ENVS 400 Independent Study - Daniel Woods - Chapter 3 & 4 Free Responses

Chapter 3 Response: Resilience, Self-Organization, and Hierarchy

When I went running yesterday, I thought about how my body has to be resilient to the food I eat and the water I drink in order for me to be able to run. Eating and drinking too soon before running, like I did yesterday, causes my stomach muscles to cramp up. But the act of eating and drinking isn’t what you would call a normal “disturbance” to a system because food and water are some of my most basic needs. I don’t know if a term has been coined for this type of disturbance, it probably has, but I guess you could call this a “basic needs disturbance.” Maybe resilience to a basic needs disturbance should be called “basic needs resilience.”  I can think of lots of examples of basic needs resilience. Can your vehicle overcome the added weight of its fuel? Can you wake up in the morning after sleeping? Can you wake up in the morning after a night of fulfilling your need to have social interaction? For how many years can your knees be resilient to the impact of the rest of your body on top of them so that they can keep carrying you to get your basic needs?  Basic-needs resilience seems like an important category of resilience because it deals with disturbances that are necessary to the system.  

It seems to me that perhaps the greatest tool for self-organizing of all time is the internet; a network that connects every device that can connect to it. People from every corner of existence can connect, share ideas, and organize. I can go on the internet and find a group of people who share my ideas about anything. I can self-organize with these people, and share two-way communication with them instantly. It works so well because every device on the internet doesn’t have to connect to every other device – it just has to connect to the server that makes the connections. This means that the internet is organized into sub-systems, where every device connected to the internet is a sub-system. This makes the system resilient, because even if my computer crashes while connected to the internet, the rest of the internet is unaffected. So the internet lets us freely self-organize with resilience.

Hierarchy affects the internet as well. The server that runs a website is at a higher level than the laptop or phone that accesses it. Information in a university is organized into a hierarchy, too: professors, student teachers, and students. The hierarchies in the internet and in a university are different because in a university, the hierarchy’s levels have progressively more knowledge; in the internet, the hierarchy’s levels have more connectivity. It seems like it can be hard to tell if some systems even have a hierarchy, and not just separate-but-equal sub-systems. Does the internet really have a hierarchy, or just separate sub-systems? The servers are nothing without people with devices who access them. A market can’t function without shoppers and sellers; they rely on each other. I suppose there are usually sub-systems in a hierarchy. There are different levels of buyers and sellers, like the luxury market and the middle-class market. There are infinite levels of sub-systems and hierarchies everywhere you look.

Chapter 4 Response: System History, Nonlinearities, Limits, and Law of the Minimum

          

         “When a systems thinker encounters a problem, the first thing he or she does is look for data, time graphs, the history of the system. That’s because long term behavior provides clues to the underlying system structure. And structure is the key to understanding no just what is happening, but why” –p88. This brings up an important idea that I’ve often thought about that has to do with why people are reluctant to understand the importance of global climate change. When I see that most people seem to not care at all that the accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, I wonder, “what could have happened in their lives to make this seem insignificant?” And then it dawned on me: my dad told me about what it was like to live in the cold war. Every day the world could end. You might not make it to your next birthday, and you would only have a few hours’ notice that the end was neigh. In contrast, the news that the earth is going to warm up by about ten degrees isn’t very scary. The social history lends itself to understanding our collective social consciousness.

            If the collective consciousness were a linear system, the news that we need change to avert disaster would result in that change. But because the collective consciousness is nonlinear, input does not equal output. Proven science does not lead to changed opinions. Humans are not robots; we use feeling and intuition to make our decisions. The fact that animal populations cycle in a nonlinear fashion is another way to explain human’s outsized impact on the earth. All species are programmed to make the most of circumstances that let them multiply. But since humans have overcome the limiting factors that would usually stop the population from growing, we are running into the limit of our global system: space. Space for our bodies, space for our waste, and space for growing food. We are approaching this limit, and other limits, with nonlinear speed. It’s my goal, and I think the goal of most environmentalists, to avert the nonlinear decline in our population if we reach our limits too abruptly.

            I like the idea of the Law of the Minimum, which says that a system needs a certain amount of all of its necessary inputs, no matter how much excess it has of a certain input. No matter how many jobs an economy has available, it won’t function without a healthy workforce. No matter how much oil there is, an oil-based economy can’t function if the wastes from it are too harmful, or there is inadequate infrastructure to deal with the waste. No matter how much people try to recycle, recycling won’t happen if there isn’t a facility to do it.

