Scepticism about doom and gloom
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- Colonel Ingus
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Scepticism about doom and gloom
by Colonel Ingus » Tue May 11, 2004 12:41 pm
http://www.policyreview.org/DEC01/jewett.html
"In February 1997 Bjørn Lomborg, a young Danish statistics professor and self-described “old left-wing Greenpeace member,” read an article by Ed Regis in Wired magazine about Julian Simon (the article, entitled “The Doomslayer,” is archived online at http://www.wired.com). Simon, a professor of business administration at the University of Maryland who died in 1998, argued in a series of books and articles that the standard gloomy assessments of the state of the world had no basis in fact.
One of Simon’s principal contentions was that the world was not “running out” of resources, but rather that nearly every physical resource was becoming cheaper and more plentiful over time. This led to a famous wager with the Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich in 1980. Simon bet Ehrlich that five metals, selected by Ehrlich, would cost less, adjusted for inflation, in 10 years than they did at the time of the wager. Simon won decisively; the price of every metal dropped, in most cases substantially (Ehrlich unfortunately learned nothing from this experience, and has continued to prophesy disaster in various forms, for which he has been rewarded with many honors).
Simon subsequently took on and debunked nearly every item of the familiar environmentalist litany of doom. “The Litany” has of course not become any less popular as a result. A current recitation can be found in the October 18, 2001 New York Review of Books, courtesy of Frederick C. Crews:
Think of the shadows now falling across our planet: overpopulation, pollution, dwindling and maldistributed resources, climatic disruption, new and resurgent plagues, ethnic and religious hatred, the ravaging of forests and jungles, and the consequent loss of thousands of species per year — the greatest mass extinction, it has been said, since the age of the dinosaurs.
Simon, primarily relying on standard governmental statistical series, showed that the Litany is inconsistent with the facts. The data he presented showed that the shadows are not falling, but lifting.
Lomborg was provoked by the Wired article into creating a study group to thoroughly examine Simon’s data, expecting to show that it was “simple, American right-wing propaganda.” But to his surprise, Simon’s points largely stood up to scrutiny. The Skeptical Environmentalist is the result. In it, Lomborg analyzes the elements of the Litany, including those recited by Crews:1
Overpopulation? Malthus has been proven wrong. The quantity of food and other resources per person is growing steadily. The rate of global population growth is declining. The most affluent societies are not even reproducing at replacement level, and birth rates are falling everywhere.
Pollution? Today there is far less pollution of the air, water, and land than our parents and grandparents experienced. The transformation of cities such as Pittsburgh and London over the past 50 years has been astonishing. And in the developing countries there is every reason to believe that we will see the same pattern. Economic growth will bring less pollution, not more.
Dwindling and maldistributed resources? The long-term trend, which shows no signs of abating, has been for virtually all natural resources to become cheaper, and, because of more efficient transportation, disparities in cost and availability have been greatly reduced. As Simon convincingly argued, the record of human ingenuity and our ability to substitute materials suggest that we will never “run out” of critical raw materials.
Climatic disruption? There is no evidence that extreme weather events have increased in number or intensity.
New and resurgent plagues? Life expectancy continues to increase around the world, and the prevalence of infectious disease, which is a fraction of what it was a hundred years ago, is not increasing.
The ravaging of forests and jungles? About a third of the world is forested, and the size of this area has changed very little since World War II. Tropical deforestation is occurring at a rate of less than one-half of 1 percent a year, and not as a consequence of economic development, but as the result of its absence.
The loss of thousands of species per year? About 1,600,000 species have been identified. Estimates of the actual number of species range from 2,000,000 to 80,000,000. No one knows the rate of extinction or the rate at which new species are arising. The best current estimate based on actual observations, and using an extremely high estimate of the likely increase in the extinction rate, is that about seven-tenths of 1 percent of species may go extinct over the next 50 years.
Thus the Litany consists of non-problems (overpopulation, dwindling resources, climatic disruption), problems that are under control and declining (pollution, new and resurgent plagues), and problems that have been hugely exaggerated and can only be solved by building modern, free-market economies in poor countries (deforestation, loss of species). All in all, Lomborg concludes, “mankind’s lot has vastly improved in every significant measurable field and . . . it is likely to continue to do so.”
