This page shares some special areas of personal curiosity within attempts to understand our world. Focus seems to rotate among these, perhaps less formally, albeit no less intensely, than what is sketched within my experience or publications pages. This more diffusely creative organization of information, mostly outside paid employment, has not yet found publishers for most of its results, nor the right collaborators to expand its considerable potential utility. Nevertheless, each aspect has already given substantial value to others.

Categories:  Research /Art / Teaching

 

Research-backed Action

•  Finding the Limits to Energy Releases, and communicating the results —

“[Albert Einstein's] requirement of total consistency forced him to take seriously the problems that his predecessors and colleagues alike had swept aside as trivialities or unanswerable matters of metaphysics…He famously argued that ‘all physical theories, their mathematical expression notwithstanding, ought to lend themselves to so simple a description that even a child could understand them’.”     — Corey S. Powell. 2006. ‘My Three Einsteins’. Discover, October, p. 44.   This is a continuing challenge, including for vital questions where physics crosses with ecology. For the survival of most species, not least humans, a particularly cogent attempt was made by the Club of Rome in 1972, whose follow-up summary included,   “A ban on bank-robbing inhibits the freedom of the thief in order to assure everyone’s freedom to deposit and withdraw their money safely. A ban on overuse of resources or generation of pollution serves a similar purpose.” — Donnella Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, and Jørgen Randers (1992) Beyond the Limits to Growth. Chelsea Green Press.

The Limits group has routinely been dismissed as fear mongers, or, alternatively,as inadequately understanding just how close to accurate they were originally. A central missing concept that would add important depth to their work is contained within the graph above. Consumption has grossly exceeded the sum of natural energy flows. This vital issue continues, too often tragically, to be overlooked.

We have only one planet easily available to us, and to live within what it allows, we ought to know better what its operational dimensions are, lest we irrevocably trespass across one of them. Of immediate importance, it is not just a logical certainty that there is an upper limit to the amount of energy that, if exceeded by human releases, will cause significant local and/or global perturbations. To take this to absurd levels—but still relevant for unbelievers—our planetary surface would simply melt, if enough additional heat could be dumped within the atmosphere. However, well before that cumulative intensity could be reached, there—just as surely—will be vitally important effects upon living and weather systems. The original source of the energy releases that can drive such changes is irrelevant, a point consistently avoided by those who wish to believe in quick fixes when problems start to become visible, as they have. Given that the absolute quantity of energy released can become surpassingly important to planetary function, the practical question should now become, just what is the most reasonable danger threshold for overall energy transfers initiated by humans?

After four billion years of evolutionary testing for the highest sustainable potential for earth’s operating systems, an intuitively promising level for human energy use to not to even come close to exceeding should be the amount routinely processed by all green plants. This evolved guideline becomes more closely defined as the total for photosynthesized biomass, scientifically called net primary productivity -- including natural production replaced by agriculture or suburbia. This total is about one percent of incoming solar inputs, (to some) a surprisingly consistent evolved maximal use level across time and space, which has worked so long, over a vastly greater time period than our species has been even a bit player in the world system. If it was even reasonably possible to exceed, it ought to have happened within those many hundreds of millions of years of the system experimentally trying out alternatives. For those who believe humans are so much smarter, agriculture harnesses no more, and usually much less, on a full year basis, even with massive fossil fuel support. This particular level as a likely overall planetary limit has been at least once proposed within my experience (in 1972), but despite conclusive support available, remains one that has never been adequately pursued or communicated widely enough.

 

The best known evidence for such an important overall local limit is what popularly has been called global warming, which could be better described as increasing climatic instability. My own calculations have argued consistently, over many years, how the related disturbances that have appeared more obviously following the graphed crossing point of increasing fossil energy use over slowly declining biomass [in the above graph sketch] are anything but simply coincidental. That the biomass line is not really linear, of course, but precise enough measurements have never been made to plot its yearly variations, so I have used a fuzzed long term average estimate, including the gradual decline in the face of human destructiveness to evolved systems. It has been cross-confirmed by a good many serious analyses, paralleling the absurdity of ethanol, from any biomass origin, as a truly significant energy source. Global human energy and material greed currently far exceed the capability of any form of renewable sources to provide. Not surprisingly, contemporary use levels are unbalancing planetary flows at many levels.

