HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: 471-1@air.atmo.arizona.edu (E. Shane Jimerfield)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.environment
Subject: Re: Why do they hate us?
Date: 22 Dec 92 05:40:12 GMT
Organization: University of Arizona, Tucson

In article <1992Dec21.172458.9968@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes:
>In article <1992Dec17.015017.756@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> 471-1@.arizona.edu (E. Shane Jimerfield) writes:
>>
>>>In article  constant@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (Tino) writes:
>>>
>>>No, I think it's due to the irrationality of the environmentalists.
>>
>>What is wrong with wanting a better future for this planet. In most of my
>>studies of 'humanity' the most appalling constant found is the destruction 
>>of nature. Men have been at war with this planet for as long as history
>>tells of their struggle to dominate all things, including other men. It
>>is time for humanity to be welcomed into the 20th century with
>>technology. Most problems can be solved if one question is answered
>>before every action taken. That question is .. Will it bring harm to 
>>another person or animal. If the answer is yes, then it's wrong, don't
>>do it.
>
>Then curl up and die. Every action, or inaction, has harmful effects
>on *something*. What must be weighed is the cost/benefit ratio of an
>action. Humans have been "at war" with "Nature" for as long as history
>records. But humans view it in a different manner. They have been shaping
>Nature to a more useful form by taming and guiding it along channels
>they see as having higher benefit to *humans* while having less adverse
>costs to *humans*. It's a very speciescentric view, but it's the same
>view any creature capable of rational, or instinctive, action holds about 
>it's species. It's the urge that drives the bee to build a comb and a
>beaver to build a dam. The beaver doesn't care if he floods out some
>competitor species. He only cares that *his* situation is improved.
>
>Alan points out that human actions are on a scale and timescale such
>that large portions of other existing species can't adapt. He sees
>that as a cost too high to pay for advancing the interest of the human
>species. But like the beaver, most humans do not consider damage to
>competitor species more important than advancing the conditions of
>the human species. That's a risky behavior, but so is maintaining
>the status quo where humans are perishing today because of present
>transitory ecological balance points. 
>
>Gary

So, I should die, wow, it's kind of a unique experience posting to this
news group. 

Could you please post your definition of humanity, I would be very
interested to see it?

-- 
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.......
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: russ@pmafire.inel.gov (Russ Brown)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 93 05:58:17 GMT
Organization: WINCO
Subject: Re: Entropy (was Prey and predator biomass)
Summary: 
Followup-To: 
Organization: WINCO
Keywords: 

In article <1992Dec30.190812.11305@daffy.cs.wisc.edu> tobis@skool.ssec.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
>In article <1992Dec28.200413.38653@watson.ibm.com>, andrewt@watson.ibm.com (Andrew Taylor) writes:
>|> [this is a re-post of articles which appear not to have propagated from here]
>|> 
>|> In article <JMC.92Dec16193832@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>|> >I found _Population, Resources and Environment_ flakey in a number of places.
>|> > For example, it says that the second law of thermodynamics requires that
>|> >the biomass of a prey species exceed that of a predator.  The conclusion
>|> >is usually true though not always and has nothing to do with the second
>|> >law of thermodynamics, Ehrlich's venture into physics.  To the
>|> >extent that humans are a predator on chickens, it isn't true for us.
>|> 
>|>  I don't know if the laws of
>|> thermodynamics are relevant and it wouldn't surprise me if Erhlich, a
>|> biologist, was applying them incorrectly.
>
>While energy conservation is a purely thermodynamic principle, entropy
>(as Claude Shannon's work showed) is actually a broader concept in information
>theory, and the thermodynamic application is really only a special case.
>
>As both economics and ecology are domains in which exchange of
>information is central, it would not surprise me if there turned out to
>be meaningful applications of the second law within those domains. I have yet
>to see any evidence that it has been successfully applied in either domain,
>though. The efforts in that direction I have seen in sci.environment have
>all been misguided and muddled, in that they attempt to apply the 
>thermodynamic definition of entropy to fields in which it offers very
>weak and essentially irrelevant constraints.
>
>Does anyone know of any more sophisticated efforts by real statisticians to 
>apply the information theory concept of entropy to economics or ecology?
>
>mt
>
Georgescu-Roegen's book, "Entropy Law and the Economic Process", Harvard
Univ. Press, is an excellent reference.

