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..

Old Photos and History----Ann's

I have always been fascinated by photos that have a certain historical bent. For instance, we have a book of old shots taken in the west prior to 1900, Many are of cowboys and even covered wagons. Indians in some instances but what I find interesting about them is that the setting the shots were taken in are still very much there. The individuals might be long gone but the setting, be it in the Black Hills or Cameron Trial are still unchanged at least in a geological sense.

 As a result of this it is still possible to go there and take a shot, of say yourself, standing in exact same spot, maybe even posturing in the same way some noble warrior was next to say Pike's Peak. It would be some work to find the exact locations because they might be altered, or they might be genuinely hard to find. One might need someone who is very familiar with an area.

There is a famous painting done in about 1860 on the Cashe la Poudre in northern Colorado. There are also some good prints of this painting around. I believe the title is something to the affect of Looking West from the Cashe la Poudre. Having lived in that area, it is easy to recognize some of the land marks in the painting. In fact, I have some times thought I was close to the spot but never had the painting in hand to compare it while in the spot. Still I found this interesting to have "been there".

 There have been many old photos I have seen and recognize the spots and wanted to go there and retake one of me doing the same things and replicating the photo even to the point of using the same sized lens. Actually, a guy by the name of Fielder in Denver has done this but he didn't put me in the shots---loser. I would not be interested in doing any of me in old porno shots but it is a thought--few were done in outdoor settings anyway. 

Tonight, I was going through some old shots taken in Paris by Ann's parents. Of course, there is cute little Ann standing ever so prim in her blue coat . Because the spot of the photo is easily recognized (Arc de Triomphe) it would be great fun to go there and take another shot with her in it--might even include a bike like the one against the wall.

Interestingly, Hitler may have also strutted down the same road 10 years earlier all puffed up for over-running the French. Probably a lot of history on this street (rue), French painters, writers, prostitutes, everything one can imagine.

Missionary's Position---Fracking Data

Everyday it seems we get another cornucopian article in one of our jackass newspapers declaring that the new oil and gas wells brought on line by the frackin' process has set conditions up so we will be energy independent. Each time I hear this my eyes fill with figures that do not agree with this idiotic position.

For one thing, the new drilling has only added some 650,000 barrels a day to out production bringing our present total to a grand 6.4 million barrels a day. But always I find myself thinking, "But we use some 19 million barrels a day" and we import close to 10 million. So just where is this additional 10 million coming from? Out of frackin"? We have already drilled some 35, 000 well bores to get this new improvement and those holes were mostly in the sweet spots. To top it off the wells decline very fast so in order to maintain the new flows more and more holes have to be drilled just to keep up--and they will not be in the sweet spots.

Yet we hear this nonsense that keeps telling the citizens drive baby, drive because we have tons of the stuff. Even if we have "some" why the hell would we want to burn it up all now. Why not save some for future generations? Plus, if no one has noticed the earth is getting hotter. We are a mindless lot.

A couple of days ago new graphs came out that one would think would wake up at least a few of the electorate, not really, I suppose, because it is outside of their world view. Maybe cognitive dissonance or some thing. Here are the graphs. Above, one can see that even the highest estimate from the tight oil only shows 2.75 million barrels a day. Not 10. The lower estimate shows almost no gain from today because the "Red Queen Affect" has kicked in where they just have to drill more holes just to stay even.

This graph may also be telling because it show that of right now the Bakken play is in decline. Admittedly there are some wells missing from this graphs as the companies are holding back some data, but still a little unnerving. Then again, maybe unnerving is not the right word because I don't want more oil. We do not need "more" oil. It is killings us. It is a tough mind change. A a paradigm shift

All and all, it is all a sad story as we struggle to maintain a lifestyle that is a dead end. When it is all gone, it will be all gone. What idiots. Nate Hagans said, "The biggest threat to the American way of life is the American way of life". There is more to that than meets the mind. We need and end to it, I am afraid. I wish it would be voluntary and not nature induced.