Military Medical Experiments in Alaska

 

At their best, the midcentury cold weather tests in Alaska were logical, necessary, and even somewhat adventurous. But with limited oversight, moral and ethical breaches did occur, including one of the more underreported controversies in Alaska history.

In 1947, the Air Force founded the Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory, or AAL, at Randolf Air Force Base, in Texas of all places, though it was soon relocated to Ladd Air Force Base. Its stated purpose was “to solve the severe environmental problems of men living and working in the Arctic,” prioritizing research on the human experience in extreme cold more than technological issues. Its more innocent projects included the previously mentioned morale survey and a wearable sleeping bag.

History is rife with terrors and tragedies when militaries experimented on their own personnel. Then there are the times when such organizations performed medical studies on private citizens. In 1955, the AAL began a study on the thyroid’s role in cold acclimatization for humans. Based on animal studies, AAL researchers hypothesized that the thyroid prompted an increased metabolism in response to extreme cold, thus aiding adaptation and survival.

A hypothesis is one thing, reasonable and debatable. Then, the researchers decided to experiment on actual people, using radioactive iodine to track thyroid activity. From 1955 to 1957, 121 individuals — 102 Alaska Natives and 19 military personnel — were given radioactive iodine pills. The Alaska Native subjects were from Anaktuvuk Pass, Arctic Village, Fort Yukon, Point Hope, Point Lay and Wainwright.

The military personnel were briefed on the nature of the study and then asked to participate. The Alaska Native subjects, however, had no idea what they were ingesting. There was no written consent, no informed consent of any type. The researchers approached village elders who summoned other residents to take part in the experiment. This interaction was limited by fundamental language barriers and a more specific inability to translate the scientific and medical details of the study, like the word “radioactive.”

Many, if not most, of the Alaska Native participants believed the pills were some sort of positive medicinal treatment. As James Nageak, one of the subjects, later said, “I figured it was something that would make me healthier. If I’d known what was in those pills, I never would have taken them . . . Nobody would have.” Further, none of the Alaska Native subjects were informed of the study results.

To be clear, and as noted in a 1996 review of the study, this methodology violated the Nuremberg Code on human research, AAL guidelines, and basic human decency. No such study would now be allowed to proceed. At least one participant developed thyroid cancer, and in 2000, the Air Force issued an apology and paid $7 million in restitution. The AAL folded in 1967.

 

Historian David Reamer in the Anchorage Daily News, January 30, 2024

Statement From President Joe Biden, January 26, 2024

 

Statement from President Joe Biden on Decision to Pause Pending Approvals of Liquefied Natural Gas Exports

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In every corner of the country and the world, people are suffering the devastating toll of climate change. Historic hurricanes and floods wiping out homes, businesses, and houses of worship. Wildfires destroying whole neighborhoods and forcing families to leave their communities behind. Record temperatures affecting the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans, especially the most vulnerable.

From Day One, my Administration has set the United States on an unprecedented course to tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad – securing the largest climate investment in the history of the world, unlocking clean energy breakthroughs that will power a clean economy and create thousands of jobs, advancing environmental justice for all, and rallying world leaders to transition away from the fossil fuels that jeopardize our planet and our people.

But more action is needed.

My Administration is announcing today a temporary pause on pending decisions of Liquefied Natural Gas exports – with the exception of unanticipated and immediate national security emergencies. During this period, we will take a hard look at the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment. This pause on new LNG approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time.

While MAGA Republicans willfully deny the urgency of the climate crisis, condemning the American people to a dangerous future, my Administration will not be complacent. We will not cede to special interests.

We will heed the calls of young people and frontline communities who are using their voices to demand action from those with the power to act. And as America has always done, we will turn crisis into opportunity – creating clean energy jobs, improving quality of life, and building a more hopeful future for our children.

City Agriculture Bad For The Climate

 wsmag.net

The University of Michigan has done a study finding that in some cases food produced in an urban environment makes a negative contribution to the effort to stem climate change. Backyard vegetables can produce up to six times the atmospheric carbon of commercial produce.

This is bad news for immigrants from countries where almost everyone is involved in small-scale agriculture in one form or another and plots of vegetables are a tradition as well as a food source. In fact, urban gardens are already discouraged by local governments for other reasons.

