Posts by Mincan

25

In the US, why are many prices doubling, tripling? What is going On?

by Fisherman in

jw
friends

gold, produce, foods, things comming out of china, turkey,... prices keep going up, up, up, umbelievably?.

.

does anyone have facts?.

Mincan

This time period reminds me of the mid-1970's...just when we elected Jimmy Carter...he "sounded" good, but he didn't know what the h*ll he was doing. Lord have mercy on us all.

Ah...no.

(Do you even understand the 1973 Oil Embargo? Do you realise the United States, up until 1970 was the Saudi Arabia of the world... the "swing" producer? Then after 1970, oil extraction has gone into relentless decline. In 1970 the United States extracted 10 million barrels per day, now it's about half that. By 1973, it was obvious that America would become an importing nation. Cut manufacturing, industry, exports, etc and you get a consumer Walmart bubble society, where everyone just takes out everyone else's laundry... when's the house of cards going to collapse, well it already has started.

(Used to be investments were made on business, not on investment...)

Jimmy Carter was the last sane President the United States had. He was the first and only to government fund alternative energy research, he even installed solar panels on the White House roof (you may remember this if you are old enough). He came on TV in a cardigan and told Americans the truth - their way of life was intrinsicly and completely dependant on oil. Turn down the thermostat, buy a smaller car, and invest in alternative energies so when the oil is gone we won't have a human die-off. If the United States had kept up that arrangement, since it takes about 30 years to change a societies energy infrastructure, we wouldn't be up shit creek now...

Americans got scared...what did they do, throw Carter out of office in a hurry.

What did Reagan do as soon as he got in office? Tore those solar panels right off the roof, cut all government funding into alternative energy research, and told Americans to stop worrying and keep on a' spending and gluttoning... how did he put it "sunrise on America" or some such nonsense...

Everyone says Clinton was a great President. I disagree, he was forunate enough to reign while America was having a free ride. The 1990s had the North Sea and Canterall discoveries (the last large discoveries we will have. In 2003 and 2004, not a single field of oil over 6 million barrels was found! To put that in perspective the world uses 85 million barrels a day. And discovery worldwide peaked in 1962) which allowed the 10 dollar a barrel oil we had at the time.

254

Why socialism will not work in America...

by zeroday in

jw
friends

the great experiment is failing.... .

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/11/mncuud91o.dtl.

Mincan

I read Rupert's book early 2005. The problem is that his assertions are sometimes so incredible and his sources are so secret at the same time. I have a hard time with them. Also, over the years, he has made predictions and they do not come true. I think he predicted a descent into a fascist, Peak Oil aggravated, collapse in 2005 for the following year. It did not play out. It is just hard to take him too seriously with stuff like that.

Here's the thing. I never buy into any predictions. At all. However, the basis for those predictions are what I think about. I can still agree something is going to happen, but like the WT teaches us, we can never know when!

However we have faced resource crises before and have innovated our way out of them. Pain is necessary for growth, I think.

Yes, but we've never faced resource crises at a dead end. In the 30s there was enough oil to swim in, and look how bad that was. Imagine something worse than the Great Depression, but without the agrarian infrastructure and no oil to support said non-existant agrarian infrastructure.

You mentioned diminshing returns, but you seem to fail to recognise their important in the grand scheme of things. Let me re-post something I wrote to people who believed that technology is somehow the same as energy. Let's remember what the 20 somethings at Google said to Kunstler when he gave them his presentation: "Dude! We've got technology!"

This is what I wrote:

6-7% increase in energy production and consumption vs. a 9-11% increase in GDP for a net gain in energy efficiency
You're right here - This is true almost everywhere. We continue to increase the efficiency of our energy consumption year after year globally. However, Our total energy consumption still continues to rise year after year. Increases in efficiency of usage only serves to offset our increasing demand marginally.

At current rates, China's energy demand is doubling every seven years. This is with increasing efficiency of consumption. (Incidentally, the same thing is happening in North America). I think a fundamental problem people who dismiss peak oil have is a lack of understanding of the exponential function. This also has a lot to do with the point of diminishing returns that our civilisation is close to reaching. Should we double our energy consumption globally by 2030 like we must do in order to maintain the status quo and keep our economic system from collapsing (for our economic paradigm depends on economic growth to function), we will consume an equal amount of energy equal to the total of all energy consumed in the history of civilisation! That is the exponential function! Since we have burned already half of the worlds initial endowment of oil since we started using it, we will need to PRODUCE the next half (or 1 trillion barrels) and consume it in the next 20 years.

