Vol. 25, No. 1 - Access to Energy Newsletter

In the new era that has been brought to us by the Clinton Administration and its predecessor, scientific truth is determined by polling data. The Administration and its retainers are now in full swing with their propaganda campaign to make polling data conform to the global warming treaty that is to be signed in December.

Meanwhile, the United States Senate, comprehending little beyond the politics of envy, has proclaimed that our country will not perform partial technological suicide on the sword of hydrocarbon rationing unless enough other countries agree to do so also.

All that stands now between the Republic and a giant global warming step downward toward an abyss of irrational mysticism and mass murder (if energy rationing is instituted, a lot of people are going to die) is the knowledge and wisdom of its citizens. The 2 million member union that calls itself the National Education Association, NEA, with the approval and help of many (but not all) of its members, has done its best to remove that knowledge.

One example is the General Educational Development (GED) Exam that is passed by 500,000 Americans each year. Passage provides a High School Equivalency Certificate which is equivalent to a High School Diploma. Some colleges require this examination for admission of home schooled students. Noah Robinson recently took the 1992 exam for practice and then the 1997 exam.

The GED informational materials state that the science exam consists of 66 questions, of which 50% are "Biology'' and 50% are "Physical Sciences: Earth, Physics, and Chemistry.'' Earth? The NEA has created a new "physical science'' that supersedes physics and chemistry and is called "Earth.'' The 1997 exam consists (by Noah's estimate) of about 56 questions on biology and "earth'' and about 10 on physics and chemistry. The risk that the student will actually have independent knowledge concerning these subjects is eliminated by the test. Fewer than 10 % of the 66 questions require any prior knowledge by the student other than the ability to read. The answers are clearly given in the reading passages preceding the questions.

In order to pass, the student must give politically correct answers concerning rain forests and other "earth'' matters including the looming shortage of hydrocarbons. (This last indicates that the NEA is still fighting the previous propaganda war. The free market long ago drove a stake through the heart of the 1970s "shortage'' myth. Global warming was then invented to take its place.) These required, politically correct answers are clearly stated prior to the questions, so a reading student knows exactly what to say.

In keeping with the ongoing NEA lowering of American educational standards, the 1992 exam was more difficult than the 1997 exam. Noah found that he could work the 90 minute mathematics exam for 1992 in 60 minutes - in his head with no use of pencil or paper. The 1997 exam required only 40 minutes. Too much knowledge is, however, dangerous.

Noah managed to give a "wrong'' answer to one of the math questions. The question involved a hexagon (a polygon of six angles and, therefore, six sides). Unless one assumed that all of the angles and sides were equal - a regular hexagon ("regular'' was not stated in the problem) - the only correct answer was "cannot be determined from the given information.'' This answer was counted wrong. The mathematicians and astrologers of the NEA no longer distinguish between hexagons and regular hexagons, so all hexagons are supposed to be assumed to have equal angles and sides.

Those who end their education with the GED or its inferior equivalent - 12 years in a tax-financed NEA propaganda mill - only comprise, however, 75% of the American population. The other 25% goes on to college. Many colleges offer satisfactory educations in physical science. For example, Zachary Robinson recently graduated with a BS in chemistry from Oregon State University - where he received an excellent education in chemistry from very good chemistry professors. He was one of seven students of chemistry in his graduating class - out of 14,000 students at Oregon State. If we add physics and mathematics and allow for four classes, the total is less than 1%.

What are the other 99% of the "students'' studying in college? Most of them are in the clutches of humanities faculties that are churning out degrees that have essentially negative value to those interested in facts and independent, truthful rational thought. Even the science students are forced to take some of these ridiculous courses -many of which are little more than sick humor for a well-prepared mind. The required "health'' class at Oregon State became so obscene that many students simply walked out in the middle of some of the raw lectures that were being given by a woman professor.