               

ENVS 400 Independent Study - Daniel Woods - Answers to in-class questions for Ch 1, 2, & 3.

Chapter 1 Questions and Responses

1.     1.   How is a system defined?

“A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something.” An example of a system is a library; it is a coherently organized building full of books that achieves the accessibility of the information in the books better than if the books were disorganized, as well as preserves that information by preserving the books.

2.    

        2. Explain the difference between elements and interconnections in systems.  Which are more important? 

Elements are the individual parts of a system. They are usually physical, but can be intangible, like social norms. Interconnections are the relationships that hold elements together. In the library, the elements are the books. The interconnections are the common subjects of the books, which is the starting point for organizing them to make them easy to find.

3.       

     3. Define stocks and flows; make a stock-and-flow diagram of our system.

Stocks are the resources in a system that can be added to or depleted, and can be tangible or intangible. Flows are the avenues of change to the level of stocks. The stock of a library is all of the media contained in it, and the flow is the rate at which the media is checked out, lost, damaged, and returned.

Flow: Books Checked In à Stock: Books à Flow: Books Checked Out à Flow: Book Reading 

Speed à Flow: Books Checked In

4.       4. Why are there lags in system behaviors?

There are lags in system behaviors because stocks have inherent momentum. For example, the stock of books in a library would respond slowly to more interest in reading because there are so many books in the library. Flows are limited to a certain speed as well; a person can only check out a few books at a time, and reading them is going to take a long time.

5.      

      5. Define: stabilizing feedback, reinforcing feedback.

Stabilizing feedback regulates the system to keep it from changing. Reinforcing feedback causes the system’s stock to grow or diminish. Stabilizing feedback in the library is the fines for not returning a book that guarantee that there will be money to buy the book again if it is lost. Reinforcing feedback is the culmination of knowledge and ongoing research that is enabled by a library that guarantees that there will be more books available that a library might be obligated to have. The stock of books is always increasing, never decreasing.

Chapter 2 Questions and Responses

1.      

     1. Describe the differences between complicated and complex systems.

According to the TED talk that is linked to in the power-point, a complex system has many individual, similar parts that all interact with each other to create a system. The individual parts are governed by simple rules that, when the individuals come into contact with each other, create a system, which has an outcome that could not be predicted by knowing the rules that govern the individuals. In other words, “the whole is the sum of its parts”. In contrast, a complicated system is one with many parts that are different from one another, and they all do a separate job that contributes to the goal of the system. Their behavior  as a group is therefore not as puzzling, because they all do their activity with the intention of the result that happens.

2.       2.  Using the system diagrams we made last week as examples, diagram key components of the system you have chosen to work with this semester (stocks, flows, information links/feedbacks.

         Recycling Stock/Flow Diagram:

Chapter 3 Questions and Responses

1. In the context of systems, what is resilience? Give examples.  How can resilience of a system be measured?

"Resilience is a measure of a system's ability to survive and persist within a variable environment."- p 75. "Resilience arises from a rich structure of many feedback loops that can work in different ways to restore a system even after a large perturbation." - p76. I think a good example of resilience is the human liver, which can regenerate itself from only 1/4 of it's original mass. The ability for a country to rebuild itself after losing a war, such as Japan's loss in WWII and subsequent rise as a technological powerhouse , is another example. The time it takes for a system to return to the state it was in before the disturbance is a good way to measure resilience. Another way to measure resilience would be to see how much more prepared the system is next time the disturbance occurs.

2. What is self-organization?  Give examples?  Is this an inherent property of complex systems?

Self-organization is the ability of a system's elements to work toward a common goal without having to rely on a central authority. Instead, each individual communicates with the individuals around it, and the cumulative effect of all the communication is achieving the goal. This is how ants work, as described in the National Geographic reading; each ant interaction involves an exchange of chemicals that give the receiving ant information about the other, and the ants draw conclusions about what to do next based on the frequency of these interactions. Birds and other groups of moving animals use self-organizing rules to move in the same general direction without blocking each other. This is how complex systems come to be; they are the cumulative effect of many individuals following the same simple rules.

