Directly inspired from Meadows (Systems Thinking)

Thinking about biodiversity policy in the United States, specifically relating to the Endangered Species Act of 1973. I have focused on the impacts that governmental policy will have on the environment, rather than contributions from both the government and the private sector. I have also chosen to focus on the financial aspect of policy, keeping all other factors equal.

This stock and flow diagram is an updated working draft of a conceptual model of a dune-lake system in the Northland region of New Zealand.

Simple model of the global economy, the global carbon cycle, and planetary energy balance.

This model simulates the growth of carp in an aquaculture pond, both with respect to production and environmental effects.

 Carp are mainly cultivated in Asia and Europe, and contribute to the world food supply.

Aquaculture currently produces sixty million tonnes of fish and shellfish every year. In 2011, aquaculture production overtook wild fisheries for human consumption.

This paradigm shift last occurred in the Neolithic period, ten thousand years ago, when agriculture displaced hunter-gatherers as a source of human food.

Aquaculture is here to stay, and wild fish capture (fishing) will never again exceed cultivation.

Recreational fishing will remain a human activity, just as hunting still is, after ten thousand years - but it won't be a major source of food from the seas.

The best way to preserve wild fish is not to fish them.

OVERSHOOT GROWTH GOES INTO TURBULENT CHAOTIC DESTRUCTION

The existing global capitalistic growth paradigm is totally flawed

The chaotic turbulence is the result of the concept of infinite bigness this has been the destructive influence on all empires and now shown up by Feigenbaum numbers and Dunbar numbers for neural netwoirks

See Guy Lakeman Bubble Theory for more details on keeping systems within finite limited size working capacity containers (villages communities)

Challenges in sustainability are multilevel.
This diagram attempts to summarize levels of self reinforcing destructive dynamics, authors that deal with them, and point of leverage for change.

The base of the crisis is a mechanistic rather than ecological worldview. This mechanistic worldview is based on outdated science that assumed the universe to be a large machine. In a machine there is an inside and an outside. The health of the inside is important for the machine, the outside not. In an ecological view everything is interconnected, there is no clear separation in the future of self and other. All parts influence the health of other parts. To retain health sensitivity and democracy are inherent. The sense of separation from other that keeps the mechanistic worldview dominant is duality. Being cut off from spiritual traditions due to a mechanistic view of science people need access to inter-spirituality to reconnect with the human traditions and tools around connectedness, inner discovery, and compassion. Many books on modern physics and biology deal with the system view implications. "The coming interspiritual age" deals with the need to connect spiritual traditions and science.

At the bottom for the dynamic is an individual a sense of disconnectedness leads to a dependency on spending and having rather than connecting. The connecting has become too painful and dealing with it unpopular in our culture. Joanna Macy deals with this in Active Hope. 

This affluenza and disconnection is worsened by a market that floods one with advertisements aimed at creating needs and a sense of dissatisfaction with that one has.

National economies are structured around maximising GDP which means maximising consumption and financial capital movement. This is at the cost of local economies. These same local economies are needed for balanced happiness as well as for sustainability.

Generally institutions focus on maximising consumption rather than sustaining life support systems. David Korten covers this well.

Power and wealth is confused in this worldview. In striving for wealth only power is striven for in the form of money and monopoly.

Those at the head of large banks and corporations tend to be there because they exemplify this approach. They have few scruples about enforcing this approach onto everyone through wars and disaster capitalism. Naomi Klein and David Estulin documented this.

Power has become so centralized that we need this understanding to be widespread and include many of those in power. Progress of all of these levels are needed to show them and all that another way is possible.

This model describes phosphorus cycling in a dune-lake system in the Northland region of New Zealand. It is based on stock and flow diagrams where each orange oval represents an input, while each blue box represents a stock. Each arrow represents a flow. Flows involve a loss from the stock at which they start and add to the stock at which they end.

Collapse of the economy, not just recession, is now very likely. To give just one possible cause, in the U.S. the fracking industry is in deep trouble. It is not only that most fracking companies have never achieved a free cash flow (made a profit) since the fracking boom started in 2008, but that  an already very weak  and unprofitable oil industry cannot cope with extremely low oil prices. The result will be the imminent collapse of the industry. However, when the fracking industry collapses in the US, so will the American economy – and by extension, probably, the rest of the world economy. To grasp a second and far more serious threat it is vital to understand the phenomenon of ‘Global Dimming’. Industrial activity not only produces greenhouse gases, but emits also sulphur dioxide which converts to reflective sulphate aerosols in the atmosphere. Sulphate aerosols act like little mirrors that reflect sunlight back into space, cooling the atmosphere. But when economic activity stops, these aerosols (unlike carbon dioxide) drop out of the atmosphere, adding perhaps as much as 1° C to global average temperatures. This can happen in a very short period time, and when it does mankind will be bereft of any means to mitigate the furious onslaught of an out-of-control and merciless climate. The data and the unrelenting dynamic of the viral pandemic paint bleak picture.  As events unfold in the next few months,  we may discover that it is too late to act,  that our reign on this planet has, indeed,  come to an abrupt end?  

Westley, F. R., O. Tjornbo, L. Schultz, P. Olsson, C. Folke, B. Crona and Ö. Bodin. 2013. A theory of transformative agency in linked social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 18(3): 27. link

In Chile, 60% of its population are exposed to levels of Particulate Matter (PM) above international standards. Air Pollution is causing 4,000 premature deaths per year, including health costs over US$8 billion.

THE BROKEN LINK BETWEEN SUPPLY AND DEMAND CREATES TURBULENT CHAOTIC DESTRUCTION

The existing global capitalistic growth paradigm is totally flawed

Growth in supply and productivity is a summation of variables as is demand ... when the link between them is broken by catastrophic failure in a component the creation of unpredictable chaotic turbulence puts the controls ito a situation that will never return the system to its initial conditions as it is STIC system (Lorenz)

The chaotic turbulence is the result of the concept of infinite bigness this has been the destructive influence on all empires and now shown up by Feigenbaum numbers and Dunbar numbers for neural netwoirks

See Guy Lakeman Bubble Theory for more details on keeping systems within finite working containers (villages communities)

Simple mass balance model for lakes based on the Vollenweider equation:

dMw/dt = Min - sMw + pMs - Mout

The model was first used in the 1960s to determine the phosphorus concentration in lakes and reservoirs for eutrophication assessment.

This version considers mercury, and adds diagenesis, using an extra state variable (mercury in the sediment), and incorporates desorption processes that release mercury trapped in the sediment back to the water column.

The temporal dynamics of the model simulate the typical development of pollution in time.

1. Low loading, low Hg concentration in lake
2. High loading, increasing Hg concentration in lake
3. Desorption rate is low, Hg in sediment increases
4. Measures implemented for source control, loading reduces
5. Hg in lake gradually decreases, but below a certain point, desorption increases, and lake Hg concentration does not improve
6. Recovery only occurs when the secondary load in the sediment is strongly reduced.

This is a causal diagram story I made as an introduction to a workshop on systems thinking.

Combining electromobility and renewable energies since 2014.

http://www.amsterdamvehicle2grid.nl/

Modeling forest succession in a northeast deciduous forest.

In Chile, 60% of its population are exposed to levels of Particulate Matter (PM) above international standards. Air Pollution is causing 4,000 premature deaths per year, including health costs over US$8 billion.

Combining electromobility and renewable energies since 2014.

http://www.amsterdamvehicle2grid.nl/

ENP 65000 assignment

A system diagram for the Mojave Desert for an assignment at OSU- RNG 341.