Merry Christmas!

 

Come see...

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Just to close out a theme

 

"We are a society of altruists governed by psychopaths" that's our fundamental problem...

I couldn't agree more!  As we look at the pain and suffering manufactured upon the world this Christmas and if you've done any homework on energy - you already know the grab for natural resources in a vain attempt to sustain growth is the motive force behind the mayhem.  Those among us who do not have compassion, empathy or love as exhibited by the human heart have always been a source of great sadness, fear and suffering.  

Soon the West will celebrate Christ's birth in a tour de force of decadent spending, twinkle lights and blow up Santa Clause effigies.  A poor commentary on Christ's birthday and what this means. As the meaning is carefully buried in commercial largess. 

My best wishes for all of my blog visitors, the 7th of January will be here soon (for my friends in the East) 

AML NLO,JRO and SEO AML - Merry Christmas you are loved dearly

Interesting points of view for our times

 Lots of folks are attempting to read the crazy tea leaves of today's nutty world.  Many have good ideas, some  thought provoking concepts are mentioned here.

I don't agree with everything Rees proposes, but he does have many very good points.  I like his construct of ideas and our minds conversion of those created stories to our own internalized facts - which often end up becoming a person's firm conviction even if it is framed by a narrative of edited information of false ideas.  I have observed this first hand.  If an entity can dominate the total control of a narrative, that entity controls what a person ends up believing - even if it's completely wrong and even if observable contrary facts  are in sight.  People are funny that way. It's the rare independent thinker that sees past the controlling agent and has the hardware to question the narrative and to then expend the  energy to ferret out reality based on demonstrated truth not conjecture, the control agent  or extended filtered innuendo.  Rees is a strong systems ideologue.  I agree systems modeling can tell us a lot, but so many modelers suspend the fact that most of these inputs are nonlinear, which makes a real world system far more complicated than a modeler could ever construct.  Rees, swerves into some really interesting concepts by looking at our human predispositions as a key factor as to why we can't seem to figure this stuff out and why we are predisposed to hit the intellectual "easy button."  With help of course from narrative framers who really don't want you to figure out the root cause to our dilemma nor want your solutions. After all ideas like decentralization and independent, regional or localized solutions don't make stocks jump in value or help build mansions on private golf courses. To this regard I find it fascinating and ironic that Y-tube labels a lot of this content as "Climate Change." But I digress. I am however watching the "climate change hatched a virus" story for obvious reasons.

The spinning never stops in today's social media cesspool.  Loss of fisheries, eco-toxicity, and a ton of our societies problems are never ascribed to economic greed, sociopathic actors and monetary inertia. These threats seem to be immune from public debate or legislated laws. These things are never allowed to be trotted out into the public domain for scrutiny - nope - it's "climate change" and you and your lawn mower are the culprit! Bad you! So get ready to pay for the problems YOU created as a plethora of non-solutions that generate lots of cash for a few get put into play without your meaningful input...  sure you can vent on a call in radio station.... sure the host can blather on about how crazy it all is... but in the end that is simply a dead end. Ahh the artful slight of hand is ever present.  Red, Blue, Left, Right, Liberal, Conservative whatever the injected divisor, and there are many.... LOL those tropes don't matter as this stuff isn't up for a debate or a vote anywhere.  I wish I had sage advice, all I can offer is try to be out of debt, own a little land or become a member of a farm co-op, drive towards your own small footprint of energy use.  There is plenty of time to move in this direction. You can design a robust environment that is regional, community based and maybe even energy independent on an individual scale.  That would be a great start.  Whatever you do, don't look here...   

LOL, lawnmowers vs power plants.  Brilliant.  

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Lets do some energy math

 Every now and then I take the time to put pen to paper and calculate for myself what problems look like. Today lets take a look at what it would take to replace a coal fired power plant.  China has been putting new coal fired plants on line like crazy, and in the US talking heads like to promote a green solution... whatever that is.  Going "green" has a lot of knock on effects.

So let's just take this example.  Brandon Shores is a coal fired power plant in Maryland.  It will be decommissioned in a couple of years leaving a 1370 mW deficit in power supplied to the grid.  If we went green on the replacement and used let us say an average 200W solar panel... it would take 1370000000 / 200 or  6,850,000 of these panels to replace it - during a sunny day. Oopsie.

A footnote on the energy sink called PV.  Read carefully and consider the end to end creation to disposal analysis.  LOL, real world data suggests a useful life far shorter than OEMs suggest.  If you give a weasel room to twist and bend, the weasel will wiggle out every time.  IE partial truths and outright lies in the absence of real data can tell you a very different story from reality.  Meh, what else is new? Use your big brain and you can figure it out. Just stay focused on real data not slick pitches. PV can, if thoughtfully applied, extend the decline.  It cannot replace oil, gas or coal.  

