HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Natural Gas, Combo?
Date: 9 Jan 93 17:51:36 GMT
Organization: Oracle Corporation
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by an unauthenticated user
              at Oracle Corporation.  The opinions expressed are those
              of the user and not necessarily those of Oracle.

In article <1993Jan7.091804.1@acad3.alaska.edu> nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu writes:
>What I Was trying to say was that some forms of new/old power can be
>combined on the same land.. Such as methane land files (where the land fill
>has been filed in and the compost is being digested and methane being
>produced) and on top of the land fill have a solar panel field. Have the
>solar panel field be protected on its edges by some form of wind power..

Yes, Michael, but

1.  What about the shadows the windmills cast on the solar panel
field?

2.  The key issue with methane is not how much land you need to
compost it.  The question is where you get the stuff to compost.
There just isn't enough.  You don't seem to be able to understand this
even though you have been repeatedly told this.

Just to try once more, how the heck do you intend to make biogas a
significant source of fuel when there isn't enough material to compost
to produce enough fuel to matter?


-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am not an official Oracle spokesman.  I speak for myself and no one else.
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: In Re: Dragonslayers
Distribution: world
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 11:09:04 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1466602027@igc.apc.org> alanm@igc.apc.org writes:

 > >I suggest again, fellow, dragons be there. I can take you to face
 > >them at your leisure. Just send your cheque, and I shall alert our
 > >people to prepare something. How frightening, or how simply absurd
 > >it will finally get just depends on you.
 >  
 > Poor Gil. He still hasn't figured out what happens to the 
 > Dragonslayer in the end.
                                .
                                .

                 [the rest mercifully deleted]


Do you have some reason for posting the same nonsense *twice*, Mr
McGowen? Or has it something to do with your "consciousness raising"
deliberations?

One would expect that if you had something substantial to contribute,
once would have been quite sufficent, yes?

Gil
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Education and the Environment by Gregory A. Smith
Distribution: world
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 93 05:31:08 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <JMC.93Jan5001131@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:

 >  
 > Gil says:
 >  
 >      Under the Western European tradition derived from Mosaic
 >      Christianity and explicitly intended to engender loyalty to
 >      the status quo. The etymology of the word "education" arises
 >      from "to the Duke".
 >  
 > Not quite.  Webster says,
                                .
                                .
                                .

 > They have similar Latin roots, but neither is a descendant of the other.

My own source was:

      Klein E.  1967
      A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language
      Amsterdam: Elsevier

Some dispute among scholars of such things, perhaps, although I find
the link a compelling one worth raising periodically.

I have already been mailed on my Latin, BTW. The translation should be
"from (ex) the Duke", apparently.

Gil

Xref: sparky sci.environment:14439 talk.environment:5418 alt.sources.wanted:2015
From: mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark Wilson)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.environment,alt.sources.wanted
Subject: Re: "Urgent warning"
Date: 12 Jan 93 18:15:36 GMT
Organization: NCR Engineering and Manufacturing Atlanta -- Atlanta, GA

In <1993Jan12.111839.10118@ac.dal.ca> zaigi@ac.dal.ca writes:



|Dear all,

|In The Chronicle-Herald : The Mail-Star Saturday, January 9, 1993 C2,
|David Suzuki, a Canadian scientist and writer mentioned that at "The end
|of November, the prestigious Union of Concerned Scientists released an
|urgent warning tha the planet is undergoing catastrophic ecological change
|that threatens all of humankind. Their global call to action was signed
|by over 1500 senior scientists, including 101 Nobel laureates from around the 
|world".

|Any idea where can I get the documentation?

|Nick 
|email: zaigi@ac.dal.ca
You migh want to check into to the background of these so called scientists.
I wan't aware that they were giving out Nobel's in environmental sciences,
so mentioning the laureates makes me think they are indulging in a bit
of resume padding.
-- 
Mob rule doesn't become any prettier, just because the mob start to call itself
a government.
It ain't charity if you are using someone else's money.
Mark.Wilson@AtlantaGA.NCR.com
From: alanm@igc.apc.org (Alan McGowen)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: In Re: Dragonslayers
Date: 9 Jan 93 13:21:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1466602027:000:650
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!alanm    Jan  9 05:21:00 1993


Gil Hardwick writes:

>I suggest again, fellow, dragons be there. I can take you to face
>them at your leisure. Just send your cheque, and I shall alert our
>people to prepare something. How frightening, or how simply absurd
>it will finally get just depends on you.

Poor Gil. He still hasn't figured out what happens to the 
Dragonslayer in the end.

My money is still on the Rhinemaidens. They had it right from 
the beginning:

     Traulich und treu ist's nur in der Tiefe;
     falsch und feig ist, was dort oben sich freut! 

And that applies to the would-be dragonslayers just as much as to 
the would-be gods.


------------
Alan McGowen
From: mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark Wilson)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: plutonium arrives in Japan
Date: 7 Jan 93 17:59:11 GMT
Organization: NCR Engineering and Manufacturing Atlanta -- Atlanta, GA

In <1993Jan6.150210.23818@news.acns.nwu.edu> len@schur.math.nwu.edu (Len Evens) writes:

|more complicated.   For example, other countries in Asia have
|expressed suspiciion about Japanese intentions about nuclear weapons.

For the umpteenth time.  The plutonium in question is not suitable for
making bombs.
-- 
Mob rule doesn't become any prettier, just because the mob start to call itself
a government.
It ain't charity if you are using someone else's money.
Mark.Wilson@AtlantaGA.NCR.com
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown)
Subject: Re: Nuclear Power and Climate Change
Organization: I can't see any in the immediate vicinity...
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 19:52:02 GMT

In article <1993Jan7.093103.2732@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes:
>In article <58220@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>>In article <1993Jan3.193353.6234@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes:
>>>While it should be obvious that we should take all the "cheap"
>>>efficiency steps we can, economic growth, and the coupling it
>>>has with energy consumption, can't be ignored. Energy usage and
>>>the GDP track quite well. We can argue which causes which, I think
>>>some of both, but we can't argue that they don't go hand in hand. A 
>>
>>Yes we can. The energy to run an early industrial revolution era
>>machine shop was enormous because a single power source had to drive
>>a mechanical gearing system that distributed motion to each machine and
>>lost a great deal of power in the process. Dropping energy requirments
>>by putting individual electric motors in each machine increased
>>productivity. Energy use <-> GDP seems like an anachronism.
>
>Actually that's mostly incorrect. My father owned an "early industrial
>revolution" machine shop that was powered by a single 15 hp electric
>motor driving overhead jackshafts that turned the machines by way of
>flat belts. That type of power transmission is over 95% efficient.
>He ran 5 lathes, 2 milling machines, 3 drill presses, a shop compressor,
>the blower on the forge, and a fan off that 15 hp motor. Today the same
>lathes *each* require a 7 hp motor. That single motor could run everything
>because it didn't have to overcome startup inertia because it was always
>running.

How many (and which) of the machines in his shop was he able to run
simultaneously?  I would think that such a setup would enable you to
run one or two machines simultaneously, but not much more than that.

Another question: how efficient are today's electric motors when running
at less than peak load?  For instance, how efficient would a 7 hp motor on
a lathe be if the lathe itself were not under load?

>Gary


-- 
Kevin Brown					kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com
This is your .signature virus: < begin 644 .signature (9V]T8VAA(0K0z end >
	    This is your .signature virus on drugs: <>
			Any questions?
From: len@math.nwu.edu (Len Evens)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: plutonium arrives in Japan
Date: 9 Jan 93 00:43:21 GMT
Organization: Dept of Math, Northwestern Univ

