might as well say this here, too.
After Katrina devastated the shallow water wells around the delta, natural gas prices briefly topped $17/mcf and some folks got dollar signs in their eyes. With the advent of fracking, major new gas fields were opened up. "Utica", "Marcellus", "Barnett", and even venerable old coal companies got into the act drilling for coal bed methane. By 2007, Baker Hughes reported that there were almost 1800 rigs in the field in North America drilling for gas.
Well, the price collapsed, of course, all the way back down to around $2.50, well below what it cost to drill a new well and almost lower than what it cost just to keep the existing wells open. All the new wildcatters were driven out of business, many properties had to be resold, and the only people making money were the outfitters.
Enter Wall Street. Always eager to find new ways to fool the public, they started offering folks like Al Gore big, big money in order to convince the public of two things, one that there is a developing crisis under the label of "global warming" and two that US reduction of carbon-based fuel use would have an impact on it, and Wall Street could invent "carbon swaps" and "carbon credits" as yet another new financial vehicle to trade. Al Gore became a multimillionaire and just to make a point he put fancy lights all over his house inside and out in Oak Ridge so it looks like a christmas tree at night.
Infrastructure takes a long, long time to change. Adaptations to oil price changes and NG price changes take many years to work their way through the economy.... building NG pipelines to small cities takes time .... changing over millions of fuel oil furnaces to NG takes time ....building NG fueling centers and changing bus systems over to burn NG takes time ...convincing small town councils to change their habits takes times ....
Then, as prices for gas bumped along the bottom, Mother Nature decided to get involved. She threw us a series of extra-mild winters and extra-mild summers. Wall Street loved it as "proof" of their global warming thesis. The drillers hated it as more and more of them went bust. By the summer of 2012, there were less than 400 rigs still in operation. The media and the politicians are all shouting from the rooftops about the modern day miracle of new gas and oil production in the USA. They are practically guaranteeing full energy independence by 2020.
fat chance.
There's a funny thing about a fracked well.
The old, conventional wells, the oil wells, the mixed ones, and even the dry gas ones ... used to be, you just stuck a straw into the ground and the stuff blew out everywhere, the biggest problem was containing it. Remember "blowout preventers" from DeepWater Horizon???? And the stuff just keeps coming and coming like the eveready bunny, for decades.
Not so with fracked wells. Yes, there is shale almost everywhere....like the girl next door. But there's another thing you remember about the girl next door? Its very, very hard to get her to put out, maybe once or twice. After that she marries you and she never puts out again. Well its the same with fracked wells. Their initial output is pretty modest in comparison with a conventional well. But then, the output starts to decline almost immediately. After a mere five years or so, its hardly worth the bother to even collect it. You can try fracking it again, but that works about as well as divorcing your wife and then marrying her back again; she is still not going to put out for you.
Enter the winter of 2013-2014. Wall Street is trying to hide some "inconvenient truths". The ice cover in the Antarctic las summer (winter there) was the largest on record. ON RECORD!. Since the beginning of satellite surveillance over 40 years ago. Meanwhile the minimum reached in the Arctic was 1.7 million square miles greater than the year before. It was the first year that the fabled "Northwest Passage" through Canadian waaters, did not open up for shippers and tankers, in six years.
Even the wooly bears in my area had mostly or all brown coats, a tell-tale sign that something "different" is up.....
I don't know about you. You can do what you want. I have more firewood in stock at this time than I have ever had before. I did start the first fire late in September, a month ahead of schedule. the temperature right now is hard frost, not unheard of, no, its about "normal" for this time of year, but we have not had a "normal" winter for a decade. I also have over half my portfolio invested in natural gas companies.....with demand at an all-time high but the number of drillers approaching a twenty year low ... you figure it out .....
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Monday, October 21, 2013
Aggression
From time to time there occur feelings or accompanying actions in my character, or my personality, or my soul, if you will, which pompous pedagogues like to label "aggressive."
I was born weak and grew up physically small while I was most often placed into social situations where the people I had to deal with were both physically larger and had more money and influence than I did. However, like everyone, I experienced situations from time to time where people caused me pain, caused me harm, and I saw no beneficial reason for their actions but only a desire to cause pain or harm. My natural reaction was to imitate them and mirror their feelings. This generally resulted in further condemnation, punishment, and pain and harm.
