In the last bog , I told you how the law of mass conservation governs the large-scale behavior of Earth's households - ecosystems - that must recycle all mass on average and export only low quality heat into the cold universe. Now, I will give you a few useful definitions of cyclic processes, sustainability, and ecosystem productivity. Let me start from stating the obvious: We live in a spaceship we cannot leave, a gorgeous blue, white and green planet Earth that takes us for a spin around her star, the Sun, each year. But this statement is imprecise. We really live on a vanishingly thin skin of the Earth, her ecosphere . Think of this skin as of a thin delicate membrane, teaming with life and beauty, but incredibly fragile. We trample on this membrane and poison it. Then we act surprised when it brakes and shrivels. Practically all life on the Earth exists between two concentric spheres defined by the mean Earth surface at the radial distance ...
In this blog, I continue to write about the environment, ecology, energy, complexity, and humans. Of particular interest to me are human self-delusions and mad stampedes to nowhere.