HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: wools@athena.mit.edu (Aaron M Woolsey)
Subject: environmental recycling
Keywords: recycling
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 16:30:36 GMT


	My home is in the state of Vermont, who's largest city (burlington)
requires curb-side recycling.  My question is this:  in recyling things like
paper and plastic, what are the environmental effects of the chemicals used to
process the used materials and create new products?..in other words, is the
"expense" to the environment caused by reprocessing materials greater than the
"expense" to the environment through `normal' disposal and production?

i too am a novice in this subject.

Aaron Woolsey.
wools@athena.mit.edu
From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Solar Fuel Alcohol (Was Re: Mary Jane has a great Biomass)
Date: 11 Sep 92 15:03:45 GMT
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group

In article <KETIL.92Sep10164009@due.ii.uib.no> ketil@ii.uib.no writes:
>In article <1992Sep10.094034.10712@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman) writes:
>   >How was corn grown through all those ages before the age
>   >Dow, etc.?
>
>   It was grown at much lower planting density, with one year in four
>   crop rotation, heavy use of animal manures, and lots of hand labor. 
>   The yield in a good year, 60 bushels/acre, was about 1/4th the yield 
>   of a field planted with modern methods in only an average year, 240
>   bushels/acre. The labor input to modern corn growing is about 2 manhours 
>   per acre per year. In the past, the labor input was about 35 manhours 
>   per acre per year.
>
>   In 1900, one farmer fed 5 off farm people in the US. Today 1 farmer 
>   feeds 43 urbanites.
>
>One could also consider the energy spent to the energy gained. Or in
>other words, how many calories of energy do you consume to get grain
>that contain 1 calorie.
>
>I *think* the numbers are about thirtysomething calories spent in the
>US, and about one in ....Indonesia?  Per cal. of food produced, of
>course.

So you're saying that in Indonesia a farmer expends as much energy
producing food as he gets from eating it. Small multiplier there.
Energy is cheap, labor is not.

>This might be a better argument for the 'old way' if energy
>consumption is an issue. And it is, isn't it?

The more important consideration is the opportunity cost of labor.
At today's minimum wage, the labor cost of the old way is about
$1.66 a bushel. The labor cost the modern way is about 2.3 cents
a bushel. Quite a remarkable difference. Productive labor is the
scarcest resource on the planet. Always has been, always will be.

Gary
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: masuda@gpnws.geoph.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp (MASUDA Kooiti)
Subject: Re: USGS stream gauging data
Organization: Dept. of Earth and Planetary Physics, Univ. of Tokyo, Japan
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 06:40:42 GMT
X-Bytes: 1095

In article <1992Sep3.032929.19744@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
bobh@fuji.hwr.arizona.edu (Bob Harrington) writes:

>... I've since located a good source of
>stream gauging data for the US. A CD-ROM of USGS/NOAA stream discharges
>for 1948-1988 has been assembled and is avialable from Dennis Lettenmaier
>at the University of Washington. If you think this is of use to you, have
>a look at Wallis, Lettenmaier, and Wood, A daily hydroclimatological data
>set for the Continental United States, Water Resources Research, 27(7),
>1657-1663, 1991. 

Thank you. In fact, I saw Dr. Lettenmaier explaining his CD-ROM
at a workshop of IUGG assembly in Vienna last year.
One of my collegues have got one from him and
now we are trying to use his data.
I am still curious about availability of data of other observing points
or other time periods.

--
Let's have a macroscope!               Kooiti MASUDA
                                       Dept. of Earth & Planetary Physics
                                       University of Tokyo
                             internet: masuda@geoph.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: SCHLOERER@rzmain.rz.uni-ulm.de (Jan Schloerer)
Subject: Re: Gallup Poll on Global Warming
Organization: University of Ulm, Germany
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 16:56:29 GMT
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.24

In  <1992Sep14.121231.17480@wega.rz.uni-ulm.de>  I wrote

>   In   Thomas J. Crowley and Gerald R. North,  Paleoclimatology,
>   Oxford Univ.Press, New York 1991  (was finished sometime in 1990)
>
> which I haven't handy, I remember having read about the same.  Again,
> the warm and cool epochs of the past 500+ million years more or less
> fitted in with the CO2 record,  the Ordovician glaciation was "the"
> puzzle, and, as far as I recall, no plausible explanation was yet
> known for that puzzle.    ...    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^                

That's not correct.   And has meanwhile been corrected by 

       Michael Tobis  (tobis@skool.ssec.wisc.edu)
   in  <1992Sep14.171454.11959@daffy.cs.wisc.edu>     -   thanks !

