Canyon Walk

I live on the edge of a canyon, with a creek snaking down increasingly steep terrain as it goes, running into a more serious creek with considerably more water in it, almost a river, coming from Nevada City. I am downstream from there, you see. A few days ago, with chilly breeze blowing in wetly from the coast, and the smell of rain, and scudding clouds close overhead, I took myself and my MP3 player for a walk. Down my usual slope, but then detour through the fire-escape route, and along the road. This being the mountains, I was passed by cars 4 whole times, and two motorcycles. One of the cars went by slow enough to say hello out the window. Love small towns.

The north side of the hill gets less sunlight, so it is damp, growing more trees, with more overhang and shade, making it yet more damp. In the winter it gets icy down there, but in the summer, now, its lovely. I meandered along the road, repeatedly reminding myself that it would eventually loop around, back up the hill. And it did. After about 600 feet of descent, I then got to climb even higher up a 15% grade, which feels like a 45 degree slope but isn't. It was paved, steep, and worked my heart very nicely. Too steep for a bicycle. Steep enough for shorter steps, but determination has always served me well so I continued my climb and eventually crested beside the high school. A quick stroll back down the road, and return to familiar territory once more, with an easy return home. I was gone over an hour.

I didn't realize this as I was walking, but its exactly the sort of place a mountain lion lies in wait to jump on you after you pass by, oblivious. The canyon is their exact territory, and full of the deer they eat. And dogs and cats, of course. Why people up here insist on tiny snack-sized dogs, I have no idea. We get packs of coyotes every full moon, howling up the street all night, wandering around in search of pets to eat. And they always get some, too. If the moon is a Monday night, trash cans are out, and they flip them over. In the higher country, bears do the same thing. My hike was safely without interruption and I may do it again.

For today, we'll see the hottest day of the year, expecting over 100'F. The sun was hot early, and my thermometer reports to me that its 95'F and climbing, at barely noon. It is summer. I'm sipping spearmint iced tea, kicking back with a novel, and enjoying the fan to keep me cool. We delay our AC as late as possible because it is expensive and stifling. I'm in the mood for fried chicken, but its very fattening so I expect we'll do hamburgers instead. The grapes outside my window continue to gradually swell, and we harvested a single, large, ripe fig off our tree. Sweet and delicious. If only it would rain. Normal years get 60 inches. We had barely 20. A heavy El Nino will give us 100 inches. That's 8 feet of water, something to fill every reservoir, saturate every aquifer, grow a tremendous snow pack in the high country, thunder down every stream and riverbed, and happily restore my state to perfect health, except for all the flooding of course. You can't have everything.

Mornings here are worth getting up for. And best used early enough that the air remains cool. Soon enough it is time to close up the house and huddle indoors. It is summertime.

Life After Air Conditioning

Here in California, where winters are generally mild, and summers are hot unless you live in the right places, air conditioning can be crucial in the summertime.

Before air conditioning, it was traditional to either go to the coast, where summer water temps are all of 53'F and a strong north wind provides a seriously chilling relief from the interior heat, or to the mountains where temperatures drop 5 degrees for every 1000 feet of elevation. This is why people rent mountain cabins, usually beside lakes, and a big part of why Lake Tahoe is so popular for family vacations. You can get away from the heat without an air conditioner.

If you can't get away, due to business or stricken by poverty, you tend to find other ways to beat the heat, or try and ignore it. The best answer to this is to minimize your air conditioning use in the hottest part of the day, or sleep through the afternoons. Rising early with dawns light allows you to do many outdoor activities in great comfort, including the usual dog walking, strolling, exercise, cycling, and even gardening or heavy labor before the sun rises and the temperatures with it.

On the far side of the heat of the day, grilling your food and outdoor dining are both welcome, provided  you live away from mosquitoes. This is also why Californians are fond of wine, of India Pale Ale (IPA), and decks. We love our gardens because we can enjoy them in the early morning, and the cooling evening. They're just miserably hot in the heat of the day.

Someday, the price of oil will affect electrical power, and the current trend is unscheduled blackouts. This is unwelcome. This is also why many people receive offers from the power company for a tiny discount to the power rate in order to remotely shut off your Air Conditioner. If you're young and poor, this might be okay, but if you're elderly and poor it might kill you. Of course, even with this ability in place, rolling blackouts due to demand might someday become scheduled blackouts, and those might eventually evolve from Outages to On-Ages. An Onage is when your power is scheduled to be on, rather than off, which becomes its new normal. At that point, you'd better have a lot of solar panels, big batteries to store the power, and clever use of both night cooling, fans, hydration, and probably siesta to get through it. Until such time as the next Ice Age comes, our future is going to strongly resemble our past, a place with no air conditioning, lots of poverty, and making the best of things.

At least we have good wine and beer. In such times, instead of claiming America has a drinking problem, which is the next target of attack now that govt has banned self defense, and is making cars too expensive, and taxed cigarettes into being a luxury item, next it can ban alcohol "for your own good" because govt controls your health care. Did you forget the nature of govt? Ban booze and make you crazy from the heat. That doesn't sound very nice. I think perhaps America has a problem with self sufficiency. It has a problem with dependence on bad advice and celebrity rather than thinking for themselves.

I think I'll look for a book on scooter repair next time I'm at the library. I might learn something useful. And retain a way to get around without sweating hard up the mountainside, twice a day. Its hard to keep a job when you stink. Remember that when you start adapting to unreliable power, and hot summers.

Canada Dumps Keystone Pipeline, Will Sell Their Oil To China

Article As sad as this fact is that we've now turned away cheap oil from Canada, the pipeline was also critically flawed. Not for safety, as the existing pipelines don't often leak, but because the pipeline was meant to EXPORT our oil to Europe after being refined at the exit port in either Houston/Galveston or Port Arthur.

 

It would have required the end of the Oil Export Ban, something which keeps our vehicles running and enables us to continue our comfortable "Easy Motoring" lifestyles a bit longer. Mr. James Howard Kuntsler may be a Liberal Curmudgeon obsessed with land use, but he's right about several things. Including the point that Americans have organized suburban life in such a way that it is somewhat expensive and troublesome to correct these land use failings into something more liveable after cheap energy becomes expensive, which it will. Without cheap Canadian oil, we should see our gasoline prices quickly rise another dollar, perhaps soon thanks to realization that Canada doesn't have to sell us ANY oil anymore. We violated the NAFTA treaty. And that means we can start paying the Brent Crude price, which is $20/bbl more. Isn't that nice? Thank the current president, and remember: you voted for this! Twice!

 

And now that New York State has announced they're continuing the fracking ban, but will continue to buy fracked oil and gas from other states to satisfy themselves, the Grasping Eastern Hypocrisy continues.

 

Mr. Kuntsler would do well to study home renovation rather than continually rant about how we've done it all wrong. His beloved Europe is full of cities composed of repurposed buildings, and it's really not that hard to turn a garage into a storefront or semi-pro workshop. Men who use their hands for a living already do this. As do hobbyists. Few turn their hobbies into income, rather preferring to take joy from building something the RIGHT WAY rather than how their boss insists and knowing it will bite them on the @55 later when it breaks/fails/doesn't-work. Whatever. Hobbies are about doing things right, for joy. A business based on quality work can sometimes flourish, if you've got buyers willing to pay for it.

