[ROCKMAN]

Don - "Shortonoil says that the extra energy is coming from the hydrocarbons being manipulated." No sh*t, Sherlock! Don't take this personally but have you been able to absorb a single f*cking FACT I've posted? LOL. Do you not remember my posting details of the significant amount of energy used to refine oil? Energy not from the oil but primarily from NG and a much smaller amount from electricity. But guess what: that FACT has been true for many decades. And the cost of that NG is less then half of what it was 10 years ago. Combine that with the decrease in oil prices (remember: refineries don't SELL oil...they BUY oil) and you understand why the refining industry is today making a profit at the crate of $38 BILLION PER YEAR.

Again don't take this personally but you seem to draw your conclusions based on what someone says they should be and not on the actual DOCUMENTED FACTS. You may not have noticed but the Rockman has never cared if you or anyone else believed his interpretations. But what I tend to focus on is attempts to spin any form of bullsh*t by ignoring or intentionally misinterpreting those DOCUMENTED FACTS.

But you're free to base your beliefs on what ideology is being offered you care to. But remember the "I just followed the directions of my leaders" defense didn't work very well at Nuremberg. LOL.

[AdamB]

http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2017/06/04/dimming-bulb-3-collapse-has-arrived/

I thought the references to ASPO and whatnot are bad enough, but this is about as ignorant, faux news as you will find on the internet.

[marmico]

While government debt is still out of control personnel debt is going down

Not much has changed in the last 8 years when it comes to the aggregate of household, business and government debt to GDP.



There were credit impulses in the 1980s and 2000s.

[AdamB]

Amazing how looking at the ACTUAL NUMBERS tends to discredit a lot of the WORDS you read here, isn't it?

Words aren't the problem Rock. SALES are. Folks are trying to angle into ETP report sales real hard, without it being obvious, and the only explanation I can think of is that they ran out of gullible sheep in the ETP thread to pitch their ideas to...for exactly the reason you mention. Numbers matter, and the more they make up, the less believable they are even to the sheep.

I'm glad you are now retired and can keep pointing all this out, because it would consume more time than I have available in the day. I'm happy to just wait to the price of oil does what it always does, and then come back here, round up the graphing where they claimed it couldn't happen, and point out that it did. Which will work until they come up with the next random decline equation to attach to, I don't know...shoe sales at Walmart or something, to pretend that when those get less, the world ends for lack of people wearing shoes.

[vtsnowedin]

@vtsnowedin
See:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-sta ... ebt-to-gdp
(Note the truncated scale. Zero is a long way down off the chart.)

You will find that 2013 was when private debt reached a post-financial crisis low, but is now increasing again relative to GDP. In 2013 the United States approximately broke even on the increase in GDP minus increase in debt measurement, but has since slipped well into the red.

Government, of course, has remained in the red for a long time...which bolsters the ability of private citizens to spend money they don't have...social security and medicare and medicaid payments, for example. Or all the money spent on the military. The government expenditures are income for, mostly, American citizens.

Don Stewart

Don Stewart

I have to go with the Federal reserve data over your source.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N

[vtsnowedin]

While government debt is still out of control personnel debt is going down

Not much has changed in the last 8 years when it comes to the aggregate of household, business and government debt to GDP.



There were credit impulses in the 1980s and 2000s.

A lot has changed. While the total is going up the private portion of the total is going down. That the Government share is more then making up for the private decrease should be a klaxon horn of warning to all voters and tax payers.

[marmico]

Documented Facts.

Refinery still gas consumption is the same as it was 30 years ago but refinery throughput is higher. Duh, increased energy efficiency when it comes to still gas.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafH ... S_MBBL&f=A

This ain't complicated stuff that Bozo Bunsen Burner Bedford, he of the missing 8.4 million barrels per day of gasoline, needs to spin.

U.S. Fuel consumed at Refineries.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/PET_PNP_CA ... _NUS_A.htm

Now Birkenstock Bollywood Stewart can hop in his autonomous EV after the permaculture meeting and travel to the Empire State Building in NYC and calculate the BTUs of fuels and let us all know about his research. However, if one dives deep enough in the EIA data sets, you can save the trip.

Do you want to know how much natural gas is consumed to refine one barrel of oil in 2015...STAY TUNED.

[donstewart]

@vtsnowedin
Private Debt is not identical to household debt. For example, a lot of the recent debt has been corporations borrowing to buy back their own stock.

Here is John Rubino on the relationship between debt and GDP growth in the US over the last 10 years:
https://dollarcollapse.com/debt/soaring ... ic-crisis/
For conspiracy theorists, you can also find Rubino's essay reprinted at Zero Hedge.

