Entrophy---A Taste of Fate

I pulled this piece off some other source, both the text and the graph. They are not necessarily connected but do have a relationship. The graph is about energy use. Energy use speaks to CO2 emissions mentioned in the text. Thus, they are closely related. My interest here is in the word entropy and the 2nd law of Thermodynamics.

The critical information here is that "the rate of growth in CO2 emissions in 2011 exceeded that of global GDP".

There may be many complex economic reasons for this, such as the growing coal consumption in China, but it also reflects the most fundamental and inviolable law of the Universe: the Second Law of thermodynamics, or the Entropy Law.

Every energy use or conversion results in entropy, or waste, pollution, heat, disorder and chaos. Entropy accumulates and never reverses. While it's possible to create instances of local order (which is what all technologies do) - such as a city, a factory, a house or a consumer product - that results in a disproportionate export of entropy to the environment.

As we use up the "low-hanging fruit" of available energy and material resources, each subsequent effort to reach the higher fruit will require ever more energy expenditures and hence result in ever more entropy.

CO2 is a form of entropic waste and climate change is the inevitable entropic outcome. The faster we race, in our technological effort at "progress", the farther behind we get. That is fundamentally why the growth in GDP results in an even faster growth in climatic entropy. That's a law of the Universe.

We cannot undo our accumulation of entropy, any more than we can reverse the flow of time (which are one and the same). We can only choose to increase entropy faster or slower, but increase is unavoidable because it's the law of the Universe.

The problem with our response to climate change is that we are still dealing with it as a problem. A problem has one or more solutions. A crisis, however, does not yield to solutions but only to a response. We must begin to decide how we are going to respond to what is inevitable and unavoidable, and we can do that by bunkering down behind our Stand Your Ground laws, or by coming together in communities to share our simple skills and essential knowledge to co-create a more sensible paradigm for human life on this fragile little planet Earth.

Robert Riversong

Revolution Watch----Retirement Funds

Here we are just facing the new year, the snow is soft on the ground, the birds are delightfully looting our feeder and my belly is full, not overly, but a nice meal of white bass, garden potatoes, beets and canned peaches is sure pleasant in my gullet.

Like all days, the local paper arrived and brought with it the latest on the fiscal cliff, which I suspect is nothing more than a little ramp of needed corrections of a bloated system that can, in itself, not be totally corrected by anything these believers of neoclassical economics could muster. I mean, how can we carry trillions of dollars in debt, debt that we are no more able to pay off than the country of Greece can pay. The only way we, or Greece, could pay it off is to have run-away growth. This has always been the pattern in this system. Take out debt and pay it with a growing business (personal or national) What if there is no growth? Oops!

So I have been watching this revolution for some time now and nothing is really changing except the slow decline in our standard of living. Now, I am not saying this is bad because it has to happen as we are individually and collectively living beyond out means. It is just changing, that is all.

Fortunately it is going slowly but it is painful to watch the legislators trying to find solutions when certainly many of them must be figuring out there are no solutions. Cut expenditures, sure, has to be done, but that will lead to fewer jobs and more drop in the standard. Raise taxes, particularly on the bottom 90% and that might also have a dampening affect on the sought after growth. All points in one direction. So far, so good because it would appear we have to go there. It will be a bitch.

Today, here was another reminder of the pattern. Retirees of Wisconsin employees will face a shrinking retirement account. That has an unpleasant ring to it. They get paid less but the price of food and fuel go up. Means they will spend less on discretionary items, thus a slower growth in the economy. I seems we have to adjust. Wonder at what point folks become really unhappy about this?

Winter has Arrived in Wisconsin

As the cold comes and the snow falls there are those that shiver and  moan as if seeing themselves heading out to the gulag in some distant even more frozen archipelago. It is as if it’s Russian time, with winter travelers racked with toil and drudgery fighting their way to spring while the potatoes run low and the vodka is cut .  They may seek to hibernate, to hold tight against some household fire thinking it will all end one day, and if they are still alive in the coming spring, it is only God’s work that has carried them through.

The sun passes low and in its effort never gains much height. It is a cool blue light even on the sunlit days having to pass through the winter atmosphere filled with drifting ice crystals. The warmth that is there just cannot make it this far to our northern outposts but gets stopped to the south holding us hostage up here. On other days the oppressive clouds, while not the dynamic billows of summer, cover the land producing a sameness, not a blue sameness of the sunny days but more a pall over all things. Each hour of the day seems the same in tone, it is like a weight held over all things, a low light almost not strong enough to light a room.

This dreary time can be a burden and a collar of sorts holding back ambition much like a heavy load pulling on the reigns of a straining draft animal. Some shrouded human desperados seem sapped of energy wanting to slip away from the darkness maybe to find comfort in the touch of a toddy as if it was artificial sunlight that was flowing back to their being.

