WHERE DO SCIENTISTS STAND ON ACID RAIN?

As things now stand, the main ingredient of acid rain appears to be Ey 1984, an element known as Election Year 1984. This makes it highly beneficial to Canadian nationalists, energy stiflers, and corporation baiters; the beauty of the game is that they get the pay-off while you pay the costs.

What they try to make you believe is that the uncertainties of acid rain are simply due to scientists never being satisfied until something is proven beyond unreasonable doubt, and that only the utility industry opposes the measures now considered in Congress.

You would expect this type of political, anti-scientific campaign to be led by the medicine men of the American Association for the Abolition of Science (AAAS), and indeed, they will not disappoint you. Science of July 15 contains a two-page article by Science scribbler Eliot Marshall, who is getting to be quite a writer on rain: he dismisses it if it is yellow, but beats the alarm if it is acid. A second full-page article by Richard A. Kerr appears under the maximum-size headline EMISSION CONTROL WILL CONTROL ACID RAIN, purporting to reflect the stand of a respected panel appointed by the National Academy of Sciences.

Quite apart from the ignored objections listed above, this is simply false. The NAS report does not conclude that reductions in sulfur dioxide emissions from plants in the Midwest would significantly reduce the problems caused by acid rain, nor does it support pending legislative proposals.

"As a member of the scientific panel which prepared the report for the Academy," writes Prof. V. A. Mohnen of the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, State Univ. of N.Y. at Albany [Wall Str. J. 8/8/83], "I am deeply concerned about these misinterpretations. Our report ... concludes that the contribution of Midwestern sources to acid rain in the sensitive areas in the Northeast, where the problem is most important, cannot be determined at this time...

"The bills pending in Congress require the largest reductions in emissions to come from sources in the Midwest, with much smaller reductions in the Northeast itself. The report specifically states that the source-receptor relationship for this strategy cannot be established at this time. It thus does not provide scientific support for the pending legislation."