Vol. 24, No. 11 - Access to Energy Newsletter

Many years ago, when sex education was first being introduced into the socialized schools, there was a joke going around to the effect that this might help reduce the rate of population increase. If the government taught these classes with the same effectiveness that it taught other subjects, the students would be unable to reproduce.

Well, the birth rate in America is now below replacement rate, but we hesitate to attribute this to tax-financed education. School-based destruction of the beauty of sexual awakening within marriage has helped to weaken American families and has contributed substantially to the soaring rate of sexually transmitted diseases - both tending to reduce births. On the other hand, non-family births have greatly increased, so sex-ed may have accomplished nothing more than a diminution of American moral standards and quality of life.

The unabashed and rapid expansion of government financial interests in the promotion of general vice, however, has been astonishing indeed. We are wondering when mobsters will start publishing newsletters complaining about socialism and the destruction of free enterprise in their chosen fields of expertise.

Throughout America until quite recently the citizenry was "protected'' by strict laws against gambling - a vice that our government betters told us was destructive of individual, family, and societal moral fiber. (Gambling was also engaged in occasionally and without great ill effects by a large percentage of our most conservative citizens.) Now, of course, government is in the gambling business.

Not content with their take from taxes on horse track betting and Nevada casinos and their occasional sanctimonious raids on unapproved bingo games, our governments have plunged enthusiastically into the lottery business and encouraged proliferation of casinos throughout the land - casinos that pay large sums of protection money to government. Who among us has not experienced an uplifting sense of pride as he waits in line at the grocery store behind a strong, able-bodied American who first pays for his groceries with food stamps and then buys his daily allotment of lottery tickets with cash?

This is, of course, understandable. Those who work hard are fined by high taxes, which are needed to pay rewards to those who prefer not to work. Idleness, however, creates boredom. So, government bureaucrats come to the rescue with unemployment forms and lottery tickets to help fill the empty moments between TV commercials.

Government involvement in the gambling industry pales, however, in comparison with the new partnership it is now forging with the cigarette industry. The epidemiological science here has been well-established since the 1960s. Each pack of cigarettes habitually smoked per day diminishes life expectancy about 8 years. A two-pack-per-day smoker can expect to live, on average, 16 fewer years than a nonsmoker. The biochemistry of this phenomenon is still not completely understood, but the effect is unequivocal. Smokers age more rapidly and die sooner from the degenerative diseases of aging. Increased probability of lung cancer is only one of the ill effects.

Outlawing cigarette smoking is held to be an unacceptable encroachment upon human freedom. I agree. In any case, attempted prohibition of alcohol taught our government a memorable lesson about the futility of laws against a widely popular vice. This does not mean that government should be in the cigarette business.

The long-standing hypocrisy of tax-financed agricultural subsidies to tobacco growers was bad enough. This was offset, we were told, by heavy taxes on cigarettes, which were justified as "discouraging consumption.'' Now, as ably exposed in "A Tobacco Settlement'' in The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 1997, p A14, the actual nature of the partnership between government and tobacco is more apparent.

The laws of economics being beyond government control, it had become clear that further large increases in cigarette taxes really would reduce consumption, to the detriment of both the tobacco companies and the tax collectors. Moreover, class action lawyers were beginning to horn in on the entire enterprise. (I do not intend to express support for lawsuits brought by people who knowingly harm themselves, but that is another issue.) This has threatened to split the take from the cigarette businesses with an additional mob.

Therefore, for the past year or so we have been treated to the softening-up phase of a new protection racket. First, the Clinton Administration threatened tobacco companies with draconian controls that would be damaging to their businesses. Second, government courts permitted more progress in gigantic class action lawsuits against tobacco companies. There were white hats for everyone - the Food and Drug bureaucrats, the politicians, the courts, the lawyers, and the press - all of whom claimed the high ground against the evil, black-hatted cigarette producers. Now that the marks (partners) have been sufficiently softened up, we are seeing the protection "deal.'' Tobacco companies are agreeing to pay a substantial share of their profits (hundreds of billions of dollars over future years) to government bureaucrats and politicians in return for guarantees that they will not be mugged by class action suits in government courts or by business-destroying government regulations. Class action suits and punitive damages will be prohibited in cigarette litigation but will be permitted for other products, including medicines and toys.

