Here, this is 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, now it's getting sexy, and finally it's kind

of new AG.

Now the end stage of this process is something like this.

Here is an ad that tells you that you need to get this magnetism that exists in the earth,

but since nature is drastically depleted, this environmental supplement is incredibly

important, and they will sell you magnets to increase your supply of it.

Now we see we've completed the circle from fear to selling point, from magnetic fields

that are too powerful for health to fields that are too weak for health.

Of course rather than buying these magnets you could just stand alongside a power line,

or sit with your back to a TV set, snuggle up to a kitchen appliance, there's lots of

ways to increase your exposure to healthful magnetic fields.

I'm reviewing these past fears not to make fun of them, but because I think this back

and forth quality, that's the fears that suddenly rise and subside is symptomatic of a

deeper problem with modern environmental thinking, a problem that we have to fix.

But meanwhile the fears do continue to rise and fall.

Let's look at some graphs of past fears.

To get a rough idea of the visibility of fears, I did a word search on Nexus for two newspapers,

the Washington Post and the New York Times.

These provide very rough measures, but they'll show you a trend.

Here's the graph for power lines and cancer.

As you can see, not much interest to peak following Broder's book and decline here, which

I think is people sensibly saying, wait a minute, and then the thing has its own momentum

...