 

He IS right that non-thru streets (cul de sac) neighborhoods minimize land for maximum home size and profits and prevent thru streets for public transit. You have to escape the neighborhood to get to a thru road with a streetcar or train on it. Of course, in the post oil world, you'll be unemployed because nobody has the fuel for a distant commute when all you're getting is minimum wage, or less. Ever heard of kickbacks? Very popular at fast food restaurants when I was young. You give your manager a couple bucks an hour or you don't have a job. Nasty as that. Honestly, I don't understand why more managers weren't murdered.

 

The solution to the cul de sacs is often to create an exit or two for cross traffic. Maybe this can be done via eminent domain and an abandoned or distressed property. Maybe some open area can be paved or given rails for a streetcar. Lots of old railway beds have had their rails removed and turned into hiking trails, however the land still belongs to the rail companies, in perpetuity (forever) so they can take it right back again if they so wish. Too bad if you liked "Iron Horse Trail" or built storage spaces or a house on the right of way. It belongs to them. They can demolish it with little warning and no compensation. You didn't know that, did you? You learn the most interesting things in professional GIS.

 

So Canada will get rich selling its oil to China, and probably Japan and other bits of Asia too. And we won't get to turn that oil into gasoline and diesel and kerosene, for a nice profitable markup that only the oil companies (and their European customers) will get to enjoy. Oh well. Fracking is going to step up to make the difference at the higher Brent Crude price. I know that the Democrats will continue to vote for the destruction of the Middle Class. That's their thing, after all. Make more poor people. Paying more for gasoline will certainly do that.

 

If you aren't getting educated on scooters and motorcycles, or very fit riding a bicycle, this is your warning shot to get on with it. Who knew that Canada would be pulling the trigger?

BOOK: Raising Steam

Raising Steam is the latest Discworld novel from Terry Pratchett. It is another in the Industrial Revolution series of the stories. It's about steam engines, in particular trains. You may think those are the only kind, but you'd be wrong. Mining used stationary steam engines to run water pumps to empty mines so the workers wouldn't drown. Very important. Being in a gold mining town, there are examples of these at the Empire Mine machine yard, a display outside the headframe (the top of the mine entrance). Putting a steam powered boiler on wheels was a bit evolutionary jump, in the 19th century, and deserves credit for the innovation it was.

Raising Steam follows the story of the son of an inventor killed by a steam boiler explosion, who figures out the Safety Valve, which pops open just a bit before the boiler would explode. This is a real thing, btw, included on all boilers and steam engines. Steam engines are entirely mechanical, no computer, no electrical. Just mechanical devices to regulate pressure so it never goes too high. The engineers, who deserve the title, manage heat and water and pressure using the gauges and valves to control the overall pressure, thus the steam available for work, driving the piston which powers the wheels. I've seen several steam engines up close and even now I realize just how much I don't know about their workings. The more you think about it, the niftier it is.

A local bloke wants to restore the narrow-gauge steam engine railway from Colfax, down on I-80, up to Nevada City. There once was a line running mining materials and coal and such, and carried gold, silver, tin, antimony (not the same as tin), and arsenic back. These are valuable metals. West of here, near Camp Far West, there was a copper mine too. Metals are like that, occurring together. The story includes aspects of the mining industry, miners, and the efforts to develop materials sufficient to both power the steam engine and the rails to support it as it moves. In the real world,  you have to use high quality steel for rails. Soft steel doesn't last and must be replaced or cause a derailment. Very important.

When I was giving up on Welding as a career, one of my classmates was an amateur engineer on the Niles Canyon Railway, and I talked to him while he was managing the engine at the station. He said the neatest thing about a steam engine is every part of it is there for a reason. It all makes sense. In modern times, that's rather cathartic. Naturally, functional equipment isn't allowed because denying it provides jobs to political appointees who are bad at anything else. Train Banners make me a sad panda. Trains bring tourists. Trains carry freight. Carry passengers smoothly, and with far more comfort than a bus, van, or stagecoach.

The most important aspect of the book is it reminds me we could have trains here again, and all the good that would do for the tourist industry. Until the mines reopen, that's all we've got going for us.

BOOK: Germline by T.C. McCarthy

This is good scifi. The author T.C. McCarthy was the real life version of the desk job that Jack Ryan was supposed to be, a CIA/DOD analyst. Reading all those reports must have inspired and depressed through immersion in the mess of a Land War In Asia to create this novel. Germline is the fully realized promise of the (US Army) Land Warrior Program, complete with HUD, working armor, waste disposal, power pack, radio, GPS, computer: the whole works. Why are they there? Strip mining leads to inevitable resource war conflict. The last century of war was all about resources, mostly oil. Someday the oil will be gone, and we'll fight over something else. The smart money is water, but once that is resolved, it leaves rare earth elements, based on what they can do for industry.

This book is essentially All Quiet On The Western Front, with loss after loss, and the growing madness that the wars bring onto the poor bastards fighting it. Most of the action takes place in Kazahkstan, Uzbekistan, and Iran. The uniforms worn are actual full armor made of bulletproof ceramic. Naturally, weapons are upgraded to punch through them, but so is the napalm to burn hotter and enemy weapons are very effective. They have optical camouflage and magnetically launched flechettes, which are essentially 2 inch long darts banned by the Geneva Convention in the 1970s for being effective. The Geneva Convention bans weapons that work, but only for our side.

There are drones and serious mining equipment, because it is all about the mining, after all. Access to Rare Earth Elements for the electronics industry back home. The tanks are ineffective armor, cheaply made to mostly carry around a crew served weapon and stop only the smallest arms, but drawing all fire because that's what crew served weapons do. Any Tanker who has seen action, a veteran, will tell you this. Tanks need infantry to protect them long enough to shoot and scoot. And since Abrams Battle Tanks are expensive, they aren't reasonable in a real war with actual economics. Tanks aren't supposed to be safe. Abrams are too effective to remain in service. Light ceramic tanks, built cheap, only able to stop 20mm is probably good enough. Crews won't like that, but you're all cannon fodder, and losing your population in battle attrition is also winning, to a politician.

The character is basically a gonzo journalist, complete with drug addiction and insanity, only not much comedy. Its not that kind of novel. Any returning Veteran would likely appreciate this, if only to see how bad it would be if we stayed in Afghanistan for the next 60 years. He is VERY unlucky because plot armor keeps him alive through event after event, barely. The people he meets, mostly other soldiers, are likewise insane, haunted by their own ghosts, and walking wounded. If you stop, you die. If you lose it under fire, you die. Its a grim reality, one we could very well see if the Russians succeed in retaking the Empire, the USSR. They can copy our technology, and have the means to produce it, presumably. The Chinese antiship missiles and rocket torpedos make aircraft carrier battle groups obsolete. Easily destroyed in a hot war. Pearl Harbor with a few tacnukes. We can't even stop them. This is the world we've got, and where things are heading is worse. A sort of worse that's in the book.

 

There are two sequels, which aren't available at my library yet. Maybe too new, maybe not promising enough for others to be requesting it. Germline was very good. I recommend it, if you can stomach a grisly war story.

