Newsgroup sci.environment 104528

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bbaka@syix.com wrote:
: > With industry spewing out all
: > > kinds of crap, and the millions of SMOKERS (read:  disgusting
: > > humans, hehehe) on this wonderful planet, the ozone layer is
: > > toast as far as I'm concerned. 
: It is interesting that all these arguments over Ozone are justified by the one 
: small penalty we as humans might have to pay. Increased skin cancer and 
: cataracts of the eyes. Big deal. The ozone layer has been fluctuating for 
: millions of years, not that it killed off the dinosaurs, but the plants and 
: other animals adapted. Maybe it is because increased U.V. increases smog in 
: L.A. or some other really nit picky thing that everyone (on the Gov payroll) is 
: so concerned
You might also want to worry about the effects of added UV on various
plants, including photoplankton in the polar seas which sit at the
bottom of a lot of food chains.  Another interesting effect which
I have no desire to observe is an altering of the stratosphere#s
temperature profile and a lowering and heating of the tropopause,
This would provide a positive feedback mechanism to further
deteriorate the ozone layer, maybe causing some more serious
problems down here.      
:  Damn the ozone, I want my air conditioning, and my 3 refridgerators that all 
: use R-12. What are we supposed to do, ban all refridgeration units made before 
: the wisdom of some government paid committee decided that CFCs were no good? I 
Would you know the difference if the label was removed?  Why
whine, grab a beer from that energy efficient refrigerator and
relax.  
Josh Halpern
: 

In article <3496@dstrip.demon.co.uk>,
Steve Rencontre   wrote:
>STOP POSTING THIS CRAP.
[entire repost deleted for brevity]
I have an idea - why don't YOU stop RE-POSTING this crap? Sheesh, you even
reposted the full header - what an incredible waste of bandwidth and disk 
space.
People, when this stuff gets posted to your favorite newsgroup, please,
just read the header (the last entry in the "Path" is often a good
indication) and determine exactly where the post originated from.  Then
send a polite message to the postmaster at that site, telling him or her
that someone is abusing their account privileges, or at least that the
offending spam appears to have originated from their site, and that they
should be aware of it. You'd be amazed how well that works. 
	Simply posting angry responses, which themselves are often
crossposted to several groups, does absolutely nothing. And more often
than not, threatening to mail-bomb the *apparent* sender of the message
simply wastes even more bandwidth, especially since spammers often forge
their addresses in the From: line of their messages. 
Sorry for the crosspost, but it seems to me that the spam anomaly for the
past few weeks has been strongly positive for many newsgroups, and it is
very important to know how to respond productively to these violations.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled discussions.... 
Eric D
UC Davis

Leonard Evens wrote:
>
> One of the known reasons why the overall fuel economy of
> American cars has stagnated after large improvements
> following the oil shocks of the 70s is the shift to
> small trucks and vans, which are not covered by the
> fueld efficiency standards established in the 70s.  Including
> such vehicles would do something to redress the matter.
> And it is hard to argue that this is not possible since
> one of the reasons Detroit gives as opposing such rules
> is that it would give the Japanese and unfair advantage because
> they already know how to do it.
I don't know about that.  From personnal observation my Japanesse
vechicles just don't get that good of mileage.  My Mitsi/Dodge 
gets rather poor mileage, but has decent power, low gearing,
and I routinely use it transport firewood, hay, sheeps, turkeys,
(ok, turkeys arn't that much of a load).

In article <32440FEA.511881CC@math.nwu.edu>,
Leonard Evens   wrote:
>Steinn Sigurdsson wrote:
>> Argh. The climate system seems to have recovered stably, and
>> repeatedly to something like its initial regime, after large
>> (dT > 1 K) sudden (t = 1-3 years) radiative perturbations,
>> namely VEI 6-7 events. I'm contending that this is evidence
>> of some stability, as one might expect from Le Chatelier's
>> principle, and the absence of instability to high frequency
>> perturbations. I also noted that this is not an absolute
>> stability, there is evidence that sudden dT > 10 K will
>> cause a climate shift.
>It seems to me that you are engaging in argument by analogy.  
Speaking of analogies...
Len, I'm still hoping that you will explain how I was using the 
"fallacy of the truncated top" in pointing out that the IPCC had put no 
quantifying lower bound on the anthropic component of climate change.  
It appears to me that your fallacy applies to calculating expected 
values [for risk assessment, say], and not to what I was saying.  Since 
you accused me of this fallacy, I'd like to know whether I was actually 
being illogical, or whether you made a mistake.  You seem to be fairly 
quick at accusing people of illogic, and, er, somewhat less quick in 
either substantiating your claims or retracting them.
>Leonard Evens       len@math.nwu.edu      491-5537
snark

In article <523mg3$ab8@osh1.datasync.com>,
Paul Farrar  wrote:
>In article <51u7vb$ato@post.gsfc.nasa.gov>,
>James G. Acker  wrote:
>>"Robert C. Copeland" (rcopland@capecod.net) wrote:
>...
>>: Right on, Hugh.  I love the  way alleged research moves from one 
>>: ill-founded assumption, builds upon it, and comes up with even a more 
>>: absurd conclusion.  REAL RESEARCH starts with REAL MEASUREMENTS.  Indeed, 
>>: tropical ocean temperatures 4000 years ago.  Toricelli must be turning 
>>: over in his grave.
>>	Who's Toricelli?
>The inventor of the barometer.
That's the wittiest skewering that I've seen in sci.env for months! :-)
>Paul
snark