The New Jingoism
This is the beginning of the book and let me be damned for it up front. America has nothing to apologize for in this world; not one slightest thing.

America is the country every other country has tried to emulate. We are the only country in the world with immigrants from all over the world. I won't spend a moment ennumerating the glories of America rather I will note the tens of millions of people who have decided over the last 200 years that America may not be the perfect country but it is better than all the rest.

And, yes, that goes for all the people brought over here as slaves. Were it not for the slave trade they would have been murdered and/or eaten. There were many truly free men among them who made the best of slavery or fought to the death against it. My hat is off to them and hope that should a similar circumstance fall to me I would find their courage in my heart.

The United States is not now nor has it ever been perfect. At all times it has only been better than all the rest. Again, I am not going to prove that. You simply ask your ancestors why they came here. If the United States for all of its failings is indeed the worst of countries then your ancestors were fools.

I take it you are not descended from fools but from people who made the best choice at the time. So did my ancestors. They did not come to a perfect country. They came to a country that was simply better than all the rest AT THE TIME.

And today, the United States is still the best of all possible countries in the world. The United States accounts for 90% of the immigration in the entire world both legal and illegal both separately and together.

And what of the rest of the world? Every country in the world has the United States as its model either now or in the past. And most nations in the world consider the United States their present day model in one way or another. Yes, there are minor exceptions which are falling on their face with failure because of those exceptions.

The entire Middle East wants to imitate the United States but somehow just does not want to part with this or that part of tradition or culture and in the process fails.

Japan is our most faithful imitator and with imitation comes flattery. Japan does well with its imitation of the United States as it should. We taught them all the know. Were it not for us they would still be a backwater groups of islands suitable only for the tourist trade taking pictures of the quaint Samurai beheading a peasant for a one dollar gift. The entire concept of reverence for human life in Japan was taught to them by the United States however incompletely over a century and finally by the Atomic Bomb, two of them, they are a hard headed lot.

And is anyone trying to immigrate to Japan? Is anyone that stupid?

Is this intended to be insulting to the Japanese people? If the shoe fits, wear it. And tell it to your immigrants.

The list of countries is endless. Most have the common civlity not to call the kettle black. However, where do most of our detractors come from? Right here in the good old U S of A. And why are they detractors? Because they are ignorant and stupid; because they get some sort of emotional satisfaction from biting the hand that feeds them; because they were kicked in the head by a mule as children.

Speculation is easy. Nothing explains the reality. There is an impulse in this country always to do better, always to do more, always to lead the world into new areas of human freedom as this country always has and, God willing, always will. The blind hate detractors of this country would have us believe that every failing they percieve from Columbus forward is the fault of the present day political system in this country. And it matters not what that political system is; it is always at fault.

I will agree in principle. The United States is the worst country in the world, except when compared to all the rest.

What are the better countries in the world? Sweden? The wait for housing in Sweden is currently longer than the wait for housing in Moscow. OK, that is an exaggeration, it is in truth slightly less than the wait in Moscow. And people tell is Sweden has the highest standard of living in the world? What standard? What world?

Evils in the United States? What evils in comparison to which country? If for each evil you have to find a different country then you are proving my position correct. Everyone who finds fault with the United States is not doing to improve the United States, they are finding fault to promote a political agenda of their own. They are attempting to create in your mind a great evil in hopes you will help promote the private evil they propose.

And every private evil proposed requires they be in charge of it and have the power over your life it will give them to force YOU to do what they wish.

A true American wishes no power to change the life of anyone save for the preservation of freedom and the saving from harm of the innocents. Most citizens are true Americans working for themselves in their own way and looking only to prevent harm to others. There are many thousands out there today living off of the harm they can do others for personal gain.

They are on the TV, in the newspapers every day. They seek to convince you of some terrible evil of this country which can only be cured by making them dictator of the life of this country. They would have the country do what they want because of some evil they imagine and make sound believable. They wish to impose their petty tyranny upon us all.

There is a time to say NO. There is a time to stop it. The time is now. Yes, there are a thousand ways to improve this country but not one of them seeks to destroy the great triumphs of our past and replace it with an imagined future.

We the People are the People. The government exists for our benefit and our benefit alone. The government exists only to do the will of the people. The government does not exist to make us do what is right in the eyes of some nutball who buys the political clout. We do not have to put up with anything imposed upon us.

We are the country. We are the people. And we are the greatest country on the face of the Earth. Ask your ancestors if you doubt me.

Consumption

The ingrates of the world constantly are trying to put a guilt trip upon us like over-protective mothers. "The US consumes 99.9% of the world's whatever and only has 0.01% of the world's population" and nonsense statements like that.

In truth the United States consumes 99.9% of the world's freedom and human rights and shoulders the same amount of the world's responsibilities and return receives 0.01% of the world's respect for doing so.

The United States Civil Rights Record

The record of the United States on civil rights is one that people in this country and around the world find in their most self righteous interests to hold up to scorn. The most self righteous have the least capacity for thinking.

Consider any other country in the world which as a situation of peoples with even mixed national loyalties much less mixed ethnic or religious origin not to mention mixed racial origins.

Mixed national loyalties, the island of Cyprus (ne Crete) where there is still a United Nations force on duty keeping the Greek and the Turkish loyalists from killing each other -- again.

Mixed religion? Nothern Ireland will do for an example, if you don't drive a car.

Mixed ethnic groups? The entire Middle East, the tribes in South Africa, the Kurds in Iraq, the Kurds in Turkey, the Kurds in Iran, the Kurds in Armenia (everybody hates the Kurds.) Armenians in Turkey and still a debate as to the number of hundred thousands that died. Chinese descendants thrown out of Vietnam. Koreans treated like dirt in Japan.

Mixed races? Holy than thou England has been adapting to its immigrants from India for a decade now with very mixed results. Asian merchants and land owners thrown out of Zimbabwe.

The length of this list is limited only by the time I wish to spend recalling even the examples of the last ten years.

The point of making the list is only to demonstrate how small, how trivial, how insignificant have been the "mixing" problems faced by other countries and how arbitrary, immoral, and downright deadly their response has been when compared to the United States.

Compared to ANY other country in the world; compared to EVERY other country in the world the United States has had one hundred times more "mixing" than any other nation has ever imagined, maybe a thousand times more. And in return the United States has NEVER had any response anywhere near the magnitude of depravity of every other country in the world.

No matter what problems the United States has had mixing all groups of all types from every where and any where, we are also the only country that has invited these problems and we are the only country that has come even the least bit close to suceeding.

I am very tired of hearing about the faults of the United States. The United States was the first country in the entire world to recognize and legally protect inherent human rights. The United States was the first country in the world to define the term civil rights.

The United States accounts for 95% of the immigration in the entire world. The United States is the ONLY country in the world that debates the AMOUNT of extra effort to be made to accomodate immigrants whether legal or illegal.

As to the civil rights record of the rest of the world, some few that have followed our lead may some day in the distant future reach the position of the United States fifty years ago. Maybe they will. If they work very hard.

We can grant the United States has problems with mixing. We can grant that every new group that arrives gets its turn in the barrel as new comers suitable for hazing. We also know that every group has come to mix completely within our country.

The only failures the United States has are in comparison to accomplishments no other nation on Earth has come close to even wanting to achieve.

The United States consumes 99.9% of the world's freedom and recieves 0.1% of the world's respect for it.

So be it.

The fallacy of the Consumption Argument

A more more common form of the statement is that I parody above is that the US has only 5% of the population (approximately true) and the US consumes some very disproportionate percentage of something else whether it be energy or raw materials or whatever the person creating a simpleminded statistic wishes to discuss. This is hardly even to the level of a fallacy. At least a fallacy presumes some reason has gone into the statement but for some reason it is wrong for a reason that is not obvious.

Consider a more parodixical form of the same statement. The US is only 5% of the population and consumes over 40% of the illegal drugs in the world and poor little Jose has to go to bed each night without a buzz on. It would seem that by our purported over consumption of illegal drugs we are in fact saving little Jose from growing up a drug addict. Similarly if our consumption of energy leads to our being evil in some way then by so consuming we are saving other countries from becoming the evil over consumers we have become.

But first the question must be asked, is there anything inherently wrong or evil in consumption even if out of proportion to the world population? If it is evil for a nation to consume out of proportion to its population then Japan is truely evil for its consumption of raw fish, China for its consumption of bamboo, and Italy for its consumption of pasta. There can be no inherent evil in consumption; it is all a matter of taste.

In fact it is difficult to point out very many things the US consumes out of proportion to its population. In fact the two cited, energy and raw materials, are about the only ones worthy of note. The case must be made that such consumption is evil in the first place.

The Roots of the Environmental Movement

The Environmental movement is a suprisingly cohesive movement. It has no obvious single source or cause. So how can it be so apparently well organized? Obviously it is not organized in the usual sense as they do not all belong to the same organization or wear the same T-shirts. They do however all supports each other's causes without question or concern. If there are any quibbles they are over tactics.

Back in the late 40s early 50s there was a general fear of world communism. There was a man named McCarthy who did not start it or lead it but rode the crest of it. Today there are literally millions of people who from many years of experience have found personal reasons for being concerned about their personal environment and about the events they have read of in the papers.

In the time frame around 1950 there were literally millions of Americans who agreed with General Patton, to draft the German Army and attack to the East. Those people had lived through the stories of the millions of starvation deaths caused by the Communists, their brutal suppression and had recently experienced their conquest of Eastern Europe.

Had American boys died to give Eastern Europe to the Communists? That was the Love Canal, Exxon Valdez and Three Mile Island of the late 1940s all rolled into one. And who was next on the list? The fall of Greece and Italy to communism was narrowly avoided. The Party was powerful in France and even in England. The Finlandic countries were strongly Socialist.

Out of this grew a serious American fear of Communism. Would America be next? There was not a significant Communist influence in America at the time but there was some. A real spy here and there, an organized cell that met more for social reasons than political reasons and yes, a real historic connection with Communism by many people in their youth who were now in public positions.

Yes, there was a little here and there but not much to create an immediate threat.

Consider the parallels between the environmental movement and McCarthyism.

A general concern for the environment and a general concern about communism.

There are isolated cases of serious damage to the environment and there were isolated cases of real communist spies at work in the country.

There is no solid evidence of any coming global catastrophe from any cause and there was never any solid evidence of the imminent overthrow of the government by communism, but there are arguable hints here and there.

The impetus of the environmental movement is based upon predictions of future calamity and the impetus for McCarthyism was predictions of future communist takeover.

In both cases, for anyone who questioned there were two answers:

1) There were just enough real communists and there are just enough real local environmental problems to lend some credibility,

and

2) in both cases the predicted threat is so great we dare not take the risk of NOT acting even if it is untrue.

There are many other parallels in history, the McCarthy era fits the way it has happened in the US in the past. Another parallel with even more disastrous consequences was the Jewish threat as perceived by Nazi Germany but that was not in America.

So, no, the Environmental movement is not an organized political movement with a primary conspiracy behind it. It is a matter of a few people riding the crest of the wave and a few million followers loving to be lead.

And a final parallel to note. In the days of McCarthy if a person were to question the truth of the imminent Communist subversion of America then one was accused of being a Communist Sympathizer or Dupe or Fellow Traveler. Today, if you question the environmental movement in any way you are considered to be completely in favor of destroying the environment and ending all life on this planet.

The environmental movement does not seek to persuade people to its cause but rather it seeks to spread the TRUTH of the GREAT DANGER and to condemn those who do not agree. This was the great part of McCarthyism. If you are not with us then you are the enemy incarnate. If you are not with us then you are our enemy.