We should know by now however that oil well physics don't work that way. The easy to get and thus cheapest stuff is gone. ERoeI has decreased not for economic reasons but due to basic laws of nature. When the stuff stops flowing out of the ground under pressure you have to pump it. Deep ocean drilling is extremely energy intensive. Etc.
Once the fixed costs of producing computers and internet infrastructure are taken into account, which would be decidedly less than those require for producing cars, extensive roads, and transporting bulky raw materials, the variable expenses of sending an email are relatively small, given that it would require only a few electrical signals.
This is where the point of diminishing returns limit comes into play. As civilisation grows year after year, we must expend energy to accomplish new growth while also maintaining the sum of all past growth. As we double our economic output we are now stealing the energy required to maintain past infrastructure. We can no longer afford to build new subways and fund the operation of the old systems for example. Future growth is dependent on the proper maintenance of the current infrastructure. Do you for example have any idea what it costs to maintain deep sea fiber-optic cables? Lots of money of course but also a large global fleet of cable laying and repair vessels. The maintenance of which requires a global shipping and port infrastructure and the training and support of a skilled labour force. Also factories for the manufacture of the cable and factories for the processing of raw materials etc.

You may be right that the fixed cost of producing computer infrastructure is cheaper than that of producing cars. I don't know...but to produce the computer infrastructure we need the whole of the car producing infrastructure.

My point is this. Our civilisation is extremely complex and complexity requires energy consumption to maintain let alone expand. Diminishing ERoEI will put a halt to all this. Sending email seems relatively simple and energy efficient. However, It does not happen without massive energy consuming infrastructure and support enabling it. Putting a letter on a pony may take longer but the animal can eat grass.

Even without peak oil...our civilisation is reaching a complexity peak. It is becoming harder and harder to solve our problems by introducing technology and increasing complexity.

254

Why socialism will not work in America...

by zeroday in

jw
friends

the great experiment is failing.... .

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/11/mncuud91o.dtl.

Mincan

That is an interesting reading list Mincan !
I have read "Crossing the Rubicon" (gave it away), I own the "Long Emergency". You may enjoy "The End of Oil" by Paul Roberts.
Matthew Simmons is probably the best author on your list. He is thorough, unbiased, and does not fall prey to conspiracy theories (I find Crossing The Rubicon hard to believe).
You might enjoy these sites:
http://theoildrum.com/
http://fromthewilderness.com/
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/
I don't always agree with Kunstler and he has definite bias but damn he is an interesting read. He updates his blog every Monday.
Cheers,
Burn

First off, I must say... so, I'm not "scum" (with or without quotations marks ) anymore?

Now, as for The Oil Drum, Clusterfuck Nation, and From the Wilderness (when it was up and running), I visit regularly obviously you must glean from my reading list.

I have read The End of Oil, but didn't find it as helpful for new ones as the books I've listed.

Clusterfuck Nation, hahahahaha, I post there as Brandon, or did for many months when I was a doomer. Perhaps you remember these posts, hilarious...perhaps.....? Kunstler is a quack, Ruppert is not. Both are biased, you are correct in stating Simmons is the least, he's worked for "the world's largest investment banker" and is definitely in the in-crowd.

254

Why socialism will not work in America...

by zeroday in

jw
friends

the great experiment is failing.... .

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/11/mncuud91o.dtl.

Mincan

Both require ever increasing inputs of resources (liquidity and petrochemicals) to achieve increasingly diminishing returns.

Most people will be shocked when they find out agribiz requires 10 times more energy to manufacture food than the food energy it produces.

That's right, 10 calories of hydrocarbon energy goes into every 1 calorie of food energy you stuff down your gorge.

As Oil peaked 2 years ago, we're leaving the plateau phase and entering the depletion stage (demand about 3 mbpd higher than supply)...without a depletion protocol such as Richard Heinberg's suggested one...

Mincan's Suggested Reading:

Richard Heinberg - The Party's Over, Power Down, The Oil Depletion Protocol

Matthew Simmons - Twilight in the Desert

James Howard Kunstler - The Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency

Mike Ruppert - Crossing the Rubicon

Kenneth S. Deffeyes - Beyond Oil

Julian Darley - High Noon For Natural Gas

33

ten pounds in ten weeks, weeks three and four

by Hortensia in

here's the new thread - we can update this thread for a couple of weeks, then i'll start another one.

it's so nice to hear what other folks are doing, and the folks who aren't dieting or exercising as a part of this group, your input is very helpful.

i appreciate kensei and mincan for instance for their advice.

Mincan

Well, I shouldn't be gaining anymore weight now. I quit taking that terrible anti-depressant Mirtazapine. Those electric shock "brain shivers" were enough to through me off the deep end, extremely fing scary! Anyway, I have replaced it with something that may be of use to all of you guys, man I really want to support you all.

