From: alaric@sti.com (Alaric Tekiahyn)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Subject: Re: Greens vs. Property Rights
Date: 9 Jan 1993 03:16:19 GMT
Organization: Software Transformation, Inc.
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: smurf.sti.com

In article <JMC.93Jan6221044@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>, jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:
] 1. "standing on each others shoulders" is a mere rhetorical device.

So sue me.	:-)

] Each country has its own population problem.  Bangladesh probably
] couldn't support a six-fold increase in population.

No kidding.  So you'll concede, then, that your observation about the
ability of the United States to do so is inapplicable to Bangladesh?
How about the rest of the Third World?


] 2. Mr. Tekiahyn must have dreamed up that stuff about the Green
] Revolution not making any difference.  India has multiplied its
] wheat production several-fold and has had no food crises since
] the 1960s.

India has also taken major steps to control its population.  (Not all
of which I morally agree with...   for example, Indira Gandhi's
forced-sterilization program...   but that's another story.)  This
is a major contributing factor to its lack of major famines in recent
years.  They're still not out of the woods, though.  For example, I
believe I recall hearing that the crops in the Dekkan failed this year.
I may be wrong, though, so don't take that as gospel.
	:-)


] 3. When forests are cut down in Brazil, the wood is burned, just do
] get rid of it.  If it were not burned, cutting down the forests
] wouldn't put CO2 in the atmosphere.

But the trees that are cut down won't continue recycling oxygen to CO2
merely out of gratitude for the fact that you didn't burn them.

Besides, ask any botanist about the ecological weakness of tree
plantations.  Assuming you could get anything replanted, because
by the time the slash-and-burn farmers (or slash-and-dump-in-deep-
anaerobic-swamps) have moved on, the damage has been done.  The soil
has been destroyed.  That's *WHY* they've moved on.  Despite popular
belief, the soil of the average tropical rainforest is incredibly
poor; rainforest flroa just happen to have evolved to be very good
at getting every last drop of use out of it without destroying it,
out of necessity.  The plants that are there now are the ones that
managed to live in that fragile soil without destroying it.


] 4. What specific pollution are you referring to?  Each kind of
] pollution has its own remedies.

That's a cop-out, and you know it.
OK, here's one for you:  Heat pollution.  Waste heat from all that
power generation.  Let's see you talk your way out of the Second
Law of Thermodynamics.


] 5. The French  built two pre-production breeder reactors, had
] some troubles and are deciding what to do.

"Had some troubles" is putting it mildly.  Believe me, I've *seen*
Phenix B.  It's a meltdown waiting to happen.

] The Japanese are
] building a breeder reactor.  That project is the cause of the
] Greenhype flap over shipping the plutonium.  The French breeder
] reactors work, and the Japanese reactor will be made to work.

It will?  Did you get that from your crystal ball?  Pardon my
cynicism here, but I don't believe that you have the power to
predict the future.  And the last I heard, the French reactors
still spent more time down than on-line.


] 6. The energy content of granite, used as a source of uranium is
] larger than the energy content of pure coal.  In fact the energy
] content of coal, regarded as a source of uranium, is larger than the
] chemical energy content of the coal.

The key problem is extracting the uranium in usable amounts.


] 7. All the schemes for getting rid of fission products that have
] been proposed will work well enough to make them a minor hazard
] compared to other hazards of human life.

Does this mean that living 30 miles downwind from Hanford nuclear
reservation, for example (our country's primary fission-waste
"disposal" site) is safer than playing Russian Roulette with an Uzi?
Unquestionably.  Safer than walking through south-central L.A. after
dark wearing Nike sneakers and a flashy jacket?  Probably not.  Safer
than flying home twice a year to visit your folks?  Thanks, but I'll
take my chances on the airlines.
(I won't even get *into* the subject of decommissioning.)

Or are you talking about the supposedly safe 'long-term' disposal
methods?  Like the borosilicate glass that's supposed to last a
hundred thousand years?  It's a shame they found the test cores
were leaching out after less than ten years, isn't it?

] ... It is only fanaticism, on the one hand,

Ah, but one man's fanatic is another man's defender of the public good.
Or whatever phrase you prefer.  He whom the Thuggee sees as a devout
upholder of his faith and a scourge upon the infidel, the Christian
sees as a murderous heathen fanatic.  It's all a matter of perspective.
Personally, I don't think there's anything fanatical about people who'd
rather not have a hundred thousand gallons of high-level waste buried
ten miles up the road. 

] and governmental political cowardice on the
] other, that have made it difficult to find a solution that suits
] everybody.

Now what constitutes "governmental political cowardice" here?  Do you
mean it is cowardly of the government not to just march into some little
town in Utah or Nevada and say "We're going to store all the nuclear
waste produced in the U.S. in your back yards, whether you like it or
not, so shut up and get used to it"?

Joking (I hope) aside, I'd really like to hear just exactly what you
*do* mean by this.


] 8. I don't "disagree with the subjects being discussed" on the
] newsgroups to which I post.  I suppose that in using this phrase
] Mr. Tekiahyn is being as careless with English as he is with
] science.

Ignoring for the moment the unsubstantiated assertion here, I'm
merely quoting the advice - or warning - which I was given about your
apparent posting philosophy.  After reading more of your posts, I find
myself tempted to agree with the sender of the aforementioned advice.
[However, I haven't entirely given up on you yet.]


] 9. As for contributing to newsgroups being "a foolish endeavor",
] I convince some people of some things, and other people can't be
] convinced of anything at all.

As would be apparent had you troubled to quote that phrase in context,
I see nothing foolish about posting to newsgroups; merely about the
charge leveled against you of deliberately posting flame-bait in order
to intentionally raise the noise level.
[A charge on which the jury is still out, so to speak.]


] 10. I am pleased that Mr. Tekiahyn is giving me "the benefit of
] the doubt" "for the time being", and I shudder to think what will
] happen to me when is patience is exhausted.

Why, I'll simply stop bothering to read your posts, should that
eventuality arise.  Is that so terrible?  Would you rather I'd just
taken the warning at face value, and dropped your name in my news
reader's KILL file right away?  I'll be happy to oblige, if you'd
prefer that, but I prefer to judge people on their own merits rather
than on what other people say about them.


] 11. His quotation from Jefferson isn't quite accurate either.

...Can this possibly be an attempt at a .sig flame?   Spare me...


] Finally, I would like to know specifically where Mr. Tekiahyn got his
] belief that " the Green Revolution didn't make a drop in the bucket's
] worth of real difference."  I suppose he might mean, "didn't influence
] the writings of the doomsters", but then even losing $600 on his bet
] that the price of minerals would go up didn't influence Paul Ehrlich.

Before the 'Green Revolution', the majority of the third world was
starving.  After the 'Green Revolution', the majority of the third
world is still starving.  They just have rusting tractors sitting in
the middle of their fields now.

That's what I meant.

Oh, by the way:  You can bandy comments about the doomsters, and I could
wax lyrical about the don't-worry-be-happy crowd.  Let's just not, huh?


-- 
      "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom."  --  Thomas Jefferson
    ......................................................................
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