After a great deal of pain and harm, I tended more often to turn my aggressive feelings upon myself, to deliberately injure or harm myself. In doing so I discovered that this often created pain and suffering on the original perpetrators. None of this is exactly rocket science although it does seem to be lost on most of the "psychiatric experts" of our day, who prefer a genetic or other chemical explanation to the outrageous suggestion that they themselves may actually be perpetrating more damage than they are alleviating.
After years and years of trial and error, of accumulating a vast array of experience tangential, inverted, reverted, and convoluted, I began to realize that there was never and is not and never will be anything "wrong" with me or my brain or my feelings or the things that I do. God loves me very, very much and the people who believe otherwise are simply trucked up.
Furthermore, after a long, long time, I began, slowly at first, to understand, more and more thoroughly, that the one thing that all of the people who have tormented me all of my life have in common is that the "need" me. They need to have me around because they need someone to control, to dominate, to look down upon, and to harass and punish and inflict pain upon.
And that little fact makes everything so easy. All I ever have to do to get back at them, to release my aggression if you will, to express myself, and to teach them the lesson that they need so badly to learn, is simply to abandon them and go off and have a good time somewhere else. It really drives them crazy....
...Like its going to do when the United States of trucking America collapses and all of the mothertruckers who have counted on their money to save them are going to realize that it is only so much paper and has no more value than sand. Maybe they won't starve to death on account of all the sandwiches there, but they sure will suffer. And I will exercise my greatest sin, and laugh.
I was born weak and grew up physically small while I was most often placed into social situations where the people I had to deal with were both physically larger and had more money and influence than I did. However, like everyone, I experienced situations from time to time where people caused me pain, caused me harm, and I saw no beneficial reason for their actions but only a desire to cause pain or harm. My natural reaction was to imitate them and mirror their feelings. This generally resulted in further condemnation, punishment, and pain and harm.
After a great deal of pain and harm, I tended more often to turn my aggressive feelings upon myself, to deliberately injure or harm myself. In doing so I discovered that this often created pain and suffering on the original perpetrators. None of this is exactly rocket science although it does seem to be lost on most of the "psychiatric experts" of our day, who prefer a genetic or other chemical explanation to the outrageous suggestion that they themselves may actually be perpetrating more damage than they are alleviating.
After years and years of trial and error, of accumulating a vast array of experience tangential, inverted, reverted, and convoluted, I began to realize that there was never and is not and never will be anything "wrong" with me or my brain or my feelings or the things that I do. God loves me very, very much and the people who believe otherwise are simply trucked up.
Furthermore, after a long, long time, I began, slowly at first, to understand, more and more thoroughly, that the one thing that all of the people who have tormented me all of my life have in common is that the "need" me. They need to have me around because they need someone to control, to dominate, to look down upon, and to harass and punish and inflict pain upon.
And that little fact makes everything so easy. All I ever have to do to get back at them, to release my aggression if you will, to express myself, and to teach them the lesson that they need so badly to learn, is simply to abandon them and go off and have a good time somewhere else. It really drives them crazy....
...Like its going to do when the United States of trucking America collapses and all of the mothertruckers who have counted on their money to save them are going to realize that it is only so much paper and has no more value than sand. Maybe they won't starve to death on account of all the sandwiches there, but they sure will suffer. And I will exercise my greatest sin, and laugh.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
feelings ...
(aside) Nina Simone's rendition of the song by that name, at the Montreux jazz festival, 1976, ranks up there with my all time top life art experiences. Check it out on you tube or someplace.
Life has given me cause to meditate and reflect, lately, upon the facet of my nature represented by my extreme non-violence, non-aggressive nature. From time to time I wonder, if circumstances came down to blakc-and-white, could I kill a man if I had to in order to keep myself alive? I do not know. I'm pretty sure I could kill someone if I had to in order to protect someone I love, though.
I have been taking an online college course in Human Evolution lately. I have a personal theory that the story of Cain and Able in the Bible has its metaphoric origins in the genocide of the Neanderthal species of hominids by the "Caucasian" race. Hence, white skin is the "mark of Cain". Some other time I'll try to do a blog entry on some of the details I have found. I'm sure its not a popular conclusion but there's masses of supporting evidence and I am by no means the only person to posit such a hypothesis.