As with McCarthyism, you must believe the conclusions and never, never question the complete and total lack of any reason to believe the conclusions of the

Decision making under Uncertainty

or

The Fright Factor

Almost 20 years ago, Professors Tversky and Kahneman published a landmark paper which has received hardly a fraction of the attention it deserves. It covered precisely the topic of this section, decision making under uncertainty. It addressed the question as to how people make decisions when all the information is not known, when there is not enough information upon which to make a logical decision.

Every one who has considered the immensity of the problem of predicting or even coming up with a good guess as to the future of the earth due to the activities of Man has to admit one thing. We do not have enough information now and we may never have enough information to make a correct decision as to the proper course of action or even to know if the proper course of action is to do nothing at all.

What these reseachers demonstrated in a manner that was not emotionally loaded was simply that people when there is not enough information to make a decision then they will decide based upon the way the question is asked.

For example, two questions. Will you play the state lottery for one dollar a day for one thousand days for the chance of winning three hundred dollars? Will you play the state lottery one time for a dollar on the chance of winning three hundred dollars dollars. Most people will say no to the first question and yes to the second question. In truth the former question is a statement of the odds for winning money over a long period of time. They are essentially the same bet.

How does this apply to the New McCartyism? If I told you that eating potatos increased you chance of getting a hangnail would you stop eating them? If I also told you that eating tomatos increased you chance of getting cancer would you stop? Remember, no other information than my saying so. People may not stop eating either but few would give a second thought to their next potato but might look sidewise at that tomato.

This is an example of the Fright Factor in the question. When you were young would you walk through a grave yard at night if thought you might fall down and get hurt? Perhaps. But if you thought you might meet a ghost would you take that same walk?

Why the difference? The fright factor the fear of the unknown. This affects the judgment of well read people and even of scientists. Consider the impact on people who know little to nothing about science. For the most part this is not their fault at all. Science is barely taught in school by people who barely understand from textbooks that are exceedingly trite or exceedingly dense. Few people realize that science is not hard; science text books are hard.

Lets go back to that oncogenic (the proper name for what the popular press calls carcinogic -- note laymen are not even exposed to the proper words) tomato. What if in each case my reason for telling you was that I had examined the entrails of a chicken? Would your decision be the same? Of course not.

On the other hand, what if I had claimed the information had come from a noted scientistic researcher? You might be inclined to take it a bit more seriously. What if I then told you the researcher was noted for his crazy idea? Your opinion would change again.

What if I told you that many noted scientists believed in oncogenic tomatos? What then if you found that by many I meant five and there were hundreds who disagreed? What if there were really no opinion within the community but rather ongoing research and then I chose to say rather noted scientists have determined tomato eating is responsible for 6000 cancers in this country yearly? One final what if, what if the real statement by the scientist was IF it is true then "there are 6000 cancers per year" and that my quote was only of the words in quotations?

Now you might ask me why I make this statement when it is still a matter of research and I would say, in light of the potential danger involved I have chosen to make a prudent statement. Unfortunately prudence has no bearing whatsoever upon the validity of any scientific theory. In the new McCarthyism the potential disaster in the statement is the reason for taking action. The worse the imagined disaster the more reasonable and prudent seems the action they propose. This is human nature.

There is an old story of the great emperor who was a real clothes horse. One day a great con man arrived in the kingdom to make is fortune. He convinced the emperor he had the finest cloth in the world but only those of impeccable taste in clothing could see it. And the emperor not wishing to be thought one with less than perfect taste in clothing "saw" the fabric and ordered an entire wardrobe of new clothes.

When they were ready, the emperor called for a royal procession through the streets in which he would display his new clothes. The people not wishing to be thought so uncultured not to see the clothes lined the streets oo'ing and ah'ing over the clothes and complimenting the emperor.

Almost at the end of the procession there was a young boy of innocense and without guile who looked at the emperor and said, "but he doesn't have any clothes on." And the crowd laughed at the emperor and themselves and the emperor retired to his castle in shame.

This book is to point out the environmental emperor has no clothes. Environmentalism in all its aspects, in all its forms, is as naked as a jaybird, parading down the street with proud fancies and without substance.

Who knows Science?

Who cares?

In my discussions with people on this subject I have found very intelligent people who are working with the enviro-nut pronouncements and trying to make sense of them. In fact they are doing rather well at times putting together what they hear.

Take for example Mike S. He had been hearing about radiation poisoning and its effects. Given that he believed what he had been told about the effects he had come to the conclusion that a radioactive atom continues to radiate deadly particles forever. In this light he was assuming that one ingested atom of Plutonium meant ultimate death from radiation poisoning or cancer. Of course this is absolutely untrue but he had been doing his best to make sense out of the information presented to him.

I find many cases of this. People are begin bombarded today with deliberate misinformation. They do not have the time or perhaps the inclination or perhaps no idea of where to start to learn the truth. How many know more than the vaguest suggestion that there is something wrong with the idea that a Plutonium atom would radiate forever?

And why do I say it is deliberate misinformation? I would hate to think that otherwise apparently intelligent individuals claiming to be working in a good cause would maintain deliberate ignorance of what they are talking about. Give me an honest crook rather than a ignorant klutz any day.

What has brought this about? We all know that science education in this country is about at a standstill with the National Education Association as the major roadblock to making any change in that situation. (This is Union Rules. No one with a rare degree in science may be paid more than a person with a degree in dirt common degree in English. If you even talk about it, they go on strike. Thus they prevent attracting science teachers for their own financial benefit.) We also know that we do not like to study science. It is too hard. It is for other people.

However it is interstesting to note that were it not for this scientific illiteracy there would be no environmental movement. People would be too well educated to swallow any of this stuff and nonsense and certainly would be many dollars richer for not sending their hard earned money to mass-mailing hucksters. People think Jim and Tammy Bakker were bad. The enviro-profiteers have raked in tens of billions over the last ten years and produced rallies, press releases, more mass mailings and well paid staff positions.

Are the leaders of these movements really lying to you in their mailings? Read the next one you recieve carefully. It will say something like, "The earth may be coming to an end unless ..." Pardon me? MAY be coming to an end? That is not a statement of fact. It is exactly the same as saying "The world may NOT be coming to an end unless ..." Either statement is a correct statement. The only question is which is the most misleading?

Consider again the famous lead sentence to the statement signed by a few hundred scientists (at least that is what they claim. "Global warming MAY be inevitable unless ..." Have you ever opened you mail and read, "You may already be a winner?" Whenever you read one of these environmental funds appeals in the future remember, "You may already be a Warmer."

Why worry about fringe groups?

There are so many inter-related groups that support each others causes that it would seem you could smell them coming and not worry. When someone condemns the eating of meat you know they are to be pitied as mentally challenged.

However, there is another side to their activities, they willfully promote every half truth, exaggeration, misrepresentation they can discover that supports their intentions. And they do this with barely a mention as to their motivation for doing so.

Take the Spotted Owl case. What they really wanted was to shut down the forests to logging so they could wander through them for free, that is, increase your price for forest products for their benefit.

Who are the greatest promoters of every half baked unduplicated study showing harm to your health from eating red meat? The vegetarians of couse; but they will never tell you that up front.

Who is in favor of every restriction that will slow or stop economic growth? Why those who are in favor of socialism and want to prove free enterprise will not work.

What we have here is a free wheeling proganda machine with ulterior motives. When someone tells you of some horror they have imagined and asked for your money to stop it, there are a few valid questions you should ask. First ask HOW they plan to stop it and second ask what that will mean to you.

When you hear a TV commercial for EXXON gasoline you know that EXXON has something to gain by it. If you were told that a warning against eating red meat were brought to you by a vegetarian organization that would put an entirely different light upon the subject.

What we are dealing with here is a massive disinformation campaign. Propaganda for that is promoted because it fits in with a completely different and hidden political agenda. If the ecology movement were to tell you they are promoting the fairy tales for the purpose of promoting a socialist government would you give them a second listen?

Their motives are as diverse as they are insistant upon promoting ideas, true or not, which support those motives. Why are they against CFCs? Because they are essential to industry and they want industry stopped or made to expensive. Why are they against the use of chlorine gas? Because the other methods are more expensive.

More generally, why do they invent terms like bioaccumulative?

The popular culture often brings to the fore those who provide sham instead of enlightenment.

It has been said better, by Igor Stravinsky of all people in a series of lectures given at Harvard in 1939 as follows.

"In every period of spiritual anarchy wherein man, having lost his feeling and taste for ontology, takes fright at himself and his destiny, there always appears one of these gnosticisms which serve as a religion for those who no longer have a religion, just as in periods of international crises an army of soothsayers, fakirs, and clairvoyants monopolizers of journalistic publicity."

These are the times for people like this to arise. It is not so much the loss of traditional values or religions but the failure to make the effort to learn the new things that have caused our loss of faith in the old.

Darwin brought many to discard religion but how few who discarded religion studied Darwin. At times science has caused many to discard religion but few have taken the time to learn religion. They have replaced something with nothing. As such they are willing to follow the first thing that replaces what they have lost.

People who once held and then abandoned a formal religion are very likely to adopt some form of mysticism to replace it. Not that science or whatever supports mysticism but note so many recent best sellers of pop science such as, The Dancing Wu Li Masters. These purport to show science is nothing new, it has all been known before.

Is religion abandoned because of the death of a loved one? How quickly will spiritualism be adopted with seances, speaking with the dead, crystal balls and the whole nine yards?

Today we have a mass turning away from religion which has always been easy enough with a reasonable excuse. But how many have replaced it with their reasonable excuse? Very few. So what do they turn to? The easist thing that comes done the street. Anyone willing to instill a few simple solutions to all of their problems is accepted wholeheartedly.

Of course, simple solutions only last for a short time. What happens? They move on to the next simple solution. Yesterday vegetarianism, today the ozone layer, tomorrow they will get around to saving the whales.

This is why they appear to be so closely related. They are wanderers from cult belief to cult belief. They have old relations or perhaps future plans to belong to the other organizations.

They have failed where reason is concerned. They have abandoned the intellect and reason and replaced it with pap. They are the derelicts of the mind.

When you hear them speak realize this.

Global Warming

There are dire predictions, intolerably hot summers, the sea level rising and flooding New York City and submerging Florida, mass starvation, droughts, real Biblical proportion end of the world stuff. And it is just around the corner. And even if we stop right now it is going to happen anyway. And, and, and ... the list goes on and on. Each terror more creative than the last.

What is the evidence for any global warming? None. Not a thing. For every bit of evidence for some local warming there is equal evidence for local cooling. It is a simple as that.

What is the greatest cause of the fallacy? It has been commonly believed but never tested that CO2 is one of the reasons for the current temperature of the Earth. The folly is simply that although it is widely believed it has never been tested. This was even published as educational value material in children's comic books in the 1950s -- I remember it well.

Over the last 100 years there has been an uncontrolled experiment (called the Industrial Revolution) increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere. The result of that experiment to date is that there is NO direct relationship between the CO2 content of the atmosphere and the temperature of the atmosphere.

Simply we have fallen into a very old dangerous trap. It is better to know nothing than to know something that is not true. What simply is not true is the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has a direct relationship to the temperature of the atmosphere. The test has been conducted and the theory has been disproved.

Our concern of the CO2 in the atmosphere is based upon our belief in something that was never true in the first place.

But have not 355 scientists signed a statement agreeing there is global warming? If anyone thinks that 355 scientists have ever agreed on anything they do not know any scientists. The "statement" actually said the possibility of global warming should receive increased attention.

Has not Europe agreed to work to limit CO2 emissions? Europe has chronic unemployment and a shrinking population. If Europe does nothing at all they will decrease their CO2 emmissions simply because their population is decreasing. For the US to do the same it would have to seal its borders and stop ALL legal and illegal immigration immediately and start incentive programs for small family sizes.

Where did all the coal come from?

