Vol. 25, No. 11 - Access to Energy Newsletter

Some Access to Energy readers have already received direct-mail advertisements from Forbes Magazine about the new Gilder-Robinson Science & Technology Alert - "A Contrarian Investment Letter of Scientific Integrity.'' All Access to Energy recipients will soon receive a complimentary copy of the first issue of this new newsletter along with a subscription form. This new publication will be essentially an expanded, better-researched, better-written, and better-edited version of Access to Energy that includes the additional feature of investment analysis based on the science and technology discussed.

Access to Energy will continue as always. Access to Energy has a 25 year commitment to its readers and principles. It may participate in the raising of additional voices, but its own voice will not cease to be heard. Actually, Access to Energy will also be improved as a result of our increased access to excellent research capabilities.

Why are we doing this? Well, financial profit is a good motive, and, if the newsletter is successful, we will happily receive a profit. Profits make other projects possible. For example, the Petition Project against the global warmers now has about 19,000 signatories including approximately 17,000 scientists. About half of the funds for this have been provided by direct donations from readers of Access to Energy. The other half were obtained from profits - in this case more than a year of income from subscriptions to Access to Energy.

Profits are, however, not my reason for participating in this new newsletter. Even if there were no profits, I would happily write it without compensation (he says - we hope with candor - while anticipating compensation). I am willing to do this because this effort is about improving human well-being and saving lives, as illustrated by some calculations we did in preparation of the first GRSTA issue: Analysis of results in the medical war on cancer shows that, between 1950 and 1995, good progress was made. After population adjustment, it turns out that cancer killed 25,000 fewer Americans under the age of 55 in 1995 than it would have killed had 1950s preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic conditions prevailed. Since 73,000 such deaths still occur annually, this is about a 25% improvement.

Taking into account all cancer deaths at all ages (including increases in older age groups caused by general advances that allow people to live longer), improvements since 1950 are now saving about 500,000 years of American life or 6,000 lifetimes per year. We estimate that, world-wide, about 20,000 lifetimes per year are being saved as compared with 1950. This is a wonderful achievement. It corresponds roughly to a decrease in highway auto deaths by 30%.

On a comprehensive world-wide basis, however, the number of saved lives from cancer is less than 1% of the number lost to malaria as a direct result of the ban of DDT. For every lifetime saved from cancer, 100 children die of DDT-preventable malaria. Even this 100-fold difference is an underestimate, since we assigned only two-thirds of the malaria deaths to the DDT ban.

Yet, malaria is only a beginning. The UN's global warming energy rationing program, of which Kyoto is just the first step, will kill at least 10-fold and perhaps 100-fold more people than does the ban of DDT. Those who do not die will see their living standards reduced.

Nor does the killing stop with the DDT ban and energy rationing. The slowing and, in some cases, reversal of technological progress in many areas translates into a great many more horror stories of unnecessary human suffering and death.

Suffering and death often results from public ignorance about the truth - ignorance that is the result of poor education, poor distribution of factual knowledge, and active disinformation by propagandists who exploit public ignorance and fear.

We are fortunate to have a monthly opportunity to correct some of this nonscience with Access to Energy. This opportunity is then amplified by its use in independent work by AtE readers.

The Gilder-Robinson Science and Technology Report will, however, reach a mostly different and potentially much larger number of people. As an investment newsletter, it can sell for a substantially higher price. This provides funds for more advertising - which also distributes our message. Just the initial advertising of GRSTA exceeds all such advertising of AtE since it was originated. Moreover, our message will be substantially enhanced and better communicated by working with George Gilder, a very talented and experienced technologist and writer, and his coworkers.

Newsletters are an important aspect of media communications. Newsletter advertising may, however, be equally or more important. Direct mail advertisements are typically received by about 100 people for each one who subscribes - and each of those advertisements is a powerful means of communication. The pro-nuclear power, anti-pseudoenvironmentalist message of Access to Energy reached 80-fold more readers in GRSTA ads than it will reach through AtE itself this month - readers who, for the most part, have less knowledge about these subjects than do the readers of AtE.

When the stakes are as high in human life as they are with such issues as DDT and "global warming,'' it is not enough to do any less than the maximum possible with the skills and opportunities available. We are fortunate and delighted to have this remarkable opportunity to do much more by working with George Gilder, Forbes Magazine, and their co-workers.

