In a Q & A after a book lecture at Dartmouth College last year the author was confronted by an ardent, but clearly clueless co-ed who accused him of being a selfish, heartless, and mean spirited conservative. She allowed as how, when she graduated, she would be helping the poor and under-nourished people of the country. It was a scene straight out of the rebellious 60’s. Unfortunately for her she seemed caught in a time warp – conditions have changed. It was as if she were volunteering to minister to injury victims of trains wrecks and ignoring the orders of magnitude more people who are hurt in automobiles crashes. There are many more people who suffer health problems and even early death owing to being overweight than by being undernourished in this country today. If one believes the statistics, and they seem indisputable, 60% of American adults are overweight; 40% of these are seriously overweight; and 20% of these are obese. If you do not believe these figures then I suggest just look around.
There has been a change in this country in the past generation or two in the percentage of people who are overweight. In a photograph of my extended family of 35 people taken in 1939 there is one woman who would be considered “fat” and two who could be called “chubby.” I doubt if a similar family group could be photographed today with the same proportions.
What are the causes of the weight problem in this country? Simple. There is too much food available and consumed, especially high calorie food, and too little physical activity. Everybody who is paying the slightest attention knows that. The answer to this problem? Also simple, but not necessarily easy for many people to correct.
On average I briskly walk 25 miles per week at a rate of 15 minutes/mile and thereby burn approx. 1800 Kcals (6 ¼ hrs. @ 288 Kcals/hr.). The classical definition of a calorie is the amount of energy it takes to heat one gram (one cubic centimeter or 1/1000 of a liter) of water one degree Celsius. The calorie associated with weight loss/gain is really 1000 calories (commonly referred to as Kcal or the amount of energy it takes to heat one kilogram (1000 cc or one liter of water one degree Celsius). There are approx. 3600 Kcals burned per pound of weight loss, therefore I lose about ½ lb. of weight for a week’s worth of walking (calories continue to be burned for a while after exercise stops so I may be understating the weight loss a bit). One could gain more weight than that just thinking of consuming a couple of Krispy Kremes so where is the gain in my exercise? Look at it in the long term. By walking 50 weeks per year at the same distance/week the weight loss would be 25 lbs. and over 5 years, everything being the same, it would amount to 125 lbs (450,000 Kcals). Of course everything would not be the same, nor would I want it to be else I would look like an inmate in the Civil War Andersonville military prison camp.
Of the people I see walking or jogging in the parks where I walk I estimate that 80% of them are not overweight and of the ones I see reasonably regularly, there are 0% who are overweight. Naturally it is not just exercise that keeps these people fit. You can be sure they follow healthy life style regimens such as not over eating. Fortunately there seems to be a recent trend in the past few years in the general population of people taking action against the excessive weight problem. This is a hopeful sign that, if true, bodes well for the future. It is a case of less is better in the sense of better health and more appealing appearance while carrying less weight.
In addition to the other demonstrated health benefits of exercise such as cardiovascular, pulmonary, muscle toning, and bone density gain, weight control is important, but doubtless not sufficient for a healthy body weight. As an undergraduate, world famous pioneer heart transplant surgeon, Dr. Denton Cooley played on the University of Texas varsity basketball team at 6 ft. 4 inch and 180 lbs. In 2005 at age 85 he still weighed 180 lbs. When asked his recommendation for not gaining weight he responded, “Don’t eat!” That is typical of the brusque personality of a surgeon. He obviously did not mean to completely give up eating which would be fatal after a period of time and therefore not good for your health, but meant not to overeat. Good advice.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
FREAKONOMICS: WHAT IS THAT? 13
There is a 2005 paperback book with the improbable and a bit bizarre title of FREAKONOMICS: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. It was on the New York Times non-fiction best seller list for almost a year, reaching number four. You may have read it, but if, per chance, you haven’t, I will relate a couple of items from it.
At mid-night on April 15th 1986 approximately 7 million children disappeared completely in the United States – just disappeared! Was this the biggest, and unreported, kidnapping in the history of the world? Well, no it wasn’t, although it was indeed a singular event. However it would be accurate to say that circa 7 million imaginary children disappeared. Here is what happened: A law was passed, effective for the 1985 tax year, mandating that the IRS require not only the names and birthdates, but also the social security numbers of minor dependents on the 1040 income tax forms. The result was a decrease in the claimed dependents from 1984 to 1985 of the aforementioned 7 million. Clearly many people do not mind being dishonest, especially when it comes to the prevention of government seizing their money, but given the probability of a penalty associated with the crime, then they are deterred. People do respond to proper motivation as the following vignette from the book further illustrates.
A day care center in Israel decided to impose a fine of $3 each time a parent was 10 minutes or more late in picking up their child(ren). What do you suppose happened? If you said the delinquency rate increased you would be right. In fact it doubled from what it was before fines were imposed. Why? The answer lies in the concepts of motivation and incentives. A parent could be late every school day of the month and pay only $60 per month additionally, just 1/6 of the basic fee of $360 per month. Not only would the parent be able to continue longer whatever they had been doing, but would have the lagniappe of having their guilty conscience assuaged by paying a fine. If the fine had been $100 per incident then rest assured there would have been many fewer late arrivals – and a great deal of ill will. The answer is to find the proper penalty – severe enough to change behavior, but not so draconian as to generate widespread resentment and, no doubt when the option was available, a vacating of the day care center by the clients.
Starting 15 years prior to 1990 the violent crime rate in the United States rose by 80%. Whatever the real reasons for this increase were, there were a number of causes put forth including a more liberal attitude toward crime, lighter prison sentences for criminals, and fewer policemen. The experts, criminologists and journalists (who of course have answers for everything – almost always the wrong answers) predicted that the crime rate would spiral completely out of control with dire consequence for society in the next decade. In fact a funny thing happened. Instead of rising precipitously as had been predicted, the teen age murder rate fell more than 50% in the five years after 1990 and by the year 2000 the over-all murder rate fell to its lowest level in 35 years. As listed by Levitt & Dubner the reasons given by the ‘experts’ for this drastic drop in violent crime is as follows: (1) Innovative policing strategies; (2) Increased reliance on prisons; (3) Changes in crack and other drug markets; (4) Aging of the population; (5) Tougher gun control; (6) Strong economy; and (7) Increased number of police. The crime data have shown that of these only #2 and #7 had any significant effect on the lowering of the violent crime rate. By the use of a mathematical process used in probability and statistics called regressive analysis one reason for the lower crime rate can be isolated from the data which was far and away the most important, but was never mentioned by the ‘experts’ and journalists. Forty years ago, yes a full forty years in 1966, I took an evening course in mathematical statistics at Southern Methodist University which covered the theory and application of this mathematical procedure (for anyone who is interested, any standard textbook on probability theory would contain this theorem).
To get at this causative factor we have to go back to a legal decision in the case of Norma McCorvey vs. the Dallas County district attorney, Henry Wade. On January 22, 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a final ruling, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, in the famous Roe v. Wade abortion case, holding by 7:2 that abortion was a constructional right in the entire country based on the due process clause of the XIV amendment of the United States Constitution. Fast forward about 16 or 17 years because that is when the violent crime rate started dropping. Why? Many of the most at risk babies who would have been born to young, single, largely minority mothers and who would have become violent criminals were aborted. It makes sense and it is borne out by the data. Can you imagine the irony and unintended consequence of it all? Conservatives who favored a severe ban on abortion and who were also tough on criminals saw the unsettling complementation of their two contrasting philosophies. Liberals who favored abortion and a more gentle treatment of malefactors also saw that abortion caused fewer young criminals who could be coddled. Sometimes one thing one wishes for is diagrammatically opposed to another. At times doesn’t life (actually, in this case, life and death) offer a strange and contradictory scenario?
At mid-night on April 15th 1986 approximately 7 million children disappeared completely in the United States – just disappeared! Was this the biggest, and unreported, kidnapping in the history of the world? Well, no it wasn’t, although it was indeed a singular event. However it would be accurate to say that circa 7 million imaginary children disappeared. Here is what happened: A law was passed, effective for the 1985 tax year, mandating that the IRS require not only the names and birthdates, but also the social security numbers of minor dependents on the 1040 income tax forms. The result was a decrease in the claimed dependents from 1984 to 1985 of the aforementioned 7 million. Clearly many people do not mind being dishonest, especially when it comes to the prevention of government seizing their money, but given the probability of a penalty associated with the crime, then they are deterred. People do respond to proper motivation as the following vignette from the book further illustrates.
A day care center in Israel decided to impose a fine of $3 each time a parent was 10 minutes or more late in picking up their child(ren). What do you suppose happened? If you said the delinquency rate increased you would be right. In fact it doubled from what it was before fines were imposed. Why? The answer lies in the concepts of motivation and incentives. A parent could be late every school day of the month and pay only $60 per month additionally, just 1/6 of the basic fee of $360 per month. Not only would the parent be able to continue longer whatever they had been doing, but would have the lagniappe of having their guilty conscience assuaged by paying a fine. If the fine had been $100 per incident then rest assured there would have been many fewer late arrivals – and a great deal of ill will. The answer is to find the proper penalty – severe enough to change behavior, but not so draconian as to generate widespread resentment and, no doubt when the option was available, a vacating of the day care center by the clients.
Starting 15 years prior to 1990 the violent crime rate in the United States rose by 80%. Whatever the real reasons for this increase were, there were a number of causes put forth including a more liberal attitude toward crime, lighter prison sentences for criminals, and fewer policemen. The experts, criminologists and journalists (who of course have answers for everything – almost always the wrong answers) predicted that the crime rate would spiral completely out of control with dire consequence for society in the next decade. In fact a funny thing happened. Instead of rising precipitously as had been predicted, the teen age murder rate fell more than 50% in the five years after 1990 and by the year 2000 the over-all murder rate fell to its lowest level in 35 years. As listed by Levitt & Dubner the reasons given by the ‘experts’ for this drastic drop in violent crime is as follows: (1) Innovative policing strategies; (2) Increased reliance on prisons; (3) Changes in crack and other drug markets; (4) Aging of the population; (5) Tougher gun control; (6) Strong economy; and (7) Increased number of police. The crime data have shown that of these only #2 and #7 had any significant effect on the lowering of the violent crime rate. By the use of a mathematical process used in probability and statistics called regressive analysis one reason for the lower crime rate can be isolated from the data which was far and away the most important, but was never mentioned by the ‘experts’ and journalists. Forty years ago, yes a full forty years in 1966, I took an evening course in mathematical statistics at Southern Methodist University which covered the theory and application of this mathematical procedure (for anyone who is interested, any standard textbook on probability theory would contain this theorem).
To get at this causative factor we have to go back to a legal decision in the case of Norma McCorvey vs. the Dallas County district attorney, Henry Wade. On January 22, 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a final ruling, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, in the famous Roe v. Wade abortion case, holding by 7:2 that abortion was a constructional right in the entire country based on the due process clause of the XIV amendment of the United States Constitution. Fast forward about 16 or 17 years because that is when the violent crime rate started dropping. Why? Many of the most at risk babies who would have been born to young, single, largely minority mothers and who would have become violent criminals were aborted. It makes sense and it is borne out by the data. Can you imagine the irony and unintended consequence of it all? Conservatives who favored a severe ban on abortion and who were also tough on criminals saw the unsettling complementation of their two contrasting philosophies. Liberals who favored abortion and a more gentle treatment of malefactors also saw that abortion caused fewer young criminals who could be coddled. Sometimes one thing one wishes for is diagrammatically opposed to another. At times doesn’t life (actually, in this case, life and death) offer a strange and contradictory scenario?
Saturday, April 14, 2007
ENERGY – IS IT BEING OVERUSED AND ARE WE RUNNING OUT? 12
Let’s see at the outset if we can agree on something. That something is that energy can not be created or destroyed – the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. If that is true, and there is enough potential energy extant on earth for human use, then we can not run out of energy. It is like our use of water. All of the water used by humans, other animals, insects, arachnids, plants, trees, etc. does not disappear out into space. True, water conservationists may be considering only potable water, but that is just a matter of technology to convert or recapture water to make it useful. And if the argument then changes to the expense of reclaiming water read on about the treatment of energy.
The Greens and even other people, especially, but not only, on the left, believe that energy use (in particular in the USA) should be curtailed and perhaps rationed; the world is rapidly running out of useful energy; and fossil fuel derived energy sources are noxious, are ruining the environment, and therefore should be quickly phased out. None of these assertions is true as I shall endeavor to illustrate.
At this point it is important to define what is being discussed. Considering the possible sources of energy: fossil fuels; wind; the sun; biomass; and nuclear, there is no shortage of raw energy. But what exactly is energy (see list of definitions)? Those raw energy sources are potential energy that is capable of being reconstructed to do useful things. The process of making energy useful is to apply order to it. That is to say to decrease its entropy. Sunshine, wind, fossils fuels, nuclear fuel, all have to be ordered to coax useful work out of them. In fact, by far, most energy is used to extract, refine, transport, and apply energy to do what we consider useful. And the total process is exceedingly wasteful and inefficient. As recounted by Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills in their 2005 book, The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, The Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy Thomas Edison’s first light bulb converted 4% of the energy input to the bulb into light - 96% was dissipated in heat. It gets worse than that, much worse. The power plant Edison built to light his bulbs did not even convert 10% of its heat into electricity. The total energy conversion from power plant to light bulb output was less than ½ of one percent.
Efficiency of raw energy conversion has gotten better over the years and keeps getting better, however it is still a small percentage of the potential energy of the resource which gets converted into useful work. Most of the energy which is wasted is in the form of heat. Fortunately this dissipated heat is a small percentage of the total heat which reaches the earth from the sun during daylight and is then radiated back into space at night. According to Huber & Mills, an estimated 5 million Quads (see definitions) of solar energy reach the earth per year – 10,000 times as much as humans consume in the form of fossil fuels, crops, and wood. So no, in case you were worried, we are not turning the earth into a gigantic hot forge by our inefficient use of energy.
Over the past 30 years, appliances, air-conditioners, refrigerators, light bulbs, electronics, etc. became 30-50% more efficient, yet in the USA we burn an additional 400 million tons of coal per year. Increasing the efficiency of energy generation increases not decreases the use of energy. Tremendous improvements in efficiency create more demand, not less. Our main use of energy is not lighting, locomotion, or cooling. It is to extract, refine, process, and purify energy itself. And the more efficient we become at refining energy the more of it we want to use. Say’s Law [John Baptiste Say (1767-1832)] states that additional supply creates additional demand. Collective wants are insatiable. In order to lower consumption it would be necessary to lower efficiency. I do not know anyone who is in favor of that.
