greatest accomplishments were, of course, as principal author of the Declaration of Independence and as one of the prime movers behind the establishment of American liberty. His epitaph, which he wrote himself, emphasizes the attainments that he held highest. It does not mention that he was twice President of the United States. Perhaps he thought we would remember (or maybe he anticipated the possibility of William Jefferson Clinton).

A famous story is of a dinner for Nobel Prize winners that President Kennedy held at the White House. Kennedy is said to have remarked to the assembled guests that there had not been so much intellect in that room since Thomas Jefferson dined there alone.

Like hundreds of millions of other people in many nations, I greatly admire the legacy of Thomas Jefferson. A visit to the Jefferson Memorial including its engraved passages from some of his greatest writings is inspiring indeed. He doubtless had many faults and failures and made many mistakes, but his special contributions have enriched us all.

(Ten years ago, while looking up Isaac Newton in the rare books section of the Library of Congress, I came upon the only book Newton wrote about the Bible - a study of the Prophecies of Daniel and John. A few minutes after asking to see it, I was handed Thomas Jefferson's personal copy. It still bears his initials. Jefferson sold his books to Congress to pay his debts. These books were the beginning of the Library of Congress. Later, I obtained a microfilm of the book, and we published an exact facsimile of Jefferson's copy. Still in print today, this has been a very popular publication.) Now, I have read how terribly wrong have been my impressions. We may need to go through our entire inventory of books crossing out Jefferson's initials. Written by one Conor Cruise O'Brien, illustrated by Ben Verkaaik, and published by The Atlantic Monthly, October 1996, pp 53-74 is the article "Thomas Jefferson: Radical and Racist'' with the subheading, "In the multiracial American future Jefferson will not be thought of as the Sage of Monticello. His flaws are beyond redemption. The sound you hear is the crashing of a reputation.'' The National Review , April 22, 1996, pp 29-32 and November 25, 1996, pp 67-69, has joined this pogrom with "Liberalism and Terror'' by Conor Cruise O'Brien and "Doubting Thomas'' by Forest McDonald.

Jefferson's flaws? Well, of course, he kept slaves as did George Washington. Both men disliked slavery, sought to end it, and suffered financially from neglecting their slave-owning duties while in public service. This is not, however, O'Brien's primary complaint. His main argument is that Jefferson disliked slavery - all slavery, too much, and was too vigorous and uncompromising in his advocacy of human freedom. Moreover (and this is especially remarkable in view of the difficulties Jefferson endured as a result of his efforts to interpret the Bible himself rather than accepting the precepts of organized religion), O'Brien tells us that Jefferson was too religious.

In a double shot, O'Brien tries simultaneously to dilute Jefferson's contribution to the Declaration of Independence and discredit him as a religious fanatic by pointing to changes others on the committee made in his original text. His prime example is Benjamin Franklin's phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident'' which replaced Jefferson's original, "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.''

O'Brien could better have used Jefferson's statement, "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.''

O'Brien admits that Abraham Lincoln quoted extensively from Jef-ferson, but warns that Confederate leaders did also and that Jefferson has even been quoted by the Klu Klux Klan. He is especially disturbedthat "Thomas Jefferson approved keeping the spirit of armed rebellion alive in America and elsewhere - 'refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants'.'' Thus, O'Brien claims, Jefferson serves as justification for every patriot and pseudopatriot regardless of whether or not O'Brien approves their cause. He notes that domestic terrorists have quoted Jefferson, so apparently Jefferson should share the blame for any actions that they take.

McDonald is even more vituperative. He describes Jefferson as a devious, wily, deceptive paranoid filled with "bloodlust.'' He states that "the twentieth-century statesman he [Jefferson] 'would have admired most is Pol Pot.''' Pol Pot brutally murdered a large percentage of the helpless civilian population of Cambodia.

Under this vicious rhetoric, it is evident that the essence of their attack is that Jefferson was the most articulate and effective intellectual spokesman for individual human freedom as a cause worth dying for that America has ever produced. O'Brien, McDonald (whose is brought to us courtesy of the University of Alabama where he is a professor), The Atlantic Monthly, and National Review believe that the time for such thoughts has passed and that Jefferson is, therefore, a dangerous anachronism.

I agree with O'Brien and McDonald that the words of Thomas Jef-ferson are dangerous. They are dangerous to those who would turn the United States and perhaps the whole world into one giant plantation wherein all people, except for a privileged few, are perpetual economic, social, and (where they resist) physical slaves. Thomas Jeffer-son is dangerous to C. C. O'Brien and F. McDonald, and to The Atlantic Monthly and National Review - not to you and me.