We are a bit late in the backwoods:  when Michael's post arrived, the
following was already ready and as it contains some additional details
of the story:  perhaps someone is interested ...


The possible explanation has to do with the distance of the South Pole
from the edge of Gondwanaland  [Crowley & North, p 214-217, 225-227].
Gondwanaland or, for short, Gondwana was a "supercontinent" consisting
of what is today  South America + Africa + Arabia + India + Australia
+ Antarctica.  Gondwana moved as one unit through most of the Paleozoic;
the Paleozoic lasted from roughly 570 through, depending on the source,
245 to 225 million years ago.  Evidence for the Ordovician glaciation
around 450 mio years ago can be found in rocks from the Sahara.  At that
time, as far as is known, the South Pole was in Northern Africa, close
to the edge of Gondwana; later on the South Pole may have moved deeper
into the continent. The pole's distance from the edge of a continent
with the size and shape of Gondwana seems to have considerable influence
on the seasonal cycle, the idea being that summer temperatures around
the pole tend to decrease, the closer the pole moves to the continental
edge. Calculations with energy balance models have supported this idea,
and glaciated conditions seem to be possible even for high CO2 levels
if the pole is located in coastal regions. The authors caution that this
is a working hypothesis which "warrants considerably more testing before
it can be accepted."

With regard to albedo, I couldn't find much for that time period. During
the Ordovician, no land plants are known. Land plants seem to have first
appeared a bit later during the early Silurian   [W.B.Harland et al.,
A geologic time scale 1989, Cambridge Univ.Press 1990, wall chart, ISBN
0-521-39879-7].  The first "expansion" of land plants seems to have oc-
curred even later, during the Devonian; vegetated surfaces can decrease
surface albedo [Crowley & North, p 216].


Jan Schloerer          schloerer@rzmain.rz.uni-ulm.de
Klinische Dokumentation           Uni Ulm
Postfach 3880     DW-7900 Ulm     Germany
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Carburetors, gasoline, and why I don't recycle
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Date: 5 Sep 92 11:26:33

In article <18adv2INN9mn@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> bl713@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Lev Tarasov) writes:

   Conspiracy theories may be easy to generate, but within the 
   transportation sector, documented conspiracies have occured in the 
   past. The US used to have a large network of trolleys in its cities.
   To promote private transportation, GM bought many of these trolley
   systems and scrapped them. Now I would call this a criminal cons-
   piracy, though maybe others might just call it free enterprise.

Within the circles in which Lev Tarasov moves, the fact that GM bought
some (how many?) trolley systems and later stopped operating them is
undoubtedly sufficient evidence for a conspiracy.  However, not every
reader of sci.environment shares his assumptions.  Some of the rest of
us would like the following:

1. Evidencce of conspiracy.  This is a legal term.  It requires
several people getting together or several corporations getting
together to plan something.  Is there evidence that several companies
got together?  If they did and actually planned to abolish the
trolleys, this was illegal as a conspiracy in restraint of trade.  Was
this known before the statute of limitations ran out on the offense.

2. I don't know if you can have a conspiracy within a single company,
but I suspect you can.  Is there evidence that GM planned to do away
with the trolleys?  It seems to me that if you could show that several
GM executives got together and planned something improper, that would
constitute a conspiracy.  Maybe you could have a class action suit on
behalf of poor, black, female, gay people who were deprived of decent
transportation.  Since the steroid class action suits took place
more than 20 years after the mothers took the steroids, there may
not be any statute of limitations, and plenty of the victims are
still alive and litigiously inclined.