Just where did is all come from? And all the oil for that matter. It came from plants and ultimately from the air. Coal from thin air? Yes. And in burning it perhaps we are just returning the coal to the air.

Is the really a threat to the human race to burn fossil fuel? Just what is fossil fuel?

First off, fossil fuel is a bit of a misnomer. A fossil is something that was once organic that was eventually replaced by stone. Dinosaur bones you see are not the bones themselves but rather the bones decayed and left inadvertant "molds" in the ground that were filled with mineral bearing waters that solidified into stone. Dinosaur bones are in fact really rock in the shape of bones.

As such fossil fuel is not fossil at all. It is the original carbon from plants that once lived which over the millions of years has become buried under the earth.

The best available theory suggests that coal and oil originated as plant life that was abundantly produced in the world wide warm tropical climate that existed from between 800 to 200 million years ago. Today if you want to see a future coal seam, go visit a peat bog but not there are few of them today. I will come back to this point.

In the early earth life divided into many forms of surival. Some to live off of thermal vents in the oceans, some to live off of rare high concentrations of certain minerals. We find examples of these today but they are quite rare.

Early two main forms adopted the life cycles that permitted the greatest number of offspring and thus came to dominate the life patterns on earth. One drew its life energy from sunlight through photosynthesis and became plants. The other lived upon plants and upon each other and these are animals.

Not only do animals live directly off of plants for food but also breath the oxygen given off by plants. In the life cycle of plants the take carbon dioxide from the air and combined with other chemicals and sunlight produce what they need to live and grow. In the process they give off oxygen.

The process of photosynthesis is slow and thus plants exhibit little more movement than pointing turning toward the sun during the day as it moves across the sky. Oxygen consumption produces much more energy and permitted the development of animals which move around.

Back to coal. In photosynthesis plants consume carbon from the carbon dioxide they take from the air. Now we make one assumption here. Before the start of life, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was a certain amount and no more was added. Certainly, volcanoes over the hundreds of millions of years added some but they were random events not part of the life process.

So over a few hundred million years plants lived and died and in many cases instead of being a constantly active recycling layer of topsoil found itself in bogs and swamps that eventually became thick and buried and turned to coal.

In this process carbon was removed from the atmosphere NEVER to return until we started burning it for fuel. In other words, if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was fixed when life first began then the very existance of life has REDUCED the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

We are living in a world whose atmosphere is starved for carbon dioxide as plants and geologic forces have sequestered so much of it below the surface of the Earth.

Let us get back to the peat bogs. The United States has the world's largest proven reserves of coal with enough for over 500 years consumption at the present rate. That is a lot of carbon that was permanently removed from the atmosphere and permanently reduced the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere.

But rather the question is, if there is so much coal today where are the future coal beds of the world? Is the world not creating any more of them? Apparently there are very few and they are very small. The most commonly known are the peat bogs of Scotland. There are few others. Why?

Let us take a look at another phenomenon. If plants are raised in greenhouses where the carbon dioxide is increased then the plants grow faster and larger. This indicates that plants are starved for carbon dioxide. If they have enough they grow faster and larger. This is leading us somewhere.

I have a modest hypothesis. The earth now has much less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than is needed by plants to grow normally. In fact every plant we see that is not properly hothouse grown is a carbon starved plant. If there were more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere we would have more and larger and faster growing plants.

Back to the peat bogs. Why are there not more of them? Why are there not more future coal beds in the making? Because plants do not grow fast enough or large enough to provide the raw material for future coal beds.

I propose that over the millions of years life was doing quite nicely with a much high carbon dioxide atmosphere however geologic forces and local climates caused plants to be buried rather than recycled into the atmosphere. Thus over the millions of years the earth and all of its plant life has become starved for carbon dioxide as more and more of it has become locked away deep underground.

This is why there are so few future coal beds being produced these days. The growth rate of plants is so diminished by the carbon dioxide depleted atmosphere they live in as produce an ecology where every excess bit of plant waste is scarfed up by some organism or other. There is none left over to become future coal beds.

The consequences of this? Burning coal and oil is in fact returning to the atmosphere exactly what was once taken from the atmosphere and never replaced. By burning these fossil fuels we are in fact returning the atmosphere to the condition it was before geologic forces interfered and started burying it away from ever being returned to the atmosphere.

Far from destroying the earth, burning fossil fuels will restore the early balance to the earth, increase plant growth and food supplies and give us perhaps a somewhat higher oxygen environment to live in.

Long after nuclear power makes fossil fuel burning way to expensive we will possibly continue to burn them just to kelp restore the vegatative productivity of the earth.

The Plant life Process

The life processes of plants are extremely relevant to making some sense out of environmental misunderstandings. From any introductory text you will find that plants need water, light and nutrients and I presume most everyone knows this. Consider two lesser known facts two of those essentials to plant life come from the air.

Nitrogen is the first and usually covered in texts. Nitrogen is absorbed through the roots of plants. It comes however from the sky, from thunderstorms which create various nitrous oxides and mild nitric acid that then rains into the soil. From there it is fixed by bacteria, that is, used up by it and eventually it finds its way into plants.

The second is rarely mentioned as it is not a considered a nutrient, is it carbon. Carbon is the fundamental building block of life. All life on earth is based upon carbon. Without carbon, no life.

The carbon plants use comes from the carbon dioxide gas in the air and only from there. Plants take in carbon dioxide and through the process of photosynthesis remove the carbon and release oxygen. Oxygen being of course the essential gas for animal life.

With animal life if there is a smaller than needed amount of an essential nutrient the animal tends to become sickly and die early. For the most part with plants, if an essential nutrient in in short supply, the plant simply grows more slowly. When all essentials are available in the correct proportions and as much as the plant can handle, a plant has its maximum growth rate.

If you want to take a professional approach to growing your house plants you will grow them in an enclosure called a phytarium. With it you can provide the plant with all the essential nutrients in the correct proporations. Guess what happens if you increase the amount of CO2 in the enclosure? Most plants grow faster.

One more time in different words, for most plants the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is less than what is needed for maximum growth. Not only that, when you do increase the CO2 they generally need less water for the same growth. A very good case can be made that the earth's atmosphere is deficient in carbon dioxide.

The Rain Forests

Today there is great shouting in the streets over the destruction of the Brazilian rain forest. Lets recount the list of coming disasters (if we can remember them all.) The earth will run out of breathing oxygen. There will be no new drugs. Millions of species will become extinct. The land will turn into a desert. Dire enough for you?

What will happen if they are cut down? Some local weather patterns may change; nothing more. If they are not cut down the economic growth of Brazil will grind to a halt.

But won't the Earth stop producing oxygen? Just where did that idea come from? Some one invented it for the purpose of making money as usual.

If the rain forests were in fact a major planetary source of oxygen then the oxygen concentration within the rain forest would be massive. If the oxygen concentration rose above 22% the entire forest would go up in flames with the first small fire. At 22% oxygen content in the air almost everything is explosively flammable.

Lets put this in perspective. The earth is only 20% land. I don't have a number in front of me but let us make the assumption that 20% of the land is forest. That would mean only 4% of the earth is forest. Lets keep this simple with a wildly high assumption that 25% of all forests are rain forests. That results in no more than 1% of the earth being rain forests.

For 1% of the land surface to make any exceptional contribution to the oxygen on the planet it would have to be producing enough oxygen within the forest to burn it to the ground with the first fire.

For rain forests to be a major source of oxygen for the planet when only being 1% of the land mass then it must be pumping out oxygen at such a prodigious rate that the effect would be directly measurable by the increased oxygen both inside and down wind of a rain forest.

The truth is, there is no such measurement, there is no such increased oxygen content.

Won't the land turn to desert? Why would that happen? They are using slash and burn land clearing tactics, however that is the same technique that was used in clearing the Great Eastern forests in the US and they are not deserts.

Millions of species will become extinct? There will be no more new drugs? Let not answer that directly. Lets rather look at what the experts are doing. Are the pharmacutical houses sending armies of collectors to gather specimens before the become extinct? Are there armies of naturalists descending upon the forest cataloging every thing in sight? NO!

The experts are not acting as though these stories are true.

There is nothing but the weeping and wailing of environmental activists who prefer to issue press releases than to do something constructive.

What do the Warming Models Really Predict?

Announced in bold face and all upper case print or in stentorian tones by the fund raisers, "Leading Scientists predict temperature will rise [insert your favorite number] degrees in the next fifty years. This will result in the end of all life on earth unless you [insert your favorite home remedy] and send your contributions to me."

Let me state the first rule of math modeling whether with pencil and paper or with the fastest computer in the world. If the model does not explain the present then you know one thing for certain, the model is wrong.

As I have already discussed there is absolutely no evidence of any warming on the global level having occured in the last one hundred years. That is in itself is a strange finding but it is correct. There is direct evidence of increase CO2 in the atmosphere over the last twenty years and there is indirect evidence going back about 100 years more.

Therefore, the models which link CO2 increase with temperature increase are completely invalid. They do NOT explain why there is no indication of a temperature increase. They violate the first rule of math modeling and in not being able to explain the present they are worthless in explaining the future.

But just for the sake of argument let us assume for the moment that these models are valid. Just what do they predict? They all predict a temperature increase in the future they were predicting about 10 degrees F average increase over the entire world over the entire year. As the models have become more refined, as they say, the predicted increase is down to about 3 degrees F and some models as little as 1 degree F.

But in any event all of them predict an average that is for the entire planet for the entire year. However, that is just the simple number use by those interested in selling newspapers and those who are intent upon collecting donations use. Why do they use it? Because it conjures up images of broiling hot summers and deserts. Because if they explained it to you, you would be out there burning all the coal and oil you could find.

Why? Because every prediction indicates the LEAST temperature increase will be in the summer and in the hotter climates and the MOST increase will be in the winter and in the colder climates. These increases will average out to whatever number they are predicting.

So what does it really mean? It means that in the summer it will be slightly warmer and in the winter it will be much warmer. It means that this warming effect will make the colder latitudes a little warmer in summer and a lot warmer in winter.

In practice this means at the equator there will be little change at all. It means the further North you go the shorter the winters, the longer the growing season, the more food produced. It means the more snowfall and rain there will be in the colder months, leading to more water in the ground for the spring crops.

Some have suggested this will lead to the melting of the icecaps and the glaciers. Whoever said that knows just enough to get it wrong. The size of a glacier is simply the ratio of who much snow falls in the winter to how much melts in the summer.

Let me first correct a common misunderstanding. Cold air causes rain and snow, it does not carry the moisture that becomes rain or snow. The colder the air the less moisture the air can hold. Rain or snow is caused when warm air with a high moisture content meets a cold air mass. The cold air mass cools the warmer air so it can not hold as much moisture. The result is rain or, if cold enough, snow.

Because of this the warmer the higher latitudes the more snow will fall in the winter and add to the size of the glacier. Since the summer are going to be relatively less warmer than the winter there will not be a balancing amount of summer warmth to melt the extra snow. The result? The glacier grows.

Now I am not going to predict that global warming will cause the next Ice Age, rather I am going to point out that world wide moderate temperatures and growing glaciers go together. The Hollywood idea of freezing cave men and glaciers is of no better accuracy than anything else Hollywoood produces. After all have you never wondered why African climate mastadons and mammoths are found next to glaciers? With the stomachs full of plants? Obviously the climate was relatively warm. And if anyone believes the slight amount of fur on the Wooly Mammoth was enough to keep them warm I will be happy to sell them a string teeshirt to keep the warm next winter.

What will this mean to us should it happen? A longer growing season world wide. More food growing further North. The Earth able to support a vastly greater population to the point of obesity.

Even if the predictions of the models are correct then everyone should go back to burning coal.

Growing Glaciers mean a coming Ice Age?

