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  • From: Pete Vukovich <pvukovic1@yahoo.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Solar and Wind are not renewable.
  • Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2009 12:38:39 -0800 (PST)

I think the evolution of the brain was more simple, most of our actions and 'complex thoughts' are probably still limited by the biochemical processes which power our cortex's, but somehow having a brain which was slightly less hardwired to stimulus than a cockroaches made reasonable vessels for RNA or so the 'thinking' goes. But I'm not sure its an indicator of overall success - I'm not so sure RNA's surival strategy was intended to encompass its own overabundance.

After all as a result of our medical 'know how' our bodies now contain 5-10 lethal genes our ancestors weren't privy to. As a result of 'harnessing energy' we can now blow up in a few hours more than we can create in a 100 years. And I think the worst of it may be arrogance,  the potential to believe our brains can actually get us out of the uncomposted manure piles they create - instead of just feeling relief that so far we've been lucky or worrying that were testing natures patience. Not to point out the obvious, but bacteria outnumber humans mass wise about 4,000 to 1, they can live in almost any junk we can produce and extreme places we wouldn't stand a chance , and their dna contains a tiny epsilon of the nonsense codewords human dna does - and somehow they do that without anything we can recognize as a brain, for longer than we've been a species. I don't know what that tells you, I mean I enjoy my brain as much as the next guy, but I'm not so sure its why I'm here. Others who know me would argue its definitely not how I got here, just the reason nature has taken pity on me.





--- On Sun, 2/8/09, Daniel Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com> wrote:
From: Daniel Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Solar and Wind are not renewable.
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Sunday, February 8, 2009, 1:36 PM

The "renewable" or "sustainable" label is a language barrier
to significance of human activity.
When considering a technology or behavior of human beings, we must first
consider what we have to offer the world/universe as a species.
The common misconception is that Man is some kind of Fallen Angel, dropped
lock, stock and barrel into the 'wild' garden of Eden.

Nothing comes from the top-down. Everything in the universe is built from the
bottom up. Humans are just one of many upright-walking primates that managed to
evolve the ability to imagine. Imagining that there is a tiger in the grass was
more useful than not imagining the tiger hiding in the grass, so our
imaginations grew and became coherent as our images became connected to one
another.

That's it. That's what separates us from the cockroach or the elephant:
imagination which more often gets us into trouble than out of it.

Now, let's imagine that we have the ability to contribute something to the
world that no other species can contribute. I'll use "protect the
planet from asteroid collisions" as an example.
How many people do we need to do this? Which people? How do we determine the
importance of any action or civilization we create?

It's simple. 'Net Future Usefulness'. We are as valuable as our
lives are useful to someone in the future (most commonly, our children).
We could all go to living in caves or underground houses or in the jungles of
the tropics, but when the next big dinosaur-killing asteroid comes along, we
would probably go extinct along with most of the planet's species.

On the other hand, if we constructively use resources so that there is a Net
Usefulness to our actions, then building windmills and solar panels can leave a
more useful and stable world than the one we inherited.

It's the Net, not the specific resources that are critical, and using less
is better, but using none is getting nowhere.

Dan Conine
Belgium, WI





>Energy in the real world
>by John Weber
>http://www.energybulletin.net/node/47606
> Published Jan 1 2009 by Energy Bulletin
>
>Solar and Wind are not renewable. The energy from solar and from wind is
>available but not renewable. An oak tree is renewable. A horse is
>renewable. They reproduce themselves.
>
>But, and a very important but, the human made equipment used to capture
>solar energy or wind energy is not renewable. In fact, there is
>considerable fossil fuel energy embedded in this equipment. The glazing on
>a solar collector of any kind ? solar thermal water, solar thermal air,
>and solar electric ? requires energy to manufacture. Aluminum comes from
>bauxite. It takes considerable energy to refine the bauxite.


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