HAS222d/253e Intro to Energy and Environement: life under the pale sun

P.B. RhinesLecture 12:

(1) Global energy: national profiles, local solutions

(2) Natural Capitalism

(3) exponential growth and PAT

Thomas Friedman: ‘The world is flat’Richard Florida: ‘The world is spiky’ (Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 2005,

http://edgeperspectives.typepad.com/edge_perspectives/2005/10/the_world_is_sp.html)

• Thomas Friedman taught us that the world is flat (Google him to read samples of his argument), but Richard Florida says otherwise. Florida, who is best known for his book and his thoughts about the creative class and the importance of this burgeoning section of society, says that the world is spiky.

• In a series of maps, Florida shows us first where the world's population centres are. In further maps, he then goes on to show where many of the world's patents are issued and where the 1 200 most quoted scientists of the world are located. The purpose is to show us that while much of the world is urban (over 50% world wide now compared to just 3% in 1800), that the ability to innovate and create is centredamong remarkably few places in the world. Some cities around the globe are towers of patent filings, population, and science (New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, Tokyo, Shanghai), but other major population centres (Mexico City, Cairo, Paris, Rio) almost completely disappear off of these maps. Florida says that the world's major cities that are centres of innovation have little to fear from globalisation and that these centres are often more linked with other alike international cities then they are with other urban areas in their own nations. A large population does not necessarily mean innovation and development. Although certainly any major urban centre has people who are developing new products or services in it, there are few cities that are globally important sites.

The world is not flat

Contrasting national energy profiles: US and Tanzania.

http://earthtrends.wrf.org

UN’s human development index vs. electricity use

Benka, S.G., Physics Today, April 2002

yet another energy unit: the quad (1018 Joules): globaluse of marketable energy by type, and production/consumption of oil by

country

Pacala & SocolowStabilization Wedges, Science 2004

If carbon dioxide concentration inthe atmosphere can be kept below500 ppm (it is now 375, it was 280 before human intervention), the climate changes will be far smallerthan with unrestrained growth (1000 ppm or more). Remember,Venus is a run-away greenhousewith mostly CO2 atmosphere andsurface temperature of 7000C

upper curve is 1.5% carbon releaseincrease per year which is typical offorecasts for industrialgrowth Each of 7 ‘wedges’ is a 1 gigaton per yearreduction in carbon emissions acting over the next 50 years; altogether they could keep atmospheric CO2 below500 parts per million

• . Some of the wedges:• efficient vehicles,• reduced vehicle use,• efficient buildings,• efficient coal fired electricity plants,• more natural gas• elec. plants,• remove CO2 from smokestack and bury it, • wind• solar,• biomass energy sources

• ..others??

(2) Natural CapitalismHawken, Lovins & Lovins, 1999

hear lecture at KUOW Weekday archives (search for Lovins):http://www.kuow.org/defaultProgram.asp?ID=3749

Capital is: moneygoods …these two are the standards of business

but alsopeoplenatural resources

the problem is that these things that are mined, gathered, harvested from Nature are deemed ‘cost-free’ with a value approximately zero

yet ‘the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the otherway around’.

ecosystem services like pollination: are bees now in trouble(Albert Einstein: ‘if bees were to disappear, people woulddisappear within 4 years’)

People were once a limiting factor of the economy, with limitless environmental capital..now it is the other way around.

• Four principles:• 1. radically increased natural resource productivity

– Factor Ten Club: “Within one generation we can achieve a ten-fold increase inefficiency with which we use energy, natural resources and other materials”

– defining efficiency ( output per $) => include quality of life, long-term valuation– vast opportunity for technology development…and for profit– end of subsidized inefficiency (mining, oil, coal,fishing, forest industries) – the automobile: 1% efficient as a people mover (20% efficient at converting gasoline

to mechanical energy, but human represents only 1/20 th of the mass being moved..=> 1%..and that neglects inefficiency in bringing you the gasoline. Incandescent light bulbs are ~ 3% efficient

Electric motors are ~ 90% efficient while gasoline engines are ~20% efficient)cars are 20x too heavy and engines 10x too powerful…yet a UW study shows nocorrelation between efficiency of electric motors and their cost…market price!

20 times your body weight per day of ‘stuff’ is created and 99% disposed– design whole systems rather than one component at a time: e.g., heating and ventilating in buildings is squeezed into

inefficient, small ducts, pipes and vents, making it noisy and inefficient. Windows are still installed without long-term energy efficiency implications.