Hanging on the door is our old fur coat made to keep the winter traveler of many years ago warm and protected in the coldest of weather. It weighs some twenty pounds and coupled with snowshoes, the long shoes, the snow and cold was conquered when there were no plows,  just the roughed-out trail of horse-drawn sleighs. But even then obviously the winter cold did not prevent the locals from setting the scene for Currier and Ives. They did not huddle frightened in home nor did they head south, they did what one has to do in this new season. They embraced the day, face to the breeze, afoot and light hearted.

So as I sit sunken in my leather sofa within inches of the old stove, I should shed not a tear for the loss of summer or the glorious fall, for winter is here. It is but another season filled with joy if I can just get off my dead aging posterior and embrace the beauty, this wondrous part of frozen Wisconsin.

Yes, it snowed and it is now winter. The many colors of white are now seen reflected under shadowed trees and shrubs, even the houses cast a faint hint of their hues on the snow. It is subtle, but  living with a painter has left me knowing these things of color. These colors will be a start.

Not burdened by the tonnage of the old long fur coat but sleek in my Gortex Alaskan jacket,  it is time to step out to look for the morning tracks. Before doing just that, I remembered that last night we heard an Owl in the oak trees to the south, a lone owl making a series of three hoots, the first a bit ornamented. I remembered thinking maybe if lucky it was a Horned Owl or better a Great Snowy.

Then I stepped out boldly, there in the backyard was a cat’s track heading toward the bird feeder. He was pursing the our local flock of birds. Again, my mind pondered back to the Owl and a memory of Great Horned Owls eating cats, eating cats that were too engrossed in hunting birds that the feline lost track of its own enemies. All was fair game and the winter was on. Nature has a way of squaring things up I thought as I remembered the horribly hot summer and the chatter of global warming. Owls might be a symbol of sorts, maybe a symbol of mother nature and could we be a common, on the loose house cat too intent on our own consumption? Wow, Winter even makes my brain work!

Remarkable what winter can be like, so revealing. Across the way the soft snow had lighted itself on the tall grasses making shadow patterns in the surrounding snow. Beauty is everywhere. The trees caught a light breeze and the flowery snow dropped in a dazzling shower, some settling on my now red face. I caught a movement in the hedge row and saw a squirrel that in the summer I would not have seen. This is no gulag. This is winter in Wisconsin and it is just starting. While the stove is warm and inviting the out-of-doors is a dream land.

Now if we could just get a real blizzard, one that would bring the friends around, the one that would force us out into the night to survey the wrath, one that would let us live for a brief moment sampling what it was like for Dr. Shivago, one to let us know the cold so that when the summer comes around we will know the warmth.

The Nine Best Countries

This web page is so good I could not help but put on my site.

http://karenlynnallen.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-nine-best-run-countries-in-world.html

Unfortunately I can not just put it up here to read, at least I don't think I can. By hitting the link it will lead you there. It is well put together and very informative.

The Cat and the Owl

We have this sneaky cat that has been hanging around the grounds here. It is not ours. The musty old feline we had is doing deserved garden time now, thank God. This is a smallish gray thing and I suspect he is zeroing in on the bird feeder or at least hanging in the under brush where he sees the sparrows and finches flitting out.

Now, I am no fan of cats due in part because they are the number one killer of song birds, at least here in the states. I suspect in other parts of the world, including Europe, there are very few song birds because they have been eaten on shish-kebabs, plus we saw untold number of cats in France ( the old castles have rats which is a tradition). The locals net them in great number, if they can still find them. They defeather them and roast them as tidbits on a stick. The diners apparently are indiscriminate in their choice of species---maybe the endangered ones make them horny. As a result there are areas, particularly in the middle east where they are gone.What the cats don't get, they eat. Serious evironmentalist there.

Fortunately, in Wisconsin we don't consume many song birds---Norwegians and Swedes have never fancied them even though they eat weird fish material. Cats around here are forever cruising because so many people just let them out thinking they are harmless and eat only rodents. Wrong there. We had a cat one time that had about 20 dead young robins under a choke cherry bush. Just killed them and left them lay. I didn't kill the cat but it crossed my mind.

Interestingly, last night as were were laying in bed minding our business, when we heard an owl hoot just to the south and I found myself thinking it might be a fat Great Horned. Not sure but just wishing---or might be a Great Gray, maybe a hungry Great Snowy. Slyly, I was thinking the cat was, in fact, smallish and inclined to shuffle around a night. Then I remembered the story of a guy who watched a Horned Owl making a low approach to a cat intently hunting ground-dwelling birds in Colorado. The Owl came up behind the cat and in one motion embedded his laws in the brain of the cat. The owl never lost its stride and flew off to see if it had made the kill. Which it had. Owls eat cats. Now we are talking. Ya baby.

I like cats myself but can't finish a whole one, plus there are so many cats and so few recipes. I'm pulling for the Owl, might even make an Owl nest, maybe catch the cat and tie it out. I know..