TomatoPie wrote:http://online.wsj.com/articles/peak-oil-debunked-again-1417739810

“technology responds to need and to price.”

Why does the end-of-oil myth persist? Part of it is that peak oil is more wish than prediction—a desire to see the end of fossil fuels to serve a larger political agenda. It is also a way of scaring governments into pouring money into alternative energy sources that can’t compete with oil and natural gas without subsidies and mandates. Predicting disaster can also be a profitable business and a path to speech-making celebrity.

They don't know what they're talking about. Oil is a finite resource.

Is it possible that it's not a political agenda, but an environmental one? Maybe people don't like acid rain and photochemical smog. Pollution from fossil fuel burning kills millions of people around the world each year. Maybe they don't like that and it's not political. Is that possible?

Germany gets most of its energy from renewable sources, even exporting it to neighboring countries. Is Germany getting killed economically from it or it helping to drive their success? I'll let you figure out the answer.

(could you tell me the answer because i don't know how to figure it out)

TomatoPie wrote:http://online.wsj.com/articles/peak-oil-debunked-again-1417739810

“technology responds to need and to price.”

Why does the end-of-oil myth persist? Part of it is that peak oil is more wish than prediction—a desire to see the end of fossil fuels to serve a larger political agenda. It is also a way of scaring governments into pouring money into alternative energy sources that can’t compete with oil and natural gas without subsidies and mandates. Predicting disaster can also be a profitable business and a path to speech-making celebrity.

oil companies are subsidized.

wsj editorial board is lobotomized

Werthless wrote:Higher (pegouvian) taxes on gas (combined with tax cuts on earned, W2 income) probably produces the outcome you're all looking for. And all of this without the government trying to pick winners in the alternative energy business. I support this, even though it will never happen in the current political climate:

Many conservatives don't like it because it's a tax increase, which is why I pointed out that it can be combined with other tax cuts to make it revenue neutral. It also hurts rural drivers most, since there are fewer alternatives to driving when you live outside of a city. Rural people vote GOP, so a tax hurts their supporters. Many liberals don't like it because gas taxes are regressive, and are a higher percent of a poor person's income. More poor people vote Dem, so a tax hurts their supporters. Maybe it's good policy when both Repubs and Dems have a reason to oppose it?


Hey, look, it's a classical economics reference! I'm sure docsmooth will be around shortly to deride it.

I have no problem with 'classical' economics. I take issue with cartoon economics

and you've basically explained why economics, on its own, cannot determine your policy choices for you

SK790 wrote:as good of a place as any to put this; A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/fea ... s-20141119

The story of a girl who was gang raped at UVA and all of the gross things that happened to her after.

She was having an especially difficult time figuring out how to process that awful night, because her small social circle seemed so underwhelmed. For the first month of school, Jackie had latched onto a crew of lighthearted social strivers, and her pals were now impatient for Jackie to rejoin the merriment. "You're still upset about that?" Andy asked one Friday night when Jackie was crying. Cindy, a self-declared hookup queen, said she didn't see why Jackie was so bent out of shape. "Why didn't you have fun with it?" Cindy asked. "A bunch of hot Phi Psi guys?" One of Jackie's friends told her, unconcerned, "Andy said you had a bad experience at a frat, and you've been a baby ever since."

This past spring, in separate incidents, both Emily Renda and Jackie were harassed outside bars on the Corner by men who recognized them from presentations and called them "#$!&@" and "feminazi bitch." One flung a bottle at Jackie that broke on the side of her face, leaving a blood-red bruise around her eye.

this one was from another girl who got gang raped at UVA, but holy #$!&@:

"I went to the dean covered in scabs and with broken ribs," she remembers. "And he said, 'Do you think it was just regrettable sex?' "

Rolling Stone today issuing a statement that they don't trust the subject of the story anymore. Wow.

Drew got to em!

I know where Rolling Stone could find some competent editors

TenuredVulture wrote:If you think about it, if you think peak oil has been debunked, then you face a choice--either keep burning oil because it's the cheapest energy source out there until the polar ice caps melt and Pine Bluff AR becomes a port on the gulf of Mexico and my house becomes a beach front property, or use government incentives to develop alternative fuels that don't dump even more carbon into the atmosphere.

I do think it's pretty much fact that we will destroy our ecosystem from burning fossil fuels long before we run out of fossil fuels to burn. WELCOME TO THE MIDAMERICAN DESERT! Here's your camel.

No matter what "incentives" are forced upon Americans, the Chinese will burn coal like it was Pittsburgh in 1900. We can be like France - adopting pristine policies that make us fee righteous - and we can then be as relevant as France, too. Cheese and wine, it ain't all bad, right?

We do indeed face a real problem of replacing fossil fuels. For those who have faith that global warming will destroy us, that's all the motivation you need. For others, even the most level-headed pragmatist knows that the oil in the earth is a finite supply.

But markets solve these problems -- they always have. It's not like we'll wait until the oil is gone and then begin scratching our heads. When we get to the point -- 150 years from now -- when oil is indeed scarce, prices will be rising sufficiently to spur develeopment of alternative fuels. Along the way, we'll find much cleaner ways to burn dino fuel.

Only one thing is certain - no "solution" will begin with an act of Congress or a president too impatient or impotent to get Congress to act.

Monkeyboy wrote:Germany gets most of its energy from renewable sources, even exporting it to neighboring countries.

