From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Population growth and cultural destruction (Re: Nast
Distribution: world
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 92 08:14:47 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1992Dec30.192317.1676@watson.ibm.com> andrewt@watson.ibm.com writes:

 > In article <725702732snx@tillage.DIALix.oz.au> gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil
 > Hardwick) writes:
 > >Please do cite just one occasion where I have insisted exclusively on
 > >graduate qualifications to post here?
 >  
 >    Message-ID: <724469845snx@tillage.DIALix.oz.au>
 >    >The *minimum* entry requirement should be graduate level, while the
 >    >rest get on with mastering the undergraduate basics. Or qualifying for
 >    >fresher entry to start with would help . . .

Any more, among the very many you filter out and ignore in pursuit of
your campaign? Just rewording the above comment, where in all my pleas
in this regard do I insist that nongraduates should be excluded. I do
not respect, again, your propaganda campaign.

Once more:
 > >The issue throughout has been on the standard of debate, expecting that
 > >people do at least some level of homework before engaging in reasoned and
 > >thoughtful argument on any matter concerning the environment.

 > But you don't do this.  For example, you posted that quolls are extinct.
 > Not only are there several extant species but one is found not far from where
 > you live. Your knowledge of Zimbabwe apparently doesn't even extend to its
 > location.  But when I point out your many errors, the response is another
 > 20 lines of blather, unblemished by any knowledge of Zimbabwe.

No, I do not do it perfectly always. I have never claimed to and I
certainly do not try to, especially when I have finally got the so
frustrated with someone. Again, the repeated plea has consistently
been toward raising the standard here.

Now, as to your two examples of my apallingly dishonest participation
in this news group, Zimbabwe as a geographic area is *physically*
located in the south east of the African continent. Please do have a
look on a map for yourself. The country is a sovereign political entity
is very much aligned with neighbouring States also in the south east of
the continent more generally referred to as East Africa.

You can rearrange that without losing any validity. The bloc together
pursuing Camp Fire Programs of which Zimbabwe is a member lying in
its south west, is in East Africa. Yes? If you have something more to
contribute on what they are doing there, please do feel welcome to
make your presentation here. If you do not know yourself, there is no
point having a go at me on that basis.

On quolls, I did subsequently post the fact that I had been reminded
that *some* quolls still existed on the mainland, where I had argued
that they existed in Tasmania. Yet you appear free to ignore it and
here appear intent on accusing me of some sort of substantial fraud
or dishonesty.

Your silly nit-picking points are pathetic in the extreme, especially
posed here as revealing a serious and fundamental flaw in my argument.
Sorry, you are most unreasonable and I yet watch for further clues as
to your ambitions for being so. I should let you know that I am not a
member of a political party, aligned philosophically or academically
with any particular school of thought, and indeed work independently.
So I don't know what you finally think you can achieve by wanting to
attack me embarrass me in any way.

Perhaps you were simply not around at the time, but when I had first
logged on here I was flamed most egregiously for being so bold as to
make statements concerning Catastrophe Theory, despite the fact that
I had clearly and explicitly introduced myself as an ethnologist, and
where I was posting from. Which my detractors failed to do, and which
you yourself fail to do.

I do not respect this garbled chatter among wholly anomymous people
claiming to be anyone at all with no further ambition in life that to
attack and ridicule all and sundry, and to the extent I get caught up
in it I make no apology whatsoever. Rather, again, (how many more
times must I ask!) let us make use of this resource to initiate a
substantial debate on the world environment, yes?

If you are indeed bone fide, Mr Taylor, how about getting on with it?

 > You claimed this here before about Australian mammals and I explained to you
 > why it wasn't true.  You responded saying you were ignoring me because I wasn't
 > an Australian citizen (I am). Let me try again.

I am glad you are Australian. The point made, however, which you once
again choose to ignore, remains very much concerned with intervention
by foreigners in the sovereign affairs of another country. The point
was made quite explicitly and clearly that Australians are free to,
and indeed already have, made up their own minds on the matter of
kangaroo culling. Had you identified yourself perhaps my wording may
have differed, but my intent remains.

What more do I have to say to you to be clear in my argument? Whatever,
you appear just as intent yourself on editing from literally thousands
of words an extremely few wholly marginal to my thread, you feel for
reasons I have yet to determine are going to embarrass or discredit
me. Sorry, not.

