• Bach sonata • Energy vs materials flows

– Materials cycle – Energy Flows from source to sink (2nd law

• Overall earth energy balance• Energy flow in the atmosphere and oceans• Energy flow in the biosphere

Lecture 2Energy Flows on Earth

E-101 - Energy and Sustainability Professor Lonnie Gamble

Sustainable Living Department Maharishi University of Management

This presentation was prepared on solar powered computers

Substitutability(Economics)

You can substitute one form of energy for another, being careful to take energy quality (entropy) into account

But there is nothing that can be substituted for energy - energy has no substitute.

No matter how clever we get, we will never find a substitute for energy.

Energy - Stock VS Flow

Energy Flows on Earth

WindWavesOcean CurrentsStormsTidesGeological UpheavalStatic discharge (lightning)Plants and AnimalsSolar Energy

MATTER VS ENERGY FLOWS

1. MATTER CAN BE RECYCLED (conservation of matter).2. ENERGY CAN NOT BE RECYCLED (2nd Law of

Thermodynamics).In nature:

Materials CycleEnergy Flows: From high quality, low entropy source to low quality high entropy sink. We can make use of energy as it flows on the path of entropy.

http://www.digital-recordings.com/publ/publife.html#creation

A Model for the Cycling of Matter and Flow of Energy

Materials Cycle, Energy Flows

The Circle of Life: 29 kmfor each person: .5 sq meters

The Economy of Nature

Economy of Abundance Within Limits vs Economy of Scarcity

Overall Earth Energy Balance

Entropy and the

Energy doesn’t cycle- it flows, losing usefulness as it goes. Life works to capture and store, renew and regenerate the usefulness of energy as it flows – life is anti-entropic

Sustainability = Life

30% Reflected by Clouds or Earth’s Surface

19% Absorbed by Atmosphere and

Clouds

0.023% absorbed by

plants

Energy flow in the Oceans and Atmosphere

Energy Movement - Wind

Trade Winds and Doldrums

Wind

Across the US:http://hint.fm/wind/

Across the world:http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/

isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=-52.52,27.01,333

Ocean Currents

Gulf Stream Warms Europe

Warming of Europe

Coleman map

Gulf Stream

Named and mapped by Benjamin Franklin

Moves warm water from the equator to the higher latitudes

100,000 million tons of water flow between Florida and the Bahamas every hour, flowing between 2 and 5 mph northward

Bigger than the combined flow of the Mississippi, the Nile, the Congo, the Amazon, the Volga, the Yangtze - 20 times greater than the flow of all fresh water into all oceans from rain, rivers, and melting ice and many other major rivers of the world

No beginning and no end – makes a loop

The theoretical maximum energy dissipation from Gulf Stream by turbines is in the range of 20-60 GW (20 – 60 large coal or nuclear power plants) One idea, which would supply the equivalent power of several nuclear power plants, would deploy a field of underwater turbines placed 300 meters (980 ft) under the center of the core of the Gulf Stream.[37] Ocean thermal energy could also be harnessed to produce electricity utilizing the temperature difference between cold deep water and warm surface water.[38]

Animation of ocean current flowhttp://www.livescience.com/19662-animation-reveals-ocean-currents.html

http://www.livescience.com/26273-gulf-stream.html

Hydrological cycle

Nature Economy operates on an unimaginably large scale in time and space

The blood of dinosaurs, the breath of Jesus

Water cycle times:Residence times, reservoirs

Atmosphere - 9 days, 13,000,000 cu kilometers Ocean – 3000 years, 1,370,000,000 cu

kilometers And it’s been doing this for billions of years

Everything is connected in space and time by these flows

Hurricane Patricia – the most violent storm in history

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/23/world/americas/hurricane-patricia.html

Energy Flow in the Biosphere

Food Pyramid and Trophic LevelsPhotosynthesis and Respiration

Thermodynamics of Life

Sonata Bach sonata This

Can power this

Photosynthesis

Respiration

Atmospheric Carbon Cycle

Life on Earth

Photosynthesizers – Autotrophs

Those that live on photosynthesizers - Heteroptrophs

An Energy Budget for Producers

The thermdynamic argument for being a vegetarian

Each trophic levels represents a 10 fold increase in energy needed – only 10 percent of the energy captured at one level is available to the next. All trophic levels are ultimately dependent on primary producers that have the ability to utilize solar energy. Eating lower on the food chain means more can be fed from the fixed amount of solar energy captured by primary producers

Energy and Life

Trophic Levels (Masters)

Energy Flow In A !Kung Bushman Managed Ecosystem

• The !Kung, until recently, obtained food from populations of plants and animals in the Kalahari Desert.

• Mongongo nuts1, small quantities of plants20 (roots, melons, gums, bulbs, dried fruit) and game animals16-28 provided about 2355 kcal/person/day (more than adult male requirement of 2250).

Number of species

Energy Flow In A Modern Agricultural Ecosystem

• The average American relies on domesticated plants and animals to meet his or her caloric requirements.

