From: tyadav@athena.mit.edu (T.Y.)
Subject: Re: A minor problem
Followup-To: sci.environment
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 17:11:24 GMT

=======================================
 cross posting to sci.environment. 
 follow ups seem to belong more to sci.environment
 because [1] thorough-bred capitalists (tm) do read other newsgroups too. :)
	 [2] the discussion is almost 100% about environment.
 What is this newsgroup about? - TY 
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>simoni@strat.Stanford.EDU (Richard Simoni) writes:
>>No, I wouldn't go to that gas station, but the problem is that I probably
>>wouldn't find out that they were dumping.  By what mechanism are polluters
>>discovered and exposed to the public so that consumers can make such
>>informed decisions?  I think this is a hard problem.  >Rich Simoni

 I disagree that there is no way to know "they were dumping." There is.
 Do material balance - how much in, how much sold, how much is still in there.
 Install soil monitors underneath gas station....etc. etc.

 In general, discovering polluters ain't that tough. The tough thing to know:
 Is it really a pollutant? And at what level?

 lewchuk@cs.UAlberta.CA (Michael Lewchuk) writes:
>
>The environment does have limits.  We find them when we reach them, but the
>problem is when we reach them we usually have to back off a lot before things
>regain their balance.  

 I agree, that till now, this has been pretty much our (human) record -
 we have learnt about environmental limits when we reached tham. But, this
 to me, is an opportunity for novel scientific/technical research/study -
 predicting and modeling the real limits of environment. It is not necessary
 to learn limits after the event, what is thought and science for?

 Environment may have limits. But human ingenuity/ability doesn't. 
 For example, theoretically speaking, small amount biotoxins could be 
 shown as fatal to environment. But technically, the human ability/genius
 to process these is not limited. Later, I give an example from vaccination
 industry.

>It may not be possible for us to feed 6-8 billion people
>without doing major soil damage. 
> It may not be possible for us to maintain our
>present level of economic advantage if environmental damage to some countries
>which provide us with services render those countries nearly uninhabitable.
>Think of the computer you're using.  Tell me what it cost you.  Okay, now tell
>me what part of that was labor, what rough quantity of materials were used,
>and what environmentally dangerous pollutants were produced in creating it.
>Judging by the process used to create chips and such, I doubt that we are at
>the stage where all pollutants used are somehow miraculously kept out of the
>environment.

 All this is too speculative. Please don't treat this as a flame, but
 there are just too many "may be" and doubt based clause there. So, I skip
 analysing these.

>There are some big problems with pollution per se.  For one, it has next to
>no economic value. 
>Unlike "heat pollution" (which I didn't think was pollution
>per se), biotoxins are, well, deadly so you don't want to use them anywhere
>near living things.  The only thing they're good for is biotoxin disposal
>research at universities trying to manufacture bacteria which can eat thru the
>stuff.  

 Biotoxins can be formed during vaccine manufacture. But there are ways to
 keep them in check and monitored. FDA/EPA does set out limits etc., but
 having worked at Merck, I can say, that these limits are too outdated and
 ossified. Needless to say, that vaccination etc. industry is a profitable
 blue chip industry. The way to control biotoxins are numerous: don't make
 them, change the process/product; modify intermediates; add reactants that
 consume functional groups that identify the toxin....  
 Biotoxins have no economic value (perhaps that is why they are called toxins).
 But too many things seem to have no economic value in the begining. PAH 
 containing soot for example was considered to be a cancer causing stuff. How
 to safely dispose it remained interesting research area for some time. Now,
 researchers have found the same soot to contain buckminsterfullerenes (C60).
 Well, a new industry is in the making now.
 Life is not risk free. Learning always goes thru mistakes/hopelessness.
 Problems are challenges to be romanced with.

> Are you guys really
>happy dumping large quantities of toxins into your atmosphere, land, and water
>until your sky is yellow/brown, your water is tan-colored or green and your
>land is rated unsuitable for growing food? Are you happy reducing biodiversity
>until we find out how much of the food chain we're gonna lose if we keep
>hacking at the insects, trees, and birds?  Will you think that the world is
>a good place if those birds twittering in the park start dying of sulfate
>poisoning, and you don't have any birds to listen to anymore?

 No. Just working to understand/improve/excel.

T.Y.			(who thinks that human mind is an unlimited resource)
----
tyadav@athena.mit.edu
Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.objectivism