After the sun sets, well you'd have to go to the very resource dense finite life battery bank - which would be the size of a small farm.  If we used wind turbines  we would need 456 3mW turbines to do the job and hope the wind blows. Or just like night time on the solar array, not much happening.  

So just one, plant - and not a large plant - is really hard to replace with the technologies we know and understand.

My point is, the green transition as envisioned and promoted today is not possible.  Sorry, I hope something else comes along but there really is no substitution.  Green is kind of baloney.  So is counting CO2 - a second order problem.  Unless of course CO2 is a euphemism for fossil fuel conservation.  In which case it appears that several geopolitical boundaries have decided to play this game in very different ways. We have global energy depletion, a first order problem,  in our future and we have no realistic plan or solution and a lot of ideologies marching on as business as usual. That will eventually bring us headlong into conflict for what's left. Not tomorrow, but this current graduating cohort will hit this like a buzz saw.  In 20 years - just one generation - the world will be a very different place.

But moving to micro grids could create jobs, drive economic stability and morph us away from utility companies into local decentralized solutions.  A modern day REA.  But sadly, that is not what politicians or bankers seem to be fascinated with at the moment.

Art Berman has a great explanation...

The other side of the coin on energy alternatives are facts like it takes 500,000 lbs of ore to make a single 1000 lb lithium ion battery pack for one car that has maybe a 15% utilization of it's energy application.  A much more rational use of this limited strategy is to put batteries at sub stations along with connected wind and maybe cheap solar farms and evolve regional micro grids. Way better utilization of finite resources and although replacing residential demand with alternatives isn't a long term solution it's a great fossil fuel life extender. Might even be energy neutral.  Mining for example, creates a total value of the mineral matter in the world that has increased from 465 billion USD in 2008 to 845 billion USD in 2011 (i.e. grown by 45.55%). The minerals extracted from mines take an important part in the growth of GDP and hence the economy of different countries.  This ain't free. Over 471.48 GJ are consumed to transport the minerals. excluding lithium the new kid on the block. Why rip up the planet to make millions of batteries to make EV's?  Could you even do it?  NO, even copper supplies are not scalable for any of this at this point. Not to mention the electrical phase loads effects on the shortened fatigue life of current transformers and sub station designs.  Knock on stuff that is huge. Yes, the exact numbers of any resource can and usually are obfuscated.  Yes people  and countries lie about this stuff, investors and fund managers make claims that there are limitless resources (recycle) but nobody shows an energy balance that supports the business case. If it takes more energy to recycle than you recover you only slow the downward spiral - or ironically accelerate the depletion depending on the energy overhead. Nobody wants to discuss the fact that the Earth's known reserves of copper (for example) are now less than 1% pure. Have you noticed the price of copper wire these days? It takes more and more energy to crush, refine and smelt that ore to keep up with the voracious consumption of 8 billion people.  (to be honest the top 5% of the economically wealthy countries consume a disproportionate amount) As any ore quality gets poorer in grade the energy required to do something with it rises in an asymptotic way.  Eventually the growth game will end - this is a certainty. Physics doesn't care about hopes, ROIC, money in vs energy out or slick sales pitches and it will see to that. The core problem is that 8 billion people consume everything at an astounding rate that is simply not sustainable without a logical roadmap that strives to be energy neutral.  Micro level solutions similar to a plant organism make a lot of sense.  That might mean it's not going to be possible to support 20 million people in a giant city but rather a dispersal of population into a sustainable distribution like we had in the 1800's might be an outcome.  Ooooh, boy what about all that real estate value?  The dream of the corporate farm and the genetic modified patented seed? That's the stuff that keeps us from solving this epic problem in a timely manner.  Not how much CO2 is in the atmosphere (second order stuff my friends).  Arguments around that topic are a waste of precious time and take us to profitable for very few dead ends with dire consequences for all. 

All of these problems get easier to solve with less people to worry about (read: consume), but solutions are doable even today with ethical, moral and unfettered logic and planning.  IF we can get the politicians, lobbyists, and oligarchs out of the promoted solutions debate (some of which are not so ethical or moral), we can get on with testing and developing solutions that are demonstrated to work.  To this regard I suggest patent law should be suspended for all factors and technologies involved in the multitude of solutions that work.  That ownership of energy resources be community co-ops, and that solutions that work be openly shared and published.  Our first steps should be extension, then independence from the depleting fossil fuel feedstocks. Let alone halting eco-toxicity aka "climate change" which in my mind is not only industrial process waste, it is also for example, genetic seed manipulation and the plethora of pharmaceuticals and their waste stream as imparted on humans and the environment. Somehow the effects of reckless exploitation are now being connected to climate change.  Go figure...

