Oil is at a 12-year low

[Ironduke]

Really. Where's your evidence?

There is hard geological evidence for climate change and flooding events caused by de-glaciation, supervolcano eruptions, and small asteroid impacts during the time Homo Sapiens have existed. There is hard evidence for rich and dense forests in Arizona and New Mexico while Homo Sapiens existed - and these lie at the same latitude as the Sahara and Arabian deserts, but less sandy.

If there were civilizations along what was then the Mediterranean Lake, which was the destination for the Nile among other rivers in southern Europe, with the Danube emptying into the Black Lake, and other rivers emptying into the Baltic Lake, with these peoples building settlements out of wood and mudbrick - these would have been completely dissolved by the oceanic waters that flooded in. The stone tools would be worn like any other rock into smoother rock indistinguishable from naturally occurring pebbles and sand.

I'll place my trust in the evolutionary biologists, archaeologists, physicists, and their theories and discoveries. The Earth looked radically different before the last mass de-glaciation that preceded what we currently know of human civilization.

Most people in this world believe there is some God directing the course of human events, and that the Earth is fixed in nature for the most part and even only a few thousand years old. Perhaps over half of my countrymen truly believe this. There's nothing wrong with that - people need something to believe in and they didn't know any better for much of history, and somebody needed to provide laws and order to society. The appeal to a divine entity and that we are somehow unique, special snowflakes has historically worked in ages of mass illiteracy and subsistence survival.

I'll take the word of people who are by and far have vastly greater intellects and abilities of reasoning, and logic to guide me toward more correct conclusions, inferences, and theories, rather than accounts written down in an age of ignorance and mis-education. Even if, at this point, there are merely theories and inferences.

I would recommend reading the works of the eminent geographer, Harm de Blij.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_de_Blij

And this book, which I'm currently reading.

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Geography.../dp/0195315820

He's not a nutcase or a crank. He's one of those lone brilliant intellectuals without equal in an age where nutcaseism and crankism is again on the rise. Before he discusses the three challenges facing America - he lays out in one-third of the linked book much of what I've been discussing - the theories of Mediterranean, Baltic, and Baltic Lake rudimentary civilizations are my own, it is an inference. I believe these rudimentary civilizations existed before the current historical record begins, and also believe they also existed on the vast Indonesian peninsula that is now islands, and also along coastlines of much of the world that is now inundated a couple hundred miles inland since the last de-glaciation.

The geological record proves that these areas were supremely habitable. Physics proves that if there were rudimentary civilizations in these areas - that there would be hardly a trace of them left due to water based erosion and dissolution of organic building materials. Underwater archaeology is just becoming a reality - the field is in its infancy. As the decades progress, I believe much of what is taking an the conventional wisdom regarding the dawn of civilization will have to be pushed further and further back. Thus far, we only have evidence of civilization in areas that are high and dry. If civilization existed on lands that were since inundated before the last de-glaciation - whom we believe to be the originators of civilization may merely be the survivors of previous civilizations.

And no - I don't have any evidence. I'm not James Cameron with a stockpile of billion-dollar deep-sea submersibles ready to go at a moment's notice. Just as some people choose to believe in a God or multiple gods, and buy into the idea that the Earth's climate regions are fixed and that the Earth is 6000 years old, I will continue to believe what I believe. That the story of humanity and civilization stretches back further than what we currently know. I'll follow the lead of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, Harm de Blij, Carl Sagan, Jared Diamond and so on - they are like 20/20 hindsight prophets with better powers of foresight than men who lived 14 centuries, 20 centuries, or 30 centuries ago.

To each his own. I would say it is not proven - but it is a worthy endeavor to prove it in the future. Just as so many things we thought to be myths have been in fact proven - such as Troy, and the Stone Age settlements found in Syria that stretch back thousands of years further than we originally could have ever thought to have been the case. Troy was thought to be a religious myth until relatively recently in human history. As were the Minoans and countless other peoples whose existence was proven in the 20th century.

I'll cease discussing this particular sub-topic on this thread at this point.

[Doktor]

Really. Where's your evidence?

*grabs pocorn*

[Ironduke]

*grabs pocorn*

You can put your popcorn away - I've already said everything I had to say, and I'm going to let it stand. ;-)

The only exception to this is if someone cares to say that Troy never existed, that the Minoans did not exist, the Etruscans did not exist, that the Mycenaeans never existed, and that the recent archaeological discoveries in Syria pushing civilization back to 10,000 B.C. on high and dry ground that was not inundated are also myths. It will give me a better feel for what basis other people are basing their arguments, and I'll respond accordingly.

