Re: us motorists are gas sucking whining energy pigs



gwhite wrote:

> I was
> agreeing with Carl that OPEC are not lords unto themselves. They need
> to keep the price low enough such that competing forms of energy are
> not pursued. That is, if they want to sell their oil.


Carl is right, this is true.

Our current gasoline price spike is nothing unusual. People seem to forget how
the oil companies do this every year -- lots of press releases every spring,
telling us how and why prices will be going up. They're just boosting prices
for the summer driving season, especially Memorial Day through July 4. They've
been starting this effort a little earlier every year for the last several
years. You can corroborate this by reading through old newspapers. The same
pattern emerges every year, with the same kinds of stories from the same
"sources" (PR think-tanks). It's all just part of an ongoing haggle with the
public.

>> Unforunately, acid rain, CO2 emissions, etc., are the
>> only problems with coal ever discussed.

>
> Modern coal energy plants do have scrubbers to greatly reduce acid
> rain. Indeed the controversy has died down. I'm sure they could be
> made better, but I don't know the cost. Coal plants do emit C02, for
> those who are concerned with the claim of global warming.


It seems you don't believe this "claim."

> There are
> many new coal energy plants planned for construction. I just read it
> in the paper a few days ago.


Yup, unfortunately. In case you haven't noticed, energy companies are big
backers of our current administration -- which in many cases, has returned the
favor by calling the dogs off.

>> Mining coal is like tearing up your
>> backyard with a bulldozer, to find $1.25 buried there,
>> and leaving the mess for the next homeowner to clean up.


> The only thing important is the that the backyard is represented by
> the seller truthfully to the next buyer. If it is "torn up," but the
> buyer decides that's okay for the selling price, then I don't see a
> problem with inheriting a "cleanup." After all, truth in selling
> means the buyer was aware there would be costs of improvement.


My point was that the cleanup would be more expensive than the "treasure" is
worth. So digging it up is pointless. And it might even cost more than the
land is worth. So it will sit like that for eternity, unless the taxpayers pick
up the tab. This is the problem with coal. It's only cost efficient when the
environmental damage caused by the mining is ignored -- which is in fact what
happens.

>> I'm with you on investment in other
>> technologies, but not that one.


> I would let the marketplace decide. The only confounding issue is
> that of externalities, specifically pollution. Are the beneficiaries
> bearing the full cost of the energy and not someone else? That's the
> only sticky part to it in my mind.


That *is* the sticky point, and it's a reality. The beneficiaries are not
bearing the full cost.

Matt O.
 
carlfogel wrote:
>
> Meanwhile, I notice few mothers with three children wishing that
> everyone would switch to bicycles and mass transit schemes.


Plenty of mothers with three children are beating down the doors of real estate
offices in villagey communities, willing to pay millions of dollars to live
where they can walk to everything.

Matt O.
 
Matt O'Toole wrote:
> carlfogel wrote:
> >
> > Meanwhile, I notice few mothers with three children wishing that
> > everyone would switch to bicycles and mass transit schemes.

> Plenty of mothers with three children are beating down the doors of real
> estate offices in villagey communities, willing to pay millions of
> dollars to live where they can walk to everything.
> Matt O.




Dear Matt,

Plenty of mothers are willing to pay millions of dollars to live where
they can walk to everything.

Unfortunately, they don't have millions of dollars, so they drive like
most people in the U.S.

Carl Fogel



--
 
carlfogel wrote:

> Plenty of mothers are willing to pay millions of dollars to live where
> they can walk to everything.
>
> Unfortunately, they don't have millions of dollars, so they drive like
> most people in the U.S.


With a little planning, it would be easier and cheaper to build villages for the
mothers, than to give them millions of dollars so they can outbid radiologists
for space in the existing ones.

Matt O.
 
carlfogel wrote:

> Dear Matt,
>
> Plenty of mothers are willing to pay millions of dollars to live where
> they can walk to everything.
>
> Unfortunately, they don't have millions of dollars, so they drive like
> most people in the U.S.