Unfortunately, many posters appear to stopped learning about the
broader, i.e., non-thermal, aspects of thermodynamics, particularly
statistical thermodynamics, after they take their obligatory _course_. 
Many confuse entropy and enthalpy.  It makes dialogue difficult.



Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.environment
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Idiotic Japan Bashing
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Date: 29 Dec 92 00:14:43

I'm still puzzled about what is supposed to be in a 100 year plan.  I can
think of one 200 year plan that succeeded.  In something like 1780,
Benjamin Franklin put some money in a trust that was to last 200 years
and then do some good for the city of Philadelphia.  200 years later,
there was $6 million in the trust.  However, that plan had no detail.

Let us consider Japan.

In 1868, Japan decided to model its empire on that of Napoleon III,
Emperor of France.

In 1870, Napoleon III lost the Franco-Prussian War and was deposed.
Japan decided to model itself on Prussia.

Late in the 19th century, Japan decided to go in for colonies in
imitation of the European colonial powers.  It took Formosa from
China, occupied Korea and won a war with Russia enabling it expansion
into Manchuria.  In pursuit of this plan it fought a small war
with the Soviet Union in 1939 which wasn't successful.  I would
suppose that Pearl Harbor was in further pursuit of this "plan".
What isn't clear is how a plan is to be distinguished from a habit,
in this case the habit of imperial expansion.

[Was the U.S. expansion to the West in pursuit of a plan?  I'll bet
you can find someone who predicted it.  However, the idea that the
U.S. might take California was not apparent to the British in 1830,
a mere 18 years before California entered the U.S.  My evidence for
this is a book published in 1830 by "an Englishman" worrying about
California.  He thought the Spanish were losing their grip and that
if Britain didn't do something, the Russians would get California.
The United States isn't mentioned once in the book.  By the way
Abraham Lincoln predicted in 1865 that the U.S. would have a population
of 250 million by 1965.  His estimate was slightly high.  Does
that mean he had a plan, or does it mean that he was rashly blurting
out the secret plan of the executive committee of the ruling class?]

Note that Japanese imperial expansion was pursued at substantial costs
in other goals.  The money they put into matching the U.S. Navy
could have gone into pursuing manufacturing excellence.

At the end of World War II, Japan lost all its Asian possessions,
and subsequently pursued a policy of industrial and commercial
excellence, which turned out to be successful.  The policy included
a continued political and military dependence on the U.S.  It will
take some fancy footwork to regard this as just a continuation of
the previous imperial plan.

Perhaps the Japanese plan consists of advancing the interests of the
country using whatever means seems appropriate at the time.  If that's
it, then every country has the same plan.

--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Subject: Re: Foresty Service.
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Destructive Testing Systems
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 22:14:07 GMT

In article <1992Dec24.160535.1@acad3.alaska.edu> nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu writes:
>
>Stop by the local Federal Building and fine the Personnel Office..

Of course getting any Fed to actually *pay* the fine will be difficult.

Gary
-- 
Gary Coffman KE4ZV          |    You make it,     | gatech!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
Destructive Testing Systems |    we break it.     | uunet!rsiatl!ke4zv!gary
534 Shannon Way             |    Guaranteed!      | emory!kd4nc!ke4zv!gary      
Lawrenceville, GA 30244     |                     | emory!ke4zv!gary@gatech.edu
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: andrewt@watson.ibm.com (Andrew Taylor)
Subject: Re: Spotted Owl, Natures Way?
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1992 17:15:25 GMT
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

In article <1992Dec24.164511.1@acad3.alaska.edu> nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu writes:
>Question toall. Was the Spotted Owl going away becuase of human encrouchment or
>was it going away because of natural factors that if humans had not been there,
>that would have made the Spotted Owl extinct.