In article <C0K3q2.JCE@world.std.com>, moroney@world.std.com (Michael Moroney) writes:
> In <1993Jan7.203118.17716@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker) writes:
> 
> >Mark Wilson (mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM) wrote:
> 
> >: For the umpteenth time.  The plutonium in question is not suitable for
> >: making bombs.
> >: Mark.Wilson@AtlantaGA.NCR.com
> 
> 	I think the other countries believe Japan possesses the
> >technological capability to reprocess the large amounts they are importing
> >into weapons-grade plutonium.
> 
> It is even more difficult to extract weapons-grade Pu-239 from the other
> isotopes in the plutonium they just received than it is to extract
> weapons-grade U-235 from readily-available uranium ore.  
> 
> -Mike

-- 
Having started this subthread, I think it has gone off on a tangent
(perhaps a tangent to a tangent).   I think the issue of whether
or not the particular kind of plutonium may be used for weapons
is interesting, particularly with respect to the argument about
whether some of this plutonium might be highjacked or diverted
to third parties.  However, any sensible person realizes that
the Japanese have sufficient technical capability to make as
many bombs as they want if they decide to do so and they would
probably choose the most efficient way to do it and not advertise
it to the world.  Also, any
sensible person would realize that the Japanese don't want to 
make bombs at this point.  The point I
was trying to make (apparently not very well) was that the
_political_ reactions
of Asian countries and their _understandable_
suspicions about Japanese intentions
(merited or not) are one part of a complex problem.  I was bemoaning
the fact that most of the discussion left out any mention of such
issues---preferring to see the whole thing as a conflict between
good guys and bad guys.  

Leonard Evens      len@math.nwu.edu      708-491-5537
Dept. of Mathematics, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL 60208
From: nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Natural Gas, Combo?
Date: 7 Jan 93 17:18:04 GMT
Article-I.D.: acad3.1993Jan7.091804.1
Organization: University of Alaska Fairbanks

What I Was trying to say was that some forms of new/old power can be
combined on the same land.. Such as methane land files (where the land fill
has been filed in and the compost is being digested and methane being
produced) and on top of the land fill have a solar panel field. Have the
solar panel field be protected on its edges by some form of wind power..
 
To many people think too narrow about how to combine the uses of land.
 
Such as only methane production for the land and nothing else..


Michael Adams
Alias: Morgoth/Ghost Wheel 
nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu
From: paul.burnett@pcs.sj.ca.us (Paul Burnett) 
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: A simple solution (was: S
Date: 11 Jan 93 19:36:00 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: PCS-BBS - San Jose, CA - 408-270-4085
Reply-To: paul.burnett@pcs.sj.ca.us (Paul Burnett) 

TO: 6500axel@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu

AB>every industrialized country adopts one or two
  >underdevelopped countries (a suitable matching could be worked out by
  >the UNO) and promises to pay social security benefits to elderly and
  >to construct a working health care system in this third world country.
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^             ^^^^^^^
Could we please get some country to adopt the USA and construct a
working health care system for _us_ before _we_ have the audacity to
adopt anybody?
---
 . QMPro 1.0 41-8688 . ...from San Jose, CA
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Education and the Environment by Gregory A. Smith
Distribution: world
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 93 05:47:28 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <2935440099.0.p00004@psilink.com> p00004@psilink.com writes:

 > >DATE:   Tue, 05 Jan 93 05:21:32 GMT
 > >FROM:   Gil Hardwick <gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au>
 > .[....] The
 > >etymology of the word "education" arises from "to the Duke".
 > >                        ^^^                           ^^^^
 >  
 > Oh dear. Philology, it seems, has as many pitfalls for the unwary as 
 > ethnology. 
                                .
            [excellent discussion read and appreciated]
                                .

 > The argumentum etymologicum is always, I think, rather feeble, but
 > particularly so when the etymology is a "howler".
 >  
 > --Michael Smith

Marvellous, wonderful. You see, guys, a flame war is not necessary at
all; there are some real scholars out there just aching for a chance
to strut their stuff to our mutual edification.

Let's see what sort of momentum can now be maintained . . .