Dear Carl,

A mother with three children is wealthy.

Jonathan Swift
 
Matt O'Toole wrote:
> carlfogel wrote:
> > Plenty of mothers are willing to pay millions of dollars to live where
> > they can walk to everything.
> >
> > Unfortunately, they don't have millions of dollars, so they drive like
> > most people in the U.S.

> With a little planning, it would be easier and cheaper to build villages
> for the mothers, than to give them millions of dollars so they can
> outbid radiologists for space in the existing ones.
> Matt O.




Dear Matt,

I suspect that you're wrong. It's far more expensive to provide all the
amenities of modern life within convenient walking distance because you
lose the economies of scale.

For example, it costs far more to cut up a grocery store that serves car-
based customers and turn it into dozens of small grocery stores to serve
foot traffic--you need dozens of managers and clerks to run every
location and the delivery trucks have to make dozens of new runs, each
of which takes as long as the original run.

We don't give a typical mother of three children millions of dollars.
She tends to buy her own car for far less and prefers driving it to
trudging miles on foot.

The radiologists typically drive to work at hospitals. If grocery stores
are unlikely to downsize to suit pedestrians, radiology groups are even
more unlikely. At current prices, don't expect to see a friendly
neighborhood MRI scanner soon.

As a matter of fact, I have half a dozen radiologists as clients.
Possibly as a reaction to spending long hours reading scans in
windowless rooms in the bowels of the hospital, they all live in Pueblo
West, a thirty mile round trip that provides them with huge vistas.
None of them live within walking distance of anything except their
neighbors' homes.

Pueblo West is advertised as a "planned community."

Carl Fogel



--
 
"Matt O'Toole" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> carlfogel wrote:
>
> > Plenty of mothers are willing to pay millions of dollars to live where
> > they can walk to everything.
> >
> > Unfortunately, they don't have millions of dollars, so they drive like
> > most people in the U.S.

>
> With a little planning, it would be easier and cheaper to build villages for the
> mothers,...


Planned economies have been found to be very expensive in terms of
human life and just plain old money. The planners haven't turned out
to know nearly as much as they think they did when it comes to the
economy, but they make up for that by knowing full well who to send to
the gulag.

Me? I'll let the mom's of the world figure how to spend their own
money. In a market economy where bad decisions on the average lead to
bad results (and vice versa), I trust "mom" to make a reasonably
informed choice regarding what she can and cannot afford, and what she
does and does not prefer.
 
carlfogel wrote:

> ...
> The radiologists typically drive to work at hospitals. If grocery stores
> are unlikely to downsize to suit pedestrians, radiology groups are even
> more unlikely. At current prices, don't expect to see a friendly
> neighborhood MRI scanner soon....


Maybe Colorado is different, but most of the hospitals in my area have
recently built or are planning to build MRI and/or radiology additions.

--
Tom Sherman - Quad Cities (Illinois Side)
 
Tom Sherman wrote:
> carlfogel wrote:
> > ... The radiologists typically drive to work at hospitals. If grocery
> > stores are unlikely to downsize to suit pedestrians, radiology groups
> > are even more unlikely. At current prices, don't expect to see a
> > friendly neighborhood MRI scanner soon....

> Maybe Colorado is different, but most of the hospitals in my area have
> recently built or are planning to build MRI and/or radiology additions.
> --
> Tom Sherman - Quad Cities (Illinois Side)




Dear Tom,

Colorado may well be different. Are most people in Illinois within
reasonable walking distance of a hospital?

My point is that most neighborhoods (an evening stroll) don't include
hospitals, not that major U.S. hospitals forgo MRI scanners. (Radiology
is considerably cheaper.)

Indeed, it would interesting to have a statistic about the average
distance from a U.S. home to a full grocery store (as opposed to a Kwik-E-
Mart), a far more common destination than a hopsital.

