Michael, 1/7/09 post to Britt’s list - Amerikalistan
Odum is certainly a major contributor to modern systems thinking, but he represented the parts of systems as numbers in equations that were controlled by the rules of their inter-relationships. That’s one metaphor that helps track what is physically happening, until the relationships and their rules change by […]
Mary, 1/7/09 post to Downslope
This is an especially good example of the EROI (energy return on energy investment) problem. What is stopping the oil sands development is all the high costs, coming from the fundamental inefficiency in the physical process of extracting, refining and disposing of the consequences of it. As the total cost […]
Anselmo, 1/7/09 post to Britt’s list - Amerikalistan
I guess I should give it a name, call it the “Equal Strain Principle” of natural systems. It’s a fairly easily observed behavior, in how any stable networks of relationships gets along. They share strains. It’s also a necessary logical consequence of systems having ‘homeostatic’ balance. Parts of […]
Anselmo, 1/6/09 post to Britt’s list - Amerikalistan
One could add a few more limiting factors, like the ones that would apply even if you happened to miraculously find solutions to all the others people are talking about.
One of those hidden “back stop” dead ends, you might call them, right ahead of us, is price. The […]