HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: parson_r@cubldr.colorado.edu (Robert Parson)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Another ozone question
Date: 27 Jan 93 00:59:21 GMT
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder

In article <1993Jan26.173513.1@cubldr.colorado.edu>, I wrote:

> 1. The whole process took hundreds or thousands of millions of years,
>  with the oxygen content of the atmosphere slowly creeping upwards. 
>  
 Whoa - that's a peculiar image there, oxygen diffusing upwards on a
 billion-year time scale? I meant that the concentration of oxygen in
 the atmosphere increased very slowly. 

 Wayne's _Chemistry of Atmospheres_ (Oxford 1991, Ch. 7) has a brief 
 discussion of the evolution of the earth's (and other planets') atmospheres.
 He reproduces a figure from a model calculation of ozone concentrations
 for various oxygen concentrations. With oxygen at 10**-4 of its present
 level, ozone is mostly at the surface, but even for oxygen at 10**-3 of
 present an "ozone layer" starts to form (down around 10 km, whereas the
 present layer is between 15 and 40 km). All such calculations are
 speculative since, as Carl said, the ozone loss rate depends sensitively
 upon trace constituents and we don't know much about what their 
 concentrations were a billion years ago!  

 Robert
From: sizex@bnr.co.uk (Eric Barber)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: archaeology and the law
Date: 20 Jan 1993 11:48:48 GMT
Organization: BNR Europe Ltd, London Road, Harlow, England.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.199.202.49

My wife has a semester project on archaeology and the law.
She is especially interested in the law on treasure trove.
Does anyone have any information on similarities between
British and other laws on treasure trove, or perhaps the
consequences of not having any? For "other" read Scandinavian,
Dutch, Irish, countries with legal systems evolved from the
British. Canadian would be especially interesting since the
law on treasure trove has been recently changed (from the
British model to something more suitable to Canadian
circumstances?).

please email me, and thanks.
Eric
   _    "just a Texan a long way from home"
 _| ~-. Eric Barber, BNR Europe Limited, London Road, Harlow, England CM17 9NA
 \, *_} AT&T/BT/etc. +44 279 403527/429531 x 3527, ESN (NT/BNR) 6 742 3527
   \(   DISCLAIMER:  Working at, not speaking for, BNR  | Eric.Barber@bnr.co.uk
From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Idiotic Japan Bashing
Date: 21 Jan 93 13:21:28 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1993Jan20.002834.27142@oracle.us.oracle.com> mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:

>For example, a 50 year hiring plan is
>ridiculous for almost any company because you don't know what
>functions will be automated over the next 40 years.

A plan doesn't have to be set in concrete. In this case you decide
what things are likely to be automated, what things may be automated,
the likely consequences, etc., and make a plan which involves a number
of options, decision points, and review points. It wouldn't surprise
me if there were Japanese companies which had 50 year hiring plans.
The point is that if you are right you come out ahead of the game, and
if you are wrong you come out no worse off than the idiots who think
the game is unplayable.

My business is robotics research, and I sometimes get interviewed by
interested companies. I always ask them about how far ahead they plan
and budget, because some of my research is long-term. I am staggered
by how much further ahead Japanese companies routinely plan and
budget. The big companies often plan, in informed and carefully
researched detail, many decades ahead, where US and UK companies will
refuse to look more than five years ahead. The last Japanese
businessman I spoke to said his idea of a _medium_ term company-funded
and -staffed research programme was twenty years. He also funds long
term research programmes, with big teams, not just a boffin in a hut.
How long is long term? He just laughed and said "Much longer than
twenty years!  For my children's children."

In the UK it is hard to even get funding in a University for the kind
of research routinely done by Japanese companies with their own funds.
With some notable exceptions, most UK companies don't do research;
what they call research is short term development. They expect
Universities to do the research for them, and hand them working
manufacturable prototypes.

And what is the West doing? Running down its education and research
infrastructure. It is clear that the torch of the leading edge of our
industrial civilisation has already passed over to the Far East.  It's
just going to take a decade or so before the man in the street and the
politicians reluctantly acknowledge what can no longer be denied. And
the Japanese will say "Western men are such good entertainers!" as we
tout for their tourist yen.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh          +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
From: 471-1@air.atmo.arizona.edu (E. Shane Jimerfield)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Constructive Posts and Bells of Hope
Date: 26 Jan 93 02:24:30 GMT
Organization: University of Arizona, Tucson

You simply type K when viewing a subject you don't ever want to see
again.