Boomers Realize Nobody Can Pay Their Social Security

Oops! Funny how it is, when you make it financially impossible for families that means there are no families to pay your retirement, pave your roads, man your hospitals, and clean up your bed mess in the rest home. Funny how that is. Big "DOH!" moment starting to settle into a grim reality. When taxes get high enough I'll leave this state too, move somewhere smarter. Somewhere with actual families that own actual homes. Stupid boomers.

Drive In The Mountains

Got new tires on Dad's sports car. We took it out for a spin Sunday. It is a long way up 49 to Downieville. Hwy 49 goes and goes and goes before you reach North San Juan, looking little more than a slightly smoother country road. Then it goes and goes climbing even more passes and twisting narrow tree lined road before reaching the North Fork of the Yuba River and slowly climbing that. I was surprised to learn that Downieville, despite being famously icy in winter, is the same elevation as Nevada City: 2850 feet.

Downieville was a gold mining town. Like most, it has largely died back after the gold was extracted, but the North fork of the Yuba River flows through town and it's very pleasant in the summer. The water also provides trees and excellent trout fishing. And more recently, full suspension mountain bikes get carried up to the top in vans of tourists, then coast down 3000 feet on beautiful rocky trails. Ferrying tourists and bikes is a going trade for the locals, and it is mountain biking heaven. Having driven all the way up Highway 49, however, I can see a day when it will be easier and safer to come up from the East side over Yuba Pass rather than wind north up 49 through all that pot-growing hillbilly country. On our way through North San Juan, at 8:30 AM, there were several men still enjoying the prior night of drinking out front of the saloon. There's some of those places in Grass Valley and Nevada City, too, if you wondered. The hard core alcoholics glare at everybody going by. In a less pleasant, and even lower standard of living future I just can't see that road surviving very well without taxes to pay for it. And every desperate house you crawl past is another reminder of the gap between wealth and poverty. And if you're going up that road to play tourist, that's wealth. Safer to take the Eastern route out of Truckee or Grayeagle. Much safer. Folks there are already committed to tourism, with no delusions of industry, not like the Pot Growers fool themselves into.

 

And once you reach Downieville's East side by crossing the bridge, the road drastically improves, and you can flow up smooth pavement through Sierra City (which is a tiny town of 240 people), then up to wider and smoother and faster road to Bassets Junction, population 40, hang a left onto Gold Lake Road and see what was looming over your left shoulder: the Sierra Buttes.

 

They are pretty. They are the high point of the northernmost extent of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, about 7000 feet tall. There's a road up to 5700 feet, to Lower Sardine Lake, which has actual trout in it. I saw a couple fishermen with a stringer of 14 inch trout as they tiredly returned to their campsite on foot. Good for them.

 

About 10 miles north of the Buttes, the Mohawk Fault cuts off California's sub-plate mess from the North American Plate and the Cascade Range, which starts on the North Side of the faultline. Its active volcanos from there to Canada. For the geologically inclined, like me, this is a big deal. This is the northern tip of the Sierras, which runs all the way down to Tehachapi Pass, where the Garlock Fault cuts off their southern end and causes Death Valley, itself having some faults in the same pattern as the rest of Nevada's Basin and Range. The Buttes are carved by glaciers. The lakes are where the glacier was. It is all melted away, but it will come back if the snow is heavy enough not to completely melt in the summer. Forming glaciers isn't that hard to understand. It is all about accumulation that doesn't quite melt. If more accumulates than melts, it will eventually grow large enough to compact, and to move. And that's your glacier, right there.

 

We arrived at Sardine Lake and went for a hike, because it was midmorning, after two hours behind the wheel, and a little too early for lunch. We hiked along a trail covered in cobblestone-sized rocks up to Upper Sardine Lake. It is a Cirque Lake, directly below the sheer cliffs of the Buttes, which despite being carved by glaciers have continued serious erosion since then due to being made of extremely brittle rock, some of which is marble, some greenstone, and all containing rough chunks of deep-sea chert within them. Chert only forms at least a thousand miles out to sea because it requires uncontaminated dissolved silica-rich seawater for its source. No rocks, no mud, no terrestrial surface stuff. Just deep sea water. There are mountain high cliffs of it north of San Francisco, where there's a great view. Very famous to Sedimentologists. And photographers. Some of that same chert is 250 miles away in the Sierra Buttes, at 6000 feet. And ain't that a heck of a thing?

 

We drove 4 hours all told. Two hours there, two hours back via 49 to 89, 89 to 80, 80 to 20 and home. Beautiful weather. Roads were good until we got to the Nevada County stretch of 89 where the road turned into superslab poorly paved with asphalt. Terrible and uncomfortable, those last 20 miles before Truckee. Summer driving in the Sierras is all about the rivers, trees, wildflowers, mountain scenery, and wild places. Having just driven those, I think my dreams of a railroad up there for tourists is a bust. It is too far, serving too few people. Too many resources for not enough payoff. All the more important to visit there while we can. Someday getting back there is going to be expensive, and the locals will have a tough time growing enough food for the winters and probably have to abandon it until such time as regular food runs are possible again. However long that may be.  

Someday many roads in the sierra will look like this. Enjoy the pavement while you can. It is not forever.

New Soviet Empire Growing

Vladimir Putin is definitely putting on the clown suit. He's been doing a bunch of different ego boosting nonsense over the last year, while assaulting Ukraine and seizing the oil and gas pipelines and going after mixed territory, leaving the world to think he's gone straight from Sudetenland to Full On Crazy. Putin was KGB, then FSB. He's not stupid. Or wasn't anyway.

I just watched the new Jack Ryan movie, a Clancy reboot with modern politics and current events. Less Cold War, more modern "everybody is our enemy" situation we find ourselves in now. There are some glaring mistakes in it. For one, the New York Stock Exchange doesn't start trading at 9:00 AM. It starts at 9:30. You would think someone would fact check that before making the film, and at least fix that in the AR sessions and editing. They didn't.

For another, the bomb at the end, in water, was likely to knock down the bridge because water transmits explosions more strongly than air. Knocking down a major bridge in New York City is still a successful terrorist attack, and would still crash the markets, and would still enable the basic plan to work. Essentially, they screwed up the movie because they didn't stop the bomb and the financial side would have still destroyed the dollar and removed America from the playing field of international politics, meaning the villain won. They ignored the impact on the markets, and the effect of a bomb in the bay and the panic of evacuating Wall Street, and all its long term consequences, with short term crash and panic being the obvious result in the real world. They cheated in the movie, ignoring this, going for an unrealistic neat ending, rather than a realistic "the enemy won despite our best efforts".

In the real world, the New Soviet Putin is crazy like a fox. While his ego is going seriously weird, he remains on his game with taking over Ukraine and quietly killing off the population or driving them out of the captured territory through merely suggesting that genocide and ethnic cleansing are not being talked about, which is talking about them, and suggesting its very much considered. It did, after all, succeed in Yugoslavia. They go away with it. A few leaders took the blame, but the lands are cleared for expansion and the world is watch. Don't tell me that the French wouldn't jump on this to clear Marseille of mad bombers, and the Arab quarter in Paris. French doctrine is be French. Being anything else in France is antithetical to their cultural imperative. Arabs can't be there because they refuse to be French, ever. They are an occupying invasion force with a history of suicide attacks. Obviously, they've got to go. If the French don't act soon, the Arabs will nuke them.