Gil
From: paul.burnett@pcs.sj.ca.us (Paul Burnett) 
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: True Exploitation
Date: 9 Jan 93 15:11:00 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: PCS-BBS - San Jose, CA - 408-270-4085
Reply-To: paul.burnett@pcs.sj.ca.us (Paul Burnett) 

TO: alanm@hpindda.cup.hp.com

AM>Numerous "poor underdeveloped countries" have postcolonial economies depende
  >on a few cash crops established during colonial times. The cash crops -- e.g
  >sugar, coffee, tea, tobacco, pineapples, etc -- have taken a tremendous toll
  >on native ecosystems -- replacing them entirely over vast tracts.

Somehow, this reminds me that the same holds true for the majority of
crops grown in _this_ country - tobacco, cotton, corn, sugar, etc.  Do
you worry about the "vast tracts" of native ecosystems replaced here?
---
 . QMPro 1.0 41-8688 . ...from San Jose, CA
                                                                                                                                                                         
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: constant@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (Tino)
Subject: Re: Save the Planet and the Economy at the Same time!
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 16:50:05 GMT

In article <7313@ucsbcsl.ucsb.edu> 6500axel@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu writes:
>We should take the case of smoking as a guiding example. Nowadays,
>people hardly dare to mention in public that they are smokers: smoking
>is 'out'.  Would be great, if in a few years also car driving were
>'out', wouldn't it? Only those silly enough to always carry 1000 kg
>along with them would still use cars.

Please compare the benefits/risks associated with smoking and driving cars.
This is what a scientific minded person would do. I'm going to keep my car.

>P.S. Please don't waste your time writing down the 'jobs in the car
>industry' argument. 

No need to. 

Tino
-- 
     "Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders..." - J.D.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Purdue University School of Nuclear Engineering
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Nuclear, Climate, and *Progress*
Distribution: world
Date: Fri, 08 Jan 93 14:38:56 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents

Gary Coffman started me thinking much more deeply about all this (as
an ethnologist should, by rights), with his talk of jack shafts and
pulleys, and the coming of electricity. I know, getting me into a
remiscent mood after a few beers about what was; but anyway;

When I was a boy, my dad had actually built up his business by being
the only one in the entire district who knew anything about generating
plant. We used to drive out 60 miles and more to repair 32 volt *WIND*
generators on pastoral stations, made up of great big 30' windmills
by the local blacksmith from angle iron, all of it bolted together
with corrugated iron blades to drive these new-fangled generators to
keep banks of 2 volt lead-acid cells charged to light the homestead.
To keep the women happy, because they could now keep food fresh.

His youngest brother became chief engineer in charge of one of the big
hydro power stations up on the Snowy Mountains project as it was being
completed, long before we had the grid connected out our way.

My grandfather was the shire engineer, and had as a young man built
himself a two-horse pole sulky with a rack on the back for his bicycle
(perhaps the precursor to those gadgets made from bits of pipe on the
backs of cars today), so he could go about inspecting the shire works
program over weeks of bush travelling.

Guys, that plant was not very long ago in every modern country, *the*
technology. I don't think that attitude has really changed, or should
be changed. What has happened in the meantime is a loss of innocence,
where now we are so burned up with obtuse philosophical and political
argumentation we no longer have any idea what is real, or good.

We no longer have any faith in human intelligence, in talent and the
spirit of hard work and innovation to bring us out of our respective
dark ages. Yes?

That Right Wing-Left Wing North-South First World-Third World crap is
a load of shit. I think what McCarthy is actually driving at is not too
far distant from reality, if he ever decided to think less deeply about
his silly arithmetic and learned to articulate what is actually driving
him instead.

Bastard of a man. What a frustrating business it is to get people to
join in teaching the new generations something real.

Gil

Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: "Michael Smith" <p00004@psilink.com>
Subject: Re: Education and the Environment by Gregory A. Smith
Organization: Performance Systems Int'l
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 00:24:18 GMT
X-Mailer: PSILink-DOS (3.3)

>DATE:   Tue, 05 Jan 93 05:21:32 GMT
>FROM:   Gil Hardwick <gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au>
.[....] The
>etymology of the word "education" arises from "to the Duke".
>                        ^^^                           ^^^^

Oh dear. Philology, it seems, has as many pitfalls for the unwary as 
ethnology. 

