Tag Archives: entropy

Lowering? Entropy of Wet Landscapes

Small-Scale Distributed Integrated Resilient Agroforest Ecosystems…Buzz words buzzin’ like bees and birds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GINQvtKaZGY
“So here is a way to get a wet area to be a pond, well-drained raised garden beds, focused nutrient delivery system, and a propagation space for hardwood cuttings, in an area that was just kind of mucky and filled with grass and shrubs.”

Here’s a nice video on entropy and order. Is forest gardening lowering or increasing entropy in its local system, in our Earth system?

The Problem is the Solution: Carbon, and the case of Life and Death


The problem is the solution.

Permaculture Principle

Hearing about carbon and the environment, many people think of atmospheric carbon as a green house gas. Right alongside that are all the long-term massive changes in the carbon cycle from fossil fuel extraction, processing, and use as fuels and plastics. Carbon is problematic, but it’s so much more. In fact it’s a lot of things, and it’s ubiquitous in life.

On Earth, all known living things have a carbon-based structure and system.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry

Even fossil fuels contain this fact, that carbon is the building block of life. Fossil fuels are not inherently bad, they are just part of life systems, dead for millions of years only to be brought to life briefly for a fast flash then a slow decay. A decay of life systems themselves, a stumbling toward high entropy and climate chaos. How do we reign in the chaos, how do we lower entropy on Earth as Life overall seems inclined to do?

The complexities around fossil fuels, from geology to economics and ecology to justice, exist in full form only at scales (i.e. a hyperobject) that are hard for us to grapple with. It is how we interact with the the systems fossil fuels are a part of, to either degrade or regenerate those very living systems and life itself. Carbon can be the quickly-lost exhaust of burned billion-year-old oil, or it can be rich black organic matter that gets better with time, revitalizing soil that sustains us and all life on Earth.

We live at a time where there is widespread disturbance all around us. The ground is open and waiting for seeds. We can bemoan the tragedies that nature has endured or we can cast seeds and plant a future.
We can and do influence the ecosystems around us more than any other species. That influence can come through reckless destruction, blind abandonment, or conscious intent.

Trees of Power by Akiva Silver of Twisted Tree Nursery near Ithaca, NY

Carbon’s role in life systems can give momentum to feedback loops of degradation or of restoration and regeneration. Carbon can serve a core role in feedback loops that produce goods in the present and get better over time: trees, soil, animals enjoying carbon while sequestering and storing it, all in mutual benefit enhancing the systems one and all exists in.

Enjoying carbon? Enjoying it as in making fulfilling, mutually beneficial use of it. And enjoying it while we still can, that is, considering how dire some environmental situations are becoming in large part due to imbalances in the carbon and other cycles. We need the tools to shift the carbon cycle into a more wholly beneficial setting. We know the tools: trees; carbon farming; regenerative, ecological lifestyles and landscapes. And we have the main building block of those tools, waiting to take f(x) one way or another: Carbon. For life systems, ecosystems; or for the degradation, destruction, and death of those systems?

For life systems, or for the death of those systems?

Where’s the carbon?

Is it regenerative or degenerative?

Is it diverse or a monoculture/monopoly?

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LoNo Computing: Crunching Logic Calcs with No or Low…Emergy?

LoNo Computing. LoNo (short for low-power no-power) Computing is the idea of building a computer that is extremely low power. It is the attempt, inspired by nature, to build efficient computers by harnessing the natural behavior of natural systems.

via https://charlesreid1.com/w/images/f/f1/LonoComputing.pdf

I discovered this while exploring another concept I recently discovered, Solarpunk. Solarpunk was first presented to me via Firefox’s Pocket webpage recommendation of Nine Sci-Fi Subgenres to Help You Understand the Future.

Computers powered by natural forces, using very little power. I found this fascinating at first, then recognized with more fascination than usual the wonder of our current computing technology: the laptop I type this on is labeled as 65W, and online searches suggest it probably uses more like 15W; this is a fraction of the ~100W human body. Water has many interesting properties, as does electromagnetism. I’m curious about how hydraulics, pneumatics, and electronics compare as computing mediums, but it seems likely electronics will continue advancing the forefront of computing, especially as it is 1) an underlying, fundamental force essential to the behavior of hydraulics and pneumatics; and 2) entangled in all sorts of quantum strangeness.

success ion: be the change

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In the USA and now in Brazil, we see powerful nations viscerally divided between elected officials. Objectively, neither is perfect. Subjectively, the opposing side is so bad it *must* be avoided. Sadly, the side which is the most outspokenly hateful and disregarding of universal human rights is in the lead. Continue reading →

Contentedness, Time, and Entropy – Thoughts from Fasting – Summer Solstice 2018

I eat and am satisfied. And then I become hungry again.

I lay on the grass and the Sun chases the chills away. Light warms my bones comfortably and the soft breeze and corresponding sound of leafs is music to one’s ears. I am content. What more could I ask for?

Time goes by, and I am restless. Where has the contentedness gone? Has the content changed so?

Biological activity is at its base merely physics unfolding. If a rock is in its perfect state, can it remain so? No, the rock will eventually succumb to weather.

The state of things is such as it is because of a perpetual unfolding. This is related to the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics: one can observe the instantaneous position of a particle, or one can observe the velocity of a particle moving through some portion of space, but one cannot observe both simultaneously. Things do not exist in a fixed state, for they are always in motion. Things do not exist ever in motion, because in the moment they are present in only one place.

How am I to be content? The content of the present is all there is to conceive, yet it is destined to change, for it could not exist if it were not for its flux.

I give thanks to the microbial kingdom and to the elements; may the backbones of life be appreciated and in mutually regenerative peace, peace, peace, One Love.