Quote from: comrade simba on Jan 20, 2025, 09:02 PMI try to keep three maxims in mind:

I don't know.
I don't care.
It doesn't matter.

Interesting set of maxims to live by.  I'm not in this club, as anyone who has read my material for a while knows.  Let me address them each in turn.

#1- I don't know.

What is knowable and what is not?  Can you know that 1+1=2?  If a tree falls in the forest and you weren't there, can you know if it made a sound?  If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, do you know it's a duck?  You could make philosophical arguments that show you can't know these things for sure, but my POV is they all reach my test of being beyond reasnable doubt.  So my POV is I know them as true, and you would need to present some really good arguments to convince me otherwise.

Of course, most things aren't quite so clear cut, but for every question out there, at a certain point I have enough evidence to make my own determination of the truth, and that's what I know.  To change my mind, you have to present arguments that show me why I am wrong.  I'm always interested to hear such arguments and examine them.  At least as long as the arguments are presented respectfully without insults, obfuscation, ad hom attacks, strawmen, appeals to authority and bad faith.  There are other things people will do in an argument to get it off track too, but those are the main ones I don't tolerate.

The Diner is supposed to be a place where people with a genuine interest in topics related to the collapse of industrial civilization can present their viewpoints and discuss them, in the effort to ferret out The Truth from the vast quantity of misinformation ejaculated on the net.  So I welcome members who enjoy telling me what they know also.  Then we can compare the differences to get a better understanding and hopefully get closer to the truth.  At the end of the process, hopefully everyone knows a little more than when we began.

#2 I Don't Care

I have spent the last 15 years digging into this subject and written reams  of material to examine what is going on.  You don't spend that much time on something you don't care about.  Kdog also has spent a long time immersed in the topic, he cares about it also.  It's probably the most important question of our time, so it's hard for m to understand how so many people don't care about it.

#3  It doesn't matter

If the future of the planet and of the civilization of homo saps doesn't matter, what does?  We may just be a fly speck in the universe and when we're gone nobody will be around to care, but WE ARE THE FLIES.  So what happens does matter to us.  Does what we say here matter?  Well, since so few people read it, it doesn't matter to the vast majority of the global population, but it DOES matter to those of us who are members of this flyspeck on the internet on the flyspeck of the planet.  If the Diner doesn't matter to you, why bother spending time chatting here?

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on Jan 20, 2025, 08:55 AMYou are in the cooler for 24 hours for being an idiot.  You posted something that was drawn 75 years ago and you presented it as absolute fact.  Deliberate obfuscation violates Diner rules.

Jesus K-Dog you've got to be kidding.

While I understand that in this place I am stuck with the audience I got, I've taken EE classes and I know damn well people who can do that can at least THINK.

You asked for something and I damn well provided it. Hubbert's graphs of US and World oil ARE quantatative, and they are absolute fact, published in science journals, and his estimates are his estimates and if you don't like them that's fine. But you ASKED for his quantative and I provided it.

You don't like him having drawn them up in 1956? Not my problem. You don't like that those quantatative numbers don't match reality? Not my problem. He drew his line in the sand, and it worked in the US, through 1970. And then one day it didn't. This isn't political theory and relative concepts....he posts volumes and years. Compare those for the US or World to reality and there is only one conclusion that can be drawn. Once you get there, you can then "but but but" all you'd like, any way you'd like.

Quote from: comrade simba on Jan 20, 2025, 04:35 PMHubbert's graph peaks at 12.5 billion barrels a year. He just stopped the upward slope of the bell curve too soon.

He did. But he did it because, using the method he used and outlined in that paper, he HAD to. The volume output was the result of his independent variable, which was the presumed oil reserves and resources available. Without it being larger than it was, he couldn't get the peak higher.

It is one of the HUGE disadvantages of this method. Another is that a US free market development scheme is active, which is NOT the case for most countries.

Quote from: comrad simbaThe real thing to be argued is when the top of the curve is / will be reached.

It already has been, for the world anyway. Peak oil, the most current one, and #6 claimed or occurred this century, was 2018. We've been living in a post peak world for 7 years now. <yawn>

The record for the world living in the post peak era is closer to 15 years, as global peak oil in 1979 wasn't surpassed until somewhere in the 1993-1994 timeframe, if memory serves.