Should an Access to Energy reader subscribe to both publications? People with substantial investments should do so. They should also subscribe to the Gilder Technology Report - which has a proven record of success in telecosm technology. While investment analysis is inherently difficult and sometimes incorrect even with the best professionals, the analysis in both of these newsletters is superior. Even small bits of good analysis can be very rewarding where significant investment capital is at risk. For those who cannot benefit from such analysis, the choice is more difficult. Even at discounted prices, these newsletters are expensive.

In the 20 years that Petr Beckmann published Access to Energy, he did much to resist and refute the antitechnology causes of those who promote ignorance and myth under a facade of pseudoscience. We do our best to continue his effort. The GRSTA provides an opportunity to substantially amplify the effects of this work. Just the advertising alone should cause much unhappiness in antitechnology land.

Cresson H. Kearny and I first met at a conference of the American Civil Defense Association in 1986. At that time, Cresson strongly objected to my public advocacy of government civil defense shelters for the American people - not to the shelters, to the advocacy in 1986.

Just after the dawn of the atomic age and World War II, some of the principal scientists who initiated that age (especially Eugene Wigner and Edward Teller) started serious work on the protection of civilian populations from the effects of nuclear explosions. This civil defense research work eventually expanded to include protection from nuclear, chemical, and biological threats from accidents, terrorism, or war -dangers that have increased along with science and technology.

This research and development effort was so successful that President Truman became the first United States President to advocate substantial civil defense protection for the American people. This advocacy was later strongly supported by both Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, who tried to implement effective American civil defenses.

Unfortunately, advocacy of civil defense by these Presidents was not enough. The American government provided very little civil defense protection for its citizens. The small amount that was provided was completely eliminated by the Bush and Clinton Administrations. (The adopted Republican Platform in 1988 contained a plank that I wrote, which called for a strong civil defense - one of many planks that the Bush Administration ignored after it was elected.) American engineers, particularly at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory civil defense development program, watched as their technology was installed in Switzerland and some other European countries, in the Soviet Union, and even in China - but never in the United States. Eventually, after decades of experience and disappointments, they shifted emphasis to self-help civil defense and developed the techniques reported in the remarkable book Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson H. Kearny - originally published by the U. S. government. This book of tested home-makable defensive techniques and devices, which, in its updated edition, was widely distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to its personnel during the Reagan Administration, would have saved many American lives in case of nuclear terrorism or war - and may still do so. It even contains tested instructions by which almost any individual with a few hours work can manufacture a reliable, calibrated fallout radiation meter from a tin can and other materials found in most American homes.

Julian Simon reminded us that people are the ultimate resource. And, occasional, unusual individuals are more than resources - they are national treasures. Cresson Kearny is one such individual. His presence on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory team was essential in turning self-help civil defense into a practical field of endeavor.

That day in 1986 at the TACDA meeting, Cresson knew something that I then refused to believe. He knew that American politicians and bureaucrats would never provide a proper civil defense for the Ameri-can people. Therefore, he viewed my advocacy as a diversion from self-help measures. Now, 12 years later, our only effective civil defense work at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine consists of the distribution of self-help information to American families including, most importantly, our role as publisher of Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson Kearny.

Though not generally recognized by academic universities - except by his degrees earned at Princeton and as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford -Cresson Kearny is one of the finest experimental scientists that I have ever known. He is an extraordinarily rigorous experimentalist. In intellect and investigation he is so rigidly honest and candid that, were it possible, he would be said to carry these two virtues to an extreme. In innovation he is unsurpassed. Many of America's foot soldiers in wars during the second half of the 20th Century owe their lives to the fact that Cresson Kearny became America's leading expert in the design of proven infantry equipment, especially for jungle warfare. When, during this distinguished career, he turned his attention to civil defense, the results were also remarkable.

One aspect of equipment for the foot soldier that has long concerned him is the tendency for military bureaucrats to forget lessons learned in previous conflicts and then slowly reinvent needed equipment at the expense of many lives. This memory hole for simple lifesaving technology is especially tragic.

For example, it is important for soldiers in wet environments to float. One day several years ago after Cresson had been telling me about his frustration over the failure of the U. S. government to provide proper flotation devices to soldiers in Vietnam - many of whom consequently drowned - I happened to be rereading the diaries of Julius Caesar. Caesar and his enemies in the Roman civil war were maneuvering with hundreds of thousands of soldiers when very heavy rains complicated the issue. Caesar writes that his opponents have a great advantage because it is their custom to supply their soldiers with breath-inflatable bladders which keep them afloat in streams and rivers. Just in Cresson's lifetime, this simple but important lesson has been forgotten and relearned several times. One wonders how many times the need of infantry for personal flotation gear has been reinvented during the past 2,000 years since Julius Caesar wrote.