Carl Fogel



--
 
[email protected] (gwhite) wrote:

> "Matt O'Toole" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Mining coal is like tearing up your
> > backyard with a bulldozer, to find $1.25 buried there,
> > and leaving the mess for the next homeowner to clean up.

>
> The only thing important is the that the backyard is represented by
> the seller truthfully to the next buyer. If it is "torn up," but the
> buyer decides that's okay for the selling price, then I don't see a
> problem with inheriting a "cleanup."


The problem with that thinking is that it presumes that it's OK for a
destructive moral imbecile to "own" land that existed for eons before
he did, and which will remain ruined for millenia after he's exploited
it.

You can own, and "tear up", a bicycle or a house or a dinette set.
Destroying good land is another thing altogether. Remember how much
older and more important the earth is than any of its young cultures
that have developed notions about free markets, ownership rights, etc.

Destroying land is like eating your seed corn, or your children's seed
corn. Or your children. You just don't do it if you have any sense
of respect for God's works, or of kinship with other beings, or of
having inherited from the past and owing something to the future.

Chalo Colina
 
carlfogel wrote:

> Dear Tom,
>
> Colorado may well be different. Are most people in Illinois within
> reasonable walking distance of a hospital?
>
> My point is that most neighborhoods (an evening stroll) don't include
> hospitals, not that major U.S. hospitals forgo MRI scanners. (Radiology
> is considerably cheaper.)
>
> Indeed, it would interesting to have a statistic about the average
> distance from a U.S. home to a full grocery store (as opposed to a Kwik-E-
> Mart), a far more common destination than a hopsital.


Dear Carl,

We are faced with defining reasonable. Many in the US would define
reasonable as less than one block. [1] However, if we increase
reasonable to two miles (a pleasant walk IMO) the number becomes
substantially greater.

What is sadly humorous is the large percentage of people in the US who
think that averaging less than 15-mph while travelling extended
distances in a motorized vehicle is reasonable. To me this would be
intolerable (which is why I choose not to live in the suburbs of a major
city).

[1] Notice how people will cruise around a parking lot trying to get one
of the closer spaces, when it would be quicker to take an empty spot on
the edge and walk the remaining distance.

--
Tom Sherman - Quad Cities (Illinois Side)
 
[email protected] (Chalo) writes:

> You can own, and "tear up", a bicycle or a house or a dinette set.
> Destroying good land is another thing altogether. Remember how much
> older and more important the earth is than any of its young cultures
> that have developed notions about free markets, ownership rights,
> etc.
>
> Destroying land is like eating your seed corn, or your children's
> seed corn. Or your children. You just don't do it if you have any
> sense of respect for God's works, or of kinship with other beings,
> or of having inherited from the past and owing something to the
> future.


You rarely vote Republican, I'd guess. Remember the good old days of
James "we can destroy the environment because the end of the world is
coming next week, anyway" Watt and Ronald "if you've seen one redwood,
you've seen 'em all" Reagan? Everything old is new again- it's the
same bunch of morons running the country yet again.
 
npr gave a renditon of the FREEENERGYHYDROGEN problem yesterday.
local high school up the road abit is into it.
hydrogen powered radio racers, weather pressure or actual combustion?
and somebody gave them a fuel cell.
so the interviewer asked a stud what gives here and LO!!!!!!!
he said water gives hydrogen and free energy when burned gives...
i paraphrase.
no doubt the thought process may not be totally articulated as the
owner wud intent...
but i've fooled with solar for some time and come into contact with
people who will defend similar thoughts to the death.
 
carlfogel wrote:

> Colorado may well be different.


Colorado *is* rather sprawly.

> My point is that most neighborhoods (an evening stroll) don't include
> hospitals, not that major U.S. hospitals forgo MRI scanners.
> (Radiology
> is considerably cheaper.)


This dicussion has nothing to do with radiology or hospitals. It's about what
kind of neighborhoods people with money (radiologists, for example), choose to
live in, when they really have a choice.

> Indeed, it would interesting to have a statistic about the average
> distance from a U.S. home to a full grocery store (as opposed to a
> Kwik-E- Mart), a far more common destination than a hopsital.