And now that Iraq has fallen to the ISIS murder squads, and they've immediately recovered the chemical weapons the USA long suspected were there, and the ISIS troops took pictures of and blasted onto the internet, we can only conclude that nuking Iraq is a pretty good idea. 30,000 USA trained and paid for and armed Iraqi police and troops stepped back and let ISIS start their slaughter. This is more than a failed state. This is an enemy. And Russia laughs, because Gulf instability means more oil profits, and oil demand, for them. Turkey keeps voting for Sharia Law Islamists, Kurdistan now has a stronger chance to form without organized opposition in Iraq, and Iran already marched troops across the border, which is an act of war. Since Iraq is a failed state, they didn't bother declaring, that I am aware, because they're trying to hold onto Baghdad. I think they're going to lose. Maliki was a failure, doing the usual oppress your personal enemies game to distract from all your failures. Once again, the last 6 years of presidential policies are resulting in death and likely genocide. Which is okay as long as you have a good golf game in Palm Springs, right?

I have been listening to a scifi audiobook called Germline by Andrew McCarthy, a CIA analyst in exactly the same way that Tom Clancy wasn't. The author has written a story about future warfare, taken to the expected technological extremes of 60 years of the Land Warrior Program, human cloning, and rare earth element mines being the battleground in Kazahkstan, an allegory for Pakistan and Afghanistan, both of which have rare earth elements and uranium. As pointed out in the story, electronics work by rare earth elements. Stuff like Rhodium. If you don't have them, you can't manufacture with them or get the special electronics tricks these elements allow. Strip mining complex mountain edges is why the Gold Country is in the Sierra foothills. Mountains and remelting rock tends to concentrate elements naturally, particularly if they don't bind into source minerals and get left with otherwise pure quartz, concentrated into the smallest volume and area, making mining them ideal method of extraction.

 

Most Russian lithium came from concentrated second boiling pegmatites in the Ural mountains. A long narrow range where European plate attaches to the Asian plate. The writing style in the novel is sort of gonzo plus neuromancer doing All Quiet On the Western Front. It is a war story, and the best war stories are really about how much you lose in the process. The friends, your self respect, your sanity. You lose those in wars. It is nuts to think anything else. Wars are fought with money, and those funding the generals are usually cheapskates, where human debris and death are perfectly okay because they don't count. Dead heroes are worth more than live war wounded. Dead heroes can't complain the events didn't happen like that, and dead heroes are great recruiters for the hopeless and gullible. Join the army, save your country.

People joke that the Cold War is over, but we have a new war with the Russian Empire, which is already starting to take back its territory and recover its exploitation. Blame the FSB and vodka and oligarchs making it impossible for small business to work there. It's go big or go home in Moscow. If you want small, you have to leave Russia. That's how it is. No point arguing about it. A big company can afford to payoff the FSB, or work with them towards shared goals, pay for internal security, and results in the biggest profits for the top staff and owners. Russian mafia are those owners. And they are completely ruthless sociopaths. The head of Lukoil was an oil billionaire and was captured and jailed, spawning many interesting action movie plots, mainly because Putin wanted the money for himself. And now he has it. Russia is seriously nasty. We are kidding ourselves that what they are up to, recovering the USSR to exploit it all again, won't end badly. And cause a Land War In Asia.

We've lost Iraq. We don't care about Ukraine because we're trying to get Turkey to put in a pipeline instead, bypassing Russia for the same oil. Turkey is fighting an active war with Iran and Kurdistan, both of which want the eastern part of their country. It is in Russia's best interest for those wars to go hot so the pipeline won't get built, or gets blown up so much it is useless. This raises the price of oil and makes their only source of hard currency more valuable. Middle East instability is in their literal best interest. I imagine they are selling weapons, particularly anti-aircraft and probably methods to deliver chemical weapons payloads to their enemies via rocket, just to insure this keeps going as long as possible. And if things start to stabilize there, it is in their very best interest to blow up some oil loading platforms like Ras Tanura. That's the nightmare scenario.

 

It's as bad as nuking Tel Aviv, for all the trouble it will cause. The current US president won't even meet with the Israeli PM anymore, and has drastically increased the threats to Israel. And the Jewish voters in this country all voted for him, twice. Do they hate Israel? Will they vote for the next anti-Semitic president too? They used to be so vocal about that, but these days: silence. Honestly, the Middle East is nothing but zealots. They're going to shoot each other until they run out of bullets, and then they'll switch to swords. And when the swords break, rocks. That's the kind of people they are. Now that the oil is running out, they're way more desperate, more vicious, and getting their licks in before the easy weapons systems are all wrecked and they have to kill the hard way.

 

What is happening in ISIS is crying out for aerial bombardment. Blow up the refinery lost to terrorists in Mosul. Boom. Blow up the chemical weapons storage site they know all about at the Pentagon but weren't allowed to visit under Saddam or Maliki. No excuses now. Boom. We've lost Iraq. No reason not to destroy everything the ISIS guys can use against us. The entire population stepped aside to let them, so clearly they agree with ISIS as the guys who are more just, more right, and answering their deep abiding cultural need to slaughter everybody else. This is what happens when you try to force multiculturalism on a population that measures itself by how many blood feuds they have running, and how many enemies they've killed. Its just gotten back to normal, is all. From before Saddam's regime. He said we would reap a whirlwind by killing him. He was right.

ISIS is Obama's legacy in the Middle East. The instability in the world, and the regrowth of the Russian Empire, and those genocides are a direct result of the LAST SIX YEARS. Not of GWB, but BHO. Anybody who keeps blaming Bush at this point, when Obama has clearly made everything worse, everywhere he's done anything... his is a failed presidency. How will you vote? That is as much as you can do for this international mess.

 

Meanwhile, how will you adapt to the evolving gasoline price increases, the eventual sanctions against the USA for things like spare parts to keep your car running, silly electronic toys, and the exporting of your job to China or India? Every time the phone rings, and an Indian drip is trying to con you for money, which president made that happen? Bush had the Do Not Call List. Obama? "The Last Six Years... oh wait."

Enjoy your week. I'm sure it will be lovely. It is summer now. Soon enough we'll be looking back on the good old days, before 9/11, when international politics were international problems that had nothing to do with us. Sigh.

F1 Grand Prix of Austria

Good race, clean and fast. Track is in great shape so the speeds were up, no wrecks. The biggest problem for drivers was brake wear. There's 200 feet of elevation change in a lap, and the corners are harsh and F1 drivers go as fast as they can. Several cars retired from the race with blown brake discs, which explode from centrifugal force and extreme wear. Sebastian Vettel, 5 time world champion is not having a good year, and shortly after the race start his transmission threw up its hands and opted not to work. Then it did, just as suddenly, but he was a lap down and out of the points. After half a race they retired the car, withdrawing him from the race. He has not finished three of the races this year, putting him well out of the points for any kind of championship run.

Kimi Raikonnen, Finnish F1 driver famous for his curt answers to long questions: "Yes. No. I went faster.", ended up 10th, continuing this year's streak of underwhelming performance. Many are suggesting he retire at the end of this year. F1 is usually a young man's game. Ego and immortality are required, and must be matched by fearless skill. If you aren't fearless, you can't apply the skill, and without both those, you can't compete.

