CryoNet #22652 - #22660

CryoNet - Tue 7 Oct 2003

    #22652: Global Warming, myth or misunderstood? [James Swayze]
    #22653: Re: CryoNet #22644  [Azt28]
    #22654: Re: CryoNet #22646 Moving to Canada [Azt28]
    #22655: Re: CO2phobia [Steve Harris] [Keith Henson]
    #22656: life extension and population [Charles Platt]
    #22657: Re: a safe haven for cryonics? [David Stodolsky]
    #22658: Burning fossil fuels [Kennita Watson]
    #22659: Laser Nanosurgery -- I'm excited! [Kennita Watson]
    #22660: No news is no news  [Ben Best]

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Message #22652
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2003 04:03:02 -0700
From: James Swayze <swayzej@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Global Warming, myth or misunderstood?
References: <20031006090002.50423.qmail@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

Anyone thinking they have a lock on whether CO2 is a problem for warming 
the planet or not I believe needs to study theses sources and put their 
considerable combined scientific talents to work deciding if the facts 
here are correct.

If they are then we are headed for an Ice Age not tropical paradise in 
some views nor Waterworld in others.

http://www.essc.psu.edu/~bjhaupt/papers/guest.97/guest-sh.html#modeling_of_the_global%20_conveyor

http://wikyonos.seos.uvic.ca/people/weaver/documents/weaver-abstracts.html

more found here:

http://search.netscape.com/nscp_results.adp?source=NSCPTop&query=langrangian%20melt%20water%20event%20global%20warming&x=0&y=0


James

-- 
Member:
Cryonics Institute of Michigan  http://www.cryonics.org
The Immortalist Society         http://www.cryonics.org/info.html
The Society for Venturism       http://www.venturist.org
Immortality Institute           http://www.imminst.org

MY WEBSITE: http://www.davidpascal.com/swayze/
Signature Memetic Virus--The worst enemy of those who now or will need medical 
care is the uninformed politician or moral fanatic who proscribe what doctors 
are allowed to prescribe and research, with the consent of their patients. 
Those who understand this are strongly encouraged to modify this to fit their 
personality, and add this to their signature file, and organize to recover our 
freedom from Big Brother. For those who wait until they are sick, it will be 
too late. Those who suffer from diseases which might have been cured by 
advanced medical research or schedule 1 drugs banned by Big Brother, have the 
right to hold accountable those who sat on their hands or worse, deferred their 
responsibility for personal and humanity's survival to unseen mystical agents, 
while they remained ill and dying.

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Message #22653
From: Azt28@xxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 08:56:44 EDT
Subject: Re: CryoNet #22644 

>From : John deRivaz:

> The survival of individuals now cryopreserved is a rather different matter.
> Their best chance may well lie in designing cryonics institutions so that
> there is little financial or career advantages to be obtained in attacking
> them.
> 
> Nevertheless, if there are two cryonics facilities near to each other
> geographically yet in different legislatures, this could be helpful, but
> whether dewars with patients inside could really be shipped across
> international borders with one legislature unwilling is practicable is
> another matter.

The logical solution is to have many facilities in many contries and a ship 
to move dewars from one to another with the minimum state control. Airships 
would even be best: Faster, inland access,...

Yvan Bozzonetti.


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Message #22654
From: Azt28@xxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 09:03:46 EDT
Subject: Re: CryoNet #22646 Moving to Canada

>From C. Platt:

> 
> Rather than contemplating moving an American organization to
> Canada, I would favor an entirely new Canadian-based cryonics
> organization. The more organizations there are, the more
> secure we should all feel.
> 
> --CP
> 
A CI chapter would be best.

What are the last news?

What about moving in another US State?

YB.


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Message #22655
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2003 09:28:47 -0400
From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: CO2phobia [Steve Harris]

At 09:00 AM 06/10/03 +0000, Steve wrote:

snip

>Ice ages are probably environmentally benign, since the come on and 
>retreat at time scales of 10,000 years or more, which time enough to let 
>plants and whole ecosystems migrate. But do that in 50 years, and temp 
>change from north to south generally outrun the plants, and then you get 
>mass extinction. Let's not go there, is my message.

Steve, I am certainly not arguing with you about the undesirability of 
rapid climate changes.  But the ice core record reflects the climate 
"chattering" into and out of ice ages on scales shorter than 50 years.  At 
the end of the Younger Dryas cooling the climate warmed up 13 deg F in 50 
years!  The jump to ice age conditions is even faster.  It seems there are 
large positive feedbacks involved that are poorly understood, but may 
involve abrupt shutoff of the massive movement of heat from the tropics to 
the far North Atlantic through the thermohaline circulation of the ocean.

Here is a starting 
point:  http://faculty.washington.edu/wcalvin/1990s/1998AtlanticClimate.htm

thermohaline "ice age" in Google will take you into much of the rest of it.

The consequences of an ice age for cryonics and humans in general are not good.

Keith Henson

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Message #22656
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 10:14:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <other@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: life extension and population

David Stodolsky writes:

"One way to reduce fuel consumption is to limit population.
This solution is counter to the promotion of any life
extension technology."

And this assumption is based on...?

First, population is limiting itself. The demographic
transition is pretty much undeniable at this point, with
births per female lifetime down to 1.2 in some Euro nations
(which are now worried about population _decrease_). Of
course this has happened at the same time that average life
expectancy has increased. Therefore your suggestion that life
extension tends to worsen the population problem has already
been disproved, if we are talking about average life
expectancy. Women don't necessarily have more children just
because they expect to live longer; the reverse has turned
out to be true.

