From Tamara her own bad self:
Some bright spark in the Letters to the Editor section of today’s cat box liner was opining that when the Messiah leads us to glory come November, a rational energy policy could be passed that would…
…are you ready for this?
…”[end] the use of fossil fuels in 10 years“.
May I suggest that you, sir, are a bleedin’ idiot and should keep your piehole respectfully shut when grownups are talking?
Are you seriously suggesting that in the space of a decade we could replace every moped and chainsaw, every combine and bulldozer with their equivalents from the Segway catalog? That the coal-fired powerplant that provides the juice to run the refrigerators in the organic produce section of your local Tofu-Mart be supplanted by some solar cells? That the big diesel generator that provides the emergency backup power for your Aunt Millie’s respirator down at Sisters of Mercy General be replaced by pink unicorns farting moonbeams through the blades of wind turbines?
And she wonders why she has a huge internet following.
On the topic of Obama supporters, I have never seen such a bunch of deluded idiots in my entire life. When I talk to people who are planning on voting for him, it’s like talking to a bunch of cultists – I’m not kidding. Of the dozen or so people I know that are planning (or say they’re planning) on voting for Barack, exactly 1 has been able to present a case for Barack that didn’t hinge on how “different” things will be when he’s elected. One person. Sadly, I suspect that this person is the exception, rather than the rule.
Even trying to move away from fossil fuels is better than John “dodge the issue” McCain and his multi-million bounty.
Good job missing the point, dunderhead.
There’s an engineering principle that says that railroads will be built when it’s railroading time.
Railroading time comes when a combination of economic and technological factors make railroading both feasible and profitable. Railroading time does not come when some idiot with a liberal arts degree and an expensive hairdo proclaims it to be time for The People to pull together and make a thing with rails that is also a road.
The minute that it is feasible and profitable to abandon fossil fuels, humanity will drop them like a live grenade, much like you’re not burning a damn whale oil lamp in your coal-heated living room.
Or to put it another way, a single large bounty isn’t enough to reshape the economic landscape. And spending more on oil certainly isn’t going to help the issue.
On a different note, I’d like to know what Ahab thinks of the Pickens Plan. Everything I’ve seen of it suggests free-market voodoo without clear incentives for much of anything.
“pink unicorns farting moonbeams”
There has definitely been something different about the city since she’s moved up here. 🙂
“free-market voodoo without clear incentives”
It’s a wonder more people don’t starve from forgetting which end of the spoon goes in their mouths.
If you can think of a clearer incentive than making a goddam buck, I’m all ears.
If you can think of a clearer incentive than making a goddam buck, I’m all ears.
A plan that consists of “the free market will do X” and “private industry will do Y” without explaining why this will happen is lacking clear incentives. If these things are clearly profitable, wouldn’t they have been done already? What does Pickens want to change that will reshape the economics at hand, and how is he going to do it?
A 58 million dollar marketing campaign doesn’t answer any of those questions.
If for example the cost of wind generated electricity is lower than the cost of coal generated electricity, that is a painfully obvious incentive to switch to wind production. I’ll provide you a concrete example, Kalium. I’ve been thinking about building a wind turbine on my property. Why? Because as windy as it is at my house, I may be able to use 3 times as much electricity as I do now, while selling enough to the power company to pay the loan I would get to build the wind turbine. My costs decrease dramatically and my quality of life goes up. If you can’t see the incentive in such a thing, you’re willfully blind.
I can see the incentive under such a scenario. What I’m asking is why this sort of massive shift hasn’t already happened and what Pickens purports to change.
I’m hardly ignorant of the functioning of economic forces. That said, claims that said forces will suddenly trigger a set of massive changes without any significant change in the economic landscape to trigger it set off my bullshit detector. The market isn’t generally given to hideously expensive whimsy.
Kalium, Kalium, Kalium.
As a fellow BOB, I must say, I’m ashamed.
Take a look at history, seriously. We’ve had such major shifts in energy in the past. It’s one of the things that triggered the Industrial Revolution, and further, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries the transition from Whale-oil and coal to Fossil Fuel based products. These market forces are the same thing that spread the use of electricity to replace oil lamps.
Ironically, we’d not likely have half the fossil fuel use for electrical energy production if it wasn’t for reactionist leftists who scream in terror and protest whenever the easiest, safest and lease carbon outputting energy generation is suggested… one that doesn’t depend on the weather or take up unprecedented amounts of acreage. One that in its over 40 year history of usage has had one minor accident in the US, and only a handful other problems worldwide, and one major disaster caused completely by human error rather than any problem with the safety systems. In fact, it’s about the one area I wish the US would follow France’s lead on…
“A plan that consists of “the free market will do X” and “private industry will do Y” without explaining why this will happen is lacking clear incentives.”
Are you deaf or are you dense?
The free market is built on incentives. If there is a real incentive to do something, it will get done because people like incentives, which can then be redeemed for fabulous prizes at your local Neiman-Marcus and Hammacher-Schlemmer outlets.
Is it so bad to ask where these incentives will come from? Just waving “incentives” around doesn’t answer anything. I don’t know about your trees, but the leaves on mine don’t spend so well.
Unless “incentives” is code for “federal subsidy”, in which case everything makes sense again.
“Is it so bad to ask where these incentives will come from?”
You are either willfully obtuse or too dense to argue with.
I’m assuming that in your world there is some kind of free market that exists without incentives? One where people, uh, go “free marketing” around for free, or because it makes them feel good?
I’d assume you get an incentive for showing up at work every day, no?
It hasn’t been cost effective. That’s why, plain and simple. Just because a technology exists doesn’t mean it’s cost effective to use it. A hell of a lot of farmers stuck to horses and mules for a long time after tractors became available because grain and hay was cheap, but gas was expensive.
You really don’t understand economics, do you? “Incentives” is code for “profit”. Did Steve Jobs need a federal subsidy to introduce the iPod or the iPhone?