Near the Gulf of Mexico, on the road between Houston and Corpus Christi, is the town of Victoria, Texas - one of the oldest settlements in the western United States. Thirty-five miles southeast of Victoria, rising out of the mists that roll in from the Gulf near the town of Seadrift, is one of America's great petrochemical plants, built by Union Carbide in 1954 and later expanded several times.

I feel that I know this plant well, since I have a large framed aerial photograph of it on the wall beside me along with a matching framed artist's drawing of the plant before it was built. Under the artist's drawing is the aluminum hard hat of the man who was in charge of the design and construction of this plant and partially responsible for its operation during the first four years - my father, Edward H. "Ted'' Robinson. His most trusted and valued co-worker at that time, Arnold Graham, still lives in Victoria, remembering their efforts.

Ted Robinson went on to lead teams of engineers who designed and built similar Union Carbide plants in Puerto Rico, Scotland, Belgium, Brazil, Japan, and India. He is buried in an alpine glacier near the top of Mont Blanc on the border between France and Italy, which contains the remains of the Air India Boeing 707 that crashed there on January 24, 1966. The cause of this crash is not known for certain. It is believed to have been the work of assassins that killed the Indian physicist Bhaba, who was then head of the nuclear energy program of India and was also on the airplane.

The original plant at Seadrift produced primarily polyethylene. It now produces additional products. This plant is a part of the vast infrastructure of chemical plants, built by the generation of Americans now in their 80s and the generations before them, that supplies the chemicals upon which our technological civilization depends. Along with the dams, bridges, foundries, mines, wells, mills, factories, railroads, research laboratories, computers, and other technological installations that have been built by the past several generations of Americans, these plants form the technological superstructure upon which our science, technology, and economic freedom depend.

The capital required to build these things was supplied by the savings of tens of millions of people, who set aside part of the money they had earned and invested it in the free market in hopes of making a profit. It was also built by the profits retained by the corporations themselves. Capital alone did not, however, build the industries -people did. These people were led by unusual individuals whose love of science and technology dominated their personal lives and drove them and those around them to ever greater accomplishments.

Archibald MacLeish told me many years ago that the thing that impressed him most about human beings was their amazing ability to love - and he was not thinking of the shallow phenomenon that dominates the lyrics in the cacophony of "pusic'' (word invented by a musician friend) which pollutes most of America's radio stations.

Each person has an enormous capacity to love - in many different ways. In some individuals, a part of this love is intensely directed toward science and technology. My father, for example, was simply head-over-heels in love with chemical plants (and with my mother, but that is another story). He lived and breathed their design and construction. When not in use for food, our kitchen table was covered with blueprints. He had no hobbies or avocations - the building of chemical plants was his vocation and all of his avocations combined. And, as a result of this all-consuming love, he built superb plants.

I have seen this sort of love in a few other individuals. Mrs. Merrifield, the wife of R. Bruce Merrifield, who was the first man to synthesize an enzyme, described her husband's love affair with each of the 20 naturally occurring amino acids - a love that enabled him to link them together in ways never before accomplished.

Linus Pauling, regardless of the low state of his personal and professional ethics, was completely in love with the structures of molecules. The incredible joy Linus felt as he pursued three-dimensional, semi-quantitative explanations for the structures of molecules and, later, for the structures of atomic nuclei was the greatest of all the scientists I have known. He was supremely happy when calculating or describing the properties of chemical bonds.

Scientists work largely alone or with a few other people. Those who build industries work with large numbers of people. These prime builders, driven by their love for their work, are usually not the most well-liked, but they are often the most respected. It is their job to make our industrial world work - regardless of the personal foibles of those whom they must direct in doing this work. Their personal love for their work is the driving force that motivates them.

All of us are beneficiaries of science and technology. We live lives that are much longer and are filled with seemingly endless pleasures, experiences, and freedoms that would not be available without technology. Even the "warmers'' who gathered in Kyoto to bemoan and attack the world's hydrocarbon technology dropped in by way of airplanes belching demon carbon dioxide.