A key difference between my observations and previous approaches has been finding how the origin of the energy being used by humans is essentially irrelevant for their overall consequences. That has been noted increasingly widely in one set of calculations, about how switching to ethanol from gasoline would make little difference in atmospheric releases, even if doing so in competitive total quantity was practically possible. For all such comparisons, it is the total of all types of energy consumption that counts most for the planet, and for all those who live upon it. The related background becomes that there never can be a genuinely "clean" energy source. This rountinely is exemplified, but too rarely noticed widely enough, by how each new possibility proves troublesome through coal, oil, big hydro, nuclear, and now wind as sources, whenever the consequences of large-scale use are followed sufficiently carefully.

 

Source	Example Problem(s); there are ever so many more	Common Results
Coal	Soot "fixed" by tall stacks or precipitators; mercury...	Acid rain; disease
Oil	Spills during production and transport; flammability	Maritime and other disasters
Hydro	Water loss behind storage dams; sediment buildup	Salinity and fish kill-offs
Nuclear	Cost; radiation; terrorism; explosion; uncontainable wastes	Lasting millions of years
Wind	Noise; unstable electricity; interference with wildlife	Sleeplessness; bird kills
Gas	Contaminated water from wells	Downstream pollution
Solar	When concentrated: chlorinated silicon; immense heat	Systemic death

 

Ask migrating flocks about large windmills, or salmon about dams, let alone the rest. There will always be rude surprises, whose number correlates directly with the total amount of energy used, from any source. The more power used from any one source, the more quickly places and ways those serious booby prizes will appear from its unique, but inevitable issues. Thus, while it has been useful for Al Gore and others to underline the summary set of problems, simply restraining carbon output alone, without cutting total human-manipulated energy flow rates, can only shift where future problem sets will explode.

On the other hand, and perhaps surprisingly from this surface dourness, the situation is far from hopeless. Parallel evidence meanwhile confirms that lifestyles actually could be notably improved by reducing energy releases, at every possible step of energy utilization. Amazingly enough for most corporate leaders, with each reduction, net profits could rise, even for the already rich—along with how additional benefits from reducing waste, at all levels, are inherently more widely sharable, worldwide.

An easily understood example comes with better insulating homes, where reducing energy losses and thereby energy flows, allows for easily perceived improvements in bodily comfort, while it decreases living costs and overall pollution. As additional insulation helps control temperature oscillations over time and through space, drafty cold or hot spots become less intrusive—and not just once, as happens when just adding more energy. Although negatives can and do emerge from single-minded concentration on any simplistic strategy, insulation is among the many of the kinds of positive energy reductions that can follow more careful, less wasteful technical approaches.

Among the outcomes of similarly doing more tasks with less energy, on larger scales, is how the mind-melting noise and other increasingly obvious consequences, ranging from traffic congestion to lung diseases, of energetic abuse could so clearly fall with declines in overall heat releases. Each reduction in energy wastefulness could add personal to planetary benefits, if done thoughtfully enough. Along that way, imagine how thinking in a comfortable room as one's employment beats working on an arctic oil rig, deep in a coal mine, or within a blast furnace, especially if the net income from better conceptualizing becomes higher than from beating up the earth, as it should.

In sum, the idea of artificially induced climate change has gained considerable acceptance in recent years, but the inseparably associated issue that simply shifting energy release sources cannot possibly be its cure has received too little concurrent attention. A potential balance instead comes from how more careful technology can indeed accomplish most practically desired functions with far less energy input, by using dramatically fewer materials for far longer periods, to the benefit of all, in generally more comfortable ways for most.

Unfortunately underlying this conundrum for those who fantasize otherwise, no energy supply or material approach, even efficient reductions, can support ever-increasing human numbers on this planet. The only possibility for continued human population expansion always has been outward, further into the universe, a direction which has its own limits, and rather more serious immediate difficulties.

