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What can we say? Thanks, iTulip community member John E.
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Re: Congress on iTulip.com
Always good to know that conngress is always there whenever a bubble bursts, so I'd say let's create another one. How about cheap piece of shit tech stocks? I'm in."Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
- Charles Mackay -
Re: Congress on iTulip.com
Originally posted by Tet View Post
I think this is the trail you better be on. http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1471Comment
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Re: Congress on iTulip.com
The chances of me believing something dealing with the market, or commodities from a site out of Toronto is less than zero. Right after Salt Lake City more stock scams originate out of Toronto than anyplace else in the world. The Peakster Oil scam is just the latest version of Bre-X or any of a number of other Bush/Toronto stock scams. How did Bre-X turn out anyway, a couple guys who they said were dead turn up living on Caribbean Islands. I wonder which Islands these hypsters pitching Peak Oil turn up on.Originally posted by bill View Post"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
- Charles MackayComment
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Re: Congress on iTulip.com
I agree with you in regards to stock scams. The reason I posted the site is for information purposes only as I do believe alt energy will play a important role in the next bubble cycle.
I will not get in a debate as far as “Peak Oil” but I do believe there will be a carbon tax slammed on all carbon producing energy and that tax will be used to fund alt energy programs. Let’s say oil at some future date the price goes down and the usage goes up, the carbon tax attached will increase revenues and support alt energy programs.
I have researched in length Wind and Solar for investment and if oil tanks so do these two industries, history cycles tell it all. However if and I do believe it is in the works a carbon tax is applied the funding for alt energy will explode,even if oil usage goes up, more carbon produced, more tax.
Last edited by bill; July 05, 2007, 01:10 AM.Comment
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Scammers and Con Artists on the Toronto Exchange
Dear Sirs,
I apologize for posting to this thread as I'm not sure if it's unofficially reserved for "inner circle" members of the I-Tulip community. I am not even a paying subscriber so that would be impolite indeed.
I hold the great majority of your comments in considerable respect, and agree with 95% of what you observe elsewhere. I must sincerely acknowledge you run circles around me in sophistication regarding practically all aspects of financial flows and transactions.
However in this 21st century era it is absolutely not difficult for even untutored people possessed of a critical eye, a bit of curiosity, no preconceptions, and a good dose of common sense to dig up and quickly assemble very robust research on many topics of investment interest.
If commercially available reports from investment firms don't deliver the goods within a year or two of their publication, those firms become unmarketable - and it's absolutely not difficult to distinguish those that have identified the actionable themes from those advisers and funds who are chasing theses with no positive return. In short, those analysts that earn their subscribers outstanding returns, particularly if they do it year in uear out for five to seven years, validate their investment theses handily, and the chaff is cleared out pretty quickly.
What allows the non-specialist layman to arm himself with very robust information is the simple ability to BUY the very best of this kind of intelligence which is readily commercially available on the market - it all carries a track record, so it really does not take much looking to find the highest referred sources.
Hence if I am willing to spend, (and did some sloppy digging), I can purchase Cambridge Energy Research Associates report on the rosy state of energy today for $1000 and I will be presumably as well informed as the CEO of any larger company that wishes to purchase that same intelligence.
I've found in recent years that for very modest expenditure, one can select, purchase, read and assemble some very high level intelligence on investment themes of interest which has been directly validated by strong returns. One can start by buying multiple intelligence sources, cross index them to see which common themes emerge, and then easily broaden the investigation of those themes about which there is the widest consensus.
I have no doubt we are all aware of these same resources and their validity.
We (Joe Sixpack if you will) therefore can vault ourselves to a position of making reasonably safe, well-informed, actionable decisions on energy investments, by having simply bought the data from reliable sources, such as Mssrs. Henry Groppe and Charley Maxwell, both of whom have run blue-chip energy consulting firms for fifty years and consult primarily to larger corporations.
Such firms entire business, and specialization is to provide commercial quality actionable intelligence on the state of the energy industry to their corporate clients. For such firms, to be shown to be correct is their ultimate and only currency. They cannot afford to be wrong, as even just two or three years of being wrong would put them out of business and so lose them a clientele built over fifty years.
Such "borrowed intelligence" if you will, is made available merely for the cost of a subscription (some curiosity however is still required!).
