From: alaric@sti.com (Alaric Tekiahyn)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Subject: Re: Greens vs. Property Rights
Date: 7 Jan 1993 03:31:15 GMT
Organization: Software Transformation, Inc.
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: smurf.sti.com

In article <JMC.93Jan5203830@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>, jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:

Q: Where do you plan to house 30 billion people?

] 1. If the U.S. had its population increased by six, the country as a whole
] would be less crowded than New Jersey is today.

That makes about 1.5 billion people.  What if the population of Bangladesh
were increased by six?  They'd be standing on each others' shoulders.
(Coming soon to a third world nation near you.)


Q: Where do you plan to grow all the food necessary to feed 30 billion
 people, at current U.S. standards, without clear-cutting every last
 forest in the world?

] 2. That there is land was the conclusion of the old N.A.S. study.
] It assumes highest level conventional productivity but no new technology.

Achieving "highest level conventional productivity" is kind of hard when
you're farming soils that were poor when you started, and are now totally
exhausted.  As is the case in most of the Third World.  In case you hadn't
noticed, the Green Revolution didn't make a drop in the bucket's worth of
real difference.

Q: (And then what are you going to do about CO2
 build-up, after you cut down all the forests?)

] 3. If you cut down the forests but don't burn the wood, you do not
] contribute to the CO2 in the atmosphere.  One way of removing CO2
] from the atmosphere is to cut down forests and dump the wood in
] swamps in a reducing atmosphere.  If you then plant new forests,
] you get a net reduction of CO2.

Who said anything about burning the wood?  In case you haven't been
awake during the past year, current estimates are that what's left of
the tropical rainforests are providing ~60% of the world's oxygen
supply.  We inhale O2, exhale CO2.  Green plants convert CO2 to O2,
and 60% of that is happening in the rainforests.
And at the current rates of deforestation and population growth -
most of the deforestation being due to not logging, but slash-and-burn
farming - the tropical rainforests will be *gone* in under 20 years.
Many of them will be gone in under 10 years.

That's the CO2 buildup I'm talking about.

And please explain just what in nineteen purple hells is supposed to
be the point of cutting down forests and dumping all the wood in swamps
just to plant new forests?


Q: What do you plan to do about all the pollution generated by 30 billion
 people living the way the average American citizen does?

[I notice you didn't even *attempt* to answer this one.]


Q: What are you going to do after you exhaust all the fossil fuels on the
 planet (which will probably be in about 5 years, if you try to maintain
 current American living standards for 30 billion people)?

] In order to get the energy required by all these people, we would
] have to use nuclear breeder reactors.  In this case, very low
] grade uranium ores, e.g. granite, would last the earth for hundreds
] of millions of years.

I really hate to disappoint you, pal, but have you noticed that *no-one*
is building "breeder" reactors any more?

Do you know *why*?  It's because they don't really work.  A U.K. Atomic
Energy Authority scientist "blew the whistle" in 1979.

And the idea of using granite as "very low grade uranium ore", quite
frankly, is laughable.  Have you ever looked at the figures to see just
exactly *HOW* low grade granite *IS*, as uranium ore?

I'd also like to hear what you're going to do with all of the high-
and low-level nuclear waste created by enough fission reactors -
even so-called 'fast breeders' - to supply the power needs of 30
billion people at U.S. levels.



I've received one warning that you make a habit of posting flame-bait
to groups in which you disagree with the subjects being discussed, in
order to raise the noise level in those groups.  That's as may be, but
if that's the case, don't you think it's a rather foolish endeavor on
your part?
For the time being, I prefer to give you the benefit of the doubt and
ascribe your opinions to simple ignorance of the issues in question.



-- 
      "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom."  --  Thomas Jefferson
    ......................................................................
    Phil Stracchino : phils@sti.com : alaric@sti.com : The Renaissance Man
      PGP 2.0 - Freeware public-key data encryption.  Get it and use it!
           Finger alaric@sti.com for PGP 2.0 info and my public key