Cresson Kearny is now 84 years old. For the past nine years, he has been working on a project that he hopes will preserve essential information about infantry warfare and equipment. The end result of this work is an entertaining autobiographical book which contains the technical information needed to reconstruct needed equipment at any time in the future. He has named his book "Jungle Snafus . . . and Remedies.'' The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine is fortunate to be its publisher. This book is scheduled to be printed on July 20. Access to Energy subscribers may now order a copy from OISM, P. O. Box 1279, Cave Junction, OR 97523 or from Access to Energy, P. O. Box 1250, Cave Junction, OR 97523 for $19.95 postage paid. This is a low introductory price for this 420-page hard-cover book. The commercial price to be listed three weeks from now will be substantially higher.

The dust cover of Jungle Snafus . . . and Remedies includes statements by three men - John K. Singlaub, Major General U. S. Army (Ret.), the accomplished commander of American forces in Asia; Howard K. Smith, the well-known war correspondent; and George C. Ferguson, who was awarded 12 (that's not a misprint - it is twelve!) Purple Hearts before being made Command Sergeant Major of CON-ARC, the Continental Army Command of the United States.

General Singlaub writes: "Throughout the military history of the American people, the qualities that have contributed most to winning battles have been the ability and the willingness of its combat leaders to innovate and solve unexpected problems with ingenuity and creativity. Jungle Snafus . . . and Remedies provides an amazing revelation of first hand stories and anecdotes that enable the reader to gain ideas and examples of how imaginative thinking by combat leaders can avoid disasters, save lives, and win battles. The book is a fun read and covers many areas unrelated to jungles. I strongly recommend that all leaders, especially those in infantry and Special Operations units, read this fascinating collection of combat wisdom.''

Howard K. Smith writes: "This is the record of a large part of a lifetime devoted to detecting things that went wrong, often fatally, for the foot-slogging soldier in America's twentieth century wars, and inventing canny ways to set them right. This anecdotally rich work is essential for soldiers who would like a better chance if there is a next time, and interesting for those who merely enjoy learning new things.''

Command Sergeant Major Ferguson writes: "This book includes descriptions of much of the combat-proven equipment, ranging from lightweight breath-inflated boats and individual flotation devices to cool, mosquito-protective uniforms, that again should be produced and issued to American soldiers. Teams from my Jungle Platoon needed such equipment when reconnoitering some 40 Japanese-held islands and destroying installations. Nor would all 11 Rangers of the team I commanded have been drowned off Omaha Beach had they had the breath-inflated bladders issued late in World War II to many thousands of our soldiers fighting Japanese invaders.''

It is important to realize that, whether in war or in peace, our lives depend on science and technology of many different types. There is today too great a belief that simple technological lessons of the past (which often contain the solutions to very sophisticated problems) are "low tech'' and "out of date''. This myth is embodied especially in a ridiculous and despicable phrase in common use by generally helpless academics - the "post-industrial society'' - which generally means that the efforts of other people will clothe, feed, house, and transport the "intellectual'' to and from his places of lofty thoughts. Information is valuable and thoughts are essential. Those, however, who believe that America can cease to produce and can trade thoughts and information for production are due a rude awakening.

To the foot soldier, theory that has not been translated into action and equipment has little value - and technology that is not there might as well never have been invented. With Jungle Snafus . . . and Remedies, Cresson Kearny has helped ensure that it will be there.

The DDP meeting in Phoenix included a tour of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station nearby. Producing enough electricity to meet the requirements of Hong Kong, New Zealand, Denmark, Portugal, and Israel combined, Palo Verde serves about 4 million American customers. The electricity output of its three reactors is equivalent to six Hoover dams. A single Palo Verde fuel load has the same energy capacity as a railroad train of filled coal cars stretching from Phoenix to Pittsburgh. Ah, but what do we do with the radioactive waste?

If all of the high-level radioactive waste (all spent fuel and associated radioactive materials) that has ever been generated by all United States nuclear power plants combined were placed on one football playing field, the pile would be only nine feet deep.

Moreover, if the American nuclear industry were allowed by "our government'' to reprocess its fuel - thereby further ensuring that nuclear power would be the least expensive electric generating method, then the remaining pile of waste in that singe football field would be reduced to a depth of only three inches. England, France, Japan, and most other countries do reprocess their fuel.