3. Have you eliminated innocent interpretations of GM's actions?

Maybe they bought the systems just as a business expansion effort
and only later discovered that they could not be profitably operated.
Is there evidence that they abandoned a profitable operation or
one that good businessmen could make profitable?  This might be
established by showing that those trolley systems not bought up
continued to be profitable, but maybe there aren't any except in
specially favorable locations.

What if they thought that the trolley routes could be made profitable
by replacing the trolleys by buses?  After all, they need not share
your authors' prejudices that trolleys are better.  By the way
at the time, environmentally minded people favored getting rid
of the trolleys, because they are extremely noisy.  (I was referring
to the noisiness of the trolleys, not that of the environmentally
minded people).

--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
From: shipman@zippy.gso.uri.edu (Scott Lindstrom)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Neutralizing hurricanes
Date: 11 Sep 92 17:41:06 GMT
Reply-To: shipman@zippy.gso.uri.edu (Scott Lindstrom)
Organization: U of Rhode Island, Graduate School of Oceanography

In article <1992Sep10.051801.22738@edsi.plexus.COM>, grimmund@edsi.plexus.COM
(Grimmund Blackwing) writes:

GB>I can conceed that it may be very possible for the human race to 
GB>take preventative measures against hurricanes, perhaps even 
GB>destroying them once started.  I question whether or not we will 
GB>be able to predict even the simplest of the long term ecological 
GB>effects of such action.  Like it or not, hurricanes are an 
GB>intregal part of local ecosystems and the entire northern 

What nonsense.  Hurricanes are NOT `integral parts of local ecosystems'. 
Hurricanes are rare events (lt's been 25 years since one hit Miami!)  True,
hurricanes are an essential part of the heat budget, and are necessary to
transfer heat poleward (and for that reason alone it's silly to try to tamper
with them), but any local ecosystem that depends on hurricanes is destined for
extinction just as surely as weather patterns change.


GB>hemisphere's weather systems.  Though blowing up an oil tanker in 
GB>just the right spot may seem like an interesting idea, wouldn't 
GB>preventative measures in construction and evacuation on the 
GB>mainland be a bit more ecologically conscious?
GB>
GB>doctor@edsi.plexus.com
GB>

Scott
--
   The only other sound's the sweep of easy wind and downy flake

shipman@zippy.gso.uri.edu 4017926509 URI GSO NBC Narragansett RI 02882
From: mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: "Paper Or Plastic?"
Date: 15 Sep 92 16:37:45 GMT
Organization: Oracle Corporation
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by an unauthenticated user
              at Oracle Corporation.  The opinions expressed are those
              of the user and not necessarily those of Oracle.

In article <JYM.92Sep14183235@remarque.berkeley.edu> jym@mica.berkeley.edu (Jym Dyer) writes:
>>> Which is better for the environment, paper grocery bags
>>> or plastic ones?

>=x= Failing reuse, the best long-term choice is paper.

Jym, what makes you think this?  Per pound you are definitely correct,
but a plastic bag weighs only a fraction of the weight of a paper bag.
Neither decays in landfills and polyethylene is a byproduct of the
petroleum industry.


-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am not an official Oracle spokesman.  I speak for myself and no one else.
From: howard@titan.hal.com (Howard Gayle)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Chronic undernutrition in developing regions
Date: 6 Sep 92 17:35:49 GMT
Reply-To: howard@hal.com (Howard Gayle)
Organization: HaL Computer Systems, Inc., Campbell, California
NNTP-Posting-Host: titan.hal.com

The 14 August 1992 issue of Science has (p. 876) a table from an
FAO report of 26 July 1992.  Here's part of the table, for all
developing regions:

Period   Total population (10^6)    Chronically undernourished (%)
------------------------------------------------------------------
1969-71     2 609                   36
1979-81     3 262                   26
1988-90     3 938                   20

