Greenhouse Mending

Conserve To Greatness---Energy Resource Efficiency and The Future (5 of 5) ECOLOGY--THE CLOSING CIRCLE Ecology and efficiency are merely two sides of the same coin. Efficient energy systems require less fuel and emit fewer combustion products. Substituting data flow for that of people and their vehicles reduces fuel and material use. Recycling materials reduces mining requirements and fuel needs while decreasing waste streams. Better materials reduce energy use, mining needs, and dangerous waste products. Better food production systems could feed many times more people at less energy cost and less pain to the environment. Still, the greatest danger to humanity is probably fouling the nest with wasted resources before realizing their value. Poor farming practices and overgrazing devastated much of the land where classical civilizations thrived (Lowdermilk). Ruined highlands silted and ruined lowlands. One initiative of China's so-called Great Leap Forward in the early years of the c...

Conserve To Greatness---Energy Resource Efficiency and The Future (4 of 5) FOOD Shortly after the Second World War, thousands of Japanese prisoners were hungry nearly to starvation. It was not that their American captors had deliberately deprived them, only that they had received wheat instead of rice. This illustrates an important facet of human behavior. Unless constrained in a prison camp, people resist new eating habits. Thus, it is seems difficult to use the many efficient options available. Yet, progress eventually comes. In Europe, potatoes were only fed to livestock for some decades before an eccentric booster (who had been fed potatoes as a prisoner of war) gave the French queen a bouquet of potato flowers. In America, tomatoes were thought to be poisonous until in the early 1800s a maniacal gardener posted notices and then astonished a crowd by publicly eating a tomato. Conversely, people eat too much of some things. Ali...

Conserve To Greatness---Energy Resource Efficiency and The Future (3 of 5) ENERGY AGAIN--AVOIDING TRAVEL Another transportation approach may be the best, avoid it altogether! James Martin wrote about "the wired society" in the 1970s. Martin described possibilities of replacing much commuting with communicating, and Martin's wired society is developing now. Many jobs can are done at home. Employees simply call in to send and receive data. Communication has already decreased the energy costs of a small number of telecommuters. If applied widely, it can save energy for roads and vehicles and materials for the work places that are no longer needed. Most important, telecommuting to work is distance insensitive. Once society adjusts to telecommuting, telecommuters can be across town or across the continent...or on another continent...or across space. One effect of this is that peasants can get good jobs without leaving their land. Nature lovers can homestead in the wilds while ...

Conserve To Greatness---Energy Resource Efficiency and The Future (2 of 5) ENERGY Energy is the most notable set of mineral resources because any shortages of energy affect production of other minerals and food. Conversely, excess energy allows production from the most dilute ores and the most marginal farm lands. World energy prices reached low points in the 1960s and 1980s (adjusted for inflation). In the 1960s, Increased production in the giant oil fields of North Africa and the Persian Gulf drove down the prices of oil and all competing energy sources. Low prices allowed sloppy burning methods and encouraged rapid growth in energy use. Energy use increased geometrically, as in the Club of Rome computer simulations. Then in the 1970s, many of the major petroleum exporters managed to raise world prices by cartel controls on production, and most energy prices rose along with those of oil. Consequently, efficiency of energy use also began increa...

Conserve To Greatness---Energy Resource Efficiency and The Future (1 of 5) Man built most nobly when confronted with the greatest limitations. Frank Lloyd Wright Nothing grates quite so much as that stock phrase, "This country didn't conserve its way to greatness." In fact, homo sapiens in general and Americans in particular did conserve to greatness! Better designs, using less material to get more results, is only one engineering option, the opposite of burning more fuel. If fuel is cheap and fresh air unlimited, burning more is wisest. If fuel is costly and air polluted, time and materials must be devoted to increasing cleverness. Fortunately, this can often be done. Clever engineering can often follow Buckminster Fuller's dictum of "doing more with less." For example, Benjamin Franklin was asked to help ease a problem of a wood f...

The Silver Bullet Blues—Stumbling Towards Energy Fixes You see, during the full moon, I become a terrible raging thing, a werewolf. That’s why you must take this gun and be prepared to use it. It has a silver bullet. That’s the only thing that can stop me. Lon Chaney as Frank Talbott into many werewolf movies A silver bullet … or a crucifix … or a contrived delivery of sunlight is a dependable component of thrillers. At the last moment, the one crucial item defeats evil, and goodness prevails. The silver-bullet metaphor has even escaped the fictional realm. One often hears, “We need to find the silver bullet for …,” X, whatever X is. Unfortunately, reality has few simple issues and fewer silver bullets. Instead, shortages of desired things and unwanted byproducts of producing those things can only be solved (or mitigated) by investing work and money and time. Magical thinking allows societies to stumble after silver bullets rather than making the practical investments to solve problems...

Every Little Energy Bit Helps…And Every Eccentric Bit…and Every Bottom-Line Bit Every little bit helps! Every little bit helps! That was a line from a new group in the 1970s—the environmentalists. They had big ideas about cleaning all the smoke stacks of America. They also had little ideas. One of the little ideas was a brick in the toilette tank. One brick saved about one quart per flush with the resulting savings in water and water purification chemicals. AND if all the toilettes in America had a brick…. Let’s start with a serious concern about energy. Petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert said that petroleum production is like a bell-shaped curve. Production of oil for our cars goes steeply up to a peak.…. Then, it goes steeply down. In 1956, Hubbert said that oil production in the lower forty-eight states would peak about 1970. People laughed…until 1970 when it happened. Now, other geologists are saying there is a similar curve for world oil production. And that peak might be roughly...