HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: Sheep, FED, Alaska.
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 15:55:41 GMT

In article <1992Dec24.162756.1@acad3.alaska.edu> nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu writes:
>> 
>Well instead od condeming my chances for even the chance for land, why not turn
>the whole state of Massachusetts into a park. If you so much want land for
>parks, why not create your own, closer to where people can actually use themm..
>Most people can't even get to the so called parks unless you like flying (which
>is not a cheap thing) or snow machine in which is not fun, unless you live near
>the park.. Im not sayin gpruvate ownership will save the wilderness, what I am
>trying to say is much of these so called park lands can only be seen by wealthy
>people. Such as congressmembers.. 
>
My understanding is that most of the Alaskan parks are there to preserve
wildlife habitat, not to create playgrounds for tourists.
>> 
> 


-- 
==============================================================================
A thought for the holidays:
   "Wine is living proof that God loves us and likes to see us happy"
	- Benjamin Franklin			dean@vexcel.com
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Enviro-industry on ABC
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<1gofcoINNik@gap.caltech.edu> <JMC.92Dec16171212@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
	<1992Dec21.164325.9562@ke4zv.uucp>
Date: 21 Dec 92 17:32:31

In article <1992Dec21.164325.9562@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman) writes:

   In article <JMC.92Dec16171212@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
   >Isn't the longest electric transmission line the intertie between
   >the Pacific Northwest and Southern California extending 1500 miles?
   >However, only a small amount of Southern California's electricity
   >comes over this line.  Does anyone know what fraction of the power
   >is lost to resistance?

   This was hashed out over in sci.energy a couple of months ago. If 
   you design for a maximum loss of 10%, the cable requirement is really
   quite modest, about the diameter of your arm for a transcontinental
   EHV cable with a 1000 MWe carrying capacity.

   Gary

1000MWe is about one big power plant.  A situation in which one part
of the country is supplying another part of the country with a substantial
part of its electricity requirements would require at least 10 times that
capacity.

What voltage was assumed?  I assume the transmission was taken to be dc.
Are there any losses other than resistive, e.g. ionization losses from
the very high voltage?
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: intimidation
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 17:42:58 GMT

In article <394@snll-arpagw.llnl.gov> hwstock@snll-arpagw.llnl.gov (stockman harlan w) writes:
>In article <1992Dec17.154634.9130@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>>not the sole basis for the concerns about climate change.  You
>>suggest that we practive conservation while we "wait" for better
>>data and theory but many people would not consider this to be
>>waiting.  I would agree that conservation and efficiency are the
>>appropriate tactics based on current knowledge and that is what
>>most environmentalists are calling for now.
>>
>??? I suggested immediately cutting down on emissions, not "waiting". If
>you base your decisions on dubious models, you will lose the respect of
>scientists and open yourself up for criticism at all levels. I would
>rather base my decisions on a conservative analysis of the size of
>CO2/organic sinks and sources as fractions of the natural sources and
>sinks.
>
>To assess any model, I generally follow the debate that takes place in
>the peer-reviewed literature; for climatology, this debate seems to be
>lively. Don't forget there are risks on both sides of this debate; I can
>find little good to say about wasting energy, but on the other hand,
>extremely rapid changes can sink a fragile economy and lead to backlash;
>the country (and the world) does not have infinite money to spend on
>solutions. I found the recent Consumer Reports survey of public
>perceptions on environmental problems to be very enlightening in this
>regard.

