Having spent the majority of my career in photovoltaic R&D, I certainly support those technologies. I also agree with the essay that even renewables require responsible creation and usage. One energy source, however, will not satisfy all applications so I also favor ongoing fusion research., even though its commercial payback may be decades away. Our present problems derive largely from lack of far-sighted planning. Remedies of these must therefore project decades or even centuries into the future.
And of course I agree that overpopulation will negate any attempts to create a healthier and more prosperous future. I thank the author for raising that point.
Thank you, Jonathan. I appreciate your specific expertise here amid my generalized speculation. And I very much appreciate your focus on the long-term planning that rarely occurs. As for population, I'm overdue for a focused piece on the topic. I've written a few, but it's been a while.
Jason, yesterday our mountain microseasonal temperature dropped from 62 degrees to 34, and felt like 15 with the wind chill. My mind was drenched in an eerie sense of dread, echoes from Helene. I believe the snow you wish for landed in Black Mountain overnight. If I could, I would press 'forward' to Maine. We don't need it as we recover our orphan roads from landslides, and dry out our riparian banks from the floods.
As I write about Kinship this week in a Substack collaboration with Brian Funke, I see, even more clearly, that 'kinship' may soon be tossed around as carelessly as 'ecosystem.' I see the problem in me as I wade through my decision to build a tiny house: the permissions i need to obtain, not from the county, but from the Bears, the Carolina Wrens, and the Squirrels who own the acorns that become Oaks of this land.
Energy choices are very much on my mind. I bow to you for doing the heavy lifting in the science research. Your translation skills are stellar. Thanks, brother.🌱🌿
I'll give you my address for the snow delivery, Katharine. Otherwise, stay high and dry as best you can. As for your tiny house, please bear in mind the scale of what's actually happening and who's causing damage at the landscape scale. It's not you nor your tiny house. Enrich the landscape around the place you call home, and you'll remain far ahead of the curve. Thanks for all you do.
An essay, tremendously informative, eloquent and making a convincing argument for the use of solar power rather than pinning our hopes on fusion technology coming to the rescue anytime soon.
What troubles me is how do we escape the fundamental equation that any power source we use creates heat energy at the downstream end? What has been concerning us recently in the last forty years or more are the harmful toxic pollutants and greenhouse gas byproducts of our power generation and I think we are well on our way to eliminating them with solar and wind.
But still, whether it be a sewing machine, a microwave, a lithium powered bicycle, an elevator lift, we are still generating heat that has to go somewhere. We can't reflect it back into space, we can't geo-engineer it away, we can't sequester it. Our civilization's byproduct is heat no matter what power source we use. And that worries me, as I see no way around it.
Even if we ate nothing but plants, taking the energy they sequester from the sun and using it to power and warm our bodies, the heat we generate just to run our bodies and move around, when there are 8 billion of us, is substantial. Now add the heat byproducts of our civilization and even with no greenhouse gases we are warming up the planet. Just how much is the question. Jason, I think I see a path to a solution but I don't think it is one many will want to take.
Thank you, Michael. I need to understand this long-term heat problem better. I've heard this idea but haven't been able to wrap my head around it. Thanks for the reminder. Stay tuned...
Jason, do you remember reading how in the cold days of winter the medieval European peasants would bring some livestock into their huts at night to serve as a heat source? Even two humans can heat a room significantly just from their body heat in winter. Now multiply that heat by the size of our current herds and our own numbers.. We'd reduce the heat problem significantly by becoming vegetarians! And of course reducing our own numbers.
All those eggbeaters, elevators, bicycles, and smartphones we so rely on, have to be manufactured, they don't grow in nature awaiting harvesting. And that fabrication process involves an enormous amount of heat release and global warming. But to eliminate all these adjuncts is the path no one wants to take. We feel it would reduce us to a brutish Stone Age existence. And it might. But we've learned a little in 40,000 years and there may be ways to solve the problem and keep our civilization. We might just offshore it for one. Bears thinking about.
