Trashing the Planet

...Much of the problem results from a mistransmission of data from scientists to the media...

...Like Uganda, it was a place many of us would like to visit but few of us would care to live in...

...But the students had taken this problem into account and switched to their backup system, which was a hookup to the city of Madison's electrical supply...

...When they found out it would take two acres of collectors to do the job, they settled for three windmills instead: Came the day of the concert—and no wind...

...This is especially so with low-level nuclear waste...

...Like Talbott and Burke, the authors of the vast majority of these books seem much more concerned with solving alleged environmental problems than with establishing whether or not they exist...

...Getting them to open up their minds and change their beliefs is an Augean task...

...Since 32 percent of Madison's power comes from nuclear plants, it could be said that one of the three windmills used by the students was nuclear-powered...

...At least one, however, Bill McKibben's The End of Nature, stated that the earth has gone to hell, and thus even buying his book wouldn't help...

...One of the terrors envisioned by the prophets of ozone depletion is a massive increase in skin cancers due to increasing penetration of ultraviolet rays...

...Indeed, they could be criticized for trying to cover too much ground in too little space...

...They are not as numerous and generally not as severe, but they are problems nonetheless...

...Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest...

...Of course, to those whom the authors criticize, and who will be quick to criticize the book, this is a physical impossibility...

...Perhaps the most important reason the environmentalists are so eager to implement drastic solutions to what may prove to be non-problems is that they simply happen to like those solutions...

...and simple misinterpretation...

...The book devotes, for example, only eighteen pages to both the ozone and global warming problems...

...Faking advantage of her somewhat advanced age, Ray, 75, grants that in the "natural age" into which she was born carbon monoxide and ozone pollution weren't problems, but the streets were practically paved with pony pooh...

...After all, is not science the culprit...

...TRASHING THE PLANET: HOW SCIENCE CAN HELP US DEAL WITH ACID RAIN, DEPLETION OF THE OZONE, AND NUCLEAR WASTE (AMONG OTHER THINGS) Dixy Lee Ray with Lou Guzzo/Regnery Gateway/206 pp...

...Nevertheless, the authors use their space wisely...

...The premium for this policy would be as much as $3.6 trillion, according to one estimate, along with tremendous changes in living standards...

...Undaunted, James Burke, a world-renowned science journalist and producer of the alarming "After the Warming" program for PBS, tells a reporter that any debate over the issue is a "supreme irrelevance," that "the real issue is whether we take out any form of insurance against it...

...But far from being just another waste of timber, this is a revealing and responsible book which deserves to be on the shelf of everyone who calls himself an environmentalist...

...But why all the disinformation...

...The problem with these is that when one looks at construction costs as well as the costs of the fuels themselves (obviously wind and sunlight are free), wind and solar energy are considerably more expensive than fossil fuels and nuclear energy, both in dollars per unit of energy and in accidents and lost lives (although as photovoltaic technology improves, solar will become cheaper and safer...

...Ray and Guzzo excel in the sections concerning nuclear power and waste and nuclear medicine...

...The authors mention a 1980 rock concert at the University of Wisconsin that the student sponsors wished to power by solar energy...

...Even Calvin Coolidge would need more room than that to lay out the arguments...

...Note the authors wryly, "According to the rules covering low level waste, that amount should mean that people cannot be buried, cremated, or disposed of in garbage...

...factoids, false, exaggerated, or misleading information that acquires credibility through constant repetition...

...It is interesting to note that in our society," they write, "$200,000 is spent annually on safety improvements to save a single life in an automobile accident—where 50,000 deaths occur each year...

...Stepping into the debate, such as it is, is Dixy Lee Ray—former governor of Washington, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, assistant secretary of state in the U.S...

...Part of the problem, too, is simple egocentricism...

...But in the nuclear industry $2 billion is spent yearly to save one life, even though there have been no fatalities...

...lifestyles, and the free market but upon the application of scientific technology...

...This book is a good start...

...They have cleverly entitled their book Trashing the Planet, thus ensuring that "politically conscious" bookstore managers, who regularly screen out "undesirable" books based on their titles, will stock this one...

