Subject: Re: Dangerous Solar (was Re: Global oil production could peak in as little as four years!)
From: William Royea
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 19:29:06 -0800
Jeremy Whitlock wrote:
> The concept of putting solar converters (PV or thermal) on every rooftop is in
> the same category as extracting uranium from the oceans: we ain't going to
> do it. What we're talking about are practical, near-term options for
> large-scale energy production -- the kind that drives industry. When you
> try to extract electrical energy from surface insolation, on a scale
> comparable to available nuclear technology, you find that the risks
> incurred due to the diffuse nature of the energy resource begin to add up.
>
> These risks are quantifiable in terms of materials-acquisition,
> construction, and maintenance health risks. And, the bottom line,
> according to Inhaber (1982) and Holdren (1983) in two independent studies,
> is that the total risk is greater than for nuclear.
Sure... if you assume that there will never be a major nuclear accident.
I would wholeheartedly agree that, barring major accidents, nuclear
energy could very well be a safer source than nuclear energy. But that
possibility exists, and is in fact, a very real possibility. Even if you
assume that our man-made reactors are engineered to operate very safely,
as many are, there is not much you can do to prevent earthquakes and
human error.
I know the federal government requires extensive seismological data for
the sites that nuclear reactors are built on, but even the Northridge
earthquake that struck just 2 years ago was on an undiscovered fault. A
major quake near a nuclear plant is beyond anybody's control, and can
easily rip open a nuclear plant.
The possibility of human error is also very real, for instance a valve
being shut when its supposed to be open. Even though the engineers were
smart enough to prevent Three Mile Island from becoming more than just a
major news event, we may not be so fortunate the next time. I don't care
how well you engineer a plant, you can't account for everything.
If any of you believe that such an accident will never occur because
it's never occured in this country, there's a bridge I'd like to sell
you.
William
Subject: Re: Major problem with climate predictions
From: Raymond D'Antuono
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 14:43:27 -0800
charliew wrote:
> There is no way to know that without either having very good
> climate models, or actually doing the "experiment" that we
> are now doing (e.g., adding more CO2 to the atmosphere).
> You pessimistic types automatically assume the worse, even
> when there is no evidence to back you up.
> Well, you may be right in saying there is no evidence, but by the time we
have evidence, it will be too late. What we do have to back us up is a
serious reason to believe that global warming may eventually occur. This
serious reason to believe is as follows:
a) CO2 in our atmosphere is what is known as a "greenhouse gas", which is
any gas in the atmosphere which absorbs heat that is reflected up from
the surface of the Earth and radiates heat back to the surface. These
gases act as sort of a "blanket" which keeps the temperature at the
surface warmer than the about 250 K it would be without an atmosphere.
b)Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the average
concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has been markedly rising.
c)If we assume a simple model of the atmosphere, then if the CO2
concentration continues to rise, the average temperature at the surface
will also begin to rise, as the CO2 "blanket" will have gotten "thicker".
Even an average temperature rise of a couple of degrees Celsisus could
have drastic effects - rising of sea levels and flooding, for instance.
d)If we take the simplified model of the atmosphere, and attempt to
account for the many other variables, that's when the uncertainty arises.
I see three possibilites arising from this:
i) Any other feedback into the system caused by the rising CO2 will be
dampened out, and temperatures will rise more or less as predicted.
ii) This feedback (by feedback, I mean any other side effects resulting
from the CO2 increase) will not be dampened out, but will amplify and
cause other (possibly catastrophic) unpredicted anomalies, effects we
probably would never think of otherwise - remember, we're talking about a
chaotic system.
iii) The side effects will merely feed back into the system in a way to
balance out the warming effect, and nothing much will happen.
This is why I call it "russian roulette". There is a recognized risk and
*valid* reason to be concerned. There is also reason to believe that
nothing will happen. I personally believe in option ii), that we are
altering our environment in ways that we don't understand, and the
effects of which we are not able to comprehend now. That was the point
of my original post, to point out the uncertainty of a chaotic system.
And I'm not talking about a butterfly flapping its wings in China, I'm
talking about a permanent change in the chemistry of our atmosphere.
Merely a slight change in the balance of a chaotic system can totally
alter the workings of the system.
> If you took
> >your child to an amusement park, and you suddenly heard
> that there was a
> >five percent chance that the roller coaster that he had
> ridden many times
> >before could jump the track at any time, sending all those
> aboard to a
> >potentially violent death, would you even consider letting
> your child
> >ride on that roller coaster again? You wouldn't even have
> a chance to
> >consider it, since the authorities would have shut it down
> already!
>
> I so love it when you take this approach. If you can't
> convince someone on scientific grounds based on available
> physical evidence, you go for the "trump card". Whip out
> that example of "hurting a child" to get people emotionally
> involved in the discussion. Good move. Unfortunately, this
> is a cheap shot that I have learned to recognize (liberals
> have used this trick so often that I am tired of listening).
> Please choose another trick. This one is getting boring.