In each region, even though the population is increased, the
fraction of the population that was chronically undernourished
decreased.
--
Howard Gayle
HAL Computer Systems, Inc.
1315 Dell Avenue
Campbell, California 95008
USA
howard@hal.com
Phone: +1 408 379 7000 extension 1080
FAX  : +1 408 379 5022
From: jkrumrin@lab3.smcm.edu (Jennifer R. Krumrine)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Environmentally Conscious Students Need Information
Date: 8 Sep 92 18:47:10 GMT
Reply-To: jkrumrin@oyster.smcm.edu
Distribution: usa

I am an undergraduate interested in finding out about computer networks  
which will allow students in a "Global Changes" seminar to access current,  
scientific information on environmental issues.  I have received  
information about the Global Action Network, Tufts University.  If anyone  
has subscribed to the Global Action Network, write about your experiences  
using it.  I would also greatly appreciate any information regarding other  
networks that may be useful in our seminar.

Jennifer Krumrine
jkrumrin@oyster.smcm.edu
From: eugene@ksr.com (Eugene Yi-jen Pan)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: "Paper Or Plastic?"
Date: 8 Sep 92 08:48:06 EDT
Followup-To: sci.environment
Distribution: na
Organization: Kendall Square Research, Waltham, MA
In-reply-to: kim@.cs.umass.edu's message of 7 Sep 92 20:07:49 EDT

In article <53056@dime.cs.umass.edu> kim@.cs.umass.edu writes:
> An FAQ?
> 
> Which is better for the environment, paper grocery bags or plastic ones?
> 
> I'm a novice environmentalist.
>                             
>    John Kim               Before you slip into unconsciousness 
>                           I'd like to have another kiss...

The best would be to bring your own bags to the store.
From: bj368@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Mike E. Romano)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Solar Fuel Alcohol (Was Re: Mary Jane has a great Biomass)
Date: 6 Sep 92 14:00:01 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc5.ins.cwru.edu


This discussion or thread concerning alcohol as a substitute fuel
for petrol, etc.....
I had originated the --MaryJane has a great Biomass Posting---
which pointed out a number of uses for hemp including a crude
fuel....then later suggesting alcohol production from corn.

Seeing where the thread is going, I have to make a few points.
Firstly, hemp has been grown for millennia and thus tried
and tested for all its utilitarian uses through the centuries.

Secondly, alcohol has also been produced through the centuries.
Further, corn need not be grown with any artificial chemicals
at all...is this too obvious to state?
How was corn grown through all those ages before the age
Dow, etc.?
Besides there are at least a dozen different commercial
methods for producing industrial grade alcohol including
a very efficient methods using anaerobic bacterial
cultures and paper pulp byproducts.
-- 
            Mike Romano     Univ. Calif. Berkeley
From: Global Action Network <gan@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Date: 10 Sep 92 09:11 PDT
Subject: Re: Environmentally Conscious Students 
Nf-ID: #R:umd5.umd.edu:15347:cdp:1466601761:000:1101
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!gan    Sep 10 09:11:00 1992


I responded via email to Jennifer as she requested.

Very briefly, for the moment here:
The Global Action Network (now changing its name to the Global Action
and Information Network [GAIN]) has moved from Tufts University to
become an independent project under the Tides Foundation.  We are in
the process of moving into a new office in Santa Cruz, CA.

GAIN's information regarding U.S. federal environmental legislation
is posted in several conferences on EcoNet.  We are considering making
it available in other ways and are in communication with folks at
SEAC and Student EnviroLink.  There are several college faculty who
use the GAIN information as part of their classes.

Normal GAIN functioning is continuing during this time of transition
and change.  GAIN will continue its current work and will be 
expanding.  We are in the process of writing a new brochure that will
be available electronically and in print.

Please send us email <gan@igc.org> if you would like to receive
our new information as sson as it is available.

Jennifer -- thanks for you inquiry.