Quote from: comrade simbaI personally figure the west's reserves will decline (frak magic no more) at the same rate arctic/Russian oil will come on line. Decay in the west, progress in the ROW for a generation (13 - 20 years)

Hubbert's method wasn't about reserves, those numbers are way too small to generate any of the peaks he claimed. He needed to start with resources, and then work backward into reserves+resource numbers. As peakers all know, part and parcel of this is the reserve growth problem. That was figured out by the USGS more than a decade ago now, so one of the new things needed to do when trying to figure out global oil production is the resource to reserve conversion ratio. That work was completed by the EIA in the late 201X's, and the USGS was already using it in a less granular leve in 2012 for their World Assessment update of that year.

RE - heh heh... I gotta make sure I don't get all heated up and start to ARGUE!
For my maxims, not everything fits into all three categories - I specifically said "Few things cannot honestly be put in at least one of those categories." Opinion and belief are not verified facts so the bulk of stuff never makes it past I don't know. That's just me, anyway.

IMO, for the record. #1 applies to AGW. Global warming trend is upward - no argument there. #2 applies here as in hey man, if I gotta move north so be it. #3, It doesn't matter, is also sort operative here in that it is subjective ie, I don't own coastal real estate. Rather than OMG hair on fire megaphoning from a soapbox I entertain myself looking at maps and speculating on what goes under, how it may affect populations of animals (including humans) etc. Being interested is different from "caring". After all, I'm just killing time 'till time kills me.

TDos - I can't find a simple chart showing production of crude and nat gas from say the 80's to current. You got something handy? "It's not real 'till you can graph it!"

Off to the Trumpi threads. Gonna be a fun week, heh heh.

Quote from: comrade simba on Jan 21, 2025, 12:50 PMTDos - I can't find a simple chart showing production of crude and nat gas from say the 80's to current. You got something handy? "It's not real 'till you can graph it!"

Here is a link to the EIA international energy statistics.

https://www.eia.gov/international/data/world


Click on "Data" tab.
CLick on "Petroleum and other liquids" title.
CLick on "Annual Oil Production and Other Liquids"

Go down a few lines and select "Crude Oil and Lease Condensate"

That strips out all the HGLs and liquids that aren't oil at the well volumes.

Little slider bar at the bottom scrolls back and forth, back to 1973 anywhere. Units are million barrels per day.
2023 was about 1 million barrels a day light of the peak annual volume in 2018.

Quote from: comrade simba on Jan 21, 2025, 12:50 PM#2 applies here as in hey man, if I gotta move north so be it. #3, It doesn't matter, is also sort operative here in that it is subjective ie, I don't own coastal real estate. Rather than OMG hair on fire megaphoning from a soapbox I entertain myself looking at maps and speculating on what goes under, how it may affect populations of animals (including humans) etc. Being interested is different from "caring". After all, I'm just killing time 'till time kills me.

So basically what you are saying is that since these effects don't appear to directly affect you and your life, they don't matter to you and you don't care about it very much because of that.

There are however secondary effects and repurcussions that will affect you, and much more affect your son who you cared enough about to pick up and move to find a decent school where he might learn something.

You may not own real estate on the coast, but millions of people do and as various disasters hit their stretch of coastline or their valley which flash floods from an atmospheric river or wildfire, they'll become more homeless refugees some of who will end up pitching tents around your neighborhood where the parks will then become either unsafe or at least unpleasant to picnic at with all the refuse and piles of human feces and the smell of stale urine  under the shade of the tree you liked to set up by.

Even if you don't get this particular blowback in your neighborhood because it's one of the ones with all the big houses with an HOA that employs private security to patrol and the cops  sweep away the homeless, you don't care because you don't empathize with their plight?

If I have a maxim I live by, it was expressed best by John Donne:



or more completely MEDITATION 17


PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

RE

Son is going to buy a hacienda in Mexico or Ecuador in the next couple of years with a nice little Abuela Cassita in back so I can raise goats and turnips again. No, I don't give a flying fuck about 'merica as it is today, and if shtf before we escape, East Flannel Oregon is as good a place for a heavily armed white motherfucker like me to stand ground on as anyplace I can think of.

