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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Crabbe who wrote (4116)	2/9/2006 2:01:41 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218605

<Perhaps the declining test scores from 1963 to the late 1990's can be attributed to tetra-ethyl lead in the gasoline supply of America. Certainly lead in the environment increased drastically until the 1980's, then with the removal of lead from gasoline perhaps the children born after this time had higher IQ's because of decreasing exposure to lead.> Lead in petrol contributed something like 0.25 IQ points deficit and total lead something like 0.50 IQ points deficit with a lot of lead poisoning coming from paint. Lead in gasoline/petrol was one of the major blunders of the 20th century. Apart from harm to brains, it wasn't really of much value in fuel and had negative effects such as polluting the engine oil, exhaust system, increasing knock by depositing in the combustion chamber, which required carcinogenic lead scavengers to be added to the fuel. The Flynn Effect is just the data as measured. I'm not sure what you mean by "too simplistic". Measure something, report it. That's what the Flynn Effect is. What you conclude from that data is up to you and further research. It's like saying the polar ice cap is thinner than it was and measuring it each year at a particular place for the last 100 years. It's just data which doesn't really need "belief" unless one mistrusts the measuring people or system. The reason why the polar ice is thinning has room for lots of belief systems and the greenhouse effect does indeed seem to be a place for religious fervour. I think we are saving the planet from turning into an ice ball. Greenhouse effect zealots believe we are turning the planet into a baking desert with melted ice and flooded coastal plains, maybe even to runaway greenhouse status with everything fried, or, because of the oceans, steamed. Mqurice