You may need to save your popcorn for another thread. Unless someone cares to re-rail the thread back to oil and energy. :-)

[Doktor]

There is hard geological evidence for climate change and flooding events caused by de-glaciation, supervolcano eruptions, and small asteroid impacts during the time Homo Sapiens have existed. There is hard evidence for rich and dense forests in Arizona and New Mexico while Homo Sapiens existed - and these lie at the same latitude as the Sahara and Arabian deserts, but less sandy.

If there were civilizations along what was then the Mediterranean Lake, which was the destination for the Nile among other rivers in southern Europe, with the Danube emptying into the Black Lake, and other rivers emptying into the Baltic Lake, with these peoples building settlements out of wood and mudbrick - these would have been completely dissolved by the oceanic waters that flooded in. The stone tools would be worn like any other rock into smoother rock indistinguishable from naturally occurring pebbles and sand.

I'll place my trust in the evolutionary biologists, archaeologists, physicists, and their theories and discoveries. The Earth looked radically different before the last mass de-glaciation that preceded what we currently know of human civilization.

Most people in this world believe there is some God directing the course of human events, and that the Earth is fixed in nature for the most part and even only a few thousand years old. Perhaps over half of my countrymen truly believe this. There's nothing wrong with that - people need something to believe in and they didn't know any better for much of history, and somebody needed to provide laws and order to society. The appeal to a divine entity and that we are somehow unique, special snowflakes has historically worked in ages of mass illiteracy and subsistence survival.

I'll take the word of people who are by and far have vastly greater intellects and abilities of reasoning, and logic to guide me toward more correct conclusions, inferences, and theories, rather than accounts written down in an age of ignorance and mis-education. Even if, at this point, there are merely theories and inferences.

I would recommend reading the works of the eminent geographer, Harm de Blij.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_de_Blij

And this book, which I'm currently reading.

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Geography.../dp/0195315820

He's not a nutcase or a crank. He's one of those lone brilliant intellectuals without equal in an age where nutcaseism and crankism is again on the rise. Before he discusses the three challenges facing America - he lays out in one-third of the linked book much of what I've been discussing - the theories of Mediterranean, Baltic, and Baltic Lake rudimentary civilizations are my own, it is an inference. I believe these rudimentary civilizations existed before the current historical record begins, and also believe they also existed on the vast Indonesian peninsula that is now islands, and also along coastlines of much of the world that is now inundated a couple hundred miles inland since the last de-glaciation.

The geological record proves that these areas were supremely habitable. Physics proves that if there were rudimentary civilizations in these areas - that there would be hardly a trace of them left due to water based erosion and dissolution of organic building materials. Underwater archaeology is just becoming a reality - the field is in its infancy. As the decades progress, I believe much of what is taking an the conventional wisdom regarding the dawn of civilization will have to be pushed further and further back. Thus far, we only have evidence of civilization in areas that are high and dry. If civilization existed on lands that were since inundated before the last de-glaciation - whom we believe to be the originators of civilization may merely be the survivors of previous civilizations.

And no - I don't have any evidence. I'm not James Cameron with a stockpile of billion-dollar deep-sea submersibles ready to go at a moment's notice. Just as some people choose to believe in a God or multiple gods, and buy into the idea that the Earth's climate regions are fixed and that the Earth is 6000 years old, I will continue to believe what I believe. That the story of humanity and civilization stretches back further than what we currently know. I'll follow the lead of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, Harm de Blij, Carl Sagan, Jared Diamond and so on - they are like 20/20 hindsight prophets with better powers of foresight than men who lived 14 centuries, 20 centuries, or 30 centuries ago.

To each his own. I would say it is not proven - but it is a worthy endeavor to prove it in the future. Just as so many things we thought to be myths have been in fact proven - such as Troy and Stone Age settlements found in Syria that stretch back thousands of years further than we originally could have ever thought to have been the case. Troy was thought to be a religious myth until relatively recently in human history.

I'll cease discussing this particular sub-topic on this thread at this point.

How does all of this fit into "has been highly accelerated by intensive human agriculture "

[Ironduke]

How does all of this fit into "has been highly accelerated by intensive human agriculture "

When deserts become established via periods of glaciation and de-glaciation, agricultural civilizations continue to try to survive by more intensively farming what little land remains to them. Turning it into desert. As the marginal land is extinguished by ever-increasing populations that are more and more marginalized, the natural occurrences become magnified. Transition areas are the first to go, and grassland and savanna transforms into new transitional areas, which turns into new desert.