In essence, the government is going into the cigarette business. A transparent veil of justification has been manufactured by claiming that governments need this money to pay for the increased costs of illness due to cigarette smoking. As The Wall Street Journal points out, however, tobacco-related deaths probably cost less, not more. Everyone suffers one terminal disease. Tobacco users tend to die sooner and more quickly with fewer overall medical expenditures and also less burden to the old-age pension systems.

How do the stockholders of cigarette companies feel about shared "ownership'' with government? Well, in response to the expected deal, stock prices of cigarette companies have sharply increased.

As the endless struggle between freedom and tyranny - free enterprise and socialism - continues, it is disconcerting to notice the businesses that our governments have chosen to enter in their pursuit of "the public welfare'' - alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and protection. Perhaps prostitution will be next - after a few more years of preparatory work in sex-ed classes and school-based "health'' clinics.

In his June 14 presentation to the San Diego conference (audio tapes available from DDP, 2509 N. Campbell Ave. #272, Tucson, AZ 85719 - telephone (520) 325-2680), Professor S. S. Penner quantitatively summarized the known sources of energy available for human use during the coming centuries and the amount of energy he expects to be required during the 21st century. (See also Energy, Vol 1: Demands, Resources, Impact, Technology, and Policy, S. S. Penner and L. Icerman, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1981.) Dr. Penner gives 1995 commercial worldwide energy use as 4 x 10²⁷ ergs/year and stabilized demand in the next century, assuming a world population of 10 billion, as 2 x 10²⁸ ergs/year - a fivefold increase over 1995.

Normalizing, therefore, to a worldwide human requirement for 2 x 10²⁸ ergs/year and assuming all of the world's energy is produced from the single tabulated source (for simplicity - he does not predict this), his estimates of nonrenewable known reserves (worldwide except where noted) for energy production can be given as: 1. Deuterium fusion - 5 billion years 2. Breeder reactors (including thorium and U-233) - 20,000 years 3. Coal, oil (including shale and tar), and natural gas - 1,000 years 4. Water-moderated uranium fission reactors - 100 years 5. Fusion from Lithium 6 - 100 years 6. United States coal, oil, and natural gas - 50 years 7. Hydrothermal to 6 miles depth (partially renewable) - 20 years 8. United States water-moderated uranium fission - 10 years 9. Hydrothermal to 2 miles depth - 4 years For renewable energy sources, his estimates expressed as excess of available energy over 2 x 10²⁸ ergs/year can be given as: 1. Solar at the boundary of the earth's atmosphere - 2,500 fold 2. Wind energy - 1,000 fold 3. Geothermal (flow of heat from earth's core) - 0.4 fold 4. Hydroelectric - 0.05 fold 5. Tidal energy - 0.05 fold The amount of energy from each source that will actually be used depends, of course, upon marginal cost and place utility, measures of the values of the specific cost and location of each increment of energy. These sorts of considerations lead to the conclusion that energy in the 21st century will be generated from a mixture of sources.

Obviously, energy from nuclear fusion and energy from solar radiation (directly or indirectly) are appealing from the point of view of essentially limitless supply. This appeal is, however, only a theoretical advantage until they can be supplied at economically competitive prices. An age of low-cost energy from fusion for large industrial needs and solar panels on the roofs of homes for personal requirements may be just ahead or it may lie in the distant future, depending upon the speed with which the relevant technological problems are solved. The free market, if it is allowed to operate, will take care of this.