None of this is news to readers of Julian Simon, and indeed the facts on which this book is based have long been readily available to anyone interested in environmental trends and conditions. Nevertheless, Lomborg has produced a very useful book. Meticulous, balanced, and thoroughly documented, it is an excellent summation of what is currently known about the “real state of the world.” In addition to the issues addressed above, it is particularly illuminating on the subjects of pesticides, global warming, and genetically modified foods. Undoubtedly The Skeptical Environmentalist will receive some unfriendly and dismissive reviews, but most of Lomborg’s points are irrefutable, the rest reasonable interpretations of the available evidence.
Although professional environmentalists will undoubtedly see this book as an attack, Lomborg is by no means hostile to environmental values or insensitive to environmental problems. He is not peddling a Panglossian view of the world, or denying that there are problems that merit action. What concerns him is that they are not being dealt with realistically and rationally. Because of the public misperceptions of risk reflected in the Litany, resources are being misallocated. Consequently society is less safe, and the environment is less healthy and clean, than each would be if we based our prioritizations “not on fear but on facts.”
Although there may be considerable grounds for optimism about the condition of the planet, it is difficult not to be pessimistic about the likely impact of this book. The Litany has proven to be largely impervious to mere facts. Lomborg mentions a few of the reasons.
The major environmental organizations have both economic and political reasons to exaggerate the extent of our environmental problems and avoid dispassionate analysis of the costs and benefits of the solutions they propose. Their fundraising depends on maintaining the perception among their membership that the environment is under siege. To admit that an environmental issue is complex and not well understood, and that a proposed solution could on balance have a negative impact, does not make for a very effective call to arms. Major environmental legislation gets passed only if a sense of crisis is created.
And there is a price to be paid by those who openly dissent from the conventional environmental wisdom. Politicians who oppose the environmentalist agenda are characterized as industry shills who are corrupt or indifferent to environmental despoliation. Those scientists and other professionals who are in the best position to point out the inaccurate and exaggerated nature of environmentalists’ claims are reluctant to do so. In some cases this is due to fear of appearing to be on the “wrong side” of an environmental issue and possible damage to personal or professional relationships. They may also feel that exaggerated and misleading arguments should be overlooked and forgiven because those making the arguments have their hearts in the right place and the cause is a righteous one.
Of course, at a general level the cause is righteous; environmental protection is a good thing; no one wants to be against it. There is a consensus in favor of environmental protection. The debate is really only at the margin. But as Lomborg points out, the policies advanced by environmental organizations often would leave society worse off because they are based on false premises.
In general, representatives of the media are believers in the Litany. With few exceptions they are inclined to reduce complex technical issues to a morality play pitting the good-guy, if perhaps a trifle zealous, environmentalists against self-interested, black-hat polluters. They are not interested in doing the work necessary to subject environmentalist claims to scrutiny.
Ultimately people believe in the Litany in the face of contrary evidence because they want to believe it. And the people who most want to believe it are the affluent and secure. Someone living in the eastern United States has to be very affluent to spend much time worrying about the effect on a caribou herd of drilling for oil in a tiny corner of a vast and desolate arctic plain. The connection between environmentalism and affluence has long been recognized. As William Tucker wrote in Progress and Privilege (Anchor Press, 1982), “Environmentalism has been the mass adoption of aristocratic values by America’s burgeoning upper-middle class. It is the ‘conservatism of the liberals.’ ”
It is no accident that Theodore Roosevelt, the first politician to make preservation of the wilderness a major part of his agenda, was a child of wealth who grew up in Manhattan. His descendant Theodore Roosevelt IV, still wealthy and still based in Manhattan, is an active environmentalist today. The environmental movement, even as it has recruited a large upper-middle-class membership, continues to be staffed and funded to a not insignificant extent by people with names like Rockefeller, Pew, Getty, and Kennedy. The family fortune may have its origin in dark satanic mills, but the current generation can devote itself to saving the earth. In its romantic, nostalgic, only-man-is-vile view of the natural world, its disdain for vulgar materialism, and its grandiose objectives, environmentalism has its greatest appeal to those who are already on the upper rungs of the economic and social ladder. Scratch a captain of industry or finance, and you will often find a life member of the Sierra Club, or at least a generous supporter of the Nature Conservancy. His children, being more sheltered, will be susceptible to the full-strength versions of environmentalism peddled by EarthFirst! and Greenpeace. The appeal of the Litany is fundamentally visceral, not rational, and so it is highly resistant to the sort of detached, cold-eyed analysis engaged in by Lomborg and Simon.