In any case, it is clear that the future of America is being determined by an electorate wherein most of the voters have little or no knowledge of science or engineering beyond that learned between the ages of six and eighteen. In the tax-financed schools, this usually means "earth'' and "biology'' (more enviro propaganda) with mathematics, physics, and chemistry reduced in importance except for a small minority of students. (The success of a few, regardless of adversity, keeps hope alive in the hearts of the diminishing number of dedicated teachers of science.) In this vacuum of knowledge, telling the people what to "think'' and then polling them to see if they think it yet is perfectly sensible even if it is morally and ethically bankrupt.

These are the reasons that the 1.5 million home schooled children (soon to be 3 million at current growth rates) are so important to the future of American science and technology and to freedom. These children are all outside of the NEA propaganda mills. They are free to learn mathematics (the language of science) properly and then go on to first-rate science texts. Every one of them, even the least talented, can be taught to properly read a graph of atmospheric temperature or atmospheric ozone concentration vs. time and to draw an individual, independently determined conclusion.

"Earth'' is not a physical science; wrong answers in mathematics are not made right by "good reasoning'' or group consensus; atmospheric chemistry is not determined by polls of television viewers; and there are plenty of people in the world ready to take America's place as a leader of science, technology, and free enterprise, if American minds continue to be destroyed by tax-guzzling propagandists.

It is, of course, not difficult to find outstanding scholars and outstanding teachers within the tax-financed school system. Nor is it difficult to find skilled doctors in the government health care system or outstanding research scientists in tax-financed research. Most of America's Nobel Prize winning scientists during the past few decades have received tax-financed research grants, as have most other university-based academic scientists.

When government moves in on a valuable human activity and buys control with tax money, it does not automatically destroy the talent and productivity of all of the participants. Even under the most autocratic and repressive totalitarian regimes, outstanding scientific work is often accomplished. There are two arguments against government control. First, it is inherently immoral, and, second, it is counterproductive.

I have never known of any non-defense research project that justified the confiscation of the property of men, women, and children by force or threat of force. Tax money consists of private property that is seized by government under the claim that politicians and bureaucrats are more skilled in using it than are those who earned or otherwise honestly received it. Even if this claim were true, the seizure would be inherently immoral because the right to economic freedom from theft is a self-evident part of the inherent human rights to life and liberty.

A proper function of government is the protection of its citizens from theft - not participation in their mugging. Even if government programs were better than private programs, it would be immoral to steal from the citizenry in order to support them.

It happens that government programs are inherently counterproductive as compared to private ones. People are not, however, completely repressible. They will get some valuable work done regardless of their circumstances. It is said that there is an immense positive return from government-funded research. This is misleading. There is instead an immense positive return from research - government has merely horned in on the credit by forcing itself on the research community as an unnecessary, inefficient, and immoral middleman.

Nowhere in America today is this effect more obvious than in the educational system. Funded by the most pernicious sort of taxes - the threat to throw families out of their own homes if they do not pay property taxes regardless of their current income - over two million bureaucrats and teachers have created schools that, regardless of the best efforts of the remaining outstanding teachers and students, have a net negative value to the education and development of young Americans.

With about 20,000 students now using our self-teaching home school curriculum, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine has been receiving between 100 and 250 letters and calls from parents each day. There are numerous varied sorts of requests and questions, but the following unedited letter that arrived recently from an American mother summarizes many of them: "Dear Dr. Robinson: "I am the mother of two children (11 and 12 years old) who have been public school 'educated.' I asked questions, raised concerns, and did everything I was told to do by the teachers. I participated in damaging my own children even though every step of the way I had strong feelings that something was wrong.

"My children had good grades but they are functionally illiterate, have very small vocabularies, could barely do addition, had nightmares because 'we are going to die from over-population or global warming' or some such nonsense, and they know graphically how homosexuals have sex.