Regards,

Bill

Bill Leland

Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: --Warming Threat to Economy
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder, CO
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 21:18:40 GMT

In article <STEINLY.92Sep10140417@topaz.ucsc.edu> steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes:
>In article <1466601760@igc.apc.org> tgray@igc.apc.org (Tom Gray) writes:
>
>
>   According to IIE's William Cline, global warming by a predicted 2.5
>   degrees Celsius (C) by the year 2050 will reduce U.S. gross
>   domestic product (GDP) by about one percent, or $60 billion. 
>   However, Cline noted, global warming is cumulative and irreversible
>   and is projected to reach 5.7 degrees C by the year 2100 and 10-18
>   degrees C by 2300.  The impact of the latter figure would be a drop
>   of six to 20 percent of GDP.
>
>Ignoring the ludicrous 10-18 K warming figure (what _did_ they
>do to get that? Do a linear extrapolation of 2.5K/50years and add
>nominal error bars? ) it could be noted that 1% variations in GDP
>are economic noise, and US growth rates are 2-3% per year long term
>average. Anyway, isn't the whole problem excess economic growth
>by the "North"? ;-)

I would assume they used an exponential growth extrapolation, which
would be more reasonable than linear _assuming_ no actions are
taken to limit CO2 and equivalents.  The growth that some
environmentalists (ala Club of Rome) complain about is not GNP
(money) growth, it is the growth in _physical_ throughput, which
may or may not correlate to GNP growth in the future.  And while a
1% variation in economic growth for 1 year might be noise, it
wouldn't be when accumulated over many years. In any case,
if the temp increased by over 10 degrees C, a decreasing GDP might
not be our most pressing concern.
>
>*  Steinn Sigurdsson   			 Lick Observatory     	  *
>* steinly@lick.ucsc.edu		       "standard disclaimer"  	  *
>* But, oh, love is strange 					  *
>* and you have to learn to take the crunchy with the smooth,      *
>* I suppose 				              - B.B. 1983 *


-- 

		dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)
From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Effect of Economic Thrroughput on the Environment
Date: 11 Sep 92 22:42:57 GMT
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder, CO

In article <1992Sep11.141829.25009@cs.rochester.edu> dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:
>In article <1992Sep10.211840.14872@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>
>> taken to limit CO2 and equivalents.  The growth that some
>> environmentalists (ala Club of Rome) complain about is not GNP
>> (money) growth, it is the growth in _physical_ throughput,
>
>A correction here: the Club of Rome said no such thing.  Indeed, the
>Club of Rome is (was?) not an environmental group at all, but rather a
>group of business types in Europe who commissioned a number of
>studies, including the one that was described in "Limits To Growth".
>That was a report *to* the CoR, not *by* the CoR.  Moreover, I don't
>believe the CoR ever formally endorsed the conclusions of Meadows et.
>al.

True.  The statement that I saw was attributed to Meadows. 
>
>BTW, there is no obvious reason why physical throughput cannot be
>greatly increased, as long as the fraction of that throughput that
>ends up as pollution is decreased.  Efforts to reduce pollution by
>process changes and other means have often been very effective, with
>orders-of-magnitude changes in pollutant levels (examples: scrubbing
>of gasified coal shown able to reduce SOx emissions [vs. no pollution
>control at all] by a factor of 300, and replacement of tetraethyl lead
>by other octane boosters effectively eliminating automotive lead
>emissions).  There is no fundamental law saying that a certain amount
>of pollution must be created per kilogram of industrial output.
>
>	Paul F. Dietz
>	dietz@cs.rochester.edu

While this is theoretically true, it hasn't been true in general.
Increased throughput has generally led to more pollution.  And
pollution isn't the only issue.  While I agree that pollution is more
of a limiting factor than resource availablilty, both are an issue.
The type of pollution control you mention above is due to
non-market regulation.  Using a regulatory mechanism to convert
throughput to a low-impact paradigm would be a highly inefficient
way for the economy to run considering the huge number of pollutants;
and this assumes that the regs are
well written, hardly easy to guarantee.  Unless a market-based
mechanism can be created to do this, I would doubt that throughput
can be increased without pollution increases.  I think that permit
systems have promise for globally-impacting issues such as CO2,
but I am not convinced that such methods will work well for the 
many pollutants that have local impacts that vary widely in 
different ecosystems.

-- 

		dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)