The thin veneer

31 August 2008

It never ceases to impress me how quickly one can get into trouble out here in the Mojave Desert. On the whimsical excuse of finding some landscaping rocks, I set off towards the Rodman Mountains in my Jeep Rubicon with the intention of turning a few public property rocks into private property rocks. I've tried before to find the way south towards the lava flows to the gas pipeline road that runs behind the Newberry Mountains, only to get lost in a maze of braided stream channels. This time I took the road past the transfer station up to a BLM open route. The only place this route is marked is where the old dump road turns west. After that you are on your own. Not far up the wash I was flagged down by two offroaders. This being Labor Day weekend I'm sure the dirt bikers and dune buggiers were thick all over the Johnson Valley OHV area to the south. These two fellows were completely lost. They thought they were almost to Slash X and were somewhat dismayed when I said that they were almost to Newberry Springs and that Slash X was a long ways in the other direction. The older fellow asking directions (I guess guys do ask for directions) said, "well at least we have lots of water" and then they roared off in the wrong direction (guys may ask but then not listen). Just about every year a few people die out here, just a little ways away from a civilization that is just out of reach.

I got lost twice and had to backtrack when the boulders in the wash got too big to drive over. Finding the right braid in the stream channel almost depends on instinct. A few miles south of this mild farming community lies a rugged landscape where life is ruled by the ancient laws of instinct and survival, mistake and death. Somehow I get the feeling a that few other folks might be feeling that nature is not under our control. About two million people are headed inland in advance of Gustavo. Another half million or so Indians are waiting out a flood on high ground.

For these and others the thin veneer of civilization is stripped away, as Edgar Rice Burroughs would say in his classic Tarzan novels when some cultured English man or woman was cast into the jungle. I'm sure the motorhead fools didn't think this as they roared away, and never would until they ran out of gas, lost up some remote canyon. Neither do the motorheads pulling their high powered fizz boat to the lake behind their Hummer. Likewise for the motorheads gassing up their motorhome, pulling behind it their Ford Excursion, civilization is many comfort levels deep. Until, that is, a little storm or some other act of God, Nature, or man cuts off the juice of civilization.

• teosinte @ 19:13 

  The big one

  25 August 2008

  Last Saturday I was invited to speak at a local workshop about living with fire at the wildlands urban interface. I warned the organizer that I would go off the reservation. He said, "that's fine, come anyway, doom and gloom and all." It was a small audience, but I'm used to that. A few fire folks in a two bay firehouse on the south side of Apple Valley, a middle-aged couple that drifted in for entertainment, and the neighbor family of one of the organizers came to hear about native landscaping, fire resistant siding, watch a demonstration burn, and hear me preach doom and gloom. Although in fairness, they didn't know about this last event in advance. But somehow, over the last couple of years, I've learned to give an ultimately pessimistic presentation without disturbing anyone or ruffling any feathers. It's all in the words and style, not in the substance. For example, on the oil/population graph, rather than say peak oil is coming and we're all going to die, I point out that population is strongly correlated with oil production (consumption) and when the global curve takes on the shape of the U.S. curve then human population will likely track its shape. The people nod and go uh huh. But it doesn't sink in. It's superficial and kind of academic in an interesting way. Everyone told me it was an interesting talk and then went on about their lives. I've seen other doomers give the same talk in the vein of the end is nigh and we're all going to die and watched people go apoplectic with denial, scoffing, laughter, and even hatred.
  
  "Yeah, Tom and I were laughing about Guy's presentation," the workshop organizer told me as we had both help organize that workshop where Guy talked about peak oil and kicked over an ant hill of government bureaucrats. Nearly everyone saw Guy's talk not as a warning but a social faux pas. No, it doesn't sink in and it never will. Not even when the gas lines stretch around the block. Even at large conferences of geologists, where everyone should know better, hardly anyone has heard about or cares about peak oil. And scoffing at anthropogenic climate change has become a fad.
  
  As I've said before, we are in a buying opportunity the likes of which may never come again. Any spare cash I have is going into energy index funds, gold, and commodities. Enron, Worldcom, Bear Sterns, Indymac, subprime and the credit crunch – those were foreshocks. The big one is still coming.

  • teosinte @ 18:47 

    Ba‘al Zebûb's Babes

    15 August 2008

    These are happy days. The stock market is going up, the dollar is going up, gas is going down, gold is going down, and Preznit Dubya is on a bender at the Olympics. Economists are squealing with delight as it seems we can accelerate our unsustainable rush to use everything up before Jesus comes back. Banks can start lending again, making money appear out of nowhere, the Fed can pull rabbit after rabbit out of their hat, and maybe the house builders can even get back to turning perfectly good land into stucco shack ghettos as fast as possible. Oh, it's a good time to be alive. Except if you're in Darfur, Haiti, Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Ossetia, or any of those other unlimited projects.
    
    If you read any of my meager diatribes you know I take a light hearted approach to doom. That's because all doom is personal – all pain is suffered individually. We all come to that last thought before the light winks out no matter what wicked moves are played on the Grand Chessboard.
    