Perhaps a few words about why I think debt is important. Here is Robert Sapolsky, in his book Behave, page 136:
'Sustained stress has numerous adverse effects. The amygdala becomes overactive and more coupled to pathways of habitual behavior, it is easier to learn fear and harder to unlearn it. We process emotionally salient information more rapidly and automatically, but with less accuracy. Frontal function--working memory, impulse control, executive decision making, risk assessment, and task shifting--is impaired, and the frontal cortex has less control over the amygdala. And we become less empathic and prosocial. Reducing sustained stress is a win-win for us and those stuck around us.'

Just taking a casual look around at society and politics and the economy and the people writing on this blog, do you see any evidence that excessive long term stress may be at work? My theory is that debt is one source of such long term stress...in fact, Sapolsky mentions debt as a stress trigger unknown to other animals. Sapolsky observes that 'These stress effects on frontal function also make us perseverative--in a rut, set in our ways, running on automatic, being habitual. We all know this--what do we typically do during a stressful time when something isn't working? The same thing again many more times, faster and more intensely--it becomes unimaginable that the usual isn't working.'

If the economy needs restructuring because, objectively, piling up more debt has not been working, the very existence of the pile of debt, which someone regards as 'wealth', coupled with some dim realization that the wealth is being threatened, creates the conditions which make change difficult. Which is why most crises like this end up in collapse rather than purposeful change.

Don Stewart

[asg70]

https://dollarcollapse.com/debt/soaring ... ic-crisis/
For conspiracy theorists, you can also find Rubino's essay reprinted at Zero Hedge.

So you just gleefully glide from linking to one perma-doomer blog after another. This has no effect other than to preach to the converted.

[donstewart]

@asg70
One of the points that Sapolsky makes is that when chimp number 2 is abused by chimp number 1, he tends to go abuse a female chimp who then abuses her infant. It turns out that stress hormones are reduced as a result of inflicting stress on others.

I enjoy baiting you. Whatever stress I may feel about the mountain of debt, the stress hormones are reduced when I merely point out to you that it's all coming from the same giant conspiracy. Probably something to do with the Elders...
Don Stewart

[shortonoil]

"Those numbers could be reprinted by Steve Keen or Automatic Earth of lots of other sources. Unless you take the position that 'debt doesn't matter', then I think you ignore the statistics at your peril. Whether Zero Hedge reprints them or not is just a psychological problem that YOU have."

Like this graph from the FED that these numbskulls are trying so hard to avoid (because as usual they have no coherent explanation for it) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V the psychological problem of cognitive dissonance is running rampant throughout the present society and economy.

We now have (what would have been not may years ago) an absurd situation where the FANGS, with no profit, which are burning through huge amounts of cash each year exhibit a greater owner equity than the rest of the S&P 500 combined. We have Tesla, which has never generated a profit, burning through $billions per year in cash, which built 76,000 cars last year that has greater owner equity than GM; which built 10 million.

The transition from an asset accumulating economy to a consumption orientated economy has changed the very meaning of money. Money, which was once seen as a store of wealth, is now seen as a vehicle to be used in the conversion of accumulate assets into consumables. Making a profit, building a cash reserves, increasing working capital are now all considered to be passe side effects compared to converting owner equity into reportable sales: sales that no longer require an associated profit.

The Central Banks will continue to pour unlimited, unbacked currency into a failing economy in hopes of propping up weakening markets because they have no other options. As they do the velocity of money will continue to fall as it has done for the last 20 years of CB intervention. The illusion that all is well will be sold off to buyers of 100 year negative interest rate bonds, 8½ year, no money down, car loans, $half million student loans that can never be repaid, and shale wells that will never turn a profit.

Those that can see through, and avoid this rapidly disintegrating veil of delusions will find themselves in far better position than those that bought into the half truths, and deceit sold as a free lunch for all that join in. M2 will continue its stratospheric assent, the velocity of money will continue to fall and the economy will chug to a halt in an environment where insufficient energy now exists to ever again power growth. Required new paradigms are never easily accepted; those that do have a greater tendency to survive; those that don't often die. We are watching survival of the fittest work at its most basic level, and its unavoidable and ever persistent presence guarantees the outcome.