My 2 cents, tik, tik, tik

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End of summer trip to Hunting Island

One of our favorite places to be is Hunting Island.  We've been going there for years and it always sets our senses back to a simpler time.  

Hazel loves to chase the Sand Pipers

Oops, this was supposed to in the Estivant Pines post. It's amazing to see how old some of these pine trees are.

In the ready position!

Shrimp boat following the coast

Sunny, warm, lots of birds... The perfect afternoon

Can you tell which is the before and which is the after?

Here's a hint: if you were putting on the brakes and about to rotate down for a plunge into the ocean and a tasty fish snack, how would you place your wings?

This years bird came from the Carolina's

Another wonderful T-Day!

The USCG making the coastal patrol. I still remember the day these were awarded by the USCG over the BHTI ship. Looks like they made the right choice.

 

 

 Leyla - you guys are the best!  Please do publish that cookbook!

 

I've been working some numbers, it may take me a while to post but these are interesting times. 

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I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving

 ..."Setting aside time to give thanks for one's blessings, along with holding feasts to celebrate a harvest, are both practices that long predate the European settlement of North America. The Puritans observed days of fasting to pray for God's favor, as well as days of thanksgiving to thank God for a bountiful harvest, victory and other joyous occasions..."

So says Wiki.  A source of dubious edits and murky ownership.  The origin no matter how you look at it is about being thankful for what you have.  Please take a moment to reflect on your good fortune and maybe a moment of prayer for those innocent people entangled in man made or natural adventures that look a lot like war or punitive forces like poverty and tyranny that exist in so many places these days.  Please pray for the innocent and the helpless that they too may find peace and safety soon.

New post coming, I've been busy!

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First snow right on schedule!

 A wintry landscape and what a change of view.

Just a few hours makes a big difference this time  of year

See you next year!

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First snow of the season just might be around the corner

 This is just about the time of year when the temps drop just enough to give us that first inch or two of snow.  It amazes me that when this happens, just like a well choreographed play - hundreds of drivers will slide through stop signs, collide with each other and generally make the repair shops very busy.  So today I'll post the "before" pic.  In a couple of days I'll post the "after" pic.  New to this years back yard are the his and hers Adirondak chairs cut into the shape of Wisconsin!  

So here we are, enjoying another beautiful fall and very soon the trees and ground will get that first dash of white!

My regards to all those visitors from Singapore! 

A bit off topic from today's post but none the less an excellent paper.  Education, awareness and an understanding of our world has never been more important.   

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The viola is a beautiful instrument

 My daughter used to play the viola and I fell in love with the sound...

Might I suggest this site for your audible enjoyment.

https://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html

The Queen's Jig is my favorite!

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Five X August

aint no rock and roll

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A tri-fecta of recent common sense from three energy experts... and a humorous bonus video.

Take a good look at the mineral requirements needed to meet the green being legislated... money does not equal success.  Quiz question 1: How many tons of ore need to be processed per 1000lb battery pack?  Quiz question 2: If we never put a battery in a car, but rather put an appropriate sized battery in a house, how many tons of carbon could be saved?  (Trick question: 4 tons per house, 4 houses per EV car.  If you left the battery in the car, about 1 ton/yr/car.  ) Cars after all are responsible for 8% of the worlds carbon emissions.  That's right EIGHT percent.  If you really care about the theory of climate change (sketchy as to if humans could ever control it) you should be putting your efforts into off-gridding as many households as possible.  OOPS, what about all those meters on the side of all those houses?  Hmmmm, stupid is as stupid does - I'm afraid.  8X the reduction in carbon emissions if you off grid homes and NEVER build EV's. So why aren't we doing that?  Where's the energy policy that truly looks out for this reality?  

More common sense, important to grasp that green = profits for your solution which may not be anywhere near correct.  Monetized, tidy spreadsheets that make you feel good.  But don't work and will leave billions in search of a real solution in just one generation.

So in my little corner of the net,  here are some (in my opinion) clear doses of reality that hopefully will help all understand what changes are coming.  Why they are impacting us, and what reality is which is VERY different than the mass media narrative.  

Humor, with facts delivered with some rough language.  

Physics will win regardless of what the politicians and bankers decide to legislate and the talking heads blather on about.  Physics, much like a honey badger, doesn't care about profits.  