I'm an Epictetus fan, myself.

QuoteThe Enchiridion

By Epictetus

Written 135 A.C.E.

Translated by Elizabeth Carter

1. Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are slavish by nature are also free, and that what belongs to others is your own, then you will be hindered. You will lament, you will be disturbed, and you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you. Further, you will find fault with no one or accuse no one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you, you will have no enemies, and you not be harmed.

Aiming therefore at such great things, remember that you must not allow yourself to be carried, even with a slight tendency, towards the attainment of lesser things. Instead, you must entirely quit some things and for the present postpone the rest. But if you would both have these great things, along with power and riches, then you will not gain even the latter, because you aim at the former too: but you will absolutely fail of the former, by which alone happiness and freedom are achieved.

Work, therefore to be able to say to every harsh appearance, "You are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be." And then examine it by those rules which you have, and first, and chiefly, by this: whether it concerns the things which are in our own control, or those which are not; and, if it concerns anything not in our control, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you...

Quote from: comrade simba on Jan 22, 2025, 03:40 PMSon is going to buy a hacienda in Mexico or Ecuador in the next couple of years with a nice little Abuela Cassita in back so I can raise goats and turnips again. No, I don't give a flying fuck about 'merica as it is today, and if shtf before we escape, East Flannel Oregon is as good a place for a heavily armed white motherfucker like me to stand ground on as anyplace I can think of.

I'm an Epictetus fan, myself.

Given the fairly rapid progress of global cooking and the fact running A/C in countries with energy deficit will be problematic,  I'm not sure it's the best location for a retirement casita.

Far as Epictetus is concerned, I'm not sure the things he classifies as in our control really are, and the ones he labels not can always be ignored.  So it's not a real clear cut division.  What are the "lesser" things not to be carried away with?  At what point is something important enough to care about, even if it's not in your control?  Property may not be in your control nor is taxation, but if your taxes are raised, the tendency is to care about that.  Few people are at peace with having their taxes hiked up.  Particularly when the taxes are used to fund something also not in their control that they don't agree with.

RE

QuoteAt what point is something important enough to care about, even if it's not in your control?

For that you wanna go pure Advaita Vedanta. Once you get to the point of seeing the illusory nature of personal volition and responsibility you set the paddle down and relax, adrift on a shoreless sea.

QuoteFew people are at peace with having their taxes hiked up.  Particularly when the taxes are used to fund something also not in their control that they don't agree with.

Sharecropping, the landowner takes a cut. Ruled, the Monarch will have his share. Governed, the taxman will cometh. SHTF, the warlord will take what he needs. In simple terms, that's the nature of the social contract. Didn't you say something upthread about life not being fair?
I am at peace.

Quote from: comrade simba on Jan 22, 2025, 06:11 PMI am at peace.

Nonsense.  You're only at peace because currently the taxman's cut doesn't constitute an existential threat.  Once it does, the only way you'll be at peace is dead.  You either have to rebel and not pay up or you'll die.

A similar strategy is that of the ascetic or monk who takes a vow of poverty.  If you're OK with having nothing but subsistence level shelter and food, you're free of the taxman because of math.  Even a 100% tax can't touch you, because 100% of 0 is still 0.  Knarf here chose the monastic life, although it's not necessary to be at zero income here in the FSoA, simply low enough to be below the poverty line.  I have also done this for the last 25 years, keeping my income threshhold just below where once I took the standard deduction, I either owed $0 or I got an annual tax return, usually in the neighborhood of about $500.  My income from SS and my pension comes to just $80 less than the maximum allowed by Medicaid to be eligible for that.  For the 10 years prior to that I only worked part time, about 25 hours a week to keep myself at the poverty line.

However, you can't go lower than this and still not care and be at peace.  If you're homeless, even if you're OK with living in a tent, the Gestapo won't let you do that, they'll show up one day and toss it in the dumpster.  I've never had to face homelessness, the closest I came was after my divorce.    I had my mom to fall back on though and ended up moving back home with her, after 6 months living in my van while I worked 2 jobs and worked on my Master's.  I slept in the van and showered at the university gym.