• 2. biomimicry– estimate that only 6% of materials involved in US industry end up as products;

overall, durable goods produced = about 1% of wastespider webs versus Kevlar: silk made from flies. Nature’s Darwinian evolution has selected low-impact, high efficiency solutions. Abalone shell stronger than our best ceramics assembled at 4C from seawater, no waste. Trees make a sugar called cellulose which is strong as nylon, wood as strong as steel and low toxicity. Paint that cleans itself the way lotus petals stay white as the rise from the mud made in Germany.

Successful companies will take their values from customers, designs from nature and their discipline from the marketplace.

• 3. service and economy flow: continuous flow reckoning – the economy moves from durable goods to services– xerox copiers, air conditioning, elevators; ‘lease a vertical transport service’; Dow’s solvents: don’t sell these toxic things

but lease a ‘solvent service’. Why are you trying to sell me this thing, there must be something wrong with it.– University of Zurich chemistry class that makes goo from pure chemicals, run backward: take goo and separate it into

primary chemicals. Closed loop cycle thinking– Dupont plastic films: thinner, recycled, profitable– Ray Anderson’s INTERFACE carpet company…carpet tiles with invisible seams..eventually lease a floor covering service

» 1000 times less raw material input than conventional carpets!– beginning-to-end tracking of materials and waste: the carpet factory where the waste water is cleaner than

the water coming in. The environment comes into the service-flow economy because, if you are renting someone a copier you may design it to optimize its lifetime and value when its life is over..its recycling value. Design and planning come to the foreground, whereas if you sell copiers you don’t care what happens to them.

– increased employment, continuous need for service rather than big capital purchase

• 4. investing in natural capital– business has not followed its own accounting principles in neglecting value of natural capital– ‘tragedy of the commons’

chapter 7 (Muda…) of Natural Capitalism tells of Interface, a carpet company that has implemented closed cycle,

ingenious, non-toxic thinking into its products.

NY Times24 May 07

Beginning to end thinking: this water pump is 9.5% efficient relative to the fossil fuel input at the electricity generating plant (and less so if you go back up the

chain further to extraction and shipping of coal, and if you include environmental damage by soot, sulfer and CO2). Note that these numbers for

efficiency should be examined. Elsewhere we read that electrical power transmission on average has a loss of 30% of its energy in the US, rather than

the 9% shown by Lovins et al. here

from Natural Capitalism

40% off energy use in US goes into generating electricitygeneration efficiency: 33%

electric power loss: plant to consumer7.2% in US..costs more than shipping the fossil fuel

US average cost: 8.2 cents per KwH (up 10% in past year)

10,000 plants

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losseshttp://www.energetics.com/gridworks/grid.html US Dept of Energy

• Natural Capitalism: the Curitaba, Brazil story1972: a new mayor, architect, engineer, planner Jaime Lerner, ‘brain of a technocrat and soul of a poet’ in 12 years ‘redesigned’ the city

– believed that “trend is not destiny” (after Rene Dubos)– solutions that are fast, fun and cheap: street malls…garbage removal (pay the people for their

garbage in the urban core!)– public and private transport: “growing along the trail of memory and of transport..memory is the

identity of the city, transport is its future:• land use and growth patterns, matching population density to the capability of transport• single design strategy for land use, flow of food and waste, health and education, jobs and income,

culture and politics…..new design for buses and bus stops: 270 passenger Volvos, triple length.• land use regulations, urban parks, 1,100 registered private woodlands, 7 sq miles of parks

– everything is recycled solutions that are fast, fun and cheap: street malls…garbage removal (pay the people for their garbage in the urban core!)

• finds a recent parallel in the Deep Economy movement (Bill McKibben’s recent book, advocating diverse, local economies and the 100 mile dinner (cooked with food grown within 100 miles).

Curitiba bus stop, Museu Oscar Niemeyer, botanical garden (formerly a garbage dump), Universidade Federal de Peranã

Exponential growthDigression on exponential growth and global population: exponential

growth occurs when the growth is proportional to the population..forexample, if each person has the same number of children during their life;

or, if lily pads grow on the surface of a pond by reproducing at a constant rate…the effect is very slow growth, almost invisible, followed by explosive growth until the pond is covered.

Is global human population growing exponentially?

exponential growth?linear and semi-log plots of global population against year

An exponential curve appears as a straight line on a semi-log plot [log(population) plotted against time, where the vertical axis has equal intervals

for each power of ten (or power of e)]. Apparently global popuation is ‘hyper-’exponential.