Now this is a hard topic to address. The comon wisdom of the 1990s is that when the glaciers become smaller the world is warming. Funny thing, in the 1970s the common wisdom was that when the glaciers grow larger it was a sign of the coming Ice Age.

What causes a glacier to grow or decline? Glaciers are NOT a measure of global temperature. The rise and fall of glaciers is simply the ratio of the precipitation to fall in the winter to the melt off in the summer, nothing more and nothing less. If more snow falls in the winter than melts in the summer the glacier grows. If more melts in the summer than falls in the winter, the glacier gets smaller.

That sounds easy enough. So if the coming winter cold from the artic brings down all that snow that means it is getting colder. Right? Completely wrong.

The colder the air the less moisture it carries. The cause of snow and rain is primarily warm air with a lot of humidity meeting with cold air. The cold and warm air mixing causes an average cooling and the water vapor to fall from the air as rain.

Short introduction to Global Weather Patterns

This is in no way intened to be exhaustive or even to cover more than a handful of points. This is to provide some background into how the world weather patterns are generated and to give a working feeling to apply that information to environmental discussions.

To do with we start with the most simplified model. The earth as a sphere revolving around the sun. The equator is warmer than the poles. At the equator the air becomes warmer and rises. At each pole the air becomes colder and falls.

In the most simple sense we have rising air in the South and falling air in the north. The the air circulates from the poles to the equator along the surface and from the equator to the poles at high altitude. Add to this simply that air north of the equator returns to the north pole and air south of the equator returns to the south pole and the understand the first order approximation to the earth weather patterns.

In this case you will note there is very little mixing across the equator. This is borne out by measurements of the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere at the Moana Loa observatory in Hawaii. Not only to the track the from year to year but from month to month. During the summer in the north, when there is a lot of plant growth using up CO2 the concentration is lower than in the winter. Since when it is summer in the north it is winter in the south, the concentrations track the seasons in the north. If there were signficant mixing across the equator there would be no seasonal change of the CO2 content.

This lack of mixing between the hemisphere is one of the most crucial questions that have to be answered by those who hold CFCs released in the north first show up in the south.

Where did the seasons come from? The earth is tilted on its axis with respect to the sun. Through out the year the amount of light and therefore heat falling on a one hemisphere increases while decreasing in the other. In fact the tilting is such that the polar regions are alternately have either 24 hours a day of light or of darkness. The atmosphere covering the earth is very thin so most of the air over the poles is without light from the sun for those same six months. The arctic and antarctic circles define the areas at sea level where there is no sunlight during these times. If they were redrawn about 60 miles smaller they would define the area where the air is devoid of sunlight for the same six months each year.

Without the constant infusion of heat from the sun heat is lost by radiation into space. Thus during these times of the year the air is cooling most rapidly. The warmer coming up from the south at high altitude cools most rapidly at this time. When you hear weather reports of a freezing arctic air mass headed your way, this is where it got so cold.

If things are so simple why is are there cold fronts in the first place? Why not a simple constant flow of cold air from the north? This is where meteorologists at all levels earn their pay.

For one major factor is that the earth rotates on its own axis. Lets say you were trying to set a record for the time to fly around the world. If you trying to do it in one day at the equator you would have to fly a bit over 1000 miles per hour. Why? The circumference of the earth at the equator is about 25,000 miles and the earth rotates in 24 hours so to do so in one day would be 1,044 miles per hour. But why do it the hard way? Why not go up to the north pole and walk around it? If you could find the exact location of the pole you could walk around the world in a few seconds.

It works out that the farther you get from the poles the faster you have to move to complete the journey around the world in one day.

Lets take an arctic air mass moving south. For it to be moving directly south toward the equator it would have to move faster for each mile south it traveled. Air directly in contact with the surface is sped up by the earth but the higher the altitude the less acceleration. This would seem to give a nice prevailing breeze at all times.

Unfortunately this is where the simple model breaks down. There are different affects over the oceans than over land. Mountains and plains on land have different affects. There are major currents in the ocean of different temperatures that change the local weather. There are thousands of factors that would have to be taken into account to completely understand the world's weather.

Msg#:21796 *Elite*
09/18/90 20:14:08
From: MATT GIWER
To: GABOR LAUFER
Subj: REPLY TO MSG# 21779 (SO2)

The article is not really that good. Just a summary of the issue, no more information than I was talking about last year. SO2 produces smaller condensations that plain water in clouds making them brighter and they reflect away more light. Clouds with an SO2 content are brighter.

However, one quote of interest in the article was from one of the climate researchers, "We have been wondering where all the warming was." Stating indirectly exactly what I have been saying all along. There is no warming.

I do not intend to hang my hat on this issue. I don't think in any way SO2 explains why CO2 has had NO affect on temperature. It would be impossibly fortuitous that the sulphur content of fossil fuels is exactly enough (in the proportions we burn it) to match the carbon content of the fuels (again, in the proportions we burn it.) The carbon content of coal per BTU vs oil is much higher. The sulphur contents of both and the SO2 already -More-

mixed with some natural gas varies widely. It would be an almost impossible coincidence for them to exactly match to cancel each other.

My point is we do not understand enough in the least about global climate to begin to draw any conclusions as to what action to take. <->backward forward on message chain

Cows and Greenhouse Gases

Cows are releasing greenhouse gases and causing global warming and we should stop eating so much meat. So all over consuming, greedy, evil Americans should become vegetarians or you will destroy the world.

Lets us dissect this bit or raging nonsense.

What is a greenhouse gas? Heat reaching the earth from the sun is in the form of infrared radiation which is light of a longer wavelength than the color red. If we could see infrared with the same number of different colors as we see visible light there would be at least another eight colors within the infrared spectrum.

How is the earth warmed by the sun? The sun bathes the earth in the infrared colors which, if we could see them would vary from red to violet. Warming occurs when the earth and atmosphere absorb this infrared light.

There are two interelated processes that cause the earth to be warmed by the sun. The first process is the air is transparent to the infrared colors we would call blue and violet and it absorbs the colors we would call red and orange. In absorbing the red and orange infrared the air is warmed.

The second process is the earth itself, the land, the plants, the oceans, being warmed by the blue and violet infrared that reaches the surface. Remember, infrared is what we call heat and all warm bodies radiate infrared. So when the earth is warmed by the blue and violet it then radiates red and orange infrared. And it is this red and orange that is radiated back toward the sky and through the atmosphere.

The atmosphere which absorbed the red and orange infrared coming in from the sun also absorbs red and orange reradiated from the earth and causes additional warming of the air.

After bearing with me this long here is what I have been leading up to. The air is composed primarily of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide. It is the carbon dioxide that passes the blue and violet infrared and absorbs the red and orange infrared. Thus carbon dioxide is called a greenhouse gas.

Bear in mind the situation is much more complicated than this but it will do for the purposes of this part of the discussion.

Now why would we be concerned about greenhouse gases? The simplest point of view (which is all we are considering now) is that an increase in the greenhouse gases will result in an increase in the amount of red and orange infrared captured by the atmosphere. Right away we see the first complication. If all the heat is already captured by the present amount of carbon dioxide what do we care if there is more carbon dioxide added by burning fossil fuel? The atmosphere can't capture more heat than all of it.

Now lets get back to the question is regarding greenhouse gases being released by cattle. What is that gas? It is plain old bovine flatulence, the same gas drives flatulence in most all animals. It is the gas that drives the breaking wind in humans. It is the gas methane perhaps better known as natural gas, the same gas we use for heating and cooking and making fertilizer and a host of other applications.

Would you like to become a multi-millionaire? It is estimated the amount of methane released as bovine flatulence is approximately equal to the amount consumed by this country for energy and other uses. The only problem of interest is its collection. Several rather humorous inventions suggest themselves ...

Back to the subject. Methane is one of the gases that does like carbon dioxide, pass the blue and violet infrared and absorb the red and orange. In considering whether or not this is a problem we have to ask two questions. One, is it longlived in the atmosphere? Two, is the production of it by cattle a change from the conditions precattle? Remember a point from the discussion of

chloroflurocarbons and the ozone layer. The as yet unproven potential for CFCs to damage the Ozone layer was the fact they are long lived and stable in the atmosphere. That is they are not chemically reactive with the other gases in the atmosphere; they will not change to simpler gases before the rise as high as the Ozone layer.

Carbon dioxide is not long lived in the atmosphere. plants breathe it and use it up. Animals eat the plants and breath in oxygen and breath out more carbon dioxide.

Is this true for methane? Not at all. Not in the least. Methane is natural gas. It burns. But burning only means that it joins with oxidizes, it chemically joins with oxygen to produces simpler compounds, in this case water and more carbon dioxide. We rarely see iron burn but iron rusts, or rather oxidies. Methane is constantly deteriorating in the atmosphere whether caused by simple sunlight or by the lightning in thunderstorms. Methane is NOT long lived in the atmosphere.

But then, it does deteriorate into carbon dioxide which adds to the carbon dioxide which could still be a problem, right? This leads to question two. Is the cattle industry in this country any different from the conditions that existed prior to our arriving here?

We first should consider the earliest descriptions of the plains of what are now the midwest and western states regarding the buffalo. Consider specifically the description that the buffalo herds stretched from horizon to horizon. I have yet to hear anyone describe any cattle herd in those terms, even on the Ponderosa Ranch.

How many buffalo were there? That we do not know. We do know that buffalo are grazing animals just as cattle are grazing animals. Both have a strong tendency to the flatulent release of methane. And this is only speaking of large grazing animals.

In fact little has changed due to the development of cattle ranching regarding methane production and even if so it has always been with us. Right from nature.

The Practicality of Solar Power

So many seem so completely convinced that solar power will solve all of the world energy problems forever that it is about time to give this some serious consideration.

Given: Solar power will replace without other impact the power requirements of our homes.

Given: At Noon, at sea level at the equator on either of the Equinox the solar power at all frequencies (infra-red, visible, UV) is approximately one horsepower or 750 watts per square meter due to insolation. Insolation is the proper term for impacting sunlight.

In all cases assumptions will be made that are in favor of solar power. Therefore we will assume 750 watts per square yard rather than which is 20% in favor of solar.

The no impact power requirement.

The standard for a household is 100 amp service up from 50 amp service of 40 years ago. The actual household need is more like 75 amps but the given that there will be no other impact means to use 100 amp service. 100 amps * 120 volts = 12,000 watts. So at 750 w/sq yd that is 16 square yards at 100% conversion efficiency. That is a square 4 yards on a side or 12 feet on a side.

Solar cell efficiency

The best reported solar cell conversion efficiency reported is around 20% and that only with mirrors concentrating the light. But since we err in favor of solar power we say 50% conversion efficiency. It is useful to note here that almost NO power conversion is that efficient. Electric power plants are on the order of 28% efficient after decades of development; MHD power conversion under development is something like 32% efficient. So the size of our solar panel is now 32 sq yd.

Day and night

Since the sun is not out at night we have to again double the size. Note that this presumes the solar panel is not fixed but rather turns to point exactly at the rising sun, tracks it across the sky all day until it is pointing at the setting sun. A rather large and expensive mechanical device would be required to do this without one cell shading the other. We are up to 64 sq yd or 24 feet on a side. We ignore that rather large cost and all other costs. This is not a cost trade off.

At this point we are at the outside limit of an apartment on the south side of the building. Considering the North side needs power and east and west sides needing power that would increase the size requirements by about three. But enough of apartment buildings.

Latitude

Lets move up to about the latitude of Wash DC and decrease the insolation by another factor of two. Granted it is not cut in half on June 22 but on Dec 22 it is much less than half. The requirement is now 128 sq yd of solar cells.

Summer and winter

Not only does the angle change with latitude but also the amount of sunlight per day. So for ease of calculation we move a bit north of Wash DC to where the worst case is 8 hours of sunlight on Dec 22. Thus we need a 1/3 increase is the solar cell area to compensate for this or about 170 sq yd which is a square about 60 feet on a side.

