Positive feedback loops: Controlling global climate

(This is the fifth post in the “feedback loops” series.) Climate is weather, over a long period of time. Unlike weather, climate is predictable. It has a number of factors like solar insolation, rainfall, temperature and latitude/altitude that controls it in a particular place. Also, climate encompasses a large area. Because of the spatial and […]

Disturbance: Driving changes in the universe

(This is the fourth post in the “feedback loops” series) Imagine a world where nothing interacted with anything. Each entity, molecule and atom remained in isolation. They could not feel or touch each other, directly or indirectly……. That would be a dead world.

Positive feedback loops: Creating more of what’s already there!

(This is the third post in the “feedback loops” series) Ever used a bad eraser in your life? One that has been used so much that it’s become completely black? What happens when you erase something with that eraser? Instead of cleanly removing everything you have written on the page, it just makes your page […]

Monitoring in EIA

Is it enough to suggest mitigation measures and let things be? Of course not! That will be like asking a kid not to touch the remote and then leaving the kid in the house to go shopping! The final step of the Environmental Impact Assessment is the longest one, and continues during (constructional phase) and […]

Homeostasis: It’s why you tilt bikes, it’s why populations never grow forever

This is the second post in the “feedback loops” series. In the first blog of this series, I started the post by talking about how our body responds to cold and hot conditions. When it gets too cold, we shiver to increase the body temperature. When it gets too hot, we sweat. The sweat evaporates […]

Feedback loops: Regulating natural processes

When it gets really cold, what happens to your body? First you start shivering. Then, if you don’t take the hint and get warm, some of your body parts become numb. Keep this up, and soon, it’ll become blue. So will your mood. Similarly, what happens when it gets really hot? You sweat. You sweat […]