The close of the age of hyper exploitation...

 Consider we have a global awareness of depletion of dozens of familiar resources.

We can easily visualize emptying our refrigerator, our food pantry or our fuel tank.  We understand the concept of a finite resource.  Where we struggle is expanding our vision to grasp the food and the energy we consume comes from the Earth's pantry.  It is not infinitely large, nor has it been exploited at the rates we are experiencing now.  So a rational human should be able to connect the dots on a couple of ideas...

The economic systems we have don't consider the implications of depletion just wealth creation. That's a systematic failure hardwired into our "modern" civilization.  If you can dig it up, make something and sell it... no problem even though, just like Mother Hubbard's pantry the Earth's pantry is running out of lots of critical stuff.  Anyone who has ever lived in a mining town has experienced what this means first hand.  Great economy while the ore is easy to get, bankruptcy, hardship and dire times when the ore runs out. Why does that happen? Nobody plans ahead for depletion because it happens on a time scale people and governments tend not to plan for or get concerned over. Kicking the can down the road is a familiar past time, move somewhere else where there ore is not yet depleted...  Today globally we have gotten lost in a spiral of  hyper exploitation.  Lol, and this is not making our situation better, by the way. We have failed to grasp that we do not have infinite resources and we are too greedy to preserve our gifts for the future generations to come.  

All of us know we live on a planet with finite resources but yet we lack a popular philosophy of life that is consistent with that reality.  We let wealth generation and short term power and position convince us to sell the planets gifts for today's enjoyment and never think about tomorrow. One of our biggest blind spots is the failure to think over a planning horizon longer than a lifetime.  A civilizational life span - generations in time - nope, that's not us - now hoarding bickering, colonizing, oppressing, waring - that's us! The latest rumors talk about technocracy, digital dominance, AI, cameras and social controls tied to an ever more complex energy hungry matrix of constantly obsoleted operating systems and programming languages.  It may have its day but it wont last for very long. Meh, ideas that do not address the fundamental problems of depletion and scarcity will eventually fail - physics wouldn't have it any other way.  Sustainable living is incompatible with energy consuming complexity.  These futuristic machinations just add a new twist to how helpless or hapless the general population will eventually be in a generation or two when we are faced with an inevitable enormous energy contraction.  

Our cheap energy legacy has allowed generation after generation to become increasingly more delusional and increasingly more irrational in our beliefs and world views.  It is almost fairy tale like. How do we fix this?  Well my friends (from all over the world) I have hope that many of you are thinking and acting to align your life along ways that will help you to adapt and thrive - or just enjoy life.  Nobody needs the latest cell phone, or electronic gadget that pulls you away from immersion in the good things in life like neighbors, friends, a good book to read or a spirited and friendly debate at your local piazza.   Those are things to treasure.

In the end it will all get sorted... no matter who you vote for or what car you drive.  So learn to adapt and enjoy the ride, because I'm pretty sure none of us can change the situation we are in.  

How to create a slow motion train wreck...

 Depending on where in the world you live, you probably don't know about the Colorado River which is the source of irrigation water for many many farms in several states in the Southwestern US.  

A drought which happens from time to time has greatly effected the snow pack in the Rocky Mountains, and the traditional rainfall rates cannot keep up with extraction and evaporation which has created a situation where reservoirs and large dammed artificial lakes in the river system are running at record low depths.  Implications?  Well, Arizona will experience a 760,000 acre feet reduction in supply.  Nevada and California will experience enormous infrastructure costs to go deeper and add more subterranean pumping from depleting aquifers.  This in turn will accelerate the future loss of available water for crops. Agriculture consumes 80% of the basins water supply. A sort of Red Queens effect. 

How on earth did we get here?  Must be that pesky climate change that data centers and their point source of green house gas emissions seem to be immune from - no? 

Virtually all of the agricultural areas this system supported were once upon a time hyper-arid, very hot desert environments that no one lived in. Imagine that, setting all the agenda driven noise aside, the idea of reversing the natural environment which was in tune with the way the climate had established its natural rhythms was temporarily altered by man made irrigation for 100 years.   This applies to some notable areas like the Imperial  and Coachella Valleys in California and the farms surrounding Yuma, Arizona.  Before the big idea diverted Colorado River water into agricultural irrigation less than 3 inches a year of rainfall was the norm.  There were dollars to be made in watering the desert.  Cheap land became very expensive land and for a time, enormous crop yields were produced.  So money has been made! That seems to have been the goal without regard to biophysical economics.

