While it is much more enjoyable to write about the extension of technology into new frontiers, it is of even greater importance to preserve the technology that we already possess. This is one of the primary factors that has caused us to work for many years in advocacy of the building of a national civil and strategic defense.

Reasonable estimates suggest that life in the United States after a major nuclear war would be comparable to that in the late 1860s after the War Between the States - in population density, technology, and quality of life. Aside from the tragic loss of life, why should we allow the unscrupulous machinations of politicians, bureaucrats, and their elitist bosses, who have left America without any national strategic and civil defense whatsoever, to permit the destruction of the technology that has already been built by six generations of Americans?

Our unconscionable vulnerability to this threat not only worsens the damage in the event, it increases, through weakness, the probability of disaster, and it raises the probability that Americans can be blackmailed into giving up their national sovereignty and freedom.

There is, however, another danger to our technology that is much closer to our homes and more likely to destroy our way of life.

Yesterday, I attempted to order some rubber boots for my son Noah. He has outgrown his size 15s. The lady in charge of the store explained that the markup would be 35% over wholesale for this special order. With the aid of her calculator, she then informed me that, since wholesale was $43, the price would be $78. When I tried to tell her that she had made a mistake (suggested retail was $60 and 135% of 43 is 58), she became agitated and told me, "What you don't understand is, is that the price is high 'cause you're wanting one pair.'' She had calculated a 35% markup by adding $35 to the price. After more futile discussion, I went to another store to order the boots. (There the salesman was unwilling to attempt to estimate the price at all.) The day earlier, a mother telephoned about the self-teaching aspect of our curriculum. She said that she had graduated from college with a degree in education, but had learned nothing. She found herself unable to help her 10-year-old son with his arithmetic. It was essential that she find a school curriculum requiring no teacher help.

Recently, the chairman of a university chemistry department said to me, "It is much worse than you realize. More than 90% of our students cannot read a book with enough understanding to apply the knowledge in it in even simple ways.'' A few weeks earlier, a famous professor of mathematics at a major university told me that the most pressing educational problem is teaching the students to read.

The campus newspaper at a nearby high school with about 2,000 students recently carried an article in which the principal of ten years listed, as one of his most important accomplishments, the expansion of AP courses at the school to specifically prepare the students for Advanced Placement exams. These are given once each year in May by the College Board. High scores permit students to skip the corresponding college courses. When, however, Noah and his sister Arynne took AP tests at that high school this year, in some subjects they were the only students taking the test. Between the two of them, they took as many exams as all the other 2,000 students combined.

About one-half million American families are now teaching their children at home. Though few of these parents have any training or experience in education and most of the texts they use are at public school grade levels, their children average in the 80th percentiles (see Access to Energy 24, No. 8 p 3) as compared with public school children, who average 50th percentile (by definition). Moreover, black and hispanic home school students are as high as white students, while in public schools these children average in the 20th percentiles.

Public education (tax-financed socialism) has become the most widespread and devastating form of child abuse and racism in the United States. Moreover, people who have been cut off at the knees by public education are so mentally handicapped that they cannot be responsible custodians of the energy technology base or other advanced accomplishments of our civilization. These ignorant people vote, and their votes are beginning to destroy our way of life.

Regarding our Version 2.0 self-teaching home school curriculum, we have been receiving over 50 letters and calls per day primarily from poorly educated parents who desperately want something better for their children - and who hope to learn along with their children.

As global warming propaganda oozes out of government schools (remember the Statue of Liberty drowning in the Atlantic Ocean?) and gushes from "public'' radio, some scientists do have the courage to respond. An example is "Rapid Sea-Level Rise Soon from West Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse?'' by Charles R. Bentley, Science 275, pp 1077-1078 (1997). Ice that is already floating in the ocean or is below sea level with drainage to the ocean cannot, of course, cause the sea level to rise whether it melts or not - as Petr Beckmann explained in Access to Energy years ago. There is, however, ice in Antarctica that is above sea level and is not floating. Known as the West Antarctic ice sheet, it rests on a bed on the Antarctic continent and melts continuously at the bed-ice interface. Current melting, according to Bentley, would be sufficient to raise sea level by 1 millimeter per year (about 4 inches per century) were it not for the fact that snowfall adds about the same amount of water each year to the top of the ice. Therefore, there is no net addition of water to the ocean. Correcting for the ice below sea level and assuming that snowfall remains the same, Ben-tley estimates that this melting would have to increase by about sixfold to cause a rapid rise in sea level.

During the years that Laurelee and I supported ourselves and our work by trading commodities, I sometimes thought about starting a financial newsletter. A possibility was to start two newsletters under different titles. One would predict that the markets would go up, and the other would predict that they would go down. After an appropriate interval, the newsletter that turned out to be wrong could be closed and the other advertised on the basis of its track record.

[While we are on the subject of commodities, I will mention one unethical, probably illegal, and virtually certain-to-succeed method of trading. Simply have a friend at a large brokerage house compile a list of current trades by small, amateur traders who work at occupations other than trading for a living - and then trade the opposite direction from this compilation. This group, averaged together over time, always loses. All large brokerages have this information in their computers, but none would take advantage of it now, would they?] Stanford's Stephen Schneider, who gained fame as a global cooler and now is in the forefront of the global warmers, is well hedged. Green & Gold 7, p3, available from P. O. Box 74416, Lynnwood Ridge, Pretoria, 0040, South Africa, quotes Schneider as warning in Science, July 9, 1971, that we may be close to triggering an ice age. His colleague Lowell Ponte is quoted as writing in 1976, "The cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in poor nations .... if it continues and no strong measures are taken to deal with it, the cooling will cause world famine, world chaos, and probably World War, and this could all come by the year 2000.'' Global warming is faltering, but global cooling may once again become a growth industry.