At this size we have eliminated town houses from having their own solar panels.

One can agrue that winter heat could be supplied by natural gas rather than electricity but the major requirement for increased power in the home has been summer electricity. It is granted that there in the most insolation when it is the hottest (almost true, a 90 day lag occurs due to the thermal constant of the Earth itself) but then that still leaves us with air conditioning being one of the major draws of electric power.

Energy storage

Assuming simple DC from the cells to battery storage and another 50% efficiency we have 340 sq yd of cells. Note that charging any known battery is more like 15% efficient.

Energy recovery

Assuming again direct draw from batteries there is another 50% efficiency and again noting the power discharge is also in the 15% range for all known real batteries. This gives us 680 sq yd of solar cells or an 80 foot square of them. Note at this point we are also around 6000 sq ft which eliminates houses in the near in suburbs from having their own solar cells.

Up conversion

It could be argued that everything in the house could be converted to 12 volt DC operation. However, because of the low voltage these devices are much less efficient than devices which operate on 120 V. Now again to be fair, inverters achieve 80% efficiency so we are only up to about 800 sq yd.

Power transmission

Since we have eliminated all apartments, all town houses and the high density houses in the near suburbs from having their own solar cells we have to consider power transmission from a remote solar farm. 3/4 of all power generated is lost in the transmission process. Thus we need 4 * 800 sq yd or 3200 sq yd per household of solar cells or around 30,000 square feet or approximately 3/4 of an acre per household.

Since this is not a discussion of the potential of superconductors and the like 25% efficiency for existing power transmission methods is within the guidelines.

Total requirements

For the Wash DC area with approximately 1 million households this will require some 750,000 acres to be devoted to solar farms and the ground on those farms will not recieve ANY direct sunlight ever as it is assumed that the solar cells recieve all of it.

This will provide power only for homes. Wash DC is a unique example as it has little to no industry; Xerox machines are a major power drain in this area. So lets take a more normal area and suggest the requirements of industry are at least equal to home requirements. A normal city this size would need 1.5 million acres or something like 22,500 square miles, or an area somewhat greater than 1/4 the state of Ohio for each 1 million households with equivalent industry to go with it.

The intent of the above is not to reject all consideration of solar power. Rather to put solar power in perspective and demonstrate that we have a long time to go and a lot of other existing technologies to improve all at the same time before solar power is going to be in any way practical. It is not something that is just over the hill or something that is being suppressed by anyone.

Solar power is just one small possibility that may become a component of the power generation needs of the country in the next few decades. It should not be dropped but neither should it be elevated as the salvation of the would.

Ozone: The Hole with a Difference

Man made chemicals are destroying the ozone layer and there is a hole over Antarctica to prove it. The chemicals are chloro- fluro-carbons (CFCs) such as are used in home and automobile air conditioning.

What is ozone? The gas oxygen is an atom. It is the gas in the air we need to live. In the air, oxygen exists as a molecule, two oxygen atoms joined together, chemically expressed as O2. If you have a strong ultraviolet light or an electric spark, ozone will be formed. Ozone is simply three oxygen atoms in one molecule to make O3. Ozone is the fresh smell after a thunderstorm.

In the upper atmosphere ultraviolet light coming from the sun converts some of the normal O2 into O3. In doing so, the ultraviolet light is used up. Thus the ozone is not really a shield against ultraviolet light at all but rather O2 is the shield, O3 is created by absorbing the ultraviolet light. The production of Ozone rather than Ozone itself it the shield. Ozone is not stable like O2. It breaks down into normal O2 rather rapidly which is why the fresh air smell after a thunderstorm goes away rapidly.

Where is the Ozone layer? It is some 50 miles above us and all over the world.

What are CFCs? Carbon is an atom that easily forms into long chains with other carbon atoms. When in the long chains it easily adds other atoms to its chain. If those atoms are hydrogen we have hydrocarbons, gasoline, kerosene, diesel oil being examples of them. If the other atoms are chlorine and fluorine we have CFCs. Nothing magic about them.

CFCs are primarily industrial chemicals which are also used in air conditioning. They are produced and used primarily by the industrialized nations. We note in passing the industrialized nations are primarily in the Northern Hemisphere. We can comfortably estimate that 90% of the usage is in the Northern Hemisphere.

In themselves chlorine and fluorine are extremely chemically active and in the free state would rapidly join with some other atom. Chlorine is common household bleach. It joins with other atoms which may have color and appear as stains and produces a colorless, bleached, compound.

Back in 1973 in the laboratory it was found that free chlorine and fluorine caused O3 to break down more rapidly. How could that ever matter? Chlorine and fluorine are very chemically active and could never survive alone to reach the ozone layer above us. As a component of the gas CFC is might reach that high. Keep in mind despite numerous efforts no one has ever measured CFCs up in the ozone layer.

But there is a hole over the Antarctic to prove it, isn't there?

Lets look at some facts about that hole.

First, the hole was discovered only three years ago. It has only been present in two of those three years. There was a year without a hole, but there was not a year without CFCs.

Second, the hole occurs during the Antarctic winter, the time when there are 24 hours a day of darkness. Ozone is created by ultraviolet light coming from the sun. During the winter there is no sun and ozone breaks down normally without sunlight. So rather than being a sign of CFC effect it is rather what one would expect, no sunlight, no ozone.

Third, in the two and only two years of observation of the Arctic during the days of 24 hours of darkness there was no hole found. It may be there occasionally. It has only been looked for in the last two years and it has not been there either year. One had to ask, if 90% of the CFCs are in the northern hemisphere why has not hole been observed? In Antarctica were there are the least CFCs there has been a hole two out of three and in the Arctic where there are the most there are no holes for two years. Everything points to the Antarctic hole having nothing to do with CFCs whatsoever.

Why should one be skeptical that CFCs are causing the hole?

First, more than 90% of all the CFCs are used in the Northern Hemisphere. Antarctica is as far from the North Hemisphere as you can get on this planet. Why do all the CFCs race to the South Pole to do their damage? Those are some smart CFCs we are using. Why in the world would CFCs, or any gas for that matter, move to the South Pole? There are no particular wind patterns that move air from pole to pole. In fact the world wide wind patterns move air from each pole to the equator and back again. There is very little mixing between the hemispheres.

Second, since 90% or more of the CFCs are in the northern hemisphere why is there no hole over the north pole when it is in 24 hours of darkness? Granted we have only been looking for it for two years but since the impact in the north should be at least ten times greater than in the south, it should have been observed.

Third, if the effect of a thinning ozone layer is to increase the amount of ultraviolet light reaching the surface, where are the measurements? Measuring the amount of ultraviolet reaching the surface can be done with very simple instruments yet no one has found any increase.

What are the ultimate consequences of increased ultraviolet in any event? Honestly, no one knows. The amount of ultraviolet increases as one moves towards the equator. So far the worst case prediction of increase is like moving from northern to southern California. Should we evacuate southern California and points south?

The cries of the destruction of the ozone layer are very premature. If all is true as is discussed we are talking a reduction only of the ozone layer by how much, I will grant I do not know but then I will also insist, neither does any one else.

Certainly people will be able to get a tan more quickly in the summer and perhaps all year round. There is certain to be an increase in skin cancer but skin cancer, although the most deadly if not treated, is also the most easily treatable of all cancers usually done right in the doctor's office. President Reagan had two of them removed while in office.

Why would that happen". The person looked up and said: It gets ionized and the magnetic pull takes it there". It sounded like bullshit, but I just couldn't counter it. It was to pathetic to tell him what I really thought.

Advice: Address this aspect.

Amateur Toxicology at the EPA

What is toxicology? It is a study of poisons based upon the following observation. If a dose of X is the minumum amount to kill a person then, all else being equal, if one half that dose is given to each of two people then both will live. The practice of toxicology is to determine what amount of a substance is lethal and to determine all the intricacies of the above assumption, "all else being equal."

In pursuit of pursuit of what makes things unequal we find that body weight is most important such that dosages are measured in milligrams per kilogram of body weight. The activity of most all drugs, poisons, toxic substances are measured in this way.

However, there are many other variables that are not worth the effort to identify. Because of this there is the concept of the half lethal dose, or the LD50. The LD50 applies not only to deadly dosages but also to the level where one half the test subjects develop dangerous side effects, cancer for example, and continuing to assume "all else being equal."

A typical cancer test is conducted on a group of genetically defective albino rats, commonly refered to as white rats. A dosage level will be established where one half of them develop cancer or some other serious side effect. In normal usage this level is compared to the normal exposure level. If the LD50 is close to the normal exposure level, such as in a medicine, the drug will not be approved. If the normal exposure level is much lower than the LD50 the substance will be declared substantially harmless.

Or it should be so.

Comes the EPA with a new theory. Let us take a common example. In the LD50 case there is a dose of arsenic that would have kill a person. If two people were given one half of that dose both would live. The EPA makes a different assumption. To wit, if there is a lethal dose of arsenic for one person then if one million persons were given one millionth the dose then one person in that million would die. This is patently absurd. There are thousands of substances we ingest daily that are vastly greater than the one millionth level, table salt for instance even by those on a salt free diet, such that people would be dying of poisoning every day from normal living habits.

There is absolutely no basis for that in the entire science of toxicology what so ever. The EPA assumption springs solely from statistics. In this regard they will study people who have a higher than normal exposure to a substance for many years. Then if they find a higher than normal incidence of some disease they will say that even low level dosages are harmful.

The statisticians make one very fatal error in this. They assume that ALL of the people in the study had exactly the same average exposure and never in their entire job history EVER recieved a higher exposure than that and NEVER were exposed to anything else. It is absurdly similiar to the case of studying traffic accidents and saying that EVERY driver and passenger has a specific chance of dying while totalling IGNORING people driving while drunk or on drugs or without seatbelts.

The EPA has invented this concept of low level exposure being deadly out of the whole cloth of statistics and from nothing else. Existing laboratory methods make it impossible to ever prove the validity of this concept. Thus the EPA has created out of whole cloth without laboratory proof the concept of a danger from low level exposure.

No where is this more apparent than in low level exposure to carcinogens. At the moment the country is wasting tens of millions of dollars over radon, asbestos, cigarette smoke, you name it, all invented by that "damn lie," statistics.

Massive changes in public policy are being made over second hand cigarette smoke. What basis is there for this? A simple (simple to the point of fallacious) assumption is made. That the amount of smoke inhaled by a smoker and the smoker's risk of smoking related diseases can be calculated down to the second hand smoke. It is saying that if 400,000 smokers die per year then if non-smokers inhale one thousandths of that smoke that 400 per year will die from second hand smoke.

For some reason this seems an irresistable conclusion although it is just as absurd as saying that one person in one million, all else being equal, will die from one millionth of the lethal dose of arsenic.

Toxic Recreations

or

Just what is the Environmental Protection Agency?

To understand what the EPA is it is most important to understand the one very important fact. The EPA is not now nor has it ever been a scientific organization. The EPA is run completely by lawyers without the slightest scientific training whatsoever. If you ask them, they are proud of it. They are proud to tell you they ignore science when it comes to making regulations.

In line with this you must realize that it is the deliberate intent of the EPA to subvert science toward regulation. They see their mandate (they lobby Congress for authority to regulate a substance, Congress passes the law, the EPA says "We have to do it, Congress passed a law") as laws passed by Congress. And their objective is to create regulation even in the complete absense of any scientific basis for doing so. And they are not above lying to do so.

Therefore it is not surprising when a group of scientifically ignorant attorneys latch onto any fantasy that would permit them to sound like they had some basis for what they want to do in the first place.