Fewer cars than usual retired from the race from overheating at least. It was mostly brake problems. And thanks to a lack of wrecks the only obvious puncture was Daniil Kvyat, young Russian driver. The Grand Prix of Russia is still on, despite the genocide in Ukraine and the increasingly eccentric megalomaniacal actions of the Soviet Dictator, Vladimir Putin. We may as call him a Soviet Dictator, because he's clearly trying to get the Band Back Together. Whatever that's worth.

The race was good, the track was good, I'm glad its back in service. I just wish they'd offer alternative setups for the cars, with non-electric engines. The drivers look like skeletons, they've lost so much weight to keep the cars legal, and the overheating problems and acceleration wouldn't be an issue if they didn't have the damned batteries for the KERZ system. Lose those 200-400 pounds of battery and the cars would return to proper speed, and the drivers could eat a burger sometime. They're basically living on bacon these days. How sad is that? A big bowl of bacon. No carbs. The fats will provide energy, but they're starving. Looks terrible. This is asking too much.

Overall, the teams are mostly surviving in spite of the new car engines, not because of them. A lot of formerly good drivers are being held back by this, and it is hurting the sport. They can't get rid of the engines from the series due to a 4-year iron clad contract, and the R&D costs won't be repaid until 3 of those years are done. But if the races stay dull, they'll lose their audience, ticket prices will drop and the money will go out of the sport, followed shortly by the quality. Ferrari are really seriously talking about dropping F1, and Renault is too. Honda is coming into it next year, but if their cars are just as crippled by bad electronics and overheating as the current cars? It won't fix what is wrong.

Really, power to weight ratio remains king. If you only break even between power and weight to a lighter car without all the weight of batteries, the answer is stupidly obvious. Austria was decided by brakes. Lower weight means the brakes would have lasted so they could have gone into corners harder. Lower weight means the sideways grip wouldn't be fighting as much momentum, so they could corner sharper and take tighter lines, able to pass more easily. More passing means more exciting race. All the KERZ gives you is a quick passing boost, and you could easily do that with variations in the valve timing, since F1 cars use pneumatic valves, powered by air pressure rather than springs. That gets your RPMs up again, since fuel management keeps them down at 12,000. That sounds like a lot until you realize they used to run at 18K RPM.

Dump the batteries, F1. It isn't working. 2.4 L Turbo and 3.0 L normal aspiration engines instead. That will put the fun back in the cars. And drops them about 400 pounds of weight. Let your drivers eat a dinner roll. Maybe see about some alternative fuels, if you want. Audi TDI won LeMans again, running diesel. Can F1 do that?

NASA Wants To Lasso Asteroid Into Orbit

How can this possibly go wrong? The same NASA that put a non-parabola into orbit in the heaviest satellite ever launched, the Hubble Space Telescope. Utter bonehead move.

 

The same NASA that plowed a lander into Mars at Mach 6 because they couldn't convert back and forth from Standard to Metric measurement systems.

 

The same NASA that burned up not one, but two TWO space shuttles, mainly through poor understanding of Materials. Materials which are core to engineering of the shuttles.

 

NASA is likely to discover that most asteroids are not just one piece, but multiple chunks loosely drifting together by microgravity. Attempting to shift their courses, as if they were a single solid rock, is almost certain to  exceed their gravitational attraction so instead of one rock brought into orbit, we get a shotgun blast of meteors going many places, including here. Tsunami generating from ocean strikes. Lava throwing and volcano erupting, and fires and dust clouds when they hit land. The Meteor Crater in Arizona was only 75 feet across. The blast that resembled a nuke going off in Russia last year was merely 30 feet across, and exploded in the atmosphere. The Tunguska blast knocked down trees in Siberia and lit the sky in Paris and London and Tokyo. If they hit the seas, 70% of the earth's surface, the impact is capable of super-rainstorm cloud cover, nuclear winter and the next ice age. There would be meteor strikes all over the globe, only rarely cities since most land is empty. 

 

And all caused by NASA because based on their history of accidents, all future attempts are likewise doomed by their known incompetence. If NASA had to get work based on their job history they wouldn't even be let near the deep fryer at a fast food franchise, they are so accident prone. They aren't careful. They don't check their work. They don't doublecheck for errors. Wartime engineering was fast and loose, but it was better than NASA who spends far more for each project. I don't understand why they aren't defunded  after the last disasters. Letting them near an Earth-killer object? No way. That is crazy.

Limits and Localized Happiness

I can't fix the world. This should be my mantra. It's infuriating though. We have to live with the stupid decisions of others. One of the great conceits of survivalism is that you can and should step back and let others get their Darwin Awards. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting what to eat for lunch. Sometimes that lunch is you. I think Survivalists need to bite the bullet instead of shoot it, and get involved in their communities, especially charity things, and recruit self sufficiency and civic pride. Local stuff.

 

Be valuable to the community and they probably won't turn on you like hungry cannibals when the going gets tough. And don't say that never happens. Whose house gets left to burn in the wild fire? Which levee is saved in the flood? Which school district gets the computer teacher and school books replaced? All politics is local, and we should focus our efforts locally, on the things we can actually change. Start with yourself and work outwards.

 

One huge source of misery is a dirty car. Wash the outside. Wax it. Rainx the windows. Then clean out the trash and vacuum it and wash the windows and instrument panel and wipe off the dust. Check the tire pressure. Change the oil. Change the air filter. That's 10 minute job that's around $20 for the filter, and makes a huge difference to engine power. Take it for a tuneup, including valve adjustment. These things can add 10 mpg to your fuel economy. Clean windows, inside and out, and clean instrument console and clean interior with no rustling, no stains, from the inside it will look like a new car, and when you drive, you won't be thinking about how your life sucks because your car sucks. Your car doesn't suck. It was dirty. That was your fault. One day of your effort takes off 20% of your stress, gone, fixed. This is one of the first things you should fix in your life.

 

Next is clutter. It makes a small space feel even smaller. If you bump into stuff you can get really manic, and panicked, and miserable. Get rid of the clutter and the space you can afford will feel bigger and some of that panic will evaporate. Sell what you can, rather than pay to keep it in storage. Give away to charity what you can't sell. Toss what charity won't take. Most cities even have free places to get rid of electronics. Do that. If you aren't using it, you don't need it. Once you have less stuff in your living space, you will find a huge sense of relief because you now have space to turn around in. This is a big deal. More than you realize, until you've done it and then you'll understand what I'm talking about.

 

Clean the rest of your living space, one item at a time, thoroughly. Clean the surface of your TV. Vacuum off your speaker grills. Blow the dust out of your PC. Suddenly stuff that was kinda fritzing out starts working properly, fast like when it was new. This is because dust is an insulator and heat is the enemy of electronics, like dust is the enemy of optics. A clean TV has a sharp picture. There's a lot to be said for Spring Cleaning. Some of that dust might have been making you sneeze or causing you headaches. You might feel better now.

