Subject: Re: Plastic Worms
From: "\"Uncle Al\" Schwartz" <#UncleAl0@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 16:06:15 -0800
ANN JUDKINS wrote:
>
> My nine year old son is doing a science project about the effects of
> plastic fishing worms on objects they might come in contact with. He
> noticed that a worm he left on a plastic toy "ate" into the toy.
>
> He needs a SIMPLE ( remember he is nine ) explanation of what the
> plastic worms are made of and why they "eat" into other substances.
> Would you please e-mail me with your answers?
>
> Thanks for your time and knowledge, Ann Judkins
Plastic worms are poly(vinyl chloride) plasticized with lots of
dioctylphthalate (non-volatile solvent). Add a little and you get Tygon
tubing or vinyl upholstery covers. Add lots and you get a soft,
complaint, near-to-gooey gum. Like jello and water, over-plasticized
PVC can ooze or diffuse the solvent which is a pretty good solvent for
going after most of everything else that is made of common plastics.
Furniture finishes and oil paint, too.
Phthalates have been implicated as carcinogens (huge GC flame detector
response like almost all mutgens, but apparently harmless in cell
culture), and as xenocryptoestrogens (male feminizing agents). Blood
and IV fluid bags were phthalate-plasticized, as was plastic medical
tubing. When detectable amounts of phthalate started shwoing up in
everybody's blood and body fat, the use was cut back.
High temps, as in cars, tend to volatize the usual phthlate
plasticizers, making vinyl shrink, harden, and eventually crack. Vinyl
"restorers" are often water emulsions of dibutylphthalate rather than
the much less volatile dioctyl ester. Using them puts a
dibutylphthalate monkey on your vinyl's back. If manufacturers used
trioctylmellitate, trace vlatilization would not be a problem and vinyl
would last much longer. Who wants that?
BTW, "octyl" in this cse is "2-ethylhexyl" to be precise.
--
Alan "Uncle Al" Schwartz
UncleAl0@ix.netcom.com ("zero" before @)
http://www.ultra.net.au/~wisby/uncleal.htm
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children, Democrats, and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: David Shivak
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 18:46:10 -0500
On 22 Jan 1997 lightnje@esvx23.es.dupont.com wrote:
> I just can't resist the urge to jump into this thread...
>
> While I'm not opposed to the general premise that many
> tenured profs are retired on active duty I've got to take issue with
> the notion that I seem to be getting from some on this thread that
> THE ONLY WORTHWHILE SCIENCE IS SCIENCE THAT "PRODUCES", and that IF
> YOU DON'T PRODUCE, YOU'RE A LOSER OF A SCIENTIST....
> If you measure production by publication or narrower yet,
> product development, I think you're ingnoring important parts of
> real science.
...
> On the other hand "SUCCESS" in this sort of research
> is often what it takes to fly a paper in the SCIENCE/NATURE/CELL
> category (fill in your own list of journals of eminence).
As opposed to the majority of respondents here, I actually have seen a
few examples of qualitative estimation of a candidate's ability. One
committee member I spoke with said that too many papers in second rate
journals reeked of "me-too" research... that which does not originate
ideas but merely figures out the niggling details left over from someone
else's paper. While I'm sure some deans are of the "can't read can
count" variety, I don't think all are measuring scientific output with a
measuring tape (thank god).
One thing that has not been mentioned thus far in this thread is the
effect of job security on the students of faculty. Will a researcher be
willing to grant students leeway in their choice of project if he is
under pressure to keep his job by pumping out papers? I would think
one's best option in this case would be to hire a lot of hard-working,
unindependent students to get the most hours in the lab per buck. I have
seen some supervisors of this variety hand off the most dead-end (but
minimally publishable) work to students in the guise of a thesis... i.e.
doing repetitive, mindless experiments again and again, varying only the
protein / promoter / species / etc. While this wastes no time
"retraining" the student it does not encourage independent thought or
even the aquisition of new skills. I know that some supervisors will
manage the lab this way irregardless of tenure status, but would the
abolition of tenure tend to select for "efficiency measures" such as
those above? I think it may have already, as Art has mentioned, in
"soft-money" positions where tenure really means nothing but grants mean
everything.
Dave Shivak
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Shivak - shivakd@fhs.mcmaster.ca
"He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of
cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out
to warm the air in raw inclement summers." - Jonathan Swift, _Gulliver's
Travels_, Ch. 5.
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: "Arthur E. Sowers"
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 22:45:11 -0500
On Wed, 22 Jan 1997, Michael Dworetsky wrote:
> In article <32E53D4D.5337@ultranet.com> chucksz@scientist.com writes:
> >Lawrence R. Mead wrote:
> >>
> >> Dettol (mikeh@gold.chem.hawaii.edu) wrote:
> >[snip]
>
> In following this mainly American thread, I see that no one has hit upon
> the uniquely British solution incorporated in the 1988 Education Act by
> the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher.
>
> Tenure for all new employment contracts was abolished so that academics
> could be dismissed for 'good cause' (I won't go into details, but imagine
> the lengthy and difficult process of setting up tribunals, appeals,
> etc--there have been very few dismissals for this reason) or for reasons
> of 'financial redundancy', e.g., if one's university was no longer going
> to have a department or group teaching and researching one's subject. The
> latter provision has been the subject of some abuse by administrations,
> according to the university staff unions.
>
> The Education Act specifically has protections of free speech written
> into it to counter the claim that tenure is required in order to protect
> freedom to advocate unpopular or unusual ideas. I'm not sure how well
> this works in practice.
>
> What is bizarre, of course, is that being promoted in effect changes
> one's contract, so that ***those who earn promotion*** (mainly through
> research excellence, though teaching also counts) lose tenure, but those
> who are unpromotable (or, at least, unpromoted--even if deserving) retain
> tenure if their contract was dated before 1988.
>
> I understand that in the USA one receives tenure upon promotion.
Not necessarily. Many schools, particularly medical and health science
centers, have been or are planning to separate promotion from tenure
consideration. Many schools (particularly the ones in the limelight) have
also separated the "appointment" from the salary. They have also linked
the salary in many cases to grants, and de-linked the salary either mostly
or completely from institutional resources. This means that if you lose
your grant, you lose your job. I know of many examples where tenure means
that if you lose your grant, then your paycheck goes immediately down to
50% of full salary for one year. After that one year, if you don't get
your grant support back, then your salary goes to zero. Sure, the
appointment is tenured. You have, maybe, an office. But your lab gets
taken away. This is not that common, but on the other hand, I've heard of
it from a good number of people I know.
Art Sowers
-------------------------------------------------------
Written in the public interest, the essays on
"Contemporary Problems in Science Jobs" are located at:
http://www.access.digex.net/~arthures/homepage.htm
Snail mail adr to me: P.O.Box 489, Georgetown, DE 19947
-------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: "Arthur E. Sowers"
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 23:02:51 -0500
On Tue, 21 Jan 1997, Marc Andelman wrote:
> Hi Mike. I whole heartledly agree. I would go one better, however, and
> modestly propose that we abolish academia. Sort of put it out of
> it's own misery. In fact, it could abolish itself once the information
> age helps expose such atavistic anachronisms of inefficency .
> ( I am not Pat Buchanan, Spiro Agnew's speach writer). The universities are
> like an old line industry that has sunk it's capital into innefficient plant and
> equipment. They cannot change.
>
>
> Regards,
> Marc Andelman
>
>
Hi Marc,
I disagree. I think there should be places where advanced study can take
place. This study should not be targetted. It should be funded with better
long term assurance than the 2-3-4 year funding periods in present grants
or better chances for funding renewal. Currently, a given NIH grant has a
30% + chance of non renewal on the first renewal, and a 60% chance on the
second competitive renewal. We now have most PIs spending 6-9 months of
each year writing, rewriting, and resubmitting proposals instead of doing
more reading in the library, better manuscript preparation, and better
thinking.
I certainly cannot recommend to a young person who is really excited about
doing research all of his life to spend 5-7 years getting a PhD, another
5-10 years on one or more postdocs (expanding his CV while waiting for a
faculty position), and then waiting another 5-6 years to come up for
tenure and then get dumped out on the street if his funding lapses for one
or two years. I actually know some very good people who had the "grant
lottery" misfortune and were saved because they had tenure. Within 1-2
years they got their grants back. But the disruption in research progress
was also damaging.
We can argue about details, but research is a long term operation. Even
product development (eg. by drug companies) is a long term operation, and
they usually come up with the funding for it from their own resources or
investors, etc.
Art Sowers
-------------------------------------------------------
Written in the public interest, the essays on
"Contemporary Problems in Science Jobs" are located at:
http://www.access.digex.net/~arthures/homepage.htm
Snail mail adr to me: P.O.Box 489, Georgetown, DE 19947
-------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: ABOLISH ACADEMIC TENURE
From: "Arthur E. Sowers"
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 23:21:03 -0500
Mike gave us his anti-tenure thoughts without giving us his situation
vis-a-vis the subject. I have seen, in my days, tenured faculty who
exemplified the epidomy of lazyness, arrogance, unreasonableness, and
being generally out-of-touch-with-the-world. I have met secretaries,
janitors, and members of our military that were better human beings than
some profs. Academia (and its culture) has its own peculiar version of
"rot" which alows a lot of unfairness be perpetuated (I have on
my web page a series of essays devoted to parts of this situation). If
anyone, mark my words, will compare the fraud, deceit, lies, chicanery,
and malfeasance on campuses with what goes on in the
industrial/commercial/government cultures, then it is miniscule by
comparison. People who are rich can often get away with murder (and other
crimes), figuratively or literally. There are many many books written
about these areas and if Mike really wants to get mad about something,
I'll post some titles for him to read.
Pure academic campuses are where a tenured prof may enjoy a
status which is highly "protected." However, that, and the priveledges
Mike refers to below, do not tell the whole story. First, tenure, per se,
does not mean permanent employment in many many cases. Many many campuses
are, or already have, watered down tenure to the point where it means very
little (this is also covered in my essays on my web page). In a large
number of cases, tenure may be associated with the "appointment," only.
Its relationship to the salary is quite another thing. At a large fraction
of the better schools, at least a minor fraction comes from grant money.
For many faculty, 100% of the salary comes from grants. What good is
tenure if one's salary drops to 10-20% of "normal?" This situation, as far
as I have been able to determine is the case for a significant fraction of
the faculty at medical schools (medical school faculty account for about
10% of all faculty [USA statistics]). The situation in many
non-medical health science schools is similar. And, tenure-track positions
are being abolished for new faculty at many campuses and being replaced
with "postions" which are tenure-eligible, but I know from people in some
of these departments that chairs have been not recommending tenure for
many years.
At non-medical schools, what is happening is that many faculty are being
hired in non-tenure track or "adjunct" postions which have lower pay,
little or zero fringe benefits, and are characterized with zero job
security (their appointment may not be renewed and no reason need be given
for this regardless of how well they perform; most people, in general, are
not aware that even in tenure-track positions, a chair can usually
terminate a faculty member with approximately zero (if you count minutes)
notice (I have heard of several cases and have documentation for this) and
this having nothing to do with performance, but politics (eg. the faculty
member did something to piss off the chair). I know of one case in a
medical school where a new chair came into the department and literally
fired the whole faculty (obviously no one had tenure) lock, stock, and
barrel.
So, this is the purpose of tenure. Chairs have incredible power and deans
almost never (oh, maybe 0.0001% of the time) meddle with a chair's
operations (I can cite maybe two cases where I know of publication of the
information and I know of a couple of cases where the removal of a chair
was hushed up very effectively). Again, this is more in health science
campuses, but I have heard similar stories from departments at some of the
most limelight of campuses.
I have a faculty handbook which devotes extensive space to how much
professional commitment a faculty member MUST have towards his/her
institution, but there is practically nothing about any commitment on the
part of the institution towards the faculty member (except for annual and
sick leave). I would like to go into some detail about this someday.
But, I favor tenure (and not just in appointment, but also for a
significant fraction of the FTE salary) because:
To become a prof at any worthy institution requires not only grad
school to a PhD (or other Dr degree), but usually at least 4-5, and up to
10 years of postdocing. We're talking about major commitment and devotion
of a very large part of ones best adult years (not to mention possible
debt financing) to preparation for devoting a lifetime to an indepth
study. Although this is primarily for the sciences, I respect all other
intellectual endeavors as well (arts, music, humanities, etc.). Why should
one piss away their life for stupid one year appointments? Uncertainty of
grant renewal in the sciences. And when the grant funding does not get
renewed, the guy in question gets dumped down the chute into the trash can
without even a going away party AND finds that the outside
industrial-commercial world will probably view him as overqualified for
almost everything from McDonald's burger flipping and Wal-Mar floor people
on up.
Try to think of nonfaculty people who have job security and good
paycheck security that are above that of most faculty and are also not
accountable. I can think of many corporate officers, employees within our
law enforcement infrastructure, a large fraction of our military
personnel, and many support staff infrastructures, to name a few. I think
if we add all of these up, we will find a much larger population of people
with all of the characteristics Mike listed for his "model" tenured prof.
Thank you for your time and attention, and forgive my bad spelling
tallents,
Art Sowers
-------------------------------------------------------
Written in the public interest, the essays on
"Contemporary Problems in Science Jobs" are located at:
http://www.access.digex.net/~arthures/homepage.htm
Snail mail adr to me: P.O.Box 489, Georgetown, DE 19947
-------------------------------------------------------
=== no change to below, included for reference and context ====
On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Dettol wrote:
> DOES ACADEMIC TENURE HAVE ANY PLACE IN THE MODERN WORLD?
>
> I find the whole idea of someone being given a job for life abhorrent
> but I think what irritates me the most about academia is the lack of
> accountability of tenured staff.
>
> I'd like to hear if anyone knows of a tenured academic who has been
> sacked for poor performance. I am personally aware of two academics
> who have been sacked [one broke the law (theft of university property)
> and the other was "invited to retire" rather than face a harassment
> suite] but none who have even been discipline for poor performance.
>
> What is so special about academics that they deserve privileged
> treatment? The idea of a job for life has been tried in the broader
> community and has failed. The reasons for the failure are generally
> given as lack of incentive, lack of competition, lack of efficiency and
> productivity and so on.
>
> Isn't it time we abandoned failed socialist ideas of a job for life?
>
> When discussing this issue with others the point is often raised what
> criteria should be used to assess performance. Also it is often
> suggested that poor performers exist in the real (ie, non-academic)
> world.
>
> As a first instance could I suggest a minimum requirement of turning up
> to work for at least twenty hours a week. I'm sure failure to turn up
> for work would result in dismissal in private industry. I have been
> associated with three academic chemistry departments and this criteria
> alone would result in three staff members being sacked. At the moment
> of course they are tenured and therefore accountable too no-one. The
> off-the-record feeling of others in these departments is that there is
> nothing that can be done so just ignore the problem and try not to make
> the same mistake when hiring the next time.
>
> Admittedly academic absenteeism is probably only a problem in a
> relatively small percentage of cases but it highlights the lack of any
> systematic accountability.
>
> I think a far worse and endemic problem is fraud. I'm choosing to use
> the word in its broadest sense. Perhaps "parafraud" is a better word.
> It is the word used by Harold Hillman in an article published in The
> Times Higher Education Supplement (1995) titled "Peccadilloes and Other
> Sins" to describe a multitude of academic "sins" some of which included
> :
> "research workers who do not report their own experiments or
> observations that are incompatible with their beliefs.
>
> Academics who do not quote publications who's conclusions they do not
> like.
>
> Scientists who do not carry out the relevant control experiments either
> by omission or refusal to do so, when attention has been brought to
> them...
>
> Some supervisors expect to share in authorship of research work in which
> they have made little or no intellectual contribution..."
>
> It is this final point that I think is the most widespread.
>
> The current system of reward in academia encourages quantity rather than
> quality of research publications. I'd like to take a hypothetical
> example of an academic who works diligently during their initial years
> of academic appointment. Through hard work and flair in their field
> they may attract research funds which in turn enables them to attract
> graduate students and, if the researcher publishes and gains more
> recognition (= more funds), post docs. There reaches a stage when a
> research group has enough graduate students and postdocs for the whole
> process of engaging in scientific research to be self propagating
> without the need for input from the principal investigator (PI).
>
> At this stage the PI faces a moral dilemma. One can become an absentee
> PI, turn up for work very now and then and still watch one career flower
> due to the output of the laboratory or the PI can continue to
> participate actively in the process. Sometimes a problem exists in that
> despite the best intentions of the PI the research group becomes too big
> for the PI to have a realistic input to all projects. In this case and
> more so in the case of the absentee PI they are needed solely to sign
> purchase orders. My point here is that these people have become
> glorified lab managers and are no longer needed for the scientific
> process to continue (other than getting their signature on a PO).
>
> I think that without tenure this situation would be less likely and
> where it existed the university would be able to dismiss the faculty
> member and appoint someone else.
>
> The next thing that often gets raised when I have this discussion is
> that in the situation that I have described (and witnessed) the PI is
> still productive based on the only measure of productivity that seems to
> exist in academia, namely quantity of publications.
>
> This is where a huge reform in attitude is necessary. Recall the final
> point that I quoted from Hillmans article. I've asked people why
> such-and-such a person was listed as a co-author when they have made no
> scientific contribution. A typical response is that "they raised the
> money."
>
> For those of you who are chemists check out the ACS ethical guidelines
> for publication (I'm sure the other societies have similar). It is
> quite clear in those guidelines what constitutes authorship and what
> doesn't. Raising the money does not constitute grounds for authorship.
> If it did a philanthropist could choose to fund research projects and
> very soon become the most published scientist of our time.
>
> The problem that is rampant in academia is that PIs take credit and
> co-authorship when they do not ethically warrant it, and thereby
> increase their quantity of publications, enhance their reputations and
> make funding all the easier to acquire the next time. And so the cycle
> continues and a PI can build a 30 year career by turning up to work in
> the first ten years.
>
> At the moment it is a foolproof system. No accountability exists. The
> people in a position to observe this parafraud, the graduate students
> and postdocs, depend on the PI for their salary but perhaps what is more
> important they depend on the PI for a reference for future employment.
> Why be a "whistle blower?" You are only there for a few years, it is
> too easy not to rock the boat.
>
> PIs will continue to be "raising the money" and paying graduate students
> and postdocs and churning out quantities of papers and raising more
> money and so on...
>
> The cycles continues and academia has lost its way.
>
>
> Mike
>
>
Subject: Re: EXECUTE ACADEMICS...
From: wmaya@csupomona.edu (Walter Maya)
Date: 22 Jan 97 20:11:14 PST
Dettol: Three words for you: Never grow old!
I can think of some scientists who did very good work after 50. However I
believe that I need only one counter example: Donald Cram, who at 70 did the
really exciting thing of synthesizing cyclobutadiene alone inside a carcerand.
There are other examples, particularly in biochemistry, but I would have to
look them up.
To all the folks who think tenure is a cushy job, I say: Why don't you get a
job with tenure? The Universities are always hiring. Get in on a good thing.
I am amazed by the sheer amount of stupidity that I see in sci.chem. But then,
I think it was Einstein that said that he knew of two things that were
infinite: maybe space, and certainly human stupidity. Cheers,
Prof. Walter Maya, Chem. Dept., Cal Poly, Pomona, CA 91768
In article <2gybdvr6dg.fsf@pulsar.cs.wku.edu>, adler@pulsar.wku.edu (Allen Adler) writes:
>
> Dettol writes:
>> I think academics over the age of fifty should be made to retire or be
>> executed (by guillotine).
>
Subject: Re: Green House effect (WAS Re: phenol from biomass)
From: Leonard Evens
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 22:17:58 -0600
Peter Hernes wrote:
>
> > > Second, there are actually TWO things going on with gas emissions due to
> > > industry, cars, etc. 1) green house gases are causing an increase in
> > > AVERAGE temperature across the globe (lest you still disagree with this,
> > > consider that they just handed out a Nobel prize for work that shows this
> >
> > I think you are confusing two different things. The Nobel Prize in
> > Chemistry was awarded for work on the relation between CFCs and ozone
> > depletion.
> > This has essentially nothing to do with the question of global warming.
> > (CFCs are in fact greenhouse gases, but that was not particularly
> > relevant
> > to the awarding of the prize.)
>
> You are correct. My mistake. That's what I get for writing off the cuff
> -- I mixed up my climate connundrums.
>
> However, I have been doing some followup on the greenhouse gas/SO2 issue.
> My "source" for that was a talk given at the University of Washington,
> so I asked the speaker for more information. Here is an excerpt of the
> reply:
>
> "Best recent summary of the internationally accepted view (1000
> climate change scientists worldwide, >98% global consensus) is the 1995
> IPCC Third Assessment (WMO/UNEP) available in the UW bookstore (Houghton
> et
> al, eds, 1996, Cambridge Univ Press).
> Follow-on articles on sulfate forcing are appearing regularly in
> Nature and in Science, all tracable to the seminal work by our own
> Professor Robert Charlson (At Sci and Chemistry)--for a popular version,
> see his Sci Am article (270:pp 48-57,1994).
> The inclusion of the sulfate regional cooling is widely considered as
> responsible for the IPCC statement (first time!) that the findgerprint of
> human activity is discernible in the observed climate record."
>
> > > science) 2) sulfur dioxide emissions cause a DECREASE in average
> > > temperature. To correctly look at the effects of gas emissions on
> > > temperature, you have to plot BOTH types and compare them with average
> > > temps. What you get is a stunning overlap -- in places like the eastern
> > > U.S., Europe, Russia, and areas of China where local emissions of sulfur
> > > dioxide are high enough to compete with or overwhelm green house gases,
> > > the temperature has gone DOWN. In the rest of the world where sulfur
> > > dioxide emissions aren't significant, but green house gases have
> > > increased, temperature has gone UP.
> >
> > There may be some elements of truth in your assertion, but I don't think
> > it is anything close to being that simple. There are some differences
> > between
> > the Northern and Southern hemispheres and they may be related to sulfate
> > aerosols, but I don't think anyone claims such a simple direct relation.
>
> See above reference.
>
> > > Third, weather patterns in the U.S. are driven to a large extent by the
> > > position of the Jet stream. The green house effect essentially mimics an
> > > El Nino effect, in which warmer water in the tropical Pacific forces the
> > > Jet stream over the Pacific farther north. Models show that the primary
> > > warming effects of green house gases will be in the tropical oceans
> > > because the intensity of the sun is the highest there, hence the
> > > similarity to El Nino. In any case, pushing the Jet stream farther north
> > > in the Pacific means that more arctic air will get pulled down into the
> > > the U.S., hence, -87 in SoDak.
> >
> > I only wish everything were so straightforward.
>
> Of course it's not that straightforward, but at least it's closer to
> reality than the notion that the greenhouse effect will cause all temps to
> go up uniformly across the globe, which is what I was trying to counter
> by my original post. I realize the models have limitations (some of them
> extreme), but it's a place to start, and one of the outputs of the models
> is precisely the assertion that the tropics will warm and the jet stream
> will be forced north. If we have any understanding at all of what happens
> in an El Nino year, this could be considered common sense.