Modern free-market economies generate wealth. The wealthier a society is, the cleaner and healthier will be its environment. Wealth also begets environmentalism. And environmentalists are predisposed to perceive that things are getting worse, and to support policies that retard the very economic growth that is necessary if environmental conditions are to continue to get better. This is the paradox of environmentalism. And so in the absence of worldwide economic regression, it seems likely that the rhetoric of environmentalism will grow ever darker and more apocalyptic, and its agenda more extreme, even as objective measures continue to show environmental improvement.
Although he is unlikely to convert many of the faithful, it is to be hoped that Lomborg will make The Skeptical Environmentalist a continuing project. As environmental data accumulate, and new false alarms are inevitably sounded, there will be a need for revised editions. If he perseveres, Lomborg may prove to be a worthy successor to the original doomslayer, Julian Simon."
I put in all the bolds but I couldn't have said this better myself. So many people are learning "junk science" that they take it as an article of faith instead of questioning and saying "is this really the problem? can something else be causing this? do we even know enough to talk about it at this point?"
I'm not saying there aren't problems. I just think we should fully understand a situation before going off half cocked trying to "fix it". Seems the most rational course.
"In February 1997 Bjørn Lomborg, a young Danish statistics professor and self-described “old left-wing Greenpeace member,” read an article by Ed Regis in Wired magazine about Julian Simon (the article, entitled “The Doomslayer,” is archived online at http://www.wired.com). Simon, a professor of business administration at the University of Maryland who died in 1998, argued in a series of books and articles that the standard gloomy assessments of the state of the world had no basis in fact.
One of Simon’s principal contentions was that the world was not “running out” of resources, but rather that nearly every physical resource was becoming cheaper and more plentiful over time. This led to a famous wager with the Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich in 1980. Simon bet Ehrlich that five metals, selected by Ehrlich, would cost less, adjusted for inflation, in 10 years than they did at the time of the wager. Simon won decisively; the price of every metal dropped, in most cases substantially (Ehrlich unfortunately learned nothing from this experience, and has continued to prophesy disaster in various forms, for which he has been rewarded with many honors).
Simon subsequently took on and debunked nearly every item of the familiar environmentalist litany of doom. “The Litany” has of course not become any less popular as a result. A current recitation can be found in the October 18, 2001 New York Review of Books, courtesy of Frederick C. Crews:
Think of the shadows now falling across our planet: overpopulation, pollution, dwindling and maldistributed resources, climatic disruption, new and resurgent plagues, ethnic and religious hatred, the ravaging of forests and jungles, and the consequent loss of thousands of species per year — the greatest mass extinction, it has been said, since the age of the dinosaurs.
Simon, primarily relying on standard governmental statistical series, showed that the Litany is inconsistent with the facts. The data he presented showed that the shadows are not falling, but lifting.
Lomborg was provoked by the Wired article into creating a study group to thoroughly examine Simon’s data, expecting to show that it was “simple, American right-wing propaganda.” But to his surprise, Simon’s points largely stood up to scrutiny. The Skeptical Environmentalist is the result. In it, Lomborg analyzes the elements of the Litany, including those recited by Crews:1
Overpopulation? Malthus has been proven wrong. The quantity of food and other resources per person is growing steadily. The rate of global population growth is declining. The most affluent societies are not even reproducing at replacement level, and birth rates are falling everywhere.
Pollution? Today there is far less pollution of the air, water, and land than our parents and grandparents experienced. The transformation of cities such as Pittsburgh and London over the past 50 years has been astonishing. And in the developing countries there is every reason to believe that we will see the same pattern. Economic growth will bring less pollution, not more.
Dwindling and maldistributed resources? The long-term trend, which shows no signs of abating, has been for virtually all natural resources to become cheaper, and, because of more efficient transportation, disparities in cost and availability have been greatly reduced. As Simon convincingly argued, the record of human ingenuity and our ability to substitute materials suggest that we will never “run out” of critical raw materials.
Climatic disruption? There is no evidence that extreme weather events have increased in number or intensity.
