Archive for April, 2007
Friday, April 27th, 2007
The concept of a "photosynthetic ceiling" was first introduced in Jared Diamond's book Collapse. Though Diamond certainly did not pioneer the idea, as far as I can tell he was the first to use the easily digestible term "photosynthetic ceiling", often referred to in other studies as human appropriation of [...]
Posted in Alternative Energy, Environment, Global Warming | 1 Comment »
Thursday, April 26th, 2007
Innovation, by its very nature, is difficult to institutionalize. Innovation requires free and open environments where people can be creative, explore their own interests, and leverage available resources. Institutions rely on predictable processes so that when someone flips a switch or makes a phone call, they get the [...]
Posted in Development, Global Warming | No Comments »
Monday, April 23rd, 2007
Right-wing media outlets often portray those of us who advocate for the greening of the globe as "liberal" big-government wackos whose ideas have no place in the hard-nosed scrabble of policy debate. Their portrayal notwithstanding, the green movement is in fact one of the most common sense, community-oriented and self-reliant [...]
Posted in Appropriate Technology, Environment | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007
Continuing on the idea of agricultural wastes, we move to pyrolysis, a term used to describe the conversion of biomass (and non-biological waste products, as well) into constituent elements by exposing it to moderate temperatures (~500ºC) in the absence of oxygen for short periods of time (fast pyrolysis). Though general [...]
Posted in Alternative Energy, Global Warming, Agriculture | 1 Comment »
Thursday, April 5th, 2007
Agricultural technologies that turn waste products into something useful have been absent from farming systems for too long now. Weeds, manure, bagasse, corn cobs, shells and husks...these are a few of the waste products from a list of many. Yet just as intensive outside inputs are a [...]
Posted in Agriculture | No Comments »