The verb "educare", with essentially its modern sense, existed in the 
very earliest Latin. It is, of course, derived from the verb "ducere", 
meaning "to lead", and the preposition "e(x)" meaning "out" or "away" 
or, sometimes, something like "up". "Duke", naturally, is not a Latin 
word but is derived from the Latin "dux", a leader, and ultimately 
from the same verb stem (representing Indo-European *deuk-). So "duke" 
and "educate" are not grandparent and grandchild, but very distant 
cousins. Of the two, "educate" is the older.

In fact, "educate" is not just a special concrete sense of "lead out": 
Latinists will have noticed that it is a first-conjugation verb, while 
the ultimate etymon, ducere, is third-conjugation; and *real* Latinists 
will also know that the 'u' in educere is long (representing the "full 
e-grade" of the Indo-European root), while the 'u' in "educare" is short 
(representing the "zero-grade" of the root). Thus the coinage 
represented by "educate" is in fact extremely archaic -- pre-Latin or 
Proto-Italic. The two would have seemed as different to speakers of 
Classical Latin as, say, "tug" and "tow" in Modern English, which also, 
as it happens, represent outcomes of the full e-grade and zero-grade 
of the same Indo-European root, *deuk-.

The argumentum etymologicum is always, I think, rather feeble, but 
particularly so when the etymology is a "howler".

--Michael Smith
 
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: userDHAL@mts.ucs.UAlberta.CA (David Halliwell)
Subject: Re: What is Climate?
Organization: University Of Alberta, Edmonton Canada
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 03:15:41 GMT

rmg3@grebyn.com (Robert Grumbine) writes:

>  Sci.environment spends a lot of time talking about 'climate change'
>and related (potentially) environmental changes that may accompany
>some of the predicted 'climate changes'.

>  Yet, implicitly, there is an assumption that everyone talking in
>the group carries the same definition of climate.  Given that
>there are approximately as many definitions of climate as people
>who study the subject, it seems unlikely to be true in this group
>either.

>  Two common elements in the definition of climate by people in
>the field are averaging (of some quantities) over time, and over
>space.  Which quantities, how to average, how long a time, and
>how large an area (volume) are generally points of debate.

>  What are your thoughts?

   Pretty good intro, is what I think. The phrase I tend to use in
intorducing climatology at the first-year level is "expectations
of weather". I particularly like this definition because it is easy to
explain to people that you don't always get what you expect...

   One major thing to add to your definition is variability: the "average"
also has a certain amount of spread around it, and this spread is also
an important part of our expectations. We could actually have a "climate
change" by altering the range of variation, even though the average
remains constant.

   The question of what time period is appropriate then essentially becomes
a question of how long a period should we base our expectations on? A
single year is inappropriate, or even a decade. A generation is what
we implicitly use when we start off "When *I* was your age..." and may
in fact be the reason that "climate normals" use a 30-year period. However,
looking back over the last century, it is quite a chore to find a period
of 30-years where "climate" appears to be stationary. If people lived
for a million years, then ice ages would be considered "variability"
instead of "change".

   One way to look at the whole thing is in the context of boundary
conditions. Given fixed boundary conditions, I would call the result
"normal climate", even if there is variation over a wide range of
time scales. An interesting part of global climatology is trying to
figure out how long a period is required to observe all possible
variability for a given set of boundary conditions. A "climate change"
would be a shift in climate which is attributable to some change in
controlling conditions (e.g. solar output, or some aspect of internal
conditions which is independent of the climatic variabilty). Thus,
variability is the time-dependent behaviour which cannot be attributed
to time-dependent controlling factors. If we have incorrectly seperated
"variability" and "change", then we may spend a lot of time looking for
the cause of "changes" which were in fact "variation" and therefore
are "unexplainable".

   Anyone else care to comment?


Dave Halliwell
Department of Geography
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta
Newsgroups: sci.environment