Life goes on - Summer 2021

No one is happy:

I think this video might say something about us as a species.

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Here’s how I look at it. For all intents and purposes I am bankrupt. My daily expenses far out way my income. My house is crumbling, my drive way is breaking up and all the people I have suckered into investing in my stash of monopoly money are wising up. I have sent the majority of my industries to places where virtual slaves build my junk for me so that my GDP is primarily advertising the crap others build and producing pharmaceuticals. I’m just tired of struggling to keep feeding that damned wood stove and so I’ll cover my roof with PV panels. Who can tell me how I can accomplish this?

The U.S. national debt is beyond 123 trillion dollars. Every man woman and child legally in the country owes 800,000 dollars if that is to every be paid off. But somehow we are going to build millions of acres of PV farms and install millions of charging stations so when your vehicle gets low on power you can watch porn on your phone while you wait a couple of hours to refuel.

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Tom:

If I have learned anything from the last couple of depression level events.
Money grows on trees…
Bit coins are made up money and the gov can never raise interest rates.
Wall street and banks always get a bail out.
If you can’t pay your rent you won’t be evicted.
Last but not least it pays better to sit on your arse and get a pogey check than it does to work for less than the cost of living.

Madness:
Maybe a buck is only worth something if you believe in it like Peter Pan…

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Where did you find these numbers? It is about 4 times too high; and the 800,000 dollar figure does not check out either; 800k times 330,000,000 is 264 trillion.

28 Trillion dollars still sounds like a lot, though, I will give you that. I wont pretend to understand modern monetary theory, but I will say that I personally will put more trust in college educated economists than some “online news source” that cant even do basic arithmetic :grinning:

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The history of Finland:

After the second winter war the Finnish people were left with intolerable war reparation to the Soviets. A good friend of mine was sold as a child for farm labour because it was not cost effective to be raised by his own family… ( He grew up to be a hobo post war Red Fin… one of the funnier ones not like those terribly not fun white Fins that walk without bending their knees… ) .

Where am I going with this???

Well my chum said " I came here to Canada in 1969 after working my way across the pond on a Swedish ship and if this new land turns out not to be pretty ok I can move to the next "

Conclusion:
Bugger it all just walk away if the debts and labours are more than your back can bare. Its only the bankers you hurt and Mom and Pop will still be someplace you can visit.

He is an old man now…
I work with his son also a self proclaimed " Red Fin ". But Olivie tells me this country ain’t what it was in 69 and maybe that just the way it is. You bugger off someplace else when the wheel come off and start fresh. You only hurt the bankster when you walk away.

Going to add:
I dated a blond haired apple shaped girl just like the one in the video back in my youth.
Her Dad called me " High-shavack Polak " ( stinking Polak LOL ) I did not marry his daughter but I got a nice deal on a pick up truck from him…
He did not know I grew up around Fins so I understood a lot of the swear words…

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Tom over the last decade the military budget found 1 trillion dollars to spend on the F35 that doesn’t meet any of the design goals and the Pentagon just announced they want to cancel the project and start over.
Since the start of covid we have found 5.5 trillion dollars to spend on the pandemic. In today’s dollars WWII cost the USA 5 trillion dollars for comparison.
There is 6.5 trillion dollars we where able to find that we won’t need in the future.

Now for the cost of grid scale solar.
For utility-scale solar projects completed this year, the average cost of electricity generation over the lifetime of the plant (called the levelized cost of electricity) was between $35 to $55 per megawatt-hour in some of the world’s biggest markets — the US, Europe, China, and India.Oct 13, 2020

[image]

https://www.theverge.com › sol…

Solar energy reaches historically low costs - The Verge

So just the 1 trillion dollars we wasted on a single failed Pentagon program would buy a ton of solar. Maybe we could start by canceling the next F35 and employ Americans building renewable energy instead. Just saying the government knows how to fund the things they want. No one asked where we would find a trillion dollars for a new fighter jet.

That’s a good one, but when our money was on the gold standard and you had silver certificates things were different. It was not Never Never Land back then. It was the good old USA, made in the USA. Now with the petro dollar the goverment can just keep printing up monies, and spend as much as they want. A growing trend in a lot of countries. We are heading for super inflated times. Things here have double in the passed few years. They talked about a big reset. RIGHT.
A wheel barrow full of money to go by some bread at the store. Oh wait we have plastic digital monies now. Okay the equivalent of digital monies to a wheel barrow full of money. It happen in Europe after WW1. But the banks got richer they loaned monies to both sides for the war.
Okay Bob get off the Soap Box now. When you read about history of what happened it makes you wonder if we will ever learn.
Hey everyone are you getting excited for Argos 2021, looking forward to seeing you all there. It’s like having a family DOW wood gas reunion. I can just smell the great cooking the wonderfull ladies will be doing. Looking forward to the new project builds too, get them finished up.
Bob

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The F35 had a lot of issues in its early development. However that was over a decade ago and considering this is probably the most advanced and sophisticated plane to ever exist its just part of the development. That plain is probably the most bad ass plane to ever exist today. They plan to order nearly 2500 of them by 2044 and they are supposed remain in service until 2070.

Very nice presentation, @DanNH. But one should always check what is presented to him.

