STARK RAVING MAD

Your (Our? Their? How do I say this politely?) Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations Population Fund, Jane Fonda, informed the United Nations during her September United Nations speech that "Our species alone co-opts, consumes, or eliminates 40 percent of the earth's photosynthetic energy.'' If only it were true.
Western Living in the November 1993 article by Sharon Butala reports proceedings of the big enviro gathering at Salina Kansas, the 15th annual Prairie Festival. The conference opened with an address by George Foreman, cofounder of Earth First. Butala reports: "As Foreman reached the climax of his talk, he raised his voice to ask, 'What do we do with this love of life? With this love of earth?' Growing more passionate by the second, he shouted, 'But dammit! I am an animal!' Then, tilting back his head and lifting his hands to his face, he roared that sometimes he wanted to tear apart a woodchuck -I think it was a woodchuck - with his bare hands and devour it.'' "Before I'd recovered, he took a deep breath and, not too realistically I thought, howled like a wolf. He wound up his speech by urging the audience to join him in a big wolf howl. Enthusiastically, they all did their best, howling from soprano to bass, more or less in unison.'' Butala reports that she sat stunned as Forman left the stage, "while everybody around us rose to their feet, clapping wildly.'' Don't think about Foreman. Think about the enormous political power that Babbitt, Clinton, and Gore are giving to that audience.

Greenpeace is opposing a proposal to target American and Soviet nuclear weapons on the oceans rather than cities in order to diminish the risks from accidental launch. Although I have doubts about the merits of this unverifiable procedure, can it really be that Greenpeace prefers to lose a city rather than some fish? Since Green-peace is also trying to close the chemical industry with a total ban on chlorine compounds, perhaps Clinton will compromise by agreeing to target industrial chemical plants instead.

The Unspotted Sturgeon, Wall Street Journal, November 22, 1993, p. A14 reports that a stuffed fish in the Alabama Museum of Natural History has been nominated by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife office for the endangered species list. The stuffed fish apparently looks a little different than those that are abundant in Alabama rivers, but no corresponding live fish can be found. "Under a federal law already drafted, the [stuffed] sturgeon would be awarded some of the nation's busiest commercial waterways as 'critical habitat'...'' in hopes that somewhere a living specimen can be found.
Not to worry, however, Bruce Babbitt has agreed to appoint an independent scientific panel to study this matter. The panel members are being picked by Jim Stewart - the USFW bureaucrat who proposed the listing and began this pseudoenvironmentalist debacle.

•	Cargo Cult Science
•	OZONE AND ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT
•	PINATUBO STRIKES AGAIN
•	PLEASE DON'T DO IT
•	NUCLEAR SECRETS
•	*STARK RAVING MAD*
•	GOOD READING

Vol. 21, No. 5

Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
Volume: Issues
Issue/No.: Vol. 21, No. 5

Date: January 01, 1994 02:47 PM (For actual publication date see newsletter.)
Title: Cargo Cult Science