 

"The Health Effects of Low-Level Radiation'' by Myron Polly-cove, Health & Environment Digest 10, No. 7, pp 52 -54, November (1996), available from the Freshwater Foundation, 2500 Shadywood Road, Excelsior, MN 55331, is an excellent summary of some of the best experiments showing that ionizing radiation, in low to moderate doses, increases human health. These have been described in previous issues of Access to Energy except for "Mortality from Breast Cancer after Irradiation during Fluoroscopic Examination in Patients Being Treated for Tuberculosis, A. B. Miller, et al, New England Journal of Medicine 321, pp 1285-1289 (1989). In this study, breast cancer deaths decreased by 40% in women who received about 0.15 Gy of radiation. At about 0.35 Gy, the death rate was the same as for women who were not irradiated. Above 0.35 Gy, the death rate gradually increased to a level of about twice the nonirradiated group at 1.75 Gy.

Pollycove summarizes the molecular biological discoveries (appropriate literature references are in his article) that permit us to understand why radiation improves health as follows:

1. "The very high background of intrinsic potential mutations (240,000/cell/day) produced by reactive oxygen metabolytes (ROM: free radicals and H 2O2) and thermal instability compared to 20 potential mutations produced predominately by the free radicals generated by 1 r of low linear energy transfer (LET) radiation. By comparison, the average background radiation in the U.S., including radon, is approximately one-third r. In addition, by fundamental limitations on the accuracy of DNA replication and repair, every single gene is likely to undergo 400,000 unrepaired mutations per day in each person.''

2. "The presence of an active DNA damage control biosystem that, until declining with age, effectively prevents, repairs and removes intrinsic and environmental mutations.''

3. "The activity of the DNA damage control biosystem is decreased by high dose (e.g., at or above 100r), high-dose-rate (at or above 20r per m) radiation, but adaptively responds with increased activity to low dose (e.g., at or below 20r), low-dose-rate (e.g., at or below 1r per m) radiation as well as low-dose toxic chemical agents.''

In other words, the ordinary chemical deterioration and rebuilding of cellular genetic material in living things is so great in magnitude that deterioration from low doses of radiation does not contribute significantly to the destruction and replacement that is an essential function of life. Low doses of radiation and toxic chemicals do, however, stimulate the ordinary repair mechanisms to work harder. The net result is that these repair systems do a better job of correcting ordinary natural biochemical deterioration, so health is better rather than poorer as a result of low exposures to radiation and toxic chemicals.

(For a chemical example, Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Newsletter, July 1994, available from 1601 N. Tucson Blvd., Suite 9, Tucson, AZ 85716, and Second Opinion, December 1996, available from 7100 Peachtree-Dunwoody Road, Suite 100, Atlanta, GA 30328, both report a study by William Hazeltine, Lancet II (7161): 4-6, July 1969, showing increased health in Beagle dogs that were given 10 parts per million DDT in their diets.) These explanations will be refined by future research and may even prove to be incorrect. This cannot, however, change the experimental findings that disease incidence is lower and health is better in people exposed to moderately increased amounts of ionizing radiation.

The natural intrinsic mutation rate is so high that we need extensive biochemical machinery to cope with it. That machinery works better in the presence of low-level damage from extrinsic factors, so such damage improves our health.

This is not just a new scientific curiosity. It is going to cause a virtual revolution in environmental politics, since it means that the vast enviro apparatus constructed to prevent low levels of exposure to radiation and other such factors has actually been diminishing rather than improving health. It is so politically incorrect that, so far, the news media have completely ignored it, but the truth cannot be ignored forever.

Those who want to reverse public fear of nuclear power should be actively advertising this effect rather than trying to hide under the en-viro lie of global warming. Global warming will eventually die because it is a false construct, but no one can cause radiation hormesis (the beneficial effects of low level radiation) to die because it is an experimentally demonstrated, naturally occurring biochemical truth.

• The DeWeese Report 2, No. 11, p 5, November (1996), available from 13873 Park Center Road, Suite 316, Herndon, VA 22071, reports that People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals has called onFishkill, New York to change its name to "Fishsave.'' Fishkill is a 300 year old Dutch town. In Dutch, its name means "channel or creek.''
  
  
• The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 1996, p A20 reports that, regardless of a July Federal Court order to do so, the Department of Energy has notified the owners of American nuclear power plants that it will not be able to meet its obligation to provide nuclear waste storage in 1998. Nuclear utilities have paid $12 billion into a federal fund for nuclear waste storage.
  
