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PAGE 10
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 23, 1983
that absorbs the ultraviolet light capable of inducing mutations
and cancer.
Then would come darkness. Within a week after the war, some 200
million tons of sooty smoke would create what Stephen Schneider
of the National Center for Atmospheric Research calls "a blacktop
highway three miles up." The smoke would absorb so much of the
sun's rays that less than 5 percent of the normal amount of light
would reach the ground, causing a constant gloom that would choke
off even photosynthesis, the process by which green plants con
vert sunshine to food. If the war broke out in spring or summer,
when plants are most vulnerable to cold snaps, virtually all land
plants in the Northern Hemisphere would be damaged or killed,
says Ehrlich. Without this first link in the food chain, every
higher organism would risk starvation....
The panelists on the ABC discussion and the scientists who devised the
latest theories confirmed the reality of Matthew 24:22--"And unless those
days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those
days will be shortened" (RAV}. One thinks too of Zephaniah 1:14-15--"The
great day of the Lord is near...a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of
darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness."
- �- --
One curious aspect of the public and scientific concern over an all-out
"nuclear exchange" is that nearly all attention is focused on u.s.-soviet
relations, almost to the exclusion of the spread of nuclear technology to
other nations.
In this light, it is significant that in the past week,
Argentina announced its latest breakthrough in nuclear technology.
Re
ported THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
... The fact that Argentina is producing enriched uranium on a
pilot scale puts it just a step away from becoming the first
Latin American countryable to make an aEomic bomb. And if the
Argentines did decide secretly Eooecome a nuclear power, there
is little that the_U.S� or �ther nuclear powers could do to stop
them.
Despite heavy .·pressu1;e...Argentina refuses; �o sign the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty:
As a result, all- the critical
facilities in its production chain that could lead to
·a
bomb are
�utside the safeguard surveillance mechanisms of the United
Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency.
President-elect Raul Alfonsin issued a statement promising that
he would "exercise tight control over all our nuclear policy...to
1imit this development to strictly peaceful uses." ...But the
Chileans, who are locked in an explosive border dispute with the
Argentines, weren't so convinced. "From the mi1itary aspect, the
announcement is a threat," said a Chilean government consultant
on nuclear matters. "They claim it is for peaceful purposes, but
the pace of their program is so intense that sooner rather than
latertney can reach the status of a country with nuclear war
capabilities."
The "nuclear genie" is indeed out of the bottle and there is no way man can
put it back.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau