HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: beast@netcom.com (J. Kintscher)
Subject: Re: Sustainable lifestyles
Organization: Belle & Philippe, Pty. Ltd.
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 21:49:52 GMT

In article <donb.719007652@crash.cts.com> donb@crash.cts.com (Donald Bowen) writes:
>	Another reward is that I can build things.  A few hours in the garage
>resulted in a doll house that my daughter treasures above anything else.  All
>told I spent about $25 and 10 hours on the doll house and it will be aaround
>long after the plastic $100 one from the toy store is fouling our landfills.
>4 hours over a weekend and $5 of wood built a toy that is asked for by every
>kid that comes into the house.  $20 of wood and 8 hours built an end table
>that my wife has to show to everyone and they all want a copy.  That has 
>earned me about $150 this year.  Tax free or about $200 if it came from 
>employment.

Are you doing it for the money, or because you enjoy it?  It sounds like
the later.  I do woodwork because I enjoy it.  I also write programs
because I enjoy it.  Its very cost effective to make wooden toys yourself,
especially since there's so much over-priced plastic junk out there.
However, its not very cost effective for me to spend a few thousand hours
writing a very complex game I could buy for around $50.  Yes, gardening is
cheap, but so are staples in the grocery store.  I don't enjoy gardening,
so I don't think its worth doing for the minimal amount of money it would
save me. 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey A. Kintscher	 | "Now, my suspicion is that the universe is not only
beast@netcom.com     	 |  queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can
			 |  suppose. . . . I suspect that there are more things
"No matter where you go, |  in heaven and earth than are dreamed of,  in any
 there you are."	 |  philosophy."
			 |				J. B. S.  Haldane
	Buckaroo Bonzai	 |				Possible Worlds
From: steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: IPS: CFC-Free Refrigerator
Date: 14 Oct 92 14:25:50
Organization: Lick Observatory/UCO
NNTP-Posting-Host: topaz.ucsc.edu
In-reply-to: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU's message of 14 Oct 1992 15:27:49 GMT

In article <1bhe9lINNc0@gap.caltech.edu> carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick) writes:


   In article <1466601808@igc.apc.org>, Tom Gray <tgray@igc.apc.org> writes:
   >but dkk claims their new refrigerator is cooled by the simple
   >gases propane and butane, usually used in the ordinary cigarette
   >lighter. where the traditional refrigerator uses cfc-blown foam
   >for insulation, the dkk invention uses expanded polystyrene.

   Hmmmm.  What happens when this sucker springs a leak and the fuel/air mixture
   reaches the brushes of the compressor motor?  Sure, it doesn't use CFCs.  But
   is it safe?  Somehow, I doubt it.

It is illegal for me to store compressed butane of propane in my home,
not to mention the fit the insurance company would throw.,,

*  Steinn Sigurdsson   			Lick Observatory      	*
*  steinly@lick.ucsc.edu		"standard disclaimer"  	*
*  Just because there's a reason          			*
*  Doesn't mean it's understood              Specials, 1979	*
From: ekd@tamarack20.cray.com (Ellen Dona)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: ECIX Climate Files 10/92
Date: 7 Oct 92 18:04:54 GMT
Followup-To: Posting with tasteless P.S.
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Originator: ekd@tamarack20


 
>The issue also has a short article concerning great tits.  Honest.

1.  I sincerely doubt the issue had an article entitled "Great Tits."  They
    most likely used a more descriptive, less sexist term than that.  I
    wish you had, as well.

2.  What does this have to do with your posting, and why did you feel
    compelled to include it?  I am sure there's a more appropriate place
    in the net for articles like this.  Including it in sci.environment is 
    unnecessary and offensive.


Please think twice before including stuff like this in future postings.


Ellen
From: bl713@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Lev Tarasov)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Rights for Rocks!
Date: 9 Oct 92 15:36:14 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


You have forgotten what I feel is the strongest right's argument,
Occam's razor. Whatever non-religious parameter you take to 
differentiate humans and non-humans, you will always find some
humans (brain-dead, severely mentally handicapped,...) who will
be beat out by some non-human such as a chimpanzee. Should we
allow experimentation on those humans who "flunk"?.
From: tgray@igc.apc.org (Tom Gray)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: --UCS Offers New Energy Policies
Date: 10 Oct 92 02:27:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1466601783:cdp:1466601790:000:1277
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!tgray    Oct  9 19:27:00 1992


<responding to steinly>

>Wind is never going to be more than 10% of capacity on US scale
>demands (ie some small countries may use it for greater fraction
>of capcity)

But of course you cannot say this.  It's like saying nuclear
reactors can never be made safe.

A good, credible study of wind in the UK done a few years ago
by Michael Grubb, who is now with the Royal Institute of
International Affairs, found that approximately 1/3 of
that country's electric power could be supplied by wind before
penalties to the rest of the grid became unacceptably high.

So we can take that as an approximate upper boundary, although
studies by Lockheed and General Electric in the late 70s both
returned figures of ~1 trillion kWh annual potential for the US,
which is a little more than 1/3.

But these numbers still do not take into account enhanced
energy efficiency or advanced energy storage systems.  To my
knowledge, no one has even looked seriously at what could be
done with EXISTING storage capabilities -- pumped, thermal,
hydro or any other -- to maximize wind's potential.

Without investigating these possibilities, setting an arbitrary
figure of 10% for wind's contribution is, as John McCarthy is
so fond of saying, talking nonsense (even though 10 is a number).

Tom
From: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Sustainable lifestyles
Date: 17 Oct 92 02:06:26 GMT
Reply-To: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol1.gps.caltech.edu

In article <1992Oct16.233913.27071@vexcel.com>, dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
=>An "aggregate model" had better be consistent with existing trends.
=>These trends are towards lower prices and increased substitutability.
=>If it predicts a deviation from this trend, it had better have a good
                                              -------------------------
=>reason for predicting it -- a reason that had better be a product of
  --------------------------------------------------------------------
=>specific information about availability of specific resources, or
  -----------------------------------------------------------------
=>effects of specific pollutants.  
  -------------------------------
=>
=The problem is that most analyses that find a problem with 
=unsustainable throughput are not based on resource scarcity,
=they are based on sink saturation.  Though the CO2/ozone example
=may not be typical of sink saturation, it shows how difficult they
=are to predict.
=
=The need for substitution is also likely to be the need to find a resouce
=that uses a different sink, not a resource with less scarcity.  Just how
=unique are sinks to resources?  Is there a synergistic problem as more
=sinks become, if not saturated, then at least somewhat scarce, in the sense
=that they aren't taken for granted?

=>If not, the model is just a formulation of unsubstantiated opinion.
  -------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you, Dean, for your unsubstantiated opinion.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: CARL@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL

Disclaimer:  Hey, I understand VAXen and VMS.  That's what I get paid for.  My
understanding of astronomy is purely at the amateur level (or below).  So
unless what I'm saying is directly related to VAX/VMS, don't hold me or my
organization responsible for it.  If it IS related to VAX/VMS, you can try to
hold me responsible for it, but my organization had nothing to do with it.
From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Catastrophe Theory in Enviromental Modeling?  NOT!
Distribution: world
Date: Fri, 09 Oct 92 12:49:16 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <43720@ogicse.ogi.edu> jhurst@amb4.ccalmr.ogi.edu writes:

 > [Because Gil's response to my last post was content-free, I chose to rephrase
 > my questions without the offensive political asides.]

That is nice of you, Jim. While I do appreciate your prior mail both
on this occasion and the previous, I have nevertheless found myself
unprepared for the nature of this, your second outburst.

Where usually I archive news and mail of interest and only print out a
hard copy to pass on to someone else, on this occasion I found myself
actually printing your post in order to sit and have a good long look
at it before replying to you.

Your attack appears to be based on your stated experience with the
people with whom you trained, along with their precursors, having
become buried under "a suffocating burden of Meaningless Jargon and
Academic Pedantry". At no time have you addressed the model I had
myself suggested, and quite reasonably given the limitations of a
newsgroup post you might simply have requested more details on what
I myself was talking about before getting off your bike.

That someone else failed is not a criticism of my work. Such a notion
is preposterous. One can imagine any idiot slavering over a crucible
anywhere to no end whatsoever, and invoke those results as an attack
on anyone else at anytime at all, but it does not constitute valid
criticism of anything. It is just raving on.

I do apologise that I have no idea what a BS Detector is. Do you
Americans use new instrumentation we backward Australians have no
access to yet? Perhaps it is something you need over there that we
could also use here? Would someone like to mail me details?

In the meantime, you might read

        Foucault M. 1972:1991
           The Archaeology of Knowledge
           New York: Routledge

and then go back and have another look at Thom, to what he was saying
about the nature of change. Perhaps you should also consider Ockam's
Razor in your further theoretical work, and learn to keep it sweet.
Otherwise, if you remain unable to adhere to a clear method which
brings unambiguous results to the work you do to your own merit, that
is your problem. Old mate.

For the rest of your irrelevant obfuscation of what I have said I am
simply not bothered any more attempting a reply. You have managed to
annoy me with your raving on. Perhaps you are on a caffeine trip, and
it might pay to get off it for a while.

Thank you for your interest.

--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *
From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Sustainable lifestyles
Distribution: world
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 06:58:26 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1bcqsvINNhim@gap.caltech.edu> carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU writes:

 > Is that counting the time it takes to make your own farm implements?
 > From scratch?

It takes very little of the time available to a community to make farm
implements, from scratch or otherwise, and people have been doing it
for thousands of years without suffering ill-effects. It is not a
question that high levels of production are achieved with very small
effort indeed. Even the growing of food takes up very little of the
time available; for the most part it does actually grow by itself;
doesn't it?

Enough food can be grown for everyone in the world before breakfast
every morning, in terms of the total productive hours available to any
given nation. People interested in the notion of sustainability do not
usually want be "self-sufficient" as such, merely less dependent on the
highly capitalised industrial economy BECAUSE they want more free time
available to pursue a productive and satisfying lifestyle.

The economic question to be addressed with respect to the making of
farm implements in an industrial economy is rather concerned with how
salaries are to be paid to the masses of unproductive people employed
by the manufacturer to carry out mundane and repitive tasks, where
farmers no longer pay such exhorbitantly high prices for machinery
which have no bearing on the productivity of the farmer's land.

Even now, computers and automation are taking over most of the jobs
people were doing before, which phenomenon in large part stimulates
this debate to begin with. All those people now freed from boredom and
repetition might be helping the farmers a little more, or perhaps
helping farming communities to pool their machinery inventory to
avoid being ripped off so badly by the factory, and so free up the
availability of money to the farming community where it originated.

The productivity of an agrarian economy is well-established. Any way
you wish to look at it, the central question in all this must consider
what all the city people are doing, and how might they sustain their
*unproductive* lifestyles as economic decisions shift further away from
supporting urban industrial activity as it declines through its own
technological progress. Perhaps that inevitability is what the rest
of you are so hysterical about . . .

 > Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: CARL@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL
 >  
 > Disclaimer:  Hey, I understand VAXen and VMS.  That's what I get paid for.  My

And that is about your limit.

--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *
From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Sustainable lifestyles
Date: 16 Oct 92 00:04:55 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <JMC.92Oct13215811@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:

 > I don't propose any new incentives.  It is merely that once the
 > transportation costs are faced, there will be an incentive to
 > conserve deep topsoil in river valleys, because an excess can be sold
 > to improve nearby uplands.

Until next it rains, and the soil is washed down once again. Perhaps
the Professor is also promoting the sale of homing pigeons . . .

--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *
From: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Sustainable lifestyles
Date: 16 Oct 92 17:56:08 GMT
Reply-To: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol1.gps.caltech.edu

In article <-1366698201snx@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au>, gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick) writes:
=
=In article <JMC.92Oct13215811@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
=
= > I don't propose any new incentives.  It is merely that once the
= > transportation costs are faced, there will be an incentive to
= > conserve deep topsoil in river valleys, because an excess can be sold
= > to improve nearby uplands.
=
=Until next it rains, and the soil is washed down once again. Perhaps
=the Professor is also promoting the sale of homing pigeons . . .

Never heard of terracing, eh Gil?  Maybe you should stick to ethnology.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: CARL@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL

Disclaimer:  Hey, I understand VAXen and VMS.  That's what I get paid for.  My
understanding of astronomy is purely at the amateur level (or below).  So
unless what I'm saying is directly related to VAX/VMS, don't hold me or my
organization responsible for it.  If it IS related to VAX/VMS, you can try to
hold me responsible for it, but my organization had nothing to do with it.
Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.environment,talk.politics.misc
From: pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis)
Subject: Re: Subsidies for Roads and Cars in the USA
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 92 21:32:55 GMT

In article <JMC.92Oct7115304@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>I do not offer to satisfy the religious - either those who think
>it is unesthetic to drive 1/4 mile or those who think that it is
>sinful to get one's electricity or vegetables from sources several
>thousand miles awasy.

