HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: The Ecocentric Criterion (again)
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 16:13:08 GMT

In article <724469845snx@tillage.DIALix.oz.au> gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick) writes:
>
>In spite of your noble ideals, Dean, it is a pity you don't simply
>knuckle down to getting some of that work done, instead of sitting
>their arguing about it all the time. What really does give me the
>shits is that some of us have actually spent twenty years and more
>of our lives analysing these issues, to find a mob of "concerned"
>fruitcake bloody ning-nongs who have not bothered to think at all
>seriously through the complex of issues at hand, jumping the queue
>to disrupt and obfuscate our discussions just when we are actually
>beginning making some progress.

...

>You are just probing and hypothesising here; apparently because you just
>don't know what you are talking about to start with. How about going and
>actually doing a bit of homework on these issues and then come back to
>us with something worthwhile to contribute?
>

My postings here are not the result of strictly personal musings.  I
have read books by people (yes, including non-US citiznes) about
these subjects and it is those attitudes and learnings that lead to
the ideas that I post.  It is not just random hypothesizing.  That 
you may disagree with them does not invalidate them.  

I really have no interest in endless arguments with you about
semantics or your criteria for participation on this net.  If it
doesn't meet your criteria, don't use it.

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


-- 

		dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)
From: alanm@igc.apc.org (Alan McGowen)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: The Outer Limits
Date: 18 Dec 92 06:47:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:hpindda.cup.hp.com:149180168:cdp:1466602009:000:2167
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!alanm    Dec 17 22:47:00 1992


I didn't mean read Ehrlich, Wilson etc. for information on the 
physiology of bioconcentration. None of them are physiologists. 
I meant read them in preference to the protestations of faith of 
technologists if your object is to understand the living world.

McCarthy reads Ehrlich much as a creationist reads Gould. One 
would be tempted towards a charitable interpretation that 
deliberate deception was intended, were it not for the chickens 
remark, which is too homespun an example of incomprehension to 
have been planned for effect.

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.  

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. 

------------
Alan McGowen   
From: alanm@hpindda.cup.hp.com (Alan McGowen)
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 19:34:26 GMT
Subject: An impact proportional to P, not dP/dt
Organization: HP Information Networks, Cupertino, CA
Newsgroups: sci.environment


	An example of impact proportional to P rather than dP/dt


For some time now there has been a "debate" going on in sci.environment
as to whether human impacts on the environment are proportional to
population size, or to change in population size. 

In ECO CENTRAL 24, I discussed the loss of polymorphism in a population
resulting from genetic drift, and showed that the condition for
stability of a population against this loss is

Ne >> 1/u = 10^5  to 10^6   for typical eukaryotes

where u is mutation rate per locus per gamete per generation and Ne is 
effective population size. This estimate excludes the effects of natural 
selection, but natural selection can only *reduce* genetic diversity, never
increase it. Loss of polymorphism at a locus means that fewer gene variants
(often only one, in which case the locus is called "fixed") occur at that
locus in the population. This in turn means that that locus can no longer 
contribute to adaptation in that population, since adaptation arises from 
shifts in frequencies of gene variants. Thus drift reduces adaptive potential.

Many ecosystems appear to be packed to capacity with species, i.e. there is 
no competitive "room" (on average) for additional species, except when room
is created through extinctions.  There are many lines of observation, 
experiment, and theory which lead to this idea, which is sometimes called 
the Red Queen Hypothesis -- the idea that most evolution is just "treading
water", competitively speaking -- just hanging on to the share of the resource
pie (the niche) that a species already has, in the face of competition. 

Where this is true, one consequence of it is that on average species exist in
total numbers that are just sufficient to maintain themselves against such
extinction factors as loss of adaptive potential due to drift.  Many species
have (or once had) numbers that are just in the right range for this (a fact
which supports the Red Queen Hypothesis, but does not depend on it.)

But those numbers resulted from the ranges which those species once had. 
Human development has reduced the ranges of many, many species to well below
those which they once held -- and consequently their populations are now 
well below the sizes needed to avert loss of genetic diversity to drift (and
often well below that needed for protection against more immediate extinction 
factors). 

That loss is an *ongoing* impact on the environment, resulting simply from
the *existing* converted habitat area, which is in use for the *existing*
human population P. Even if we had dP/dt = 0, this impact would continue 
to take its toll. Its effect is to elevate extinction rates in the future.