Status of research: collected the basic supporting data more than 35 years ago, about the same time I stopped eating hydrogenated (trans) fats after a smaller scale, but parallel evaluation. For this greater case, still in need of cooperators and funding to refine proof, providing still more detail, and getting the word out widely and effectively. Even the total for biomass production is too little known, and may be declining faster than indicated as humans continue to impact natural potentials. [As a not irrelevant sidelight, mechanized agriculture is almost never as productive in harvesting sunlight on a year-round basis as the prairies or forests they replaced, or alternatives that are mimic natural patterns more closely, while buildings, asphalt or concrete end biomass output completely while they are present.] From not wanting to preach without practicing, in the vital area of personal proof of alternative possibilities, despite very comfortably living in a fairly large home, not having the funds to do what would be more optimal to improve it, and driving true high performance vehicles, our own electricity and gasoline use are at least 80% lower than the American norm, with other fuel consumption less than half the current average among otherwise peers, practically illustrates some of the possibilities, while enjoying their benefits.

 

Among the more specific projects --

•  Lighten Up: Solving Vehicle Impacts — a subset of the above, where exploring details of practical pathways that could at least halve highway deaths, while just as notably reducing global environmental damage, on and off roads, including the size of roads themselves. We all share the consequences of living in a world where centuries of data confirm the performance and other advantages of reducing mass throughout transportation, but decision makers—at every level—continue to ignore the destruction caused by conveyance of excess weight on the road (or even inherently more efficienct rail). The ongoing results of this willful form of ignorance are a vastly magnified version of attempting to deal with obesity while refusing to consider the impact of calories. Both death rates and energy use in transportation are in the first place unalterably tied to total weight in motion.
  
     This image of my older Alfa Romeo should hint of how moving to quite a bit less than half the weight of today's highway-clogging behemoths could allow for at least twice as much joy as transport that isolates its users from experience—even with 50+ year old techniques. The manuscript underlines how updated technology can readily provide all desired travel functions even more effectively, with greatly reduced overall impact on all others, but also with improved comfort even for users who do not wish to feel wind in their hair. If everyday driving were to require more skill, would that be so bad? More Americans died in September 2001 on highways than in the World Trade Center.
  
  The difference between humans using any machines and those without them is often even greater. That gets confused with the "all men are created equal" concept, as do always unequal machines, along with learned capabilities to use them. The facts are clear; the problem lies in communicating them effectively.
  
  A presentation made to the Ecological Society of America at the turn of the millenium of some of the key background and conclusions has been partially animated and posted on-line at: Should People or Machines Have Equal Rights?. Its goal is to compare the consequences of off- and on-road use by vehicles (and other tramplers) in a quickly understandable form for both quantitative scientists and the general public.
  
  A concluding snippet of that distillation follows:
  
  
  
     Recently (i.e, June 2009), that presentation has been reviewed in detail, rewritten, and again rejected by academic scientific publishers, which does not necessarily reflect either the potential value of its ideas or the quality of their presentation. So that interested readers might judge for themselves, I have made available a pdf version of the update that may be seen through this link. Suggestions for venues to get the word out would be immensely appreciated. It could make a very real difference to long term quality of life for both humans and our planet.
  
     A more detailed book would expand this less argumentative framework for action, more thoroughly resolve seemingly ever-increasing differences of opinion, and deal more effectively with the problems behind them. For a formal (.pdf) version of a Lighten Up book proposal, another link leads there.
  
     Some tangentially wider ramifications, which extend into art, literature, music, and philosophy, are outlined in a separate integrative course proposal.
  

Status:  scientific analyses and preliminary text completed; further illustrations in progress; searching for a legitimate book publisher.

•  Fishery Profitability/Quality Augmentation and Monitoring — my doctoral studies in expanding world food supplies included potential outputs from the oceans, then especially looking at possibilities based on the Antarctic krill. The projections that I made 30 years ago are being fulfilled. especially following extended visits to Scandinavia during the last 10 years, fisheries continue as a serious issue in my thinking. One focal point lies in reducing environmental impacts by upgrading smaller-boat approaches. Hope especially arises from theoretically lower energy intensiveness and higher-quality catch, both related to smaller masses to handle over shorter distances, among other characteristics. These should help them compete more effectively with more expensively financed, larger and further-reaching vessels, if properly managed, and the products wisely handled, distributed, and marketed. Like organic and other intrinsically higher-value products, higher prices could go back to workers, and we all could benefit. Less weight over less distance inherently creates less pollution and lower operating costs. Potentially better food products should be translatable into improved net income, with greater sustainability all around. There is evidence that progress in this direction is being made in New England and Alaska (e.g., the Marine Conservation Alliance).
  