With reprocessing, all high-level fuel waste ever produced from all American nuclear reactors could be stored in one room the size of the large family room in our farm house. Actually, we would rather have it in a suitable underground pit nearby, so that we could safely draw off some heat during the winter and reduce our cancer risk by hormesis.

Palo Verde is required to keep all of its unreprocessed spent fuel and fuel assemblies at the power plant, since the U. S. government has reneged on its contract to provide off-site storage - for which electric utilities have already paid more than $10 billion. Each Palo Verde reactor has, therefore, a pool of water about the size of an extra deep backyard swimming pool in which the past decade of waste is stored. Plans call for this to be eventually transferred to dry storage casks in a building at the plant.

Each of the three Palo Verde units currently produces 524 megawatts of electricity. High pressure hot water from each nuclear reactor passes through a heat exchanger so that water near the reactor is not circulated through the turbines. This exchanged heat contained in high pressure steam drives a turbine-generator that is 200 feet long and produces as much electricity as two Hoover dams.

And how do the enviros and our government officials show their thankfulness for this engineering miracle from the past? They demonize it with ongoing propaganda lies and, thereby, prevent the building of additional such plants in the United States. Asia, however, unaffected by this nonscience, is building dozens of new nuclear power plants - with enough capital left over to buy obsequiousness and treason from these same U. S. government officials.

We recently received a direct mail solicitation from the National Academy of Sciences (signed by its treasurer) - which is supposed to be America's most prestigious scientific organization. We are invited to contribute $35, $50, $100, or $1,000 by checking one of the convenient boxes on the reply form. If we send $1,000, we ". . . will be honored with membership in The Prometheus Society.''

Prometheus was the mythical Greek Titan who gave fire to man. As punishment for this, he was chained by the gods to a mountain where, each day, an eagle arrived to eat out his liver which he then regrew in time for the next day's feast of the eagle. Given the National Academy's recent record of actions, we are wondering whether this $1,000 "honor'' would associate us with Prometheus or with the eagle.

In any case, if we cannot afford $1,000, the appeal assures us that any donation at all will bring us - straight from the bastions of the Academy - a mouse pad with Albert Einstein's picture on it.

The letter brags about National Academy of Sciences accomplishments, including help for the "threatened Alala crow of Hawaii'' (trumpeted in the first sentence of the NAS appeal letter) and "the development of National Science Education Standards'' - for a nation that, with their help, has become last in the developed world in science education. "We are leading the fight to ensure that the teaching of evolution stays in our classrooms, and 'creation science' stays out'' - no doubt to encourage intellectual freedom. "We are at the forefront of the debate over whether to use statistical sampling for the year 2000 census'' - a partisan political issue. NAS also brags about "the development of a 15-year blueprint for a massive undertaking to map and sequence the human genome'' - which, after wasting billions of tax dollars, is now being supplanted by private industry with a 3-year plan at less than one-tenth the cost - and no tax dollars.

Missing from the appeal is mention of NAS work on the apparently less important issues such as the ongoing pseudoenvironmental genocide from the DDT ban, the continuing program to ban all industrial halogen compounds (fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine) such as methyl bromide - the indispensable agricultural fumigant - and the Kyoto plan to ration and severely restrict world energy supplies.

Actually, NAS has not been completely silent on these issues. They managed to issue a one-page press release stating that they were not involved in our Petition Project to obtain American scientific opinion on global warming (although more than 70 individual NAS members did sign the petition) - and they have elevated to the position of NAS Foreign Secretary the august personage of Sherwood Rowland, one of the Ozone Three whose politically motivated one-third of a Nobel Prize in return for his support of enviro myths about freon and ozone is an embarrassment to the scientific community.

The NAS letter says: "Many of these [NAS] studies are publicly [tax] funded, because we are trusted by the government to explore topics in a way that no other organization can.'' No doubt about this!

Since the oceans, atmosphere, vegetation, soils, and detritus of the Earth (mostly the oceans) contain 40,000 gigatons of carbon (Gt C) and since annual exchanges between these reservoirs are hundreds of Gt C and are not accurately known, it cannot now be reliably determined whether or not the 5 to 6 Gt C humans are releasing into the atmosphere are the cause of the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Known resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and shale are about 10,000 Gt C, so human activity could, over a period of thousands of years, add only about 25% to the Earth's easily available carbon dioxide. Yet, an increase of about 35% in atmospheric carbon dioxide has occurred during just the past 200 years (mostly during the past 50). This increase is either the consequence of human releases which have not yet equilibrated with the oceans or of release of carbon dioxide by the oceans as the Earth warms naturally from the Little Ice Age.