In the meantime, these estimates are reason for great optimism with regard to the centuries immediately ahead. Coal, oil, and natural gas technologies are well-developed, and hydrocarbon fuels are clearly abundant in supply. There is adequate fuel for fission reactors for the near future, which gives plenty of time to bring in breeder reactors before uranium supplies are limiting.

Overall, it is obvious from these numbers that the human race has an abundance of available energy from a great variety of sources, which will last far into the distant future. After that, new energy sources will be available. Energy is the currency of technological progress, and we have all that we will need for the relevant future.

This is, of course, the root cause of current political maneuvers. During the 1970s, the antitechnology population controllers attempted to convince uninformed people that there was an "energy crisis'' and that industialization and energy use should be curtailed to save the rapidly dwindling supplies. This campaign was made possible by temporary, politically caused dislocations in petroleum supplies.

During the "energy crisis,'' the usual collection of enviros, academics, and trust-and-parrot media outlets wailed the baleful message that mankind had created his own end by profligately wasting the precious reserves of Planet Earth. Free-market forces spoiled their party, however, as energy prices dropped and their constituents in the public gradually became aware that the "crisis'' had passed.

The reserves listed above are not, of course, all immediately available at a low price. It is unlikely that humans will ever extract all of the solar energy colliding with the earth, fuse every last deuterium atom in the oceans, or extract even the most inaccessible hydrocarbon reserves. (The reservoir of known reserves continues to rise, and hydrocarbons can also be synthesized using energy from other sources.) In any case, fission and breeder reactor technology is already with us as is hydrocarbon technology. Moreover, on these time scales, it is clear that solar energy can be captured when needed. Should humans begin to exhaust their nuclear and hydrocarbon reserves, higher energy prices would turn on solar sources such as the burning of renewable biomass and the use of solar collectors.

Energy needs for the projected 10 billion people can obviously be met. To help visualize this number of people, consider that 10 billion is one person per 700 square feet of Texas or, divided into families of four, a 2,800 square foot, two-story home for each family - if the homes covered half of the surface area of Texas and housed all 10 billion people. Alternatively, each four-person family could occupy a 3,200 square foot, two-story home with those homes covering five percent of the area of the United States or one house per 1.5 acres. If they were housed in cities, the United States alone could accommodate all 10 billion people with less than one percent of its land devoted to housing and much of the rest devoted to very high intensity agriculture.

One acre of Iowa farm land currently produces enough grain to feed about 15 urban adults, while a typical acre of Great Plains wheat land provides for about 5 such adults. If 10 adults are fed per acre, then devoting one percent of the United States to housing and half of the remaining land to agriculture would accommodate 10 billion people.

The United States covers 6% of the land on the earth, so spreading these 10 billion people out over earth and allowing them all to live as families of four in suburban 3,200 square foot two-story homes requires 0.3% of the land for housing and 3% for intensive agriculture (or about 15% if half of their food is grain and the other half beef). This is one family of four and one luxurious home per 13 acres.

Now, of course, not all 13-acre plots are as lush and livable as those in Southern Oregon, so, setting aside 60% of the earth as wilderness, each family still gets 5 acres - the generally preferred amount for rural retired families in Southern Oregon. Moreover, the natural beauty of the earth is increasing rapidly as coal, oil, and natural gas are turned into plants and animals through carbon release as carbon dioxide. Even at current release rates (an order of magnitude below those required to exhaust world hydrocarbon supplies in 1,000 years), it is estimated that the plant and animal populations of the earth will double during the next century (see Access to Energy, 21, No. 3, pp 2-3 (1993)). Bruce Kimball's presentation in San Diego showed the enormous impact that rising carbon dioxide levels will have upon the productivity of agricultural crops alone.

The 10 billion people of the 21st century could have essentially unlimited energy, a vast, increasingly beautiful planet upon which to live, and the technology to make their lives wonderful indeed - with no resource or technology limitations on the bequest of these blessings to their descendants for centuries and millennia in the future.