• See the separate notes posted on the class website too.

• notice that y = d eat and t = (1/a) log(y/d)are complementary relations (the same curve turned round): the exponential curve

rises faster than any power of t, and the log curve rises slower than any power of y. (log here is log to the base e, e = 2.718…).

If you plot an exponential curve on a distorted plot, with axeslog(y) and t, it is a straight line with slope a and intercept log(d) (the value at t=0). This is very useful as a way to look at data that ranges widely, from very big to very small.

Exponential growth is more extreme than ‘algebraic’ growth. If you have a power law, it grows more slowly than exponential:

y = g tncan also be plotted with distorted axes, log(y) and log(t). Here, the power law will appear as a straight line with slope n and intercept log(g), because

log(y) = log(g) + n log(t)These are good empirical ways to assess growth rates and distinguish exponential behavior and algebraic behavior.

Doubling time

• P = Po exp(αt) we speak of the ‘e-folding time’, the time for P to increase by a factor e

(=2.718). More natural is to consider the doubling time: P goes from Po

to 2Powhen exp(αt) = 2 or αt t = loge (2) = .6931,that is at time t = .6931/α

• α is the ‘growth rate’ with units time-1. If α is expressed in percent rather than as a decimal value, then 69.31/α is the doubling time. A good approximation is:

doubling time in years = 70 divided by the growth rate in %

• With a credit card loan at an 18% interest rate you will pay a bit more than double the purchase price if the loan is for 4 years, paid off all at the end.

Global population and its rate of change, per yearUS population: 298.7 million as of May 2006

global population: 6.515 billion “ “ “you are here

largest % growth rate

largest absolute growth rate

slope of population curve…rate of growth of population (millions per yr)

zoomed

peak in 1985

rate of growth of population (% per year)

2%

1%

2%

1%

peak in 1963-65

doubling time of population = 69/growth rate (growth rate in % per year)

100 yr

50 yr

the largest % growthrate occurred in 1964-65

At 2%, it representeda doubling time for global population of only31 years. Since then growth has slowed dramatically.

(good)

(bad)

you are hereyear

http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wp02/wp-02.pdf

Population (left) and population/1950 population) for China, India, US, Nigeria, Mexico, South Africa, Norway and global. Projection to 2050.

Ladybugs and aphids Ladybugs and aphids As long ago as 1789, Thomas As long ago as 1789, Thomas MalthusMalthus studied the nature of studied the nature of

population growth in Europe. He claimed that population was incrpopulation growth in Europe. He claimed that population was increasing easing faster than food production, and he feared eventual global starvfaster than food production, and he feared eventual global starvation. Of ation. Of course he could not foresee how modern technology would expand fcourse he could not foresee how modern technology would expand food ood production, but his observations about how populations increase production, but his observations about how populations increase were were important. Population grows geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8 …), ratherimportant. Population grows geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8 …), rather than than arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4 …), which is why the numbers can incrarithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4 …), which is why the numbers can increase so ease so quickly. Look to Nature: are we that different from other animaquickly. Look to Nature: are we that different from other animals and ls and insects? In Oregon a few years ago there was a huge increase in insects? In Oregon a few years ago there was a huge increase in the the ladybug population, spurred by an unusual supply of their favoriladybug population, spurred by an unusual supply of their favorite food, te food, aphids. But, just as rapidly, the ladybug population soon crashaphids. But, just as rapidly, the ladybug population soon crashed when ed when they overran the food supply.they overran the food supply.

Notice how the global population hit a very high growth rate of Notice how the global population hit a very high growth rate of 2% 2% in 1965, then declined.in 1965, then declined.

Note that exponential growth, Note that exponential growth, y = d ey = d eatat which follows this pattern of doubling every 69/a time units, iwhich follows this pattern of doubling every 69/a time units, is more extreme than “algebraic growth”, s more extreme than “algebraic growth”, compare with compare with y = y = btbt22 or y = or y = ctct33growth functiongrowth function rate of change of y rate of change of y rate of change of y divided by yrate of change of y divided by yy= y= dedeatat ay (exponential growth) aay (exponential growth) ay = y = btbt22 yy1/2 1/2 (t(t2 2 growth) 2(b/y)growth) 2(b/y)1/21/2

