XIX. Global Warming and Other Environmental Myths:
The Economic Consequences of Fact vs. Media Perception
(Appendix A, by Dixy Lee Ray)
America's Unknown Enemy: Beyond Conspiracy
Editorial Staff of the
American Institute for Economic Research
[1993]
An address delivered at the 1992 Progress
Foundation International Economic Conference, "The Media
and the Economy," in Zurich, Switzerland. Dr. Ray has been
Governor of the State of Washington, an Assistant Secretary of
State, and was a long-time faculty member of the Zoology
Department at the University of Washington. She is currently
Senior Scholar in the Department of Environmental Health and
Safety at the University of Maryland. She also serves on the
Board of the Washington Institute for Policy Studies and is a
consultant to the National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory.
Dr. Ray holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and 22 honorary
degrees. Among her numerous other honors, she lists the United
Nations Peace Prize and being named "Woman of the Year"
by the Ladies Home Journal in 1973. Her latest book is
Trashing the Planet, published by Regenery Gateway in
1990.
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I believe in freedom. I believe in liberty. I believe that no one is
so wise they can plan things for other people. And so, as we reach the
end of the 20th century and as the 21st century approaches, I cannot
help but reflect upon two different observations.
First -- looking back -- we in the Western industrialized nations
have been privileged to live in a century of such progress in
knowledge and in its use for the betterment of human society as has
never before been experienced. From the vantage point of greater
longevity, better health, expanded and more nutritious food supplies,
large scale freedom from back breaking manual labor, the marvel of
electronics, increased mobility, and unprecedented personal liberty,
we appear to view it all as nothing more than a basic human right.
Perhaps we should recall the words of Lord Chesterton, one of the
great English writers of the past, who said at the beginning of the
Industrial Age, and I quote, "We are perishing," he said, "for
lack of Wonder, not for lack of wonders."
Second -- looking forward -- we seem not only to have lost a sense of
wonder at human accomplishments but to accept the notion that all
progress now must cease. It must stop because, according to some
people, everything we have achieved has also caused too much damage to
the earth. In the name of environmentalism we must change, they say,
from a society that believes in progress to one that is dedicated to
sustainability. Now it is by no means clear just what this condition
of "sustainability" refers to, except that it is essentially
a back-to-nature movement, and it is outspokenly
anti-industrialization.
Mr. Maurice Strong, the head of the United Nations environmental
programs, wrote, in August of 1991, "It is clear that current
life-styles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class,
involving high meat intake [Mr. Strong is a vegetarian], consumption
of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, ownership of motor
vehicles, small electrical appliances, home and work place air
conditioning, and suburban housing, are not sustainable. A shift is
necessary toward life-styles less geared to environmentally damaging
consumptive patterns."
And earlier this year, Mr. Lester Brown, who is the president of an
organization called World Watch Institute, said, "Building an
environmentally sustainable future requires restricting the global
economy, dramatically changing human reproductive behavior, and
altering values and lifestyles. Doing all of this quickly requires
nothing short of a revolution." Now all of that is a pretty big
order, and I think that neither the "affluent middle class"
to whom Maurice Strong refers or anyone else is going to like it very
well! Remember, these two individuals are among the leadership of the
much-publicized Earth Summit, which was held last June in Rio de
Janeiro in Brazil, but their positions were not reported by the press
despite the fact that more than 7,000 reporters were in attendance.
More about the Earth Summit later. For now, the question I want to
discuss is this: are the so-called global environmental issues so
serious that they demand revolutionary changes in our modern, Western,
high-tech society -- changes that would have drastic economic
consequences? Those environmentalists who are identified as "activists"
-- the ones who are spokesmen and who have political clout -- maintain
that, indeed, the following problems must be alleviated as soon as
possible: 1) global warming; 2) ozone depletion; and 3) the size of
the human population. Are they correct in their position?
Global Warming
Nearly everyone believes that the earth is heating up. Is it?
Probably not -- at least there is no evidence that it is. Why then do
so many believe in global warming? Because everybody says so. And that
is the only position that is widely reported. Further, although there
has been considerable coverage of the predicted consequences of
climate changes, such things as harmful effects upon agriculture, the
melting of polar ice caps, which will flood coastal areas and low
lying islands, there has been little, if any, analysis of the economic
consequences of proposed solutions.
Publicity has also been given to the assumption that the presumed
climate change is caused by increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
and that this in turn has been caused by burning fossil fuels in
industrialized societies. But almost no attention, or very little, has
been given to the possible causes other than humans using fossil
fuels. The press itself has become an advocate for one answer to the
question. Now all of this is pretty heady stuff. That is to say, the
charges make good headlines. The only problem is, everything in the
generally publicized situation is based upon assumptions, upon theory,
upon computer models and computer simulations. What in fact are the
facts?
Temperature records taken in North America and Western Europe over
the past 150 years show many ups and downs but no clear trend either
toward warming or toward cooling. This is also borne out by analysis
of 135 years of recorded temperatures of the sea surface taken by
ships and ships' personnel. And, more recently, satellite data
recording 24 hours of temperature readings from all over the globe
reveal, at most, there has been a possible 0.30 centigrade temperature
rise during 13 years, that is 1978 to 1991, of continuous satellite
temperatures. Now, 0.30 centigrade is hardly anything anyone can
perceive without very special instruments. Were the global
warming-greenhouse theory borne out in nature, we should have
experienced an increase from between 20 and 40 centigrade during the
past 200 years. But this has not happened.
Historical data also remind us that the earth passes through warm
phases and cold ones. The medieval period, for example, was warm. It
was followed by the so-called "little ice age," which lasted
until about 1850 and from which the northern hemisphere is probably
still recovering. On a longer time scale, we cannot overlook the fact
that there have been ice ages and there have been warm periods in
between. In fact, if we look at the entire history of the earth for as
far back as we know it has existed, about 80 percent of the time the
northern hemisphere has been covered with ice, and we live in a most
unique period of somewhat warmer temperatures.
Climate changes, both large and small, tend to be cyclic and they are
likely related to changes in the sun itself, where in fact all climate
starts, and its cycles of sunspots and solar flares.
Two Danish scientists, E. Friis-Christensen and K. Lassen, reported
last year that there is a clear parallel between the 11-year sunspot
cycle and ocean temperatures, which have been measured in the northern
latitudes as part of a harbor ice observation for the last 130 years.
And in April of this year, Dr. Robert E. Stevenson, who is
Secretary-General of the International Association for the Physical
Sciences of the Ocean, reported, "Mean sea level has not changed
in the past century (which puts the lie to the ecologist's argument
that global warming is melting ice and the polar caps), atmospheric
temperatures though having up and down cycles, have not established a
trend in either direction." No measurement that has been taken
and recorded in the past 200 years has been outside normal variations.
Finally, when even the best of the global climate computer models is
tested against the weather of the past few decades -- where we know,
indeed, what has happened -- they don't fit! The very best ones, from
the National Center for Atmospheric Research at Boulder, Colorado,
predict that as much rain falls in the Sahara Desert as in Ireland.
Anybody who would believe that needs to have some second thoughts. But
anyone who watches the daily weather forecasts on the evening
television programs knows that with the very best and most expensive
computer technology available it is still not possible to predict,
accurately and consistently, what the weather is going to be 5 days in
advance. Why, then, should anybody believe that they can predict
what's going to happen in 5 years, or 50 years, or 150 years?
Even so, the media do not report these contrary data, not even when
more than 50 of the outstanding and leading atmospheric scientists in
the United States signed a statement -- a petition, if you will --
saying that the global warming theory is "highly uncertain"
and that it is "... based upon unsupported assumptions that
catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuels
and requires immediate action." They ended their petition with
this simple sentence: "We do not agree."