A portion of the funding for the study, which included eight universities, was from the US National Science Foundation, an agency of the US government.   

Are People Really Worried About Climate Change?

 

 

 

 

 

A library has found it necessary to set up a display of climate anxiety books, apparently because readers are either unable to find them or simply aren't interested. Atmospheric science, the study of the gases chaotically circulating above the surface of the earth, is a complex subject that even scientists devoted to it haven't mastered completely. If, indeed, the sometimes unusual weather is a sign of an existential climate crisis wouldn't there be a general clamor for more detailed information by the proletariat? If people are concerned about the future of the planet wouldn't they also be interested in the effectiveness of the measures being taken to address the problem and the costs involved? 

There's a daily media concentration on the threat of hydrocarbon fuels to life on earth but hardly anyone, even those politicians in charge of disbursing the funds that are meant to enable a transition, can actually explain how it all works in detail.

We saw a similar process in the government's response to Covid 19. Recommendations by various parties such as the CDC and its "6 foot social distancing" and mandatory face masks, have been found through further research to be arbitrary measures that weren't base on any scientific evidence, but simply the opinions of government functionaries. Isn't it possible, or even highly likely, that some of the approaches to existential climate change are also arbitrary and, if the crisis is real, perhaps ineffective and expensive measures that won't achieve the goal?   

3 Degrees Celsius At WEF

Swissinfo.ch has the daily info on the WEF confab. Here is some of it:

3 degrees Celsius

The world is set to warm by nearly 3 degrees Celsius by 2100, wreaking havoc on our health, food supply, biodiversity and economies according to a UN reportExternal link released in November.

These worries didn’t spur the same lofty pledges to tackle climate change as they have at past WEF meetings though. Even US Climate Envoy John Kerry expressed his frustration in one of his many WEF sessions. “I’ve been trying to find a way every day to communicate to people what the urgency really is and why it is we need to take seriously what the scientists and mother nature are telling us.”

There were a host of sessions touching on the climate crisis, and a good deal of talk about the need to invest in the energy transition. But there was no one telling companies in Davos the “house is on fire”, like Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg did in 2019. The fact that there were few young people on the streets and on the WEF stages may explain why climate didn’t get as much attention.

 There’s another reason for the so-called “greenhushing” by companies. “Company leaders may hesitate to put themselves out there because the issue of sustainability has been so politicised,” Patrick Odier, former senior partner at Swiss private bank Lombard Odier and current Chairman of Building Bridges and Swiss Sustainable Finance told SWI on the sidelines of WEF.

The Function of Science

     The function of science today is a very significant one-and in this definition of its uses no criticism of it is implied, for everything is science, in one sense, that is effective. Science is often described as the religion of industrialism. It is said to have provided man with "a new world-soul." Its public function is actually, however . . . to conceal  the human mind that manipulates it, or that manipulates, through it, other people. For in its impersonality and its "scientific detachment" it is an ideal cloak for the personal human will. Through it that will can operate with a godlike inscrutability that no other experience can give. It enables man to operate as though he were nature on other men. In the name of science people can be almost without limit bamboozled and managed.

Wyndham Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled, Black Sparrow Press, Santa Rosa, CA, 1989, pg. 47 

Jeffrey Lyash, TVA CEO, Salary and Benefits

 Forbes.com informs us:

 

tennesseestar.com

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a quasi-public federal agency, paid their new chief executive officer much more than the U.S. president’s $400,000 annual salary.

In fact, Jeffrey Lyash earned $15.5 million in pay, perquisites, and retirement benefits over the last two years. Lyash’s compensation amounted to $8.2 million in 2019 and $7.3 million in 2020.  

Unlike Dr. Anthony Fauci, who earned $434,300 last year and is the most highly compensated federal employee paid by taxpayers, TVA employees do not receive taxpayer-funded salaries and customers generate 100 percent of operating revenues.

However, the TVA is a federally owned utility, and they enjoy a competitive advantage that is funded by American taxpayers. For example, the TVA does not pay state, local or federal taxes. Congress approves its budget.

With a $1.3 billion-dollar taxpayer infusion of capital for its first 26 years; access to lower interest rates as a federal entity; exemption from some regulations and anti-trust laws; and a board appointed by the U.S. President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, TVA remains a federal, not an independent, entity.