Its about UK refinery. UK refinery throughput in 2005 was 1 619 000 barrels of crude oil per day, according to Statista.com. With 40% gasoline extraction ratio, it makes production of 9 927 708 000 gallons of gasoline in 2005. If their total consumption in 2005 was 5 642 000 000 kWh of electricity, it makes some 1.76 kWh per gallon of gasoline, not 4,5 as presented. But wait, where it comes the 60% rest of refined crude oil? More than 25% ends up as diesel fuel, another 10% as jet fuel, almost 10% as heavy fuel oil and and LPG. The rest is mix of hydrocarbons useful in subsequent industrial processing.

So, what I see in the video is bad math and little bit bias to support ones viewpoint.

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If you take out a mortgage on your house you have made a commitment to pay off the balance. If you tell millions of people that they can rely on receiving their Medi-care and S.S. then that is still debt that you carry. Governmental accounting truly falls into the realm of Magic. So regardless of how you view that debt there is still not enough solvency to totally rebuild a failing power infrastructure with green technology. The petro-dollar is basically dead. The major players feel no obligation to it now. There is nothing backing our fiat economy.

This is the big if! Long ago when we looked at electric vehicles for around here, we found that it was nearly an ideal situation as far as travel goes. Most commuters here travel less than 30 miles a day and could be recharging their cars at work or at home. I don’t know what the figures are anymore I’ve totally forgotten about it. I can imagine electric vehicles replacing a slice of the demographic in America. The question is how large is that demographic and what are their constraints. Obviously it’s doable or GM and Volkswagen etc wouldn’t be getting into the game. I’m not skeptical about it. I think the technology is on the shelf. I just don’t think anybody realizes how many cars that’s going to be.

Thank you KamilK,
A voice of reason.
I withdrew my post/comment as too long and by it’s ending too ominous.

Of course. Lets just stop refining crude oil to then support electric cars.
Bye-bye to affordable cooking and heating propane’s blends. Oh yeah. We will just use more Grid electical!
Bye-Bye to very cheap medical bottles. Oh yeah. We will just go back to using recyclable glass! Gee Dudes this glass recycler use a ton of electricity in their smelters too. Wife’s nurse friend husband retired as a plant engineer from a regional glass smelter recycler.
We talk. He loves glass.

Simple, seemingly obvious Answers are a salesman talking.
He/She cares not of consequences and complexities. Just that they get you to pull the oars their way.
S.U.

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image

Most places in america did have small railways called InterUrbans but have since been replaced

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I definitely agree, I think we should be very careful of who and what supports various regulations/changes, not to mention that the government regulation often ignores the reality of many situations. Remember back when Obama was president and there came about regulation that your fleet of vehicles had to have a high average gas mileage? The Result of this was that all these companies that need big work trucks to do necessary work had to buy a lot of small cars ect that they didn’t actually need to boost the average gas mileage of their fleet. So the end result really wasn’t really that it made the environment better they just made more cars.

Another big scam is recycling. You probably know the “Reduce Reuse Recycle” Recycle being the last thing you should do since if you really read about how “Recyclable” plastics really are, or the process involved, or the fact that a lot of it doesn’t end up being recycled anyways. It really starts to look like a scam these global corporations have pulled over people to promote consumption of cheap goods.

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Where I live you are allowed one bag a week and pick is every two weeks, Recycle and a green bin of food waste is still picked up weekly. But I am my wits end trying to reduce the amount of trash I produce because the the excessive packing in plastic and a wife that loves to use paper towels for everything.

I have resolved my self to never changing my wife, but I think they need to pass laws forcing companies to sell in bulk where you fill your own container or force the disposable industry out of business by enforcing a reusable container law.

I started to burn the paper rather than put it in the recycle box. This is not a Eco-friendly solution

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Toss the papers and cardboard in the gassifier. Fuel in the tank

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I often wonder why people waste prescious personal time and well being on issues they have no control of. People are strange critters. It sunny out today, I think I’ll join the wood chucks. :grinning: They know how to live.

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I tend to put paper towels in a bag and pour things like oil cooking grease in there to burn. Sometimes if there is a lot of paper used toss in some single use plastic film or foam meat trays ect that the recycle will not take. In the winter my wife likes to sit outside and smoke near the burn barrel and this keep her warm and not smoking in my house…

I would not gasify any of this…

I have given some thought top using the paper as a binding material for charcoal- paper brickets. I thought it might make a nice big honey comb bricket without having to add anything else. Maybe a 50:50 mix would produce something not so much to cook with but as a campfire fuel. Its just a thought and experiment waiting for warmer weather.

That’s another thing we arnt allowed to do in pierce country washington. Fire pits are regulated by size and what is allowed to be burned, nothing larger then 3’ radius with a 3’ flame, no manufactured products allowed. No paper, cardboard,lumber, styrofoam, also no leaves or pine cones. Some get away with it being out in the sticks far enough, but it can be a healthy ticket and many neighbors take no issue with reporting another neighbor as Steve U and myself know all to well. Iv had fire department and police called on me several times for brush fires on logging sites that were payed for with county and permit application that were shut down do to neighbor complaint of “I can’t breath”. 850$ permit down the drain and have to haul off and dispose of all remaining brush and stumps. It is now stipulated in contract landowner is designated to pull all necessary permits for waste removal. At that point I’m just a worker and if the job gets shut down I don’t lose my butt

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