A footnote to consider...

None of this technology seems to pass an elementary feasibility test (if you are honest about it) however, as a scheme to shuffle investments about it has merit.  If you do manage to see that big battery factory on the hill, the dangerous nature of the run away thermal characteristics don't just make spectacular fires. Indeed, the off gasses contain enough poison to wipe out a major city.  That with declining ore quality makes energy in / energy out approach infinity - lol.  If you are here to enjoy my pics, maybe read my wandering prose on energy or torsional vibes or whatever... have a look at the footnote too.  

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Saudi Arabian proverb: “My grandfather rode a camel, my father drove a car, I fly a jet plane, my son will ride a camel.”

 A bit dated, but still a wonderful set of writings on THE subject of our times...

Human Future

Mineral Depletion

Roper, and so many others have looked at the obvious and tried to awaken the casual observer and the able influencer.  The problem in my opinion is more political abetted by faulty economic theory.  If you consider the non-linearities of discovery, use and depletion, economic growth is absolutely incompatible with how the world works.  

Zero growth and sustainable processes are the only natural schemas in nature that provide anything that looks like stasis.  Making money out of managing money, underwriting development with the promise to provide interest payments to investors are examples of how economics is incompatible with the world.

I've said "physics always wins" and it will.  If you model the system equations by various modifications used in the "Limits to Growth" you can observe for yourself how non-linear results are achieved by business as usual thinking.  

Roper brings an interesting treatment of re-cycling.  The notion that minerals and metals with poorer and poorer concentrations can be refined and used or can never be exhausted because of recycling is obviously incorrect although one can acquire and extend resources that you don't have by adopting re-cycling.  For example if you import a lot of Lithium Ion batteries ostensibly to use and then capture the materials in your own re-cycling effort you can achieve aggregation of those materials.  But an energy analysis of all of the system inputs is not very encouraging.  That is if you also contain pollution.  If you don't consider that in your calculation things look more profitable. But that's based on our flawed economic growth based theories.  

A locally produced and consumed hydrogen energy based economy seems much closer to a stasis maintaining approach, but there are few opportunities to monetize this energy strategy.  IE if you want a real re-set, hydrogen is the obvious way to go in my humble opinion.  Economists and bankers wouldn'i warm up to this - at least until it got cold and dark...  LOL, but I digress.  

There are more important things than making money when it comes to heading off a crises.  Perhaps economic evolution in thought can be merged with sustainable regional models to create a better way.  We need thought leaders to show up pretty soon on this matter!

Anyhow, please treat yourself to a perusal through Dr Roper's work.  He has some wisdom to share even if it's a bit dated.  His view on depletion extends to minerals and metals and his recycling models are fascinating learnings.  These problems won't go away.

Don't forget this oldy either...

Rickover (1957)

Nothing new about any of this, except how solutions are currently being described, what top down change is attributed to and how contemporary schemes are put into action without ever mentioning the word - depletion.  

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Late summer visitors

Several times each week we get visited by a doe and a fawn.

Hazel chased this little guy around the yard a few months ago... not so much anymore!

On a nice slow late evening cruise around the lake we came upon a flock of sleeping geese.  It's that time of year when all of the animals get ready for fall and our long winters.

I've a few roadside oddities to post, maybe I'll get to that this weekend.  We have had an amazing summer, I hope all my visitors have too!

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August already!

Another wonderful summer.  I've always thought summer was the best time of the year!

I am determined to finish my pizza oven this summer!

The loons haunting call is a common occurrence on our little lake

On this little cruise I got to experiment with my B-Day gift, a depth / fish finder! I was looking for deep topography on the lake and floated by these two.

Of course Hazel always wants to drive...

That is until a loon starts calling...

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The Beautiful Keweenaw

 What a pleasure it is to wander through the forest and old mining company diggins in the Keewenaw.  I've explored many of these sites over the years and when someone says they go to a place and feel recharged - well this is one of those places for me.  

The huge expanses of forest, the silence and the lack of a cell phone connection all conspire to creating a beautiful escape from today's crazy world.

A map of the Keweenaw.  Surrounded by Lake Superior and further North than where most Canadians live!

View from the Brockway Escarpment on a beautiful summer morning.  In early mornings fog will roll through this valley.  This feature provides an excellent climate for pine trees and all of the fauna that live in such places.

LOL, I enjoyed a few days in this remodeled chicken coop from the 1860's...

What a view.  The plaque tells the visitor of the history of copper mining in this part of the world.  Float copper was extracted here for over 100 years. Very pure and was a key enabling factor in the electrification of the world.  Often ignored as a historical reality, this find allowed electrification to grow at an exponential rate.  Today the copper is gone, the miners have left and nature has reclaimed this land.