Peace
-Shane
-- 
Take 'er easy.... Shane
.watch out for the lightning (a large-scale high-tension natural electric
discharge in the atmosphere)......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
..informal... a sudden usually improbable stroke of fortune.......
From: jlacey@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (james.w.lacey)
Subject: Re: Cars and suburbs
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 21:56:09 GMT

In article <21JAN199323271566@pearl.tufts.edu> ddeocamp@pearl.tufts.edu (DANIEL M. DEOCAMPO) writes:
>In article <2936740077.1.p00004@psilink.com>, p00004@psilink.com (Michael Smith) writes...
>>>DATE:   Fri, 15 Jan 1993 17:27:30 GMT
>>>FROM:   james.w.lacey <jlacey@cbnewsl.cb.att.com>
>>[advice to use transit instead of car deleted]
>
>>>[....]
>
>>>While public tranportation is an excellent goal for Americans
>>>to move toward, we have to start with an understanding of how
>>>and why we travel so much by car now.
>> 
>>Very true. Car-dependency is the symptom; suburban sprawl is the 
>>underlying pathology. (There is, to be sure, something of a 
>>chicken-and-egg question on the historical level.)
>
>[...]
>
>>the transit facility gets paid ticket-by-ticket. What has to be 
>>discouraged is car *ownership*; use will follow.
>> 
>>--Michael Smith
>
>Are there no realistic ideas for a mode of transportation which caters to the
>individual while avoiding serious environmental harm?  I raise the question,
>but have no clue about an answer.  Even solar cars have serious costs (mining,
>production, etc.).  
>
>What I believe is probable, however, is that the costs of
>technology such as solar and zero-emission vehicles will be deemed acceptable. 
>Perhaps they are, especially in the face of the combustion engine.
>...

Part of the answer will be in a different direction:  information
technology.  Many people (especially professionals like software
engineers, for example) can telecommute rather than drive to
work every day.  If a person spends most of his/her time
at a computer or terminal, or on the phone, or communicating
via fax or email, there is no reason why that person MUST
drive to work everyday.  It only takes a couple of thousand
dollars worth of equipment to set up a home office (computer,
fax, speakerphone, even an extra phone line).  And if the
company is updating its equipment every two or three years,
the home office is a good place to direct the outmoted but
still functional equipment.  (Example, a 286 machine replaced
by a 386/486 at work.  The 286 goes to the home office.)


-- 
     Jim Lacey  --  my own opinions    
     email:  att!cbnewsl!jlacey  or  jlacey@cbnewsl.cb.att.com
     D'ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous?
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Constructive Posts and Bells of Hope
Distribution: world
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 05:30:22 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1993Jan20.202711.22349@daffy.cs.wisc.edu> tobis@skool.ssec.wisc.edu writes:

 > I am sorry to have been unclear. I do not suggest that any discussion not
 > representing opposite extremes coalesce into mailing lists. Far from it.
 > I would like to see more here from the moderate center. I only suggest
 > that a mailing list is a more appropriate tool for coordinating
 > strategies among like-minded people, while a newsgroup is a better
 > place to learn to understand and appreciate other points of view.

I really very much appreciate your saying this, Michael. I wonder if
it means you are backing away from your extreme religious views on a
single objective environment yet, that we may indeed engage a far more
moderate, informed, useful and practicable discussion on the real world
out here?

If you wish to save public face, e-mail would suffice.