Our auditors at the OpenTheBooks.com compiled the TVA payroll numbers via our Freedom of Information Act request and the TVA’s U.S. Securities and Exchange filings.

In April 2019, the TVA hired Lyash and agreed to pay him $8.2 million. The package included a $445,846 salary; a $380,00 bonus; $480,085 in recruitment/relocation incentives; 401K retirement contributions; and millions in “other” compensation and deferred pension earnings. 

In 2022 Lyash received a compensation package of $9.2 million. On the morning of Jan 17 he asked TVA customers to limit electrical use due to unfavorable weather.

Peak Climate Science

 

 

 tatuaje.kulturaupice.cz

 Liam Mannix at the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia opines on the transition of science from its once iconoclastic individual efforts at discovery to an industry. The indications of a problem are the incredible growth in published papers, the peer review process, an avalanche of information, possible fraud. His analysis reads like the next chapter in Michael Polanyi's The Growth of Science in Society, Knowing and Being, written in 1967. Polyani's book describes how science was done then, Mannix talks about how it's done now. 

Perhaps the most significant factor in the change in science is money. Funding for science, from the government and private sources, is administered by academia, in an effort to award more PhDs and employ more researchers. Patents are awarded for research that yields marketable discoveries and licenses are issued that produce serious income for the institutions involved. That's what has changed about science. 

New York to London in 3 Hours and 25 Minutes

In good news for somebody, NASA and Lockheed Martin have announced that work has been completed on the X-59 supersonic passenger jet and that flight tests will be performed later this year. The significance of the new aircraft is that when traveling faster than the speed of sound it shouldn't produce the "sonic boom" that has been prohibited by the US and other countries over the ground below for 50 years. 

 

Lockheed Martin Skunk Works 

The aircraft is an experimental one, meant to test the ability of its design to eliminate the sonic boom. If successful, its elements will be incorporated in other designs that could be used in passenger service.

It wasn't only noise that led to the abandonment of the SST, a supersonic passenger jet that flew a schedule from the US to Europe. The fare made regular trips prohibitively expensive for most.

So NASA and Lockheed Martin have spent a fortune to design an airframe that can exceed the speed of sound for what? The technological challenge? Is it really necessary for civilian passengers to complete a journey in half the time it does now when the time is measured in single digit hours? At some point will even faster speeds be desired? Aren't there more important problems seeking solutions than a quiet supersonic airplane? 

 

America's Largest University Plans to Fight Climate Change

Yes, in terms of student numbers, Arizona State University is the largest in the US. Together with the Salt River Project, a power and water utility based in Phoenix, ASU is planning a four pathway approach to creating a carbon-neutral economy in Arizona.

Path one:  Electrify the economy, in residential, commercial and industrial areas.

Path two:   Build a new carbon economy by using new technologies to capture, recycle, reuse and possibly store CO2 in permanent storage facilities.

Path three: Using a newly developed hydrogen economy to provide the energy for transportation, construction, farming, heavy equipment and some electrical power production as well as the heat needed for some industrial processes.

Path four: Recognize and alleviate problems with underserved and financially vulnerable populations.

 

San Tan Generating Station, Gilbert AZ        Photo by SRP

The pathways are further explained here.  

Once again, a major university has a plan, which seems to be very similar to other plans presented by other academic institutions to not only arrest climate change but create financial benefits to the public at large.  

The Visible Environment

 Because of the invisibility of any environment during the period of its innovation, man is only consciously aware of the environment that has preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world. Because we are benumbed by any new technology — which in turn creates a totally new environment — we tend to make the old environment more visible; we do so by turning it into an art form and by attaching ourselves to the objects and atmosphere that characterized it (…) the Greeks [for example] were oriented toward the pre-Homeric primitives.

