Please, Give Me a Break!

Sep 7, 2009

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What is it about Barack Obama that gets some folks so riled up?

He can’t broach health care, doubtlessly one of the most pressing issues in the U.S. without opponents stirring up a bee hive of anger.

He can’t try to deal with economic recovery after one of the worst downfalls since the Great Depression without being skewered by every anti-tax, anti-spending yeah-hoo (or should I say “wahoo“) from Onancock to Big Stone Gap.

The economic crisis started in earnest about a year ago and it wasn’t Obama’s watch. And, lest we forget, George W. Bush introduced the largest expansion of Medicare since the 1960s without giving us one iota of thinking how we’re going to pay for it all. By the way, the financial meltdown happened when he was in office, too.

And we have our own beloved James A. Bacon beating a regular drum about the End of the World due to government spending.

And now, public school systems across the country are not going to broadcast Obama’s speech to school kids on Tuesday. Well Gee, every president since FDR has had his smiling mug photographed with a bunch of Boy Scouts, Brownies, grade school geniuses, etc., and no one has said anything.

Obama’s too partisan, too dangerous. Well, gentle readers, take a gander at the following and tell me just how dangerously socialistic it is. It is what Obama’s going to say tomorrow:

‘I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

“But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

“That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Do you really think this is a threat to our Constitution and our way of life?

Peter Galuszka

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99 responses to “Please, Give Me a Break!”

Accurate

September 7, 2009

You know Peter, if he had left it with that speech, it would have been fine. The ruckus stirred up when Obama's education department came up with a 'suggested lesson plan'. Ohhh, wrong-o!!!! Teachers are there to teach. Most of them are very good at it. Most of them can figure out how much Obama's speech pertains to their class and/or subject and do what they want/what they will from there. But no, Obama's educational department had them 'writing about how YOU can help the president'. 'What things do you pledge to do to help the president achieve his goals' Blah, blah, blah, blah.

I'll be the first to admit that I loath the man. Obama has done nothing that I like and just about everything that I could (and do) dislike. I don't listen to Limbaugh but I understand that he talked about rooting for the president to fail – I'd be a member of that club.

Just saying.

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Gooze Views

September 7, 2009

Accurate,
Fair enough. But I had similar feelings about "W" about how he butchered the English language, how ineffectual he was, how he was surrounded by thugs like Cheney and Rumsfeld and how he (Reagan-style) boosted all the things Republicans claim to hate, such as deficits.
Just thouht you'd like to know.Got a thought on that?
Peter Galuszka

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Mick

September 7, 2009

What a bunch of nonsense. The education department "lesson plan" is a thinly-veiled excuse for people who already disliked the man to indulge in over-the-top, hysterical outrage. Some of the outrage comes from Obama himself, who represents a certain worldview and background that conservatives simply despise (very much like JFK, decades ago). Some of it is the right wing trying to get petty revenge for what they saw as the unwarranted and never-ending criticism of the Bush 43 administration. Forgetting, of course, that much of the initial hatred leveled at Bush 43 was considered petty revenge for how Clinton was treated from 1994 onward.

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Anonymous

September 8, 2009

Mick – you've made my point exactly. We have no rules that are the same whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican.

It's escalation time after time. If Obama doesn't get to talk, neither should the next Republican president and vice versa.

When do we quit and have a single set of rules for everyone?

TMT

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Larry G

September 8, 2009

I think it's different than it used to be.

When people who did not vote for Obama – start immediately on day one criticizing … steady drumbeat… on virtually everything he says… it's a clear agenda in my view.

We have a poisonous, caustic environment, a stated strategy to hound him out of office – starting now.

Sorry.. even Bush got better treatment than that in his first 8 months… people turned against him after they voted for him – and for good reason.

In this case, we have the folks who voted against Obama from the get go… upping the ante…

trying to portray this as no different than was done to Bush at the front of his term is not really being fair nor honest.

8 months… 8 months.. what could any leader accomplish – good or bad in that amount of time that would earn him the vitriol that we now see?

I do not intend to "get even" at the next election but I know this.. anyone who gets the nod of the and support of the conservatives.. if that person heeds to their creed – he's not getting this vote.

I have had no problem voting for fiscal conservatives my whole life but this crowd is off the ranch… they've taken over the body of Moderate Conservatism much like dracula has turned his victims into ghouls.

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Anonymous

September 8, 2009

Geez, guys, event the "Education Department" (how Orwellian) was smart enough to pull the plug on that one. It's gone, its over.

Now, what aobut the president's actual speech is it that make you want him to fail?

The only reason for conservatives to be so wrapped up on this (and everything else he does) is that he makes them realize how badly they have failed.

Can ANY president be so bad he does NOTHING right? Even Nixon had his famous trip to China.

RH

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Anonymous

September 8, 2009

Larry – the left was angry that Bush won the election and started its attacks from day one. The right started after Clinton pretty darn soon after he took the oath of office. The Democrats had their knives and axes out for GHW Bush's cabinet nominees. What is happening to Obama is no different in direction. Only the intensity changes.

It's retaliation and escalation. It didn't end with Bush and it won't end with Obama.

IMO, we need to admit that this is the case. The shoe is on the other foot. And it's time we all started to get some basic agreement on what is fair treatment of a president. Otherwise, we will see Democrats crying when their guy is in office and Republicans crying when their guy is elected.

TMT

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J. Tyler ballance

September 8, 2009

That there is a steady drumbeat of opposition from the Republicans is no surprise. They LOST!

However, we should be taking a look at why the propaganda machine is monopolizing the airwaves.

For the past few decades the FCC has allowed our TV and radio stations to pass from independent owners to a few very powerful conglomerates.

We do not need a, fairness doctrine, to ensure the Democrats get equal time, but what should be done is the brak-up f the media conglomerates' stranglehold on station ownership.

The FCC rules must be revised to only allow a local owner of each station and that each station owner would be forbidden from also owning other media outlets.

This pro-entrepreneur and pro labor initiative would create thousands of new jobs, and most likely would lay the foundation for much greater variety of programming.

Such a move would not put Limbaugh et. al. out of business, but would create thousands of opportunities for small locally oriented programs and much fewer rebroadcast stations that are merely run by computer relays carrying generic programming that is selected by the mega-corporate ownership.

Pass along a note to your Congressman and support this change to FCC rules before we end up with all of our media lorded over by a few oligarchs.

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J. Tyler Ballance

September 8, 2009

That there is a steady drumbeat of opposition from the Republicans is no surprise. They LOST!

However, we should be taking a look at why the propaganda machine is monopolizing the airwaves.

For the past few decades the FCC has allowed our TV and radio stations to pass from independent owners to a few very powerful conglomerates.

We do not need a, fairness doctrine, to ensure the Democrats get equal time, but what should be done is the brak-up f the media conglomerates' stranglehold on station ownership.

The FCC rules must be revised to only allow a local owner of each station and that each station owner would be forbidden from also owning other media outlets.

This pro-entrepreneur and pro labor initiative would create thousands of new jobs, and most likely would lay the foundation for much greater variety of programming.

Such a move would not put Limbaugh et. al. out of business, but would create thousands of opportunities for small locally oriented programs and much fewer rebroadcast stations that are merely run by computer relays carrying generic programming that is selected by the mega-corporate ownership.

Pass along a note to your Congressman and support this change to FCC rules before we end up with all of our media lorded over by a few oligarchs.

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Larry G

September 8, 2009

I'm not convinced that the media, especially if we count the internet as part of it, needs to have more government involvement. It seems very healthy to me. Just about any point of view that is "out there" finds an outlet.

we not only have a true 24-hr news cycle – but within minutes of a release of information the apparatus can go high order.

But TMT, look at this:

http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob1.htm

this man had tremendous and widespread support after 9-11. He had critics but they were like ankle biters… 80% of the American people WANTED HIM TO SUCCEED.

All he had to do was maintain and he would have remained a popular president for the rest of his Presidency and for history.

He EARNED his bad rating and critics by his actions TMT.

This President has not done anything yet and more important, he has not lied to the American people, trashed the Constitution and dissed our allies.

and yet.. the claim is that he's being treated no differently than the way Bush was treated – early in the Bush Term.

it's just flat not true.

Clinton left office with a 60% rating despite his impeachment.

TMT – do you remember what the conservatives were saying about McCain when he was seeking to be the nominee?

They trashed him for his refusal to support deportation, never mind, that that the only candidates who supported it had no chance in a general election. These were people from his OWN party.

People like Anne Colter said that she would vote for Obama if McCain ended up the Republican nominee.

These are the same folks that are after Obmama right now.

They do not have a viable agenda that could succeed in an election.

Their views are not shared by a majority of Americans so they have no chance – ZIP of implementing their policy wishes so their goal is not to offer alternatives but to destroy – like vandals.

Show me, on the left, the equivalent of this?

Where are the folks whose views are so out o the mainstream that they have no chance to win an election so their sole purpose is to destroy those who are in office that are opposed to their views.

we're going to get through this.

the folks doing this are – defining themselves and their true agendas.

After awhile, more folks are going to understand where this kind of criticism is coming from and then treat it for what it is worth and recognize who the folks are that are behind it.

We'll still have the yammering and vitriol but it will be recognized the same way we see people on street corners with signs that say the end is near. Free speech sure… but after awhile… more like sounds from a monkey cage rather than "communication".

I think this is new.. it's blindsided people but they're going to begin to recognize it.

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James A. Bacon

September 8, 2009

For once I agree with Peter. A lot of conservatives lost their marbles over the Obama speech. If the president was using the platform to make a political statement, I would have a problem, but clearly he wasn't. In fact, the message that Obama was driving home — study hard, get good grades — was one of the few areas with which conservatives whole-heartedly agree.

Critiquing the lesson plans is a legitimate exercise. Conservatives should have limited their rhetoric to those narrow issues.

This is the same old substance-less politics of symbolism that gets the far right so riled up. Wave a red flag, and the bull will charge.

Conservatives don't do anything to advance their broader agenda when they react this way.

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Larry G

September 8, 2009

I'm going to call it what it is Political Vandalism.

this is not about…

" this is wrong… and this is what we should be doing instead".

this is about: " this is wrong and I'm going to destroy you"

even when it's not wrong…

we already have plenty of examples of this.

go to any urban area that is rundown and look at the damage and look at the bars on the windows.

the people that do this are making a statement but we are not understanding that message.

we are giving it way, way more credence than it deserves.