In the United States 40% of total raw energy is supplied by oil and 60% by coal, gas, uranium, and hydroelectric. For electricity, 50% is supplied by coal; 20% by uranium; 18% by natural gas; 0.27% wind; 0.013% solar and the rest primarily by hydro and oil. After the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979 pundits declared that was the end of civilian nuclear power. The Chernobyl accident seven years later confirmed it in their minds. Since 1979 the amount of electricity generated by uranium increased from 11% to 20% of the total today. No new reactors were built in the intervening years, except the ones already under construction, however these new ones and the existing ones were made more efficient and were run more hours per day.
Electricity is responsible for 60% of our GDP and 85% of our growth in energy demand since 1980. In the next several decades hybrid automobiles combining electrically powered batteries and gasoline engines with fully electric drive trains will increase the relative utilization of electricity. As it is now, less than 20% of the cost of owning and operating automobiles is due to the cost of gasoline (so why all the grumbling and whining over the price of gas?) and with the future hybrids the cost of powering these vehicles will be even less. The cost of electricity for automobile propulsion versus the cost of gasoline is 1/3 for electricity generated by coal and 1/10 if generated by uranium.
If the Greens and their sympathizers do not give up their unrelenting and unrealistic opposition to oil and gas exploration and refining and especially uranium utilization then this is going to happen: As the increasingly efficient and increased use of electricity eventuates, the United States will burn more and more coal. No politician, either Democrat or Republican (no others count), will be responsible for the lights going out as was experienced in California under Governor “Gray Skies” Davis (Davis did not cause the problem which was building years before he became governor, but he was in office at the critical time and he contributed to the problem rather than the solution so he paid the price). Uranium is by far the densest (most mass and potential energy per unit volume) and most economic form of raw energy, is readily available, and can be made completely safe. Let the fanatics explain why it should not be more widely used as a raw energy source.
Is the United States an energy consumption hog? We consume about 100 Quads of raw energy per year today up from 7 in 1910 and 35 in 1950. The USA consumes 43% of the world’s gasoline, 26% of the electricity, 25% of the petroleum, 25% of natural gas, and 23 % of hard coal. We also produce 25% of the world’s goods and services so our consumption is not out of line with our productivity. Despite what the effete Europeans might think America spreads democracy in the world (a good thing according to sensible people), provides military defense (also a good thing), feeds people around the world out of proportion to America’s population, and pioneers many key inventions and engineering technologies. This would not be possible if we were burning dung as a primary fuel. As countries become more industrialized and more productive they consume more raw energy. From 2002 to 2004 the USA used 700,000 more bbls. of oil per day; during this same time period China’s increase was 1.47 million bbls. per day. In contrast to the 2 gigawatt Hoover Dam on the Colorado River the Chinese built an 18 gigawatt dam on the Yangtze River.
Is it true that the more fossil fuels are used up the less there are available and the more expensive they become? Intuitively it would seem so, yet this has not been true historically. Global oil production has increased from 66.8 million bbls./day in 2002 to 69.2 in 2003, 72.5 in 2004, and is at a still higher rate in 2005. In 1980 some experts predicted that the price of oil would be $200/bbl. by 2003. There were only about 30 billions bbls. of proven reserves in the USA in 1979. Since then 67 billion bbls. of crude have been produced. Recently what was described as the largest onshore oil field in the last 30 years in the lower 48 states was discovered in Utah. Even though the history of such discoveries is that inevitably the reserves are initially overestimated, then underestimated with more data, and finally with still more data more accurately estimated, these discoveries are typical when there are incentives.
The price of crude oil has remained remarkably stable over the years despite increased costs of extraction. Wells which are drilled through 10,000 ft. of water, 20,000 ft. of rock vertically, and 30,000 ft. of rock horizontally have not materially raised the cost of crude, inflation adjusted, from wells drilled in 100 ft. of water in 1954 and unit costs are less than the 69 ft. well drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859. According to Huber & Mills production costs of the Statfjord oil field in the North Sea are not much higher that the Spindletop field of southeast Texas discovered in 1901. Even though the popular perception is that recent gasoline prices in the USA were at historic high levels, the inflation adjusted prices in 1981 were at equal or higher levels. And to promote cleaner burning, the various gasoline additives mandated by different states have increased gasoline costs in the interim.
On the order of 5 million Quads per year of solar energy reach the earth. Worldwide coal reserves are 200,000 Quads and oil shale at least 10,000 Quads. There are 3.5 trillion bbls. of recoverable heavy oil in tar sands in Canada and Venezuela – at 80 million bbls./day consumption this would represent a 100 year supply. Global consumption is 345 Quads of fossil fuels (100 in the USA) per year. Given these huge reserves of raw energy along with renewable sources such as wind and hydroelectric as well as nuclear, one could realistically conclude that energy sources are essentially infinite.
Is the earth’s environment slowly (some would say not so slowly) being degraded by humanity’s inexorable drive to extract and consume vast amount of energy? Well, what has happened in the past? London, England has more hours of clear skies than it did a century and more ago when great quantities of soot were spewed into the atmosphere by coal burning fireplaces and furnaces; Los Angles is less polluted now than it was in the past few decades; and Pittsburg used to be called the “Smoky City” – no more.
According to Huber & Wells in 1840 it required 6000 cords of wood to produce 1000 tons of iron. As late as 1910 some 27% of all U.S. farmland was devoted to feeding horses used for transportation. Feeding the organic transportation system in 1910 required far more land than we have since seized for oil pipelines, refineries, and wells. The lower 48 states had a bit over 1 billion acres of forests when the first Europeans settled in New England. By 1920 that figure shrank to about ¾ of a billion acres. In recent years trees have been replanted at a rate of 3 million acres per year. Growing up on a farm in Michigan in the 1940’s I planted thousands of various pine seedlings myself. For the first time in history a Western nation has reversed the decline of its forests. If current trends continue America could eventually return to the levels of forestation last seen by the Pilgrims.
The British Antarctic Survey out of Cambridge, England in a recently published report based on satellite images between 1992 and 2003 stated that the East Antarctic ice sheet gained about 45 billion tons of ice and thickened at an average rate of 1.8 cm. per year – enough to reduce the ocean’s rise by 0.12 mm. per year. This region comprises circa 85% of Antarctic’s total ice volume. Does this prove “Global Cooling” is the order of the day? No, but it does not exactly support the theory that the earth is becoming an oven either.
What could reverse this inexorable drive to consume more and more energy? Not an exhaustion of raw energy as has been discussed in detail, but rather a drop in world population – something that most assuredly will happen, although not soon.
Currently the world population is approximately 6½ billion. Even though the worldwide fertility rate has been declining for the last 50 years, the forecast for the world population is 8 to 9 billion by 2050. How can there be an increasing population with a decreasing fertility rate? The answers are: 1.) Even if the fertility rate is falling, if it is still above the replacement rate then the population will increase. 2.) There is a quarter of a century or so delay (called momentum) between births and the age of the women giving birth. 3.) Although fewer children are being born the ones that are born are living longer.