"I removed my children from the public school a year ago and began homeschooling them. They can now add, subtract, multiply, and divide. I am having a terrible time teaching them to read because they can't get past the method they had in school - skip or guess words. I have noticed that homeschooled children who have never attended public school consistently do much better than homeschooled children who have attended public school.

"Homeschooling my children has been most frustrating because they have developed habits and traits in the public school that are difficult to overcome. Such as they expect me to somehow put knowledge into their heads without their participation. I have come to believe that accusing the schools of doing nothing is inaccurate - they are actively damaging the children.

"Your homeschool curriculum sounds great for kids who have never been damaged by the public school system but can it work for mine? Sincerely,'' There is no shortage in America of truthful voices raised in opposition to the anti-science, anti-technology, anti-free enterprise message preached by the demagogues who are seizing control of our nation.

There is, however, a shortage of citizens who have the ability and inclination to listen to the truth. For the cause of that shortage, you need look no further than socialist schools. Your tax dollars at work.

At 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light usually seems to be a nonlimiting quantity affecting only space vehicles and other objects that manage to be so far away that their signals are noticeably delayed in transmission. We do not often encounter speed of light limitations within our own rooms. I still recall my surprise 30 years ago when I learned that some of the sections of our DEC PDP/11 computers could not be located more than a few feet apart because the speed of light controlled and restricted their communications.

In the Gilder Technology Report, August 1997, pp 2-7, available from Monument Mills, P. O. Box 660, Housatonic, MA 01236, George Gilder points out three aspects of current technological development that are currently being constrained by the speed of light -which he converts to nine inches per nanosecond in a vacuum and about four inches per nanosecond in typical electronic circuits, where information transfer is slowed by resistance and capacitance.

It turns out that microprocessor computer chips in the newest personal computers are spending most of their time waiting for light-limited communications with direct access memory. This limit also slows communications within the memory itself. As the requirements for memory access grow beyond the capabilities of cache memory on the processor, the main memory must move closer and closer to the processor. Gilder predicts that the entire memory and central processor will soon be forced onto the same chip. [As business advice he further predicts that the current manufacturers of memory will therefore take over the production of central processors (rather than vice versa) because the subsystem they are now making is larger than the central processor and so comprises most of the ultimate product.]

Moreover, another effect of this limitation is continued decentralization of information processing. The speed of light causes computers to remain physically small and limited in capability, so their distribution to hundreds of millions of separate locations around the world to meet local needs is more practical than centralized computers. Centralized computers are limited in capability by the light-determined size restriction and, also, by external communication rates.

A third effect that Gilder points out is in the nature of communications satellites. Geosynchronous satellites with rotation rates matched to the Earth's rotation are constrained by physics to be 23,000 miles above the Earth's surface. This causes a significant light-limited delay in communications with them. Low earth orbit satellites are placed, however, 60 times closer to the Earth's surface. Only a minor factor in current voice communications, the 60-fold decrease in communications delay has very great importance for digital computer-based communications. For this reason, extensive low earth orbit satellite systems are to be constructed. [As investment advice, he compares the companies engaged in this work.]

So, it is likely that, with current technology, computer processors and memory are going to merge in assemblies that become inexorably smaller; information processing will continue to decentralize to hundreds of millions of computers spread all over the earth; and these computers will talk to each other through fibre optic cables and a rotating shell of hundreds of satellites just a few hundred miles above the Earth's surface. The primary constraint determining this overall design is the unfortunate fundamental slowness of the speed of light, which moves at only 700 million miles per hour.

Much of the knowledge that each of us retains actually consists of a collection of assumptions. Life is too short for every person to follow every fact through to rigorous proof. It is for this reason that an open mind is so important. We base our conclusions on the best information available, but we must always be ready to alter our assumptions on the basis of new information.

Doubt, however, need not dominate our lives. On one occasion, I was told that a conclusion I had reached was wrong and that additional information was available. Further, I was told that if I would travel 2000 miles and participate in a closed, secretive meeting with people who were not permitted otherwise to individually discuss the facts with me, these additional truths would be revealed. As would be expected, the demanded arrangement reinforced my original conclusion. If there really were new information, it could be imparted by free individuals communicating by telephone or letter.

