tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post2625096592334432465..comments2024-01-10T11:19:56.456-08:00Comments on What Is Sustainable: GeoDestiniesWhat Is Sustainablehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10227382786082159733noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post-23268316460429523172013-06-27T15:23:56.282-07:002013-06-27T15:23:56.282-07:00Brian, I visited Walt yesterday. The second editi...Brian, I visited Walt yesterday. The second edition of GeoDestinies is scheduled for an August release, but don't hold your breath. Dates can be very slippery.<br /><br />He gave me a book: Scarcity: Humanity's Final Chapter by Christopher O. Clugston<br /><br />I'm almost done with it, and it's a mind-blowing book. It will be the next review on my blog.What Is Sustainablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10227382786082159733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post-19885077285410447892013-06-27T15:02:19.147-07:002013-06-27T15:02:19.147-07:00Quoting Youngquist to just about anybody is akin t...Quoting Youngquist to just about anybody is akin to carrying Darwin's famous work into a fundamentalist church.<br /><br />A companion volume to Youngquist's text is William Catton's "Overshoot," especially his eleventh chapter on <a href="http://www.ecoglobe.ch/overshoot/e/overcarg.htm" rel="nofollow">Space Age Cargo Cults</a>.<br /><br />Good news: my pasture this year finally has 100% coverage, no embarrassingly bare sand hills.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post-83764084525389919492013-06-25T10:30:01.517-07:002013-06-25T10:30:01.517-07:00Riversong, I agree. When solar energy is used for...Riversong, I agree. When solar energy is used for photosynthesis, it can cause no harm (if the plants are not slaves on tilled fields). I don't think that the conversion of sunlight to electricity can be sustainable.<br /><br />VAST amounts of energy are wasted now. There are abundant opportunities for shrinking our footprints. What Is Sustainablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10227382786082159733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post-21600819543756242882013-06-25T06:28:20.138-07:002013-06-25T06:28:20.138-07:00One "answer" often proposed by the techn...One "answer" often proposed by the technocrats and geeks is improved energy conversion efficiency - i.e. better photovoltaic cells and solar concentrators - to more productively capture that endlessly renewable solar energy. But efficiency is really an industrial value and not an organic one. <br /><br />The overall planetary solar conversion efficiency by photosynthesis (the basis of the entire web of life) is about 1%. To an engineer, that would seem terribly wasteful due to poor design. But it's the rate which Gaia has found to be sustainable over hundreds of millions of years.<br /><br />Until we learn to "think like a mountain", we will never truly understand what it means to sustain the planet in perpetuity.Riversonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05413657075902226702noreply@blogger.com