As explained by Ben J. Wattenberg in his 2004 book, Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future an ongoing United Nations study on demographics as well as the U.S. Bureau of Statistics postulate that the world population will be 2 to 3 billion by the year 2300 almost back to what it was in 1950 at a little over 2½ billion. That is a long time period for making projections, yet the trends are there. Of course conditions could change and therefore change the outcome, but it seems to me more likely that some catastrophic event such as a deadly pandemic disease or a nuclear holocaust would lower populations even further rather than raising population numbers by God knows what.
The replacement fertility rate is 2.1 children per woman. In 1950 the world rate was 5.0; in 2000 it was 2.7 and was previously predicted to be 2.0 by 2050. The new number is 1.85 for 2050 and that number may drop to 1.7 when still newer estimates come out in 2008 which may mean that the world’s population will peak before 2050 and not reach the 8 to 9 billion figure.
The fertility rate in the less developed world was 2.9 in 2000 and is forecast to be 2.0 by 2050. It is a commonplace that the fertility rate drops as a population gains economically. In a wonderfully sardonic commentary in the 1950’s Bergen Evans told the story of the man who was worried that the black population in the USA was increasing faster than whites. Evans told him that yes the black birth rate was higher than whites, but as blacks gained in economic and social status their birth rate would decline – thus mixed are all blessings! This current decline in third world countries is largely unrelated to economic development, but may be due to what is called diffusion (the spread of communications). People may not have yet experienced too much in the way of increased economic prosperity, but they are not dumb, they know what is happening in the developed world, partly as the result of smaller families. Indonesia, Egypt, Iran, Brazil, Cuba, and Mexico even though they currently have more than replacement population increase rates, have declining fertility rates. Wouldn’t that be the supreme irony if, at some future time, the United States offered incentives for Mexicans to come here while the Mexican government tried mightily to keep them home!
Many European countries are undergoing population declines now as are Japan and South Korea. Europe as a whole, which has a fertility rate of 1.4, down from 2.6 in 1950, is predicted to decline by 100 million by 2050. Russia alone is suffering an 800,000 per year decline in population. Japan’s fertility rate was 2.8 in 1950 and 1.3 in 2005 with a projected 17 million population decline by 2050. South Korea’s rate was 1.1 in 2005. The South Koreans have a real and growing problem with population decline, but are not expected to drop to zero by 2050 – unless the N. K. Commies launch nukes.
The fertility rate of the USA was 3.5 in 1960 at the height of the “baby boom” and is 2.0 today. Because of robust immigration and momentum, by contrast with Europe, the United States which has a current population of almost 300 million is projected to have a population of 400 million by 2050. Compared to historical standards we are not currently being overrun with immigrants. Early in the 20th century our population had 14% foreign born, 5% in 1970, 10% in 2005, and a projected 13% in 2050. By the 2nd half of the twenty-first century there are apt to be three great powers in the world: the United States with a 400+ million population and China and India with circa 1 billion each. Given their population declines and their quasi socialistic societies the European countries will have to be content learning to be 3rd rate powers. A caveat in the prediction about India taking her place as one of the three great powers is given by Adlai E. Stevenson, former U.S. presidential candidate in the 1950’s, having predicted that it takes 50 years for a country to industrialize. India gained independence in 1948 so by 1998 they should have been industrialized. As of 2005 they still are not, although they have made big strides – especially in the last 15 years, so perhaps his time frame needs to be stretched a mite.
DEFINITONS
1st Law of Thermodynamics – The energy going into a system, minus the energy coming out of a system, equals the change in the energy stored in the system. Stated more simply the Law says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
2nd Law of Thermodynamics – Heat will, on its own, flow from a hot object to a cold object. An alternative definition is that the state of any closed system inevitably decays from more order to less order.
Energy - The name given to the ability to do work. Potential Energy is possessed by a body due to its position or form. Kinetic Energy is energy possessed by a body because of its motion.
Entropy – The entropy of a substance increases whenever the energy it possesses decreases. Entropy is also used as a measure of the disorder of a substance – the greater the disorder, the greater the entropy.
BTU (British Thermal Unit) – Heat required to raise one lb. of water one degree Fahrenheit.
Quad – One quadrillion (10¹) BTU’s.
Horsepower – The power required to raise 550 lbs. 1 ft. in 1 sec.
Force - Force is a push or pull on an object or body.
Work - The amount of work is determined by the strength of the force used and the distance through which it moved.
Power - Power measures the rate at which work is done.
Watt – A unit used to measure power. An electric devise uses 1 watt when 1 volt of electric potential drives 1 ampere of electric current through it.
Gigawatt – One billion watts.
Calorie – Quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree centigrade.
The Greens and even other people, especially, but not only, on the left, believe that energy use (in particular in the USA) should be curtailed and perhaps rationed; the world is rapidly running out of useful energy; and fossil fuel derived energy sources are noxious, are ruining the environment, and therefore should be quickly phased out. None of these assertions is true as I shall endeavor to illustrate.
At this point it is important to define what is being discussed. Considering the possible sources of energy: fossil fuels; wind; the sun; biomass; and nuclear, there is no shortage of raw energy. But what exactly is energy (see list of definitions)? Those raw energy sources are potential energy that is capable of being reconstructed to do useful things. The process of making energy useful is to apply order to it. That is to say to decrease its entropy. Sunshine, wind, fossils fuels, nuclear fuel, all have to be ordered to coax useful work out of them. In fact, by far, most energy is used to extract, refine, transport, and apply energy to do what we consider useful. And the total process is exceedingly wasteful and inefficient. As recounted by Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills in their 2005 book, The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, The Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy Thomas Edison’s first light bulb converted 4% of the energy input to the bulb into light - 96% was dissipated in heat. It gets worse than that, much worse. The power plant Edison built to light his bulbs did not even convert 10% of its heat into electricity. The total energy conversion from power plant to light bulb output was less than ½ of one percent.
Efficiency of raw energy conversion has gotten better over the years and keeps getting better, however it is still a small percentage of the potential energy of the resource which gets converted into useful work. Most of the energy which is wasted is in the form of heat. Fortunately this dissipated heat is a small percentage of the total heat which reaches the earth from the sun during daylight and is then radiated back into space at night. According to Huber & Mills, an estimated 5 million Quads (see definitions) of solar energy reach the earth per year – 10,000 times as much as humans consume in the form of fossil fuels, crops, and wood. So no, in case you were worried, we are not turning the earth into a gigantic hot forge by our inefficient use of energy.
Over the past 30 years, appliances, air-conditioners, refrigerators, light bulbs, electronics, etc. became 30-50% more efficient, yet in the USA we burn an additional 400 million tons of coal per year. Increasing the efficiency of energy generation increases not decreases the use of energy. Tremendous improvements in efficiency create more demand, not less. Our main use of energy is not lighting, locomotion, or cooling. It is to extract, refine, process, and purify energy itself. And the more efficient we become at refining energy the more of it we want to use. Say’s Law [John Baptiste Say (1767-1832)] states that additional supply creates additional demand. Collective wants are insatiable. In order to lower consumption it would be necessary to lower efficiency. I do not know anyone who is in favor of that.
In the United States 40% of total raw energy is supplied by oil and 60% by coal, gas, uranium, and hydroelectric. For electricity, 50% is supplied by coal; 20% by uranium; 18% by natural gas; 0.27% wind; 0.013% solar and the rest primarily by hydro and oil. After the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979 pundits declared that was the end of civilian nuclear power. The Chernobyl accident seven years later confirmed it in their minds. Since 1979 the amount of electricity generated by uranium increased from 11% to 20% of the total today. No new reactors were built in the intervening years, except the ones already under construction, however these new ones and the existing ones were made more efficient and were run more hours per day.
Electricity is responsible for 60% of our GDP and 85% of our growth in energy demand since 1980. In the next several decades hybrid automobiles combining electrically powered batteries and gasoline engines with fully electric drive trains will increase the relative utilization of electricity. As it is now, less than 20% of the cost of owning and operating automobiles is due to the cost of gasoline (so why all the grumbling and whining over the price of gas?) and with the future hybrids the cost of powering these vehicles will be even less. The cost of electricity for automobile propulsion versus the cost of gasoline is 1/3 for electricity generated by coal and 1/10 if generated by uranium.
If the Greens and their sympathizers do not give up their unrelenting and unrealistic opposition to oil and gas exploration and refining and especially uranium utilization then this is going to happen: As the increasingly efficient and increased use of electricity eventuates, the United States will burn more and more coal. No politician, either Democrat or Republican (no others count), will be responsible for the lights going out as was experienced in California under Governor “Gray Skies” Davis (Davis did not cause the problem which was building years before he became governor, but he was in office at the critical time and he contributed to the problem rather than the solution so he paid the price). Uranium is by far the densest (most mass and potential energy per unit volume) and most economic form of raw energy, is readily available, and can be made completely safe. Let the fanatics explain why it should not be more widely used as a raw energy source.
Is the United States an energy consumption hog? We consume about 100 Quads of raw energy per year today up from 7 in 1910 and 35 in 1950. The USA consumes 43% of the world’s gasoline, 26% of the electricity, 25% of the petroleum, 25% of natural gas, and 23 % of hard coal. We also produce 25% of the world’s goods and services so our consumption is not out of line with our productivity. Despite what the effete Europeans might think America spreads democracy in the world (a good thing according to sensible people), provides military defense (also a good thing), feeds people around the world out of proportion to America’s population, and pioneers many key inventions and engineering technologies. This would not be possible if we were burning dung as a primary fuel. As countries become more industrialized and more productive they consume more raw energy. From 2002 to 2004 the USA used 700,000 more bbls. of oil per day; during this same time period China’s increase was 1.47 million bbls. per day. In contrast to the 2 gigawatt Hoover Dam on the Colorado River the Chinese built an 18 gigawatt dam on the Yangtze River.
Is it true that the more fossil fuels are used up the less there are available and the more expensive they become? Intuitively it would seem so, yet this has not been true historically. Global oil production has increased from 66.8 million bbls./day in 2002 to 69.2 in 2003, 72.5 in 2004, and is at a still higher rate in 2005. In 1980 some experts predicted that the price of oil would be $200/bbl. by 2003. There were only about 30 billions bbls. of proven reserves in the USA in 1979. Since then 67 billion bbls. of crude have been produced. Recently what was described as the largest onshore oil field in the last 30 years in the lower 48 states was discovered in Utah. Even though the history of such discoveries is that inevitably the reserves are initially overestimated, then underestimated with more data, and finally with still more data more accurately estimated, these discoveries are typical when there are incentives.
The price of crude oil has remained remarkably stable over the years despite increased costs of extraction. Wells which are drilled through 10,000 ft. of water, 20,000 ft. of rock vertically, and 30,000 ft. of rock horizontally have not materially raised the cost of crude, inflation adjusted, from wells drilled in 100 ft. of water in 1954 and unit costs are less than the 69 ft. well drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859. According to Huber & Mills production costs of the Statfjord oil field in the North Sea are not much higher that the Spindletop field of southeast Texas discovered in 1901. Even though the popular perception is that recent gasoline prices in the USA were at historic high levels, the inflation adjusted prices in 1981 were at equal or higher levels. And to promote cleaner burning, the various gasoline additives mandated by different states have increased gasoline costs in the interim.
On the order of 5 million Quads per year of solar energy reach the earth. Worldwide coal reserves are 200,000 Quads and oil shale at least 10,000 Quads. There are 3.5 trillion bbls. of recoverable heavy oil in tar sands in Canada and Venezuela – at 80 million bbls./day consumption this would represent a 100 year supply. Global consumption is 345 Quads of fossil fuels (100 in the USA) per year. Given these huge reserves of raw energy along with renewable sources such as wind and hydroelectric as well as nuclear, one could realistically conclude that energy sources are essentially infinite.
Is the earth’s environment slowly (some would say not so slowly) being degraded by humanity’s inexorable drive to extract and consume vast amount of energy? Well, what has happened in the past? London, England has more hours of clear skies than it did a century and more ago when great quantities of soot were spewed into the atmosphere by coal burning fireplaces and furnaces; Los Angles is less polluted now than it was in the past few decades; and Pittsburg used to be called the “Smoky City” – no more.
According to Huber & Wells in 1840 it required 6000 cords of wood to produce 1000 tons of iron. As late as 1910 some 27% of all U.S. farmland was devoted to feeding horses used for transportation. Feeding the organic transportation system in 1910 required far more land than we have since seized for oil pipelines, refineries, and wells. The lower 48 states had a bit over 1 billion acres of forests when the first Europeans settled in New England. By 1920 that figure shrank to about ¾ of a billion acres. In recent years trees have been replanted at a rate of 3 million acres per year. Growing up on a farm in Michigan in the 1940’s I planted thousands of various pine seedlings myself. For the first time in history a Western nation has reversed the decline of its forests. If current trends continue America could eventually return to the levels of forestation last seen by the Pilgrims.
The British Antarctic Survey out of Cambridge, England in a recently published report based on satellite images between 1992 and 2003 stated that the East Antarctic ice sheet gained about 45 billion tons of ice and thickened at an average rate of 1.8 cm. per year – enough to reduce the ocean’s rise by 0.12 mm. per year. This region comprises circa 85% of Antarctic’s total ice volume. Does this prove “Global Cooling” is the order of the day? No, but it does not exactly support the theory that the earth is becoming an oven either.
What could reverse this inexorable drive to consume more and more energy? Not an exhaustion of raw energy as has been discussed in detail, but rather a drop in world population – something that most assuredly will happen, although not soon.
Currently the world population is approximately 6½ billion. Even though the worldwide fertility rate has been declining for the last 50 years, the forecast for the world population is 8 to 9 billion by 2050. How can there be an increasing population with a decreasing fertility rate? The answers are: 1.) Even if the fertility rate is falling, if it is still above the replacement rate then the population will increase. 2.) There is a quarter of a century or so delay (called momentum) between births and the age of the women giving birth. 3.) Although fewer children are being born the ones that are born are living longer.
As explained by Ben J. Wattenberg in his 2004 book, Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future an ongoing United Nations study on demographics as well as the U.S. Bureau of Statistics postulate that the world population will be 2 to 3 billion by the year 2300 almost back to what it was in 1950 at a little over 2½ billion. That is a long time period for making projections, yet the trends are there. Of course conditions could change and therefore change the outcome, but it seems to me more likely that some catastrophic event such as a deadly pandemic disease or a nuclear holocaust would lower populations even further rather than raising population numbers by God knows what.
The replacement fertility rate is 2.1 children per woman. In 1950 the world rate was 5.0; in 2000 it was 2.7 and was previously predicted to be 2.0 by 2050. The new number is 1.85 for 2050 and that number may drop to 1.7 when still newer estimates come out in 2008 which may mean that the world’s population will peak before 2050 and not reach the 8 to 9 billion figure.
The fertility rate in the less developed world was 2.9 in 2000 and is forecast to be 2.0 by 2050. It is a commonplace that the fertility rate drops as a population gains economically. In a wonderfully sardonic commentary in the 1950’s Bergen Evans told the story of the man who was worried that the black population in the USA was increasing faster than whites. Evans told him that yes the black birth rate was higher than whites, but as blacks gained in economic and social status their birth rate would decline – thus mixed are all blessings! This current decline in third world countries is largely unrelated to economic development, but may be due to what is called diffusion (the spread of communications). People may not have yet experienced too much in the way of increased economic prosperity, but they are not dumb, they know what is happening in the developed world, partly as the result of smaller families. Indonesia, Egypt, Iran, Brazil, Cuba, and Mexico even though they currently have more than replacement population increase rates, have declining fertility rates. Wouldn’t that be the supreme irony if, at some future time, the United States offered incentives for Mexicans to come here while the Mexican government tried mightily to keep them home!
Many European countries are undergoing population declines now as are Japan and South Korea. Europe as a whole, which has a fertility rate of 1.4, down from 2.6 in 1950, is predicted to decline by 100 million by 2050. Russia alone is suffering an 800,000 per year decline in population. Japan’s fertility rate was 2.8 in 1950 and 1.3 in 2005 with a projected 17 million population decline by 2050. South Korea’s rate was 1.1 in 2005. The South Koreans have a real and growing problem with population decline, but are not expected to drop to zero by 2050 – unless the N. K. Commies launch nukes.
The fertility rate of the USA was 3.5 in 1960 at the height of the “baby boom” and is 2.0 today. Because of robust immigration and momentum, by contrast with Europe, the United States which has a current population of almost 300 million is projected to have a population of 400 million by 2050. Compared to historical standards we are not currently being overrun with immigrants. Early in the 20th century our population had 14% foreign born, 5% in 1970, 10% in 2005, and a projected 13% in 2050. By the 2nd half of the twenty-first century there are apt to be three great powers in the world: the United States with a 400+ million population and China and India with circa 1 billion each. Given their population declines and their quasi socialistic societies the European countries will have to be content learning to be 3rd rate powers. A caveat in the prediction about India taking her place as one of the three great powers is given by Adlai E. Stevenson, former U.S. presidential candidate in the 1950’s, having predicted that it takes 50 years for a country to industrialize. India gained independence in 1948 so by 1998 they should have been industrialized. As of 2005 they still are not, although they have made big strides – especially in the last 15 years, so perhaps his time frame needs to be stretched a mite.
DEFINITONS
1st Law of Thermodynamics – The energy going into a system, minus the energy coming out of a system, equals the change in the energy stored in the system. Stated more simply the Law says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
2nd Law of Thermodynamics – Heat will, on its own, flow from a hot object to a cold object. An alternative definition is that the state of any closed system inevitably decays from more order to less order.
Energy - The name given to the ability to do work. Potential Energy is possessed by a body due to its position or form. Kinetic Energy is energy possessed by a body because of its motion.
Entropy – The entropy of a substance increases whenever the energy it possesses decreases. Entropy is also used as a measure of the disorder of a substance – the greater the disorder, the greater the entropy.
BTU (British Thermal Unit) – Heat required to raise one lb. of water one degree Fahrenheit.
Quad – One quadrillion (10¹) BTU’s.
Horsepower – The power required to raise 550 lbs. 1 ft. in 1 sec.
Force - Force is a push or pull on an object or body.
Work - The amount of work is determined by the strength of the force used and the distance through which it moved.
Power - Power measures the rate at which work is done.
Watt – A unit used to measure power. An electric devise uses 1 watt when 1 volt of electric potential drives 1 ampere of electric current through it.
Gigawatt – One billion watts.
Calorie – Quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree centigrade.
Friday, April 6, 2007
POLITICALLY INCORRECT SCIENCE 11
Science journalist, senior editor of the Weekly Standard, and columnist for National Review, Tom Bethell had a paperback book tilted A Politically Incorrect Guide to Science published in November 2005. Bethell grew up in Great Britain and graduated from Oxford University. Some of what follows is taken from his book.
It is interesting that Charles Darwin said his theory of evolution – national selection and the survival of the fittest - was based on the work of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834). Malthus was a free market economist who postulated that worldwide famine would ensue because the population was increasing geometrically and the food supply was increasing arithmetically. He was wrong because his assumptions about these increases were incorrect. This idea was taken to a ridiculous level in the 1960’s by Paul Ehrlich (see my essay Fools, Frauds & Fakes) who said that 65 million Americans would die of starvation by the 1980’s. Sacre´ bleu! What idiocy. If he had meant obesity 20 years later he would have looked less ridiculous. British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) made the wry comment that the theory of a laissez-faire economist was applied to the animal and vegetable kingdoms and embraced by the left.
The view of many people, both in and out of science, is that if a process or substance, such as radiation, lead, mercury, etc., is toxic then even the minutest amount is detrimental. Linus Pauling who won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1954 (he was working furiously on the structure of DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid] and might have won the Nobel prize for medicine except he was beaten to the solution by American James Watson and the Brits, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins) was a believer in this Linear No Threshold Theory of toxicity. Pauling and his wife ingested massive quantities, as much as a couple of orders of magnitude more than is recommended, of vitamin C as a preventative for colds and cancer. Although they both lived into their early 90’s (Pauling died at the age of 93 of prostate cancer) millions of other people lived that long or longer without taking supplemental vitamin C. Double blind studies have failed to show any correlation between large doses of vitamin C and prevention of colds and cancer. Because of his tireless advocacy of banning all nuclear testing he won the Nobel Peace prize in 1962. He also won the Lenin Peace Prize in the same year so one can see who was pushing his agenda.
There is a theory called hormesis which holds that while large doses of these materials are toxic, low doses are in fact beneficial.
Johns Hopkins researchers found that Eastern USA shipyard employees who worked on nuclear reactors for ships and submarines were exposed to 10 times the amount of radiation compared to workers who were not exposed yet they had a 25% lower incidence of cancer that the national average.
Radon is a colorless, inert, radioactive gaseous element given off in the radioactive disintegration of radium and is found in the basement of houses all around the country in widely varying amounts. A comprehensive study at the University of Pittsburg yielded an almost inverse relation of radon exposure and lung cancer.
Radiation from uranium bearing rocks and cosmic radiation because of higher elevations in the Rocky Mountain area are greater than in the Mississippi Valley area. However incidences of cancer are measurably lower in the Rocky Mts. than in the Mississippi Valley.
Although it is controversial, there is a Japanese study which indicates that survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on average live longer that Japanese in the same age group of other cities. Certainly there is no clear indication that life spans of H & N survivors have been shortened relative to other Japanese.
It was predicted that the fatalities of Chernobyl would be on the order of 150,000. The New York Times and Washington Post reported that to date 50 deaths are attributable to the Chernobyl nuclear accident (1986). And even if that total is increased owing to the longer term effects of nuclear radiation as a causative agent of cancer the original estimate will not be approached.
Then President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971 with the prediction that the war would be largely won by 1976. I do not recall there was widespread laughter by the public at that extremely silly forecast. Admittedly Nixon was not someone who inspired merriment – contempt would be more like it. Still how could he or anyone have been so naïve?
Whacko environmentalists like to claim we are all slowly, and in some cases not so slowly, being poisoned by chemicals input into the air, ground, and water by perfidious and profligate man. In fact low levels of chemicals are beneficial to good health. Consider such chemical elements as phosphorus, magnesium, molybdenum, nickel, copper, zinc, chromium, and selenium which are trace elements necessary for good health and contained in many vitamin and mineral supplements. Mercury and lead are also in this category such that while large amounts are toxic, small quantities are essential.
Is global warming occurring and if so is it caused by human activity? The “Greens” and other head cases insist the answers are yes and yes and all dissenters are right wing environmental evil despoilers who should be suppressed. As for myself, I have a few questions. Not only is there a problem of obtaining accurate and representative temperatures now, given the “heat island” effect of cities, lack of proper temperature recording equipment in third world countries, and considering the earth is 2/3 covered with oceans, but comparing these with past proxy temperatures derived from tree rings and ice cores is problematic at best.
The environmentalists estimate that global temperature has increased by 1 ºC over the past 100 years, yet there was a circa 30 year period in the mid century where average temperatures declined and most of the gain is attributed to the first half of the 20th century. If industrialization is the cause then how is this explained?
Vikings settled in Greenland about 1000 A.D. The name was not selected cynically to entice additional settlers, but was an accurate description unlike now where the names of Iceland and Greenland should more descriptively be interchanged. Iceland has the advantage of being centered over a volcanic “hot spot” and therefore has many hot water geysers to promote thermal heating.
The diet of the Vikings was 80% derived from grazing land animals and 20% from fishing in the sea. This was prior to the “Little Ice Age” from approximately 1400 to 1850. As the global cold weather persisted the diet of the Vikings changed to 80% from fishing and 20% from the diminishing herds of sheep and cattle. Eventually all the sheep and cattle died and even the fish stopped coming into the cold northern waters. The Vikings did not want to emulate the native Greenlanders because they considered them barbarians so they all starved. Hubris will get you every time.
There were many other effects of the Little Ice Age. New England was so persistently cold that the western migration of Americans was greatly accelerated. The severity of the “Irish Potato Famine” is attributable to the prolonged cold and damp weather. Question: What caused what was a relatively global warm period prior to the LIA, what caused the LIA, and what caused the warm up after?
There are two current theories as to the mechanism of the temperature change during the Little Ice Age and neither, naturally, has anything to do with the alleged irresponsible actions of man. One theory is that the sun on a still unpredictable and not understood basis periodically outputs a changing and significant amount of solar energy. Another theory is that currents carry waters from the tropical regions northward transferring heat to northern latitudes. These waters cool as they reach northern latitudes becoming denser and therefore sink, effectively forming a conveyor belt of warmer water flowing northward at the surface and cooler water below traveling southward as equilibrium tends to distribute the northern and equatorial water levels. During the relative warm period preceding the Little Ice Age the northern glaciers melted and with the mixing of less dense fresh water from the glaciers the near surface waters did not sink thereby shutting down the conveyor effect. Without the heat transfer from the tropics to the northern latitudes the Little Ice Age was initiated. Or so goes the theory.
The United States has not signed on to the Kyoto Treaty and has therefore been pummeled by the hard left in this country and around the world. However the purpose of the treaty is clear. It is to cripple the US economy. Consider: Major polluting countries, China, India, Brazil, and third World countries are exempt from emission standards for the undisputed reason their economies would be hurt. The chosen year of 1990 for base reductions favor Russia and Germany as it was subsequent to then that their economies started growing rapidly owing to the overthrowing of Communism in Russia and the unification of East and West Germany. According to a just released European Institute for Public Policy Research report, only Britain and Sweden are hono(u)ring their commitments to cut greenhouse gasses and 10 out of 15 European signatories will miss their treaty targets without taking urgent action.
There is no doubt that AIDS (Auto Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is a huge health problem in Africa. The question is, is it as widespread as advertised? Whether people in Africa have AIDS is largely not determined by tests for HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), but whether hospital patients have several of such symptoms as a 10% weight loss, cough, fever, and diarrhea which are all symptoms of AIDS and symptoms of other diseases as well. Additionally false positives of HIV are produced by such maladies as malaria and pregnancy, common in Africa. Despite what is called the AIDS epidemic the population of Africa is continually increasing contrary to the forecasts of the most pessimist alarmists.
The effect of a diminution in smoking and earlier detection of some cancers has lowered cancer mortality rates. However even though there has been a significant decrease in the mortality of some forms of cancer there are other types which have not had any meaningful decrease in the mortality rate in the past 50 years. Cancer is a serious, but interesting disease or more correctly a series of various diseases. It is widely accepted that gene mutation is the cause of most cancers. There is an alternate explanation called the theory of cell duplication or the Aneuploid Theory which holds that mistakes made during cell division cause cancer. For example when a somatic cell divides instead of producing 46 double structured chromosomes it erroneously makes, say, a cell with an many as 80 double structured chromosome pairs. University of California molecular biologist, Peter Duesburg has been proposing this theory for 25 years. He is better known for his claim that HIV is not the cause of AIDS so perhaps his explanation for the cause of cancer should be taken with a large, even very large, dose of skepticism. The complexity of cellular biology is what makes an understanding not only of cancer, but human biology so frustrating. The Human Genome Project was first conceived in 1975 with great promise for human cellular engineering advancement. Thirty years later understanding of human cellular biology has been frustratingly slow. There is no rational reason to believe that stem cell research will advance any faster.
It is interesting that Charles Darwin said his theory of evolution – national selection and the survival of the fittest - was based on the work of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834). Malthus was a free market economist who postulated that worldwide famine would ensue because the population was increasing geometrically and the food supply was increasing arithmetically. He was wrong because his assumptions about these increases were incorrect. This idea was taken to a ridiculous level in the 1960’s by Paul Ehrlich (see my essay Fools, Frauds & Fakes) who said that 65 million Americans would die of starvation by the 1980’s. Sacre´ bleu! What idiocy. If he had meant obesity 20 years later he would have looked less ridiculous. British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) made the wry comment that the theory of a laissez-faire economist was applied to the animal and vegetable kingdoms and embraced by the left.
The view of many people, both in and out of science, is that if a process or substance, such as radiation, lead, mercury, etc., is toxic then even the minutest amount is detrimental. Linus Pauling who won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1954 (he was working furiously on the structure of DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid] and might have won the Nobel prize for medicine except he was beaten to the solution by American James Watson and the Brits, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins) was a believer in this Linear No Threshold Theory of toxicity. Pauling and his wife ingested massive quantities, as much as a couple of orders of magnitude more than is recommended, of vitamin C as a preventative for colds and cancer. Although they both lived into their early 90’s (Pauling died at the age of 93 of prostate cancer) millions of other people lived that long or longer without taking supplemental vitamin C. Double blind studies have failed to show any correlation between large doses of vitamin C and prevention of colds and cancer. Because of his tireless advocacy of banning all nuclear testing he won the Nobel Peace prize in 1962. He also won the Lenin Peace Prize in the same year so one can see who was pushing his agenda.
There is a theory called hormesis which holds that while large doses of these materials are toxic, low doses are in fact beneficial.
Johns Hopkins researchers found that Eastern USA shipyard employees who worked on nuclear reactors for ships and submarines were exposed to 10 times the amount of radiation compared to workers who were not exposed yet they had a 25% lower incidence of cancer that the national average.
Radon is a colorless, inert, radioactive gaseous element given off in the radioactive disintegration of radium and is found in the basement of houses all around the country in widely varying amounts. A comprehensive study at the University of Pittsburg yielded an almost inverse relation of radon exposure and lung cancer.
Radiation from uranium bearing rocks and cosmic radiation because of higher elevations in the Rocky Mountain area are greater than in the Mississippi Valley area. However incidences of cancer are measurably lower in the Rocky Mts. than in the Mississippi Valley.
Although it is controversial, there is a Japanese study which indicates that survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on average live longer that Japanese in the same age group of other cities. Certainly there is no clear indication that life spans of H & N survivors have been shortened relative to other Japanese.
It was predicted that the fatalities of Chernobyl would be on the order of 150,000. The New York Times and Washington Post reported that to date 50 deaths are attributable to the Chernobyl nuclear accident (1986). And even if that total is increased owing to the longer term effects of nuclear radiation as a causative agent of cancer the original estimate will not be approached.
Then President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971 with the prediction that the war would be largely won by 1976. I do not recall there was widespread laughter by the public at that extremely silly forecast. Admittedly Nixon was not someone who inspired merriment – contempt would be more like it. Still how could he or anyone have been so naïve?
Whacko environmentalists like to claim we are all slowly, and in some cases not so slowly, being poisoned by chemicals input into the air, ground, and water by perfidious and profligate man. In fact low levels of chemicals are beneficial to good health. Consider such chemical elements as phosphorus, magnesium, molybdenum, nickel, copper, zinc, chromium, and selenium which are trace elements necessary for good health and contained in many vitamin and mineral supplements. Mercury and lead are also in this category such that while large amounts are toxic, small quantities are essential.
Is global warming occurring and if so is it caused by human activity? The “Greens” and other head cases insist the answers are yes and yes and all dissenters are right wing environmental evil despoilers who should be suppressed. As for myself, I have a few questions. Not only is there a problem of obtaining accurate and representative temperatures now, given the “heat island” effect of cities, lack of proper temperature recording equipment in third world countries, and considering the earth is 2/3 covered with oceans, but comparing these with past proxy temperatures derived from tree rings and ice cores is problematic at best.
The environmentalists estimate that global temperature has increased by 1 ºC over the past 100 years, yet there was a circa 30 year period in the mid century where average temperatures declined and most of the gain is attributed to the first half of the 20th century. If industrialization is the cause then how is this explained?
Vikings settled in Greenland about 1000 A.D. The name was not selected cynically to entice additional settlers, but was an accurate description unlike now where the names of Iceland and Greenland should more descriptively be interchanged. Iceland has the advantage of being centered over a volcanic “hot spot” and therefore has many hot water geysers to promote thermal heating.
The diet of the Vikings was 80% derived from grazing land animals and 20% from fishing in the sea. This was prior to the “Little Ice Age” from approximately 1400 to 1850. As the global cold weather persisted the diet of the Vikings changed to 80% from fishing and 20% from the diminishing herds of sheep and cattle. Eventually all the sheep and cattle died and even the fish stopped coming into the cold northern waters. The Vikings did not want to emulate the native Greenlanders because they considered them barbarians so they all starved. Hubris will get you every time.
There were many other effects of the Little Ice Age. New England was so persistently cold that the western migration of Americans was greatly accelerated. The severity of the “Irish Potato Famine” is attributable to the prolonged cold and damp weather. Question: What caused what was a relatively global warm period prior to the LIA, what caused the LIA, and what caused the warm up after?
There are two current theories as to the mechanism of the temperature change during the Little Ice Age and neither, naturally, has anything to do with the alleged irresponsible actions of man. One theory is that the sun on a still unpredictable and not understood basis periodically outputs a changing and significant amount of solar energy. Another theory is that currents carry waters from the tropical regions northward transferring heat to northern latitudes. These waters cool as they reach northern latitudes becoming denser and therefore sink, effectively forming a conveyor belt of warmer water flowing northward at the surface and cooler water below traveling southward as equilibrium tends to distribute the northern and equatorial water levels. During the relative warm period preceding the Little Ice Age the northern glaciers melted and with the mixing of less dense fresh water from the glaciers the near surface waters did not sink thereby shutting down the conveyor effect. Without the heat transfer from the tropics to the northern latitudes the Little Ice Age was initiated. Or so goes the theory.
The United States has not signed on to the Kyoto Treaty and has therefore been pummeled by the hard left in this country and around the world. However the purpose of the treaty is clear. It is to cripple the US economy. Consider: Major polluting countries, China, India, Brazil, and third World countries are exempt from emission standards for the undisputed reason their economies would be hurt. The chosen year of 1990 for base reductions favor Russia and Germany as it was subsequent to then that their economies started growing rapidly owing to the overthrowing of Communism in Russia and the unification of East and West Germany. According to a just released European Institute for Public Policy Research report, only Britain and Sweden are hono(u)ring their commitments to cut greenhouse gasses and 10 out of 15 European signatories will miss their treaty targets without taking urgent action.
There is no doubt that AIDS (Auto Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is a huge health problem in Africa. The question is, is it as widespread as advertised? Whether people in Africa have AIDS is largely not determined by tests for HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), but whether hospital patients have several of such symptoms as a 10% weight loss, cough, fever, and diarrhea which are all symptoms of AIDS and symptoms of other diseases as well. Additionally false positives of HIV are produced by such maladies as malaria and pregnancy, common in Africa. Despite what is called the AIDS epidemic the population of Africa is continually increasing contrary to the forecasts of the most pessimist alarmists.
The effect of a diminution in smoking and earlier detection of some cancers has lowered cancer mortality rates. However even though there has been a significant decrease in the mortality of some forms of cancer there are other types which have not had any meaningful decrease in the mortality rate in the past 50 years. Cancer is a serious, but interesting disease or more correctly a series of various diseases. It is widely accepted that gene mutation is the cause of most cancers. There is an alternate explanation called the theory of cell duplication or the Aneuploid Theory which holds that mistakes made during cell division cause cancer. For example when a somatic cell divides instead of producing 46 double structured chromosomes it erroneously makes, say, a cell with an many as 80 double structured chromosome pairs. University of California molecular biologist, Peter Duesburg has been proposing this theory for 25 years. He is better known for his claim that HIV is not the cause of AIDS so perhaps his explanation for the cause of cancer should be taken with a large, even very large, dose of skepticism. The complexity of cellular biology is what makes an understanding not only of cancer, but human biology so frustrating. The Human Genome Project was first conceived in 1975 with great promise for human cellular engineering advancement. Thirty years later understanding of human cellular biology has been frustratingly slow. There is no rational reason to believe that stem cell research will advance any faster.
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