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Accurate

September 8, 2009

As I said, it was Obama's educational department 'lesson plan' that was the piece that pushed his speech to the kids over the edge. However, that said, it was no surprise that it then extended into stuff regarding … what is in the speech? What is he trying to do? Etc. There is much mistrust regarding Obama and this was just another reason to raise it's ugly head.

Gooze, I could go into how I hate that Obama can't speak without a teleprompter. How his "um" and "ahh" and stuttering when he is trying to speak off the cuff drive me NUTS! Probably as bad as "W" did to you when he pronounced the word 'nuclear'.

I wasn't a huge "W" supporter, but I did like him over Gore and Kerry and was pleased when he won. I was not a huge McCain supporter, but I preferred him over either Hillary or Obama; or any of the other democrat candidates.

Could McCain have done any better in 8 months? The world will never know, I shutter to think of anything getting worse than it presently is.

I don't admire a president who travels the world apolgizing for my country. Whatever we did, is done. We've certainly done a lot to make this world a better place and without us … again, I shutter to think how this world might be.

I didn't understand how people could be so incensed regarding "W"; they called it a derangement syndrome. But now I do understand it as I have it regarding Obama.

I could go on and list the items that he has lied about, his failures; but I realize that I'm scrutizing this man down to his toes – and I won't apologize for it. For a while, I still have that right (yes, that's how bad I have the Obama derangement syndrome – that I seriously worry that he will take that right away).

In my life view, Obama happens to be the president of my country. He is NOT my president. As Hillary once said, it's patriotic to dissent and protest; just call me a patriot.

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Gooze Views

September 8, 2009

One criticism I do have of Obama is that he's trying to do too much too fast with a bright but inexperienced staff.
So many people are screaming about his health plan when, fact, he doesn't really have one yet. There are four proposals out there.
Regarding stimulus funding in higher ed, he first wanted to use stimulus money for bricks and mortar projects, but reeled it back and is giving it to fiunancial aid and tuition tax credits.
ProPuiblica.org reports that only about 14 percent of the $787 billion in stimulus has been spent yet.
One wished Obama would start focusing and stop going off in all directions at once. Witness today's education speech. He could have stopped any Dept of Ed. recommending reading list or whatever. He did, but he paid a price for his inexperience. The speech itself to the kids isn't a bad idea. but it got out of hand. He hasn't learned yet how to control spin and stop the Swift Boaters.
Peter Galuszka

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Larry G

September 8, 2009

re: too soon, too much lost the meaning of incremental

could not agree more

and let's be honest.. anyone or any group that comes into the office with the problems that were ongoing .. and thought they were going to handle that plus healthcare reform and steering the energy barge in a different direction is, in a word

arrogant ….

some might say – ambition, optimism, etc

but Chutzpa – NOT recognizing the gravity of the circumstances belies some serious error of judgment.

Fair criticism and fully justified.

but these Bush guys they crack me up..

What exactly did he choose to tackle?

Not health care.

not energy

not Katrina

not the budget

not the economy

What did he accomplish – besides dividing the country along hyper-partisan lines – the guy who had the temerity to say he was a "uniter" and then the "decider".

what did the man do besides get us into two wars, lose thousands of lives over a lie, order the kidnapping of people to hold and torture without charges and tell Congress and the Supreme Court that it was not in their jurisdiction?

Bush is an outlaw – all the talk from the critics about the "constitutionality" of healthcare … or "illegals".. are gnats on a dog's butt compared to Bush's treatment of the Constitution.

These are not things that Bush talked about.

These are things he did – he acted on them.

It was those acts that got him judged – and he went from 80% who approved to almost 20% – not on what he said but what he did.

for the folks who supported Bush to judge Obama on what he has done done and what they think he "might" do is

dumb as a stump logic…

the same folks who were just fine with GB's "acts" are going bananas over "proposals".

how did folks find out about the "lesson plan"?

Well hells bells.. it's because they got released.

How many things did Bush choose to NOT RELEASE?

so the mans releases a proposed wording – and it was wrong – granted – but he did that BEFORE he did it.

He did not do it and then tell everyone it was his right as President to do what he thought.

this is the kind of Alice-in-Wonderland double standard that these folks are using.

but I'm starting to "get it"

these folks don't really care about proportionality at all..

it's not in their vocabulary

Bush was their man. Obama is not. And that's justification enough to tear the man down.

One good thing about all of this – these folks are DEFINING who they are…

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Keith

September 8, 2009

James Bacon said that the speech should never have been criticized but the proposed lesson plan was fair game. "Writing letters to yourself asking how you can help the President" makes absolutely no sense with the speech as posted yesterday since it does not talk about President Obama or his administration. Thus, the obvious question is "Was there an earlier version of the speech which was clearly political"? We will never know but the Education Department's suggested lesson plan only then makes sense.

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Larry G

September 8, 2009

yup … more conspiracy plots by the man of color… who also cannot prove he was born here so if we try real hard we can get rid of this ultimate angry white man's worst nightmare.

The idea of having a black man as a role model for kids is apparently such a threat, such an affront to one's sensibilities that a way must be found to "expose" him so the kids can be told the truth about his illegitimacy.

No less than Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, and Sen. Lamar Alexander realized just how far things have gone – and pulled back – and did the right thing.

All the folks of color in the US are paying attention here and they'll vote and even though they'll not be a majority until 2040 – there are about 20% on the left who have no qualms combining with the 40% minority

those who find this distressing… start packing..before Obama starts sending those Nazi death squads (disguised as Black/Hispanic health care workers) to pry that gun out of your cold, dead hands.

I thought, as a country, we got past this….

boy was I wrong.

Massive Resistance apparently lives on in the hearts of some of us Virginians and now that I think about it… isn't what we are witnessing a more modern, more sophisticated version of Massive Resistance?

It may take until 2040 before we get over this.

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James A. Bacon

September 8, 2009

Larry, If you want to carry on a dialogue with wingnuts who think Obama was not born in the United States, I would refer you to World Net Daily or NewsMax.com. I haven't seen anyone of that stripe contributing to, or commenting on, the Bacon's Rebellion blog.

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Larry G

September 8, 2009

Jim… I think they are like roaches.. as soon as you shine the light of them in one blog they run to another.. and I'm just helping to protect your blog by letting folks know ahead of time that they're not welcome here.

your're welcome.

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Anonymous

September 8, 2009

Hawaii is not the real US of A.

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Anonymous

September 9, 2009

Anonymous,
Hawaii is a U.S. State and has been a U.S. territory for moe than a century — about as long as Arizona. It's as much as the US as Sarah Palin's home.
You seem rather parochial in your view.

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Groveton

September 9, 2009

Wow! This thread is so good I'm going to respond from the Tarmac at O'Hare with my iPhone. RH defending Obama. Jim Bacon overtly telling the birthers to stay away? LarryG losing his marbles while seeing invisible racists? Human settlement patterns my a** – this is the good stuff.

Would McCain be doing better right now? Yes! Because he would have left almost all of the controversial issues on the nightstand next to his Geritol. Obama is an iconoclast. He is a butt kicker. He's willing to take on the health care meaga lobby. Half of what he's doing is nuts but at least he's doing something. He's not JFK he's Teddy Roosevelt!

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Accurate

September 9, 2009

Groveton –
I really tried to not respond, but your comment ate at my brain after I got done losing my dinner. You were right but for the wrong reason. And you were wrong for the wrong reason.

You were right, McCain wouldn't have us in this pickle. But you were wrong, he wouldn't have us in this pickle because he wouldn't be spending us into oblivion. He has a clue which Obama is still vainly (as in both his ego and his lack of finding) searching for.

You were wrong when you compared Obama to Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt went into history as a great American; Obama will be seen as a great socialist – not even close to the same.

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Groveton

September 10, 2009

Accurate:

You do have Obama Derangement syndrome. For the record, I voted for one Bush or another 4 times.

Here's my skinny on Obama:

1. Reverand Wright – Who cares? My bet is that wifey (who has some racist tendencies – read her college thesis) dragged ole Barry out to hear that crack-pot.

2. Barack the Re-distributor – Yeah, probably. At least to some extent. Maybe Jim Bacon will let me write a guest column on the wealth gap under my pen-name. He doesn't really like columns written under pseudonyms and I can understand that. But the wealth gap can't keep growing like it has been. And I believe the gap is caused by changes in productivity caused by improvements in technology. In other words, it won't get narrower without some redistribution. And what happens when the wealth gap gets too big? Ask Czar Nicholas and his family. I'd rater cough up a few bucks than a few buckets of blood.

3. Financial meltdown – a hoax. I bought it hook, line and sinker just like everybody else. It just didn't happen. But it sure did deflect people from talking about further regulation of financial instutions. Who needs more regulation when the government owns controlling shares in the … uh, what? … they pais the money back 6 months after they got it?

4. Health Care – Obama is right that something has to give. He's helter-skelter about what he wants to do. That's too bad because the problem of health care costs consuming an ever larger proportion of the GDP must be addressed. Obama should have spent 2009 outlining the problem with pushing any particular solution. An open discussion of the problem. Listening to the people. Then, he might have built sufficient anger and frustration among the people to get a complete revamp through. But he jumped to an extreme answer before he created the extreme crisis that required the extreme answer. He should spend more time on Wall Street. They know how to create a good fake crisis before demanding a ridiculous solution.

5. Carbon tax – Again, he's right. We can't just keep buring fossil fuels at ever increasing rates and dumping CO2 into the air. I'll even agree that the science of global warming isn't fully settled. But the consequences are dire enough that we ought to start the abatement plan just in case.

6. Exploding deficits – Here Obama is just plain wrong. And this mistake is going to hurt. Hey, you can't get them all right. Even Ronnie had Ollie North and the Contras.

7. Iraq – Seems to be working. I think he's following Bush's plan with the surge then Iraq-ization but he's following the plan.

8. Afghanistan – Not working. This is a real ticking time bomb for Ole Barry. The Iraqis lived in a civilized society (give or take their psychotic leader). They had something to gain by ending the fighting and getting back to civilized society. Kind of like the Italians in WWII. The Afghans? Think Vietnam in the early 1960s. They don't care if the fighting lasts for another 20 years. The Taliban? Just another set of kooksin the country. Hell, add them to the list. Will Barry surge or will he cut and run? I am thinking cut and run might be the better answer on this one.

