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    Archive for June, 2009



    What’s wrong with Science? - glad you asked

    Published on June 20, 2009

    –In a longer post to TheGreatChange Lorna had asked:
    What is this list about? Attacking science or solving environmental problems? And if you do the former, how can you address the latter?
    –I responded:
    Lorna, There are serious problems with the design of the scientific method. The problem is not with what it has found, but what […]


    natural vs. artificial - more than semantics.

    Published on June 16, 2009

    Today Stan replied “Nice.” and Nick “A nice perspective”. It’s something I’ve been trying to say in a way that avoided the pitfalls for many years actually.
    Anselmo had said yesterday: I think the dispute on “natural” vs. “artificial” is not just mere semantics, as you [Nick] appear to perceive it. Why? let me […]


    Human dominion or negotiation, Getting control out of our heads

    Published on June 15, 2009

    Kathryn McCallum had said on 6/9, I am interested in this idea of communicating the “systematic tendency to overestimate human knowledge and control…predicated on the premise of predictability” as discussed very eloquently by my friend Kate Rigby in the attached essay.
    Kathryn,
    Coming back to this, I’d entirely agree that humanity is part of nature, and […]


    1 Acre of Bliss, re: Reversing Population Growth

    Published on

    ….follow the money!
    Eric Rimmerhad said on 6/11:
    “Thanks Peter – I do like your second paragraph – though there is a catch. The UK and the US and many more relatively low-birth-rate countries cannot live within the food-production capacity of the land they live in!”
    To Peter Salonius’s statement on 6/11:
    ‘That said, there certainly […]


    Now real steering with the tipping points…!

    Published on June 7, 2009

    Emily Spence had sent me a PNAS paper on the “Tipping elements in the earth’s climate system” and “Is Economic Growth a Delusion” by Steven Stoll
    Emily, Thanks much again.   The PNAS paper on tipping elements, though as good as I’ve seen from established scientists, is still a bit flimsy relative to what […]


    Real steering for the chicken and egg

    Published on

    Yesterday Eric Rimmer, on the sustainability slide show discussion, had replied to my comment about the problem with using I=PAT for the “chicken and egg” problems of overshoot relating the problem of population vs. wealth. He said: Thank you. Phil. Interesting thoughts, though I can’t detect what you suggest we should […]


    Carrying Capacity… the big picture in the details

    Published on June 3, 2009

    Lawrence Espy and Bill Reese similarly replied to Steve Solmony that the model of population growth limited by the natural carrying capacity of the earth was too general, and that Russ Hopfenberg’s article on population carrying capacity and “genetic feedback”. My reply to them precedes my earlier reply to Steve.
    Lawrence had pointed […]