> No, it is not a trick, nor a trump card, it is an analogy! And a valid
one! The "child" is the Earth. The "parent" is the human race (although
in actuality, the Earth is the mother to us all!), the "roller coaster"
is the industrial practice of releasing CO2 waste into our atmosphere.
Now, let's say a bunch of leading scientists got together and announced a
consensus, that we could continue releasing CO2 with a 95% certainty that
no long-term damage would be done. Do we want to gamble with our future
generations that that one-in-twenty chance won't happen?
I think the odds are much greater than 5% anyway.
> >So
> >why are we willing to play russian roulette with our
> environment?
> >
>
> Another appeal to emotion! I *do not* base my scientific
> decisions on emotion.
> This is not an appeal to emotion - please see my reference to russian
roulette above!
> >status-quo. Unfortunately, there is so much money involved
> in the
> >current energy production technologies that even if
> undeniable evidence
> >were produced, the fat cats would still do their damndest
> to ensure that
> >they went to their graves filthy rich despite the untold
> suffering
> >they would pass on future generations. (Oh, I'm sorry, I
> think I just
> >fired a shot at capitalism!)
>
> Yes, you did. And as I have recently observed, the more
> radical "environmentalists" are actually looking for
> control. They want to control the economy, they want to
> control the individuals that society is made of, and they
> probably want to control other things that are not even
> apparent yet. Bashing capitalism, and taking away people's
> ability to maintain economic freedom, is a *very* good way
> to gain control over them.
> I'm not looking for "control" for the sake of control; I, and other
environmentalists (no quotes) would like to see a society in which the
almighty dollar wasn't so almighty, a society where money doesn't give a
corporation immunity when it comes to raping - yes, raping - our
environment. There should be laws to protect our planet and our natural
resources from harm! This does not take "away people's ability to
maintain economic freedom".
I guess that it comes down to this: does mankind have the power to cause
permanent damage to the environment of this planet?
Ray D'Antuono
Subject: Re: 2000 - so what?
From: hatunen@netcom.com (DaveHatunen)
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 22:19:49 GMT
In article <32925825.13C9@instadv.alumni.pitt.edu>,
HeartSinger wrote:
>DaveHatunen wrote:
>> Do you make a habit of going to parties and insisting on a rationale
>> for it from the guests before they can have some fun?
>>
>> Do you celebrate your birthday? Why? It's just another day on the
>> calendar.
>
>Ummm.... I don't see the relevance of what you have to say in regards to the
>original post. The point of the matter is, the year 2000 is an arbitrary
>count, based on the supposed year of the birth of Christ. (Actually, the
>date is probably off a few years, from what I've read--that is, if such a
>person even existed, which is another issue, and one I'm not willing to get
>into right now.)
>
>A birthday is, however, verifiable in whatever calendar one is using, and the
>anniversary does recur every solar year. It is not an arbitrary count based
>on something that may or may not have occurred. So there is no real
>significance to our Western year 2000. That is all the original poster was
>trying to say, in my opinion.
But what is the significance of a birthday that makes it worth
celebrating? Really? Who cares if 365 days have passed? What's the
point? Except for certain legal birthdays, like 18 and the date you can
withdraw money from your IRA.
It's a milestone, so to speak. As is the year 2000. And, yes, it's
really no big deal, except that people want it to be. If they didn't,
they'd at least celebrate the true start of the new "Millenium" in
2001. But 2000 is a niftier milestone.
In some places they don't really celebrate a birthday; in Finland your
name day is more important, and it's REALLY arbitrary.
--
********** DAVE HATUNEN (hatunen@netcom.com) **********
* Daly City California *
* Between San Francisco and South San Francisco *
*******************************************************
Subject: Re: Global Warming: Effect on Sea Level
From: farrar@datasync.com (Paul Farrar)
Date: 19 Nov 1996 16:45:02 -0600
In article <3291C223.2781@theBorg.wes.army.mil>,
Robert Evans wrote:
>Paul Farrar wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Maybe you can help us.
>> 1. Did you read about Spencer's work in one of his publications,
>> or in a secondary source?
>> a. Which Spencer publication?
>> or
>> b. Which secondary source?
>> 2. What instrument did he use? How does it work? What does it actually
>> measure?
>> 3. What measurements did the warming comment apply to? Does it differ
>> from Spencer's? If so how? And why?
>>
>> Several people here know the answers to 2&3.
>>
>> Paul Farrar
>
>
>Paul,
>
>I read news accounts and heard about it via TV news. How accurate
>I don't know. But these are the answers to 2 & 3:
>
> Spenser (& John Christy) used government weather satellite data
>that measures the radiation given off bye oxygen. This data has
>been collected since 1979. They were able to calculate the temperature
>of the air within three miles of the Earth's surface at 33,000
>locations around the world on a daily basis.
>
>There results were first published, I believe, in the journal Science,
>March 1990. These show that from 1979-1988 the world's average
>temperature barely moved.
>Evidently, they have also compared their results to weather balloon
>data and have come up with close matches.
