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

Book recommendation - a rare insight into energy

CJ Campbell's atlas has been on my bookshelf for a few years now. It is a stark reminder that there are no huge energy reserves "yet to be discovered".  It also plainly shows the reader that there is no magical country that you might fix colonial ambitions on because it's the next big energy sink you feel that century old need to conquer, bust up and  exploit.  Nope, all been found, all depleting, some a lot further along than others.  So if you can grasp that energy is the economy not the bank, you may be able to grasp all those plans for continued growth don't happen without limitless cheap energy.  

Well worth acquiring or a trip to your library to have a good read.  Whomever controls the world's BTU's owns the whole enchilada...  Lots of reserves out there, but coal seams 2 feet deep and a mile underground will never be mined but always counted in the "reserve" column.  Neither will gas or oil deposits that require more energy to get out of the ground than they can return.  So clever actors tell the story different ways - you have a big brain - you can figure it out for yoursel!    Then there are geological events like earthquakes, vulcanism and plate movements that can greatly alter the performance of a reserve.   

The past 200 years have truly been an anomaly in global history - sadly most of the planets current inhabitants know no other way of life than the exceptional one most of us are experiencing at the moment.  Entire systems of governance, financial machinations and "investment vehicles" are devoid of this finite and diminishing energy based reality as well.  It seems humans are just not good at history, and really good at delusional thinking, easily duped and manipulated. They aren't good at non-linearity either, but I digress.

So here is a thought piece.  Before the industrial age, where mankind slowly learned how to capitalize on cheap oil and coal to mechanize lifes arduous chores we had a small government footprint and villages of small size in rural places - these were the natural state of our global cultures and will be again.  That structure was no accident, It was the evolution of how we came to organize life in the absence of that cheap energy.  Populations were constrained by how much land could be plowed by oxen and planted by your father and harvested by the family. If the land didn't support crops nobody lived there.  

Consider we are in one generation or two, right back in that type of world - only with ideas that data centers and jet airplanes are going to be part of that.  Nope.  Energetic expenditures that compete with the human condition will go away, surveillance state or not.  Just ask Machiavelli.  Money and the power or privilege that is giving today's decision makers leverage won't work because in the future real food you can eat and real heat that can keep you warm are all that matters.  The make believe world will fall away and those who enjoy it's machinations will too.  

Yours truly

Niccolò Machiavelli believed people were easily manipulated because he viewed human nature as inherently selfish, fickle, and driven by appearances rather than reality. In The Prince, he famously noted that the masses are easily swayed by a leader who masters the art of deception and projects strength. At least when nobody is really hungry.

People are quick to pledge loyalty when times are good but will turn on a leader the moment trouble arises. He believed that because subjects are self-interested, their allegiance can be bought or managed through calculated rewards and carefully applied fear - again no body is REALLY hungry.  He argued that because "men in general judge more by their eyes than by their hands," a ruler does not actually need to possess good qualities, but must merely appear to have them... that veneer has its limits though.

So if we extrapolate this old wisdom to the the current global community and the power brokers who like to dominate and make their fortunes that way - take heed, the outcomes will be the same irregardless of modern high tech software, camera fueled AI and the plethora of digital control dreams being sold as the solution to whatever ails ya. People haven't changed but delusional thinking is as popular as ever at all stratas of society.  

LOL... maybe "AI" is good for something, I rather like my statue.  Backwards looking LLM's are not too accurate at divining a future not yet written.  Caveat Emptor. 

PS - I might add LLMs filled with terabytes of corrupt data sets acquired from compromised and agenda driven captured sources can only suggest corrupt and compromised solutions.  GIGO still rules the digital domain and there is a LOT of garbage out there - there is no magic bullet to clean up the mess that has been created over the past decades (only knowledgeable humans with a moral and ethical guiding principal fixing it is about the only chance we have to make it useful for the more complex problems).  Standard screening designs completely miss or misinterpret coherence when complex nonlinear interactions or unmodeled factors are present. Especially if you don't want to look for them!

Sure equations based on physics no matter how complicated should work correctly, but the results they should elucidate (making sense of the results) meh, I have read so many journals both during and post the covid exercise that presented false conclusions based on their own data sets that I have personally come to the realization that not too many editors or "peers" truly understand DOE statistics, co-factors, linear relationship bias and that's just the tip of the knowledge tree iceberg.  More complicated co-factors and successful test valuations seem to be the domain of very few these days and if your depending on the folks who hide out in ivory towers to grow a backbone, don't.  My 2 cents.  

Another chair just got taken out... err "claimed"

 As energy resources slowly become more expensive and depletion slowly bites down harder, a whole bunch of energy just went to a private AI machination... snag that chair!  "As tech giants turn to natural gas fields..." The musical chair game continues with corporate strategy placing their big butt down on a chair in Texas!  Restart the music, let's go around again and see who's the next unidentified player to NOT get energy and who is the lucky winner of the next chair.

At a time when energy feedstocks are in depletion - we have figured out how to make a bigger straw and stake out corporate winners and everybody else losers...  Interesting times.  I wonder where we will be in 20 years when this contract expires.  

LOL, the largest green house emissions in the US!  Another chair has been awarded. Is the whole global warming thing over now?