From the temperature dependence of solubility of carbon dioxide in sea water, it can easily be shown that the atmospheric increases could be coming from that source - just as more carbon dioxide bubbles out of a soft drink if the temperature is increased. And, even though increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, like increases in atmospheric temperature, would generally be good for the Earth's biological environment, opponents of world energy rationing would prefer to argue that the increase in carbon dioxide is of nonhuman origin. This is a stronger political position - but only if it is right. There are three observations which warn us that it might be wrong.

First, the same uncertainties in carbon balance that prevent reliable attribution to humans also prevent reliable attribution to the oceans.

Second, the atmospheric carbon dioxide exchange rate with the other reservoirs, as measured by atmospheric carbon 14 since atmospheric bomb testing was terminated, is slow enough - given the uncertainties - to be consistent with the human release hypothesis.

Figure 1 from "Accelerator radiocarbon dating of art, textiles, and artifacts'' by A. J. T. Jull, Nuclear News, June 1998, p 32, gives carbon 14 values from tree rings and seeds that are more precise than earlier compilations we have seen. Carbon 14, normalized to pre-bomb test values (1.00), was 1.82, 1.41, 1.2, and 1.1 (given in text) in 1964, 1974, 1985, and 1998 respectively - giving half-lives of 10, 11, and 13 years.

Roughly estimating, without calculus, let us assume that 30 Gt C, 40 Gt C, 50 Gt C, and 30 Gt C were released by humans in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and half of the 1990s, respectively, and that there have been 3, 2, 1, and 0 half-lives of 10 years duration elapsed since each of these decades. This gives 3 + 10 + 25 + 30 = 68 Gt C.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide rose from 315 parts per million in 1960 to 360 ppm or 750 Gt C total in 1995. [750] - [(315)(750)/(360)] = 94 Gt C. This, given the many uncertainties of measurement, is close enough to 68 Gt C to indicate the rise could be from human release.

Third, the tree-ring measurements of very long-lived pine trees which we have cited earlier (see, for example, Access to Energy 25-3, November 1997) show markedly accelerated growth from carbon dioxide increases of the last century, but they show no such accelerated growth during the Middle Ages (1,000 years ago). Since temperatures were warmer then than they are now, ocean outgassing (if it occurred) should also have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide at that time.

It is becoming distressingly common for people to speak of scientific models being "validated'' by experiment and of experimental results being "validated'' by other experiments with similar outcomes. "Validate'' seems to have become a sort of uncourageous way to imply "prove,'' and it does not properly convey the scientific method.

"Hypotheses'' are invented in the minds of men to explain and correlate experimental observations. Sometimes, hypotheses are invented even without such observations. A useful hypothesis contains, within itself, the means by which it can be tested by experiment.

Occasionally a hypothesis is so well-constructed that a "definitive experiment'' can be carried out that, on its own, either rigorously proves or destroys the hypothesis. Other, usually poorer, hypotheses suggest weaker experiments - dozens of which may provide "mounting evidence for'' the hypothesis, but none of which is definitive.

A "theory'' is a hypothesis or collection of hypotheses that have great general utility and have stood either one or more definitive experimental tests or a great many suggestive experimental tests.

All theories and hypotheses are vulnerable to destruction by just one definitive experiment - regardless of the weight of evidence or of scientific opinion in their support.

In parallel with the tragic decline of academic standards, morals, and ethics in our universities, the language and syntax commonly used in science has also deteriorated. Scientists should state their hypotheses clearly, marshal the evidence in their behalf with conviction, never rest in efforts to prove themselves wrong, and responsibly state the ways, if any, their conclusions affect the lives of other human beings.

Instead, we read endless pusillanimous papers in which the authors stake out shiftable positions that are so adjustable that they can be made to fit virtually any later discoveries. The goal seems to be to place so many caveats in one's publications (in the guise of being oh so "scientific'') that you can never be proved wrong - and can, regardless of the ultimate results, show that you were on the right track.

"Is'' becomes "may be;'' "proves'' becomes "validates;'' and a paper that clearly states its position on a controversial issue becomes "unbalanced'' and "not appropriate.'' Where the science in question has significant implications for the lives of other human beings, this sort of behavior is not just tragic - it is unconscionable. Anyone working in such an area has a moral obligation to be decisive and clear, and to correct or reverse direction whenever he sees that he has made an error. Honorable, decisive men make mistakes, while indecisive men avoid criticism - and also avoid honor.