Obviously I despise the aggressions of my people, made worse by their extreme efforts to hide, obfuscate, and redirect blame. Most especially the ones who exhibit it the most, i.e. the ones on top. Obviously I believe that sooner or later, God will make them pay for their behavior. Most likely their ultimate downfall will occur within my lifetime and I will get to witness it, maybe participate a little bit. After all my dad's name was "Sam", I am Sam's son.
I run some level of fear nearly all of the time. Although mostly its way in the background, it comes to the front very easily and often. It is common, for example, for me to be wakened from a deep sleep in terror, heart pounding, senses on high alert, and have no idea of what woke me. My parents started to single me out for special attention before I reached puberty. the counselors and the psychiatrists staunchly asserted that I would never be "cured" but would need their constant assistance all of my life. Breaking free from their leeches took inhuman strength.
Fundamentally, I could not tolerate a minute more of my life without God. This is not some intellectual, cognitive conclusion. This is not something I arrived at by listening to ministers or reading any books. This is atavistic, visceral, down at the most fundamental core of my being. That is where He lives. Simply put He is the only one that I can trust never to abandon me. I can leave or I can drive away, virtually any human being. Besides, all of you will die, sooner or later, that is the number one most essential fact of your nature. There is nothing in the whole world that I can do to prevent you from dying, no matter how wise, how intelligent, how courageous I may act.
Somewhere on earth, a man was murdered last night. I felt him go, I was awakened to feel his terror and then his recognition. He was an aggressive man but he acted stupid. That's pretty much all I know about him, I have no idea where he lived or who he knew or what he had done to deserve his fate. Certainly I could not have done it, could never be accused of such. Most everybody else is going to breathe a little bit easier today, though, and no one is going to miss him.....I wonder what his name was ....
Life has given me cause to meditate and reflect, lately, upon the facet of my nature represented by my extreme non-violence, non-aggressive nature. From time to time I wonder, if circumstances came down to blakc-and-white, could I kill a man if I had to in order to keep myself alive? I do not know. I'm pretty sure I could kill someone if I had to in order to protect someone I love, though.
I have been taking an online college course in Human Evolution lately. I have a personal theory that the story of Cain and Able in the Bible has its metaphoric origins in the genocide of the Neanderthal species of hominids by the "Caucasian" race. Hence, white skin is the "mark of Cain". Some other time I'll try to do a blog entry on some of the details I have found. I'm sure its not a popular conclusion but there's masses of supporting evidence and I am by no means the only person to posit such a hypothesis.
Obviously I despise the aggressions of my people, made worse by their extreme efforts to hide, obfuscate, and redirect blame. Most especially the ones who exhibit it the most, i.e. the ones on top. Obviously I believe that sooner or later, God will make them pay for their behavior. Most likely their ultimate downfall will occur within my lifetime and I will get to witness it, maybe participate a little bit. After all my dad's name was "Sam", I am Sam's son.
I run some level of fear nearly all of the time. Although mostly its way in the background, it comes to the front very easily and often. It is common, for example, for me to be wakened from a deep sleep in terror, heart pounding, senses on high alert, and have no idea of what woke me. My parents started to single me out for special attention before I reached puberty. the counselors and the psychiatrists staunchly asserted that I would never be "cured" but would need their constant assistance all of my life. Breaking free from their leeches took inhuman strength.
Fundamentally, I could not tolerate a minute more of my life without God. This is not some intellectual, cognitive conclusion. This is not something I arrived at by listening to ministers or reading any books. This is atavistic, visceral, down at the most fundamental core of my being. That is where He lives. Simply put He is the only one that I can trust never to abandon me. I can leave or I can drive away, virtually any human being. Besides, all of you will die, sooner or later, that is the number one most essential fact of your nature. There is nothing in the whole world that I can do to prevent you from dying, no matter how wise, how intelligent, how courageous I may act.
Somewhere on earth, a man was murdered last night. I felt him go, I was awakened to feel his terror and then his recognition. He was an aggressive man but he acted stupid. That's pretty much all I know about him, I have no idea where he lived or who he knew or what he had done to deserve his fate. Certainly I could not have done it, could never be accused of such. Most everybody else is going to breathe a little bit easier today, though, and no one is going to miss him.....I wonder what his name was ....