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Gooze Views

September 10, 2009

Just want to note that in the Richmond area, school districts such as Chesterfield now say that Obama's school chat was OK after they refused to broadcast it.
The mind boggles with such stupidity. And the arrogance of such thinking is profound. I'm going to play the race card. Doubtful a White president would have gotten this condescending treatment from such White genuises as the Chesrerfield County Schools
Peter Galuszka

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Accurate

September 10, 2009

Groveton –
Obama derangement syndrome, you betcha, guilty as charged. See my first post, in my eyes there isn't ANYTHING that this man can do right. However, I find it interesting that you seem to think that Obama is a good(?) president and I base that off your reply. Let's go over your points.

1) I agree, who cares about Rev. Wright. Although the folks that he hangs with do seem to be influencing him – I see the influence as negative, just my opinion. So point 1 – a don't really care point to both you and me.

2)You seem to agree that indeed his policies are set up to do some wealth re-distribution. You seem to think this is – good(?) or maybe inevitable. Either way, you seem to give him a thumbs up, I give him a thumbs down.

3)Financial meltdown – You grade it as a hoax and give him a thumbs down, so do I.

4. Health Care – You rate the situation as something that needs to be addressed, so do I. However you rate Obama's way of 'fixing it' as a thumbs down, so do I.

5. Carbon tax – Okay we differ fiercly about this one. You believe in that CO2 is causing problems and that we are the cause of the that problem. I disagree, I will point to the many, many times that the earth's climate has done changes long before man, long before the internal combusion engine. Obama's 'fix' on this one won't fix one single thing, it won't lower the temperature of the earth (which has been going down for the last 10 years on its' own) even one half a degree. What it will do is raise the cost of EVERYHING. You give Obama a thumbs up, I give him a thumbs down on this one.

6. Exploding deficits – On this one you give him a thumbs down, so do I.

7. Iraq – You give him a thumbs up while acknowledging that all he is doing is following Bush's script. I too will give him a tenative thumbs up only because he didn't come in and screw this one up like he has done on so many of the issues that he's faced. He actually shut up, and left alone rather than mess with it.

8. Afghanistan – You give him a thumbs down on this one, so do I.

So let's go over your eight points/items. One point was moot, then you gave him three thumbs up and four thumbs down (I gave him one thumbs up and six thumbs down), yet you rank him with Roosevelt, I can not agree.

As for Gooze last comment, check back on what a hard time the democrats gave the first President Bush when he gave an address to the school children. The dems held hearing, they called upon the GAO to investigate, the NEA (which I detest) denounced the president's speech. And the bottom line was it was as unremarkable as Obama's speech. Again, Obama got in trouble when his educational department first distributed the 'lesson plan' for teachers to follow for the speech. Just another example of a rookie president stumbling his way through his presidency.

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Larry G

September 10, 2009

re: "exploding deficits"

well you don't have that problem if you do stuff like wars and prescription drugs "off budget".

Then the next guy who says that doing such things off budget is essentially lying and requires everything "on budget", the dimwits in the crowd can't understand so they talk about "exploding" deficits.

re: global warming

Going against some of the most reputable scientists in the world without yourself being of equivalent knowledge is a bad bet.

the more germane of this is – what if you are wrong in your opinion? What would be the consequences?

So what do you build in to your idea of how we should handle this?

If your response is to disagree and say that there is no chance of a problem – then I don't want to be around you when you are estimating other potential risks and how to mitigate them.

re: racism and losing marbles

I'll plead not innocent – nolo contendere – as I do not have absolute, incontrovertible proof and I have convicted on who the loyal opposition is keeping company with these days. The Rev. Wright stuff is a warning marker.

re: Iraq – pulling the troops out of the cities is NOT Bush's plan – it's the opposite.

re: Afghanistan – wrong war for the right reason.

You cannot win an Asymmetric conflict with conventional forces and you cannot win any conflict if the opposing warriors look like civilians and mix with those civilians.

we don't learn this lesson.

re: judging presidents

We had 8 years to decide about Mr. Bush.

He started with almost an 80% approval..

he did not lose that by people changing their minds because they didn't like him….

he earned it – fair and square.

At the end – the only folks who supported him – the hard core – are now – the core of the opposition to Obama.

this is not happenstance.

I'm critical of Obama and I worry about what lies ahead of us but I'm not near so sanguine as Groveton and Accurate in their shoot-from-the-hip assessments of an 8-month President that they in fact, confess. is based in part on events not of his own making…

It would be like if I threw a flaming coal at Groveton and Accurate and then criticized them for getting their hands burned.

we have lost all sense of proportionality.

The most valid criticism of Obama in my view will not come from folks who supported Bush – on the issues – that ultimately – most found him wanting on.

In other words.. if you thought Bush did a great job on the Iraq War – you've got a problem similar to someone who lost a foot and said that it was a victory because you didn't lose your whole leg.

there is no "success" for us in "Iraq" that we could not have achieved any more or less than having the CIA do away with Sadaam and then step back.

because, in the longer run..that is what is going to happen anyhow except that we sacrificed our children like cannon fodder on a lie and then dumped the deficit caused by the way on the next guy…where we then "judge" him.

The people who know this – are the 70% who found out at the end of Bush's term – not the 20% who insist that the man done good and who say that they did like next guy – from the get go.

These folks are fair judges of Presidents?

ha ha ha…

wrong about Bush..and won't admit it… then using that same mindset to judge this guy…???

right.

I'm not defending this guy. The circusmtances that we are in right now – will take a very strong and competent leader – and we don't see that kind of leader that often.

We just finished with a "strong" but incompetent guy…so we know that does not work.

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Anonymous

September 10, 2009

"And I believe the gap is caused by changes in productivity caused by improvements in technology. In other words, it won't get narrower without some redistribution."

As usual, Groveton is spot on.

We are going to need money for certain things, whatever they turn out to be, (might be global warming, healthcare, fighting the next pandemic, or fighting the next war) and the only place to get it is where it is.

RH

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Anonymous

September 10, 2009

" I bought it hook, line and sinker just like everybody else. It just didn't happen. "

We will never know if id didn't happen, didn't happen because of government action, or would have been worse without government action. There is going to be a lot of revisionist history on this for decades.

Meanwhile, we are where we are. I hope somebody buys GM cars so we can get our money back.

RH

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Anonymous

September 10, 2009

"Obama is right that something has to give."

How did we ever allow ourselves to get to the point where insurors are allowed to rescind insurance you have paid for, and redact claims they have already paid, just because they claim you have some ailment that you never even knew about, and they won't even tell you what ailment it supposedly was?

Let alone argue about whether something needs to be done after we got there.

RH

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Anonymous

September 10, 2009

"But the consequences are dire enough that we ought to start the abatement plan just in case."

So are the consequences of insufficient energy or energy at too high a price. Either way a lot of people die. Sooner or later we have to face that.

RH

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Anonymous

September 10, 2009

" check back on what a hard time the democrats gave the first President Bush when he gave an address to the school children. "

It's a shame we have politicized our own children as well as the educatonal process.

You would think we would be smarter than that.

RH

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Anonymous

September 10, 2009

Ray – I agree that we have all gone off the deep end on politicizing everything. It's out of control and is only going to get worse, because everyone is so self-righteous that they will not admit their "side" has done the very same thing.

We need one set of ground rules that apply to Democrats and to Republicans. If George HW Bush can talk to students, so should Barack Obama. If the Democrats called for congressional investigations, so should the GOP. You can't complain when the other guy does something and then clap when you do the same thing.

What are the ground rules? If we don't have some, the escalation will only continue.

TMT

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Larry G

September 10, 2009

re: abatement and consequences

Any of us can have doubts about some outcomes

but if you know the outcome might be a world whose weather system has become more like some of the uninhabitable planets – then you would be grossly irresponsible for not acknowledging that possibility, no matter how remote and refusing to support doing anything until we can get a more definitive answer.

The number of people who will "die" as a result of higher energy costs verses the number of folks who will "die" if the oceans spawn dozens/hundreds of mega hurricanes that make Katrina look like a waterspout is …in a word – just plain DUMB.

We have a very good track record when it comes to things like this.

We are almost always wrong in our assessments about potential harm from pollution and almost never right…

we don't end up with people "dying" if we make energy more expensive… if that were true – we'd not have an native American descendants..who had no energy no matter the cost…

there are millions of people who live on this earth that use 1/10 the energy that we do.

It's not about "no" energy. It's about using LESS energy.

The standard argument seems to be… in effect.. that conservation kills people.

and we're supposed to treat that idea like it deserves respect.

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Larry G

September 10, 2009

re: race to the bottom on "keeping score".

I don't think that essentially "agreeing" on "keeping score" will solve anything.

It's like asking the combatants to agree on rules of engagement.

It really has nothing to do with what is causing the war much less deal substantially with it.

I simply think that one CAN judge an 8 year record and CANNOT judge a 8 month record and I would make that statement no matter who we'd be talking about.

What I find totally off he wall is judging on 8 months from the 20& who still support the leader who had lost support from 70% of the people.

If you STILL support Mr. Bush, if you're in that 20% AND at the same time you opposed Mr. Obama "on his record" – I just do not think you have much credibility.

and we know that what is going on right now is little more than swift-boating…

it not about the debate.. it's about what? rules of engagement?

come-on TMT you can do better than that..

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Anonymous

September 10, 2009

"The number of people who will "die" as a result of higher energy costs verses the number of folks who will "die" if the oceans spawn dozens/hundreds of mega hurricanes that make Katrina look like a waterspout is …in a word – just plain DUMB."

I'm not convinced anyone knows how big the difference will be. Bad as your hurricane image is, think of the New England blackout lasting for a month in winter.

It's not too hard to dream up a Mad Max scenario when those tens of thousands of townhomes get cold with no alternative available.

It isn't a question of just higher energy costs, it is a question of how many people get cut off entirely, with each increment of cost increase.

We already have emergency programs to serve such people. You may as well consider that part of whatever revenue you get from higher energy taxes shold be set aside to feed those funds.

Except, we already have competing claims for that money: some saying it will be used to offset other taxes so the energy tax will be revenue neutral, and others saying we will use it to subsidize renewables.

Some predict that reducing greenhouse gases will only cost a few percent of GDP, and others say that cost will actually be redistributed anyway.

Sorry, I just don't believe you get a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas with a 5% increase in costs. Since energy is related to everything we do, that 5% increase will affect everything, not just what you spend on fuel.

Millions are already living on thin margins, and this will only make things worse. See Groveton's comments on Tsar Nicholas.

It won't be the cold or mega hurricanes that kill people off, because we will have riots in the streets long before then.