If I'm not making complete sense, and you're not getting it - I am obviously wasting my time and I'll choose another thread and another subject. I do have other priorities in life and other interests as well. ;-)

[Doktor]

When deserts become established via periods of glaciation and de-glaciation, agricultural civilizations continue to try to survive by more intensively farming what little land remains to them. Turning it into desert. As the marginal land is extinguished by ever-increasing populations that are more and more marginalized, the natural occurrences become magnified. Transition areas are the first to go, and grassland and savanna transforms into new transitional areas, which turns into new desert.

If I'm not making complete sense, and you're not getting it - I am obviously wasting my time and I'll choose another thread and another subject. I do have other priorities in life and other interests as well. ;-)

Yay, sure scratch the curiosity and ran away. Not well played, good Sir.

[Ironduke]

Yay, sure scratch the curiosity and ran away. Not well played, good Sir.

If I run into a wall of denialism and am merely in a circle where I'm re-iterating previous points ad infinitum - with a one-liner outright denying everything I have said, holding all I say to be false - there are better uses of my time. I'm a truly busy man and don't have time for circular arguments. As they say in American football - there has to be forward progress. I don't play small ball with endless turnovers, only to end the game in a 0-0 tie. That being said - in intellectual debate - there only way to be the loser is to choose to be - intellectual debate can very well be a game with two winners.

Imagine Vidal and Buckley debating, before they started calling one another a homo and a fascist, respectively.

If someone were to say - "I agree with you here, here, and here, but I have a difference of opinion, and believe there is evidence to support my point on this matter I disagree on you with, here is what I have to say" - then that's where the debate re-starts. I've offered arguments based on hard science facts that have been proven from the climatological and geological records - proven by hard science - and followed up on them with theories and inferences - which is the foundation of the scientific theory itself.

Not being a geologist, archaeologist, physicist, or even a scientist myself - I acknowledge the intellectual contributions and superior wisdom and ability of those who are renowned in their fields who have put forward their own discoveries, knowledge, and ideas - and added a few of my own. Cross-fertilization of ideas from people in other fields is also vital to science and discovery. That being said, I'm also not a researcher, fellow, or ivory tower guy.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is not an archaeologist or geologist - he surely has the intellectual capability to be these things, but he chose to specialize in physics, but in the new Cosmos and his writings - he acknowledges the intellects and contributions of those who studied and specialized in these fields, then leverages his own celebrity and appeal, to spread facts and knowledge discovered by people who are not Neil deGrasse Tyson to a mass audience.

I would go as far to say - the sign of a true intellectual is the person who recognizes and defers to those who are their superior, whether in their own field or in other fields, and goes on to layer their own contributions on top of pre-existing discoveries, theories, facts, and knowledge, and also propagate these things to people in their own field who would be otherwise unaware of them.

They may have unproveable theories - at least at first - but they then either go out and discover whether their theories are factual - or at the very least, encourage or create an environment conducive to others doing so through their own efforts, or a combination of efforts.

I'll withhold my ideas and debate for another topic if all I see is one-liners in response to what I wrote. Not a big deal - I'll also keep an eye out for substantive and well-thought out replies on this subject matter as well.

Dok - if you've got substance to add - don't hold back. This is the ideal I co-founded WAB in July 2003 with - no one-liners (except perhaps to lighten the mood if things get too serious), rather - I looked forward to intellectual debate with breadth, depth, intelligence, and wisdom. Mocking people and making light is a great way to cut them back down to size if their ego gets out of control - deeply intellectual comedians who have chosen comedy as their intellectual prism do this all the time - but they also come forward with substantive arguments incorporating comedy, to make it appealing to a broad audience who appreciates both humor and intellect rolled into one.

It seems thus far from what I've seen - is that you're holding back on us. ;-)

[snapper]

Really. Where's your evidence?

You ever been to the Pyramids? I can tell you that in the limestone they are made of are thousands of fossils of ancient marine animals. Thus the region they were quarried in was once below the sea.

[Parihaka]

You ever been to the Pyramids? I can tell you that in the limestone they are made of are thousands of fossils of ancient marine animals. Thus the region they were quarried in was once below the sea.

Uh huh. And that is evidence of man made desertification how exactly?

[Ironduke]

You ever been to the Pyramids? I can tell you that in the limestone they are made of are thousands of fossils of ancient marine animals. Thus the region they were quarried in was once below the sea.

The limestone shows that the world is more than 6000 years old - proves it beyond a doubt. Thanks for citing evidence on that.