History teaches, however, that the political machinations of human governments often cause terrible deprivations and suffering for great numbers of people regardless of circumstances. Fortunately, with many sovereign nation states, it is unlikely that all will err at once. This is one compelling reason to oppose world government.

As an ignorant, self-serving elite continues to immobilize Ameri-cans in a tar baby composed of antinuclear, global warming, antitech-nology, antiscience, antidefense, and prosocialist myths, other nations are adopting and extending our technology for the betterment of their people. In "Senators Warn Global-Warming Pact Is At Risk if Developing Nations Don't Act,'' The Wall Street Journal, p A20, June 20 (1997), it is reported that Timothy Wirth, the Clinton Administration undersecretary of state for global affairs, was questioned about plans to limit hydrocarbon use in the United States while projections of Asian economies do not include restrictions and predict far more total use than the United States. His reply? Wirth said that China eventually would decide that such controls would be in its self interest to help curb rising sea levels and rising temperatures that dry up farm land.

Since there is not a shred of credible scientific evidence that human hydrocarbon use will lead to significantly increased sea levels or dried up farm land, this is nonsense. China's primary national interest in the Global-Warming Pact is in the severe crippling effect that it would have upon the economic productivity of China's competitors. If the Clinton-Gore-Wirth sleaze trio manages to cut Americans off at the knees with this treaty, it is the American people who will suffer while Asian people thrive.

With the rapid decay in moral values in our society, it is not surprising that this has spread to science. The advent of big-time, tax-financed science during the past 50 years has served to sharply accelerate this trend by filling the ranks of "scientists'' with legions of people whose abilities and ethical standards are not compatible with this subject.

Consider Richard Feynman's statement that "a scientist's highest obligation is to prove himself wrong'' against the backdrop of tax-financed schools and universities in which cheating, lying, stealing and generally immoral behavior are practiced by a large proportion of the students and faculty. We have descended so far that polls show that a majority of those who voted for the current President of the United States and approve of his performance do not believe that he is an honest man.

Still, raw dishonesty in the reporting of scientific results is shocking. It is important not to lose our individual moral sense of outrage at this sort of behavior.

My first experience with this was in 1979 when Linus Pauling attempted to publish, under his own name,

Figure 1 research that I had carried out. Linus wanted to advertise the finding that very large doses of Vitamin C (near lethal) decreased the rate of growth of cancer in mice, but he did not want to report that the same experiments showed that Vitamin C at ordinary doses increased the rate of cancer growth. So, he plotted the data with a distorted horizontal axis that pushed the offending points so close to the origin that the reader would not notice them.

When this was revealed, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences rejected his paper (although he managed to publish part of it later in the proceedings of an unrefereed Brazilian symposium). Even so, Linus put in all of the data. He just arranged his graph so that part of it would be effectively concealed.

My next experience was in 1992 regarding an endangered species filing through which several large enviro organizations attempted to seize control of Southern Oregon farms, logging, and mining by alleging harm to Steelhead fish in the streams and rivers.

The centerpiece of this filing was a claimed correlation between the amount of logging and the number of Steelhead in the streams. This correlation had a strong statistical significance. When, however, I looked at the original data, I found that about half of the available data had simply been left out of the calculation. When all of the data were considered, the correlation disappeared. A similar attempt was made with stream flow data in order to implicate farmers. There too, when all of the data were considered, there was no correlation at all.

Most recent, however, is the remarkable case illustrated in Figure 1 and displayed by Dr. Sallie Baliunas during her presentation in San Di-ego. The relevant literature references are: "A Search for Human Influences on the Thermal Structure of the Atmosphere,'' by Santer, B. D., et al, Nature 382, pp 39-45 (1996); "Human Effect on Global Climate?'' by Michaels, P. J. and Knappenberger, P. C., Nature 384, pp 522-523 (1996); and "Human Effect on Global Climate'' by Santer, B. D., et al, Nature 384, p 524 (1996). See also World Climate Report 1, No. 21 and 2, No.1 available from P. O. Box 455, Ivy, VA 22945, telephone (703) 907-6160, and State of the Climate Report 1997, available from the same address. These publications by Patrick J. Michaels and his colleagues are excellent.