It is indeed in that same investment area, among people of that same caliber, that an outstanding firm comes to light, precisely in that lair of scams, unscrupulous rumor-mills, thievery and investment adviser fraud known as the Toronto market for resource shares.
One of the top performing investment houses in Toronto is SPROTT ASSET MANAGEMENT.
http://www.sprott.com/index.php
If you conduct even a cursory diligence of their credentials you'll ascertain without much difficulty that they are the top performing family of mutual funds in Canada. Mr. Eric Sprott has earned a broad and deep degree of trust sufficient among investors to maintain 1 billion dollars under management, and a very large part of his theme for the past seven to ten years has been precisely in the energy arena, informed with an outstandingly profitable result, because they subscribe 100% to the "peak oil" recognition which some people here apparently regard as the most harlequin, mountebank unscrupulously defraudatory scheme to ever hoodwink credulous widows.
You might say Sprott Asset Managment "put their money where their mouths are, and a great deal of their client's money. Mr. Sprott, unlike the vast majority of his American mutual fund counterparts, has all his net worth invested in his own mutual funds. The man is an outstanding example of scrupulous regard for his client's interests. You could not find a finer one.
Please take a cursory inspection of their 1, 3, and 5 year returns on their managed funds. Do a global search for Eric Sprott and his firm and you'll readily conclude this is a first tier natural resources adviser and family of mutual funds in North America.
They have made their clients a great deal of money, and were among the very first in 1998 - 1999 to shepherd their clients into the Uranium sector, when doing so required a great deal of vision and courage. Of course now their investment theme is so mainstream as to verge on popular, and copy-catted by a variety of other funds globally. They were possibly the very first, back in the late 1990's.
I submit here with considerable earnestness, that despite the great ease with which we can all source highly revealing data on the tightness of the world's energy markets, the fact that you may not discern even a glimmer of an investable trend but ascribe all this business in the energy markets to "bunk" and "fluff" puts the acuity of your judgement on more complex issues into question. The comments about the integrity of many players on the Toronto exchange may be merely unkind if we go by the integrity of Mr. Eric Sprott.
Either Mr. Sprott's 1 billion USD worth of clients have made a ton of money over a half decade, from his direct recommendations, and have an eye to harvest a lot more, or they are merely dupes of some Tinhorn north of the border. In that case Mr. Eric Sprott must weild phenomenal powers of persuasion to have drawn in such large investor sums. You must make your own informed decisions.
There are many issues you master which I do not. I'm here to point out to you the ease with which you can spend a measly couple of thousand dollars and gain the a very broad spectrum of the very best intelligence available on the enrgy markets - from the top professionals in energy, to know (with very little uncertainty) if energy is a theme upon which you might make a lot of money in coming years. This is not theology, it's merely investing, where we can protect ourselves from bunk a lot more easily.
Energy depletion, as the Sprott family of funds have mapped it out for seven years now, is not complex at all in it's outlines. It's been, and promises to be extremely profitable, not primarily because of inflation, but because of depletion.
I have zero ideological interest in whether oil peaks at all. I only got interested to invest, and also to plan parts of my life around it. What surprises me is that contributors in this community with a great deal of sophistication in virtually all other areas find this topic so emotionally fraught that they cannot be comfortable with even provisionally adopting the opposite side of the argument just to investigate it further for their own portfolios.Comment
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Re: Scammers and Con Artists on the Toronto Exchange
There is a ton of cash to be made on a chain letter, the trick though is to be one of the first ones into the scam not the last left holding the bag. Those that hold the Peak Oil view should be looking for an exit, not a entrance.Originally posted by Lukester View Post
"The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time."
Fred Hoyle, 1982.
I'm a big believer in Peak Oil, my belief leads me to be looking for an entrance point in which to go short, Oil, Oil Stocks, Gas, Gas Stocks and anything having to do with Toronto, because Toronto has proven time and time again that they are nothing but scam artists and just because someone in Toronto has managed to scam $1 billion from the bagholders just means he's better at it, not that it's not a scam.