y = y = ctct33 yy2/3 2/3 (t(t3 3 growthgrowth) (3c/y)1/3

Ladybugs and aphids Ladybugs and aphids As long ago as 1789, Thomas As long ago as 1789, Thomas MalthusMalthus studied the nature of studied the nature of

population growth in Europe. He claimed that population was incrpopulation growth in Europe. He claimed that population was increasing easing faster than food production, and he feared eventual global starvfaster than food production, and he feared eventual global starvation. Of ation. Of course he could not foresee how modern technology would expand fcourse he could not foresee how modern technology would expand food ood production, but his observations about how populations increase production, but his observations about how populations increase were were important. Population grows geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8 …), ratherimportant. Population grows geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8 …), rather than than arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4 …), which is why the numbers can incrarithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4 …), which is why the numbers can increase so ease so quickly. Look to Nature: are we that different from other animaquickly. Look to Nature: are we that different from other animals and ls and insects? In Oregon a few years ago there was a huge increase in insects? In Oregon a few years ago there was a huge increase in the the ladybug population, spurred by an unusual supply of their favoriladybug population, spurred by an unusual supply of their favorite food, te food, aphids. But, just as rapidly, the ladybug population soon crashaphids. But, just as rapidly, the ladybug population soon crashed when ed when they overran the food supply.they overran the food supply.

Notice how the global population hit a very high growth rate of Notice how the global population hit a very high growth rate of 2% 2% in 1965, then declined.in 1965, then declined.

Note that exponential growth, y = d eNote that exponential growth, y = d eatat which follows this pattern of doubling every 69/a time units, which follows this pattern of doubling every 69/a time units, is more extreme than “algebraic growth”, is more extreme than “algebraic growth”, compare with y = compare with y = btbt22 or y = or y = ctct33

rate of change of y rate of change of y divided by yrate of change of y rate of change of y divided by yy= y= dedeatat ay (exponential growth) aay (exponential growth) ay = y = btbt22 yy1/2 1/2 (t(t2 2 growth) 2(b/y)growth) 2(b/y)1/21/2

y = y = ctct33 yy2/3 2/3 (t(t3 3 growthgrowth) (3c/y)1/3

• 1. World population crossed the six billion threshold in 1999.• 2. World population is projected to cross the 7 billion mark in 2013; the 8

billion mark in 2028; the 9 billion mark in 2054. World population nearly stabilizes at just above 10 billion after 2200.

• 3. It has taken just 12 years for the world to add this most recent billion people. This is the shortest period of time in world history for a billion people to be added.

• 4. World population did not reach one billion until 1804. It took 123 years to reach 2 billion in 1927, 33 years to reach 3 billion in 1960, 14 years to reach 4 billion in 1974 and 13 years to reach 5 billion in 1987.

• 5. The highest rate of world population growth (2.04 per cent, 34 year doubling time) occurred in the late 1960s. More recently the rate (1995-2000) was 1.31 per cent (53 year doubling time), and in 2005 was close to 1.0%. (69 year doubling time)

• 6. The largest annual increase to world population (86 million) took place in the late 1980s; the current annual increase is 78 million. Note the difference

• 7. Of the 78 million people currently added to the world each year, 95 per cent live in the less developed regions.

http://www.prb.org/pdf05/05WorldDataSheet_Eng.pdf

surprisingly, many countries have birth rates below the steady-statereplacement level (about 2.4 children per couple)

Alternative energies and optimism:we have looked at solar and wind power in some detail. In Lomborg’s

(The Skeptical Environmentalist) book-keeping they represent roughly 0.04% wind 0.009% solar 0.04% biomass0.12% geothermal 6.6% hydropower6.4% ‘traditional’ fuel wood and charcoal

• While these are small fractions of the 4 x 1020 Joules per year(i.e. divide by seconds-per-year, π x 107, and then 1000 to get an equivalent expression, 1.3 x 1010 kilowatts) for the 6.5 x 109 residents of Earth… 2 Kw per person, 24/7, hydropower and fuel woods are significant and the others are growing very rapidly. Allegedly wind power installations are now cheaper in long term cost than the fossil fuel power generation plants that dominate our electricity production.

Remember that electricity represents about 40% of our energy use, and that electric motors are vastly more efficient (~90%) than gasoline engines (~20% or less). But if the electricity is generated at ~33% efficiency in the coal- or oil fired plants, and transmitted to you at 70% efficiency, then on the face of it, your electric motor may be as poor environmentally as you gasoline engine. But one hopes to improve the 33% greatly or at least its environmental impact by scrubbing out the CO2 at the smokestack. By localizing the fossil fuel use, the net effect on the environment could be very good. ‘Efficiency’ needs to include the loss of, and damage to, natural capital and the (I would say huge) damage to human capital, the cost of overcrowded roads, noise, health effects of too many cars.