RH

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Anonymous

September 10, 2009

" there are millions of people who live on this earth that use 1/10 the energy that we do."

Yes, but how well and how long do they live?

I predict there will be major mayhem before we agree to live as they do. At the same time they are allr TRYING to get to the point where they live as we do.

I don't see us hooking up a bicycle to the well pump, as they do.

Not without a fight.

RH

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Larry G

September 10, 2009

people will not die because we conserve and use less electricity.

If your claim had any semblance of rationality to it -we could compute a death rate associated with higher energy costs.

You use the example of a total black out to show what can happen.

Are you DAFT? Did we say that we were going to shut down the plants all together?

So you're totally dismissing the idea of a higher than average incidence of much stronger than normal Hurricanes which will.. in fact, result in a major loss of life

.. to a blackout from what?

turning off the power plants or not delivering coal to them anymore?

.. what exactly would cause the region-wide blackouts that would "kill" people.

this is not unlike the argument that the healthcare winguts are using to argue FOR the status-quo….

i.e. we cannot change or the govt will be setting up death squads…

pitoooooooooeeeeee

try thinking for a change.

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Larry G

September 10, 2009

" predict there will be major mayhem before we agree to live as they do."

how about we live like the Europeans do by using 1/2 of what we do right now?

how many Europeans are "dying" because of $8 a gallon gasoline and twenty cents a kilowatt hour electricity?

Here is how we compare:

http://www.thehcf.org/images/2007/5A_new2S.jpg

can you show me how many are dying by not using how much we are using?

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Accurate

September 11, 2009

Larry –
I don't want to live the Europeans. If I did, I would have moved there. To me, there is really nothing that appeals to me about living in Europe or living like Europe. Yes, the have nice history, they have good food (in some places) and they have tons of history. But I don't really want to drive around in a tiny, little car. I'm not a rail nut so their much acclaimed rail system does nothing for me. Their cost of living is higher and their standard of living is lower than what we have in this country. Ask immigrants (both legal and illegal) they come here for opportunity, they don't try to get into Cuba or Venezuela or even Germany (not like here). We are unique, I don't want to be 'like them'; I'm proud that I'm an American and not a anything else.

As for the CO2 scam, there are hundreds of scientists, almost daily who now (based on scientific data) have done a 180 on the CO2 controversy – here is a link.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=927b9303-802a-23ad-494b-dccb00b51a12

Just one of many, many stories about how the CO2 was interpreted wrong and the many peer reviewed studies that show that man is not the cause for the increase, it's something the earth does on a rather cyclical basis. We can't really affect it, but we can try to get ourselves ready for it. Like anything else, there will be good things that come from it and bad. Quit drinking the kool-aid Larry.

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

the claim was that if we cut back and use less that people will riot in the streets and die, etc and that's simply not true and I demonstrated that it is possible to use less energy and not "die".

tell me what this means Accurate:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/science/earth/11passage.html?hpw

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

re: the Inhofe Press Blog

as a source of authoratative info????

here's the deal Accurate

we truly don't know for sure.. but we have plenty of indicators that to ignore them…we'd do so at our own peril – literally.

Now why would you choose to reject any and all of it even if there was the slightest chance that it could be true?

It is not some off the wall idle speculation when a substantial number of scientists including many Nobel think "something" is going on.

That's what I don't understand about you and folks like you views.

If something was going on with your own body that was different than before.. would you just ignore it ?

If tests were done that showed something might be going on – would you continue as if nothing had changed?

what if the potential problem was one that you could actually mitigate by a lifestyle change..

say you smoked cigarettes and there are some warning signs and you have a choice to ignore them or find out more and in the meantime do what?

continue as if nothing needs change?

that's the problem here.

You've got some pretty heavy weight "doctors" expressing concern about something that could have some serious consequences if it turns out to be true.

but you are apparently in that group of folks who just flat deny… and it just doesn't make any sense to me.

If your gas guage says empty do you let it affect your reasoning?

you ought to – right?

if you get a blood test and it shows cancer precursors do you ignore it ?

I'm just not getting the denial of the warning signs…

It's not like we haven't been through this before… with many other pollutants…

we ALWAYS underestimate the damage and we ALWAYS have to go back and further restrict or just plain ban substances that we initially believe to be safe.

we have this problem right now with the air quality of our urban areas. We have the folks who want more roads saying that the air quality is not that bad and we need more roads -and we have the scientists say that – yes it is that bad and that many people suffer medical problems from it.

but this does not seem to affect the folks who don't want to believe it… because it simply is not acceptable to their view of reality.

I agree.. we don't know as much as we need to know but where I disagree is whether we should do nothing or something.

We could disagree about what we should do but to say we should do nothing is just plain dumb IMHO.

at the least, we should try to cover our bets…

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

"I demonstrated that it is possible to use less energy and not "die"."

As a result of energy prices, among other things, more people are driving motorcycles and tiny cars, and more of them are dying.

I demonstrated that using less energy will kill some people. It cuts both ways.

It is possible for US to use a little less and not die. It isn't anywhere near as clear that millions can use a lot less and not die, especially since so many are on the edge already.

We are talking about reducing greenhouse gases by 50% which basically means reducing combustion by 50%.

You are going to have to increase combustion just to manufacture all the stuff it will take to produce renewable energy.

I think the effects of reducing combustion by 50% are nearly unimaginable, and so will be the effects of not.

Either way, a lot of people are going to (eventually, we are talking 2050, after all) die. The real problem we have on our hands is how to decide who that will be.

The process of making that decision is likely to kill a lot of people, because it is demonstrably likely that there will be war over energy supplies.

RH

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

"how about we live like the Europeans do by using 1/2 of what we do right now?"

We have been through this before. The Europeans use less energy than we do, but they STILL use it less efficiently than we do because we produce far more GDP per unit of energy.

Therefore if WE cut back our use to half of what it is we will give up far more GDP than they would, which means we will all be MUCH worde off, not just 50% worse off.

Every unit of energy we save costs us far more dollars. Remember Devon's Paradox: the more efficiently you use something, the more of it you use. This is a case in point.

RH

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

"-we could compute a death rate associated with higher energy costs."

We probbly can, if anyone tried to do it. We have plenty of examples, like heat rellated deaths in Chicago. The heat resulted in higher energy costs (and capital costs to buy cooling equipment) whih many could not afford, and they sweltered to death in their apartments.

RH

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

Unlike Accurate, I'm inclined to believe the CO2 scam.

I don't beleive anyone has serously thought about the results of the alternative.

I don't beleive you can cut 50% of combustion and cost only 5% of GDP. That is just not credible.

RH

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

" It is possible for US to use a little less and not die. It isn't anywhere near as clear that millions can use a lot less and not die, especially since so many are on the edge already."

bullsnot – an extra large plug if you will

you have NOT demonstrated that people die by using less energy overall – like the Europeans, in fact the rest of the industrialized world – that is kicking the crap out of us competititvely.

we have a prolifigate energy environment that buys us nothing other than air pollution and mountain-top blasting.

the rest of the industrialized world stays warm, has plenty of lights and hot water, TVs, etc, etc.. everything we have and they are healthier than we are..live longer…have less infant mortality, etc.

by all basic health and welfare measures they match us and use 1/2 of the energy that we do.

saying that you have demonstrated that people will die if we match the rest of the Industrialized world is what?

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

" Remember Devon's Paradox: the more efficiently you use something, the more of it you use. This is a case in point."

how about you supply a credible, authoratative link for this?

using energy to boost your GDP if ultimately it results in massive destruction of your ability to produce is pretty stupid.

The rest of the industrialized world is just as efficient as we are and just as competitive and more so on some things.

what you won't face is that we are exceptionally wasteful in our use of resources and we try to rationalize it by saying it's okay because good stuff comes from it.

it goes right back to whether one believes that putting 4 people in one car conserves energy or not.

If you don't believe it then it's perfectly understandable while the rest of your views are similarly off the wall.

For a self-avowed "environmentalist" Ray, you seem to have not a good idea about energy and efficiency…as in ..like disagreeing with the rest of the industrialized world.

this is the problem.

if you won't deal with realities – facts -and make excuses why our use is so much more.. it's perfectly consistent with saying you also don't believe in global warming..

Conservation – i.e accomplishing the same function by using less energy is a GOOD thing.

When you close your front door – you are conserving energy and it does not take a rocket scientists to understand this.

yet in your view..closing the front door – has "impacts" and actually does have other "costs" not properly accounted for.

double bullsnot.

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

"http://www.thehcf.org/images/2007/5A_new2S.jpg"

That is a meaningless graph, but it leads to some interesting calculations.

It takes about 3 acres of trees to absorb a ton of CO2 per year, so the average world household needs around 30 acres to subsist sustainably and the average US household need 170 acres (whether they LIVE on it or not.)

Shucks, I'm good to go! I wonder what everyone else is doing to support THEIR 170 acres?

RH

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

" I don't beleive you can cut 50% of combustion and cost only 5% of GDP. That is just not credible."

well why don't you compare the GDP of the industrialized nations?

you don't have to "believe" Ray, there is data… you just don't want to use it because then it would screw up your own convoluted beliefs…

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

Just how much of the "Greenhouse Effect" is caused by human activity?
(The following comes from a British web site)
It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account– about 5.53%, if not.

This point is so crucial to the debate over global warming that how water vapor is or isn't factored into an analysis of Earth's greenhouse gases makes the difference between describing a significant human contribution to the greenhouse effect, or a negligible one.

Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many "facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.

Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).

Human activites contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small– perhaps undetectable– effect on global climate.
…………………………………………………………..
The above statement came from another web site:
http://www.espere.net/Unitedkingdom
/water/uk_watervapour.html

RH

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Groveton

September 11, 2009

You gotta love Bacon's Rebellion!

First, I am a shameful Obama lover –

"You were wrong when you compared Obama to Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt went into history as a great American; Obama will be seen as a great socialist – not even close to the same."

"So let's go over your eight points/items. One point was moot, then you gave him three thumbs up and four thumbs down (I gave him one thumbs up and six thumbs down), yet you rank him with Roosevelt, I can not agree.".

Then, I am shamless Obama hater –

"I'm critical of Obama and I worry about what lies ahead of us but I'm not near so sanguine as Groveton and Accurate in their shoot-from-the-hip assessments of an 8-month President that they in fact, confess. is based in part on events not of his own making…

It would be like if I threw a flaming coal at Groveton and Accurate and then criticized them for getting their hands burned.".