• Cereal grains (grasses5), lesser quantities of other plants20-40 and domesticated livestock4 meet our caloric requirements.

Energy in corn equivalents

Who Has the Most Sustainable Way of Meeting Caloric Requirements?

Your Understanding of Energy Flow Has Important Future Consequences. Check It Out With Your

Answer To This Question?

One winter 7 sailors are shipwrecked on a barren artic island that has water but neither soil or vegetation. A crate of corn flakes and a crate containing 7 hens are also cast ashore with them. To survive as long as possible the sailors should:

a. kill & eat the hens, then eat the cornflakes. b. feed the corn flakes to the hens, then eat the eggs. c. eat the cornflakes & let the hens fend for themselves.

Energy and Ecosystem Services

Costanza – Value of Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem Services

• Capital - assets available for use in the production of further assets

• Natural Capital - the mineral, plant, and animal formations of the Earth’s biosphere when viewed as a means of production of oxygen, water, filter, erosion preventer, or provider of other natural services.

Natural CapitalHave you ever considered that the cereal you eat is brought to you each morning by the wind, or that the glass of clear, cold, clean water drawn from your faucet may have been purified for you by a wetland or perhaps the root system of an entire forest? Trees in your front yard work to trap dust, dirt, and harmful gases from the air you breathe. The bright fire of oak logs you light to keep warm on cold nights and the medicine you take to ease the pain of an ailment come to you from Nature's warehouse of services. Natural ecosystems perform fundamental life-support services upon which human civilization depends. Unless human activities are carefully planned and managed, valuable ecosystems will continue to be impaired or destroyed.

Nature’s Ecnonomy - Ecosystem ServicesSelf regulating – Self organizing – Powered by sunlight

•Production of oxygen •Maintenance of biological and genetic diversity •Purification of water and air •Storage, cycling, and global distribution of freshwater•Regulation of the chemical composition of the atmosphere•Maintenance of migration and nursery habitats for wildlife•Decomposition of organic wastes•Sequestration and detoxification of human and industrial waste•Natural pest and disease control by insects, birds, bats, and other organisms•Production of genetic library for food, fibers, pharmaceuticals, and materials• Fixation of solar energy and conversion into raw materials •Management of soil erosion and sediment control •Flood prevention and regulation of runoff •Protection against harmful cosmic radiation•Regulation of the chemical composition of the oceans•Regulation of the local and global climate•Formation of topsoil and maintenance of soil fertility•Production of grasslands, fertilizers, and food•Storage and recycling of nutrients•Concentrate Minerals for easy extraction

Source: Lovins, Lovins, and Hawken. Natural Capitalism

The Value of Nature’s Services

• ･ Flood Control: Much of the Mississippi River Valley's natural flood protection services were destroyed when adjacent wetlands were drained and channels altered. As a result, the 1993 floods resulted in property damages estimated at twelve billion dollars partially from the inability of the Valley to lessen the impacts of the high volumes of water. ･

Value: Medicines• 80% of the world's population relies upon natural

medicinal products. Of the top 150 prescription drugs used in the U.S., 118 originate from natural sources: 74% from plants, 18% from fungi, 5% from bacteria, and 3% from one vertebrate (snake species). Nine of the top 10 drugs originate from natural plant products. ･

Value: Water Filtration

• Before it became overwhelmed by agricultural and sewage runoff, the watershed of the Catskill Mountains provided New York City with water ranked among the best in the Nation by Consumer Reports. When the water fell below quality standards, the City investigated what it would cost to install an artificial filtration plant. The estimated price tag for this new facility was six to eight billion dollars, plus annual operating costs of 300 million dollars -- a high price to pay for what once was free. New York City decided instead to invest a fraction of that cost ($660 million) in restoring the natural capital it had in the Catskills watershed. In 1997, the City raised an Environmental Bond Issue and is currently using the funds to purchase land and halt development in the watershed, to compensate property owners for development restrictions on their land, and to subsidize the improvement of septic systems.

Value: Pollination

Over 100,000 different animal species -- including bats, bees, flies, moths, beetles, birds, and butterflies -- provide free pollination services. One third of human food comes from plants pollinated by wild pollinators. The value of pollination services from wild pollinators in the U.S. alone is estimated at four to six billion dollars per year.

