Tag: nature

Transportation

Posted on by Mark

Henry Ford built cars. Many cars. And these cars needed roads so roads were built. And these cars needed petrol so petrol was refined. Presently, the Earth has over 64 million kilometres of roads. Transportation uses energy; over a third of all energy consumed or about 1.7e20Joules annually. By design, roads stop natural processes; roadways have no vegetation, no natural capturing of solar energy by plants. Almost all fuel comes from non-renewable fossil fuels. We know Henry Ford’s world of cars is not sustainable.

We have learned much from the Covid pandemic. One important piece of knowledge is that we can undertake beneficial work, even when working remotely. We don’t need to commute every day to an office. At least we learned this is possible if we have competent managers.

We have also learned that there’s much to enjoy in our local environment. We don’t need to travel halfway around the globe for a vacation. Rather, simply spending an hour walking in a natural environment of woods and glades recharges our spirits.

From an overarching view, today’s service economy is replacing the production economy emphasized by Henry Ford. The Internet is the backbone of the service economy. As showcased during the pandemic, we don’t need ready, personal transportation for each of the 8 billion people on Earth. Isn’t it time to reduce the unnecessary energy spent on transportation? And return roads to nature?

War in Europe

Posted on by Mark

A critical, non-renewable resource should be safeguarded. Wisdom recommends it be used only as necessary. With the ongoing climate crisis, there’s also greater cause for safeguarding non-renewable fossil fuels due to their noxious by-products. And we can use the energy contained in fossil fuels only once; thereafter, it’s gone forever. Hence wisdom dictates restricting it to essential usage.

Yet folly has replaced wisdom as war returns to Europe. War, as typical, serves to destroy. In effect, combatants use large amounts of natural resources to ruin their opponent’s infrastructure. There’s little regard for the attendant loss in nature services or the commensurate loss of nature. Presumably the combatants assume that they can easily rebuild infrastructure and that nature regenerates itself. This isn’t wisdom given the constrained availability of energy and the finite ability of nature.

Let’s remember, non-renewable fuels can only be used once. As we use natural resources to build and rebuild infrastructure, we take more of nature for ourselves. And release more noxious emissions for future generations. Let’s also remember that when a species goes extinct, we’ve lost its service forever. Can we accept war as common in the future? Assuming not, how do we end war?
Fire at Chernihiv oil depot. Credit: nexta
Oil depot burning. Photo Nexta_TV

Foundations

Posted on by Mark

People make stuff. A lot of it. By one account, we’ve made more stuff than there is stuff in nature. Let’s assume this is true; it probably is. What stuff have we made? Well, we made roads, buildings, machines and such. What has nature made? Through evolution, nature has trees, elephants and amoeba. Our stuff, for the most part, needs humans to maintain it and to get value from it. Nature on the other hand has effectively created autonomous beings that fend for themselves.

Where is the future leading? The trends indicate that the quantity of human stuff continues to increase by about 30Gt per year. All this stuff needs human effort to maintain usefulness. In contrast, the amount of natural stuff has remained somewhat the same for a very long time. Exceptions are for global catastrophes such as asteroid strikes, massive volcanic eruptions and climate change. However as Homo sapiens take over, we replace nature with human stuff. Thus, the future necessitates increasing human effort, energy, to sustain stuff.

Nature continued over billions of years. Changes occurred such as the extinction of dinosaurs and the expansion of mammals. Will the future see the same for human stuff? Will it remain useful after global catastrophes? And will people leave enough natural stuff to sustain the future?

Foundation
Foundation

Cement and Concrete

Posted on by Mark

People seem to have a reluctant relationship with Earth’s natural world. We know that nature provides us with our necessary food. But most of us buy it in shops. And, with most of us living in cities, even our homes and workplaces are removed from nature. For these, concrete is the most effective separator. It’s a human invented material that is the foundation for most of our civilization.

Concrete results from mixing cement with water and with a suitable filler such as sand or gravel. Its use in the Roman era Pantheon demonstrates its durability. Its longevity can be further enhanced as we use rubble from destroyed concrete structures as filler for new concrete structures. However, cement can’t be re-used. New concrete requires new cement. And cement is costly.

Let’s scale the cost. Annually we produce over 4×109 tonnes of cement, equivalent to the cement for about 1000 dams the size of the 3 Gorges Dam. This amount is to remain constant to well past 2050. Its production calls for an annual expenditure of 3.5GJoules of energy per tonne. This amounts to an allocation of 1.4×1019Joules of energy annually, about 3% of total energy consumption. As most of the energy comes from fossil fuels then there’s resulting pollution at a rate of 0.54t of CO2 per tonne of cement, about 8% of global CO2 emissions. Because of this, cement is a significant parameter when modeling future climate change. Over history, humans have used about 128×109 tonnes of cement to enable living apart from nature, which is almost a thousand times greater than the weight of all humans. Concrete is costly both in energy consumption and pollution emission.

Concrete separates us from nature. And estimates are that we will continue this separation for decades to come. Should we continue to separate ourselves from the ecosystem? Or are you willing to fight this apparent primal urge to treat nature as a threat? For a prosperous future, we recommend you look for ways to live with nature rather than apart.