too good to be true

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

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note: last year's Amazon Commission fees were $2k.  Thank you one and all!  All book sales were $125.  $10 a month is NOT worth the disadvantages filing taxes for it brings.  Therefor, all my books are now being sold at cost with zero profit for myself.  e-books go from $1.25 to .99 and paper books are at the minimum price-usually at least 50% less than before.  As a result all the books are now sold from Lulu.com rather than on Kindle.  All the book links are at my web site:
www.bisonprepper.com 
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Now, I certainly know for a fact that none of you have fallen for the e-mail scam that is supposedly from a Nigerian prince needing to claim his fortune with your help.  All you needed to do was give him your Social Security ( “don’t call me a national ID” ) Number and bank account and he will gladly shall in this windfall since you were nice enough to help him.  And I doubt although I cannot prove that few of you would will all your worldly possessions to the televangelist that talks in tongues.  I’m trusting and hoping that if your parents didn’t teach you that If Something Seems Too Good To Be True, You Can Be Certain It Is, at least after being screwed a time or two you finally learned your lesson.  When I suddenly found a very bodacious buxomly lass in my bed at the young age of 26, I SHOULD have known it was too good to be true, but alas my Little Brain being the dingus he is would brook no argument as the lady offered me her charms.  That only took roughly half my adult lifespan to pay for, the price one is charged for a REAL education.

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When everyone and his brother started telling you that This Time Was Different, that housing prices would always increase ( as they had seemingly magically done in California for close to a century ), did you think that was Too Good To Be True?  I trust that if any of my readers, who I expect great things from and shan’t brook any nonsense from about Yuppie Scum Survivalism, actually did fall for it that they had no choice as a wife as evil as my ex forced you into it ( that shall be your only excused excuse ).  The only reason California had the mirage of ever increasing housing costs was both from state/fed subsidized water imports, a one off soil draw down and federal money pouring in.  Plus, they had a lot of oil there at one time and all newcomers could live further and further away on desert land so as to be able to afford a home themselves.  And the only reason the nation itself saw insane housing prices was the last credit binge the central banks unloosed on every single swinging Jack and Jill out there.

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Even if you weren’t aware of any of that, were you leery nonetheless?  I hope so, for your sake.  And if you did treat the housing boom as the bubble it was, did you fall for the fracking fiasco right after?  It didn’t take very long for the naysayers to pop out of the Blogger woodwork and show you what a complete scam that was.  As soon as Beck & Company embarrassed themselves cheerleading for the century minimum Oil Independence, we were shown the figures from the most hyped wells that proved fracking was at most about a three year bonanza.  And not a very cheap one at that.  If you still have any illusions that ( USA! USA! USA! ) we will be the new Saudi Arabia ( which, really is NOT what you want to aspire to as they were cutting their prime wells with 90% seawater TEN YEARS AGO to get out the dregs-they only avoided production declines by moving offshore and pumping less sweet crude ), that should have dissuaded you.  If not, there is always the EROI.

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Okay, technically it might be EROEI, but, whatever.  Energy return on energy invested is such a simple concept you have to be stoned to miss it.  If it takes MORE energy to get carbon fuel out of the ground, you get LESS energy to burn.  Kind of like, The More People There Are, The Less Food There Is To Go Around.  You can slap all the lipstick you want on that pig, but you are still looking at swine, not a prom date.  So, let’s look at EROI, shall we?  I covered this already, but I don’t think I got through to most of you ( with, you know, most states going legal on weed, I wouldn’t doubt most of you are stoned as you read this ).  So we’ll look at it in a different way.  In 1930 we were pumping 7 mbpd ( million barrels per day ) and had a population of 123 million.  Hence, every day each citizens share of the oil was .06 barrels.  In 2015 we were pumping 20 mbpd ( actually, I think we were down to about 18, but rounding up makes for better numbers ) with a population of 320 million.  Still .06 barrels per person.  No problems, right?

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Wrong.  Because back in the day, with super giant fields ( there is a classing system where this is an actual designation-I’m not making it up as if to say “super groovy” or some such ) gushing oil all over the place-Texas and California and etc.-was so easy to extract and process that the EROI was 100 to 1.  By 1970 US domestic oil was down to 30 to 1 ( which might explain far better the economic class warfare from the Sixties than any sociological explanation-if energy was declining in delivered BTU’s, less to fuel growth to placate the minority masses.  Not that the meat grinder of Vietnam helped all that much ).  Today, with the incredibly bad 5 to 1 of fracking oil, even importing better EROI oil doesn’t expand the total mix of consumables past 10 to 1.  We are ONE TENTH the useable energy per capita as we were a hundred years ago.  That means that even if each person sees in their hypothetical share the exact same as always, that volume delivers only ten percent of useable energy as it used to. 

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And you think that argues for continued economic prosperity?  Continued employment?  The only reason we aren’t even worse off is that we still are holding the reserve currency globally ( BARELY.  I believe that any friggin day now, that whole system implodes.  A dozen years ago we invaded Iraq to keep them from selling oil for Euro’s.  Since then, more and more countries are trading outside the dollar and we can’t say boo.  Just a few days ago Japan-our Japan-agreed to trade in the Chinese centric system.  If foreigners don’t trade oil for dollars, we can’t get any oil! ).  The Oil Age is in decline.  Big time.  To think it won’t get very bad very quick is to dream of things too good to be true.

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