> Spike Jones wrote,
> > I dont think tar balls belongs on this list, however. Tar is a natural
> > substance.
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> True, I should retract the tar balls. They can come from oil, but they also
> can be natural. I have no idea what percentage of tarring on our beach is
> natural and how much is artificial.
Wait, dont retract the tar balls. I retract my original objection. Natural
pollution is pollution just the same, and I define pollution as anything that
bothers humans. If it bothers or slays animals that humans like, then that
substance is pollution too. Humans are animals, therefor anything that
humans do is natural, therefor we need not distinguish between human
made pollution and the other variety. Except of course we've no one
to sue with the nontechnically origin pollution. {8-]
> > Speaking of political influence, I cut out an ad in the local
> > paper begging people to check and possibly replace the flapper valve in
> their
> > toilets...
>
> I guess I'm missing the problem here. Certainly fixing leaking toilets to
> stop wasting water is a good thing.
When fresh water is being thrown into the sea from rivers, it seems
absurd for them to be worrying over a few thousand cubic
feet of fresh water a year from a bad toilet valve. My contention
is that life is adaptable, and no ecosystem is *that* delicate.
> >...raise the global temperature at the same time, to
> > salvage some of that good Siberian land the commies are wasting
> > currently. spike
>
> This seems strange, Spike. You seem to be against fixing toilet valves to
> save water, but then you propose turning the grassy western U.S. plains into
> vast forests instead. Will you grab all that land from the ranchers to grow
> the forests?
Grab? We would *buy* those lands for a pittance, and here is how
this is calculated. The vast grasslands which I speak of is sometimes
used to grow grain and alfalfa, both fairly irrigation intensive, with
razor thin profit margins. The price of the land is easily estimated by
taking a typical yearly profit margin, which is about 200 bucks an
acre year, then divide by the current cost of money. Right now money
is about 6%, so that land can be bought up for about 3200 bucks an
acre, or in other words, practically free.
> Will you ban logging to keep the forests from being cut down
> as fast as it grows? Do you think storing enough water inland to lower sea
> levels is technically easier than curbing pollution? It almost seems like
> your easy alternative is worse than the current suggestions which you
> dislike.
Nah, the logging industry will be controlled by the market demand. What
I am all about here is pointing out the deplorable level of water control,
this in the biggie developed nations. We really need to have better
control of water. There is no shortage of fresh water; we dump the
stuff into the sea at the Sacramento River Delta, at the mouth of the
Columbia, at the Mississippi River Delta. We still have *floods* every
year along the Mississippi, floods! Why dont we control water better
than that? We can do better.
There is no need to put dykes around Florida, for if we hold
the sea level we could intentionally warm the planet, melt some of the
Northern ice and make for more productive land. We could likely
keep the Antarctic ice while clearing off most of Greenland and
much of Siberia. Of course these are major projects, and currently
we may have a shortage of people on this planet to get it all done,
but with encouragement, populations can be expanded to help
with the project. We could eco-engineer this planet into one that would
be a much better place for humans and transhumans. Perhaps not so
great for mosquitos as it is today. Why do we need to have harsh
climates anywhere, when we have or can develop the technology to
fix it? spike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:57 MDT