• We have argued that an important test of environmental ideas and trends can be made a few years after a book or research paper has been published. Check the predictions! This needs to be done widely.

– Lomborg in 2000 quotes the US Energy Agency in predicting a price for oil at abou $20 to $22 per barrel through roughly 2010. The price in May 2007 ranged from $50 to $75. So much for ‘no problems with oil supplies’

– Lovins in 1999 quotes the CEO of Daimler-Benz as ‘pledging’ 100,000 of their car production to be hydrogen fuel cell powered by 2005. There are no such cars. Toyota in 1998 revealed plans to market fuel-cell cars ‘well before 2002 (later slipped to 2003)’. Only a token, trial vehicle has been developed. He quotes the president of Toyota as predicting 1/3d of the world automobile fleet to be electric/gasoline hybrids by 2005! In fact Toyota is the dominant producer and is doing very well, but the number of hybrid Toyota’s produced in 2004 was 200,000 (of a world new car production of ….0.3% are hybrids). So much for instant environmental solutions with new technologies.

– Paul Ehrlich, in his books The Population Bomb and The Population Explosianfollowed the tradition of a 1970s book The Limits to Growth in sounding the environmental alarm with numbers that were too pessimistic in some areas. Depletion of energy supplies, metals and minerals has not happened as quickly as predicted. Yet, the basic message is much more important than prediction of the exact year that oil will be gone.

– The next slide shows how far off predictions of global energy demand were back in the 1950s-1980s: virtually everyone predicted more energy demand, neglecting increased efficiencies.

Ashok Gadgil and Jon Koomey, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Paul Craig, Professor Emeritus of Engineering at the University of California at Davis,

published in the 2002 Annual Review of Energy and the Environment,

energy forecasts made between 1950 and 1980 systematically overestimated energy demand (neglecting increased efficiency)http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/EETD-energy-forecasting.html

We see above that burning wood for cooking and purifying water is a big part of global energy use even today (~6.3%). Much of this occurs in the tropics where sunshine can be abundant. Solar box cookers are

a ‘soft technology’ that can entirely replace wood burning, except in rainy seasons that accompany tropical monsoons. This is a potentially

radical improvement developing nations’ household energetics

Another aspect of alternative energy: radically improving developing nations’ household energetics; Solar cookers in Bolivia and Nepal…a soft technology that bakes bread, cooks meals and purifies water, replacing the need for fuel wood burning (or..yak dung in Tibet), wherever it’s sunny www.solarcooking.org

communal solar cooker: people are thinking bigger, and regarding the community

and some are thinking really big

• Series of Scheffler Solar dishes/concentrators concentrate light on receivers generating steam.The steam generated with the salar dishes in terrace is sent to kitchen via steam pipe lines to kitcchen to cook food for thousands.Such Solar Steam cookers are working successfully at Brahma KumarisMt.Abu Complex to cook for 1000 persons per day, for their Taleti Complex for 10,000 persons per day and for Shirdi Sai Baba Temple(seen in photo) for 3000 persons per day.Worlds largest Solar Steam Cooking is being installed by us at TirumalaTirupati Devasthanam Complex to cook for 15,000 persons per day!!!!

• www.solarcooking.org

• Solar Steam Cooking System:With technical assistance provided by M/s HTT GmbH of Germany and funding from GATE/ GTZ also of Germany, the first solar steam cooking system to cook for 1,000 person was developed and installed at the Brahma Kumaris' Ashram, Mt.Abu in Rajasthan. In 1997, this was the first Solar Steam Cooking System based on Scheffler Solar Concentrators in the World. Its success has led to many more systems being installed in India. Schematic

• Working principle of Solar Steam Cooking System :• In the focus of each pair of Scheffler Concentrator (dishes), the sleeping dish and standing dish,

are placed heat exchangers called receivers.• The Solar rays falling onto the dish are reflected and concentrated on the receivers placed in its

focus. Due to concentration the temperature achieved is very high (between 450-650 degree centigrade) and thus the water in receivers comes to boiling and becomes steam.

