Shining Arcanine, are you getting paid some of that $16 million by ExxonMobil to post the nonsense I'm reading from you in this thread?

(see http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_rel...g-tobacco.html)

'Cause if you're not and you're simply one of the mindless minions parroting the "science" paid for by the oil industry, you ought to consider getting some money in exchange for throwing your critical faculties out the window.

What you're saying is approximately the philosophical equivalent of: I don't think smoking is bad for me because people have been dying for thousands of years, we all die, and something's going to kill me someday anyway.

 

You know, of all the things you have said in this thread, this one may just take the cake. You are completely dismissing the credibility of a particular set of information based on the completely ancillary fact that the word 'watch' appears at the end of the domain name of the site on which it appears? Wow. If this reflects the logical and analytical processes you used to come up with your conclusions, then no wonder you think this way. That is like saying that you dismiss anything Barack Obama might say, because a person with a similar name, like perhaps Osama, is untrustworthy. The reasoning boggles the mind.

Also, the idea that peer review is somehow discredited as a system because there are individual instances of error is a fallacy. Peer review is not censorship. If that were so, new ideas would never be heard; the astounding technological and scientific advances of recent years give the lie to any such claim. Every day there are scientific publications that challenge or upset the conventional wisdom and thereby add greatly to our common understanding, and it is the goal of scientific journals and the scientists associated with them to see that even the most surprising results- ...no, ESPECIALLY the most surprising results... -, if true, reach a large audience so they can be tested, verified, and taught to others.

On the other hand, results that are not credible can and should be kept out of such publications. For ages, proponents of junk science like perpetual motion machines have complained about the censorship of peer reviewed journals or the US Patent Office, and your complaints are all of a piece with theirs. Patents are not granted for perpetual motion machines. This is not because the US wants to deny everyone the benefits of living a life of ease off the free energy that would be readily available to us all if someone would just let the inventors file some paperwork; it's because perpetual motion machines are impossible, discredited, and based on junk science, mistakes or fraud, and so granting a patent for one would do the public a disservice.

Look- the scientific community is not a conspiracy. Certainly opinions can differ, but when it comes to global warming and CO2, the opinions of the scientific community differ less and less with every passing day, and the debate continues primarily among politicians and laypeople. However, I have hopes that even this may be winding down, now that one of the greatest doubters, George W. himself, has conceded on global warming, albeit ungraciously and narrowly. I refer you to today's New York Times, which relates:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/sc...html?th&emc=th

I am not going to try further to change your mind, however, as I believe that to be fruitless.

I cannot help but remark in closing, however, that even in an upwardly trending system there will be local peaks and dips reflecting ordinary variation from all kinds of causes (many things currently impact oil prices- it's a very tight market), and the recent drop in oil prices can only be temporary. We live on a planet with a sharply increasing population, which is sharply increasing its per capita use of a finite resource. Your 'economies of scale' comment is quite irrelevant. Even if the marginal cost of extracting a large number of barrels was quite small, relative to the sunk costs of infrastructure, exploration and development, as you seem to mean, the total costs are still going up (as exploration in more remote or deeper areas becomes more and more expensive, for instance), and the total demand is still skyrocketing, so prices have nowhere to go but up in the long run.

 

I dunno, But I hope that the prices do go up again.

Let me give my reasons, before I get flamed.
The most important one is that petrodollars are funding people that really hate us, big time tyrants and despots. From Iran to Venezuela, from Nigeria to Russia. Does anyone think that either M. Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez would be so bold and brazen if they did not have those billions and billions of petrodollars?

Now, someone will tell me: "Fernando, but precisely lowered oil pices will deprive these tyrants from substantial revenue". And to which I respond, you are absolutely correct, this is true -in the short term.

But in the long term, the only way that we are going to change our energy-guzzling habits, and where continuous funding will be available for serious research for alternate energy sources, is for the COST OF ENERGY TO BE SKY-HIGH.

I read a piece somewhere, can't find the source now, that one of the questions being routinely asked at Detroit's Auto Show, is whether car companies should continue funding development on hybrid and other fuel efficient vehicles now that "once again, gas will be cheap".

 

It's not going to get much lower before OPEC really starts slamming on the brakes. They're a cartel, so they can do just about anything they want.

On the other hand, I strongly agree with Fernado. The only way to really motivate people in this country is to affect their personal lives, especially their pocket books. Make gas $6 a gallon, and you'll start seeing people get behind alternative fuels, hybrid technology, and fuel cells.

Until then, most people will continue on their merry way. It's the same as global climate change. It's happening, whether we are the cause or not. But until it starts affecting the majority in some tangible fashion, only a small number of people want to do anything about it (such as preparing for such impacts).

~X~

 

BobWilson, stevejust, leahbeatle, fernando_g and xyrus are right on, in my opinion.