Either I need to change my pen name to Sybil or you guys need to read what I write more closely.

Hint: Accurate has my position down a lot better than LarryG.

I think Obama has a lot of guts. He isn't always right about what to do but he trying to do something. Most politicians would just let health care fester and worry about the issue de jour. Kind of like the corproate types who can't see past the next quarter. They always end up in deep kim chee. So will the US if we don't get after some of these deep rooted problems.

If there were 11 Obamas playing against the Redskins I'd still root for the 'Skins. But I'd hope for a close game.

Our process of checks and balances doesn't give any president free reign. Obama can't just make the public option law by saying so. But the president can use the bully pulpit to stir things up. And he can push specific plans. Like Teddy Roosevelt did when he went "trust busting". Like Obama is doing with health care.

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

Ray.. where are the credential o the web sites that you derive your information from?

and why would you choose to accept some kinds of speculation that differ from other views but more importantly…

if you really don't know.. and you acknowledge that there may well be some uncertainty and one side of that uncertainty includes less than wonderful outcomes…

why do you choose to believe the speculations that only point to little or no effect?

of course you're the guy that think that many of the now-banned chemicals that we know are bad for the environment – are still opposed to them being banned…

right?

so even after the evidence is in .. and it's conclusive to most folks and virtually all of the scientific community – you still choose to accept a tiny segment of those who disagree?

The question is if you choose wrong on a more restrictive regime.. what is the harm?

Well.. you lose some GDP but then at some point.. you realize you were too restrictive and you loosen it up so you lose a few years of productivity.

what happens if you are wrong on the other side?

we already know.

They're called superfund sites and more than a few of them are so polluted that they can only be fenced off to prevent harm to those who may wander by.

The problem is you cannot rope off the planet if you are wrong in a similar way with GW.

and that's what I don't get.

You're essentially willing to place a bet on the possibility of massive destruction on the same basis that you'd not want to ban some chemicals because they "might" not cause harm even though the evidence is pretty conclusive.

You're the guy who still believes that they have yet to prove a definitive link between cigarettes and lung cancer because we've not yet set up a human trial and without that human trial there will always be the small chance that the correlation is wrong.

at what point – do you become convinced otherwise?

answer – at the point it is too late.

the only hope that we have on this is that enough others will eventually outvote you -like they did with other chemicals in the environment.

at some point.. we push aside the folks that would allow us to go over the waterfall because we were not yet too close to be sucked over it.

we need to bring the boat to shore …and take some time to scout ahead before we get back in and go full steam ahead.

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

"well why don't you compare the GDP of the industrialized nations?"

We have been through this before and I have presented the data.

Nations that use less energy than we do produce much less than we do,with the notable exeption of Japan.

for the most part, their producton per unit of energy is lower and therefor they cannot afford to use more, as we do.

I have never said there are not some savings to be made, but we are NOT going to reduce combustion by 50% and reduce GDP by only 5%.

Some energy production will be replaced with renewables and the production and maintenance of that will replace some GDP, but the efficiency will be much lower, and we will have to use less becasue we won't afford more.

It is Devon's paradox, again.

for myself it is very simple. I burn ahalf as much diesel fuel and I produce half as much product. Maybe I save a little by not working the hilly areas first. But there is no technology that lets me reduce my energy ysage by half without cutting my productivity in half.

There are no hybrid tractors or solar tractors, and no technology that will support electric tractors. maybe we go back to steam and I burn wood instead of oil, but that reduces my efficiency too.

I don't beleive the rest of the world is all that different from my experience.

I like to sail, which uses 100% renewable energy. But it is not Free – no cost, because it costs me about $2.00 per mile, on average. Burning oil in my hybrid is four times as efficient on a cost basis. And again, I doubt the rest of the world can do much better: the last I knew F still = MA.

RH

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

"You're the guy who still believes that they have yet to prove a definitive link between cigarettes and lung cancer "

I'm the guy whose father edited the first surgeons general report on smoking and who quit smoking as a result.

RH

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

" for the most part, their producton per unit of energy is lower and therefor they cannot afford to use more, as we do."

huh?

are we making the same products to sell on the same world market and energy is a cost component of the product that affects it's price?

so you're saying what here?

that they can make a product for less than us because they have to?

what kind of logic is this guy?

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Accurate

September 11, 2009

Larry (or anyone else) –
check it out, the list is now 700 scientists with lots of letters behind their names, including:

Dr. Sallie L. Baliunas, Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Dr. Robert C. Balling, Jr., Climatologist, Arizona State University

Dr. Norman Borlaug, Agricultural scientist, father of “Green Revolution” and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal

Dr. Patrick Moore, Ecologist and founder of “Greenpeace”

But a few of the hundreds of scientists that now discredit the UN/Al Gore studies. Google it yourself. It will add costs, cut jobs and hurt the remaining industry that we have left in this country.

We had warmer temperatures in the earth's history, warmer than today but they didn't have the internal combustion engine … hmmm, how did that rise in CO2 happen then? The Sahara was once a lush jungle, and (again) before the industrial age, it turned into the desert that we know it to be. To think that man has a hand in changing the climate or that we can affect it in any meaningful way is a fallicy – we're that significant.

Do you have an answer to how/why those climate changes occured earlier?

As for the cost of energy killing people. Yes, people die from heat exhaustion because they weigh the cost of food and medicine versus turning on an appliance that costs energy=money to run. The same is true during winters, when they don't run the heat, they just try to wrap up in blankets to ward off the cold – sometimes it doesn't work. And you want to increase that cost.

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

" I'm the guy whose father edited the first surgeons general report on smoking and who quit smoking as a result."

you also the guy who would not ban dioxin, ddt and dozens of other chemicals because you demand that the potential harm be proved to be more costly than the benefit.

right?

so using your approach.. we'd still have many banned chemicals in use because it's never been "proved" that the dollar cost of their harm exceeds the dollar benefits?

right?

and you propose to use this same approach for Global Warming.

right?

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

accurate – did you read this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/science/earth/11passage.html?hpw

re: people dying…

Accurate – people DIE by getting old and crossing the street in front of traffic.. and they DIE from not taking the drugs they had in hand…

normal healthy human beings do NOT die from using less energy than they did before.

If that were true – we'd have major die-offs of people over the decades as we ALL cut back on energy use.

This is a really DUMB argument.

How many people will die from multiple Katrina-like Hurricanes if it turns out that those things are related to GW?

Are you willing to bet the house that there is absolutely no possibly of that happening?

do you not accept the idea of risk and risk management?

how would you manage the risk associated with GW? Simple deny it as a possibility and move on as before?

so.. if the doctor tells you if you don't cut back on fats and get your Cholesterol levels down you will die.. you just tell him that you not only don't believe him but you also are not going to take any steps at all to respond to the risk?

That's what I do not understand about your position.

Is the right course of action to deny all possibility of a worse case and do nothing?

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

"Hint: Accurate has my position down a lot better than LarryG."

Larry is an expert at misrepresenting other peoples position as a way to bolster his own.

——————————

Ray.. where are the credential o the web sites that you derive your information from?

I presented them with the data: it is inthe archives somewhere. I avoid websites that have an obvious predilection, or else I compare their arguments with those of opposing predilections, and pick the best part of both arguments to draw my own conclusions.

This is not too hard. you can check energy usage for various nations and GDP. You can check GHG emissions and back calculate to energy usage. or you can find sites that do this for you. There is even a site that shows the change in the ratio of GDP and Energy usage over time. You can watch successful countries increase their GDP faster than they increase their energy usage, and vice versa.

I don't accept speculation. I'm a scientist, and speculation is just untested hypothesis. No data, no value. Thats why wen someone stands up at a meeting and says "This will cause too much traffic" it is just background noise without a reference. I want to ask, "How much would you have to cut out before you had too little traffic?"

Uncertainty is not a reason to make bad decsion or to weight a decision more one way than the other. It is not all that hard to measure the uncertainty. Then you come up with a range of answers and a range of cost alternatives.

A small proability of a big cost is mathematically the same as a big probabilty of a small but certain cost. The small but certain cost is a lot easier and less expensive to rectify, with a greater probaility of success,and a better cost benefit ratio.

If you save enough money on all the small things, you may eventually be able to tackle the big ones. You fight a big war one platoon and one pillbox at a time.

There are many things that have a small probability and a big risk. We cannot possibly defend against all of them. We spend a gazillion dollars fighting GHG only to discover we are about to be annhilated by a comet. Or we get annihilated by a gamma ray burst a billion miles away before we know it happened.

But we know that thousands lose their health care just when they need it most, or have it rescinded for reasons they never knew and aren't told about.

That, we can fix. And we can do it a lot cheaper than cleaning up PCB that might kill somebody someday. I might have to worry about choking on GHG someday, but it is far more likely I'll get killed by my insurance company before then.

——————————

"…what happens if you are wrong on the other side?

we already know."

No, we do not. That is why your question has that big IF in the middle of it.

It is a logical and an economic fallacy to think that a a large event with large uncertainty is more valuable to pursue than a bunch of smaller events with known probabilities. It is like worrying about a hurricane 1500 miles away while you are in the shipping lanes.

There are ways to deal with uncertainties, and they do not include throwing money at eery possibe catastrophe.

RH

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

" for the most part, their producton per unit of energy is lower and therefor they cannot afford to use more, as we do."

huh?"

Read it again, it means exactly what it says. The more efficient you are, the more "profit" you make and the more you can afford to use.

Airplanes are a lot more efficent than they used to be, so we burn a lot more jet fuel.

RH

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

" you can check energy usage for various nations and GDP. "

I'm not making the GDP argument – you are. Prove your assertion.

re: long term planning is a futile and expensive exercise

So.. in your view – the potential threat from GHG is so small as to not require any action what-so-ever on our part to deal with risk?

correct?

So we do not need to exercise any risk management at all with regard to GW because it's pretty conclusive that the level of risk is so low as to not require any response on our part?

so you fundamentally disagree with this report:

http://securityandclimate.cna.org/

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

"that they can make a product for less than us because they have to?"

No, we make products for less, or more valuable products for the same. Even though our manufacturing sector is decimated as far as jobs go, in dollar value US manufacturing is still growing.

Some foregn countries use less energy per person than we do but they produce less godds per person as well. Their standard of living is not as high to begin with, but if they give up on using a gallon of fuel they don't lose as much as we do, either.