The Spotted Owl was not going away before man started clearing and logging its
forests.  However, this sort of observation is made of the California Condor.

Modern factors, such as DDT, caused its the Condor's extinction in the wild (its
now been re-introduced) but it had been in decline for thousands of years.
This decline may still have been caused by man.  The Pleistocene extinctions
of mega-fauna likely played a large part in the Condor's decline.  The cause
of these extinction is hotly debated, as they came in a time of climatic
change, but many think man was at least partly to blame.

Some say these extinctions doomed the condor and the mountains of California
and Baja were a dead-end for the Condor. Its seems to me they could equally
well have been a refuge which would have allowed the Condor to weather the
current unfavourable condition as it may have done many times in the past
when factors such as climatic change produced unfavourable conditions.

Andrew Taylor
From: mpolen@suntory.mti.sgi.com (Mike Polen)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.politics.misc,alt.activism
Subject: Re: Idiotic Japan Bashing
Date: 29 Dec 1992 17:30:46 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: suntory.mti.sgi.com

Michael Friedman) writes:
|> Tom Leylan) writes:
|> >mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
|> >  >jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker) writes:
|> >  >>but Japan supposedly has a 100-year enviro-industry plan
|> 
|> >>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?  
|> 
|> >Michael, May I suggest that your difficulty in believing any particular
|> >thing is due to more to your upbringing and environment than anything
|> >else.
|> 
|> You can suggest it, but youy will find it hard to convince me.
|> 
|> >You take a trip to Germany and you sit yourself down in a brewery that
|> >has been brewing beer for 600 years and you get yourself a sense of
|> >continuity.
|> 
|> So?  That does not mean that they can plan 100 years in advance.
|> 
Sure it does.  They can say:

	We will defeat the americans in basic manufacturing, even if
	it takes 100 years.  We will enact special legislation, interfere
	with their governmental and commercial organizations, undercut
	them, steal their patents, and take advantage of their stupid
	ideas about free international trade.  We will continue
	to do this even if it takes 600 years until we beat them.

That is a 100+ year plan.

I am not saying this happened, but there is not reason to believe it
couldn't happen.
-- 
These opinions are usually my own, sometimes my dog's,
occasionaly my (grown) children's, never my employer's.
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: 471-1@air.atmo.arizona.edu (E. Shane Jimerfield)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.systems
Subject: Re: Sheep in Organizations
Date: 23 Dec 92 09:15:49 GMT
Organization: University of Arizona, Tucson

In article <1gm3bcINNaia@access.usask.ca>, assmus@rocky1 (Bayne Assmus) writes:
>> 
> 
> Why do so many "so-called" environmentalists preach against   
> nuclear energy, an industry with a low fatality history (yes, 
> we know about Chernobyl, a tragedy, but the only real source 
> of fatalities in the industry) when thousands of miners a year 
> in the United States alone die of black lung disease (an average
> of 4000 deaths/yr during the seventies).  These deaths occur in
> a modernized country with safety regulations.  How many deaths
> occur in less developed countries that heavily rely on coal power
> (and we can't deny them the rights to cheap energy that has given us
> the standards of living we've enjoyed and abused)!
> 
> Maybe Greenpeace should start intercepting coal shipments
> --
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> cranky geoeng's doing grad studies in the tundra   

One of the basic problems that has been stated over and over again is
the waste, and what to do with the build up.

I am not real fond of using the argument:

  if A is not a deadly as B then use A.

Especially when B is a seperate issue. And in this case the 
potential for A to be deadly is high.
 