In rigorous science, assumptions cannot always be avoided, but they need to be clearly stated in each instance. Perhaps the most remarkable occurrence of assumptions in science concerned Sir Isaac

Newton's second law of mechanics. Newton wrote, "The change of momentum is proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.'' As Newton defined momentum: "The quantity of momentum is the measure of the same, arising from the velocity and quantity of matter conjointly.'' In the symbolic representation of calculus: F = d (mv) / dt.

Newton did not know whether or not mass is constant, so he put it inside the differential. He did not assume that it is constant.

During the following 200 years, however, physicists found it convenient to assume that mass is constant. It became customary to write: F = [m] [d (v) / dt] or F = ma, where only the velocity and acceleration, d (v) / dt, were assumed to vary.

Albert Einstein put an end to this when he demonstrated that mass is not constant - a finding that has been widely and erroneously reported as Einstein having found that Newton was in error. It was, in fact, the physics community after Newton that made the erroneous assumption. Newton's law, as he stated it, allows for variable mass.

One modern assumption that has worried me for many years, for several reasons, is contained in the term "fossil fuels'' which is widely used to refer to coal, oil, and natural gas. It is so universally assumed that these substances are entirely derived from the decomposition of previously living plants and animals that "fossil'' is used in their shorthand name. You may have noticed that, in Access to Energy, I use the terms "hydrocarbon fuels'' or, simply, "coal, oil, and natural gas,'' and do not use "fossil fuels.'' "An Unexplored Habitat for Life in the Universe'' by Thomas Gold in American Scientist 85, No. 5, pp 408-411, September-October 1997, available from P. O. Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, summarizes, with appropriate references, the current arguments opposed to the "fossil'' in fossil fuels.

Hydrocarbons are very widely distributed. They are found in the atmospheres of giant gaseous planets, on asteroids, on interplanetary dust grains, and in meteorites. They are believed to exist deep in the earth where great pressures and temperatures actually increase their stability. They may be the source of carbon in diamond, which forms at pressures reached only at depths of 100 miles or more in the Earth.

Since hydrocarbons are less dense than rock, they rise toward the surface. In volcanic regions, they are partially oxidized by rocks, but in nonvolcanic regions, there is less oxidation. Methane is, therefore, most abundant in nonvolcanic regions. The estimated amount of methane hydrate exceeds the total for all coal, oil, and other natural gas.

Commercial helium is produced from oil and gas wells, since this is the only place that helium is found in sufficient quantities for commercial extraction. Gold suggests that helium, which is formed by radioactive decay of uranium and thorium, is pumped to the Earth's surface and concentrated by hydrocarbons rising from their places of origin deep in the Earth. He quotes Mendeleev, who concluded that petroleum is formed nonbiologically, very deep in the Earth.

Gold also quotes Sir Robert Robinson as writing, "Actually it cannot be too strongly emphasized that petroleum does not present the composition picture expected from modified biogenic products, and all the arguments from the constituents of ancient oils fit equally well, or better, with the conception of a primordial hydrocarbon mixture to which bio-products have been added.'' Gold's hypothesis, summarized in Figure 1, is that hydrocarbons are formed by ordinary chemical processes in a region where they are very thermodynamically stable, deep in the earth. They then rise upward. Near the surface, they pass through a region in which temperatures and pressures permit microbial life and where oxides of iron and sulfur provide the oxygen needed for life. These microbes are the source of the biological compounds that have led to the belief that petroleum is fossil in origin.

Gold discusses this hypothesis in the context of the search for life on other planets. He points out that this search should not be limited to planetary surfaces, which are generally very hostile environments. If hydrocarbons are of nonbiological origin, then pools of hydrocarbons below the surfaces of planets may be the most universal and most promising environment in which to look for life.