The fact that 20 or 30% of the world's population is living in conditions as seen in the various Mad Max movies to some degree or another, checking my clock, at the very moment I'm typing this - which is 0552 on 2 May 2017 - is a major cause of concern for me.

Edit: I've waited a four minutes to see if the Mad-Max like conditions 20-30% of the world's population is living in has ended and civilization has arrived to these 20-30% of the world's people - but there are in fact several thousand MORE people living in Mad Max-like conditions than there were just four minutes ago.

I'm sure if I were to check in tomorrow, there may be several tens of thousands more living in these conditions, and the Mad Max-like conditions will continue to be with us at this time tomorrow. I'm more sure about it than what the weatherman has told me the weather will be like tomorrow, even though I cannot prove that Mad Max-like conditions won't abate. :-)

It may be the case that these are not humans, and if they are - it is all their own fault and they have no-one else to blame, that the Mad Max dystopia they're living in was self-imposed and a product of their own failings. They must not want civilization, or education, or anything, really. They just want to sell us cocoa, and palm oil, and uranium, and oil and be poor.

If anyone has any recommendations on how to clear up these Mad Max-like conditions, I'm all ears. Not that I can do anything about it - other than be concerned as a fellow human being, and continue to live the minimalist, post-materialist lifestyle I've been pursuing these last several years. I put my money where my mouth is on that.

I'll have to check in with Bill O'Reilly with regards to what these people are even thinking. They must be crazy. I'm sure he will have the answers to the questions I have. As Sagan, deGrasse Tyson, Diamond, de Blij, and many, many others aren't making sense to anybody - we should turn to O'Reilly.

You know - O'Reilly has a picture of his face covering the entirety of several books he's published - that's so you know it's him because when you see his face on the book - you instantly make the association between him and all the answers for the pressing questions of our times. He used to answer all the questions we needed answers for an hour each night on one of the cable news channels - but he got set up and framed. So now we need to read the book. Trump said so himself - the President cannot be wrong.

The Art of the Deal is bigger than the Bible, and should be the only textbook used in every class, from preschool through post-secondary. Coloring books of The Art of the Deal should be made - with half of the box of crayons containing various shades of orange.

A bachelor's degree, every single one of them, should require 120 credits - with each credit covering one page of The Art of the Deal. Master's theses and doctoral dissertations should also cover an aspect of The Art of the Deal, in one way or another - and anything critical of the work should get you kicked out of college and blacklisted from ever being employed, and any person criticizing The Art of the Deal sent to live in Syria - they are obviously associated with some bad hombres.

Obviously our intellectuals are all frauds - we should turn to Trump, Putin, Le Pen, Farage, as well as the journalists such as O'Reilly, Hannity and even their counterparts on the left, perhaps - Maddow, Olbermann, Matthews, and so on. Whoever shouts the loudest and talks over another person and doesn't let them get in a word edge-wise, is the correct person to turn to for all the answers.

[Ironduke]

There are so many things in this world, where we see half-truths, quarter-truths, tenth-truths, hundreth-truths, and thousand-truths.

Let's just call them partial truths.

The denialist position on man's effect on climate is a partial truth.

It is far, far more dangerous than an outright lie.

An outright lie can be demonstrated to be false.

A partial truth is insidious, dangerous, and in this age we're living in - is getting people killed by creating an environment where the complete truth is disbelieved, while the actual truth is framed up to be seen as a lie.

What makes the partial truth so insidious, dangerous, and deadly is that it has just a sprinkling of truth in it - enough to make people eat the poisonous lie flavored with artificial truth flavoring.

I'm not accusing anyone here of being a liar. But other people's lies are being repeated. People with vested interests, vested in profit, people who then lobby and create propaganda in the form of commercials and astroturfing campaigns, and so on.

When these insidious, dangerous, and deadly partial truths are told and repeated, such as the denialist position on manmade climate change - people buy it and millions die miserable deaths and another million species go extinct before their time.

We're perpetuating a Holocaust on this Earth - instead of millions of humans, it is millions of species that are suffering from a genocide caused by indifference and greed.

[Ironduke]

so just when we were talking about oil tax being political suicide:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...g-the-gas-tax/

Just for clarification - when I spoke of $200-300 barrel from whatever means - I meant a tax.

A barrel is 42 gallons - at $5.50-$6.00 a gallon in many European countries, they are paying approximately $231-252 per barrel. Obviously a barrel has more than just gasoline in it, if you were to simply distill the gasoline portion from it - most gasoline is actually produced by cracking longer hydrocarbon molecule chains into gasoline-sized ones in a refinery.