The idea of the millionth dose discussed above is one of the intriguingly simple ideas that one would expect scientific illiterates to run with. It has just enough intellectual (though not scientific) standing, requires at least a high school understanding of statistics, and sounds so precise that it would be attractive to people who look better wearing Dobermans than three piece suits.

As a matter of history the Environmental Protection Agency was created not by law but by Executive Order. It was immediately staffed by lawyers at the highest levels. Scientists are found at the lower levels only to provide advice to lawyers who are totally and completely incapable of comprehending what is said to them.

The first actions of the EPA were to issue regulations the required the reduction by half of all the substances that were currently held guilty by the pop scientists, the cranks, and the hippie love children. In other words they did absolutely NO scientific review of the substances or their relative dangers. Some substances certainly needed to be reduced by much more than half others certainly by much less than half. But it suited their scientifically ignorant minds to order them all cut by one half.

From that sallow beginning and foolish precedent it has only gotten worse.

As a side note, the Headquaters Office of the EPA have some of the worst indoor air quality of any office building in the nation. In fact, were they a private organization, the EPA would have them in court. The employees have been complaining for years. The EPA either does not care about its employees or does not believe its own lies.

For all of its work in regulation it does not have even one decent scientific library for its scientists to use. But who cares about the scientists? There is nothing new in science. It does have a massive law library however. But then there is always something new in the law.

Consider after 20 years the EPA still promotes the charlatin science contained in the Delaney amendment. Yet, that makes things so easy. It doesn't require thinking. No judgment need be used. And the science? What do they care for science? They find it easier to legislate the reality than to think to understand it.

But look at all the great benefits the EPA has given us? There is the asbestos scare. There is the radon scare. There is the second hand smoke scare.

It took the EPA almost ten years even to admit there are several kinds of asbestos (something that had been known for centuries by nonlawyers) and that only one of those kinds causes a health problem. It took a few more years before those mental giants admitted, privately at least, that tearing it out is more risky than leaving it in place.

Here the EPA has NEVER proposed measuring the amount of asbestos in the air as there is little to none in the air where it can be breathed in most places they are almost demanding it be removed. (As we will see they want Radon to be measured.) Their recommended procedure is visual inspection; if you see it, it has to be removed.

Of course tearing it out puts more asbestos into the air than there was before. So the EPA recommendation is to make the problem of asbestos worse. That is, the EPA specifically recommends damaging the health of people by exposing them to asbestos.

To their neverending shame now that they are faced with the possibility of having to admit they deceived the nation they are saying it is all the fault of the removal companies. Those filthy profit making companies have inspired all the panic. I would hope they are able to recall ALL of their literature on this subject before someone takes them to court over it.

But now the radon scare. The EPA holds, publishes, shouts from the rooftops, makes press releases proclaiming there are 20,000 deaths from lung cancer per year due to Radon. To date the EPA has not produced on autopsy report, has not produced on body, has not found any reason to suggest that any person has ever contracted lung cancer from Radon. However they have this thing about Radon. Maybe the don't like the spelling. I don't know. They have never said. But Radon is on the hitlist at EPA.

Radon is a naturally occuring radioactive gas that can accumulate in a basement if there is little ventilation. It has the capability of causing cancer. And here the EPA recommends measurement before taking action.

Why? Well because it is an odorless and colorless gas. And because there is not the slightest bit of evidence that radon in any basement has ever caused any cancer. The nation is being studied for Radon and for cancer in the same places. Absolutely no relationship has been found. Canada and England have conducted similar studies and they find no connection either.

In absense of any evidence whatsoever Radon causes any cancer what does the EPA do? It redoubles its efforts to condemn Radon and any zealot without a reason would do. The EPA even ranks Radon as a cause of lung cancer even in the total absense of evidence that it has ever cause even one lung cancer.

And as a matter of continuing and ongoing interest, they rank it ahead of second hand smoke as a cause of lung cancer. If you are still in need of a further sardonic chuckle, the EPA ranks asbestos as the greatest environmental source of lung cancer.

So after discussing two imaginary problems created by the EPA we get to the third on their list, second hand tobacco smoke.

There is a study that quite clearly demonstrates the children who were subjected to second hand smoke from their parents from birth through age six have a reduced lung capacity compared to children their age when they reach High School. This presumes they spend most of their time for those first six years in the presense of smoking parents and recieve the a full 24 hours per day of second hand smoke.

Therefore ... sorry, I forgot to tell you something. That is the only solid information on the subject of second hand smoke. It is the only one that exists showing anything. Not one study shows any case of cancer.

But does not the EPA claim it causes lung cancer? Certainly, by the millionth dose rule of charlatan science. People who do smoke get more lung cancer than people who do not. People who do not smoke also get lung cancer. Therefore, by calculating backwards and divvying up the cases of lung cancer among asbestos, radon and second hand smoke they publish a real scary number; 3,700 to be exact. I presume it is only modesty that prohibits them from claiming 3,704.

What continues to amaze me is the continued gullibility of the average American on these matters. But more on that elsewhere. Only a very few have publically attempted to call the EPA to book for their continuing stream of outright lies, fraud, and deception of the American Public.

Remember, we are paying for this garbage being spewed out by lawyers. They not only do not care in the least if what they are saying is true or not, that would be bad enough. Rather they deliberately mount a scare campaign about things they know are absolutely false. Goebbels was not half so convincing as these folk.

And all this time you thought they were scientists you could trust?

They are scrounging, greedy lawyers as we have all come to know and hate.

Reprinted from the Chicago Tribune, "An army of cleanup workers did more last damage to some parts of the Alaskan wilderness than the 11-million galleon Exxon Valdex oil spill did in 1989.

That was the assessment of a federal expert as Exxon Co. wrapped up its second season of beach-cleaning operation in the Prince William Sound over the Weekend."

The Gasoline Tax

or

The new Sin Tax

First let us consider the general class of sin taxes as they are refered to in this country. The implied purpose of a sin tax on alcohol and tobacco is to discourage their use. In practice the worst thing for a sin tax to do would be to be successful and then there would be no tax money.

The purpose of a sin tax is to raise money from something that people will do regardless of the taxes and the amount of taxes can't be too high else bootlegging will be encouraged. Simple as that.

So what of a high tax on gasoline to discourage the use of automobile? Sounds good doesn't it?

Let me ask you this. Just how much gasoline do you use that is not for essential purposes like going to work, the grocery store, the doctor? If you are like most people your answer will be "very little." There still seems to be a fantasy running loose among our brain dead environmentalist friends that people do nothing in their spare time but drive around the country side in order to burn up gasoline.

The majority of gasoline consumption is in getting to and from work and to essentials like grocery stores. Yet what do the flatliners demand? A $20 a gallon gasoline tax of course. Well, not quite $20, maybe only $10. Lets not push it, how about just $5 a gallon? Personally, I don't think those folks are in Kansas any more.

It is obvious that any adult wishing to conserve gasoline can simple put an extra $5 per each gallon he buys into his personal savings account and take this self imposed tax as a personal benefit. There is no apparent reason why the money should be paid to the Federal Government when the only thing the Fed will do with it is increase the defict by $7.50 for each $5.00 collected. If there is any objection to this idea, that individuals will not have the self disciplne to save the money consider rather the Federal Government has a proven record of absolutely NO discipline in overspending tax monies collected.

So it must be admitted by any honest person the result of a ridiculously high tax on gasoline will not be to reduce consumption but rather only will increase the national debt.

So why an outrageous tax on gasoline? The next most common answer is the rest of the world has a high gasoline tax on gasoline. I do not see what that means. Comparing the details of tax law across nations is something best left to the academic person who has a very high tolerance for conflicting ideas. Certainly, Germany and Japan have very high gasoline taxes but also they have no capital gains taxes. So which should we emulate?

What is the next excuse for higher gasoline taxes? It will reduce air pollution. How can that be since there are so few non-essential miles driven? And in any event, why should the essential and nonessential miles be taxed equally?

If the real purpose were to reduce air pollution then the obvious solution to that would be to simply change to a four day ten hour work week. Since people would only be going to work four days a week instead of five that would immediately eliminate 20% of the gasoline consumption in this country that is used for getting to work. Air pollution would immediately be reduced by that amount and there would be peace on earth and good will toward men and the millenium would begin.

What air pollution?

Why the smog in Los Angeles of course.

But I don't live in Los Angeles.

You just don't care about the people who die in Los Angeles when the pollution gets bad, you nasty, evil person.

Most large cities in this country did have a problem with air pollution and it was solved with automotive technology (and in the process destroyed Detroit and gave the market to Japan but that is another story.) The problem was not solved by less gasoline consumption, it was catalytic converters and engine design and making smaller cars. It doesn't matter how much easier it is to die in an accident in a small car; who would not give his life to save the planet?

The problem is solved to 99 percentage points. If Los Angeles still has a problem then it will be cheaper to round up all the people with breathing problems and send them to Lake Tahoe all expense paid every time there is an air quality problem. This will be a hundred times cheaper than changing over the entire country to higher MPG cars.

(I like that idea. I feel my asthma coming on, better move to LA real fast.)

Go outside folks and look at your polluted sky and breath that polluted air. If you live any place by California you have to read the worst of the gloom and doom people to believe there is a problem. But then don't go outside and breath the air else it might shatter the illusion created by the gloom and doomers. After all, how could they write so well while suffocating.

Transitting the Masses

If ONLY we could get dirty, smelly people out of their dirty, smelly cars we could save oil, clean the environment, end world hunger, bring about peace on earth, and end navel lint forever.

Now words to that effect I have heard more than a couple of times. It is only people who are the problem; people in their automobiles. People doing such unnecessary things as driving to work, buying food, taking children to school.

But since mass transit is considered the salvation of the world lets take a good, hard look at mass transit. By mass transit we mean a way for people to get to and from work and necessary businesses such as grocery stores that is not the private automobile.

The first and most important thing to consider is that all mass transit system run at a loss. Were it not for local, state, and federal subsidies everyone of them would be out of business.

The extent of these subsidies is not readily apparent. The most obvious subsidy is the money put into the systems to make up for the fare being less than the cost of operation. But there are other indirect subsidies. What if they were privately owned rather than run by the local government? They would have to pay local, state and Federal taxes.

To keep things simple, lets say the average fare is one dollar. Subsidies run about one third of money taken in from fares. Thus exclusive of all taxes and profit the real fare just to break even would be 150%, or $1.50.

Now where does the subsidy come from? or better yet, why is there a subsidy? Obviously the subsidy comes from tax money, all our taxes. Even cab drivers pay tax money to make the competition cheaper so they can earn less money and pay less taxes and work 80 hours a week to live near the poverty line.

Why is it subsidized? Now that is a very good question and the ONLY real answer is that if it were NOT subsidized there would be fewer riders and it would require an even greater subsidy to keep the system in operation. In other words mass transit is subsidized in order to have something to subsidize.

It is something like the family that buys a pleasure boat. A boat is a hole in the water to pour money into. Mass transit is a hobby system which a city buys in order to have something to soak up all the excess tax money it collects. Or to have an excuse to raise taxes again. Mass transit is a money loser everywhere.

But why is there mass transit running at a loss? For this there are a myriad of reasons proposed but in fact not one of the reasons is ever borne out in practice. The Paternalistic Reason: The poor need it to get to work.

Really? If they are working they are not poor. However, mass transit does not go everywhere to every available job. Where there is good mass transit service the jobs are taken. Where there is poor service jobs go begging because people can't get to them. As we shall see, the well off were the ones that lead to mass transit subsidies.

The Environmental Reason: It reduces air pollution. No one who has ever been bathed in the black smoke of a bus can hear that reason without thinking how stupid some people are to believe that reason. In any event, long before people could spell air pollution there was a push for mass transit subsidies. This is only the currently popular (as of 1990, one has to date the reasons, they change so rapidly) reason for pushing for mass transit.