Now, virtually all of our technology is under serious attack. From our lumber mills, farms, and ranches to our dams, power plants, and factories, all are under assault. Our enemies belong to a peculiar form of pagan religion. Petr Beckmann called it the "green religion.'' This is not a new religion. The animal, plant, and earth worship ascendant today (partially at the expense of animals, plants, and the earth, which are, on balance, actually harmed by this mania) is fundamentally the same as that which arose periodically among the ancients, as chronicled, for example, in the Old Testament.

This religion is now preached in our schools, our press, and our political institutions. It is, primarily, a religion of death. Technology, in the view of these zealots, has committed a terrible sin. It has made possible the lives of billions of human beings - human beings whom they believe to be alive at the expense of worshiped plants and animals. (The fact that technology enhances the lives of plants and animals is suppressed by the professional enviro religious agitators.) It is the moral obligation of every American - each living and benefiting from freedom and technology; each obligated to pass these blessings on to future generations; and each entrusted with a vote in the fate of the great American experiment - to stop this mania.

Seadrift and the tens of thousands of like accomplishments must not be destroyed - at least not without a terrible fight.

During the past few weeks, I have become more optimistic about the possibility of defeating the global warming mania - even though the administration has signed the global warming treaty and polls of public approval are gradually rising toward the levels necessary to defeat Senate opposition to its ratification. Ratification of this treaty or any agreement resembling it would be by far the worst defeat ever suffered by science, technology, and freedom at the hands of the envi-ros - a defeat that would seriously set back human progress and likely cost the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

The global warmers are, however, beatable. Consider the current situation. The propaganda that is gradually convincing the public to support global warming goes as follows:

1. Most scientists agree that human release of carbon dioxide is causing the temperature of the Earth to rise and that, if continued, this rise in temperature will soon lead to catastrophic changes in climate accompanied by world-wide floods, storms, droughts, and other climatologic nightmares, including such things as Arctic weather in London, the flooding of most of Florida and other near-sea-level regions, and widespread starvation as agricultural activities are disrupted. Released carbon dioxide hovers above for centuries and will continue to wreak havoc in many ways that are only now being discovered by scientists who are fighting for the environmental survival of our planet.

2. In order to forestall and mitigate this catastrophe in progress, it is necessary that mankind immediately curtail the release of carbon dioxide (and several other greenhouse gases, although carbon dioxide is the primary target). The initial step must be a reduction of about one-third in release by developed countries. Ultimately, as political pressures are intensified, this reduction must be increased in magnitude and extended to all people by means of internationally enforced laws. Since most human release of carbon dioxide is from the use of coal, oil, and natural gas, it is the use of these that must be sharply reduced.

3. The world-wide catastrophe of global warming is so terrible that any measure that forestalls it is justified, regardless of the human cost. In any case, those opposed to ending the pollution of our atmosphere with carbon dioxide are primarily greedy business people who want to pursue profit regardless of the environmental consequences. Very few scientists oppose the global warming treaty. These few are either isolated crackpots or employees of oil and gas companies or other industries with large economic self-interests in continued pollution.

In short: Virtually all scientists agree that greenhouse gas emissions must be stopped to preserve the global climate. The enviros on their white horses are trying to save the Earth by stopping these emissions. Greedy business people and unprincipled politicians on their black horses are trying to stop these noble enviro efforts.

Most of the current Senate debate about the treaty is economic in nature. It is virtually certain that, as things now stand, the people on the black horses of economic concern will lose to those on the morally superior white horses who are struggling to save the Earth - regardless of the cost in human well-being. The warmers are winning. When the polling numbers get high enough, their win will be permanently entrenched in international law.

The truth (which is not being heard in the global warming hysteria) does not, of course, depend upon polling numbers. Scientific truth is never determined by vote. The eventual triumph of truth in this issue will be cold comfort, however, to the vast numbers of people who will suffer the ill effects of technological rationing in the meantime.

But where are the warmers politically vulnerable? They are vulnerable in point number 1 - the assertion that most scientists agree with them. The fact is that most scientists and engineers are not working on climatological matters and are not interested in being distracted from their work by politics. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that a great many scientists now depend upon funding provided by the executive branch of the federal government - a situation that increases their aversion to politically incorrect matters.

