Here Comes the Sun

To begin studies for tomorrow's oil-less days, one needs to focus on learning about our Sun and about climate.

Without oil, we are basically forced to work within renewable energy sources. (For that matter, coal and oil are actually "ancient sunlight," but that is not what I consider a renewable resource given the timeframe needed to create coal and oil.) THE major, daily, dependable energy source is the Sun. Everyday, for all places on the Earth for half or more of the year, the Sun shines for at least part of the day, becoming an energy source we need to work with and work within its limits.

Almost every physical geography textbook starts with teaching about the Sun, the Earth's orbit about the Sun, and in turn the diurnal (daily) and seasonal rhythms of sunlight and the climate it produces. If you can master those first sections of the book, you can learn to live within this renewable energy source.

We interact with the energy the Sun produces in several important ways:

First, most directly, the Sun provides light to see by. We need light to see. Plants need light to grow. Daylight hours are when we need to be doing chores, outside or inside, while we have the light to see by. Night is when we should be sleeping. More work will be done naturally during the summer, with its longer days, and less work done in the winter, with its shorter days. Working within this rhythm of sunlight means that one's working day can't necessarily be the artificial 9 to 5 that most people live.

Second, the sun provides warmth - warmth to heat the ground for plants to grow, and to heat structures to keep us warm. We need to build (or more likely retrofit) our structures to capture this heat when we need it, and shed the excess heat when we need to be cooler. Key will be the latitude you live at - both for light and warmth - as this affect the design requirements of buildings for heating and cooling more than anything. One design does not fit all, as every place is different globally due to latitude.

Third, the sun, through its warming of the air and ground, and therefore relative temperature changes and air pressure changes, causes the wind. Wind can be used to heating, cooling, and to do work, such as energy production through wind mills. Understanding your locale's wind patterns in turn means understanding your location relative to the oceans, the interior of a continent, and physical features such as mountains, valleys, and plains.

Fourth, the sun brings us rain on those currents of wind, driven by the warmth of the sun. Understanding the sun leads one to want to understand their patterns of rainfall, how much to expect and when. Rain in turn provides us with water to drink, bathe with, cook with, water plants with, and use as a means of storing the Sun's energy for longer periods of time.

Fifth, the sun drives our climate. Put all of the above together, and you have the pieces that define what you can grow (affected by your soil, of course). Terms like heating degree days, cooling degree days, and growing degree days are all measure of one's climate, along with the basics of temperature and rainfall.

In other words, living in tomorrow's world, without fossil fuels in abundance to burn, means learning once again to live within the means and limits of the Sun. The past one hundred and fifty years has been basically an attempt, using oil and other "ancient" fuels, to live beyond the limits of the sun. We won't be able to do that in the future. We must once again learn about the Sun. Everything starts again there.

So start your post-oil studies by studying the Sun.

The slogan for tomorrow's world should be "Here Comes the Sun."

Kevin Anderson
Dubuque, Iowa