New and resurgent plagues? Life expectancy continues to increase around the world, and the prevalence of infectious disease, which is a fraction of what it was a hundred years ago, is not increasing.
The ravaging of forests and jungles? About a third of the world is forested, and the size of this area has changed very little since World War II. Tropical deforestation is occurring at a rate of less than one-half of 1 percent a year, and not as a consequence of economic development, but as the result of its absence.
The loss of thousands of species per year? About 1,600,000 species have been identified. Estimates of the actual number of species range from 2,000,000 to 80,000,000. No one knows the rate of extinction or the rate at which new species are arising. The best current estimate based on actual observations, and using an extremely high estimate of the likely increase in the extinction rate, is that about seven-tenths of 1 percent of species may go extinct over the next 50 years.
Thus the Litany consists of non-problems (overpopulation, dwindling resources, climatic disruption), problems that are under control and declining (pollution, new and resurgent plagues), and problems that have been hugely exaggerated and can only be solved by building modern, free-market economies in poor countries (deforestation, loss of species). All in all, Lomborg concludes, “mankind’s lot has vastly improved in every significant measurable field and . . . it is likely to continue to do so.”
None of this is news to readers of Julian Simon, and indeed the facts on which this book is based have long been readily available to anyone interested in environmental trends and conditions. Nevertheless, Lomborg has produced a very useful book. Meticulous, balanced, and thoroughly documented, it is an excellent summation of what is currently known about the “real state of the world.” In addition to the issues addressed above, it is particularly illuminating on the subjects of pesticides, global warming, and genetically modified foods. Undoubtedly The Skeptical Environmentalist will receive some unfriendly and dismissive reviews, but most of Lomborg’s points are irrefutable, the rest reasonable interpretations of the available evidence.
Although professional environmentalists will undoubtedly see this book as an attack, Lomborg is by no means hostile to environmental values or insensitive to environmental problems. He is not peddling a Panglossian view of the world, or denying that there are problems that merit action. What concerns him is that they are not being dealt with realistically and rationally. Because of the public misperceptions of risk reflected in the Litany, resources are being misallocated. Consequently society is less safe, and the environment is less healthy and clean, than each would be if we based our prioritizations “not on fear but on facts.”
Although there may be considerable grounds for optimism about the condition of the planet, it is difficult not to be pessimistic about the likely impact of this book. The Litany has proven to be largely impervious to mere facts. Lomborg mentions a few of the reasons.
The major environmental organizations have both economic and political reasons to exaggerate the extent of our environmental problems and avoid dispassionate analysis of the costs and benefits of the solutions they propose. Their fundraising depends on maintaining the perception among their membership that the environment is under siege. To admit that an environmental issue is complex and not well understood, and that a proposed solution could on balance have a negative impact, does not make for a very effective call to arms. Major environmental legislation gets passed only if a sense of crisis is created.
And there is a price to be paid by those who openly dissent from the conventional environmental wisdom. Politicians who oppose the environmentalist agenda are characterized as industry shills who are corrupt or indifferent to environmental despoliation. Those scientists and other professionals who are in the best position to point out the inaccurate and exaggerated nature of environmentalists’ claims are reluctant to do so. In some cases this is due to fear of appearing to be on the “wrong side” of an environmental issue and possible damage to personal or professional relationships. They may also feel that exaggerated and misleading arguments should be overlooked and forgiven because those making the arguments have their hearts in the right place and the cause is a righteous one.
Of course, at a general level the cause is righteous; environmental protection is a good thing; no one wants to be against it. There is a consensus in favor of environmental protection. The debate is really only at the margin. But as Lomborg points out, the policies advanced by environmental organizations often would leave society worse off because they are based on false premises.
In general, representatives of the media are believers in the Litany. With few exceptions they are inclined to reduce complex technical issues to a morality play pitting the good-guy, if perhaps a trifle zealous, environmentalists against self-interested, black-hat polluters. They are not interested in doing the work necessary to subject environmentalist claims to scrutiny.