If we look at maps from the early 1800's these areas were actually identified as deserts!  Just add water and shazam - name changes! Only there were problems from the start. Deserts tend to experience very high evaporation, so water has always been needed in copious amounts to keep the desert from returning.  The margin of safety against crop failure was so thin that even from the start a light winter with little snowpack meant farming went bust. So to double down on teaching the Earth how to behave, "entrepreneur$" added dam$, well$ and reservoir$.    So the drive for economic growth once again super-ceded common sense. Lets see how this evolved...

Climate does change, geophysics is indeed dynamic and consequently the impacts of our weather has always influenced the stability of human populations.  In the history of the Colorado River and its evolution we refused to acknowledge the power of natural forces.  In 1922 something called the Colorado River Compact was published. This "science" (Remember to just follow the science?) was built on a mathematical fiction. Yep, publishing misleading papers is a time honored skill.  The prediction of being able to produce 15,000,000 acre-feet of water was based on hydrologic data that captured the wettest decade in 1200 years.  So with this version of the truth, a fantastic revenue generating idea came into focus: selling real estate, building roads and towns, farming,  building towns and all that infra-structure that goes with it in all of these states... billions of dollars made speculators wealthy humanoids. All based on a misleading premise which now has ballooned into a potential  tragedy of national proportion. With an overhang of millions of people, their property and livelihoods, maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.  But hey, lots of people made fortune$!

The physics hadn't changed.  Building an irrigation system with dams and reservoirs based on a once every 1200 year decadal cycle of rain and snow was obviously never sustaining.  So to keep the bad idea going, enter - drill baby drill.  Pump water out from deep aquifers.  All finite life adventures, none of which is sustainable. Once again, humans aren't good at non-linearity.  Or the big picture if emotionally attracted to wishing rather than accepting facts. These aquifers are all going dry.

But wait, there's more. As the large damed reservoirs evaporate hydro-power generation goes off line, possibly forever. The famous Hoover Dam is nearing what is called a dead pool level.  Thats when water level drops to the point that generation is no longer possible.  Currently The Hoover is 30% below peak output as head level drops (water pressure reduces and turbines can't drive the torque needed to hit full rate generation). If the dead pool scenario eventually happens, millions of acres of heavily irrigated crop land will lose their primary source of water.  What does manage to flow will be cooked by the desert heat and algae blooms not seen in a hundred years will return with fish kills and toxicity of various sorts.  

The resulting power generation loss has already caused skyrocketing electricity (energy drives it all) bills which effect almost every cost associated with life. With no real back-up fossil fuel generation must increase to keep the enormous populations who now depend on electricity to keep cool and life functional in these places.

So the scheme to turn the desert into a cornucopia struggled and was kept alive by adding deep wells for a few generations, but alas physics - geophysics, wins again.  

 

Have we learned anything from this? Another example of economic opportunity cost insufficiently comprehended with physical limitation and follow on consequences when we all know better. Sadly I think we have not learned anything.  The take-away - ignoring system behavior may allow a small circle of investors to reap a windfall, but the back end may be so catastrophic it far outweighs the benefit to society.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again the automobiles of the 1930's were the high mark of craftsmanship and auto design...

 As an engineer I actually lived through the transition from the drafting board to CADAM and the evolution of computer aided design analysis and simulation.  I lived it and I can tell you what we lost along the way. 

I learned how to rotate that pencil to keep the tip sharp and the line weight constant on that giant mylar or velum sheet.  I had the erasure shields, french curves and cloth filled bags of crushed erasure bits... Yep I was there. I learned the Hardy Cross from an old AVRO guy.... and test lab was all analogue so equations and components were 1:1.  I had a notepad with my calculations recorded for reference.

I was in the front row seats for CADAM. Catia, Romulus-D, CAPT, SDRC Super Tab, Ideas, Pro-E, Creo, Group Trap Relimit baby with a light pen and function key pad... yeah some Inventor Auto Cad stuff too but that crossed over from architecture so it was never in my lane until much later.