Nevertheless, there is a strong and growing undercurrent of opposition to global warming within the scientific community. Scientists are beginning to read the relatively simple research literature on this subject. Most are astonished by the difference between experimental observations and public pronouncements in this field - where the facts are overwhelmingly opposite to the claims of the warmers. What will happen if tens of thousands of scientists and engineers evaluate this research and sign a document that reads as follows?

"We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will,

in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.'' What will happen is clear. The warmers will be deprived of the central pillar that underlies their entire campaign. Only the false premise of a consensus of support within the scientific community enables them to keep their horses painted a morally superior white. Remove their facade of scientific consensus, and they will likely lose - if it is removed it in time to reverse opinion polls that influence the Senate.

There is not much time, but we believe there is enough - if we act as quickly as possible. Will large numbers of scientists sign this statement? We are certain that they will, if they are provided with a reliable scientific review of the relevant research literature along with appropriate references that give them easy access to the underlying experimental information.

As you read this newsletter, therefore, the enclosed review article, petition, note, and return envelope are being mailed to significant numbers of scientists and engineers throughout the United States. The note, urging signature, is signed by Frederick Seitz, Past President of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and President Emeritus of Rockefeller University.

This Petition Project is the work of a group of scientists who have no connections whatever to corporations or other entities with economic interests opposed to the warming treaty. Funds for the mailings now underway were donated primarily by private individuals and none originated in the coal, oil, or natural gas industries or their subsidiaries.

No specific institutional letterhead has been included with the mailings. This is an issue of scientific fact. Signature of the petition should not imply endorsement of an organization or institution. Also, of course, no requests for funding or other solicitations are included with the mailings. Considerable personal sacrifices have been made by some scientists and other individuals in originating and producing these materials and financing the initial mailings. This petition campaign needs to be expanded as widely as possible. It costs about one dollar to produce and mail the petition, note, review article, and return envelope to three individual American scientists and engineers.

If you or anyone you know is willing to help with this, please make contribution checks payable to "Petition Project'' and send them to Petition Project, P.O. Box 1925, La Jolla, California 92038. You may wish to use the enclosed envelope. (These contributions are not tax deductible.) Also, if you are a scientist or engineer, please sign the petition and return it. If you are not a scientist or engineer, give these materials to one whom you know and urge him to sign. More petitions are available by mail from the La Jolla address.

Access to Energy is doing everything that it can to support and extend this campaign. Petr Beckmann founded this newsletter more than 24 years ago because he was concerned about attacks on science and technology by means of pseudoscience and propaganda. At that time, the subject of greatest concern was the smear campaign directed against nuclear power. Unfortunately for Americans, the enviros won that contest and largely stopped the further development of nuclear power in the United States. Fortunately, however, they failed to stop nuclear development in other countries and, so far, have failed to dismantle most existing American nuclear power plants.

Please understand that this is not just another petition. In this unique case, a large number of signatures on the petition by scientists and engineers - individuals trained and credentialed to evaluate the relatively simple science involved - will demolish the foundation of falsehood upon which the entire global warming propaganda campaign has been built. With many signatories to this petition, warmers will no longer be able to marginalize scientists who oppose them as crackpots or industrial shills. They have lied about their "consensus of scientists'' just as they have lied about the science. If these lies are exposed to public view, their support will fade - to the substantial benefit of mankind.

The enclosed review ("Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide'' by Robinson, A. B., Baliunas, S. L., Soon, W., and Robinson, Z. W., January 1998) was written for scientists, although most of it is readable by laymen. The science here is relatively easy to understand. If you find it difficult reading, concentrate on the figures - which tell the whole story. Figures 1 to 4 below may help. See the review for captions, details, and references for these figures.

Figure 1 illustrates the nature of the controversy. It is important to understand that past and projected increases in carbon dioxide cannot warm the atmosphere significantly - even though the overall greenhouse effect, especially from water vapor, is an important factor in maintaining hospitable global temperatures.

The warmers claim that a small increase in temperature from the radiative effect of increased carbon dioxide will throw the entire temperature control mechanism of the atmosphere out of balance and lead to runaway warming, largely due to increases in water vapor.