     In this general effort, my original backgrounds in physics and food technology, along with later detailed analyses of the beef and bison industries, should be valuable. The burgeoning "slow food" and "organic" movements, with their focus on quality and being willing to pay more for it, offer the increased income source. The old timers are trying hard with resources badly damaged by generations of essentially non-existent or ineffective resource management, and some continue to do well. Although good efforts are being made, there is more that could be done.
  
     Meanwhile, David Dobbs book, The Great Gulf, has nearly brought up to date the intense, and related, controversies over the future of North Atlantic cod. Its data collection descriptions made me realize that variations upon the digital camera approaches that I have been developing within a grassland context could more effectively (at least in theory) address arguments about fish numbers and movements. Better data, less intrusively collected, could benefit all affected parties, including the fish, fishermen, and those of us who love to eat the product.

Status:  outlined experimental and business-level concepts; in need of cooperators, refinement, and funding.

 

• The Viable Ranch — to give a group of people, who could not otherwise afford it, the possibility to purchase -- and live as often as they wish upon -- a very large piece of land. Not coincidentally, they would also be able to take that land to a more harmonious, natural status, with increasingly profitable, sustainable food, fiber, and fuel production. These opportunities come by combining, and fully respecting, (1) the positive feedback capabilities inherent in native perennial plants, and (2) the multiple species of animals that have adapted over eons to graze upon them, together with (3) the higher efficiency and lessened damage that would result from management using much-lighter-weight technology. The concept also integrates human needs for comfort with better community organization, both of which can benefit greatly from more natural system virtues. Throughout it, the dreams of the 1960's, and other cooperative living explorers, are scientifically evaluated, evolved, and matured. Legal aspects, not least dealing with just what "ownership" means, along with the complications of continuing human population growth, make the possibilities vastly more difficult than their purely technical aspects.
  
  

Status:  extensive research, and rough text, completed; searching for book publisher; looking forward to active cooperators. Some related information that I have assembled about the potential of bison is available on line.

•  Riparian Zone Values — making the benefits of more natural river and stream corridors more commonly believable, and thereby, their area to expand. This does not imply that people should not live reasonably near streams, but that these areas need special care. As usual, that which benefits nature locally has many benefits for both nearby and more distant humans.

Status:  basic story completed and images integrated, looking for a publisher, while our own previously suburbanized property is being restored slowly and gently as a living example.



•  Highly functional rail — creating more serious interest in alternative transportation systems for urban corridors, based on higher efficiency, lighter weight materials to get people moving several times faster (if they want to), more comfortably, and much more safely. Japanese bullet trains, in 50 years, have killed fewer people (none) than die every few hours on America's much slower, anything but "free"ways. Meanwhile, moving freight by rail is inherently at least three times efficient than by truck, and could be even more so.

Status:  preliminary organization phase, riding the existing system whenever feasible, and inclusion within discussions about the wider question of energy use.




•  Meanwhile, more immediately, searching and translating the Medical Literature —

Seemingly even more of a tangent than the rest, but following successful searching for strategies to repair an unusual injury (my own completely torn posterior tibialis tendon), I began restructuring databased medical research literature, by organizing, selective winnowing, and evaluating meanings behind the words. Simply scanning through Medline is not enough for most potential users to fairly compare current and older research, either for risks or possible benefits, no matter how seemingly appropriate their background. Instead, I have been able to compare what is known, and what isn't yet, in a way to help both physicians and patients better understand present situations and alternative possibilities. The news may not always be good—needing once to tell a friend about his wife, "love her while you've got her" because there were no currently hopeful options—but often enough surprising possibilities for those concerned have appeared, albeit sometimes only after considerable effort and time. This is a complement to, not a substitute for, licensed physician assistance.

Status: Available on a contract basis.

   ...  and on to art  ...