At the San Diego meeting, S. S. Penner estimated that all of the energy required for a world population of 10 billion people could be provided for 1,000 years by means of known reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas alone. (See Access to Energy 24, No. 11, pp 1-2, July 1997.) Allowing for the lower, gradually rising current population and the use of other energy sources as well, the reserve is much greater than 1,000 years. Moreover, there is some research which indicates that current oil fields are refilling from oil and gas fields below them. (See Access to Energy 23, No. 3, p 4, November 1995.) In any case, it is obvious that the occasional shortages of hydrocarbons during this century have been politically caused and that, given world reserves, any shortages arising for many centuries (probably millennia) in the future will also not be caused by inadequate supplies.

This has been implicitly admitted by the enemies of technology and their mentors, who advocate "reducing'' world population by an order of magnitude by limiting technology. (Is it not wonderful that semantics so facilely obscures impolite words like "murder'' and "genocide''?) This is the reason that they shifted the focus of their efforts against hydrocarbons from the myth that we are running out of hydrocarbons to the new myths of global cooling and, now, global warming.

The notion that hydrocarbon use must be reduced because of diminishing supply rested on two tenets - very small known reserves and the "fossil'' fuel hypothesis, which implies very slow ongoing production and minimal undiscovered reserves. The free market has destroyed the first of these two tenets for at least the next 1,000 years. If research destroys the "fossil'' idea, even our very distant descendants will not be limited. (Given the rate of technological advance, they will also likely be able to make any petroleum they need by other means.)

While such authorities as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in its page 3A article on July 17, 1997, entitled "Animals, Plants, Glaciers Sending Warming Signals,'' continue to beat their Aztecan drums of global warming, and as the Clinton Administration runs headlong, like the Biblical demonized hogs, toward a cliff of international carbon controls, sophisticated thermometers on orbiting satellites still find no indication at all that atmospheric temperature is increasing. Less reliable ground measurements show no temperature fluctuations outside of the normal range of variability that long predates significant human release of carbon dioxide. This should at least be understandable by all college graduates who have passed a course in Thermometer Reading 101.

The new game is looking for changes that can be blamed on temperature rises, since temperature rises themselves are not occurring. Apparently forgetting that environmental and biological phenomena are inherently variable, the enviros now blame virtually every fluctuation on global warming regardless of the indisputable fact that the globe is not getting unusually warmer. Apparently, we need (this will get the Administration's attention) a new national program to teach thermometer reading to the American people. Additionally, it must be explained that in cause-and-effect arguments, it is unacceptable to argue that the effect has arrived before the cause has occurred.

Meanwhile, "The Global Warming Treaty: For U. S. Consumers -All Pain, No Gain'' Brief No. 238, based on a presentation by F. B. Smith, and "The Global Warming Game'' Brief No. 239 by E. M. Trisko and H. S. Burnett, published by the National Center for Policy Analysis, 727 15th St. N.W., 5th floor, Washington, DC 20005, summarize estimated economic effects of current global warming treaty proposals. For the United States, these include:

1. A drop in Gross Domestic Product of $150 to $250 billion.

2. Electricity and household fuel cost rise of 50%.

3. Gasoline price rise of 60 cents per gallon and gasoline rationing. 4. Sharply increased prices for food, medical care, police and fire protection, air travel, and most other goods and services.

5. Major reductions in industrial production.

6. Sharp increases in the cost of homes and fewer homes constructed. Those constructed would be substantially smaller.

Implicit in these effects are very large increases in federal and state taxes to pay for increases in government expenses and for transfer payments to the estimated 500,000 to 1 million people who would lose their jobs each year as a result of diminished economic activity.

In addition to job loss, suffering will be most severe for the poorest American households because the poor pay much larger percentages of their income for essential services such as heat, electricity, and transportation. These are the American poor - who will probably be saved from starvation by depleting American capital and savings.