30%. Impressive.

But not "most"

TomatoPie wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:If you think about it, if you think peak oil has been debunked, then you face a choice--either keep burning oil because it's the cheapest energy source out there until the polar ice caps melt and Pine Bluff AR becomes a port on the gulf of Mexico and my house becomes a beach front property, or use government incentives to develop alternative fuels that don't dump even more carbon into the atmosphere.

I do think it's pretty much fact that we will destroy our ecosystem from burning fossil fuels long before we run out of fossil fuels to burn. WELCOME TO THE MIDAMERICAN DESERT! Here's your camel.

No matter what "incentives" are forced upon Americans, the Chinese will burn coal like it was Pittsburgh in 1900. We can be like France - adopting pristine policies that make us fee righteous - and we can then be as relevant as France, too. Cheese and wine, it ain't all bad, right?

We do indeed face a real problem of replacing fossil fuels. For those who have faith that global warming will destroy us, that's all the motivation you need. For others, even the most level-headed pragmatist knows that the oil in the earth is a finite supply.

But markets solve these problems -- they always have. It's not like we'll wait until the oil is gone and then begin scratching our heads. When we get to the point -- 150 years from now -- when oil is indeed scarce, prices will be rising sufficiently to spur develeopment of alternative fuels. Along the way, we'll find much cleaner ways to burn dino fuel.

Only one thing is certain - no "solution" will begin with an act of Congress or a president too impatient or impotent to get Congress to act.

Markets don't solve problems. The only problem markets sometimes solve is the allocation of resources. They do not solve collective action problems, nor do they solve problems generated by externalities. Unless you wouldn't mind if your neighbor decides to make a little on the side rendering hogs in his back yard. So because Chinese coal burning dooms us anyway, we should go ahead and help the planet just get there faster?

Of course, China's doomed precisely because of their short-sighted reliance on coal--essentially, they are destroying their urban population with their coal burning ways.

TomatoPie wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:If you think about it, if you think peak oil has been debunked, then you face a choice--either keep burning oil because it's the cheapest energy source out there until the polar ice caps melt and Pine Bluff AR becomes a port on the gulf of Mexico and my house becomes a beach front property, or use government incentives to develop alternative fuels that don't dump even more carbon into the atmosphere.

I do think it's pretty much fact that we will destroy our ecosystem from burning fossil fuels long before we run out of fossil fuels to burn. WELCOME TO THE MIDAMERICAN DESERT! Here's your camel.

No matter what "incentives" are forced upon Americans, the Chinese will burn coal like it was Pittsburgh in 1900. We can be like France - adopting pristine policies that make us fee righteous - and we can then be as relevant as France, too. Cheese and wine, it ain't all bad, right?

We do indeed face a real problem of replacing fossil fuels. For those who have faith that global warming will destroy us, that's all the motivation you need. For others, even the most level-headed pragmatist knows that the oil in the earth is a finite supply.

But markets solve these problems -- they always have. It's not like we'll wait until the oil is gone and then begin scratching our heads. When we get to the point -- 150 years from now -- when oil is indeed scarce, prices will be rising sufficiently to spur develeopment of alternative fuels. Along the way, we'll find much cleaner ways to burn dino fuel.

Only one thing is certain - no "solution" will begin with an act of Congress or a president too impatient or impotent to get Congress to act.

a) China will not burn coal like it was pittsburgh in 1900 when trading partners tire of holding their nose over their failure to behave as if it was actually 2014ish andd begin NOT TRADING WITH THEM AS MUCH AS A RESULT

b) all that will happen long, long before 150 years passs

c) your tinkertoy economics models - superior to what the WSJ editors use (bones & rattles), but not a whole lot better - DO NOT TELL YOU THESE OBVIOUS THINGS. Haven't you noticed?

d) governments will probably not dictate but will certainly shape the direction & pace of the changes that will happen a lot faster than you or the WSJ editorial board can apparently imagine

MARKETSSSS TELL ME MORE

Finally, markets work some--which is why Werthless is right that the most efficient way to reduce gasoline consumption is not a system of fuel efficiency standards or subsidies for people who buy electric vehicles but instead jacking the gas tax up two or three dollars a gallon. But he also correctly notes that's a non-starter politically--even if the increase in gas tax is offset somewhere else. (Actually, I think I heard someone somewhere is proposing a smaller gas tax increase, taking advantage of the current drop in oil prices in order to dedicate more funds to infrastructure improvements--it was on CNBC or something. The claim there (one I find a bit dubious) was that infrastructure improvements would save motorists something like $800 a year because there would be less traffic, fewer repairs necessitated by hitting potholes, and so forth which would more than offset the costs.

Also, and note I do favor a substantial increase in the gas tax, it is even more regressive than a typical sales tax, because a rich person can easily trade out their Lincoln Navigator for a hybrid Lexus SUV or even a snazzy Tesla, while a lower income person isn't going to have many options other than to continue to drive his 10 year old F-150.

This sucks

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... Syria.html

From last August?

logs on to bsg.com to get a fat guys terrible opinions

so mean

jerseyhoya wrote:From last August?

and by "last August" you mean August 2013

Youseff wrote:logs on to bsg.com to get a fat guys terrible opinions

does this opinion make my ass look fat

be honest

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:From last August?

and by "last August" you mean August 2013

I'd have just said August if I meant August 2014.