• Above the receiver is an insulated header pipe filled half with water. The cold water enters the thereceiver through inner pipe, gets heated due to the high temperature of the concentrated rays and the heated water goes up. The cold water again enters through inner pipe and and the cycle continues till steam is generated. The steam gets stored in the upperhalf empty portion of the header pipe and pressure keeps on rising. The steam is than drawn / or sent to kitchen through insulated pipe line.

• Spurred by the success of the above system, with training and jigs provided by Gadhia Solar, the Brahma Kumari's installed the world's largest solar steam cooking system at their Taleti Ashram in Abu Road, Rajasthan. This system installed in 1999, cooks upto 35,000 meals a day.

• Gadhia Solar has manufactured and installed many solar steam cooking system since than on Turn-Key basis - starting for system for 500 people per day (1,000 meals per day) to 15,000 persons per day (30,000 meals per day)

The story of Pacala and Socolow’s wedges of carbon reduction (see above) goes on and on, and extends to wedges of sustainable building with natural materials that have a much smaller footprint on the environment. One can build with bamboo, not the thin kind we know but heavy, thick bamboo trunks that are competitive in strength with tradiational wood or steel framing… from a rapidly growing sustainable forestry site in Columbia or Costa Rica…www.zeri.org

Perhaps the most striking contrast of discord I see in thinking about this course is the brilliance of modern technology, next to the growing social and

environmental inequity: ecocide leading to genocide• Ehrlich’s PAT

Population x Affluence x Technology

is an estimate…theory…idea… of the impact of humanity on the global environment

Population is simple… or is it?… consider the spiky world of Richard Florida

Technology is simple… or is it?.. the inventions that empower us to shape the environment purposefully, and also inadvertantly. It is the ‘inadvertant’ that is particularly dangerous. Recall Thomas Midgely , inventor of both leaded gasoline and CFCs … chlorofluorocarbons used in refrigerators and spray cans for decades, but both became dangerous global pollutants.

That brings us to Affluence…simple? It seems to mean, really, power and control over resources (natural and human) by one sector of the population. What we see are too many rich and too many poor and not enough in between. MacNeill’s ‘energy slaves’, the energy each of us has at our command (expressed in units of human somatic energy) numbers something like 500 for the average 2 kW Earthling, and 3000 for the 11kW American+…(compare with MacNeill’s estimate of 75 slaves)

________________________________________________________________________+(recall that we use the metric of climbing mountains carrying 25 kg loads…suggesting roughly 2000m climb each day, or mg∆h = 25 x 9.8 x 2000 = 4.9 x 105 Joules of work per day. With 5 work days per week this gives an average power of 4.0 watts! Compare this our peak running-upstairs power output of roughly 1 kW and our average food energy intake (say, 3000 kCal/day = 12.6 x 106 J/day = 12.6 x 106/0.864 x 105 J/sec = 145 Watts). So, as work-machines we are about 3% efficient converters of food energy into mechanical energy. Not much better than the 1% efficiency of the automobile as a converter of gasoline’s chemical energy into people-moving mechanical energy.

Two short essays, late-night thoughts about this course, 30 May 2007P.B. Rhines

Where is the logic of studying Native societies of the Arctic, in the midst of studying energy physics, chemistry, biology, energy flow through the physical world and the world of living things…and in the midst of studying the pressing human predicament of population growth, global warming, finite energy, finite environment?

I believe that the logic is in our (warm, southern peoples’) complex relationship with these small native populations. Most obviously, we have cast our shadow on them, if only by studying them and visiting them. But following Knud Rasmussen and Harald Sverdrup, explorers/ethnologists with the greatest respect for the societies they visited, came European fur traders and ivory traders, whalers in search of oil for lamps and baleen for corsets, Americans in search of modern oil in ANWR, Danes in search of shrimp in Greenland, Canadians in search of minerals brought guns, sugar, European diets and turned hunters into fishermen and oil wildcatters.

Why was it that the ‘warm’ people developed technology, and built the modern world? Because of energy, ample environment for growing and catching food, and easy trade routes. The Industrial Revolution in England in the 1700s-1800s was fueled by coal and iron and hinged on a few inventionslike the first geologic map of Britain (in 1815; see The Map that Changed the World: Wm Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester), the steam engine, to pump ground water out of the coal mines. See McNeill’s text, or The Lunar Men by Jenny Uglow: 5 men who came together on the night of the month with the fullest moon,”for a little philosophical laughing”, as Erasmus Darwin said. Joseph Priestly, Josiah Wedgewood, James Watt dreamt of canals to transport china without breaking it, electricity.. “warmed by wine and friendship, their heads full of air pumps and elements and electrical machines, their ears ringing with talk, the whirring of wheels and the hiss of gas."