Elsewhere on Planet Earth, the poor will have no safety net. Especially in Africa and Asia, a lot of people are going to die. They will lose energy, food, and markets for their labor. The global human carnage that will ultimately result from this insane program of energy rationing will be far greater than the mass killing from the DDT ban (currently running at one human death - mostly children - every 12 seconds) and the genocidal nightmares of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot.

There have been many terrors and insanities during recorded history. Power hungry maniacs have caused so much human suffering over the past 6,000 years that the study of history is largely devoted to analyses of their activities. Never before, however, have so few people had such awesome power to impose suffering and death on so many -and to cloak their activities in a guise of assumed virtue.

Make no mistake about this, however. Their power is American power - derived from American technology and financed by Ameri-can taxes. Carbon rationing is being cloaked in a disguise of internationalism, but the raw economic and military power for its imposition is American. It cannot be imposed without American participation. If we let this happen, we shall be guilty of a crime beyond forgiveness -and that crime will not be forgotten by the survivors.

The Wall Street Journal reported on page 1, August 1997, that "The U. S. will pay more than 1,000 teaching hospitals nationwide not to train doctors in some specialties in an effort to reduce a glut in those areas, according to the Washington Post. The program, which is contained in recent budget legislation, expands a $400 million New York experiment.'' Let's see - they are reducing the amounts paid to farmers to not produce food, while they are starting a new program to pay hospitals to not produce doctors who keep people alive to eat food. Perhaps next will be a program to pay Teamsters to not deliver food to prevent a predicted glut from more food and fewer people.
Our local UPS driver retires next year. Under the rejected UPS plan, his pension payment would have been $3,200 per month. Under the victorious Clinton Administration and Teamsters plan, his pension will be $2,400 per month. The union victory on behalf of UPS drivers has cost this one man $9,600 per year (or an over 30% increase in his pension) for the rest of his life. During the strike, the Teamsters Union did not allow UPS employees to vote on the UPS offers because the primary issue was the continued looting of their pension fund.
"The Great Tax Cut of China'' by A. Rabushka in The Wall Street Journal, p A14, August 7, 1997, reports that the current overall tax burden in China is 10% of GDP while in the United States it is 34%. That 24% difference represents the savings and investment capital left over after functional expenses that would allow American workers to compete favorably with those in China. America was built by free enterprise during a period of low taxation. With economic freedom confiscated by high taxes, Americans are losing their way of life.

Facts Versus Fears by Adam J. Lieberman, published in May 1997 by The American Council on Science and Health, 1995 Broadway, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10023-5860, is "a review of the 20 greatest unfounded health scares of recent times.'' From DDT to asbestos, this is excellent reading.

"Chemical Properties of Element 106 (Seaborgium)'' by M. Schadel, et al., Nature 388, pp 55-57 (1997), and the layman's summary "Oddly Ordinary Seaborgium'' by R. Lougheed, Nature 388, p 21, (1997). These experiments show that the chemistry of Seaborgium is essentially the same as that conventionally predicted from the periodic table. The research paper has 18 authors who conducted their entire series of chemical experiments with just 7 atoms of Seaborgium.

"Schools Ponder New Global Landscape'' by D. Normile, Science 277, p 311 (1997). He lists 11 Asian and European universities averaging 260,000 students in each university. These universities teach students remotely - not on a central campus. Their costs range from 5% to 50% of the cost of equivalent on-campus instruction.

The off-campus CD-ROM home school curriculum for ages 6 to 18 produced by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine now has 20,000 students with this number currently rising at the rate of 3,000 per month. The cost of the OISM curriculum is 10% of that for other equivalent educational programs and its academic quality is higher.

The electronics revolution will turn tenured professors and NEA unionized "educators'' into the vacuum tubes of the 21st century.
"Flying on Sunlight,'' Science News 152 p 75 (1997) reports that the airplane, Pathfinder, flew to 71,500 feet using solar power alone.