Sustainable Sustainability

[Solute]

The trees turn to fire. Pies are cooked. Thousands of turkeys wait on death row planning their final meal. As the spectre of Boreas arrives, my thoughts have turned to heating. The future white wasteland has spurred research into effective heating methods. A search for how to heat a room with body heat, lead to a website:https://www.lowtechmagazine.com. In particular two articles: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/02 ... paces.html and https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/03 ... stems.html. The inefficiency of central heating as been mentioned in ERE blogposts before. At a fall holiday meal a few years ago, my hosts son-in-law built ceramic heaters and teaches others to do the same.

The purpose of this post comes from a newer article titled: How to Make Wind Power Sustainable Again?

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/06 ... bines.html

The common, mainstream environmental narrative advocates increases in solar and wind power, while ignoring, with or without ignorance, the unsustainability of solar and wind power generation. In the above mentioned article, windmill blades are currently made of unrecyclable fibreglass and epoxy. These materials are trashed in the US or burnt in the EU... and then trashed. Solar panels are also made with some toxic and unrecyclable materials. The above mentioned article describes a model of "green" energy that is truly sustainable. Mostly wooden turbines with iron mechanism creates a carbon sink and fully recyclable energy source. Built in a forest where the next generation of turbines grow. Technology a century old when oil was not found them thar hills - true again in the not so distant future.

Are there any others types of renewable technology similar? Thoughts on why such ideas are not mainstream other than not rocking the boat too much for individuals for whom the right to a SUV is the 28th amendment, where riding a bike, not blasting central heating and cooling, and having a garden is fundamentally hell on earth.

[Riggerjack]

Yeah, lowtech is fun. But where I run into issues with lowtech sustainability is durability.

Being able to replace the wooden gears for your windmill from those not too nearby woods, (because trees cut wind...) is not the same as having the skill/tools to do so. Even if it were, how often would you like to replace handmade parts?

But if that's what does it for you, here's an awesome video of one of the antique European windmills in action. It was taken by a tourist, but it shows how the millwork goes together and the pieces that are made to be replaced/calibrated:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9BjFjKeYKDo

[Solute]

@Riggerjack, great video. That windmill was beautiful.

From my developing understanding of lowtech, as outlined from the magazine, the main purpose is along the lines of continuing 19th and early 20th century innovation without coal or petroleum.

From my understanding of the proposed wooden windmill, the gears and rotating material would be metal with the rest being wood. Metallurgy techniques like through hardening can significantly improve the durability of metal - increasing the lifespan. Current windmill gearboxs have a 20-25 year lifespan with many failing to survive past year 15. Usually larger windmill fail sooner than smaller counterparts. If a more sustainable model produces similar or superior results, the choice is obvious.

[7Wannabe5]

One thing to bear in mind is that toxicity is almost always going to be related to concentration and scale. For instance, a good friend of mine who is a bit of a health nut recently ended up in the emergency room due to drinking too much water. So, any time humans are engaged in cognition with their environment in a manner consistent with sorting algorithm with simple Good/Bad or Kill/Care dichotomy, it is likely that concentrated stock piles of elemental resources will result. For instance, we humans have done such a good job of converting solar energy into tasty kilocalories for us, we are on the verge of global majority obesity. However, this clearly does not mean that it isn't very important to concern ourselves with maintaining adequate supplies of kilocalories.

Another example would be that it is very difficult for humans to raise livestock which we genetically engineered (bred) for tastiness/domesticity in the presence of wild carnivorous competitors. So, humans genetically engineered (bred) dogs with the specific behavioral qualities that lend themselves to livestock protection. In the book, "The Wizard and the Prophet", the author makes a fairly convincing argument that is as irrational to be hard-line opposed to GMOs as it is to be hard-line resistant to Global Climate Change.

Anyways, there are a number of different rational, sustainable models that can be constructed depending on initial preference for final results. For instance, do you think human population should or will top out at or around 10 billion mid century? I believe this is the current scant majority consensus, but the interesting thing is that it is based on trends or correlations that are not well-understood. For instance, what is the mechanism behind the correlation of education of females and reduced fertility? Since there is no hope for sustainability of any limited resource with uncontrolled human population growth limited to this planet, it is pretty clear to me that "educating females" wins hands down over "building wooden windmills" as choice for direction of current efforts.

[Riggerjack]

Well, bigger windmills break down faster, because they are dealing with more force, more torque. That's just greater wear and tear, overall.

They build at that scale, because there is more wind higher up. More wind means more power, but higher towers means more leverage...

The problems you are describing, are economic. We build out of fiberglass, because weight and strength are important factors, and disposal is not. When we fill the current valley, we'll cover it in dirt, and start filling another valley...

Now the standard answer here is to somehow make disposal more of an issue, usually through regulation. This is... suboptimal.

My thoughts go along the lines of what parts are failing, and how can we adapt the design to minimize failures and lifetime maintenance. This is never a concern during the "grab all the subsidy money floating around" stage of government incentivizing tech.

But after the failures start piling up and the subsidy dries up, the real engineering work can begin. We just aren't there yet.