It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Nature370 p 165 (1994) reports that Carl Sagan is being left behind by renewed interest among astronomers for comet and asteroid tracking to guard against an event on Earth like the recent impacts on Jupiter. Sagan's problem - the projects may suggest mitigation with nuclear explosions. After a career of arguing that one nuclear disaster, no matter how improbable, is not worth the risk, Sagan now claims that the risk of cosmic impact catastrophe is only 3,000 deaths per year (because it is improbable) and therefore protection is not worth the risk of nuclear development.
"EPA Came Through for Archer-Daniels-Midland Soon After Andreas's Role at Presidential Dinner'' in The Wall Street Journal, p A22, July 6, 1994 reports the new EPA rule that 10% of all gasoline sold in the U.S. by 1996 contain corn-based ethanol. The ruling coincided with Dwayne Andreas's co-chairmanship of a $2.5 million presidential fund raising dinner. ADM makes 60% of U.S. ethanol.
Meanwhile the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPACT) requires that 10% of motor fuels be nonpetroleum by year 2000 and 30% by 2010. (See Energy Information Agency report
Estimates of U. S. Biomass Energy Consumption 1992, GPO Stock No. 061-003-00852-6, available from GPO at telephone (202) 653-2050.) This insanity has become so rampant that even the politically correct AAAS cannot stand it any more. See "Paradise Gained'' by D. E. Koshland, Science265, p 167 (1994). In a very bad sign for the envirocrats, Koshland (Editor-in Chief of Science) is not just criticizing them, he is laughing at them. "Paradise Gained'' is about a fictional (so far) EPA ruling that humans stop exhaling CO2. The ruling is phased in over two years in order to give exhalers time to adapt.
"In case of ingestion, give 2 to 4 cups of milk or water. Then induce vomiting ...... and get medical aid immediately.'' This is just part of the politically correct warning now carried by laboratory grade NaCl and NaHCO3 - better known as table salt and baking soda. Many irreplaceable laboratory reagents have been banned entirely.