Marshall McLuhan, Playboy interview, 1969 McLuhan's New Sciences

Electrical Reliability

A Change In Asian Cuisine

 

stock.weanimalsmedia.org

If you're planning a trip to parts of East Asia to sample the different foods there, keep in mind that the more and more westernized South Korea is making consumption of dog meat illegal in 2027. The linked article is written by this fellow:

 Peter J. Li, PhD, is an associate professor of animal politics and law at the University of Houston-Downtown and a China policy specialist at Humane Society International

There's  a university in Texas, not northern California or Manhattan, that has an occupied position in "animal politics and law". Can there even be such a thing as "animal politics"? Eating socially favored animals doesn't seem to be much of a problem in Houston or anywhere else in the country. There might be issues with elephants doing circus tricks and tigers leaping through rings of fire but speakeasy dog restaurants seem like a stretch.

Dr. Li mentions that Asian nations should use the "soft power" of culture to spread niceties like banning dog cuisine. "Soft power" has been credited with aspects of US culture spreading over the world, particularly through entertainment, movies and music, though that seems to be more and more of a two-way street and perhaps not completely beneficial.

But what if this kind of thinking becomes universal? Will Indian Hindus be able to criminalize the consumption of beef in areas where they're not politically dominate? Eating horse meat, once a daily lunch menu item at the Harvard faculty club is now illegal in practical terms anywhere in the US but is still common in parts of Europe and many other places as well.

Be that as it may, the University of Houston-Downtown is a public university and an independent part of the University of Houston system. It's none of my business but just as an observation, is the eating of dog meat anywhere in the world the legitimate concern of a southern US institution ostensibly devoted to research and education? Wouldn't replacing Dr. Li with a professor of chemistry or physics be more valuable for the Houston population than an animal rights activist? If one really does care about man's best friend wouldn't he also be appalled at the obese dogs on leashes plodding down suburban American streets?

What's really being driven at here isn't a critique of Asian dietary foibles and the reaction to them. It's about the US university and the changes in its make-up and function. Recent controversies concerning university affairs miss the most important aspects, what was and is their actual purpose and have they strayed from it? If they have, is there a remedy needed and what might it be?

Dr. Peter Li                         newsus.cqtn.com

 

 
 

Brookfield Asset Management and Climate Change

The Wall Street Journal published a short question and answer piece with Brookfield managing partner Jehangir Vevaina in its January 9th edition. The immense Canadian asset manager is headed by former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, Mark Carney.

The questions asked were in regard to Vevaina's and Brookfield's perceptions of the future of green energy. With $78 billion in renewables and energy transition investments the company has a serious interest in the efforts to arrest climate change. 

Referring to recent sell-offs and issues with publicly traded renewable companies, Vevaina said:

. . . already we are seeing  a more nuanced perspective return as investors put their money to work with developers with geographic and technology  diversification and the best track records. 

He expanded on that statement, mentioning the risks presented by wars, global supply problems and price volatility. On a positive note, investment in "clean" energy is now, for the first time, greater than investment in hydrocarbon energy and the international effort to achieve Net Zero is on schedule.

One thing that was not mentioned is that no government has reconsidered policy meant to control CO2 emissions. They are all in on the process.

Here we are. Hydrocarbon energy, an efficient, reliable, developed source of power is now condemned by academia, demonized by media, dismissed by government. Those three all stand to gain by the current fantasy but none so much as corporations like Brookfield Asset Management. Climate change is really all about wealth redistribution on a scale that dwarfs anything ever done before.      

U of Texas And Climate Misinformation

The University of Texas-Austin, one of the 89 members of the Association of American Universities and one of the country's leading research universities, is on top of the climate crisis. Its Bridging Barriers program also includes the Countering Disinformation and Misinformation program, an effort focused on older people who they believe to be more susceptible to climate change denialism, as they say here: 

 First, our research will investigate what kinds of disinformation is most widely believed by older adults what the qualities are of those messages. Second, we will investigate some of the digital barriers that older adults face and develop training to assist them in evaluating social media messages, with a particular focus on health messaging related to the coronavirus. Third, we will host a conference to highlight the ways various countries have taken steps to curb disinformation. We will highlight the most productive approaches for redressing misinformation among older adults around the world and share policy recommendations within the US security and policy structures. 

They feel that the older generation is flummoxed by social media and doesn't get the real message. This means that they actually know the truth and the facts so the geezers should listen to them. Or maybe they think that people eligible for social security have a problem operating a smart phone. Senior citizens lose some of their intelligence to the next generation, except for the septuagenerians of the congress and executive branch.