The major North - South Highway known as US-41 starts in this remote place and ends in Florida a world away.

Surrounded by the giant Lake Superior, this land sees an incredible amount of snowfall.  Something called "Lake Effect" makes this a winter wonderland or nightmare depending on how you look at it! This is the famous snow thermometer, the seasons total accumulation is marked by the arrow.  The record accumulation of snow occurred in the 1978-79 winter.  I remember that winter very well.  In one storm I experienced 12 foot high snow drifts.  

An example of the size and therefore age of pine trees is shown here.  This example of a cross section is of a rather young tree in this area.  It is surmised that this example was germinated at as a seed in the year 1500 and cut down for a mining company in 1900.  The mines used this timber to support the overhead rock in tunneling.  Today this forest is protected.

Have you ever seen a war memorial of a boat made out of rock and pipe?  This memorial of the USS Kersarge is part of a memorial.

Hope you liked the pics!  It's been a beautiful summer...

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The 2023 Iola Car Show!

 The 2023 show was huge!

It was a beautiful day to take a wander through all of this automotive history.  Thousands of cars, something for every gear head.  

One of my favorites - Pierce Arrow.  What a superb restoration.

I really like the old trucks.  In the day this '29 Chevy truck moved a lot of stuff.

This is a showroom quality 1934 Packard

Count'em... yup that's a V12. These engines make an unmistakeable sound.  Smooth power and elegance in design.  Engineered to last a lifetime.  Planned obsolescence had not yet slinked out of the business schools yet because this was the pre-business school era.

The American car designs from the 1930's were (in my opinion) the most beautiful cars in the world even to this day.  Deco influences, streamlined - they are rolling sculptures.  This is a 1937 Chevrolet Coupe.  Bella.

More Deco, more streamlined, this 1937 Cord Phaeton looks brand new. Imagine hidden headlights and a tuned exhaust gently rumbling as you roll down the highway.  Cord had a short lifespan - only seven or eight years depending on how you count it. Gordon Miller Buehrig was the designer and fellow alumni of where I went to grad school.

This 1954 Packard was HUGE. A lot of sheetmetal and swoopy lines make this iconic.

Can you spot the subtle differences? This is the '55

This 1955 Nash was the high mileage car of its day. The reasoning behind this counter culture design is really an interesting story in itself. 

Lots of chrome on the 1956 Pontiac Chief, this hood always reminds me of a 1950's bowling team jersey...

This is the '57

A little red T-Bird.  This is a '57.

and the little red corvette - a 1960.

I remember walking past a yellow AMX parked in the neighbors driveway as a 9 year old on my way to the bus stop.  I thought it was so cool back in '69.

My favorite year for the Mustang is 1970.  I think the front design is awesome.

There is something to be said for the later year size and fast back design.  This one is a '73 kind of at the end of the muscle car era.  Smog pumps and lower compression engines were part of the evolving landscape.

I forgot that AMC actually offered this back in the day... a camper package for the Hornet.

This show is huge... there's even a control tower to broadcast from and scan the grounds for emergencies.

A working 1967 Amphicar.  This was a car and a motor boat. In the rear are two propellers. 

Check out the doors on this Kaiser Darrin...

A very nice 1930 Ford AA truck. 

A '59 Edsel wagon

The inventor of the "snow machine" is really lost to history as kits like this one on a Model A existed for the Model T as well.  Before that light coal fired steam locomotives were tracked as well.  This is the "Snowbird Kit". 

I remember ogling my brother's friend Victor's maroon GTO back in the 60's. I had similar tail lights on my first car!

Just past the gate... welcome to Iola!

This years theme was cars from the 50's and Leave it to Beaver actor Jerry Mathers was in the house...

Another vehicle I owned along the way.  My truck was black and had an enormous 360 cu in V-8,  I remember watching the gas gauge go down as I drove it around...

A nice '55 Studebaker Champion. Loewy magic.

A B-Body Super Bee from '71.  I remember these cars as fast and fashionable as a kid.  I think it was a lot more car than many could handle. Consequently, a lot of these ended up in accidents.  This motor could wind up faster than most and the big engine varients made 425HP.  Put that in a rear wheel drive 2 door coupe with a young male at the wheel and you get a bump in insurance prices! My high school buddy actually spun the drive shaft off of his.  LOL, those were the days!

Last but not least, a venerable ute from 1957.  A cab-over 4x4 Willys pick up.

Hope you all liked the picks.  I loved the show.

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