There have been, however, numerous such small increases in temperature over the past 3,000 years - many beginning from temperature levels much higher than today - and no such runaway warming has taken place. Moreover, a substantial increase in carbon dioxide in the latter part of the 20th century has occurred with no sign of temperature increase at all. The experimental data indicates that the atmosphere compensates by adjusting itself in opposition to small temperature changes - illustrated as "Hypothesis 2.'' There is also good theoretical support for this view.

Moreover, atmospheric carbon dioxide equilibrates rapidly with other reservoirs, which contain more than 50 times as much CO2 as does the atmosphere. Carbon 14 measurements illustrated in Access to Energy 22, no. 1, p 3, give a half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere of about one decade. As documented in the review, the atmosphere annually exchanges about 20% of its CO2 content with vegetation and the ocean. The warmers claim that carbon dioxide "can remain in the atmosphere for centuries.'' Sure it can - in tiny amounts or after cycling through huge natural reservoirs that dwarf atmospheric quantities.

Each year, mankind is releasing about 5.5 gigatons of carbon (Gt C) as carbon dioxide, as compared with an estimated total ocean, biological, soil, and atmospheric quantity of more than 40,000 GtC - which explains the legitimate remaining uncertainty as to whether or not mankind is responsible for the approximately 150 GtC increase in atmospheric CO2 during the past two centuries (mostly during the second half of the 20th century).

The bottom line is, of course, the temperature. It is simple thermometers that have invalidated the global warming hypothesis. In figure 2 are shown both the weather balloon measurements and the satellite measurements of total average global temperature in the lower troposphere at an altitude approximately two miles above the earth. The global warming computer models, upon which the entire global warming hypothesis depends, predict that temperatures in the lower troposphere should be rising rapidly with increases in CO2. In fact, during the past two decades in which the highest CO2 values have been recorded, the lower tropospheric temperature has actually decreased.

Of greater interest to most people is, of course, temperatures where they live on the Earth's surface. Figure 3 shows average surface temperatures in the contiguous United States for the past 103 years. Current temperatures are now near the 103-year mean. Global averages are the most relevant to the warming debate, while regional temperatures are of greatest public interest.

There are two global surface compilations that are used by the warmers. These two compilations contain essentially the same sorts of artifacts and uncertainties, which disqualify them as useful information in evaluating global warming. The research literature comprehensively addresses this question. The flavor of this is illustrated by the bias that has been introduced into the NASA-GISS compilation through the urban heat island effect in California and the obviously biased choice of measuring stations as shown in figure 4. The California stations alone cannot account entirely for the large errors in these compilations, which are continually used in "warmer'' propaganda. They do, however, illustrate the poor quality of the NASA-GISS work.

Never forget that the global warming debate is not about minor greenhouse warming. Nor is it about natural temperature fluctuations as experienced, for example, during the past 300 years while the Earth recovers from the Little Ice Age. Warmers want the public to believe that the detection of any temperature increase at all is proof of their claims. Indeed, the slight drift downward in tropospheric temperatures during the past two decades is simply fortuitous. With essentially equal probability, global temperatures could have been drifting upward during that period. Figure 2 in the review shows the wide range of temperatures that has prevailed during the past 3,000 years.

Warmers, politically unlucky in the current natural temperature cycle, are trying to convince the public that the first sign of temperature increase will presage disaster. In the absence of that increase, they are invoking all sorts of nonsense such as butterfly migrations, on the premise that butterflies can detect temperature changes that still elude human thermometers.

Global warming is not about mild changes in temperature - up or down. The definition of "global warming'' which is now seared into the public mind by the warmers' propaganda campaign is: catastrophically large temperature increases giving rise to global climatological disasters in the forms of continental flooding, erratic and severe weather, and massive damage to the Earth's biological environment. It is this claim that has been scientifically invalidated.

"Global warming'' has nothing whatever to do with the minor increases in temperature that will surely be observed eventually, since the current natural temperature trend cannot, of course, continue permanently downward.