Santer's finding of a strong positive correlation between temperature and time in the Southern Hemisphere troposphere between 30° and 60° S latitude (a region where confounding atmospheric influences are less, so that greenhouse gas warming might be expected to be more easily and accurately observed) played a substantial role in the deliberations of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, which has been influential in the push for treaties placing global controls on hydrocarbon use. The solid points inside the oval in Figure 1 are those reported by Santer, et al.

The open circles in Figure 1 are those added by Michaels and Knappenberger, who looked up the rest of the data. Since Santer's paper was published in 1996 and was used prior to publication to influence the IPCC report, there can be little doubt that he and his co-authors deliberately omitted data points to create the trend that they reported.

It is inconceivable that even the most incompetent scientist, finding such a pronounced trend to support his hypothesis in the data between 1963 and 1987, would not, when writing in 1995 (published in 1996), look at the data between 1987 and 1995 to see if the trend continued. These data do not support the hypothesis.

So, Santer clearly faked the result, circulated it during IPCC proceedings in order to influence world global climate policy, and later published in Nature. Michaels and Knappenberger caught him, but their paper was published several months after his - long after the correction could undo the bias introduced by Santer into the IPCC report.

If a graduate student in science tried to pull a stunt like this, even once, he should be dismissed from graduate school and denied a degree. Had an undergraduate at Caltech when I was there in the early 1960s taken an action equivalent to this, the governing body of the student honor system would have recommended to the Dean that he be expelled from Caltech, and the Dean would have immediately expelled him. The proper response to Santer and those of his co-authors responsible for this lie is dismissal with prejudice from their professional positions. They should never be permitted to work in science again.

Ah, but this is a new age. Santer will probably continue to wheel and deal in "environmental science'' and spend your tax dollars for his "scientific'' work. Worse, he has done and will continue to do damage to billions of people whose lives may be seriously harmed by misguided global climate policies.

The Wall Street Journal, June 19, 1997, reported on page 1 that "More than 2,400 scientists urged Clinton to take early domestic action to reduce carbon dioxide and other pollutants that cause global warming. A Harvard professor said the statement shows unusual agreement that scientific questions surrounding the issue have been largely resolved and that quick government action is needed.'' That is the entire article - not even a reference. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant; it has not been shown to cause global warming; and there are several hundred thousand scientists in the United States alone. The 2,400 is less than 1% (and probably most of the 2,400 are simply trusting and parroting the IPCC report). Moreover, truth is not determined by polls.

There is no room for dishonesty in science - none. A discipline that tolerates dishonesty is not a science at all. It is beneath contempt.

"The Human Costs of EPA Standards'' by Wendy L. Gramm and Susan E. Dudley in The Wall Street Journal, p A18, June 9, 1997, reports that the Environmental Protection Agency's own analysis shows the new EPA ozone regulations will cost more than the economic value of the benefits. Moreover, human deaths caused by the regulations exceed human lives saved. Additional deaths from lost personal income of Americans are estimated by the authors as approximately 7,000 per year. These deaths will be among poorer Americans - those for whom the Clinton Administration continually cries crocodile tears.

Meanwhile, "Will Minivans Become an Endangered Species?'' by Eric Peters and H. Sterling Burnett in Brief Analysis, No. 232, June 4, 1997, published by the National Center for Policy Analysis, 12655 N. Central Expressway, Suite 720, Dallas, TX 75243-1739, reports that the next advocated ratchet in federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy, CAFE, regulations may clear American roads of minivans and sport utility vehicles. This will increase further the number of Ameri-cans killed by their government each year on the nation's highways.