I don't know that statistic, but I do know that 80% of all car trips are less
than 3 miles. This is ridiculous.

There were 4-5 major supermarkets within 2 miles of each of my half dozen
residences in southern CA, and at least one within a mile. When I was a kid I
was almost completely self-sufficient, able to walk or bike anywhere I needed to
go -- school, store, library, friends' houses, after-school sports and
activities.

One reason I don't live in there anymore is that it has become too expensive.
Why? Because the millions of people who live in Orange County have voted with
their dollars for what are the best places to live -- older grid-subdivision
neighborhoods with a villagey atmosphere, all amenities in close proximity,
walkable sidewalks and bikeable streets. The same is true in any other major
metropolitan area that I've ever visited, in North America and abroad.

Matt O.
 
g.daniels wrote:

> ...
> no doubt the thought process may not be totally articulated as the
> owner wud intent...


Indeed. ;)

--
Tom Sherman - Quad Cities (Illinois Side)
 
"Matt O'Toole" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> carlfogel wrote:
>
> > Colorado may well be different.

>
> Colorado *is* rather sprawly.
>
> > My point is that most neighborhoods (an evening stroll) don't include
> > hospitals, not that major U.S. hospitals forgo MRI scanners.
> > (Radiology
> > is considerably cheaper.)

>
> This dicussion has nothing to do with radiology or hospitals. It's about

what
> kind of neighborhoods people with money (radiologists, for example),

choose to
> live in, when they really have a choice.
>
> > Indeed, it would interesting to have a statistic about the average
> > distance from a U.S. home to a full grocery store (as opposed to a
> > Kwik-E- Mart), a far more common destination than a hopsital.

>
> I don't know that statistic, but I do know that 80% of all car trips are

less
> than 3 miles. This is ridiculous.
>
> There were 4-5 major supermarkets within 2 miles of each of my half dozen
> residences in southern CA, and at least one within a mile. When I was a

kid I
> was almost completely self-sufficient, able to walk or bike anywhere I

needed to
> go -- school, store, library, friends' houses, after-school sports and
> activities.
>
> One reason I don't live in there anymore is that it has become too

expensive.
>


If homes cost only $50,000 with the same environment I still wouldn't live
behind the almost entirely soulless, lifeless, bland Orange Curtain (Santa
Ana (and Laguna Beach in the past) excluded).

Greg
 
carlfogel wrote:

> ...
> Indeed, it would interesting to have a statistic about the average
> distance from a U.S. home to a full grocery store (as opposed to a Kwik-E-
> Mart), a far more common destination than a hopsital.


Dear Carl,

Homer Simpson appears to require medical care almost as frequently as he
visits the Kwik-E-Mart.

--
Tom Sherman - Quad Cities (Illinois Side)
 
[email protected] (Chalo) wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> [email protected] (gwhite) wrote:
>
> > "Matt O'Toole" <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > > Mining coal is like tearing up your
> > > backyard with a bulldozer, to find $1.25 buried there,
> > > and leaving the mess for the next homeowner to clean up.

> >
> > The only thing important is the that the backyard is represented by
> > the seller truthfully to the next buyer. If it is "torn up," but the
> > buyer decides that's okay for the selling price, then I don't see a
> > problem with inheriting a "cleanup."

>
> The problem with that thinking is that it presumes that it's OK for a
> destructive moral imbecile to "own" land that existed for eons before
> he did, and which will remain ruined for millenia after he's exploited
> it.
>
> You can own, and "tear up", a bicycle or a house or a dinette set.
> Destroying good land is another thing altogether. Remember how much
> older and more important the earth is than any of its young cultures
> that have developed notions about free markets, ownership rights, etc.


I think the collectivist view has been so thoroughly discredited that
argument on the matter is pure folly.
 
"Matt O'Toole" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> gwhite wrote:
>
> > I was
> > agreeing with Carl that OPEC are not lords unto themselves. They need
> > to keep the price low enough such that competing forms of energy are
> > not pursued. That is, if they want to sell their oil.