I guess I didn't explain myself clearly.  I quoted the work wait from your
earlier post because it seems that you don't want to wait at all.  You are
willing to take some actions now to reduce emissions. I assume you meant
that you want to wait before taking more drastic actions.  As to the
models, note that they are not the sole evidence, theoretically
speaking, behind climate change.
-- 
==============================================================================
A thought for the holidays:
   "Wine is living proof that God loves us and likes to see us happy"
	- Benjamin Franklin			dean@vexcel.com
Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.environment
From: len@schur.math.nwu.edu (Len Evens)
Subject: Re: NYT article on Japanese breeder
Organization: Dept of Math, Northwestern Univ
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 15:01:28 GMT

In article <1992Dec23.041913.6495@sugra.uucp> ken@sugra.uucp (Kenneth Ng) writes:
>The New York Times has taken money from various anti-nuke groups to run
>various anti Japan nuke program ads that look a lot like the paper itself.
>Its full of the standard anti-nuke balony, things that I thought were
>settled long ago, like the fallacy of plutonium being the most dangerous
>substance.  Its a cheap shot I know, but nothing unlike similar anti-nuke
>tactics.
>
>-- 

Now we are really getting silly.   The N. Y. Times along with every other
newspaper I have read accepts many ads from many different advocacy groups.
These include all parts of the political spectrum and all points of view
on all issues.   They also include foreign governments trying to influence
U. S. public opinion.   I suppose they would draw the line at the Klu Klux
Klan and similar groups.   The group that buys the ad controls the format,
although I suspect the newspapers try to limit the extent to which they
can mimic the normal appearence of the paper.  In any case, ads are clearly
marked as such.  No one who knows how to read is going to be fooled.   Of
course, the Times and other newspapers take money for such ads.   That is
the purpose of running ads: to make money for the newspapers.    I have
seen full page ads in the N. Y. Times supporting the Palestinian position
and condemining Israel.   Knowing the oft expressed opinions of the
New York Times on its editorial pages, I find it hard to believe that the
Times supports such positions.


Leonard Evens      len@math.nwu.edu      708-491-5537
Dept. of Mathematics, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL 60208
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: mjvande@pbhye.PacBell.COM (Mike Vandeman)
Subject: Re: Sacrifice (was Re: Save the Planet ...)
Reply-To: mjvande@PacBell.COM (Mike Vandeman)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 00:47:47 GMT

>My focus as an ethnologist, as you might well have picked up by now,
>is *not* toward one social group somehow "qualified" or empowered to
>solve problems for other social groups, while remaining insulated
>from the risks those solutions might entail. The model is very much
>concerned with communities themselves taking back ownership of their
>own problems, that those who bear the brunt make the decisions; that
>is, those who will suffer most from the solution have the greatest say
>in whether it should be implemented.
>
>Of course there is a role for scientific and all other expertise in
>such a model, although as part of the community itself engaged in a
>direct discourse on reality with people who live in it, rather than
>cloistered in academe or as agents of government imposing legalised
>abstractions of reality on people, especially where those people have
>no right of protest at the effects.
>
>Big problems are solved in small local increments by real people with
>their sleeves rolled up, *not* by the latest Presidential New Deal, or
>by "environmental friendly" officials in the White House.
>
>People don't have to sacrifice anything, just get on with it and
>*benefit*, for the same reasons you wipe your arse whenever you go
>to the toilet, or wash the dishes, or do the household chores. It is
>just *housekeeping*, fundamentally, and if you don't want to do it
>then you have to live in the shit accumulated around you, yes?
 
One teensy-weensy problem, Gil: wildlife have no say in the process.
Satisfying people is not enough.
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: tobis@skool.ssec.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis)
Subject: Re: Save the Planet and the Economy at the Same time!
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 00:01:37 GMT

In article <1992Dec30.213217.28678@vexcel.com>, dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
|> In article <1992Dec30.193316.11510@daffy.cs.wisc.edu> tobis@skool.ssec.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:

|> >In any case, with a long-term growth rate of 0 in the US case and 750%
|> >per generation in the Burma case, in 2.79 generations (assuming all children
|> >grow up and have families similar to the one they grew up in) the impact
|> >of the Burmese family will have caught up to that of the American family,
|> >and thereafter rapidly surpasses them.
 
|> These parameters are probably not linearly related.  If the population
|> in Burma continues to grow at its current rate, it is likely that per
|> capita consumption will decrease since their economy does not generate
|> the wealth to increase consumption at that rate.  Although poor
|> countries may have increasing GNP's per capita, physical consumption
|> tends to decrease with large population growth rates.