3.  Describe complexity and hierarchies, how are the two terms related?  Again, give examples.

Hierarchies are sub-systems of systems that organize and divide a large system. Each sub-system is more tightly connected with itself than with the other sub-systems, which works to divide tasks, so that a system can solve several different problems simultaneously and with efficiency. If complexity is the sum of a system's parts, then it is also the sum of the sub-systems. Sub-systems can also have complexity, such as how each animal population is a sub-system of the whole ecosystem. Another example are all the sub-systems in a car; the air-conditioning, engine cooling, window motors, and other systems work to get you down the road safely. And you in your car are but a sub-system of the larger system of commuters and consumers, who are all contributing to moving capital and ideas around. 

ENVS 400 Independent Study - Daniel Woods - Project Proposal

Background
Recycling is the most obvious, easiest, and best thing in terms of cost-benefit analysis that can be done to improve the sustainability of our society. Unfortunately, only 35% of households and 10% of businesses recycle their waste. Making new packaging and products using recycled material, rather than virgin materials, saves huge amounts of energy for virtually every type of material. Here are a few examples:

1. Recycling one ton of plastic bottles saves the equivalent energy usage of a two person household for one year.

2.      2. It requires 95% less energy and water to recycle a can than it does to create a can from virgin materials.

3.      3. Recycling cardboard only takes 75% of the energy needed to make new cardboard.

Source: http://recycleacrossamerica.org/recycling-facts

            

Project Goal
 Improve the percentage of households and businesses that recycle in Gunnison by helping them start recycling pickup at their buildings and informing on how to recycle in the city of Gunnison.

Reason for Doing Project
 Gunnison’s recycling program is disorganized, separated geographically, and hard to use. Information is not readily available in one public place on how to recycle; for example, directions for how and where to recycle alkaline batteries are not present on the City of Gunnison’s website (www.cityofgunnison-co.gov), but they are on the Gunnison County website (gunnisoncounty.org). And where is the proper place to recycle alkaline batteries? Not the recycling center- the post office! Another example of difficult recycling is for electronics, which are accepted at the Gunnison Public Works building for only 3.5 hours a week: Monday from 1:30pm to 4pm. In addition to having scattered places where recycling is dropped off, residential recycling service requires that all different materials be sorted into different bins, even different colors of glass. On top of this, the City of Gunnison will only provide a home with four bins. As there are more than four different kinds of materials that have to be recycled, this leaves person to either find more bins themselves or to throw away some of their recyclables. These very specific rules for recycling in Gunnison are not easily apparent, leading to less than perfect rates of recycling.

Methods for Accomplishing Goal:  

1.      Create a pamphlet that compiles all information on how, where, and when to recycle all possible materials, as well as instructions on how to start recycling service at a home, that can be widely distributed and easily understood.

2.      Set up a stand at the 4^th of July festivities where the pamphlet can be passed out. I will be able to interact with the public in person, and encourage them to call the Gunnison Public Works Department to have recycling service started at their homes.

3.      Distribute pamphlets to local coffee shops, as well as to the Gunnison Public Works Dept., so they can pass out pamphlets as well.

ENVS 400 Independent Study - Daniel Woods - "Thinking In Systems" Chapters 1 & 2 Responses

Chapter 1: The Basics

The book starts with the statement that everything is a system, and that systems have parts that have interconnections that can either be physical or intangible, i.e., information. I can see that humanity is a system where the parts are individual people. There are a seemingly infinite number of systems that connect people; endless sets if physical and information connections between people. One of the great interconnections of all people is food. There are people that grow it, people that process it, people that package it, distribute it, and we all consume it. All the food that every person eats comes in containers of some sort, unless it is fresh from the farm. Even if you are eating at a restaurant, the ingredients they use came in a package, unless they came straight from the farm, of course. Because the system of food distribution is so integral to humanity, and also tied to containers, it logically follows that food containers are another system that is shared by all people. What happens to those containers can be one of three things: they become trash, they are re-used, or they are recycled. The first step in the system of recycling is for the person who has recyclables to sort them properly with other recyclables. This sorting is a physical interconnection between the person and the recycling facility.

A system created by people works because of the information that people pass to each other. For the physical interconnection of recycling to happen between a person and a recycling facility, the information has to travel from the facility to the people.