 

Next thing is your body. Are you getting exercise? Are you getting enough? Instead of joining a gym, look around and see if there are any laborious chores you need to get done. Do those first. Are you tired now? You just saved money by exercising without a gym. I am a huge fan of Audiobooks because I can listen to them while walking, which is serious exercise here in the mountains. I strongly recommend audiobooks because you will exercise for longer periods and not even notice you are doing so because the book distracted you. This is immensely healthy. And online libraries like Library To Go, or your state's equivalent, allows net loans, so you can get them online rather than going to a physical library and borrow CDs, which most libraries have. A surprising number of people don't even have a library card. Weird, since they're being taxed for it. Bring your utility bill or a bank statement to prove residency. They usually require that for a card to be issued. This is massively cheaper than Amazon or bookstores. And you don't need to store the book once you've read it. You do need to actually read it, however. There's a degree of commitment required. Of course, if you listen while you exercise, it is handled soon enough. I know nearly all modern cellphones will do this. But MP3 players are also cheap, and with all the Apple Cultists around, an iPod will also work. So now you're not bored when walking. Win.

 

Do you own a bicycle? Do you ride it? When was the last time? Walk most days. Ride some days. Getting your bike back into shape is usually a matter of a cheap hand pump for the tires (Walmart or Home Depot), and silicone spray lubricant for the chain. Wipe everything down with a rag first, then wipe off the black crud that oozes out of the chain. If you have to buy a new chain, they sell those at Kmart and Walmart and Amazon. Price shop. Same with tires and inner tubes. When in doubt, buy cheap and durable rather than expensive. After all, you might like cycling and want to upgrade to something fancier or more comfortable.

 

Can you cook? Try a new recipe. Buy the ingredients cheap and fresh. Find the local discount grocery. Tons of online recipes. Your library will also have lots of cookbooks in the Nonfiction section. Every cuisine you can think of will be there. Learn the tricks, decide if you like the result. Throw a dinner party for friends with what you've learned. It is cheaper than eating out, more fun, and utterly civilized. And you can show off how clean and tidy your place is, since you already did that work. Your friends will reciprocate, inviting you to their places for feasts they've come up with. This is far better than eating out, not just expense but quality and atmosphere too. Lower salt, better booze, no interruptions or noise from impatient and unfriendly waiters. Eventually you can get to the point where you visit the good markets, even the farmers markets, for the local food worth paying that extra bit for. Local delicacies are not to be ignored. Up here we have cherries and apples, for pies and nibbling. Back home in Sonoma County, we had seriously excellent wines and cheeses. What is your local delicacy? What do they make they are famous for? When was the last time you had some?

 

All these local things you can do, starting with yourself and radiating outwards, are a healthy alternative to worrying about Russia killing off Ukraine, or Iraq becoming the Caliphate of Islamic Terrorism. We can't fix those things. We're only able to fix things close to us. So focus on that, and when it comes time to vote, remember where the happiness is, and where the misery is, and don't confuse the two. Find the local happiness, and make more room for it in your life.

The Electric Car Ethics Debate

Electric cars are a fine idea. Only, the tech isn't there yet. They cost too much. They weigh too much. The require rare earth elements to handle the needed current for their electric motors. Their batteries explode if they get damp, and require serious cooling or they stop working. There isn't enough lithium on earth to provide batteries, even with the best battery technology available, for everybody. There's a whole list of expensive flaws. The biggest one is that only the rich can have them. Stratified societies end up in revolutions. And cyclic violence is persistent.

 

To an electric car fan, these costs are trivial. I disagree. These are critical limitations.

 

The reason I go on and on about scooters and motorcycles is they are NOT limited in the same way electric cars are. A compromise vehicle takes advantage of the small motor and light weight, adding a wheel for stability. If you are willing to go SLOWER, you can exchange the crash cage weight for a lighter car for drastic fuel economy gain. Elio Motors is making an ultralight trailing delta wheel trike which uses this basic principle of lightness for fuel economy. It is not super comfortable, but neither are electric cars. Nothing is free, after all. But it does keep the rain off, and it's stable enough, even in snow, thanks to ABS and low center of gravity. It is, more importantly, cheap to make from standard materials, so you can make them anywhere in any number and the whole world can have them without fighting wars. Even Africans can have these. Internal Combustion engines made of steel are infinitely producible, not limited. There are no have-nots.

 

Another reason I reject expensive alt vehicle cars is the cost. If a vehicle costs too much, it is pointless. If only the rich can have it, it is a rich man's car. A rich man has money to spare. A rich man driving around poor people gets resented, and eventually that snob stops being a Who and becomes a What, and the What is a motive with dollar signs. A kidnapping victim. Rich people are not used to thinking like this, but in 58% unemployment in the USA today, they should be. Desperate people do desperate things.

 

This is why an alt vehicle should be efficient and either dumpy or slightly embarrassing looking. Nobody resents the weirdo in the slightly slow English 1956 MG Bugeye Sprite convertible on the side of the road. They don't know he gets 60 mpg because the electronics stop working during a mere 20 mile drive and he ends up having to pay for a tow every other trip. If it were reliable, it is still a little slow because it has a small engine and is to top out around 50 mph because that's how fast it was designed to go back then. Its for a ride in the English country roads, between hedgerows and through broad valleys. Nobody resents drivers behind the wheel of a Caterham 7, the modern incarnation of the Lotus Super 7. Open top, open wheel, useless in the rain, and fast because it is light.

 

I think people like the Tesla, despite its supercar cost, because they really don't care what owning one involves so long as they can keep the fiction that THEIR lives won't change while everyone else is giving up gasoline and suffering the transition from a cheap transportation economy to an expensive one. We have organized our lives over commuting to work. Over the fiction that we can afford to associate with whom we like, and do what we want for a living. That is false.

 

That the Tesla will be able to go fast, modern 90 mph freeway maniac speeds is silly. Asphalt is oil. Asphalt is not free. Going fast requires smooth, maintained roads. Those cost money that nobody has anymore. The economy is crap. Cuts are everywhere, and the Federal Govt already announced a willingness and desire to dump maintenance of freeways onto states or sell them to private toll road companies, meaning without sufficient users, those roads won't have the money for repairs. If everyone has to pay to get on the freeway, they can't spend that money on gasoline, which means hypermiling, or alt vehicles, which really just means SLOW. Everyone will be slowing down to a sensible 45 mph where air drag is drastically less, and getting 85 mpg in a car based on a motorcycle with no air conditioning, no radio, and the passenger seat behind you, Elio motors cars or something like it, like the VW 1L.

 

People are willing to KILL to keep their conveniences, right up until others start shooting back, changing laws, and otherwise ruining their parade of Ego with harsh reality. Slow is affordable. Fast is history. Sorry if that offends, but do the math on air drag.

 

It is pure delusion to believe that prices will fall enough to allow everyone to have a Tesla, even the upcoming bubblecar cheap one. Because like laptops, there is a bottom price, and the more they build, the less lithium available, the more the lithium costs, the more it boosts the car price. Eventually much of the Tesla (or Leaf) car cost is the battery.

 

And then you start trading range for affordability, and that becomes a losing scenario when range drops as the battery wears out. Maybe supercapacitors will make up the crucial difference, but how long do those last under the heavy loads of electric motors. I learned to weld. That's using high current to deliberately superheat metal and move it around. Welding machines still require maintenance, because those currents damage them over time. Heat is also a factor, and is bad for electronics. The fancy F1 car engines are suffering from serious overheating of their batteries, to the point that cars drop out of the race with only a few laps from the finish. How sad is that?