>
> Carl is right, this is true.
>
> Our current gasoline price spike is nothing unusual. People seem to forget how
> the oil companies do this every year -- lots of press releases every spring,
> telling us how and why prices will be going up. They're just boosting prices
> for the summer driving season, especially Memorial Day through July 4. They've
> been starting this effort a little earlier every year for the last several
> years. You can corroborate this by reading through old newspapers. The same
> pattern emerges every year, with the same kinds of stories from the same
> "sources" (PR think-tanks). It's all just part of an ongoing haggle with the
> public.


Oh I know all about that. The formulations for summer are different.
Here in CA, there are even stricter regulations, so prices are even
higher since we can't use any one elses formulations. Like you say,
every year the same thing happens, but folks don't "get" why.

> >> Unforunately, acid rain, CO2 emissions, etc., are the
> >> only problems with coal ever discussed.

> >
> > Modern coal energy plants do have scrubbers to greatly reduce acid
> > rain. Indeed the controversy has died down. I'm sure they could be
> > made better, but I don't know the cost. Coal plants do emit C02, for
> > those who are concerned with the claim of global warming.

>
> It seems you don't believe this "claim."


I didn't write that. I think it is quite possibly true.

> > There are
> > many new coal energy plants planned for construction. I just read it
> > in the paper a few days ago.

>
> Yup, unfortunately. In case you haven't noticed, energy companies are big
> backers of our current administration -- which in many cases, has returned the
> favor by calling the dogs off.
>
> >> Mining coal is like tearing up your
> >> backyard with a bulldozer, to find $1.25 buried there,
> >> and leaving the mess for the next homeowner to clean up.

>
> > The only thing important is the that the backyard is represented by
> > the seller truthfully to the next buyer. If it is "torn up," but the
> > buyer decides that's okay for the selling price, then I don't see a
> > problem with inheriting a "cleanup." After all, truth in selling
> > means the buyer was aware there would be costs of improvement.

>
> My point was that the cleanup would be more expensive than the "treasure" is
> worth. So digging it up is pointless.
> And it might even cost more than the land is worth.


Unfortunately this makes no sense. If it was worth more in some other
condition, then someone should have bought it for *more* money. It
wasn't worth it, that's why no one paid the higher price. It had
higher value being stripped. That's what the prices tell you.

> So it will sit like that for eternity, unless the taxpayers pick
> up the tab. This is the problem with coal. It's only cost efficient
> when the environmental damage caused by the mining is ignored --
> which is in fact what happens.


Nooooo... it was decided through the market pricing that it was worth
digging the big f'ing hole. Why should the taxpayers pay anything?
So what if it sits "like that for eternity?"

The only traction available here is the externality one. That is, if
runoff causes water pollution or some other problem.

> >> I'm with you on investment in other
> >> technologies, but not that one.

>
> > I would let the marketplace decide. The only confounding issue is
> > that of externalities, specifically pollution. Are the beneficiaries
> > bearing the full cost of the energy and not someone else? That's the
> > only sticky part to it in my mind.

>
> That *is* the sticky point, and it's a reality. The beneficiaries are not
> bearing the full cost.


Fair enough. It is a place to start.
 
Tom Sherman <[email protected]> wrote:
> g.daniels wrote:
>
>> ...
>> no doubt the thought process may not be totally articulated as the
>> owner wud intent...

>
> Indeed. ;)


Does it seem to the rest of you that g.daniels has upped his
meds? I've had him kill-filed for a long time. But I recently
moved my newsreading to a different machine, and didn't copy
my filters. He used to seem to me about as lucid as someone
who went through a whole sack of airplane glue everyday... and
referred to lead paint as "wall candy". These days he seems much
improved. Maybe just a touch of starter fluid now and again.

--
Dane Jackson - z u v e m b i @ u n i x b i g o t s . o r g
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism
by those who have not got it." -George Bernard Shaw
 

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