Ultimately people believe in the Litany in the face of contrary evidence because they want to believe it. And the people who most want to believe it are the affluent and secure. Someone living in the eastern United States has to be very affluent to spend much time worrying about the effect on a caribou herd of drilling for oil in a tiny corner of a vast and desolate arctic plain. The connection between environmentalism and affluence has long been recognized. As William Tucker wrote in Progress and Privilege (Anchor Press, 1982), “Environmentalism has been the mass adoption of aristocratic values by America’s burgeoning upper-middle class. It is the ‘conservatism of the liberals.’ ”
It is no accident that Theodore Roosevelt, the first politician to make preservation of the wilderness a major part of his agenda, was a child of wealth who grew up in Manhattan. His descendant Theodore Roosevelt IV, still wealthy and still based in Manhattan, is an active environmentalist today. The environmental movement, even as it has recruited a large upper-middle-class membership, continues to be staffed and funded to a not insignificant extent by people with names like Rockefeller, Pew, Getty, and Kennedy. The family fortune may have its origin in dark satanic mills, but the current generation can devote itself to saving the earth. In its romantic, nostalgic, only-man-is-vile view of the natural world, its disdain for vulgar materialism, and its grandiose objectives, environmentalism has its greatest appeal to those who are already on the upper rungs of the economic and social ladder. Scratch a captain of industry or finance, and you will often find a life member of the Sierra Club, or at least a generous supporter of the Nature Conservancy. His children, being more sheltered, will be susceptible to the full-strength versions of environmentalism peddled by EarthFirst! and Greenpeace. The appeal of the Litany is fundamentally visceral, not rational, and so it is highly resistant to the sort of detached, cold-eyed analysis engaged in by Lomborg and Simon.
Modern free-market economies generate wealth. The wealthier a society is, the cleaner and healthier will be its environment. Wealth also begets environmentalism. And environmentalists are predisposed to perceive that things are getting worse, and to support policies that retard the very economic growth that is necessary if environmental conditions are to continue to get better. This is the paradox of environmentalism. And so in the absence of worldwide economic regression, it seems likely that the rhetoric of environmentalism will grow ever darker and more apocalyptic, and its agenda more extreme, even as objective measures continue to show environmental improvement.
Although he is unlikely to convert many of the faithful, it is to be hoped that Lomborg will make The Skeptical Environmentalist a continuing project. As environmental data accumulate, and new false alarms are inevitably sounded, there will be a need for revised editions. If he perseveres, Lomborg may prove to be a worthy successor to the original doomslayer, Julian Simon."
I put in all the bolds but I couldn't have said this better myself. So many people are learning "junk science" that they take it as an article of faith instead of questioning and saying "is this really the problem? can something else be causing this? do we even know enough to talk about it at this point?"
I'm not saying there aren't problems. I just think we should fully understand a situation before going off half cocked trying to "fix it". Seems the most rational course.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ... Benjamin Franklin
by Chacal » Tue May 11, 2004 9:50 pm
Colonel, recycle threads, you polluter! 
Anyway, it's hard to oppose your point of view, except that it's sure to be used as a weapons by other kinds of fanatics.
Another point of view of mine: of course we must not forget that all these arguments are only based on the short term. In a million years, there will probably be no trace left whatsoever of the human race on the planet, and its brief passage will have had no influence on earth's fate.
Actually, we're just a virus. On time some remedy will be found and earth will be cured.
Anyway, it's hard to oppose your point of view, except that it's sure to be used as a weapons by other kinds of fanatics.
Another point of view of mine: of course we must not forget that all these arguments are only based on the short term. In a million years, there will probably be no trace left whatsoever of the human race on the planet, and its brief passage will have had no influence on earth's fate.
Actually, we're just a virus. On time some remedy will be found and earth will be cured.
Chacal
[SIZE="1"][color="LightBlue"]Reporter: "Mr Gandhi, what do you think of western civilization?"
Gandhi: "I think it would be a great idea."[/color][/SIZE]
[SIZE="1"][color="LightBlue"]Reporter: "Mr Gandhi, what do you think of western civilization?"
Gandhi: "I think it would be a great idea."[/color][/SIZE]
by Rand0m » Tue May 11, 2004 9:59 pm
Originally posted by MiliTant
This is a waste of a topic......all you downgrades need to stop postin BS like that and talk about something more important like...ECGN MAP ROTATION *cough
I think there needs to be a rtcw smoking room and a bf smoking room
- SavageParrot
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by SavageParrot » Wed May 12, 2004 3:08 am
Originally posted by MiliTant
HAHAHAHHAHAH...not funny.i think that the ECGN crowd need to learn a new map besides beach..i mean it gets a lil old havein panzers n snipes all over the map.Try sumthin new for a change,it wont kill ya
Do try and keep up. This is a forum for conversation on topics not related to gaming, look at the RTCW forum if you want to talk shop, and stop posting here and complaining that it is irrelevant.