But for countris really on the edge wher thsy use a lot less fuel than we do and earn a dollar a day, well, you give up a gallon of fuel, you die.

Hate to blow your bubble.

RH

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

"I'm not making the GDP argument – you are. Prove your assertion."

I already did that twice, go look it up.

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

" Airplanes are a lot more efficent than they used to be, so we burn a lot more jet fuel."

Ray.. What? that does have to do with your premise about Europe's energy use and GDP compared to the US energy use and GDP?

explain again why the Europeans can use 1/2 the energy and we cannot ?

… because they "must"????

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

"…the potential threat from GHG is so small as to not require any action what-so-ever on our part to deal with risk?"

We need to determine or estimate the real risks and real cost of effects as best we can.

Then we need to do the same thing concerning the cost and effects of mitigation.

Probably, the uncertainties ar so high that any investment in funds (or not) has a small most probable value, compared to things we know we can fix.

Did you run out and buy stock in AIG when you could get it for 12 cents? I didn't think so. When AIG was $50 a share would we have been justified in spending $25 a share to keep it from going to 12 cents?

Nope, because you would be better off doing nothing. But that is what we are suggesting we do with GHG.

——————————

I believe we will eventually use up our resources or poison ourselves like cells in a petri dish. I'm with you on the potential/eventual catastrophe scenario. I just don't agree on the solution.

Lets say we are really smart cells and we say look we need to conserve everything outside the logical location for th eclear edge: let's not use the Agar within an inch of the wall (battlefield, maybe, in human terms.)

OK fine. we just moved the day of reckoning from the edge of the Petri dish to an inch fromthe edge, and we put more than half our resources off limits.

We are going to have fewer cells and they are going to die sooner. Now we have to pick, who will live and who will die, or not be born.

The consequences of doing anything so ambitious as to provide some opportunity for preventing catastrophe may be catastrophic in itself.

Russia lost a whole generation of its menfolk that way, and they haven't recovered yet.

RH

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

the argument that people who use more energy are better off than those that use less basically ignores the effect of efficiency.

If a more efficient process, using less electricity results in cheaper toilet paper – it does not follow that people will use more toilet paper.

ditto with toothbrushes or hemorrhoid cream or hats, unless one thinks that people will buy more of something because it is cheaper – even if they don't need it.

If someone figures out how to make caskets using less energy it will not result in more people dying to take advantage of cheaper caskets.

that's how ridiculous this argument is.

The truth is – if you spend less money on heating – you may well decide you can afford more TV channels on your cable or you can afford to replace that inefficient fridge sooner than before.

It does not mean you will use more heat.

when these obvious contradictions are brought up.. it results is hand waving… and dogged insistence that the theory itself cannot possibly be wrong because… get this.. it's got an equation… and equations are the truth.

God Forbid that someone would ask where the equation came from and whether or not that equation was expressly written to demonstrate how a theory about something COULD work.

so you put "Devon's paradox" in a GOGGLE search and what do you get?

Do you get a Wiki hit or a hit with a ".gov" or a ".edu"?

do you find out that Devon's Paradox is actually a LAW that is actually used in real circumstances?

Nope… it's yet another cockamamie idea latched onto by the folks who would choose that over the ample contradictory evidence that exists all around us.

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

" I believe we will eventually use up our resources or poison ourselves like cells in a petri dish. I'm with you on the potential/eventual catastrophe scenario. I just don't agree on the solution."

if this is your basic beliefs then why would you do something like buy a more efficient appliance or car?

is it only because it allows you to buy more stuff?

and you really don't care what kind of a world your kids or their kids get?

I would submit that folks that have that attitude should not be determining risk and energy policy to start with.

In fact, you should start every single one of your posts with that as the front matter… because only when we know that do we really understand a lot of your reasoning on the issues.

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

US Energy efficiency

http://www.sdi.gov/lc_ener.htm

The models by Kummel and Ayres predict that for every 1% increase in energy inputs you get about a 0.7% increase in GDP on average. The immediate implication is that a reduction of 1% in energy will cause a corresponding 0.7% drop in GDP. So if the world's oil supply were to decline by 30% the global GDP would lose 23% of its value.

The 10 Richest Nations
Table 1: Top 10 in 2006

Country Population (millions) Per Capita GDP
Norway 5 $46,435
Republic of Ireland 4 $44,073
USA 301 $43,607
Denmark 6 $36,636
Canada 33 $35,269
Austria 8 $34,610
Finland 5 $33,923
Switzerland 8 $33,618
Japan 127 $33,069
Australia 20 $33,069
Total Population 518
Average GDP $39,627

Table 2: Projected Top 10 in 2050

Country Population (millions) Per Capita GDP
Norway 5 $48,580
Switzerland 7 $31,634
Japan 105 $29,692
Austria 7 $29,283
Finland 5 $28,886
Denmark 5 $28,320
Germany 73 $26,826
USA 349 $26,720
Taiwan 19 $25,997
France 60 $25,625
Total Population 635
Average GDP $27,372

The interesting thing about the winners is that the size of the group has barely changed, and while their GDP has declined, it has not gone down by much. The average per capita GDP has dropped by about 30%, mostly driven by the decline in the United States. While this drop will be noticeable, given the high level of income that exists today it will not be beyond peoples' means to accommodate.

The 10 Poorest Nations
Table 3: Bottom 10 in 2006

Country Population (millions) Per Capita GDP
Other Africa 720 $1,889
Uzbekistan 28 $2,005
Bangladesh 150 $2,239
Pakistan 165 $2,656
India 1130 $3,678
Indonesia 235 $4,040
Egypt 80 $4,164
Ecuador 14 $4,458
Philippines 91 $4,940
Other C&S America 60 $5,185
Total Population 2,673
Average GDP $3,162

Table 4: Projected Bottom 10 in 2050

Country Population (millions) Per Capita GDP
Other Africa 1,436 $582
Uzbekistan 41 $718
Pakistan 345 $787
Bangladesh 212 $794
Other Middle East 229 $1,247
Egypt 115 $1,487
Ecuador 21 $1,736
Other C&S America 108 $1,768
Indonesia 312 $1,896
Algeria 58 $2,077
Total Population 2,877
Average GDP
$939

It's a very different story for those nations on the bottom of the ladder. While the population of the bottom 10 countries hasn't changed much, their per capita GDP has dropped a whopping 70%. The average income has fallen from $8.50 per day now to $2.50 per day (in today's dollars) in 2050. Also notice the inclusion of Africa's 1.4 billion people in this group. As their average income is so low, probably a full billion people in this group will be trying to live on less than a dollar a day.

http://canada.theoildrum.com/node/3230

RH

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

"…and you really don't care what kind of a world your kids or their kids get?"

I'm green. I have no children.

Realistically, what kind of world the children get is out of my hands.

Yes, I make best value choices because it increases my remaining options. Making bad value choices, especially really big ones, decrease my future options, and therefore increases my future risk.

Same goes for the rest of the world, but most of them don;t know it.

——————————

"If a more efficient process, using less electricity results in cheaper toilet paper – it does not follow that people will use more toilet paper."

Sure it does. that kind of thinking is a lack of imagination.

Reminds me the story of the lady who called Sears to order a case of toilet paper. Sears asked for the catalog number.

"YOU moron, if I had the catalog I wouldn;t need the toilet paper."

—————————–

My reasoning on the issues is based on what I was taught in graduate school on environmental risk management, and operations research.

Probable Value = Probability of Event * Cost of Event

We've launched, what, 160 shuttle missions and we lost two. Cost around 1.5 billion per launch. Probable cost of a loss = roughly $18.75 million, every time you go up. Which means every mission had better be worth $1.5 billion PLUS the probability of a loss, or the trip isn't worth taking.

RH

RH

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Anonymous

September 11, 2009

"the argument that people who use more energy are better off than those that use less basically ignores the effect of efficiency."

The fact is that people who use it more efficiently use more, except for Japan. that is known measurable fact.

Japan proves there is some partial merit to your argument, we can save some, but in the limit efficiency leads to more use, not less.

No, people will not die to use more caskets. but some people will get caskets who otherwise would have only a shroud. Or the casket builder will use his new profits to go into some other, additional business and use the energy there.

The data above predicts that billions will wind up living on a dollar a day if oil supplies decline by a third or price goes up by a third.

I predict a good number of them will die. While we are making plans to curb greenhouse gas we should make plans to bury those people. I hope we have efficient caskets.

RH

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

" My reasoning on the issues is based on what I was taught in graduate school on environmental risk management, and operations research."

so how do you explain the contradictions?

You can order all the cases of toilet paper you want but unless you have some other use for it.. you're not going to use any more of it.

Same thing with bottled water or paperclips or hair dye or q-tips.

What you were taught does not jive well with reality..

and your response is – " this is what I was taught".

is that the best you can do when I present the contradictions to you?

What does this statement mean?

" As a percentage of income, food has dropped as the price has decreased".

If kumquats drop to 1/4 of their original price are you going to buy 4 times as many?

do you think if your theory is wrong on things like this that it might also be wrong on other things?

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Larry G

September 11, 2009

" The data above predicts that billions will wind up living on a dollar a day if oil supplies decline by a third or price goes up by a third."

the data above predicts more cockamamie ideas from you.

How many folks died when gasoline went from $2.00 to $4.00?

Have you got that data handy?

of course you don't because the data does not predict that at all.. only the guy looking at it with his glasses on backwards.

more expensive gasoline results in more fuel efficient cars and more efficient use of cars.

Europe has $6-8 gasoline, their average car is more efficient than our average car and they drive about 1/2 as much as us…and they still have a longer life expectancy than us.

If you want to say more folks in Bangladesh will die…from an increase in gasoline prices, please show me the number who died when gasoline went from 2 to 4 bucks… where is that data?

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Anonymous

September 12, 2009

If you lower the price of toilet paper you will sell more toilet paper. One reason you sell more is tha you convert people who were using the sears catalog.

You might think that's a joke but my grade school honest-to-god had sears catalogs in the outhouses.

But the price is ultimately set by what the market will bear and what the demand is: you are partially correct.

The issue here is efficiency. If you make toilet paper more efficiently you sell the same paper at the same price but you make more profit.

That means you can take whatever you had left over from your efficiency gain and make something else out of it. You don't save it to make TP next month.

The end result is that the efficiency makes you money but does not save resources.

Suppose I discover I can get a little more efficiendy out of my tractor if Ihave the tires inflated correctly. Does that mean I use less fuel? Nope, I just finish what I was doing ten minutes earlier and do something else, clear a few trees or something.