...It is not coincidental that the dracon- ian solutions suggested by environmental extremists, from forced sterilization to elimination of internal combustion engine vehicles to expenditures of trillions of corporate and tax dollars, seem to have a common thread of austerity, rejection of free market principles, and greater centralized control of the populace...

...The authors' critique of alternative power sources such as wind and solar is also enlightening...

...their criticisms are thoughtful, factual, and damning...

...Concerning the ozone layer, for example, they note that "the best measurement data indicate that the ozone layer increased in average thickness during the 1960s and decreased during 1979-86...

...The brownshirts of sixty years ago have counterparts among the greenshirts of today...

...There is also the risk-free society, which declares that old risks (such as coal-burning plants and coal mining) are acceptable, but that new risks (such as pesticides and nuclear plants) are not: Here we are, hi the final decade of the twentieth century, a once buoyant nation with unbounded faith in the future and in our ability to make it better, but now so possessed by self-doubt and recrimination and so frightened that something might go wrong that we are unwilling to accept even minute amounts of personal or environmental risk...

...After adducing evidence on the amounts of pollution emitted by volcanoes and absorbed by oceans and other natural forces, the authors conclude, "In light of the enormous size of the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, and the colossal natural forces involved, it would appear that man's puny activities are being vastly exaggerated...

...Since then, several studies by such respected institutions as MIT and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have revealed no global warming trend...

...In fact, the authors note, instruments set up in 1974 have found continually decreasing penetration of such radiation...

...T his is the first myth that the authors debunk, that we have strayed dangerously far from "the natural age" that so many environmentalists romanticize in their books, lectures, and television shows...

...In 1990, more than 200 environmentalist books flooded our bookstores and our senses...

...Heating was poor, air conditioning and refrigeration non-existent...

...If a government inspector told you that you had termites in your mudand-straw walls, you might be skeptical...

...As they dispute theories of man's rightful domination over nature, environmentalists often exaggerate his ability to affect the ecosystem...

...But if you were told that the solution was to be given a brand new, more spacious brick house, what would you care if the termite assertion proved untrue...

...This is fine for reinforcing the beliefs of the sympathetic or appealing to the truly open-minded, but on all of these issues the public has been bombarded with propaganda from movie and television stars, the media, and a few scientists as well...

...It defines problems before giving answers, and then the answers it gives are based not on the destruction of individuality, chosen Michael Fumento is the author of The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS...

...But technology carries a price, and new types of pollution and other problems have sprung up to replace the old...

...It was, by today's standards, a filthy world of discomfort and disease...

...Some of the disinformers honestly believe their cries of doom, but others are smarter than that...

...Nuclear waste is certainly a serious problem, but like most of the truly serious environmental problems, it has been exaggerated...

...Kerosene, coal, and wood pollution filled the air indoors and out...

...Alar, dioxins, asbestos, and PCBs get only seventeen pages between them...

...Was not the world a happier, better, cleaner place in the days before the automobile, the nuke plant, pesticides, and preservatives...

...London's famous "fog," for example, was actually pollution from millions of wood stoves, now replaced by natural gas, oil, or electric heaters...

...Bureau of the Oceans, among other things—and journalist Lou Guzzo...

...True environmentalists will reject these interlopers and embrace those who identify the real problems and offer real solutions...

...The decreases were comparable in magnitude to the increases of the 1960s...

...The authors discuss nearly all the big environmental bugaboos: the greenhouse effect, the ozone layer, asbestos, pesticides, dioxins, acid rain, and the uses of radioactive materials...

...18.95 Michael Fumento 42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1991 One proponent of the theory that chlorofluorocarbons are depleting the ozone layer stated, "We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have...

...Most people knew someone who had been horribly crippled or killed by syphilis...

...The windmills turned nicely, although one of them went backward...

...Malignant melanoma, the type of skin cancer that has been greatly increasing in incidence, is unrelated to ultraviolet exposure...

...Indeed, you'd be training termites to eat mud...

...Most asserted that the earth was going to hell in a handbasket, or at any rate that it certainly would unless you bought the book...

...Blaming the media for everything is an easy way to score points, and to the authors' credit they willingly criticize scientists and pseudoscientists for putting emotion and faith before facts, and the scientific community in general for failing to weed out the phonies...

...It can be broken down into three types: anxiety, a general belief that there is an inherent conflict between technology and humanity...