X-Message-Number: 10514
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 1998 08:56:13 -0700
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: Ozone, fingerprints, and noise.

Thomas Nord and George Smith post some stuff that seems to have little
to do with cryonics. But then so do I. I posted the Y2K articles because
I thought they'd be of immediate concern to orgs and to folk who want to
guard their health and wealth until they can be frozen.

It's plain now, however, that these posts are generating much more heat than
light, so I'll not pursue them any further here. Anyone actually interested
can email me.

Likewise to recovering folk from their fingerprints. George, this is something
for some new age I'll-believe-anything-I-like-and-screw-you-skeptics list,
not cryonet. Speaking as someone who actively participates on a couple of
those lists from time to time, I'd be happy to give you their addresses.
http://www.wsu.edu:8000/~paths/ is a good one. Or you might prefer the 
neotech forum at http://www.neo-tech.com/ or the omega Point forum at 
http://www.neosoft.com/internet/paml/groups.O/omega-point-theory.html.
On cryonet we're mostly focused on what to do if it should turn out that 
the current scientific theories are correct and your distinctiveness 

resides almost exclusively in the structure and process of your nervous system.

As to our grandchildren blaming us for ozone/greenhouse, Thomas, that's 
the very least of their environmental troubles. Species extinctions are
presently proceeding at 10,000 times the rate of 100 years ago. The World
Wildlife Fund just published a study suggesting that roughly 1/3rd of our 
accessible natural resources have been rendered barren in the last 25
years, and that our rate of destruction has been increasing by 5% each
year for some time. Much, much more in this line can be had from Jay 
Hanson's gloom collection at http://www.dieoff.org/. 

But there are two reasons to think all that long term gloom may be irrelevant.
The first is Y2K; the global geopolitical destabilization that might 
result from the worldwide failure of technology could carry off so many
people in the developing world that humanity's ecological impact would be
sharply reduced. Or it might result in toxic spillage and ABC warfare that
will screw living things up long after humans are only known by the grooves
left in their disposable razor blades. Or it might have no real effect -
no one knows, but this uncertainty makes planning now to address the
environmental issues moot.

The second reason to ignore the long term gloom is the possibility of 
fixing it with molecular nanotechnology. Thomas Nord might enjoy reading 
Eric Drexler's Engines Of Creation at http://www.foresight.org/EOC/ 
for the best introduction to the topic. Of course nanotech is presently
blue sky, but working on it or on related technologies is a much better
bet to fix the self-immolation of the human race than sending letters to
liars and fools^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H politicians who respond only 
to payola^H^H^H^H^H^H campaign donations and pulp melodrama 
^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H modern photo-journalism.

The relevance to cryonics being extremely tenuous, again I'd suggest 
a different forum for this topic. I don't mean that as a brush-off - I 
think these are vital concerns - but they're just not the concerns that 
are the focus of discussion here. The ecological economics list is an 
excellent place - you can read archives and subscription details at 
http://csf.colorado.edu/ecolecon/index.html . I think that might be
a more responsive list for this stuff.

Cheers and apologies,
Peter Merel.

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