Doomsteading is another method, but as you noted the schools out in the boonies ain't so great, so if you CARE about your kid's education, you gotta quit on it and move somewhere.  This was in the sphere of something you could control, but you weren't at peace because your kid wasn't learning anything.

Stripping yourself down to be able to be at peace and be happy with just what you NEED rather than all the things you WANT is fairly difficult to do.  You wanted a good education for your kid, but it wasn't an existential threat.  You could have stayed on the Doomstead and homeschooled.

Anyhow, no biggy, we all compromise sometimes on our philosophy.  Despite my Jonne Donne philosophy,there's a certain point at which I stop caring about a homeless person.  After enough years on the street, drug addicted and alcoholic, he's beyond salvation.  Kids in my 9th grade Physical Science class who couldn't do basic math and busied themselves disrupting the class fit into people I stopped caring about also.  Nobody's Perfect, even Jesus.  He got ticked off enough to throw over the tables of the banksters.  He didn't have infinite patience. lol.

RE

QuoteQuote from: comrade simba on Jan 22, 2025, 06:11 PM
    I am at peace.

Quote from: RE on Jan 22, 2025, 10:07 PMNonsense.  You're only at peace because currently the taxman's cut doesn't constitute an existential threat.  Once it does, the only way you'll be at peace is dead.  You either have to rebel and not pay up or you'll die.

Anyone who thinks taxes are an existential threat needs to harden the fuck up.

Quote from: RE on Jan 22, 2025, 05:22 PMFew people are at peace with having their taxes hiked up.

I said I was, and gave you specific reasons why taxation never bugged me. And then you dismiss it as "nonsense". I'm putting you on "ignore" for the rest of the month. I don't have a cooler button.

Quote from: comrade simba on Jan 23, 2025, 05:01 PMAnyone who thinks taxes are an existential threat needs to harden the fuck up.

Currently here in America, they're not.  However, in many societies over the millenia, the land owner would set the tax rate so high that when the harvest came in, after you paid the Crown its tax and the Tithe charged by the Church, there wasn't enough grain left over for the family to eat.  You'd end up eating the seed corn and not have enough to plant the next season.  Particularly if the King was at war and the treasury was bankrupt this would happen.

Quote

Quote from: RE on Jan 22, 2025, 05:22 PMFew people are at peace with having their taxes hiked up.

I said I was, and gave you specific reasons why taxation never bugged me. And then you dismiss it as "nonsense". I'm putting you on "ignore" for the rest of the month. I don't have a cooler button.

Well, now you know why we have the cooler.   Sometimes you just don't want to deal with somebody who won't buy what you are selling.  I can't just ignore people because the Diner is my responsibility.   So when I need a break from what that person is trying to sell, I turn them off for a few days.  But you are free to ignore me, I have no problem with that.

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on Jan 17, 2025, 11:55 AMhttps://poweringautos.com/is-the-smoke-from-a-lithium-ion-battery-harmful/

Info on the smoke.

Holy shit. Don't get caught downwind.

Quote from: comrade simba on Jan 23, 2025, 05:01 PM

QuoteQuote from: comrade simba on Jan 22, 2025, 06:11 PM
    I am at peace.

Quote from: RE on Jan 22, 2025, 10:07 PMNonsense.  You're only at peace because currently the taxman's cut doesn't constitute an existential threat.  Once it does, the only way you'll be at peace is dead.  You either have to rebel and not pay up or you'll die.

Anyone who thinks taxes are an existential threat needs to harden the fuck up.

Quote from: RE on Jan 22, 2025, 05:22 PMFew people are at peace with having their taxes hiked up.

I said I was, and gave you specific reasons why taxation never bugged me. And then you dismiss it as "nonsense". I'm putting you on "ignore" for the rest of the month. I don't have a cooler button.

.


Boy, this thread is vintage RE. I told you what I was, I told you why, and then you turned around and called it nonsense. From the Greatest Hits collection.

Quote from: Surly1 on Jan 26, 2025, 10:29 AMBoy, this thread is vintage RE. I told you what I was, I told you why, and then you turned around and called it nonsense. From the Greatest Hits collection.

I try to stay consistent. 

RE