To Charles A Phillips and others who feel strongly about the use of hemp
for paper: the forest network is a medium for exchange of ideas about how
to manage forest resources in general and in particular how to develop
decision support systems to help us. Contributors try to subscribe to the
scientific ethos where opinons can be expressed but should be labelled as
such and for the most part ideas are substantiated by as much scientific
evidence as can be mustered. The type of advocacy you have presented in
favour of growing hemp as a pulp crop does not fit that pattern of
behavior. The subject is OK, discussion of the merits of alternative
sources of fibre are quite legitimately the subject of the network;
particularly the methodology of how to dispassionately evaluate the
alternatives (which is what developing decion support systems aims to do).
Your latest message breaks some of our (unwritten rules). It was the
advocacy of a course of action without an attempt to give a scientificly
valid justification. It was abusive (we don't like being called sawdust
heads), it inferred we are biased ( sponsorship doesn't automatically infer
bias, we all get paid by someone), and worst it was a collection of
unsubstantiated assertions for which you claimed some high moral ground.
Maybe paper fibre is better derived from hemp than wood; this is not the
way to discuss that possibility.
I am just one user of the network and is a little presumptious of me to
make this request --- but we have been through this before, please treat
the subject in a scientific manner or take your discussion elsewhere. Ryde
James.
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Ryde James | Forestry/Science
Tel: (61+6)249-4330 | Australian National University
Fax: (61+6)249-0746 | Canberra, ACT 0200
|
___________________________________________________________________________
email: Ryde.james@anu.edu.au
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