I'm very interested in the Tar Scam and curious about lift costs, because the deeper and the bigger the hole you dig the more expensive it gets to pull the Tar out of the hole. I would think there's got to be some huge holes in Canada by now. I think it's pretty funny that Salt Lake City, the other Scam Capital of the world is looking at running the Tar Scam in Utah. Here in the US it's pretty hard to get a strip mining permit, the ecological damage is pretty severe, I guess Canada doesn't care. Canada is producing something close to a million barrels of Tar Scam, interesting to note that OPEC is cutting a million or so barrels of low lift cost production. From a fundamental standpoint this doesn't last because pretty soon this turns into an energy sink, I would think 2008 presents some great opportunities to short Tar Scam stocks.
Turning lead into gold has been one of the oldest scams ever created, the Tar Scam is no different.
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
- Charles MackayComment
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Re: God bless the Cornucopian
The wide community of oil geologists, oil financing bankers, concerned scientists and general public who have been discussing oil depletion in recent years observe one small group of particularly maverick deniers of resource depletion with a special degree of bewilderment - these are called the "Cornucopians" and it is their earnest belief that hydrocarbons are formed deep within the bounteous earth and well up spontaneously to pool into the oil strata a few thousand feet down.
This is the so-called "abiogenic oil" theory and I do believe (although I can't quite believe my eyes) it is being hauled out and dusted off here as a serious "rebuttal" to oil depletion in 2007 having any possible merit as a theory. As theories go, "Cornucopianism" is certainly among the more whimsical.
The Cornucopians (derives from the ancient greek mythological term "Horn of Plenty") claim this school of thought has a sound scientific basis.
A wide array of concerned geologists worldwide who follow events in the oil sector very closely remain utterly bewildered on the purported science behind Cornucopianism as it implies that oil in liquid hydrocarbon state can exist, let alone form, outside the oil window.
Modern oil geology, as taught by someone like Professor Ken Deffeyes at Princeton has a broad consensus across America. They teach the same geology at the Colorado School of Mines, perhaps the premier geology school in the world, or certainly one of the earliest established.
This commonly accepted modern theory acknowledges some animal matter in the early prcursors of oil (components of the earlier Keragen), but it describes the source instead as biological matter which is primarily derived from microscopic marine life, both animal and vegetable, which must then become trapped in deep ocean layers deprived of oxygen during a part of it's existence, before geological time and shifts move it into rock layers.
Even then, a highly rare and singular series of strata events have to form above it or else it does not survive geologically. Trapped oil, as succinctly described by Prof. Deffeyes, is geologically RARE.
The modern geologic theory, taught in "geology 101", specifically dismisses the formation of hydrocarbons from "dinosaurs". If one has read "geology 101 - chapter 1" ridiculing "dino-goo" is merely specious.
Most relevant to discovering the absurdity of the "science" behind Cornucopianism is that modern oil geology requires oil and gas to form only within a specific depth "window".
Professor Deffeyes notes (and here I find myself having to type it from a book to get a "geology 101" point across to Tet -
<< Burying organic-rich sediments in rocks deeper than 7500 feet takes them into a temperature range (about 175 degr. Fahrenheit) that causes large organic molecules to break into smaller pieces. Molecules with five to twenty carbon atoms are gases at room temperature and pressure: natural gas. A depth of 7500 feet is called the "top of the oil window".
Burying the sediments or the oil deeper than 15000 feet continues the breakdown until the remaining product has only one carbon atom per molecule. That gas, almost pure Methane (CH-4) is often referred to as "dry" natural gas. The limit of 15000 feet is the bottom of the oil window. If you are looking for oil, you need organic rich sediments that have been buried at some time in their history, into but not deeper than, the oil window. >>
Presumably the oil geology taught to first year geology students at Princeton represents the most informed consensus of modern geology for first year geology students (probably first semester of first year), otherwise doubtless many concerned upper-middle-class parents might be agitated about where all their expensive tuition payments were going.
Mr. Deffeyes clearly indicates - No, oil does indeed not come from Dinosaurs. Yes, oil does indeed come from microscopic plant and marine life - in that it required the ENERGY OF THE SUN to become trapped within it's biological material. This has something quite elementary to with (accepted?) common laws of thermodynamics - i.e. energy input from the sun had to exist at some stage of the hydrocarbons formation cycle - hence derived from material which was alive and photosynthesizing or feeding on those plants, on the surface of the planet, not welling up from sunless depths).
The point here with regard to geology basics is this: that at depths below 15000 feet, all precursors of oil and gas get broken down into gas and can no longer develop into oil. The process does not work (at least in nature) in reverse, with gas below 15000 feet welling upward into the oil window from 15000 feet up to 7000 feet, and thereby spontaneously re-aggregating it's broken down molecules back into oil.