Every step along the way as Silicon Graphics made pixels move to a faster Mhz/Ghz beat, I saw a degradation of human intellect in fundamental problem solving skills.  Let me share with you, revolving a section in your head and then on a 2d piece of paper to locate machining points or GT datums took some sensibilities that pushing mouse buttons simply don't back feed to the brain.  Broken mental feedback loop - and that matters. Analysis by mouse clicks and no mental grounding is another weakness we have managed to bake into our modern way of doing things. No underpinnings, just surprises when the recalls roll in.

So what am I getting at?  Two things: conservation via optimization and cognition applied to life.  

Those beautiful 1930's cars - like this one. See all those compound curves, beautiful body panels?  No computers, no CNC, no cad were used - just skilled craftsmen and artists working the clay on the front end the drafting boards in the middle and the model makers at the stamp plant. Think how much less money was dumped into the "old ways."  Human labor - both mental and artistic delivered. How many people could re-create this today using the tools and craftsmanship of the 1930's?  LOL, ask your AI to help you and see how that goes.  AI doesn't do craftsmanship, and if it's not hooked up to a step file that feeds some computer thing - sorry - no can do... maybe that's worth looking into. A real threat here is the loss of knowledge as to how to actually do something. Do you see where this is going?  So designing a car took longer - who cares when reliability and resource optimization and utilization matter - now more than ever.

2700 lbs of mostly steel, glass and rubber pushed along by an 80 HP inline six sipping fuel at 20 mpg and the typical owner maybe drove 7000 miles per year.  That is how efficient our communities were and how that enabled us to live our lives back then.The 2030 version of basic transportation should be much lighter and get a few more mpg, without all the electrical overhead too by the way IMHO. Nothing wrong with crank down windows and cable connected damper settings on vents.

Summary point 1.  Locality was what had evolved as the common way of life.  A long round trip was 50 miles, most trips were under 10.  You could get almost everything you needed in that circle. We need to recapture a common sense lifestyle and return to those efficiencies that didn't involve huge warehouses filled with stuff that came from half a world away. We need to make life that practical again.

Summary point 2. Simplicity was everything.  If it broke, you just fixed it yourself with no special tools or exotic electronics - even building up a spun crankshaft bearing. Can anyone do that in their garage  any more?  What real value (complexity of all sorts makes a ton of money - I know) does complexity have if it drives an incredible loss of reliability, early obsolescence and thereby makes system EROI ridiculous whilst destroying the ability of the average person to repair and re-use? Simplicity should be the goal. If we think about living in our time optimization of depleting resources is an important action to blunt the implications that scarcity brings. Simplifying is an OBVIOUS goal - unfortunately it doesn't make money, so it ain't happening. I think as a society we've long traded common sense for the fiction of forever economic growth.  Just another of the many dimensions to the mania I suppose.

I love those bullet headlights, not a single chip, gps, or computer on board. The supply chain that made this car made sense unlike today's vulnerable, overextended fat system eroi bad habit.

Do todays economic models reflect reality? Is anybody thinking ahead?

 Seeing as how modern society structures our lives around institutionalized economic ideas, including the concept of interest rates and investments that are intended to provide a greater return on the investment than the initial deposit... Can you cognate that in a world of finite resources, this idea cannot stand the test of time? Steady state is great if you can achieve it. Growth and retraction around that set point should be expected. That is called "normal". The life style we are leaving behind has been abnormal in the history of the world.

For a variety of circumstances, our current economic systems have already demonstrated that growth is not a given nor a constant in spite of the equations in the econ books.  Depletion, non-linear and sometimes intangible societal and environmental events effect the outcomes and have done so since the beginning.  Admitting the system is incomplete when it comes to correcting for energy depletion has been hard to conceive of for most people because copious amounts of cheap energy over many generations have allowed substitutions of various kinds to replace the failing adventure with something else.  So much so and for so long we have adopted the notion that science or technology will figure it out and tomorrow somehow will be better than today.  We'll invent something... BUT not without abundant, cheap, available ENERGY. This is the part we all have a hard time understanding - mostly because keeping the wheels turning like they always have is our universal happy spot and we don't really know what or how to revert back to less oil, gas and coal and KEEP our exi$ting frameworks intact.  Oopsie, the brick wall or cliff or whatever mental image you want to conjure is approaching so that your kids or grandchildren will have no choice but to address it if we don't.  Some folks are indeed grappling with these ideas, read on.