Recommended reading:

Futuyma, Douglas _Evolutionary Biology_, Sinauer

Nitecki, Matthew ed. _Coevolution_, University of Chicago

Soule, Micheal ed. _Conservation Biology_, Sinauer

------------
Alan McGowen
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: The Ecocentric Criterion (again)
Distribution: world
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 92 01:01:13 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <STEINLY.92Dec17150140@topaz.ucsc.edu> steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu writes:

 > Hey, if it makes 'em feel good to get all macho that's fine,
 > I feel no more obliged to evaluate my society by their standards
 > than they accept my evaluation of them by my standard. 
 > But don't err on the other side, is it any better in any objective
 > sense to be able to survive naked in a desert or wearing
 > a tie in downtown LA? 

Well, I never intended to imply that they feel *good* about it, just
that they accept their lot in life and endeavour to get on with it
instead of sitting back whinging and complaining all the time from a
position of coddled privilege protected from reality by force of arms.

Your question on whether it may be "better" in any objective sense is
simply not valid; when naked in the desert one does whatever one needs
to do to survive, as alone in the big city one does whatever one needs
to do there to survive. That is, one merely adapts and strives . . .

 > If some people do not wish to seek health, long life or
 > soft lounge chairs then let them go their own way - I do think
 > they should be presented with the option and allowed to make
 > an informed choice though - of course even that becomes a problem
 > when the choice is to accept smallpox vaccine (with attendant risk
 > of cultural contamination) or to suffer nobly, die or bear your
 > scars with pride... and remain a reservoir of infection to the
 > rest of us.

Well, yes of course. The point of the matter is that they are denied
such choice, usually by armed force against them if you care to pay
more attention to what is actually happening in most countries of the
world. There is no point criticising the very many who live on the
municipal dumps in the Philipinnes for refusing adequate health care,
as an example, without paying attention to the soldiers armed with
machine guns who guard the rich farm land inhabited by the very few.

The world is *not* democratic, and criticism of people on the basis of
their having failed to make the appropriately free choices toward the
betterment of their own lot in life is preposterous. Why don't you
criticise the real arseholes around the place instead?

BTW, there is *no* "cultural contamination" involved in technology
transfer and adequate health care. Such nonsense is the province of
the world's lunatics . . .

--
Gil Hardwick                          Internet:  gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                  Fidonet:  3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                         Voice:  (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *
From: len@math.nwu.edu (Len Evens)
Subject: Re: Bad science
Organization: Dept of Math, Northwestern Univ
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 01:01:32 GMT

In article <1992Dec15.223424.4024@daffy.cs.wisc.edu>, tobis@skool.ssec.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
> 
> And I for one am very irritated by this "true-believer" label that
> someone has been spreading to journalists. I hardly think that the
> law of energy conservation is particularly superstitious or irrational,
> and that, rather than models or historical data or superstition is the real 
> basis of the concern. The exact sensitivity of global mean surface temperature
> to greenhouse gas perturbations is a scientific issue of considerable
> practical importance. The tendency of the press to garble it into a question
> of "belief" or "non-belief" as if it were a question of faith with only
> two conceivable answers is both ignorant and insulting. (imho of course)
> 

Along these lines, I was annoyed by an article in the Science section of
today's New York Times.   It was reporting on the success of climate
modeling programs in predicting some events in the past which presumably
give greater credence for predictions of global warming in the next
hundred years.   The article spent considerable time discussing just
why this partciular research was significant, and I won't dwell on that
here.  (You can read the article yourself.)  However, the author of
the article repeated the assertion that relatively sophisiticated
climate models are the only sources for predictions of possible global
warming.   As Michael Tobis has amply explained in this newsgroup, there
are relatively simple `back of the envelope' calculations based on
well established physical principles which underly such predictions.
(Maybe you need more than one envelope.)   I had hoped for better
from the Times. 

Leonard Evens      len@math.nwu.edu      708-491-5537
Dept. of Mathematics, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL 60208
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Subject: Re: Hydrogen (was Natural Gas)
Keywords: auto fuel maybe, energy source no
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 18:01:55 GMT

In article <1992Dec17.000826.13708@daffy.cs.wisc.edu> tobis@skool.ssec.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
>In article <tkdcnf4@sgi.sgi.com>, jeremy@classic.asd.sgi.com (Jeremy Higdon) writes:
>|> Does it make sense not to use a resource that we have abundant quantities
>|> of, just because they aren't infinite?  Perhaps we will have perfected
>|> hydrogen by then, or fusion.
>
>Hydrogen may or may not be a sensible fuel for vehicles, but it IS NOT
>a plausible energy source. It does not occur in significant quantities
>in elemental form on Earth, and it COSTS energy to extract it from water
>or other compounds. This is a bit of confusion that is widespread and needs
>to be addressed somehow. 

