Changes in the moment of inertia of the earth, brought about by the redistribution of ocean water from the tropics to ice at high latitudes, couple energy from the spin of the earth into convection in the liquid core. This mechanism may help provide the driving energy for the earth's dynamo. Sufficiently rapid ocean level changes can disrupt the dynamo, resulting (in half of the cases) in a geomagnetic field reversal. The model can account for the previously mysterious correlation reported between geomagnetic reversals and mass extinctions.

Ducks, geese, coots, and other wild birds, both migratory and resident, have been swimming on the Redox waste water pond and eating the herbage and mud on the bottom. The pond is caused by the discharge of five to ten million gallons of water a day from the heating and cooling coils of reactor vessels in the Redox plant. At least twice in recent months leaks in the coils have permitted solutions of radioactive material to escape to the swamp. Once the leak was in the waste concentrator tank and once in the first oxidation tank, so that the material in the swamp would include significant amounts of every radioisotope found in irradiated uranium, including plutonium and all fission products. This paper discusses the hazards to humans from handling or eating wildfowl and to risk of both internal and external exposure.

Briefs describe 33 charts, graphs, and schematics offering some recent history and perspectives on the world and U.S. energy situation and the problems for survival facing the world. Of interest is Figure 28, showing the Club of Rome's model of the earth in terms of resource consumption, food, money, people, pollution, etc. A computer was asked to extend recent history into the future and results indicate a collapse of the industrialized system towards an agrarian culture around the year 2025. It is noted that the model did not consider technological initiative or man's willingness to change lifestyles. The final (33) schematic is a guesstimate of noticeable impact timescales, indicating when research projects on transition or ultimate energy sources at LASL might be expected to yield impact. (MCW)