If depletion reduces the input flow of low cost energy into our economic systems (albeit slowly) THAT becomes a new perturbation into a flawed economics model that never has seriously accounted for the largest input it has always been dependent on.  Biophysical economics attempts to address this, but is still in its infancy as far as its ability to model system eroi and therefore in its ability to guide or discern implementation strategies and value technological solutions - many of which simply consume more energy at a faster rate and offer no solution anybody wants to project a few decades into the future. Again infinite growth is not possible with finite resources.  Depletion demands reduction. How that reality gets adjusted in our complexity filled world is a tug of war with no geopolitical plan as far as most can see with an expectant eventual giant brawl involving blocks of the interested which further break down to thought leaders and influencers inside those blocs all the way to your local citizen just trying to pay their bills.  Energy touches everyone. The lack of  awareness and a plan to develop a cogent set of integrated policies regarding depletion will likely result in scarcity fueled contests EVERYWHERE.  Chaos to be filmed by a plethora of cameras and sent to the data centers for some reactionary after action remediation LOL...  Addressing the back end isn't going to fix the front end nor address the fundamental issue.  But it will generate revenue. Yay.  

Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Charles A.S. Hall and side kick Cutler Cleveland and Herman E. Daly & Robert Costanza all need to be looked at seriously and should be names familiar to the public discussion of our energy / economic future and how multidisciplined societal adaptation is necessary.  This notion is not new, the Limits to Growth models sprang forward from the notion that energy was a critical input to our societies for hundreds of years.  It is when you finally encounter the negative slope that you are forced to confront its implications.  Sadly only after its painful affects are felt do we seem to react.  LOL, for many I am sure they will be left wondering; "What happened"? Being creatures prone to the effects of cognitive dissonance, what we variously come up with to answer that question will be absolutely amazing to observe. 

In pre-industrial age times, the major focus of life (agricultural economics if you will) was on farming which was local - regional at best. Next came hand made craftsmanship based upon talent and locality of resources.  So much can be learned from studying what was valued in previous sustainable populations.   We are a few generations away from energy and mineral depletion becoming a wide ranging and rigid constraint but this time, instead of a cultural or demographic regional phenomena, we are globally  heading in that direction.  Which you might think requires getting along and a collegial solution to OUR problem. 

It will last forever - or will it? 

The Tacoma Narrows bridge wasn't too big to fail.  Physics did what it always does and always will do.  Gravity can't be negotiated. Physical limits are what they are, it is time for a realistic public discourse.   Some people are indeed thinking ahead about these realties... 

Summer is the best time of the year!

 We've been seeing our lake level drop more than usual, with very little rain falling this month.  

That has caused a lot of boat lifts to be in shallow water, too shallow to moor a boat.  It takes a lot of effort to re-adjust dock height and maybe extend them out to deeper water so I'd say almost half of the camps and homes who do have a boat don't have one in the water this summer.  That was our situation too.

It took a huge effort but I finally moved our dock and lift out and leveled them.  The effort is always worth the labor because when you get a chance to get out you are rewarded with seeing any one or more of the local bear, bobcat, loons, eagles, fishers, fox, deer, muskrat and geese all cohabiting this wonderful aquatic system. At one time or another all have passed through our yard and many have attempted to break into our garden! LOL, last winter a squirrel ate through the insulation on a few sensor wires that needed repair as well.  Those new pressurized gas caps were a mystery to me too.  Seems that they don't vent fuel vapor like the old fuel tank caps.  Well, that can be fixed!  But I digress as usual.  

This eagle was calling out and it took a while to find it!

The loons have been making their haunting calls all summer - especially at night.  We are so grateful for the beauty that surrounds us. Life is good here and I wish and hope it is for you my visitor as well.  

LOL, sigh. I recommend Primus

 Here, here and here.  Makes about as much sense as anything else in this world.

Happy B-Day JRO

 All my love

Dad ee oo