Anyway, this may help those of you that may be also suffering from anxiety, depression, insomnia, and excessive carbohydrate cravings, and if you aren't being treated with Traditional Western medicine for them yet. Otherwise, you might want to try it in low doses, perhaps 50mg every other day at bedtime or something or other. Anyway, this is my post from today on the ADHD forum I belong to, forgive the manic nature of the post!

5-HTP!

Jesus, I don't know why I took so long to act on the things I was reading about it months ago.

My history, I've been depressed for over 10 years, and only when I had an in-patient episode this past September have I been getting anything to try to combat it.

I've been on the SSRI Escitalopram (Cipralex/Lexapro) for about a month and a half, all it did was kill my sex drive and ability to do anything sexual.
I've been on Wellbutrin another month and a half, all it did was exacerbate my anxiety and elevate my blood pressure.
I've been on Imipramine for one day, all it did was confuse me and put me into a severe hypertensive episode (woke up in the morning with blood pressure 190/90 and a pulse of 130 a minute, THIS WAS WAKING UP!)
I've been on Mirtazapine a week, all it did was put me to sleep all day, make me eat all day, and worst of all electric shock sensations whenever I tried to relax or sleep. One night I couldn't sleep for 2 hours due to an electric shock every single time I was about to doze off. Extremely scary.

None of these things helped my GAD, OCD, PTSD, or depression.

In comes 5-HTP. The first night I bought it I took one 100mg tablet. After an hour and a half, not only was my anxiety gone, but my mood was so elevated that I started dancing and singing out loud to music and feeling exhilarated. It wasn't mania, cause I've had that before. It also gave me a nice sleep, a little groggy, but not as bad as Mirtazapine (which I was still getting out of my system then as well) and the electric shocks only happened twice and very soft ones and gone forever now...

Today is my fourth day on it and my anxiety is gone. I don't worry about stupid **** anymore, so I think my negative OCD is gone, as I don't linger on thoughts that bother me, my mood is too good for that, as I want to enjoy things. It's motivated me to do the things with OCD that make me happy, like organising stuff and having things neat, as well as washing my hands frequently again...etc. It's reduced the somatic effects of Ritalin, especially the heart rate has slowed down all day. (I usually get 10 minutes or so about 45 minutes into a dose where my heart rate goes up, stroke volume increases, before going down again; on wellbutrin, this would continue the entire time of the dose! By evenings I was a nervous wreck!) It is somewhat calming and sedating, which is why I take my 100mg dose around midnight, it calms me down in the early morning hours and motivates me to sleep a little earlier than usual.

I am hesitant to say it's either all the 5-HTP or all placebo. Placebo has never taken away my anxiety, only made it worse. Now I feel like I'm ready to try to find a job and get started on things. I've felt this way for a long time but my anxiety has stopped me. I'm finding I'm way more social now, as anyone may tell from my recent postings, I'm posting on forums a lot more.

Important stuff to remember. Do not take this if you are on an MAOI, Tricyclic, SSRI, antihistamines, cough syrup, etc, anything that effects seratonin. You may get seratonin syndrome. Also, you shouldn't take more than 100mg a day. The bottles will sometimes say 100mg three times a day but this is crap. Anyone taking more than 200mg a day is sure to get either nausea, headache, dry mouth, or other elevated seratonin symptoms.

There's a lot to look up on the internet to know what will be best for you. You can usually tell by what it does for you. For some people it will make them more sleepy (me) and decrease appetite (me) and increase sex drive (me ). Some people says it does the opposite of these things in all three categories to them. This may effect what you take it for or if it will be effective for you. You may not have a seratonin deficiency. Also, if you have done something that has temporarily lowered your seratonin levels, like pulled an all nighter, done LSD, etc this may bring it up to a good level but then continuing to use it might be too much and give you side effects, so it's pretty cool to know what it is effecting you. For instance, I took too many yesterday and got a headache from it, and was extremely focused, it double whammied my Ritalin. Not going to do that again. However, I felt no anxiety which really surprised me, I'm very sensitive in changes of perception and it usually freaks me out, but with the lowered anxiety and calmness and lower somatic reaction, I was OK with it.

So I don't know, if you are trying to get off an SSRI, like Prozac, I've read in low doses (25-50mg daily) it might help with the withdrawal effects very effectively. If you are looking for a new anti-depressant, give it a try! what do you have to lose? Just start off low and see how it goes!

I will come back here to let people know if my ravings were all for naught. I doubt this is placebo though simply because its so reinforceing. Maybe it has a "poop-out" after awhile, but everything I've read says it tends to differ from anti-depressants in this feature. Some people only take 50mg 4-5 times a week and feel great! I'm suspecting 100mg at a time might be too much for me, I can definitely feel it!