Value: Total• Robert Costanza and other theorists of natural capital

conducted extensive economic analysis of nature's services to humanity in the 1990s. The economic contribution of seventeen of these was found to be approximately US$33 trillion per year, greater than the activities in the inter-human economy, which totaled about US$25 trillion. This was based on estimated costs of replacing the services nature provides, with equivalent services using methods wholly based on human infrastructure

The Sun: Other Services

•Provides a source of order or negative entropy that allows systems to become more complex and rich•Gravity that holds solar system together•Gravity influences tides•In vedic astrology, the king or ruler, Raam•Provides rhythms and seasons in nature•Of primary importance for orientation and placement in environmental design•Flag of the Global Country of World peace

•In partnership with the moon, provides convenient mood lighting at night

Aurora

END Energy Flow in Nature

Find meaning of symbols - odum

Hunter Lovins• “But even Natural Capitalism is not enough. We then have

to address the very important parallel agenda of ensuring that a vibrant and responsible civil society is creating the sort of future we all want to live in. Markets (an "ecosystem" within which corporations are only one creature) are very powerful tools, but only that. Markets make a good servant, a lousy master, and a worse religion. We've tended to confuse those roles of late in this country. It is time that we all think much harder about what really matters to us, what the real purpose of being alive is, and how to achieve those higher purposes. But here's a clue: Most of what you can stick a price tag on ain't it.”

“For the first time, we have the ability to provide for all of humanity”

Buckminster Fuller, 1969

“The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created

them”- Albert Einstein

“I look for what needs to be done. After all, that's how the universe designs itself.” - Fuller

Solving for Pattern• "There are all kinds of solutions to any problem. Some

solutions actually make the initial problem worse, and some solutions actually create new problems. What you really want to look for are solutions that by their very nature wind up having cascading benefits.” Nina Simons, Co-Executive Director of Bioneers,quoting Wendell Berry, at the Bioneers 2005 Conference.

Energy Cost lowUtility darn near infinite

Show pie chart of life cycle building costs

Hydrological cycle

• Length of time for the average molecule to cycle

• Blood of dinosaurs story

Energy and the Human Economy

Energy Flows in Nature

Water cycle times:Residence times, reservoirs

Atmosphere - 9 days, 13,000,000 cu kilometers Ocean – 3000 years, 1,370,000,000 cu

kilometers Energy required – calculation

diff between evap over oceans and rainfall over oceans

Average Height of landLength of time, mixing , 2nd law

Blood of a dinosaur, breath of jesus

Blood of dinosaurs

How we use energy

Energy Movement - Ocean Currents

The flow of the gulf stream is bigger than the combined flow of the Mississippi, the Nile, the Congo, the Amazon, the Volga, the Yangtze and many other major rivers of the world. The best technical estimate is that one hundred thousand million tons of warm salt water flow between Florida and the Bahamas every hour. At 235 gallons per ton, we have 235 x 1010 gallons per hour flowing between two and five miles per hour northward. This flow has been estimated to be about twenty times greater than all the fresh water in the world flowing into the oceans of the world from rain, rivers, and melting ice.

This great mass of flowing water, or energy, has no beginning or ending, for its waters flow continuously northward along our east coast then east across the North Atlantic to the coasts of Europe and the United Kingdom, where it turns south and flows along western Europe and Africa, before again turning westward across the South Atlantic to the Caribbean basin. Lake any large river, it has tributaries, counter currents and eddies.

This entire circulation is not called the Gulf Stream; only the portion that flows northward beginning in the Caribbean Islands and flows to the mid-Atlantic at the latitude of the North Sea is so named. There are many other names for the other segments.

.

Nature’s Economy: Gulf Stream

How is it possible to have such a continuous source of energy that moves the estimated one hundred thousand million tons of water (100,000,000,000 [1010]) past Miami at the rate of two to five miles per hour? This is perhaps the greatest simple source of power in the world. (Note: In addition to water, huge quantities of thermal energy are being moved from the equator to Europe)_

Simply explained, the earth rotates counter-clockwise, and the combination of the rotation and the viscous fluids, air and water, produces a pumping action that pushes the water of the South Atlantic westward. The atmosphere, resisting the world's rotation, produces what we call Trade Winds. Because the earth is spinning faster than the surrounding mantle of air, on the surface of the earth the winds blow from the east. Thus, the great expanse of water in the South Atlantic is pushed westward by both the earth's rotation and the less viscous air, until it is thrust against the land masses of Central and South America, and is forced to split into two streams--the Brazil Current, flowing south, and the Gulf Stream, flowing north, the Gulf Stream being greater of the two.

The volume of water returning from Europe and Africa has been calculated to be substantially less than the volume of water of the Gulf Stream between Miami and the Bahamas. Some of this increased volume is attributed to the funnel, or venture, effect, caused by the narrowing of the Gulf Stream between Miami, Bimini and Cat Cay, which increases the Gulf Stream's velocity and drags additional volumes of water along

Gulf Stream cont’d

Natures Economysee also list in Natural Capitalism reading

* moderate weather extremes and their impacts• * produce oxygen• * produce a stable concentration of gasses in the atmosphere• * disperse seeds• * decompose wates• * mitigate drought and floods• * protect people from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays• * cycle and move nutrients• * protect stream and river channels and coastal shores from erosion• * detoxify and decompose wastes• * control agricultural pests• * maintain biological and genetic diversity• * storage, cycling, and global distribution of fresh water• * generate and preserve soils and renew their fertility• * contribute to climate stability• * purify the air and water• * regulate disease carrying organisms• * concentrate minerals for easy extraction