Donella writes that "An important function of almost every system is to ensure its own perpetuation." This is true of why systems of sustainability and resource conservation are present in the human system. At the most basic level, every human is born with the ability to reproduce more humans. But to make that happen, there are a lot of resources a human needs along the way; food is one - and so, containers for food are another. Recycling is a system that has the purpose of perpetuating our continued existence.

Chapter Two: A Brief Visit to the Systems Zoo

This chapter explains how several kinds of one-stock systems work. In one-stock systems, there are always two forces acting on the stock. The one stock system of the temperature in a house is a system governed by two equalizing forces: the temperature of the thermostat and the outside temperature. This leads into the important role of feedback delays in a system like this that cause oscillations. In the house analogy, the temperature in the house over time would oscillate up and down around the thermostat's setting because the thermostat can't tell what the temperature is in the whole house. In any system of two equalizing forces, oscillations will be present because of the feedback delay. I saw this feedback delay at the liquor store all the time; an obscure drink becomes popular seemingly overnight, and the orders for new product can't catch up to demand fast enough. Then when the order for the liquor has come, the fad has faded and the store is left with extra cases of a product.

A human population system in an industrialized economy is another one-stock system with one equalizing loop, but the other loop is reinforcing. The equalizing force is the death rate - it always pulls toward zero. The reinforcing loop is fertility - the growth of the population takes on an exponential curve as it increases in an environment of abundant resources. It would logically follow that resource consumption would also take an exponential curve upwards as well. In our society, the reinforcing loop of wealth accumulation leading to resource depletion has been stronger than the equalizing force of the limited amount of resources available. The world has a limited amount of oil and ore to support the reinforcing loop of gas-powered automobiles, and yet thousands of such vehicles are sold every year. The oil extraction industry (part of the reinforcing loop) seems to have more power to find new places to drill, such as in the newly melted arctic ocean, than environmental activists, who see the looming power of the equalization loop that will take effect when the oil is all gone, have to stop it. The oscillations that come with a system of two equalizing forces can be drastic in a system with an equalizing loop and reinforcing loop. In the book, the shift in balance between two forces system dominance. Oscillations in the system with two equalizing forces are smaller and more frequent than in the system with a reinforcing loop. For me, the whole point of pursuing sustainability is to avoid the violent transition from growth to decline of the human race if we deplete any resource too fast.

The important concept of flow is revisited later in the chapter when the system of a fishing economy is described. The use of a renewable resource like fish can go on indefinitely as long as the flow of fish from their habitat to human use is kept at the same level as the reproduction of the fish. Fishing can actually increase the reproduction rate of fish if the fish are at such a high population that there is not quite enough food for all of them. Flow seems to be important for the use of all resources. Take electricity. The amount of electricity we can harvest sustainably is only limited to how many solar panels and wind turbines we can build. While sustainable electricity generation can be produced in great quantity, there is a limit to how quickly it is generated, or how fast its flow is. However, the amount of electricity we use can be unleashed faster and faster. It is hard to tell if a fully electric vehicle fleet in America could be supplied by only renewable energy, but it seems unlikely to me. In the terms of systems thinking, what I am saying is that the flow out of the stock of electricity is always going to be faster than the flow into the stock.

SRO Adventures

          This past week working for SRO has been a busy one. I had the privilege of helping out with a joint experiment that was being held at the Colorado State University ARDEC farms. These are the agricultural fields where much of the USDA experiments are done in conjunction with the CSU campus. This specific study was used in order to determine if the electrobiocide would be a suitable candidate for the field decon of agricultural equipment. Dr. Craig Ramsey was the head of the study who is the direct link between the university and the USDA. Myself along with John mixed different concentrations of the biocide to be used for the study. These concentrations were then sprayed onto different farming equipment that was infected with Bacillus subtilis, a very hardy bacteria closely related to Bacillus anthracis or anthrax. The biocide was sprayed in different concentrations from different distances onto surfaces containing the bacteria. This test was then done with other anti-bacterial products in order to determine the effectiveness of each. 

           These three days were interesting and eye opening to how USDA experimentation is conducted and to be honest I was a little disappointed. I guess I expected that experiments such as this would be performed by top notch scientists all wearing specialized white suits like the ones used to take ET in the movie. Instead I was confronted with seemingly normal guys in a cornfield pressure washing tractors. Besides how the experiment appeared that data collected will be able to be sent to lab and the effectiveness of the biocide in this type of application will be determined. This was a very interesting experience and I am looking forward to many more.  