The aboriginal population of Australia, a successful but slowly evolving society for nearly 60,000 years before the coming of Captain Cook and the English prison ships, and the Inuit of Greenland share the burden of smallness and energy-poverty: development of technology seems to require enough people, enough competitive societies nearby, and enough energy and quick enough trade routes to make the pot boil.

More of the logic of studying Arctic natives comes from learning of their own brand of success…their adaptability, strength, fortitude. Their ingenuity in the most hostile, life-threatening climate on Earth.

They succeeded so well! Their technology was simple but the Greenland kayak is a good example of a highly evolved form, light, fast, economical, carries a lot, built of driftwood and sealskin. Mine weighs 35 lbs, and it requires no floatation compartments: it does not sink if flooded! I like it better than the $2500 plastic kind. A group of 6 of us built 6 of these in 6 days. Svend Ulstrap, my building instructor from Denmark and Greenland, said proudly, ‘there’s nothing in this boat that you couldn’t eat’. Wood, cotton thread, #20 duck canvas, linseed oil and chalk. No metal, no nails, no screws. He earnestly wanted his kayaks to disintegrate back to Nature when we are done with them rather than sitting in a land-fill for a thousand years.

Their adaptation to a communal life that involved close isolation for long periods of darkness.Their patience .. squatting motionless by a seal breathing hole for hours, with harpoon poised.Their frugal use of energy and insulation, of somatic heat energyTheir physical strength and endurance.Their fortitude in the face of tragedy: failed hunts, lost family members, outbreaks of disease.Their spirituality. Sila was the name of Kristin Laidre’s double ended boat in the waters west of Greenland: Sila being the weather god or

‘consciousness’. Elaborate mythology, orally transmitted and administered by the shaman, filled the vacuum in their lives when times were hard. It is said that the Inuit love to dream in the long winters, and to promote this they like to be a bit chilly (which does promote active dreaming…try it).

These are qualities that might serve us well in the coming decades. (Build a super-insulated house..or an apartment building that uses no fossil fuel for winter heating, live close to your work, eat food grown locally...)

OF REFRIGERATORS AND OTHER THINGS

Refrigerators and freezers have made possible a healthier life with fresh, crisp food, vegetables in winter, fewer trips to the grocery store. In earlier times, the winter was a fallow period with vegetables hidden away in ‘root cellers’, or canned in jars by a hard-working farm-wife. Meats were preserved by using salt to draw out the moisture and bathe the meat in a briny fluid hostile to microbes and decay. Indeed, salt used to be immensely valuable and used like gold as a currency (‘salary’). But, let’s go a little deeper into refrigerators.

It is cold outside, and to protect us from the cold we have houses made warm by burning oil or gas. Inside them we want a cold box so we burn more fuel to suck the heat out (which incidentally helps to heat the rest of the house). Inside the refrigerator we want our butter not to be too hard so there is a little box that warms it up. And, most of you will not remember the days when refrigerators would cake up with ice and have to be defrosted: that was solved by periodically drawing out the moist air, and warming it to remove the moisture, then chilling it down again.

There are questions of energy, efficiency, many details of engineering design here. Insulation is important; ‘fridges used to have thick walls. Now the ‘slim-wall’ design using solid insulation is the pride of the industry, fits better in small kitchens, and doesn’t use more electricity than the old white elephants. In the early 1990s $30 million was given to US manufacturers to improve efficiency; apparently this lead to new models more than 30% improved in efficiency. China put $31 million into such a competition in 1999, leading to better than 40% increase in efficiency (decrease in KwH used) in new refrigerators. A modern US refrigerator uses about 450 KwH of electriciy per year compared with 2000 KwH per year in 1972.

Deeper still. The refrigerator in our house runs most of the time. Late at night when all else is quiet it can be heard throbbing away by itself. It has not been opened for hours yet it has to run constantly to hold the air 15 degrees (Celcius) or so below room temperature. What could be wrong? How does a refrigerator work? It is a heat engine working backwards. A heat engine takes a flow of thermal energy (from input to exhaust) and puts out some fraction of it as work..mechanical energy. With the refrigerator instead, we take mechanical energy generated from electricity and move heat with it. The PV diagram comes into play; a fluid is expanded and compressed making a repeating cycle; when when expanded it cools greatly, and this cold fluid is run through pipes lining the cold compartment. When compressed it is much warmer, and flows in pipes exposed to the air perhaps with metal fins to help conduct away the heat. Now the efficiency is measured just the inverse of the efficiency of a heat engine: the amount of cooling divided by the mechanical energy input. Note that a ‘heat pump’ is such a device set up to air condition your house in summer and, run the other way, heat your house in winter.It miraculously pumps heat one way or the other and in winter this is much more efficient than simply running an electric heater.