The Futurist Reason: Mass transit is the wave of the future.

Sorry folks, mass transit is the wave of the past. It is an idea that has come and gone. It had its time in the limelight and now it is continuing on the life support of subsidies.

The case can be made that no one has ever made any money operating a mass transit system. The only money to be made was in the building of it. Even the vast rail system of the US was ONLY made practical when the government gave away massive amounts of land to the railroad companies. The potential of that land made up for the losses in building the railroads.

Back in the good old days when cities were really cities and people walked a couple blocks to work no one needed mass transit. A generation later came the industrial revolution where factories required a large labor force that could not conveniently live within walking distance.

At that time a transit system became practical. But keep in mind that where you lived determined where you worked. You either walked to work or the trolley took you there. There was no freedom to work across town. This was one of the underlying reasons for the union movement and the accompanying riots. People either worked in the neighborhood or did not work at all -- and there was no welfare system in those days.

Came the automobile and freedom to average worker, real freedom. If the wage is higher across town where there is no bus route then drive to the new job. In very old cities this is still considered rather a rather strange thing to do. In the modern city driving across town to a job is hardly considered reason to move to a residence near the job.

But there was another change that made the somewhat profitable bus companies of the cities obsolete. After World War II there was an amazing invention, the Suburbs. Looking back on it from our homes in the suburbs it is hard to realize just what a massive difference this really made to the world around us.

First and foremost the suburbs would not have been possible without the automobile. To this day city dwellers laugh at the idea of living way out in the country even when the population of the suburbs is easily triple that of the city. Back when they were starting to be built is was most commonly predicted they were become the future slums of America, to be deserted as soon as people came to their senses and moved back to the city.

But things did not turn out that way. And since it was the automobile that made the suburbs possible, there was no consideration for building them to make mass transit practical to serve them. But still the for profit bus companies did make some attempts to get some of the business from them by creating routes. Few were very successful.

Came the local government into the act with its demands that the transit companies provide service to the suburbs. And the transit companies came back with a demand that the local governments pay for it. This is compressing a lot of history into a few words but in fact political pressure was the instigator of mass transit subsidies, not any concern for the poor or the worker.

And what was the political pressure? "I grew up with good trolley service and I want it out here where I live also. How can my wife get to the grocery store? We only have ONE car you know." One car? How quaint. Wife not wroking? How archaic.

Push came to shove and there were subsidies. And with subsidies came politicians making vote grabbing points. "The bus company is gouging the city by demanding such a huge subsidy." Of course, it was the city who demanded service to unprofitable areas in the first place.

But in a larger sense, since there were to be subsidies there had to be a negotiation of the amount. In any negotiation there were two sides, the bus company trying to get as much as possible hoping to at least break even and the city offering as little as possible hoping to save a few dollars for other pet projects.

In any event, when the subject is politics the subject is never good faith negotiations by politicians. Certainly in private a politician may love his family and be nice to the cat but that does not win votes in a large city. When the choice is between good faith negotiations and a vote getting issue there is no choice, no second thought; a politician without the votes is no longer a politician.

To compress a couple more decades into a few words, the cities used emminent domain to confiscate the transit companies. In reality the companies asked for it by submitted to city presure and accepting city bribes (about time we call a subsidy what it really is) in the first place. In the real world one avoids all confrontation with the local bully who holds all the cards as eventually you loose everything. So it was with the transit companies.

Some did rather well by it however. Roy Chalk sold out (rather had his Washington, DC bus line stolen from him by the local council of governments) and went on to buy the small but marginally profitable Allegheny Airlines. Today we know it as USAir. Now if the Council of Governments had not been so interested in politics and had bought Allegheny Airlines... No way. People make money. Governments throw it away.

Today we have most all cities owning the mass transit systems. (Note how they were the transit companies until the socialist impulses of the cities started calling them the transit system for the masses. Marx would love it.) We also have every one of them running at a loss. In every city the average tax payer pays for a system for those lucky or dumb enough to be use it.

And just what is the future of mass transit now that it is in the hands of the goverment? Why obviously more of the same. And idea that saw its time in the spotlight of history and was outmoded with the success of the automobile is considered to be the wave of the future.

My friends, if you give me unlimited government subsidies and I can make the horse and buggy the wave of the future.

Spotting the Owl

It is interesting those promoting the Spotted Owl over human beings is a currenly popular fad. The image is of a subspecies of owl only being able to live in very old forests. Unfortunately this is somewhat different from the truth.

The Spotted Owl makes it nest in dead trees from which it obtains a significant amount of its food. Otherwise it eats almost anything. For the Spotted Owl to survive along with forest harvesting one need only leave the dead trees standing.

As a matter of further interest it is noted the Endangered Spieces Act incorporates the idea of subspecies. What is a species in the first place? The separation of one species from another is simply they are mutuallY infertile. They may mate but they can not produce offspring.

What is a subspecies? A subspecies is an idea that was discarded by the scientific community sixty years ago. If we are to continue the analogy, Oriental, Amerind, Negroid, Caucasian and every other identifiable variation upon the human species is a subspecies.

Are the scientists not being quoted in the environmentalist press releases concerned? Not in the least. In fact those being quoted are not concerned either unless they are activists and that is contrary to being a scientist. The idea of a subspecies is a discarded concept on the trash pile of science.

.. write REDSQIRR

.. write SNAILDAR

The Big Lie of Species Extinction

Have you ever heard the very old story that man is destroying some number of thousands of species every year / month / week / day or what ever the gullibility limit of the listener is?

There is absolutely no truth to that statement in the slightest. It is an imaginary number. It is a lie repeated over and over until we accept it without question.

Let us look at reality. The EPA requires months of study, some times years before having enough data to recommend putting any species on the threatened or endangered list. And that is simply to establish the numbers are decreasing. And even when done the results are debatable rather than unanimous. And often subject to limitations of research. Consider after years of the snail darter holding up a TVA project it was found fluorishing quite nicely a few miles away. And all of this only one species at a time.

If the mass extinction idea is correct we are implicitely accepting there are armies of naturalists out in the field collecting data on each species that becomes extinct. They are implicitely watching the last of the species as it breaths it last.

There is no army of naturalists doing this. The statement of mass extinction is specious, it is propaganda, it is a lie. It was made up to serve a political purpose.

There is a grain of truth in it. Simply in a multimillion year evolutionary sense we are in a period where the number of species is declining rather than increasing. This is one of many such periods in the history of the Earth.

It seems to be a long term cycle in the evolutionary process. There is exactly NO implication in this concept that Man is the cause of the extinctions. Consider that in the last 100,000 years six species of pre-humans have become extinct and perhaps Neanderthal Man can be considered also to have become extinct if the rumor they are behind the environmental movement is not true. Man can hardly be both the cause and the victim at the same time.

Every so often man is blamed for the extinction of large animals in the Americas. The extinction of large mammals in the Americas occurs about the same time as humans arrived. But humans lived with those same large mammal in Africa and Asia and Europe, the old world, for tens of thousands of years without causing extinctions. Yet they disappeared from the Old World at the same time they disappeared from the Americas.

The number itself is an estimate only and it is based upon the long term multimillion year evolutionary cycle. It has nothing to do with us or any thing we are doing today.

Consider the land that is today the United States. As little as 200 years ago there was one continuous forest that stretched from the Eastern Seaboard west to the Appalanchians in the North and Central states and in the Southern states to what is now the state of Texas. Consider that what is now the breadbasket of the US was in those days mainly Buffalo and Plains grasses.

In the intervening 200 years that ecology has been completely destroyed, wiped out, it is gone. I point out there was no great ecological catastrophe because of that. A land that perhaps sheltered perhaps 2,500,000 humans at most now feeds to the point of obesity 250,000,000. How many species extinctions were there due to this complete and total destruction of the original environment? The answer is easy, the Passenger Pigeon. One bird for all this massive total change of the ecology.

Is this any where near 10,000 per year? or 1000 per year or even one per year? It is an averge of 1/2 species per century.

These nebulous predictions of doom for the destruction of an ecology have no basis in human experience. I mean, if they had happened before, would they be near as frightening? If the objective is to instill fear, then one must foretell disaster of truly Biblical proportions in order to get your contributions.

Animals Rights and Wrongs

Animal rights. It is a statement of a truth that only exists upon challenges to it. It does not exist from any a priori position.

This is a difficult point to make but bear with me. Since the beginning of recorded history until only a few centuries ago there existed no concept of human rights. There was family rights, there were rulers rights and there were obligations for each. These rights and obligations were either traditional or negotiated through treaty.

Some four hundred years ago there arose the idea that humans had intrinsic rights independent of family and allegiance that each person had simply by being a human being. For a couple of centuries philosophers nibbled around the problem and arrived at the idea of a social contract. Humans have rights because they respect the the same rights in other humans. It devolved to essentially, the mutual exchange of rights.

It is of note that no such a priori basis exists for animal rights. The entire debate of the pro animal rights folk revolves around I say animals have rights and you prove me wrong. It argues from analogy and from common expressions in the language.

Those who propose animals have rights lean heavily upon the presumption that all the arguments of preexisting human rights apply equally to animals UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE. The burden of proof is shifted to the person who disagrees.

The Humane Laws

One common expression of this is to suggest that humane treatment of animals is an expression of animal rights. On the contrary the humane laws are a restriction upon human actions.

The intentions of Animal Rights types

The stated intention is to stop the suffering of all animals. No it is not. The real intention is to stop all real and imagined suffering of animals caused by man with very heavy emphasis upon imagined suffering.

Let us take for example two examples. The humane slaughter of a cow for food and the killing of a deer in the wild by wolves.

In a slaughter house the cow is lead to the slaughtering area and a .22 bullet is fired at its head. The shock of impact of the bullet dazes the animal and it is quickly hoisted up and the throat cut. What is left of the animal's consciousness ends in less than one minute and clinical death occurs in less than four minutes.

In the wild a deer will be chased by wolves until it slows enough for an individual wolf in the pack to catch it and rip some meat off of it. That wolf then stops to eat that bit of food while the deer continues to try to escape but more slowly now. Another wolf will tear away more flesh and stop to eat it.

Eventually enough flesh has been torn from the deer that it can no longer flee and it falls. At which point those wolves which have not eaten will tear off some flesh and eat. The deer is rarely dead at this point. The feeding process continues until the pack is fed. At some point in the process of being eaten the deer dies but not until it has watched its own flesh being eaten. Effectly a deer is eaten alive by wolves.

Among large predators in the wild only a very few kill their food before they eat it. The most common examples of the kill before eating method are in the cat family. This is merely an evolutionary specialization where cats have very specialized claws on their hind legs which permit ripping open the gut of their prey. This is one of the primary survival characteristics of the cat family in that it permits a single animal to make a kill rather than having to rely upon a large pack to make a kill.

The anthropologic record indicates humans as large predators made up the lack of killing claws and teeth with the use of clubs and hand axes going back to the beginning one hundred thousand years ago. Other species of humans also used tools going back some two million years. The most effective use of either is to stun the animal with a head strike and then kill by throat slitting. It is interesting to note how little changes over the millenia. This is essentially the same slaughtering technique as is used today.

If the criteria for judgment of eating meat is a moral consideration regarding the pain experienced by the animal then Man is superior to predators in the wild in that man does kill his food before eating it and by the oldest tools and implicite usage man renders the prey unconscious before the killing action. The big cats come close but the prey is fully conscious of the cat's teeth holding it and the hind legs ripping it apart.

By the criteria of minimum suffering, Man is the moral superior of any animal.

Why do I limit this to the larger predators? Simply because they prey upon the grazing animals. And for the most part these animals are larger than the predator. A fox can attack and kill a rabbit rather easily as it outweighs the rabbit several times over. The method of killing the prey involves vastly superior size and strength. A fox can crush a rabbit's skull in its mouth or shake it until the neck breaks. No wolf can pretend to do that to a deer.