Gil

Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: parson_r@cubldr.colorado.edu (Robert Parson)
Subject: Re: 1992 ANTARCTIC OZONE DEPLETION
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 05:27:27 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.014305.18111@gn.ecn.purdue.edu>, constant@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (Tino) writes:
> 
> From the same source:
> 
> <begin quote>
> 
> There are several other conclusive studies demonstrating that vast amounts
> of chlorine from seawater and other sources do reach the stratosphere.  Three
> scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, A.C. Delany,
> J.P. Sheldovsky, and W.H. Pollack published a paper in the Dec. 20, 1974
> _Journal of Geophysical Research_ ("Stratospheric Aerosol: The Contribution
> from the Troposphere") in which they document the presence of chlorine and
> bromine in the stratosphere from oceanic sources, noting that there is much
> more chlorine and bromine in the stratosphere than could be accounted for by 
> the direct injection of sea salt particles.  Delany et al. write that there
> is twice as much chlorine as "what would be expected to accompany the sodium
> in the sea-salt component of the tropospheric aerosol, and bromine is present
> in an approximately 200-fold excess." 
>
 
 More Larouchite pseudoscience.

 Twice practically nothing is still practically nothing. Look up the paper -
 it gives a mixing ratio for inorganic chlorine of <0.1 ppb at 11 km.
 (Which is about a factor of two larger than more recent studies that I
 have seen, see my reply to Woody Ligon.) Total organic chlorine at this
 altitude was more than 2.0 ppb.

> From Maduro and Schauerhammer,
> 
> "There has yet to be published a single scientific paper that presents any
> documented _observations_ (italics his) of CFC molecules actually breaking
> up in the stratosphere."
>
 
 How about:
 CFC mixing ratios drop off rapidly with altitude in the strat.
 Inorganic chlorine mixing ratios rise rapidly.
 Reaction intermediates (e.g. COFCl) show up precisely where the CFC's
 are dropping off.

  Robert
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Idiotic Japan Bashing
Distribution: world
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 07:40:53 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1993Jan21.181648.14468@oracle.us.oracle.com> mfriedma@uucp writes:

 > YOU CAN'T, BUT YOU WON'T ADMIT IT.

Oh, that's all you are worried about? My impression was that your
whole purpose was to flame all these whingers and moaners who are
giving you the shits, while I have from this distance been trying to
say, "Hey, wait, there is a little more to it worth thinking about!",
as I do persistently with McGowen, Tobis, Taylor, et al.

Blessed miracle, maybe we'll get somewhere eventually. Do you agree
then to work with me through an agreeable vocabulary so that we are
*both* able to proceed with a mutually intelligible discussion without
anyone over there screaming in panic for a kill file?

 > >    plan  n  an assessment of what must be done to achieve an aim;
 > >             project, scheme; large-scale detailed map; diagram of a
 > >             structure projected on a flat surface; detailed scale
 > >             drawing -- plan (pres/part planning, p/t and p/part
 > >             planned) v/t and i make a plan of or for; devise methods
 > >             of doing; regulate by a central authority.
 >  
 >  
 > Great.  Now, I think we are talking about line 1 of the definition,
 > correct?

Also, "project, scheme" *and* verb forms. It depends on what specific
context you are refering to for each case, but I am quite happy to
step through them one after another with you.

 > > > >How about a little less bullshit, 
 >  
 > > > That's my line.
 >  
 > >Please demonstrate that's the case if you expect to be believed.
 >  
 > It's easy.  Just read your verbiage above.

Ha! We can keep firing these one liners at each other ad nauseam, but I
am prone to criticising others for doing that so I'll not respond this
time.

 > Depends on the American.  GM sure as heck is.  Microsoft isn't.

Agreed, but there is also an entrenched counter-ideology of there as
well, isn't there? Which probably bothers you more than GM's situation.
 >
 > Doesn't Australia have similar problems?

Well, yes and no. We are not an industrial nation, but we do have the
same sorts of ideological and cultural origins as you we yet have a
very long way to go before they are to be resolved. Unlike China or
Japan.

 > >Sorry, you have failed to demonstrate in any way that you comprehend
 > >the techniques he discusses and I thought you might benefit from reading
 > >the book. Indeed, you open your argument here by suggesting that I am
 > >the one who gets flustered!
 >  
 > Once more, your point?

Merely an observation, yes? To which I yet await your further response.
If you want to toss back endless one-liners, as above I won't bother
to pursue it further.

Gil

From: alanm@hpindda.cup.hp.com (Alan McGowen)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 21:18:57 GMT
Subject: Re: Temperate zone habitat loss
Organization: HP Information Networks, Cupertino, CA
Newsgroups: sci.environment

Andrew Taylor writes:

>Geographic barriers are a key factor in speciation. Man-made habitat
>fragmentation could well increase speciation rates although you'd have
>consider its effects on genetic diversity too.  I'm not sure how well
>speciation is understood. There is plenty of debate about it.