-- 
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.......
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu
Subject: Japan/China Bashing+
Organization: University of Alaska Fairbanks
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 23:48:45 GMT

MAjor problem with confusian philosophy if I remember my eastern civilization
class was it has a habit of stagnating a culture into thinking that there is
nothing new (remember old dark age thoought by St. Augustine of Hippo: That
there is no new info in the world..) in the world. Well gues what happened when
the Europeans got there, they pounded the chinese nation into the ground and
took what ever they wanted.. Japan had similiar problems, different or almost
similiar causes, but similiar outcome, they stagnated, gave away their over
seas posessions/colonies.. Yes the chinese and japanese once had over seas 
colonies before the west came to them c.1500ad.. 

Basically saying that confusion thought and Taoist thought is not all good.
Also the chinese kill a small number of girl babies every year or produce
more babies to get that "special son"..

Yes saying "BULL SHIT" as a previous poster said is not very nice and violates
ediquite (sp), but come now all, can't we be adults and keep our obnoxius
comments about the parentage and such to our own private email boxes..



Michael Adams
Alias: Morgoth/Ghost Wheel 
nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu

Sorry about this all, point I might want to make, is just becuase soemthnig
works or doesn't work in one country, does not mean it will work or not work in
another.. We must llok at cultures in full and not in part to get the full
feel and reasons for why, and such..

Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Development policies
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<1992Dec15.155026.11786@vexcel.com> <1992Dec15.155957.12052@vexcel.com>
	<1992Dec18.164247.17939@ke4zv.uucp>
	<STEINLY.92Dec18154507@topaz.ucsc.edu>,<1992Dec21.162017.9194@ke4zv.uucp>
	<1hnhloINNnna@gap.caltech.edu>
Date: 28 Dec 92 11:16:16

The bill setting pi = 3 was referred to the Committee on Swamps.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: has anybody heard of this letter?
Distribution: world
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 92 00:08:10 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1466602017@igc.apc.org> ecixdy@igc.apc.org writes:

 > Folks, you do NOT have to have a PhD. to know something about global
 > climate change.

I think the plea has been quite consistently that the base line for
discussion be informed and reasonable presentation of facts; 1. that
lay contributors have both access and significant input to the debate,
and 2. that a valid frame of reference can be established that expert
contribution is effective in making the debate a substantial one.

The response to Dr. Vandeman on urban transit, IMHO, is excellent.

--
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: mjvande@pbhye.PacBell.COM (Mike Vandeman)
Subject: Re: Alliance for a Paving Moratorium (Alert)
Reply-To: mjvande@PacBell.COM (Mike Vandeman)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 00:06:43 GMT

> > You are forgetting one little fact: your method is FAR TOO SLOW for what
> > is needed. According to the U.N., we need to reduce traffic by 50% to avoid
> > the greenhouse effect. Your don't-offend-any-old-ladies method can't begin
> > to do that.
>
>Yes, we are all quite aware of the fact that your primary agenda is to
>invoke panic so you can rush your policy proposals through. Sorry, but
 
Nonsense. Just telling the truth, unlike you with your heads in the
sand.

>Your operating model appears to offer but two choices, accept either
>the risk of dying from the "greenhouse effect", or the risk of mass
>destructiveness in the civil unrest you wish to stir up in the pursuit
>of your campaign to fast track policies before the planet "overheats".
>
>Well, we have had plenty of experience with the latter and know the
>risks intimately. The former remains entirely hypothetical.
 
You should talk to your countryman, Peter Newman, from Fremantle.
Xref: sparky sci.environment:14003 ca.environment:1130 ba.transportation:2960
From: mjvande@pbhye.PacBell.COM (Mike Vandeman)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,ca.environment,ba.transportation
Subject: Re: Save the Planet and the Economy at the Same time!
Date: 30 Dec 92 00:24:06 GMT
Reply-To: mjvande@PacBell.COM (Mike Vandeman)
Distribution: na
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA

>Great ideas, all of them.  But they are still just band aid solutions
>to the real dilemma:  too many people putting too great a stress on a
>planet with a finite amount of resources.  When we can come up with a
>real solution for curbing the current population growth we will ease
>the increasing strain on our fragile environment as well as alleviate
>many other ills facing society today (e.g. crime, poverty, education).  
>This seems to be too big an issue for any country, let alone politician, 
>to handle but one which will sooner or later need to be dealt with.
 