 

In electric cars the components will need replacement before they stop working, or more likely AFTER they stop working because people are reliably stupid. How many miles is that? 100? 1000? Do you need to replace those capacitors monthly? Every 3 months, like an oil change for $1000? Calling this a challenge is sort of like not admitting to bad engineering, which is created by bad engineers. Still think this is better than fossil/liquid fuel? At what point is a more reliable motorcycle using home made ethanol or biodiesel both more reliable and more economical? Or is it time to move into the city crime zone housing market? Or get a job locally with a big pay cut?

 

Tesla is offering an electric car dream. And people are investing in that dream believe they will not have to change their lifestyle with the world, when the world has to change as oil goes away.

BOOK: Bootstrapper

Just finished listening to an audiobook called Bootstrapper. It is about a mother of three who divorces after 19 years of marriage. She has to learn to cope on one income, and try to hold onto her farm and still raise three sons, two of them teenagers. Farming is very hard. Many things can and do go wrong. And some investments do not pay. This is why farming is hard. If you treat it like a hobby, your results will cost, not pay. Every professional farmer knows this. They see hobby farmers as a distraction. As romantic fools. And often bad press. This is one of those kinds of stories. It is still interesting, but for humor its tone is more wry comments from the sons than thoughtful preventative wisdom. It is about things that go wrong that should have been prevented, but weren't thanks to typical non-farmer ignorance. Sigh. Still entertaining.

New York is Misogynist

Bloomberg continues to spend his billions telling everyone in New York City (and the world) to throw down their guns and sing Kum-Baiy-Yah. This does not work, unless you want the criminals to have an easier time of it.

 

This is clearly what New Yorkers want. They want to enable criminals. They understand that this means women will be unable to defend themselves from rapists, but on the plus side, if you are a rapist not getting shot by your victim is a great reason to vote for Bloomberg's Policies. On reflection, support of Bloomberg is support of misogyny, aka Hatred Of Women. I think that's terrible. I don't want women to be abused. I much prefer women who smile, not cringe in fear just because I am bigger than they are. I suspect women working night shift in New York City have a lot more to fear, every time there's a Make More Victims rally like the one on Sunday. It is particularly telling that Bloomber's Mayors against guns has actually seen many of those mayors arrested, charged, and convicted for serious felonies. Always for money corruption, but sometimes for murder, and even gun running. Isn't that ironic that his biggest supporters are actual criminals?

 

New York City enjoys telling the rest of America how to live, what to think. I think New York City needs to be a non-American, Anti-Constitutional special district, like Indian reservations. They're against the constitution, so lets allow them this conceit in exchange for taking away their TV broadcast frequencies. They can send to cable. And we can ignore them. America has nothing in common with New York City, the City of Victims. People who stay there deserve what they get. They can vote with their feet. Or they can work the night shift and get raped and strangled on the way home. That's a reality in New York City as it is. Banning women access to self defense is just Misogyny. There's no nice or polite way to say that. Women who consent to living there are consenting to being victims. Like the above fools who apparently want to be victims of violence. They condemn other less fortunate women to a genuinely terrible fate. What kind of a person does that?

 

Vote with your feet, New Yorkers. If you don't like the laws, leave town. Because you can't fight the law. Just don't move to another Bloomberg Mayor crony town. Half those guys are in prison, but the other half are still out there. Read that list, and realize more have gone to jail since 2012, when the article was published. There's nothing nice to say about Bloomberg in the face of these facts. He associates with actual violent criminals that happened to be elected to power. This DOES imply complicity. And is he someone to listen to when he is either complicit to criminals OR gullible? It is one or the other.

 

In the meantime, women in gun control cities are at greatest risk of rape, robbery, and murder. Those with the highest possession of concealed carry weapon permits have the lowest risk. How do ya like them apples?

 

 

The Future: Short Version

Economy worse. This is unavoidable. Economies work on inertia, and the housing bubble isn't fully burst, nor is the Derivatives bubble. Until those completely pop, we will remain screwed.

 

EU dissolves in fighting over payment of German debts caused by sleazy German bankers who gave Ninja loans in Greece and Italy and Spain, now bankrupt due to costs of plane tickets making vacations there expensive, thus vacation properties worthless.

 

"It's not my fault!"

Note the empty vacation condos and apartments all over Spain.

Most war machines powered by oil (esp. JP8 jet fuel), so wars drastically curtailed. Discussion of foreign wars just that: discussion followed by a sternly worded letter. No more implied invasions "necessary".  

 

 

Oil supply far lower, gasoline prices far higher. Most California fracked oil exported, leaving locals without oil but plentiful natural gas. Cars convert to CNG, pavement switches from asphalt to cast concrete slabs, electric cars remain a rich kids fantasy.

"Why I am exporting America's future!"

CNG

See all the green steel rebar? Concrete still cracks and shreds in winter snow conditions so that doesn't really last either. Better than just concrete but still not that durable under truck wheels.

 

 

 

International trade transportation shifted from containerships to sailboats due to cost of oil.

 

US dollar worthless internationally. Most states have own currency backed by something real, like food, gold, rare earth element mining for industrial use.

 

 

 

Rise of toll roads is already being flouted to replace currently free-travel interstates so Feds can shift money to pet projects, trapping the poor in place to starve and die.

 

High Enduring Unemployment means the jobs aren't coming back. Many of those people shift to vegetable gardening and cheaper food. Lots of eggs eaten, lots of potatoes.

 

US welfare state collapses. Entire Social Security scheme was a Ponzi confidence game anyway. Free medicine and welfare are done without someone working to pay for it. Since America has no jobs anymore, there is nobody to pay.  

"Immigrants are the future of America." - Obama, June 13th, 2014, speaking in California on immigration reform and the current invasion crisis. But what about American kids? Aren't THEY the future of America? Or are you saying American kids have no future? And since their educations are a result of your policies for the last 6 years, doesn't that mean you are admitting you destroyed our kids and turned them into trash with no future? Isn't that another one of YOUR failures? This is Obama's legacy.

 

Insurance has already collapsed. Rise of cheap neighborhood clinics that only take cash or food for payment. Decline of life expectancy. Many die from infections, malnutrition, and preventable illnesses. More die of malpractice at "alternative health". Dead is very alternative to health.

 

Franchise-based food corporations collapse due to shipping costs. Non specialized diners replace McDs, BK, etc, using local food sources and actual durable food prep rather than freezers etc.

 

Grocery stores become smaller while warehouses rebuilt. No more JIT (Just In Time) shipping model. No more cheap stuff from China.

 

Every town makes its own fuel or uses CNG (compressed natural gas) piped in from national fracking operations. CNG vehicles dominant. Many homes have CNG pumps in their garages. Fuel stations sell CNG.

 

US power grid unreliable. Most cities have own power plants or PV solar going to sodium batteries. Most homes have roof PV for own use, stored in battery banks and used to preheat hot water heater, run fridge and TV, and backup for CNG gas supply issues. National grid is often down, many states authorize regional/local cutoff as discretion of locals based on need. Rural power grid historical footnote. Air conditioning historical footnote. Daily showers with hot water historical footnote.