Next time around I've got more field to cut so my efficiency gets me more profit but not less fuel use.

And there is a limit, I can only optimize the tires once, after that, no more efficiency gains, and I'm back to square one: I want more production then I burn more fuel; more than before the efficiency gain.

End of story.

Despite all you claim about baloney, we know that the facts are that efficiency leads to more use, not less.

RH

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Anonymous

September 12, 2009

"What you were taught does not jive well with reality.. "

Actually it does. Your so called contraditctions are false.

just about everything we do today we do cheaper and more efficiently than before. Food used to be one third of our family budget but now it is much less.

Do we eat less food? Nope
Do we spend less money? Nope, we make more and spend more.

Therefore we must be using more resources. Efficiency is NOT the same as conservation.

Efficiency is increasing the output for the amount of input. It doesn't mean you use less input, becauwse you figure on using the output, generally speaking.

Conservation is preventing loss.

They are entirely different.

RH

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Anonymous

September 12, 2009

"…the data above predicts more cockamamie ideas from you."

It isn't my data. Go to the site and read it yourself.

——————————-

"How many folks died when gasoline went from $2.00 to $4.00?"

When, or because?

I don't know, but if we can find out, I'll wager it is over a hundred.

RH

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Anonymous

September 12, 2009

"..only the guy looking at it with his glasses on backwards."

HUH?

Calm down, take a deep breath.

You are asking me if I have data on somethng that happened and then saying there is no data to predict backwards.

There might not have been any prior data predicting that, but now that we have it, or could get it, it would be applicable next time, no?

You can't win this arument, so you are reduced to calling names?

RH

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Anonymous

September 12, 2009

Gas Station murder suspect arraigned

Fight over gas prices ends in death

Fuel prices set to trigger rise in winter deaths …

Indonesia: Clashes over student death after fuel protest arrest

Death Rates and Food Prices

High Gas Prices Result in Fewer Driving Deaths, Study Finds

Motorcycle Deaths Linked with Rising Gas Prices | InjuryBoard Seattle

RECORD HEAT WAVE IN EUROPE TAKES 35

Rising Gasoline Prices Could Take A Bite Out Of America's Obesity
First obesity, then starvation

Motorcycle deaths in state this year higher than in '08 – Edmonton …

OAP deaths warning as British Gas hikes prices up by 35%
Jul 31 2008 By Janice Burns

HUNDREDS of old folk will die in Scotland because of the staggering 35 per cent hike in the price of gas,

Fewer Bike Week Visitors Blamed On Economy, High Gas Prices …
That's pretty funny

Gas price drives motorcycle sales despite danger – Washington Times

Motorcycle Deaths Linked with Rising Gas Prices

Cops Claim They, Not Gas Prices, are Responsible for Drop in Auto Fatalities

Study: Cheerleading accounts for most sports-related injuries …

Workplace Deaths Fall in Wyoming
Fewer people working, maybe

Energy prices could fuel winter death rate – politics.co.uk

Fuel Price Hike Triggers Violent Protests In Nepal

The Hidden Death Toll of Higher CAFE Standards

In the UK Fuel poverty is said to occur when in order to heat its home to an adequate standard of warmth a household needs to spend more than 10% of its income on total fuel use.

After Deadly Protests, Ecuador Rolls Back Fuel Prices

————————

If we keep this up it could be over a hundred countries, let alone a hundrede deaths.

Shoot yeah, lets raise fuel prices – it will be great for the environment.

RH

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Anonymous

September 12, 2009

For many, fuel poverty is a question of life and death. …

Rocketing fuel prices sparks return to traditional log fires for …when death occurs due to poorly installed heating systems.

Two dead in Europe fuel protests

There is more if you care to look.

RH

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Larry G

September 12, 2009

" The end result is that the efficiency makes you money but does not save resources."

If you believe in Jevron's Paradox – yes.

do you have a chart that shows how actual efficiency for something leads to more consumption of it?

If electricity doubles in price like in Europe does that not result in increases in efficiency of use?

so you cut down the total electricity bill.. does that mean you'll end up using even more electricity than you did before?

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Larry G

September 12, 2009

" Do we eat less food? Nope"

no.. you said that if food got cheaper than we'd eat more…

and while it might be partially true.. to a point.. people will not eat more and more food the cheaper it is..

it's the same as toilet paper.

these are direct contradictions to your theory…

" Efficiency is NOT the same as conservation."

no they are not but you CAN Conserve by being more efficient.

You can conserve electricity by using LEDs instead of incandescents.

You can conserve electricity by using a microwave rather than an oven.

You can conserve electricity by using a heat pump rather than baseboard electric.

you can conserve heat by not leaving your front door open.

you can conserver gasoline by turning your engine off at stop lights (or buying a hybrid that does it for you).

you are so wrong about this guy.

I can cite you virtually non-stop contradictions …

Ray.. how many folks died in Katrina or floods in Bangladesh?

do you think more people in Bangladesh die fro higher energy prices or more frequent flooding that could be the result of global warming?

no I'm not calling you names.. I'm saying that you look at data and make conclusions about what it means that are simply not supportable… and that much of the time the data you provide does not come from authoratative sources but from blogs of folks who think like you who also don't provide authoratative sources.

I'm not opposed to folks using their own noggins to make up their own minds…

but when you do this – you have to resolve the contradictions.

and you don't..

you dismiss Japan as not really relevant when that's simply not true.

it's an example that totally contradicts what you believe so you hand-wave it away rather than delving into why it violates your theories.

you don't want to understand why.. that's why you hand wave it away.

so if I say anything about your character .. I am wrong.. and I apologize.. but I feel perfectly free to go at how your process things…

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Anonymous

September 13, 2009

" Do we eat less food? Nope"

no.. you said that if food got cheaper than we'd eat more…

Isn't that much the ame as not eating less? If we are not eating more, where is the obesity problem coming from?

RH

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Anonymous

September 13, 2009

"you CAN Conserve by being more efficient."

Finally. Yes, you can, but in practice it does not happen. In poractice you spend the same money to make more product so you have not only saved nothing you have used MORE resources.

In practice, you save a little money on toilet paper and then you spend the money you "saved" on Mexican food.

What you are arguing, flies inthe face of historical fact. WE are thousands of times more efficient than we were only a few years ago.

If we were SAVING anything as a result our savings rate should be through the roof and banks would be giving money away.

But that isn't what happened: our production and consumption is through the roof, as EMR will be happy to explain.

Where the hell is the savings, Larry?

————————–

Anyway, there is a limit to how much efficiency you can get. Eventually you cannot squeeze any mmore form the system.
Efficiency is a delaying tactic, not a solution to the root cause problem. Once we squeeze all we can, we will wake up and face the same problem: we need more power plants and something to feed them.

RH

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Anonymous

September 13, 2009

"you dismiss Japan as not really relevant when that's simply not true."

When did I do that?

Japan is a clear outlier on the curve, and we ought to understand why.

Don't expect it to solve any of our problems, though. We could adopt everry applicable Japanese lesson, and still need more power, more resources and more highways in ten years.

RH

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Anonymous

September 13, 2009

One argument against the efficacy of improving energy efficiency is called Jevons’ Paradox. This suggests that, when we improve our energy efficiency, we also reduce our demand for energy from that same use. That decreased demand in relation to supply makes energy cheaper, which in turn makes us use more of it. It has been suggested that this “rebound effect” only accounts for 5-20% of efficiency gains, but I have written previously about the potential for a “shadow” rebound effect that potentially accounts for nearly the entire efficiency gain.

————————–

The Tata Nano: While the efficiency revolution may let us drive on half the gas, the productivity revolution may make it affordable to twice as many–or more.

————————–

the Nano is revolutionary because it is representative of another trend in the modern economy—our ability to produce more for the same amount of energy consumed, and it’s broader corollary, our ability to produce most everything more efficiently and cheaply. If you track economic statistics with much interest, you have probably noticed that the statistics covering “productivity” show a virtually permanent increase over the past few decades. The Nano is a prime example of exactly that trend—in real dollars (and accounting for subsidies), it is probably the least expensive four-door car every built by a considerable margin. Some of that comes from economy of scale, some from the ability to leverage processes and materials developed elsewhere, and some is simply the result of designing with precisely that goal in mind. But the result is the same: a car for less money means a car that more people can afford to buy.

——————————

Economic growth is driven by three main factors: increasing population, increasing energy availability, and increasing productivity. It is often assumed, here and elsewhere, that a focus on productivity is the only realistic way to maintain economic growth if we are to control population and pollution while dealing with plateauing or declining energy supplies. Does the Nano throw a wrench in that analysis? Even if this unanticipated consequence of increasing productivity only serves to negate our gains in energy efficiency, this is enough to cast serious doubt in my mind over our ability to maintain economic growth going forward.

—————————-

This development seems to carry with it the significant moral hazard (already a hot debate topic within the world of carbon emissions) in the possible “solution” of denying these efficiency gains, or their products, to the world’s poor. Where is the cut-off? Do we cap the “middle class” at one billion? Two billion? Three? The possibility and morality of such a move are highly suspect.

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Anonymous

September 13, 2009

You can conserve
You can conserve
You can conserve

Those are not instances of increasing efficiency. Yuo are juat proving my point that conservation and increasing efficiency are different, not only in qulity but in sign: they point opposite directions.

You have not shown a single example where greater efficieny has not led to more use.

And you confuse energy efficiciency with economic efficiency

"Consider a machine that is sold for $100, which lasts only a year, and then a solidly made version of the machine, that costs $300 and which lasts for 10 years.

As far as the company is concerned, the two machines will do the same job, for as long as they last; and maybe for the time the company wants that job done. However, by paying out only $100, $200 is saved for using the next year.

During that year of the $100 machine’s life, the other $200 dollars may be invested (assuming the company has that money spare). With the great onrush of technology, next year’s version of the machine may be better, or a new and more efficient process may have been developed.

If, to pay for the more expensive machine, the extra $200 was borrowed, then the company may well have to pay 10%+ per annum interest on their borrowings. The company may hope to be better off next year, so the immediately cheaper item may be purchased. And next year, it is likely that the same considerations may apply. Therefore, a company may decide to buy the ‘cheaper’ version each year. This may well not be energy-efficient."

Saving energy and wasting money probably means more resources are used somewhere else in the system. But it is also true that you can sometimes save money by wasting energy.