>
> > > I agree that "environmentalism" has become extreme in many cases, and that
> > > is unfortunate precisely because it causes people to act in the OTHER
> > > extreme to counter it. However, don't throw out the baby with the bath
> > > water. The kernel of truth is still there in the "environmental"
> > > movement -- that is, that we have a finite amount of resources on this
> > > planet and we need to be good stewards of them.
>
> > I think your heart may be in the right place, but you have quite a lot
> > to learn.
>
> Don't we all have a lot to learn? Have you ever met anyone who didn't
> (other than Uncle Al, of course)?
> A curious statement . . .
>
> > One good place to start is the Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on
> > Climate Change which presents virtually everything that is known and
> > extensive bibliographies. Jan Schoerer also regularly posts a short
> > FAQ on the subject in sci.environment which is well worth reading and
> > also contains useful references.
>
> That's two plugs for the IPCC report -- I'll add it to my "To Do" list.
> Are you familiar with the report that was cited to me above? Did you
> reach the same conclusion, i.e. that for the first time, humanity's
> fingerprint on global temps is now discernable?
>
> Peter Hernes
>
I'm sorry I came down on you so strongly, but your mixing up ozone
depletion and climate change put me off.
My impression from what I have read is that the relation between
enhanced greenhouse warming and cyclic phenomena like El Nino is still
an open question with some work suggesting there may be such a relation.
If anyone knows anything more definitive, I would very much like to know
about it, since it seems to me to be a fairly crucial point since El
Nino, it seems fairly clear, has a dramatic effect on climate.
What you said above about sulfate aerosols I beliieve is correct, and
Charlson certainly seems to be one of the leading experts on that
subject. I found his Scientific American article very informative
at the time, but I believe it is already out of date. Climate Change
1995 contains more up to date information.
I wish both those worried about climate change and those skeptical about
it would read the IPCC Reports. One at least learns what the relevant
issues are and which questions need to be answered. If you insist on
finding information to support your position, you can find it on either
side in these Reports, but I would hope that all of us will try instead
to understand what is known rather than look for support for a
predetermined opinion.
As to your last question, after reading the famous Chapter 8 of Climate
Change 1995, I think the authors do in fact conclude that human
activities have probably affected climate, but they don't try to
quantify the amount of the effect. However, to be comepletely honest I
have to admit that they word things so carefully and include so many
caveats that it would not be irrational to conclude that the question is
still open. Personally I am convinced human activities have affected
climate since the beginning of the industrial revolution. More to the
point I believe that a doubling or worse of the CO_2 concentration (or
its equivalent in other greenhouse gases) will likely lead to
significant climate changes, but the timing and degree is uncertain.
I think it is imprudent to continue with this unplanned experiment in
global engineering, but I expect we will continue anyway.
_____________________________________________________________________
> Peter J. Hernes Tel. (206) 543-2155
> University of Washington Fax (206) 543-0275
> School of Oceanography
> Box 357940
> Seattle, WA 98195 pjhernes@u.washington.edu
--
Leonard Evens len@math.nwu.edu 491-5537
Department of Mathematics, Norwthwestern University
Evanston Illinois
Subject: Re: Green House effect (WAS Re: phenol from biomass)
From: Leonard Evens
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 23:24:41 -0600
"Uncle Al" Schwartz wrote:
>
> James C. Allison wrote:
> >
> > Leonard Evens wrote:
> > "Uncle Al" Schwartz wrote:(with lots of snips)
> > > > "Higher average temperatures" are elicited by the measurements being
> > > > made in what is now cement and asphalt urban (vs. what was transpiring
> > > > leafy rural) environs. The Green House Effect is a pile of
> > > > Environmentalist progandistic swill fit to feed to spotted owls (which
> > > > happily eat rats in Home Base lumberyards).
> > > > Alan "Uncle Al" Schwartz
> >
> > > Would you please supply some evidence for your last statements? Right
> > > now you are simply proceding by argument by assertion of personal
> > > belief. Why in the world should anyone pay any attention to your
> > > personal beliefs? What qualifications do you have? Have you published
> > > any of your contentions in peer reviewed scientific journals?
> > >
> > > Please refer to the IPCC Reports which discusses the issue of urban
> > > heat island effects. This issue has been thoroughly explored and it
> > > does not suffice to explain what appears to be observed warming.
> > >
> > > The issue of whether or not we have observed warming due to enhanced
> > > greenhouse radiative forcing is quite complex. There are in fact
> > > reasonable arguments which critics have raised. But I don't think you
> > > have the foggiest idea what they are. If you are going to engage in
> > > polemics on this issue, you should at least arm yourself with sensible
> > > arguments instead of engaging in simple minded arguments not
> > > particularly supported by the data.
> > > Leonard Evens len@math.nwu.edu 491-5537
> > > Department of Mathematics, Norwthwestern University
> > > Evanston Illinois
>
> > Uncle Al,
> > Are you going to let Leonard get away with this? %^D
>
> Never argue with a fool - casual passersby cannot tell the difference.