A "particular focus on health messaging related to the coronavirus" means that the University of Texas-Austin has an institutional belief that corona virus will be a serious problem for the foreseeable future.

An interesting project that's already been completed was Climate Change Dramaturgy.  While its goals are brought up, details and examples aren't given.

 This project explored how theater and community engagement can help develop a context-specific understanding of climate change to empower Texan communities and individuals to become resilient and adapt to a changing climate.

Climate scientists are busy folks these days so getting the theater department involved in spreading climate anxiety can take some of the load off their shoulders. 

 While the thespians may not have the educations in physics and chemistry of their STEM fellows, it's likely that they are more able to transfer the knowledge and emotions that they do have more effectively. Of course, a context-specific understanding of climate in its most basic parameters is a part of being a Texan.

The Commercialization of Academia

 In 1980 the US Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act or the Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on Dec. 12 of that year. Prior to its passage utility patents that resulted from federally funded research were retained by the federal government. Public Law 96-517, as it is recorded, allows the federal government to assign patents resulting from publicly funded research to the contractors involved and the non-profit institutions engaged in that research. Federal agencies were allowed to grant exclusive licenses to inventions belonging to the federal government.

This means that the while the expenses of research were covered by the taxpayers the economic fruits went to "non-profits" and contractors who had already been paid to do the work.

An example is this university which has been instrumental in the formation of 212 start-up companies in the last 14 years based on patents it owns. AUTM, a Washington, D.C. non-profit, encourages and coordinates relationships and technology transfer between research institutions and corporations. 

IP Watchdog has this to say about the subject:

 Over $71 billion USD was spent in federally sponsored research at universities in 2018 in the US alone. Approximately $2.94 billion in licensing revenue was generated in 2018 directly from the process of taking academic inventions to market, otherwise known as technology transfer (TT). Including federal laboratories, the US invests more than $100 billion each year in federal research funding, with a cumulative spending of more than a trillion dollars over the last 15 years.

Federal research funding is a big deal for academic research and for businesses wishing to use their discoveries for commercial purposes. In an article from 2016 at Nature.com's website, this quote appears:

 “We're at another inflection point,” says John Swartley, executive director of the Penn Center for Innovation (PCI), the technology-transfer office at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. To face these challenges, technology-transfer offices need to find new ways to work with private companies, scientists and outside investors, while maintaining their own integrity. “We can never forget that we are, at core, an academic institution,” says Swartley.

Maintaining their own integrity is turning out to be the difficult part, if, in fact, it remains a goal in the years since 2016.

 

Today In Amsterdam

 

 Today in Amsterdam, 300 years ago.

Today in Amsterdam, January 4, 2023.

The Pattern For The New World Order

This writer seems to be on the right track but it's also obvious. The New World Order.

time.com

Causality in CO2 and Temperature

In the early years of the twentieth century, Swedish Nobel Prize winner Svante Arrhenius postulated that CO2 in the atmosphere produced higher temperatures. The causality of higher atmospheric temperatures was the presence of CO2. This has been the theory accepted as reality ever since and the justification for all manner of remedies. But, is it true?

Four scientists at the National Technical University of Athens, Imperial College, London, and the Poznan University of Life Sciences, Posnan, Poland, have performed a study using CO2 figures from a number of sites and temperature readings as well, from the period 1850-2021. They find that causality to be the other way.

The mainstream assumption of the causality direction [CO₂] → T makes a compelling narrative, as everything is blamed on a single cause, the human CO₂ emissions. Indeed, this has been the popular narrative for decades. However, popularity does not necessarily mean correctness, and here we have provided strong arguments against this assumption. Since we have identified atmospheric temperature as the cause and atmospheric CO₂ concentration as the effect, one may be tempted to ask the question: What is the cause of the modern increase in temperature? Apparently, this question is much more difficult to reply to, as we can no longer attribute everything to any single agent.

We do not claim to have the answer to this question, whose study is far beyond the article’s scope. Neither do we believe that mainstream climatic theory, which is focused upon human CO₂ emissions as the main cause and regards everything else as feedback of the single main cause, can explain what happened on Earth for 4.5 billion years of changing climate.

 

  

The AP Addresses Claudine Gay's Fall

The fall wasn't very far. In resigning the presidency of Harvard, a largely ceremonial position that consists mostly of fund raising and representing the school at events including other schools, she remains on the faculty with the same salary as before. 