Trying to Make Sense of It All:  A tangent memoir
The introduction for the currently 250 page, press-ready, thoroughly illustrated manuscript says early on,    "While celebrating the winter solstice before our fire in 2007, a physician friend intensely suggested bringing together my sometimes outrageous set of car stories. These emerged, during a more than a year of unpaid hours, as one appropriate center for tales from an occasionally adventurous life in the twentieth century. Their way carried through privileges of driving, or riding in, some of the best road machines, albeit rarely looking pristine; interacting with some of the time’s most important people, along with many others at least as interesting; weaving among vital historical trends; and pulling together globally valid scientific observations. This expanded into a longer set not just worth telling, but by pairing modest skill with user patience, generated coverage of a life even worth reading or listening to. Like an interesting gravel road, its many imperfections are not all to be discovered ahead."
Status:  Eventually, still sometimes wielding a hose, I grow beyond this picture by my father, and leave the shadows. This is that story, now looking for a publisher.    Pre-press portions may be arranged by subscription.

•  Scenes of a Voyage: Scandinavia's winter coastlines —
  Why would anyone wish to head North, especially to the furthest that is more or less easily accessible, in February? For the beauty, of course, and in quest of cleaner air, among other reasons. The coastal voyage along Norway's fjords has become increasingly popular in summer, but in winter it can take on aspects paralleling the trawler photo (posted above), or the one below, taken at Nordkapp (Europe's Arctic end), above 71 degrees North latitude. But it can also reflect the clearest sun, as in Trondheim, to the left. This collection of 108 color images of Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, with their associated stories, should be of interest to a wide audience, both in the U.S. and abroad.
  
  As the book's introduction concludes,
  "There are a great many compensations for this kind of travel, if one is willing to experience something outside the wastefully over-protected (and thus excessively polluted) daily life faced by most English speakers. For everyone, we hope that the images presented here will allow some of the best parts of the trip to be shared, without the necessity of repeating the screaming gales and cold. Beyond that, for the more adventurous, may they serve as a teaser to gather similar experiences in person."

   

Status:  images integrated with text; more than half printed as fine quality examples. Searching for a quality publisher. A CDROM-HTML version, with full-computer-screen-sized images, is complete.  Contact the author for more information.

 

 

 A Photographic Portfolio
More of my images, including several from the book, are now posted in a portfolio/collection. Even thought they have been drastically reduced in size, they may download slowly because of their information content.

Status:  Viewable, with fuller quality prints and use permissions available.

 

• Willie Nelson's 1974 Picnic — 125 original silver prints and text, covering the second of these annual events, from the building of the stage at Texas World Speedway, through the performances. A cropped image from the book became the cover for Robert Earl Keen's Picnic CD (on Arista-Austin in 1997), as an amusingly convoluted result of my recognizing the license number in Keen's tale about attending that picnic on his previous album, #2 Live Dinner.

  Status:  content completed; working with a world-class book designer on layout; searching for a wider-distribution publisher.

     As a teaser, the current draft text, and several modestly-sized versions of the images — including stage construction and in-performance vignettes of Willie, Floyd Tilman, John Hartford, Guy Clark, and Waylon Jennings — may be viewed by moving on to the on-line pages of Silver Eagles Taking Flight. Before going there, do note that (1) the file size to be transferred is more than 500kb for the sample images; (2) their perceived quality will depend on display screen capabilities; and at best (3) only a small portion of the original 70mm photographs full detail and depth can reasonably be transmitted within a 72 dpi substitute for the "real" thing. Nevertheless, if you have a good quality computer screen and a sufficiently robust link (or patience), do have a look, for it should reward music and/or photography lovers.

     A complete set of full-computer-screen-sized images, with a more complete text, is available on CD-ROM. Contact the author for information.

 

Teaching

•  Lighten Up:  Bringing Technology into Harmony with People and Planet
        — a still developing proposal for a comprehensive course, with an interactive CD-ROM
  
                Status:  on-line illustrated outline.
  

 

The Rejection Collection

	[prospective publications that ought to be widely seen, but have not yet found a formal publisher]
2009	Effectively Comparing Land User Impacts. Yorks, T.P.    [begun 1994; submitted to various possibilities as it evolved]
2005	Reducing energy consumption by 90%, with increased comfort. Yorks, T.P.   [submitted to Orion in the year noted; linked as modified 2009]
2011	On Prairie Dogs and Coexistence with Other Species, Yorks, T.P.    [also begun in 1994 and submitted to various possibilities as it evolved]
2004	On Lightening Aircraft, Yorks, T.P.   [submitted to the VP at Boeing most associated with innovation; received not even a reply]

 

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Keen cover image by Michael Sabin, © 1974 by Terence Yorks and © 1997 by Arista Records;
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page updated 22 July 2011