>
>This is the best I can come up with without going back and doing
>research; if those on the list know more about it, I'd like to know.
>
Bob: I'm not mad at you, but I am annoyed by some people's persistant
and willful misrepresentation of this data. The satellite instrument
DOES NOT measure the surface air temperature. It is MSU 2 (microwave
sounding unit, ch 2). It measures the brightness temperature at 53.74GHz.
This is pretty much equivalent to an average over a BIG chunk of the
troposphere and a bit of the stratosphere. What those chunks are
can depend on several factors, such as surface emissivity. The peak
sensitivity is at about 700mb, which about 5km up. Most of the
response is between about 1km to 12km. Surface temperature effects
are very variable, due to the emissivity problem. The basic paper
to consult is Spencer, Christy, and Grody 1990, J. of Climate, v3,
pp1111-1128. For some theory consult Kidder and Vonder Haar's book
on satellite meteorology.
Surface air temperature is measured by thermometers a few metres above
the surface. There is no good way to measure this from a satellite
that I know of. Estimates of climate changes, global warming etc.
refer to this variable. Jones et al. provide the most widely used
series. See the Trends series of reports and the Web pages of the
CDIAC at Oak Ridge: http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/home.html
The two series do not necessarily track each other. (They certainly
have different global means -- about 250K vs 288K.) This is a very
interesting problem in itself. See the article by Hurrell & Trenberth
in the Sept J of Climate, also online at
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/papers/
>
>
>Bob Evans
>
>
>
>P.S. Are you the Paul Farrar that used to work for Corps of Engineers
>and then the Naval Oceanographic Office?
That's me. Now at Ocean Modeling Branch of Naval Oceanographic Office.
Did we meet while I was at WES?
>
>
>
>--
>______________________________________
>
>all opinions expressed are mine and
>mine alone.
>
>______________________________________
Paul Farrar
http://www.datasync.com/~farrar
Subject: Re: Nuclear Safety disinformation (was Re: Dangerous Solar)
From: fukuchi@komae.denken.or.jp (Tetsuo Fukuchi)
Date: 20 Nov 1996 04:58:02 GMT
In article <32917215.4176167@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, masonc@ix.netcom.com
says...
>
>On 19 Nov 1996 04:48:32 GMT, "Mike Asher" wrote:
>
>> I bemoan America's lack of a good rail system as does Europe. The
many
>> times I've travelled by train in Europe, I've always been impressed
by the
>> speed, efficiency, and comfort. Unfortunately, such a system in the
US
>> would-- despite the environmental gains-- never pass a mandated
>> "environmental impact study".
>>
Europe has a higher population density than the U.S. so mass transport
by railway is more feasible. Mass transit by railroad in the U.S. is
probably suited only for the East Coast, between Boston and Washington,
and as you know there is already railroad service there (maybe for
SF-Reno and LA-Vegas for all the gambling traffic also!)
To be sure, a "clean " railroad must be electrified, since the diesel
engines are as bad as the diesel trucks on the Interstate. Imagine
electrifying a transcontinental railroad from the east to west coast,
the cost will be prohibitive. If it's a high-speed, perhaps magnetic
levitation train, more so.
>That's nonsense, that last sentence. The U.S. has two problems: the
great
>American Desert separating east and west and capitalistic low prices of
air
>fair. After all, the U.S. invented air travel (didn't it xxx?). It is
the
>environmentalists who would like to see more train service. Trains are
>energy efficient and low in pollution.
>
The Desert probably doesn't have much to do with it; if manual labor
in the last century could build a RR over Donner Pass, then modern
engineering can build it in the desert or mountains without any problem.
Today it will be much easier building a RR across a desert than through
an urban area, the complaining residents (lawsuits? maybe) and
construction costs in large cities is far worse than the weather or
terrain problems
As for air travel being too strong of a competitor, maybe the air
traffic deregulation, which resulted in a cut-throat airfare war, was
not in the best interest of the nation.
Perhaps, if the gasoline tax were increased dramatically and the revenue
used to subsidize railways, then perhaps citizens can be persuaded to
take the train rather than drive the car. Gasoline in Japan costs about
4 times as in the U.S., every time one drives on the Tokyo freeway one
must pay a toll of $7, in fact driving on the expressway doesn't make
any sense for a solo driver
Tetsuo Fukuchi.
Tokyo Japan
Subject: Re: GUNS and nuts
From: mfriesel@ix.netcom.com
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 17:29:32 -0700
I reply:
OK guys, the situation is this: Someone posted that he ran into some
beer-guzzling shooters in the woods. I asked the readers to guess how
they voted, and mentioned no party when I did so. Our old Forester -
Stopel? - responded that I shouldn't infer that they voted Republican
- even though I didn't mention Republican in my --->initial<---- post.
The letter you're quoting below is my reply to the old Forester, and
not the post I was referring to and to which he responded. At least
he apparently got the message, unlike you.
The amount of intelligence you characters exhibit really is
depressing.