$6/gallon gasoline would be perfectly acceptable to me. I use, in the following order, walking, bicycle sharing, bus/light rail, Uber/Lyft to get around, depending on my time/money tradeoff considerations at that particular moment. The world has changed, the economy has changed, and I've done what I need to do to adapt to adapt to changing conditions, as the ground shifts under my feet. It has the massive side bonus of being friendly toward the environment. Bi-winning, as Carlos Estevez would say.

Perhaps a refundable tax credit for truly rural residents for a certain amount of gallons per year would be a viable strategy - refund the tax paid on up to 2-3 gallons of gas per work day, so in effect they are paying the pre-tax gasoline price on, say, up to gallons per year. I'm sure there would be a small free rider problem - but most of the tax would be collected.

This would give rural residents 30-45 minutes of drive time each workday, tax-free. Suburban/urban customers would pay the full $6 with no tax credit. I have a car available to me when I visit relatives in rural/small town areas - eventually in the next few weeks I'll be purchasing an 80s GM Sedan just to drive a few hundred miles a year whilst visiting. Perhaps a later year model of my old Pontiac 6000 with the Iron Duke engine.

Food and clothing transportation could also be made eligible for a diesel tax credit, as well as medication and so on. If 20% of a semi-trailer is filled with food, clothing, or medicine, the transport company would get a tax credit on 20% of the gallons they purchased on mixed loads. Again, free riders and fraud are potentially issues to deal with, but a solution such as this with the political suicide problem we face with regards to gasoline/diesel taxes, something like this would probably be something in the direction of an actually viable strategy.

This is my answer to zraver's points - point taken, alternative suggested.

[Parihaka]

I don't know if you're addressing my statements but all I'm asking for is if you've got any evidence (science papers etc) that the desertification of the Sahara and Arabian peninsula is caused by human activity? All I can find is that it's caused by the end of monsoon activity 5,500 years ago because of a change in the angle of the Earths rotation. The fertile cresent has been constantly occupied for at least the last 12,000 years, and remains fertile, heavily occupied and intensively farmed.

[Ironduke]

I don't know if you're addressing my statements but all I'm asking for is if you've got any evidence (science papers etc) that the desertification of the Sahara and Arabian peninsula is caused by human activity? All I can find is that it's caused by the end of monsoon activity 5,500 years ago because of a change in the angle of the Earths rotation. The fertile cresent has been constantly occupied for at least the last 12,000 years, and remains fertile, heavily occupied and intensively farmed.

I quoted de Blij. You can pick up his book secondhand at any used bookstore for $5 if you're ever near a University. If you can find a discounted old edition on sale on a .co.nz website, I'll pay to have it shipped to you.

I am not commenting on you specifically, and I apologize as I may have used your brief statements as a foil on which to expound generally on the denialist mindset, which you may not possess yourself specifically. You may or may not fully buy into denialism - I don't know which aspects of it you do or do not believe in because you haven't expounded your views at length.

I couldn't find someone specific to rebut, but I wanted to take an opportunity to expound my views. I apologize if there's been any confusion.

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...obal_Terrorism

[Parihaka]

I quoted de Blij. You can pick up his book secondhand at any used bookstore for $5 if you're ever near a University. If you can find a discounted old edition on sale on a .co.nz website, I'll pay to have it shipped to you.

I am not commenting on you specifically, and I apologize as I may have used your brief statements as a foil on which to expound generally on the denialist mindset, which you may not possess yourself specifically. You may or may not fully buy into denialism - I don't know which aspects of it you do or do not believe in because you haven't expounded your views at length.

I couldn't find someone specific to rebut, but I wanted to take an opportunity to expound my views. I apologize if there's been any confusion.

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...obal_Terrorism

To be honest, he looks like a doomsday cultist to me. I experienced the same thing in the early seventies, my museum displaying population clocks and announcing everyone on earth would be starving by 2000. Well, that came and went.

As for global warming, here is a merged series of threads from the past decade. In short my beliefs, yes it is warming and has been since 1650. The majority of this rise is natural, some is human caused (via the logarythmic response of temperature to the addition of CO2 in well mixed gases), most however not.
CO2 is not a toxin and I don't see enforced massive population reduction via energy poverty as either viable or moral, especially since all trends show population stasis by 2050.
Agricultural land use is falling as efficiencies in production and processing are introduced and, ironically given the doomsday cultists hatred of CO2, the Earth is greening (increasing heat and CO2 = plant growth).
I'm happy to discuss anything you have in detail but I come armed with science, not gut beliefs.