  Kris Sanda, commissioner of Minnesota's Public Service Department and spokesman for 73 nuclear plants in 34 states is quoted as saying, "It's outrageous that DOE can build a central nuclear waste storage facility in Russia by 1998 but not in the U.S.''
  
  
• "MTV Math Doesn't Add Up'' by Marianne M. Jennings, director of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at Arizona State University, in The Wall Street Journal, December 17, 1996, p A22, relates her experiences after learning that her straight-A daughter could not compute 10% of 470 or convert one-fourth to 25% in an algebra problem. Some highlights: Her "Addison-Wesley text, Secondary Math: An Integrated Approach: Focus on Algebra, has color photos, essays on the Dogon tribe of Africa, and questions such as 'What role should zoos play in today's society?' There's Maya Angelou poetry, pictures of Bill Clinton and little insights from Tabuk and Esteban (youngsters chosen to enlighten students about cultural differences in the ever-fluid concept of slope). The book, with its busy pages and journey through environmentalism, is an 800-page pedagogical nightmare.'' Based on new National Standards, the students are supposed to gain a "conceptual understanding'' of math without outmoded ideas like problems and practice. Group work is emphasized with students who do not know math and do not practice it trying to teach each other.
  
  When she asked school officials why the students were not required to practice simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, they labeled her as a member of the "extreme Christian right.'' Her daughter explained that she had been taught "that people who demand learning as a part of education are 'religious zealots'.''
  
  
• "It's a Wonderful Life,'' an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, p A16, December 20, 1996, relates the plight of Wiley Berggren, manager of a 7-Eleven store in Odessa, Texas who successfully captured a thief in the act of running away with the store's merchandise. Mr. Berggren was fired for violating 7-Eleven's national policy that no employee shall make any effort to thwart a criminal. (See the Jeff Cooper quote on page 1.) It is likely that 7-Eleven does not fear criminals; but it does fear lawyers. (See again the Jeff Cooper quote.) This reminds me of the story circulating some years ago that in Oakland crime had become so prevalent that it was considered entrapment to open a 7-Eleven store. (See yet again the . . . . . . . )

• Facts Not Fear - A Parent's Guide to Teaching Children About the Environment by Michael Sanera and Jane S. Shaw is an excellent 300-page book published by Regnery Publishing, Inc., Washington, DC (1996). With a wealth of information and many excellent comparisons, this book is good reading for adults, with or without children, and a great gift for children and grandchildren.
  
  
• "Recycling - Boon or Bust'' in The Torch 5, Number 8, pp 1-8, December 1996, available from 5535 E. Rosewood St., Tucson, AZ 85711. Recycling has always been a part of industrial procedures when it was economically sensible, but the enviro-induced recycling mania of recent years is just interactive propaganda. This article shows that it has also become a great waste of resources. Especially interesting is the explanation of why paper recycling actually harms forests by making good forest management practices uneconomical.
  
  
• Conservative Environmentalism - Reassessing the Means, Redefining the Ends by James R. Dunn and John E. Kinney published by Quorum Books, Westport, Connecticut (1996). This is a serious, well-documented, and well-referenced book demonstrating that free-enterprise and technology generally enhance the environment and improve human life, while government environmental controls and regulations usually harm the environment and degrade human life.
  
  
• "The Normal Population that Tried to Deny Itself or a Modern Case Fable of the Foibles of Making 58.3% Better than the Other Half'' by Carl Olson in The Journal of Irreproducible Results 24, No. 4, pp 24-27 (1978), is a hilarious description of those who try to defeat the distribution function of human conditions by means of government fiats. J. Irrep. Results 41, No. 6, pp 25-26 (1996), also reprinted the Access to Energy 23, No. 8 (1996) editorial "Sweet and Dangerous.'
  
  
• "Looking for Results,'' an interview with Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase on rights, resources, and regulation by Thomas W. Hazlett in Reason 28, No. 8, pp 40-46, January 1997, available from 3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 90034-6064.
  
  
• Environmentalism Gone Berserk by Mike Oliver. Mr. Oliver has been working on this interesting book for several years. If it is not yet published, he may be willing to provide a draft copy. Write to Mike Oliver, P.O. Box 485, 504 Mary Street, Carson City, NV 89703.
  

• "The trick is to be so skilled at work that it becomes play - Self-Motivation for the Study of Science'' by Arthur B. Robinson in Practical Homeschooling, November/December 1996, pp 44-45, available from P. O. Box 1250, Fenton, MO 63026-1850.