[kublikhan]

Shortonoil replied to me with an explanation I have no reason to doubt. It is possible for a refinery to do a lot of things to manipulate the hydrocarbons, but the manipulation frequently involves using a lot of energy. Shortonoil says that the extra energy is coming from the hydrocarbons being manipulated. For example, if two light molecules are being fused to make a medium weight molecule, it takes energy. The energy has to come from somewhere, and subtracts from the thermodynamic benefits attributable to the hydrocarbon source. Whether the extra energy comes from burning some part of the 'oil' stream or instead from electricity generated by burning coal or gas is a secondary question, important to those in the industry, but which doesn't change the overall thermodynamics. The 'financial sense' can diverge for a short time from the 'thermodynamic sense', but eventually thermodynamics wins.

The stability of the yields from refineries makes sense if we understand how refineries are designed to work. But a very important question is 'how much manipulation is required to massage the inputs in order to make them fit for what the refinery wants to do to them?'' In the case of oil shale from Colorado, the answer has always been, and remains today, 'more massaging than we can afford to do'. Whether the global trend toward mixing very heavy oils and very light oils is 'more than we can afford to spend' is a topic that Mr. Hill said he would address in an SRSRocco post, and which he has been addressing here. I don't have an opinion on that question, because finding the answer appears to require parsing some EIA data. As I have said before, my experience is that understanding what is in government statistics requires some expert knowledge, which I don't pretend to have. Back in the good old days I would go uptown to the Empire State Building and pore through Bureau of Labor Statistics data and put it together in novel ways. But I learned that one had to be very careful and know exactly what the data meant and how it was collected. I'm not the guy to dissect EIA numbers.

If you don't want to wade through the EIA data yourself, how about some easily digestible facts to help you come to your own conclusion:

energy consumption in refineries peaked in 1998, and has since then slightly declined.

Energy Efficiency Improvement in the Petroleum Refining Industry

Energy use has remained relatively flat since 1995, while production volumes and product mixes have changed, demonstrating an improvement of the energy efficiency of the industry over the same period.

Energy Efficiency Improvement and Cost Saving Opportunities for Petroleum Refineries

[asg70]

@asg70
One of the points that Sapolsky makes is that when chimp number 2 is abused by chimp number 1

Two words for you: off topic.

[marmico]

Like this graph from the FED that these numbskulls are trying so hard to avoid (because as usual they have no coherent explanation for it) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V the psychological problem of cognitive dissonance is running rampant throughout the present society and economy.

Knock off your monetary policy Bozo routine. M2 is just one variable in the Fed tool box.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/money_12845.htm

You are aware that GDP is the numerator and M2 is the denominator in M2V. If the growth rate of the blue line is greater than the growth rate of the red line, then M2V declines.

[creedoninmo]

Short wrote: "required new paradigms are never easily excepted"
When the new paradigm involves moving to a lower standard of living or actually living sustainably it is basically impossible to accomplish in present society. The actual process as it unfolds will be gruesome.

[asg70]

Short wrote: "required new paradigms are never easily excepted"
When the new paradigm involves moving to a lower standard of living or actually living sustainably it is basically impossible to accomplish in present society. The actual process as it unfolds will be gruesome.

The reverse is also true. Those here who are so attached to the idea of moving to a lower standard of living have a hard time accepting the idea that the center might just hold on a little longer.

[Cog]

Short wrote: "required new paradigms are never easily excepted"
When the new paradigm involves moving to a lower standard of living or actually living sustainably it is basically impossible to accomplish in present society. The actual process as it unfolds will be gruesome.

How many sock-puppets does shorty need?

Gruesome is a new word for you ETP trolls. I appreciate the effort you are making though.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Short wrote: "required new paradigms are never easily excepted"
When the new paradigm involves moving to a lower standard of living or actually living sustainably it is basically impossible to accomplish in present society. The actual process as it unfolds will be gruesome.

Why would living at a lower standard of living be "impossible" to accomplish for the middle class and above in the first world?

They might not like it, but since, despite the doomer meme, it's not like they are living on the edge of starvation or without shelter or health care.

They could survive just fine economically with more frugality, including less baubles, less vacation travel, smaller homes and cars, and far less consumer "crap".

IMO, except for the poor who are at the level of survival/subsistence living, the best thing for the earth and for humanity in general would BE to move things down a peg or two as far as consumption.

Or do you mean it is impossible politically? If so, then I (sadly) must agree with you.

[ROCKMAN]

Adam - "I'm glad you are now retired and can keep pointing all this out". Who the f*ck is retired? LOL. Not much well site work right now: all I've done this year so far this year is pulled tubing on one well. And maybe back to horizontally redrilling that old Frio field this fall.

Spend the rest of the time in front of the computer studying one piece of crap field after another looking for an acquisition. Spend breaks here. And at 2 am when my trigeminal neuralgia wakes me up. LOL.

Maybe I confused you by mentioning getting my first SS check last month.