From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: The Outer Limits
Distribution: world
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 92 09:24:11 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1466602009@igc.apc.org> alanm@igc.apc.org writes:

 > Biomass pyramids *can* be inverted -- for example, the standing 
 > biomass of whales can exceed that of the phytoplankton, because 
 > the productivity of the latter is enormous (the total biomass 
 > produced by the phytoplankton in a year is still more than the 
 > total biomass produced by the whales in a year). On land, biomass 
 > pyramids are not inverted. The biomass of humans is less than 
 > that of *all* the foods which humans eat. The impossibility of 
 > inverting an energy pyramid is a consequence of the *first* law 
 > of thermodynamics. Given the productivity constraints which hold 
 > for land plants, land herbivores, and land carnivores, the 
 > impossibility of inverting their biomass pyramid *is* a 
 > consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, as Ehrlich 
 > asserts. It is impossible for an organism to convert all the 
 > energy of its food into tissues, behavior, and offspring.  

Alan, you forgot the case of land reptiles (water pythons) which live
off small land mammals (swamp plain rats) as their respective life-
cycles replicate those of whales and krill, for example. The fact is
that the mammals use up probably 90% of their energy intake just to
keep warm (not to mention the massive amounts used up in the process
of mating and breeding) during seasonal life-cycles, while the cold-
blooded reptiles just hybernate on it without feeding for extended
periods over years while populations of the former wax and wane.

A high turnover, BTW, does not equate with high productivity, only
with population instability and far more acute management strategies
needing to be implemented. I have mentioned here before that it is
the very small species rapidly becoming extinct . . .

 > The reason for concern about what McCarthy calls "trace" 
 > substances is that some of them bioconcentrate, which can bring 
 > their levels in tissues up to concentrations which are no longer 
 > "traces". Bioconcentration increases densities up food chains, 
 > and in some cases across generations of mammals, via milk. It can 
 > occur when a substance cannot be metabolized and is fat 
 > soluable. Some organohalogens such as PCBs have this property. 
 > Bioconcentrated PCBs appear to be responsible for some birth 
 > defects in birds, such as the crossbill syndrome. Some biologists 
 > think that they may be responsible for nonrecovery of whale 
 > populations which are no longer hunted and for mass beachings of 
 > pilot whales. 

You also appear to have forgotten (perhaps deliberately as is your
wont) the repeated (ad nauseam) plea here for substance quantities
to be stated as an essential criterion for determining toxicity. The
problem is *not* concerned with banning substances, but as in all
things managing their impact, yes?

You do the world an injustice by just *imposing* your moral ideology
without rhyme or reason to it. Rather than raising "consciousness" as
you so boast, all you end up doing is to give everyone the shits so
they stop listening any more, and go off to find another forum free
for the moment until you catch up with them again and they finally
just wander further afield again (ad nauseam).

Perhaps if you to do want a refresher on consciousness and alienation
you might go back over your Hegel, Feuerbach and Marx, but then it
would pay you dividends to do just a little homework on contemporary
twentieth century history and monitor yourself the long term efficacy
of their ideas (*not* good). Or are you just as incapable of thinking
through what they had to say and its consequences as you are anyone
else?

It is not effective, just wasteful of resources and making it all the
more difficult to get any sensible discussion going among intelligent
and thoughtful people, from whichever premises they may have made their
opening remarks, which might lead somewhere constructive eventually.

And not least it is *BORING*.

--
Gil Hardwick                          Internet:  gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                  Fidonet:  3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                         Voice:  (+61 9) 399 2401
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