Saturday 5 April 2014

WHY?


WHY ? 

Some have asked what it actually is I wish to accomplish, and why I do it.
I tried to answer one correspondent towards the end of my blog of 02 February 2013 http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/snippets-questions-2-comments.htm
from which I would like to quote (bullet points extended here):
_______________________________
So much for my return comments.  Happy to learn of any corrective sources, which you – or anyone else reading this – could point me to. I only claim to be a still learning pundit (for want of a better word in contradistinction to expert or consultant which I don’t claim to be), and then not in any climate science but in the areas of CleanEnergy and Sustainability.

To illustrate, here is my current study and work program, briefly:

·         The global design problem:
".... to render the total chemical and energy resources of the world, which are now exclusively preoccupied in serving only 44% of humanity, adequate to the service of 100% of humanity, at higher standards of living and total enjoyment than any man has yet experienced."
Buckminster Fuller, UIA Paris, 1963
·         Its timescale (solutions must be valid for grandchildren’s grandchildren):
“Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors; we borrow it from our Children.”
Ancient American Indian Proverb
·         Method (democracy defined): 
“Libraries are not just depositories of books, but cornerstones of democracy. True democracy --based upon the informed consent of the governed --cannot exist without full free and public access to knowledge.”
Seattle City Librarian Deborah Jacobs, as quoted by Bruce Mau
·         Aim: Sustainability

In these respects, I wholly share your closing encouragement – “Now let’s get to work, seriously!”
_________________________________

My first blog was posted on 09 September 2009 – ,
http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/clean-energy-primer-quousque-tandem.html 
since when I am occasionally reporting and commenting on my learning progress – see at side column for total postings, and popularity ratings to date. 

Latest entries in the TYGER series are --  at the date of this posting (but check for later entries of TYGER reads that stirred or inspired me):
the first TYGER posting is at
The most popularly read blogs are always shown in the right margin of each posting.

The complete updated list is always available at   http://tinyurl.com/k7ryobs   

The only rewards are that I learn a lot from the sources I quote, can talk and present what I learned, find readers in many countries, and to have been asked to let some of my blog postings be reproduced for wider circulation. Two recent articles, reprinted from my blog site, may illustrate some aspects I currently wrestle with:

As referred to in both of these TYGER postings I would like to quote again from Buckminster Fuller’s Foreword to his Critical Path [Hutchinson, London,1983]:

“My reasons for writing this book are fourfold:
       (A)   Because I am convinced that human knowledge by others of what this book has to say is essential to human survival.
      (B)   Because of my driving conviction that all of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly – right now.
     (C)   Because I am convinced that humanity’s fitness for continuance in the cosmic scheme no longer depends on the validity of political, religious, economic, or social organizations, which altogether heretofore have been assumed to represent the many.
     (D)   Because, contrary to (C), I am convinced that human continuance now depends entirely upon:
     a.     The intuitive wisdom of each and every individual.
     b.     The individual’s comprehensive informedness.
     c.     The individual’s integrity of speaking and acting only on the individual’s own within-self-intuited and reasoned initiative.
     d.     The individual’s joining action with others, as motivated only by the individually conceived consequences of so doing.
     e.     The individual’s never-joining action with others, as motivated only by crowd- engendered emotionalism, or by a sense of the crowd’s power to overwhelm, or in fear of holding to the course indicated by one’s own intellectual convictions."


I am trying, as best I can, to follow the advice in Fuller’s point (D) above, using as much as possible of the Traffic Signs in my comment in 
http://www.principia-scientific.org/tyger-tyger.html#comment-2562 
already referred to above,
   
as  ...my own ‘Traffic Signs’ in my ‘Whole-Earth-Sat-Nav’ through the CRITICAL PATH as a pointer to Democracy needing what appears to me like a never-ending minimum seven-voices, ricercar-like spiralling quest that might help mankind to ‘make it’ to the next interglacial.”    [see Comment #1 below, for ease of reference]

Following this advice, 'doing what I do' gets more exciting day by day, and that’s why I blog in order to share this excitement while quoting literature and links to sources that give rise to it.

The list of countries that are reported to have attracted readers of my blog postings comprise (at time of writing) :

And the Critical Path is still very long – with thanks to those who illustrated it for us: 

 http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/reality-check-following-collection-of.html

and above all,  Thank You to all those ‘teachers’ on whom I leant  in my various blog musings.

Wednesday 2 April 2014

TYGER of TYGERS #2

TYGER of  TYGERs continues...

...to present Reality Facts in this encyclopaedic  "...interdisciplinary text [that] will provide useful perspectives for readers  with backgrounds including resource economics, environmental studies, energy analysis, mineral geology, industrial organization, manufacturing, and material science”  as the back cover description advises.


Vaclav Smil:  Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization, 
First Edition, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2014
.


Bound to be seen as the standard reference on how to measure and compare the world's material health&wealth - and GDP is not one of the telling metrics.


And remember Alexius Meinong: 
"TRUTH IS A PURELY HUMAN CONSTRUCT BUT FACTS ARE ETERNAL"
Here be Facts.

Go, get yourself some Tyger Nights.....