Cleaning behind the refrigerator is a Hallowe’en experience. Cob-webs and sticky puddles. I had a strange compulsion to get back there and clean it out, thinking it would make it run more efficiently. Air is drawn past coils of metal tubing in which the liquid refrigerant flows, so that the ‘waste’ heat will be carried off. A pleasantly warm airstream can be felt under and behind. But this mesh of metal tubing was thick with dust bunnies, so that the air would have a harder time flowing past. The refrigerant would have to be pumped faster to do the same amount of cooling, than if the dust was cleaned up. So I felt good after this (always strange) experience of sucking mountains of dust into the vacuum (like a video run backwards somehow). I pictured long periods of silence late at night.

2.Did it work? I don’t know, because I didn’t measure anything. I could have timed the ‘duty cycle’ (the fraction of time the fridge is running), or

monitored the electricity use (with a watt-hour meter like the one outside your house or apartment) but of course there are variables: how warm is the room, how moist is the air, how full is the fridge (does it run better full or empty)? It might seem extreme but there are enough refrigerators in the world that a little more efficiency built into them would save the world a lot of energy.

Cleaning the fridge, inside or out, is not something that everyone does. Some would argue that that human energy is better spent on more important things. Some are fastidiously neat and have to clean everything around them.

Let’s go one step deeper. I was thinking about the cob-webbed coils of the fridge, how hard they have to work to do the same job. In middle age you will begin to be aware that you have lungs and that air passes through them so that oxygen can be extracted and carried by red blood cells to your muscles, heart, brain. Each day we run a lot of air through these passages, and suspended dust, and unwanted gases come along with the oxygen. The lungs are remarkably clever at cleaning themselves out with a steady flow of mucous fluid, yet in the deep, small passages this does not happen, and soot can collect. Even the larger channels of the lung can be overwhelmed by exposure to smoke. There are also many organic chemicals that enter the body this way. Our bodies are wonderfully adaptable, but were not designed to withstand this buildup forever.

Why can’t we vacuum out our lungs the way I did the refrigerator coils? The other fluid pathways in the body have similar problems, and I imagine that one day we will have a sort of RotoRooter job done on our veins and arteries, perhaps an out-patient procedure every few years, which will bring back some of our youthful vitality. Medicine has provided cures and relief for a remarkable range of injury and disease. Yet we still see people suffer and die from what seem just plumbing problems.

Finally, the fridge in your kitchen has a past and a future…a life cycle if you like. It was born somewhere in Michigan or Taiwan with a design that has not basically changed in half a century. After a 10 or 20 year lifetime it will end up at the dump, hopefully some the metal recycled. If it is now 20 years or more old, the CFC refrigerant will be released to the atmosphere. These are molecules made (in the case of CFC-11) of one carbon atom at the center with one fluorine atom and three chlorine atoms, arranged around like chairs round a table. They will rise to the upper atmosphere, where they attack the ozone layer…fortunately CFC’s are now banned in most countries, and the ozone hole may be on the mend. And, the ozone hole has now been shown to greatly intensify the westerly winds round Antarctica, and possibly the ocean circulation beneath, and with that, possibly the primary production biology of the Earth: a very far-reaching change in the global climate system induced by rich humans with their refrigerators. It is about as strange as in Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy where author Douglas Adams imagines that the world is being run by extragalactic mice, as a computer experiment, and where spaceships were peopled by neurotic computers. Yet, this is not science fiction.

The design of the back side of a refrigerator defies analysis. Looking at how things work is part of this course. There are layers and layers of design and understanding and we can never get to their end: but a functional understanding of the workings of our environment can often be approached. Sometimes a little knowledge is dangerous of course, so beware of becoming a casual expert in the environment, knowing the buzz-words and repeating the news about el Nino or global warming or habitat loss without going one step deeper, confronting some of the uncertainties.

. http://counties.cce.cornell.edu/chemung/publications/replace-old-fridge.pdf