- shockwave203
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by shockwave203 » Wed May 12, 2004 3:14 am
Scepticism about doom and gloom? puh-lease! With the world overpopulating and countries becoming more 'developed', we'll see huge increases for natural resources in the future. Developed nations already over-use resources that are not renewable. In 100 years, I can only imagine how bad the state of this planet will be if things don't change.
by deathBOB » Wed May 12, 2004 11:17 am
Lol.... The earth has so many resources we will not even scratch the surface (actually thats what we do lol)... They are non-renewable until we figure out how to make somethign better out of synthetics...
^ A creation of Spirit of Me
by RCglider » Wed May 12, 2004 11:57 am
very good Ingus.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
The earth is not overpopulated, another lie. The fact is, we don't have enough new births to support the current population in the future. If there's any doom and gloom, it's that.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
The earth is not overpopulated, another lie. The fact is, we don't have enough new births to support the current population in the future. If there's any doom and gloom, it's that.
- Colonel Ingus
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by Colonel Ingus » Wed May 12, 2004 1:29 pm
You are dead on Chacal. I am not saying we should be polluting ad naseum. I do think there are problems and we do need to take steps to take care of them I just hate how we as a society go off half cocked and aren't even sure of what we are doing.
But when you state things like that a lot of people instantly assume you are anti-whatever. If I post something positive about Bush I am labeled a conservative. Post something anti-Bush and I am labeled a liberal and I am neither.
In fact this next upcoming election scares the hell out of me because BOTH guys suck major ass and we are screwed either way.
You question environmental policy and you are dismissed as a wonton polluter and don't care about the environment. Which is untrue as I do care but lets treat the root cause and not symptoms. You probably don't want a surgeon doing exploratory surgery on you if he doesn't have a clue whats really wrong with you and we should treat major poblems that face all of us the same way.
And RCGlider you couldn't be more right. The U.S. population would have been in major decline many years ago if were not for the fact that immigration keeps us right around stable. Most Western civilization is that way and it seems to me that we should be developing these overpopulated poor countries as the trends indicated in this review states that actually starts to cure all of the above mentioned problems. Poor people starved for food and work aren't going to worry about the environment. Thats a luxury only a rich society can afford.
And there are literally billions of tons of untapped resources awaiting us in space. We could move all our polluting industries into space and turn the entire Earth into a gigantic natural park. Notice how I am being a pro-space nut here?:D
Everythings renewable. Hell you can make oil and plastics out of plant matter. Its just cheaper right now to dig it out of the ground. I am NOT an oil advocate. Lets get off that and into better technologies like fuel cells. Byproduct turned out by fuel cells? pure H20.
But when you state things like that a lot of people instantly assume you are anti-whatever. If I post something positive about Bush I am labeled a conservative. Post something anti-Bush and I am labeled a liberal and I am neither.
In fact this next upcoming election scares the hell out of me because BOTH guys suck major ass and we are screwed either way.
You question environmental policy and you are dismissed as a wonton polluter and don't care about the environment. Which is untrue as I do care but lets treat the root cause and not symptoms. You probably don't want a surgeon doing exploratory surgery on you if he doesn't have a clue whats really wrong with you and we should treat major poblems that face all of us the same way.
And RCGlider you couldn't be more right. The U.S. population would have been in major decline many years ago if were not for the fact that immigration keeps us right around stable. Most Western civilization is that way and it seems to me that we should be developing these overpopulated poor countries as the trends indicated in this review states that actually starts to cure all of the above mentioned problems. Poor people starved for food and work aren't going to worry about the environment. Thats a luxury only a rich society can afford.
And there are literally billions of tons of untapped resources awaiting us in space. We could move all our polluting industries into space and turn the entire Earth into a gigantic natural park. Notice how I am being a pro-space nut here?:D
Everythings renewable. Hell you can make oil and plastics out of plant matter. Its just cheaper right now to dig it out of the ground. I am NOT an oil advocate. Lets get off that and into better technologies like fuel cells. Byproduct turned out by fuel cells? pure H20.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ... Benjamin Franklin
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