Agreed, but the solution is simpler: vasectomies & no kids (& I practice
what I preach). Also, behaviour is at least as important as numbers:
People who don't own cars do a lot less damage. Etc.
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.energy
From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz)
Subject: Re: Nuclear Power and Climate Change
Organization: University of Rochester
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 13:15:31 GMT

In article <p2qrxnc@dixie.com> jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes:

> First capital cost: If we postulate a scenario where the US
> commits to an  all-out conversion to nuclear energy, it must
> also be postulated that things that need to be done to
> streamline the process will be done. Things such as generic
> type-accepted packaged units, less complex fault-tolerant
> reactor  designs, one stop licensing, putting the intervenors
> back out on the  street where they belong and so on.  To suggest
> that a plant would  cost $1000/iKW is grossly dishonest.  One
> can examine the closest thing the US has had to a type-accepted
> design was the GE turnkey BTRs of the MkII generation.   Browns
> Ferry is an example.  A very good example since the first two units
> were about the last built before the nuclear hysteria sent 
> costs to the stratosphere.  Units I and II were built for a total
> cost of about $250 million.  At a MW capacity of about 1000 MWE each,
> that puts the cost at about $250/iKW.  Technology advancements can 
> comfortably be assumed to offset inflation over the period.


$250/kW seems awfully low -- that's even less than the capital cost of
simple cycle combustion turbines.

The recent USCEA study of the economics of nuclear vs. oil/gas/coal
for the next decade used cost figures for ABB Combustion Engineering's
new reactor design.  Even with its simplification, its "overnight
capital cost" is around $1300/kW (for a 1200 MWe reactor).  I find it
hard to believe that USCEA -- a pronuclear group -- would overestimate
the cost of reactors by a factor of 5.

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu
Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.politics.misc,alt.activism
From: tleylan@pegasus.com (Tom Leylan)
Subject: Re: Idiotic Japan Bashing
Organization: Pegasus,  Honolulu
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 05:18:05 GMT

mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
>tleylan@pegasus.com (Tom Leylan) writes:

>>In short they plan to exist 100 years from now, and they plan to serve
>>their customers and to have employees and your stock certificates will
>>still be worth something.

>Well, if you call that a plan, then most companies and countries have
>thousand year plans, not hundred year plans.  Of course, a plan that
>simple and with that little detail is so useless that you might as
>well not have it.

That is simply not the truth.  I'll bet that there are few companies that
plan to be around in one thousand years.  Many businesses not only plan to
sell out but actively prepare for it.  One starts a company, goes public
and sells out.

>A decent plan would identify key markets and technologies that the
>company should get into.  For example, I have a 20 year plan for my
>part of Oracle and another for my career.  

Your personal prowess aside, simply writing a plan is as good as no
plan at all.  I probably don't realize that Oracle is founded on a
company with a 200 year history in database products or are you simply
trying to convince us that a 10 year presence should elicit confidence
in any "plan" that pops up in your boardroom ?

You do not get it... it is clear and I'll stake my money that 100 years
after Oracle is dead and buried that Matsushita Corp. is still around.

Oracle can't plan the next 100 years any more than a 5 year old can plan
the next 20 years, that however doesn't mean that nobody can.

tom

Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: mjvande@pbhye.PacBell.COM (Mike Vandeman)
Subject: Re: Save the Planet and the Economy at the Same time!
Reply-To: mjvande@PacBell.COM (Mike Vandeman)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 19:47:04 GMT

>driving is to work and church. Since we consider such driving essential,
>we'd still do it.
>
>What WOULD change my driving habits is a better transit system. The 

That's what they all say. Except that no matter how good the transit gets,
it is never good enough for them. Transit IS good enough, for those willing
to use it. Which may include living near it!
Xref: sparky sci.environment:13997 talk.politics.misc:65571 alt.activism:19886