> However, if it floats your boat, THE EARTH IS IN THE GRIP OF A MASSIVE
> COOLING TREND WHICH WILL IRREVOCABLY RESULT IN ANOTHER ICE AGE:
>
> "Newsweek," 28 April 1975, Peter Gwynne
> "International Wildlife," July 1975, Nigel Calder
> "The Cooling," 1976, Lowell Ponte
> "Global Ecology Readings Towards a Rational Stretegy for Man, 1971,
> Reid Bryson
> "Science," 09 July 1971, Dr. SI Rasool and Dr. SH Schneider.
>
I asked for references showing that observed warming over some relevant
period is due to increased urbanization which is approximately what Mr.
Schwartz claimed in the posting I was responding to. Instead, he calls
me names and changes the subject. Apparently we are now discussing
predictions of global cooling made over 20 years ago. I have not read
all the above above references, but I did read the Science article by
Rasool and Schneider. This has been the subject of extensive discussion
in sci.environment, and I posted a long discussion of what is in the
article and what followed in Science over the next decade under
Schneider's name. Rasool and Schneider did some rough calculations and
concluded that dust might predominate over greenhouse gases, but if my
memory serves me right, they made no striking predictions. They did
rule out the possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect, and I think
most everyone agrees with that conclusion today. I felt the paper was
more like a thought experiment, and in any case the state of the art was
primitive enough at that time that all sorts of conjecture was
possible.(However, even in this paper, they remark that Manabe estimates
were different from theirs as to greenhouse warming.) By the end of
that decade, Schneider had clearly resolved the matter in his mind and
come down on the side of greenhouse warming predominating. However, it
should be noted that the issue of aerosol cooling has not gone away.
The latest analyses show that it plays a significant role. See Climate
Change 1995 for more discussion of this matter and how incorporating
both factors leads models to make predictions more consistent with
observations.
As to cooling, there is a very strong possibility that we will be
entering another glacial period at some time in the near (on a
geological time scale) term. After all we have been primarily in
a global ice age interspersed with interglacial periods for quite a long
time. But time scale is all important. Enhanced greenhouse warming
is something to be concerned about in the short term from a human point
of view, which is a very different matter.
> The most sophisticated current climate models are incapable of
> forecasting the weather two weeks in advance, much less 50 years into
> the future. Perhaps this is because nobody knows anything about clouds,
It is numerical _weather_ prediction computer models that in fact can't
predict _weather_ more than about four or five days in advance. It is
thought that it will never be possible to predict weather in this way
more than about two weeks because of `chaotic' behavior of the
underlying dynamical system. However, climate is not the same as
weather. It is the average of weather, and there is no reason why
climate models can't in principle predict climate many decades in
advance. In fact climate models predict quite a lot about climate,
e.g., seasons.
Even the weather models by the way are getting better at predicting the
general weather patterns weeks or more ahead if we don't insist on
detailed forecasts. There were articles about this in Science I believe
within the past couple of years, but I'm afraid I don't have the
references handy. {Perhaps some kind soul will provide them.
> and there are land masses and open sea to complicate smooth sphere
> models - polar caps, jet streams, Third World throwbacks burning their
> forests into ashes and their land into laterite, volcanoes,
> Environmentalist landfills belching methane and carbon dioxide... All
> together now: IT NEEDS MORE RESEARCH.
Well at least we agree on something. And I hope everyone who also
agrees lets his or her Congressional Representives know about it, since
Congress does not seem convinced more research is needed. All the
factors mentioned above by the way are discussed in the IPCC Reports
(except they don't engage in name calling about particular countries.)
> In the meanwhile, we will all panic to up the ante for grants.
>
> Even a cursory look at climate data shows that if anything, days have
> not gotten warmer, nights (when it gets colder) have gotten warmer. A
> leveling of temperature extremes from the bottom up moves the mean
> temperature without increasing any maximum. THE SKY IS FALLING!
> MINI-ICE AGE! GREEN HOUSE EFFECT! If the treeline is moving north, it
> is sopping up extravagant tonnages of CO2 (photosynthesis, you know -
> palstic doesn't grow on trees) and keeping it sequestered for
> centuries.
The Carbon models discussed in the IPCC Reports---see in particular
Climate Change 1994---already take into account take up of some of the
excess CO_2 by the biosphere. It is not enough to prevent further
buildup. It has been occuring for decades, will continue to occur, but
doesn't affect the predictions because it has been accounted for. Of
course, there may be surprises. On the one hand the biosphere could
start taking up much more CO_2 than expected, and on the other hand,
the northern tundras could thaw and release a lot of extra CO_2. To
assume that all certainties will break in the benign direction has no
rational justification.
> Le Chatelier has the last laugh.