Automakers are required to continually reduce the size and weight of automobiles in order to comply with CAFE regulations. Interestingly, these standards have not increased transportation efficiency or reduced fuel use. First, driving has increased as cost decreased, completely erasing the lower fuel costs per mile. Second, smaller vehicles are used to carry fewer people, so, the tiny cars are less efficient per passenger mile. Presently, minivans get 64.8 passenger miles per gallon, luxury sedans and sport utility vehicles get 70.2 passenger miles per gallon, and the subcompacts get 60.8 passenger miles per gallon.

The subcompacts are much more effective, however, at killing their occupants. Academic research has estimated that between 440 and 780 American motorists are killed per year per 100 pound reduction in auto weight for a current 2,200 to 3,900 deaths per model year. The National Highway Safety Administration admits to 322 additional deaths per year per 100 pound reduction in auto weight. That is one unit equivalent of an Oklahoma City bombing every couple of weeks.

"Beyond the TV Temptation'' by George Gilder, Gilder Technology Report 2, No. 5, May 1997, is an excellent article on market forces and the nature of corporations as applied to the advance of communications and computer technology.

Gilder reports that, in the United States, personal computers are now in 40% of all households, 50% of households with children, and 60% of households with annual income over $40,000. In one year, between February 1996 and February 1997, the average selling price of personal computers declined from $1,872 to $1,584.

As text files, more information than any human being can read in an entire lifetime can now be delivered to his PC on less than one pound of plastic CD-ROMs. Soon, even image files and audio and video entertainment will be so accessible that a lifetime's worth will be deliverable in a small box. Gilder sees an ocean of information flowing into each home through fiber optic cables. I think that, during the transition, a surprisingly large part of this may roll in on plastic.

Either way, the media and academic monopolies on "entertainment'' and "information'' (the quotes are necessary in view of current standards) are as dead as the no-threshold linear hypothesis of radiation health effects. With the death of these monopolies, the minds of men will no longer be controllable by central authorities with monopolistic resources. This is great news for freedom and free enterprise.

"Astrology Rising'' is the cover article in the July 1997 issue of Life magazine. It seems that astrology and related forms of mysticism are enjoying rapidly increasing popularity among Americans.

We now have animal worship, earth worship, self worship, human worship, and government worship - taught throughout our schools and universities and reinforced by incessant media propaganda. Why not astrology? These madnesses have taken over other notable civilizations in human history - with uniformly catastrophic results.

"Boys Used to be Boys, But Do Some Now See Boyhood as a Malady?'' by G. Pascal Zachary one page 1 of The Wall Street Journal, May 2, 1997, reports that 5.4 million American children were classified as disabled in 1995. Of these, "Attention Deficit Disorder,'' ADD, diagnoses have doubled during the past five years. From 80% to 90% of ADD "diagnoses'' occur in boys - with most then given psy-choactive drugs. Other classifications include "learning disabilities'' and "speech and language impairments.'' Tax-financed schools employ armies of counselors, administrators, and psychologists who team up with teachers to hide socialized education's failures behind contrived pathological designations and treatments that now involve about 10% of American children.

"It's Time for U. S. Leadership to Stop Global Warming'' screams an advertisement by The Natural Resources Defense Council, NRDC, in the New York Times of June 13, 1997. This ad brings word that "no credible scientists dispute that global warming is causing ecological change, human disease, and economic dislocation'' - a quote it credits to the Los Angeles Times.

In the ad, the NRDC bills itself as "a national non-profit organization of scientists, attorneys, and environmental specialists'' with 350,000 members. The ad states that "2,000 scientists agree that global warming poses a severe threat.'' Apparently the other 348,000 members are attorneys and "environmental specialists.''

The "global warming'' hypothesis predicts a large atmospheric temperature increase. Since even a small human-caused warming is, so far, undetectable in any of the global temperature data, it can hardly be causing ecological change, disease, and economic dislocation. NRDC must have an unusually creative definition for "credible scientist.''