Re: [nafex] Global warming, etc.

["Richard J. Ossolinski" <osso@acadia.net>]

Great piece, Donna, though I think it would have had a bit more credibility if
you'd omitted the last sentence  -  or are you traveling by bicycle? :-) 
Sorry, couldn't help myself.  Enjoy your respite.
Richard

Kieran or Donna wrote:
> 
> You all might want to amuse yourselves, and feel much better about where you
> happen to be, by taking a gander at this:
> http://www.russiatoday.com/frames/frames.php3?url=http://c.moreover.com/clic
> k/here.pl?x14438493
> It's about a long and severe cold wave in Siberia, and leftover effects from
> the communist system, since nobody has had to take personal responsibility
> for anything there in 70 something years.  Keep in mind that it's unusually
> warm in Alaska right now.  We'd heard that the last few years the polar
> vortex winds had kept tightly wrapped around the north pole, so apparently
> they are dipping southward this year.  Is it part of a normal small cycle,
> the effect of global warming, or the beginning of the next Ice Age?  We're
> overdue for one.
>     When the subject of Americans using lots of energy came up, I was too
> busy to respond.  Thank you Dan for mentioning that we don't waste candles
> at our place.  I lived 3 years in England, and think that coin meters for
> electricity are great.  I'd turn on the water heater for our weekly bath,
> and feed the meter for a couple of hours.  I skimped on little chunks of
> coal to keep the living room at 60 degrees, the rest of the house was
> colder.  When you have had to moniter your energy use, when you have had to
> feed the actual coal or wood into the fire, you have at least a better idea
> of how much energy you are using. (Of course this does not explain why
> people like our neighbor keep their house stifling hot with a woodstove.)
>     Have you all heard that the WTO or somebody is trying to ban top loading
> washing machines in the U.S.?  It's to make us conform to EU or whoever's
> standards for energy use.  I use side loaders all the time at the
> laundromat, and they are cheaper to run, IF you hang your clothes up to dry.
> If you take those clothes out and put them into a dryer, all the money (and
> energy) saved by using a side loader goes up in steam.  I like to use a
> spinner to get them nearly dry, but nobody has them at home, and won't have
> them.  The fact is, or was at least 20 years ago and again my last visit 10
> years ago, that people in Europe don't have dryers.  So it IS more efficient
> to use a side loader THERE.  But if Mrs. Josie Average unloads her efficient
> at washing but not very efficient at spin drying side loader, and puts the
> clothes in a dryer, she will probably use more energy than she did with her
> old "inefficient" toploader.  Has anyone told the dogooders THAT?  The real
> problem is that Americans are so used to the idea that it is somehow their
> right to use clothes dryers, that they find the idea of clotheslines
> incomprehensible, and even a little sordid.  Ritzy neighborhoods frequently
> forbid them.  I personally don't care for hanging out in laundromats waiting
> for a machine to do something that God is perfectly willing to do for me,
> and paying for the privilege. When I did have nice things like plumbing (it
> was usually pretty old plumbing), I still had no craving to have a machine
> waste energy wearing out my clothes.
>     Maybe instead of all the kinds of programs sponsored by gas guzzlers and
> makers of appliances and fuel and oil and gas companies, maybe we need
> public TV stations to buy get more imported cheap sitcoms from Europe so
> Americans can begin to grasp the idea that civilization is not just about
> consuming and driving real fast.  I have 7 in-laws over there, and only 2
> even own a car.
>    American history (the part we know about, since we killed off and ignored
> the "prehistory", which is by definition what we didn't care to learn and
> record.) is so short that Americans tend to have the idea that before the
> internal combustion engine, there were only sort of subhumans.  A neat book,
> MEDICINE AND CULTURE, says that Europeans are used to the idea that the
> people who lived there hundreds and thousands of years ago were their
> ancestors, and were reasonably smart.  For that reason, Europeans will try
> to figure out HOW an herbal remedy works, rather than trying, like
> Americans, to prove WHETHER it works.  And the French, irritating as the may
> be, have actually got the idea that your background health affects whether
> or not you get sick.  So when you go to a French doctor, he is likely to
> give you a tonic instead of an antibiotic.
>     I don't know.  It's plain that we have a lot of bread and circuses to
> keep us from thinking too deep, and a lot of politicians who want us not to
> worry, they are taking care of everything.  I kind of suspect though, that
> bad diet or even the flouride in the water is doing something to Americans
> ability to think.  (I don't mean NAFEXers, all that fruit is keeping us in
> tiptop shape).  I just keep finding that I read the news, listen to news on
> the shortwave, and worse yet read the literature I pay for (Seed Savers
> Exchange and ACRES USA are real fearmongers, guys) and I want to go,
> "AAARRRGGHHH!!!!"    Thanks for listening.
> Donna TN z6, headed for z9 for a couple weeks.