Guzzler tax = good? I think so. But, why was it removed last time we have one? Was it very effective? I honestly don't remember it making that much of a difference. Maybe it was too short-lived. Or maybe my memory is not so good
A guzzler tax does NOT get the millions of older cars off the road any sooner (we don't have 50 years, Shining. Or even 20.). In fact, a guzzler tax may make the old ones *LESS* likely to retire. They'll be more valuable to keep around and restore (no guzzler tax). Nothing like a muscle car of the 60's (if gas is going to be a buck a gallon, like you want). Likewise, many trucks live VERY long lives. A guzzler tax on some of the new ones will make people keep many of the older (even less efficient) ones around longer. A guzzler tax is only a partial solution, I believe.

And oil prices going DOWN is NOT the answer. This is like the carrot on a stick with us - the weak (take the easy way out) consumers. It has to hurt our collective wallets before we'll do anything worthwhile about it. If it's not hurting, we don't yell at our politicians about the problem (what problem?), so of course it's not on their radar - and NOTHING gets done. Including no guzzler tax. No one see the problem - why penalize anyone?

 

Paid $2.01/gal this evening and remembered the news reports a milder winter has reduced the demand on heating oil. It has been a mild winter, again. This might be the lull before the Iran war begins and shoots the price of oil up again.

Bob Wilson

 

It is not just guzzler taxes hurting the retirement of older cars/trucks. Right now it costs me $12.50 to have my truck inspected (2002 diesel). If I get a new 2007 truck it must be emmisions tested which will raise that to around $45 plus the added hassle of getting that done. I was talking to a couple people on one of my construction sites and they all mentioned not getting a new truck because of that. I know that is a small cost, but small things can break a big movement. They also considered getting gas trucks that would get worse mileage because of the cost of diesel being so much more than gas, and since they both must be emmissions tested why not get the cheper truck (diesel trucks usually carry a $6000 price premium over a similarly powered gas version). I don't think this is good either because now they will be burning more fuel than they were in the diesel truck. For our energy independance we must find a way to decrease the consumption of fuel.

 

An EXCELLENT point, gumby, and one I forgot to mention earlier. We cannot afford to just wait and hope, or even take steps that will only help far, far down the road. In truth, we can't even afford to just stop in our tracks, and say that all new technology from here on out has to meet certain standards- there's too much existing stuff out there in the world, causing problems, that has a lot of useful lifetime left. Moreover, even if we stopped all the emissions today, we'd still doubtlessly have to come up with a way to reverse the damage that's already been done, to the extent that's possible.

Another group of excellent points. You're right about the value going up. As for your last point, it's just like New Source Review in the Clean Air Act. As many of you probably know, this was a set of requirements that new energy plants had to meet higher environmental standards. The idea was that the old ones would close after a while and new ones would be built that were squeaky clean. Instead, decades later, the energy companies kept refurbishing and expanding the old plants, over and over, keeping the dirtiest emissions going and refusing to spend a little extra for the environmental technology even after it had been available for decades. The new, squeaky clean plants were never built, or not in any large numbers, and the rules had the very perverse effect of locking the worst polluters in place and giving an institutional advantage to the existing, dirty companies by creating a difficult bar to potential new entrants into the industry, who couldn't compete on an equal footing in terms of cost.

 

Likewise, many trucks live VERY long lives. A guzzler tax on some of the new ones will make people keep many of the older (even less efficient) ones around longer.
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I live on South Texas, just across the border from Mexico. One of these days, I'll post a photo of the hundreds -if not thousands- of old, battered, semi-derelict vehicles that get exported all the time from the US into Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, etc, etc. Many of those are being towed, two or three at the time, because they barely work.

The reason is very simple: in poor areas of those countries, $500 is all you can spend on a truck.

Of course, they have to be "repaired". First to go is all the emissions equipment. Then they "tune" the vehicle to run ultra-rich. With a rich fuel mixture, the vehicle will run in most conditions. Of course you are sending tons of carbon monoxide and unburnt hidrocarbons into the air. You are also wasting lots and lots of gas....but who cares, gas is cheap.

It gets worse. With all that unburnt fuel, some of it will seep into the crankase oil, diluting it. The engine, short of life already, will completely wear down. Now you have essentially a dirty two stroke engine, burning gas and oil. Some of the smoke they belch could work as anti-radar jamming.

Eventually the vehicle will break down completely. Whatever that can be removed will be salvaged, and then the carcass will be abandoned to rot out.
A complete environmental disaster.

If it were in my power, I would pass legislation to forbid the export (or the import in the case of Mexico) of such vehicles. But I don't have that power, and I don't think that legislation will be ever enacted.

A higher gas price would do the trick, though. These gas-guzzlers become even more so when they are tuned to run rich. A 12 MPG vehicle becomes a 7 MPG vehicle. So if gas is costly enough, it won't make sense to buy such a vehicle, not even if they give it to you for free.

 

Fernando, you just hit the nail on the head!

While the short term negative effect of $6/gallon might be the extended lives of inefficent, high-polluting older vehicles, they can't last forever. You also reach a point where even a free vehicle is too expensive to operate.

We can't just throw a switch and fix this. $6/gallon is a good start. I have no doubt that mass-transit and high-mileage cars would quickly rule the day.