Strategic Resource Optimization

           I am now two weeks into my internship with the SRO Inc. For this post I will be giving a company overview and what exactly I will be working on throughout the summer. SRO Inc is run by a couple of individuals but John Breedlove, who is in charge of the agricultural aspect of SRO, will be my boss throughout the summer. To begin SRO stands for strategic resource optimization and is the company who invented a product known as elctrobiocide. This electrobiocide is a very potent environmentaly friendly chlorine dioxide solution that has numerous applications in both agriculture as well as health care. The unique elctrochemical processes used to create the solution is what makes electrobiocide so special. This "sauce" has been tested and proved to eradicate bacteria and viruses as well as all commonly used household cleaners and, as I stated before, is completely environmentally friendly as well as EPA registered. The solution is so non toxic that it can literally be drank with no adverse side effects.
          Now how does a solution that disinfects play any kind of role in the agricultural world. Well in many commercial greenhouses across the U.S. as well as in outdoor farms, it is a constant struggle to keep molds and other microbial plant parasites from spreading and destroying entire crops. When the elctrobiocide is sprayed onto the crops any form of malicious microbe will be destroyed, thus saving the destruction of the crops. The interesting part is that the solution has no harmful side effects on the plant itself or on anyone who consumes the plants. This is what I will be working on and learning more about over the course of the next few months. The biocide seems to have a positive interaction with plants that causes them to grow up to 30% larger than without the biocide, yet this has not been officially proven. I will be working on an experiment that will test this fact and will be looking into why this increased productivity occurs, as well as seeing if the non-toxic biocide has any alteration on the taste of non-legume type crops such as lettuce. Besides working on this experiment I will be shown around by John who will teach me how the biocide is created and processes involved as well as meeting some of his work associates who are conducting their own experiments at the CSU farm. I am extremely excited about this opportunity to help out with and be a part of such a cutting edge product and will be writing about my adventure as it unfolds.

I'll Take A Whiskey Ginger...Hold The Straw

     This weekend was the ultimate test to see if waste-free was sustainable for all different walks and ways of life. Is waste free living for the stay-at-home wife and mother who pinterests all day and has time to make her own mascara? or can young, mobile, and let's not forget poor, individuals do it too without wallowing in misery and self defeat? my answer is.....YES! but you must plan ahead. However, planning can be fun and it doesn't have to take long either.
     This weekend, my best friend, Brooke, and I attended Winter Wondergrass Festival in Avon, Colorado. It is a three day outdoor festival which we decided to car camp for...in February. The weather has been unusually warm, but of course it decided to finally snow the one weekend I didn't want it to. Bringing my waste free lifestyle on the road didn't prove as hard as I thought, but it did add to my waste jar at a faster rate than previous. I began preparing for my trip the day before. As my beans were soaking, I roasted up some sweet potato to take with me. The next morning I got up extra early, cooked beans, quinoa, and tons of vegetables to last the entire weekend. The one thing I forgot was a kitchen towel or cloth napkin because I ended up just wiping my hands on my clothes. we car camped in style and enjoyed many meals in the back of Brooke's subaru.

                                        (Car Eatin'! The bag of chips are Brooke's, I swear!)


        I invested in an awesome set of bamboo utensils that come in a heavy duty cloth container with a carabiner so I can attach it to my backpack and never lose it. The thing i struggled with the most was to resist the temptation of the the little things. I'm a sucker for sweets and Brooke brought along a bag of ginger chews. It's easy at home to not give in because I just don't buy them, but there there were just taunting me. I ended up having one and keeping the wrapper in my pocket to put in my jar for later. I figured it was a little gift I could accept from a friend and accept the small consequence.
      The festival itself did a really good job of trying to make less waste. Every ticket holder got an awesome stainless steel mug and discounted drinks when used all weekend. It was at the late night shows that I had to remember to say "No Straw!" or "No Lime!" I received some pretty weird looks, but they obliged. I did have to put my wristbands from the festival and the late night shows into my jar, but there was no way i could have avoided it if I wanted to attend.
       The weekend was amazing and fast-paced and because I planned one day ahead, being waste-free flowed right in where I rarely had to think about it. It was an awesome test to see if waste-free can be mobile.