Three phrases to contemplate

Here are three essential phrases to contemplate (and hopefully come to accept):

1. "Food. Shelter. Transportation. Security." [Dmitry Orlov, when summarizing essential needs, in his blog post, "Social Collapse, Best Practices," February 19, 2009, http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html.]

2. "There is no brighter future ahead." [John Michael Greer, in offering a counterspell against incantatory thinking that prevents people from seeing the future; postulated at the end of his blog post, "Waiting for the Millennium; Part One: Peak Oil Goes Mainstream," June 9, 2010, http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2010/06/waiting-for-millennium.html]

3. "No technology or product, regardless of how "good" or desirable it may seem, can be guaranteed to be there tomorrow." [Me, summarizing John Michael Greer and his views in response to blog commentors who insist that "good" things, such as the internet or medicine, will be preserved or still there after oil.]

A second online Physical Geography textbook by Pidwirny

Four years ago, back in 2006, I wrote a brief post pointing readers to an online physical geography textbook authored by Prof. Michael Pidwirny of the University of British Columbia. This textbook, titled "Fundamentals of Physical Geography," is now in its second edition at this website, http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/contents.html.

Checking back through some of my earlier posts, I revisited Pidwirny's website to make sure his textbook was still available, and discovered that he is working on a second physical geography text. This is a much more substantial text, written in the pattern of most traditional textbooks that college professors use. So far he is still in the sections on the atmosphere, weather, and climate, which means much of the book has yet to be written. But with what he has written, he covers solar dynamics, including the solar radiation budget, the atmosphere, and the resulting air masses. He has still to write about actual weather patters, such as mid-latitude cyclones and longer-term climate. This new book, titled "Understanding Physical Geography (1st Edition), can be found here: http://www.physicalgeography.net/understanding/contents.html. Be sure to monitor this work in progress, and then download a copy when it is done. I will try to do the same to keep you in formed of its publication status. The author does suggest he will have this second ebook done in 2012.

I congratulate Prof. Pidwirny on his efforts!

Cheers from Dubuque,
Kevin Anderson

See "Green Wizardry" series over on TheArchdruidReport

John Michael Greer, over on his outstanding blog, The Archdruid Report (http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/), has recently started a series of posts and educational lessons on what he is calling "green wizardry." His goal is to teach all of us (okay, those who will listen and learn), and have each of us self-teach, about the skills and lessons needed about living in a less energy-intensive way. He is using, in part, as his starting point what was already known and written about in the 70s and 80s, plus previously taught in ecology before it got "modernized."

Remember all those DIY books on insulating your home, building solar dehydrators, solar water heaters, and so on? Remember all those pamphlets published by your university extension agent? They are back (or should be back) as part of our resource to preserve and learn from. Here is one rather comprehensive set of those pamphlets, all 190 pages worth as a PDF document, that I commend all of you to print and save: http://www.culturalconservers.org/library/masterconserver.pdf

I commend anyone reading my blog who isn't already reading JMGs materials to go on over there. Read. Learn. Participate. He will succeed in what honestly was the starting point for this personal blog several years ago. While I didn't (and would not have thought to call it) "green wizardry," if you search the earliest posts on this blog on what my goal was (e.g., the first and last posts in my August 2005 archive), it is actually the same as what JMG will accomplish.

Humbled in Dubuque,
Kevin Anderson