If you're concerned about the effects of lengthening the
*maximum* human lifespan (say, from 120 to 250 years, more or
less) it's important to remember that this only leads to
linear growth as opposed to the exponential growth caused by
an increase in the birth rate. Therefore I regard an increase
in the maximum lifespan as being far less likely to impose
"population stress" than an increase in the birth rate. But
what are the actual numbers?

A few years ago, I searched for any kind of UN-sponsored or
other simulation/projection of the consequences of an
increase in maximum lifespan. Finding nothing, I called
various government agencies and nonprofit population study
groups. So far as I could tell, no demographers anywhere had
ever studied this issue. The people at Worldwatch and the
Population Institute, for instance, were baffled by my
question.

So, I wrote my own little simulation program and ran various
scenarios (all relating to US population). I found that if
maximum lifespan increases by 5 years during each future
10-year period, while fertility rate decreases by 1.5 percent
every 5 years, and an assumed reduction in age-related
diseases lowers the risk of death by 60 percent every five
years, everything balances out. The result after 200 years is
the same as if the current birth rate and maximum lifespan
remained the same, coupled with a slight decrease in risk of
death in higher age groups.

Of course life extensionists are expecting a much bigger
increase in maximum lifespan, and it may happen more
suddenly instead of being spread out over a couple of
centuries. And nanotechnologists have their own view of the
future. But my projection is more consistent with the
historic rate of change of population variables.

In any case, the principle is very clear: An eventual
doubling in maximum lifespan, coupled with a very large
reduction in disease risk, can be offset by a relatively
modest decline in fertility. The decline that would be
necessary in the US has already been exceeded in some other
nations.

I believe the concern about the effects of an increased
maximum lifespan is rooted more in psychology than in
reality. We feel an instinctive resentment in response to the
idea of 150-year-olds becoming a dominant age group. This
resentment probably is linked with an assumption that someone
of that age is parasitic and unproductive. Of course if life
extension therapies are successful, the assumption is wrong.

One last point: Since life extension will cost money, it
should affect richer nations more than poorer nations.
Fortunately, richer nations have lower birth rates than
poorer nations, generally speaking, and are much better
positioned to tolerate an increased maximum lifespan without
catastrophic environmental consequences.

Anyone who worries about population should be much more
concerned with third-world birth rates than first-world life
expectancy.

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Message #22657
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 17:14:02 +0200
Subject: Re: a safe haven for cryonics?
From: David Stodolsky <david.stodolsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

On Sunday, October 5, 2003, at 12:03  PM, John de Rivaz wrote:

>
> Over the period likely to be required before reanimations are possible
> legislatures may well change their views. As I have said previously, a 
> lot
> of this depends on whether individuals with power decide that their 
> personal
> careers or financial positions can be improved by attacking cryonics. 
> If
> these individuals also have persuasive ability, such as Stalin or 
> Hitler,
> then whatever the logic cryonics can be wiped out in their country. 
> Just as
> a supernova can explode in a galaxy and bathe it in life destroying
> radiation, so can such an individual appear in any legislature 
> anywhere.
> Therefore no one country is intrinsically safer than any other over 
> long
> time periods.

While this is generally true, failing to recognize the differences in 
stability of different countries would be an error. The power of single 
persons is limited in democratic states, however, as recently seen, 
this is honored more often in speech than in practice.


dss

David S. Stodolsky  davidstodolsky@xxxxxxx  SpamTo: bin@xxxxxxxxxxxx

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Message #22658
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 18:22:24 -0700
Subject: Burning fossil fuels
From: Kennita Watson <kennita@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Personally, I'd rather stand downwind of a windmill (or of a nuclear
reactor, given appropriate Geiger counter readings) than of an
oil-burning power plant (or of a cigarette or a Cadillac for that 
matter).
My lungs register their vote by coughing and wheezing or not.  I
don't need global warming statistics to tell me which I prefer.

Live long and prosper,
Kennita
--
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
none but ourselves can free our minds.
           -- Bob Marley, "Redemption Song"

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Message #22659
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 18:44:55 -0700
Subject: Laser Nanosurgery -- I'm excited!
From: Kennita Watson <kennita@xxxxxxxxxxx>

http://www.nature.com/nsu/030929/030929-12.html

Live long and prosper,
Kennita
--
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
none but ourselves can free our minds.
           -- Bob Marley, "Redemption Song"

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Message #22660
From: "Ben Best" <benbest@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: No news is no news 
Date: Mon,  6 Oct 2003 20:06:19 -0700

   I know that people are wondering 
what is happening between the Cryonics Institute
and the Michigan government officials over 
their desire to regulate us as a cemetary. There
is simply nothing new to report at this time. The
best I can do is copy a statement from our attorney
-- David Ettinger -- which will appear in the next
issue of THE IMMORTALIST. 

             -- Ben Best, President
                Cryonics Institute
                http://www.cryonics.org/

##############################################

  From David Ettinger:

    The State of Michigan Department 
of Consumer and Industry Services 
has issued orders limiting CI's 
activities pending its licensure 
as a cemetery, which the Department 
claims is required. CI  has filed 
papers indicating that it disagrees, 
and stating that the orders (which 
were not issued by a court) have no 
effect, because the Department has 
no jurisdiction over CI. Moreoever, 
the orders have no impact on CI's 
patient care. 

    CI cannot be more specific regarding 
the resolution of these matters at this 
time, because of the sensitive nature of 
the legal process. However, CI is hopeful 
that matters will soon be resolved favorably. 
The State of Michigan has made clear in 
its press release that it is not anti-cryonics 
and believes that CI could continue to operate 
successfully if licensed as a  cemetery.

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