>
Le Chatelier's Principle says things in stable equilibrium tend to
return to equilibrium if perturbed. As such it is a truism. But it
doesn't say if you apply a steady forcing to a system, it will respond
by returning to equilibrium. For example I am in stable equilibrium
on the second floor of my house, but if I step out the window I won't
continue to float there. Moreover, the earth has undergone rather
large changes over its lifetime. I agree that there is a human
tendency to believe that things won't change very much, at least in our
culture, but this is more wishful thinking than based on experience.
> The Russian economy has utterly collapsed, and continues to contract
> each year. Italy has a perpetual crisis of governent corruption and
> stagnation. The whole of Hispanic America is a midden of Byzantine
> Catholic degeneration. The British royal house has discovered a
> downside to chronic inbreeding. If all these social, economic,
> political, and agricultural travesties show no sign of serious internal
> upset, I fail to see how another 100 ppm of CO2 in the air will move a
> whole planet which has had 5 billion years to work out dynamic
> equilibrium and homeostasis. Adding another jigger of Inda Ink to a
> glass half-filled with India ink leaves it just as black.
>
I won't comment on the various insults to other cultures and the
Catholics.
According to IPCC estimates, if current policies are continued,
concentrations should rise to about 700 ppm by 2100 (compared to about
360 ppm now), which would be unprecedented for the entire time our
species has been on Earth. And of course it would not stop there. At
some point, we will have to limit emissions. It is just a question of
when. However, it is certain that as claimed above, the biosphere will
adjust somehow to such changes. The question is how well our societies
will adjust. Personally, I don't think this will mean the end of
humanity, but it may mean considerable dislocation and suffering.
If we can avoid some of this by prudent actions now, it is rational to
try to do so. As to the rest of the planet, there is a lot of evidence
of large losses of biodiversity, and climate change will excacerbate
this. After enough millions of years, the biosphere will certainly
recover, but I'm afraid I can't take quite that long term a view.
--
Leonard Evens len@math.nwu.edu 491-5537
Department of Mathematics, Norwthwestern University
Evanston Illinois
Subject: Re: First Colony: Mars or The Moon or Space Station?
From: The Giddings
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 20:33:05 -0800
Anonymous wrote:
>
> Beth and Richard Treitel wrote:
> >
> >> To my surprise and delight, Anonymous wrote:
> >>
> > [massive snip]
> >> if you could build
> >>equipment on the moon it would be easier to boost it to earth orbit or
> >>to elsewhere in the solar system than on earth.
> >
> > There's a mild Catch-22 here. For this to come about, launching
> > things from Earth to orbit would need to be expensive (i.e. the launch
> > cost would need to be a substantial fraction of the manufacturing
> > cost), AND launching things from Earth to the Moon would need to be
> > cheap enough that one could send up an entire mining + manufacturing
> > complex, and a launcher, at a cost that allowed the entire operation
> > to be profitable. Since factories have a tendency to weigh a lot more
> > than the things they produce, it seems unlikely to me that both these
> > things will be true together, until there are considerable advances in
> > manufacturing technology, or until there's a very large market, so
> > that mass production of simple things on the Moon is economic.
> >
> > If someone knows more about building lightweight factories, I'd love
> > to hear from them.
> >
> > - Richard
> > ------
> > A sufficiently incompetent ScF author is indistinguishable from magic.
> > see also:
> > What is (and isn't) ScF? ==> http://www.wco.com/~treitel/sf.html
>
> You build many robots and send them up. People on earth could
> teleo-operate them just like people use bulldozers here on earth. They
> prospect around and build structures from the cement regiolith. (the
> regiolith is made of nearly the same stuff as cement) The send up some
> of the bare essentials such as pots and machining equipment, a few
> chemicals and electric heaters. The robots produce solar cells from the
> silicon, and metals from the pots, which eventually will be powered by
> electric power. The robots produce more robots and more equipment and
> more robots and more equipment and so on. People could hop up there
> occasionally, but the robots don't require any oxygen. Eventually
> enough machining and electronic and mining equipment could be built to
> stop dedicating production to more machining and extracting equipment
> for more robots and start dedicating production to aerospace. Tough,
> but you end up with a great lot more there then you initially launched
> up.
All very true, but your notion of depending so heavily on robots makes
me a little wary. It is, however, a simple question of economics. The
question is Moonbase of Space Station. A few facts are relevant: It
takes twenty times as much energy to boost from Earth to Earth orbit as
from Moon to Earth orbit. The most abundant material on the Moon is
Oxygen in the form of SiO2. With simple, even automatable, equipment and
a solar energy source, oxygen for breathing and for making fuel could
easily be produced. Minerals and other materials are also easily
available.
You don't have to build *everything* on the Moon, but building
everything you can there (fuel, some simple strutures) will save a lot
of money.
