THE PLOWBOY PAPERS ENERGY, ECOLOGY AND ECONOMICS
(Page 11 of 11)
May/June 1974
By Mother Earth News
All outside energy sources flow in from sources indicated with the circular symbol and these sources deliver causal forcing actions. All storages of energy, structure, money, information, value, etc., are represented by the tank-shaped symbol and these tanks are called state variables. All energies leave systems as dispersed heat that has no more potential for doing useful work. In the diagrams the dispersal of unusable heat energy is called a heat sink.
RELATED CONTENT
The U.S. Department of Energy's work with the city of Greensburg, Kan., over the past year is beari...
. . . ENERGY FLASHES...... ENERGY FLASHES...... ENERGY FLASHES. . . September/October 1982 POPEYE W...
A new study predicts we could have one quarter of our energy needs from renewable sources by 2025, ...
Which renewable energy technology has the best potential to combat global warming and power our fut...
Missouri creates a stronger market for renewable energy by passing a clean energy initiative....
When two different kinds of flows of energy (or materials, information, or services that carry energy) interact in processes where both are necessary, we draw a work gate symbol. The system has an X if the action of one flow so facilitates the flow of the other and vice versa so that the process is a multiplier action. As in all processes, useful energy that drives the processes emerges as degraded, no longer reusable dispersed energy leaving the earth through the heat sink. (Heat on earth ultimately is reradiated out to space from the top of the atmosphere.)
Self-maintaining entities such as populations, cities, industries, and other organizations that feed energy from storage back into multiplicative pumping actions are shown with the hexagonal symbol. The energy dispersed in maintaining the system, its growth, and its work services is shown passing out the bottom in a heat sink.
When new storages are developed, energy laws require that much of the energy be dispersed into unusable heat in order to make the process of storing go fast enough to be most competitive. The symbol for Potential generating work shows the necessary heat dispersal that is required for any storing Process.
When two energy flows may be substituted for each other, we show their junction as the convergence of lines. This means that the flows add (in contrast to the work gate where other kinds of interactions are the result).
Because money flows as a countercurrent to the flow of energy, goods, and services (the latter two also carrying energy), we represent pathways that involve economic transactions with the diamond shaped symbol and two counter diagrams pathways. The energy cost of doing economic business is shown as the energy lost into the heat sink.
The diagrams may be examined as if they were a series of water tanks and pipes with water flowing between the tanks, being driven by the pressures of the storages or outside pressures and the energy of the water pressure, ultimately leaving the system in the various frictional heat dispersions. The diagrams can thus be visualized to help see the complexity of systems and recognize just from the configurations what kinds of responses might follow proposed manipulations. As further given in Ref. 1 the diagrams are also ways of writing mathematical differential equations for making precise mathematical descriptions of relationships.
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 | 11 |