I don't think that these numbers are actually typical of Burma btw. I was just
going with the example provided.

But it is hard to imagine impact declining steeply enough to outweigh
rapid growth rates. (see my concluding paragraph below)

|> >The belief that a low-tech existence would allow the world's population
|> >to grow indefinitely is surprisingly common among people who think
|> >of themselves as committed to environmental protection. Unfortunately
|> >it is completely incorrect.
 
|> I agree that it is incorrect but I was not aware that it is common.
|> It isn't among the people I know.  There is a "fond" attitude about
|> low-teck lifestyles, but I wasn't aware that they were tied to
|> continuing population growth.

Ask around among your Environmentally Correct friends. You will find many
of them making the specious argument that because overconsumption exists
in the west, therefore overpopulation is not a serious problem. I believe
they make this statement because they are Politically Correct in other ways,
and are loathe to find fault with any culture other than their own.

|> >if you make the rough but plausible approximation that family size is 
|> >inherited, simple calculation of any particular environmental impact shows
|> >that limiting family size to replacement rate is BY FAR the most significant
|> >contribution any individual can make to sustainability.
 
|> If per capita consumption is kept constant, that would be true.  I don't
|> think that that is the case, however. 

If per capita consumption does not decrease exponentially at a rate faster
than the exponential growth rate of the population, it remains true. I
recommend the arithmetic exercise to anyone unconvinced.

mt
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Education and the Environment by Gregory A. Smith
Distribution: world
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 92 08:32:09 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <2934826781.2.p00004@psilink.com> p00004@psilink.com writes:

 > Well, not quite. Education (in all actually existing cases) involves 
 > something that might be called, neutrally, the transmission of values. 
 > This process will be referred to as "indoctrination" by those who don't 
 > share the values being transmitted. So arguments about "indoctrination" 
 > are really just mystified and confused arguments about what values to 
 > transmit, and (by implication) what the values of the society should be. 

Help us! This is the most convoluted goobledegook I have read anywhere
on the Internet. Why don't you just leave the kids alone and go play
with someone your own age? They are smart enough to pick it up as they
go along themselves, without you screwing their brains with this sort
of incomprehensible jargon.

McGowen likes children too, and worries about their consciousness.

Why don't you both find yourself a nice woman from among your own
generation to snuggle up with in bed at night, and get real, yes?

Gil

Xref: sparky sci.environment:14052 sci.energy:6503
From: pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis)
Subject: Re: Sheep in Organizations
Followup-To: sci.environment
Organization: Precipitating Pendulums Postal Party Poopers
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 92 18:55:37 GMT



Please remove this thread from sci.systems. It has nothing to do with
the charter of this group.
-- 
hybrid rather than pure; compromising rather than clean;    | Militant Agnostic
distorted rather than straightforward; ambiguous rather than| I Don't Know
articulated; both-and rather than either-or; the difficult  |   and You Don't
unity of inclusion rather than the easy unity of exclusion. |   Know Either
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Bandwidth burner
Distribution: world
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 05:19:37 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <2934731029.0.p00004@psilink.com> p00004@psilink.com writes:

 > May I take the liberty of encouraging a policy of non-response to this 
 > poor soul? I ask this as a favor, since I don't have the equivalent of a 
 > kill file and no way of prefiltering posts; I have to get all in order 
 > to get any, at a clunky 9.6 kb/sec.
 >  
 > Believe me, I hate that snippy net-police mentality as much as anybody; 
 > this is a cry for mercy.

Sorry, but you have to suffer like the rest of us in the name of free
speech. Hell, why not make the guy feel welcome, part of the group, on
a substantial learning curve as we all are, and less likely to feel
like sniping?