Sticking pretty much to the mainstream view, the selection factors during
speciation are: local biotic selection factors and local climatic selection
factors. The genetic factors are the founder effect (a small sample effect
which means that a founder population need not be "typical" of the parent
population), and also the adaptive potential of the founder population --
i.e. its polymorphism.

By decreasing *species* diversity and *spatial* diversity (including loss
of ecosystem types) humans are reducing the differences between biotic
selection factors at neighboring locales (and sometimes also climatic 
selection factors when these are byproducts of organisms). I.e. this
reduces the chance that a founder population will be subject to unique
selection pressures.

By decreasing population sizes, humans are decreasing the pool of genetic
diversity from which founder populations can be formed, which in turn 
means decreasing the potential difference between founder populations.

Humans are also in many cases decreasing the number of actual founder 
populations being formed. This occurs when e.g. fragmentation reduces the 
chances of colonization as habitat patches of a given type increase in mean 
distance from each other.  Since very many tiny colonies undoubtedly fail 
for each one that speciates, a lowered (persistent) rate of formation of 
small colonies should also reduce speciation. Note that an increased rate 
of formation of small colonies will not often help if it is part of an 
overall reduction of numbers of the parent population towards eventual 
extinction, as this increased rate will not persist.

Qualitatively, then, it seems very likely that humans are reducing the 
speciation rate. Very little quantitative work has been done on this 
subject as compared to work done on extinction rates, in part because we
have many more opportunities to observe extinctions than we do to observe 
speciations. 

------------
Alan McGowen
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: Desiree_Bradley@mindlink.bc.ca (Desiree Bradley)
Subject: Spill (La Coruna) #1,#2
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 00:04:46 GMT

Very recently (probably early January 1993) a tanker ran aground and spilled
oil off the Spanish coast, near La Coruna.  That is the second time that La
Coruna has had a tanker spill.  I searched Enviroline for confirmation.  See
short citations below:

Gundlach, E., 1977.  The Uriquiola oil spill, la Coruna, Spain....
    (In MARINE POLLUTION  06/77)

Gundlach, E., 1978.  The Uriquiola oil spill, la Coruna, Spain....
   (In ENVIRONMENTAL GEOLOGY  -- a 1978 issue, Enviroline didn't say)

I didn't see anything in Enviroline that looked like a study of long-term
effects.  It would help in assessing impacts of the 1993 spill (the second
spill) if somebody knew if the biology, etc. of the shorelines near La Coruna
had been looked at between 1989 and 1992 - so that people would know if the
area had recovered from the first spill and populations of shellfish and
other intertidal invertebrates were back to what they had been before the
Uriquiola had its accident.

Desiree Bradley
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: "Urgent warning"
Date: 24 Jan 93 01:44:23 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <149180262@hpindda.cup.hp.com> alanm@hpindda.cup.hp.com writes:

 > A Nobel laureate in solid state physics likely has a much better 
 > understanding of how science works than does the average layman 
 > -- or engineer. They are much less likely to dismiss the work of
 > colleagues in fields other than their own out of political motives
 > than are the latter (particulary engineers, whose main difference
 > from intelligent laymen is that they *think* they understand science,
 > while the laymen know they do not).
 >  
 > Consequently when climatologists, atmospheric chemists, and population 
 > biologists sound warnings, they are apt to recognize them as serious.

Please substantiate with evidence, McGowen. Even some comparison among
college students for their comprehension, intelligence, and ability to
reason, before going on further to specialise respectively in solid
state physics or engineering, would be useful.

Else you need to explain what there is about solid state physics that
makes a person so brainy that nobody else's opinion needs to be taken
into account, or what there is about engineering that apparently makes
them so stupid.

While I think about it, what makes *you* so brainy? Are you a graduate
in solid state physics yourself, or something similar?

Meanwhile, your own abstract models yet need to be supported with at
least some attempt at proof, unless you are trying to make out that
science has recently been re-invented to suit your agenda.