Why eat meat?

First off, why not eat meat? The alternative is called vegetarianism.

Meat causes diseases and cause you to die young. That sounds good with all the medical studies coming out these days. But one must remember that vegetarianism is a food fad that has been around for thousands of years. The idea that a few recent medical studies support the idea has no bearing the fact it always has been a food fad.

The recent medical studies are perhaps correct as far as they go. Certainly the substances in meat have been linked with many fatal diseases. However, there is a point rarely mentioned. Even though vegetarians die of these meat related disease much less often, they don't live any longer than meat eaters. They die of different causes but they die nevertheless at the same average age as meat eaters.

The choice to eat as a vegetarian only changes the form of death not the time it will come. Vegetarians do not live any longer than meat eaters.

The most recent outbreak of medically induces food fads has been cholesterol. And every popularized word about the subject has been a lie. All of the studies have been of diets high in both cholesterol and fats. There have been no studies of diets with the same fats but with and without cholesterol.

As any researcher in the field will tell you, it is the fats NOT the cholesterol that causes the problem. And just what does "NO Cholesterol" mean on the package label? It means the fats are from vegetable sources as only animal sources have cholesterol. So what does a vegetarian diet do for you? Nothing regarding the medical reasons which might have lead you to stop eating meat.

But did you stop eating meat to reduce the pain and suffering of animals caused by Man? No, as most people could care less about vegetarians or animal rights types and continue to eat meat.

Cosmetic Testing

A lot is lumped under cosmetic testing and I assure you it is not all just a different shade of some color of eye shadow.

Mascara is a primary item for test. Studies have indicated that some types and some uses can lead to blindness.

Hair coloring is the big. Some of them in the eye can lead to blindness.

I for one would rather seem a million blind animals than one blind human.

Now if someone wished to ban cosmetics in the first place that is one thing. But as long as they are being developed and sold, I do not want my wife or daughter to loss their sight in order to be prevent the same from happening to some animal.

Animals as test Subjects

It may surprise you to realize that every researcher in the world who uses animals would like to find a better way than animal testing. And this is for reasons wholely different from any concern for animal rights.

Let us take a typical animal test. Lab animals are very difficult to deal with. They do not survive very well in the laboratory. A large and significant test might begin with 100 rats and at the end of the test there may not be enough alive to draw any conclusions. Consider the problem yourself of keeping 100 rats in separate cages for a couple of years if you think this is easy.

And even if enough live, they may be disqualified from the test for other reasons such as developing some other disease. (It is not commonly know but the lab rat comes in many varieties even though all are white albinos. The variety chosen is selected to be suseptable to the study at hand. This is done to induce enough of the problems being studied to yeild any useful results.) If a rat is being used to test for cancer and it develops another disease, it is invalidated from the test results.

That large test starting with 100 rats will be lucky to end with 20 that can be used in the final report. And without going into to details right now, that makes for some very carefully done statistics to suggest any conclusions.

Why the problem with the test animals? To run any test the test subjects must satisfy the criteria of being as close to the same as possible. Obviously if one test were conducted with a mixture of dogs, cats, fish, lizards, and birds the test would have no meaning.

What few realize is the immense variability within even a single species or even within a single variation within a single species. One white rat may look just like another to the layman but in fact there are dozens of strains of variations upon the white rat; each bred for its susceptability to a particular disease.

Not only that the white rat is not a white colored rat, it is an albino rat with pink eyes and the whole nine yards. The laboratory white rat is a genetically defective albino to begin with. On top of this each strain used for testing is particularly susceptable to the disease to be tested.

Is the test for a carcinogen (a cancer causing substance)? Then researchers will use a particular substrain of rat that has been bred because it gets cancer easily. This is the world of animal research and this is only the tip of the problem.

To get any results from any humanly conductable research program strains of rats that will get the disease even if never tested have to be used. Take a carcinogen test for example. The test is for a particular type of carcinogen and the strain chosen gets cancer easily. 20% are going to contract cancer whether they were tested or not and die from it long before the test is complete. And if it is one of the common cancers they get they are discarded from the test.

(Aside one. Given this tremendous variability even within animals that are outwardly identical is it any wonder the idea that an owl with spots on it chest or a squirrel with a reddish tinge can't be taken seriously as anything worth protecting?)

(Aside two. Given the hundreds of tests conducted on rats that are bred to develop cancers at the drop of a hat is it not interesting that NEVER has a lung cancer been caused in a lab rat with cigarette smoke?)

So why do researchers continue using animals? Because nothing so far is better. Computer models? They only can be used when the results of animal tests are fed into them.

Food Fads for fun and profit

What is proper nutrition? What constitutes good and bad food? No one knows where it started but there is an Eygptian papyrus setting forth dietary rules, a raw onion a day tops the list of recommended foods.

People have pursued dietary fads for centuries. Every time there is at least a choice of foods beyond subsistance it is almost a badge status to choose one over the other.

Are there possibly such things as good and bad foods? Consider the human race which exists on just about every conceivable possible variation of diet that can be imagined from near total vegetarianism to near total high fat red meat.

The first professional peer group Journal of Nutrition was originally scheduled for its first issue in 1987 by Tufts University. To the best of my knowledge it has still to have published its first issue.

The Vegetarian Craze

Let us specifically consider vegetarianism as a currently popular fad. Rest assured in times when there has been a real shortage of meat no one was pushing vegetarianism.

The funniest thing about the discussions of this subject on both sides of it is the constant comparison between carnivores and herbivores and arguing which type humans were "meant to be."

Funny? Simply that with the exception of herbs used for seasoning no human can digest what is on a herbivore quick weight loss diet or any other herbivore diet. Humans do not eat grasses or leaves which is the herbivore diet. It is flat out impossible for humans to digest such a diet in any quantity that might approach sustaining life as it is similarly impossible for herbivores to digest meat.

Humans are a third group entirely along with many other species including of course the apes, crows, pigs, and a host of other animals that eat meat, fruit, grain and vegetables to varying degrees, usually according to what is in season or what can be found or caught. Membership in this group is not permanent or fixed for the life of the species.

Dogs and cats are unarguably carnivores. Yet the average dog can survive quite well on a 40% vegetable (not plant and leaf) diet and cats on about a 10% one. And the percentage mix of the diets these animals can survive on is varies greatly for individual animals. It is presumed that since dog remains have been found with prehistoric man and since cats sort of appeared in Eygpt within historic times that dogs have had more time to evolve toward surviving on the same diet as humans. Further, in prehistoric times surviving on the same diet as humans had a greater survival value as prehistoric man can not be presumed to have gone out to catch a meat animal specifically for the dogs. In civilization, it is more likely humans catered to the carnivorous tastes of cats and thus there was little survival presure for cats.

We are definately not herbivores. We do live upon just about any other food that comes along and in one way or another thrive upon it. The question becomes, is there any particular advantage to any particular mix of food sources and if so just what is that advantage?

The primary advantage to our omnivorous digestive tracts is survival. We can live off of most anything that comes along which does not eat us first. Thus the question as to whether there is any advantage to any particular mix of food sources has to be asked in light of the presumption there is enough of both animal and non-animal foods available to make a choice. Unaided by farming, humans could not survive the winter without being able to eat meat, there are no fruits, grains or vegetables and man can not survive on tree bark nor hibernate.

After the presure of survival is removed by farming and food preservation technology as happened some eight to ten thousand years ago the mixture of foods is simply the optimization of food production per unit of labor. It makes no sense to expend more energy raising food than the nutritional value of that food.

Since we can live off of grains it does make sense to keep and raise cattle which can live off of the straw, what would otherwise be waste for us. The tattered arguement that the same land could be used to grow food for the starving masses again fails to realizes the only starving masses are those that have failed to blow away the local dictator making them starve.

No matter how much land is used to grow grains for human consumption is still makes sense to raise cattle to use the straw which is otherwise waste from grain production. In fact the more grain produced the more cattle should be raised.

People who are concerned about the US diet of meat should rather be more concerned about their own state of ignorance of reality.

The US eats MEAT!!!!

How many times have the vegetarian types and the partly vegetarians and the sorta might like to be one some day vegetarian types condemned the United States for wasting so much food producing land to raise meat animals? If you are like me at least once a week.

Why to they say this is so terrible? Because people are starving in China. (They sound a lot like my mother when I was a child.) But they do not say starving Chinese but rather they refer to the rather more nebulous, global hunger.

The most important point to remember is that there have been very, very and then very limited examples of starvation in the last 100 years that were not caused by the government of the country of the starving. It is hardly necessary to point out the ten to twenty million starved to death by Joseph Stalin for political reasons. It is rather more instructive to discuss India.

India of the post British colony era adopted socialism. One of their policies was to artificially increase the price of seed grain and fertilizer while mandating the selling price of the food grown. The result? Massive shortages of food in the cities. India was a food importing nation.

The common sense finally got through to the country and they let the free market govern prices. Within three years of that happening India became a food exporting nation and more than enough food for it people.

The starving countries in Africa today are starving because the government wants to starve them out as part of a civil war.

Given this situation just what does the choice between raising grain or meat in the US between grain and meat have to do with world hunger? As my mother never pointed out, surplus food in this country does not get it into the hands of the hungry. And if the government of the country of the hungry does not want them to get it, they will continue to be hungry.

It is said that if the US would stop raising cattle and use the land to raise grain then that grain would automatically get into the mouths of the hungry. The US can raise more grain than it can consume or sell or even give away around the world. It is only since about 1984 that we have a system that does not require us to store all the excess production until it rots.

However, could we give it away to countries which are poor? No way in hell the governments of those countries would let it happen. Back when there were many net food importing countries and the US was a major supplier to the world in the early 80s the delivered price to a foreign country might have been on the order of 22 to 25 cents per pound. That included all costs and profits. The selling price within the country would have been typically 50 to 60 cents per pound.

Why? The government of the country took its share of the profits (read corruption.) In Latin American companies the honor of making a US grain deal was doled out as the way a young man made his first stake in life with the profit he could keep personally -- but if he did not share he was most commonly shot.

The gov could not allow our grain in at its real cost as it was cheaper than home grown grain and that would put local farmers out of business. There were a myriad of factors but the most important point is simply that growing more food in this country does not in any way get into the mouth of anyone else in the world.

So why not raise cattle? It is not as though the US is short of grain for eating. Back when the best price the farmer could get for corn was 12 cents a bushel, corn based breakfast cereal sold for almost 2 dollars a pound. When a one pound loaf of bread sells for 60 cents the wheat that goes into it is less than one cent. If there were so much grain in this country that it were free the price of products on the shelves would hardly change.

The amount of cattle the US raises bears no significant relationship to the price of food in this county nor to the number of hungry people in the world. The US production of meat for its diet as a matter of choice has no relationship to the anything else in the world.

The Natural Balancing Act

The balance of nature is something we have been hearing about since the first Disney nature specials at least. The word balance is often preceeded by the word delicate just as the term environmental scientist is always preceeding by the word leading. There are no second string environmental scientists and if one so much as steps on a wild flower the earth is doomed.

The image presumed by the term delicate balance conjures up walking a tight rope. It is presuming the balance of nature is like a boulder perched upon the peak of a mountain; the slightest touch will send it crashing into the valley. The environmentalists prefer this image. Real science does not talk about balance. Real science talks about equilibrium. And in using the term equilibrium it defines many, many types of equilibrium. There are two basic classes of equilibrium, static and dynamic. Within these there are stable and unstable equilibrium. There are more type than this and all of these types have been observed in nature.

Which type does the environmental movement presume exists with the term delicate balance? Static and unstable equilibrium. This is the type illustrated by the boulder on the top of the m