I mean, if he is out of work he is probably not in too good a mood
anyway. Kill files are the silliest thing I ever heard of.

Gil

Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu
Subject: Re: Corp Control, Shareholders.+
Organization: University of Alaska Fairbanks
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 23:56:44 GMT

In article <1992Dec29.175641.28581@vexcel.com>, dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
> In article <1992Dec29.034938.1@acad3.alaska.edu> nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu writes:
>>If people want to control the MEGA-Corps, then spend your money and buy some
>>voting stocks and become a SHARE-HOLDER.. After all who does the corporations
>>respect other than a high government official (maybe), the shareholders..
>>At least when they vote. I have one share in ARCO, and I can vote for that one
>>share.. IT might soon mean more than being able to vote in the US elections..
>>
> What an entirely frightening prospect.  I will not give up my democratic
> rights, compromised as they may be, to such economic voting without a
> fight.  As to controlling large corps by becoming a share holder, there
> are too many shares to have an effect and if the policies that am I am
> trying to affect relate to damage the company is doing to others, then
> that method should not be necessary.
> 
> Do you find such control by mega-corps any less fightening than
> the distant political control that you complain about?
>>
>>Michael Adams
>>Alias: Morgoth/Ghost Wheel 
>>nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu
> 
> 
> -- 
> ==============================================================================
> A thought for the holidays:
>    "Wine is living proof that God loves us and likes to see us happy"
> 	- Benjamin Franklin			dean@vexcel.com

What is the difference between having a voting share in a company and having a
vote as a citizen in the US? not much, other than you get the vote in
a democracy for "FREE?"... OR do we get it for free.. 

YEs I know both do not sound appealing when they both are so far away from my
residence.. Im on the opposite side of the US from Washington, DC and
we sometimes get no respect. After all the election for the President was over
even before we got to vote.. 

Time for the Nome national forest to grow.. (we take old xmass trees and
put them out on the ice, its a real fun thing to do).

I know I might get more repect if I had more shares (voting that is) than
I do from the FED.. After all in some corps you can actually get rid
of the President beofre his term is up.. (grin)..

True voting against the company can eb a real pain, maybe that is the
difference.. OR is it?
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Save the Planet and the Economy at the Same time!
Distribution: world
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 92 03:31:31 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1992Dec24.211950.7768@pbhye.PacBell.COM> mjvande@PacBell.COM writes:

 > Of course. But one can STILL avoid car ownership, if one tries, just like
 > we sacrifice to maintain good relations with people. We feel that such 
 > sacrifices are worth it.

This idea of sacrifice is a real bun in the oven. The criteria for
effective management of the environment must necessarily be based on a
high quality cost/benefit analysis for all cases. Already many of us
have "sacrificed" far more than enough, by putting aside far more
lucrative careers to study in depth the various problems we face in
common, and to seek globally an interdisciplinary discourse on those
problems that we can work through them and finally achieve something.

What we receive most often in return is the most egregious abuse and
personal attacks against us by the uninformed and panic-stricken who
want to jump on the political bandwagon to promote simplistic, one-
dimensional solutions, instead of settling down to work with us on a
total systems management strategy. I do not have to sacrifice anything
to maintain good relations with such people; unless they show they are
prepared to exhibit a willingness to enter good relations with me, we
remain distant.

Which is the largest single part of the problem in itself.

Now, I own a car among other things which by any reasonable analysis
assists me in pursuing by any reasonable standards workable solutions
to the global problems we have. On the other hand, you might like to
visit Guangzhou during peak-hour; getting stuck in a traffic jam of
*bicycles* clogging up a four lane highway for literally miles, with
whole convoys of trucks and official vehicles just stuck there until
it clears, is no rational idea of progress whatsoever.

