Document 0g9Gb2jVGeRrd1EEbpqQ0jOvM

Alt THE WALL STREET JOURNAL TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1990 REVIEW & OUTLOOK TX TIMER Scientific Faddism rmcoow26o George Bush went over to George town University yesterday to address a U.N.-sponsored group of environ mentalists gathered to discuss the subject of global wanning. All he said was: "Wherever possible we believe that market mechanisms should be applied and that our policies must be consistent with economic growth and free-market principles in all coun tries." Based on the reaction, you would have thought the President had held up a mirror in front of a vampire convention. Market mechanisms? Economic growth? "Aaaaaaahhhhh!" shrieked the environmental elite. Or, as David Becker of the Sierra Club so plainly put it: "It was a gross disappoint ment There was more talk in the speech about economics than about the environment" What more does anyone need to know about the envi ronmentalist gestalt? Congress and the administration are embarking on consideration of the Clean Air bill If the past is prelude, science and economics are in for a rough ride. We've been round the track with many scientific fads recently, such as "nuclear winter" and the asbestos .panic, Eariy on, thTsystem always seems to promote the fads and sup press the science. Carl Sagan's nuclear winter postu lations, much ballyhood when they first appeared, have now been dis missed by most of the scientific com munity. The idea was that a sudden release of smoke, caused by burning cities in a nuclear war, would have a drastic cooling effect on the atmos phere, and that the human race would eventually be annihilated by the tem perature drop. It turns out that the as sumptions and estimates upon which the computer models were based were deeply flawed. Today, estimates of post-nuclear war cooling have moderated. "It's nice to see these guys acting like sci entists again," one researcher told the New York Times. In the nuclear win ter delusion, only the credibility of a few arms control hysterics suffered. But another falsg alarm-the asbestos scare-shows that the costs dfscieh-' tific faddfsm can be enormous. Cbngress passed alaw banning as bestos, and schools have spent billions fomwrimt it Cia*'ftr # ~~ U!-.~ of asbestos, including a recent one by Harvard's Energy and Environmental Policy Center, which reached essen tially the same conclusions. In their Science article, re searchers from Johns Hopkins, Yale and other institutions confronted the asbestos issue head on: "Does air borne asbestos present a risk to the health of individuals in schools and other buildings? The available data do not indicate that asbestos-associated malignancies or functional impair ment will occur as a result of expo sure in most airborne concentrations of asbestos in buildings." The study pointed out that the incidence of as bestos-related lung cancer occurred mainly among asbestos workers and primarily those who also smoked. This is a long way from Johnny sitting in a classroom. U.S.'mi^rfe curtailed." the scientists concluded, noting that the only time serious health risks are created is when asbestos is ripped out of the walls as part of the removal process and thereby released into air. But re moval is what the regulations man date. The EPA estimates that it will cost billion over 30 years to com ply With federal asbestos removal ffialfdates. " The National School Boards Associ ation has estimated the asbestos-re moval costs for elementary and sec ondary schools to be about S6 billion. Put differently, instead of hiring new teachers, upgrading their curricula, initiating anti-drug programs or im proving facilities, many schools have been forced to squander their money on a federally declared, nonexistent health threat The man most responsible for the law that led to this monumental waste is former Congressman James Florio, who who was recently inaugurated as Governor of New Jersey, and was last seen laying hands on the state's auto insurance system. The global-warming issue suggests that a similar process is under way again. The comments of skeptical sci entists have received more attention than in the past, but on balance the debate still plays on the level of reli gious belief. Mr. Bush's chief of staff, John Sununu, is being roundly at*