Figure 1, from Eco-logic pp 1 & 5, March/April 1997, available from P. O. Box 191, Hollow Rock, TN 38342, gives the infrared satellite temperature data for the lower atmospheric troposphere updated to 1997. Eco-logic quotes Robert Balling, Director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University, as saying that the most recent satellite measurements of global temperature are among the most interesting in the 19-year history of the record. These measurements show that January 1997 was the coldest January ever measured by the satellite system. You, of course, did not hear about these measurements on the evening news. Had January 1997 been the warmest month, this would have been reported as a major crisis. Since global temperatures fluctuate up and down as a result of natural processes, there will always be recent data for at least one doomsday scenario.

After half a century of substantial human release of carbon from coal, oil, and natural gas, and a very large increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels (not necessarily cause and effect), the temperature of the atmosphere shows no measurable significant net warming except for the period of time preceding most of the carbon dioxide release.

Figure 2, adapted from their publications, illustrates the close correlation between changes in the surface temperature of the Earth's Northern Hemisphere and variations in the Sun's magnetic activity. (The smooth line is the solar magnetic cycle length. The rough line is the Earth temperature deviation from its mean.) This correlation has been extended to the 11th century by means of measurements of carbon 14 and beryllium 10 in ancient trees and ice cores in comparison with recorded historical events. Increased solar activity is associated with strong magnetic fields that deflect cosmic rays away from the earth and thereby reduce production of these isotopes.

Moreover, Baliunas and Soon and their colleagues and predecessors have made measurements of magnetism and brightness fluctuations of other stars similar to our sun. These measurements show that the sun's fluctuations are not unusual among stars of its type. They conclude that "solar-brightness variations can explain most of the past record of terrestrial global temperature fluctuations.'' So, the sun changes in brightness by about one-half of one percent, and our global "betters'' use this as an excuse to turn our power off.

The pseudoenvironmentalists ask that we make gods of men - notably of themselves as leaders of the new world order. Alas, it is turning out that the sun (and not men) is setting the temperature of the Earth. They are hedged, however, by their insistence that we also worship plants and animals and mother gaia. From there it is only a short step further to worship of the sun god - under their guidance.

The Aztecs worshiped the sun god. One of their religious dogmas required that a stone at the top of their worship pyramid be kept continually wet with human blood as desired by the sun god. Pseudoenvi-ronmental laws and regulations are already killing enough human beings worldwide to supply materials for the maintenance of many such pyramids. (In a required course for chemistry majors at Oregon State University, my son Zachary is "learning'' that the Aztecs and their quaint customs were far superior to present day Americans.)

In 1996, France produced 378.2 TWh(e) of electricity from nuclear power. The only country producing more was the United States, which made 674.8 TWh(e). Others over 100 TWh(e) were Japan at 287.0, Germany at 152.8, and Russia at 108.8.

Russia reports that electricity from nuclear power is costing about one-half of that generated from coal, oil, and natural gas. This is, of course, the reason that the world's rapidly developing economies are enthusiastically installing more nuclear power plants.

American politicians and bureaucrats expect to continue to consume the technological accomplishments of prior generations while not allowing sensible installation of the best new technology. In decades to come, we will then hear even greater calls for trade barriers so that Americans can live in their own internally produced dark age, while the rest of the world moves forward. Already worldwide competition is lowering the real wages of American workers who are overtaxed, over-regulated, and often work with obsolete machinery because needed replacement capital has been seized by government.

Energy is the currency of technological progress. The May 9, 1997 information release by Business Communications Company, 25 Van Zant Street, Norwalk, CT 06855, gives as the projected annual increases in electric power generating capacity during the next decade: North America - 1.1%, Central and South America - 3.6%, Western Europe - 1.9%, Eastern Europe - 1.0%, Middle East - 5.5%, Africa -4.2%, Far East and Oceania - 6.9%. They point out that the United States is strong in energy research and development that it can sell to these markets. The ultimate bottom line, however, is that he who has the electricity can support the industry to do and make things of value.

Finally, word even came to The New York Times - see "Recycling is Garbage'' by John Tierney, The New York Times Magazine, June 30, 1996. Then New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani declared recycling "is not a religion'' (New York Times, July 3, 1996 - "Giuliani Assails Recycling Goals in Law''). He was wrong. A religion is just exactly what the enviros want recycling to be. At that point, it was costing New York City taxpayers $50 million to $100 million annually to recycle 14% of their garbage, not counting household labor.

Now, "Recycling Craze Litters Nation With Failing Programs'' by David Rothbard and Craig Rucker, Citizen Outlook 12, No. 2, pp 1-3, available from CFACT, P. O. Box 65722, Washington, DC 20035 (read also "Our Stolen Future: A Reckless Use of the Precautionary Principle'' by Elizabeth M. Whelan in this same issue), reports that New York's experience has been repeated across the country. City after city and several states with ambitious recycling plans are coming to the conclusion that recycling wastes resources rather than saving them. One estimate puts the U. S. loss at about $4 billion per year.