The topic at the END of serious discussions on oil depletion among geologists and concerned scientists (and even the general public who took fifteen minutes to read up on hydrocarbons formation) is the enjoyable, humorous chit-chat about the "Cornucopians" - which invariably elicits a good deal of mirth.
I venture to guess that the considerable number of "peak oil deniers" here (thinking they are maintaining their critical skepticism, but who are actually abdicating it by buying into this claptrap), whether as outspoken as Tet or not, have done as little elementary reading on this specific topic as Tet has. The ability to distinguish absurd hot air arguments from any serious discussion of the topic should be a prerequisite for posting rebuttals on these web pages.
I see further that Finster obliquely refers on other threads (and I doubt he's referring to anyone else) to my arguments on this same very specific topic as "theatrics" - to which my comment is that such loosely articulated blanket dismissals display the same degree of sloppy out-of-focus examination as is displayed seriously trotting out "Abiogenic Oil" on these pages and seeing that not a single person here breaks out laughing.
Please note, I have qualified myself everywhere as not having the knowledge to rebut much else on these pages. I actually agree with a lot, and I see many people here of fine conscience. I don't argue for the sake of argument. Where I agree I mainly say nothing. However when that intellectual modesty and sense of caution encounters such arrant nonsense as Cornucopianism I feel an urgent need to inform all here that the quality and tenor of their investigation has just taken a sharp dive and is now slithering pathetically across the scientific floor.
I simply don't have the knowledge to argue or rebut the vast majority of issues on these pages to do with credit markets. So what do I do? I don't profer an opinion about things of which I am patently ignorant.
When I see some senior people on these pages sounding off on "abiogenic Cornucopianism" and lampooning "peak oil" without even having gotten straight in their minds what those depletion scientists actually state - I wonder why the editors of this website don't have concern that the their stated positions on this narrow range of issues may be considered frivolous by the public at large. I would be issuing disclaimers on the opinions of my senior commentators when they venture into gems such as "abiogenic oil proves that everything you say about depletion is nonsense".
This is as explicit as I can get. Apparently a few of the senior group of I-Tulip commentators do not understand what is absurd, un-educated, un-scientific and obscurantist to the point of embarassment about proposing "Cornucopianism" as a serious rebuttal of oil depletion.
If such arguments are tacitly left standing for general consumption as "valid questions and rebuttals" on the issue - it contaminates and weakens I-Tulip's ability to claim any informed position at all on the topic. It also misleads the public about an issue with a potentially large significance to economies worldwide.
Ref: Kenneth F. Deffeyes - "Beyond Oil" - Farrar, Straus & Giroux - NYC.Comment
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Re: God bless the Cornucopian
I see it is time for iTulip to weigh in on this with a position. We will also expand our gold position, to clarify that our editorial policy is that we do not believe that money based on gold is any more or less honest than money based on anything else, or that fiat money or fractional reserve banking is inherently bad. There is no ideal money system, only degrees of good and bad. Most importantly, a bad government can do as much harm to its citizens with gold based money as a good government can do well for its citizens with fiat. But this is a digression (at one time, gold played the same perverse role in the global economy as the US Treasury dollar does today).Originally posted by Lukester View Post
We will craft a formal position statement on Peak Oil, but less formally I'll say this; and with a BS in resource economics, I can claim at least some credentials on this issue.
My experience is that most of us live our lives as if we had one in the bank because most of us cannot comprehend the brevity of our human life until a good part of it behind us. In the natural context of a human life geologic time and events that happen in geologic time are unintuitive. How can a river have carved the Grand Canyon? How can the deserts of the Middle East or the American southwest have once been massive jungles? How can sunlight converted to cellulose in a CO2 rich atmosphere over hundreds of millions of years produce all of this oil? Surely something must be pumping the oil up from somewhere below for so much to come out the top.
There are many places on this earth, and one need not travel far if one lives in Illinois or Pennsylvania, where indeed the oil no longer flows. It is this fact that makes the case for the Peak Oilers. What hurts their case is that no disinterested party knows how much oil is left, and no interested party is motivated to be truthful.