    How can I possibly be serious about the inevitable? It's all a matter of timing. I don't know when for anything except for some astronomical events and only what for a very few things. One what is that the value of petroleum in a time series plot will look like a V – we're presently on the left leg – and another what is that "in the long run we're all dead." That's why I love these mad rushes back into Denial. It's a buying opportunity just like going back in time. It's a chance to plant a few more fruit trees and stock up on supplies. And it's the funniest thing in history to hear the propaganda industry "explain".
    
    "International pressure on Russia is building," the professional propagandists say. Pressure from what, I wonder? Hot air maybe, blowing out of Washington? Hey, if they don't go back to being the losers in the Cold War like they're supposed to then we won't let them be in our private club for special friends.
    
    "Now," says Condi as she stamps her foot angrily. Some scheming might have been done in Crawford back in August of 2001 some think. Now the Babes of Ba‘al Zebûb are headed back to the ranch. One wonders what a terminal bookend to Dubya's term might look like.

    • teosinte @ 21:10 

      Writing on the Wall

      8 August 2008

      How low will it go? Oil dropped to $113.10 today, down by almost of fourth from it's summer time high. You can get a gallon of the cheap stuff now in Barstow for $4.079 a gallon. Look out for twenty dollar oil, here we come. Let the good times roll.
      
      "We told you so," the Cornucopians cackle while the Peakists hang their heads to keep from getting hit by another piece of falling sky. The stock market shot up in glee, the huge pickup trucks roared past me on the highway, even a few flags reappeared flapping from car windows. Meanwhile, we have nothing to worry about but the Olympic Games, China's human rights record, and John Edwards' affair.
      
      But what's really changed? Nobody has suddenly made any more oil in the ground and nobody certainly has found a bunch more. Quietly, very quietly so as not to disturb the Americans, a quiet little war started in South Ossetia. Just as quietly a huge armada slipped off to the Persian Gulf. Hmmm – Caspian basin, Persian Gulf – this couldn't have anything to do with oil could it? Naw, we have plenty of that stuff, just look at how the price is dropping.
      
      Meanwhile, back in the Heimatland, people who couldn't pay off their loans yesterday still cannot pay them off today. So Fannie posted a $2,300,000,000 loss in the second quarter, poor thing. Don't worry, honey, it's only money. Besides, the stock market is going back up again.
      
      Yes, no, everything's changed but still stays the same. In the housing bill that bails out Fannie and Freddie, in Section 3083, the debt ceiling is raised to $10.615 trillion (that's $10,615,000,000,000). If your ceiling is the sky and you raise it, what do you have but the sky? The sky's the limit! Whoohoo! It used to be that most of us peasants were a paycheck away from personal doom. Now it looks more like we are about nine Big Macs away from anarchy.
      
      The writing's on the wall, my dear.
      
      4: They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.
      
      5: In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.
      
      25: And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
      
      26: This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.
      
      27: TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
      
      28: PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.
      
      Daniel, Chapter 5.
      
      Now we know the Persians as Iranians but who were the Medes? As it turns out, they were the first Iranians.

      • teosinte @ 20:54 

        Solutions

        1 August 2008

        Do you feel sometimes like things are getting out of control? In Maryland cops delivered 32 pounds of pot to the Berwyn Heights Mayor, Cheye Calvo's house then the SWAT team showed up and shot his two Labrador retrievers. They had to chase one dog around the house to kill it. Oh and then it turns out that our very own Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is most concerned about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. So much so that us taxpayers must bail out the Chinese and Russians so they won't have to suffer any losses on their Freddie and Fannie stocks. And here you thought it was all about the poor homeowner. Yeah, you and I must simply be shit to fertilize the money tree.
        
        Out here in California the state employees might be making minimum wage for awhile. Let's hope they have money saved up to make their mortgage payments. Or maybe they'll take out a few more credit cards and pay big bucks interest until the new budget is approved. Aren't we in a fix? If you try to drive without a license or tags the judicial system will make an example of you. But you can't renew because all the workers at the DMV got sent home. And if you can't drive you can't work, and if you can't work you can't make your mortgage payment. Then another house goes into foreclosure and Hank will have to give more of your taxes to the Chinese. What a country.
        
        It's clear that some powerful interests made it so that automobiles are an absolute necessity for life in the States then went on to loose billions of dollars. People you know are probably going to retire to the poorhouse because of this as their pensions go under. It's unlikely Social Security will be there for them. Perhaps a few of the mad Scotch Irish will have to go kill some liberals to get even once their food stamps run out.
        
        There's no way out of the fix we're in – no silver bullet, no magic pill – only Cargo Cults and Denial. People say I'm negative but I'm not. I'm positive. I'm positive we are going to Hell in an hand basket. People want answers. People want solutions. The answer is that some problems don't have solutions. Sometimes the solutions involve pain and suffering. In our present situation the solutions might involve stocking up on non perishable food, such as hard red winter wheat and beans, and trading dollars for old silver coins; tightening our belts and relearning how to dig the earth with a spade.

        • teosinte @ 21:11 
          
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