--
Gil Hardwick                          Internet:  gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au
Consulting Ethnologist                              Fidonet:  3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                         Voice:  (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: "Michael Smith" <p00004@psilink.com>
Subject: Re: Suburbs: the great untouchable (Was: Save planet...)
Organization: Performance Systems Int'l
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 21:12:52 GMT
X-Mailer: PSILink-DOS (3.3)

>DATE:   Thu, 31 Dec 1992 14:48:39 GMT
>FROM:   James G. Acker <jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov>
>
>Michael Smith (p00004@psilink.com) wrote:

>: It seems inescapable to me that suburbanization is to blame for a great 
>: deal of our wastefulness and (environmental) destructiveness. This is an 
>: issue that few people posting in these groups address directly, although 
>: transportation questions, in particular, are inextricably linked with 
>: settlement patterns. 
>
>	Absolutely.  Though I have to point out, the two suburbs
>I've most recently lived in:  Columbia, Md and Reston, Va,
[....] are just a little too far
>out for a good transportation link.  The MARC trains which allow
>Baltimore to Washington commuting would almost work -- if I worked in
>D.C.  There is a park-and-ride system that would work (I could walk to
>the pickup-point) if I worked in Baltimore.
>	I don't.  I WORK IN A SUBURB, too -- as do a lot of folks
>around here.   The Naval Surface Weapons Command is in Silver Spring.
>CIA is in Langley.  GSFC is in Greenbelt.  The NSF move to Arlington --
>even with an EXtremely convenient Metro station -- is being hotly
>contested.  DOE has a Germantown Facility.  NIST is in Gaithersburg.
>Census Bureau is in Suitland, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Absolutely right; it isn't just residential patterns, of course, but 
work patterns too. All the facilities you cite, interestingly, are 
government ones, and could easily be relocated (over some suitable span 
of time) in more central locations, amenable to mass transit access. 
Zoning could do the same for private facilities. One element among many.


> Land ownership rights are
>practically in the Constitution -- so how do we at the grass-roots
>level change those ideas?????

Don't know that you need to attack that problem head-on; suburbs can't 
grow without plenty of government and quasi-government help in the way 
of road-building, tax breaks, infrastructure provisioning, legislative 
consent to the creation of these grisly little gerrymandered suburban 
municipalities.... Lots of levers there, without attacking the 
sacredness of Private Property. They worked in one direction; they can 
work in reverse. 

--Michael Smith
From: aq637@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John J. Lopez)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Atmos. Dispursion Simulator
Date: 29 Dec 1992 21:23:11 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: aq637@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John J. Lopez)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


Hi, I am looking for a simulator that will run on UNIX or VAX or anything
of the sort, that will simulate pollutants in the air.  I have worked with
a simular program that allowed the user to enter data concerning
elevations, wind currents, etc.

I would be very pleased if anyone with information e-mailed me here or at
jolopez@dante.nmsu.edu with any information on where or how I can obtain
such a program or program name.

Thanks.
-- 
John Lopez   646-3251        |  'Somtimes, it makes sense
C-119 Garcia Hall            |   to think--sometimes.'
New Mexico State University  |       --Guenter Habdank
Las Cruces, NM  88003        |
From: paul.burnett@pcs.sj.ca.us (Paul Burnett)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Idiotic Japan Bashing
Date: 28 Dec 92 07:20:00 GMT
Reply-To: paul.burnett@pcs.sj.ca.us (Paul Burnett)
Organization: PCS-BBS - San Jose, CA - 408-270-4085

TO: mfriedma@uucp

MF>>but Japan supposedly has a 100-year enviro-industry
  >>plan.

MF>I keep hearing this kind of bullshit.  Does anyone out there really
  >believe it?  After all, can you imagine the hundred year plan that a
  >business or company would have come up with in 1893?

Think about the hundred year plan Japan might have had in 1938 - they
have encountered a few technical difficulties, but seem to be getting it
back on track.
---
 . QMPro 1.0 41-8688 . ...from San Jose, CA