The issue's Editorial - "A Responsible Energy Future" by physicist-turned-congressman Rush Holt - took much the same position.  Stating that our current mode of energy generation releases "greenhouse gases and other noxious pollutants that damage our quality of life," he asks: "Will apprehension about negative effects provoke people to examine our energy habits and take action?"

Not to be outdone, in an introduction to the special energy section, Stone and Szuromi take it upon themselves to actually answer this question, stating that advances in energy technology "will likely need to be assisted ... by changes in our own habits of energy use" - and note this - "willingly or not."

Does anyone else out there see a problem with this picture?  The Science cover caption implies that there exists a connection between fossil fuels and global warming that is so well established that it may actually require that fossil fuel use be restricted.  The editorialist lumps fossil fuel produced "greenhouse gases" with other "noxious pollutants" that are bluntly stated to "damage our quality of life."  And the authors of the introduction to the energy section deliver the coup de grace: willingly or not, they say, our habits of energy use will be changed.

Now we don't know how you interpret these statements; but they seem to us to spell force.  And force is usually only used when appeals to reason fail.  And appeals to reason usually only fail when they are, well, unreasonable.  And if greenhouse gas emission restrictions are going to be forced upon the American people, you better believe that the American people have already determined that there is no reasonable basis for their imposition.

So just what are the noxious greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuel combustion?  Primarily, they are water vapor and carbon dioxide.  And you can bet your life that Rush Holt is not talking about good old H2O when he says these gases "damage our quality of life."  Note also that there is no question about this "fact."  They are not thought to hurt us.  They are not believed to hurt us.  They just purely and simply "damage our quality of life."

Hey, it must be so.  A physicist said it.  And physics is a pretty exact science, right?  Yes it is; but physicist Holt is also a U.S. Congressman, which emboldens us to ask Is It Science or Politics?, which thought was actually inspired by a man named Freeman J. Dyson, who once dabbled a bit in physics himself (see our Volume 2 Number 12 editorial).

Unfortunately, Congressman Holt must stick pretty close to his primary field of training.  If he read the biological literature to any degree, he would be well aware of the fact that, in addition to the postulated warming influence of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 concentration, atmospheric CO2 enrichment has a proven "aerial fertilization effect" that is a great boon to vegetation, which could truthfully be said to not damage our quality of life, but enhance it.  Fortunately, Professor Dyson has never let artificial barriers restrict his curiosity in this regard; and his quest for truth has led him to some quite opposite conclusions to those of Congressman Holt.

In a restructuring of the question posed by Holt, we ask the following: Will enthusiasm about the positive effects (of atmospheric CO2 enrichment) provoke people to examine the motives of those who would force us to restrict CO2 emissions and take appropriate action?  We can only hope and pray that the answer to this question is a resounding yes.

So what are those motives?  The spate of papers that follow the introductory materials of the special energy section casts considerable light on at least one.  In the very first sentence of his Viewpoint article on "A Realizable Renewable Energy Future," John A. Turner of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado states that "interest in renewable energy has depended on the perceived risks of using fossil fuels."  Translation: If it were not for the "perceived" risk of using fossil fuels, renewable energy would be a non-field of inquiry.

In a second Viewpoint article entitled "Underinvestment: The Energy Technology and R & D Policy Challenge," Robert M. Margolis and Daniel M. Kammen conclude their plea for government dollars by stating that "without a sustained and diverse program of energy R & D and implementation, we are crippling our ability to make the necessary improvements in the global energy economy," where their concept of "necessary improvements" is defined by the "decarbonization" mandated by the Kyoto Protocol, as described by them a few sentences earlier.

Last of all, in a major Review article, Shah et al. state bluntly that "since the beginning of the 1990s, ecological considerations linked with the CO2/global warming problem have taken over as a main driving force in promoting alternative energy sources, in particular, PV [photovoltaic] solar energy."  Yes, an industry that cannot stand on its own two feet does indeed need a straw man to support it.  And CO2 fits the bill to a T, as in Treasury, like the U.S. Treasury, where the U.S. is truly us.  It's clearly our money, which they want.  And they're gearing up to take it by force.

Hey, it must be true.  They say it right there, again and again, in terms so clear that even a physicist can't mistake them, in the pages of Science.  Or should we say Political Science?