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  • From: "Kieran or Donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>
  • To: <nafex@yahoogroups.com>
  • Subject: [nafex] Global warming, etc.
  • Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 15:32:25 -0600

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.








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