Indeed, hydrogen should be seen as an energy *storage* and *delivery* medium 
in competition with electrical transmission and pumped storage. Pipelines are 
in general the most efficient methods we have for distributing energy over 
large distances in large quanity. However, very high voltage DC transmission
lines are beginning to offer stiff competition. Supertankers can go where
no pipeline or electrical transmission line can yet go, so for intercontinental
energy transmission, liquid and compressed gas transport remain the most
efficient ways of shipping energy.

Gary
From: alanm@igc.apc.org (Alan McGowen)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Carrying Capacity and Sanity
Date: 14 Dec 92 01:21:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:hpindda.cup.hp.com:149180155:cdp:1466601989:000:2186
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!alanm    Dec 13 17:21:00 1992


If sci.environment were a forum like ECOLOGY-L it would be 
inappropriate to subject it to the kind of cage-rattling I 
sometimes use. But this isn't a place for discussing research 
findings -- there is no commonality of background among the 
posters here, so that is almost impossible, and basically would 
be worthless to do. The closest approximation to anything like 
that I've seen recently in here (or talk.environment) is Michael 
Tobis valiantly holding out against some guy who thinks that if 
treelines aren't marching up mountainsides everywhere, global 
warming must be hogwash. 

The fact is that sci.environment for years was a plinth for 
certain arithmetical professors to declaim against 
environmentalism and to try to subvert every discussion into an 
argument about nuclear power. When I began posting in the group, 
I decided I would be an idiot to play by their rules  -- so I 
haven't. I don't think the results have been altogether bad. The 
biology content has gone up. I don't want to be the rooster who 
claims credit for the dawn, but I think I had something to do 
with that. 

As for whether controversy stimulates or represses "constructive 
thinking", I really doubt that anything I could write would 
influence a person's capacity to think constructively, or 
creatively, either positively or negatively. I try to provide 
materials, or at least germs of materials, but the thinking is up 
to the reader.     

But this is an old argument, really -- I remember it well from 
the 60s -- should we try to "radicalize" people and risk 
polarization, or be careful not to turn them off? I was, and 
still am, for the "push-hard" approach. That's one element of 
youthful impatience I think was sound -- provided the times are 
ripe for it. I think they are, again. It's time to raise 
conciousness -- principally in the readers. The regular posters 
are not the object here, or at least the rare ones who can learn 
(and they *do* exist) are not so fragile that a posting-policy 
should be formulated around not turning them off. Most posters 
can't learn, and you don't formulate anything around them other 
than exchanges intended for the reader. 

Alan
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.systems
From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: free Beyond the Limits program
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 22:29:20 GMT

In article <JMC.92Dec14134116@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>In response to my question about the vertical axes of the graphs in _Limits to
>Growth_ being unlabelled Dingo offers the excuse:
>
>     For the readers who haven't seen the graphs, each one
>     contains quite a few curves, each corresponding to some
>     aggregate measurement, such as population, industrial
>     output, etc.  To label a single graphs with a half dozen or
>     so vertical axes would be quite crowded.  Since each graph
>     started in 1900, they included historical values so the
>     future portion of the graph can be interpreted by comparing
>     to the first part of the curve.  To know the actual number,
>     you would have to look up the actual value in a statistical
>     abstract.  I believe that some benchmarks were provided for
>     this purpose for at least some of the curves, such as
>     population, but I don't know if they were provided for all
>     of the curves.
>
>We can indeed look up what the population was in 1900.  Suppose
>we wanted to look up the amount of pollution in 1900, what would
>we do?  Is it defined well enough to be meaningful, let alone
>look-up-able?

You need not look them up for 1900.  1950 will do.  Not all of the
aggregate quantities are fully defined in _Beyond the Limits_, but
a reference is provided for those who would like full technical
specifications for the models used.  The same reference was noted
by the poster who offered the software of the model.

>--
>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: alanm@igc.apc.org (Alan McGowen)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Something to think about
Date: 13 Dec 92 00:46:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1466601980:000:2754
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!alanm    Dec 12 16:46:00 1992


          Something to Think About

Let's do a sort of thought experiment -- except that this 
experiment has been run in reality.

