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#280: Not what you’ve been told
#280: Not what you’ve been told A YOUNG PERSON’S GUIDE TO THE ECONOMY Introduction Intended for an educational documentary, The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra is a 1945 composition by Bejamin Britten. A similar title – A Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson – was used for a progressive rock compilation album released in 1976. What we need now […]
Whiff After Whiff
Whiff After Whiff Image by Anne and Saturnino Miranda from Pixabay The word “whiff” is used in baseball to describe when the batter swings and makes no contact with the pitched ball. The term presumably derives from the sound of hitting nothing but air. This off-sequence post acts as a brief update that I wanted […]
Humans: the Movie
Humans: the Movie What follows is a story involving a movie watched by animals. The pacing of the movie to be described might seem like a very odd choice, but it simply mirrors the pacing of human life on the planet. A vivid visual imagination on your part will help to bring the story to […]
Post-Modernity
Post-Modernity As sketched in the previous post, I believe modernity to be an unsustainable flash that will not persist into future millennia. Uncomfortable with untethered speculation, I have said little about what might come after, but feel I owe something in this vein. Semantically, what follows the modern age must be the post-modern age, right? Except […]
Distilled Disintegration
Distilled Disintegration Photo by Nigel Brown; licensed under Creative Commons My adult life has run on two diverging tracks. On one, I played science. The other track branched off at age 34—twenty years ago this month—when I started teaching a class on Energy and the Environment. I was eager to piece together our likely energy future: […]
Unsustainable Goose Chases
Unsustainable Goose Chases As we look toward the uncertain future, it may occur to some among us that we’ll need energy on Mars. How are we going to get it? Presumably Mars has no fossil fuels—although on the plus side its atmosphere is already 95% CO2, compared to Earth’s 0.04%, so they’re likely to be […]
Putting Science in its Place
Putting Science in its Place Photo by Noam R Although I might be described as a dyed-in-the-wool scientist, I’m about to say some things that are critical of science, which may be upsetting to some. It’s like those warnings on a movie or show: strong language, nudity, smoking, badmouthing science. So, before I lay into […]
The Simple Story of Civilization
The Simple Story of Civilization The stories we fashion about ourselves are heavily influenced by our short life spans during an age of unprecedented complexity. We humans, it would seem, are unfathomably complicated creatures who defy simple “just-so” characterizations. Animals, or humans tens of thousands of years ago are fair game for simple stories, but […]
Finite Feeding Frenzy
Finite Feeding Frenzy Image by ariesjay castillo from Pixabay You may be aware that our food industry is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, to the point that it takes about 10 kcal of energy input to deliver 1 kcal of consumed food. The enormous energy multiplier is due to extensively mechanized plowing, harvesting, processing, and delivery […]
The Cult of Civilization
The Cult of Civilization From Pixabay/KELLEPICS I recently watched a Netflix documentary series about fundamentalist Mormons, exposing along the way a number of beliefs that seem bizarre from the outside, but that are accepted as perfectly normal within their insular community. Though the term “cult” is not used in the series, it is hard not […]
Death by Hockey Sticks
Death by Hockey Sticks Courtesy Pixabay (PhotoMIX-Company) You may be familiar with the term “hockey stick curve,” used describe a trend that has been flat/stable for a very long time, but shoots up at the end of the series in dramatic fashion, resembling the shape of a hockey stick. Hockey can be a violent sport, […]
Spot The Illusions We Tell Ourselves
Spot The Illusions We Tell Ourselves Whitewater Falls, North Carolina Recently there have been a rather large number of occurrences which shine a light on some positive progress being made on ecological overshoot. Unfortunately, many outlets and even scientists have made claims about so-called “solutions” which are anything but, and generally they’re simply not true. […]
Caught Up in Complexity
Caught Up in Complexity From analogicus, via Pixabay Readers of this blog will know that I have come to some big-picture conclusions about success and failure that are unsettling. I don’t like them myself. Not only do they create an inner sadness about where I think the human endeavor is heading, but they result in a sort of isolation […]
Bonus: Galactic-Scale Energy with Tom Murphy
Bonus: Galactic-Scale Energy with Tom Murphy Take it from astrophysicist Tom Murphy. Sure, lightsabers, dilithium crystal warp drives, and Mars colonies are a lot of fun to consider. But a physics-based perspective on energy tells us that we need to accept the limits to growth, stop chasing sci-fi fantasies, and get to work building a […]
Who is Professor Thomas W. Murphy, Jr. and What Does He Know About Energy and Resource Decline?
Who is Professor Thomas W. Murphy, Jr. and What Does He Know About Energy and Resource Decline? I have mentioned Tom Murphy many times in this blog precisely because facts don’t lie. If anyone wants to truly know where we are as a species on this planet, Tom can definitely tell you. Don’t get me […]
