Diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, computer science professor Randy Pausch, decided to give his last lecture in front of a full auditorium in September 2007. The lecture is about achieving your childhood dreams and inspiring others. I am not going to write so much more about it, but just recommend that our readers watch this video, as almost 12 million people have done already on You Tube.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

In the “Must see” category we pick interesting and inspiring videos that we find on the video sharing sites, mainly YouTube, showing people who are in general not associated with GLI, but say or do things that we believe our readers will find interesting.

Further reading:

• Understanding peak oil
• Must see: A farm for the future
• Must see: Transition movement’s Rob Hopkins on TED-talks
• Must see: Tropical permaculture strategies
• Must see: The transition movement movie

What if you started a colony of bacteria inside a bottle at 11 o’ clock and it doubled every minute? Assume that at 12 o’ clock the bottle was full, meaning that the bacteria population has reached the point where the environment inside the bottle can sustain no more of them. Now, at what time before that happened was the bottle half full?

The answer to this question is that it was half full one minute to twelve. That is what doubling every minute means. If the bacteria could think, when do you think they would start to realize that something was wrong, that they were running out of space, and rapidly so?

These and many other very disturbing questions are asked by Dr. Albert Bartlett, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Physics, University of Boulder Colorado in this lecture named “Arithmetic, Population, and Energy” that you can find in these 8 video clips.

Because bacteria are not the only organisms that have to deal with the effects of exponential growth. Many human phenomena also follow this growth pattern, like population growth, migration, economic growth, consumption of  consumer goods and energy etc. etc.

Might it also be so, that we find ourselves at the time “a couple of minutes to twelve?” Now, a lecture with an old professor in front of a group of students is usually not something you would think about as terrifying. And sure it lacks the extremely graphic images of a war or a terrorist attack, but if you listen carefully and understand what he is saying, you will probably find this video more terrifying than just about anything.

The video does not only show that the human race is in bigger trouble than most people think. It also shows the mathematical fundamentals behind why we will not discover the problems until very shortly before we run into them.

By the way, you don’t need to possess university level skills in mathematics to follow this lecture.

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”

Dr. Albert Bartlett

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In the “Must see” category we pick interesting and inspiring videos that we find on the video sharing sites, mainly YouTube, showing people who are in general not associated with GLI, but say or do things that we believe our readers will find interesting.

Further reading:

• Must see: Randy Pausch Last Lecture
• Must see: Richard Heinberg on our post carbon future
• Website review : TED Ideas worth spreading
• My aliens told me that your aliens are wrong
• Welcome

If I should name the one person that has influenced me the most in my life among those I have actually never met, then probably it would be the late Dr. Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996). Carl Sagan was an astronomer, author and educator, especially famous for the television series Cosmos. And Cosmos was indeed where I first came across his work.

I think it is safe to say that whoever was born before 1980 and never heard about the Cosmos series, has probably missed out on the most important educational tv-show of all times. Cosmos was made when the cold war was still very much a hard reality. And I especially remember Carl Sagan talking about the importance of a civilization surviving its own technological puberty. I believe that is a very good way of putting it. Maybe civilizations are like teenagers, some don’t get past puberty, because they risk too much and get themselves killed in a “traffic accident.” What will be the faith of the human civilization? Today, facing the end of cheap fossil fuel, with a population way too large to sustain without some major achievements, we are once again reminded of Carl Sagan’s words, that we as a species owe our survival not only to ourselves, but to the Cosmos vast and ancient, from which we stem.

In the following video Carl Sagan shares some reflections he made 10 years after the making of Cosmos

Links

Wikipedia on Carl Sagan
The Carl Sagan Portal
Cosmos
The science network, “Sharing Carl Sagan’s vision of science as a candle in the dark”
More Carl Sagan videos

In the “Must see” category we pick interesting and inspiring videos that we find on the video sharing sites, mainly YouTube, showing people who are in general not associated with GLI, but do things that we believe our readers will find interesting.

Further reading:

• Must see: Richard Heinberg on our post carbon future
• Understanding peak oil
• Must see: Randy Pausch Last Lecture
• Must see: Transition movement’s Rob Hopkins on TED-talks
• Must see: A farm for the future

Ecologist Richard Heinberg is the head of the Post Carbon Institute and the author of he Party’s Over, Power Down, The Oil Depletion Protocol, and Peak Everything. In this interview he talks about the future of the human species with a lesser and lesser supply of fossil fuels. He also points out that the human species is no different from other species when it comes to what happens if the resources needed to support the current number of human organisms on this planet become inadequate. He even dares say that population growth constitutes a problem. In other words, he dares to say what in the eyes of many people is a taboo even to think.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the “Must see” category we pick interesting and inspiring videos that we find on the video sharing sites, mainly YouTube, showing people who are in general not associated with GLI, but do things that we believe our readers will enjoy watching.

Links

http://www.richardheinberg.com/

Post carbon instituteFurther reading:

• Must see: Randy Pausch Last Lecture
• Must see: Carl Sagan 10 years after the making of Cosmos
• Understanding peak oil
• Must see: A farm for the future
• Must see: Transition movement’s Rob Hopkins on TED-talks

In their famous 1984 song “Do they know it’s Christimas” the artists united in Band Aid to raise money for Africa, described the continent as a place “where nothing ever grows.” Have you ever watched a film from a very warm place, like in Africa or India, and though to yourself that nothing can ever grow there? Think again. In this amazing video with permaculture founder Bill Mollison you will see that things can, and indeed do, grow in such places.

In the “Must see” category we pick out interesting and inspiring videos that we find on the video sharing sites, mainly YouTube, showing people who are in general not associated with GLI, but do things that we believe our readers will enjoy watching.

Links

Wikipedia on Bill Mollison
Tagari blog archiveFurther reading:

• Must see: Randy Pausch Last Lecture
• Must see: Transition movement’s Rob Hopkins on TED-talks
• Must see: A farm for the future
• Understanding peak oil
• Must see: Carl Sagan 10 years after the making of Cosmos

The transition movement, which has been mentioned in a book review earlier on this blog, announce on their blog that they will be showing a preview of their movie “In transition” online later this week. It will be available from New Zealand’s midnight Thursday June 11th 2009 to Alaska’s midnight Sat June 13th . The exact URL will be posted on their blog.

Latest update December 2009. The movie is now available on YouTube:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu_MvGdMzo8

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr58Tsbcsq4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQvAKcO0Xn0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SstCl5ZT2CY

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMqNofCZqSo

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PMEhf8NQow

Further reading:

• Book review : The Transition Handbook
• Must see: Transition movement’s Rob Hopkins on TED-talks
• The world’s first osmotic power plant prototype opened in Norway
• Book review : Here comes everybody
• Must see: Randy Pausch Last Lecture

Today we have embedded a series of 8 videos from YouTube showing a documentary named “Understanding peak oil”, that we strongly recommend everyone to watch. You will have to set aside approximately one and a half hour to watch the entire documentary. How many hours you will spend thinking about it afterwards is hard to tell. If you have never heard about “peak oil” or are unfamiliar with what it means, watching this documentary might be one of the biggest wake up calls you’ve had, ever. You will probably never get what you are about to see off your mind again.

In the “Must see” category we pick out interesting and inspiring videos that we find on the video sharing sites, mainly YouTube, showing people who are in general not associated with GLI, but do things that we believe our readers will enjoy watching.

Further reading:

• Must see: A farm for the future
• Must see: Randy Pausch Last Lecture
• Must see: Richard Heinberg on our post carbon future
• Must see: Tropical permaculture strategies
• Must see: Transition movement’s Rob Hopkins on TED-talks