The Indians of the US east and Midwest had used beavers 
sustainably for millennia. [We know that because there were still 
beavers there when the white man arrived, and the Indians did use 
them.]  The whites, however, did something to which the Indians 
were unaccustomed -- they offered large economic rewards for 
pelts.

Suddenly, the Indians began trapping beavers just as quickly as 
they could and selling them to whites (they were shipped to 
Europe and made into expensive hats and *very* expensive suits).
The Indians did not use new trapping technology -- they used the 
same traps they always had -- they just used them a lot more 
intensively. Beaver populations collapsed, and many local 
extinctions resulted. It was in part to find new sources of 
beaver pelts that Louis and Clark explored the interior -- the 
east had been trapped out. 

Now, if the relationship of the Indians to this resource had been 
entirely a result of ecological limitation, how could a change in 
economic *incentive* alone have destroyed the equilibrium? 
Something other than the ecosystem itself must have been acting 
to stabilize the situation -- something that was disrupted when a 
new cultural trait was injected. But what could a cultural trait 
disrupt except an equilibrium maintained by cultural adaptation?

It seems unlikely then that millennial stability of resource use 
can be explained by ecological limitation alone. Some cultural 
stabilizing mechanisms must also be present -- or how could they 
be disrupted? 

Obviously the cultural stabilizing mechanisms were not themselves 
stable against the disruptions introduced by the Europeans. But 
that is hardly surprising since they had never been presented 
with such challenges before -- they hadn't evolved in their 
presence. To my mind, the importance of these stabilizing 
mechanisms of traditional peoples to us today is not so much that 
they can be emulated to solve *our* problems -- rather, they 
serve as a kind of "existence proof", showing that it is at least 
*possible* for humans to live at equilibrium with the natural 
world. The thing has been done before, so we may be able to do it 
ourselves.

Another, more speculative, possibility is that we may have lived 
at equilibrium with the natural world for so long that we were 
selected *biologically* by these cultural adaptations, acquiring 
some propensities such as biophilla which might still help us out 
in our search for new means of cultural stabilization. We may not 
only be able to do it ourselves, it may not even be as hard as we 
sometimes think.

------------
Alan McGowen
From: mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark Wilson)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: E-Link: Ticket America Ca
Date: 16 Dec 92 17:34:43 GMT
Organization: NCR Engineering and Manufacturing Atlanta -- Atlanta, GA

In <92350.152940VIC@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> VIC@QUCDN.QueensU.CA writes:

|Auto-addicted netlanders show a real uneasiness about the TICKET AMERICA
|campaign.  I think they fear the truth about the real environmental
|destructiveness of the car will force them to alter their selfish
|life style.  They have been brain washed too long by the auto-makers
|who spend billions each year in advertizing.  According to one auto-maker
|the average person sees over 25 car commercial per day (10,000 ads per year).

|The car-addicts must discourage and intimdate any one or any idea that
|might make the truth known about the automobile's unhealth, destructive
|and enslaving nature.  They will conjure up all kinds of excuses and
|reason to justify their addictive destructive life-style and will
|encourage others follow their folly.

|"Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction
|and many enter through it, but small is the gate and narrow is the
|road that leads to life and only a few find it."

Of course self-delusion is a great way to make yourself and your ideas
seem more important than they really are.

Have you ever consider the possiblity that the reason people ridicule
you and your ideas, is actually because they both actually are stupid.

Nah, that would require thinking.

-- 
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: hsr@eng.cam.ac.uk (Haile Selassie)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Zambia, Industry
Keywords: Environment Info
Date: 17 Dec 92 15:42:01 GMT
Reply-To: hsr@eng.cam.ac.uk
Organization: University of Cambridge

Could someone please advise me as to where to get information on the
existing regulations concerning the role of industustries in
maintaining the environment in England and also in Zambia, Central
Africa.  I am interested in  any information that deals with or reviews
problems associated with third world countries in Africa with respect
to enviromental problems caused by Mismanagement of Engineering
companies and also with poor government safety regulations.  These
contrasted with the steps taken in England and elsewhere is interesting
to me noting that many Governments in Africa are proceeding to more
western forms of government.

Haile Selassie Rajamani
F9 Adrain House
56a Grange Rd
Cambridge CB3 9DH
England
Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.environment