Trashing the Planet: How Science Can Help Us Deal with Acid Rain, Depletion of the Ozone, and Nuclear Waste . - Among Other Things - book reviews

National Review, Dec 3, 1990 by Geoffrey Morris

alm reason and alarmist environmentalism do not co-exist," writes Dixy Lee Ray, former governor of Washington and co-author with Lou Guzzo of Trashing the Planet: How Science Can Help Us Deal with Acid Rain, Depletion of the Ozone, and Nuclear Waste (Among Other Things) (Regnery Gateway, 206 pp., $18.95). Into today's irrational environmental debate, Governor Ray tries to instill some calm reason in the form of science.

She does not deny there are problems; that man, in building his world, has scarred his surroundings. Her worry is that debate on the issue is controlled not by scientists but by journalists and lay people, who, although genuinely concerned about the earth, tend to believe the most dire environmental scenarios.

Take, for instance, the almost mystical belief in global warming. Governor Ray contends that the popular hysteria-that as the world heats up, polar ice caps will melt, oceans will overflow, and cities will scorch-began with the testimony by NASA scientist James Hansen at a Senate hearing, in which Dr. Hansen predicted that "1988 would be the warmest year on record, unless there is some remarkable, improbable cooling the remainder of the year."

Well, according to Governor Ray, there was. She asserts that 'the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean underwent a remarkable, improbable cooling-a sudden drop in temperature of seven degrees." This she attributes to La Nina, a cold ocean current (as distinguished from El Nino, the more commonly known warm ocean current), which Dr. Hansen neglected to include in his computer model.

Why, Governor Ray asks, if there have been significant increases in carbon dioxide in the geological past-well before man's industrialization-do we attribute present carbon-dioxide increases entirely to man and his machines? Nobody is certain what is causing the increase in carbon dioxide or whether nature will respond by, say, increasing plant growth, therefore taking in more C02, and concurrently expelling more oxygen. Nor do we know how the present peak in volcanic activity affects the global climate. (Pollutants produced since the beginning of the industrial revolution do not begin to equal the quantities of toxic materials spewed into the air from just three volcanoes: Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883, Mount Katmai in Alaska in 1912, and Hekla in Iceland in 1947.)

Governor Ray is well qualified in the field. Among other government and private-sector duties, she has been chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and an oceanographic consultant to the National Science Foundation. But her book's rather wordy subtitle is misleading: she does not tell us how science can deal with environmental problems, but rather how scientific facts have been miscommunicated, thus misleading the public with false notions and "scare stories about carcinogens lurking in everything we eat."

Trashing the Planet is a refreshing reprieve from the tiresome howls of doom and gloom so common to discussions of the environment. Governor Ray examines myths concerning nuclear waste, acid rain, asbestos, dioxin, pesticides, etc., and replies, Enough! Enough unsubstantiated projections; enough wild predictions; enough about global warming and toxic fish.

Governor Ray does not claim to have final answers. She demonstrates that the facts are not being disseminated rationally. And before we spend billions of dollars on the Clean Air Bill and other regulatory disasters, we should make sure that we are not needlessly stifling the economy.

-GEOFFREY MORRIS