Jeremy Michael Brown wrote:
>
> In article <328FFF5A.3000@ix.netcom.com>, mfriesel@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> > Brian Liedtke wrote:
> > > Nice trick, you cut out all the message and said
> > > "I did? where"
> > > Well let me repost your message and see if you can find two instances
> > > of 'Republicans' in your message.
>
> > > Brian Liedtke
> > I reply::
> > Man, you even use the same terminology. But it's no trick. Please do
> > repost the message I was referring to.
>
> Terminology? He just pointed out where you used the party's name. Maybe
> you weren't trying to trick all of us naive people out here, but he is
> quite right.
> Here's the passage:
>
> > > I reply:
> > > [snip] I won't pick on you for
> > > implying that a gun could be Republican, a simple mistake when you're
> Here's time One:
Read the following:
WRONG MESSAGE. I DIDN'T USE THE WORD 'REPUBLICAN' IN THE POST HE WAS
RESPONDING TO!
^^^^^^^^^^
>
> > > worked up.
> > > He continues:
> > > > The quy described a group of outlaws, they dont vote, nor
> > > > probably, do you.
> > > I reply:
> > > Actually, I vote all of the time, at every election, and I urge others
> > > to do the same. You'll notice I didn't mention Republicans in my
> Here's time Two: ^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> > > message, not once. Think about it.
>
> And that makes the first time a political party has been mentioned in this
> thread that I've seen. Hopefully you've had all sorts of fun. It was
> interesting - or humorous? - watching you bait and pounce. Going from
> nothing to even less. No one cares. Reply if you want, I'm not going to
> be reading it. Hope this wasn't the most fun you've had all week.
>
> Cheers,
> Jeremy
>
> --
> My real e-mail Address: jeremy-brown@uiowa.edu
>
> Do not send Commercial, 'Junk,' email - unless, of course, you are willing to pay for me to read it. Please negotiate beforehand. Thank you for your support.
Subject: Re: Nuclear madness (Extremely safe nuclear power)
From: zcbag@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (B. Alan Guthrie)
Date: 19 Nov 1996 16:25:44 GMT
In article <56d7ck$l4b@linet06.li.net>,
Bob Bruhns wrote:
>B. Alan Guthrie (zcbag@cnfd.pgh.wec.com) wrote:
>: Please explain to me the gross negligence which occurred at
>: Three-Mile Island, Unit 2, on the morning of March 28, 1979.
>: I have asked you this question before, but you have not responded.
>
> Sorry, somehow I must have missed your question.
I was working for Babcock & Wilcox at the time of the accident. I
had been there since the preceding July. B&W; is the reactor
vendor for Three-Mile Island.
What you describe below is not negligence. To be sure, mistakes
were made, but negligence implies a degree of criminality.
>
> Actually, the gross negligence occured BEFORE the disaster. My
>recollection was wrong, about the details of the TMI event, as I
>was surprised to discover recently. In fact I'm surprised nobody put
>the record straight. It was NOT bungling by the on-duty operators as
>I had believed. BUT IT WAS EVEN WORSE, it was a huge failure of
>nuclear plant safety, from the designers down to the plant managers.
>
> It seems there were some leaky valves that the TMI management
>decided not to fix, but only to work around. This caused certain
>pipe temperatures to be high, and that added to the confusion when
>trouble began. But the big problem was inadequate remote metering.
>Because one pressure guage failed, the operating engineers were
>completely deceived. And another major negligence was that the
>plant designers had not answered the question, which had been asked
>BUT NOT FOLLOWED UP, of when to add emergency coolant and when NOT to
>do so. (SOMEBODY should have followed up on THAT, with any force
>necessary, I think.) And, some unknown person or persons had shut the
>valves to certain flow pipes, which was not known, and should NEVER
>have happened without the knowledge of plant operations, and this
>contributed to the disaster too. And I have to wonder about the
>attention to maintenance, because several valves and controls did not
>work as they should have, and this contributed to the disaster as
>well.
There is more than one pressure sensor in the plant. The failure
of one sensor will not set off the actual scenario.
You are correct in that one or more valves on the pressurizer
were leaking, leading to a high temperature reading in the
pressurizer tail pipes under normal condition. When the
accident occurred, the relief valves lifted on the pressurizer
and they did not reseat properly, giving a leak path. The
leak was detectable due to high temperature readings in the
pressurizer tail pipe, but the normal leakage made the temperature
indication more ambiguous than it should have been. However,
the failure to fix the leaking valve(s) is not negligence. In
retrospect, it was a contributing cause of the accident certainly,
but at the time it seemed entirely reasonable.
>
> Evidently, there are circumstances in such a reactor design when a
>high pressure/high temperature condition should NOT be addressed by
>adding coolant, because of some steam blocking effect, I think. Of
>course, usually the coolant would be the common-sense choice. But the
>designers had not addressed an old question about WHEN to add, and when
>NOT to add more coolant, and plant management had not pressed the issue
>as they certainly should have.
>
> Bad directions were in place, and THIS caused the operators to fail
>to add coolant, when it might still have headed off the meltdown.
>
Yes, the procedures were inadequate, but the inadequacy is not
negligence. Since the accident, procedures have been extensively
revised and overhauled throughout the nuclear industry in the
USofA.
> When the reactor acted up, the on-duty engineers and the operation
>computer did not know about certain shut-off valves, temperature
>readings were misleading, several emergency valves did not work, one
>critical pressure guage was completely malfunctioning, etc. Because
>of the sequence of events, and their speed, it would not have been
>possible to send people to manually examine valves, etc, once the
>event was in progress, because of the extremely hazardous conditions
>that deveolped so quickly. The on-duty operators did absolutely
>everything they could, but the bad procedures and bad information
>and plain bad luck defeated their best effort, and the meltdown was
>the result.
Again, no negligence in the above account.
To my mind the major contributor to the accident was improper
training. It was pretty obvious to anyone with an appreciation
of steam tables that the reactor coolant system was in a
two-phase (water/steam) condition. Unfortunately, the
operating crew (which included operators trained in the vaunted
nuclear navy) was too busy fighting the accident to stand back
and gain an overall view of the accident progression.
I was developed an informal event tree of the accident, and
there were about half-a-dozen decision points. At each
point the reactor operators made the wrong decision. A
correct decision anywhere along the path would have prevented
the accident from developing to its ultimate conclusion.
So I disagree, the operators did not do everything that they
could.
>
> The designers and the plant managers did not consider safe operation
>to be very important. Probably they thought that there was so much
>safety and redundancy in the system that nothing could go wrong. Many
>people in this thread express similar complacency. But we know what
>happened. And it could happen again, and again, and again,
>regulations or no, if complacency is permitted past security in
>nuclear plants.
>
Nonsense - of course, the designers and the plant managers thought
that safe operation was very important. The plant got into a
rather strange configuration and the accident was the result.
Precisely because of the design, the health impact on the
general public was extremely minimal.
It is important to note that a substantial portion of the core
melted, but the public health impacts are undetectable, at least
from a radiological point-of-view.
> So I'm sorry if my prattling on about safety is not taken well in
>certain quarters, but this is where I'm coming from. Where nuclear
>meltdowns are possible, I don't want to hear talk about how safe it
>is, period. Disaster always follows. The Titanic, TMI, etc, etc.
>In fact it looks to me as though the Chernobyl disaster happened
>because some abusive bureaucrat decided to prove how "safe" their
>reactor was, in order to preserve his job. Only, of course, he blew
>it, bigtime. Is it really surprising?
>
There was a meltdown on the Titanic? Well, I guess that that old
iceberg did eventually turn to water.
What you do not appreciate is that the nuclear industry has
extensively revamped its operating and emergency procedures since
TMI. Operator training has been revamped and made more rigourous
(not sufficiently rigours to my mind). Certain hardware
modifications were made.
While the incidence of accidents is at least to some extent
stochastic, I note that at the time of TMI we had about 400
reactor-years of operation in the USofA. We now have roughly
2000 reactor-years, which indicates to me that the changes made
in response to TMI have had some impact.
--
B. Alan Guthrie, III | When the going gets tough,
| the tough hide under the table.
alan.guthrie@cnfd.pgh.wec.com |
| E. Blackadder
Subject: Re: Dangerous Solar (Humour!)
From: zcbag@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (B. Alan Guthrie)
Date: 19 Nov 1996 18:31:51 GMT
In article <56lhqg$jl3@netnews.ntu.edu.tw>,
Michael Turton wrote:
>In article <01bbd347$e6af2f80$89d0d6cc@masher>,
> "Mike Asher" wrote:
>
> [snipped]
>
>>Yes, wind farms have worked so well in the past. The example of Southern
>>Cal Edision, who spent thirty million for a 2MW plant leaps to mind. It
>>was sold for scrap a few years later, for $51,000. Or the windfarm in
>>Alameda Country, California? The operators have had to buy out all nearby
>>homeowners, as the noise is unbelievable. And they've also been the
>>subject of two (that I know of) lawsuits over the deaths from birds flying
>>into the vanes...included eagles and other protected species. I believe
>>the cost per megawatt there is around $16,000. Thats five times the cost
>>of a coal or nuclear plant.
>>
>>Some smaller wind turbines have been very succesful. However, to claim
>>these can any significant fraction of demand is ludicrous.
>
>
> [snipped]
>
> Ludicrous? How strange, then, that it the Energy Information
>Administration (EIA) of the DOE has printed in several of its publications
>that wind could, in fact account for a very significant proportion of the
>US energy supply. North Dakota alone could account for more than a third.
>The midwestern states could easily supply the whole US with wind power.
>Wind plants have a number of advantages over nuclear plants, such as greater
>on-line reliability, lower maintenance costs, less waste from power
>generation, space (remember, nuke plants have to have mines and waste disposal
>areas) and so forth. And of course, a catastrophe at a wind plant would
>not make large land areas unlivable for long periods of time.
> Mike, your claim that no workers have died in nuclear plants is
>absurd. There have been a large number of deaths worldwide including a
>number in the US, beginning with the three killed at Idaho Falls in 1960.
The SL-1 accident was at a military facility - different set of rules
than for the civilian nuclear industry.
>And those are just the ones we know about. Further, as far as I know there
>are no stats on the contaminated workers who died later from cancers as
>a result of contamination earlier in life. Greenpeace maintains a partial
>list of nuclear accidents and events at:
>http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/nukes/chernob/rep02.html
>Your claim also does not include the numbers who have died as a result of
>military use of nuclear power, aboard Soviet subs and so forth.
>
Again, accidents on Soviet submarines hae little bearing on the
generation of electricity by western power reactors. And yes, studies
are performed of nuclear power plant workers to follow their health
histories.
--
B. Alan Guthrie, III | When the going gets tough,
| the tough hide under the table.
alan.guthrie@cnfd.pgh.wec.com |
| E. Blackadder
Subject: Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy
From: zcrah2@cnfd.pgh.wec.com (Andy Holland)
Date: 19 Nov 1996 16:21:17 GMT
In article <56iu43$r03@news.inforamp.net>,
J McGinnis wrote:
>On 14 Nov 1996 17:19:23 GMT, jmc@Steam.stanford.edu (John McCarthy)
>wrote:
>
>>Yuri Kuchinsky includes:
>>
>> World Food Organization reports that over 800 million people
>> are starving on this planet right now. Get rid of your pink
>> glasses.
>>
>>I'm sure that "starving" isn't the word that was used by the World
>>Food Organization. If 800 million were starving, and the report was
>>from last year, we would expect them to be dead by now. Would
>>Kuchinsky tell us what actually happened or will happen in the next
>>year or two?
>
>You want to know what's happening? Can you face the truth?
>
>
>U.N. World Food Council documents:
>-------
>Every day around the world 40,000 people die of hunger. That's 28
>human beings every minute, and three out of four of them
>are children under the age of five.
>
>The number of hungry people increased five times faster in the 1980s
>than in the previous decade. By 1989, 550 million people filled the
>ranks of the malnourished or hungry.
>-------
>
>This shows quite plainly that things are not getting better. Since
>1989 the number of people facing famine has almost doubled. These
>people are not simply upset that they have to live on swill instead of
>a Big Mac and fries, they're dying.
>
>If everyone produced and consumed food as North Americans do, there
>would only be enough food on the planet to feed 2.5 Billion people. On
>the other hand if Americans reduced their meat consumption by just
>10%, it would free up 12 million tons of grain anually - more than
>enough to feed all those facing famine.
>
>
>Jason McGinnis
There is already a great deal of excess grain. The problem is, that
we aren't getting it to the people in real need.
The problem gets worse, because of wars, greed and the use of
starvation as a weapon to weild control on others.
While cutting conspicuous consumption might help, and certainly
would benefit our own personal health, the real problem is getting
the food to the hungry people.
Too bad we don't use our foreign aid budget to purchase grain
as our agricultural subsidy to farmers. Instead, we'd rather
give governments money so they can buy F-16s, and continue the
killing of innocents.
andy.holland@nmd.pgh.wec.com
std. disclaimer
Subject: Re: Major problem with climate predictions
From: jbh@ILP.Physik.Uni-Essen.DE (Joshua B. Halpern)
Date: 20 Nov 1996 11:12:45 GMT
Jim Smolen (jsmolen@bcm.tmc.edu) wrote:
: jbh@ILP.Physik.Uni-Essen.DE (Joshua B. Halpern) wrote:
: >Your basic horseshit. Defense spending increased. Domestic
: >spending not associated with entitlement programs (Social Security,
: >Medicare, etc. ) decreased or stayed constant. The conservative
: >Democrats in the House forced through the first two Regan Budgets.
: >The situation only reached the stalemate you describe after 1986,
: >when the Republicans lost the Senate.
:
: Well, let's see what we got here. The following data were downloaded
: from the Concord Coalition Homepage and are submitted for the perusal
: of one and all.
:
: Enjoy,
I'm just going to add a few comments below, but thanks for listing
the table.
:
: Jim
:
: ___________________________________________________________________
: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE FEDERAL BUDGET
:
: each major government function. This is done for every tenth year from
: 1945
: to 1995 in order to get some idea of how the allocation of outlays has
: evolved. This does not show every short-term trend. For example, right
The problem is that we were talking about a short term trend
1980-86 or so. Thus a ten year listing will not capture these
trends. However, they are still useful in setting the context.
: OUTLAYS BY SUPERFUNCTION AND FUNCTION: 1945-1995
: (as percent of total outlays)
: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
: SUPERFUNCTION and Function 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985
: 1995
: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
: NATIONAL DEFENSE.................. 89.49 62.43 42.82 26.03 26.71
: 17.91
: HUMAN RESOURCES
: Education, training, employment,
: and social services.......... 0.14 0.65 1.81 4.82 3.10
: 3.57
: Health........................... 0.23 0.43 1.51 3.89 3.54
: 7.60
: Medicare......................... 0.00 0.00 0.00 3.87 6.96
: 10.52
: Income Security.................. 1.23 7.41 8.00 15.09 13.55
: 14.51
: Social Security.................. 0.29 6.47 14.77 19.46 19.93
: 22.11
: PHYSICAL RESOURCES
: Energy........................... 0.03 0.47 0.59 0.88 0.60
: 0.32
: Natural resources and environment 0.49 1.37 2.14 2.21 1.41
: 1.46
: Commerce and housing credit...... -2.84 0.13 0.98 2.99 0.45
: -0.95
: Transportation................... 3.94 1.82 4.87 3.29 2.73
: 2.59
: Community & regional development. 0.26 0.19 0.94 1.30 0.81
: 0.70
: NET INTEREST...................... 3.36 7.09 7.27 6.99 13.68
: 15.28
: OTHER FUNCTIONS
: International affairs............ 2.06 3.25 4.46 2.14 1.71
: 1.08
: General science, space & technlgy 0.12 0.11 4.93 1.20 0.91
: 1.10
: Agriculture...................... 1.76 5.13 3.35 0.91 2.70
: 0.64
: Administration of justice........ 0.19 0.37 0.45 0.89 0.66
: 1.07
: General government............... 0.63 0.95 1.27 3.13 1.22
: 0.91
Notice that the only increases between 1975 and 85 were defense,
interest, social security, medicare and agriculture. The 10
year interval between points is also too coarse to provide
more than a coarse indication of the differences between
Carter and Clinton and the Reagan-Bush years. Still what
can be gleaned from the table shows that my original
contention was reasonable.
SNIP...
: The debt as a percentage of GDP reached its peakvb
: at the
: end of World War II. It's peak was 127.5 percent in 1946. From there,
: it
: steadily declined to 35.9 percent of GDP in 1975. It's lowest point
: was
: actually 33.6 percent in 1981. Since then, it has risen back up to
: 70.3
: percent of GDP. It has continued to rise despite the fact that the
: deficit
: has recently declined. Hence, a stabilizing of the deficit does not
: necessarily imply a stabilizing of the debt.
This is somewhat misleading. (Actually more than a little). If
you look at debt as a function of GDP on a yearly basis, you see
a STEADY decline until 1981, then a rapid growth, which accelerated
even further in the Bush administration. The growth of debt
as a function of GDP slowed to essentially zero in the first
Clinton term, (and last that I looked in 1995 appeared to
have almost turned over and started shrinking again).
IMHO, this is the most important statistic with respect to the
debt. Balanced budget ammendments would be severly deflationary,
and destructive of the economy, but as past experience has
shown (1945-1980), if yearly deficits are controlled so that
debt as % of GDP is below 50%, the economy will flurish
Josh Halpern:
--
Subject: Re: Major problem with climate predictions
From: jbh@ILP.Physik.Uni-Essen.DE (Joshua B. Halpern)
Date: 20 Nov 1996 11:32:33 GMT
Harold Brashears (brshears@whale.st.usm.edu) wrote:
: jbh@ILP.Physik.Uni-Essen.DE (Joshua B. Halpern) wrote for all to see:
: >gdy52150@prairie.lakes.com (gdy52150@prairie.lakes.com) wrote:
: >: brshears@whale.st.usm.edu (Harold Brashears) wrote:
: >: >felton@phoenix.princeton.edu (phil. Felton) wrote for all to see:
: >: >>In article , jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU wrote:
: >SNIP..
: >: >Second, I am interested if you have seen a director of the President's
: >: >Management and Budget office who has *not* falsified budget
: >: >predictions. The office has always been highly politicized. It has
: >:
: >Alice Rivlin.
:
: I do not view Ms. Rivlin as being any less partisan than past
: occupants of that position. I am inclined to credit the accuracy of
READ. I did not say less partisan, I said that her forcasts were
accurate and NOT falsified. Her record of ACCURATE forcasts
extends back to 1980 at least, when she was in and then
head of the CBO.
: her forcasts to the help from COngress. I have a quote from her,
: which you may find interesting, at least I did.
This is a joke, right? The CBO forcasts under the Republicans
starting in 1995, were obviously crafted to serve their
Balanced Budget jihad. They were MUCH too pessimistic,
far more so than any academic or commercial forecast.
: "We are now looking at a future from here, and the future we were
: looking in February now includes some of our past, and we can
: incorporate the past into our forecast. Nineteen-ninety-three, the
: first half, which is now the past and was the future when we issued
: our first forecast, is now over."
: ----Laura D'Andrea Tyson, chairman of Clinton's Council of
: Economic Advisers (Richmond Times Dispatch, 1/7/94)
Laura Tyson is not Alice Rivlin in drag? Besides what is
iso interesting about stating the obvious, that models and
forecasts are to be modified as new data comes in
: Regards, Harold
josh halpern
:
:
--
Subject: Re: 2000 - so what?
From: sshinn@sparky.wrlc.org (Scott)
Date: 20 Nov 1996 00:59:46 GMT
HeartSinger (bLisa@InstAdv.alumni.pitt.edu) wrote:
: DaveHatunen wrote:
: > Do you make a habit of going to parties and insisting on a rationale
: > for it from the guests before they can have some fun?
: >
: > Do you celebrate your birthday? Why? It's just another day on the
: > calendar.
: Ummm.... I don't see the relevance of what you have to say in regards to the
: original post. The point of the matter is, the year 2000 is an arbitrary
: count, based on the supposed year of the birth of Christ. (Actually, the
: date is probably off a few years, from what I've read--that is, if such a
: person even existed, which is another issue, and one I'm not willing to get
: into right now.)
Quite so, according to the bible, Jesus was born, and grew up during the reign
of King Herrod , who we now know died in 4 BC. So if one were to base the
with jesus' birth as day 1, its at the very least 2000 AD
right now. :)
All this in mind, Im of the opinion that the world ended several years ago,
but due to bugetary constraints the approprate announcements had to be delayed.
sshinn
Team BOFH
Hit any user to contniue.
Subject: Heidelberg Appeal
From: jmc@Steam.stanford.edu (John McCarthy)
Date: 20 Nov 1996 01:33:34 GMT
Heidelberg Appeal
The Heidelberg Appeal was publicly released at the 1992 Earth Summit in
Rio de Janeiro. By the end of the 1992 summit, 425 scientists and other
intellectual leaders had signed the appeal. Since then, word of mouth has
prompted hundreds more scientists to lend their support. Today, more than
2,700 signatories, including dozens of Nobel Prize winners, from 102
countries have signed it.
We want to make our full contribution to the preservation of our
common heritage, the Earth.
We are, however, worried at the dawn of the twenty-first century, at
the emergence of an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific
and industrial progress and impedes economic and social development.
We contend that a Natural State, sometimes idealized by movements with
a tendency to look toward the past, does not exist and has probably
never existed since man's first appearance in the biosphere, insofar
as humanity has always progressed by increasingly harnessing Nature to
its needs and not the reverse. We fully subscribe to the objectives of
a scientific ecology for a universe whose resources must be taken
stock of, monitored and preserved.
But we herewith demand that this stock-taking, monitoring and
preservation be founded on scientific criteria and not on irrational
pre-conceptions.
We stress that many essential human activities are carried out either
by manipulating hazardous substances or in their proximity, and that
progress and development have always involved increasing control over
hostile forces, to the benefit of mankind.
We therefore consider that scientific ecology is no more than an
extension of this continual progress toward the improved life of
future generations. We intend to assert science's responsibility and
duties toward society as a whole.
We do, however, forewarn the authorities in charge of our planet's
destiny against decisions which are supported by pseudoscientific
arguments or false and nonrelevant data.
We draw everybody's attention to the absolute necessity of helping
poor countries attain a level of sustainable development which matches
that of the rest of the planet, protecting them from troubles and
dangers stemming from developed nations, and avoiding their
entanglement in a web of unrealistic obligations which would
compromise both their independence and their dignity.
The greatest evils which stalk our Earth are ignorance and oppression,
and not Science, Technology, and Industry whose instruments, when
adequately managed, are indispensable tools of a future shaped by
Humanity, by itself and for itself, overcoming major problems like
overpopulation, starvation and worldwide diseases.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
During the last years of the Second Millenium, the Earthmen complained
a lot.
Subject: Re: Dangerous Solar
From: Anco S. Blazev
Date: 19 Nov 1996 16:33:01 -0700
Mike Asher wrote:
: Solar 1 became Solar 2 after Aug 31, 1986, when an explosion and fire
: decimated the original installation. Two technicians were badly injured.
: I posted the amount of concrete used in Solar 1: just under 20,000 tons.
: Note that a 500 MW+ nuclear reactor requires about 4000 tons. Solar 1
: generated 10 MW....when the sun was shining.
Solar 1 is another example of the inadequacy of the US Government and its
glorious energy buddies -- DOE, NREL and Sandia -- in getting involved in
the real world affairs. This abortion, and I had the honor of
participating in building of the 300 ft. tower 15 years ago, is not what
Solar energy is meant to be. It is not how Solar energy should be used.
Solar 1 is nothing but a large toy, a large bag of wasted money and a
large scale "desaster waiting to happen", or rather "desaster waiting to
happen again and again". With the money that was used at Solar 1 to date,
we could've powered half of Los Angeles with conventional Solar Panels and
such simpler devices.
: Will, I never disagreed with solar power in limited applications. If you
: want to prescribe it as a panacea, however, you need to solve the problem
: of power storage, among others.
Solar power will not solve the problems of the US, because of the
self-righteous attitude of many people, not unlike yourself, but will
solve the problems of many other countries, where governments don't
subsidise electric power, and/or where nuclear power is a no, no!
Best regards,
Anco Blazev
--