This much we can say for sure. Humans have been able in a mere 100 years to consume a vast portion of the oil, gas, and coal that sun and organic processes took many millions to produce. I prefer to think of these in the thermodynamic sense, as pre-charge batteries. All others, such as hydrogen, must first be charged by human effort before they can be used.
Imagine never having to go to the store to buy batteries when the ones in your flashlight run out but being able to stick your hand in a drawer in the kitchen and pick another one up out of an apparently bottomless container. That's what we've been doing with oil and gas and coal for 100 years.
Can we keep sticking our hand in the drawer and pulling out fresh pre-charged batteries at current rates and costs for another 100 years? Probably far less. For another year? Very likely more.
The Peak Oilers say "we" can see or feel or measure the bottom of the drawer. I'm not sure, but I am ready to concede that we are probably close enough that investment in alternatives is finally safe. In any case, the nations that own the drawer are not going to sell us the batteries on our terms anymore.Last edited by EJ; July 04, 2007, 05:52 PM.Comment
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Re: Congress on iTulip.com
EJ - Many thanks to you for your reply. I submit only an observation, and it's a reiteration:
<< Surely something must be pumping the oil up from somewhere below for so much to come out the top. >>
This idea runs against the molecular breakdown of hydrocarbons as they exist at greater depths. Pressure and heat augment as depth increases, and once hydrocarbons break down below the oil window (below approx. 15000 feet at the lowest) they break down to gas and cannot again reconstitute into larger molecular chains, i.e. go from being gas back to being oil.
Unless sunlight derived hydrocarbons are squeezed laterally from adjacent (but somehow hidden) deposits within the oil window (7K to 15K feet), there is no way in modern recognized petroleum science that that sunlight enriched organic residue can emerge from deeper points in the earth. It's illogical to the science. The oil could only replenish oil fields if it was inorganic in origin, and this idea is refuted by the geology taught in schools today.
When oil fields are discovered, estimates of reserves are approximate. Therefore any estimation of the requirement that they must be being replenished cannot be more than a guess. The known science disproves that guess. Oil cannot rise up from levels below 15K feet - due to heat and pressure at those lower levels. Heat below these levels simply cooks any hydrocarbons off entirely.Comment
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Re: Congress on iTulip.com
Maybe you missed my point.Originally posted by Lukester View Post
A river did carve out the Grand Canyon, the Middle East and the American southwest were indeed once massive jungles, and sunlight did convert to cellulose in a CO2 rich atmosphere over hundreds of millions of years all of the oil.
While we're at it, man landed on the moon, there are no UFOs, and fires caused the World Trade Center towers to collapse.
Did I miss anything?Comment
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Re: Congress on iTulip.com
EJ - I would regret imposing on your time with frivolities. I must be the one missing something as your reply is difficult for me to understand.
I was attempting to make a very simple straightforward reply to this one assertion:
<< Surely something must be pumping the oil up from somewhere below for so much to come out the top. >>
This was the crux of the previous posts, and I wished to call to your attention that as far as I can see, the science taught at the top geology schools today disqualifies it entirely. Accordingly, we cannot make this assertion.
In your reply (maybe I misunderstood) you seemed to indicate that "oil emerging from below" was still up for debate.
The Colorado School of Mines, and Princeton Geology department do not teach the existence of abiotic oil, and I understood you clearly to agree that hydrocarbons are from organic matter which trapped millions of years of solar energy.
If abiotic oil does not exist, then my understanding is that "something pumping up oil from below into the existing oil fields " cannot exist. What I was seeking to clarify is that self replenishing oil fields is not a principle taught at our mining schools, and is considered to have no basis in fact.
What am I misunderstanding otherwise?Comment
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Re: Congress on iTulip.com
Mr. Janszen - I am not a proponent of creationism. Where does that leave the rest of my inquiries in your view? Honest and consistent, with sound references, or frivolous and without basis?Comment
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Re: Scammers and Con Artists on the Toronto Exchange
Originally posted by Tet View PostOriginally posted by Tet View Post
How is it possible that I keep finding myself in agreement with both Tet and Lukester???
Anyway, I agree about the Tar Scam, and it's not just because of the energy to pull the tar (you're supposed to call it oil, Tet) out of the bigger and deeper holes. I can't find anyone involved who can tell me what they're going to do for water.
For anyone thinking of investing, I urge a visit to Alberta first. The scene makes coal mining look pristine.Comment
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