Not having any idea who Prof. McCarthy could be referring to, I note
that:

	- if the American standard of living includes the statistic
	    that an average person will not walk more than 1/4 mile,
	    then his ideas about dealing with various problems
            will need to include dealing with an enormously
            expanded use of private, motorized transport for the future.

	- likewise, if the American standard of living includes the
	    ability to eat vegetables from any bioregion at any time
	    of the year, Prof. McCarthy's solutions will need to cover
	    a vastly increased distribution system when the world
            population reaches 30 billion.

Prof. McCarthy appears to think that I have some religious views on
lifestyle. I don't know where he gets this idea from. I am a strong
advocate of individual freedom, and have never advocated that the
lifestyle I believe would best suit humanity as a species be imposed
by any form of compulsion or abrogation of the type of rights found in
the US Bill of Rights. I do not believe that driving or eating are
sinful - I believe that sometimes, they are *stupid*. I have nothing
against stupidity, or sin for that matter, except that stupidity helps
no-one, and often makes life for others worse.

--paul



-- 
There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a
little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider
price only are this man's lawful prey.
						John Ruskin
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Sustainable lifestyles
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<JMC.92Oct14200937@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> <54833@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 15 Oct 92 17:22:16

FIn article <54833@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:

   In article <JMC.92Oct14200937@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
   >Some back of the envelope calculations suggested that the economics
   >is tolerable for short distances in areas with expensive farmland
   >where soil is the only difference between poor land and good land.

   Perhaps you are missing out on a profitable venture. Please let's
   all see these calculations. 

   yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu

I'll supply them when I get ready.  In the mean time it would be good
for you to do a calculation for *once*.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: Sustainable lifestyles
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 13:54:32 GMT

In article <JMC.92Oct9003559@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>Evidently my point about making top soil a commodity wasn't clear.
>I wasn't referring to selling land, which already is done, but to
>selling top soil.  In Idaho near Boise, land with good top soil
>sells for $4,000 per acre and land with poor top soil for $1,000
>per acre.  Someone who owns an 1,000 acres of $1,000 land should
>buy top soil from someone whose top soil is deeper than necessary
>and truck it to improve his land.  This would give the owner of
>deep top soil an immediate incentive to conserve the top soil,
>whereas now he can afford to let a fair amount of it erode away.

Assuming that the topsoil difference is the main cause in the
difference in price, it would seem that market forces have
already responded to topsoil issues and that those owning land
already have an incentive to save it.  If it were cost-effective
to truck topsoil to the degraded land, it would already be happening.

Actually, I have read that topsoil preservation has come a long way
in the US due to educational efforts by the government and that its
loss has decreased greatly.  Unfortunately, this is not true for
many less developed countries.  Apparently, some of the Green
Revolution agricultural methods have been found to contribute to
this problem.  They increase yield significantly, but not sustainably.
>--
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>*
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
>


-- 

		dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)
From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Sustainable lifestyles
Date: 8 Oct 92 22:08:00 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <JMC.92Oct7225619@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>The short term solution to the top soil is to make it into property.
>That way a farmer with deep topsoil would protect it, because he could
>sell it to some other farmer.  So far as I can tell, this doesn't
>require any laws, just someone to make a market.  A rough calculation
>suggests that moving it is bearably expensive.

I'm a little puzzled by this proposal. Is it your contention that 
most US topsoil is *not* privately owned right now? Have I somehow
failed to hear about all those Kibbutzim and collective farms in
Iowa? And, what's involved in a "top soil market"? Is it something more
than  the real-estate market? Do you envision farmers assembling their
fileds from purchases in a spot top-soil market? 

>In the long run we'll either have to chew up rock to make more or
>do without.

Chew up rock to make more topsoil? Care to sketch the chemical process
at work here? Inquiring gardeners want to know.

>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

"He who does set theory is doomed to talk nonsense"
                      T. Skolem (attributed)

-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu
Newsgroups: sci.environment