Monday, September 16, 2013
cut more firewood.
The carbon credit trade advocates on Wall Street
have been masquerading as advocates of environmental consciousness
for the last decade.
Under the banner of Al Gore (among others), who has made a small fortune
with his propaganda campaign,
they have attempted to terrorize all of us with
horror stories about rising oceans and super storms.
Lately, their campaign has hit a few "speed bumps".
Some "inconvenient truths", if you will.
The minimum ice extent in the arctic this summer,
though still below the last thirty years' median,
was a million square miles larger than the previous summer.
Didn't they tell us it would be gone completely by now?
Meanwhile, the maximum antarctic ice extent hit a new record
since the beginning of satellite surveillance over 50 years ago.
The weather forecasters, disappointed by the lack of appearance
of ANY significant hurricane, have been giving names to
every little squall that has blown up.
Painstaking observations show that in the last 120 years,
the average rise in the sea level has been just over seven inches.
Its a bit hard to terrorize people about that after having promised a thirty-foot rise....
Climatologists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
have recently been forced to revise their statistical observation of
median observed worldwide temperature change to half of what they had previously offered,
throwing in extreme doubt their dire warnings about the future.
And probably the most troubling observation
to those people in such a hurry to damn fossil fuels is that
the sun has apparently chosen,
for reasons which are quite beyond contemporary scientists to even guess at,
and clearly beyond the slightest influence of man's puny civilization,
to lapse into a period of reduced radiation and sunspot quiet.
No one knows how long it will last, so far its been only 6 years
but there was a period in history (1645-1715)
which is referred to as "The Maunder Minimum"
which is also referred to as "The Little Ice Age"
disclaimer -- I own coal. As a consequence of my research.
have been masquerading as advocates of environmental consciousness
for the last decade.
Under the banner of Al Gore (among others), who has made a small fortune
with his propaganda campaign,
they have attempted to terrorize all of us with
horror stories about rising oceans and super storms.
Lately, their campaign has hit a few "speed bumps".
Some "inconvenient truths", if you will.
The minimum ice extent in the arctic this summer,
though still below the last thirty years' median,
was a million square miles larger than the previous summer.
Didn't they tell us it would be gone completely by now?
Meanwhile, the maximum antarctic ice extent hit a new record
since the beginning of satellite surveillance over 50 years ago.
The weather forecasters, disappointed by the lack of appearance
of ANY significant hurricane, have been giving names to
every little squall that has blown up.
Painstaking observations show that in the last 120 years,
the average rise in the sea level has been just over seven inches.
Its a bit hard to terrorize people about that after having promised a thirty-foot rise....
Climatologists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
have recently been forced to revise their statistical observation of
median observed worldwide temperature change to half of what they had previously offered,
throwing in extreme doubt their dire warnings about the future.
And probably the most troubling observation
to those people in such a hurry to damn fossil fuels is that
the sun has apparently chosen,
for reasons which are quite beyond contemporary scientists to even guess at,
and clearly beyond the slightest influence of man's puny civilization,
to lapse into a period of reduced radiation and sunspot quiet.
No one knows how long it will last, so far its been only 6 years
but there was a period in history (1645-1715)
which is referred to as "The Maunder Minimum"
which is also referred to as "The Little Ice Age"
disclaimer -- I own coal. As a consequence of my research.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
well, heck
why not?
Most everyone knows its going down now.
Bloomberg, this morning, is carrying no news at all. Instead, their pages are plastered with feel-good editorials about growth and recovery, such blatant lies that not even the writers themselves are fooled anymore.
So, heck, why not start a new war?
Lets pick a country where there are already warring factions but both sides hate us.
Lets pick a country which has an ancient reputation as a world-wrecker.
Let us pick a country which has no wealth or natural resurces.
Let us pick a country which offers us no stategic or military significance whatever, but which does provide vital military security to Russia and to China and to Iran, countries which we very very much need to provoke and to incite to make war against us.
Let us give aid to a group of rebels with strong ties to Al Qaida.
Let us see if we can reduce the world population by just a bit, before the coming debacle in the food production centers of the world as natural gas fertilizer and oil transportatrion become more scarce.