 

United part of States over. Divided States loosely associated for trade, with interstate tariffs based on various local and regional factors. Smuggling across state lines common.

 

Shipping anything is expensive.

 

Labor costs lower than shipping costs, so most things that can be done locally, are.

 

Panama Canal controlled by Chinese military occupation force. Alternative canal under construction in Nicaragua by Chinese contractors from Bay Bridge, many delays and overruns, various failures, project infinitely delayed to deny access to only alternative route crossing in Central America.

 

Venezuelan/Colombian and Canadian Oil both sold to China exclusively. Likely war to develop between those two countries over control of oil.

 

Mexican oil sold to USA and EU or China.

 

Nigeria resembles the set of Blood Diamond.

 

Muslims generally denied entry to most countries. International terrorism drastically reduced.

 

States with no self defense rights see drastic drop in women's education levels and far higher death rates, particularly from both suicide after rape and rape-murder.

 

Most high school graduates enter apprenticeship programs rather that attend college, as tuition costs are massive debt burden and educations useless compared to craft skills in real world jobs. Cost of repaying student loans becomes vote issue and states authorize student loan debt default protections, since most student loan scams out of state federal programs no longer recognized by Divided States Of North America (DiSoNA).

 

Main means of transportation is bicycle. Middle class with better paying jobs have CNG or alcohol powered scooters. Mom's use CNG powered bubble cars.

 

Wealthy towns have electric overhead-wire powered streetcars, usually vintage style (think SF muni buses, not Portland TriMet).

 

SF city for rich and their servants alone. Bay Bridge unsafe, unused. Bay Area largely ghost town due to drinking water rights going to fracking rather than people.

 

LA empty of its millions since only enough local water supply from rain for 150K people, not the other 12 million living there today. LA is a ghost town.

 

Most California San Joaquin agriculture over due to fracking demands for water, end of subsidized pumping to LA.

 

California levees fail. Much farmland lost.

 

Wildfires increase siltation of existing foothills reservoirs, ending most hydroelectric as well as value of reservoirs. Plan to dredge fails to get funding due to expense of diesel fuel required, govt contracting, and scandal of insider bribery over contract (utterly common Calif. problem).

 

Malaria and bird flu and meningitis actual health problems again.

 

Heroin grown domestically major crime problem.

 

Wild animal attacks significant cause of death. Feral dog packs kill many women and children in ghost towns and ghost cities like Oakland, San Jose, and Detroit.

 

Food poisoning from non-refrigeration or handling spoilage returns to being a major cause of death.

Ricketts and Scurvy common ailments.

 

#1 source of food protein is chicken eggs.

 

Local breweries and distilleries common and legal. Reuse of containers for bottling is typical practice.

 

Biodiesel more valuable than dope. Biodiesel is a better fuel for a motorcycle than CNG.

 

Electric heavy rail trains replace diesel engine trains. Most freight carried this way. Most towns get spurs.

 

Night Watchman becomes a real job again. Armed security common in response to stabby junkies, snipers, arsonists hired by competition, and burglars. With actual warehouses, there is now something to protect.

 

Home delivery is growth industry. Note that in Japan in the 19th century, rickshaw operators were known to die of heart failure and had noticed drastically shorter life expectancy.

 

Repairs of existing goods, despite costs of labor, cheaper than attempting to get new part shipped from China. Use of 3D printers to make local replacement combined with labor can fill gap between.

CNC programmer for 3D printing and machining growth industry.

 

General end to Materialism due to widespread poverty.

Rise of local crafts, including professional knitting, home canning, home shop furniture making, quilting, and local cobblers (shoe maker). Crafts taught via apprenticeship programs, church groups (not bounded by limiting laws which prevent solutions to problems like govt).

 

Gen X ends up inheriting Baby Boomers debts, votes for US default on pensions. US dollar collapses, destroying Baby Boomer retirement savings, resulting in Uncomfortable Retirement. Those Boomers who apologize to their kids live better retirements than those too estranged to ask for (and actually receive) help. 

 

General famine worldwide resulting from collapse of dollar ironically halting US food (grain) exports. Farmers won't ship if can't get paid. Food shipment receivers unable to cope with sudden demand from fallow fields and lack of local experienced farmers. World population drops 1 billion (note that 2 billion people are currently surviving on American food exports. I figure half of those will survive by turning skinny, desperate, and evil. Historically, famine leads to warlords and civil wars.)

 

Most African nations collapse without US and China subsidies. Foreign invasion seizes Niger Delta and controls their oil, possibly by NOT pumping it.

 

Europe goes green and builds nuclear power plants because they have no other choice.

 

Spain, Italy, and Greece kicked out of EU. Germany attempts to shift own mistakes onto remaining members. France and UK leave EU over debts.

General US withdrawal from global issues and intervention, due to US poverty and deliberate sabotage of US policies.

What difference does it make?

 

So yeah, those are the highlights for the next 10 years. Plan accordingly. Some of this will happen much sooner, depending on the death toll in Iraq and Ukraine. Any oil embargo would accelerate this. Any dumping of US currency, like Russia started doing a month ago ($12 billion and counting) makes this happen faster too. Also, say goodbye to the International Space Station. The Russians have the right of refusal to carry US supplies and crew to the station, and are already banning export of rocket boosters. Without Soyuz, there is no space station. It will fall out of the sky since there is some atmospheric drag thanks to its low earth orbit. That adds up. Eventually it becomes debris and Kessler Syndrome happens like in Gravity and Planetes.

In the real world, Kessler syndrome ALSO puts stuff into higher orbit, which breaks more stuff. The more stuff up there, the more chances for an orbital strike and unlike the movie, objects tend to be going at velocities in the 12 km/sec range, or faster. You can't see that coming. Your eyes literally can't relay the info to your brain fast enough. Orbital Debris is so scary that its a terrific argument to stay on the ground. And the Chinese have developed anti satellite weapons that can be launched by jet fighter at high altitude, and they WORK.

This is NOT speculation. They confirmed this, as did the USA and EU space agencies. This is a real thing. GPS is way out, so probably beyond reach for now, but maybe not forever. And if they miss they can keep trying. Now imagine your convenient satellite TV stations suddenly go offline and you find out the Chinese shot them down out of spite. The debris is now all over that orbit so can't be used for centuries. Cable TV jacks up their price since they are now a monopoly. Hahaha. Sucker.

 

Lest you think I am speaking ONLY from Pessimism, recall I live in the Golden State, where miners were supplied with opium so they would stand in freezing melt water straining gravel for gold nuggets and dying of pneumonia. America was rid of suckers, and a lot of merchants supplying miners took gold for payment. The guys selling the Blue Jeans with rivets to hold pockets full of gold nuggets (the actual stated reason for those copper rivets on your Levis) remain the top seller denim jean maker today. Wells Fargo stage coaches carried gold bullion to the mint in San Francisco. California has always been about exploiting suckers for money. Even when it kills them. Sometimes killing suckers if the preferred way to do business. The Golden State is soaked in human blood. And yes, that's terrible. We'd like to think things are better now, but look beneath the surface.