The AP article makes the point that in reality the controversy over Gay's testimony before Congress and her plagiarism over the years didn't count for as much as the fact that she was an activist, female, black liberal, skewered by dark conservative political forces. It also points out that she is Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African American Studies.

Academic positions in the study of government are inevitably intertwined with politics. While it's not true in this case, failed liberal political figures are often kept in academic faculty pools where they are easily transferred back into government service. (See Jennifer Granholm) The reason grad students get PhD.s in government isn't so they can study the minutiae of bureaucracy, it's so they can know something about and have an effect on politics. If they get caught up in political controversy they have made a mistake in judgement. 

In the current political climate academia and media are reinforcing their general liberal stance. If Ms. Gay had been fired she wouldn't have needed even a cab ride to her next interview for employment. It's likely that university regents at many schools were hopeful that she would be sent packing and be available for their own institution. By proving her bona-fides she has taken a step forward in her career.

 

Journalism and Climate Change

The Poynter Institute is a journalism college that owns the Tampa Bay Times and is involved in many aspects of news analysis and fact checking. Its influence on journalism may not be as significant as its educational role but it is a key part of the media approach to the "science" of climate change, This article is an example of its usual take on the subject. The safety of journalists that present the mainstream account of CAGW is compromised by crazies who threaten them. Evidently, these are not the same crazies that glue themselves to busy highways or splash ketchup on valuable art in protest of fossil fuel use. Somehow the public must be made aware of a global existential threat without producing an existential threat to a small group that's dedicated to disseminating truthful, valuable information. 

The media is the second step in the climate disaster journey. First, of course, is academia. The research colleges, recipients of many millions in government and other funding, acquire that funding by supplying the media with horror stories of a world consumed by heat, rising sea levels and dead polar bears. The media uses this non-information to generate income and its consumers, who are the public and government employees that have the capability of creating executive branch agency subdivisions apparently at will. Government money, essentially as imaginary as the problem, is distributed to entreprenurial contractors to build the renewable energy infrastructure needed to put the climate back on an even keel while abandoning reliable fossil fuels, at a cost that will eventually be in the trillions.

Any thinking person, or even one with a minimal grasp of physics or economics, will realize upon reflection that the goal of those with climate anxiety, a stasis climate, can't be achieved by any means. It might be time for the media to tell this to their consumers.  

Renewable Electric Fishing

The DOE is behind an effort to promote the use of electric motors as propulsion in a part of the North Pacific fishing fleet based in Sitka, Alaska. Three different programs are being encouraged financially by the DOE's Vehicle Technologies Office, a division of the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy.  These projects are just a small part of the federal government's enthusiastic embrace of eliminating fossil fuels in not only power generation, home heating and automobile travel but also in commercial fishing and who knows what else. 

The DOE is the godfather of a number of executive branch agencies that were created by the executive itself, apparently to be involved in issues for which there were no historical presence of federal involvement. 

 flicker.com 

Two of the projects involve both ICE engines and supplemental batteries. A third runs on batteries exclusively. 

Aside from the fact that a freighter loaded with lithium batteries caught fire near Alaskan fishing port Dutch Harbor recently, commercial fishing remains one of the most dangerous occupations. Fire at sea is certainly one of the gravest calamities that can occur in the fishing business. That would be one very good reason to not be involved with this fiasco. 

Another is that the weight carried by a boat is a serious issue in fuel consumption. Batteries are heavy and would inevitably reduce catch by limiting the weight a boat can carry. The two projects using batteries as an adjunct will be forced home sooner than otherwise when catch reaches the point of the boat's capacity. The batteries themselves will also take up precious space once reserved for catch. Using the ICE engines to turn generators that charge batteries at sea is uneconomical, silly and uses the fuel that is so bad for the environment.

If this transition made any sense at all, it would already have been either investigated and adopted or discarded by cagey fishermen compelled to look at the bottom line, like all small businessmen. Continuous developments in fishing technology and practices have improved catch so much that more stringent catch quotas are imposed regularly to avoid depleting stocks.

Agencies of the federal bureaucracy are determined to justify their existence in any way they can by riding on the CAGW bandwagon.