"Industry groups at Kyoto meeting call for more use of nuclear energy'' in Nuclear News, January 1998, p 12, published by the Ameri-can Nuclear Society, 555 N. Kensington Ave., La Grange Park, IL 60526, is a depressing account of current attempts by the nuclear power industry to use the myth of global warming to promote their own economic interests.

Meanwhile, the Nuclear Energy Institute ran a full-page four-color ad in in the January 1998 issue of The American Spectator touting the reductions in carbon dioxide pollution offered by nuclear power.

Of all industrial groups, one would have hoped that the nuclear power industry would be the most vocal in its opposition to the use of pseudoscientific propaganda to cripple technology. Nuclear power generation, which (as discussed extensively in Access to Energy for more than 24 years) enjoys great real advantages, has been severely damaged in the United States during the past three decades by just such propaganda. Yet, now that the nuclear industry has seen advantages for itself in promoting enviro propaganda, it is joining the feeding frenzy right along with the most unprincipled priests of the green religion.

Do these nuclear power executives really think that the enviros are going to give up the myths about nuclear power that they have so painstakingly ingrained in the public mind? The only way to remove those myths from the body politic is by dissemination of the truth. The public is not likely to be impressed by truths emanating from an industry that simultaneously promotes lies when it perceives that this may give it a short-term advantage.

We recommend that nuclear power executives read "Dam-busting: Victory for the fishes'' in The Economist, December 6, 1997, p28, which describes the destruction of a hydroelectric dam by the enviros.

• The state of Oregon is not waiting for international treaties, much less scientific evidence. Oregon has adopted a benchmark of stabilizing CO 2 emissions at the 1990 rate. The city of Portland, Oregon, has set a goal of reducing CO2 emissions to 20 percent below 1988 rates by 2010. We are tempted to remark about the "People's Republic of Oregon'' but are deterred by the fact that even the "People's Republic of China'' refused to sign the Kyoto agreement.
  
  No doubt Oregon hopes to eventually meet its goal by importation of electricity from coal-fired power plants in other states.
  
  
• The Wall Street Journal, January 2, 1998, p1, reports that a new Roper poll shows that more than 50% of Americans think most electricity comes from hydropower. Actually, reports the Journal, 12% comes from hydropower. Most American electricity is generated by coal and natural gas-fueled power plants.
  
  
• Is the American media interested in correcting such misimpressions in minds of our citizens? So far, they have shown a greater interest in publicizing fear propaganda against coal, oil, and natural gas.

• "Homeschooling: Back to the Future'' by Isabel Lyman in Policy Analysis 294, January 7, 1998, published by the Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20001. This review of the origins and current state of homeschooling in the United Sates contains much useful information.
  
  
• "Environmental Scares: Plenty of Gloom'' in The Economist, December 20, 1997, p19. This is an excellent review of activities of the merchants of environmental fear during the past several decades. The article covers everything from the runaway population growth myth to the false claims about depletion of natural resources. Our current favorite is two quotes: "The first comes from Newsweek in 1975: 'Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend . . . But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.' The second comes from Vice-President Al Gore in 1992: 'Scientists concluded - almost unanimously - that global warming is real and the time to act is now'.'' [Italics added by The Economist.]
  
  
• "The New Threat of Mass Destruction'' by Richard K. Betts, Foreign Affairs, January/February 1998, pp 26-41. This article advocates the installation of civil defense for the protection of American civilians from terrorist and other use of weapons of mass destruction, with special emphasis on biological weapons. The author unfortunately uses civil defense to deprecate the installation of strategic defenses, which are also badly needed to protect American civilians.
  
  Biological weapons are receiving increasing attention because their ease of manufacture and delivery renders deterrent measures almost useless. A couple of dedicated and moderately well-educated terrorists with $50,000 worth of surplus laboratory equipment could, for example, kill millions of unprepared Americans in a single anthrax attack.
  
  
• eco-logic 41, November/December 1997, published by the Environmental Conservation Organization, P. O. Box 191, Hollow Rock, TN 38342. This entire issue is excellent reading from the Kyoto Report and the Leipzig Declaration to articles by S. Fred Singer and Hugh W. Ellsaesser. The global warming issue is covered here in numerous articles about various aspects of the subject.