RH

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Anonymous

September 13, 2009

" the decline in the number of BTUs consumed per dollar of GDP [from 19,000 BTUs consumed per dollar of GDP in 1950, to a projected 9,000 BTUs in 2010], but energy consumption continued to grow. "

RH

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Larry G

September 13, 2009

" Isn't that much the ame as not eating less? If we are not eating more, where is the obesity problem coming from?"

there is still a limit to how much you can eat… no matter how cheap it gets.

Steak could be a buck a pound and you still could not eat 8 times as much as if it were 8 bucks a pound and of course if you could manage that – you WOULD NEED …MORE Toilet paper but if we measured the need for toilet paper on your logic..we'd need tons more.

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Larry G

September 13, 2009

" Finally. Yes, you can, but in practice it does not happen. In poractice you spend the same money to make more product so you have not only saved nothing you have used MORE resources."

wait. let me get this straight, if you make the same product with less resources, you have used MORE resources.

come again?

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Larry G

September 13, 2009

" But that isn't what happened: our production and consumption is through the roof, as EMR will be happy to explain.

Where the hell is the savings, Larry?"

It's called productivity and it buys you things like better health care, higher standards of living, a better ability to help those in poverty, etc

and.. reduce the destruction of the environment and the costs required to mitigate it.

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Larry G

September 13, 2009

" We could adopt everry applicable Japanese lesson, and still need more power, more resources and more highways in ten years."

you would if you continued to grow.

What Japan has shown is that you can grow and become more efficient as the same time.

which means you won't use proportionately more resources as a consequence of growing.

Europe also has proved that you can continue to grow and still use 1/2 the energy per capita as the US does.

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Larry G

September 13, 2009

" You have not shown a single example where greater efficieny has not led to more use."

toilet paper?

more efficiency = lower prices does not equal higher use.

a more efficient washer does not mean more clothes washing.

a more efficient toilet does not lead to more toilet use.

what part of this do you not understand?

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Larry G

September 13, 2009

re: Energy Efficiency, Consumption, rebound effect, Jevrons Paradox…

I'll concede on this being accepted as a valid effect especially when applied on a macro level.

For instance, replacing a car with one with twice as good fuel economy is not likely to end up with twice as much mileage.

more mileage perhaps but not twice as much.

but on a macro scale, the money saved from being able to purchase less gasoline – could, in some gases lead to more consumption.

You wouldn't buy more toilet paper with the money saved but you might buy something that uses energy that you do not own before.

but also just as likely is you might go up a tier on your cable channels..buying the next level up – with the gas money saved.

or you might start buying a better grade of wine or a GPS unit …etc.

some of these won't result in more energy use but they may result in an increase in the energy needed to manufacture them..

but a better grade of wine or steak is basically in increase in quality of life and even though you might be buying more steak.. that means you also are using less hamburger.

So the bottom line here is that there is an effect..on some things but not others…

if you added a new room on your house with the money you saved from buying a more efficient car, then you'd likely wipe out any energy savings – unless of course you also used some of that same money saved to buy a more efficient heat pump.

I've yet to see a graph that shows nominal energy use (adjust for growth) compared to an energy efficiency index though.

In other words.. you can show a chart of every increasing energy use – but how much of that is due to population growth and how much of it is due to increases in energy efficiency?

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Anonymous

September 14, 2009

"re: Energy Efficiency, Consumption, rebound effect, Jevrons Paradox…

I'll concede on this being accepted as a valid effect especially when applied on a macro level."

Thank you.

And notice how similar this is to the argument that you cannot build your way out of congestion because more road space just invites more cars: the induced taffic argument.

You make the roads more efficient – and you get more road use. And it doesn't matter whether you make them more efficient by adding more road space or adding more alternatives like rail transit.

But here is the problem, the macro level is just the sum of the micro level decisions, just as long term profits are made up of a string of short term ones.

So you can't very well argue that the ruel only holds at the macro level, but you are right, efficiency gains sometime translate into more different options and not necessarily more of the same ones.

One option might be that you use less and just conserve the difference, but experience shows that is NOT the ususal result, and therefore promoting efficiency as if it was the same as conservation is a mistake.

The other porblem we have is that normally when we conserve something wer conserve it for future use: my wife and I are busy making pickles and peach conserves right now. (There are no store bought pickles like my wif'e home made.)

But the plan is to USE those conserves someday.

The conservation movement as a whole doesn't seem satisfied with any kind of conservation that isn't permanent, for all time. They think THEY have the legal right to ignore the legal concept of not being able to reach beyond the grave, just because their motives are pure.

I like old growth forest, too, but there is nothing qute like working with a piece of wood that is 75 rings to the inch. That is a piece of wood that deserves to be treated with reverence and respect. Obviously, that is a privilege that is necessarily rare, like eating true New England Bay Sallops, but why would we ever want to exclude either privilege, totally, and forever?

RH

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Anonymous

September 14, 2009

"What Japan has shown is that you can grow and become more efficient as the same time.

which means you won't use proportionately more resources as a consequence of growing."

That I can agree with.

Now, even if you don't use proportionately more resources you are still using more resources. And if the starting argument is that we have to conserve because we are running out, then efficiency is a good delaying tactic but it isn't a solution.

What I don't agree with is the Pollyanna idea that we are going to solve our resource problem through ever greater efficiency. Because efficiency does have some limits. The more you know about a speeding object's location, the less you know about its speed.

If we are going to treat old growth forest as a renewable resource we can't have tens of thousands of people with chain saws cutting it down, but one person with a chain saw probably isn't a threat: een old growth forest will grow back before he uses a significant part of it.

We would like the Old Growth forest to be as much use to us as it is the owls and the squirrels, and that goes for all our other renewable resources, too.

But that means we have to decide who "us" is, and so far that is a decision we are mostly unwilling to make. China made a cut at it with their "one child" rule, and it had serious problems, but now some Chinese see the advantages of not having so many.

I'm trying to convince that she needs to make some end of life care decisons concerning our aging and sick cat, but I'm not making much headway. If it is that hard with cats it is going to be even harder with people,as the current angst over non-existent "death committees" shows. And it is going to be even harder controlling both life and death.

If we are going to have old growth forests, we are going to have to kill off a lot of loggers and a lot of product users. Either that ro reran them for other jobs and using other resources.

But those resources already have users and manufacturors, and they are going to want to protect "their turf".

I believe we are about to have a head on collision between the ethics of conservation of resources and the ethics of conservation of people. And one way we try to avoid this uncomfortable result is to believe we can solve everything with more effciency.

We'll solve or congestion problesm with trains because they are "more efficient", we think. And then one day we wake up wondering why anyone wants to ride a sardine machine to work every day.

RH

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Larry G

September 14, 2009

what you do with efficiency is you capture the benefit of it at a societal level.

and the way you do this is the way that California and Europe do it.

You tax it then instead of using the money to consume more – you build infrastructure that ends up encouraging more efficiency.

that's sustainable.

so you tax coal-powered electricity and you use the tax to provide solar-power

you tax gasoline and you build rail

you tax cigarettes and alcohol and sweets and you provide healthcare with it.

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Anonymous

September 15, 2009

"I'm green. I have no children."

See todays story in the WAPO

When It Comes to Pollution, Less (Kids) May Be More

"By preventing the creation of new polluters, the group says, contraceptives are a far cheaper solution than windmills and solar plants.

It is an unorthodox — and, for now, unpopular — way to approach the problem, which can seem so vast and close that it is driving many thinkers toward gizmos and oddball ideas."

Never let it be said that I'm not in the Vanguard, or that I am hypocritical about my arguments vs how I live. The Petri dish argument is on the rise.

RH

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Anonymous

September 15, 2009

ciant"what you do with efficiency is you capture the benefit of it at a societal level."

No, what happens is that societies like California and Europe pass laws that tax the individual and provide to society. The way they capture the benefit is that they steal it.

If I do something more efficiently, then I ought to get the benefit, and not society.

Societies like California also make the mistake you have made, which is confusing increased efficiency with conservation.

California (and no place else that I no of) does NOT tax efficiency. They tax usage that they want to discourage, in the name of conservation.

And god knows what they use the money for, because they are broke.

—————————

"you build infrastructure that ends up encouraging more efficiency.

that's sustainable."

No it isn't. It isn't sustainable if it isn't profitable.

A friend was describing to me a new winery being built in Fauquier, and how the owner had built beautifully done wine caves, and how everything on his place was just gorgeously done, and how he was a big promoter of doing things sustainably.

Well, that's easy to do if you have unlimited family money to do it with. But in the real world, it is not sustainable unless it is profitable. The California analogy is that their "family money" is taxpayers money, and they seem to think they have an unlimited amount of it.

Energy efficiency is not the same as fiscal efficiency.

Suppose I'm using a steam engine to pump oil out of a well. since oil is so valuable and coal is so cheap, it maight actually PAY me to use 500,000 btu worth of coal to pump 250,000 btu worth of oil.

Fiscally efficient and fiscally sustainable but not energy efficient.

I'm on your side, really. I wish things were the way you see them, but they are not. If we really want to effect change then we need to understand wht is really happening and why.

We can't effect change by drinking our own Kool-Aid.

——————————-

There is a big difference between encouraging me to be efficient and taxing me for not being efficient. If you are going to pay me to become more efficient (because it is better for society) THEN youhave some ncentive to make sure my energy efficiency is aligned with YOUR fiscal efficiency. Society cannot afford to spend more on efficiency than it saves from efficiency.

But if they just tax me for being inefficient, then society doesn't have to care what it costs. They think it is "Free- no cost" as Jim Bacon would say.

In fact, it is just bad accounting and really lousy measuring. Society can't afford to spend more on efficiency than it saves. Since society is the sum of the individuals, it is a FALLACY to think that society gains by forcing individuals so spend more than they save.

In the same way it is a FALLACY to think that society gains by stealing from individuals.

BUT if society agrees to pay for what it gets, same as anyone else, THEN it has an incentive to see to it that policies result in a net social gain without causing individual losers.

Now, if youwant to work for positive change, and positive environmental change, then THAT is the change to work for first.

RH

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Anonymous

September 15, 2009

"Oregon State researchers concluded that child-bearing was one of the most fateful environmental decisions in anyone's life.

Recycle, shorten your commute, drive a hybrid vehicle, and buy energy-efficient light bulbs, appliances and windows — all of that would cut out about one-fortieth of the emissions caused by bringing two children, and their children's children, into the world."

WAPO

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Bacon's Rebellion

Please, Give Me a Break!

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