Having spent the majority of my career in photovoltaic R&D, I certainly support those technologies. I also agree with the essay that even renewables require responsible creation and usage. One energy source, however, will not satisfy all applications so I also favor ongoing fusion research., even though its commercial payback may be decades away. Our present problems derive largely from lack of far-sighted planning. Remedies of these must therefore project decades or even centuries into the future.
And of course I agree that overpopulation will negate any attempts to create a healthier and more prosperous future. I thank the author for raising that point.
Thank you, Jonathan. I appreciate your specific expertise here amid my generalized speculation. And I very much appreciate your focus on the long-term planning that rarely occurs. As for population, I'm overdue for a focused piece on the topic. I've written a few, but it's been a while.
Jason, yesterday our mountain microseasonal temperature dropped from 62 degrees to 34, and felt like 15 with the wind chill. My mind was drenched in an eerie sense of dread, echoes from Helene. I believe the snow you wish for landed in Black Mountain overnight. If I could, I would press 'forward' to Maine. We don't need it as we recover our orphan roads from landslides, and dry out our riparian banks from the floods.
As I write about Kinship this week in a Substack collaboration with Brian Funke, I see, even more clearly, that 'kinship' may soon be tossed around as carelessly as 'ecosystem.' I see the problem in me as I wade through my decision to build a tiny house: the permissions i need to obtain, not from the county, but from the Bears, the Carolina Wrens, and the Squirrels who own the acorns that become Oaks of this land.
Energy choices are very much on my mind. I bow to you for doing the heavy lifting in the science research. Your translation skills are stellar. Thanks, brother.🌱🌿
I'll give you my address for the snow delivery, Katharine. Otherwise, stay high and dry as best you can. As for your tiny house, please bear in mind the scale of what's actually happening and who's causing damage at the landscape scale. It's not you nor your tiny house. Enrich the landscape around the place you call home, and you'll remain far ahead of the curve. Thanks for all you do.
An essay, tremendously informative, eloquent and making a convincing argument for the use of solar power rather than pinning our hopes on fusion technology coming to the rescue anytime soon.
What troubles me is how do we escape the fundamental equation that any power source we use creates heat energy at the downstream end? What has been concerning us recently in the last forty years or more are the harmful toxic pollutants and greenhouse gas byproducts of our power generation and I think we are well on our way to eliminating them with solar and wind.
But still, whether it be a sewing machine, a microwave, a lithium powered bicycle, an elevator lift, we are still generating heat that has to go somewhere. We can't reflect it back into space, we can't geo-engineer it away, we can't sequester it. Our civilization's byproduct is heat no matter what power source we use. And that worries me, as I see no way around it.
Even if we ate nothing but plants, taking the energy they sequester from the sun and using it to power and warm our bodies, the heat we generate just to run our bodies and move around, when there are 8 billion of us, is substantial. Now add the heat byproducts of our civilization and even with no greenhouse gases we are warming up the planet. Just how much is the question. Jason, I think I see a path to a solution but I don't think it is one many will want to take.
Thank you, Michael. I need to understand this long-term heat problem better. I've heard this idea but haven't been able to wrap my head around it. Thanks for the reminder. Stay tuned...
Jason, do you remember reading how in the cold days of winter the medieval European peasants would bring some livestock into their huts at night to serve as a heat source? Even two humans can heat a room significantly just from their body heat in winter. Now multiply that heat by the size of our current herds and our own numbers.. We'd reduce the heat problem significantly by becoming vegetarians! And of course reducing our own numbers.
All those eggbeaters, elevators, bicycles, and smartphones we so rely on, have to be manufactured, they don't grow in nature awaiting harvesting. And that fabrication process involves an enormous amount of heat release and global warming. But to eliminate all these adjuncts is the path no one wants to take. We feel it would reduce us to a brutish Stone Age existence. And it might. But we've learned a little in 40,000 years and there may be ways to solve the problem and keep our civilization. We might just offshore it for one. Bears thinking about.