(To emphasis (not to endorse) the power of this stuff, I did check the erowyn vault for experiences using this in a recreational/synergistic fashion with other drugs and alone, and have found that people said it makes cannabis highs feel like the first time, with more euphoria/less anxiety AT LOW DOSES! People that roll LSD (never tried it here) said the same thing, it makes it seem like your first trip, and will build up depleted seratonin reserves afterwards. Some idiots tried taking huge doses of it alone (500mg+ at once) and become very spaced out and have mild audio and visual hallucinations (less than cannabis) but generally do not feel good on the come down.)

Another note, this suppliment raises seratonin levels in the entire body, I've learned that seratonin is primarily stored in blood platlets and that it may not all go to your brain, this is why too much is not good, because too much seratonin in the body is not good. SSRIs, etc, block re-uptake, leaving more synaptic seratonin available in the brain, completely different mode of action, perhaps why there are less and different side effects from using this. AKA appetite suppression rather than stimulation, good sleep rather than insomnia, lower anxiety rather than more. Jesus, why wouldn't someone use this first? You can get 60 100mg tablets for like 8 bucks here.

Okay, I'm done my hyperfocusing rant!

So anyway, the reason it might be of help to you good folks here is that if you have any lower-than-needed seratonin your head, this will improve your mood, help you sleep, and decrese anxiety. However, it also has been tested on obese patients and people wanting to lose weight, and it is shown to be a modest appetite suppressant as well as reducing cravings for carbohydrates. I have read many online personal accounts of this curing binge eating disorders and the like and helping people keep their mood and motivation going when on a low-calorie diet, because it's common knowledge when you enter a caloric deficit on a daily basis, this will lower your brains seratonin levels!

So try it out if you think it will be safe for you. I encourage everyone to only try 50mg daily at first just to see how it effects you.

34

Can we PLEASE stop calling bs on people unless we KNOW them?

by avishai in

jw
friends

someone just called "bull$h*t" on a sick poster.

i'm getting really, really fed up with the petty witch hunts and hall monitoring.

fed up, i almost don't want to be on here anymore.

Mincan

Hear Hear! That's why I don't touch those post with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole.

25

In the US, why are many prices doubling, tripling? What is going On?

by Fisherman in

jw
friends

gold, produce, foods, things comming out of china, turkey,... prices keep going up, up, up, umbelievably?.

.

does anyone have facts?.

Mincan

US Dollar being dumped by world, there's simply nothing to back it up anymore, no natural resources, no manufacturing, no strong military, no strong nation... they import everything, they produce nothing of value that anyone wants, and the world is generally sick of their arrogant...

The petrodollar being dumped for the Euro is the death blow though...

60

ten pounds in ten weeks week one

by Hortensia in

haven't read the posts on the other thread yet - will do so asap.

in the meantime, had a long day myself, did not got for a walk, worked nine hours without a break!

busy day, had breakfast, only a yogurt for lunch, was glad to come home and have a bowl of cereal.

Mincan

Wow, that's insulting, this thread thinks you guys need advertisements "4 idiots"

71

Does the Camera Love You?

by compound complex in

jw
friends

dear photogenic friends,.

how does the camera treat you?

love you?

Mincan

Awesome CoCo! Captain Blood is my favourite Flynn Flick. A friend of mine borrowed it and I couldn't watch it for like 2 years! Thank God he gave it back to me before he threatened to kill me! I'm on his hit list now, lol.

Edit: Oh yeah, that pic on the previous page, can you designate the group vomiting area?

8

Antarctic is losing ice nearly twice as fast as ten years ago

by kenai in

jw
friends

hi all, love this board.

here is something some of you might find interesting:.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3181944.ece.

Mincan

Yes, it's a paradox. In the latest interglacial period (so called holocene) humans created the very conditions that allowed them to flourish (releasing the planet's stored carbon that it had taken 4.5 billion years for it to tuck away safely from the thin little candy shell we call the biosphere; make no mistake, this was being done 10,000 years ago with specific targets such as forests, we liked the savannas and created them. An excellent book to read on this subject is "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman) to and which in the end will allow them to be decimated. Civilisation was made possible by cereal crops, and domestication of specific animals, the conditions for these things to thrive is a very fine margin.

Mincan's Recommended Reading:

Anything by Jared Diamond, specifically "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail" and "Guns, Germs, and Steel"

For an outlandish viewpoint, turn to Derrick Jensen "Endgame" Parts I and II, and "The Culture of Make Believe" (Ive even been banned from his forum for disagreeing slightly with his point of view; been reinstated...lol)

Daniel Quinn, for an anti-propaganda viewpoint of civilisation as a concept and of memes, the genes of our minds.

and of course all the other books I've suggested