Let us see if we can increase the US feceral deficit.
Let us see if, by increasing our deficit spending, by increasing the rate of new debt accumulation, we can thereby bring about even more printing of money by the Federal Reserve, hastening the total demise of our currency. All the while, threatening the world supply of crude oil at the same time.
Its all doomed anyway, lets see what we can do to bring it down faster.
heck, why not? brilliant move, I say ....
Most everyone knows its going down now.
Bloomberg, this morning, is carrying no news at all. Instead, their pages are plastered with feel-good editorials about growth and recovery, such blatant lies that not even the writers themselves are fooled anymore.
So, heck, why not start a new war?
Lets pick a country where there are already warring factions but both sides hate us.
Lets pick a country which has an ancient reputation as a world-wrecker.
Let us pick a country which has no wealth or natural resurces.
Let us pick a country which offers us no stategic or military significance whatever, but which does provide vital military security to Russia and to China and to Iran, countries which we very very much need to provoke and to incite to make war against us.
Let us give aid to a group of rebels with strong ties to Al Qaida.
Let us see if we can reduce the world population by just a bit, before the coming debacle in the food production centers of the world as natural gas fertilizer and oil transportatrion become more scarce.
Let us see if we can increase the US feceral deficit.
Let us see if, by increasing our deficit spending, by increasing the rate of new debt accumulation, we can thereby bring about even more printing of money by the Federal Reserve, hastening the total demise of our currency. All the while, threatening the world supply of crude oil at the same time.
Its all doomed anyway, lets see what we can do to bring it down faster.
heck, why not? brilliant move, I say ....
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
now
it gets interesting.
The crash is upon us.
First to collapse are all the countries of the far east,
separately and together.
Japan, struggling with an aging populace
all wanting benefits when so few are still working,
and meanwhile Fukushima is pouring radioactivity into the Pacific
and they can't afford to clean it up.
China, which has been fudging and lying even more than the US about its economy
India, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand,
all having been surviving and prospering on exports but now nobody is buying.
What money they still have is all coming here
and keeping the US from total collapse -- yet --
Next, Europe will fall
as the German people finally reach their limit
in trying to "buy" the entire continent
by supporting failing economies of Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, etc
and even France and the UK have been leaching off of them.
Meanwhile the entire Middle East goes up in flames
as the failed policies of the would-be colonialists in Washington become more apparent.
We have tried to bully the entire region but its just not working anymore,
now that death is more desirable than servitude to us ....
For awhile the capital will still flow to New York
and still sustain us
but as the stock market falls
and faith and trust in our government completely collapses,
our cohesion will also fail
and it will become each man for himself ...
our population has been carefully taught to be so frustrated, angry, mistrusting, vengeful
and it is armed to the teeth with guns, pistols, knives, ammunition, assault rifles,
body armour, and so forth ....
killing will be random and ubiquitous ....
God has a plan.God still loves us,
still loves His creation and everything in it.
He just has quite a bit of housekeeping to do.
The darkest hour will be just before the dawn ....
The crash is upon us.
First to collapse are all the countries of the far east,
separately and together.
Japan, struggling with an aging populace
all wanting benefits when so few are still working,
and meanwhile Fukushima is pouring radioactivity into the Pacific
and they can't afford to clean it up.
China, which has been fudging and lying even more than the US about its economy
India, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand,
all having been surviving and prospering on exports but now nobody is buying.
What money they still have is all coming here
and keeping the US from total collapse -- yet --
Next, Europe will fall
as the German people finally reach their limit
in trying to "buy" the entire continent
by supporting failing economies of Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, etc
and even France and the UK have been leaching off of them.
Meanwhile the entire Middle East goes up in flames
as the failed policies of the would-be colonialists in Washington become more apparent.
We have tried to bully the entire region but its just not working anymore,
now that death is more desirable than servitude to us ....
For awhile the capital will still flow to New York
and still sustain us
but as the stock market falls
and faith and trust in our government completely collapses,
our cohesion will also fail
and it will become each man for himself ...
our population has been carefully taught to be so frustrated, angry, mistrusting, vengeful
and it is armed to the teeth with guns, pistols, knives, ammunition, assault rifles,
body armour, and so forth ....
killing will be random and ubiquitous ....