Gil
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Constructive Posts and Bells of Hope
Distribution: world
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 93 03:37:42 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <18115@umd5.umd.edu> rich@astro.umd.edu writes:

 > I would like to join a constructive conversation on sci.environment.
 > Unfortunately the most common posters in this newsgroup have no
 > manners.

Yes, isn't it sad. In between the activists routinely flaming all with
which they find an ideological dispute, and the plagiarists feeling so
free to challenge angrily all and sundry for information on the cheap
when they are themselves just too damn lazy to do their own field work,
and I must add the odd fruitcake of a lurker waiting to pounce suddenly
on some inane irrelevancy, it can get very difficult indeed to sustain
a constructive debate here.

 > Can anyone post here how to create a kill file for authors using the
 > "rn" newsreader?  I realize that this is a bit off-topic, and might
 > be better asked in "comp.unix.questions", but this is the only 
 > newsgroup out of many that I read that I feel the need of a kill
 > file for.

Still, I do think kill files are the wimps' answer to the problem. It
remains that sci.environment is probably one of the most stimulating
and productive forums available on the Internet, especially tackling as
it does such a diverse and complex topic.

Perhaps as we proceed a few more of those who wish to engage arguments
put by others will actually do so substantially from the outset, by
presenting evidence to support their position within a valid scientific
discourse, instead of joining together in caucus trying to get the wimps
(I mean, a fool's vote counts the same as a scientist's or a scholar's,
doesn't it?) on side and have kill files installed on anyone they don't
happen to like.

Hang in there.

Gil

Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: Desiree_Bradley@mindlink.bc.ca (Desiree Bradley)
Subject: Re: Spill (La Coruna) #1,#2
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 22:08:26 GMT

> Desiree Bradley writes:
> Very recently (probably early January 1993) a tanker ran aground and
> spilled
> oil off the Spanish coast, near La Coruna.  That is the second time that La
> Coruna has had a tanker spill.  I searched Enviroline for confirmation.
>
> I didn't see anything in Enviroline that looked like a study of long-term
> effects.  It would help in assessing impacts of the 1993 spill (the second
> spill) if somebody knew if the biology, etc. of the shorelines near La
> Coruna
> had been looked at between 1989 and 1992 - so that people would know if the
> area had recovered from the first spill


Does anybody happen to know offhand if the La Coruna area recovered after
that first spill (which happened in late 1970s).  Or do people simply get
excited when there is a spill but find no funds from universities, research
groups, or private industry for looking at the area 10 years later?
What about Greenpeace which is supposed to be an authority on the effects of
oil spills ---- or at least gives the impression?
Desiree Bradley
From: paul.burnett@pcs.sj.ca.us (Paul Burnett) 
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Greenpeace press rele
Date: 25 Jan 93 19:30:00 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: PCS-BBS - San Jose, CA - 408-270-4085
Reply-To: paul.burnett@pcs.sj.ca.us (Paul Burnett) 

TO: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU

JM>I'm sure that plutonium is considered valuable at Sellafield, so the
  >quantities release are as "trace" as they can make it.

Granted - but sometimes things get out of hand.  Wasn't Sellafield
called Windscale or something like that in the 1950's?  They had a
Chernobyl-type fire/disaster of some sort, and more than a trace got
out.
---
 . QMPro 1.0 41-8688 . ...from San Jose, CA
From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Greenpeace press releases -- fact or fiction?
Keywords: not in MY septic tank...
Date: 26 Jan 93 03:54:45 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <C1Fpor.n1F@world.std.com> moroney@world.std.com (Michael Moroney) writes:
>yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>
>>Since Sellafield is acknowledged to be pumping Pu into the Irish sea,
>>on purpose, and since the British government has had to actually move
>>some beaches near Sellafield, and since there was a major fire at
>>Sellafield in the 1950's, we know that "tiny trace" quantities are not
>>as issue here.
>
>Once again, How Much Plutonium are we talking about?  How much is Sellafield
>releasing every day?

Once again: Sellafields operation is covered by the British Official Secrets
Act and accurate acountings are not public, and possibly unknown. The UK
government acknowledges 1/2 ton of plutonium over the last few decades
as I recall. Look in Nature or New Scientist.




-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu