RE: Rain

["E.C.Apling" <E.C.Apling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Many thanks for your message Charles.

I am fine - and my wife has just had a hip-replacement operation - her
arthritis has kept us away from travel all this year: operation decided on
in May last and promised for end of October, beginning of November and
actually carried out on 3rd November at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital -
under the so much criticised National Health Service. She was at N&N until
last Thursday when she was transferred to Dereham Hospital for physiotherapy
and I brought her home (with helpful accoutrements) yesterday morning.

Margery cannot speak highly enough of the standard of care given - and Mr.
Tucker, the consultant orthopaedic surgeon (one of the original pioneers of
the operation) rang me on Friday Morning (3rd) to say "Hallo Mr Apling, I am
just ringing to say that your wife has had the operation and is doing fine;
you will be able to see her later this afternoon."

Because she had a bone graft, she has to walk with elbow crutches for six
weeks, until she sees Mr Tucker again on the 21st December, to avoid putting
weight on that femur until the graft has strengthened.  The physiotherapists
at Dereham taught her to get up and down stairs, and she is managing very
well, with a very positive attitude to the exercises prescibed by the
physios.

This summer of course, ALL the gardening and much of the housework has
fallen to me - and I have also spent much time upgrading my web-site (which
is mainly concerned with Norfolk history, but also has some food and general
political comments - worth a look ?) so have not had time even to read all
the list messages, let alone compose comments.

Lou Paulsen has sent me a copy of the article which started this thread,
which I think is an excellent article (apart from the confusion betwen CO2
and SO2 in volcanic emissions - which is irrelevant to the main argument).

I have, as probably many of you know, been involved all my professional life
(starting 1941) with "environmental" matters - my main qualification being
in the "Chemistry and Microscopy of Food and Drugs" (1957), my main
scientific activity having been concerned with the development, milling and
utilisation of cereal and other grain crops, and one of my main research
activities in the nutritional control of diabetes.

There is so much public, media and governmental confusion about "pollution"
that it is always extremely difficult to know where to begin in any
discussion arising - but now seems an opportune moment to write something
more.

Firstly, on the word pollution, it is salutary to remeber the derivation of
the word - it comes from the Latin word <luere>, to wash; per- or pro-luere
= "needing washing" - and has always had religious overtones (e.g. for
Hindus it is polluting to have contact with a low-caste "untouchable"; for
Moslems it is polluting to enter the mosque without removing shoes and
washing the feet) - and so I suppose it really comes as no surprise to me
that so many "environmentalists" and "organic food" addicts have what can
only be decsribed as a religious attitude to their beliefs, an attitude
which completely prevents proper discussion of the evidence.

Of course, when I started my professional life, air pollution certainly
conformed to the initial derivation above - even on a fine clear day
travelling to work in London meant that the collar of your shirt needed a
good scrub and one of the days of London "smog" one could hardly see to
cross the street, and a handkerchief held across one's mouth to protect from
the SO2 and smoke particles in the air needed a good wash when you got
home....  and then the river Thames was so dirty that no fish could survive
and shortly after the war at least one of the railway bridges across the
tributary river Lea in East London was so corroded by the acid river water
that trains were stopped until post-war repairs could be carried out.

Then, of course, there was NO public outcry about "pollution" and very few
people were interested - it was all part of the usual "environment".  Now
when the Thames is so clean that even salmon come up-river and the air is so
clean that it is hardly necessary to change one's shirt more than twice a
week everybody is shouting about "pollution"....

[My main "envrironmental" objection is to the way roadside verges seem to
"grow" discarded cigarette and "take-home food" packages; roadside ponds
seem to "grow" discarded mattresses and other junk; and woodland clearings
to "grow" scrapped cars.]

Yet the cry of "pollution", supposedly caused by industry (now squeaky clean
compared to fifty years ago) is deafening....

Secondly, just a brief word of "organic"...  All life, all food, indeed
every carbon-based chemical is organic.  How can this word sensibly be
applied to food that is produced only using the outdated methods of 19th (or
rather 18th-century agriculture)?   But this would need ten pages to discuss
properly - so I only mention it to suggest the peculiar way in which
language is used by the "environmental" lobby...

Almost all politicians in UK and US (far fewer in continental Europe, and
almost none in the LDCs) talk this Alice-in-Wonderland language - taking for
granted as established fact a whole number of seemingly unrelated
propositions, of which an incomplete list is:

the world is threatened by man-made global warming; Saddam Hussein is a
threat to the civilised world; only "organic" food production is
sustainable; "GM-foods" are a threat to human existence [UK only !!]; etc
etc.  Never is there any proper discussion of the evidence [in fact
"environmentalists" actually take steps to disurpt attempts to seek
evidence]; these are propositions just taken for granted and yet are made
the basis of far-reaching policy decisions.

On each of these propositions and more there is much to be said, but because
of the general refusal to look properly for supporting evidence - or to even
consider evidence pointing the other way, it seems just like "crying in the
wilderness" to argue against them....

Oh, yes - Charles' original question.  Do you mean are we in danger of
running out of oil?  If so then the answer must be - of course - in the
long-term YES, but oil reserves are only looked for when needed and no-one
has any real idea when the source will REALLY dry up.  It is at least 50
years since the suggestion has been made that oil will run out in the next
10 years... and it has not run out yet.

Nevertheless, to a chemist it does seem a pity that such a useful source of
chemical intermediates as oil [and same applies to coal] is just used to
burn.
But then all the environmentalists object to the use of the sensible
alternative - atomic energy !!


Regards
Paddy
NFHS Member #5594
Mailto:E.C.Apling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.btinternet.com/~e.c.apling/index.htm
or http://www.e.c.apling.btinternet.co.uk




> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Charles Brown
> Sent: 15 November 2000 20:46
> To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: Rain
>
>
>
>
> >>> E.C.Apling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 11/15/00 03:29PM >>>
>
> CB: Hey, Paddy ! How have you been ?
>
> What do you think of depletion of oil hypothesis ?
>
>