God has a plan.God still loves us,
still loves His creation and everything in it.
He just has quite a bit of housekeeping to do.
The darkest hour will be just before the dawn ....
Sunday, August 11, 2013
The Matrix
I (finally) watched "The Matrix" last night.
Many, many insights.
Probably all people of my age, particularly political, religious, and corporate leaders, ought to watch this movie in order to gain some understanding of what the young people of this culture, this society, think about them and their constructs. So many older people are still clinging to the ideas that the system is sound. They preach to the young that working to improve mankind's lot from within the system is the purpose we are all intended for. They really believe that, and they really believe that the kids will fall in line, sooner or later. How quaint.
Then, there is the total misconception of energy. If you haven't watched it, one of the supporting theses of the movie is that the sun has been burned out but that life goes on. The world is owned and controlled by digital machines which use human beings as energy source, as "batteries". Huh? Do the young people really have so little understanding of the physical properties of potential and kinetic energy? Well, of course they do. How else could I explain how young people can be so bamboozled into believing that solar, or wind, or hydrogen (!) can be used as an eergy source in the future more potent than crude oil?
Then, there is the total flattening of computer programming, computer data, and the process of human learning. The movie proposes that a human can be taught a subject by simply inserting a floppy disk and reading it, in about three seconds. No wonder the kids today take school with such a blazee attitude. Why bother learning math or physics or engineering, when it can simply be loaded in, on the spot, if the need ever should arise?
I am of course appalled that most cashiers today cannot even make change correctly in their heads, they need the cash registers to do it for them. The other day I was debating with a cashier friend of mine whether or not this skill is even needed. She stauchly insisted that she did not ever need this skill because the machines could always do it faster and more accurately. So I asked her quickly if she could give me change, two tens for a five. The exchange was made and I went on my way, content to let her win the discussion.
Most impactful to me was Hollywood's age-old fantasy about true love and sex. Central to the plot is how one kiss, accompanied with a vow of true love, could bring a human being back from death. No wonder there are so many divorces in this country. There are so, so many people who believe (and I myself was counted with them for the majority of my adulthood, which is why I've been divorced four times) who blindly believe that there exists for them a sexual partner who will save them from their own foolishness, all of it.
Thank God for God.
Many, many insights.
Probably all people of my age, particularly political, religious, and corporate leaders, ought to watch this movie in order to gain some understanding of what the young people of this culture, this society, think about them and their constructs. So many older people are still clinging to the ideas that the system is sound. They preach to the young that working to improve mankind's lot from within the system is the purpose we are all intended for. They really believe that, and they really believe that the kids will fall in line, sooner or later. How quaint.
Then, there is the total misconception of energy. If you haven't watched it, one of the supporting theses of the movie is that the sun has been burned out but that life goes on. The world is owned and controlled by digital machines which use human beings as energy source, as "batteries". Huh? Do the young people really have so little understanding of the physical properties of potential and kinetic energy? Well, of course they do. How else could I explain how young people can be so bamboozled into believing that solar, or wind, or hydrogen (!) can be used as an eergy source in the future more potent than crude oil?
Then, there is the total flattening of computer programming, computer data, and the process of human learning. The movie proposes that a human can be taught a subject by simply inserting a floppy disk and reading it, in about three seconds. No wonder the kids today take school with such a blazee attitude. Why bother learning math or physics or engineering, when it can simply be loaded in, on the spot, if the need ever should arise?
I am of course appalled that most cashiers today cannot even make change correctly in their heads, they need the cash registers to do it for them. The other day I was debating with a cashier friend of mine whether or not this skill is even needed. She stauchly insisted that she did not ever need this skill because the machines could always do it faster and more accurately. So I asked her quickly if she could give me change, two tens for a five. The exchange was made and I went on my way, content to let her win the discussion.
Most impactful to me was Hollywood's age-old fantasy about true love and sex. Central to the plot is how one kiss, accompanied with a vow of true love, could bring a human being back from death. No wonder there are so many divorces in this country. There are so, so many people who believe (and I myself was counted with them for the majority of my adulthood, which is why I've been divorced four times) who blindly believe that there exists for them a sexual partner who will save them from their own foolishness, all of it.
Thank God for God.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