Further, as you also choose to remain anomymous, and so fail to openly
identify yourself and your business, there is little point in crying
about someone else not knowing anything about you, responding to your
political campaign posted from overseas intended to imposed upon what
we are doing here in Australia.

 > Although there have been a few extinctions among Australia's small mammals,
 > mainly hopping-mice with small ranges,  they have been relatively unscathed.
 > It is largely medium-size mammals that have affected.  From memory the critical
 > size range is 0.5 to 10kg.

Perhaps you are correct, give or take a few million feral cats. But the
clear comparison I made at the time was with *large* animals represented
by kangaroos.

 > One theory is that rabbits overwhelmed and destroyed the drought refuges
 > that these mammals depended on.  Sufficent fragments remained to support the
 > small mammals and the large mammals did not depend on the refuges.  It is also
 > likely that mammals in this range were more vulnerable to fox predation.
 > Tim Flannery's Australia's Vanishing Mammals should discuss all this.

I agree with you on this probable impact of rabbits. Again, however,
the political campaign you initiated was based on philosophical argument
against culling kangaroos which I in turn found reason to defend.

 > [In response to an example of an inverted biomass pyramid from Alan McGowen]
 > > Alan, you forgot the case of land reptiles (water pythons) which live
 > > off small land mammals (swamp plain rats) as their respective life-
 > > cycles replicate those of whales and krill, for example.
 >  
 > Last I heard, there wasn't a good estimate of the density of the Flood Plain
 > Rat
 > (R. colletti)'s density. The indications are it is extremely abundant.
 > Do you have any reference/source/basis for the claim that the Water Python's
 > biomass exceeds its prey

I never made any attempt at a good estimate, or even a bad one. And
most certainly my example was *not* in response to McGowen's inverted
biomass pyramid. McGowen's usually absolute statement was that inverted
biomass pyramids *never* occur on land, without as usual offering any
evidence or example in support. My query was on the seasonal biomass
of Flood Plain Rats (R. colletti? Thanks) compared with that of Water
Pythons, which however uncertain is sufficient to bring pause for
thought on the possibility, instead of berating all and sundry with
apparently divinely inspired absolute truths.

 > > cold-blooded reptiles just hybernate on it without feeding for extended
 > > periods over years while populations of the former wax and wane.
 >  
 > Reptiles do not hibernate, they may become torpid. I doubt Water Pythons 
 > much of that either.  I doubt even more that they spend years without feeding.

Sure, they become sleepy without actually falling off to sleep. There
is no claim that reptiles do not feed for years; as you wish to read
it please note my clear argument that reptiles do not feed for extended
periods, while prey populations wax and wane. Of course the pythons
feed as the rats wax, such cycles taking place over many years. Yes?

 > > A high turnover, BTW, does not equate with high productivity,
 >  
 > How can a high turnover not correspond with a high productivity?
 > Surely the replacement of lost individuals requires high productivity at
 > least at the species level.

It is no confusion whatever that a high turnover does not correspond
with a high productivity. There can be an extremely high rate of
re-production without ever achieving high levels of productivity,
especially on a seasonal basis with massive mortality rates being
experienced with the encroachment of the Dry Season.

Otherwise, I see that you are collecting items written outside my field
arising from arguments on the propensity of McGowen and others to just
sit there abusing other people and telling them what to do, despite
constant pleas from an anthropologist specialising in the analysis of
discursive structures on the environment to present facts and reasoned
argument instead as a far more effective way of getting their message
across (if indeed it is valid), only to be abused in turn. So, what the
hell is going on over there?

Perhaps, and to you also, there may be a great deal more involved in
the matter of environmental management McGowen cares to admit, at least
sufficient to risk entering a valid interdisciplinary discourse on the
various complexities to be addressed instead of prognosticating as if
you know everything already. Sorry, like Dr Vandeman you don't.

The other criticism of McGowen was that he might just learn to speak
in ordinary language instead of bogging the debate down in reams of
unmitigated jargon which makes no attempt to draw on examples and/or
field data the rest of us might get a line on. At least you appear to
have done a little field work.

Your political campaign, in the meantime, has run out of steam.

Gil