Now this statement is especially important since the nations that
were present at the Earth Summit (and there were 178 in all) have
already signed an international agreement to limit the production of
carbon dioxide to 1990 levels. The consequence of this action is
predominately economic. According to a study by the environment
ministers of the European Community, it means that to limit carbon
dioxide emissions to 1990 levels will require that coal prices jump 58
percent, heavy oil for industry 45 percent, natural gas for industry
34 percent. Heating oil for homes and offices would jump 16 percent,
natural gas for home heating 16 percent, diesel fuel would climb 11
percent and gasoline prices 6 percent. These estimates are probably
conservative. Industry sources maintain that the agreements already
reached will probably cause a tripling in overall fuel prices.
In the United States, a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions to 1990
levels will require a carbon tax of $200 per ton of C0
2 produced. This translates into a tax of $150
per ton of coal burned, $38 tax per barrel of oil and $1.78 tax per
1,000 cubic feet of natural gas. To date, neither economists nor the
press has shown any interest in the consequences of such price
increases. And according to Maurice Strong these costs could run as
high as $600 billion per year to the industrialized nations.
Considering the lack of evidence to support the theory of global
warming, coupled with the facts that 1) if global warming should
occur, it is not carbon dioxide that is the important greenhouse gas
anyhow, rather it is water vapor. It is water vapor and clouds that
would account for 98 percent of the effect, and 2) carbon dioxide is
not an air pollutant. It is produced whenever any kind of organic
material is burned or oxidized and, more than that, it is absolutely
necessary as a nutrient for all green growing plants. The plant world
is the only source of oxygen on which all of us depend to stay alive.
Carbon dioxide has a positive benefit for green plants -- the more of
it that is in the atmosphere, the better they like it. If the amount
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should double, and this has been
done experimentally by controlling the atmospheres in which plants
grow, it results in a 30 percent increase in growth and in harvest
yield. But the public never hears about this. Well, so much for global
warming.
Ozone Depletion
The facts about ozone are these:
- Solar radiation strikes the stratosphere -- that is the area
above the atmosphere -- with its ultraviolet (UV) component it
splits oxygen molecules, which then combine to form ozone. The
UV energy is absorbed in this process, and consequently does
not, therefore, penetrate to the surface of the earth.
- Ozone molecules are relatively unstable and under conditions
of extremely low temperature, the formation of ice crystals, or
the presence of chloride or nitrogen ions, the ozone will
undergo chemical reaction, that is to say, the ozone will be
destroyed. The formation and the breakdown of ozone occurs
continuously, in amounts of about a billion tons or so every
second. The amount of ozone present at any one time is the
result of the balance between its formation by absorbing UV
light and its destruction due to natural forces. Natural
fluctuations in the amount of ozone are as much as 40 percent
from day to day and, occasionally, very much more.
- Any reduction of ozone in the stratosphere of 50 percent or
more is, by convention, called a "hole." There never
is an opening, or a place where ozone isn't -- it's just if that
much is removed then it is called a hole. The unique conditions
that occur at the south pole at the end of the antarctic winter
result in the fact of 50 percent depletion or more almost every
season. This situation lasts for from 3 to 5 weeks and then it
is reconstituted. There is no such thing as a permanent loss of
ozone. This phenomenon was discovered by Dr. Reginald Dobson in
1956 and 1957, long before chlorofluourocarbons (CFCs) were in
common use. But the widely accepted theory today holds that the
CFCs are responsible for this event, which, may I emphasize
again, preceded their use. The extent of the so-called antarctic
ozone "hole" varies from year to year and is related
to the length of the solar sunspot cycle.
- In 1961 there was a dramatic decrease in the amount of ozone
in the stratosphere (nobody knows why that happened) and until
1970 it was on the increase, with the greatest amount of ozone
ever measured occurring in 1979, and then it started decreasing
again, until about 1986 when it reached a low point, and now is
increasing once more.
None of these data -- none of these actual measurements -- supports
the theory that CFCs destroy ozone. Nonetheless, the theory that CFCs
are responsible for serious and, it is implied, permanent, destruction
of the ozone layer in the stratosphere is perpetuated by the media.
Not reported is the fact that actual measurements, taken since 1974,
show that the amount of UV radiation reaching the surface of the earth
is and continues to be decreasing slightly -- not increasing as it
would be if there were less ozone present in the stratosphere.
Now all of this would be merely of academic interest to scientists
were it not for the association of UV exposure to the development of
skin cancer. Scare stories about increased UV radiation have unduly
frightened people because of what the press has not reported. That is,
that slight increases in UV penetration related to the variations in
ozone concentrations are far, far, far less than normal variations
that people experience because of differences in geography. The plain
fact is that, normally and naturally, there is more UV penetration at
the equator than at the north or south poles.
If a person moves, say, from an area nearer either one of the polar
areas toward the equator, by the time he reaches the equator his
UV-light exposure will increase 5,000 percent! People from England or
from Scandinavia who move to Northern Australia increase their
exposure 600 percent. For every six miles closer to the equator that
anyone goes, it increases his UV exposure by 1 percent. I have not
heard of anyone turning down a vacation on the French Riviera, or a
trip to the South Seas, or any such thing, because of fear of
increased UV exposure. There is also an increase in UV concentration
for every 100 feet of elevation; but this does not prevent people from
living at high elevations, or even living in a country like
Switzerland, nor does it prevent people from climbing mountains. The
human body is accustomed to these kinds of variations and we all know
that.
Furthermore, the press has been negligent in not pointing out that
there are three different kinds of skin cancer, only one of which has
a high mortality. Common skin cancers are curable in 99 percent of the
cases. Only malignant melanoma is the fatal type and it does not
appear, despite enormous numbers of studies, that malignant melanoma
has any kind of causal relationship with UY exposure. Despite these
realities, the production and use of CFCs has been banned by an
international treaty known as the Montreal Protocol -- signed in 1987,
and revised in 1990 to make it even tougher and the penalties for
using CFCs more severe. Even the chief negotiators for this treaty
admit that a scientific basis for it does not exist.
What are the consequences of a ban, which will be total by the year
1995? Simply this: the most important of the CFCs is a substance known
in the commercial trade as freon, and freon is used in hundreds of
millions of refrigerators and air conditioning units, both domestic
and commercial. Our entire food distribution, transportation, and
delivery system depends upon refrigeration, as does the protection of
medicinals, materials for inoculations and blood supplies. Another CFC
that has important economic use is the group known as the halons --
materials that are essential in fire fighting, particularly for
electrical fires or fires that occur in close confinement, like in
airplanes or on board ships. Loss of their use has been calculated to
cost the Western nations anywhere from $3 to $5 trillion dollars. That
sum should attract somebody's attention, but so far it hasn't.
The only segments of the economy to benefit from the ban of CFCs are
the large chemical corporations who hope to sell substitutes. The
substitute for freon, which is now being manufactured by DuPont, will
cost ten times more. It is a substance that is less efficient than
freon and it is so corrosive that it will require the complete
redesign and reengineering of all existing refrigeration and air
conditioning units. The media do not report these realities, nor has
the community of economists expressed any concern for the unnecessary
and very heavy financial burden that phasing out CFCs will cost.
Human Population
Population control is very high on the environmentalist agenda. One
of their prominent spokesmen, Dr. Garrett Hardin, recently wrote, "It
is a mistake to think that we can control the greed of mankind in the
long run by an appeal to conscience.... The only way we can cherish
and nurture other and more precise and precious freedoms is by
relinquishing the freedom to breed, and doing that very soon."
Garrett Hardin, by the way, has four children.
What nonsense. Mr. Hardin, Mr. David Brower, who is the founder of
the group known as Friends of the Earth, and Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford
University professor (who is in fact a butterfly specialist),
recommend forced sterilization of all adults not chosen for producing
children. They seldom put it in those stark words, but that is exactly
what they are talking about -- and what they fall to understand is
this, that whenever a nation, whenever a society's economic condition
improves, its birth rate falls. That has been proved over and over
again.
Who is to say how many human beings are too many? Or which ones ought
to be eliminated? The approximately 5-1/2 billion humans today alive
on the surface of the earth live on no more than 16 percent of the
land surface. If we could transport all of them to one place, they
would fit inside the state of Arkansas, in the United States, with 10
square feet assigned to every single one. That would leave, for the
rest of the world, plenty of space for nature, and growing food, and
whatever else one wants to do. Because of our growing knowledge,
natural resources, whether they are forests or minerals, are more
abundant and more available today at lower cost than at any time in
the past. And yet the Earth Summit Conference was based on the
premise, the false premise, that natural resources are being depleted.
The Earth Summit's Socialist Agenda
An important document called the Heidelberg Appeal was signed by
hundreds of scientists worldwide and issued on the 1st of June. It has
been, with the exception, at least to my knowledge, with the single
exception of
The Wall Street Journal, totally ignored by the media. The
Appeal states, in part, "... We are worried, at the dawn of the
21st century, at the emergence of an irrational ideology which is
opposed to scientific and industrial progress and which implies that
economic and social progress should not continue. We contend that a
'Natural State,' sometimes idealized by movements with a tendency to
look toward the past, does not exist and probably never has existed
since man's first appearance in the biosphere, and insofar as humanity
has always progressed by increasingly harnessing Nature to its needs
and not the reverse." But this does not reflect the theme of the
Earth Summit, which is embodied in the so-called Agenda 21, which was
adopted by the 178 nations present in Brazil without any fanfare on
the last day of the conference.
Now Agenda 21 deserves study. It consists of 115 different and very
specific programs designed to facilitate, or to force, the transition
to "sustainable development." The objective, clearly
enunciated by the leaders of the conference, is to bring about a
change in the present system of independent nations. The future is to
be World Government with central planning by the United Nations.
Fear of environmental crises, whether such crises are real or
contrived, is expected to lead to total compliance. If force is
needed, it is to be provided by a new U.N. Green Helmeted police force
recommended to be 500,000 men. Already the U.N. Security Council has
expanded the definition of their charter to "threats to peace and
security" to include "non-military sources of instability in
the economic, social, humanitarian and ecological fields." That
constitutes a very broad charter for intervention.
As Michel Rocard, the former Prime Minister of France and a leader at
the Earth Summit, said, "Let us not deceive ourselves. It is
necessary that the community of nations exert pressure, even using
coercion, against countries that have installations that threaten the
environment. International instruments must be transformed into
instruments of coercion, of sanctions, of boycotts, and even outright
confiscation."
In a stunning acknowledgment, also totally overlooked by the press,
the Norwegian Prime Minister and vice chairman of Earth Summit, Gro
Harlem Bruntland, publicly stated at a press conference that much of
the agenda of the Earth Summit was derived from the goals of the
Socialist International Party, of which he is, incidentally, vice
president. One would have thought that such an admission was
newsworthy; surely a socialist agenda should interest economists.
Human-caused environmental problems such as waste management and
pollution are amenable to solution and great strides have already been
made. But so-called environmental issues like climate change and the
destruction of ozone are natural phenomena. The charges and
accusations relating to them are not based upon scientific knowledge.
It is the economic results of ill-advised, hasty, and costly solutions
for problems that may not even exist that pose significant risks for
modern society. Only if these realities are publicized can we maintain
a healthy economy.
Only if we maintain a strong economy, can we also protect our
freedom. "When one loses one's liberty one is correct to blame,
not so much the man who puts the fetters on -- as he who had the power
to prevent it but did not use it." Who said that? It was the
Corinthian representative to Sparta -- and the year was 426 B.C. It is
still true today -- and it is the profession of economics that bears
the heavy burden of explaining to the public at large what are the
extraordinary costs of embracing, without healthy skepticism, the
agendas of extreme environmentalism. There are still some issues that
are worth fighting for - and liberty through progress is one of them.
Dixy Lee Ray's views were controversial and
were responded to by others in the scientific community. A
website established by James Norton contains a section headed
"Correcting myths
from Dixy Lee Ray" the objective reader ought to consider.
One scientist, Robert Parson, prepared a detailed
critique
of the evidence provided in Ray's 1993 book, Environmental
Overkill.
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